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There’s Something Fishy About U.S.-Canada Trade Wars

In the 19th century, a tariff dispute actually came to blows, with 30 million frozen herring caught in the middle.
Trump glares at Trudeau at the G7 meeting.
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Trump Has Ignored the Worst Chapter of U.S.-Canada Relations

The War of 1812 holds lessons about the costly error of tariffs — not the threat of Canadians.
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The Truth About Trade Wars: Everyone Loses, and the Damage Is Hard To Undo

President Trump is repeating the mistakes of the Great Depression.
Map of the arms trade.

The Roots of America’s Gun Culture

How 18th-century British arms sales, the slave trade, and the Revolutionary War contributed to the mess we have today.
WPA poster for the City of New York Department of Docks, showing smokestack of ship and cargo being loaded.
Exhibit

International Trade

Histories of how money and commodities have flowed across borders, from the slave-based economies of maritime empires to contemporary globalization.

Trump speaks to auto workers.
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Donald Trump Wants to Take Republicans Back to Their Roots

The GOP was once the party of protectionism, while the Democrats led the way on free trade.

America’s Tumultuous History With Tariffs

From William McKinley to Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump has plenty of precedent if he's looking for it.

Congress Handed to the President the Power to Level Tariffs

A republic needs a legislature that can handle such tasks. We don’t have one.
A Japanese woodblock illustration of America, with a group of Americans observing hot air balloons in flight.

Commodore Perry's Expedition to Japan

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
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When It Comes To Guns, Congress Has Always Been in the Pocket of Profit Chasers

How profit motives have driven two centuries of American gun laws.
Civil War rifles mounted on wall

A World of Weapons: Historians Shape Scholarship on Arms Trading

The early history of American arms trading is missing from most of the scholarship on guns.

How Ice Cream Helped America at War

For decades, the military made sure soldiers had access to the treat—including spending $1 million on a floating ice-cream factory.
Bottles of Fanta with German labels.

Coca-Cola Collaborated with the Nazis in the 1930s, and Fanta is the Proof

The not-so-sweet history.

How Profits From Opium Shaped 19th-Century Boston

In a city steeped in history, very few residents understand the powerful legacy of opium money.

3 Ways to Think About the American Revolution

The complex combination of grievances that fueled the war had to do with taxes, class, and nationalism.

The North Carolina Trucker Who Brought the World to America in a Box

How Malcolm McClean's shipping containers conquered the global economy by land and sea.

Trump’s Defense of Taking Foreign Money Is Historically Illiterate

The Justice Department lawyers are getting the Founding Fathers all wrong.

The Troubled History of Horse Meat in America

The White House wants to reinstate the sale of horses for slaughter, but eating horse meat has always been politically treacherous.

Policing the Colony: From the American Revolution to Ferguson

King George's tax collectors abused police powers to fill his coffers. Sound familiar?
U.S. soldiers in the Civil War.

Expanding the Slaveocracy

The international ambitions of the US slaveholding class and the abolitionist movement that brought them down.

Recoil Operation

The U.S. has long supplied the world with AR-15 rifles. But only when we see its grim effects at home do politicians call for restricting its sale.
Drawing of Native Americans on a boat

Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America

Michael A. McDonnell’s book is a wonderfully researched microhistory of the Michilimackinac area from the mid-17th to the early 19th century.
Ross Perot speaking in front of a banner opposing NAFTA.

End of the End of History, Redux

Remember Perot?
Map of Mexico
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Birth of a Trade War

The Mexican origins of the birth control pill, and the trade dispute with the U.S. it generated.
Marine hospital

Sailors’ Health and National Wealth

That the federal government created this health care system for merchant mariners in the early American republic will surprise many.
Prescott Bush, Dorothy Bush, and George H. W. Bush at the White House.

How Bush's Grandfather Helped Hitler's Rise to Power

Rumors of a link between Prescott Bush and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. They were right.
Photograph of cars bumper to bumper on a highway, USA (year unknown, likely during 1970s energy crisis)

How Congress Planned To Solve The 1970s Energy Crisis

Representative Mo Udall's ambitious strategy to wean the United States off fossil fuels by the year 2000.
French Gen. Jean de Rochambeau and American Gen. George Washington giving the last orders in October 1781 for the battle at Yorktown.

How Allies Have Helped the US Gain Independence, Defend Freedom and Keep the Peace

Why should a country want or need allies? President Donald Trump and his followers seem to disdain the idea. So did George Washington.
Sheet music for W.C. Handy’s St. Louis Blues, 1925, featuring blue and white images of Louis Armstrong.

Imani Perry’s Blue Notes

Her new book tells the story of Black people through an exploration of the color blue.
Jimmy Carter and General Omar Torrijos shake hands after signing the Panama Canal Treaty in 1977

The Panama Canal Treaty Declassified

Kissinger warned: “This is no issue to face the world on. It looks like pure colonialism.”
A map dedication from Osgood Carlton "to the select men of the town of Boston" in 1795.

Practical Knowledge and the New Republic

Osgood Carleton and his forgotten 1795 map of Boston.

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