Spartacus Educational

The Vassal State: How America Runs Britain

In his book, Vassal State: How America Runs Britain (2025), Angus Hanton, blames Margaret Thatcher privatization policies in the 1980s for the reason why the United States singled out the United Kingdom for economic capture. However, he points out this has been reiterated by every prime minister since she left power. Hanton is not only interested in how this happened but wants to explain the consequences of our politicians agreeing to become an American colony. Hanton argues that the famous "Special Relationship" is less of a diplomatic partnership and more of a corporate takeover, where the UK has become a "vassal state" whose infrastructure, data, and wealth are increasingly owned and controlled by Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

In September, 1997, Spartacus Educational founder and managing director John Simkin became the first educational publisher in Britain to establish a website that was willing to provide teachers and students with free educational materials.

According to a survey carried out by the Fischer Trust, Spartacus Educational is one of the top three websites used by history teachers and students in Britain (the other two are BBC History and the Public Record Office’s Learning Curve). The Spartacus Educational website currently gets up to 7 million page impressions a month and 3 million unique visitors.

As well as running the Spartacus Educational website John Simkin has also produced material for the Electronic Telegraph, the European Virtual School and the Guardian's educational website, Learn. He was also a member of the European History E-Learning Project (E-Help), a project to encourage and improve use of ICT and the internet in classrooms across the continent.

We have published six e-books, Charles Dickens: A Biography (October, 2012), First World War Encyclopedia (October, 2012), Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia (November, 2012), Gandhi: A Biography (December, 2012), The Spanish Civil War (December, 2012) and The American Civil War (December, 2012). He also contributed an article to the recently published book, Using New Technologies to Enhance Teaching and Learning in History (December, 2012).