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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 23/01/2026

These two descriptions capture everything about how these events were presented in 50s compared to how we view them now

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 23/01/2026

Just saw an excellent exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London 🗺️🗃️

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 11/12/2025

Here’s a little snippet

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 04/11/2025

My daughter ran up to this car today and asked about the sticker. ✊🏽✊🏿✊🏼✊️✊🏾

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 24/09/2025

Excellent op-ed by Roxanne Gay “Civility Is a Fantasy” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/opinion/…

Text Shot: Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control.

Civility is wielded as a cudgel to further clarify the differences between “us” and “them.” It is the demand of people with thin skin who don’t want their delicate egos and impoverished ideas challenged. And it is a tool of fearful leaders, clinging to power with desperate, sweaty hands, thrilled at the ways they are forcing people, corporations and even other nations to bend to their will but terrified at what will happen when it all slips away.

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 17/09/2025

In 1818, Antoine Metral, a Haitian historian, wrote this account. He borrowed from Dalmas, but he also added the priestess who appears in most images of the ceremony

It is reported that before carrying out the plan, they made a sacrifice on a virgin soil and covered with wood, called le Caïman; that the victim was a black pig whom they surrounded with fetishes, and loaded with offerings of various kinds; that a young priestess, dressed in a white robe, plunged the sacred knife into her bowels according to the customary ceremonies; that they drank with acidity of his blood, and that they took from his hair, a sort of talisman which was to make them invulnerable in combat.

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 17/09/2025

In 1793 or 1794, Antoine Dalmas, the surgeon at the nearby Gallifet plantation, wrote this account of the ceremony

They celebrated a kind of feast or sacrifice in the middle of an uncultivated wooded plot on the Choiseul plantation, called le Caïman, where a very large number of slaves gathered. A black pig, surrounded by spirit objects, each loaded with offerings more bizarre than the next, was the offering made to the all powerful spirit of the black race. The religious ceremonies that the slaves practiced in slaughtering it, their greed to drink its blood, their eagerness to have some of its bristles as a kind of talisman that, according to them, would make them invulnerable, are all characteristics of the African.

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 17/09/2025

The night before the enslaved Africans on Haiti launched their revolt, they held a ceremony at Bois-Caïman. There are lots of paintings of this ceremony that was central to the revolution. The ceremony was one more example of how the enslaved Africans weren't inspired by the Enlightenment

Ernst Prophete’s painting of the ceremony at Bois-Caïman the night before the Haitian Revolution began

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 05/09/2025

Finishing up these two new excellent books.

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 01/02/2025

Traveling with a toddler in India is amazing, beautiful, exhausting, and so much more

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 15/01/2025

Excited to be in Delhi and pick up @amitav.bsky.social new book before it comes out in the states.

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 15/01/2025

Naughara is a historic road in Chandni Chowk (Old Delhi). It has nine beautiful doors and was home to the jewelers of the Mughal Emperors. 🗺️🗃️

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 13/01/2025

My favs in our rickshaw mirror 🛺🪞

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 13/01/2025

When I get great Indian food in Delhi after too long of living in Charleston

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 02/01/2025

I loved legos as a kid. I never understood the adult dude obsession with legos. I may just have found a reason to play with Legos at 50!

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 02/01/2025

Flying to NYC today. On Sat morning, I’m participating in a round table on the “Unsurvey” in World History at @historians.org 🗺️🗃️

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 30/12/2024

We don’t have as many primary sources as we do for Europe, but we know there were similar examples of rivers freezing

Screenshot. Text says: al-Maqrizi provided a vivid description of the 1361 freezing of the Euphrates:
The severe cold in Syria caused the Euphrates to freeze. Passengers and their loads crossed, it was a wonderful scene that had never been witnessed beforehand.

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 28/12/2024

Reading @sathnam.bsky.social’s Empireworld and this incredible line made me laugh out loud

A text shot containing the following information:
Title: Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe
Author: Sathnam Sanghera
Highlight: It’s no more possible to talk about the British empire without mentioning racism than it’s possible to listen to Taylor Swift without being made to think about relationships

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 28/12/2024

I love it. Instead of using serious photos of leaders, I would show them doing fun things to remind students they were humans first. (Lenin, Jinnah, Kenyatta)

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 27/12/2024

In 2022, I saw this amazing menorah in the shape of a minaret & wanted to learn more about the history. This period saw Ottoman Jews adopting lots of “Islamic” symbols

Menorah in the shape of a minaret, c.1900

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 17/12/2024

One of my favorite photos. I visited a spice plantation on Zanzibar in 2011. This is what nutmeg and mace look like when they’re harvested.

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 10/12/2024

I was looking back at an old post and thinking about what it means to decolonize world history - it’s about both changing WHAT we teach and HOW we teach 🗺️🗃️

My choice of exploring imperialism and education wasn’t accidental. By reflecting on the nature of and justifications for colonial schools, I hope both teachers and students can see how many of our approaches to teaching still reflect an imperial mindset. We often know more than our students and want to educate them, but we should avoid accidentally recreating imperialism’s inherently problematic power structures. When we lecture for an entire class or rely wholly on a single source (especially when that source is a textbook), we introduce some unequal power dynamics of imperialism in the classroom. We want to cultivate students who push back and ask questions.

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 06/12/2024

When I'm teaching the Cold War & Decolonization, I love having students read Indonesian President Sukarno's speech from the opening of the Bandung Conference in 1955 🗺️🗃️

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 03/12/2024

I'm finishing an incredible book about the history of travel. This quote is relevant to any teacher & student who ever used or heard the ridiculous phrase "Age of Discovery." 🗺️🗃️

A text shot containing the following information:
Title: On “Discovery”
Author: Shahnaz Habib
Source: Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel
Highlight: People of color often use air quotes when we talk of explorers who “discovered” the Americas or India or various Pacific
islands. Alas, it is hard to translate air quotes to text. Even when retranslated back as quote marks (see “discovered”), something is missing. My fingers often itch to include the eye-rolling and smirking that we use to accompany air quotes. I propose instead a new word: pseudiscovery. The silent p, I hope, will convey the silence of our air quotes, the people and places who were rendered invisible when Europeans pseudiscovered them.

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 01/12/2024

I also am a certified yoga teacher and lead culturally immersive yoga retreats with my wife. We now travel with our young daughter.

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 01/12/2024

I love traveling, primarily throughout Afroeurasia. I've been to over 70 countries, many of them multiple times. By learning how people in other parts of the world understand their own history, it has shaped how I approach world history.

At Ibn Battuta’s alleged resting place in Tangiers. Morocco

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 01/12/2024

Lots of folks have been following me and are new to Bluesky, so let me introduce myself. 🧵 I'm Bram Hubbell, and I'm a world historian. I primarily write Liberating Narratives, a newsletter for world history teachers.

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 29/11/2024

Students sometimes struggle to understand the racism of European imperialism. I have them look at the ABCs for Baby Patriots, & they understand how children were conditioned to see the world in racist terms 🗺️🗃️

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 25/11/2024

For the #historyfoodies here’s the perfect South Indian breakfast: idli and vada

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 22/11/2024

What happens when a bunch of world history teachers get together at #NCSS2024 - we go out to the Asian food court! @mrshistorylee.bsky.social @erbeckman.bsky.social I’m sure I’m missing people 🗺️🗃️

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 21/11/2024

I'm excited to be talking on Friday about how we can rethink our teaching of the tributary "system" and early modern East Asian foreign relations. It's more complicated than we think! @erbeckman.bsky.social #ncss2024 🗺️🗃️

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 20/11/2024

On Friday, I’ll be at #NCSS2024 w/ @mrshistorylee.bsky.social & @erbeckman.bsky.social talking about how we can center Black, Indigenous, and Women’s Voices in teaching the Age of Revolutions 🗺️🗃️

Image for a talk on the Age of Revolutions

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 16/11/2024

Here’s a little taste of the article

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 14/11/2024

On Friday 11/22 at 9:45, @mrshistorylee.bsky.social, @erbeckman.bsky.social, and I are leading a workshop at NCSS on diversifying how we teach the Age of Revolutions. We hope to see you there! 🗺️🗃️ #ageofrevolutions

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 14/11/2024

And here we are at a noodle cart in Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 14/11/2024

If we’re going to have a #historyfoodies hashtag, here’s my tofu veg laksa from the other day. Laksa reflects the different cultural traditions in Southeast Asia

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 12/11/2024

Who’s read or is reading Dalrymple’s The Golden Road? This is a great book for world historians and thinking about the spread of Indian culture throughout Afroeurasia. amzn.to/4fomkOe

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 12/11/2024

Every classroom needs to have this map in it. Students don’t understand how big Africa is. Order from BU African Studies Center 🗺️🗃️ #sschat www.bu.edu/africa/outre...

Map showing how the US, China, India, and Europe all fit in Africa

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 07/11/2024

For folks interested in learning more about Tokugawa Japan, Columbia University's Asia for Educators is offering a free workshop on Thursday, November 14 8:00–9:00 p.m. ET 🗺️🗃️ afe.easia.columbia.edu/programs/24f...

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 21/12/2023

My current favorite Chinese propaganda poster. It’s the “Children of New China” liberating Taiwan and driving Chiang Kai-shek wearing a US military uniform being driven into the Pacific Ocean. It also says “We Must Liberate Taiwan.” 🗺️ 🗃️

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 01/12/2023

Sometimes dad just needs to have a dosage with his daughter

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Bram Hubbell @bramhubbell.com · 02/10/2023

Sitting in the Marrakech airport and realizing I have so blissfully busy with this amazing first retreat. Other than posting on IG, it’s been impossible to check in on the socials. Who else struggles with all the different social media services? 🤯

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