Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Taplow Court, Buckinghamshire, once the seat of Charles Pascoe Grenfell MP. Built in the 1850s, its neo-Tudor style spoke of the past, but Grenfell was a pioneer of modern industry, with copperworks in Wales and mines in Cuba. The Cuban mines were worked by enslaved Africans and Chinese “coolies”. 000
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 04/09/2026Paradise Square, Sheffield, a place for public meetings in the nineteenth century. In May 1863 a crowd of 6,000 people called for recognition of the Confederate States of America. As Tobias Gardner tells us, local metalware makers were badly affected by the loss of Southern markets in the Civil War. 010
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 03/09/2026The Black Swan, Sheffield. The Clash played their first ever gig here on 4 July 1976. 020
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 26/08/2026Too right. Check out “Slavery’s Long Goodbye” (published next month by @livunipress.bsky.social) for details of British mining companies practising mass enslavement in Cuba from the 1830s to the 1860s. 02410
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 19/08/2026I mentioned to my mate Andy that I planned to re-read Braudel on the Mediterranean once I was retired. Look what he’s bought me… 160
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 07/08/2026Think Victorian Christians were opposed to slavery? Think again. Many evangelicals were abolitionists, but from the 1830s the most dynamic element in British Christianity was Tractarianism. And Tractarians were indifferent, if not hostile, to abolitionism. 010
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 07/08/2026Want to know more about Cuban slavery and British industrialisation? I have the book for you #copper #Swansea 054
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 07/08/2026What’s the new book about? For one thing, corporate enslavement by British mining companies in #Cuba from the 1830s to the 1860s 000
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 06/08/2026Am grateful for some very generous endorsements ahead of publication 041
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 06/08/2026Hard copies arrive! “Slavery’s Long Goodbye”, out soon with @livunipress.bsky.social 4206
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 10/06/2026@mininghistory.bsky.social any idea what’s happening here? A postcard showing a clash between “white men” + “coolies”. Context: sent by my great uncle Dai Hughes, Rhondda collier who mined in South Africa, once for gold, then for coal (at Glencoe Junction) in 1920s (I think). 220
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 18/05/2026The book has a cover and a publication date. 30 September 2026 from @livunipress.bsky.social 071
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 03/05/2026Industrial landscapes don’t get any better than the north Cornish coast #copper #tin 061
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 20/04/2026The actual Castle of Otranto. But for real gothic horror, head to the cathedral, which is festooned with the skulls of 800 townspeople who were executed when the Turks took the city in 1480. 000
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 28/01/2026“Slavery’s Long Goodbye” (@livunipress.bsky.social). This is a story that also takes in #SierraLeone , #Swansea in South Wales, and #Argentina 0104
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 14/01/2026Coming soon from @livunipress.bsky.social A wild ride from Cuba to the Cape Colony and Civil War Kentucky. The moral of the story? Although C19 Britons thought their model of emancipation was exceptional, it was anything but #Cuba #AmericanCivilWar #slavery #emancipation #SouthAfrica 22112
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 04/12/2024First draft complete! “Slavery’s Long Goodbye: Capitalism, Nationalism and Christianity in the Age of British Emancipation”. All 140,000 words of it. Rather more than the Press is bargaining on. 2144
Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 27/11/2024Thank you to mi amiga Julie for this gift from Mexico. Blast furnace biography is a genre I’d like to see more of. 020