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Chris Evans

@cevans3.bsky.social
354 followers 739 following 32 posts

Historian of enslavement, emancipation, energy, and metals. Author of “Slavery’s Long Goodbye: Capitalism, Nationalism and Christianity in the Age of British Emancipation” ( 2026). ORCID 0000-0002-4194-5217

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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Taplow 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”.
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Paradise 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.
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The Black Swan, Sheffield. The Clash played their first ever gig here on 4 July 1976.
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Too 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.
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I 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…
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Think 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.
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Want to know more about Cuban slavery and British industrialisation? I have the book for you #copper #Swansea
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
What’s the new book about? For one thing, corporate enslavement by British mining companies in #Cuba from the 1830s to the 1860s
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Am grateful for some very generous endorsements ahead of publication
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Hard copies arrive! “Slavery’s Long Goodbye”, out soon with @livunipress.bsky.social
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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).
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
The book has a cover and a publication date. 30 September 2026 from @livunipress.bsky.social
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Industrial landscapes don’t get any better than the north Cornish coast #copper #tin
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
The 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.
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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
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Coming 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
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
First 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.
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
Thank you to mi amiga Julie for this gift from Mexico. Blast furnace biography is a genre I’d like to see more of.
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Chris Evans @cevans3.bsky.social · 12/10/2024
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