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The Historical Journal

@historicaljnl.bsky.social
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The Historical Journal publishes papers on all aspects of British, European, and world history since the fifteenth century.

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh @gianamar97.bsky.social @uvahumanities.bsky.social and Mika Hyman @mikahyman.bsky.social @hpscambridge.bsky.social on 'Cross-Contextualization as Method' #History #Global #Culture 🗃️ 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
In 2010, Sujit Sivasundaram published a groundbreaking essay titled ‘Sciences and the global: on methods, questions, and theory’ in the journal Isis.Footnote2 Reflecting on the challenges posed to the ‘global history of science’ by what critics supposed to be a scarcity of sources from beyond Europe, Sivasundaram proposed a method of ‘cross-contextualization’, whereby scarce and unorthodox sources would be read alongside more plentiful, conventional ones. This approach extended beyond merely reading against the grain; it also promised to show how materials produced in disparate cultural contexts could, when studied together, mutually thicken and complicate one another’s interpretations.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Anna Simon-Stickley @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social and Amelia Urry @hpscambridge.bsky.social on 'Cross-Contextualizing the Histories and Politics of Environmental Proxies' #History #Analysis #Climate #Methodology #Roundtable🗃️ 👉Open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
In this essay, we approach the method of cross-contextualization as both an actors’ category and as an analytic approach for historians interested in the construction of long-term or large-scale environmental knowledge. While we both use cross-contextualization as it was originally conceived as a method to tell global histories of science by reading together sources not obviously in conversation, we also deal with actors who themselves are doing historical work by historicizing global climates across different contexts. To do so, these actors, too, have learned to read sources at a distance from their obvious audiences, thereby expanding what it is possible to say about the broad and nebulous category of global environment. We think through two areas of research: the construction of climate knowledge in nineteenth-century Egypt, from Anna, and the use of climate proxies in the twentieth-century technoscience, from Amelia.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Rabia Abba Omar (Stellenbosch University) and Theo Di Castri @theodicastri.bsky.social @homertoncollege.bsky.social on 'Giving Intentionally Silenced People(s) a Voice' #Archives #Roundtable #History #Creative 🗃️ 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
In the following conversation, historian Theo Di Castri and researcher/curator Rabia Abba Omar reflect on how questions of silence and voice are at play in their respective work. After challenging the very idea of ‘giving’ an archival voice to intentionally silenced people(s) and considering some alternative approaches, the conversation moved on to consider how artists, activists, and scholars working in other disciplines stand to expand and enrich our ability to respond to these recurring quandaries.
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Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh @gianamar97.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Our entire roundtable on "Cross-Contextualization as Method", co-edited with @mikahyman.bsky.social, is out now in FirstView in @historicaljnl.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1017/S001...
doi.org
Cross-Contextualization as Method | The Historical Journal | Cambridge Core
Cross-Contextualization as Method
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Jeremy Schneider @cornelluniversity.bsky.social and Siyakha Mguni (University of Cape Town) on 'Should the Lithosphere Tell Our Stories?' #Earth #Fossils #Culture #Knowledge #Indigenous #Western #Ancient 🌍🏔️🗃️ 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
This discussion pursues potential areas of epistemic productivity at the convergence of Western scientific frameworks and Indigenous knowledge systems to understand the ontological unity of natural systems, interpreting the lithosphere not merely as a physical substrate, but as a deep archive of human histories, cultural practices, and cosmologies in all the world’s regions. By de-fossilizing knowledge – a useful analytical concept that allows the discovery of potential conjunction of scientific thought and robust forms of knowing from ancient cultures – we foreground relational epistemes and explorative narrative possibilities inherent in ancient human landscapes. The selected cases, though brief and not exhaustive, support our view that there are strong resonances between Western science and ancient knowledge forms seen among Indigenous cultures in the world.
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Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh @gianamar97.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Delighted to see @mikahyman.bsky.social and @sebkroupa.bsky.social's brilliant piece (and, indeed, almost all of the "Cross-contextualization as Method" roundtable) out now in @historicaljnl.bsky.social!
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Mika Hyman @mikahyman.bsky.social @hpscambridge.bsky.social and Sebestian Kroupa @sebkroupa.bsky.social @mcgill.ca on '(Up)rooted Consumptions: Can Plants Speak?' #Roundtable #Dialogue #Environment #Human #Global 🌵🌱🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
In this dialogue, Mika Hyman and Sebestian Kroupa consider how plants operate as dynamic agents shaping historical and cultural processes. Plants offer especially productive sources for cross-contextualization precisely because they refuse confinement to a single context or form of evidence. Their traces range from living organisms and herbarium specimens to traded objects, entries, and images in scientific treatises and motifs in visual and material culture. This multiplicity enables historians to use plants to move across disparate geographies, chronologies, and epistemologies. The apparent rootedness of plants belies their extraordinary mobility: transported as seeds, dried samples, and cultivated crops, plants reveal both global connections and ruptures, moments of transfer as much as dislocation and loss. While plants may not speak to us in a literal sense, their movements, meanings, and material presences open histories that might otherwise remain silent – and that challenge imperial, anthropocentric, and accumulation-driven narratives.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri @chountisdefabbri.bsky.social @uniofaberdeen.bsky.social on 'The Many Lives of Edmund Burke: A Historiographical Review' #History #Review #Politics #Thought #Evolution 📜 18thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
This historiographical review maps and scrutinizes the interpretative traditions that have grown around Edmund Burke’s thought since the 1790s, identifying three distinctive strands of criticism: the Victorian utilitarian/proto-liberal interpretation, the Namierite analysis of Burke, and the North American natural law tradition. It then turns to the recent archival and contextual scholarship that has largely superseded these schemata – the biographies of F. P. Lock and Richard Bourke, the analysis of J. G. A. Pocock, and the imperial and global perspectives of P. J. Marshall and others – which relocates Burke within the political crises and colonial contexts in which he wrote. This reorientation has been underpinned by the modern editorial projects behind his Correspondence and Writings and speeches. Rather than adjudicating who Burke was, the review traces how successive generations have read, reframed, and instrumentalized his prima facie contradictions, suggesting that his resistance to classification reflects less a defect in the literature than the enduring richness of its subject.
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Duncan Money @mininghistory.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Always helpful to read widely around your topic. This is both a very good article summarising the scholarship on a topic I know little about and alerted me to research on Moroccan miners in the coalfields of northern France: theses.hal.science/tel-01957590
theses.hal.science
Making sure you're not a bot!
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Abhimanyu Arni @kingshistory.bsky.social on 'Indian Political Intelligence (IPI) and the Recolonization of the Indian Diaspora: From Ethnographic Surveillance to Racial Deportation, 1938–1953' #Activism #Colonial 20thc 🗃️ 👉Open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
This article examines the activities of Indian Political Intelligence (IPI) in Britain between 1909 and 1947, arguing that the agency exemplified the ‘imperial boomerang’ as, through it, the authoritarian and racialized practices of colonial governance returned to shape the British state. Although headquartered in Britain, IPI was financed by the Government of India and operated as a key component of the Raj’s security apparatus, working closely with Special Branch, MI5, and other state bodies. This article shows how the agency deployed colonial ethnographic categories and intelligence practices to monitor and disrupt Indian anticolonial activism, particularly among the organized working-class diaspora in the Midlands. IPI’s campaign against the Indian Workers Association during the Second World War culminated in the creation of Defence Regulation 47AAD, which enabled the arrest, detention, and deportation of Indian seamen and workers on racialized grounds. By tracing the origins and implementation of this regulation and the associated deportation programme, the article reveals how colonial modalities of surveillance, policing, and racial governance were repatriated to the metropole. In doing so, it demonstrates how colonial security practices undermined the universality of British liberalism and contributed to the construction of racialized forms of state power within Britain itself.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Lloyd Bowen @lloydbowen.bsky.social @cardiffuni.bsky.social on 'Revisiting the Origins of the ‘Roundhead’ in 1641' #Terminology #Debate #Drama #Pamphlets #Theatre #Puritan #Print 17thc📜🗃️ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
This article revisits the contested origins of the political label ‘Roundhead’ during the English Revolution, challenging the conventional view that the term originated spontaneously during the Westminster tumults of December 1641. While historians have generally relied upon John Rushworth’s later account of David Hyde denouncing parliamentary crowds as ‘round-headed dogs’, this study demonstrates that the contemporary evidence is more ambiguous. It explores alternative formulations, particularly Hyde’s reported insult ‘Ram-headed rogues’, and situates both terms within a wider culture of anti-Puritan satire, theatrical caricature, and political mockery. Drawing upon pamphlets, dramatic literature, manuscript annotations, and print culture, the article argues that ‘Roundhead’ may already have circulated before December 1641, notably in Richard Brathwaite’s Mercurius Britannicus. The article therefore proposes a more complex genealogy for the term, showing how political identities emerged through the interaction of print, performance, satire, and popular mobilization rather than through a single moment of invention.
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Lloyd Bowen @lloydbowen.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Short article published today in @historicaljnl.bsky.social on the making of the “Roundhead” stereotype in 1641. It’s OA and can be found here. Enjoy!
eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com
Revisiting the Origins of the ‘Roundhead’ in 1641 | The Historical Journal | Cambridge Core
Revisiting the Origins of the ‘Roundhead’ in 1641
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Dr Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri @chountisdefabbri.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
New piece out in The Historical Journal (@historicaljnl.bsky.social ): "The Many Lives of Edmund Burke." Few thinkers have been so thoroughly reinvented by those who claim them. A short thread on why the historiography of Burke is as revealing as the man. 🧵 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
The Many Lives of Edmund Burke: A Historiographical Review | The Historical Journal | Cambridge Core
The Many Lives of Edmund Burke: A Historiographical Review
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
📣HJ Blog! What was the place of Persia in Elizabethan politics and culture? Ebrahim Joseph @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social considers the appeal of King Cyrus in Elizabethan England #Politics #Monarchy #Theatre #Stage #Drama 16thc 17thc 🗃️ 👉Read online here: www.cambridge.org/core/blog/20...
cambridge.org
Reconsidering the Renaissance: Elizabeth I and Classical Persia « History# « Cambridge Core Blog
In the 1570s, Elizabeth I grappled with the question of whether to execute Mary, Queen of Scots. As she did so, she was urged to follow the compelling example of the Persian king Cyrus the Great. As t...
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Michelle Pfeffer @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social on 'Divine Legation (1738–41), Public Sensation: William Warburton and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Scholarly Celebrity' #Religion #Controversy #Bible #Scandal 18thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
William Warburton, literary executor of Alexander Pope, controversially defended the divinity of the Pentateuch on the grounds that it omitted promises of future rewards and punishments. His monumental Divine legation of Moses demonstrated (1738–41) has long had a reputation for being vast, sleepy, and abstruse. This article shows how this seemingly impenetrable book nevertheless became a public sensation. Widely read and endlessly discussed in the periodical press, the book’s success owed much to a public already fascinated by biblical scholarship. Yet the sheer density of this erudite work made it an unlikely candidate for a literary sensation. Drawing on a rich cache of archival records, the article shows how public interest was ignited and sustained by the efforts of Warburton and his publishing team to capitalize on the eighteenth-century media ecology. As they created buzz and inflated the polemic, Warburton himself became a celebrity, his private life – including his sex life – caricatured in gossipy magazines. As his renown grew, so did his infamy, and the sensation was further fuelled by a growing appetite to witness his distinctive ‘theological rage’. Achieved against the odds, the notoriety of Warburton and his book show how eighteenth-century technologies of celebrity could make the sleepy exciting.
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Emile Chabal @emile-chabal.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
So happy that this piece is out! It gradually turned into something like an intellectual history of the subfield of French immigration history, so it's a perfect introduction or primer for the uninitiated - and perhaps a little thought-provoking for those who know the field.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Emile Chabal @emile-chabal.bsky.social, Angéline Escafré-Dublet (Université Lumière Lyon 2) and Daniel A. Gordon @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social on 'Insiders and Outsiders: The Historiography of Immigration in France' 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
The history of immigration has become a dynamic subfield of French history since the 1970s. We examine its origins in both academic and activist milieus, and we consider its development in relation to some of the most important civic debates that have animated the French public sphere. In particular, we explore how histories of immigration expose some of the central concerns of modern French history – about the boundaries of citizenship, the power of the state, and the revolutionary potential of those who are kept on the margins of Frenchness. We also discuss the relationship between French and foreign scholars of immigration, and, by way of conclusion, we consider the future of a field that faces threats from a growing political backlash to immigration.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Stanisław Boridczenko (University of Szczecin) on 'Three Identity Types Shaping Popular Attitudes towards the Army in the Polish Eastern Borderlands during the September Campaign' #Military #History #Civilian #WWII 🪖 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
This article re-examines the intricate relationship between society and military forces, challenging the conventional view that reduces these groups to monolithic entities. Focusing on the Polesie Army Group’s journey during the September campaign of 1939, it investigates how the Polish army moving through ethnically and culturally diverse regions of the Second Polish Republic encountered a wide range of civilian responses. Drawing on archival records, this analysis reveals a complex spectrum of local reactions, from fervent patriotism to overt hostility, deeply shaped by deep-rooted cultural and ethnic differences. By framing these interactions as part of a broader, long-term process of societal development, the article offers fresh insights into the fluid and often contested boundaries between different types of identity, highlighting the powerful influence of local contexts.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Christopher J. Murphy @salforduni.bsky.social and Christopher R. Moran @uni-of-warwick.bsky.social on '‘Un livre problématique’: Official History, Anglo-French Relations, and the Fallout from M. R. D. Foot’s SOE in France' 👉Read OA: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
As the first official history of a secret service, SOE in France (1966) by M. R. D. Foot represented a major departure from the long-standing culture of secrecy that surrounded Britain’s intelligence community. Following publication, the book was criticized in France for its treatment of the resistance and its leader, Charles de Gaulle. This reaction was so vituperative that fears surfaced in Whitehall that the government-sanctioned book would be weaponized by de Gaulle, now president of France, to block a second application by the United Kingdom to join the Common Market. This article examines the missteps that were made by officials in charge of the project that put the British government on a collision course with the French downstream. It is argued that, while officials should have concentrated on the book’s portrayal of the resistance, they were preoccupied with removing unflattering material about statesmen like Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden. The article examines how officials, to safeguard a second EEC bid, refused to acknowledge their own failings and instead painted Foot as a second-rate historian. It speaks to a fascinating conversation about the dangers of scholars working with the state, which is more powerful and has agendas at odds with academic historians.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Christopher J. Murphy @salforduni.bsky.social and Christopher R. Moran @uni-of-warwick.bsky.social on '‘Un livre problématique’: Official History, Anglo-French Relations, and the Fallout from M. R. D. Foot’s SOE in France' 👉Read OA: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
As the first official history of a secret service, SOE in France (1966) by M. R. D. Foot represented a major departure from the long-standing culture of secrecy that surrounded Britain’s intelligence community. Following publication, the book was criticized in France for its treatment of the resistance and its leader, Charles de Gaulle. This reaction was so vituperative that fears surfaced in Whitehall that the government-sanctioned book would be weaponized by de Gaulle, now president of France, to block a second application by the United Kingdom to join the Common Market. This article examines the missteps that were made by officials in charge of the project that put the British government on a collision course with the French downstream. It is argued that, while officials should have concentrated on the book’s portrayal of the resistance, they were preoccupied with removing unflattering material about statesmen like Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden. The article examines how officials, to safeguard a second EEC bid, refused to acknowledge their own failings and instead painted Foot as a second-rate historian. It speaks to a fascinating conversation about the dangers of scholars working with the state, which is more powerful and has agendas at odds with academic historians.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
📘From our latest issue! Giorgia Perletta (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan) on 'A Critical Review of the Non-Aligned Movement in Contemporary Historiography' #Geopolitics #ColdWar #Review #History #Transnational #Nation 20thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Despite a growing body of scholarship reflecting renewed interest in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), there remains little agreement on how to interpret its origins, ideological coherence, political agency, and historical significance. This review article examines a selection of key English-language publications from 2011 to 2022, analysing them across three main dimensions: the NAM’s ideological foundations; its political and diplomatic practices; and its positioning within global and postcolonial historiographies. In doing so, the article challenges conventional narratives that depict the NAM as a reactive or marginal actor, while also highlighting emerging approaches that emphasize its ideological roots, strategic agency, and transnational entanglements. These contrasting perspectives expose an ongoing attempt to introduce an innovative outlook and perspectives within the field to resolve methodological and interpretive tensions. Ultimately, the article argues that recent literature offers important openings for rethinking the NAM not simply as a Cold War product, but as a dynamic actor in the making of global order, and points to the need for further research into its shifting meanings across time, space, and context.
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Koji Hirata @khirata.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
I am delighted to announce that I have recently begun a new role of Reviews Editor for The Historical Journal: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... In this role, I commission review essays on all aspects of history since the fifteenth century.
cambridge.org
The Historical Journal | Cambridge Core
The Historical Journal - Sara Caputo, Bronwen Everill, Helen Pfeifer
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
📣 We are delighted to announce that Dr Koji Hirata @khirata.bsky.social will be joining The Historical Journal team as Reviews Editor! Dr Hirata’s research spans modern China, Japan, and Russia/the Soviet Union, while encompassing broader interests in global histories of capitalism and socialism.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
📣 We are delighted to announce that Dr Koji Hirata @khirata.bsky.social will be joining The Historical Journal team as Reviews Editor! Dr Hirata’s research spans modern China, Japan, and Russia/the Soviet Union, while encompassing broader interests in global histories of capitalism and socialism.
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PHANZA Professional Historians of New Zealand / Aotearoa @phanza.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Might be some interesting comparative material in this open access article for anyone working on humanitarian politics, the Church Missionary Society etc. in 19thC Aotearoa New Zealand.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
From our latest issue! Darren Reid (McGill University) on 'Indigenous Rights, Philanthropy and Humanitarian Governance across the Anglo World, 1837–1951' #Australia #CivilRights #Government #Imperial 19thc 20thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
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Geneva Graduate Institute @gvagrad.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
HIV/AIDS came to be understood as an overwhelmingly urban phenomenon in late 20th-century England. A new @universitypress.cambridge.org article by @georgesevers.bsky.social, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute’s Gender Centre examines "HIV/AIDS and the English Countryside" 👇 shorturl.at/BiVC9
cambridge.org
HIV/AIDS and the English Countryside | The Historical Journal | Cambridge Core
HIV/AIDS and the English Countryside
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
📘From our latest issue! Jack Haughton @camhistory.bsky.social on ''Dispelling ‘das Herbert Butterfieldproblem’: A Rereading of The Whig Interpretation of History' #IntellectualHistory #Progress #Positive 20thc 🗃️ 👉Read online here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Herbert Butterfield’s The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) is universally received as sceptical of ‘whig’ teleology in historical accounts and, therefore, of politically charged narratives of history. This view stands in need of a basic correction. Butterfield’s work targets teleological accounts which involve a determinate conception of progress such as would arm a partisan politics. He calls this the politics of the ‘general proposition’. Nevertheless, he does defend a conception of progress involving an indeterminate concept. The historian finds, intimated in the detail of the past, that progress is the fruit of interactions between opposing parties. The imperative for the statesman in the present, then, is to facilitate such interactions. In short, The Whig Interpretation of History is a positive work of political thought. Looked at this way, Butterfield’s later, controversial work, The Englishman & His History, does not appear to be in contradiction with the earlier book so much as a polemical expression of it. The two books together present what may be called Butterfield’s politics of historiography. Histories which present progress as a straight line, to be co-opted by one party, encourage precisely the political action which impedes progress. Butterfield, in short, is still a kind of ‘whig’.
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Dr Stephanie Brown @drstephaniebrown.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Congrats @ciarab.bsky.social 🎉 Looking forward to reading this
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
📘From our latest issue! Ciara Breathnach @ciarab.bsky.social @ucc.ie on 'Newspapers as Surrogate Archives: A Case Study of the Early Twentieth-Century Dublin City Coroner’s Court' #Archives #Newspapers #Press #Ireland #Legal #History 20thc📰🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Newspaper reporters routinely occupied the galleries of the adversarial and inquisitorial courts at the beginning of the twentieth century but whether their shorthand progressed to publication and into the public domain was sensitive to many factors. Newsworthy cases were self-selecting; headlines could be quickly constituted from verdicts and riders, and the verbatim replication of proceedings provided editors with ready content safe from libel. Scholars of Ireland rely heavily on digitized newspapers as surrogate sources for legal records destroyed in 1922, but the extent to which they can be used in that respect merits further and detailed research. This article takes a case study approach to show the methodological challenges faced by historians dealing with partial archival pasts and why digitized newspapers should be used with great caution. Using a sample of cases from Irish coronial court registers, it traces newspaper coverage over the course of a census year to ascertain discernible patterns. With a particular focus on suicide, it exposes the problems associated with using digitized newspapers in historical research, the limitations of search engine capacities, as well as the necessity for more critical analysis of the embedded gender and class biases that influenced editorial decisions.
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Martin Willis @profwillis.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Always worth reading Keir on issues of environment. This one based on years of extensive research. Fascinating and timely.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Amy Craig @camhistory.bsky.social on 'Miniature Material Worlds: Women and the Baby House in Eighteenth-Century England' #Place #Space #Women #Miniature #Art #Culture #History #Materiality 18thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
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Mark Williams @mrfw17thc.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Given the state of drought in so much of the UK, @keirwaddington.bsky.social could not be doing more timely work! This is a fascinating and important article. Give it a read #skystorians !!
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Hannah Dongsun Lee @hd-lee.bsky.social (Tokyo Metropolitan University) on 'Hugo Grotius’ Protestant Positive Law' #Divine #Christian #Religion #Law #Thinking #History 17thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
This article reconsiders the novelty of Hugo Grotius by shifting attention from his idea of natural law to his reformulation of the idea of divine positive law. Modern scholarship has often questioned the novelty of Grotius’ natural law, emphasizing instead his dependence on earlier traditions, chiefly Catholic scholasticism. Against this view, the article argues that Grotius’ distinctive and influential interventions lay not in natural law as such but in his reconceptualization of divine positive law and its systematic separation from natural law. The term divine positive law first gained currency among Catholic theologians and was then employed specifically in defence of the sacerdotal authority of the Church. At the hand of Grotius, however, it was identified as the entirety of divine commands in Scripture, including the Decalogue and the Gospel. Through this transition, natural law became detached from Scripture, and its obligation unprecedently minimal and permissive. Situating these innovations within the developments of Remonstrant theology and Hebraic scholarship in the Protestant Dutch Republic, this article shows how Grotius’ idea of divine positive law gave rise to a new study of natural law as well as debates on the interpretation of the Old Testament and on the nature of Christian obligation.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Tom Arnold-Forster @raioxford.bsky.social on 'Mary McCarthy and the Watergate Crisis' #Politics #Democracy #USA #American #Debates 20thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Watergate is conventionally understood through insider narratives about its complex daily churn as an unfolding political scandal. But the crisis also drove broader theoretical debates about democracy and the state in 1970s America. This article offers the first sustained account of Mary McCarthy’s Watergate writings. She theorized Watergate as a stark legitimacy crisis that revolved around the relationship between democracy and totalitarianism. Through dialogues with Hannah Arendt and others, McCarthy argued that Watergate turned politically on the public’s ability to unmask and contest the power of totalitarian state actors. By rejecting tragedy as a conceptual framework for Watergate, and by recentring the state in debates about US totalitarianism, McCarthy’s work shows how and why interactions between public opinion and state power could advance both democratic and anti-democratic politics.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
📘From our latest issue! Laura Newman @ucl.ac.uk, David Green @davidgreen.bsky.social & Harry Smith @exeter.ac.uk on 'Vision Impairment and the British Post Office, c.1860 to 1910' #Work #Disability #Employment #PostOffice 19thc 20thc📮🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
In this article, we first explicitly argue that disability associated with poor eyesight was a socially constructed category dependent on the needs of the Post Office as an employer and its ability to construct workplaces which ameliorated the impact of vision impairment. The second part of the article addresses the institutional responses and technological landscapes of work which comprised the contexts within which visual impairment needs to be interpreted. This involves examining the importance of medical inspection by Post Office doctors which worked to exclude those with significant sight loss from postal employment. However, what was understood to constitute significant or irreparable sight loss varied across different government agencies, and different definitions of what constituted significant sight loss served as a point of contention between Post Office management and the Civil Service Commission. .
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
📘From our latest issue! Keir Waddington @keirwaddington.bsky.social (Cardiff University) on 'Living with Drought in the Long Nineteenth Century' #Water #Environment #Climate #Rural #Weather 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
The 1893 drought will, according to the science journal Nature in July, ‘unquestionably take its place among the recorded events of history, if regard be had to its intensity [and] the length of time during which it has lasted’. Communities reported being stretched beyond endurance. Rivers ran dry, reservoirs dropped to record lows, wells failed, and domestic water supplies were restricted to a few hours per day. But while the 1893 drought was severe, it was not unusual. As this article reveals, urban and rural communities faced regular droughts of varying intensity and duration during the long nineteenth century. What did this mean for them? Where previous interest in extreme weather events has focused on recovering historic patterns, or examined resilience or adaption, this article explores the lived experiences of drought to offer a new perspective on the impact of weather shocks and water scarcity on people’s lives. By combining evidence from meteorological reports, newspapers, official reports, and local government archives, the article undercovers the fragility of urban and rural water supplies and examines how behaviours were adapted in response to water scarcity and precarity.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
📘From our latest issue! Vincent Roy-Di Piazza @roydipiazza.bsky.social @uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social on 'Abraham Bäck, Scarcity, and the Racial Anatomy of Skin' #History #Medicine #Anatomy #Pseudoscience 17thc 18thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
In February 1744 in Paris, the Swedish physician Abraham Bäck (1713–95), better known as Carl Linnaeus’s best friend, dissected the cadaver of an unidentified sub-Saharan man. In contrast to the widespread exploitation of the enslaved dead in North America, cadavers of dark-skinned Africans remained rare in the anatomical theatres of eighteenth-century Europe. Scarcity not only increased their market value in medical circles interested in skin colour: in Europe, empirical anatomists often used these rare remains for building their medical authority. This article explores the rise of an empiricist social culture of racial anatomy in the European Enlightenment by following the case of Bäck, whose research on ‘black’ skin also provides a little-known counterpart to Linnaeus’s racial anthropology. Bäck’s case illustrates not only how European anatomists often wrote accounts of skin colour which best showcased their medical skills but also how the production of racial pseudoscience became increasingly driven by the authoritative rise of empiricism, the expansion of the slave trade, and the Enlightenment’s fascination with human differences.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
📘From our latest issue! James Fox @jamesafox.bsky.social @glasgow.ac.uk on 'Numeracy, Otherness, and the Invention of ‘Civilization’ in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Anglo-European Travel Writing' #Science #China #Americas 17thc 18thc 🗃️ 👉Open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Depictions of numeracy among non-Europeans were a prominent feature of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Anglo-European travel writing, but remain largely overlooked in the extensive scholarship on travel, knowledge, and empire. This article shifts attention from traditionally ‘scientific’ forms of numeracy such as mathematics and astronomy towards more fundamental counting, calculation, and communication skills, to examine the way in which mutually reinforcing hierarchies of otherness and numerical knowledge were constructed in travel accounts. Focusing particularly on writings about China and the Americas, it demonstrates the way in which European written and mathematically precise numeracy was perceived as superior to oral, embodied, and object-based practices observed elsewhere. Exploring the reception of these ideas in eighteenth-century Britain reveals that numeracy became integral to emergent notions of European modernity and civilization. The example of numeracy, this article suggests, demonstrates the interrelationship between social relations in national context and global power structures.
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Jan Machielsen @janmachielsen.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Wow. This sounds fascinating!
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PJ Wilson @pjwils.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
This is a brilliant piece by @kabcommons.bsky.social and, I think, will be of interest to anyone working in the study of migration in history.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
📘From our latest issue! Kathleen Commons @kabcommons.bsky.social @sheffielduni.bsky.social on 'Discovering ‘Immigration Control’ in England, c. 1540 – c. 1640' #Migration #History #EarlyModern #England #Immigration 📜 16thc 17thc 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Migration history is a growing field – yet the legal status of migrants in early modern England has not yet been investigated in detail. Reconstructing the legal system that governed migrants in early modern England does not just add significant depth and nuance to histories of migration and migrants, but also provides fresh insight into the status of English subjects. Furthermore, it enables historians to trace longer histories of the exclusion of migrants from rights in England and Britain. This article reconstructs the common law governance of migrants between c. 1540 and c. 1640, showing how common law principles and practices excluded migrants from the rights-bearing status of English subjects. Rather than being governed by the law, migrants were substantively governed under prerogative, a form of governance repeatedly resisted by English subjects. Although some migrants could access (unstable) liberties granted under prerogative, for the most part migrants were also subject to discriminatory local byelaws and licences and commissions granted by the crown for their exploitation. The repeated ‘molestation’ of migrants by informers for working contrary to statute, and petitions against this harassment from migrants suggest this early modern system of immigration control was relatively well understood by both subjects and migrants.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
📣From our latest issue! Henry Ansgar Kelly @uofcalifornia.bsky.social on 'Galileo’s Three Repudiations of Copernicanism – Two Coerced and One Volunteered' #Science #Astronomy #Religion #Sun #Inquisition ☀️🔭 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Up to 1616, when the Copernican theory of heliocentrism was prohibited, Galileo had never asserted its truth. But the pope and cardinals of the Roman Inquisition assumed that he had, and he was required to repudiate it. In contrast, Copernicus’s book was only lightly corrected and allowed to be read. Galileo continued his practice of not asserting the reality of heliocentrism in his Dialogue on the two world systems, but he was put on trial nevertheless, in 1633. However, instead of being charged with a crime to be proved, as required by canon law, he was subjected to pre-trial interrogation and intimidation, and he confessed to a made-up crime. His conviction entailed another repudiation of the static sun, on pain of harsh punishment. In subsequent years, even though he was reckless in expressing preference for the condemned theory, he still did not advocate it. In fact, in writing to the Tuscan ambassador to Venice in 1641, he insisted that the Copernican system was false, because theologians said so. However, he went on to say that the opposing Ptolemaic view was actually erroneous, while the other was merely insufficient – because stellar parallax (which would prove the earth’s orbit) could not yet be measured.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Ebrahim Joseph @lincoln.ox.ac.uk on 'Honour and Deceit in The Warres of Cyrus, Classical Persia, and Elizabethan Politics' #Drama #Theatre #Monarch #Queen #Greek #Roman 16thc 🎭👑 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/service...
The role of drama in counselling the early modern monarch is well established, as is the centrality of classical Greek and Roman histories in early modern political culture. Through analysis of the Elizabethan play, The warres of Cyrus, this article argues that Achaemenid Persia should be placed alongside Greece and Rome as a key framework for early modern political discussion. The Achaemenid setting facilitated a vision of rule distinct from the usual classical models. In this Persian context, the virtuous prince was opportunistically ruthless, and unequivocally authoritarian. Performed by the children of the Chapel Royal in the 1570s, and published in the highly charged atmosphere of the 1590s, this drama casts light onto Elizabethan politics during times of marked political tension. Its emphasis on the disjuncture between appearance and reality evokes a political climate characterized by widespread fear of dissimulation. Elements at court, this article contends, met these fears with an emphasis on the stabilizing potential of a prince’s capacity for ‘policy’. At its first performance, The warres of Cyrus seems also to have sought to persuade Elizabeth to act leniently towards the captive Mary, Queen of Scots.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Ebrahim Joseph @lincoln.ox.ac.uk on 'Honour and Deceit in The Warres of Cyrus, Classical Persia, and Elizabethan Politics' #Drama #Theatre #Monarch #Queen #Greek #Roman 16thc 🎭👑 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/service...
The role of drama in counselling the early modern monarch is well established, as is the centrality of classical Greek and Roman histories in early modern political culture. Through analysis of the Elizabethan play, The warres of Cyrus, this article argues that Achaemenid Persia should be placed alongside Greece and Rome as a key framework for early modern political discussion. The Achaemenid setting facilitated a vision of rule distinct from the usual classical models. In this Persian context, the virtuous prince was opportunistically ruthless, and unequivocally authoritarian. Performed by the children of the Chapel Royal in the 1570s, and published in the highly charged atmosphere of the 1590s, this drama casts light onto Elizabethan politics during times of marked political tension. Its emphasis on the disjuncture between appearance and reality evokes a political climate characterized by widespread fear of dissimulation. Elements at court, this article contends, met these fears with an emphasis on the stabilizing potential of a prince’s capacity for ‘policy’. At its first performance, The warres of Cyrus seems also to have sought to persuade Elizabeth to act leniently towards the captive Mary, Queen of Scots.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
👉From our latest issue! Mishael Knight @peterhousecam.bsky.social @camhistory.bsky.social on 'The Utopia within Utopia (1516)' #History #IntellectualHistory #Law #Thought #Social 16thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
The debate between Hythlodaeus and an English lawyer before Cardinal Morton in Book One of Utopia (1516) contains many proposals for socio-economic reforms. These have typically been interpreted as innovative proposals to counteract the corruption of Christendom which surrounds them. However, when placed into their legislative context, it is apparent not only that these reforms echo closely many socio-economic reforms passed in England in the decades preceding Utopia, but that corollaries for almost all of them were passed when Morton, in whose presence the debate took place, was lord chancellor. Recognizing this forces a reassessment of this debate, showing Hythlodaeus’s flaws, and reframing the contribution of the English lawyer. This very reassessment, however, realigns the entire dialogue before Cardinal Morton, which it is possible to identify as a mirror to the wider text. It is a Utopia within Utopia, or, a mise en abyme. By closing examining the reflection, it appears that this provides a structural indication of how Utopia should be read.
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
📣The latest issue of the HJ is out now and accessible here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... 📖All articles are open access!
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Daniel Hucker @uniofnottingham.bsky.social on 'American Philanthropy, European Pacifism, and the Parameters of the International Peace Movement before the First World War' #Activism #Philanthropy #Intervention 20thc 🗃️ Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Daniel Hucker @uniofnottingham.bsky.social on 'American Philanthropy, European Pacifism, and the Parameters of the International Peace Movement before the First World War' #Activism #Philanthropy #Intervention 20thc 🗃️ Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
📣Out now on #firstview! Kit Kowol @kitkowol.bsky.social and Richard Toye @richardtoye.bsky.social on 'The Management of British MPs’ Postbags and Politician-Voter Relations in the Democratic Age' #Politics #Letters #Communication 20thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
This article explores the management of correspondence between British MPs and the public, examining how citizens have used letter-writing as a tool to seek assistance, advocate for policies, and express support or dissent. It highlights how MPs and their staff triaged correspondence, distinguishing between ‘authentic’ expressions of public concern and orchestrated lobbying. It also considers the strategies employed by letter-writers to maximize their impact, from carefully crafted appeals to emotional rhetoric, frequently made in the knowledge that intermediaries would process their communications. The increasing volume of correspondence, facilitated partly by technological advances, reflects the enduring perception of letter-writing as an effective means of political engagement. While much scholarly work has focused either on a quantitative analysis of letter numbers and outcomes or a qualitative analysis of the substance of letters on controversial issues, this article shifts the focus to the broader processes of correspondence management and voter-politician interactions. By analysing how MPs and their assistants assessed, prioritized, and responded to communications, we provide new insights into the evolving relationship between representatives and the public. We suggest that correspondence was a means through which voters demonstrated their authenticity to politicians - and not just the other way round.
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