Category: Empire
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Interview with Adam Simmons on ‘Nubia, Ethiopia, and the Crusading World, 1095-1402 (Routledge, 2022’)
By Gabby Storey and Adam D. Simmons How did you get into the topic of the book? I developed my initial interest in earlier African history during my MA at KCL. I’ve always been more interested in the topics which are often not covered, to understand why not and to see how much history we…
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Everyday Decolonisation: the local museum in 2020
PIPPA LE GRAND A few Monday mornings ago, I stood outside Weston Park Museum, Sheffield, enjoying my job and welcoming visitors. There were few enough around that I was able to gaze at the frieze over the door and even discuss it at length with a colleague. The frieze, according to Sheffield Hallam’s Public Art Research…
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Britain First: The official history of the United Kingdom according to the Home Office – a critical review
Frank Trentmann BRITAIN FIRST: The official history of the United Kingdom according to the Home Office – a critical review Following this summer’s open letter to the Home Office, this article by Frank Trentmann offers an analysis of the official history chapter in the ‘Life in the UK’ handbook that is required reading for migrants…
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James Forbes’ Mango and the Art of British Indian Empire
Apurba Chatterjee In 1765, James Forbes, a mere Scottish lad of less than sixteen years of age, set sail to India following his appointment as a Writer for the English East India Company (EIC) in Bombay. Forbes was to stay in India for eighteen years, and he gradually rose to prominence as the Collector of…
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Historians Call for a Review of Home Office Citizenship and Settlement Test
21 July 2020 Historians Call for a Review of Home Office Citizenship and Settlement Test We are historians of Britain and the British Empire and writing in protest at the on-going misrepresentation of slavery and Empire in the “Life in the UK Test”, which is a requirement for applicants for citizenship or settlement (“indefinite leave…
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How to Run an Empire: Early Modern Style
L.H. Roper Dr C. Annemieke Romein recently offered a very helpful discussion here of how the habitual misunderstanding and misuse of nineteenth-century characterisations of ‘-isms’ and ‘the state’ continue to obscure our understanding of the nature and history of European government prior to 1789. With Dr Romein’s permission and assistance, this post will extend her…
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Edgerton & Empire: Nationalism, Imperialism and Decolonisation
Liam Liburd One of the indirect and unintended side-effects of the tragic murder of George Floyd by an officer of the Minneapolis Police Department in late May has been a renewed effort to confront Britain’s own history of racism, especially that in the form of colonialism. Activists have taken aim at the symbols of this…
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Worrying about the Field of the History of Emotions in Ireland – A report
Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi Back in November, when the world was still in a relatively ‘normal’ state, I asked Dr Hannah Parker about the possibly of writing a report for the new History website concerning a series of events I was organising under the title, “Worrying about the Field of the History of Emotions in Ireland”.…
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The British Army’s Chinese Auxiliaries in Arctic Russia
Yuexin Rachel Lin While conducting research in the Academia Sinica digital archives in 2017, I stumbled across a remarkable document: A list of Chinese workers, part of a labour company recruited by the Slavo-British Legion in the northern Russian cities of Murmansk and Archangel. The list includes every man’s name, age, hometown, and even the…
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