History blog archive

Tag: Featured

  • ‘”A celebrated correspondence between the charming Mrs C- formerly well-known in the fashionable World – & her Amiable Daughter”’: The Historical Importance of the letters of Hitty and Bess Canning.[1]

    ‘”A celebrated correspondence between the charming Mrs C- formerly well-known in the fashionable World – & her Amiable Daughter”’: The Historical Importance of the letters of Hitty and Bess Canning.[1]

    By Rachel Smith Whilst reading through the eighteenth-century Canning Family archive at the West Yorkshire Archive Service in Leeds, I came across a rather interesting letter from John Murray, a publisher, to a Mrs Butler. Dated 25th July 1912, he wrote that I gather from what Miss Routh and Mr. Duff told me that the…

  • Face to Face Encounters: Letter-Writers and Portrait Photographs in the Russian State Archive

    Face to Face Encounters: Letter-Writers and Portrait Photographs in the Russian State Archive

    Hannah Parker On the final research trip for my PhD, I found some small portrait photographs of letter-writers in a file of between some hundred and a thousand 1925 letters to the editor of Krest’ianka – a series of biographies with enclosed photographs from their authors. Though, in my experience, group photographs were occasionally included…

  • Men and Feminism: Gender Equality in the Nordic Countries, 1960s to Present

    Men and Feminism: Gender Equality in the Nordic Countries, 1960s to Present

    DR HANNAH YOKEN I’m a Finnish historian who lived in the UK for nearly a decade. When I tell my British friends and colleagues where I’m from, they often respond with an air of admiration, complimenting the relatively egalitarian principles upon which Nordic social democracy has been built.  Certainly, this notion that the Nordic countries are…

  • Why is the HIstory of Emotions So Important?

    Why is the HIstory of Emotions So Important?

    ASHLEIGH WILSON The History of Emotions has become a vital field of historical research within contemporary academic discussions. Able to provide insight into the emotional history of a particular event, society and culture, this thematic approach has allowed for a nuanced understanding of the past. As a current undergraduate student, I have become deeply fascinated…

  • The History of Emotions: A Four Volume Sourcebook

    The History of Emotions: A Four Volume Sourcebook

    KATIE BARCLAY, with FRANÇOIS SOYER, is editor of Emotions in Europe, 1517-1914 (Routledge, 2020), a four volume sourcebook. Here she talks to History about the work. History: What was the inspiration behind this project? Katie: I’ve been teaching History of Emotions courses for several years now and had been developing a series of resources to support students…

  • Will Africa be included in a global history of Covid-19?

    Will Africa be included in a global history of Covid-19?

    ANNA ADIMA Over a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, one would be hard-pressed to deny that future history books will record this as a global milestone in the 21st century. Every individual around the world has in some way been affected by the virus; however, mainstream – Western – media remains guilty of underreporting the pandemic…

  • Lacquer as Art and Medicinal Material in Early Modern England

    Lacquer as Art and Medicinal Material in Early Modern England

    CHENG HE Look up the word ‘lacquer’ in an art dictionary, or on Google, and you usually find the word ‘varnish’; a sticky liquid applied to the surface of objects to form a shiny coating. The word can also refer to the objects coated with varnish themselves, which are sometimes decorated with additional materials like…

  • Saints, Beggars and Scapegoats

    Saints, Beggars and Scapegoats

    Why depictions of status and disability in the Early Middle Ages still matter JUTTA LAMMINAHO ‘A lame man crawling along on his hands led a blind man to the paupers’ hostel at St Gall, where both of them stayed the night, and were both healed at the tomb.’ – Walafrid Strabo, Life of St Otmar[1]…

  • Communications and Complaints: Revisiting Nineteenth-Century Germany

    Communications and Complaints: Revisiting Nineteenth-Century Germany

    JEAN-MICHEL JOHNSTON We’ve all been there: a patchy Zoom connection, an interrupted online transaction, a YouTube video that just won’t load. We all recognise the everyday frustrations that come with the malfunctioning of the Internet, even as we celebrate ever faster broadband or cheaper mobile data allowances. Communications networks don’t always fulfil their promises, but…

  • Reflections on ‘The World At War’

    Reflections on ‘The World At War’

    DANIEL ADAMSON I was recently intrigued to find a repeat of the 1973 documentary The World at War buried in the depths of Freeview television. Across 26 hour-long episodes, this series chronicled the course of the Second World War and charted the key experiences of the conflict. The reputation of The World at War preceded the programme: in 2000,…