The Historical Journal

@historicaljnl

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

231 Folgt4.058 Follower258 Posts

Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir historicaljnl.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· 5h

📘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’.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· 3d

📘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.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· 7d

📣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...

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· 9d

📣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.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· 10d

📣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.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· 17d

📘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. .

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· 20d

📘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.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· 23d

📘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.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· 29d

📘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.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jul 13

📘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.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jul 9

📣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.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jul 8

📣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.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jul 7

👉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.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jul 1

📣The latest issue of the HJ is out now and accessible here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... 📖All articles are open access!

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jun 29

📣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...

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jun 26

📣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.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jun 25

📣Out now on #firstview! Jake William Bransgrove @jakebransgrove.bsky.social @camhistory.bsky.social on 'Patronage Networks and the Afterlives of James Cook, c. 1770–1820' #Patronage #Social #Friendship #Family #Kinship 18thc 19thc 🗃️🧑‍🤝‍🧑 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This article examines the longevity of interpersonal ties in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, and their impact on the structure of social networks incorporating individuals separated by rank. Using the example of a protracted patronage relationship involving the explorer James Cook, his family, and the wealthy naturalist and president of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, it shows how social ties formed in life continued to exert an influence on behaviour when a key member of a network was dead. Cook, who died in 1779, remained associated with Banks many years later, the consequence of a powerful and recognized bond combining qualities of friendship and patronage. This bond motivated appeals to Banks to assist Cook’s impoverished family, initiating an affair with which this article is concerned, and whose granular study illuminates the operation of genteel norms conditioning lasting interpersonal ties. In showing the representative value of this case, the article tracks actions motivated variously by friendship, kinship, and patronage, demonstrating how they unfolded across time and in surrogate fashion.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jun 23

📣Out now on #firstview! Reyhan Silingar @reyhansilingar.bsky.social on 'Authorial Metadata at Sea and on Shore' #Migration #Materiality #Global #History #Sea #Japan #Archives 🗃️🌊 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jun 23

📣Out now on #firstview! Martin Dusinberre (University of Zurich) on 'Author’s Response: Authorial Metadata and the Evidentiary Line' #Archive #Response #Roundtable #Global #World #Methodology #Colonial🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jun 22

📣Out now on #firstview! Hannah Shepherd @hannahjshepherd.bsky.social on 'What Shifts in Transit? Global History and Global Archives' #History #Japan #Migration #Travel #Review #Technology 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jun 15

📣Out now on #firstview! Jessica A. Fernández de Lara Harada @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social on 'Archive/s, Methodologies, and Silenced Subjects in the Past, Present, and Future of Global Histories' #Roundtable #Archives #History #Global #World 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

On Thursday 7 March 2024, an initial roundtable discussion of Mooring the global archive: a Japanese ship and its migrant histories was held at the University of Oxford History Faculty, as a part of the ‘Moving Stories: Sectarianisms in the Global Middle East’ Seminar Series, chaired by John-Paul Ghobrial, with Jennifer Altehenger, Jessica Fernández de Lara Harada, Giuseppe Marcocci, and Filippo de Vivo in conversation with Martin Dusinberre. An open access copy of the book can be consulted here. The present essay takes Martin Dusinberre’s Mooring the global archive as a starting point to analyse, discuss, and elaborate distinct approaches to global archives; historical methods; forms, meanings, and reproductions of violence; the place of ethics in historical research and writing; and global, transnational, and local histories. This essay draws on the above-mentioned roundtable discussion, and whenever relevant refers to the contributions of the colleagues who also participated in it to acknowledge the fruitful discussion that inspired The Historical Journal roundtable publication. In this collection of essays, we expand and deepen the discussion with other academics and early career researchers. Together, the collection of essays aims to pose questions, identify blind spots, and build new perspectives that enrich our shared understanding.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jun 4

📣Out now on #firstview! Anna Muggeridge @worcesteruni.bsky.social and Ruth Davidson @ruthdav.bsky.social on 'Revisiting the Politics of Motherhood in Modern British History' #Motherhood #Political #Maternal #History #Identity 20thc 🗃️👩‍🍼 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This article argues for the importance of motherhood as a category of historical analysis. This review will explore trends in the historiography of motherhood in modern Britain, first examining maternalist literature, then the turn towards maternity policy, examinations of motherhood and activism, and finally the recent turn towards experiential histories of motherhood. It suggests that these approaches have grown more expansive, but often remain disconnected. The article argues that motherhood is not a fixed identity; it has been defined, challenged, and performed in response to specific historical moments. In drawing these together, the article offers new ways to understand the histories of motherhood and mothering, and opens up potential avenues for future exploration.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jun 3

📣Out now on #firstview! George J. Severs @georgesevers.bsky.social @gvagrad.bsky.social on 'HIV/AIDS and the English Countryside' #Urban #Rural #Heteronormativity #Sexual #Morality #History #Demography 20thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Britain was an overwhelmingly urban phenomenon. Towns and cities were home to the majority of people living with HIV and boasted most of the hospitals which diagnosed and treated them. The epidemic was not simply understood as urban because of demographic epidemiological factors; it was also seen as antithetical to rural life. This article explores the ways in which HIV/AIDS was positioned as urban through a particular cultural construction of rurality in late twentieth-century England. This cultural imaginary rested on a nostalgic construction of the English countryside in which conventional heteronormativity buttressed social, moral, and sanitary stability. The English countryside was frequently thought to be in need of protection from HIV/AIDS, whether in the form of metropolitan producers shoe-horning the virus into cherished rural soap operas, or more directly from the urban import of HIV and the gay men understood to be its most likely carriers. This article examines the cultural mentality in which rurality was mobilized as distinct from HIV/AIDS, pointing to the wider anxieties about changing rural life for which the epidemic often acted as a proxy.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Jun 2

📣Out now on #firstview! Nathaniel Andrews @uomhistdept.bsky.social on 'The Politics of Everyday Life during Argentina’s ‘Infamous Decade’ (1930–43)' #Military #Activist #Everyday #Social #Nation #History #Argentina 20thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

In Argentina, the years 1930–43 became known initially as the ‘Infamous Decade’, book-ended by General Félix Uriburu’s coup of September 1930 and a further military intervention in June 1943. Though Uriburu’s dictatorship only lasted until February 1932, the following eleven years – encompassing the presidencies of Agustín P. Justo, Roberto Ortiz, and Ramón Castillo – were characterized by widespread electoral fraud and corruption. Drawing mostly on police records, this article sheds fresh light on how, in everyday life, activists from across the political spectrum experienced, negotiated, and resisted state power and ideological conflict during this period. The history of everyday life has found fertile ground in Argentina and, consequently, everyday life history approaches have revealed important insights into more recent periods of authoritarian rule in the country, including the ‘National Reorganization Process’ of 1976–83. However, everyday experiences of both state power and ideological tensions during the ‘Infamous Decade’ remain overlooked. More generally, studies of this earlier period have often focused primarily on the nation’s capital or the province of Buenos Aires. In contrast, this article brings together material from across the country, to further understandings of political activists’ everyday experiences of state control, resistance, and ideological conflict between 1930 and 1943.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· May 19

📣We're delighted to hear that Emily Chung's (@emvchung.bsky.social) HJ article 'Proximity and Segregation in Industrial Manchester' has been shortlisted for the @royalhistsoc.org Early Career Article Prize 2026! 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· May 19

📣From our most recent issue! Timothy Twining @tntwining.bsky.social on 'Richard Simon, Vernacular Biblical Scholarship, and the Last Early Modern Polyglot Bible' #Bible #History #EarlyModern #Language #Translation #Catholic 17thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· May 15

📣Out now on #firstview! Tao Zhang (Sichuan International Studies University) on 'China in American Abolitionism, 1830–1865' #Politics #Abolition #Slavery #International #History 19thc 🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Often neglected by scholars, China actually played a role in America’s abolitionist movement from 1830 to 1865. Anti-slavery crusaders invoked the country to reinforce their moral suasion, which emerged as one major tactic against slavery after the 1830s. Appropriating the prevailing stereotype of China as an uncivilized and pitiable Other, they presented the characterization as a reference to expose the barbarity and hypocrisy of pro-slavery Americans, as well as the insincerity of Britons regarding abolition. Although white and Black activists emphasized different aspects along racial lines, they were united in leveraging this moral campaign to shame self-styled leaders of civilization into reconsidering their position on slavery. In the process, abolitionists sustained America’s Orientalist condescension toward the Chinese. China became an abolitionist weapon not because of its national power, but because of its perceived backwardness.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· May 11

📣Out now on #firstview! Jennifer Evans @historianjen.bsky.social and Sarah Fox @sarahfoxhistory.bsky.social on 'Anticipating Birth in Early Modern England' #Birth #Motherhood #Pregnancy #Medicine #History 17thc 18thc 👶🌿🗃️ 👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Scholars have described the days leading up to birth in the early modern period as a time when women purchased linens, prepared bedchambers, and called upon the services of a midwife and their gossips. However, manuscript recipe collections reveal that preparations in anticipation of labour went beyond such measures and incorporated the consumption of specific medicines. This article studies remedies that were designed to be taken six weeks before birth to reveal, in new ways, the experiences of late pregnancy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These remedies, we argue, show women’s anticipation of birthing beyond fears of their own or their infant’s mortality. We suggest that they emphasize the centrality of women’s ‘felt maternity’, which we define as an embodied sense of responsibility for the infant and its passage into the world, and that they demonstrate that anticipation involved multi-layered experiences of time. Moreover, we suggest that these remedies make manifest the physical areas of concern for women in late pregnancy, revealing a perceived need for the body to be fortified and dried, as well as the desire to relieve uncomfortable corporeal symptoms associated with this point in the lifecycle.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· May 6

📣Out now on #firstview! 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.

The Historical Journal@historicaljnl· Apr 24

📣In our latest issue! Ellen Paterson @kebleoxford.bsky.social on 'Contemporary Parliamentary History and Petitioners in the Long Parliament, c. 1640–1642' #History #Politics #Petitions #CivilWar 17thc 📜🗃️ 👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...