by the North American Conference on British Studies editorial team Introduction Jonathan Connolly is the recipient of the 2019 Walter D. Love Prize. Connolly’s winning article (for the best entry in British history) was “Indentured Labour Migration and the Meaning of Emancipation: Free Trade, Race, and Labour in British Public Debate, 1838-1860,” Past & Present 238 (February 2018). In August 2020, he will take up his new position as assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Interview How did you become interested in this topic? Early on in graduate school, I began reading about indenture in the South African context, where I was interested broadly in processes of imperial expansion. Like many I think, I was struck by how quickly the indenture system took shape, so soon after abolition. An interest in origins led me to the southern Caribbean and then in particular to Mauritius. As I read more, I became increasingly concerned not only with what indenture ‘was,’ but with how it was represented. Many of my interests and nascent commitments as a historian involved the political culture of imperial rule—attempts to understand and rationalize power. So my earliest question, the question […]

Received from Dr. Chloe Ireton (University College, London) This event was initially scheduled to take place 3rd to the 5th September 2020 at UCL in London. Due to the ongoing worldwide COVID-19 pandemic and public health emergency, the organisers have decided to postpone the event until the 2nd to the 4th September 2021. The CFP (details below) is unaltered but the deadline for proposals has been extended until the 30th April 2020. Overview: This colloquium is designed to discuss ideas and methods from intellectual histories outside of a European context, especially how they might stimulate new approaches in the discipline of intellectual history as constituted in the Western academy. We plan to bring together scholars working in and on different regions to start a conversation about how intellectual history is researched, taught and configured in different places, bringing into stark relief the politics of knowledge of the field. We hope that all intellectual historians, whatever their specific area of research, will be interested in joining us to rethink the endeavour of intellectual history in a global context. Over the last few years, since the publication of Moyn and Sartori’s landmark collection of essays Global Intellectual History (2013) and the launch […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Our publisher Oxford University Press Academic has released a free to read collection of articles about the history of illness, disease and pandemics entitled “History of Outbreaks”. All articles in the series are free to read until 31/03/2020. Oxford University Press Academic introduce the collection by saying that: “When a disease occurs in greater numbers than expected in a community, region, or season, it is considered an outbreak. In addition to human suffering, outbreaks create panic, disrupt the social and economic structure, and can impede development in the affected communities. While we cannot predict exactly when or where the next epidemic or pandemic will begin, we can explore and learn from outbreaks of the past.” There are four Past & Present articles, drawn from issues released in recent years as well as one which is still forthcoming. Please find them listed below: *‘Loving Capitalism Disease’: Aids and Ideology in the People’s Republic of China, 1984–2000, Julian Gewirtz *The Path to Pistoia: Urban Hygiene Before the Black Death, G. Geltner *Rejecting Catastrophe: The Case of the Justinianic Plague, Lee Mordechai and Merle Eisenberg *The Antonine Plague, Climate Change and Local Violence in Roman Egypt, […]