by Dr. Mark Hailwood (University of Bristol) Those of us historians intent on exploring the world of ordinary women and men in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries conduct a lot of our research by looking at surviving examples of what such people read–for instance, cheap printed broadside ballads–or of what they wrote–take, say, Joseph Bufton’s notebooks. These materials are fascinating and undoubtedly useful, but regular readers of this blog might understandably find themselves wondering about the validity of this approach, and asking themselves a simple but important question: to what extent could the lower classes of England actually read and write in the seventeenth century? It’s a fair question, and has important implications. Matters which I explore in “Rethinking Literacy in Rural England, 1550–1700” Past & Present No. 260 August 2023 (Open Access). Does this material really provide a window into the minds of the most humble people in Tudor and Stuart society, or were reading and writing skills the preserve of the more affluent, or at least the middling, classes of society? After all, in 1691 the puritan writer Richard Baxter had described his lower-class neighbours as ‘the rabble that cannot read’. Was this fair? Back in the 1970s the social historian David […]

by the Past & Present editorial team The Royal Historical Society now invites applications for its programme of Masters’ Scholarships for the academic year 2023-24. This scheme provides financial support to students from groups currently underrepresented in academic History. Scholarships are worth £5000 each and are awarded to students who will begin a Masters’ degree in History (full or part-time) at a UK university from the start of the academic year, 2023-24. Six Scholarships will be awarded for 2023-24. This year’s Scholarships are generously supported by the Past & Present Society and The Thriplow Charitable Trust, to which the Royal Historical Society is extremely grateful. The programme, established in 2022, seeks to actively address underrepresentation and encourage Black and Asian students to consider academic research in History. By supporting Masters’ students the programme focuses on a key early stage in the academic training of future researchers. With these Scholarships, the Society seeks to support students who are without the financial means to study for a Masters’ in History. By doing so, we hope to improve the educational experience of early career historians engaged in a further degree. There are no conditions on what the award may be spent and may be used to […]

by Prof. Nicole Elizabeth Barnes (Duke University) Our planet is dying. It turns out the fossil fuels hidden beneath its crust were properly placed there, tucked away in the darkness. We cannot put them back any easier than we can reverse climate change, but we can, and must, seek every possible solution to our current predicament. This means every form of knowledge, past and present, is a resource to mine with as much diligence as we mine coal and drill for oil. The history of farming in China is one such resource, as I show in my open access article “The Many Values of Nightsoil in Wartime China” Past & Present No. 259 (May 2023). The problems can seem insurmountable. Agroindustry and rampant application of chemical fertilizers have so depleted our soils that, according to some reputable entities such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) we have just sixty harvests left. Chemical fertilizers cause harm from their inception. Phosphate mining damages habitat, pollutes waterways, and creates a radioactive byproduct, phosphogypsum. Chemical fertilizers emit methane pollution into the atmosphere during production and after application. They also pollute waterways with excess nutrients in a process known as eutrophication. […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Past and Present was pleased to learn that Dr. Roseanna Webster (Trinity College, Cambridge) has won the Royal Historical Society’s Alexander Prize 2023 for an article in any field of history by a woman scholar”. The award was made for her article “Women and the Fight for Urban Change in Late Francoist Spain” (open access) due to be published next month in Past & Present no. 260 (August 2023). This year the Alexander Prize was also awarded to Dr. Jake Dyble (University of Padua) for the article “General Average, Human Jettison, and the Status of Slaves in Early Modern Europe” published last year in the Historical Journal. The prize judges noted that: “Roseanna Webster’s work on Francoist Spain is a classic account of history from below. She focuses on female activists in new housing estates whose concerns were to gain the necessities of life, such as a regular supply of running water. Webster’s use of oral histories shows how the role of activist jarred with traditional gender roles, and how this caused the women themselves some unease. Webster’s unusual choice of subject matter and her careful handling of her source material has produced […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Past and Present was pleased to learn that Dr. Samantha Payne (College of Charleston) has won the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians “article prize for 2022 for an article in any field of history by a woman scholar”. The award was made for her article “‘A General Insurrection in the Countries with Slaves’: The US Civil War and the Origins of an Atlantic Revolution, 1861–1866” which was published in Past & Present no. 257 (November 2022). The prize committee noted that: “Payne foregrounds the actions of enslaved people in the debate about emancipation following the American Civil War and its ripple effects on the other slave states of the Americas. She argues the end of the Civil War precipitated the abolition of slavery in Cuba and Brazil because of the actions of these slaves. Members of the Committee were impressed by the breadth of her research, with archives in several countries and multiple languages. By considering the communications network that existed among enslaved people and free people of color in the Atlantic world, she was able to consider how much their participation of affected the changing discourse of emancipation By reading across the […]

by Dr. Eva Miller (University College, London) Warwick Global History and Culture Centre Annual Conference: Archaeology, Antiquity, and the Making of the Modern Middle East: Global Histories 1800–1939. Organisers: Guillemette Crouzet (European Research Institute at Florence) and Eva Miller (UCL) Since Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798 with a cadre of scientific experts, the Middle East has been framed as the cradle of the world past: the place where civilization began, burgeoning with antiquities, where ancient history was visible in the landscape—or could be made so through the right kind of labour. This framing continues to affect heritage politics and international relations in the region. The conference ‘Archaeology, Antiquity, and the Making of the Modern Middle East: Global Histories 1800–1939’, held on 25–26 May, 2023 at the University of Warwick, explored how historical consciousness about the Middle East was reshaped in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and new senses of its ancient past forged through excavation and exegesis of traces of ancient civilisations (programme here). The Past & Present Society supported the essential participation of ECRs travelling from the Middle East. Why was a conference about one particular area of the globe the annual conference of a centre for ‘global’ […]

Received from Dr. Naomi Lloyd-Jones (Durham) Dates: 20-21 July 2023 Location: Collingwood College Penthouse Conference Suite, Durham University and online Registration DAY ONE: THURSDAY 20 JULY 8.30AM – 9.15AM Registration (Lobby) and refreshments (Boardroom) 9.15AM – 10.30AM Keynote talk (Penthouse Suite Room A/B) Professor Katrina Navickas (University of Hertfordshire): ‘Practical representation and battles over locality: the importance of place in British popular politics in the long nineteenth century’ 10.30AM – 11AM Refreshments (Boardroom) NB: During this break the Penthouse Suite will be split into rooms A and B for the panel sessions 11AM – 12.20PM Panel Session One Panel 1.A (Room A) Politics and emotions                             Nicholas Barone (Princeton University): ‘“The indifference is the deadweight of history”: Apathy and British Radical Politics, 1790-1840’ Professor Matthew Roberts (Sheffield Hallam University): ‘Cobden, Peel, the Anti-Corn Law League and the Politics of Feeling in Mid-Victorian England’ Dr Laura C. Forster (Manchester University): ‘The political lecture tour in nineteenth-century Britain: activism, hospitality and intimacy on the road’ Panel 1.B (Room B) Politics of land                                                   Dr Lowri Ann Rees (Bangor University): ‘Protesting paternalism: the Rebecca Riots as a political protest movement in south-west Wales’ Dr Brian Casey (Durham University): ‘Michael […]

Received from Dr. Becca Grose and Dr. Alex Traves (University of York) Conference Taking Place: 1–2 June 2023, University of York, King’s Manor Thursday 1st June 2023 Registration 12.30-1pm   Session 1 – 1pm-2.40pm “Dissolving the Paternity of Children Born to Slave Mothers in the Early Middle Ages.” Erin Dailey, University of Leicester. “Wet-nurses in early medieval narratives: bonds of affection, ties of servitude.” Katherine Cross, York St John/University of York. “Kinship Ties and Enslavement in Early Medieval England: Continuity or Dissolvement?.” Alex Traves, University of York. Break – 2.40-3.10 pm  Session 2 – 3.10 pm-4.40pm “The power in (not) dissolving kinship in fifth-century North Africa.” Becca Grose, University of York. “Cutting Ties: Death, inheritance, and paternal abdication in Islamicate geographical accounts of the Rūs.” Tonicha Upham, Aarhus University. VIRTUAL. “Denying Kinship; Claiming Land: Kinship, Property, and Power in Early Medieval India, ca. 300–800 CE.” Mekhola Gomes, Amherst College. VIRTUAL. Break- 4.40pm-5pm Plenary – 5pm    “”If anyone wishes to cast off their kindred, let them go to the assembly…” Kinship, community, and identity in the post-imperial West.’” Guy Halsall, University of York. Reception – 6-6:45pm Dinner – TBC Friday 2nd June 2023 Session 1 – 9am-10:40am “Eternal kinship of the […]

Received from Dr. Samuel Agbamu (Reading) and Dr. Elena Giusti (Warwick) Dates: 22nd – 24th June 2023 Location: Museum of Civilisations, 14 Piazza Guglielmo Marconi 00144 Roma Italy Registration Overview This conference will interrogate the roles of the ancient Greek and Latin worlds in the formulation of Italian colonial discourses, and its impacts on the cultural landscape of postcolonial Italy and its former colonies. It will approach these subjects across three themes: Classics and Italian Colonialism; Italy, Classics and Postcolonialism; and Decolonising Classics in Italy. Each theme will have a number of research questions: 1. Classics and Italian Colonialism i. How has research into Greek and Roman antiquity contributed to the formulation of Italian colonial ideologies? ii. How has Classics in Italy supported projects to inscribe difference between ‘races’, nations, and religions, as well as between categories of coloniser and colonised? 2. Italy, Classics, and Postcolonialism i. How have people colonised and formerly colonised by Italy encountered the classical tradition? ii. How have the literary cultures of Italy’s former colonies interacted with postcolonial Italian literature? 3. Classics and Postcolonialism i. How have classicists across the world sought to interrogate and undo the complicities between the discipline and the legacies of […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Every year we invite the Postdoctoral Fellows that we sponsor at the Institute of Historical Research in London to curate a “Virtual Issue” of the journal. Each issue commences with an introduction by the Fellow(s) who have curated the issue exploring the historiographical concerns, trends and currents that they have picked out from their reading of back issues of the journal. This introduction is then followed by a series of (free to read) articles that they have chosen which have been published on their chosen theme throughout the more than seventy year period that Past and Present has been published. The Society’s 2021 – 23 Fellows Dr. Tamara Fernando, Dr. Felice Physioc and Dr. Alexis Rider have curated a virtual issue called the Flows of History. Exploring the historiograpy of water as presented in Past and Present. They write: “What does it mean to write the history of water? In this virtual issue we set out to explore how articles published in Past and Present, a journal of social history, have addressed the topic of water through time, with a caveat that several important conversations on water have also taken place in other scholarly […]