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Showing posts from July, 2026

Lectureship in Early Modern British History advertised at Keele University

 The details of this post and the closing date for applications are advertised here:  https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSK768/lecturer-in-early-modern-british-history

David Appleby on the siege of Colchester in 1648

  The website of the World Turned Upside Down has an interesting talk by David Appleby on the siege of Colchester by the Long Parliament's army in 1648. It can be heard or seen in transcript here:  https://www.worldturnedupsidedown.co.uk/transcripts/colchester-1648-eleven-weeks-of-brutal-and-bloody-siege/

The Royal Historical Society's conference on the crisis in Higher Education and its implications for history

 I have just seen the RHS's notice of this conference to be held in conjunction with the Institute of Historical Research. The e-mail I reproduce below was sent by me to Jane Whittle (University of Exeter) in June, 1621 and is still relevant in my view.   Christopher Thompson 8th June 2021 at 17:28 I think that there is a need for academic historians and its practitioners to be more ambitious in opening up the discipline to the large number of former staff, postgraduates and well-informed graduates still committed to its study but without university posts. I set out some ideas on how to begin this process some years ago starting with a website offering: News Access to academic journals Books (e.g. from the Internet Archive or from Google) Book reviews (e.g. from H-Albion or the IHR) Documents Audio and Video recordings Comments and Debates between historians Weblogs Jobs Forthcoming publications Conferences Seminars Details ...

The early colonial history of Virginia

This topic has been one of enduring interest to me ever since I first came across the documentary material relating to the foundation of the Virginia colony in 1607 and the spectacular quarrels that led to the breakdown and dissolution of the Virginia Company of London in 1624. The voluminous material available to me  as a postgraduate in the works of Susan Kingsbury, Wesley Frank Craven and others has since then been supplemented by the publication of the Ferrar Papers held in Magdalene College, Cambridge's library and the discovery of a large number of smaller archive deposits in the United Kingdom. The protagonists in these quarrels - Sir Edwin Sandys, the Ferrar brothers and their supporters on one side and the 2nd Earl of Warwick, Sir Nathaniel Rich and their allies on the other - produced completely cóntradictory accounts of the issues at stake. But one feature of the historiography has been a highly puzzling feature to me, namely the belief amongst almost all colonial histor...

My letter about not being a 'revisionist' from 1988: Open University A205 course newsletter

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        This was my response to a review by Clare Hawkins in a preceding A 205 course newsletter. I am not entirely sure who Clare Hawkins was or is: she may be the writer of historical fiction books based in Wivenhoe, Essex. 

A photograph of Lawrence Stone and a puzzle about where it originates

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Forthcoming conference on forced mobility in the early modern world (pasted notice)

CfP: Moving People by Force. Comparing the Claims and Constraints of Deportation and Transportation in the Early Modern World Social and Labour History News 1 week 1 day ago Organizer: Eva Seemann (GHI Paris); Florian Kühnel (IEG Mayence); Eva Marie Lehner (Univ. Bonn); Falk Bretschneider (EHESS) Venue: German Historical Institute Paris ZIP: 75003 Location: Paris Country: France Takes place: In Attendance From - Until: 12.05.2027 - 14.05.2027 Deadline: 12.07.2026 Website:  https://www.dhi-paris.fr/de/aktuelles/detailseite/call-for-papers-moving-people-by-force-comparing-the-claims-and-constraints-of-deportation-and-transportation-in-the-early-modern-world.html   Forced mobility constituted a significant share of global mobility in the Early Modern period (1500–1800). This category includes not only the mass trafficking associated with the Transatlantic slave trade and displacement in...

A comment on the podcast on A Trumpet of Sedition about Jonathan Healey's book, The Blazing World

  I have read this comment on Jonathan Healey’s book, The Blazing World, with some interest. The authors – Pip and Mara – put forward what they consider to be the failings of Healey’s analysis well written though they rightly agree that the work was. Their case is that Healey’s narrative account of the events of the early-1640s was incomplete because it did not identify the underlying structural causes; there was no class analysis of the kind Marxists consider essential to explain the rise of the bourgeoisie over the preceding century. Feudal and absolutist rule had blocked the development of capitalist social relations and had to be overthrown. Healey offered colour without explanation and subscribed to the ‘revisionist’ project of Conrad Russell and John Morrill in denying the existence of a rising bourgeoisie and, by implication, that of a bourgeois revolution. Mid-seventeenth century politics appeared to be merely instrumental, the revolution as unjustified and Healey’s presen...