Products and services
In today’s world of nation states, conventional narratives present decolonisation as an inevitable transition from empire to national independence. However, this does not fully acknowledge the complex, ongoing nature of decolonisation. What about those colonies that did not become independent? And what about the people who resisted colonial rule, even as their countries remained politically […]
Read More
Historical rags to riches stories attract intrinsic interest. Nineteenth century social history is populated by men (mostly) driven by the self-improvement ethos who emerged from humble circumstances to relative wealth and status. They make persuasive illustrations for arguments about the rapid pace of social mobility in Victorian and Edwardian society. Two of the men in […]
Read More
Historians of war often pride themselves on telling ‘forgotten stories’ on the basis of ‘lost voices’ from the past, and rightly so. Those dedicated to the International Brigades would, however, have a hard time getting these buzz words into the subtitles of their own books, even though they have – for as long as they […]
Read More
One of my favorites children’s books was What Do People Do All Day? by Richard Scarry. Repeatedly, I learned how the Busytown tailors, construction workers, and lumbermill employees lived their daily lives. I think this clarifies why my main question when I initiated my investigation into medieval English ladies-in-waiting was precisely this: how did these […]
Read More
On February 24 of 1920, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (you know, the Nazis) issued their first party platform. Their demands are mostly what you would expect—conquering the greater German homeland, expelling foreigners, denaturalizing Jews. But point 19 of the manifesto goes in what might seem like an unexpected direction. The Nazis demanded “the […]
Read More
A map of Leadenhall Street and Houndsditch which includes several parish churches and synagogues. Excerpt from John Rocque’s 1746 map of London, from David Rumsey maps. June 1780 saw some of the most destructive riots ever to break out on the streets of London. Motivated by anti-Catholic feeling, The Gordon Riots involved several days of […]
Read More
In 1785, King Louis XVI of France commissioned Jean François de Galoup, comte de Lapérouse, to explore the Pacific Ocean, seeking to bolster French scientific prestige and imperial ambitions. The Académie des Sciences prepared a list of questions for the expedition, to settle various geographical ambiguities. One question was whether the land known as “Ségalien,” […]
Read More
Sometimes plans work best when they don’t really bear the hallmarks of a plan. Less design and more muddling through can achieve unforeseen good. This might be said for a well-known, but less well-understood, postwar international aid program for Asia, the Colombo Plan. Launched in July 1951, the impressively titled Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic […]
Read MoreKeep up with the latest from Cambridge University Press on our social media accounts.
.jpg){kind=small}
