🏴 Revealed: How mass tourism helped England after the Black Death
“The new investigations into the management and economics of the medieval pilgrimage industry has revealed that each major pilgrimage centre (often cathedrals) would seek to market their ‘pilgrimage offer’ only around four times a year - so as to deliberately concentrate mass tourism in their specific town into a manageable series of very short seasons.
This maximised efficiency and profit, while minimising mass tourism’s impact on normal ecclesiastical life.”
Archaeologists find site of epic clash between Spartacus and Roman army
“Archaeologists have uncovered a stone wall in an Italian forest that was used by the Roman army during an epic “clash” against slave revolt leader and gladiator Spartacus and his men.”
‘Choreography of conquest’: How routine violence shaped European empires
“In her new book, “They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence” (Princeton University Press), Yale historian Lauren Benton looks at the periods between those well-studied markers to examine the imperial violence that took the form of rampant and seemingly incessant small wars. She finds that European empires consistently used what she calls a “choreography of conquest” to amass power over the 500-year period between 1400 and 1900.”
The Danelaw: The Scandinavian Influence on English Identity
“Perhaps it is a possibility that these English noblemen and clergymen and some portion of the common people felt a certain fear of these foreigners, not just because of the invading force that the Great Armies were comprised of, but because these men and women from across the sea were so different yet so similar and perhaps it was because of these similarities that these two cultures were able to form a cultural hybrid in the eastern half of England where even today we can still find faint traces of Scandinavian influence.”
The Danelaw: The Scandinavian Influence on English Identity
“Perhaps it is a possibility that these English noblemen and clergymen and some portion of the common people felt a certain fear of these foreigners, not just because of the invading force that the Great Armies were comprised of, but because these men and women from across the sea were so different yet so similar and perhaps it was because of these similarities
that these two cultures were able to form a cultural hybrid in the eastern half of England where even today we can still find faint traces of Scandinavian influence.”
The slave markets of the Viking world: comparative perspectives on an ‘invisible archaeology’
“….this study explores the comparative archaeologies and histories of slave markets in order to examine the potential form and function of these sites, and how they might have operated as part of the wider, interconnected Viking world.”
Raffield, B. (2019) ‘The slave markets of the Viking world: comparative perspectives on an ‘invisible archaeology’’, Slavery & Abolition, 40(4), pp. 682–705. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2019.1592976.
The slave markets of the Viking world: comparative perspectives on an ‘invisible archaeology’
“….this study explores the comparative archaeologies and histories of slave markets in order to examine the potential form and function of these sites, and how they might have operated as part of the wider, interconnected Viking world.”
Raffield, B. (2019) ‘The slave markets of the Viking world: comparative perspectives on an ‘invisible archaeology’’, Slavery & Abolition, 40(4), pp. 682–705. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2019.1592976.
Discovering the North: Francesco Negri’s and Giuseppe Acerbi’s journeys to Norway in the 17th and 18th centuries
“Their narratives provide valuable insights into the cultural and societal landscape of the North during their time, illuminating a region largely undiscovered by other European travellers. By documenting their experiences and observations, Negri and Acerbi contribute to a broader understanding of Northern Europe, challenging prevailing narratives.”
Miscali, M. (2024) ‘Discovering the North: Francesco Negri’s and Giuseppe Acerbi’s journeys to Norway in the 17th and 18th centuries’, Scandinavian Journal of History, pp. 1–25. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/03468755.2024.2368554.
“Before the dawn of the Common Era two thousand years ago, Julius Caesar gave the land its name, Germania. But it was nineteen hundred years before the land became a country. That happened only in 1871 when the ruthless and brilliant Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck united twenty-five independent kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies, principalities, and free cities in a new German Empire.”
Anglo-Saxons may have fought in northern Syrian wars, say experts
“These finds put the Anglo-Saxon princes and their followers centre-stage in one of the last great wars of late antiquity. It takes them out of insular England into the plains of Syria and Iraq in a world of conflict and competition between the Byzantines and the Sasanians and gave those Anglo-Saxons literally a taste for something much more global than they probably could have imagined.”
“Fascism prospered from a paralysis of the state’s capacity for dispatching its key organizing functions, whether in the economy or for the larger tasks of keeping cohesion in society. At the worst points of the crisis, that paralysis encompassed the entire institutional machinery of politics, including the parliamentary and party-political frameworks of representation.”
Geoff Eley, What is Fascism and Where does it Come From?, History Workshop Journal, Volume 91, Issue 1, Spring 2021, Pages 1–28, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbab003
“Fascism prospered from a paralysis of the state’s capacity for dispatching its key organizing functions, whether in the economy or for the larger tasks of keeping cohesion in society. At the worst points of the crisis, that paralysis encompassed the entire institutional machinery of politics, including the parliamentary and party-political frameworks of representation.”
Geoff Eley, What is Fascism and Where does it Come From?, History Workshop Journal, Volume 91, Issue 1, Spring 2021, Pages 1–28, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbab003
“Fascism prospered from a paralysis of the state’s capacity for dispatching its key organizing functions, whether in the economy or for the larger tasks of keeping cohesion in society. At the worst points of the crisis, that paralysis encompassed the entire institutional machinery of politics, including the parliamentary and party-political frameworks of representation.”
Geoff Eley, What is Fascism and Where does it Come From?, History Workshop Journal, Volume 91, Issue 1, Spring 2021, Pages 1–28, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbab003
The return of long-lost Sumero-Akkadian heritage and modern disorders: rediscovering Gilgamesh, Victorian tension, and aftermath
“The rediscovery of the Mesopotamian epic complicated centuries-old and on-going debates about time and history: The major archaeologists of the period utilized it to return the field to its earliest arguments and better understand what time and history meant at the end of the nineteenth century, the Historians, Hebraists, and Biblicists began to question the originality of the Bible and verify its reliability, and figures specialized in literature and/or the arts got access to the primary sources of prehistory to update existing literature or create new fictional arts.”
Olmsted, The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler
“Kathryn Olmsted’s work provides a timely and incisive analysis of four American and two British press lords, united in their isolationism, appeasement towards fascism, and proclivity to use their media apparatus and larger-than-life personalities to forcefully promote their politics.”
Olmsted, The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler
“Kathryn Olmsted’s work provides a timely and incisive analysis of four American and two British press lords, united in their isolationism, appeasement towards fascism, and proclivity to use their media apparatus and larger-than-life personalities to forcefully promote their politics.”
“Where do national myths originate? They do not emerge by happenstance. Rather their creation and spread are an exercise of power. Influential historical actors, from antebellum slaveholders to the moguls of Hollywood and those Slotkin calls the ‘political classes’, have attempted to develop and disseminate broadly acceptable myths to serve their own interests.”
“Gerardus Mercator is perhaps well-known for all the wrong reasons. His last name evokes the infamous Mercator projection, which depicts the world in a distorted way. The projection has been criticized for putting Europe at the center of the world and favoring the northern hemisphere by making countries there appear bigger than they are in reality.”
🏴 📚 Religion and Governance in England’s Emerging Colonial Empire, 1601–1698
“Drawing on research into the Virginia, East India, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New England and Levant Companies, it offers a comparative global assessment of the inextricable links between the formation of English overseas government and various models of religious governance across England’s emerging colonial empire.”
🏴 📚 Religion and Governance in England’s Emerging Colonial Empire, 1601–1698
“Drawing on research into the Virginia, East India, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New England and Levant Companies, it offers a comparative global assessment of the inextricable links between the formation of English overseas government and various models of religious governance across England’s emerging colonial empire.”