Alex White
banner
alexjwhite.bsky.social
Alex White
@alexjwhite.bsky.social
6K followers 1.6K following 75 posts
Freelance historian with a focus on African anti-colonialism and the global media. PhD from Cambridge, hot takes from the depths of a radio archive somewhere.
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
New article out today! Published on the eve of Ghanaian independence, A Wreath for Udomo fictionalises Kwame Nkrumah's struggle against imperialism and imagines a future after British rule.

hwiccanreview.substack.com/p/accra-noir...
Accra Noir: ‘A Wreath for Udomo’ (Peter Abrahams, 1956)
A political thriller for a nation about to exist
hwiccanreview.substack.com
Reposted by Alex White
New article out today! Published on the eve of Ghanaian independence, A Wreath for Udomo fictionalises Kwame Nkrumah's struggle against imperialism and imagines a future after British rule.

hwiccanreview.substack.com/p/accra-noir...
Accra Noir: ‘A Wreath for Udomo’ (Peter Abrahams, 1956)
A political thriller for a nation about to exist
hwiccanreview.substack.com
Reposted by Alex White
Reposted by Alex White
Some very kind words, from an excellent thread on activism and the work of the historian:
The field wouldn‘t be what it is today if marginalised people hadn’t fought for their history, and in fighting developed new methods, knowledge, perspectives. There is a reason one of our best journals is called @historyworkshop.org.uk (in German @werkstattgeschichte.openbiblio.social.ap.brid.gy)
Reposted by Alex White
As Uganda's elections approach, government agencies have a responsibility to uphold press freedom. We condemn the censorship of Nation Media Group journalists covering parliamentary politics.

#Uganda #Journalismisnotacrime
Reposted by Alex White
How might we reassess friendship as a transformative, even revolutionary, political resource?

Laura Forster (@lauracforster.bsky.social) and Joel White (@joeljoel.bsky.social) join Marybeth Hamilton (@marybethhamilton13.bsky.social) to discuss the radical potential of friendship 🎙️🗃️
Friends in Common
How might we reassess friendship as a transformative, even revolutionary, political resource?
www.historyworkshop.org.uk
Reposted by Alex White
I read Wreath for Udomo earlier this year, along with Mine Boy, and will seek out more. Interested to find out from your account that Nkrumah did read the book. Abrahams at his best had an ability to present competing realities clearly, in something like the way Brecht's plays do.
Huge thanks to Hwiccen Review for the opportunity to review a book that's been out for almost seventy years! A Wreath for Udomo was republished recently by @faberbooks.bsky.social, so I'm hoping that helps introduce new audiences to Abrahams' flawed but fascinating novel.
New article out today! Published on the eve of Ghanaian independence, A Wreath for Udomo fictionalises Kwame Nkrumah's struggle against imperialism and imagines a future after British rule.

hwiccanreview.substack.com/p/accra-noir...
Accra Noir: ‘A Wreath for Udomo’ (Peter Abrahams, 1956)
A political thriller for a nation about to exist
hwiccanreview.substack.com
Reposted by Alex White
"These proposals would mean deporting greater numbers and a greater proportion of the population than former Ugandan President Idi Amin's deportation of Ugandan Asians."
Stephen Bush on the extraordinary draft legislation which Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, Matt Vickers, Katie Lam and backbench colleagues have proposed in parliament

It is a proposal that would seek to deport around 5% of the resident population, including over a quarter of a million with ILR
Reposted by Alex White
In 2011 the British Government was forced to release tens of thousands of secretly held colonial documents from its archives. But 88,000 files on Britain's last colony remain withheld from the public.

Matthew Hurst (@mrmhurst.bsky.social) on Hong Kong's colonial archive.
Memory Exiled
Matthew Hurst explores the 'politics of forgetting' through the missing files of the Hong Kong colonial archive.
www.historyworkshop.org.uk
Reposted by Alex White
📣 Call for participants 📣

Have you ever used any History Workshop Journal articles in your teaching practice?

We’d love to hear from you for the 100th issue of HWJ!

Please let us know by sending an email or feel free to DM.
Reposted by Alex White
My latest blogpost looks at the almost simultaneous collapse of Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia's governments at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s

89'-91: Northeast Africa's “collective near-death experience”

somaliarchive77.substack.com/p/89-91-nort...
89'-91: Northeast Africa's “collective near-death experience”
Between 1989 and 1991, every government from Chad to Somalia collapsed. The region still grapples with the legacy of this tumultous period.
somaliarchive77.substack.com
Reposted by Alex White
OTD in 1945, delegates from across the world gathered in Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall in Manchester to take part in the Fifth Pan-African Congress.

Theo Williams on Black and anti-colonial politics and British radical memory.
The Fifth Pan-African Congress, 1945: A Landmark Moment in British Radical History
In October 1945, delegates from across the world gathered in Chorlton-on-Medlock Town Hall, half a mile south of St Peter’s Field, to take part in the Fifth Pan-African Congress.
www.historyworkshop.org.uk
Reposted by Alex White
'The British Library...has taken years to recover from a major cyberattack that disrupted its services and restricted access to its collections. The walkout is set to take from 27 October to 9 November, coinciding with the two-year anniversary of the cyberattack.'
Reposted by Alex White
Latinx communities across the USA have been targeted by ICE. This summer, four LA historical and cultural institutions spoke out in solidarity, amongst silence in the museum sector.

Mary Rizzo on the role of museums in not only historical storytelling, but taking a stand:
No Going Back
Mary Rizzo examines how four LA historical and cultural institutions mobilize history and practice solidarity in the fight against immigration raids and deportations.
www.historyworkshop.org.uk
Reposted by Alex White
📢 episode 3 is out now

We meet the pensioner who looked into her pension fund's due diligence on climate change

What she found was shocking...

Featuring
@carbontracker.bsky.social, @josephestiglitz.bsky.social and many more

Listen now: www.overshootpod.com
Thanks! And your site looks amazing - thanks for sharing.
Here's our website, where you can follow our latest articles and podcast episodes. And feel free to get in touch if you're a history writer working inside or outside academia - I'm always open to interesting pitches!
History Workshop
History Workshop is a digital magazine of radical history. It seeks to deepen understandings of the past, cast fresh light on the present and agitate for change in the world we live in now.
www.historyworkshop.org.uk
Some exciting personal news: I’m now working at @historyworkshop.org.uk as an Editorial Fellow! It's such a privilege to join a magazine I've loved for years, and to engage with historians and activists from around the world.
Reposted by Alex White
In autumn 2000, fuel protests brought Britain to a standstill - just as record floods swept the country.

David Tomory and Timothy Cooper explore what ordinary people made of oil, climate, and crisis at the dawn of the new millennium.
Of Flood Plains and Fuel Protests
How did ordinary people in 2000 make sense of oil, floods, and climate change? David Tomory and Timothy Cooper explore the link between fuel protests and flood waters.
www.historyworkshop.org.uk