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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 2d

📣New HJ blog!

Joel Herman (@joelherman.bsky.social) explores how news both connected and divided people across the eighteenth-century British Empire📰

#History #Newspapers #Journalism #PublicSphere 18thc 🗃️

👉Read online here: www.cambridge.org/core/blog/20...

A News Revolution?: The Imperial Public Sphere and the Destabilization of the British Empire « History# « Cambridge Core Blog

The news connects individuals and communities across space at certain moments in time. One need only think back to recent events like the Arab Spring, the Refugee Crisis, or COVID to find striking exa...

www.cambridge.org

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Joel Herman @joelherman.bsky.social · 9d

I wrote a blog post on my recent @historicaljnl.bsky.social article. The concept of an imperial public sphere can help to explain the imperial crisis, but does it have utility beyond the 18C.? Can it increase our understanding of the Commonwealth and decolonization?
www.cambridge.org/core/blog/20...

A News Revolution?: The Imperial Public Sphere and the Destabilization of the British Empire « History# « Cambridge Core Blog

The news connects individuals and communities across space at certain moments in time. One need only think back to recent events like the Arab Spring, the Refugee Crisis, or COVID to find striking exa...

www.cambridge.org

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Reposted by The Historical Journal

Joel Herman @joelherman.bsky.social · 5d

Many thanks to the editors at the @historicaljnl.bsky.social blog for publishing this short piece, and to @ellasbaraini.bsky.social for her help with it. My recent article, and one of the central ideas of the book manuscript I’m currently working on, in a nutshell.

www.cambridge.org/core/blog/20...

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 12d

📢New HJ blog!✨

Vincent Roy-Di Piazza (@roydipiazza.bsky.social) explores how cadaver scarcity shaped the racial science of skin in Enlightenment Europe.

#History #Medicine #Science #Race 📜

👉Read online here: www.cambridge.org/core/blog/20...

How cadaver scarcity shaped the racial science of skin in Enlightenment Europe « History# « Cambridge Core Blog

This blog post is based on the article ‘Abraham Bäck, scarcity, and the racial anatomy of skin’ published in The Historical Journal: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X25101039 In February 1744, the Swe...

www.cambridge.org

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Vincent Roy-Di Piazza @roydipiazza.bsky.social · 12d

Wrote a 3 minute read blog post for the Cambridge Core Blog @Cambridge.org summarizing key results from my open access article on Abraham Bäck, cadaver scarcity, and the racial anatomy of skin @historicaljnl.bsky.social. Read it here👇 www.cambridge.org/core/blog/20...

How cadaver scarcity shaped the racial science of skin in Enlightenment Europe « History# « Cambridge Core Blog

This blog post is based on the article ‘Abraham Bäck, scarcity, and the racial anatomy of skin’ published in The Historical Journal: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X25101039 In February 1744, the Swe...

www.cambridge.org

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 13d

📣Out now on #firstview!

Mishael Knight (@peterhousecam.bsky.social) (@camhistory.bsky.social) on 'The Utopia within Utopia (1516)'

#History #IntellectualHistory #Law #Thought #Social 16thc 🗃️

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The debate between Hythlodaeus and an English lawyer before Cardinal Morton in Book One of Utopia (1516) contains many proposals for socio-economic reforms. These have typically been interpreted as innovative proposals to counteract the corruption of Christendom which surrounds them. However, when placed into their legislative context, it is apparent not only that these reforms echo closely many socio-economic reforms passed in England in the decades preceding Utopia, but that corollaries for almost all of them were passed when Morton, in whose presence the debate took place, was lord chancellor. Recognizing this forces a reassessment of this debate, showing Hythlodaeus’s flaws, and reframing the contribution of the English lawyer. This very reassessment, however, realigns the entire dialogue before Cardinal Morton, which it is possible to identify as a mirror to the wider text. It is a Utopia within Utopia, or, a mise en abyme. By closing examining the reflection, it appears that this provides a structural indication of how Utopia should be read.

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 16d

📣Out now on #firstview

Vincent Roy-Di Piazza (@uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social) on 'Abraham Bäck, Scarcity, and the Racial Anatomy of Skin'

#History #Medicine #Anatomy #Pseudoscience 17thc 18thc 🗃️

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

In February 1744 in Paris, the Swedish physician Abraham Bäck (1713–95), better known as Carl Linnaeus’s best friend, dissected the cadaver of an unidentified sub-Saharan man. In contrast to the widespread exploitation of the enslaved dead in North America, cadavers of dark-skinned Africans remained rare in the anatomical theatres of eighteenth-century Europe. Scarcity not only increased their market value in medical circles interested in skin colour: in Europe, empirical anatomists often used these rare remains for building their medical authority. This article explores the rise of an empiricist social culture of racial anatomy in the European Enlightenment by following the case of Bäck, whose research on ‘black’ skin also provides a little-known counterpart to Linnaeus’s racial anthropology. Bäck’s case illustrates not only how European anatomists often wrote accounts of skin colour which best showcased their medical skills but also how the production of racial pseudoscience became increasingly driven by the authoritative rise of empiricism, the expansion of the slave trade, and the Enlightenment’s fascination with human differences.

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · 19d

📣Out now on #firstview!

Evan Smith (@evansmithhist.bsky.social) and Andrekos Varnava (@andrekosvarnava.bsky.social) on 'Transnational Whiteness and the Elite Backlash to Reforming the Australian Immigration Control System in the 1950s and 1960s'

👉Open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🗃️

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Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 26d

Very excited that my new article with @andrekosvarnava.bsky.social has been published open access in @historicaljnl.bsky.social

'Transnational Whiteness and the Elite Backlash to Reforming the Australian Immigration Control System in the 1950s and 1960s'

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Transnational Whiteness and the Elite Backlash to Reforming the Australian Immigration Control System in the 1950s and 1960s by Evan Smith & Andrekos Varnava

Abstract: In the 1950s and 1960s, changes in the international situation, such as decolonization in Asia, led some Australians to question the usefulness of keeping the ‘White Australia Policy’, the basis for the country’s immigration system since Federation in 1901. Some argued that Australia’s international reputation, especially with newly independent countries in Asia and Africa, could be harmed by the maintenance of this policy. Events such as the Sharpeville Massacre in apartheid South Africa in 1960 caused further introspection into Australia’s racialized system. However, as pushes to reform the policy grew, others used international events to resist reforms. Using speeches by politicians and documents produced by policymakers, this article will show how events, such as the Notting Hill riots in Britain, the Little Rock controversy in the United States, and the Sharpeville massacre, were used as warnings about Australia potentially introducing similar ‘racial problems’ if it allowed more non-white migration. This article argues that these concerns tapped into a transnational whiteness that shared anxieties about decolonization, civil rights and non-white immigration in the post-war period, bringing a racialized solidarity forged at the turn of the twentieth century into the Cold War era.

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Sep 3

📘From our latest Special Issue

Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang (University of Missouri) on 'The Displacement and Relief of Chiang Kai-shek’s ‘Righteous Compatriots’ in the Global Cold War'

#Refugees #OralHistory #USA #Taiwan #Agency #Politics 20thc 🗃️

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Sep 1

📘From our latest Special Issue

Sarah Knoll (@sarahmknoll.bsky.social) (@uni-graz.at) on 'Hungarian Refugees in the United States between Cold War Politics, Economic Growth, and Labour Demands, 1956–1958'

#ColdWar #Emigration #Religion 20thc 🗃️

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 26

📣A double issue dedicated to #animals, for the first time in the history of the #Annales!🗃️🐈🐄

Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales @annales.ehess.fr · Aug 22

Le nouveau numéro des Annales est sorti sur @universitypress.cambridge.org
Au programme, un numéro double consacré aux #animaux (pour la première fois dans l'histoire presque centenaire des #Annales).

Bonne lecture et à bientôt pour une présentation détaillée !

▶️ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 22

📘From our latest Special Issue

Philipp Strobl (@philippstrobl.bsky.social) (@univie.ac.at) on 'Collective Refugee Agency and the Negotiation of Migration Laws in Wartime Australia, 1939–1943'

#Refugee #German #Migrant #Wartime #20thc 🗃️

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

In historical global refugee studies, the voices of migrants and their agency have become of growing interest. As recent research shows, migration is a complex process that is not simply obstructed by states but rather negotiated between different actors. Within these processes, migrants play a vital and active role as so-called ‘agents of experience’. This article analyses how specific migration processes have been negotiated by exploring the agency of German-speaking refugees from the Holocaust in wartime Australia with a particular focus on the negotiation of citizenship legislation. Relying on social cognitive theory, it focuses on actions taken at an institutional level of refugee agency. This allows for the understanding of how refugees have organized themselves and reveals what they did at an institutional level to become a point of reference for the Australian government and to influence its decision to introduce the new legal term of ‘refugee alien’.

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 21

📘From our latest Special Issue

Sebastian Musch (Osnabrück University) on 'Statelessness as a Political-Existential Predicament in the Lives and Writings of Three German-Jewish Intellectuals'

#Refugee #Political #WW2 #Germany 20thc 🗃️

👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This article investigates the writings of three German-Jewish intellectuals: Kurt Grossmann (1897–1972), Hannah Arendt (1906–75), and Günther Anders (1902–92). It argues that all three thinkers dealt, in their lives as well as their writing, with the construction of a common refugee polis. Yet this engagement was limited by a political-existential predicament that, through their attempts to reclaim their agency, turned their historical and philosophical works into a renegotiation of their own biographies. The article focuses on key chapters in Arendt’s The origins of totalitarianism, in conjunction with her essay We refugees; on Grossmann’s books The Jewish refugee (co-authored with Arieh Tartakower) and Emigration: the history of the Hitler-refugees 1933–1945; and on Anders’s essay ‘The emigrant’. As victims of National Socialism who fled from Nazi Germany to the US, these authors represent a distinctive view of the transition from the Second World War to the era of the Cold War. Reclaiming agency served as a way to resist subjugation by Nazi race ideology, yet it also circumscribed their belief in the radical potential of the political refugee, resulting in Arendt’s focus on totalitarianism, Grossmann’s limiting the refugee polis to Jewish refugee organizations, and Anders’s inward existential gaze.

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 19

📘From our latest issue

Dina Gusejnova (@dinalog.bsky.social) (@lsehy.bsky.social) on 'Loyalty and Allegiance in Baltic German Political Thought after the First World War'

#Refugee #Intellectual #Family #Politics 🛡️📜

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 15

📣John Locke’s Forgotten Manuscript

We are thrilled to announce that @davidrarmitage.bsky.social's
article on his discovery of a new John Locke manuscript is out now👇

It sheds new light on Locke's practical involvement in political economy & his engagement with Ireland 📜🗃️

John Locke and Irish Linen Manufacture: A New Manuscript | The Historical Journal | Cambridge Core

John Locke and Irish Linen Manufacture: A New Manuscript

www.cambridge.org

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Reposted by The Historical Journal

John Gallagher @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social · Aug 15

A very exciting new John Locke find by @davidrarmitage.bsky.social now published in the @historicaljnl.bsky.social!

The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 15

📣John Locke’s Forgotten Manuscript

We are thrilled to announce that @davidrarmitage.bsky.social's
article on his discovery of a new John Locke manuscript is out now👇

It sheds new light on Locke's practical involvement in political economy & his engagement with Ireland 📜🗃️

John Locke and Irish Linen Manufacture: A New Manuscript | The Historical Journal | Cambridge Core

John Locke and Irish Linen Manufacture: A New Manuscript

www.cambridge.org

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 15

📣John Locke’s Forgotten Manuscript

We are thrilled to announce that @davidrarmitage.bsky.social's
article on his discovery of a new John Locke manuscript is out now👇

It sheds new light on Locke's practical involvement in political economy & his engagement with Ireland 📜🗃️

John Locke and Irish Linen Manufacture: A New Manuscript | The Historical Journal | Cambridge Core

John Locke and Irish Linen Manufacture: A New Manuscript

www.cambridge.org

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 14

📣Out now on #firstview!

Timothy Twining (@tntwining.bsky.social) (KU Leuven) on 'Richard Simon, Vernacular Biblical Scholarship, and the Last Early Modern Polyglot Bible'

#Religion #Scholarship #Translation #Catholic #French 17thc 📙🗃️

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Richard Simon has long presented an enigma for historians, as his status as a pathbreaking textual critic and the opposition his work engendered from contemporary ecclesiastical authorities has sat uncomfortably alongside his consistent advocacy of his Catholic credentials. This article approaches this problem via an analysis of two hitherto understudied parts of his scholarly corpus. It first elucidates Simon’s distinctive plan for a new polyglot Bible in the mid-1680s before shifting attention some fifteen years to consider his work in French vernacular biblical translation, bringing out how the confessionally inflected content of his work in that field contrasted with his earlier critical scholarship. By revealing how Simon negotiated the relationship between scholarship and religion during his working life, the article foregrounds the continued import of confessionalized erudition at the turn of the eighteenth century while also interrogating the limits of its explanatory power as a historical category.

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 13

📣Out now on #firstview!

Gillian Lamb (@historicalbeans.bsky.social) (@ox.ac.uk) on 'Age, Gender, and Agency in Juvenile Migration from England to Canada, 1850–1900'

#Immigration #Class #Crime #Letters 19thc 🗃️✉️

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This article makes two important contributions. Firstly, it provides valuable insights into the motivations of working-class migrants in the second half of the nineteenth century, adding a new dimension to a scholarship focused on studies of forced migration or middle-class empire building. Its analysis of a rich body of published and unpublished letters from former institutionalized children reveals the primacy of financial gain in the migration decision and shows that working-class Britons saw the world beyond the British Isles as a space of opportunity, where they could leverage their mobility in pursuit of profit. Secondly, by arguing that juvenile emigrants need to be viewed as a heterogeneous body where age and gender made a difference in terms of experience, the article provides an important new perspective on institutional migration that has implications for wider literatures on childhood and youth. The average age of the boys studied for this article was sixteen and the research shows that they were active participants in the emigration process, shaping their own futures through their diverse decisions. Recognizing this significantly undermines the modern discourses of blame and victimhood that dominate the historiography and encourages us to re-evaluate our approach to nineteenth-century juvenile migration.

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 12

📣Out now on #firstview!

Amy Chandran (University of Florida) on 'Empire, Conscience, and Another Independency in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan'

#Sovereign #Commonwealth #Politics #England 17thc 👑🗃️

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Leviathan’s famous pronouncement that England had been ‘reduced to the Independency of the Primitive Christians’ has often been understood to signal support for the newly ascendant Cromwellian Independents in England. This article ventures an alternative reading of the passage by investigating the notion of ‘Independency’ with an eye to wider European political discourses. Scholars such as Francisco Suárez contended for the natural independence of temporal sovereigns while specifying the juridical rights and reach of imperial power. The fact that Christ and the Apostles had eschewed involvement in temporal affairs clarified this initial independency. This original state was especially important in French narratives aimed at securing autonomy against both empire and church. In light of this, Hobbes’s statement may be interpreted as endorsing a time-delimited notion of free conscience given England’s ruinous political state, but one looking forward to the unified rule of a sovereign with civil and ecclesiastical power.

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 8

📘From our latest Special Issue

Arie M. Dubnov (@gwu1821.bsky.social) and Laura Robson (@yale.edu) 'The Three Rs of Post-war Internationalism: Refugee, Return, Repatriation'

#WW2 #Global #Palestine #Israel #International 20thc 🗃️

👉Read open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 6

📘From our latest Special Issue

Matthew J. Craig on (Universität Basel) on 'Enemy Alien Internment, Decolonization, and the Uprooted Elite of Treaty Port China under Japanese Occupation, 1941–1945'

#Japan #Wartime #Elite #Colonialism 20thc 🗃️

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This article addresses the process of decolonization carried out by wartime Japanese occupation authorities, exemplifying how it played out on the ground in 1940s China with a focus on the ‘uprooted elite’ – that is, the former Western colonists of the treaty ports. After the outbreak of hostilities in December 1941, these civilians were haphazardly categorized as ‘enemy nationals’ and subjected to enemy alien regulations. This culminated in a far-reaching general internment policy from early 1943 until mid- to late 1945, when a bittersweet Allied liberation shut Japan’s ‘Civil Assembly Centres’ down. Despite Western imperialists’ desires to resurrect racial privilege and recapture a modicum of their colonial possessions, the process of ethno-political and socio-economic relegation and replacement initiated loosely under the political schema of Imperial Japan’s ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ proved to be largely irreversible as post-imperial domestic regimes advanced nationalization agendas. The uprooted elite were not merely passive objects enduring racial upheaval, removal, and ‘repatriation’. They navigated a complex and changing reality, exercising what rights they could in order to try to improve their lot. They benefited from humanitarian aid, administered by neutral Swedish and Swiss consular networks and the International Committee of the Red Cross operating on a global scale.

The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 5

📘From our latest Special Issue

Kerstin von Lingen (@univie.ac.at) on 'Citizenship, Expropriation, and Redress: ‘Migrating Objects’ and the Case of Holocaust Victims from Austria'

#Austria #Shanghai #Art #Refugee 20thc 🗃️

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Forced displacement brings with it the loss of property, belonging, and identity. Objects encode the nexus between citizenship, property, and sense of belonging/emotional attachment. The article explores the connection between citizenship and property and thereby highlights the agency of victims and their refugee’s polis. This case-study focuses on Jewish Austrian citizens who fled from Austria to Shanghai during the Nazi occupation era, expelled by the Nuremberg racial laws. During this racial persecution, they lost their citizenship and subsequently all their assets, with most of their belongings stored at the port of Trieste. Surprisingly, even after the end of the Second World War and Nazi occupation, it proved very difficult for Jews to regain their citizenship and property, for reasons highlighted in this article. The post-war nation-state could not deliver justice to actors whose economic, social, and cultural lives had been shaped through forced migration. Following scandals like the ‘Woman in Gold’ dispute concerning the return of a painting by Klimt in 2006, legal transformation in the fields of monetary compensation and citizenship laws was only brought about by resolutely transnational political-legal activism.

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The Historical Journal @historicaljnl.bsky.social · Aug 4

📣Out now on #firstview!

Valerie Wainwright (Independent Scholar) on '‘Liberal’ Virtues and Values, Women’s ‘Genius’, and the British Literary Reviews, c. 1750–1795'

#Enlightenment #Politics #Reason #Rationality 18thc 🗃️

👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

In 1764, while discussing female authors one critic suggested that the views of ‘the liberal’ were normative. But what did it mean to be a ‘liberal’ at this time? This article examines the ‘liberal and enlightened’ patterns of thought popularized by reviewers who belonged to the network of friends and acquaintances of the founders of the Monthly Review, the dissenters Ralph Griffiths and William Rose. Opposing different forms of ‘tyranny’, or authoritarianism, critics promoted ‘liberal and rational’ political principles and a social morality comprising the values of open-mindedness, reason, toleration, and ‘equity’ or justice as fairness. Focusing in particular on issues relating to gender, this article shows how conceptions of the ‘liberal spirit’ informed accounts of women’s capabilities, of their ‘genius’ and rationality. By the 1780s, the language of ‘liberal sentiments’ had spread within print culture, appearing in the New Annual Register, founded by Andrew Kippis, a leading critic at the Monthly, and in the work of political and social theorists such as Major John Cartwright or James Mackintosh. Yet, defeating stereotypical notions of gender could be complicated even for men who aspired to a place within the elite of the ‘enlightened’ or ‘liberal and philosophical’.

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