Humphrey Peake and Siege Warfare During the English Civil Wars of the 1640s and 1650s, siege warfare was a central aspect, which has nonetheless been overlooked by the historiography. Often the major focus of historians of the wars has been major battles such as Marston Moor and Naseby; important sieges such as Newark and Colchester […]
‘The cruel queen her thrall let slip’: Boundaries of Female Agency in the Ynglinga Saga Introduction The Old Norse sagas, written primarily in Iceland and Norway in the thirteenth century, represent a unique branch of Medieval European literature. They are distinct in that they are mostly written in the vernacular rather than Latin, but also for […]
As the effects of global warming become more apparent, and large scale political and industrial action towards protecting the environment remains sluggish, tensions between the material demands of humanity and the earth’s ability to provide are reaching a dangerous high. Inspired by these pressures, academics of ancient Greece and Rome have been turning their attention […]
Capitol, Capital, and the Ancient City In his 1992 landmark text Architecture, Power, and National Identity Lawrence Vale demonstrated the extent to which government buildings ‘serve as symbols of the state’ and how one can ‘learn much about a political regime by observing closely what it builds’.[1] The Residence Act of 1790 gave the American […]
Why were colonial powers interested in sexuality? In his 1847 account of the Aboriginal Australians, designed to familiarise new white settlers with the indigenous population, George Angus made sure to note why the settlement of aboriginal lands was entirely justified. ‘The population of the native tribes inhabiting South Australia is not considerable’ remarked Angus, because […]
In this article Marco Panato reviews The Carolingian World by Marios Costambeys, Matthew Innes, and Simon MacLean. At the height of its power, the Carolingian Empire dominated western Europe as its largest single polity. The Carolingian World, published in 2011, offers a comprehensive survey of the empire from its 8th century origins, to its struggle to maintain […]
In this article David Robinson considers the discursive construction of Italian identity by British travellers in the early nineteenth century, through the lens of Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism. David challenges Said’s construction of a purely East-West binary, showing how intra-European binaries were similarly constructed, through the combination of apparently objective ‘academic’ knowledge of Italy, […]
In this article Lindsey Annable reviews Paul Zanker’s The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus and analyses the connections between Roman visual culture and Roman history. Originally published in 1987 in the original German as Augustus und die Macht der Bilder, the English translation followed one year later, and continues to be relevant to […]
In this article Phoebe Brown analyses media representations of the 1976-1978 Grunwick industrial dispute. Phoebe focuses on the role of the South Asian women involved, analysing a variety of media sources and highlighting how they emphasised particular aspects of the strikers’ identity to serve diverse political agendas: the right-wing press, for example, emphasised the women’s […]
In this article Oliver Dodd examines the processes of capitalist development to account for the underlying dynamics of the Colombian Civil War (1964-2002). Oliver argues that economic development did not take place in an orderly or steady manner, but rather involved conflict and antagonism between various social-class forces engaged in a ‘struggle for hegemony’. The […]
In this article Darcie Mawby poses two important questions: firstly, to what extent did cultural exceptionalism exist among Russian noblewomen in the late imperial and revolutionary periods? Secondly, were Russian noblewomen part of a transnational European elite, or is national specificity integral to understanding their identity construction? In doing so Darcie provides important insights into the […]
In this article Thomas Black explores the production of, and dispute over, images of kingship and authority during the reign of Charles I and the Interregnum. Thomas analyses some of the images of kings and kingship that were developed and challenged in the Caroline masques, as well as topographical and pastoral poetry composed during the […]
In this article Tom Rose explores the dominant theme in cultural history: the concept of memory. Tom argues that the concept of memory should be a vital component of early-modern studies and evaluates the applicability of the theorist Pierre Nora to the mythology of Elizabeth I. Download a PDF Version of this Article Here Tom […]
Ants and Cicadas Introduction Despite having spent centuries together as part of the Spanish colonial Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, the independence wars of the nineteenth century and their aftermath saw Argentina and Uruguay separate, with the creation of the latter as an independent buffer state guaranteed by the UK in 1827 to […]
In this article David Robinson explores how historians communicate, interpret and commentate on the work of Edward Said. As David acknowledges, most Arts and Humanities students will encounter Said’s canonical work, Orientalism, at some point during their degree. For those uninitiated or inexperienced in literary criticism, however, it can be a difficult, even opaque, […]
Book Review: Johnson & Burling’s, The Colonial American Stage, 1665 – 1774: A Documentary Calendar In this article Gary Fisher reviews William Burling and Odai Johnson’s, The Colonial American Stage, 1665 – 1774: A Documentary Calendar (Madison, NJ., 2002). Gary Fisher Author Biography Gary Fisher is a second-year, AHRC-M3C-funded PhD student co-supervised by the Departments of […]