History in Conversation

Diseases long ago and far away: Does doctor's knowledge answer historians' questions? Audio Quality: please note the audio quality of this particular podcast is not optimal Professor Hamlin, who teaches the history of science and of the environment at Notre Dame, is the author of exemplary studies of public health, including A Science of Impurity and Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick. His latest book was Cholera: the Biography. Chris Hamlin takes a rather contentious position in this session of the Global History seminar which produced a good and interesting debate amongst those present. Hamlin asks the question ‘why should we care?’ in regards to historians attempts to diagnose old diseases and illnesses through knowledge of modern medicine. The problem with such diagnoses is that historians are rarely in a position to be able to say for certain and at any rate are imposing modern understandings of medicine onto medieval and early modern knowledge. Does it matter what disease actually caused the Black Death and how useful, really, is statistics that suggest high percentages of deaths connected specifically to that one disease? Hamlin argues that the understanding of the time is more important and that other illnesses and infections caused by (amongst other factors) malnutrition are often ignored in such simplistic categorisations. Hamlin’s paper is about the practice of historians and asks the question whether changes should be made to the way we approach such subjects. Debate throughout the presentation suggests that not everyone agrees with Hamlin’s position, but nevertheless does force them to find reasons why they think that way. Chris Hamlin

The Syrian Global Diaspora: Migrants from Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan since the 1880s Audio Quality: please note the audio quality of this particular podcast is not optimal The Professor of the Economic History of Asia and Africa has made many fundamental contributions on the history of commodities and labour, including Islam and the Abolition of Slavery and Cocoa and Chocolate. William Clarence-Smith 14 March 2011

Professor Thomas teaches Japanese history at the University of Notre Dame. Her book on Japanese Concepts of Nature, Reconfiguring Modernity, won the John Fairbanks Prize. She is at work on a book on the history of Japanese Photography. Julia Thomas (Notre Dame) 24 March 2010

What might a global history of the 20th century look like? Dr Lockyer lectures on the history of Japan at SOAS and has written many important and provocative pieces on modern Japanese representations of art, technology and nature. Angus Lockyer 28 February 2011

Racism – a Global History Professor Bethencourt formerly headed the Biblioteca Nacional of Lisbon and the Gulbenkian Cultural Centre in Paris. He is now the Charles Boxer Professor of History at King’s. His many works on imperial, intellectual and cultural history include The Portuguese Overseas Expansion (with Diogo Curto) and a pioneering recent book on The Inquisition: a Global History. He is working on the history of racism. Francisco Bethancourt (King's College London) 10 March 2010

Myths of Eurocentrism and Material Progress Professor O’Brien founded the IHR Global History Seminar when he was Director of the IHR. He is the Centennial Professor of Economic History at the LSE and the author of much work of fundamental importance on the practice of global history, the history of industrialization, and imperial economic history. Patrick O'Brien (London School of Economics) 17 February 2010

The Ugly Renaissance Dr Lee will talk about his iconoclastic new book and set the Renaissance in global context Alex Lee (Warwick) 27 February 2013

Synchronicity in Global Development - from Divergence to Convergence? Lucy Badalian and Victor Krivorotov 21 February 2011

Dr Irving has been exploring the problems of writing about the music as part of cultural history in his groundbreaking book, Colonial Counterpoint, about music in the Philippines under Spanish rule, and a series of lectures at Cambridge on the globalization of music in the early modern period. Audio Quality: please note the audio quality of this particular podcast is not optimal D. R. M. Irving (Christ´s Coll., Cambridge) 30 March 2010

Trust – a Global History Geoffrey Hosking is Emeritus Professor of Russian History at SSEES, and author of many major works, including Russia and the Russians and The First Socialist Society. He is at work on a global history of trust. Geoffrey Hosking (UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies) 24 February 2010

The Image of the globe in the Renaissance Familiar to UK television audiences for his celebrated documentaries, the Head of Map Collections at the British Library is the author of Tales from the Map Room, and The Lie of the Land. The record-breaking “Magnificent Maps” was the latest of many exhibitions he organized at the Library. Peter Barber 7 March 2011

Technology – a Global History Professor Edgerton has written some of the most impactful books of recent years on the history of technology, including Warfare State; Science, Technology and British Industrial Decline and the iconoclastic The Shock of the Old. David Edgerton (Imperial College London) 3 March 2010

The Mediterranean and Mediterraneans in Global History Peregrine Horden (Professor in Medieval History, Royal Holloway) chairs the panel. Nick Purcell (Camden Professor of Ancient History, Oxford) will initiate the discussion. David Abulafia (Professor of Mediterranean History, Cambridge), Cyprian Broodbank (Disney Professor of Archaeology, Cambridge), and Paolo Luca Bernardini (Professor of History, Bergamo). 19 February 2015

Manchurian Candidates: Brainwashing, the Cold War, and the History of the Psy Professions Daniel Pick (Professor of History, Birkbeck) 12 February 2015

The Consumption of Culture – a Global History NOTE: The final part of this talk is missing. Professor Trentmann directed the research programme ‘Cultures of Consumption’ and is the editor of OUP’s forthcoming history of consumption. Among his many works in the field are Free Trade Nation and Before ‘Fair Trade’. He edited Food and Globalization with Alexander Nützenadel. Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck) 17 March 2010

Cigars and Politics: An Intersectional and Transnational Approach to Cuban Women's Immigration and Work in the United States, 1880-2000 Jay Kleinberg (Brunel University) 1 October 2012

Neutral nobility to contentious aristocracy; Changing terms in testing times, 1700-1850 Amanda Goodrich (Open University) 7 March 2012

Eighteenth-century histories of Norwich and the political vernacular Daniel Howse (University of East Anglia) 11 January 2012

'Rusty old Queen Anne's many suitors': Firearms and inter-communal violence in Armagh, 1783-1790 Stephen Duane Dean Jr (King’s College London) 8 February 2012

Pitt and the poor laws: government and the politics of social policy in the 1790s. Joanna Innes (Somerville College, Oxford) 19 January 2011

Britain's Lost Revolution: Remembering the Gordon Riots on their 230th Anniversary A symposium with Ian Haywood and John Seed (Roehampton), Tim Hitchcock and Matthew White (Herts) 22 June 2010

Ephemeral Lives: On writing a ticket-centred history of 18th-century Britain Sarah Lloyd 29 March 2011

A Quaker convert and the writing of fiction: the case of Amelia Opie Isabelle Cosgrave (Exeter University) 7th May 2011

Chancery Lane: politics, space and the built environment, c.1760-1815 Francis Boorman (IHR) 19 October 2011

Britain's Lost Revolution: Remembering the Gordon Riots on their 230th Anniversary A symposium with Ian Haywood and John Seed (Roehampton), Tim Hitchcock and Matthew White (Herts) 22 June 2010

Ecclesiastical Property: Social, Economic and Religious history? The Church and English social history, 1730-1800 Daniel Cummins (University of Reading) 2 March 2011

Antislavery and empire: The imperial context of British Abolitionism, c.1783-1793 In this seminar Wyman-McCarty looks at the rise of British abolitionism in an imperial context, detailing the Atlantic slave trade in addition to the harmful practices of the East India Company as case studies. Wyman-McCarthy begins by describing the abolitionist beliefs and emphasizing the differences in debates regarding these two cases studies, continuing on to state that later on, the British presence in the Atlantic and in East India were increasingly discussed in analogous terms at the time. This contextual information is then used to detail the historiography of abolitionism in Britain. The podcast details the many causal factors which led to rising British abolitionism including the original theory in the nineteenth century that abolitionism had been the result of a small group of pious men who ‘awakened the moral consciousness of the nation’, through to the Erick William’s 1944 thesis that there was an economic motive for abolitionism and the later disproving and questioning of this. Other causal factors are also incorporated such as the growing black community in London serving as a reminder of ongoing slavery after the American Revolution, as well as the fact that many questioned Britain’s claim of liberalism and humanitarian while such activity in East India continued. Other context such as how it was thought Britain could ‘atone’ for their sins in the Empire once slavery was abolished are also discussed. Matthew Wyman-McCarty (McGill)

Britain's Lost Revolution: Remembering the Gordon Riots on their 230th Anniversary A symposium with Ian Haywood and John Seed (Roehampton), Tim Hitchcock and Matthew White (Herts) 22 June 2010

Rethinking the interests of eighteenth-century Britain Julian Hoppit looks at the current state of research into eighteenth-century Britain. His assessment is not entirely positive; seeing, for example, that the continued use of ‘class’ as a concept is harmful to our studies. In the period, Hoppit believes that personal ‘interests’ of British society were talked about rather than class. Interest groups have, for instance, been neglected by historians. In the eighteenth century interest groups proliferated spurred on by significant changes that had occurred in parliamentary government since 1688. These groups were, however, very rarely permanent or general in nature but rather focused on specific interests. The weakness of historian’s study of the period then, is to look at the distinctive, the particular, and the unique, whilst ignoring the central question of what was common and what was not! Julian Hoppit (University College London)

The Origins of a Coming Ideal: Meritocracy in Britain 1750-1850 Penelope J. Corfield is Emeritus Professor at Royal Holloway and Visiting Professor at Centre for Urban History, Leicester; and working on big project Meritocracy 1780-1914. 25 May 2010

Britain's Lost Revolution: Remembering the Gordon Riots on their 230th Anniversary A symposium with Ian Haywood and John Seed (Roehampton), Tim Hitchcock and Matthew White (Herts) 22 June 2010

Scottish townscapes and 'improvement' in the age of enlightenment c. 1720-1820 Bob Harris (Worcester College, Oxford) 21 June 2011

'Love, bitter wrong, freedom, sad pity, and lust of power': Politics and Performance in 1820 When historians talk about 1820 it is often to discuss the attempts by the new monarch, George IV to divorce his queen, Caroline of Brunswick. George IV became king on 29 January 1820 after the death of his father George III. However, due to his father’s lapses into mental illness, he acted as Prince Regent for almost a decade before then. George IV was not a popular king; leading an extravagant lifestyle; accused of wasteful spending during times of war; and losing public confidence over his divorce attempts. The Pains and Penalties Bill of 1820 was George’s attempt to dissolve his marriage through claiming Caroline to have committed adultery. The subsequent trial of the queen was heavily followed in the press with a negative response. Although the bill narrowly passed the House of Lords it was dropped by government before reaching the Commons. The politics surrounding this royal scandal were, however, far from the only concern in that year, and it is to a wider appraisal of 1820 that Malcolm Chase looks to in his paper. Malcolm Chase (University of Leeds) 21 March 2012

Pacifying the past: British historical culture, 1745-1776 Paul Davis (Princeton) 25 January 2012

Profiling Irish Crime in London, 1801-1820 Adam Crymble (King’s College, London University) 24 October 2012

Secularisation: Or Otherwise in Eighteenth-Century England? Penelope J. Corfield (Royal Holloway, University of London) 5 December 2012

Secularisation: Or Otherwise in Eighteenth-Century England? Jeremy Gregory (University of Manchester) 5 December 2012

The material life of the militia man Matthew McCormack (Northampton) 27 June 2012

'Female agony and visionary experience: Jane Lead (1624-1704), her last days and its impact upon the Philadelphian Society, c. 1697-1704' Ariel Hessayon (Goldsmiths) 12 June 2013

Loose, Idle and Disorderly: Vagrant Removal in Late Eighteenth-Century Middlesex. Tim Hitchcock (Herts), Adam Crymble (King's) and Louise Falcini (Reading) 29 May 2013

Reading Lives of English Men and Women, 1695-1830 Polly Bull (Royal Holloway, University of London) 13 March 2013

Secularisation: Or Otherwise in Eighteenth-Century England? John Seed (Roehampton University) 5 December 2012

Pechu kecha / Speed Presentations Three minute papers from early PhD students. 30 October 2013

A Sinew of Power? Ireland and the Fiscal-Military State, 1690-1782 Patrick Walsh (University College London) 16 January 2013

Material Culture Panel: The Significance of Things. John Styles (Hertfordshire) 15 May 2013

Material Culture Panel: The Significance of Things Margot Finn (UCL) 15 May 2013

The World is not Enough: Global History, Cotton Textiles and the Industrial Revolution. Giorgio Riello (University of Warwick) 30 January 2013.

What's in a Name?: The 'Conversation' Piece in Eighteenth-Century Britain Kate Retford (Birkbeck, University of London) 7 November 2012

'For the benefit of example': hanging felons at the scene of their crime in the long eighteenth century In this talk Poole begins reconsidering popular assumptions about public executions during the long eighteenth century, focusing in particular on the act of hanging offenders at the scene of their crime. The podcast looks into the tradition of hanging felons at the so-called ‘usual place’ - or at the scene of their crime, in high profile cases - following a public procession, using a ladder or cart and drop. Poole details the flaws with this system, including the opportunity for rescue attempts and the ability for the felon to ‘play to the crowd’ and ‘solicit sympathy’. The seminar next looks at the replacement of this process at Tyburn, in which the hangings and processions are replaced in 1783, with a trap door and drop, which was seen as a signifier of modernity. The lack of a geographical pattern in terms of following suit to this new mechanism is noted, with it being detailed that many places changed the mechanism of the drop, though kept the procession and continued to do so at ‘the usual place’ or scene of the crime. With this in mind, Poole notes the paradox in the continuation of hanging felons at the scene of the crime in an age when the modernising and routinizing of hangings was policy. Highlighted are the reasons for this continuation, such as to make an example of the felon or with an aim to induce confession, in addition to the effects of doing so, including added cost. Steve Poole (University of the West of England)

Professor Catherine Hall (UCL) Zachary Macaulay, the father, Thomas Babington Macaulay, the son. One a leading abolitionist, the other a great historian: both men were shaped, albeit differently, by experiences of empire. How did each imagine the nation and its relation to empire? How significant were their visions and what are their legacies? 28 November 2011