Newspapers as Surrogate Archives: A Case Study of the Early Twentieth-Century Dublin City Coroner’s Court | The Historical Journal | Cambridge Core - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

📣Out now on #firstview

Ciara Breathnach @ciarab.bsky.social @ucc.ie on 'Newspapers as Surrogate Archives: A Case Study of the Early Twentieth-Century Dublin City Coroner’s Court'

#Archives #Newspapers #Press #Ireland #Legal #History 20thc📰🗃️

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

Samuel Pepys had significant professional and social connections to transatlantic slavery in the years covered by his diary and afterwards, mediated by his involvement with two English slave-trading companies – the Royal African Company and the Company of Royal Adventurers trading to Africa. He also owned and sold at least two enslaved people in London in the 1670s and 1680s. This article uses previously neglected manuscript evidence to reassess Pepys’s involvement in enslavement and his status as an enslaver. It emphasizes three themes: the relationship between Pepys’s official connections to the African companies and his private ownership of enslaved people; the development of his involvement in slavery within his extensive social and professional networks; and Pepys’s own agency in curating his official and personal archives to shape and limit our knowledge of his slave ownership. In doing so, it considers how the consciously expressed professional and ethical priorities of administrators and slave-owners like Pepys shaped the complex archival traces of slavery in England and erased the experiences and voices of enslaved people.

📣Out now on #firstview

Michael Edwards @jesuscollegecam.bsky.social on 'Samuel Pepys, the African Companies, and the Archives of Slavery, 1660–1689'

#Archives #Letters #Diary #History 17thc 🗃️

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

You can read the article by Michael Edwards, 'Samuel Pepys, the African Companies, and the Archives of Slavery, 1660-1689', open access here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Pepys ‘curated’ letters to conceal being offered enslaved boy as bribe – research Cambridge University historian uncovers letter to diarist who was a naval official in 1670s

Really interesting read on Pepys & slavery & naval history www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026... & more in Michael Edwards @historicaljnl.bsky.social article 'Samuel Pepys, the African Companies, and the Archives of Slavery, 1660–1689'
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Pepys ‘curated’ letters to conceal being offered enslaved boy as bribe – research Cambridge University historian uncovers letter to diarist who was a naval official in 1670s

A brand new @historicaljnl.bsky.social article makes the news! www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

📣First 2026 Issue of the HJ!

Featuring articles from historians including @adambforsyth.bsky.social, @adam-q.bsky.social, @joelherman.bsky.social, @davidandress.bsky.social, @feichen-uol.bsky.social and more!

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

🗃️📜📘

📣First 2026 Issue of the HJ!

Featuring articles from historians including @adambforsyth.bsky.social, @adam-q.bsky.social, @joelherman.bsky.social, @davidandress.bsky.social, @feichen-uol.bsky.social and more!

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

🗃️📜📘

📣Out now on #firstview!

Elad Carmel (@eladcarmel.bsky.social) (@uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social) on 'George Wallace and Britain’s First Abolitionist Publication (1760)'

#Abolition #Slavery #Law #Scotland 18thc 🗃️

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

The intricacies of modern compensation procedures that value human life, injury, and property are often overlooked, despite growing demands for reparations and justice following state violence. This article historicizes the legal structures of modern compensation, arguing that the advent of imperial rule was characterized not only by the extraction of material resources and labour, but also by the discriminatory construction and implementation of imperial law, which sought to protect European life, wealth, and property. By focusing on one of the most notorious episodes of violence in British imperial and modern South Asian history – the atrocities committed by British officials in Punjab (1919), including the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre – this article underscores how British officials penalized protests and freedom struggles by legalizing indemnities, taxes, and fines to compensate European families. In contrast, colonial officials grossly undervalued the claims and payments of Indian subjects killed or maimed during state violence, if they did at all. Furthermore, this article reveals how imperial state compensation, managed in relative privacy and buried in legal proceduralism, was rooted in legal structures of intersectional racialized inequality, and political concerns that valued the longevity of imperialism, rather than a meaningful gesture of justice and redress.

📢We are delighted to announce that Hardeep Dhillon
(@migrantherstory.bsky.social) has been Highly Commended in The Historical Journal ECR Prize for her article 'Imperial Violence, Law, and Compensation in the Age of Empire, 1919–1922'

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

📣Out now on #firstview!

Jenni Hyde (@wallyberry.bsky.social) on 'Providence, Editorial, and News in Early Modern Ballads'

#News #Religion #God #Print #Everyday 17thc 📜🗃️

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

📣Out now on #firstview!

Jenni Hyde (@wallyberry.bsky.social) on 'Providence, Editorial, and News in Early Modern Ballads'

#News #Religion #God #Print #Everyday 17thc 📜🗃️

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

Many thanks, dedicated to those who live with and in the afterlives of empire.

Thrilled to have been recognised in this lovely award by @historicaljnl.bsky.social!

Huge thanks to @marloavidon.bsky.social for being an excellent camerawoman on a cold and rainy day 💐

@zarakesterton’s incredible pie charts are officially award winning! If you haven’t read her article yet, you must go check it out 💐

My @historicaljnl.bsky.social article has been published open access alongside great articles by @adambforsyth.bsky.social, @davidandress.bsky.social, and others I couldn't locate here, in the most recent journal issue.

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

The intricacies of modern compensation procedures that value human life, injury, and property are often overlooked, despite growing demands for reparations and justice following state violence. This article historicizes the legal structures of modern compensation, arguing that the advent of imperial rule was characterized not only by the extraction of material resources and labour, but also by the discriminatory construction and implementation of imperial law, which sought to protect European life, wealth, and property. By focusing on one of the most notorious episodes of violence in British imperial and modern South Asian history – the atrocities committed by British officials in Punjab (1919), including the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre – this article underscores how British officials penalized protests and freedom struggles by legalizing indemnities, taxes, and fines to compensate European families. In contrast, colonial officials grossly undervalued the claims and payments of Indian subjects killed or maimed during state violence, if they did at all. Furthermore, this article reveals how imperial state compensation, managed in relative privacy and buried in legal proceduralism, was rooted in legal structures of intersectional racialized inequality, and political concerns that valued the longevity of imperialism, rather than a meaningful gesture of justice and redress.

📢We are delighted to announce that Hardeep Dhillon
(@migrantherstory.bsky.social) has been Highly Commended in The Historical Journal ECR Prize for her article 'Imperial Violence, Law, and Compensation in the Age of Empire, 1919–1922'

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

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

📢We are delighted to announce that Jonah Miller (@wminhumanities.bsky.social) has been jointly awarded The Historical Journal ECR Prize for his article 'Suffrage and the Secret Ballot in Eighteenth-Century London Parishes'

✨Hear Jonah explain more in his HJ Highlight!

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

📢We are delighted to announce that Zara Kesterton (@zarakesterton.bsky.social) has been jointly awarded The Historical Journal ECR Prize for her article 'Artificial Flowers in the Credit Records of an Eighteenth-Century French Fashion Merchant'

✨Hear Zara explain more in her HJ Highlight!

📣Out now on #firstview!

Henry Ansgar Kelly (@uofcalifornia.bsky.social) on 'Galileo’s Three Repudiations of Copernicanism – Two Coerced and One Volunteered'

#Science #Astronomy #Religion #Sun #Inquisition ☀️🔭

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

First published in 1614, John Selden’s Titles of honor has long been ignored by historians of political thought. A large and compendious description of the various titles of Europe and the Near East; by its structure and tone, it resembles nothing more than a work of dusty antiquarianism. It attracted none of the controversy that would plague Selden’s Historie of tithes (1618); and it did not state its polemical purpose in such explicit terms as his Mare clausum (1635). If historians of political thought have remembered it at all, they have done so because Thomas Hobbes recommended the work in chapter 10 of Leviathan (1651). This article will treat Titles of honor as a work of political intention. Following Selden’s engagement with Roman Civil Law, it will argue that he composed the treatise to criticize sixteenth-century theories of resistance, and the medieval theories of divided sovereignty upon which they were founded. In short, this article will seek to reframe Titles of honor as a defence of state sovereignty against theories of noble resistance – and so explain Hobbes’s affection for the work.

📣Out now on #firstview!

Felix Liber on 'Reading John Selden’s Titles of honor (1614) as a Work of Polemic'

#Politics #PoliticalThought #Hobbes #Law #EarlyModern 📜🗃️ 17thc

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

First published in 1614, John Selden’s Titles of honor has long been ignored by historians of political thought. A large and compendious description of the various titles of Europe and the Near East; by its structure and tone, it resembles nothing more than a work of dusty antiquarianism. It attracted none of the controversy that would plague Selden’s Historie of tithes (1618); and it did not state its polemical purpose in such explicit terms as his Mare clausum (1635). If historians of political thought have remembered it at all, they have done so because Thomas Hobbes recommended the work in chapter 10 of Leviathan (1651). This article will treat Titles of honor as a work of political intention. Following Selden’s engagement with Roman Civil Law, it will argue that he composed the treatise to criticize sixteenth-century theories of resistance, and the medieval theories of divided sovereignty upon which they were founded. In short, this article will seek to reframe Titles of honor as a defence of state sovereignty against theories of noble resistance – and so explain Hobbes’s affection for the work.

📣Out now on #firstview!

Felix Liber on 'Reading John Selden’s Titles of honor (1614) as a Work of Polemic'

#Politics #PoliticalThought #Hobbes #Law #EarlyModern 📜🗃️ 17thc

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

I forgot to say, but at the turn of the year my #OA article on the Dutch Republic's godparenthoods has been published with @historicaljnl.bsky.social!

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

📣Out now on #firstview!

Henry Ansgar Kelly (@uofcalifornia.bsky.social) on 'Galileo’s Three Repudiations of Copernicanism – Two Coerced and One Volunteered'

#Science #Astronomy #Religion #Sun #Inquisition ☀️🔭

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

📣Out now on #firstview!

Molly Groarke (@mollygroarke.bsky.social) (@camhistory.bsky.social) on 'Imperial Family Biographies and New Approaches to the Family in Histories of the British Empire, c.1650–c.1950'

#Empire #Family #Personal #Review 📜🗃️

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

📣Out now on #firstview!

Molly Groarke (@mollygroarke.bsky.social) (@camhistory.bsky.social) on 'Imperial Family Biographies and New Approaches to the Family in Histories of the British Empire, c.1650–c.1950'

#Empire #Family #Personal #Review 📜🗃️

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

Very happy to announce my article is now out with the @historicaljnl.bsky.social! It reviews the current literature on family networks in the British Empire and biographical approaches to writing imperial history

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

📣HJ blog!

Is political disinformation a product of the internet age? Gordon Pentland explores it in the context of Reform in 1830s Britain 📜

#Reform #Politics #Disinformation #Brexit #Newspapers #Wealth

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