a "cross" to mark the name of Ann Cross, in lieu of a signature

The highly satisfying mark of Ann Cross, Somerset 1748

@markhailwood.bsky.social

Radical Histories - Manchester University Press The Radical Histories series encourages innovative and field-defining research in the history of individuals, groups, movements and ideas which challenged the political, social and cultural status quo...

I'm pleased to announce I'm a founding co-editor of the new @manchesterup.bsky.social book series, Radical Histories.

Do let me know if you have a proposal for a book that fits our inclusive remit on radical histories.

manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/series/radic...

After a quick experimentation of using Google NotebookLM to test how well LLMs can transcribe handwritten documents (C18th), I've learned two things...

For example, the problem of gender bias eventually reared its head: it transcribed the name 'Prudence' as 'Thomas' (not a close approximation), presumably due to its probabilistic operation rather than any difficulty in "reading" the handwritten characters themselves

All of which raises both serious ethical and methodological questions for historians.

It's simply not credible to dismiss the power of LLMs as a potential research tool, yet whether we should be using them at all, and then how we do so robustly, poses many headaches.

Obviously there are more sophisticated approaches to handling such errors (e.g. see 'Unlocking the archives...' by Humphries et al, 2025).

But for me its a reminder of the dangerously seductive power of LLMs and the radically uneven quality of their output.

Second, however, is that it will often ignore instructions and begin fabricating text. This is more insidious than the familiar OCR errors, which are relatively predictable and consistent. Here the transcription might be perfect right up until it inserts an entirely false phrase.

First, with a fairly basic prompt, the general level of transcription is astonishingly good (for a straightforward document). It quickly produces some near-perfect transcriptions and can apply standard palaeographical conventions, preserve formatting, etc.

After a quick experimentation of using Google NotebookLM to test how well LLMs can transcribe handwritten documents (C18th), I've learned two things...

Have a read of my new article! It's part of a Forum: Human Commodification, so make sure to check out the other contributions too!

Thanks to @jwhittle.bsky.social, @markhailwood.bsky.social, @aucointaylor.bsky.social, @hkrobb.bsky.social (via @tomlukejohnson.bsky.social), for reminding me that my kids are slackers. 🗃️

Lovely discussion of *The Experience of Work in Early Modern England* in the LRB:
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Front cover for book titled 'Captured Consent: Contract Labor in English Charity, Colonization, and War, 1600–1700' by Sonia Tycko, with an image of an indenture

Excited to see Sonia Tycko's book rethinking early modern consent and contract labour is now available. This is an important intervention for histories of coerced labour.

'Captured Consent: Contract Labor in English Charity, Colonization, and War, 1600–1700'

That's the one. Not sure how to respond to them yet

A new genre of AI email: the exhaustive list of technical questions requesting detailed information.

It sits in the gap where no human who possessed the knowledge to formulate the questions would ever need to send it, and no one who understood the questions would make such inappropriate demands.

This looks like a great PhD topic with funding - working with Adam Crymble (UCL) and the V&A - Invisible Hands: Migrant Labour and British Craft in the 18th Century www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Back to Basics? Historical Methods and the Rise of AI "For if AI threatens to strip historical research and writing back to its most basic form, perhaps that’s a challenge we should meet head on."

Delighted to contribute to this fantastic series on AI, British Studies and the wider humanities with @thenacbs.bsky.social!

www.nacbs.org/post/back-to...

The Body as Property and the Moral Limits of the Market: Attitudes towards the Sex Trade in Eighteenth-Century England This article explores understandings and attitudes surrounding the nature of commercial sex and the moral limits of the market in eighteenth-century England. It examines this contested commodificat...

Hot off the press and available open access. #Skystorians

Public Domain Image Archive Explore our hand-picked collection of out-of-copyright works, free for all to browse, download, and reuse. This is a living database with new images added every week.

Question for #EarlyModern #Skystorians please! 🗃️

What are your favourite online places to search for public domain images?

(free to use, out of copyright, cleared by copyright owner for public use etc)?

Example: Public Domain Image Archive pdimagearchive.org

Front cover of Violent Waters: Environmental Politics in Early Modern England by Elly Robson Dezateux.

Blurb of Violent Waters: How were environments and politics remade by sovereigns, floods, mapmakers, migrants, rioters, and writers during wetland improvement projects in early modern England? Violent Waters examines flagship ventures which promised to transform unruly fenland fringes into orderly terrain at the heart of national power and productivity. In practice, these projects sparked constitutional controversy, new floods, and huge riots. The first state-led project in Hatfield Level brought local, national, and transnational interests into contact and conflict for almost a century. Elly Robson Dezateux traces the environmental politics that emerged as water and land were constructed and contested, both mentally and materially. These disputes pivoted on urgent questions about risk and justice, which became entangled in civil war conflict and exposed the limits of central authority and technology. Ultimately, improvement was destabilised by a lack of legitimacy and the dynamism of local custom as a method of environmental management and collective action. Wetland communities, as much as improvers and sovereigns, remade the terrain of politics and the future of the fens.

Violent Waters: Environmental Politics in Early Modern England is out now with Cambridge University Press: www.cambridge.org/core/books/v...

This watery, riotous book has been more than a decade in the making, and I'm delighted to see it out in the world to live its own life!

Selling Education in England, 1650–1715* Abstract. In the period 1650–1715, a growing consensus emerged that educational culture in England did not meet the needs of the population, and that chang

My new article, 'Selling Education in England, 1650-1715' is now out (open access) in the English Historical Review! academic.oup.com/ehr/advance-...

If I understand correctly, it seems the claim is that a generic LLM is (surprisingly) better than specialist machine learning tools like Transkribus

Gemini 3 Solves Handwriting Recognition and it’s a Bitter Lesson Testing shows that Gemini 3 has effectively solved handwriting on English texts, one of the oldest problems in AI, achieving expert human levels of performance.

See also:

generativehistory.substack.com/p/gemini-3-s...

The Writing Is on the Wall for Handwriting Recognition One of the hardest problems in digital humanities has finally been solved

Impressive claims for Gemini 3.

Transcription is a potentially field-shifting use case of LLMs for historians.

Maybe some silver linings in the AI madness...

newsletter.dancohen.org/archive/the-...

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

Color illustration of a man of African Descent named Jack. He is wearing typical 18th century clothing, including breeches, a striped waistcoat, and a tan jacket. In front of Jack is a copy of a newspaper advertisement noting his escape.

How might we today visualize the appearance of people who fled enslavement? We asked a modern artist, Adrienne Mayor, to imagine and sketch Jack, who took flight from slavery in Virginia in 1730.

Read Billy Smith’s telling of Jack’s story: freedom-seekers.org/story/jack/

Really pleased to announce the launch of the all-new, all-dancing, London Lives website - www.londonlives.org It has been thoroughly re-engineered to facilitate more types of search, and redesigned for phones and tablets. The team very much hopes peope like it. 1/

So grateful to have received the Elise M. Boulding Prize from the Peace History Society for Pax Economica. What a tremendous honor!

@princetonupress.bsky.social

JOB
Assistant Professor in the History of Knowledge Pre-1400,
University of Cambridge

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assista...

Contested Commons

Formidably erudite, compellingly argued, and dryly humorous, Contested Commons will change the way you think about the politics of space, the "myth of the commons", and the history of England since the eighteenth century: MATTHEW KELLy, author of The Women Who Saved the English Countryside "Starting with Kennington Common, and ranging from Steeple Bumpstead to Sheffield, Stonehenge and Brixton, and with a cast that includes ramblers, ranters, revolutionaries and ravers, this is a superb, sweeping but fine-grained history. It's also a highly necessary, politically urgent reminder of what public space is - places for everyone, owned by everyone, accessible to everyone, whether carefully tended or wild - and what it isn't, the tradition of pseudo-public space that runs from Victorian parks to privatised malls.' OWEN HATHERLEY, author of A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain

A reminder that my book on the history of protest is now published. It is superbly produced with a great cover. Buy it now from @reaktionbooks.bsky.social

This is heart breaking. Such a wonderful and generous chess teacher, absolutely loved his videos.