went over your book today with students in a comps meeting. :)

Trump needs a history lesson. Maybe we all do By Robert Englebert The tariff war has begun. Since coming into office only weeks ago, Donald Trump’s on-and-off again threat of taking a sledgehammer to free trade has kept Canadians on edge. &nbs…

activehistory.ca/blog/2025/03...

Basking in the joy of not changing the clock today. That’s right Saskatchewan does not have daylight savings. There has to be some benefit to having 6 months of winter.

Trudeau was made for this

Word of the Day is ‘ingordigiousness’ (18th century): extreme greed at the expense of principles.

They just don’t make Nazis the way they used to. Next thing you know they’l be trying to blitzkrieg with cyber trucks.

So many border and tariff cartoons.

i.cbc.ca/1.3222777.14...
Not the first time…

High-speed rail line with 300 km/h trains will run between Toronto and Quebec City, Trudeau announces | CBC News The Liberal government launched a six-year, $3.9-billion design and development plan Wednesday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says will eventually connect Quebec City and Toronto with a high-speed...

www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
In other news, almost 30 years after I rode high speed trains in Europe, Canada decides they make sense. Good project to help spur on a potentially tariff ravaged economy though!

Common Sense by Thomas Paine, read by Professor Joanne Freeman YouTube video by Beinecke Library at Yale

"In America, THE LAW IS KING."

Thomas Paine, 1776.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Bjj...

On July 9, 1776 the Sons of Liberty in NYC tore down a statue of the King because they refused to obey unjust dictates from an unaccountable ruler. Just sayin.

Events in the United States and concerns for borders - Civil War, Fenian Raids, end of the Reciprocity Treaty - served as major impetus for the creation of the Dominion of Canada. The context is obviously different, but lots of parallels. Current Canadian response is hardly surprising.

Historians occasionally make fun of Jefferson for alleging that some Americans wanted a king, or something like a king. That strain of thinking was real and, apparently, never went away.

Canadians are coming together over the threats of tariffs, using “non-consumption” of American goods as a tool of resistance and proclamation of nationhood and sovereignty. This 250 years after a failed military campaign to try to make Quebec an American state. Lots to unpack here. History matters!

Text of the fellowship announcement from Interfolio for Visiting Fellow/ Visiting Senior Fellow associated with Brown 2026.

Hey, we're going to start looking at applications in a few weeks! Check out the fellow/ Senior fellow positions (yep there will be 2) at Brown Univ for #Brown2026. apply.interfolio.com/159128

Getting to end a lecture with « Vive la France! » was definitely one of the highlights of the week.

You can appreciate me exploiting the current zeitgeist & distorting facts in the service of my career* for a mere 99p this month, because #OnSavageShores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe is a Kindle Monthly Deal! amzn.eu/d/7PyqTK8

*get a decade of historical work for a bargain price

Mon pays c’est l’hiver

Last year as grad director. Looking forward to a full year sabbatical starting in July.

This will likely increase my productivity.

CFP: WMQ-EMSI Workshop - OIEAHC 2025 WMQ-EMSI Workshop Call for Proposals “Small Nations, Big Histories” Convened by Elizabeth N. Ellis and Eliga H. Gould June 20–21, 2025 Huntington Library, San Marino, California   In early […]

CFP: WMQ-EMSI Workshop "Small Nations, Big Histories," convened by Elizabeth Ellis and Eliga Gould

Deadline Nov. 15
oieahc.wm.edu/events-overv...

Reading week means rest and research!

A flyer advertising a call for submissions for the Huntington Library Quarterly. The Text reads: The Huntington Library Quarterly (HLQ) is a peer-reviewed journal featuring original research and new perspectives on the early modern period, broadly defined (c. 1400–1800). Its content reflects an early modern world that was connected and cosmopolitan, with diverse communities and cultures increasingly linked by the circulation of people, ideas, social practices, and material objects in ways that transcend disciplinary and geographic boundaries. We invite submissions that draw on the sources, methods, and theoretical frameworks of literature, art, history, science, medicine, material culture, music, performance, and critical cultural studies, with a preference for scholarship that is broadly legible across disciplines. HLQ’s historical focus on Britain and its American colonies has been dramatically expanded to embrace broader and more diverse fields of inquiry, including scholarship rooted in continental Europe, the African Diaspora, and the Indigenous Americas, as well as their intersections with Mediterranean, Pacific, and Indian Ocean worlds. The Huntington Library Quarterly (HLQ) invites article submissions for two featured issues that will mark the journal’s new direction. Submissions received before 15 January 2025 will be evaluated for the first of these issues, to be published in September 2025. Submissions received before 15 March 2025 will be evaluated for the second of these issues, to be published in December 2025.

Hello, new followers! Reposting this recent announcement for those who missed it: New era for the HLQ. Please share widely! If you study the #earlymodern period (c. 1400-1800) in any discipline, we'd love to see what you're working on. www.pennpress.org/journals/jou...