My favourite summary of history blog posts used to be found in The History Carnival. This monthly showcase of blog writing was active from 2005-17, hosted at a different blog each month to provide a variety of perspectives; now the old posts are archived in Welcome to the History Carnival. Here are my favourite active history blogs. I have added an interesting paragraph from each suggested blog.
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Votes for Women at 21, 1927
https://christophermoorehistory.blogspot.com/ The Canadian prime minister says now is not the time to discuss the monarchy. It seems like a cautious statement, driven more by pollsters than someone who values leadership. Political scientist Prof Emmett Macfarlane recently posted tweets: it's useless, complicated, that changing the head-of-state situation in Canada requires a high constitutional threshold. Yes, the constitutional threshold is high. But that's insufficient cause for leaving the issue. Canadian support for the monarchy is fragile. No one in Canada seriously believes the royal family has anything to do with Canada any more. Canadian identity is strong, and needs to be given expression in our governing institutions. Britishness is no longer a part of it.
Dirty, Sexy History | Skipping to the good stuff with Jessica Cale When cocaine was released to the public as a pharmaceutical after the Civil War (1861-65) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), morphine addiction was common among veterans with chronic pain. Like laudanum, another common opiate, morphine was purchased without prescription. Cocaine was also available over the counter, and doctors encouraged it to fight morphine and alcohol addictions. In 1877, a doctor in the Boston Medical-Surgical Journal wrote: “Coca diminishes weariness, strengthens the pulse, calms nervous excitement, and increases mental activity. Careful observations suggest that so far from being injurious, the moderate consumption of coca is wholesome and frequently beneficial.”
Imperial & Global Forum– Blog of the Centre for Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter In 1894 Clara Zetkin wrote in her Social Democratic women’s magazine Die Gleichheit to polemicise against the main stream of German feminism. “Bourgeois feminism and the movement of proletarian women are two fundamentally different social movements. Bourgeois feminists pressed reforms, via a struggle between the sexes and against the men of their own class, without questioning capitalism. By contrast, working women, through a class struggle, and in a joint fight with the men of their class, sought to transcend capitalism. By 1900 German Social Democratic Party women held biannual conferences where all the burning issues of the proletarian women’s movement were discussed. The German Socialist Women’s movement became the International Socialist Women Movement's backbone
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History volumes
Mental Floss Unlike men, female artists in Renaissance Italy weren’t allowed to learn their craft by becoming masters’ apprentices. But that didn’t stop Sofonisba Anguissola from studying with other artists like Bernardino Campi, Bernardino Gatti and even Michelangelo himself. Anguissola became one of the few globally recognised female Renaissance artists, thanks to her skill in portraiture. She did commission art for wealthy families, including for King Philip II, and was always pushing the boundaries of portraiture and rejecting patriarchal conventions of art through her paintings.
Students – School of History & Heritage (lincoln.ac.uk)
Every year on 27th Jan, individuals gather to remember the millions of people murdered in the Holocaust, under the Nazi regime with their collaborators, and the Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur genocides. In 1945, Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by Soviet soldiers & Stutthof was liberated in May 1945. The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day is ‘Be the Light in the Darkness’. The Darkness reflects mistreatment, persecution, misinformation and denial. Being in the Light considers resistance, rescue, confronting denial and distortion, and survivors who share their stories. This theme goes from perpetrators dividing societies and resistance, to genocide denial.
The British Empire What was a colony: units of overseas territory controlled by British Government or organisations:
A] Company Rule were when private companies, capitalised from Britain, tried to set up their own colonies as private commercial concerns.
B] Colonies were areas directly ruled by a governor on behalf of the British government and the Crown. The governor was responsible to London’s Colonial Office, the most common form of imperial control.
C] In Protectorates, the local leaders ruled domestically with autonomy, but ceded foreign affairs and defence to the British government.
D] Dominions were those colonies granted significant freedom to rule themselves. Dominions were fully independent countries after 1931.
E]Mandates were set up after WW1 as German & Turkish colonies went to Britain & France to prepare for self government, for League of Nations
Regency History A quality unmarried lady appeared at a regency ball under the protection of a chaperon, usually an older married lady like her mother. It was the chaperon’s duty to ensure that her charge’s partners were eligible gentlemen. A lady had to wait for a gent to ask her to dance. If she did not already have an acquaintance with the man, before he could ask her to dance he had to request an introduction; her chaperon might prevent this if she saw fit. At a private ball, the most suitable person to do introductions would be the hostess. At a public ball, it was performed by Master of Ceremonies.
Throughout History | A blog about antiques and history (formerly 'Not Yet Published') Europeans have long held the Far East in awe, fantasising that countries such as China, India, Indonesia and Japan were magical kingdoms filled with wondrous and rare commodities: silk, porcelain, spices, tea, timber, dyes, ivory, tortoiseshell and jewels! Trade-goods like spices were exported from China and India across to Europe along a network of roads, rivers and coastal sea-routes which became known as the Silk Road. Commodities transported along the Silk Road were rare, expensive and open to theft. Plus products took months to travel from Asia to Western Europe, and prices were astronomical! To keep costs down, European traders shipped vast amounts of exotic goods back to Europe by sea. But this was expensive, dangerous, and time-consuming, with a round-the-world voyage taking nearly a year! Having to sail around the capes meant that sea-voyages between Europe and Asia were never easy. Since the discovery of the Americas, Europeans tried to find a faster, easier route to Asia.
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The Silk Road
Margaret Rodenberg In the middle of a worldwide pandemic, too many of our leaders twist suffering and science into propaganda. You’ll find the same thing in this painting of Napoleon Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken in Jaffa, by Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835). In it Bonaparte makes propaganda from a plague by heroically comforting his plague-stricken soldiers. Fellow officers and a doctor attempt to hold him back from fatal danger. But did General Bonaparte really risk his life to comfort his contagious, doomed soldiers? Does he deserve this heroic portrayal? Although no one knew that fleas spread the horrific disease, everyone knew the plague was contagious. Yet Napoleon did visit his suffering soldiers to offer comfort.
And find:
Historian on the Edge (edgyhistorian.blogspot.com),
Blog | Love of History and
The History Girls (the-history-girls.blogspot.com) and
Tragedy thrust Rebecca Lukens into the family business, making her the nation’s first woman industrialist and the only woman to eventually own an iron mill in the US in the 1800s. In 1825, at 31 and pregnant, husband Charles Lukens died unexpectedly. On his death bed Charles made Rebecca a promise she would take over Brandywine Iron Works and Nail Factory, the family business which he'd been running. While white women from less privileged homes increasingly worked outside of the home, especially in textiles mills, white middle class women had to prioritise homemaking and child rearing. Despite her mother’s lack of support, Rebecca took over the family company, and learned the business first from her father and then from her husband, who consulted her as he expanded the company. Though it was nearly bankrupt then, Rebecca revived the mill and made it profitable, but at tremendous personal and financial cost.
https://christophermoorehistory.blogspot.com/ The Canadian prime minister says now is not the time to discuss the monarchy. It seems like a cautious statement, driven more by pollsters than someone who values leadership. Political scientist Prof Emmett Macfarlane recently posted tweets: it's useless, complicated, that changing the head-of-state situation in Canada requires a high constitutional threshold. Yes, the constitutional threshold is high. But that's insufficient cause for leaving the issue. Canadian support for the monarchy is fragile. No one in Canada seriously believes the royal family has anything to do with Canada any more. Canadian identity is strong, and needs to be given expression in our governing institutions. Britishness is no longer a part of it.
Dirty, Sexy History | Skipping to the good stuff with Jessica Cale When cocaine was released to the public as a pharmaceutical after the Civil War (1861-65) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), morphine addiction was common among veterans with chronic pain. Like laudanum, another common opiate, morphine was purchased without prescription. Cocaine was also available over the counter, and doctors encouraged it to fight morphine and alcohol addictions. In 1877, a doctor in the Boston Medical-Surgical Journal wrote: “Coca diminishes weariness, strengthens the pulse, calms nervous excitement, and increases mental activity. Careful observations suggest that so far from being injurious, the moderate consumption of coca is wholesome and frequently beneficial.”
Imperial & Global Forum– Blog of the Centre for Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter In 1894 Clara Zetkin wrote in her Social Democratic women’s magazine Die Gleichheit to polemicise against the main stream of German feminism. “Bourgeois feminism and the movement of proletarian women are two fundamentally different social movements. Bourgeois feminists pressed reforms, via a struggle between the sexes and against the men of their own class, without questioning capitalism. By contrast, working women, through a class struggle, and in a joint fight with the men of their class, sought to transcend capitalism. By 1900 German Social Democratic Party women held biannual conferences where all the burning issues of the proletarian women’s movement were discussed. The German Socialist Women’s movement became the International Socialist Women Movement's backbone
Mental Floss Unlike men, female artists in Renaissance Italy weren’t allowed to learn their craft by becoming masters’ apprentices. But that didn’t stop Sofonisba Anguissola from studying with other artists like Bernardino Campi, Bernardino Gatti and even Michelangelo himself. Anguissola became one of the few globally recognised female Renaissance artists, thanks to her skill in portraiture. She did commission art for wealthy families, including for King Philip II, and was always pushing the boundaries of portraiture and rejecting patriarchal conventions of art through her paintings.
Students – School of History & Heritage (lincoln.ac.uk)
Every year on 27th Jan, individuals gather to remember the millions of people murdered in the Holocaust, under the Nazi regime with their collaborators, and the Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur genocides. In 1945, Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by Soviet soldiers & Stutthof was liberated in May 1945. The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day is ‘Be the Light in the Darkness’. The Darkness reflects mistreatment, persecution, misinformation and denial. Being in the Light considers resistance, rescue, confronting denial and distortion, and survivors who share their stories. This theme goes from perpetrators dividing societies and resistance, to genocide denial.
The British Empire What was a colony: units of overseas territory controlled by British Government or organisations:
A] Company Rule were when private companies, capitalised from Britain, tried to set up their own colonies as private commercial concerns.
B] Colonies were areas directly ruled by a governor on behalf of the British government and the Crown. The governor was responsible to London’s Colonial Office, the most common form of imperial control.
C] In Protectorates, the local leaders ruled domestically with autonomy, but ceded foreign affairs and defence to the British government.
D] Dominions were those colonies granted significant freedom to rule themselves. Dominions were fully independent countries after 1931.
E]Mandates were set up after WW1 as German & Turkish colonies went to Britain & France to prepare for self government, for League of Nations
Regency History A quality unmarried lady appeared at a regency ball under the protection of a chaperon, usually an older married lady like her mother. It was the chaperon’s duty to ensure that her charge’s partners were eligible gentlemen. A lady had to wait for a gent to ask her to dance. If she did not already have an acquaintance with the man, before he could ask her to dance he had to request an introduction; her chaperon might prevent this if she saw fit. At a private ball, the most suitable person to do introductions would be the hostess. At a public ball, it was performed by Master of Ceremonies.
Throughout History | A blog about antiques and history (formerly 'Not Yet Published') Europeans have long held the Far East in awe, fantasising that countries such as China, India, Indonesia and Japan were magical kingdoms filled with wondrous and rare commodities: silk, porcelain, spices, tea, timber, dyes, ivory, tortoiseshell and jewels! Trade-goods like spices were exported from China and India across to Europe along a network of roads, rivers and coastal sea-routes which became known as the Silk Road. Commodities transported along the Silk Road were rare, expensive and open to theft. Plus products took months to travel from Asia to Western Europe, and prices were astronomical! To keep costs down, European traders shipped vast amounts of exotic goods back to Europe by sea. But this was expensive, dangerous, and time-consuming, with a round-the-world voyage taking nearly a year! Having to sail around the capes meant that sea-voyages between Europe and Asia were never easy. Since the discovery of the Americas, Europeans tried to find a faster, easier route to Asia.
History Magazine
Victorian Paris | Life in 19th Century Paris From May 1889-June 1890, an influenza pandemic swept over the world. Called Asian or Russian Flu, it was one of the deadliest in history, killing a million of the world’s population of 1.5 billion. The disease was first reported in Bukhara Central Asia in May 1889, reaching the American continent in Dec 1889. Never before had a virus spread so quickly. With the rapid growth of railway transport and in sea travel, humanity was no longer safe from a pandemic. The treatment was chaotic - strychnine, large quantities of whisky, salt, linseed, glycerin or quinine were used, all unhelpful.
The History Blog Los Angeles’ J Paul Getty Museum is the new owner of a previously unknown painting by trailblazing Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. It depicts the Roman heroine Lucretia the moment before she plunges a dagger into her heart. Raped by Tarquin King of Rome’s son, she demanded her relatives avenge her honour, then killed herself before them. Her act spurred the tyrannicide of Tarquin by Lucius Junius Brutus and the Roman Republic’s base. The Baroque era painting is in exceptional condition, untouched by time, poor storage or restoration.
Victorian Paris | Life in 19th Century Paris From May 1889-June 1890, an influenza pandemic swept over the world. Called Asian or Russian Flu, it was one of the deadliest in history, killing a million of the world’s population of 1.5 billion. The disease was first reported in Bukhara Central Asia in May 1889, reaching the American continent in Dec 1889. Never before had a virus spread so quickly. With the rapid growth of railway transport and in sea travel, humanity was no longer safe from a pandemic. The treatment was chaotic - strychnine, large quantities of whisky, salt, linseed, glycerin or quinine were used, all unhelpful.
The History Blog Los Angeles’ J Paul Getty Museum is the new owner of a previously unknown painting by trailblazing Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi. It depicts the Roman heroine Lucretia the moment before she plunges a dagger into her heart. Raped by Tarquin King of Rome’s son, she demanded her relatives avenge her honour, then killed herself before them. Her act spurred the tyrannicide of Tarquin by Lucius Junius Brutus and the Roman Republic’s base. The Baroque era painting is in exceptional condition, untouched by time, poor storage or restoration.
Margaret Rodenberg In the middle of a worldwide pandemic, too many of our leaders twist suffering and science into propaganda. You’ll find the same thing in this painting of Napoleon Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken in Jaffa, by Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835). In it Bonaparte makes propaganda from a plague by heroically comforting his plague-stricken soldiers. Fellow officers and a doctor attempt to hold him back from fatal danger. But did General Bonaparte really risk his life to comfort his contagious, doomed soldiers? Does he deserve this heroic portrayal? Although no one knew that fleas spread the horrific disease, everyone knew the plague was contagious. Yet Napoleon did visit his suffering soldiers to offer comfort.
And find:
Historian on the Edge (edgyhistorian.blogspot.com),
Blog | Love of History and
The History Girls (the-history-girls.blogspot.com) and
Blog - A Bit About Britain which is excellent.
Do you have a different favourite? Let me know.