Beyond Peterloo: The Founding of the Manchester Guardian
It is well-known that the events of the Peterloo Massacre, which occurred two hundred years ago today, on 16 August 1819, inspired the founding of the Manchester Guardian. These roots are today still recognised by the Guardian (which the Manchester Guardian would later become). However, a closer look at the original prospectus reveals that despite being founded in the wake Peterloo, the events of 16th August 1819 and the cause of parliamentary reform were not the only motives behind the newspaper’s establishment. In this post, Kathy Davies, a PhD student in History at Sheffield Hallam University, looks more closely at the Manchester Guardian’s long-standing concern with foreign politics.
Beyond This Day – 8 August 1940: Popular History and the Power Sisters
The historian Eileen Power died on 8 August 1940. In today’s blog post, Dr Laura Carter examines the historical legacy of Rhoda Power, Eileen’s younger sister (pictured above). In the decades following Eileen’s death, Rhoda continued to shape popular social history in Britain in quite distinctive ways that have been overshadowed by Eileen’s immortalisation as the emblematic twentieth-century woman historian.
A Cultural History of Irish Identity on Display
Shahmima Akhtar joined the Royal Historical Society in July 2019 as Past and Present Fellow: Race, Ethnicity & Equality in History. Over the next two years Shahmima will work with the Royal Historical Society and the Institute for Historical Research to advance the aims of the RHS Race, Ethnicity & Equality Report. She will also continue her research into the history of constructions of Irish identity in national and international fairs between 1851 and 1939, as she develops her PhD into a monograph. In this post for the RHS blog, Shahmima introduces her work.
Insta-Research: Social Media and the Historian
As a scholar working in a rural UK university, far from peers in her field of study, Dr Kate Strasdin decided to embrace Instagram and Twitter as a means of professional engagement, and to explore the potential for virtual communication when travel to conferences and urban-centric events was rarely possible.
A Seven-Year-Old Monster
The Many-Headed Monster is one of the longest-running and most successful of academic historical blogs. It was founded, and is still run, by Dr Laura Sangha (Exeter), Dr Brodie Waddell (Birkbeck), Dr Jonathan Willis (Birmingham) and Dr Mark Hailwood (Bristol), four early-modern historians who met while studying postgraduate degrees at the University of Warwick in the mid-2000s. To mark the Monster’s seventh birthday, we asked the team to reflect on their motivation, the editorial challenges and, most importantly, the secret of the blog’s continued success…
Charting a Course: From Shock Cities to Sexy Sailors (and Pilgrim Fathers)
Tom Hulme is author of After the Shock City: Urban Culture and the Making of Modern Citizenship, available now in the RHS Studies on History Series with Boydell and Brewer. In this post for the Historical Transactions blog, he considers how the threads from that project continue to weave through two very different new historical ventures.
Cataloguing the RHS Archive, 1: George Prothero’s Papers
As part of the Society’s 150th anniversary celebrations, the RHS has embarked on a project to revamp its archive and update its accompanying catalogue, in order to improve the accessibility of the collections and to increase awareness of Society’s past. The project is funded by the Marc Fitch Fund, a charity which supports projects aimed at preserving and showcasing important pieces of historical scholarship across the UK and the Republic of Ireland. With this generous award, the Society has been able to hire two post-graduate researchers, Eilish Gregory and Imogen Evans, to help complete the project. In this post for Historical Transactions, Eilish and Imogen introduce the project, and reveal some of their early finds in the papers of George Prothero, the Society’s first President.
RHS LGBT+ Survey 2019
The Royal Historical Society Working Group on LGBT+ histories and historians has launched its survey of the profession.
A Historian and his Times: Sushil Chaudhury and the History of Eighteenth-Century Bengal
Professor Sushil Chaudhury, historian of eighteenth-century Bengal, and General President Elect of the Indian History Congress, died earlier this year. In this piece for the RHS blog, Professor Peter J. Marshall places his friend’s work in the context of his life, and reflects on how historical scholarship about the region has changed.
An Update from the RHS LGBT+ Working Group
The RHS values the diversity of the historical community in all its forms and over the past several years has invested serious resources in projects that promote equality and inclusion. We believe that valuing diversity means listening to the voices, and respecting the experiences, of people whose lives and identities may be different to our own. This includes trans and non-binary people.
Writing a History Textbook: Seven Things I’ve Learnt
Matthew McCormack has recently finished writing Citizenship and Gender in Britain, 1688-1928. A textbook aimed at the student market, it will be published by Routledge in June 2019. In this post for Historical Transactions, Matthew shares how the process differed from his other academic publications, and the things he learned along the way.
Reflections on “Contested Commemorations”, RHS Symposium at the Open University.
On 17 May 2019 the Open University History department hosted a Royal Historical Society symposium to reflect on the centenary of the First World War. Following four years of commemorative activity, our aim with “Contested Commemorations” was to assess how a range of countries and regions had marked the centenary. Vincent Trott reports on a day of fascinating presentations and lively discussion.
