"Douglass’s 19-month tour of Britain and Ireland began in Liverpool in 1845 and, for much of the time, Manchester was his base." #slavery #abolition #history www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ju...

For Haydon's painting of the Mock Election see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moc... And also the companion picture, Chairing the Member: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chairin... #CarceralHistory #History

#OnThisDay in penal history, 1827: Kings Bench Prisoners hold mock election, satirising the farcical election process of the time. wp.me/p74yfw-aU

Jesus. 35 UK universities quietly- without debate - joined the Ministry of Defence’s “Battlefield Alliance” which seeks to “reorientate academia towards Defence and National Security” They’re destroying the social sciences and humanities while militarising the institutions

Interesting review that touches upon the rejection of modernism by many British left-wing artists. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... Laugh out loud moment: "Picasso was held in disdain: some AIA artists .... maintained that Guernica was a lesser work of political art than their own efforts."

#Wikipedia escapes the worst consequences of the UK Online Safety Act: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

The Irish Legislation Database is back, at a new URL: resources.qub.ac.uk/ild/ Be warned: there seem to be quite a few broken links. #LegalHistory #History

It was 30 years ago (next week!) - when we squatted a motorway. 1996: Reclaim the Streets Re-Wild the M41 motorway, Shepherds Bush, occupying the road for a huge rave and planting trees in the tarmac wp.me/p74yfw-LH

Good riddance to this awful law: statutes.org.uk/site/the-sta... #LegalHistory

Happy Birthday Olive Morris

A marvellous exhibition; 'To cross one more sea' is an extraordinary, terrifying, giddy-making installation, a retelling of transatlantic crossings.

Just heard about the 200 redundancies announced by my previous employer, the University of Exeter. 170 of those are in Humanities and Social Sciences. This is what happens in a country with the collapsing HE funding system with VCs-cum-CEOs on £300k salaries+bonuses and corporate governing bodies.

They kindle a culture war because they're afraid of a class war.

Good work; but why do we have to go to a dodgy US company for this? Why aren't Parliament/ National Archives/ British Library (adequately resourced for) making them available?

Now on at the Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen: “Unlock your heads at last!” Dada as political art between the world wars www.verfolgte-kuenste.com/en/wechselau... #dada

Behind the scenes at William #Kentridge's L'Orfeo: www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

This is an important question of archival access, given the valuable geological data contained, and a mining company wants exclusive access to it. No mention made in the article about the atrocities committed by the Belgians in Africa, nor of how these are reflected in the records. #Archives

New on NOTCHES: What Franco’s Archives Accidentally Preserved About Queer Life in Spain by Javier Fernández-Galeano. Link: wp.me/p6JJ6S-4VR How did the state’s repressive apparatus inadvertently preserve traces of queer intimacy, erotic life, and dissident desire? #QueerHistory #SpanishHistory

Died #OTD 7 June 1966: Hans Arp, founder member of the Cabaret Voltaire. Escaped conscription by feigning mental illness. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Arp #dada

Well I think I've just definitively dated the arrival of the very first enslaved people from Africa to an English colony in the Caribbean - the exact day which launched a slave plantation system that would see 3.5m people trafficked in its wake. And it seems that 400 year anniversary is upon us.

At least 3,000 Herero and Nama people died in a German concentration camp at Shark Island, Namibia. A new forensic exhibition in Berlin is using digital technology to unearth how colonisers scarred a landscape, and a community. www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Next Weds 10 June we welcome @jamie-gemmell.bsky.social (KCL) to our seminar, who will present their paper titled ‘John Satia and the 1731 ban on Black apprenticeship’ Register below to join us either in person at the IHR or online from 17:30. www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

"They took everything from my great-grandfather Silvestre Indias Carvajal and left us with nothing but his story, which was buried at the bottom of a 30-metre-deep well in south-west Spain for 87 years." www.theguardian.com/artanddesign... #HistoricalMemory

Harpo speaks! www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ma... #Marxism

Not before time: France overturns law classing people as property – 178 years after it abolished slavery National assembly votes to repeal Code Noir under which enslaved people were beaten, raped and killed www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m... #LegalHistory #EnslavedHistory

As a contributor to the #Wikipedia family of sites (mainly wikisource atm) I have signed this petition, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... supporting the Wiki Workers United union, and against the recent sackings of Community Tech Team workers.

Hal Foster in the @lrb.co.uk, on #Duchamp at the MOMA: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... #Dada

Precisely why I started the Statutes Project: to make legislation discoverable, useable and citable. Whilst there's some very bad citation practices by historians, it is also needlessly difficult, and the infrastructure is lacking.

Published last year, but I've only come across it now, an #OpenAccess book on prisons in the ancient world: Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration www.luminosoa.org/books/m/10.1... #CarceralHistory

Thank god that’s over. Arsenal you really put us through it. But: Champions!

The persistence of Fascist icons (sometimes bizarrely kitsch) despite the Ley de Memoria Democrática: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... #HistoricalMemory #Spain

This is a startling account of monetary collapse: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m... #Money

Two ballads on Captain Francis Winter, executed for defending the liberties of Whitefriars, aka Alsatia: alsatia.org.uk/site/2010/06... alsatia.org.uk/site/2015/02... #History

#OnThisDay in London's indebted history: the ‘Amazons ‘ of the Southwark Mint sanctuary repulse the bailiffs wp.me/p74yfw-ui

In addition, Family Search frequently utilizes prison labor to digitize materials they make available so it's just a turducken of exploitation activehistory.ca/blog/2026/04...

200 years ago the handloom weavers of Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire engaged in a 10-day rising, destroying over 1,100 power looms. To learn more check out our interactive StoryMap: storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/9a84... #19thCentury #skystorians @sslh.bsky.social @esriuk.bsky.social

Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents. I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.

Really can't wait to read this: Imprisonment in Early Modern England Politics, Debt and the Origins of a Carceral Society by @richardbell.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/books/i... (But am going to have to til October.) h/t @onslies.bsky.social #History #DebtHistory #CarceralHistory

As I was saying... MED is the kind of thing that's a major resource in its own field but virtually unknown anywhere else, and its future will be dependent on the health of one retired academic. A lot of early 21st-century digital resources are or soon will be in that bracket.

Guess the password for www.wesforleader.com !

On Friday afternoon before the Bank Holiday, colleagues in the Humanities department were called to a meeting on Tuesday. They were informed that the University Portfolio Review had decided that English Language, English Literature, Philosophy, History & Creative Writing UG degrees would close

The sun is shining, the University of London is rid of its VC, the Office (supposedly) for Students got taken down in court. A good day.

'Wendy Thomson has resigned as vice-chancellor of the University of London, 11 months after she was suspended from the post.' She is taking UoL to employment tribunal for constructive dismissal (re 'whistleblowing disclosures'). Resignation effective today.

Interesting article on "Jail Liberties" around a New York Debtors' Prison: www.adirondackexplorer.org/communities/... Similar to the 'Rules' of some English Prisons, like the Fleet and King's Bench #DebtHistory #CarceralHistory

New #OpenAccess #History book: Histories of Madness, by David Wright www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Trump is expanding the Afrikaaner refugee program, which is based on the "white genocide" conspiracy that Black South Africans are trying to take land from Whites You can't understand this story if you don't know 1 of the greatest stories in all of history A thread www.reuters.com/world/africa...

Good piece on one aspect of the enshittification of the web: "Now Unwelcome: Why I Left OzBargain & The Link-Hostile Nature of Internet Discourse" goughlui.com/2026/04/22/n...

Exhibition starting 21st May, In London: Francis Picabia, Expanding Horizons www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth... #dada