“The discomfort comes from the fact that historians are often disrupting or destroying connections people have already made between the past and the present, connections that may be based on no evidence at all, but that are an integral part of how they understand what the world is like…”

Dear history fans, what objects would you like to see in an exhibition on privateering & life at sea in the 18th century? Everyday objects, letters, navigational instruments, or something unexpected? It will also explore forced migration. I’d love to hear your thoughts #earlymodern #maritimehistory

The crisis is real, and this is part of our effort at new approaches to supporting scholars and advancing scholarship in the (vast!) early Americas. Sharing again and would appreciate your sharing, too. More info in the thread. 🧵⬇️

Self-promotion warning: @manchesterup.bsky.social will issue paper edition of our essay collection on #earlymodern European overseas empires in Jan '26 for pre-order @ GBP 30 @carrington-farmer.bsky.social manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526195791/

My author copies of THE CROWN’S SILENCE are here!!! Please spread the word, support local bookstores, and buy a copy for every royal 👑 in your life! King Charles, I’m looking at you!! Out on 1/27 in the US 🇺🇸 and on 1/29 in the UK 🇬🇧. #booksky 📚 #slaveryarchive bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

Caveat: with a revised subtitle as per anthempress.com/books/britis... But yes, coming soon!

If you want an easy way to read and then amplify the voices of historians, follow and share things from @contingent-mag.bsky.social.

🧵🪡 These look like a banger series of documentaries on protests in the US. Off to check where to stream.

🗃️ The US attracted more foreign-born people from more places than any other nation in history. We need language to acknowledge that central fact of American history. But we also need language that goes beyond the idea that the United States is, or ever was, simply a “nation of immigrants.” 🧵1/10

“The island seems to be sinking, just as Raúl warned it might 15 years earlier. It is doing so bc he and others delayed true reform. Change will come with steep costs thanks to years of economic policy waffling & the state’s refusal to give Cubans a meaningful political voice in shaping their future

On January 1, 1804, revolutionaries established the independent country of Haiti, the first nation to permanently ban slavery. As we begin a year engulfed by the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence, it’s worth reading the Haitian Declaration of Independence in full. 🇭🇹

Reading a small cache of family letters my in-laws have from around 1900. Someone is sick from diphtheria, whooping cough, pneumonia in all of them. In this one from Bloomington, Illinois: “now it is the measles, last week in the high school there was 212 students out with them.”

The cover’s up, btw.

As I’ve been saying, Dem candidates really need to take seriously the imperative to fix public education, or Rs will take advantage and destroy it. We can support educators and serve students, but we need to admit there’s a problem. washingtonmonthly.com/2025/12/29/d...

For the Kindle crowd, $0.50 for the story of how NYC was America’s last slave trading port: www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08M...

There is a fantastic documentary about this -- The Uprising of 34. www.imdb.com/title/tt0114...

For the Kindle crowd, $0.50 for the story of how NYC was America’s last slave trading port: www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B08M...

Check it out 👇

Working on something about what Twitter meant to historians - what was good/not good about it for the profession, in relation to the general crisis of academic history / the profession, etc., the cratering of the university. What was #twitterhistory at its best? What were its failures? 🗃️

In search of books to assign my U.S. History 1876-present class. The students will be mostly non-majors. Your recommendations please!

This probably doesn’t count, but the only extant personal and business papers of a colonial Brazilian trader in enslaved Africans are locked in a Salvador convent. No one’s seen them in fifty years. I’m losing my mind (maybe one guy did?). I haven’t even figured out how to approach the nuns.

At Harvard’s Houghton Library, I found a letter with salt crusted onto it. When I read the letter, I realized it was the guy’s dried tears because the letter was about the death of his young daughter

Brilliant from @adamserwer.bsky.social: the Roberts Court's attack on the Reconstruction Amendments are "consistent with the Antebellum Constitution’s narrow definition of who “We the People” are." Here are some legal historians exploring the Antebellum Const. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

My forthcoming book— For which I began research in 2006. Is now posted on the website for Princeton University Press. Cover will be added soon. The King’s Slaves: The British Empire & the Origins of American Slavery

Blue sky-storians, I am preparing an Atlantic World class for MA students. I am so excited. Have any advice? Any new MUST READS I should consider? Definitely hitting the classics, but would love to hear what has worked for you!

When illegal slave ships were intercepted by British, French, Portuguese and other antislavery patrols in the 1800s, African captives were not freed - they were sent into indentured servitude. More than 700,000 souls. It’s a huge story in the history of abolition.

If you are buying books this Holiday Season, make sure to support university presses. Lots of great deals. open.substack.com/pub/kevinmle...

RIP and thank you, Ms. Allen Boyce. 🗃 www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/u...

Next Monday, 1–2 pm, our lecture series sets sail into climate history! Prof. Eleonora Rohland explores "DOLDRUMS" – how old ship logs reveal past climate patterns and the secrets of a unique windless Atlantic zone. Join us on Zoom – register below. #earlymodern #climate #maritimehistory #history 🗃️

My new book, 'The Fenian Empire: A Hemispheric History of Irish Republican Nationalism' is now live in the NYU Press catalogue and due for release in early June, fittingly on the 160th anniversary of the first major Fenian raid on Canada nyupress.org/978147983258...

Historians and Gender scholars: If you were creating a new U.S. women's history survey course, what books would be must-reads for lecture prep? They don't have to be new, and can include material from pre-colonial to the present. Give me a reading list! (I need to spend some PD funds)

Hey historians! How many of you have published something with the help of a literary agent? If you have, what did you think of the process? 🗃️

Great article on the struggles of liberal arts colleges. I know this topic all too well from the faculty side.

We’ve grouped our primary source collections under historical themes! “Slavery and Abolition” contains 19 collections, totalling over 695,000 images. They document Britain’s involvement in transatlantic slavery and opposition to it. Explore this theme at britishonlinearchives.com/themes/11/sl...

Just under two weeks left to apply for this three-year post-doc to work on the AHRC-funded project, "Voices in Slavery’s Archive: Law, Place and Testimony in British Guiana," based at the University of Edinburgh.

I’m having a satisfying evening leaving rave reviews of my favorite history books on goodreads

"The Centrality of Slavery" arrived today. www.pennpress.org/978151282842...

PROMOTE YOUR BOOKS! EVERYONE WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR PUBLISHED BOOKS! Do not ask me how my writing is going.

It’s officially pub day for Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America‘s First Opioid Crisis! Available at a bookshop near you. Thanks to everyone who made it possible to bring this research to life! 🗃️ @uncpress.bsky.social uncpress.org/978146968953...

The publication date for my book on the history of policing American slavery has been moved up a month! Now available May 12, 2026! Thanks so much to those who have preordered! The Press is offering 30% off with the code, 01UNCP30 uncpress.org/978146969484...

In May I knocked on a door in Brooklyn. Thrilled to see that adventure become a New York Times article in print this weekend.

It's Harrison Ford's birthday today, thus we are contractually obligated to point you to this ridiculous classic from our archives.

Check out a @nytimes feature from John Harris, author of The Last Slave Ships, a history of illegal transatlantic slave trade in the United States