Last year some of our members collaborated with our colleagues Sabers en Acció, a fantastic initiative by the Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica and the Institut Interuniversitari López Piñero. More here: tinyurl.com/3c94tpsa @angarbelmar.bsky.social @jrbsjrbs.bsky.social

New book review published advance access by @jich.bsky.social Shankar Nair reviews 'Churchill and Industrial Britain: Liberalism, Empire and Employment, 1900–1929' by Jim Tomlinson www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

New voter just dropped: Dead Man www.economist.com/britain/2025...

This book deserves to be better known. It's a fascinating account of cotton processing technology from the early common era to the mid-1800s written with exemplary clarity. Completely dispels the legend of Eli Whitney.

'The top 5 IT firms (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and Tech Mahindra) employ more Indians today than the Railways or the armed forces. Similarly, private sector banks have more employees compared with their state-owned counterparts.' indianexpress.com/article/expl...

On advance access "Agricultural Workers, Tenant Farmers, and the Midcentury U.S. Welfare State: A View from the Lower Mississippi Valley" by Samantha Iyer (@fordham.edu) doi.org/10.1093/past...

This is very good, on the decline of the US machine tool industry: www.construction-physics.com/p/what-happe...

This is one of the very strangest business stories we've ever read, one that will deserving of a full history - a history that one imagines it will be all but impossible to actually write. www.theguardian.com/news/2024/de...

I've written about the long boom and long bust in South Africa's mining industry and how the once close alliance between industry and state dissolved in @phenomenalworld.bsky.social. It's a cautionary tale for countries relying on mineral wealth. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/aft...

'The global automotive supply chain is so complex and interconnected that a component made in Mexico could end up at an American plant before going back to Mexico for final assembly and then being sold to the US market — which could result in a tariff-on-tariff situation.' www.ft.com/content/85b2...

✍️Despite being the world's biggest oil producer, America is v reliant on Canadian oil. And getting MORE reliant, not less. So what happens when tariffs get imposed on Canada? The answers are quite unsettling, for the American people... and for everyone else edconway.substack.com/p/america-st...

my new article in Political Quarterly is now available on line. doi.org/10.1111/1467...

‘Among Indian states, Kerala has the largest wage gap between men and women engaged in casual labour.’ scroll.in/article/1078...

For the @newstatesman.com i wrote a profile of the historian Correlli Barnett, which charts the perils of self-loathing nationalism and the rise of Britain's new right www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/0...

How did Britain's post-industrial towns become hubs of badly paid work and disenchanted politics? They were not forgotten or 'left behind', but actively remade. My report for @cmmonwealth.bsky.social two-towns.common-wealth.org

CFP: @globalhistjnl.bsky.social development editing workshop (deadline 1 March 2025). Workshop open to scholars & #skystorians for whom English is not a first language who study/work outside of North American and Western European institutions. Keep an eye out for an ECR workshop later in the year! 🗃

💻 The Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine is now accepting applications for the Hans Rausing Scholarships, supporting postgraduate study in the history of science and technology. 🗓️ Deadlines: 14 and 15 April 2025 Find out more ⬇️

I always gain something from reading Charles Maier. This is his Max Weber lecture from 2009 on 'surprises' and the disciplines of history and social sciences. scholar.harvard.edu/files/charle...

Mike Davis in 1998: "Two kinds of Californians will continue to live with fire: those who can afford (with indirect public subsidies) to rebuild and those who can’t afford to live anywhere else." longreads.com/2018/12/04/t...

Jim Tomlinson's new book 'shows how industrial competition within the Empire exemplified the tensions between domestic economic policy and attempts at globalization, and influenced Churchill's later politics'. Very promising. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/churchill...

@shankarnair.bsky.social 's review in @isisjournal.bsky.social emphasizes the book's work to center technological engagements within the class and religious identities of workers, while highlighting the need for new models to describe artisan adaptation of seemingly foreign technologies.

If you're interested in energy/climate you've probably heard the nugget that "kerosene/crude oil helped save the whales", by reducing demand for whale oil in lanterns. I've even trotted it out myself🤦‍♂️ But it turns out it's NOT true. Here's what actually happened edconway.substack.com/p/no-kerosen...

If you (or anyone you know!) is interested in doing a PhD in the history of science and/or technology, and being based in London for 3-4 years, we have scholarships at CHoSTM at King's: www.kingschostm.com/funding-oppo...

For History Compass, I wrote about new directions in the study of the history of technology in modern South Asia. I explored the potential of these historiographic trends through poetic laments of an early 20th-century railway carpenter named ‘Abdul ‘Aziz in Lahore...

Just learned that Amiya Bagchi, political economist and economic historian of the colonial and postcolonial world, has passed away. He was 88. His books 'Private Investment in India' (1972) and 'Political Economy of Underdevelopment'(1982) remain landmark works of scholarships.

I’ve begun a historians of South Asia (broadly defined) starter pack, let me know if you want to be added go.bsky.app/zUV84F

"The Murmur of Engines" A fascinating essay about narrating the origins of WWI - Chris Clarke on Perry Anderson on Chris Clarke www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

New, neat article from Arunabh Ghosh, "The Significance of Small Things: Small Hydropower in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1983." I confess that I like it mostly because I am a nerd for small hydropower and spend my time hanging out in creeks. doi.org/10.1017/S001...

I’ve just realized it’s possible to pin posts on Bluesky, so here’s my book! It’s open access, in case you like free things 😊 www.ucpress.edu/books/pious-...

Since I'm new here, can I re-up a project of which I am v proud? It's the complete Eric Hobsbawm Bibliography - a fully searchable database of all his published & unpublished works + a set of curated thematic lists to introduce select topics. It was a labour of love. Link: hobsbawm.shca.ed.ac.uk

Absolute banger from @bhgreeley.bsky.social @alphaville.ft.com "This year the Riksbank awarded its prize to a treatment of early modern institutions so selective it functions as a bedtime story for capitalists." The Nobel for Econsplaining - on.ft.com/4f844Iv via @FT

Starmer's incredible project is to "Make Brexit Work". But you can't have a successful car crash. The alternative to his regressive 'Great Britain', strangled by its own Red Lines, is a European England. The New Statesman's Saturday essay: www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-...