My writing desk for the next couple of weeks.

Langston Hughes on Patrice Lumumba on this the 65th anniversary of his assassination.

This is a truly remarkable book. It sounds impossible that a boy born in Togo in 1941 could become obsessed with the idea of travelling to Greenland and achieve this, but he did it. Highly recommended.

Tedious and ill-informed. Specialised knowledge is produced for small audiences in many areas. Do the reports I write for industry have a wide readership? No. Is that a problem? Also no.

The first half of January 2026 has averaged +1.55ºC above preindustrial Average global CO2 concentrations for the same period 427.03 ppm (vs 424.69 ppm for the same period in 2025) Meanwhile fossil fuel usage remains firmly in place. This is a highway to hell. #ClimateCrisis

Which country leads the world in oil production in 2024? Think you know? Try to guess at chartle.cc

He chose his PhD topic based on what would provide him the knowledge necessary to sabotage Apartheid South Africa’s nuclear programme - which members of Umkhonto we Sizwe indeed did, based on the information he provided. 🫡

Currently docked alongside a Portuguese naval vessel the NRP Zaire built to fight in Portugal's colonial wars and, incredibly, still in service.

Just published a paper on the complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir meme, the decade-old tumblr in-joke that continues to impact the public understanding of the ancient world. Paywalled but email me if you want a copy. 🏺

Debates continue to circulate—as they should—about the utility of neoliberalism as a category of analysis and political practice. Myself + three other historians wrote a brief overview of how it works in our field for the Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

My review of 'Finance and the Coming of War in Southern Africa, 1894–1899' is now in the Business History Review. This book is the first to seriously examine speculation and fraud in South Africa's early gold industry. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

⚠️ Confirmed: Live network data show a nation-scale disruption to internet connectivity in #Uganda; the measure comes days ahead of general elections and corresponds to a shutdown notice from the Uganda Communications Commission "to mitigate the rapid spread of misinformation" 📉

In "Living Minerals," Javiera Barandiarán presents a sobering investigation of the rush for lithium for electric vehicles, the problematic history of lithium mining, and the consequences for sustainability. Available #OpenAccess: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255370...

Quite the fetching craft, named for his father: afsa.org/finding-pava...

Pavarotti apparently raised money to donate a pontoon boat to cross the Zambezi River in western Zambia.

📢 Call for Papers 📢 2026 Commodities of Empire workshop: “Locating Knowledge: Science and Technology in Commodity Frontiers.” 📍 Madrid, 2–3 September 2026 ⏳ Submission deadline: 14 February 2026 👉 CFP: commoditiesofempire.org.uk/events/ @davidedgerton.bsky.social @samuelcoghe.bsky.social

Happy New Year!🎊 Read our latest blog post by Melissa Meade from Seton Hall University. Learn about how public memorialization struggles to center workers in the narrative of industrial history.

A wild and wet time to be sailing out of Southampton but I'm pleased to be back on the Queen Anne for another round the world cruise. I'll be giving talks on-board this month on histories of minerals, migration and empire.

Friends, I have finally found my replacement for the "One Giant Word Doc of Research Notes" process that I always felt was inefficient. I have spent A LOT of time creating a social network style database of my research notes into 1930s resistance movements. Let me show you how it works 1/

Complete stab in the dark here. Does anyone have access to The St. Lucia Archaeological and Historical Society series? I'm desperately looking for a pamphlet in the series published by Charles Jesse in 1969 in the St. Lucia Miscellany issue. Only copy I can find is physical volume in Jamaica.

New and #OpenAccess, check out 'On Site. Colonial Labour, Business and the Construction of the Swakopmund Jetty, c. 1911–1915' by Nina Kleinöder: doi.org/10.1080/0308...

Looking for material that discusses attitudes towards 'poor' British and Irish migrants to Australia in early 20th century, particularly attitude of government.

This in no way reflects my experience of working in the Netherlands. I was only there three years and saw two close colleagues, both Dutch, have burnouts due to stress and overwork.

20 days to go to send us your abstracts on coal, community, health and welfare! Join us in June for a one day event at the University of Warwick, including NUM archive content. #CfP

I love that Oxford's History Faculty received one of the largest ever donations for the humanities and sound vaguely disatisfied with the result.

Applications are also invited for a new RHS programme for 2026, co-hosted with @ihr.bsky.social and @chalkefestival.bsky.social. 'Pitch my Project' is for early career historians to present their research at the Chalke History Festival in June bit.ly/44kfUMM. Closing date: 6 February. #Skystorians

A thread of #PublicDomain books I've got Google Books to make fully and freely available this year. Published by HMSO A Brief Guide to Official Publications London, HMSO, 1960. books.google.co.uk/books?id=q20...

Anybody able to help get me access to this?

What better way to start your year than a mining quiz question: chartle.cc

02. ZAMBIA The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell Serpell’s debut novel follows three families for three generations and more than 100 years of their lives in Zambia. #ReadTheWorld

#OtD 31 Dec 1912 about 160 African workers at the Wankie coal mine in colonial Rhodesia came out on strike. Workers were protesting the poor conditions after dozens had contracted scurvy, resulting in nine deaths over the previous three months stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/1143...

There are good resources for teaching/learning about Britain's long history of emigration in the archived materials from @migrationmuseum.org 's Departures exhibition. www.migrationmuseum.org/exhibition/d...

As an ex-young person who left Britain years ago, I'm always interested to see why people do the same. It's curious to see this described as something new that needs explanation. Britain is historically a country of a mass emigration, which has been forgotten. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A neat little nugget of medieval coal history as we come to the end of a year where the UK has just finished it first 15 months freed from coal power, but the US has slid backward on so many energy fronts. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1... #Speculations #MedievalSky

I always tell students if you ask a good question the article will write itself

Another good (open access) piece from London Review of International Law —- on nodules, frontiers, and Rosa. 🌊⛏️ academic.oup.com/lril/advance...

Guns, Germs, and Steel in Africa: Jared Diamond and the Limits of Geographic Determinism www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/guns-germs...

Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest academic publishers, has been caught using fake AI-generated citations in their textbooks

Graphite design is my passion

My only and best higher ed idea is that Britain needs to find a way to offer university courses to retirees

A very early mineral railway - part of the Liskeard and Caradon line. I think this section dates to 1846. Original stone block sleepers are from the nearby Cheesewring quarry. They were cheaper than wood but sometimes sank into the ground after heavy rain, which buckled the tracks.

The Mineworkers' Union of Zambia produces its own brand of eggs.

An archivist in Australia let me look at material I didn't have permission to view because she recognised my accent and we got chatting and worked out that she had been at school with the daughter of my old neighbour in the UK.

Turned up at the National Archives in Algiers in three quarter length shorts because it was too hot for this poor pasty Irish man and I couldn't enter due to the dress code so a soldier that was posted there lent me a pair of his jeans so I could go in. Classic Algerian generosity!

As the cataloguing of the NUM archives nears its end, our Project Archivist writes on the Miners' Hall, Barnsley: The completed Yorkshire Miners' Association archive catalogue is at mrc-describe.epexio.com/records/YMA NUM catalogue (work so far completed!) at mrc-describe.epexio.com/records/NUM

In our continuing series on places in labour history, Liz Wood introduces the headquarters building of the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association and its continuing importance now the coal industry has gone sslh.org.uk/2025/12/22/m...

Great line. The “I've been to many countries but never left Lviv” of resource rent extraction. It is theoretically possible Sonangol could add an IPO to this list in 2026 (or 2027, or 2028...)

Incredible quote on continuity in Angola’s oil industry during 40 years of war and upheaval from an executive of the state oil company: “You see, through colonialism, foreign invasion, Marxist-Leninism and capitalism, I have not left the same building.”

This map shows the projection of changes in annual precipitation in South Africa at ~1.5°C of heating. This is already playing out in real-time in December 2025. Floods in KZN (iol.co.za/news/south...) Drought in the WC (peterdutoit.com/knys...)

📢📢New article! How did apartheid South Africa weather the 1973–74 oil crisis? Despite sanctions, no oil reserves, and global recession, the immediate impact was limited. This article explores why, and how the crisis was turned into political capital. l1nq.com/sv0oJ