Conference announcement (details to follow in mid-Jan): Modern Enquiries into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: International Prosperity and Development 250 Years After Adam Smith King's College Cambridge, 5-6 MARCH 2026 Convenors: Gareth Austin (Cambridge) and Alex Trew (Glasgow)

"La contrainte et les marchés : concilier les explications économiques et sociales de l’esclavage en Afrique de l’Ouest précoloniale, vers 1450-vers 1900" Gareth Austin (Cambridge) (tr. Darla Gervais) Revue d’histoire moderne & contemporaine 2025/3 n° 72-3, pages 101-131 DOI 10.3917/rhmc.723.0101

Why had it taken *nine years* for Labour to face up to what has been glaringly obvious since 2016? And even now #Starmer equivocates with the phrase “the Brexit deal”. No - it is #Brexit itself which is the colossal act of self-sabotage.

Watch! This is so fucking good. @bellingcat.com, you are the best

'Honest Bob' Jenrick, a politician obviously & deliberately embracing xenophobia, does some weapons grade xenophobia & the BBC *apologises* for a Thought For The Day contributor calling it xenophobic. Licence fee payers need to know who makes these decisions & why. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Just attended an excellent writers' conference exploring the paths to/causes of the Great Acceleration (of human-made environmental change, starting c. 1950), at the University of Basel, organised by Moritz von Brescius (UB) and Fredrik Albritton Jonsson (U of Chicago). Exciting stuff.

Prof Peter Mandler’s (@petermandler.bsky.social) insatiable curiosity has fuelled an extraordinary career over more than two decades at Cambridge. As he steps back from formal teaching, the acclaimed historian reflects on a life of intellectual breadth, public advocacy—and no plans to slow down ⬇️⬇️

Cambridge Global Economic History Seminar, Monday 9 June, 17:15 BST in the Audit Room, King's College: John Tang (Utrecht University), "Superstition, fertility, and modernization: evidence from Japan, 1880-1980" This talk is hybrid: for zoom link see www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series...

Cambridge Global Economic History Seminar, 19 May: Lisbeth Rodrigues (Porto), ‘Beyond almsgiving: The financial role of charitable institutions in early modern Portugal and its empire’. 17:15 UK time in Audit Room, King's College, Cambridge. Or online: subscribe at www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series...

Travieso & Westland, "Resilience and decline of handicraft textiles in colonial northern Nigeria, 1911–52", Economic History Review (2024), examines the issue of deindustrialisation in what had been the leading centre of textile production in precolonial Africa. Read at doi.org/10.1111/ehr....

Congrats to Emiliano Travieso & Tom Westland for winning the Economic History Society's prize for best article in the Economic History Review (2024) by authors within 5 years of PhD. "What happened to the workshop of West Africa?"

🎙️ PODCAST | Listen to @camhistory.bsky.social’s Hank Gonzalez talk to David Runciman on the History of Ideas Podcast. 🎧 Find out more about the Haitian Revolution: the first time in history a slave revolt resulted in an independent free state ⬇️

The Zoom link for Tinashe Nyamunda's presentation on Monday 17:15 GMT will be sent to subscribers to the Global Economic History Seminar e-list 48 hours in advance. For the link to subscribe, go to www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series...

The excellent Zimbabwean financial historian Tinashe Nyamunda (now U of Glasgow) is presenting to the Global Economic History Seminar on Monday 17th, 17:15 GMT, in the Audit Room, King's College, Cambridge, on the financial origins of the Anglo-Boer War. Also on Zoom

It will output to an ugly default LaTeX/Word doc when I need to submit it to a journal but I can also write the paper with my own beautiful bespoke template that compiles essentially instantly.

Richard Reid's The African Revolution is a panoramic global history of Africa in the age of imperialism. Out now. Learn more about this monumental work of history: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Lots of discussions about mining and metals in Africa exaggerate their importance and this is a particularly obvious example. 10% of something is not enough to corner a market!

My chapter in Capitalism: Histories, edited by Robert G. Ingram and James M. Vaughn (Boydell Press, 2025) is titled "Capitalism in Africa: Two Histories, 1650s-1940s". Compares the partly similar, partly contrasting cases of South Africa and British West Africa (esp. Nigeria & Ghana).

Capitalism: Histories, edited by Robert G. Ingram & James M. Vaughan. Just published by Boydell Press. Contributors G. Austin, R. Austen, P. Coclanis, T. Dennison, A. Evans, E. Griffin, R.G. Ingram, A. Karak, J. Majewski, M. Metzler, K. Pomeranz, M. Ramseyer, T. Roy, Horus T'an

Resounding rebuttal of Trump's energy policy from a piece of work at the Daily Telegraph.

Honoured to be talking to Kaoru Sugihara's Seminar on Global Economic and Environmental History on Wednesday (15 Jan) in Kyoto: "Tropical Africa and the 'Long Acceleration'". RINH, 13:30-15:30 Japan time (venue: Research Institute for Humanity and Nature).

The changing international economic order of the 1980s Just completed a fascinating workshop (10-11 Jan 2025), organised by the tireless Prof Shigeru Akita on the beautiful Japanese island of Awaji. The subject is the international economic order of the 1980s.

Is African Economic History Experiencing a Revival? Katherine Frederick, Dácil Juif and @felixmzs.bsky.social give us their answer in our blog: ihrthegreatspurt.wordpress.com/2024/11/25/t...

I have a little paper out in the latest issue of the Industrial History Review (a special issue on new frontiers in African economic history) that looks at spatial variation in living standards and purchasing power in French West Africa around 1950. revistes.ub.edu/index.php/Hi...