Passing some quiet days over Christmas I wasn't prepared to see popping up on the historic guest list of a Regensburg café the name of Belgian King Leopold II, the man who plundered the Congo & whose wars and system of forced labour killed & mutilated millions of its inhabitants between 1885-1908...

Book launch! I look forward to presenting my book The Colonial Way of War on 9 December (11:30) at my old workplace in Munich. If you're around and would like to come, please send me a short message as space is limited!

Save the Date: 9 December 2025 - Launch event of @tommenger.bsky.social's The Colonial Way of War (published with CUP) at @globaldiscnct.bsky.social www.globaldisconnect.org/11/24/9-dece...

I too really enjoyed @sochistorywar.bsky.social 's annual conference in Potsdam. Good to see many friends and acquaintances and get to know some new ones! And it was a pleasure to present my new research project in our panel on 'Imperial boomerangs' convened by Sibylle Scheipers

I was struck today by the fact that this rather new Edeka supermarket ostentatiously displays the German supermarket chain’s origins as a cooperative of Kolonialwarenhändler, i.e. grocers selling predominantly colonial-origin goods. (at Forum Schwanthalerhöhe, Munich, opened 2019)

We are excited to announce our new lecture series starting tomorrow. Corey Ross (Basel) will be presenting on "Liquid Empire." Zoom Link: recentglobe.uni-leipzig.de/veranstaltun...

Today on a long train journey to Växjö, Sweden, for the upcoming ENIUGH Conference!

It seems the day my book came out my LMU e-mail went down, so that all e-mails sent to me now mysteriously bounce back. If you contacted me in the last days, please DM me here

Tom Menger's new book is out now - with @kimatiwagner.bsky.social blurb "In The Colonial Way of War, Menger presents a masterclass in transimperial history", congrats @tommenger.bsky.social! www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

I have been looking forward to @tommenger.bsky.social's book on colonial warfare for some time now, and it's amazing to see that it's finally out. A must for anyone who's interested in the study of violence in a transimperial comparative framework...

Publication day! My book The Colonial Way of War has finally appeared with CUP. The book is the first comparative & transimperial study of the violence of colonial warfare around 1900, based on an extensive empirical base &case studies from the British, German & Dutch Empire. It... shorturl.at/crWw2

My author copies already came today! Online version is not yet available, but hard copies can already be ordered and official publication date should be very soon!

It's now been confirmed: my book The Colonial Way of War will finally come out in early August! www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...

Newest in AI craze: Academia.edu now pushes AI-generated reviews of my own uploads on me: an AI-generated review of a book review (!)&a podcast in which a supposed Academia director has a “friendly chat” with undefined listeners (“folks”) abt an article of mine. Things are getting very weird indeed

Slightly different archive today than the ones I am used to!

📣 Open Call for Fellowships & Artist in Residence📣 🎓 for academic year 2026/27 ⏰ Apply until Sunday, 27 July 2025 Fellowships: www.globaldisconnect.org/wp-content/u... Artist in Residence: www.globaldisconnect.org/wp-content/u... 😊 We look forward to receiving your applications

Images related to my upcoming book #5: a major source corpus for my study on colonial violence are British, German and Dutch manuals of colonial warfare. While generally studies are limited to the famous manual of Charles Callwell (1896) I use a transimperial corpus covering the years 1820-1920...

CFA: fellowships of 6-12 months at global dis:connect Munich 2026-7. Centre explores inter- and disconnectedness, entanglements&disentanglements in historical&contemporary globalisation(s). For Humanities&Soc.Sciences, esp. history&theatre studies&art history www.globaldisconnect.org/wp-content/u...

Somewhat flashed to see Kaye and Malleson's 'History of the Indian Mutiny' (first published in the 1870s) still in open stack at the LMU Munich History library

The Centre for Transimperial History at Leipzig University has a lecture series this semester and it looks exciting! Here's the programme: www.hsozkult.de/event/id/eve...

👀 I thought I would never see the day. www.routledge.com/Muslims-in-t... Thank you @davi-cath.hcommons.social.ap.brid.gy @kassymbekova.bsky.social @ankahajkova.bsky.social

Exciting Global History PhD opportunity here at ETH Zürich in the project 'Engineering Empires from the Margins: Global Techno-Colonialism and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, c. 1860–1980' jobs.ethz.ch/job/view/JOP...

This scene from the Portuguese film Mosquito (2020; set in Mozambique 1917) I found quite typical for the colonial national exceptionalism that I have always sought to debunk in my work. A Portuguese soldier and his German POW come upon a...

www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/mue... Munich: a commission of experts recommends the change of 39 street names. As far as I could ascertain, 7 of these concern German colonial history, and one concerns involvement in the Transatlantic trade in enslaved people. For Robert Koch, implicated in...

Uni Freiburg schreibt eine Provenienzforschungsstelle für die Alexander-Ecker-Sammlung aus. Bitte weiterleiten, das ist wichtig. uni-freiburg.de/stellenangeb...

Images related to my forthcoming book #4: one of the most shocking instances of colonial violence I found while researching my dissertation was the dynamiting of Shona cave refuges in Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) 1896-1897. The case not only further emphasised that British colonial violence was... (1)

Absolutely delighted about the publication of GLOBALIZING EUROPE: A HISTORY (Cambridge University Press): www.cambridge.org/.../globaliz... via @cambridgeup.bsky.social

Traces of colonial history around Munich: I visited the Museum of the St. Ottilien Mission last week. What struck me most was this. I knew the German colonial authorities had never banned slavery after the establishment of their East African colony. Seeing an official 1895 German document... (1/2)

Last weekend I finally managed to see the whole 'Der Kolonialismus in den Dingen' exhibition at the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich, which delves into the colonial provenance of many of their objects. It is an interesting and critical exhibition, even if personally I slightly felt the lack of a...

Congratulations @mtoiv.bsky.social! Fabulous news!

Image related to my forthcoming book #3: a rare early image of the Uganda Rifles, a British colonial force. The mobility of African mercenaries across imperial borders was quite high, contributing to transfer of knowledge of colonial violence. In one example I found, (1/3)

CFP for workshop 'Language and Power: Exploring New Global Histories of Language', Munich, 10-11 July 2025, convened by Valeska Huber: www.globaldisconnect.org/wp-content/u...

Excited about the publication of my essay 'ARE WE AT A TURNING POINT IN WORLD HISTORY?' in The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... via @theguardian.com @us.theguardian.com

Picture #2 related to my forthcoming book: Bob Bain, Frederick Burnham and Maurice Gifford in Rhodesia (current-day Zimbabwe) 1893. The image illustrates how colonial violence was transferred from one colonial frontier to the next: the three men had gathered their experience at the US/Canadian (1/2)

Yesterday, I successfully passed my "Habilitationskolloquium" at the University of Mainz. My second book (i.e. "Habilitationsschrift") – titled: "Revolutionary Families. The Transatlantic Lives of Forty-Eighters, 1848/49-1914" – will be published soon, hopefully this summer.

I noticed that publication of my book THE COLONIAL WAY OF WAR has been delayed till April 2025. In the meantime, I will try to share over the coming weeks some pictures related to the book. Starting here with the cover image: General van Heutsz with his staff in Aceh, 1901. The Dutch-Aceh War is (1)

From an academic newsletter...

Sent the proofs of my book back to the publisher. Publication should now be in a couple months!

Do all publishers send their proofs in August now, coupled with very short deadlines? I am supposed to be on holiday...

Nearly home after a nice 3 days in Amsterdam at the DIA conference ‘The global turn in German history: new developments – new challenges’. Thanks to all for the interesting papers and discussions and a special thanks to the organisers and support staff for making it so enjoyable!

My research centre again invites applications for residency fellowships of 6-12months @globaldiscnct.bsky.social in Munich. If you are post-doc or higher, Humanities/Social Sciences, and your work relates to globalisation processes & their tensions, consider applying! www.hsozkult.de/grant/id/sti...

Specialist German history question: anyone who has written more on (overseas) colonial antecedents of Germans in Ober Ost (WWI) or in the Baltic Freikorps? Literature indulges in hints but never seems to go beyond the one reference to Rochus Schmidt in Ober Ost with his East African history

Last stop on my archive itinerary: Paris, Service Historique de la Défense, Vincennes

Leaving Nantes after 4 days in the French Diplomatic Archives. Just had time to find out Nantes was actually the French centre of the Atlantic trade in enslaved people

Longing back to those days when archive visit for me meant several weeks of leafing through documents in an archive and taking notes, not a few days of frantically taking thousands of pictures to look through at a later stage...

One of the things I never fail to notice when in Britain: the sheer amount of monuments that in one way or another refer to nineteenth-century colonial wars (these are from Glasgow and Inverness)

Used a Hamburg stopover today to finally go see the 'Benin Bronzes' exhibition at MARKK Museum, which I found quite impressive. Sad reason I was still able to do so is obviously that restitution has still not been completed

Job opportunity at the University of Amsterdam: Assistant Professor of Heritage of Social Europe vacatures.uva.nl/UvA/job/Assi...

It’s been a superb two workshop days! We had great papers and discussions, and everything seemed to fit so well together. It’s been really nice meeting you all (again) - a great thanks to all who participated and to all who made this possible!

Lunch break at our 'Dis:connections in Wartime' workshop! We had two highly intriguing panels this morning on 'Colonial dis: connections' and 'Family and migration'