The mining company Union Minière moved their registered headquarters from Congo to Belgium 13 days before Congolese independence so that the company's assets would out of reach of the new government.

Maybe esp. Phil Deloria's NYer piece on "the Invention of Thanksgiving." I still send that around to a lot of folks this time of year. Hope you and yours are where you wish to be, in all ways, this week/end. 4// www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

So my Atlantic World lecture lined up with Thanksgiving and I got to debunk these claims. I even said "You are going to hear people of a certain political motive make these claims and now you know how they aren't true".

Don’t ever work for someone who doesn’t believe in work-life balance if you can at all avoid it.

Thank you Franz-Stefan Gady for your very generous review of my book: "The Crusader States and Their Neighbours: A Military History, 1099–1187" Published in "War, Conflict and the Military" (2025). Link to review: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... @hoanssolo.bsky.social

Het is vandaag de Internationale Dag voor de Uitbanning van Geweld tegen Vrouwen - geweldtegenvrouwenmelden.nl/data-en-cijf... #orangetheworld #25november

De Russische ambassade stelde vandaag dat de Russen Amsterdam en Nederland in 1813 bevrijd hebben, maar de historische waarheid is zoals verwacht enorm rijkgeschakeerd. Een kleine reconstructie van het Russische handelen in het woelige jaar 1813

Enter for your chance to win a copy of Ronaldo Angelo Johnson's Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy during the American Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2025). The raffle ends this Friday (11/28) at 11:59pm EDT. ageofrevolutions.com/2025/11/24/b...

Howard Pyle’s 1906 painting, “The Battle of Nashville,” depicts the attack of two Federal brigades against rebel positions near Shy’s Hill. Many of the troops involved were Minnesotans. Pyle’s painting created a stir among veterans, some of whom felt slighted by the artist’s depiction of events.

Also, I had no idea that this made a minor note in some national news sites yesterday & that my name was mentioned. In all those mentions one journalist, just *one*, bothered to reach out to me to ask permission to use the photos and get a quote. That's the state of journalism in this country.

Een ‘zondvloedland,’ zo karakteriseerde ik het beeld van de Lage Landen in 17de- en 18de-eeuwse geleerde natuurgeschiedenissen. Het denken over het verleden van de Aarde bewoog tussen Bijbelse zondvloed en de volgende dijkdoorbraak, tussen schriftgeleerden en turfstekers. 1/

Palaeography 🧵! Or why it can take a historian a while to confirm what they already suspected must be the case and not really get any further than they were—but this time with confidence 😂 I'm working with documents that list the incomes of medieval French lordships, so a lot of it is about grain.

Tonight on Ken Burns's American Revolution, Rick Atkinson is going is going to tell you: "Muskets are mostly inaccurate beyond 80 yards...so a lot of the killing is done with the bayonet... this is really eyeball to eyeball." The trouble is, this just isn't true. 🧵1/16

Since people seem to have appreciated this, a closer look at this painting. IWM ART LD 1514 / www.iwm.org.uk/collections/...

Venezia

Looking forward ward to travelling to London tomorrow to present some tentative research from the COLVET project on how veterans in the interwar French Empire shifting the contours of citizenship. Come one, come all. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/colonial-v...

Dit bewijst dat er een groot publiek is dat behoefte heeft aan onze verhalen uit 't verleden, geschreven in wervelend proza op basis van wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Ik zal het tot in den treurnis herhalen: dit is tevens een oproep naar collega's om de hand uit de reiken naar de rest der samenleving.

It’s publication day for Law, Society and Political Culture in Late Medieval and Reformation Germany! At last, the key sources from the Holy Roman Empire - laws, treaties, and polemics - are available in English translation. #medievalsky #earlymodern manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526165893/

Speaking of revolutionary era maps, see many of them for yourself at argomaps.org #HATM

Well deserved praise for Matthew Taylor's Black Redcoats! A good read and a valuable contribution to a really understudied subject

Affiche voor toneelstuk Lucifer van Vondel, 1910. Omdat Joost vandaag jarig is. 🎉🎂🎁

I spoke to @bloomberg.com for this great article about the grim consequences of South Africa's abandoned mines at a time when gold prices are soaring: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Dinsdag 2 december, voor liefhebbers van Leidse geschiedenis. Ik ben er ook bij, zijnde een van die auteurs.

Very excited for this - should be getting my copy soon!

I have extremely strong opinions on protecting refugees. Every time this comes up I feel the need to post something, but I never know what to say. I can't believe I even need to say anything. Without Britain taking refugees I would not exist. My family would have been wiped out.

The central problem that emerged in Episode 1 of Ken Burns's new documentary about the American Revolution is that while he wants to integrate a wide range of voices and the historians responsible for this broader perspective, he refuses to allow it to disrupt a traditional and familiar narrative. 🗃️

A timely quote from Réné Rémond, writing about France in the 1930s: ‘It is the press of the right that formed public opinion … the Frenchman, even if he voted on the left, most often read a newspaper of the right, whose inclination was more and more towards Fascism.’

Of het nu om water, aardlagen of energievoorziening gaat, ik ben gefascineerd door de botsing tussen ideeën en de materiële wereld. Zoals bijvoorbeeld in de nasleep van een putboring in 1605 in Amsterdam. 1/9

The new Khruangbin re-rerelease is ethereal and a great background vibe music listen. My new standby void filler when I don’t want to listen to snoring cats. youtu.be/20cuFhgPLEo?...

Venezia

Venezia

Addendum: I quickly wrote something partially about the results, and the potential for misunderstanding, but also about history's profound irony. open.substack.com/pub/arutherf...

Right. Hitler's DNA. Brace yourselves for a deluge of misinformation and bad science. I'm in Australia, so do get in touch if you want some expert debunking.

Één van de scherpste en meest acute columns van het jaar 👇

Mediterranean Connections. The Frankish Kingdoms and the Roman Empire (476–756), The Medieval Mediterranean 145 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2025), is now also in paper print🤓. brill.com/display/titl... More good news is soon to come!

Dat was een inspirerende middag met Arjen Barel van het Storytelling Centre: over verhalen vertellen en verhalen delen! Eén van de onderdelen waar we naar keken was het concept van de ‘Hero’s Journey’, de reis van de held, bekend uit het werk van Joseph Campbell. 🧵 1/3

#OTD in 1941 Division z.b.V. issued a detailed OOB as it was moving into the Tobruk siege lines in preparation for the assault on the fortress. About a week later it was renamed as 90th Light, the name under which it would become famous in the desert war. @cedricmas.bsky.social

En zo sluipt ongelijkheid er vanaf de allereerste levensdag al in.

Belloludi Made national tv last night! At 14:08. www.hartvannederland.nl/uitzendingen...

See also: Kier Starmer.

#BoekenTip | Tussen horst en griend: www.atlascontact.nl/boek/tussen-... @casparjanssen.bsky.social 💧Ontdekking van het landschap aan de hand van 60 verdwijnende woorden, zoals (hieronder): balkengat, trekvaart, geest, vlechtheg en ⬇️ griend

Ha, dat is mooi. Mijn boek over Floris staat nu aangekondigd in de catalogus van Walburg Pers. Met een prachtige aanbeveling van Martine Gosselink (dir. Mauritshuis, waar Floris’ portret hangt). www.walburgpers.nl/nl/book/9789...

'Unlike old authoritarianism built on fear and force, this new system rules through code, capital, and infrastructure — making resistance feel architecturally impossible.'

Someone at a Russell Group university was moved to almost-poetry by their Faculty Meeting… Can anyone do better?

What a disambiguating opening line of caution! "Not to be confused with other massacres in El Fasher, such as during the Darfur genocide of 2003–2005."

Ich kann meine Freude kaum in Worte fassen: Mein erster Aufsatz ist heute erschienen!!!☺️🥳 Ich danke @bgebert.openbiblio.social.ap.brid.gy und @lasarroise.bsky.social für die tolle Zusammenarbeit und @kpo.bsky.social für die wunderbare Unterstützung!😇 #medievalsky mittelalter.hypotheses.org/37941

🎥 Then & Now The Lost Generation | Where they fell Verdun, Champagne, the Chemin des Dames, Somme, where over a 1.3m young and old French soldiers fell. Then & now, where they fell, their faces and their memory 🥀 Glimpse below, for the full film 👇 youtu.be/mvFPmB_5K10?si…

Publication day in 🇬🇧 #AdvanceBritannia