Image supplied by author. Last month, the Natural Environment Research Council invited the public to propose names for its new £200 million research vessel. [1] NERC intended to inspire people to read more about polar history and to generate interest in the ship’s future activities. It captured the public imagination, but in the most unexpected…
Month: November 2016
Only out to save themselves? Dr Sarah Roddy explores the history of fraudulent charity fundraisers.
Camilla Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kids Company. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. To anyone with even a passing knowledge of Victorian and Edwardian charities, the recent spectacular demise of Kids’ Company will have thrown up some strikingly familiar tropes. The charismatic, well-intentioned figurehead and founder, adept at using the media to build support, but then, virtually…
Antrobus the cleric and Peter the cock: Dr James Mawdesley discusses civil war, ministry and animal baptism in mid-seventeenth century Cumberland
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This cockerel is not, alas, historic; but it is a cockerel. What was the inspiration for this project? I came across the case of Isaac Antrobus during my doctoral research, about the political activisms of the clergy in Lancashire and Cheshire during the reign of Charles I (1625-1649). I had…
‘Every dynasty has within itself the seeds of its own downfall’? Dr Georg Christ discusses what economists can learn from the medieval writings of Ibn Khaldûn
Morroccan stamp featuring Ibn Khaldûn courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. In August last year, I attended the World Economic History Congress in Kyoto where I presented a paper on Ibn Khaldûn (1332-1406), the Arabic historian, lawyer and polymath. I was tasked to look at medieval thoughts on state intervention in the economic sector. I thought Ibn…
History@Manchester 