Africa, Cape of Good Hope, maritime security, naval history, piracy, Suez Canal
The nostalgic view that the classical polytheist world is one of religious tolerance and coexistence, whereas monotheism, which is exclusivist, is responsible for much of the religious violence perpetrated between the rise of Christianity and the end of pre-modern history. A dominant model that of the religious marketplace, is related, and similarly benchmarks the conversion of Constantine and …
As part of the United Kingdom’s response to the escalating HIV/AIDS crisis during the 1980s, special wards and community-based services were established to care for people living with HIV/AIDS (PWHA).  Much of the pioneering and innovative care developed at these centres can be attributed to nurses. However, UK nursing history has hitherto neglected to tell their stories. This chapter…
When the war was over in 1945, Germany was a country with no government, little functioning infrastructure, millions of refugees and homeless people, and huge foreign armies living largely off the land. Large parts of the country were covered in rubble, with no clean drinking water, electricity, or gas. Hospitals overflowed with patients, but were short of beds, medicines, and medical personnel…
Parallel to the abolition of Atlantic slavery, new forms of indentured labour stilled global capitalisms need for cheap, disposable labour. The famous coolie trade - mainly Asian labourers transferred to French and British islands in the Indian Ocean, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas, as well as to Portuguese colonies in Africa - was one of the largest migration m…
"The relational complexity of urban and rural landscapes in space and in time. The development of historical geographical information systems (HGIS) and other methods from the digital humanities have revolutionised historical research on cultural landscapes. Additionally, the opening up of increasingly diverse collections of source material, often incomplete and difficult to interpret, has led …
"The relational complexity of urban and rural landscapes in space and in time. The development of historical geographical information systems (HGIS) and other methods from the digital humanities have revolutionised historical research on cultural landscapes. Additionally, the opening up of increasingly diverse collections of source material, often incomplete and difficult to interpret, has led …
This chapter focuses on Françoise, a dummy figure of the upper part of the female human body used for calibrating radiation detectors in laboratories around the world. From spring 1962 to the end of 1965, Godofredo Gómez Crespo, a Spanish physicist employed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, travelled the world carrying Françoise in a box-like suitcase that also included a number of …
In The New Midlife Self-Writing, Wittman treats recent self-writing by Rachel Cusk, Roxane Gay, Sarah Manguso, and Maggie Nelson, carefully situating these vital midlife works within the history of self-writing. She argues that they renew and redirect the autobiographical trajectories characteristic of earlier self-writing by switching their orientation to face the future and by celebrating mid…
This chapter provides a brief introduction to mortality patterns over the last two centuries, from a global perspective. The period witnessed enormous and ubiquitous rises in life expectancy at birth, from a global average of perhaps 30 years in 1800 to an estimated average of 72.6 years in 2019. Remarkably, these changes took place despite a perhaps seven- to eight-fold increase of the worldâ€â€¦