Mau Mau to Midnapore: Confronting the brutality of empire There are certainly some Britons, including academics, journalists and human rights lawyers, who are aware of the realities of colonialism. However, in the society as a whole and in the media in the UK there are still far too many who seem strangely reluctant, even after so many decades after the end of the British empire, to come to terms with the true nature of colonialism or learn from the perspective of former subjects who had rebelled against it.
posted by infini
on May 6, 2013 -
17 comments
As you turn eyes to London to watch this year's Olympics, you might be surprised to find out that the
City of London has a population of about 11,000 and is only one square mile.
[more inside]
posted by eye of newt
on Jul 26, 2012 -
65 comments
Network Rail virtual archive Original drawings and plans of Britain's railway infrastructure from Network Rail, including the Forth Bridge, Bristol Temple Meads station, the Tay Bridge and lots more.
posted by Helga-woo
on Mar 4, 2012 -
6 comments
The Reel History of Britain, a BFI/BBC co-production, brings archive film into the nation’s living rooms. The footage shown in the series has been selected from the hundreds of thousands of films and programmes preserved in Britain’s film and television archives. We are complementing the series by making many of the films featured in The Reel History of Britain available online in their entirety, alongside expert commentary from the nation’s archive curators.
posted by Trurl
on Oct 17, 2011 -
4 comments
Robert F. Gallagher served in the United States Army's 815th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion (Third Army) in the European Theater during WWII. He has posted his memoir online:
"Scratch One Messerschmitt," told from numerous photos he took during the war and the detailed notes he made shortly afterwards.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 23, 2010 -
7 comments
London Lives 12 London archives – digitised, marked up and tagged – to "create a comprehensive electronic edition of primary sources on criminal justice and the provision of poor relief and medical care in eighteenth-century London".
The
Lives page is a good place to start browsing.
[related]
posted by unliteral
on Jun 8, 2010 -
8 comments
Educational gamesmaker Preloaded has recently made two strategy games for English TV station Channel 4.
1066 is a mix of tactics, insult-typing, bowmanship, rhythm-game and narration by Ian Holm.
Trafalgar Origins is all Napoleonic high seas derringdo all the time, as you sail your English ship in real time against the damnable French and Spanish. Whether you want to hoist the sails or call your opponent a stench weasel, they are fun little games which have the added bonus of teaching you about British history. Both games can be played solo or multiplayer.
[via Rock Paper Shotgun, where they like those games quite a lot]
posted by Kattullus
on May 5, 2010 -
14 comments
In 1937, the London News Chronicle published a photograph of five boys at the gates of Lord's cricket ground; two stood aloof in top hats and tails, with their backs to a group of three working-class lads. The resulting photograph became famous as a metaphor for the class divide in Britain, appearing in newspaper stories about school reform, inequality and bourgeois guilt and on the
covers of books. The photograph appeared in the Getty Images archive as "
Toffs and Toughs", and even was printed on a jigsaw puzzle in 2004. The identities of the three working-class boys were unknown until a journalist tracked them down in 1998;
here is an article on the history of the photograph and the lives of the five boys in it.
posted by acb
on Mar 23, 2010 -
36 comments
Norman Centuries is a new podcast by Lars Brownworth, best known for his podcast series
12 Byzantine Rulers (
previously). Norman Centuries, as the name suggests, recounts the history of the Normans, those literal vikings who gained Normandy and then England, Sicily, Malta, Antioch and, well, a whole heck of a lot of other places too. They were a conquering bunch. First two episodes are out with more to follow.
[iTunes link]
posted by Kattullus
on Oct 15, 2009 -
18 comments
Field Force to Lhasa 1903-04 Captain Cecil Mainprise accompanied General Sir Francis Younghusband's expedition to Tibet in 1903. He wrote 50
letters home which trace the expedition’s progress into Tibet. Read this insider's account on the day they were written some 105 years later. Final post is 18 November 2009.
[Via]
posted by Abiezer
on Apr 4, 2009 -
8 comments
Smuggler's Britain tells "the fascinating story of smuggling in 18th and 19th century Britain, when high taxes led to an dramatic increase in illegal imports. As the 'free trade'" grew, smugglers openly landed contraband in full view of the customs authorities: columns of heavily-armed thugs protected the cargoes." Includes a gazetteer with Google maps links so you can scope out some lonely
cove to land contraband of your own in the footsteps of your forefathers and introduces you to
famous smugglers like
Isaac Gulliver, who never killed a man in a long career. Though of course, it was an enterprise where things often would turn
ugly.
posted by Abiezer
on Oct 9, 2008 -
7 comments
After the Romans left Britain was divided into a number of
Celtic kingdoms that fought with each other and, increasingly, with the
Germanic invaders we know as "Anglo-Saxons." The most famous alleged defender of Celtic Britain, of course, is
King Arthur, but he's more myth than history. What catches my imagination is
The Gododdin (
Welsh original, by
Aneurin), an epic lament for the band of men who gathered at Eiddyn (Edinburgh, main town of
Gododdin) around the year 600 and headed south for a last-ditch battle against the Saxons at Catraeth (probably
Catterick in northern Yorkshire), where they were wiped out. One contingent was from
Elmet (Elfed in the poem), a kingdom that had been holding the line against the invaders in what's now Yorkshire; once Elmet was conquered, there was no stopping them. And all of this history was basic to the poetry of
David Jones, one of the best unknown poets of the previous century, and important to one of the best known,
Ted Hughes (
book with photos). "Men went to Catraeth, familiar with laughter. The old, the young, the strong, the weak."
posted by languagehat
on Aug 31, 2006 -
31 comments
90 years ago today, whistles blew around the river Somme in France as British troops prepared for an attack on German trenches. By the end of the day they had suffered 57,470 casualties. By the battle's end in November, there were over 600,000 Allied casualties, with perhaps the same number of German casualties. The
Imperial War Museum has launched an online exhibition, where you can find out more about
how the battle was planned, personal stories of those involved, and
myths about the attack. Elsewhere you can find copies of
Army reports on the first day, look at
film of the attack,
diaries and letters home from the troops, go on
tours of the
trenches, listen to
contemporary songs and music inspired by the battle, and see some
more modern responses.
posted by greycap
on Jul 1, 2006 -
38 comments
Ever wondered what old amounts of money would be worth today? Or what you could buy with your current salary if you went back 200, 400, or 600 years? Now you can find out with a tool that converts English currency from 1270 onwards into today's prices. Based on Treasury records, it tells you that Mr Darcy's £10,000 a year would now be worth nearly £350,000, or that your house would only have to be worth the equivalent of £500 now to qualify for the vote after 1832.
posted by greycap
on Jun 28, 2006 -
22 comments
Thanksgiving sucks. The English went on setting fire to wigwams of the village. They burned village after village to the ground. As one of the leading theologians of his day, Dr. Cotton Mather put it: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day." And Cotton Mather, clutching his bible, spurred the English to slaughter more Indians in the name of Christianity.
posted by j-urb
on Nov 24, 2005 -
55 comments
The worst jobs in history. Channel 4 takes you on a journey through 2,000 years of British history and the worst jobs of each era for minions like you and me. If you are curious whether you are best suited to be an Anglo-Saxon guillemot egg collector or a Georgian loblolly boy, take the
career guide quiz.
(via Malbec.
posted by madamjujujive
on Mar 20, 2005 -
21 comments
Images of medieval architecture. A great site put together by Alison Stones, Professor of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. There are two large gazetteers, one for
Britain, and one for
France. Besides photos, there are many plans, sketches and elevation drawings, which help to give an idea of the sheer scale of gothic cathedrals such as the cathedral of Saint-Étienne at
Bourges (scroll down for the human figures at the bottom).
posted by carter
on Jun 29, 2003 -
7 comments
Aspects of the Victorian Book is a Sunday morning kind of site, a relaxed but vivid tour of 19th century British publishing that explores production techniques such as lithography, binding and illustration, and looks at the printed works of the period (including forms such as the inexpensive "Yellowbacks" and their cousins, the usually lurid "Penny Dreadfuls").
posted by taz
on Nov 17, 2002 -
6 comments
1901 Back on it's feet again... At last it's the 1901 show!(the date not the time) and the
UK Public Record Office 1901 Census is up and testing again after having crashed due to overdemand earlier in theyear. And it works! I've discovered my great grandfather was a wheelwright and that his eldest son was a labourer at the gas works (I saw my first naked girlfriend in a bedroom in the shadow of that very gasworks!) and that I had a great great Uncle Percy!
posted by terrymiles
on Nov 15, 2002 -
4 comments
