Author: Doing History in Public

  • Historian Highlight – Eric Williams

    Historian Highlight – Eric Williams

    By Molly Groarke (@mollygroarke) On 19th April 1944, Eric Williams (1911-1981) delivered a lecture at Trinidad Public Library on ‘The British West Indies in World History’. Williams later recalled in his memoir how the audience overflowed the space of the library. He created typed copies of the lecture to sell cheaply so his paper could reach…

  • The Declaration of Independence and the American Constitutional Conversation, 1776-1861

    The Declaration of Independence and the American Constitutional Conversation, 1776-1861

    By Joseph Opp Every year, more than one million visitors queue for over an hour to enter the rotunda at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Under its imposing dome and two brilliant murals — flanked by columns, flags, and uniformed security — are the ‘Charters of Freedom’: The Declaration of Independence, the United States…

  • Oddments of Imperium: St. Mark’s of Bangalore

    Oddments of Imperium: St. Mark’s of Bangalore

    By David Martin (Bluesky: @davidmartin8293.bsky.social Substack: @davidmartin8293 A cathedral, the seat of a bishop, is normally an august building. From the gargoyle-studded Notre Dame de Paris to the bird-woman-spotted St. Paul’s of London, monuments that bear this name are meant to represent an ancient genealogy of European Christendom. But what happens when said Christendom arrives…

  • Friedrich Dahlmann: Germany’s Most Popular Historian before1850

    Friedrich Dahlmann: Germany’s Most Popular Historian before1850

    By Yuetong Li (Twitter/X: @yuetongli_doris) Laeta viro gravitas et mentis amabile pondus. (A happy man has a gravity and a lovely weight of mind.)  —— Anton Springer Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann (1785–1860) was a staunch advocate of constitutional monarchy. During the turbulent years surrounding the Frankfurt Parliament, few figures maintained such unwavering commitment to a unified…

  • 24. ‘Morality’ Broadcasts by a Dictator

    24. ‘Morality’ Broadcasts by a Dictator

    By David Crowther Jose Efrain Ríos Montt (1926-2018) was a complicated figure, to say the least. President of Guatemala for a brief period in the 1980s, and an influential figure in Guatemalan politics thereafter, Ríos Montt was an uncompromising Protestant moralist in a country that increasingly followed his path of conversion. As leader of the…