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Shipwrecks and Sand dunes: A Brief History of Sable Island
By Aoife O’Leary McNeice (@aolmcn) ‘Unless I’m clean lost, we must now be somewhere near Sable Island. I’m expecting to hear the roar of its breakers any minute, and once the Francis gets amongst them, God help us all!’ These are the words of Captain Reefwell in James Macdonald Oxley’s 1897 adventure story The Wreckers of Sable Island. The Island…
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Re-educating the enemy: German Prisoners of War in Britain
By Emily Redican-Bradford As the Second World War in Europe entered its final stages, Allied governments began to focus on how to deal with a defeated Germany. The leaders of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union were determined to eradicate Nazism, in the hope of preventing the eruption of another global conflict. In…
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‘No Stamp Act’: Pots & Politics in Early America
By Evelyn Strope (@emstrope) Although it may come as a shock to a twenty-first-century consumer, tea was once a political brew. The strong, steeped leaves and the teapots, teacups, and silverware that accompanied them were representative of clashes between imperialism and commercialism in the Atlantic world. As tea shifted from luxury to necessity in early…
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Serving ex-servicemen? Demobilisation schemes in India after the Second World War
By Mobeen Hussain (@amhuss27) The demobilisation of soldiers has always been fraught with questions regarding jobs, re-skilling, pensions, rehabilitation and transition into peace time society. Such challenges were particularly pronounced at the apexes of the First and Second World Wars due to the sheer scale of demobilisation.
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Unconventional History: El Paso, Texas according to an early-twentieth-century postcard
By Savannah Pine (@savannah_pine) El Paso, Texas (my hometown) features in the news frequently nowadays because of the migrant crisis and the administration’s desire to build a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico. The border, which lies along the Rio Grande, separates a large urban area into two cities: El Paso…
