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Breaking down barriers: are political thought history and public history irreconcilable?
By Zoe Alipranti (@ZAlipranti) Making historical subjects accessible to a wider audience is an important part of public history. Some public history writers target readers seeking to escape everyday life by immersing themselves in the fascinating stories of the past. Works on the history of political thought might not be an obvious choice here. Tales of medieval chivalry,…
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Apocalypse Then: what would past ages have made of COVID-19?
By Sam Harrison (@seph1812) As the implications of COVID-19 became clear last month, many of us began to ask why we had not done more to prepare for it: we had known for some time that the virus had the potential to become a pandemic, and for years experts had been warning successive British governments…
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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…
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14. A Special Copy of Richard Cantillon’s ‘Essai sur la Nature du Commerce’
By Alec Israeli While studying a modern edition of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, I came across editorial footnotes citing Smith’s quotations from Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général, a 1755 treatise by French political economist Richard Cantillon.[1] Wanting to consult the original source, I requested a copy to read at the Wren…
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The Stakes and Ends of Historicising Science
By Sam Phoenix Clarke (@samjphoenix) Science, broadly conceived, is the best instrument we have for understanding, predicting, and controlling the natural world in accordance with our needs. But science as it actually happens is messy, contingent, and fallible. The social processes by which science is done – the formulation of problems, the generation and testing…
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