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Collecting Weather Data: The Use of Scientific Instruments in Nineteenth-Century Climate Research

The climate crisis is forcing us to look more closely: weather phenomena and climatic changes are now monitored using state-of-the-art satellites, computer models, and sensors. However, recording and understanding the climate has a long history that is characterized by technological innovations and geopolitical interests, as well as everyday ideas and knowledge about climate (and weather) that cannot be recorded using scientific methods alone. My research project aims to contribute to this long history by analysing the everyday understanding of climate in the period between 1850 and 1970—that is, before the emergence of political debates on climate change and environmental degradation in response to the 1972 Club of Rome report—using various examples from German-speaking countries.

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The End of the Guilds in Syria

In the Ottoman cities of what was later to become the state of Syria, premodern guilds survived well into the 1920s. By that time, too, the infant trade union movement was beginning to take shape. Three laws shaped the transition from craft guilds to trade unions as the dominant institutions for organizing labourers in Syria. The first was the law on craft associations of 1912, issued after a group of modernist Ottoman army officers, called the Young Turks, had toppled Sultan Abdülhamid II in a revolution in 1908; the second law, on professional associations, was issued in 1935 during the French Mandate over Syria; and the third was the Labour Code, one of the very first laws issued after Syria gained independence from France in 1946. Three states—three laws. While my PhD project focuses on this period of change and the relationship between these two very different forms of organization, guilds and trade unions, the aim of my visit to the National Archives in London was to find out more about the period just before that—about the late nineteenth century and the profound changes the Ottoman guilds underwent in the wake of the capitalist penetration of the regional economy.

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Facets of Transnationalism in the Late Nineteenth Century: New Perspectives on the History of Folklore Studies

‘The many indications that the study and collection of Folk-lore is now engaging the attention of most countries in Europe make it necessary that this Society, being the first to introduce a systematic study of Folk-lore, should as far as possible work in unison and confederation with similar organizations abroad, and should draw within its membership foreign scholars and students.’1

This quote is from the annual report, published on 2 June 1886, of the Folklore Society—one of the earliest professional associations in the discipline of folklore studies (known in German-speaking regions today as Empirische Kulturwissenschaft, Europäische Ethnologie, or Kulturanthropologie). At the time, ‘folklore studies’ mainly meant the study of ‘the people’s’ customs, fairy tales, legends, oral traditions, and so on—although its disciplinary boundaries were not yet strict, but were still shifting. The quote refers to an aspect of the history of the discipline that has thus far received little attention: the transnational activities of actors and institutions. Although the institutionalization of the discipline, was often in close step with national and even National Socialist aspirations, the question arises as to how this development was related to the global and imperial interests that equally characterized this period. Was there also activity across national borders in the early phases of the discipline? And if so, what were the impacts of its successes and failures?

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  1. ‘The Folk-Lore Society: Eighth Annual Report of the Council. 2nd June, 1886’, Folk-Lore Journal, 4/4 (1886), 369–74, at 369. []

Sketching Conceptual History’s ‘Janus Face’: Reinhart Koselleck and Karl Löwith

While a student at Heidelberg University between 1947 and 1948, Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006) sketched a curious self-portrait. Drawn as part of his archaeology course, Koselleck sketched himself lying vertically, head down and feet up, under the surface of the earth, shovelling through layers of sediment in pursuit of artefacts with which to document a human past.1 A talented caricaturist, Koselleck’s self-portrait is not alone in his collection. Alongside this sit sketches of his teachers: a fringe coterie of philosophers, including Karl Löwith (1897–1973), who left an indelible imprint on Koselleck’s intellectual world as a student.

Self-portrait by Reinhardt Koselleck.
Reinhart Koselleck, Self-Portrait as an Archaeologist, reproduced from Katharina Koselleck and Ruppe Koselleck (eds.), Vorbilder—Nachbilder: Gezeichnet von Reinhart Koselleck (Bielefeld, 1983), 4 . Reinhart Koselleck, Ende einer Moritat bei Professor Wahle, Selbstdarstellung als Frühhistoriker, 1947, 27.5 x 40.5 cm, ©Erbengemeinschaft Reinhart Koselleck.

Peculiarly, when interviewed by Christof Dipper in 1998, Koselleck cited his theoretical commitment to a panoply of figures at Heidelberg, including Otto Brunner and Carl Schmitt, but made no mention of Löwith.2 Nonetheless, the intellectual lineage is self-evident; their pedagogical relationship clear. As a student, Koselleck co-translated portions of Meaning in History; he wrote the foreword to Löwith’s autobiography; and in 1967, he published ‘Historia Magistra Vitae’, the draft for his lexicographical article ‘Geschichte/Historie’, in a Festschrift for Löwith.3 Critical scholarship on the Koselleck–Löwith connection has thus far placed a thematic focus on the premise of a secularized eschatology and a historiographical focus on Koselleck’s Kritik und Krise (1954).4 This blog post will demonstrate, however, that Löwith’s influence on Koselleck is not limited to Kritik und Krise , nor indeed the premise of a secularized eschatology, but rather underpins Koselleck’s principles of Begriffsgeschichte (‘conceptual history’), as formulated within the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (‘Basic Historical Concepts’).  

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  1. Some of Koselleck’s drawings have been published in Katharina Koselleck and Ruppe Koselleck (eds.), Vorbilder—Nachbilder: Gezeichnet von Reinhart Koselleck (Bielefeld, 1983). The drawings depict, among other things, teachers and friends from Heidelberg University, and scenes and impressions from German and international politics from 1947 until 1980. []
  2. Christof Dipper, ‘Begriffsgeschichte, Sozialgeschichte, begriffene Geschichte: Reinhart Koselleck im Gespräch mit Christof Dipper’, Neue Politische Literatur, 43 (1998), 187–205, at 187. []
  3. Reinhart Koselleck, ‘Historia Magistra Vitae: Über die Auflösung des Topos im Horizont neuzeitlich bewegter Geschichte’, in Hermann Braun and Manfred Riedel (eds.), Natur und Geschichte: Karl Löwith zum 70. Geburtstag (Stuttgart, 1967), 196–219. []
  4. See for instance Hans Joas, ‘Die Kontingenz der Säkularisierung: Überlegungen zum Problem der Säkularisierung im Werk Reinhart Kosellecks’, in Hans Joas and Peter Vogt, Begriffene Geschichte: Beiträge zum Werk Reinhart Kosellecks (Berlin, 2011), 319–39. []

‘More a denial than a safeguard of rights’: Law, Politics, and Constitutional Discussions in Mandatory Palestine

In the autumn of 1930, a long memorandum landed on the desk of Lord Frederick Lugard, the British representative to the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. It had been sent by Chaim Weizmann, the president of the Zionist Organization, with whom Lugard was in close contact over the affairs of Palestine, then a British mandate. At the time, Weizmann was working intensively to mitigate the implications of the statement of policy by the British Government, the ‘Passfield White Paper’, published in October of that year. This statement, which came about following reports on the causes of inter-communal violence in the summer of 1929 and the conditions of land available for settlement and development in Palestine, confirmed the government’s intention to limit Jewish immigration and land purchases. It also reaffirmed its plan to establish self-governing institutions in Palestine, as stipulated in the Mandate granted to Britain by the League of Nations in the summer of 1922.1

Continue reading ‘More a denial than a safeguard of rights’: Law, Politics, and Constitutional Discussions in Mandatory Palestine
  1. ‘Statement of Policy by His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom’, Oct. 1930, 3692, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online, at [https://palestinianmandate.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/cm-3692.pdf], accessed 14 Nov. 2024. []

European Integration Re-Woven: British and West German Textile Employers’ Associations and European Integration, 1958–1980

Despite being famous for a skyline dotted with cranes and modern developments, a journey to Manchester is also a journey back in time. Once known for the role the city, and the textiles at the heart of it, played in the industrial revolution, Greater Manchester still has many remnants from days of past industrial glory. The derelict cotton mills and warehouses, for instance, which can be spotted on the twenty-minute train journey from Manchester Piccadilly to Bolton. Horrockses is one such remnant—a textile company with a history of nearly 200 years and a fashion line once so coveted that even Queen Elizabeth wore Horrockses dresses during her tour of the Commonwealth in the 1950s.1 Bolton, once an important town for textile production, also commemorates its history with statues of personalities such as Samuel Crompton (born in Bolton and inventor of the spinning mule), who revolutionized the industrial production of textiles.

Continue reading European Integration Re-Woven: British and West German Textile Employers’ Associations and European Integration, 1958–1980
  1. Horrockses, Crewsdon & Co, Preston. Lancashire City Council Archive, accessed 5 Nov. 2024. []

Human Interest in the Global South: The Gemini News Service (1967–2002)

As a metaphor, Marshall McLuhan’s ‘global village’ has seen better days.1 During optimistic times, it succinctly conveyed the image of an ever more closely connected world in which people separated by vast distances could easily have a chat, as if across the garden fence or at the local pub. Nowadays, however, it is described at best as a pastoral front for enduring colonial power structures in the global media system, and at worst as inspired by colonial warfare.2 Yet during the second half of the twentieth century, the villages of the world were central to journalistic projects that sought to change the colonial structure of the global media system.

Continue reading Human Interest in the Global South: The Gemini News Service (1967–2002)
  1. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, reprint (Cambridge, MA and London, 1994 [1964]), 34. []
  2. See Ginger Nolan, The Neocolonialism of the Global Village (Minneapolis, MN, 2018). []

(De)Constructing Europe? Some Findings . . .

Bringing together nine researchers based in Hamburg, London, Rome, and Warsaw, the (De)Constructing Europe project (also known as the ‘Euroscepticism project’), sought to view the history of European integration through different lenses. Challenging and moving beyond what some, such as Mark Gilbert, have termed the ‘progressive narrative’, whereby the European Union is portrayed as inexorably heading towards closer integration, the project sought to cast light on alternative viewpoints and underappreciated actors.

Continue reading (De)Constructing Europe? Some Findings . . .

‘Fuel Poverty’ and the Crisis of Welfare in Britain, 1970s–1980s

When former and present tenants of Hulme Crescents, a social housing estate in Manchester, were asked in 1990 to write down their thoughts on the estate as part of the Hulme Views Project,1 their recollections varied. While some remembered their time in the Crescents as being rather depressing and precarious, others emphasized the feeling of home and the unique community spirit that prevailed among its residents. As different as the perceptions were, there was one (albeit not the only) recurring theme mentioned by numerous tenants—the inefficient electric heating system, resulting in exorbitantly high energy costs.

Continue reading ‘Fuel Poverty’ and the Crisis of Welfare in Britain, 1970s–1980s
  1. The Hulme Views Project was initiated in 1990 by the residents of the Hulme Crescents and was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. At the time, demands for demolition of the Crescents ran high and captured the interest of the public. The aim of the project was to produce ‘a book, which tells the overall story of Hulme from . . . [the] residents’ point of view.’ Views from the Crescents: Writing, Photographs and Illustrations by People from the Crescents Area of Hulme (Manchester, 1991), n. pag. [Introduction]. []

‘Alionor Cobhame conspyryd the kynges deth’: The Magic Trial of Eleanor Cobham, 1441

My clerks called up and down
All was but mischief that they meant;
Our sovereign lord and king with crown
Him to destroy was our attempt.
Almighty God omnipotent,
He knew full well our cruelty;
Look, for such harms I am now ruined –
All women may be warned by me.1

For Eleanor Cobham—Duchess of Gloucester and wife of King Henry V’s brother—the accusation of magic against her in July 1441 came as a complete surprise. Four of her personal astrologers and nigromancers (magicians who perform magic with the help of demons) and the witch Margery Jourdemayne were also imprisoned for practising magic against the king. At this point, the duchess was aware of her perilous situation. After taking refuge in Westminster Abbey, she was brought before the royal council. The charges were: using harmful magic against the king with the help of Roger Bolingbroke, Thomas Southwell, and other clerics; and ordering a love potion to be made by Margery Jourdemayne so that she could marry the king’s brother Humphrey. Hilary Carey argues that the harmful magic ordered by the duchess was a horoscope predicting the king’s death.2 Contemporaries often regarded astrology as a demonic art, and calculating the date of the king’s death was treason. The duchess’ interest in such a horoscope could be explained by the fact that her husband was next in line to the throne.

Continue reading ‘Alionor Cobhame conspyryd the kynges deth’: The Magic Trial of Eleanor Cobham, 1441
  1. John Lydgate, ‘The Lament of the Duchess of Gloucester, 1441’, in Rossell H. Robbins (ed.), Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York, 1959), 178. I have edited the Middle English text into Modern English with the help of Jozef van der Voort (GHIL). []
  2. Hilary M. Carey, Courting Disaster: Astrology at the English Court and University in the Later Middle Ages (New York, 1992), 144–7. []