Before 28-year-old Olivia Packard walked up the steps of the Public Health Office on Neumarkt in Cologne on 23 November 1984, she had already worked as a prostitute in several German cities.1 Olivia was a British citizen. She had been born and raised in the mid 1950s near Epping Forest District, Essex, north-east of London. In 1982, she left the United Kingdom and migrated to the north of the Federal Republic of Germany to offer sexual services. A year later, she moved to Essen. There, and at times also in Cologne and Düsseldorf, she continued to work in prostitution. From 1984 onwards, she was employed at the Eros Centre at Hornstraße 2 in Cologne, one of the largest brothels in West Germany, later known as ‘Pascha’. At the end of the same year, in December 1984, she moved to Munich to continue her work there.2
Continue reading Sexual Borderlands and Social Margins: Prostitution and Migration in West Germany, 1949–1989/1990
Indian Samajvad in the History of Twentieth-Century Socialism
As one of the most widely influential political ideas and movements of the twentieth century, socialism had a history that was at once global and had various regional forms depending on the national contexts in which it took shape. In the years after the revolution in industrially backward Russia, socialism appeared to many—especially in colonized countries—not only as the way to challenge imperialist rule but also as a means to effect widespread socio-economic transformation in their countries. Such was the case in India, where socialists began articulating visions of an independent India free from colonialism, capitalism, and existing forms of exploitation. Socialism promised real freedom—not just political self-determination and sovereignty, but also economic freedom for the masses.1
Continue reading Indian Samajvad in the History of Twentieth-Century Socialism- Jayaprakash Narayan, a leading member of the Congress Socialist Party, sought to present this case at length in his Why Socialism? (Benares, 1936), a key ideological document of the Congress Socialists. [↩]
Measures of Success and Failure: Remembering Money in Medieval History Writing
At the beginning of February, Marcus Meer’s project ‘Money, History, and Moral Economies: Communicative Functions of Monetary Information in the Institutional Historiography of the Later Middle Ages (1250–1530)’ welcomed Gabriele Passabì to the team. Together, Dr Meer and Dr Passabì will look at why medieval chronicles abound in specific numeric references to sums of money (such as prices, taxes, debts, exchange rates) and broader discussions of monetary topics (about the debasement of currency, or problems with inflation or deflation, for example). Monetary rhetoric, the project argues, was a versatile communicative tool used in medieval chronicles to serve institutional strategies of remembering the past for the needs of the (medieval) present and to frame aspirations for the future. By investigating the monetary rhetoric of chronicles produced by and for cities, monasteries (both men’s and women’s), and courts in England, the Low Countries, and northern Germany between the thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the project will trace different manifestations of expanding monetary consciousness(es) and the economic thought and practice that accompanied them. In this post, they give a glimpse of their current work.
Continue reading Measures of Success and Failure: Remembering Money in Medieval History Writing
Viola Klein: A Neglected Key Theorist of Gender Studies
Names such as Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, or Simone Weil tend to evoke particular associations in people’s minds, even if these are somewhat vague or disparate. But we cannot say the same with any certainty for Viola Klein (1907–73). And yet, as a theorist and social researcher, she was highly attuned to the societal crises and failings of her time—especially the persistent gender inequalities and women’s experiences of oppression—and helped to address them. When comparing Klein to other thinkers, we must pay particular attention to her major work of social theory: The Feminine Character: History of an Ideology, published in 1946 by Routledge & Kegan Paul in the ‘International Library of Sociology’ series, which was founded by Karl Mannheim.
Continue reading Viola Klein: A Neglected Key Theorist of Gender Studies
On the Trail of Kaviani
According to legend, ‘Kaviani’ was the name given to their standard by the Sassanian warriors who won their independence from the foreign ruler Zahhāk. Kaviani was meant to show the world their triumph against tyranny and foreign domination. It became a royal banner and the first flag of Persia, remaining so until the seventh century CE, and the story of this heroic uprising developed into the national myth of Iran.1 At the beginning of the twentieth century, during a sweeping political and cultural renaissance movement in Iran, this national narrative once again came to the fore. When Iran was occupied by British and Russian troops in 1907, exiled Iranians spread their national myth far beyond their nation’s borders. As far away as Weimar Berlin, the name of the Sassanian standard was bestowed upon a Persian printworks and publishing house. The company’s logo was the Farāvahār, originally a Zoroastrian symbol for the spirit that also became a secular and cultural icon, especially after the fall of the Sassanian empire. Contrary to what one might assume, however, Kaviani took on a transnational outlook after 1920 and printed multilingual anti-colonial periodicals in various languages and scripts—including Arabic, Farsi, Ottoman Turkish, Urdu, English, and German. From the Berlin suburb of Charlottenburg, its publications reached numerous colonized and semi-colonized territories across West Asia and North Africa.
Continue reading On the Trail of Kaviani- Djalal Khaleghi-Motlagh, ‘Derafš-e kāvīān’, Encyclopaedia Iranica, 7 Nov. 2013. [↩]
Capturing Images: Butterfly Collecting and the Colour Printing Revolution
In 1767, the taxonomist Carl Linnaeus coined the term imago to describe the adult stage of an insect’s life cycle, borrowing a Latin word meaning ‘image’ or ‘likeness’.1 He thereby designated the winged insect as the true form of each species: the ‘image’ revealed once an insect has shed its prior disguises as an egg, larva, or pupa. Yet by the nineteenth century, as butterfly and moth (or Lepidoptera) collecting expanded from a fringe activity to become a widespread recreational pastime, the metaphor acquired a deeper resonance. With their spectacular colours, patterns, and symmetries, adult moths and butterflies came to be valued above all as images. Their beauty, argued Christian Friedrich Vogel in his 1822 butterfly guide, ‘is probably the reason why so many collectors place their collected butterflies under glass like pictures, in order to decorate a room.’2 Yet the seventy-eight finely coloured illustrations in Vogel’s book go to show that butterflies were a peculiar kind of picture. In order to create them—a laborious art that encompassed seeking, chasing, catching, killing, spreading, drying, pinning, and arranging—you needed to start with pictures. My PhD project takes this doubling of specimen and image as its point of departure, investigating the role of colour-printed illustrations in transforming moths and butterflies into collectable commodities.
Continue reading Capturing Images: Butterfly Collecting and the Colour Printing Revolution- Carl Linnaeus, Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis, 12th edn, 3 vols. (Stockholm, 1767–8), vol. i, pt. ii. 535. [↩]
- Christian Friedrich Vogel, Schmetterlings-Cabinet für Kinder (Leipzig, 1822–8), p. iii. [↩]
The Pirate, the Sovereign, and the Subject: Old Enemies and New Problems in the Face of Maritime Modernity (1890–1939)
In the last third of the nineteenth century, the seas radically changed. From the end of the 1870s onwards, Western-controlled steam and later diesel shipping established its global hegemony as the driving force of maritime mobility. Ironclad and motorized ships liberated shipping from the vagaries of the currents and monsoon winds. For the first time, they enabled precise schedules and furthermore massively increased transport capacities and speeds.1 This also produced unintended consequences. Lower Hajj costs led to a surge in pilgrim numbers and heightened the risk of global epidemics, such as cholera. Expanded capacities likewise intensified the movement of goods deemed dangerous by European empires, such as firearms to the East African coast.2 The combined effect was a broad devaluation of existing expertise, while rapid advances in mobility and communication reshaped expectations of maritime regulation. In short, European empires had to relearn how to read, identify, and secure ships, coastlines, and maritime mobility.
One of my three case studies examines how a new form of maritime violence in the waters around Hong Kong challenged European empires from 1900 onwards. My GHIL scholarship allowed me to visit British archives that hold a plethora of valuable documents on this under-researched story. This form of violence forced the British Empire in particular to rethink a centuries-old imperial bogeyman: the pirate.
Continue reading The Pirate, the Sovereign, and the Subject: Old Enemies and New Problems in the Face of Maritime Modernity (1890–1939)- Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 2020), 404–9. [↩]
- Eric Tagliacozzo, ‘Hajj in the Time of Cholera: Pilgrim Ships and Contagion from Southeast Asia to the Red Sea’, in James L. Gelvin and Nile Green (eds.), Global Muslims in the Age of Steam and Print (Berkeley, 2013), 103–20; Felix Brahm, Merchandise of Power: Der Waffenhandel zwischen Europa und Ostafrika (1850–1919) (Frankfurt am Main, 2022). [↩]
The Derry Civil Rights Movement: Between Historical Memory and Ongoing Struggle. Combining Archival Research and Fieldwork
My first journey to Derry (or Londonderry, depending on one’s political orientation and identity) brought me directly into the city’s living history. I arrived to attend the annual Think Left conference, held each year on the first weekend of October to commemorate the civil rights march of 5 October 1968, a pivotal moment often described as the symbolic opening to the Troubles. Sponsored largely by the city’s left-wing community, particularly the party People Before Profit, the conference served as a contemporary reminder of the enduring resonance of 1968. This year’s discussions centred heavily on Palestine Action, featuring speakers from Gaza and addressing the mounting restrictions on protest in the UK. The seamless interweaving of past and present was most palpable when Eamonn McCann, veteran of the Northern Irish civil rights movement (especially in the locality of Derry) and lifelong activist, reflected on his decades of political engagement and on how socialist frameworks have shaped both his understanding of protest and his imagination of social change.
As a historian, one may ask why I would immerse myself in a space where activists exchange ideas, mobilize campaigns, and articulate contemporary grievances. The short answer lies in the focus of my PhD project: I study how historical events are remembered, mobilized, and reframed across time, and how their meanings shift depending on who invokes them and for what purpose. My background in history and global studies has trained me not merely to reconstruct events historically, but to interrogate the narrative processes through which these events acquire significance and meaning up to the present day—for both the (historical) actors and historians alike. In other words, I work at the intersection of history and memory, assuming that the two are never separate but continuously shape one another.
Continue reading The Derry Civil Rights Movement: Between Historical Memory and Ongoing Struggle. Combining Archival Research and Fieldwork
Between Control and Emancipation: Youth Work with the Second Generation of Post-Colonial Immigrants in 1970s and 1980s London
‘The Fire Next Time’—with this alarming subtitle, the British Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) published a report on ‘youth in multi-racial society’. It stressed that the children of post-colonial migrants from India, Pakistan, and the Caribbean faced disadvantages in education and the labour market. Spending much of their time in public spaces and out of work, these young people had become a focus of public concern. The CRE argued that youth work should play a central role, particularly by engaging ‘Black youth’ in inner-city areas, described as ‘virtually or totally alienated from society’, through supervised leisure programmes aimed at averting unrest.1
Continue reading Between Control and Emancipation: Youth Work with the Second Generation of Post-Colonial Immigrants in 1970s and 1980s London- Commission for Racial Equality, Youth in Multi-Racial Society: The Urgent Need for New Policies. ‘The Fire Next Time’ (London, 1980), 11. [↩]
‘History of the Wahûma’? Publishing Practices and Colonial Knowledge Production
The first Europeans to travel through the interlacustrine region of East Africa, between Lake Victoria in the east and Lakes Albert, Edward, and Tanganyika in the west, were John Hanning Speke (1827–64) and James Augustus Grant (1827–92), who were searching for the source of the White Nile between 1860 and 1863. Sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society of London and supported by their guide and translator known as Sidi Mubarak (called ‘Bombay’ by Speke),1 they travelled on foot from Zanzibar, through the Arab trading town of Tabora (then called Kazé), before turning north and wandering through the kingdoms of Karagwe, Buganda, and Bunyoro to the settlement of Gondokoro. Their roughly three-year journey was documented by Speke and Grant alike in extensive bound volumes.
Continue reading ‘History of the Wahûma’? Publishing Practices and Colonial Knowledge Production- Richard Burton recorded his name as ‘Seedy Mubarak Mombai (Bombay)’. Richard Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa: A Picture of Exploration (London, 1860), 3. [↩]