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‘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). []

‘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. []

 ‘The problem is organising time, not work.’ Exploring Working Time Regulations and the Determination of ‘Scientific Wages’ in Ahmedabad through the Archives of the Wellcome Collection, London

How do we organize working time? This question has repeatedly come to the fore, particularly at historical junctures of technological change. Following the Second World War, countries in both the Global North and South sought to find new answers to problems of human–machine interactions. The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations’ studies on sociotechnical systems— today in the archives of the Wellcome Collection, London—have recently attracted renewed attention.1 As questions on the future of work re-emerge, it may be useful to look back at the past.

Continue reading  ‘The problem is organising time, not work.’ Exploring Working Time Regulations and the Determination of ‘Scientific Wages’ in Ahmedabad through the Archives of the Wellcome Collection, London
  1. e.g. Kena Wani, ‘Pedagogies of Development, Conceptions of Efficiency: Modern Managerialism in Industrial Ahmedabad, 1950s–1960s’, Enterprise & Society, FirstView (2023), 1–34. []

‘Consider Margaret Thatcher’s premiership as ground zero for the mess we are in now’: The British Housing Crisis in Non-Fiction

The UK is in the midst of a housing crisis that is causing hardship for millions of Britons. Over the past few years, the worsening situation has been reflected in the market for non-fiction books. In a small bookshop in north London, I counted more than half a dozen new titles dealing with the housing crisis —and a more systematic search brings the number up to at least fifteen published in the last five years. How do these books explain the crisis? In what follows, I would like to take a close look from a historian’s point of view. To what extent are these accounts informed by the contemporary history of housing and housing policy? I am not attempting a comprehensive collective review, but I would like to consider the following non-fiction books: Nick Gallent’s Whose Housing Crisis? and Liam Halligan’s Home Truths (both 2019), Bob Colenutt’s book on The Hidden Reality Behind the Housing Crisis (2020), the award-winning Tenants by Vicky Spratt (2022), A Home of One’s Own by Hashi Mohamed (2022), and All The Houses I’ve Ever Lived In by Kieran Yates (2023). This selection takes in books from very different backgrounds, including those by journalists and social scientists, but also by activists and people affected by the situation, whose books resemble memoirs. This not only reveals the breadth of the debate and its broad political horizon. Since none of the books eschews a historical perspective, the selection also makes visible a widespread understanding of the neoliberal history of recent decades and its strengths and weaknesses in explaining the present.

Continue reading ‘Consider Margaret Thatcher’s premiership as ground zero for the mess we are in now’: The British Housing Crisis in Non-Fiction

Too German for Holocaust Research? Alfred Wiener and Louis de Jong on the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1952

In October 1952, Alfred Wiener and Louis de Jong compared notes on the still relatively new Institute for Contemporary History in Munich (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, IfZ), wondering whether its staff members would be capable of conducting research on National Socialism. While non-Jewish German researchers claimed that Jews were too preoccupied with and emotional about the Holocaust, these two Jewish researchers raised questions concerning the Germans’ political affiliations. 

Continue reading Too German for Holocaust Research? Alfred Wiener and Louis de Jong on the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1952

Britain’s View of the German Cult of the Dead: A Media History Perspective

In September 1943, at a time when the Second World War was turning into a military debacle for the German Wehrmacht, the Leicester Evening Mail published an article entitled ‘The New German Valhalla: Nazis’ Pagan Cult of Death’. In it, the author analysed the current state of German wartime society and focused in particular on the central importance of the cult of death in German warfare:

Understand Germany’s morbid addiction to the Nibelungenlied, and you will understand also Germany’s official mood after Stalingrad, when for weeks the radio played funeral marches and newspapers, newsreels and Nazi speakers wallowed in a revolting orgy of death, morbidity and shameless self-pity . . . This sadistic longing for the ‘glorious’ and universal death is a dangerous element in the German make-up we must not forget, however much we may despise it . . . Everything that comes out of Germany these days reveals that the cult of death and immolation is spreading in the Reich . . . But perhaps, with bombs raining from the skies in ever-increasing volume . . . the Germans may yet learn that death is far from sweet and glorious even under a tyrant of their own making.1

Continue reading Britain’s View of the German Cult of the Dead: A Media History Perspective
  1. ‘The New German Valhalla: Nazis’ Pagan Cult of Death’, Leicester Evening Mail, 22 Sept. 1943, 3. []

‘Political Balance’ or ‘Natural Growth’? The British Mandate, Meir Dizengoff, and the Struggle over Tel Aviv Port in the 1920s and 1930s

On 24 February 1938, a crowd of 30,000 onlookers gathered in the rain awaiting the official opening of Tel Aviv port to passenger traffic. Due to bad weather conditions, however, the ceremony had been moved inside a ‘gaily decorated warehouse’ on the shore of the Mediterranean in the north of the ‘first Hebrew city’. To make matters worse, the rough seas prevented the landing of passengers at Tel Aviv port on that day, and the SS Har Tsiyon had to be redirected to Haifa.1

Yet such adverse conditions did little to dampen the Tel Avivians’ celebratory mood. The city’s port had been a project long in the making, and it held great significance not only for Tel Aviv, but for the Zionist project as a whole. Although long disregarded by a historiography focused on the Zionist ‘return to the land’, visions and schemes of a maritime revival—as part of national self-fulfilment and realization—were an integral part of Zionist thought.

Continue reading ‘Political Balance’ or ‘Natural Growth’? The British Mandate, Meir Dizengoff, and the Struggle over Tel Aviv Port in the 1920s and 1930s
  1. ‘New “Gateway to Zion” Inaugurated’, Palestine Post, 24 Feb. 1938, 1; ‘Tel Aviv—Sha‘ar Tsyion, Derekh Ba Ya‘avru ha-Ge‘ulim’, ha-Arets, 24 Feb. 1938, 1. []