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The Changing Face of Factory Regimes in South Asia: The Great Indian Peninsula Railway Workshops in Parel, Bombay, between 1879 and 1939

In 1879, Bombay (today Mumbai) saw the opening of the workshops of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway Company (GIPR) in Parel, the single largest industrial complex in the city at the time. On a site of roughly sixty acres it employed thousands of workers to maintain the locomotives and wagons that facilitated passenger travel and the exchange of mail between the centres of British rule on the subcontinent, as well as the transport of goods, especially cotton, to and from the city’s harbour. This circulation of people, information, and commodities was dependent on the smooth running of the trains, which in turn could only be assured if the staff employed at the workshops kept them in proper condition.1

Continue reading The Changing Face of Factory Regimes in South Asia: The Great Indian Peninsula Railway Workshops in Parel, Bombay, between 1879 and 1939
  1. Questions of maintenance have recently attracted more attention from historians, who acknowledge its centrality despite its invisibility to most observers. See e.g. Martin Meiske, ‘How to Commemorate Railways at 200? Unearthing Histories of Maintenance, Global Material Flows, and Colonialism’, German Historical Institute London Blog, 31 July 2025. []

The Book and its Missions: Past and Present as a Missionary Source for Global Bible Distribution

Introduction

My research project, entitled ‘A Global History of Bible Women, 1857–1916’, explores the history and agency of the Bible Woman as a missionary figure within world Christianity. Bible Women were local female evangelists employed to spread Christian teachings, distribute Bibles, and educate local women in literacy and Scripture. Initially emerging in London through the Protestant philanthropist and writer Ellen Henrietta Ranyard’s London Bible and Domestic Female Mission in 1857, the role rapidly expanded across Europe and the Global South through missionary networks, particularly those associated with the British and Foreign Bible Society. The project investigates the partnership between the London Bible and Domestic Female Mission and the Bible Society, focusing on the latter’s strategies for Bible distribution and the Bible Women’s motivations for engaging in this mission.

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The International Participation of Women in the Spanish Civil War: Searching for Traces in British Archives

Modern wars have global impacts. The war in Ukraine in particular has produced a large international solidarity movement. As a result, numerous international volunteers have travelled to Ukraine to take part in the war—including women. This fact has attracted a great deal of attention in international reporting since the beginning of the war. It still seems unusual to see women in the armed forces and in active warfare, especially when they are voluntarily participating in a war that does not directly affect them. This reveals gender stereotypes associated with war that go back many centuries: active men who protect their homeland, wives, and families vs passive women who dutifully care for their homes, children, and the wounded. As a result, women are denied political maturity, which has fatal consequences for their political role and rights of participation in times of war and peace alike.1

Continue reading The International Participation of Women in the Spanish Civil War: Searching for Traces in British Archives
  1. See e.g. Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining (eds.), A Companion to Women’s Military History (Leiden, 2012); Karen Hagemann, Stefan Dudink, and Sonya O. Rose (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 (New York, 2020); Karen Hagemann and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (eds.), Home/Front: The Military, War and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany (Oxford, 2002); Ute Frevert, Die kasernierte Nation: Militärdienst und Zivilgesellschaft in Deutschland (Munich, 2001). []

Who’s Responsible? ‘Illegitimate’ Children in England and Wales

Throughout time, the concept of ‘the family’ has had a variety of—often politicized—meanings in different parts of the world. In twentieth-century Britain, the nuclear ‘male breadwinner family’ remained the ideal, consisting of a father who provides for the family and a mother who raises the children and takes care of the household.

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The View from the Island: Britain’s Perception of the Franco-German Brigade

Formed in 1989, the Franco-German Brigade was the first operational military unit established in peacetime Europe whose soldiers were recruited permanently from two nations and whose units were constantly under binational command. It became an important part of multinational military cooperation in Europe, with the political ambition of Germany and France being the driving force behind European security and defence policy.

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The Spark of a Universal Uprising? Echoes of the Murder of Lord Moyne, 1944–5

Murder on Jabalya Street

Multiple shots were fired at Walter Guinness, better known as Lord Moyne, as his car was parking at his residence on Jabalya Street in Cairo. Later that day, on 6 November 1944, the British Minister Resident for the Middle East succumbed to his wounds. After a shoot-out with the Egyptian police, the two assassins, who had also killed Moyne’s driver, were apprehended. During their interrogation, they revealed their identity to be Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Beit Tzuri, Jewish inhabitants of Palestine in their early twenties. They declared themselves members of the militant underground organization Lehi—the Hebrew acronym for Loḥamey Ḥerut Isra’el or Fighters for the Freedom of Israel.

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Researching Religious Coloniality in East Africa: A Summer at the GHIL

Colonial Rule and Religious Resistance: My Research Project

My habilitation project, ‘“Arming the Natives and Inspiring Them to Resist German Influence”: Functions of Religion in Colonial Rule and Indigenous Resistance in German East Africa and Tanganyika (1885–1961)’, explores how religion functioned both as a tool of colonial domination and as a means of indigenous resistance. My research examines the period between 1885 and 1961, when German and British authorities used Christianity to establish their rule over present-day Tanzania.

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From Amboyna to Boston: How Massacres Become Media Events

Massacres and their staging in the media impact our everyday lives more than we realize. Whether it’s the latest news about the horrors unfolding in the Middle East or shocking images from Ukraine, the media coverage of these events is brought directly into our living rooms. This information penetrates deep into the collective memory of societies, as these incidents are not just local tragedies, but raise questions about humanity, responsibility, and international reactions.

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Compassion Mobilized: Antisemitism, Racism, and the Politics of Animal Welfare in Germany, 1945–2002

In Judaism, the protection of life, including animal welfare, is a biblical commandment, and only the meat of uninjured animals is considered kosher (prepared or kept in conditions that follow the rituals of Jewish law). The Jewish method of slaughter (schechtia) is carried out without prior stunning and is intended to ensure rapid loss of consciousness and maximal exsanguination of the animal. It is performed exclusively by a shochet, a religiously certified slaughterer whose training encompasses not only technical precision and physical skill, but also strict ethical and spiritual qualifications. The act involves a single, uninterrupted incision across the animal’s throat using a flawlessly smooth and extremely sharp knife (chalaf). This cut severs the trachea, oesophagus, carotid arteries, jugular veins, and major nerve pathways, leading to quick unconsciousness and substantial blood loss, as required by Jewish dietary law. Animals that are diseased, injured, or show internal defects are disqualified from kosher status. These conditions are identified during the ritual inspection (bedika), following which the meat may be certified as kosher if no disqualifying signs are found.

Common stunning methods, such as a percussive blow to the head or the use of a captive bolt, cause injury to the animal’s skull and are therefore deemed unacceptable by Jewish authorities. For over 150 years, significant segments of German majority society have rejected the Jewish method of slaughter, demonstrating hate and hostility. Since the Second German Empire, animal protection societies have mobilized against shechita, denouncing it as a ‘cultural disgrace’ and ‘Jewish cruelty to animals’. Although numerous independent experts have disproved the allegation of cruelty, these societies have persisted in their calls for obligatory stunning in German slaughterhouses. Antisemitic voices have swiftly echoed this demand, while the rhetoric of animal welfare activists is itself not devoid of antisemitic undertones.

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Markets, Marginalization, and Maritime Violence in Late Medieval England

Investigating Violence at Sea

In 1343, more than 150 inhabitants of Great Yarmouth attacked two ships belonging to a certain Robert Morley that were anchored at the roadstead of Kirkley, a village ten kilometres to the south, and seized around £5,000 worth of goods.1 The assailants were members of the leading families of Great Yarmouth and ranged from ship owners and traders, to holders of political office (both royal and municipal), customs officers, bailiffs, and admirals. They were involved in the administration of justice, including as members of commissions appointed by the king or his chancery to investigate violence at sea. The victim, Morley, was also a familiar figure. He came from the local area, on the border between Suffolk and Norfolk, and was one of the most important landowners in the region. He also owned multiple merchant ships. In short, he was an important man in the early years of the war between the English and French kings, which had broken out in 1337. He had been appointed Admiral of the North several times by Edward III and had defended the Norfolk coast from a possible French invasion.2

The scene of the crime—a relatively unremarkable patch of water at first glance—plays an extremely prominent role in English sources from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as one of the key sites of economic activity in the region, as a place where customs were collected by the Crown and by local actors, and not least as a hotspot of maritime violence. The fact that Kirkley Roads became such a hotspot in the first place was due to the resource conflicts fought there between various actors from Great Yarmouth and other ports along the coast—specifically, over the catching and trading of herring.

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  1. Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward III, 1343–1345 (London, 1902), 166–7, 168, 172, 385. []
  2. Graham Cushway, Edward III and the War at Sea: The English Navy, 1327–1377 (Woodbridge, 2011), 77, 91–2, 96, 114–16. []