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ISSN 1749-8155

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Review Date: 
2 Oct 2020

Jessica Hanser, in her book Mr. Smith Goes to China, tells a tale of 18th-century globalisation involving three international actors–Britain, China and India–through the lives of three British (more precisely, Scottish) merchants. All of them bore the name of George Smith, an extremely common name at the time. And all of them were ‘private traders’” (i.e.

Review Date: 
17 Jul 2020

Jonathan Scott, Professor of History at the University of Auckland, in his recent book, How the Old World Ended (2019), has provided an intellectual bridge between the early modern period and the modern world, which was born out of the Industrial Revolution.

Review Date: 
24 May 2018

Of all former government officials who have turned to the pen, Sir Rodric Braithwaite should arguably be considered one of the more welcome additions. Following three previous books focusing on the Soviet Union and Russia, he has recently turned his attention to the issue of nuclear weapons and the precarious deterrence which has kept them from being used in warfare since 1945.

Review Date: 
14 Sep 2017

In 1833, after centuries of resistance and rebellion by enslaved people, decades of popularly-mobilized antislavery protests, and years of economic struggle on colonial plantations, England’s Parliament initiated the process of slave emancipation in the British Empire.

Review Date: 
27 Feb 2014

For every large historical topic – and the transatlantic slave trade is certainly a large one – there is a need for good small books to introduce the academic understanding of the topic to students and the general public. The writing of a good small book on a large topic, however, can be no small challenge.

Review Date: 
20 Feb 2014

Simon Potter’s second major effort to map out the history of the flow of information within the British world follows many of the same lines of analysis presented in his first book.  While News and the British World: The Emergence of an Imperial Press System (1) charted the advent of imperial media discourses and the organizations that sustained them from the

Review Date: 
23 Aug 2012

Popular references to Calcutta (now Kolkata) – once the gleaming capital of British India – in Anglo-American contexts often conjure images of poverty, crowded city streets, unbearable traffic, smog, and residents that require a savior.

Review Date: 
26 Apr 2012

A brief survey of the recent academic literature on global history reveals an academy that is still trying to define a historiographical movement.