Before the Second World War, only about 20% of the population went to secondary school and barely 2% to university; today everyone goes to secondary school and half of all young people go to university. How did we get here from there? David Civil reviews a work that positions ‘education at the interface between the citizen and the post-war state’, exploring and questioning tension between meritocracy and democracy.
Review Archives
Four Nations Approaches to Modern ‘British’ History: A (Dis)united Kingdom
Sara Caputo reviews this edited volume, which ‘begins to tear down the disciplinary boundaries imposed by geographical specialisation’ and increase ‘dialogue and connection among historians of different areas’.
Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830–1930
Charlotte Legg reviews an ‘exceptional contribution to historical understanding of the colonial legal regime’ in Algeria, which sets out to explain ‘how “the Muslim question” became a sexual question’.
Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour
Michèle Cohen reviews ‘a provocative and fascinating book which asks fresh questions and offers ground breaking insights into the ever intriguing Grand Tour’.
Medieval Welsh Genealogy: An Introduction and Textual Study
Barry J. Lewis reviews this ‘in-depth investigation of the genealogies of medieval Wales’, judging it ‘a major contribution to a vital but neglected field’.
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power
David A. Nichols reviews this ‘deeply researched and insightful’ study of ‘an expansive and enduring Indigenous regime that commanded human fates in the North American interior for generations’.
Early Modern Ecclesiastical Law and Consistory Courts
Jennifer McNabb reviews a monograph and two edited volumes that ‘expand our understanding of ecclesiastical justice and its impact on early modern people in meaningful ways’.
Conceived in Crisis: The Revolutionary Creation of an American State
Grace Mallon reviews a ‘field-changing’ look at the influence of European models of state-building on the framing and ratification of the US Constitution, which calls into question previous portrayals of the American Revolution.
Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition
Alexandra M. MacDonald reviews an ‘important intervention into the historiographies of slavery, abolition, and capitalism’, which demonstrates that ‘fair trade didn’t just spring up out of nowhere’.
Feminisms: A Global History
Anne Cova reviews a ‘masterful’ and ‘profound analysis’ of the ‘radio waves’ of feminisms across 250 years of global history.