Browse all reviews
Four Nations Approaches to Modern ‘British’ History: A (Dis)united Kingdom / eds. Naomi Lloyd-Jones, Margaret M. Scull
Review Date: 11 March 2022
Four Nations Approaches, as the editors acknowledge from the start, follows in the footsteps of a very solid tradition of edited collections, brought about by the rise of ‘New British History’ in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The Grim Years: Settling South Carolina, 1670–1720 /
Review Date: 10 July 2020
John J. Navin offers a new account of the first half century of settlement in the colony of South Carolina, which he characterizes as The Grim Years. By the mid-18th century South Carolina would become the wealthiest British colony in mainland North America, but in recent years scholars long familiar with its distinctive plantation system have turned more attention to these earlier, formative decades.
How the West Was Drawn / David Bernstein
Review Date: 31 October 2019
How the West Was Drawn analyzes the relationship between Native Americans and the creation of maps of the western United States. To set the stage, Bernstein opens with a discussion of a modern controversy about maps, specifically Aaron Carapella’s Map of our Tribal Nations: Our Own Names and Original Locations. The impulse to create this map came from Carapella’s dissatisfaction with cartographic descriptions of North America.
Ypres: Great Battles / Stefan Goebel, Mark Connelly
Review Date: 10 October 2019
A Guide to the History of the SalientYpres! Langemarck! Dixmude! Passchendaele! Once sites of fierce First World War battles, these are now must-see stops on battlefield tours for the thousands of visitors who flock to West Flanders every year.
Elite Women and the Agricultural Landscape, 1700-1830 / Briony McDonagh
Review Date: 25 October 2018
Briony McDonagh estimates that over 10 per cent of land in Georgian Britain was owned by female landowners. Assuming her sample of 250,000 acres to be representative of broader patterns and trends, McDonagh surmises that ‘somewhere in excess of 3 million acres in England were owned by women in the later eighteenth century and more than 6 million acres in Great Britain as a whole’ (p.
After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century / William Rankin
Review Date: 06 July 2017
Traversing varied material, institutional, and conceptual terrains, plotting shifts in how space has been represented and enacted throughout the 20th century, and rendering connections between spatial technologies and politics, After The Map ventures far beyond conventional boundaries of the history of cartography. It is a beautiful book, not only in its dazzling array of illustrations (available in high-resolution colour form on the accompanying website, www.afterthemap.
Mapping Medieval Geographies: Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond, 300–1600 / Keith Lilley
Review Date: 06 August 2015
Following the many other ‘turns’ which have engulfed history, the ‘spatial turn’ can safely be regarded as well established. While few historians have formal geographical training, it is now de rigueur to ask spatial questions, and to seek to map research findings in publications.
Space in the Medieval West: Places, Territories, and Imagined Geographies / eds. Meredith Cohen, Fanny Madeline
Review Date: 05 February 2015
Space in the Medieval West: Places, Territories, and Imagined Geographies, this anthology consists of 11 papers initially presented at a three-day international symposium in 2009. It is the third collection of essays to emerge from the annual symposiums of the International Medieval Society of Paris (IMS-Paris).
Mastering the Niger: James MacQueen’s African Geography & the Struggle over Atlantic Slavery / David Lambert
Review Date: 18 September 2014
How can you know about somewhere you’ve never been? This predicament is at the heart of David Lambert’s superb new book, Mastering the Niger: James MacQueen’s African Geography and the Struggle over Atlantic Slavery. In 1841 the Scottish geographer and proslavery propagandist James MacQueen published A New Map of Africa. MacQueen had never visited the continent.
Telling ghost stories / Judith Harris
Review Date: 01 December 2011
Pompeii is the quintessential ghost story, frequently told by archaeological and literary scribes working together in symbiosis, not always for the good. In this multitude of ghost raconteurs novelist Robert Harris stands tall.