Special Issues

• Ancients and Moderns

  July, 2012

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  For the IHR's 81st Anglo-American conference it combined with the Institute of Classical Studies to showcase the full extent of work on classical receptions, welcoming not only those scholars who work on Roman, Greek and Judaeo-Christian legacies and influences, but also historians of the ancient kingdoms and empires of Asia and pre-Colombian America. The reviews in this special issue reflect the themese covered in the conference.

• Anglo-Saxon England: A Decade of Research

  September, 2018

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  This special issue has been curated by Dr Irene Bavuso, Economic History Society Postan Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. The selection provides an overview of research on Anglo-Saxon England published over the last decade (2008-2018). Many of the selected works propose new approaches for the study of this period, providing a wide-ranging picture on Anglo-Saxon England. The included works cover a broad range of themes, often offering challenging perspectives on debated topics. The books and the electronic resource span from Christianisation and the influence of Christian theology and religion on Anglo-Saxon society, the Viking ages in England, law and social order, prosopography, and political and socio-economic developments during the Late Anglo-Saxon period. Other contributions, although not specifically on England, offer thought-provoking perspectives on fundamental topics, such as slavery, kingship, and the Anglo-Saxon cultural influence on the Continent, helping us to situate England in its broader European context.

• Empire and Education

  February, 2021

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  This special issue has been curated by Sandip Kana, RHS Marshall Fellow 2020-21 at the Institute of Historical Research. This special issue provides a select overview of historical research on the relationship between education and empire in a global context. The included works cover a broad range of themes and offer a challenging perspective on the development of educational ideals, structures, and institutions across a wide range of geographies and time periods. Education is not an area of historical enquiry that has received as much attention as it should. These works offer an insight into the fundamental importance of the role of education within imperial structures of power and how education was used to further, strengthen, and consolidate imperial sovereignty. The works listed here also offer an alternative picture of educational development, one that focuses on the agency of local indigenous actors and communities that worked outside the formal state structures. In the absence of the state in furthering local forms of education, for children and women, we can see how local communities forged networks to establish their own educational institutions. In many instances this formed part of larger anti-colonial movements and youth movements that manifested as direct challenges to state authority. Thus, they revealed the anxieties and fears that underpinned state power and colonial knowledge. Collectively, these 11 works offer an insight into the importance of the relationship between education and empire and touch upon its legacies in the era of decolonisation at the end of empire.

• Environmental History

  July, 2010

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  This special issue, featuring reviews of recent books and resources across the field of environmental history, was commissioned to coincide with the 79th Anglo-American Conference of Historians on the same theme. The concept of environmental history as a separate sub-discipline originates from the United States, coinciding with the emergence of environmentalist movements in the early 1970s. In Britain in contrast much work that might fall under the category of environmental history has instead been conducted within other areas of the discipline, whether that be the studies by W. G. Hoskins of medieval landscapes or the work of economic historians like Tony Wrigley on the history of coal. Though there are self-defined environmental historians working in Britain, it has been suggested that the subject would be better served by an attempt to establish the environment as an issue for all historians to consider rather than the creation of yet another new historical genre. A lengthy article on environmental history is available on the IHR's Making History website.

• Fashion

  July, 2015

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  In a major collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum, the IHR took Fashion as the theme for its annual conference in summer 2015. Fashion in history is a topic which has come of age in recent years, as scholars have turned to addressing what is chic and what is style over the ages and across different cultures. The history of fashion, and the role of fashion in history, is not just confined to the study of dress and costume, but encompasses design and innovation, taste and zeitgeist, treats as its subjects both people and objects, and crosses over into related disciplines such as the history of art and architecture, consumption, retailing and technology. The reviews in this special issue reflect the themese covered in the conference.

• Food History

  July, 2013

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  From famine to feast, from grain riots to TV cookery programmes, dieting to domesticity, food features in almost every aspect of human societies since prehistoric times. At its annual summer conference in 2013 the Institute of Historical Research showcased the best of current scholarly writing, research and debate on the subject, with plenary lecturers included Ken Albala, Susanne Freidberg, Cormac Ó Gráda and Steven Shapin. This special issue of Reviews in History features books and reviews from many of the particpants in the conference.

• Great War at Home

  July, 2014

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  Fought across the world, the First World War struck deepest at home. Few neighbourhoods, villages, towns or regions emerged untouched by the global conflict of 1914-18. The 2014 Anglo-American conference took as its theme the impact of the First World War on the locality and local institutions, on the family and social life, and on the memorialisation of war in the built environment and in private life. The reviews in this special issue reflect the themese covered in the conference.

• Historical Fiction

  November, 2011

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  This special issue was commissioned to coincide with the IHR’s November 2011 conference, ‘Novel approaches: from academic history to historical fiction', which sought to to explore this current publishing phenomenon. It brought together a wide range of speakers, including academic and public historians, authors and publishers. They examined  such questions as: Why have historical novels become ‘respectable’, and why anecdotally are historians being encouraged to write them? What is the difference between historical fiction and academic history, and how rigid are the boundaries between the two? How good are readers at differentiating between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ and how much does it matter if they don’t? Does the success of historical fiction benefit or threaten academic history, and what can literary authors and academics learn from each other? To coincide with the physical event, a virtual conference was also scheduled, which featured podcasted lectures from the Novel Approaches conference; articles by historians and historical novelists; opinion pieces; bibliographies; lists of online resources - and book reviews. For the book reviews we commissioned academic historians to compare and contrast a work of historical fiction and a work of academic history on the same subject, and had a great and varied response, as you can see below.

• Histories of Domesticity

  January, 2018

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  This special issue, featuring reviews of books on the theme of domesticity and domestic living, coincides with the IHR’s 2018 Winter Conference: ‘Home: new histories of living’ (8-9 Feb 2018). The reviews of these 18 books appeared between 1999 and 2017. They provide historical studies of among other themes, architectural design, family life, housing policy, gender, possessions, neighbourliness, collective living, kitchens and domestic animals. Among the domestic experiences covered are those of early modern Holland, Georgian London, enlightenment Edinburgh, Weimar Munich, Soviet Moscow and post-war Harlem.

• Histories of Punishment

  August, 2018

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  This special issue (put together by Katy Roscoe, Pearsall Fellow at the IHR) features reviews of histories of punishment, published both as books and as digital resources. They showcase the diversity of criminal sentencing practices the state has deployed to punish and deter crime, reform criminals, and extract labour from convicts. Alongside key texts on the emergence of the prison, it draws attention to the variety of punishments that have been used over the last few centuries, including transportation, prison hulks, juvenile reformatories, executions, and exile. The collection benefits from its global, if Anglo-centric, scope that includes America, Australia, Britain, Germany and Russia. These thirteen works all use crime and punishment as a lens through which to examine wider issues of class, age, gender, politics, science, and social change.

• History and Biography

  March, 2013

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  Biography remains one of the most popular forms of non-fiction, and historical biography has often been the genre in which professional historians have written for a wider audience. But what happens when it is the historian who becomes the subject of the biographer? In recent years several major biographies of historians have been published, and others are on their way. The 2013 IHR winter conference showcases the phenomenon of biographies by and about historians, and also looks across the humanities at current research on life-writing. Biography may well be ‘history without theory’, but that is no reason not to explore why it remains one of the most compelling and challenging ways of understanding the past in relation to the present.

• Irish History

  October, 2005

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  The Irish History month featured books covering a variety of periods within the fields of political, social, cultural and economic history, and drawn from across both Ulster and Eire. Irish nationalism, Irish identity, Irish migration and the Civil War are among the subjects covered.

• Modern Spain

  October, 2020

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  The histories of modern Spain covered by ‘Reviews in History’ reflect a strong focus on the crucial periods of the Second Spanish Republic and the Civil War. However, they do range earlier, into pre-Civil War anarchist movements; the Peninsular War; and claims of the emergence of modern Spanish politics in 19th century Andalucía. Other works reviewed look beyond Spain’s borders, at cultural as well as political and military impacts of Spain on Morocco; at Spain’s place in an ‘Age of Nations’ Europe; and at British support for Franco.  Image: 'Still Life With a Guitar' by Juan Gris © Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998/WikiCommons

• Political Society in the British Isles, c. 1200-1500

  June, 2018

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  This special issue covering 'Political Society in the British Isles, c. 1200-1500' has been curated for Reviews in History by Matt Raven, a Scouloudi Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. The selections generally concentrate on the aristocracy, and include books covering Edward I's earls, Eleanor of Provence, the English gentry, parliament, heresy, the Wars of the Roses, Margaret of Anjou, medieval Scotland, the parish Church, Tudor England and the long social revolution.

• Reviews Special 2016

  March, 2016

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  Reviews in History  celebrated our 20th anniversary in 2016, which we marked by asking our Editorial Board to recommend some of the most influential / significant history books of the last 20 years. These were then re-reviewed, and you can check out the full set of these ‘classic’ reviews in this anniversary special. Some of them were instant classics, some have proved subsequently to be extremely influential, and some have perhaps not lived up to their initial acclaim - but as a whole they are hopefully an interesting snapshot of the field over the last 20 years.

• Sports History

  July, 2008

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  This special issue includes reviews of books covering a variety of aspects of sports history - amateurism, women in sport, sport and the armed forces, sport and Christianity and Olympic history to name but a few. More information can be found on the website of the British Society of Sports History, and in addition the IHR runs a regular seminar on the subject.

• The Crusades, from Reconstruction to Memory

  August, 2018

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  This special issue was curated by Dr Stephen Spencer, Past and Present Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. The selections reflect two dominant strands of historical enquiry in crusades-related studies: empirical reconstruction and memory. Arranged chronologically, several bear witness to the value of carefully reconstructing the scope and course of crusading expeditions, the careers of individual crusaders, the complex history of the Latin East, and the policies developed by specific popes. Others illuminate the variety of Muslim responses to the crusades, the persistence of crusading beyond the traditional terminus date of 1291, the incorporation of previously marginalised sources into the mainstream through accessible translations, the importance of treating ‘crusade texts’ within the broader panoply of historical writing, the growing trend of approaching narrative histories as literary creations and shapers of memory, the creation and transmission of dynastic crusading traditions, and the enduring memorialisation and appropriation of the crusades in the modern era.

• Urban History

  July, 2009

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  This special issue, featuring reviews of recent books and resources across the field of urban history, was commissioned to coincide with the 78th Anglo-American Conference of Historians on the theme of Cities. Although there is a long tradition of historical writing, based upon the town or city as the principal unit, which goes back to classical antiquity, urban history did not emerge as a separate discipline in Britain until the 1960s. The growing interest of historians, under the influence of the social sciences, in general patterns, moved approaches to cities away from being studies of particular places, and increasing sought to site them in wider systems. An interdisciplinary approach drawing on economics, sociology and geography emerged for the study of cities after 1750, whilst historians of earlier periods tended to use more traditional methods. Both, however, have been influenced by the cultural and linguistic turn of recent decades, which has tended to reduce the confidence of urban historians in purely quantitative approaches to the city. A lengthy article on urban history is available on the IHR's Making History website.

• US Elections 2016

  November, 2016

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  This special issue was produced to coincide with the 2016 US Presidential elections, and showcased four books showing the ways in which the current generation of American politicians use history to promote their own brand of politics. The selection included losing Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton, former Governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal, Republican White House wannabe, Mike Huckabee and libertarian Ron Paul. Many thanks to the hard work of our editorial board member Daniel Peart in helping put this together.

• Welsh History

  May, 2021

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  This special issue was curated by Sadie Jarrett, EHS Postan Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. It showcases the breadth of research undertaken on Wales, incorporating studies looking at the Middle Ages to the present day. Some of these works focus on case studies to highlight wider narratives, while there are also broader accounts of people and places, including the medieval Welsh economy and Wales’ place in the British Empire. The selection emphasises that Welsh history is a vibrant and dynamic field which makes important contributions to British, European, and world history.  

• Women, Property, and Law

  March, 2020

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  This special issue has been curated by Dr Rebecca Mason, Economic History Society Power Fellow 2019-20 at the Institute of Historical Research. The issue provides a select overview of ground-breaking historical research on women, property and law, spanning the medieval to late modern period in a European context. The included works cover a broad range of themes, and offer challenging perspectives on women’s contribution to social, economic and legal spheres across a wide range of jurisdictions and different time periods. Many of the selected works propose new approaches for the study of women, property and law. The works cover different aspects of women’s interaction with the law and provide new insights into women’s ability to negotiate the strictures of inheritance and marital property regimes. Women’s legal rights, and how those rights were understood, negotiated and circumvented in practice, have changed over time. The works unearth women’s legal status as property owners, challenging previous historical narratives that emphasised their legal incapacities as independent financiers and conduits of wealth and status. In these works, women are located as estate managers, household administrators, property investors, and the heads of local and international business enterprises. Focusing on women’s active engagement with property within a wide range of legal records, these works collectively dismantle the assumption that propertied status in the realm of law was exclusively reserved for men pre-20th century.   These ten works all use women’s legal status and rights to property as a lens through which to examine wider issues of class, age, gender, politics, economics, law and social change. Each work greatly enhances our understanding of gender, status and society in a historical and modern context.