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Hiding in plain sight: an eighteenth-century portrait of an Inca leader
Historian article
In this article, Emily C. Floyd explores a rare eighteenth-century self-commissioned engraved portrait of an elite Indigenous man in colonial Lima. By comparing this unassuming image with a more overtly Inca portrait, the article reveals how Indigenous leaders navigated identity, loyalty, and colonial restrictions, using portraiture to assert agency in...
Hiding in plain sight: an eighteenth-century portrait of an Inca leader
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Kangxi and Louis XIV
Historian article
Recently the French and Chinese governments have joined together in a nostalgic reflection on cultural interactions between King Louis XIV and Emperor Kangxi in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. As Sean Heath explains here, these modern reflections are particularly interesting for an aspect of the relationship which they...
Kangxi and Louis XIV
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Mercurial justice: a Jesuit chaplain’s view of life in the prisons of sixteenth-century Seville
Historian article
Justice in the early modern period was discretionary, which meant it could be both violent and deeply unfair. Elites often escaped the most severe punishments inflicted on the poor and minoritised groups. Clare Burgess shows how a Jesuit chaplain in sixteenth- century Seville used his spiritual discretion and zealous belief...
Mercurial justice: a Jesuit chaplain’s view of life in the prisons of sixteenth-century Seville
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James Macpherson: a Scottish Robin Hood
Historian article
James Macpherson led a notorious gang of robbers in late seventeenth-century Scotland, and he became infamous for robbing rich lairds to give to the poor. Anne-Marie Kilday explains how his notoriety is also significant for revealing how people in early modern Scotland could hold complex attitudes towards the Gypsy Roma...
James Macpherson: a Scottish Robin Hood
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Schools of Vice: how a medical scandal led to the dismantling of Britain’s last prison hulks
Historian article
Hulks – former naval ships used as prisons for those convicted of serious crime and sentenced to transportation – were intended to be a temporary solution to a penal crisis caused by the American Revolutionary Wars. These ‘schools of vice’, or ‘floating hells’ lasted 80 years, casting a shadow over...
Schools of Vice: how a medical scandal led to the dismantling of Britain’s last prison hulks
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Out and About: Locating the Local Lockup
Historian feature
If you are arrested for a crime today, you will very likely be taken to a police station and locked in a cell while officers decide if they have enough evidence to charge you. But have you ever wondered what happened to criminals and other disorderly folk – roughs, drunks...
Out and About: Locating the Local Lockup
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Update: Revisiting the Court of King Charles I
Historian feature
The reputation of kings, as with all political figures, is problematical. It would be surprising if it were any other way. Yet, the monarchy of Charles I remains as controversial as ever. In this article, Michael Questier looks at two diametrically opposed contemporary accounts of monarchical authority in the Stuart...
Update: Revisiting the Court of King Charles I
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The nature of Charles I’s government
Historian article
Charlotte Brownhill explores the nature of Charles I’s government. Rather than dismissing this as a disaster, she argues that there were many positive features of his government before the outbreak of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and suggests that we should consider the difficulties caused by the complexities of...
The nature of Charles I’s government
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‘By his Majesties authoritie’: worship and religious policy in Caroline Britain and Ireland
Historian article
When Charles I acceded to the throne in 1625, he inherited a situation that appeared stable but which simmered beneath the surface. As Chris R. Langley explains, in seeking to maintain his Royal Supremacy, Charles I had to manage the very different, but interconnected, religious affairs of England, Ireland and...
‘By his Majesties authoritie’: worship and religious policy in Caroline Britain and Ireland
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Caroline Court Women, 1625–1669
Historian article
Aristocratic women at the court of Queen Henrietta Maria from 1625–69 were integral to court life and actively involved in royal service; in court family networks; in dispensing and seeking patronage; and, in political and religious politics. As Sara J. Wolfson shows, it is important to study women at the apex of power...
Caroline Court Women, 1625–1669
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Piecing together the life and times of Charles I
Historian article
In this article, Chris R. Langley discusses the sources we use to reconstruct the life and times of Charles I. He explains how historians can use a wide range of sources in creative ways to understand different aspects of political, cultural and religious change in the mid-seventeenth century...
Piecing together the life and times of Charles I
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Charles I in objects and architecture
Historian article
We asked some of Britain’s leading museums and archives what object in their collections best exemplifies the reign of Charles I and why. Join Alden Gregory, Jessica Evershed, Mike Webb, Denise Greany, Glyn Hughes and Kevin Winter as they discuss some prominent objects and places in their collections and the...
Charles I in objects and architecture
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In conversation with Tom Hamilton
Historian feature
The Historian sat down with Tom Hamilton to discuss his recent work, A Widow’s Vengeance after the Wars of Religion, which uncovers the story of a revealing criminal trial during the French Wars of Religion...
In conversation with Tom Hamilton
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The Exclusion Crisis (1679–81)
Historian article
The Exclusion Crisis in the reign of King Charles II was a fierce struggle over the issue of whether the King’s Catholic brother James should be the heir to the throne. At the same time, circumstances promoted an outpouring of polemical pamphlets on a massive scale. Here Gregory Gifford examines...
The Exclusion Crisis (1679–81)
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Images of Ukraine through western lenses
Historian article
How has the understanding of what Ukraine is and, therefore, its image changed through the centuries? What did the word ‘Ukraine’ mean in the Middle Ages, the early modern times, or in the twentieth century? Even during the last four decades, this image has transformed dramatically, and the first association...
Images of Ukraine through western lenses
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Affirmative mysticism and John Woolman in colonial America
Historian article
Joshua M. Reinke introduces the American Quaker abolitionist, John Woolman. This seventeenth-century diarist’s encounter with Christ took him on a journey that led across the American colonies and provoked him to voice his fierce opposition to human bondage and the slave trade...
Affirmative mysticism and John Woolman in colonial America
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The year that lost eleven days
Historian article
From its Roman origins to the dating of the tax year, David Fleming describes how the changes made to the British calendar in 1752 came about and their effect on everyday life, both at the time and since...
The year that lost eleven days
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In conversation with Ulinka Rublack
Historian feature
The Historian discusses with Ulinka Rublack her latest book, Dürer’s Lost Masterpiece: Art and Society at the Dawn of a Global World (2023), which takes a fresh look at this major Renaissance artist, telling the story of his life and times, and reassessing some of his best-known works...
In conversation with Ulinka Rublack
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Bristol and the Slave Trade
Classic Pamphlet
Captain Thomas Wyndham of Marshfield Park in Somerset was on voyage to Barbary where he sailed from Kingroad, near Bristol, with three ships full of goods and slaves thus beginning the association of African Trade and Bristol. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Bristol was not a place of...
Bristol and the Slave Trade
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In conversation with Nicholas Radburn
Historian article
The Historian sat down with historian Nicholas Radburn to discuss his latest book, Traders in Men, which examines the role of merchants in the expansion and transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the eighteenth century.
In conversation with Nicholas Radburn
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‘Since singing is so good a thing’: William Byrd on the benefits of singing
Historian article
As the value of music education is again a topic of societal debate, Tudor composer William Byrd, the four hundredth anniversary of whose death is celebrated this year, was a powerful advocate of singing in early modern England, writes Katherine Butler.
Tudor composer William Byrd (c.1540–1623) is recognised today not only...
‘Since singing is so good a thing’: William Byrd on the benefits of singing
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Secular acts and sacred practices in the Italian Renaissance church interior
Historian article
Joanne Allen reveals a fundamental structural and architectural development in Italian churches in the Renaissance era, demonstrating that careful observation of structures and archives can substantially inform our appreciation of all church buildings.
In the opening to The Decameron (c. 1350), Boccaccio described how the ten young people who would become storytellers...
Secular acts and sacred practices in the Italian Renaissance church interior
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Elizabeth I: ‘less than a woman’?
Historian article
Tracy Borman examines the femininity of the Virgin Queen.
Elizabeth I is often hailed as a feminist icon. Despite being the younger, forgotten daughter of Henry VIII with little hope of ever inheriting the throne, she became his longest-reigning and most successful heir by a country mile. In an age when...
Elizabeth I: ‘less than a woman’?
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Out and About in Hull’s Old Town
Historian feature
Sylvia Usher explores a hidden gem in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Wenceslaus Hollar’s map of seventeenth century Hull can be a street guide for the Old Town even today. Modern Hull sprawls along the Humber estuary with residential areas fanning out for three miles or more. Hull as it was...
Out and About in Hull’s Old Town
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The Duchy of Courland and a Baltic colonial venture across the ocean
Historian article
The Duchy of Courland’s attempts to establish outposts in the Caribbean and Africa were not the only Baltic ventures across the Atlantic during the seventeenth century. However, the expeditions of the small vassal dukedom were possibly the most unlikely. The article introduces the motivations behind the Couronian colonial project, as...
The Duchy of Courland and a Baltic colonial venture across the ocean
