To what extent has colonial money helped build Britain's heritage sector? Isabel Gilbert on the importance of publicly and transparently acknowledging the problematic roots of British country houses and their collections.
What does the vaginal speculum have to do with power? How does the history of this instrument help us to understand how bodies have been understood, policed, and governed? Can this object be reclaimed?
Lisa Godson explores.
How should we understand the connections between the transatlantic slave trade, the expansion of the British Empire, and the history of Australia? Emma Christopher explores.
Madge Dresser argues that statues of slave traders, such as Edward Colston, often served complex local and civic objectives, which were inextricable from historical processes which silenced the voices of enslaved Africans.
How did Atlantic slavery end? Diana Paton argues that erasing the Haitian Revolution preserves the fiction that Britain is and was a progressive outlier in relation to race and racism
In 1860, decades after the abolition of slavery in Britain, the British economy was more reliant on slave labour than ever before. Mark Harvey explores the links between coerced labour and the production of three crucial commodities: guns,…
As debate about Obeah - spiritual and healing practices - erupts in Jamaica, Diana Paton argues that laws against obeah have historically worked to uphold colonial power and to harass poor people.
What can eighteenth-century ceramics tell us about empire? Elisabeth Grass examines how fine china tea cups and saucers became fashionable commodities that represent some of the many ways in which empire appeared, and was normalised, in…
How did haircutting and haircare shape narratives of slavery, oppression, and belonging in the early modern Mediterranean? Stefan Hanß explores the intimate politics of hair.
As statues spark controversy, Laura Leonard critically examines how white supremacists in Charlottesville, as well as critics of the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign, have invoked heritage as a legitimising language.
Katie Donnington writes about the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project and the launch of the British Slave-ownership database, which has seen renewed interest in the issues of transatlantic slavery and the acknowledgement of this…
The latest issue of The Economist turns it's laser eye on the legacy of the civil war, as the US prepares to mark the 150th anniversary of the start of what's described as 'America's bloodiest war'.
