Audiences for science in the media live and operate, as agents who endow science with social and cultural meanings, in an intermedial world. Following cultural tracers through time and across media, and attending to a key actors’ category, intermediality, historians of the public culture of science can access the social dimension of the mediation of science. Adopting an intermedial approach allows us to attune the historiography of the public culture of science to the evolution of science communication scholarship over the past three decades, and understand the role of audiences in the production of cultural meanings about science.

This response to Robert Gerwarth and Gwendal Piégais’s special issue on humanitarianism and civil wars in Europe has three parts. First, it aims to situate the authors’ findings in the broader context of what might be termed the ‘dialectic of humanitarianism’ – namely the reciprocal tendency of the violence of war, and notably civil war, and the mobilisation of humanitarian aid for its victims, to reinforce each other. Second, it considers in more detail some of the implications of the findings of all of the authors on the specific challenges posed by civil wars for ‘humanitarianism’ and for the ways in which we might write the history of the latter in the future. Finally, it reflects briefly on one key aspect of that history, namely the politicisation of humanitarian aid.

Nationalist historiography portrays interwar protest in South Asia as predominantly Gandhian, non-militaristic, and non-violent. This portrayal is at odds with the experience of other parts of the world, which were shaped by a “violent peace” in the form of small wars, armed insurgencies, the mobilization of paramilitaries, and the increased prominence of the army in the public sphere in a context of the mass demobilization of military personnel. This article asks how South Asia’s interwar labour movement was shaped by a world marked by the experience of World War I and its aftermath. Through a study of labour “volunteer movements” or paramilitaries and military-related claims-making by labour leaders on the colonial state, it argues that “militarization” was an important aspect of labour politics in interwar South Asia. Volunteer movements were a widespread form of mobilization deployed by labouring populations. Labouring communities with historical connections to military service made claims on the colonial state’s patronage during industrial conflict by appealing to their past military service or official status as “martial races”. While this article studies these phenomena among Bombay’s textile and Dalit workers, it references analogous processes that occurred elsewhere on the subcontinent. Using a unique source base of the speeches and writings of labour leaders, publications of volunteer movements, workers’ court depositions, Marathi-language memoirs, strike enquiry committees, and newspaper material, it unearths a world of militaristic ideas and action seldom explored in the context of interwar South Asian labour.

This article examines the egalitarian ideas and practices of Gamal al-Banna (1920–2013) during Egypt’s transition from postcolonial socialism to neoliberal Islamic revival. It highlights al-Banna’s efforts to recast egalitarian ideals within both Arab socialist and Islamic frameworks. I argue that during the height of Arab socialism, al-Banna Islamized the egalitarian principles of labor to conform with and popularize salient socialist objectives. As the socialist lexicon ceded to a global trend of neoliberalism, Islam became increasingly intertwined with the formation of an identity-centric Muslim world. Within this transformed sociocultural landscape, al-Banna developed an alternative vision that integrated egalitarian ideals into a liberal Islamic discourse. Through a critical reexamination of al-Banna’s writings and activism, this article uncovers a leftist, egalitarian origin within the broader spectrum of contemporary Islamic revival. I demonstrate that the contracted global perspective—from postcolonial to Muslim worlds—led al-Banna to reconceptualize the nation’s postcoloniality and social progress through a renewed framework of liberal Islam.

This article analyzes the interplay between medicine and politics in East Germany. It analyzes the meetings of the Politburo medical commissions (1958–60) to frame and define the habitus of a generation, the “Tenners” (born 1910–20), which included most of the experts in the Politburo meetings. This generation consisted of politically committed doctors who were also influential medical scholars, many with international reputations. The Politburo meetings revealed major quarrels between these experts and the Party. The communiqué (1960) issued by the Politburo showed a partial victory for the experts, because the Party acknowledged many of their claims, proving that “totalitarian” interpretations do not hold. However, this was not a victory of medicine over politics. The experts formulated their claims by combining medical and political arguments and defended the jurisdiction of their medical expertise over the Party, precisely because they believed it could more decisively contribute to achieving the goals of socialism.

This article develops a model to explain the emergence and persistence of shared memory, providing a practical toolkit for empirical research in memory studies. It begins with a review of the concepts of individual and collective memory, highlighting their limitations. In response, the article introduces two alternative concepts – subjectivised memory and hegemonic memory – that capture the interdependence of individual and collective memory while moving beyond their dichotomy. These concepts form the theoretical basis of the proposed model. The article applies the model to the example of Holocaust remembrance in Germany, illustrating how memory becomes hegemonic and persists over time.

This paper traces the way(s) Republican political leaders have infused a right-wing populist ideology at the heart of Republican Party programs over thirty years. It does so through analysis of the institutional supports and historical factions that have shaped the evolution of the Republican Party over the last century. A change in coalition forces that control the Republican Party has encouraged the emergence of a Republican Party that holds, among other things, that some radical political actions (such as the 6 January insurrection) are legitimate, while other radical political action (such as the George Floyd protests) is not. For many Republicans in the newly dominant Trump coalition, some seemingly anti-state action is in fact legitimate when undertaken in defense of a “true” US Constitution, while other action, even when clearly legal, is inherently a threat to the “true” US Constitution.

This paper reevaluates Friedrich Max Müller’s interactions with his British detractors from the early 1860s to the early 1890s. By offering a re-examination of their disputes concerning language and mind, it first and foremost illuminates a transformation in the research methods, standards of evidence, and forms of explanation that were seen as scientifically legitimate in the human sciences in late Victorian Britain. To use Müller’s language, this entailed a shift in the balance of power between “historical” and “theoretical” schools of thought, which came to privilege the latter over the former. No less importantly, this paper also demonstrates how the history of philology can contribute to the history of science by revealing the extent to which Müller and his opponents were ultimately searching for the same thing – knowledge about human origins and development. Additionally, by taking seriously Müller’s arguments as a philologist, this paper refutes the pernicious view that his objections to Darwin’s account of languages were motivated by his religious beliefs.

During the Fascist period, the extractive industry played an important role in Italy’s economic and political landscape, and sulphur was considered the autarkic mineral par excellence. This article reveals how the rhetoric surrounding the vigorous extraction of sulphur in Sicily was part of a larger project of reconstruction and reorganisation, which involved the division of land, reclamation efforts, military operations and colonisation. Drawing on examples of visual and written narratives from public reports, essays, illustrated magazines and exhibitions of the time, the article demonstrates that extraction was both the actual site of resource extraction and the Fascist extractive logic of consensus. The use of specific discourses and definitions enabled and justified the portrayal of humans and lands as extractable resources, creating images and imaginaries that normalised exploitation and transformation, and the regime’s extractive force.

In 1679, the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini published a large print detailing the entire visible surface of the moon with unprecedented meticulousness. This Grand Selenography is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular pictures ever produced within the Académie royale des sciences. However, it has remained widely neglected by historians up to now. This study offers the first account of the making and early reception of the print. It argues that the Grand Selenography remains uncompleted because it failed to satisfy Cassini and his contemporaries. Furthermore, its history allows us to shed new light on the range of issues that scientific pictures might have raised during Louis XIV’s reign.

This article looks at military history through a social lens, focusing on the identity and experiences of the Irish Catholics recruited for service in the British army during the American Revolution, a conflict which occurred before Catholics were legally permitted to serve, but during which significant numbers were recruited nonetheless. Using Irish Catholic recruitment and subsequent service in the 46th Regiment of Foot as a case study, this article will discuss the integration of this group into a regular regiment on the British establishment, arguing that despite contemporary anxieties to the contrary, the incorporation of Irish Catholics into the British army happened smoothly and without negative impact on regimental cohesion and discipline. They became well-integrated, and while their loyalty to the British state can never be definitively proven, they certainly became effective participants in its army and empire. This provides a compelling viewpoint from which to discuss the integration of ‘others’ into Britishness and the imperial apparatus during this period.