Studies of petitioning activity in the early years of the Long Parliament (1640–2) have often focused on the large-scale petitions which engaged with issues of high politics and religion in the charged atmosphere prior to the outbreak of Civil War. However, many subjects were drawn to petition the Commons and the Lords for relief in much more particular economic disputes. Utilizing overlooked manuscript petitions in the parliamentary archives and papers of the MP Bulstrode Whitelocke, this article re-examines petitioning activity between 1640 and 1642. It finds that, despite the absence of parliament during the Personal Rule, subjects eagerly embraced the calling of a new parliament, their perceptions of it shaped by its contemporary history. As MPs and peers increasingly utilized and preserved records, petitioners too evoked and confronted the parliamentary past. While some like the Merchant Adventurers’ Company glossed its presentation tactically, others including London-based glassmakers and merchants were driven by ideological beliefs in the historic role of parliament as a protector against arbitrary fiscal policies. This article contributes to post-revisionism by showing that subjects viewed parliament not as an event, but as an institution, fostering connections between past and present sessions as they petitioned for redress.

This paper examines the life trajectories, social contexts and living conditions of women of uncertain status in post-slavery, colonial-era Tabora, with a focus on those involved in the production and consumption of beer. It thereby searches insights into the aftermath of slavery in this region, particularly for women. It reflects on the persistent social unease surrounding slavery and its aftermath, and on the way it shapes and limits sources, arguing that a focus on post-slavery is nevertheless productive. Set in context, brewers’ life stories provide a vivid illustration of a competitive urban environment, the chances for self-emancipation that it offered, and the concomitant challenges and dangers. They thereby also enable fresh insight into the social history of alcohol and of urban women in colonial Africa. We find evidence of more successful brewing careers than existing studies would predict, but also of very stark vulnerability and persistent quests for safety in family networks. This spread of outcomes highlights the contingent nature of emancipation and the endlessly varied ways in which social constraints and personal motivations combined in individual lives.

Historians of the Cold War and the nuclear age have largely overlooked the existence of tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), while films, comics, novels, and television programmes that tackled the challenging imaginary, yet all-too-possible, wastes of a post-nuclear landscape have been abundantly analysed. As cultural products and tools through which to imagine other worlds, TTRPGs offer powerful insights into how, where, and why certain groups thought about the spectre of the nuclear age and how they dealt with this threat by gaming within make-believe postapocalyptic worlds. This article draws together several threads in its analysis of the American-designed and -produced Twilight: 2000 TTRPG’s historical significance. Through analysing Twilight: 2000 as a case study of how a TTRPG functions as a specific nuclear-cultural object in its own right, the article also locates this game as a part of a wider-reaching dystopian fantasy rooted in the massive everyday reality of atomic annihilation. Likewise, the game, its mechanics, setting, and artwork are analysed here as part of a distinctive Cold War culture that permitted participants to derive pleasure and affirmation from fictional “adventures” in the postapocalyptic environment.

This article analyses how forms of private cooperation between East and West were reshaped during the late Cold War and beyond. It does so by studying an elitist East–West club, called the International Vienna Council, which brings together leaders of multinational companies and leaders of the planned economy. While the permeability of the iron curtain has been well documented, little is known about the evolution of East–West circulation patterns during that time or the role played by economic elites. The International Vienna Council, initially a forum for ‘parallel diplomacy’, gradually became a platform for concrete business cooperation. The club’s activities continued after 1989, but it struggled with the transition from an East–West club to an interest group within the European Union. These dynamics shed light on the gradual autonomy of a private East–West cooperation group and its contribution to defining a pan-European economic space since the 1970s.

By investigating 321 smuggling vessels that travelled between the Faroe Isles and the British Isles between 1775 and 1785, this article explores the regionality and seasonality of illegal trade in the north Atlantic. The article centres on a neglected oceanic region, thereby inverting historical geographies, shifting the focus from port centres like London and Copenhagen to the Scottish Northern and Western Isles, as well as the Faroe Islands. Epitomizing the ‘dichotomy of insularity’, in the eighteenth century these areas were located along maritime highways of global trade, and illegal trade flourished there, despite their challenging location. The article demonstrates that this illegal trade had different seasonal cycles from those of legal trade. While legal trade halted in the winter season, illegal trade continued throughout. Linking illegal maritime activities to more lawful ones, like fishing, the article suggests that the recurring nature of the contraband trade ought to be understood in relation to the broader coastal culture, in which maritime knowledge was circulated and the local relationship to the sea defined. The study suggests that illegal trade should be viewed not merely as an extension of globalization but as a rooted phenomenon, which developed in unison with the local environment.

This article suggests that the ‘self-destruct’ phase of the late-colonial state was marked by rival projects to construct a durable political settlement in the face of the divisions wrought by development initiatives and security policy. A triangular contest between outgoing colonial administrators, a new generation of educated moderate nationalists, and those the colonial state pejoratively called ‘bush politicians,’ marked the twilight years of colonial rule. As the case of Nyeri District in Central Kenya, still reeling from the Mau Mau Uprising, indicates, these conflicts regularly concerned the meaning of post-conflict justice and the terms on which a community could be reconciled. The work of the Nyeri Democratic Party is illustrative, resisting disempowerment in the transition to independence and demanding that much more be done to heal the breaches wrought by colonial violence. This period laid the groundwork for a competitive post-colonial political arena, albeit underpinned by the sometimes dangerous rhetoric of ethnic unity. Using official documents from Kenyan and British archives, especially those in the previously closed Migrated Archive, this article illustrates the mutual bargaining that formed the political settlement in post-colonial Central Kenya.

This article explores the complex professional and personal relationship between Edward Hume, an American missionary physician, and Fu-ch’ing Yen, a Chinese physician trained in the United States, during their work at the Yale University medical mission in Changsha, Hunan, from 1906 to 1926. The partnership between Hume and Yen exemplifies the collaboration and compromise required to sustain and develop a major medical institution in provincial China, highlighting broader tensions in early twentieth-century Sino-American medical education and professional identity. Their differing priorities led to a temporary rift over the purpose of their work at the Yale mission, reflecting deeper debates about professional identity, Sino-foreign cooperation, and the evolving dynamics of Western medicine in China. Drawing on correspondence, institutional records, and contemporary reports, this study situates their partnership within broader trends of professionalisation and the localisation of scientific medicine in Republican China. It argues that the negotiation of professional status was pivotal in shaping the trajectory of their collaboration and offers insights into the local, structural, and personal dimensions of Sino-foreign cooperation in medical work.

Frank Samperi is a neglected twentieth-century American poet who produced a large body of poetry. Affiliated closely with Objectivist poetics through the mentorship of Louis Zukofsky, Samperi’s work is significantly influenced by the Catholic writings of Aquinas and Dante. With a commitment to linguistic self-reflexivity, an ethics of otherness, and a resistance to abstraction and identity thinking, Samperi’s work enhances and expands our understanding of the key traits of Objectivist poetics, often regarded as relying heavily on Judaic ideas and philosophies. As an Italian American Catholic, his poetry also demonstrates an immigrant’s compromise with Americanization, but an equally clear alignment with the emerging American poetic counterculture in the 1960s.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has reached memory studies in earnest. This partly reflects the hype around recent developments in generative AI (genAI), machine learning, and large language models (LLMs). But how can memory studies scholars handle this hype? Focusing on genAI applications, in particular so-called ‘chatbots’ (transformer-based instruction-tuned text generators), this commentary highlights five areas of critique that can help memory scholars to critically interrogate AI’s implications for their field. These are: (1) historical critiques that complicate AI’s common historical narrative and historicize genAI; (2) technical critiques that highlight how genAI applications are designed and function; (3) praxis critiques that centre on how people use genAI; (4) geopolitical critiques that recognize how international power dynamics shape the uneven global distribution of genAI and its consequences; and (5) environmental critiques that foreground genAI’s ecological impact. For each area, we highlight debates and themes that we argue should be central to the ongoing study of genAI and memory. We do this from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines our knowledge of digital sociology, media studies, literary and cultural studies, cognitive psychology, and communication and computer science. We conclude with a methodological provocation and by reflecting on our own role in the hype we are seeking to dispel.

Eighteenth-century Stockholm saw a rise in illegitimate births. Yet, premarital sex was illegal, and the early modern household offered few private spaces. Where did unmarried people meet for courtship, intimacy and sex in the early modern city? In this article, we explore the spaces used for illicit sex through a database containing baptismal records of illegitimate children in eighteenth-century Stockholm. We use these records to map the locations where and approximate times when mothers stated their children were conceived. We find that shared households and workplaces were the most common meeting places for couples, that sexual activity took place towards the city centre and not on its outskirts and that urban households in the eighteenth century appear to have been characterized by a porousness and openness that allowed for the creation of pockets of privacy. Lastly, we find little evidence for any organized sex trade in the sources.