Prior to the Second World War, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden was the home of ‘international’ opera (original-language performances, multinational casts, a cosmopolitan audience), and was an outlier in a country where ‘national’ opera (performances in English, predominantly British casts, ‘opera for the people’) was the norm. The theatre reinvented itself in 1946, launching a new national company that would perform in English and use unknown British singers. Within a short period of time, this modus operandi would fail. Focusing closely upon internal policy documents, this article examines how the company navigated a course between the two models, national and international, between 1946 and 1969. It found itself attempting to satisfy parties with diverging viewpoints: audiences who preferred international opera; the Arts Council, which demanded the company serve the nation; politicians who recognised opera as a tool of cultural diplomacy; competitor institutions overseas; and the public. The company had to strike a fine balance between two apparently contradictory imperatives: the need to consolidate its status as a key national institution, in order to justify public funding, while also establishing itself as a ‘transnational’ entity, projecting an image of British cultural confidence to those watching from abroad.

This article explores Britain and the Soviet Union’s reciprocal exhibitions in 1961. Using methods from diplomatic and cultural history the article finds that, while typical of the cultural encounters that punctuated moments of Cold War crisis, these exhibitions formed part of a broader British policy of cultural diplomacy. The British state worked closely with the exhibition companies to present subtle propaganda about the British way of life at both displays. Britain’s key propaganda message was that a system of free enterprise was vital to a good political system and economy. However, while the fairs were nominally organised by an independent company many of the company’s directors were part of a network that existed between government, the civil service and business. The government was involved at all stages. A warm attitude was displayed towards the Soviets by many British people when the reciprocal fair opened in London, despite the less positive reception of Soviet consumer goods in the press. The British state sought to limit the Soviets’ propaganda gain. It therefore ensured that it was the trade fair’s organisers rather than communist supporting organisations who received the visit of the world’s first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin.

In this Comment, I reflect on my personal experience in doing research at institutional archives as an early career historian. I discuss how my research has been shaped by encounters with physical and digital sources across Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong SAR and the United Kingdom. In doing so, I draw on the concept of ‘interim archives’ to emphasise the partial nature of primary sources in institutional archives, and the necessity for research to be multi-archival due not only to the realities of access, but also the need to incorporate diverse perspectives.

Research over the past three decades has transformed our understanding of western Europe in the years between the late ninth and early eleventh centuries. It was in this period that recognisable kingdoms of France, Germany and (to an extent) Italy were born; it was also in this period that many of the dynasties that would shape the future of the European mainland were established. Above all, it was in these years that the Carolingian dynasty which had ruled much of western Europe since the mid-eighth century was decisively eclipsed. This article uses the charters issued by rulers of these regions as a window into the processes whereby new dynasties and kingdoms established themselves on the basis of existing traditions. In doing so, it draws attention to a remarkable set of shared changes in the layout and appearance of these documents, which reveal much about the nature and significance of these transitions.

In 2022, the Centre for Global South Asia (CGSA) at Royal Holloway University of London developed a small research project entitled ‘Exhibit Asia’. The aim was to explore the use of exhibitions in nation-making in postcolonial South and East Asia in contrast to the scholarly preoccupation with investigating the region’s history of museums and exhibitions primarily in a colonial context. Its academic outcomes were to be a conference and related publication; but we also wanted our research to be relevant to our students. The resulting intervention in the teaching and learning of history took the form of a curatorial fellowship for an international cohort of ten students from Taiwan, Japan, India, Pakistan and the UK, leading to a co-curated online exhibition. The first section of this article sets out the development, design and delivery of the fellowship and discusses the viability and relevance of such projects. The subsequent three sections are co-authored by several of the participating students. They outline their methods, reflections and learnings; share their insights on the role of exhibitions in perceptions of Asia in the UK today; and analyse responses to ‘Tea and Tigers’, the online exhibition that was the outcome of the fellowship.

This article examines the pioneering yet largely forgotten magazine Hitavadi, the first Telugu Christian monthly magazine and the earliest Telugu monthly journal. Founded in 1862 by Rev. John Edmund Sharkey, Hitavadi played a crucial role in shaping the intellectual, religious and social discourse in the Telugu-speaking regions of colonial India. Despite its significance, the history of the magazine has remained elusive due to the disappearance of most issues from public libraries and archives. The scarcity of issues reflects the fragility of nineteenth-century print preservation, making this article the first detailed attempt to reconstruct the legacy of Hitavadi. Through its vernacular focus, Hitavadi blended Christian teachings with secular knowledge, addressing gender reform, education and social transformation. It was not merely a missionary tool but a platform for intellectual engagement, connecting local concerns with global ideas. This study explores the role of the magazine in constructing a Telugu public sphere and contributing to the broader Protestant mission of literacy and moral reform. In doing so, it sheds light on the dynamics of colonial print culture, vernacular journalism, and the challenges of recovering lost archival material.

Many historians continue to regard the killing of prisoners and potential prisoners on the battlefield as having been an absolute exception during the Great War, something that was ‘episodic’ and happened only ‘in isolated cases’. One reason for this assessment might be the fact that the subject has rarely been examined empirically. This article is the first study directly to compare the actions of the British and the Canadians, the Empire’s two largest armies on the western front. Drawing on a wide range of primary source material, including, for the first time, unit war diaries and after-action reports, this article reveals that documentary evidence exists for scores of separate instances of prisoner killing by British and Canadian troops deployed against German forces between August 1914 and November 1918, with the number of dead ranging from individual enemy soldiers to several hundred victims at once. Examples are recorded of prisoner killing by enlisted men, NCOs and officers, acting either in groups or alone, and furthermore of officers at platoon, battalion, regimental and even corps level either encouraging prisoner killing or issuing explicit ‘take no prisoners’ orders. The level of acceptance that commanders showed for these practices, the openness with which soldiers discussed them in their letters home to mothers, sisters and wives, and the almost complete absence of any disciplinary action against the perpetrators indicate that – on some level – they were regarded as legitimate.

This article explores the hitherto understudied development of long-distance telephony in early 20th century China. It first explores the development of long-distance telephony before 1927 when it first appeared in China and was developed by foreign actors, the Qing government and various warlord regimes. The article then turns to the Nanjing Decade (1927-1937) and compares the efforts of the Nationalist government in building long-distance telephone infrastructure with those of the Guangdong provincial government and other regional regimes. The article uses the case of long-distance telephony to make two larger arguments about state-building in Republican China (1912-1949). First, it brings in telecommunications development as a major element of state-building of both central and regional regimes. Second, building on recent work by scholars of Chinese Republican-era state-building, it emphasizes the importance of studying state-building from the vantage point of both central and regional regimes in Republican China. Additionally, the article demonstrates the value of an infrastructural approach to the study of political competition and formation in China during the Republican era.

Lightning-related accidents were relatively frequent among age-of-sail seafarers, due to tall ships’ exposure and prominence above the sea. Yet lightning remains largely neglected in the historiography on sailors’ experiences. Examining a range of contemporary medical and philosophical literature, shipboard surgeons’ journals, operational correspondence and seamen’s memoirs, this article argues that lightning strikes created unique moments of epistemological and social crisis aboard naval ships. With its awesome multi-sensorial manifestations, divine symbolism and catastrophic and erratic effects on human bodies, lightning loomed large in many seafarers’ consciousness, as a powerful source of panic and trauma. At the same time, despite contemporary developments in natural philosophical understandings of electricity, surgeons’ training on how to treat these injuries remained limited. As a result, lightning could substantially affect naval shipboard relations between officers and ‘common’ seamen, creating challenges to the former’s authority and mobilising a range of competing emotions and knowledges. Considering lightning illustrates the fruitfulness of looking at uncommon but devastating types of injury, for historians interested in medical authority and in the doctor–patient relationship. It also helps us to start sketching accounts of seafaring bodies, health and maritime medical and religious cultures that give the sky its due place alongside the water.

British left-wing politics does not know what to think about mothers. In left-wing women’s movements, motherhood has been recognised as essential and difficult; necessary for future revolutions, not least in raising future revolutionaries. In less radical circles, it has been understood as a crucial contribution to the functioning of society, often forming the basis of women’s claims to citizenship and maternalist forms of politics. On the other hand, motherhood has been seen as a ‘natural’ function of women and a private responsibility, rather than a public good or a collective act which needs comprehensive state support. The family, in this reading, is a rather conservative force, better left to social reactionaries. Mothering has added additional hurdles to the gendered obstacles women already face in pursuing politics as activists or elected representatives. Perhaps because of this, many mothers in politics have sought to downplay or distance themselves from their roles as mothers, emphasising instead their contributions as workers and activists who can be fully committed to the left cause. Feminist historians have often followed their lead and have tended to write around political mothers’ maternal roles in their scholarship. This roundtable develops themes first explored in our November 2023 workshop, generously supported by the Royal Historical Society.

This Comment derives from a group discussion, generously funded by the Transactions Workshop Grant in 2023, to reflect retrospectively on the nature and degree of interaction among six trailblazing women members of Pakistan’s constituent assembly of 1972–3 (‘women constitution-makers’) within and without the assembly against the backdrop of their life histories. I refer to this group discussion as a ‘collective reflection’ to describe its open-ended structure of snowballing conversations among a small cohort of oral history narrators on the women constitution-makers as well as archivists whose work engages with material on or related to Pakistan’s enduring Constitution of 1973. The objective of the collective reflection was twofold: to provide an interactive mnemonic context for storytelling on the women constitution-makers and their personal and political associations; and to explore the extent to which these six women acted in concert in their constitution-making role on the question of women’s political representation. In relation to the former, the collective reflection yielded valuable observations. With respect to the latter, however, it presented a mixed picture and struck a note of caution in reading strong inferences into documentary archives – in this case, the constituent assembly debates.

This article explores the oral narratives about Samuel Ezekiel Divekar (1730–97), an officer in the British army and a member of the Bene Israel Indian Jewish community, who was released from the prison of Tipu Sultan (1751–99) by the Muslim ruler’s mother, Begum Fatima Fakhr-un-Nisa. These foundational narratives are compared with non-native colonial and other sources, including manuscripts, books, letters and reports located in libraries and archives, in order to see whether there is any synchronicity between the different versions. Of particular interest is the gender dimension in which Divekar’s release from prison was facilitated by a Muslim woman, reminiscent of the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in Egypt. Although prominent in the Bene Israel communal narrative, the Begum’s role is reflected neither in colonial records nor in other accounts (notably, in Cochin Jewish letters). Finally, the question of whether Divekar brought a Torah scroll to the Gate of Mercy synagogue (so named to commemorate the compassion of the Begum) established in 1796 in Bombay is discussed. The article demonstrates that the analysis of subaltern oral narratives can enrich our understanding of history by giving a voice to marginalised groups, and focusing on suppressed narratives about gender.

This commentary article explores some of the problems encountered by independent scholars seeking to get their work published in peer-reviewed journals and in particular the difficulties they face in accessing online resources. Though often hidden, these issues are nevertheless very real for aspiring historians and those who have returned late to the historical fold. The article acknowledges the efforts of a number of journals to encourage different voices, but highlights how the limitations of current licensing and Open Access arrangements hinders this ambition.

This article provides a conceptual framework that fills a critical gap at the intersection of Chinese art and cultural history. It focuses on the Yongzheng emperor's ‘Illustrated Inventory of Ancient Playthings’ (Guwantu) and its significance within the context of the collecting and courtly elite culture of the High Qing. Through a comprehensive examination of scroll B/C.8–V&A of the Guwantu itself, as well as the relevant source material, this study elucidates the dynamics that shaped the connections between artist, collector and object in the context of the scroll. Furthermore, this contribution throws light on the multiple entangled relationships that underpinned imperial collecting practices of the period, ultimately offering new insights into the socio-cultural milieu of collectors and connoisseurs in early eighteenth-century China.

The tombstone of an Italian woman, Caterina Vilioni, in Yangzhou (1342) is a rare and important testimony to Christianity in Yuan China. By exploring the visual language and the multicultural geopolitical context of Caterina's funerary monument, this article sheds light on the dynamic processes behind how cultural and religious barriers were negotiated in the premodern Eurasian world. Despite the increasing scholarly interest in the European import of Asian luxury merchandise along the Silk Roads, movement of objects, persons, and ideas the other way around from Europe to Asia is much less explored. Moreover, the expansion of European networks towards the east was written from the perspective of men: friars, diplomats and merchants. Yet, the Yangzhou tombstone directs attention to the overlooked presence of non-elite Christian women in the cosmopolitan port cities of south-east China well before the era of modern global maritime exchange. While previous scholars traced the tombstone to Buddhist and Christian art, I argue that the visual language intentionally projected cultural ambiguity. By comparing it to the Mongol paiza (safe conduct pass), this article proposes that Caterina's burial marker functioned as an ‘otherworldly passport’, which invoked spiritual protection and facilitated the passage between two realms.

Civil War allegiance has long been a preoccupation of early modern British historians. They have weighed geographical, religious, political, and pragmatic reasons for British people to choose sides in 1642. A study of the changes of allegiance in the years that followed is just as important. Side-changing reveals the fractures and difficulties that war, regime change, and an uneasy peace created. Most scholarship has examined figures whose ideas and beliefs remained consistent as the world around them changed. This article argues that others changed their minds (and their side) because their ideas fundamentally shifted, through an engagement with oppositional literature, a royalist social environment, and relationships built with royalist agents. Through a case study of the parliamentarian Major-General Sir Thomas Myddelton it examines this process of change. The article takes the study of allegiance into the Interregnum and beyond to the Restoration, tracing the impact of Myddelton's reading, experiences, and actions upon his declared loyalty. To do this, the article proposes a methodology that cuts across historical approaches, using evidence from financial accounts, libraries, and legal cases alongside surviving correspondence and printed pamphlets to build a composite image of a changing mind.

Recent years have seen a vast expansion of scholarly interest in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Black British histories, and increasing calls to support the work of early-career scholars (ECRs) in this field. Yet ECRs continue to face several specific challenges in conducting this crucial research. This section consists of a brief introduction and two case studies based on the research and experiences of Ph.D. students Annabelle Gilmore and Montaz Marché. Gilmore aims to amplify the connections between the lives and labour of enslaved people on plantations in Jamaica and the wealth and art collection of William Thomas Beckford, now held at Charlecote Park, from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Marché seeks to trace the presence of Black women in eighteenth-century London, drawing on archival documents that provide traces of who these women may have been, and confronting the limitations of the traditional archive. Together, these pieces offer a glimpse into how these ECRs are positioning themselves within the historiography as well as considering how they hope to contribute to the field.