Histories, Volume 5, Issue 2 (June 2025) – 14 articles

Across the centuries, trees have been recognised as one of the oldest lifeforms on earth, witnessing and subject to the passage of time on a scale that far exceeds human life, telling us who we are in the world. This paper explores the intricate nature of human interactions with trees across a broad chronological and conceptual range, and the cultural, symbolic, and ecological meaning of “iconic” trees, drawing upon a selection of case studies to explore and analyse the relationship between the tree as a living organism and its cultural, textual, and mnemonic meaning. In conducting this, it reflects upon the cultural geographies of presence and absence, and the role of emblematic trees as places of memory and structures of belief. The relationship between human life and the life of trees is shown to be symbiotic; multiple cultural values and symbolic forms are ascribed to trees, and those same trees shape the physical, ecological, and human environment. The social and cultural construction of the landscape and sites of memory is presented as a key component in the formation of narratives and mentalities that define the relationship between humans and iconic trees, material and imagined. Physical, ecological, and cultural erosion, it is suggested, have the capacity of memorialising forgetfulness and creating a space in which the absence of presence and the presence of absence co-exist. The iconic image of the fallen tree, in its presence and absence, exposes the extent to which trees are also human objects, constructed and understood in human terms, and subject to a range of personal, political, and pragmatic impulses. A tree can be iconic not simply because of what it was but because of what it was believed to be, integrating a physical, historical, memory, and ecological or cultural space into our relationship with the natural world. Full article

Polish scholarly literature has not comprehensively analysed the image of the French Revolution of 1789–1799 in history textbooks. Similarly, 20th- and 21st-century historiography has presented no exhaustive overview of these events. This article does not claim to exhaust the subject matter. In addressing the topic of the French Revolution, the author seeks to connect with ongoing research in Poland concerning the philosophical interpretation of selected themes in Polish and world history. Moreover, given that the philosophical interpretation of these events in history education compendia has been and remains consistent with historiographical approaches, the author also extends the discussion to a broader consideration of the historiography of the French Revolution from the late 19th century to the present day. The French Revolution occupies a significant place in Polish historical education. However, while contemporary historiography increasingly associates it with crisis, injustice, and oppression, textbook narratives continue to uphold the myth of the French Revolution—favoured in Poland since the late 19th century—as a crucial event perceived as beneficial for France. Full article

Since the early 14th century, the Mediterranean coasts of the Crown of Aragon had mechanisms in place to alert populations of incoming threats from the sea. In addition to maritime surveillance systems strategically positioned at elevated vantage points, any information reaching the coast that posed a threat to the safety of the population or trade was swiftly relayed along the shoreline, ensuring that coastal communities could prepare and defend themselves. This information, preserved in the correspondence of coastal city authorities, serves today as a primary source not only for reconstructing maritime threats in the late Middle Ages but also for assessing the role of urban leaders in managing defence. This article explores both aspects. By analysing maritime alerts either received in the city of Barcelona or disseminated from it during the first half of the 15th century, this study examines the main threats to the Catalan coastline while emphasizing the central role of cities in managing the alert system. Full article

Massachusetts in the 1780s was deeply polarized. In the preparty era, the most developed communities were able to monopolize the levers of policymaking and governance in order to secure their interests. The least commercial–cosmopolitan communities, lacking organization and resources, were unable to advance their interests. The least commercial–cosmopolitan communities’ inability to influence politics and secure relief stemmed from the absence of party competition. The absence of oppositional political organizations to counteract the natural advantages of elites in preparty politics obstructed the representation of the least commercial–cosmopolitan communities. Such obstruction caused the accumulation of populist frustration, culminating in Shays’s Rebellion. Full article

This article assesses the importance of two tax controversies in conditioning market access in fifteenth-century Bruges. It looks at diplomatic posturing on the management of this market and the conditions for partaking in its trade. The theory of ‘signalling’ is applied to highlight diplomatic stances and reveal the reasoning behind policy decisions including reprisals, taxes, and boycotts hitherto absent in the literature. Diplomatic, urban legal, and fiscal sources are consulted to reveal what the Castilians and Catalans, sizeable and organised merchant communities in Bruges, perceived as an existential threat to their trade—the ‘fiscalisation’ of market access. This article takes a comparative approach, employing the theory of signalling to determine the strategies of the various actors involved and their efficacy. The Duke of Burgundy and his administration emerge from this story as the prime agent in determining this equilibrium, with the Castilians and Catalans bringing their diplomatic and economic leverage to bear to prevent it. The city of Bruges, as lobbyist and interlocutor, was involved throughout attempting to find a balance between its many merchant communities. These cases offer historical insights into strategies of negotiation when the economic stakes are high. Full article

The Latin (De Homine, 1662, 1664) and French (L’Homme, 1664) editions of René Descartes’ Treatise on Man present different iconographic traditions, but the iconography of the Latin editions is little known. Dutch physician and botanist Florentius Schuyl edited De Homine and illustrated it himself with a mix of woodcut and copperplate illustrations. This paper examines Schuyl’s innovative depictions of purported dynamic aspects of the pineal gland as claimed by Descartes: (1) repeatedly illustrating the pineal gland as the corporeal–spiritual linkage of the brain and soul; and (2) using a movable flap anatomy to illustrate the pineal gland as a motile structure that both responds to and directs animal spirits. None of the canonical illustrations in the later French edition attempted to depict the corporeal–spiritual linkage of the brain and soul, and the modest attempts in the French edition to depict the motility of the pineal gland relied simply on superimposition of two purported positions of the gland, a technique also employed by Schuyl. This paper also reviews how Schuyl’s illustration of a corporeal–spiritual linkage of the brain and soul in a goat sharply contrasts with his written defense of Descartes’ bête-machine doctrine in the extended preface to De Homine. Full article

In the Spanish Empire, the term mestizo/mestiza denoted, overwhelmingly, people of so-called “mixed” European and indigenous ancestry, but there existed also some regional adaptations with differing genealogies such as the mestizos de sangley in the Philippines. The article traces some developments of the application and racialization of the term mestizo shortly after the end of the Spanish Empire in the Philippines under U.S. rule. It will look at photographs that were taken in by Dean Worcester, secretary of the interior, and his staff, in order to apply and develop theories of the biologist racism, which in the early twentieth century was en vogue all over the globe. Worcester and his crew took the photographs during their expeditions and used them to illustrate their hypotheses about racialized taxonomies, adapting and further developing Spanish colonial ideas. I will contrast them with a photograph from a local studio in Mindanao. The photographs stem from the photographic collection of the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne, Germany. Full article

This study examines how English newspapers portrayed the First Saudi State (FSS) between 1794 and 1819, focusing on their role in shaping European perceptions. The starting point, 1794, corresponds to the earliest located article mentioning the FSS, while 1819 marks the final reports on its downfall, including the fall of Diriyah in 1818 and the execution of Imam Abdullah bin Saud. While most historical research on the FSS has analyzed travelogs and diplomatic reports, this study highlights newspapers as a contemporaneous and underexplored source. It finds that English press coverage primarily relied on Ottoman and allied sources, often lacking direct Saudi perspectives. As a result, articles frequently framed the FSS as a rebellious religious sect rather than a legitimate state-building effort. Using a qualitative content analysis of 55 randomly selected newspaper articles, the study identifies recurring themes, sources, and biases. Coverage peaked during major geopolitical events, but inaccuracies, sensationalized terminology, and selective reporting reinforced negative stereotypes about the Saudis. By filling a gap in historiography, this research underscores how newspapers shaped public perceptions and foreign policy decisions toward Arabia. It also highlights the broader implications of media dependency in shaping historical narratives. Full article

During the 17th and early 18th centuries, within the framework of Castilian inheritance law—which mandated the equal partition of marital assets among all legitimate descendants—the elites of colonial La Rioja devised a set of complex and adaptive strategies to safeguard the integrity of their principal estates. This study examines four lineages spanning three to six generations to analyze the mechanisms employed to ensure patrimonial continuity. These included the foundation of mayorazgos (entailments), strategic transactions among co-heirs, differentiated inheritance arrangements, the symbolic and legal assignment of familial roles, and highly endogamous marriage patterns. In a region characterized by demographic constraints, limited commercial integration, and economic stagnation, elite families also relied on credit networks involving landowners, convents, and merchants to sustain their influence. By situating these practices within broader colonial legal frameworks and recent historiography on legal pluralism and credit economies, this article offers a nuanced understanding of the legal, social, and financial instruments that shaped elite reproduction in a peripheral colonial setting. Full article

China’s engagement with global governance has evolved significantly since 1949, transitioning from outright rejection during its revolutionary isolation (1949–1971) to strategic engagement with key institutions such as the United Nations, IMF, and WTO (1971–2000), and more recently to the creation of parallel institutions like the AIIB and Belt and Road Initiative (2000–present). This paper traces these historical phases to analyze how China has navigated and reshaped global norms, balancing its integration into existing frameworks with efforts to build alternative governance structures. While Hegemonic Stability Theory and Power Transition Theory offer insights into China’s evolving strategy, neither fully encapsulates its pragmatic, adaptive approach. China’s domestic regulatory innovations, such as the Social Credit System and its promotion of cyber sovereignty, increasingly influence its global governance initiatives, reflecting a deliberate effort to export its governance models. Rather than fully integrating into or replacing the U.S.-led liberal order, China employs a dual-track strategy: engaging with global institutions where advantageous while promoting state-centric alternatives to liberal norms. This study argues that China’s historical trajectory underscores its pivotal role in shaping a multipolar world order, where competing governance frameworks coexist and challenge the dominance of Western-led institutions. Full article

In this article, I consider the narratives framing Italian-language accounts of ecclesiastical censorship in early modern Italy and its impact on the modern Italian state. I set out Adriano Prosperi, Vittorio Frajese and Gigliola Fragnito’s interpretations of the significance of the Roman Inquisition and the Congregation of the Index. Although each of these historians engaged with the theories of modernity developed by such scholars as Max Weber and Michel Foucault, I argue that their narratives were informed by a desire to explain a different historical problem. Weber and Foucault sought to demonstrate that the achievements of modern society were achieved through the creation of structures of social discipline that impinged upon individual liberty. The historians I consider here addressed a different question. They were seeking to consider whether the suppression of individual liberty enacted by the Catholic Church’s disciplinary structures prevented Italy’s progress to modernity and statehood. These arguments were initially formulated during the mid-to-late nineteenth century by such scholars and politicians as Bertrando Spaventa and Francesco de Sanctis, whose thought had been shaped by exposure to Hegelian historical and philosophical thought. In this paper, I argue that in Italian historical discourse, accounts of the nature and effects of ecclesiastical censorship have been framed by what is, in effect, an inverted Protestant narrative of progress. Full article

Three languages of service in the Hunter Valley show the emotional impact of new labour systems on valuing and self-valuing in work. The newspaper advertisements present a self-image of the servant as a negotiator for wages and conditions, and servants read these advertisements and formed attitudes from them. Their language suggests they were significant players in the modernising of work. Wealthy employers sought the cheapest labour possible, and the new lower middle-class townsman added notions of respectability that servants adopted themselves. In conflict with this, the letters of a squatter family represent the servant as an object of humour, as sly, untrustworthy, and dangerously sexualised. This abject status derived from notions of servants as less than human, as stock, from slavery. In response, servants replied that they knew their work and emphasised a labour market perspective. Full article

Jacob Gens, the head of the Vilnius Ghetto Police Force, and eventually the entire Ghetto during the Holocaust, was murdered on 14 September 1943 by the head of the Vilnius Gestapo. Historical documents and Holocaust survivor testimonies indicate that he was killed at a site that became known as the Rasu Street Prison, and not the Gestapo Headquarters, as it is widely believed. In 2016, research was completed at the Rasu Street Prison site using ground penetrating radar (GPR) and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) to locate subsurface reflection patterns that possibly indicate the location of where Jacob Gens is buried. Intersecting GPR and ERT reflection patterns were discovered and a plan was put in place to excavate that location. The excavation revealed the presence of human remains at 1.45 m below the surface. A skull and upper torso were exposed, and two teeth were collected for DNA and radiocarbon analysis. The DNA from the tooth was compared to Jacob Gens’ daughter’s DNA, and this comparison yielded a negative result, so the human remains were not those of Jacob Gens. The radiocarbon analysis provided a date between 1685 and 1735. In 1705, a plot of land was donated to the Visitation Monastery, which used this plot, and which coincides with the location of the Rasu Street Prison, as a cemetery for the poor. In 1709 and 1710, a plague epidemic was prevalent in Vilnius, as was turmoil and famine associated with the Great Northern War (1700 to 1721). Based on these discoveries, rather than finding the remains of Jacob Gens, it is likely that we found human remains that are part of a forgotten 18th century cemetery associated with the Visitation Monastery. Full article

While Kepler is regarded as a major figure in standard historical accounts of the scientific revolution of early modern Europe, he is typically seen as having one foot in the new scientific culture and one in the old. In some of his work, Kepler appears, along with Galileo, to be on a trajectory towards Newton’s celestial mechanics. In addition to his advocacy of Copernicus’s heliocentrism, he appealed to physical causes in his explanations of the movements of celestial bodies. But other work appears to express a neo-Platonic “metaphysics” or “mysticism”, as most obvious in his embrace of the ancient tradition of the “music of the spheres”. Here I problematize this distinction. The musical features of Kepler’s purported neo-Platonic “metaphysics”, I argue, was also tied to Platonic and neo-Platonic features of the methodology of a tradition of mathematical astronomy that would remain largely untouched by his shift to heliocentrism and that would be essential to his actual scientific practice. Importantly, certain features of the geometric practices he inherited—ones later formalized as “projective geometry”—would also carry those “harmonic” structures expressed in the thesis of the music of the spheres. Full article