Histories, Volume 6, Issue 3 (September 2026) – 10 articles

Imperialism as a system of exploitation profoundly shaped the natural and human landscapes of colonized regions. This paper examines how the Second World War accelerated imperial transformations in East Africa, focusing on the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme (1947–1951) as a case of business-imperial collaboration. Set against Britain’s post-war reconstruction needs, the scheme shows how corporate interests, especially Unilever’s, shaped colonial development through industrial agriculture. Drawing on archival research and recent historiography, the article argues that the scheme was not merely a failed agricultural experiment. Rather, it was a structural expression of business-imperial partnership with lasting environmental and institutional legacies. Its ecological damage and social disruption reflect broader patterns of environmental violence inherent in imperial capitalism. This study contributes to imperial environmental history in two ways. First, it traces the long-term ecological impacts of post-war industrial development in colonial spaces. Second, it shows that imperial agro-economic practices were not temporally isolated events: the effects of even short-lived, failed ventures such as the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme continued into the postcolonial period. Full article

This article examines the voyage of the Leviathan, a brigantine that sailed from Newport, Rhode Island, in 1773, in search of new sperm whale grounds in the South Atlantic but ended its journey off the coast of Brazil. There, its crew was arrested and persuaded to teach sperm-whaling techniques under Portuguese colonial authorities. Bringing together the trajectories of a Jewish merchant, a New England captain, a Portuguese viceroy, and sperm whales themselves, the voyage marked the beginning of sperm whale hunting in Brazilian waters. At the same time, it triggered an unplanned process of technological and environmental knowledge transfer across imperial borders. Drawing on Environmental History, Blue Humanities, and Atlantic Studies, the article argues that the Leviathan functioned as both a borderscape and as a boundary-crossing device, linking human and nonhuman actors across political, ecological, social, and oceanic frontiers. By reconstructing this incidental voyage through a connected and more-than-human perspective, the article proposes a transdisciplinary approach to the writing of Early Modern Atlantic history. Full article

In 19th-century Hungary, the German-language press provided an important intellectual platform for Jewish journalists, many of whom became significant actors in political communication and cultural transfer. This study examines the Pester Lloyd (founded in 1854) as an institutional case through which the mediating role of Jewish journalists in a multilingual press culture can be explored. By analyzing editorial strategies, journalistic networks, and forms of cultural mediation, the paper explores how Jewish intellectuals operated between Hungarian- and German-language cultural and political spheres. Methodologically, the study combines historical press research with institutional and intellectual–historical analysis, drawing on editorials, feuilletons, autobiographical writings, and contemporary press material. Special attention is given to Miksa Falk, whose editorial leadership embodied the ideals of liberal constitutionalism and linguistic and cultural mediation. The article situates the Pester Lloyd as both a product of and an important medium for journalistic modernization and the participation of Jewish journalists within Hungary’s evolving media landscape. Full article

This study examines Slovak compatriot associations in the United States at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as institutional structures of mutual aid, community organization and immigrant adaptation. The analysis focuses on the National Slovak Society and American Živena and is based on the qualitative content analysis of associational statutes and organizational documents. The study demonstrates that Slovak associations fulfilled functions extending beyond welfare assistance alone. Alongside systems of sickness, disability and death benefits, they also organized educational, publishing and cultural activities that contributed to the stabilization of Slovak immigrant community life in the United States. The comparison of the National Slovak Society and American Živena reveals differences between male and female organizational models within Slovak associational life. Whereas the National Slovak Society emphasized mutual aid and financial administration, American Živena focused more strongly on women’s educational and cultural activities. The findings situate Slovak associations within the broader context of immigrant mutual aid organizations in the United States and contribute to the historiography of Slovak migration and immigrant associational life. Full article

To date, many studies on the Nazi Special Courts have focused on the individuals involved in passing judgement or in the prosecution process in general, as well as on their political significance. For our study, we undertake a re-evaluation and computational ‘upcycling’ of an archive catalogue from the 1970s containing around 10,000 legal cases from the Munich Special Court (1933–1945). Although this was not an entirely new phenomenon–they were originally introduced by the Weimar Republic–, the Special Courts were unique in that they brought together general criminal law and ‘crimes’ in the form of non-conformity with National Socialist ideology under a single jurisdiction. Full article

This article reconstructs a largely forgotten episode in the history of Buddhist studies: the period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when the Buddha was widely considered to have been Sri Lankan (Ceylonese) in origin. Contrary to modern scholarly consensus situating the Buddha firmly in northern India, early European encounters with Buddhism unfolded amid profound uncertainty regarding its geographical and historical origins. Drawing on colonial accounts, early translations, sacred relics, and the European interpretation of chronicle traditions, the article shows how Sri Lanka came to appear, within certain European scholarly frameworks, to possess a coherent and persuasive claim to Buddhist primacy, grounded in living religious practice, sacred geography, and continuous historical narratives. The article argues that the subsequent displacement of a Sri Lankan Buddha was not simply the result of improved evidence, but of a deeper epistemic transformation. During the nineteenth century, new standards of historical credibility—philology, cartography, archaeology, and comparative textual criticism—redefined what counted as authoritative knowledge. Through the interventions of figures such as Brian Hodgson and George Turnour, Ceylonese traditions were reclassified as local and symbolic rather than foundational. By tracing this shift, the article illuminates how scholarly consensus is produced through changes in method and authority, revealing how changing standards of evidence narrowed the range of historically credible possibilities. Full article

The figure of Cesare Borgia occupies a complex and revealing place in the political thought of Niccolò Machiavelli. This article argues that the historical Cesare complicates Machiavelli’s more schematic presentation of military autonomy in The Prince. Whereas Chapter VII foregrounds Cesare’s dependence on Alexander VI, fortuna, French assistance, and contingent political circumstances, Chapter XIII presents a compressed movement from French auxiliaries and mercenary captains to “own” arms. By reconstructing the composition, financing, and command structures of Cesare’s forces, the article shows that his attempts to reduce dependence remained incomplete. His military power remained structurally dependent on papal finance, French backing, mercenary captains, intermediaries, and temporary forms of local recruitment. Cesare therefore did not consolidate the kind of stable territorial military apparatus that Machiavelli elsewhere identified as essential to durable rule. His rapid collapse after Alexander VI’s death reflects the fragility of a principality built on external, negotiated, and revocable support. The article thus reframes Cesare not as a historical exemplar of achieved Machiavellian military self-sufficiency, but as a figure whose career exposes the tension between Machiavelli’s theoretical use of armi proprie and the composite realities of warfare in Renaissance Italy. Full article

This study proposes a new conceptual framework that moves beyond the widely used civic/ethnic dichotomy in nationalism theory by bringing Michael Billig’s concept of banal nationalism into dialogue with the literature on everyday boundary-making. It argues that the so-called “invisible” and routine markers of banal nationalism play a constitutive role in the everyday reproduction of national belonging and in delineating who is counted as inside and who is excluded as outside. Crucially, this process is not static; it is activated and contested through the constant dialectic between everyday border-drawing and the lived reality of border-crossing. Banal nationalism, therefore, is not merely composed of unnoticed symbols, but is deeply intertwined with the quotidian mechanisms of boundary-drawing that shape rights, belonging, and processes of exclusion. In this regard, the study critiques the limitations of the civic/ethnic distinction and introduces a new model (termed “banal boundary-making”) which links banal nationalism to practices of boundary construction and the management of border-crossers across linguistic, affective, material, and administrative dimensions. The aim is to contribute to nationalism theory with a mechanism-oriented approach that transcends the binary of civic versus ethnic nationalism by showing how boundaries are performatively redrawn at the very moment they are crossed. Full article

This article examines the terminological contributions of Gaspard Bauhin in his seminal work, “Theatrum Anatomicum” (1605). It is part of a series of articles exploring the development of anatomical terminology following Vesalius. Through linguistic analysis of the original Latin text, the study identifies four models of terminological transformation: (1) passive monosynonymy—the reduction of multiple synonyms to a single standard term (clavicula, scapula); (2) visual standardization—the transformation of descriptive phrases into binary terms through the labels of anatomical illustrations (musculus obliquus superior, musculus obliquus inferior); (3) conservative osteology—preservation of genitive constructions for cranial bones (os Frontis, ossa Syncipitis); (4) implicit consolidation—the establishment of terms with disputed priority (malleus, incus, stapes) by including them in an authoritative systematic text. Statistical analysis of the Index Rerum reveals a 70% binary form in the nomenclature of muscles compared to 38% in the nomenclature of bones, which confirms the selective nature of Bauhin’s standardization. The prescriptive language (vocamus, nominamus) indicates that Bauhin prescribes rather than describes. The study establishes that os frontale, os parietale, and os occipitale do not appear in Bauhin’s active nomenclature (Bauhin 1605, Lib. III, p. 531; Bauhin 1609, pp. 145–47)—a finding that qualifies the broad historiographical attribution of modern anatomical bone terminology to Bauhin (Pretterklieber 2024; Ghosh 2016) and confirms the selective character of his standardization programme. The parallel between Theatrum Anatomicum and Pinax Theatri Botanici (1671) reveals the universal applicability of the genus et differentia principle, anticipating Linnaeus’s binary system (1753). Full article

The rapid digitization of large source collections in the humanities over the last three decades has comprehensively transformed the discipline. The accessibility of primary sources has improved drastically, the pre-processing of research data has been revolutionized in some areas, and new transdisciplinary approaches have emerged and become possible. However, while digital and computational historians have produced extensive reflection on these developments, the theoretical grounding of this transformation has not been fully integrated into mainstream historical methodology: most critically, the concept of ‘information’, central to computer science and computational methods, has not yet been systematically received as a technical category within the discipline’s methodological canon. In this contribution, we employ a concept from Science and Technology Studies—Bruno Latour’s ‘circulating reference’—to analyze and render describable the processes of historical research within a digitized research environment. Through three case studies—AI-supported segmentation of Habsburg cadastral maps (1817–1861), computational analysis of the Hof- und Staatsschematismus (1702–1918), and the datafication of the Munich Special Court archive inventory (1933–1945, 1975–1977)—we demonstrate how and at which specific points historical research benefits from this framework, and what new insights it enables. Full article