What brought you to Manchester, and what was it like to live and study here? I grew up in Blackpool. Manchester was the nearest large city with a very good academic reputation. I opted for a Hall of Residence. I ended up at a Catholic one operated by the Order Opus Dei, well before it […]
The historian Tacitus wrote, “The appearance of the country differs considerably in different parts; but in general it is covered either by bristling forests or by foul swamps”. Such was a Roman view of the whole region of Germania at the time, not just Saxony. According to Roman sources, a people known as the ‘Saxones’ […]
Hierarchies of morality were used by the British to justify colonial intervention across India. By depicting Indians as ‘immoral’, the state further entrenched binaries between the colonized and the colonizer. Such entrenchment paved the way for Western thought to be dominated by the perception of empire as a civilizing mission. Prostitution enabled imperialists to portray […]
The early twentieth century saw a boom in ice cream holding technology and the emergence of the edible waffle cone proved to be a big success in England. This article looks at the emergence of the edible cone and what preceded its invention. After the Napoleonic wars in the 19thcentury many Italians moved to England […]
The early origins of capitalism began in parts of Europe such as Italy and Germany coinciding with the fall of the feudal system. Capitalism is an economic system based on wage labour, in which the means of production is controlled by private or corporate interests for the purpose of profit, with prices determined largely by […]
Megan Dina Garlick asks to what extent medieval churchmen were writers of contemporary histories enlivened by the author’s perspective and experiences. A brief look into the historiography of one of England’s greatest legends.
Feminism as a movement has evolved dramatically since its popularisation in the mid twentieth century. Today, modern Western feminists use their keyboards as their weapons substituting for the more provocative arson attacks and hunger strikes employed by those for whom women’s suffrage was the leading battle. The fight for gender equality in the western world […]
The criminal justice system is all too easily taken for granted. This form of social control is a beacon to developed societies all over the world. It operates to protect from human rights abuse, whilst maintaining some sort of cohesion amongst citizens on a wider scale. However, we are inclined to see crime in terms […]
Railways are seemingly always present in the headlines. A consistently contested issue, the Guardian’s Seamus Milne is one of many who view rail as “a gigantic scam for siphoning off public money”, but what brought us to this point? To commuters, the private railways are not the concern of the government, nor do they have […]
On the 26th January 1788, just over 750 convicts and their children landed in Sydney, Australia and started a trend which would span almost 100 years. In these 100 years around 162,000 criminals would be shipped to Australia. January 1788 marked the first European settlement in Sydney however this was no normal occupation; instead of […]
With a population of 94 million inhabitants, the East-Asian archipelago of the Philippines is the 7th most populous nation in Asia and 12th in the world. Despite this, developments in the Philippines rarely feature in Western news cycles, until recently. An oft-cited reason for the Philippines’ huge and ever expanding population is that 80% of […]
Since it was founded two years ago, the Manchester Historian has grown and developed with each set of editors that has come to its helm. We have been no exception and we hope that the new features in this first issue for the 2013/14 academic year will only make the magazine more exciting for you, […]
Marilyn Monroe is undoubtedly one of the most famous actresses to have graced the screens of the United States and the world. Renowned for her beauty and artistic talent Monroe remains an international sex icon today, her legacy living on over 50 years after her death in 1962. Debate still surrounds the star, with many […]
The Islamic holiday of Ashura takes place on the tenth day of Muharram, mourning the death of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad and third Shia Imam who died at the Battle of Karbala in 680. The events leading up to and including Husayn’s death solidified the split between Sunni and Shia […]