April 2021 – Manchester Historian

In 2017, the Declaration on the Common Language was signed. It marks a culmination of attempts to counter nationalistic factions in the Western Balkans and a move towards a discussion of language, independent of nationalist tendencies. Language politics has been an important factor in the creation of the new national identities which have emerged out of the fall of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. T

Immediately following the war, historians sought to explain Nazi Germany as a totalitarian state with a people firmly controlled from above. This was challenged in the 1960s by the notion of ‘cumulative radicalisation’, whereby Nazism also held to initiatives from below, though historians maintained the ability of the working-class not to engage with Nazism’s ideological message. By the 1980s, however, historians considered Nazi racial ideology as capable of penetrating popular mindsets.

Modern detective novels and television dramas have captured public imagination for over a century. Forensic fingerprinting features in nearly every single one. Whilst the practise is one many are familiar with, few know of its modern history of development in colonial India, and the story of how it reached Victorian Britain to further develop into the technique widely used today across the globe.

The Roman Emperor Vespasian came to power in 69CE after a year-long and bloody Roman civil war, which had seen no fewer than four emperors. Having little legitimacy to his newfound and tenuously held position other than the strength of the legions which had proclaimed him emperor, Vespasian needed to validate his rule quickly. As everyone knew, the best way to garner public support in Rome was to decimate a foreign enemy, and Vespasian found the perfect target: Judea, a plucky province that had recently shaken off Roman rule with a rebellion in 66CE.