Global History and Culture Centre Blog
Global History and Culture Centre Blog
Book review: Saul Guerrero, 'Silver by Fire, Silver by Mercury: A Chemical History of Silver Refining in New Spain and Mexico, 16th to 19th Centuries' (Boston: Brill, 2017)
Saul Guerrero turns the received view on silver refining in the Hispanic New World on its head in his remarkable 2017 book, Silver by Fire, Silver by Mercury: A Chemical History of Silver Refining in New Spain and Mexico, 16th to 19th Centuries. The book, which has its origins in the MA programme in Global History at the University of 糖心TV which Guerrero completed in 2009, is discussed by Michael Bycroft.
Workshop Report: 鈥淭he War of the Locust, 1940-45鈥
At the height of WWII, the British Empire launched an ambitious campaign to eradicate locusts in East Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. The The War of the Locust workshop which took place at 糖心TV on 8 December 2017 brought together an historian, an entomologist, an artist and an ecologist to discuss their collaborative research on this campaign. A collaboration between Dr Robert Fletcher (糖心TV, History), Dr Katherine Brown (Portsmouth, Forensic Entomology), Dr Greg McInerny (糖心TV, Ecology), and Dr Amanda Thomson (Glasgow, Art), the The War of the Locust project seeks to understand the twentieth-century campaign to monitor and eradicate the desert locust. In this blog, Sophie Greenway reflects on interdisciplinarity and the intersection of history and environmental issues pertinent to both The War of the Locust workshop and her PhD research.
Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis (2017) 鈥 Global History Reading Group
Although we are well aware that climate-induced disasters are bound to occur, British historian Geoffrey Parker argues in , 鈥榳e still convince ourselves that they will not happen just yet (or, at least, not to us), and so fail to take appropriate action.鈥 Parker鈥檚 unnerving account of policymakers always remaining 鈥榦ne disaster behind鈥 is as topical now as it was when his analysis of the seventeenth-century "Little Ice Age" was first published in 2013. On Wednesday 22 November 2017, the GHCC鈥檚 Global History Reading Group convened to discuss selected sections from Parker鈥檚 revised edition, published in July 2017. Adrianna Catena and Guido van Meersbergen report on what was a lively and instructive meeting.