Traditionally, the festival of Diwali (the festival of lights), is said to spiritually signify the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair. However, during the 1802 festival, a fierce battle, known as the Battle of Poona, erupted near Pune, India, between the rival factions of the Maratha […]
Olive Morris had attended the Victoria University of Manchester to pursue her degree in social and economic science. She studied there for three years, from 1975 to 1978. During the three years she co-founded two groups, the Black Women’s Mutual Aid Group, and the Manchester Black Women’s Co-operative, working alongside Elouise Edwards and Kath Locke. […]
Victorian leisure and crime historian, Andrew Davies recently spoke about his book, Gangs of Manchester at a late night lecture at the Manchester Art Gallery. Charlotte Johnson interviews him about his past and current work on the working classes in Manchester and other British cities. It is hard for us to imagine how crowds could […]
1821 was possibly the most inopportune time to begin a war for independence in Europe. A few years prior, Napoleon was crushed, and the European powers inaugurated a revived conservative status quo in the Congress of Vienna that endeavoured to prevent any further upsets to the continent’s power balance. No more shocks and a good […]
The History Netball squad are continuing their success with their most recent matches seeing an exceptional 25 – 4 win against Medics and a 25 – 17 win against MSUOTC. These victories show that despite a break in training due to availability of the Armitage Centre, the girls are continuing to bring triumph to the […]
Jack Crutcher investigates the histories of the foods that now cover our tables in the festive period. From mince pies to turkey to yule logs, the history of eating at Christmas is extensive and international. A medieval Christmas had both religious and pagan elements. James Brannan explores how Cristes Maesse was celebrated, referring to carolling, […]
Mary Wollenscraft is one of the most famous people you’ve never heard of. Her presence in the school curriculum is minimal; her only appearance comes as a contextual note for ‘Frankenstein’ – the popular book written by Mary Shelley, her daughter. Born in 1759 in Spitalfields, London, Wollenscraft’s early life was complicated by an erratic […]
The history of European integration can be traced back to 1306, and the idea proposed by Pierre Dubois that European princes should form an assembly in order to attempt to secure a lasting European peace. 706 years later, much of the continent is tied, to some degree, to the European Union evidenced by Greece’s recent […]
A quick glance at the Premier League table sees Roberto Mancini’s Manchester City backed by the foreign billions of Sheikh Mansour, sitting smugly at the summit. Following closely are city rivals Manchester United, who can reasonably claim to be the planet’s best supported club. United, by winning their 19th league title in May 2011, overtook […]
On May 3rd, 2021, Northern Ireland commemorated its 100th anniversary as a separate legal entity within the United Kingdom. This raised the question: how do we commemorate a state with a history of violence and discrimination? This essay doesn’t attempt to answer this question but explores Northern Ireland as a case study to demonstrate the […]
Few can claim to have had an impact on as much social change and emancipation as Bayard Rustin. For decades, unrecognised for his work and deliberately forgotten, Rustin made possible many of the key cornerstones of civil rights, like the March on Washington, which would otherwise have not seen the light of day, or at […]
Constance Markievicz (1868 – 1927) seems an unusual figure for a revolutionary. Markievicz was born into a privileged, landholding family that owned estates in both Ireland and England. When she first met what would become the influential republican group, the Daughters of Ireland, she came to the meeting in a ball gown and tiara. Existing […]
It is nearly seven years since Bruce Jeffrey Pardo killed nine members of the same family and injured three others, before taking his own life, in a brutal Christmas Eve massacre. The mass murder, which took place at a family party in Covina, Los Angeles, featured a series of shootings and a severe arson attack. […]
Want a new archive to track down those elusive ‘primary sources’ your lecturers keep nagging you about? Writing an essay on the history of radical politics? Well, you’re in luck because this week the Manchester Historian travelled to Salford to take a look around the Working Class Movement Library. The easily accessible site houses an […]