Jonathan Petropoulos— At the start of my sabbatical in the summer of 2000, I was living in Munich, making it easier to contact Lohse. I had his telephone number and could ring him up somewhat freely. Not long after I had settled in, Lohse invited me to his home. He
Paul Gillingham— A well-known Colombian novelist once talked about how sad he was when he killed off a character. Historians never face that problem; our characters die of their own volition, or someone else’s, and there’s not much we can do about it. Our problem is never writing about some
Paul W. Kahn— Project and system views of law are in deep tension, but this is not a tension that needs to be resolved at an abstract level. We live with multiple ways of imagining law and explaining ourselves. These different pictures contend at the retail level. They are put
Jonathan Frederick Walz— Perspicacious art historian Melissa Ho—who, in her role as curator of twentieth-century art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, oversees the largest public collection of Alma Thomas paintings on canvas—describes the artist’s output as “sensorially rich work that engages sound and touch as well as vision.” Vivid,
R.J.B. Bosworth— The far-right party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) evokes the national anthem, written in 1847 as a theme tune of Italy’s unification in the Risorgimento. In October 1946, it replaced the Royal March (Marcia reale) and Fascist anthem, Giovinezza (Youth), which had, until 1943, given the country two national songs
Andrew Wilson— In one of the north-western corners of Rus lay the town of Polatsk, on the western river Dzvina. In those days, rivers made nations. They set trade and population flows; heavily forested hinterlands were much harder to penetrate. The Dzvina is the main river in the east Slavic
John Shovlin— For centuries, empires protected the commercial activity of Europeans overseas and secured their access to crucial resources and markets. Commerce requires protection to flourish, officials and merchants understood. At home, laws and courts assured capitalists’ property and governments blocked working-class threats to accumulation. States sought to protect merchants
Nomi Claire Lazar— “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival…solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and
Feargal Cochrane— It is difficult to overstate the chaos, confusion and emotion that accompanied the creation of Northern Ireland in 1921. It was not a smooth transition. At the stroke of a political pen, a legal line was drawn across Ireland, separating six of Ulster’s nine northern counties from the
Harry Rée— What was it that made an Englishman want to parachute into occupied France, in civilian clothes? It was understandable for Frenchmen: they naturally wanted to get back home and more still to get away from the sickbed smell of the Français de Londres. But why should there have been