We are delighted to announce that AHA members now have free access to History Compass for 6 months starting 17 March 2008! Just login to AHA member services, and choose “History Compass” from the list of available member services on the right hand side.

Unique in both range and approach, History Compass is an online-only journal publishing original, peer-reviewed historiographical articles of the most important research and current thinking from across the entire discipline. History Compass plays an active role in fostering research that spans centuries and continents, and provides an ideal entry point for the non-specialist.

With more than 350 articles already available, History Compass supports your research and informs your teaching by offering you:

• A new kind of core content: Articles are not traditional reports on historical research but surveys of recent historiography, ongoing interpretive debates, or suggestions for fresh directions of inquiry
• Coverage of the entire field: History Compass takes all of the past as its purview – there are no restrictions in terms of geography, time period, or historical methodology.
• Reference-linked bibliographies for each article provide the ideal entry point into specialist literature.
• Teaching and Learning Guides accompany selected articles to help you inspire and engage your students
• 100 new articles per year: 3 times more than a standard journal
• Fast continuous publication: articles typically available 6-8 weeks after acceptance
• Innovative extra content such as podcasts and blogs

For more information about the Compass journals visit www.blackwell-compass.com

Many thanks to all of you who entered the 2007 Graduate Essay Prize.

The results of the Asia section prize have now been confirmed:

Winner

Education for all: reassessing the historiography of education in colonial India
Catriona Ellis, University of Edinburgh

Runner-up

Reading the Rural Modern: Literacy and Morality in Republican China
Kate Merkel-Hess, University of California, Irvine

The final results are listed below (and are also available as a PDF). Winners and runners-up will be published in History Compass, with winners also receiving $200 / £100 of free Blackwell books.

Winners

Education for all: reassessing the historiography of education in colonial India
Catriona Ellis, University of Edinburgh (Asia Prize)

Falsified by History: Menzies, Asia and Post-Imperial Australia
Mads Clausen, University of Copenhagen (Australasia & Pacific Prize)

How far is the ‘rhetoric of inclusion; reality of exclusion’ argument applicable to the relationship of Afro-Latin Americans to the nation-state?
Helen Creighton, University College London (Caribbean & Latin America Prize)

To what extent have historians exploited monster literature for their own ends?
Anna Dunthorne, Swansea University (Europe Prize)

Scholars and the Sea: a historiography of the Indian Ocean
Sebastian Prange, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (World Prize)

No Africa, Britain & Ireland, Middle & Near East or North America Prizes were awarded this year.

Runners-up

Reading the Rural Modern: Literacy and Morality in Republican China
Kate Merkel-Hess, University of California, Irvine (Asia)

The Jews in the Medieval Polish Economy: Some Thoughts on the Historiography of the Twentieth Century
Jolanta Komornicka, Boston University (Europe)

Many thanks to all of you who entered the 2007 Graduate Essay Prize.

The final results are listed below (and are also available as a PDF). Winners and runners-up will be published in History Compass, with winners also receiving $200 / £100 of free Blackwell books.

Winners

Falsified by History: Menzies, Asia and Post-Imperial Australia
Mads Clausen, University of Copenhagen (Australasia & Pacific Prize)

How far is the ‘rhetoric of inclusion; reality of exclusion’ argument applicable to the relationship of Afro-Latin Americans to the nation-state?
Helen Creighton, University College London (Caribbean & Latin America Prize)

To what extent have historians exploited monster literature for their own ends?
Anna Dunthorne, Swansea University (Europe Prize)

Scholars and the Sea: a historiography of the Indian Ocean
Sebastian Prange, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (World Prize)

The Asia Prize will be confirmed later in February 2008.

No Africa, Britain & Ireland, Middle & Near East or North America Prizes were awarded this year.

Runners-up

The Jews in the Medieval Polish Economy: Some Thoughts on the Historiography of the Twentieth Century
Jolanta Komornicka, Boston University (Europe)

History Compass’ third PODCAST is now available!

This free podcast offers a discussion between Professor Ron Schechter, retired early modern Europe editor for History Compass, and Dr. Laura Cruz, a History Compass author. Examining Dr Cruz’s published essay, ‘The 80 Years’ Question: The Dutch Revolt in Historical Perspective’, they discuss the field of Dutch history, how it is being affected by new global and transnational histories, the need for further theoretical development in light of the cultural and linguistic turn, and the ways this article could be used in teaching.

Click here to download the podcast: http://www.gabcast.com/casts/1696/episodes/1187707007.mp3 (12.1 MB, 16 minutes 59 seconds).

Download previous History Compass Podcasts for free at http://www.blackwell-compass.com/home_podpage.  

Subscribe to future History Compass Podcasts for free via iTunes or other subscription options available here.

Send us your feedback via the comments feature here or at HICOeditorial@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com.  

‘The 80 Years’ Question: The Dutch Revolt in Historical Perspective’

Abstract

Once heralded as the ‘leading event of modern times’, the Dutch Revolt took place over a period of eighty years (1568–164 and historians have worked to interpret it for even longer. This historiographical article outlines the major points of contention and schools of thought surrounding interpretations of the deeper meaning of the Dutch bid for independence from Spanish rule. While the intellectual milieus of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe certainly left their mark on historical interpretations of this event, this article argues that writings about the Revolt distinctively trace changing perceptions of the role played by small countries in the history of Western Civilization. As is true in most contemporary historical scholarship, there are no more grand narratives for encompassing the Dutch Revolt in its entirety, but the article points to future directions for understanding the Revolt in its wider contexts, whether European or global.

Image details: ‘La Falaise à Fécamp’ by Claude Monet, 1881 © Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum

Guest Post: Andrew Greg, Project Director, National Inventory Research Project, Department of History of Art, Univeristy of Glasgow

‘NICE Paintings’ is a pioneering database aiming to bring together in one searchable catalogue all 22,000 old master paintings in UK museums. The first phase of the project is now on line at http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/NIRP/index.php. It contains detailed records of nearly 8,000 pre-1900 Continental European oil paintings from 200 public collections across the United Kingdom. Over 2,500 are illustrated with digital colour images, and more images are being added regularly.

Although a growing number of, mainly large, museums are producing on line catalogues of their collections, most museums do not have on-line catalogues and there is no union catalogue of any aspect of UK museums’ collections that brings together all their holdings into one searchable database. In addition, it has long been recognised that smaller museums do not have access to the expertise to enable them to research their specialist collections and that this is a barrier to publicising and making full use of these collections. The project’s methodology therefore was to bring together the research skills of academic art historians and the under-researched collections of often hard-pressed museum curators.

The project devised its own Access database, on established museum documentation principles, which was provided to project researchers in the field and on which they recorded their data. The individual databases were complied by the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) and mapped to VADS’ own database for web publication. We were not funded to systematically create or acquire digital images but museums have been generous with providing them where available and giving permissions. We are also very grateful to the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) and the Bridgeman Art Library for their help in providing images.

The project is aimed at everyone interested in the history of art, but will also be invaluable to teachers wanting illustrative material to teach history, geography, cultural history, and literature, mythology and bible studies material.

‘NICE Paintings’ was produced by the National Inventory Research Project (NIRP), based at the University of Glasgow. NIRP is a partnership between the University of Glasgow and Birkbeck University of London, and was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Getty Foundation and the Kress Foundation.

It is managed by a steering committee of curators from national and regional collections across the UK, chaired by Dr Susan Foister, Director of Collections at the National Gallery, London. The project is continuing to add digital images to the database, contributed by museums and the Public Catalogue Foundation, and is working to complete the project by adding to the database records on the 15,000 old master paintings in national, university and other major regional museums not included in this initial research phase of the project.

Over the next few months an alternative portal to the project’s database, with enhanced search facilities, will be provided through the University of Glasgow.

URL: http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/NIRP/index.php

Contact: a.greg@arthist.arts.gla.ac.uk

Event: The second Courts & Capitals conference organised by The Society for Court Studies and The Victorian Society.

The nineteenth century was one of the great eras of court culture and architectural patronage on a grand scale. Royal courts made huge contributions to cities and their planning but this has not received the attention it deserves. This conference highlights recent reserach and will shed new light on the influence of royal courts on the architecture and culture of some of the world’s great cities. It is intended to publish the proceedings in a special number of The Court Historian.

Date: Saturday 29 September, 2007, 10 am-5pm.

Where: The Wallace Collection, Manchester Square, London W1

Cost: £45, inc. coffee, sandwich lunch and tea.

Contact: 020 8747 5895 or events@victoriansociety.org.uk

Theme: Westminster Palace

Event: A two day interdisciplinary conference on the Palace of Westminster from the Middle Ages to the Present Day.

Date: 4-5 October, 2007
04 Octotober: Study tours of Westminster Palace; thematic and chronological overviews.
05 October: Papers looking at the function, purpose, structure, and meaning of the palace in its national and international context from the 11th-20th centuries.

Where: Porticullis House, Victoria Embankment.

Contact: Ms. June Prunty, The Society for Court Studies, PO Box 57089, London EC1P 1RF; admin@courtstudies.org.

We’re also pleased to annouce the publication of our second Virtual Issue, entitled Aspects of Early Native American History! Three of our North America section editors, Peter Mancall, Adam Rothman, and Mark Wild have specially selected the articles, and drawn together a wide-ranging issue looking at race, education, identity, war and the economy, among other topics. This issue is also supplemented by a free PDF/HTML Teaching and Learning Guide, based on these articles, written by Peter Mancall. Visit Blackwell’s Synergy site now to view the Virtual Issue and read the first three articles for free!

We’re pleased to annouce the publication of our first Virtual Issue, entitled The British World! The issue collects material from across several geographic sections of the journal, and presents articles that address a variety of issues from culture, identity, and race through to migration, economy and the environment. Visit the journal Home Page now to download the cluster map and read the first three articles for free!

History Compass is very pleased to announce a collaboration with H-Diplo and H-France! We have made History Compass author Peter Jackson’s article Post-War Politics and the Historiography of French Strategy and Diplomacy Before the Second World War temporarily free on the History Compass site, and linked to the H-Diplo listserv where Prof. Robert Young has written up a commentary. H-Diplo are hosting a discussion around this piece, so add your feedback on the commentary to the Discussion List; alternatively, you can Post Your Feedback on the History Compass website.

 Prize Wording

Unique in both range and approach, History Compass is an online-only journal publishing peer-reviewed survey articles from across the discipline, spanning both centuries and continents.

The editors of History Compass invite submissions for the 2007 Graduate Essay Prize.

Each winner will receive $200/£100 worth of free Blackwell books and have their article published in History Compass journal!There will be a prize-winning graduate essay for each of the 9 sections on History Compass:

Africa
Asia
Australasia & Pacific
Britain & Ireland
Caribbean & Latin America
Europe
Middle & Near East
North America
World

Deadline: 15 October, 2007

Guidelines The prize is open to all graduate students engaged in study at a college or university after their first degree and having not yet completed their doctorate.Those entering either competition can choose their own topic, though this should be fairly broad. The style of submitted articles should be consistent with other published articles on the sites, that is: they should have a wide scope, be written for non-specialists to acquire an introduction into new fields, and adopt a review or historiographical approach.The upper word limit is 5000 words, including abstract, footnotes and bibliography.History Compass Graduate Essays should be submitted by email as a Word document to: HICOeditorial@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com

Graduates must specify:

*          which section they are entering their essay for
*          provide the details of their affiliation
*          provide their supervisor’s name and email address

For more information, see:

www.blackwell-compass.com/home_graduate_essay.

History Compass’ second PODCAST is now available

The podcast is a discussion between Professor Stuart Ward, History Compass’ Australasian/Pacific editor, and Professor Paul Turnbull, a published History Compass author and editor. They examine Professor Turnbull’s published essay, entitled ‘British Anatomists, Phrenologists and the Construction of the Aboriginal Race, c.1790–1830’, and discuss the cognitive evolution of racial science in Europe, the theft of Indigenous cultural property from the colonial Pacific, and the repatriation of skeletal remains in Australian and European museums.

Click here to launch the podcast: http://www.gabcast.com/casts/1696/episodes/1176813759.mp3 (mp3 file, 13.8MB, 28 minutes 44 seconds).

History Compass’ first PODCAST is now available

The podcast is a discussion between Professor Felice Lifshitz, History Compass’ medieval Europe editor, and Dr Andrew Gillett, a published History Compass author. They examine Dr Gillet’s published essay, ‘Ethnogenesis: A Contested Model of Early Medieval Europe’ and ask: What is ethnogenesis? What are the questions of evidence and interpretation for interested Medievalists? How do we draw the attention of non-Medievalists to the historiographic debate over interpretative models for one of the major revolutions in western history?

Click here to launch the podcast: http://www.gabcast.com/casts/1696/episodes/1168944449.mp3 (mp3 file, 14.4 MB, 20 minutes 33 seconds).