Histories

On 10 December 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) without a single dissenting vote. The term “human rights” coalesced rapidly and unexpectedly. Samuel Moyn, a leading intellectual historian of human rights, observes that people now view universal human rights as part of a set of “conventional and enduring truths.” To the contrary, he asserts that “it was all rather new at the time.” Although historical and philosophical roots exist for the notion of rights, the early twentieth century witnessed little “human rights” discourse. Thus, this paper illuminates two evolutions—one political and the other religious—that helped set the stage for the birth of human rights in the aftermath of World War II. Politically, the failure of the “Westphalian order” to prevent the unimaginable suffering of “total war” broadened transnationalism beyond the quest for a balance of power between sovereign nation-states. On the religious side, rights advocates adapted principles drawn from prior debates to the mid-twentieth-century context, thereby contributing to the development and widespread embrace of the concept of inherent human dignity and the corresponding notion of inviolable and universal “human rights.” Full article

This study investigates the intertwined relationships and ideological visions of Max Nordau, Ignác Goldziher, and Abraham Shalom Yahuda, focusing on the evolution of modern Jewish scholarship, identity, and political affiliation around the turn of the twentieth century. Drawing on a diverse range of primary sources—including Nordau’s correspondence to Goldziher, Goldziher’s diaries, and contemporary press materials—it analyzes the complex dynamics among these three figures, each representing distinct biographical trajectories and ideological commitments. Particular emphasis is placed on Yahuda’s career in Madrid, his engagement with Sephardism, and his dual identity that positioned him as a unique intermediary between Eastern and Western Jewry. The study further explores Yahuda’s involvement with the Zionist movement and his stance on the Arab-Jewish question, highlighting his role in fostering Jewish–Arab cultural dialogue amid Zionist and assimilationist tensions. Ultimately, this research aims to elucidate how Jewish self-narratives were negotiated and transformed within the intellectual and political landscapes of the era, shedding light on the multifaceted nature of Jewish modernity at the dawn of the twentieth century. Full article

Death notices and obituaries have existed for centuries and have been democratized to include ordinary people previously deemed unworthy of public commemoration. With the advent of the internet, mortuaries, newspapers, survivors, and memorial websites have broadcast these life epilogues online along with guestbooks, transforming monologic cyber obituaries into dialogic web cemeteries. While critics argue the internet promotes social isolation, some thanatologists counter that web cemeteries foster (para)social relationships. They contend these digital platforms are sites of meaningful personal expression and community building and combat modern society’s institutionalization of death. However, sport historians have yet to thoroughly investigate these sources, which offer much to those interpreting the human experience. This paper illustrates how web cemeteries can be valuable sources for historians researching sporting persons, communities, and fandoms; it shows how web cemeteries reveal people’s identifying features and values, their shared characteristics and experiences, and how they coped with life and death, allowing broader contemplation on historical inequities and disparities with implications beyond sport. Various applications and approaches suitable for web cemeteries are discussed here. Though not exhaustive, these provide historians a framework and point of departure for examining novel sources to develop nuanced historical inquiry and interpretation. Full article

This article reports the findings of an ethnographic and historical study into an ultras group called Melbourne Croatia Fans (MCF), a group of mostly Croatian–Australian young men in their twenties who support Melbourne Knights (formerly known as Melbourne Croatia) in the second-tier Victorian Premier League competition. The aim is to explore identity formation and negotiation, and how identity formation informs relations with outsider groups. The interviews with the football club president, football club secretary, two MCF leaders, and the participant observation date back to the 2010–12 period. The supporters perceive that the club has fallen on hard times for reasons not of their own making. They participated in the former National Soccer League (NSL) (1977–2004) from 1984 to 2004, which was the first-ever national competition in Australia to involve club rather than state teams. However, the club was effectively banned from the new A-League (2005–present), which began based on a private-equity ownership model and a one-team-one-city concept. Despite this, the club can play in the annual knockout competition, the Australia Cup (formerly the FFA Cup), that features both A-League and lower-league teams. We observe here a group of young Croatian–Australian men, part of the Diaspora of Croatians that left the country, mostly in the communist era and afterwards, who aim to construct workable hybrid identities for themselves in an Anglo-majority nation on the other side of the world. They fight on two fronts—against an Anglo, corporate-style administration that effectively bans their club for reasons of ethnicity from the new national league, and against the Serbian youth who often live in the who live in adjacent or nearby suburbs and follow Serbian-origin clubs. Full article

This article analyzes the dynamics of racial mixing in two regions with diverse colonial administrations in the second half of the eighteenth century: St. Augustine in the province of East Florida (under British and Spanish rule) and New Orleans in the province of Louisiana (under French and Spanish rule). Baptismal records for Black and Brown individuals were used, compiling nominal data from a sample of Afro-descendants born in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Whenever available, information was collected regarding racial classification—for both the baptized individuals and their parents—as well as legal status (enslaved or free) and birth legitimacy. The analysis is conducted from a critical intersectionality framework, highlighting how race, legal status, and gender served as amplifiers of inequality. Among the main results, we must highlight gender and racial classification that, thus, emerge as key differentiators for explaining the legal status and legitimacy of baptized individuals, and they also indicate systemic asymmetries in parental relationships. Full article

The strategic position of the coast of the Kingdom of Seville, along the western route between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, encouraged the presence of numerous fleets and merchant nations in its ports and waters. The proliferation of privateers and armed conflicts, both in Andalusian waters and beyond, had a significant impact on navigation and trade. This article examines the diplomatic strategies developed by the Genoese consuls in Seville to protect the interests of their nation in the maritime conflicts that affected them. Full article

Pulque, an available traditional Mexican fermented beverage, has deep ethnographic and cultural significance. It was originally consumed by pre-Columbian civilizations, including the Teotihuacanos, Mexicas, Otomies, Zapotecas, Mixtecas, and Maya. It was revered as a sacred drink with both ceremonial and medicinal uses, often reserved for elites and priests. Its production is based on the ancestral extraction and fermentation of aguamiel, a sweet sap obtained from agave plants. While advances in food technology have occurred, traditional techniques for obtaining and fermenting aguamiel remain prevalent, especially in rural communities, reflecting the resilience of indigenous knowledge systems. Recent interest in pulque has focused on its nutritional content and potential health benefits when consumed in moderation, though risks related to excessive intake remain a concern. Moreover, cultural initiatives aim to revitalize indigenous heritage through gastronomic promotion, tourism routes, and festive traditions. This study explores pulque’s production processes, its cultural symbolism, and its evolving role within Mexican society, suggesting that its survival reflects both continuity and adaptation in the face of modernity. This paper is also presented as a narrative integrative review to explore the biocultural significance of pulque across the anthropological, historical, biochemical, and public-health domains. Full article

Sports teams increasingly use nostalgia-based marketing to spark fan engagement and boost merchandise sales. Yet these efforts can also provoke backlash, especially when they resurrect contested imagery. This article examines how one such campaign—the New York Islanders’ 2015 revival of their controversial fisherman logo—was framed across team broadcasts and interpreted by fans on social media. Drawing on a qualitative textual analysis of television and radio coverage alongside a quantitative content analysis of 563 tweets, the study reveals a divide between institutional messaging and grassroots reaction. While team broadcasts emphasized charity and sentimental appeal, fan discourse was notably more critical, mocking the jersey’s design and recalling past failures. By positioning nostalgia not only as a branding asset but as a reputational risk, the article contributes a novel perspective to debates about commercialization, mediatization, and fan co-production in sports. It also demonstrates the value of mixed methods for analyzing how branding narratives are negotiated in real time. Full article

Spontaneous human combustion, today scientifically discredited, was considered a legitimate medical entity in Europe beginning in the 17th century. The aim of this study is to analyze Spanish medical conceptions about this phenomenon between the 18th and 19th centuries, starting from the world context. Primary sources were used with a deductive–inductive approach. Beyond providing an account of a discarded medical theory, this work explores how certain categories of knowledge persist, disappear, and resurface under different belief systems. We analyze how the Spanish medical discourse on SHC evolved in three stages: exposure, debate, and rejection. This allows us to observe changes in medical mentality regarding factors such as searching for sources of ignition and moderating alcohol consumption as a preventive health measure. This study and its historiographical approach enable us to explore broader issues relating to ignorance, alternative ideas, the stability of scientific knowledge over time, and shifts in the field of legal and forensic medicine. This research provides a model for analyzing the complex dynamics of knowledge and its evolution at the intersection of science, culture, and power. Full article

Situated at the intersection of social history and psychology, this study examines how early Christian communities in Bithynia-Pontus navigated the persecution narrated in Pliny the Younger’s Epistle X 96. Through systematic textual analysis of Latin and Greek sources—triangulated with comparative evidence from Tacitus and corroborating archaeological data—and interpreted through Conservation-of-Resources and Social Identity theoretical frameworks, we reconstruct the repertoire of collective coping strategies mobilised under Roman repression. Our findings show that ritualised dawn assemblies, mutual economic assistance, and a theologically grounded expectation of post-mortem vindication converted external coercion into internal cohesion; these practices neutralised informer threat, sustained group morale, and ultimately expanded Christian networks across Asia Minor. Moreover, Pliny’s ad hoc judicial improvisations reveal the governor’s own bounded rationality, underscoring the reciprocal nature of stress between the persecutor and persecuted. By mapping the dynamic interaction between imperial policy and subaltern agency, the article clarifies why limited, locally triggered violence consolidated rather than extinguished the nascent movement. The analysis contributes a theoretically informed, evidence-based account of religious-minority resilience, enriching both early Christian historiography and broader debates on group survival under systemic duress. Full article

This study examines how the newly established United States pursued economic development through diplomatic and commercial initiatives with the Ottoman Empire, navigating regional powers and the era’s political-economic conditions. It analyzes using American archival sources how America endeavored to establish commercial and diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, which it viewed as critical markets in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, before signing any formal agreement. The research tracks how these early efforts laid foundations for what would become one of the world’s largest economies. The study analyzes America’s diplomatic efforts to secure an agreement with the Ottoman Empire prior to the 7 May 1830 trade agreement—which laid the foundation for bilateral relations—alongside the reactions of regional powers, the prevailing conditions of the period, and the Ottoman administration’s reluctance due to various factors, based on U.S. archival sources that, to the best of our knowledge, have not previously been utilized in existing studies. Full article

The capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, the extirpation of various heresies in the twelfth and thirteen centuries, the gradual expansion of Christian rule in the Iberian peninsula, and the mass conversion of Jews to Christianity there during the fourteenth century, all seemed to support a Christian triumphalism that imagined that as the End Time approached, Jews and other infidels would inevitably be absorbed into the Church. Nonetheless, an expanding medieval awareness of the many ‘Others’ beyond Christendom contributed to Christian anxieties that Jews (or Muslims) might expand their number through mass conversion, and not Christians. This paper will examine some sources of this anxiety. Full article

Johannes Althusius (1563–1638) was a pioneer of early modern federalism. Opposing Jean Bodin’s theory of absolute sovereignty, his theory, centered on association and symbiosis, laid the groundwork for later concepts such as associationalism, consociationalism, and the principle of subsidiarity. While his ideas have been rediscovered and reinterpreted by scholars since the 20th century, systematic research on his federalist framework, especially contrasting it with rival theories of that time, remains insufficient. This article addresses this research gap by systematically exploring Althusius’s federalism. It argues that Althusius’s covenant-based, multi-level associational/federal framework provided a counter-theory to the concept of absolute sovereignty. Systematically studying his federalism not only helps to restore his federalist ideas to their rightful place in the history of federalist thought, but also provides insights for contemporary governance paradigms struggling with modern pluralism. Full article

The essay offers an expansive and multi-stratified investigation into the role of esoteric traditions within the development of Russian modernity, reframing occultism not as an eccentric deviation but as a foundational epistemological regime integral to Russia’s aesthetic, philosophical, and political evolution. By analyzing the arc from Petrine-era alchemical statecraft to the techno-theurgical aspirations of Russian Cosmism and the esoteric visual regimes of the avant-garde, this essay discloses the deep ontological entanglement between sacral knowledge and modernist radical experimentation. The work foregrounds figures such as Jacob Bruce, Wassily Kandinsky, and Kazimir Malevich, situating them within broader transnational currents of Hermeticism, Theosophy, and Rosicrucianism, while interrogating the role of occult infrastructures in both late-imperial and Soviet paradigms. Drawing on recent theoretical frameworks in the global history of esotericism and modernist studies, the long-read article elucidates the metaphysical substrata animating Russian Symbolism, Abstraction, Malevich’s non-Euclidian Suprematism and Moscow Conceptualism. This study contends that esotericism in Russia—far from marginal—served as a generative matrix for radical aesthetic innovation and ideological reconfiguration. It proposes a reconceptualization of Russian cultural history as a palimpsest of submerged sacral structures, where utopia and apocalypse, magic and technology, converge in a distinctively Russian cosmopoietic horizon. Ultimately, this essay reframes Russian and European occultism as an alternate technology of cognition and a performative semiotic universe shaping not only artistic modernism but also the very grammar of Russian historical imagination. Full article

The article is aimed at building on the existing studies devoted to the last stage of the assimilation policy directed at the Muslim population in Communist Bulgaria during the second half of the 1980s. The 40th anniversary of the forced change of the given Turkish–Arabic and Persian names of this population is an occasion to revisit this dark period of the recent past. This study focuses on the short- and long-term consequences of the political measures, which became known as the ‘Revival process’ (1984/1985–1989). For the first time, the author presents new written sources, including analytical and field reports commissioned by the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party and prepared by Bulgarian scholars during the second half of the 1980s, as well as later collected biographical data related to Muslims affected by the events, derived through an (auto)ethnographic method of research among Turks, Crimean Tatars and Muslim Roma. Full article

Two of the renowned figures of Edo-era Kokugaku (National Learning), Motoori Norinaga and Ueda Akinari, famously debated the merits of their scholarly approaches to Japanese antiquity during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Their intellectual dispute was the result of the radical conclusions reached by Tō Teikan in his Shōkōhatsu (An Outburst of Provocations; 1781) in which he argued that the Korean peninsula and China influenced ancient Japan, and that Japan’s first emperor, Jimmu, was from Ryukyu. While Akinari supported the notion of continental influence on ancient Japan, Norinaga did not, and while the former was mostly agnostic about Jimmu’s Ryukyuan roots, the latter opposed that as well. Norinaga, however, was not opposed to the idea of ancient ties between Ryukyu and Japan, an issue with which Akinari’s silence seemed to signify some degree of agreement. This commonality between these two intellectual giants demonstrated the extent to which Japanese intellectuals of the Edo period viewed the Ryukyu Kingdom (now Okinawa Prefecture) as occupying an ambivalent geopolitical space, in which it was neither fully foreign nor fully native. At the same time, Akinari’s historiographical approach to Japanese antiquity, which emerged in his debate with Norinaga, exerted an influence on nineteenth-century depictions of Ryukyu’s historical and cultural ties to Japan, chiefly Kyokutei Bakin’s Chinsetsu yumiharizuki (Fantastic Tales of the Moon Bow; 1811). Full article

This article examines the struggles for water justice led by women in the Aconcagua River Basin (Valparaíso, Chile) through a hydrofeminist perspective. Chile’s water crisis, rooted in a colonial extractivist model and exacerbated by neoliberal policies of water privatization, reflects a deeper crisis of socio-environmental injustice. Rather than understanding water merely as a resource, this research adopts a relational epistemology that conceives water as a living entity shaped by and shaping social, cultural, and ecological relations. Drawing on life-history interviews and the construction of a hydrofeminist cartography with women river defenders, this article explores how gendered and racialized bodies experience the crisis, resist extractive practices, and articulate alternative modes of co-existence with water. The hydrofeminist framework offers critical insights into the intersections of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and environmental degradation, emphasizing how women’s embodied experiences are central to envisioning new water governance paradigms. This study reveals how women’s affective, spiritual, and territorial ties to water foster strategies of resilience, recovery, and re-existence that challenge the dominant extractivist logics. By centering these hydrofeminist life histories, this article contributes to broader debates on environmental justice, decolonial feminisms, and the urgent need to rethink human–water relationships within the current climate crisis. Full article

President John F Kennedy faced an impending crisis upon taking office in January 1961. The revolutionary threat of Cuba held the potential to spread to several neighboring countries. This crisis was the product of decades of neglect from successive US presidents, that ultimately invited the USSR into the region and fell to Kennedy during his first year as President. Kennedy sought to recast the image of the US in the hemisphere to inoculate against the example of Cuba. The cornerstone of this plan was the Alliance for Progress, a substantial program of economic assistance from the US to Latin America. However, that program has widely been criticized as a failure. Rather than reflect on the economic and social limitations of the Alliance for Progress, this paper will evaluate the diplomatic impact of Kennedy’s approach in forming the anti-Cuban coalition in the first year of his presidency. Kennedy successfully changed the Latin American attitude towards the US prior to the releasing of any substantial economic aid. Therefore, this paper will argue that “The Kennedy Plan” was a diplomatic success that reduced the threat of Castro’s Cuba in the context of the Cold War. Full article

Across the centuries, trees have been recognised as one of the oldest lifeforms on earth, witnessing and subject to the passage of time on a scale that far exceeds human life, telling us who we are in the world. This paper explores the intricate nature of human interactions with trees across a broad chronological and conceptual range, and the cultural, symbolic, and ecological meaning of “iconic” trees, drawing upon a selection of case studies to explore and analyse the relationship between the tree as a living organism and its cultural, textual, and mnemonic meaning. In conducting this, it reflects upon the cultural geographies of presence and absence, and the role of emblematic trees as places of memory and structures of belief. The relationship between human life and the life of trees is shown to be symbiotic; multiple cultural values and symbolic forms are ascribed to trees, and those same trees shape the physical, ecological, and human environment. The social and cultural construction of the landscape and sites of memory is presented as a key component in the formation of narratives and mentalities that define the relationship between humans and iconic trees, material and imagined. Physical, ecological, and cultural erosion, it is suggested, have the capacity of memorialising forgetfulness and creating a space in which the absence of presence and the presence of absence co-exist. The iconic image of the fallen tree, in its presence and absence, exposes the extent to which trees are also human objects, constructed and understood in human terms, and subject to a range of personal, political, and pragmatic impulses. A tree can be iconic not simply because of what it was but because of what it was believed to be, integrating a physical, historical, memory, and ecological or cultural space into our relationship with the natural world. Full article