Posts by Harry Cocks
Diplomats: beyond the ambassador’s reception
May 7, 2014
It is sometimes said that a diplomat is someone who thinks twice and then says nothing. In a new book John Young of Nottingham History examines the career of David Bruce, the longest serving US ambassador to the UK, who filled that office between 1961 and 1969. Using insights from historical and diplomatic studies, Professor …
Was Oscar Wilde Fairly Tried?
April 7, 2014
On 25 May 1895 Oscar Wilde and his co-defendant Alfred Taylor were convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labour. The key evidence against them came from their former associates – “renters” Charles Parker, Fred Atkins and Alfred Wood who testified that Wilde had committed “indecent acts” with them and …
Robert Peel: Conservatism, Liberalism and Reform in 19th Century Britain
March 26, 2014
Robert Peel’s record of achievements in politics would stand up against that of many British prime ministers. As Home Secretary in the 1820s he reformed England’s criminal code, established the Metropolitan Police (on which all later police forces were based), and gave civil rights to Catholics and nonconformist Protestants by repealing the Test and Corporation …
Liberalism and Nationalism in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
March 11, 2014
On the 25th of January 1894 the prominent Jewish liberal politician Heinrich Jaques walked into his lawyer’s office in Vienna and shot himself in the head. As a young lawyer and financier in the 1860s he had written works in support of the Austrian state and the assimilation of Jews. In 1879 he was elected …
Historians and the Politics of Commemoration
February 25, 2014
The recent spat between Conservative Education Secretary Michael Gove and the “left-wing historians” he blamed for distorting our view of World War One shows that anniversaries can provoke serious arguments about history and politics. In this case, Gove attacked those such as Regius Professor of History at Cambridge Richard Evans, whom he held responsible for …
Violence in Revolutionary Russia
February 10, 2014
Was the violence that accompanied the Russian Revolution and the early years of the USSR specific to the Bolshevik state, characteristic of its “totalitarianism,” or is violence somehow inherent to the formation of modern states? Did Bolshevik terror merely represent the militarisation of practices begun by the tsarist government, such as categorisation, information gathering, policing, …
The Heresy of Peter Garcias, Toulouse 1247
January 25, 2014
In 1247 a townsman of Toulouse named Peter Garcias was accused of heresy and made subject to a processus (the collection of evidence against the alleged heretic from a series of witnesses) administered by the inquisition. The statements in this case were from monks who claimed to have heard Peter proclaim a series of heretical …
What is the History of Sexuality Again?
January 6, 2014
People have been calling themselves “historians of sexuality” since the early 1990s, and there were plenty of others who dealt with questions of sex, desire and the body before that. How is it then, that we are still asking the question, ‘what is the history of sexuality?’ Perhaps one of the first writers to place …
Maria-Magdalena Mazepa: Politics and Sorcery in Ukraine
December 2, 2013
Current street protests in Ukraine about whether to pursue an EU integration pact or forge closer links with Russia are part of a long history of tension and accommodation between the two countries. The Ukrainian dilemma (East or West, Europe or Russia) is the background to a new article for Russian History from Liudmyla Sharipova …
The Reign of Edward II: Beyond the Legend
November 28, 2013
Edward II of England (whose tomb in Gloucester Cathedral is pictured here) is probably best known for the supposedly grisly manner of his death in 1327, which was said to have involved a red-hot poker and an intimate orifice. However, even though they generally agree that Edward was murdered in Berkeley Castle in that year, …
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