It is tempting to view colonial empires of the Early Modern period as unified entities which can be described with thick lines. For a thick description of a more differentiated reality it can be challenging to find relevant sources. Thanks to a project for legal materials from numerous states on the Indian subcontinent it becomes feasible to adjust the general image of British rule over India during three centuries. Thanks to a number of scholars working at Dartmouth College and colleagues elsewhere in the United States the initiative for the Indian Princely States Online Legal History Archive ..read more

Sometimes an odd chance brings you suddenly to a subject or book. In April I spotted a new primer for Belgian palaeography tucked away among books on linguistics in a book store. I was happy to spot Oud schrift voor beginners. Een inleiding tot de paleografie [Old script for starters. An introduction to palaeography], edited by Georges Declercq and Hanne Roose (Ghent 2023), but I could not help pointing out its misplacement at the sales desk. In this post I will look at the promises and qualities of this new book ..read more

When creating texts nowadays it is challenging not to test here (yet!) the notorious ChatGPT tool, but we often try to get a good view of ideas and themes by creating a mind map. In this post I will look at a book promising to offer a historical atlas of Dutch crime and punishment. Paul Brood and Martin Berendse have recently published a series of fine historical atlases, and now Paul Nieuwbeerta joined them for the Historische atlas van misdaad en straf. Nederlanders over de schreef (Zwolle, 2022). Last year I did not want to review thrice a book on Dutch history hence ny choice to bring it o ..read more

Sometimes real or supposed barriers keep you from investigating new subjects. For a long period I saw the sources of Byzantine law as a conglomerate of difficultly accessible sources. On my legal history website Rechtshistorie I scarely mentioned Byzantium and its laws, and to be honest, I was not always aware of this substantial omission. Nowadays algorithms tend to lead your focus to themes and issues, but this time a personal announcement about a new introduction to Byzantine law finally pushed me into adding some lines and references to my webpage on Roman law. On top of that came the ques ..read more

A few months ago already I spotted the beautiful catalogue Hieroglyphs. Unlocking ancient Egypt for the exhibition with this name at the British Museum (13 October 2022-19 February 2023). My initial interest was the palaeographical side of hieroglyphs. In 1822 Jean-François Champollion famously announced his decipherment of this script. One of the great merits of the exhibition is showing not only the Rosetta Stone as crucial to this breakthrough, but a combination of his own stamina and intellectual creativity, the comparison of several sources, languages and scripts, and not in the least coo ..read more

The loss of archival records by an accident, deliberate destruction or whatever other cause is one of the greatest threats for the collective memory of peoples and nations, and even for humankind in general. How can you substitute things lost for ever? Such thoughts were very much alive after June 30, 1922, when the Public Record Office of Ireland in Dublin went on fire during the Battle of Dublin. Munition stored in the building was hit by shells and multiple fires destroyed documents from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Only in 1928 the PRO could reopen. On June 30, 1922 the Nati ..read more

Summer time has been for me amidst of other things a book reading time. One of the new books I read became within a few months a bestseller in my country. Author Kester Freriks published already several books about nature and maps. His new book Grensverkenningen. Langs oude grenzen in Nederland [Border reconnaissance. Along old frontiets in the Netherlands] (Amsterdam 2022) came into existence thanks to Leiden University Library. Martijn Storms, curator of maps and atlases at this library, is his co-author. Earlier books by Freriks showed gems from the maps hjeld at the Allard Pierson, the com ..read more

This month at long last the third edition appeared of a renown manual for Dutch palaeography from 1500 to the mid-eighteenth century by Peter Horsman and Peter Sigmond, Schriftspiegel. Oud-Nederlandse handschriften van de 13de tot in de 18de eeuw (3rd edition, Hilversum 2022). For at least ten years no new manual of its kind has been published in the Netherlands and Belgium, and thus I was immediately curious about this revised edition, announced last year but printed and published only now. Which differences can be found between the last and this edition? What are its qualities, and where can ..read more

Musing about a possible goal for a holiday this summer France is bound to enter my thoughts! Thus it made me really happy to find a new portal about French regional history with an European dimension. The portal Norécrit. Aus sources de la Normandie. Pratiques de l'écrit das la Normandie médiévale is a project at the Université de Caen bringing you a tripartite online corpus with sources for legal history, ecclesiastical administration and the history of medieval archives and libraries, in particular for the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel. In earlier posts I looked here at Norman customary law and ..read more

Sometimes a word evokes almost automatically an association with a distinct historical period. The word inquisition is first and foremost linked with medieval Europe. On this blog and website I explain why speaking about the inquisition is misleading. In Early Modern Europe the Spanish and Italian inquisition received most attention from historians, but in Italy you have to distinguish between Rome and Venice. Recently the project TraPrInq started for the transcription and study of records of the inquisition in Portugal between 1536 and 1821. The project is accompanied by the blog e-Inquisitio ..read more