Fact vs. fiction

In conjunction with the Institute of Historical Research's November conference Novel Approaches, their online Reviews in History has been comparing works of academic history with novels set in the same period

Julia Lovell (Birkbeck College, University of London)) compares Mao's last revolution by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhols with Yu Hua's novel Brothers (Xiong di)

Click to read her REVIEWS

Mao's last revolution (Harvard UP, 2006) is available in SOAS Library at CC951.056 / 995530.
Click HERE to go to the catalogue entry
Brothers is available at the British Library

Dr Jenny Benham (from the IHR) compares Jonathan  Riley-Smith's classic The Crusades: a short history with the Swedish bestseller The Temple knight by Jan Guillou

Click to read her REVIEWS

The Crusades (2nd edition, 2005) is available in SOAS Library at NB909.07 / 933682
Click HERE to go to the catalogue entry
Try Foyles or Waterstones if you are intrigued by The Temple knight !

Law and politics of British colonial thought: book reviews

Compare reviews of Law and politics of British colonial thought: transpositions of Empire by Dr. Shaunnagh Dorsett (Faculty of Law, University of Wellington) and Ian Hunter

The book is "mainly concerned with British Law as it developed in settler colonies", commencing with Britain's North American territories and concentrating on the Anglophone colonies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, although there is a "lively" account of English barrister Travers Twiss and his support of the Belgian King Leopold in the establishment of the Congo Free State

• Reviews in History (Institute of Historical Research) - review by Dr. Jack Harrington (Open University)
• Settler Colonial Studies  - review by Professor Peter Karsten (Department of History, University of Pittsburg) [PDF]

Find the book in SOAS Library at A344.2 / 737200

Click here to link to the Library catalogue

Jerusalem: the biography (book review)

Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Jerusalem : the biography" was  published in the U.K earlier this year. The book examines the history of the city from the earliest times to the present day.

Read the latest review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review 


Find the book in SOAS Library at QJ956.944 / 734184

Click here to view the Library catalogue

Information skills for Historians

A quick reminder that there will be sessions looking at information resources for historians in Room E17 (Library) on

• Friday 4th November (10-11 a.m.)
• Friday 11th November (10-11 a.m.)

The sessions will look at topics such as electronic journals, databases (full-text and bibliographic), the Library's online subject guides, and looking for resources beyond SOAS

Please email ms28@soas.ac.uk and let me know if you would like to attend either of these sessions.

Imperial heights : book review

Eric Jenning's Imperial heights: Dalat and the making and undoing of French Indochina looks at the development of Dalat, some 100 miles northeast of the modern Ho-Chi Minh City on the Lang Bian Plateau, as a hill-station and spa for European colonialists in the early 20th century. By the 1920s, it was a "decidedly French social space".

Read the review by Michael Vann in the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and see the author's response to the review as well.

Find the book in SOAS Library at GG959.703 / 742279.
Link to the Library Catalogue from  here

Professor Eric Jennings  is based at the Department of History, University of Toronto
Associate Professor Michael Vann is based at the Department of History, California State University, Sacremento.

Women and trade-unionism in post-war Japan: book review

Dr. Christopher Gerteis' book Gender struggles: wage-earning women and male-dominated unions in post-war Japan was published by Harvard University Asia Center in 2009 as one of their East Asian Monographs series

Read the latest review (in Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol.37(2) 2011)

Dr Gerteis lectures on the history of contemporary Japan here at SOAS
The reviewer, Professor Robin LeBlanc, lectures on politics and law at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, Lexington (Virginia)

There are two copies available in SOAS Library at D331.478 / 987419.
 Link to the catalogue entry from HERE

Storytelling and oral history

A report from the BBC's Middle East website looks at the tradition of storytelling and the role of the professional storyteller  in the Middle East, and how history (ancient and modern) as well as contemporary events such as the Arab Spring are being adapted by the storytellers.

Click HERE to read the report

The report also includes videos of modern professional storytellers performing
But will the traditional art survive in competition with modern technology?

Welcome to SOAS

Follow the History blog for updates on SOAS Library resources, book reviews, websites, news-stories and much more

You can go to the Information skills pages on the BLE for general research guides, guides to the various databases and subject specific research guides

You can also use the Subject Guide for History on the main Library website for internet resources selected by Library staff : http://www.soas.ac.uk/library/subjects/history/

If you have any queries about the history collections in SOAS Library, finding books and journals, or using any of the online resources, you can contact me:

Mary Seeley (Subject Librarian for History and Religions; Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica)
Room C3 (Library)
Email: ms28@soas.ac.uk
Tel.: 020-7898-4195

Russian Orientalism: 2 new studies

Read Rachel Polonsky's article "The paradoxes of Russian Orientalism" from the online Times Literary Supplement which examines the Russian view of "the East" and outlines the connections between the nomads of the Asian steppes and the European Slavs.
The article looks at how these issues are explored in two recent books - David Schimelpenninck van der Oye's Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian mind from Peter the Great to the emigration (2010) - in SOAS Library at A303.48247 / 733376 - and Vera Tolz's Russia's own Orient: the politics of identity and Oriental studies in the late imperial and early Soviet periods (2011) - on order

Gertrude Bell and Iraq

This article from the Jerusalem Post looks at the life and legacy of Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) both as an adventurer and explorer, as well her role as a "political officer" in Basra in 1916 and involvement in the creation of the modern Iraqi state in 1920

Chocolate, women and Empire: book review

"In the mythology of chocolate, the power relations of production and consumption are subsumed by a more attractive narrative of exotic peoples and their surroundings… chocolate seems to generate a particular type of history writing … one which delves into the realms of fantasy and romance 

(pp. 85–6)."

Dr. Emma Robertson's "Chocolate, women and Empire: a social and cultural history" is reviewed by  Professor Barbara Bush (History Department, Sheffield Hallam University" in the Institute of Historical Research's "Reviews in History"

Dr Robertson is Senior Lecturer in History, also at Sheffield Hallam

If you want to read more on the imperial history of chocolate, the book is in SOAS Library at A338.17374 / 987393

Book review: Muslim expansion and Byzantine collapse in North Africa

Go to the Bryn Mawr Classical Review to read about Walter Kaegi's recent book "Muslim expansion and Byzantine collapse in North Africa".
The reviewer is Dr David Woods, Head of the Classics Department and a Senior Lecturer at University College Cork (Ireland)

Find the book in SOAS Library at UM949.501 / 738923

Ethnology Museums and the issue of exhibiting human remains

In colonial times, human remains were routinely collected by archaeologists and anthropologists and displayed in ethnology museums - this article from the Deutsche Welle website examines this issue in conjunction with a new exhibition at Vienna's Ethnology Museum which explores the context and legacy of the work of Hans Liechtenecker in Namibia in 1931 and his "Archive of Dying Races" that displayed human remains and featured oral recordings.
The Deutsche Welle article also looks at cases involving Australian Aborigine and Naga remains that have come to be displayed in museums

A new title to look out for !

Oxford University Press has just brought out "A concise companion to history", edited by Ulinka Rublack.
The book contains a selection of essays on the writing and interpretation of history, and on the treatment of cross-cultural thematic issues such as commerce, population and ethnicity, including a chapter on the merging discipline of environmental history.

SOAS Library has a couple of copies on order ...

Click HERE to read the review by Alix Green (University of Herfordshire) in the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History
Alix is Head of Policy at the University and a part-time PhD student researching how "historical thinking can contribute to public policy development"

More on the acquisition of "cultural assets" by museums

Report from Bloomberg news on the ceding of a collection of antiquities to Leipzig University's Egyptian Museum by the Jewish Claims Conference.
The sale of the artifacts by Egyptologist Georg Steindorff to the Museum in 1937 had been ruled earlier this year as being made under duress. Steindorff, who was of Jewish descent, escaped from Germany in 1939.

Cambridge Histories Online: new online resource

SOAS Library now has access to the complete Cambridge Histories Online containing over 270 volumes published since 1960, covering over 15 different academic subjects. Users can search and browse content, personalise the interface including, saved & most recent searches, workspaces and bookmarks and export citations.

Includes: The Cambridge History of Music, The Cambridge History of Islam & The New Cambridge History of Islam, The Cambridge History of Judaism, The Cambridge History of Political Thought, The Cambridge History of Africa, The Cambridge History of Ancient China, The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, The Cambridge History of Egypt, The Cambridge History of Iran, The Cambridge History of Japan, The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, The New Cambridge History of India and many more...

http://histories.cambridge.org/ [On-campus]
http://bit.ly/CHOnline [Off-campus]

Orientalia Suecana: new open-access content

Orientalia Suecana

This international journal of Indological, Iranian, Semitic, Sinological and Turkic studies (founded in 1952 and published by Uppsala University in Sweden) is now making recent content available online through open-access.

The open-access content begins with Vol.58 (2009). 

The Library has print copies also from Vol.1 to Vol.59 at Per 5 / 79769

You have to download each volume individually via the links on the journal homepage in order to view the full-text.

Excavations at Swahili trading town in East Africa

Archaeology website "Past Horizons" reports on the excavations at Songo Mnara in Tanzania. The town was occupied between the 14th and 16th centuries AD, when the town was part of "the indigenous and cosmopolitan  form of urbanism that linked Africa with the Indian Ocean world system from AD 700 - 1500"

"Before silk: unsolved mysteries of the Silk Road" : video

Professor Colin Renfrew of the MacDonald Institute of Archaeological Research (Cambridge) delivers a lecture on the early contacts between China and Western Asia and Europe from the neolithic to the 8th century AD

This video of his lecture is uploaded onto YouTube.
Please note it runs for an hour and was recorded live

School of Museology to be established in Egypt: online article

Egypt's museums have been in the news following the looting that took place in major institutions and at archaeological sites during the country's recent political upheavals.

"The lack of trained museum personnel is indeed the overarching problem in Egypt's path towards the creation of a new effective museum system" says Ramadan Badri Hussein, supervisor of the office of the MSA's Minister for Archaeological Affairs.

As part of an ongoing programme of initiatives, a School of Museology is shortly to be established at the Casdagli Palace in Cairo.

Read more in Nevine El-Aref's report for the al-Ahram Weekly Online

Museums and ethics

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington is facing calls to cancel a planned exhibition of Chinese artifacts salvaged from a Tang-era shipwreck as they were recovered by a commercial treasure-hunter rather than by academic, archaeological methods.
Read more in this article from the online New York Times  

From Hellenism to Islam: book review

Published by Cambridge University Press in 2009, "From Hellenism to Islam: cultural and linguistic change in the Roman Near East" (edited by Hannah Cotton)  explores the "constantly shifting blend of languages and writing systems, legal structures, religious practices and beliefs in the Near East" in the 800 years between the Roman and Islamic conquests.

Read a review by Christian Hogel (University of Southern Denmark) in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review ("an impressive and very readable publication")

Find the book in SOAS Library at NB417 / 732888

The two eyes of the Earth: book review

Matthew Canepa's 2009 book "The two eyes of the Earth: art and ritual of kingship between Rome and Sasanian Iran" is reviewed in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review by Dr. Peter Edwell of Macquarie University, Sydney.

The book is based on the author's PhD thesis at the University of Chicago. Professor Canepa is currently  at the Department of Art History at the College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota
Dr. Peter Edwell is based in the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University, Sydney

SOAS Library has a copy of this book at NT935 / 741958

Antiquities : is it possible to "collect" them with a clear conscience?

Article from the Huffington Post on the legality of collecting "antiquities" and the problems faced by museums where items in their collection, or that they wish to acquire, are of dubious provenance

Jerusalem: archaeology and rival histories

Article from the online edition of the Smithsonian Magazine explores the complex history of the Temple Mount and the fraught nature of archaeology on the site as "ancient history inflames modern-day political tensions"

Medieval Islamic courtyard at New York's Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is reconstructing a medieval Maghrebi-Andalusian courtyard as the centre-piece of its extensively remodeled Islamic art galleries.
Read a report from the New York Times on the Met's multi-million dollar project

Treasures of Afghanistan exhibition

Two reports published in connection with the British Museum's latest major exhibition "Afghanistan: crossroads of the ancient world", which opens today (3rd March) and runs until 3rd July

"The hill of gold" - article by Peter Thonemann from the Guardian (Saturday 21st February) looks at the historical background to the treasures, in particular the Tillya Tepe hoard

"Karzai opens London show of rescued Afghan treasures" - report from Reuters by Stefano Ambrogi (2nd March) on the opening of the exhibition and how the artifacts were saved for posterity.

Journal of Near and Middle Eastern Studies: open-access journal

The Journal of Near and Middle Eastern Studies is a new annual, open-access publication from the Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations Students' Union at the University of Toronto.
It showcases undergraduate academic papers on all aspects of the history and culture of the region from ancient Mesopotamia to the present day.
Content of the 2010 issue ranges from "Death and the netherworld in ancient Mesopotamian thought" (Nisa Soeherman) to "The duality of structure between the IDF and Israeli society" (Matthew Ianucci)

The Crusades and the Near East -cultural histories : Book review

Dr Jonathan Harris (Department of History, Royal Holloway College, University of London) reviews The Crusades and the Near East: cultural histories in the Institute of Historical Research's online Reviews in History
The book, edited by Dr Conor Kostick of Trinity College, Dublin, explores the cultural history of the Crusades and how they shaped European identities.

SOAS Library has copies at NB909.07 / 736679

Trading post excavated in Qatar: Gulf Times article

The town of al-Zubarah flourished briefly as a pearl-fishing and trading town between the mid-18th and early 19the centuries. This article from the Gulf Times reports on the excavations at this important site

Wilfred Thesiger photographs (Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford)

The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford has been digitizing its collection of photographs by the explorer and writer, Wilfred Thesiger (1910-2003)
Click here to view some of his iconic photographs taken in Africa, the Middle East, India and Pakistan from the 1930s onwards - and buy copies if you like.

History Blogging Project: new website

The History Blogging Project is a new web site supported by the History Lab, the University of Oxford and Roehampton University and aims to create a set of training resources that will enable postgraduate students to create, maintain and publicise a blog on their research. 

Topics covered include: why blogs?, blogs to engage the public and how to write suitable content, plus discussion forums and guidelines around these issues. Also suitable for other academics interested in setting up their own blogs and discussion forums.

The site aims to be fully developed by mid-2011

Link to it from the History subject guide, under Research and Teaching

Asian Perspectives: open-access journal

The journal Asian Perspectives (published by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa) is  now available on open-access from Vol.1 (1957) to Vol.47 (2008).
The journal looks at the archaeology and prehistory of the Asia-Pacific region

N.B. the Library also has access to Vol.39 (2000) onwards via EBSCOHost as well as print holdings from Vol.1(1957) onwards at Per 103 / 137833

"To whom do antiquities belong?"

This is the question posed by an article in the Jewish Ideas Daily.
The waterlogged remains of an archive relating to Iraq's exiled Jewish community were discovered in a flooded Baghdad basement by American troops in 2003. The archive, which includes material dating back to the 16th century, but mainly comprises documents, personal papers and Judeo-Arabic manuscripts from the 19th and 20th centuries, has been conserved in the USA. The archive is now claimed by both Israel and Iraq as part of their heritage.

Colonial Film: Moving images of the British Empire

The Colonial Film Database is the ongoing result of a collaborative project between the British Film Institute National Archive, the Imperial War Museum, the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, Birkbeck College and UCL.

The database has so far catalogued over 6,000 films dating from the late 1890s to the later 20th century from most countries of the former British Empire and Commonwealth. The collection ranges from dramatic "shorts" and amateur footage to official productions by organizations such as the Empire Marketing Board and the Crown Film Unit.

350 of the most important films have detailed critical notes by the project's academic research team.

150 are available to view online (Click the A-Z Films link at the bottom of the homepage to select and view)

-- 

A companion to Byzantium: book review

Read Professor Paul Stephenson's review of the recently published "A companion to Byzantium" (edited by Liz James) in the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History, and her response to his critique.

If you want to see what the debate is about, you can find "A companion to Byzantium" in SOAS Library at Ref. QT949.502 / 733914

Liz James is Professor of History of Art at the University of Sussex

Professor Stephenson is a member of the Department of History at Durham University, and their Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Two new open-access journals of interest to historians

Two new open-access journals with a wide historical (and thematic) range

Hallesche Beitrage zur Orientwissenschaft

This academic journal published by the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (frequently in monograph format) covers a wide range of topics and countries (ancient history, archives, religions, Middle Eastern studies etc.)
It is currently available as digitized open-access texts from Vol.1 (1979) to Vol.44 (2007).

The current link address is via AWOL (Ancient World Online blog)

'Atiqot (Journal of the Israeli Antiquities Authority)

This journal covers the archaeology of "the land of Israel" from prehistory to Ottoman times. Open access coverage begins with Vol.60 (2008). You need to register first, but after that you will be able to login to view and share journal content.

Sasanian Empire: website and open-access e-journals

Sasanika is hosted by the University of California at Irvine. The website features resources on the geography, history and archaeology of the Sasanian Persian Empire

The website also gives open-access to:

e-Sasanika (a collection of open-access academic papers) 

Name-ye Iran Bastan (International journal of ancient Iranian studies) : the project to make all content for this title is a work in progress and only 2001 is currently available. The journal is in Persian and English

The site also aims to give access to the Persian language title Bulletin of Ancient Iranian History, which looks at the Iranian world prior to the coming of Islam. Only Vol.5 (2009) is available at present.