Apr 6, 2019Catholic Emancipation as a Constitutional RevolutionAntonia Frazer’s new book The King and the Catholics brings to light a neglected topic in British history, the removal of legal restrictions on Catholics. Catholic emancipation was a critical moment along the path to religious freedom — the theme of my book with Noel Johnson, Persecution and Toleration (see…History7 min readHistory7 min read
Mar 20, 2019The Institutional Foundations of AntisemitismAntisemitism has returned to mainstream politics in Europe and America. One fundamental misconception about antisemitism is that it is simply another form of racism. Thus Jeremy Corbyn responds to charges of antisemitism with “ ‘I’ve spent my whole life exposing racism in any form”. …Anti Semitism6 min readAnti Semitism6 min read
Mar 15, 2019Why Persecute?Why was religious persecution common in the premodern world? This is the question Noel Johnson and I address in Persecution and Toleration. Answers that rely on the alleged barbarism of the times or the brutality or narrowed-mindedness of individual churchmen or rulers are unsatisfying. …Christianity8 min readChristianity8 min read
Apr 2, 2018Revisiting Epstein’s Freedom and GrowthI was fortunate to be invited give the Epstein Lecture at LSE this March. The series is named after the great LSE economic historian Larry (Stephen) Epstein. Here I’ll summarize why it was such an honor to give the lectures. The content of the lecture will be another post. Epstein…Economic History4 min readEconomic History4 min read
Dec 16, 2017Books of the YearThe following 2017 books seized my imagination. I’ve focused on non-fiction here rather than fiction. The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper. I’ve previously discussed this original and fascinating take on how Rome fell in this essay. Harper depicts the Roman empire at its height in the 2nd century AD…WIB History8 min readWIB History8 min read
Nov 7, 2017Could Rome Have Had an Industrial Revolution?This question is prompted by Kingdom of the Wicked, a new book by Helen Dale. Dale forces us to consider Jesus as a religious extremist in a Roman world not unlike our own. The novel throws new light on our own attitudes to terrorism, globalization, torture, and the clash of…History10 min readHistory10 min read
Published inExtra Newsfeed·Aug 11, 2017The Counterfactual and the FactualHistorians often appear skeptical of counterfactual arguments. E.H. Carr argued that “a historian should never deal in speculation about what did not happen” (Carr, 1961, 127). Michael Oakeshott described counterfactual reasoning as ‘a monstrous incursion of science into the world of history’ (quoted in Ferguson, 1999). More recently, Eric Foner…History8 min readHistory8 min read
Jul 13, 2017Some Thoughts on “Seeing Like a State”James C. Scott, the Yale political scientist, and the author of some of the best books on the history of states, has a new book coming out, entitled Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (here). …Politics6 min readPolitics6 min read
Apr 24, 2017Geopolitics and Asia’s Little DivergenceCrossposted on Notes on Liberty Why did Japan successfully modernize in the 19th century while China failed to do so? Both China and Japan came under increasing threat from the Western powers after 1850. In response, Japan successfully undertook a program of state building and modernization; in China, however, attempts…History6 min readHistory6 min read
Apr 3, 2017The End of the Past(crossed posted at Notes on Liberty) On Branko Milanovic’s recommendation, I read Aldo Schiavone’s The End of the Past. Scholarly and elegantly written, it provides one of the best imaginative reconstructions of the ancient Roman economy. Previous posts have touched on the economies of late antiquity, the modernist primitivist debate…History8 min readHistory8 min read
