Shankar Nair

Last year some of our members collaborated with our colleagues Sabers en Acció, a fantastic initiative by the Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica and the Institut Interuniversitari López Piñero.
More here: tinyurl.com/3c94tpsa

@angarbelmar.bsky.social
@jrbsjrbs.bsky.social

Churchill and Industrial Britain: Liberalism, Empire and Employment, 1900–1929 Published in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (Ahead of Print, 2025)

New book review published advance access by @jich.bsky.social

Shankar Nair reviews 'Churchill and Industrial Britain: Liberalism, Empire and Employment, 1900–1929' by Jim Tomlinson

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Britain’s parties cater to a voter who is, often literally, dead To understand British politics, one must understand Dead Man

New voter just dropped: Dead Man www.economist.com/britain/2025...

This book deserves to be better known. It's a fascinating account of cotton processing technology from the early common era to the mid-1800s written with exemplary clarity. Completely dispels the legend of Eli Whitney.

'The top 5 IT firms (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and Tech Mahindra) employ more Indians today than the Railways or the armed forces. Similarly, private sector banks have more employees compared with their state-owned counterparts.'

indianexpress.com/article/expl...

Agricultural Workers, Tenant Farmers, and the Midcentury U.S. Welfare State: A View from the Lower Mississippi Valley* Abstract. This article reconsiders what is often seen as a defining feature of the mid-twentieth-century welfare state in the United States: its exclusion

On advance access "Agricultural Workers, Tenant Farmers, and the Midcentury U.S. Welfare State: A View from the Lower Mississippi Valley"

by Samantha Iyer (@fordham.edu)

doi.org/10.1093/past...

What Happened to the US Machine Tool Industry? Machine tools – machines that cut or form metal – are the heart of industrial civilization.

This is very good, on the decline of the US machine tool industry: www.construction-physics.com/p/what-happe...

Humphrey’s world: how the Samuel Smith beer baron built Britain’s strangest pub chain Since the 1970s, Humphrey Smith has acquired scores of pubs and historic properties around the UK. But time after time, he has left the buildings empty. Why has he allowed his empire to moulder?

This is one of the very strangest business stories we've ever read, one that will deserving of a full history - a history that one imagines it will be all but impossible to actually write.
www.theguardian.com/news/2024/de...

After the Diamond Rush | Phenomenal World For over 150 years, mining has constituted a core feature of the South African economy. The seemingly inexhaustible bounty of the earth made the country the wealthiest in the continent and financed on...

I've written about the long boom and long bust in South Africa's mining industry and how the once close alliance between industry and state dissolved in @phenomenalworld.bsky.social.

It's a cautionary tale for countries relying on mineral wealth.

www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/aft...

More here bsky.app/profile/beng...

Global car industry faces anxious wait on US tariffs Industry braces for tit-for-tat trade war that could spark wave of bankruptcies among parts makers

'The global automotive supply chain is so complex and interconnected that a component made in Mexico could end up at an American plant before going back to Mexico for final assembly and then being sold to the US market — which could result in a tariff-on-tariff situation.'
www.ft.com/content/85b2...

America still needs Canadian oil. Here's why And why the tariffs on Canada could plausibly lead to America doing deals with considerably more shady countries. A dive into the weird and wonderful world of heavy oil

✍️Despite being the world's biggest oil producer, America is v reliant on Canadian oil. And getting MORE reliant, not less.
So what happens when tariffs get imposed on Canada?
The answers are quite unsettling, for the American people... and for everyone else edconway.substack.com/p/america-st...

An Industrial Policy for Hairdressing? Industrial policy is undergoing a notable revival in Britain, as well as elsewhere. But what are the aims of such a policy? The current government's core statement wholly subordinates its industrial ...

my new article in Political Quarterly is now available on line. doi.org/10.1111/1467...

‘Among Indian states, Kerala has the largest wage gap between men and women engaged in casual labour.’

scroll.in/article/1078...

The prophet of the new right In the life and work of Correlli Barnett, we can find all the most dangerous currents of contemporary conservatism.

For the @newstatesman.com i wrote a profile of the historian Correlli Barnett, which charts the perils of self-loathing nationalism and the rise of Britain's new right
www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/0...

A map of the collieries and factories in North Nottinghamshire, all of which have now closed.

How did Britain's post-industrial towns become hubs of badly paid work and disenchanted politics?
They were not forgotten or 'left behind', but actively remade.
My report for
@cmmonwealth.bsky.social

two-towns.common-wealth.org

CFP: @globalhistjnl.bsky.social development editing workshop (deadline 1 March 2025). Workshop open to scholars & #skystorians for whom English is not a first language who study/work outside of North American and Western European institutions. Keep an eye out for an ECR workshop later in the year! 🗃

Applications open for Hans Rausing Scholarships in History of Science and Technology The Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHoSTM) is now accepting applications for the scholarships, supporting postgraduate study in the history of science and technology.

💻 The Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine is now accepting applications for the Hans Rausing Scholarships, supporting postgraduate study in the history of science and technology.

🗓️ Deadlines: 14 and 15 April 2025

Find out more ⬇️

I always gain something from reading Charles Maier. This is his Max Weber lecture from 2009 on 'surprises' and the disciplines of history and social sciences.

scholar.harvard.edu/files/charle...

The Case for Letting Malibu Burn - Longreads Many of California's native ecosystems evolved to burn. Modern fire suppression creates fuels that lead to catastrophic fires. So why do people insist on rebuilding in the firebelt?

Mike Davis in 1998: "Two kinds of Californians will continue to live with fire: those who can afford (with indirect public subsidies) to rebuild and those who can’t afford to live anywhere else." longreads.com/2018/12/04/t...

Churchill and Industrial Britain This book offers a new understanding of the main economic and political trends of 20th-century Britain, through the lens of Churchill's early career and approac…

Jim Tomlinson's new book 'shows how industrial competition within the Empire exemplified the tensions between domestic economic policy and attempts at globalization, and influenced Churchill's later politics'. Very promising.

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/churchill...

It was a privilege to have had the chance to review your book @amandazillo.bsky.social!

Amanda Lanzillo. Pious Labor: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India. 246 pp., illus., notes, bibl., index. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2024. US$34.95 (paper); ISBN 9780520...

@shankarnair.bsky.social 's review in @isisjournal.bsky.social emphasizes the book's work to center technological engagements within the class and religious identities of workers, while highlighting the need for new models to describe artisan adaptation of seemingly foreign technologies.

No, Kerosene did NOT save the Sperm Whale How we carried on exploiting sperm whales long after the conventional wisdom said we'd stopped. Forgotten Material #1

If you're interested in energy/climate you've probably heard the nugget that "kerosene/crude oil helped save the whales", by reducing demand for whale oil in lanterns.
I've even trotted it out myself🤦‍♂️
But it turns out it's NOT true.
Here's what actually happened edconway.substack.com/p/no-kerosen...

If you (or anyone you know!) is interested in doing a PhD in the history of science and/or technology, and being based in London for 3-4 years, we have scholarships at CHoSTM at King's: www.kingschostm.com/funding-oppo...

A Railway Carpenter in the History of Technology?: New Opportunities From Modern South Asia This article examines interconnected questions that are central to new scholarship on the history of technology in modern South Asia. Which communities, groups and individuals have formed and sustain...

For History Compass, I wrote about new directions in the study of the history of technology in modern South Asia. I explored the potential of these historiographic trends through poetic laments of an early 20th-century railway carpenter named ‘Abdul ‘Aziz in Lahore...

Just learned that Amiya Bagchi, political economist and economic historian of the colonial and postcolonial world, has passed away. He was 88. His books 'Private Investment in India' (1972) and 'Political Economy of Underdevelopment'(1982) remain landmark works of scholarships.