The Long Eighteenth Century
Déjà Vu All Over Again: Grass Roots Organizing And the Abolition of the Slave Trade
The first popular political movement to use the techniques of what we call grass roots organizing was the movement to abolish the slave trade in the eighteenth century. The Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers, were the first group to take a public stand against slavery and the slave trade, even though Quakers…
Read More
Word(s) With A Past: Left and Right as a Political Metaphor
As some of you may have noticed, here in the United States we’re coming to the end of a long, weird election season. A lot of labels have been thrown about with little reference to what they mean or why. At some point, when I had become almost numb from the rhetoric, it dawned on…
Read More
Poor Tipu
Several weeks ago, I realized that I had never written a post about Tipu Sultan here on the Margins and I promised to rectify that shortly. This is me keeping that promise. Tipu Sultan, the self-proclaimed “Tiger of Mysore”, played an important role in my development as a historian. When I first heard his story…
Read More