ISSN: 1479-2443 (Print), 1479-2451 (Online)
Editors: Brandon Byrd Vanderbilt University, USA, Duncan Kelly University of Cambridge, UK, Tracie M. Matysik University of Texas at Austin, USA, Alden Young Yale University, USA, and Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins Wesleyan University, USA
Editorial board

Modern Intellectual History publishes scholarship in intellectual and cultural history from 1650 onwards. MIH concerns itself primarily with apprehending the contextual origins and receptions of texts in order to recover their historical meanings. But we understand ‘texts’ in the broadest sense, so as to encompass multiple forms of intellectual and cultural expression. These include, but are not limited to, political thought, philosophy, religion, literature, both the social sciences and the natural sciences, music, architecture, and the visual arts.

Revising the history of early French social science
08 June 2023, Thomas Lalevée
Historians long thought the term science sociale was coined in 1789 by the revolutionary theorist Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès.

Radical Democracy and/or Ordinary Anarchy?
06 June 2023, Sophie Scott-Brown
Journalist Colin Ward (1924-2010) believed anarchism was ordinary with its roots firmly in the small, everyday acts of improvised co-operation that made living...

Empire in the Soil: Superphosphate and the British and French Imperial Manufacture, 1914-1937
27 October 2025, Rosie Charles
The history of European imperial agriculture has often been told through the lens of technological innovation, such as the development of the agricultural automotive...

The Franco-German Brigade: A Mirror of Integration—and Its Limits
30 September 2025, Benjamin Pfannes
When the Franco-German Brigade (FGB) was established in 1989, it was hailed as a unique experiment in postwar Europe. Never before had soldiers from two former...

Political Disinformation on the Eve of Reform
26 September 2025, Gordon Pentland
The ‘Vote Leave’ or ‘Brexit’ bus which toured the UK in 2016 plastered with the blunt assertion ‘We send the EU £350 million a week’ is an infamous recent example...

Modern Intellectual History

Recent articles and essays

Governing the Miracle

Communication Theology, the Decolonization of Information, and the Africanization of Journalism, 1960–1990

Losing Control of Tocqueville: J. P. Mayer and the Genesis of Gallimard’s Oeuvres complètes d’Alexis de Tocqueville

British Legal Opinion about Immigration and Sovereignty, 1833–1906

Neoliberalism and Its Hegemonic Crisis

The Social Organization of Property: The Homeownership System, Managed Hierarchy, and the Challenge of Social Selfhood in the Early Twentieth-Century United States

Republican Revivals

Situating Bjørn Lomborg in the History of Climate Politics: The Turn from Markets to Planning in Promethean Discourse