Modern gravestones have been a common sight in European towns and cities for just over three hundred years. They provide a wealth of information beyond simply names and dates, and can teach us a great deal about the time and place in which they were erected and the people who built them. I have been recording and conserving gravestones for fifteen years, and here I present some of the techniques, sources, and hard-learned lessons of using gravestones as archival material that will enable you to see your local graveyard in a whole new light.

Scholarship on overseas Chinese and modern Chinese diplomacy often centers on nationally recognized leaders and officials with prominent global roles. However, a fuller understanding of the diaspora requires examining lesser-known diplomats and local leaders who often had a greater impact on their communities than distant official policies. The transnational life and evolving identity of Yü Shouzhi (1907–1999) – a grassroots Chinese diplomat, community organizer, and small business owner in Mexico – exemplifies this dynamic. Initially trained and appointed by the Chinese Nationalist government, Yü’s diplomatic work extended beyond official channels to foster transethnic, transnational, and intergenerational networks within the Chinese-Mexican community. His transition from formal diplomacy to community leadership and commerce reflected how individual migrants successfully navigated transnational and national politics, community relationships, kinship, and transethnic relations and gained social power. In the process, Yü adjusted his sense of belonging and developed diasporic nationalism, transforming from a representative of the Nationalist government to a deeply rooted Chinese-Mexican community member. This article argues that Yü’s ability to adapt his role as a Chinese diplomat and cultivate a Chinese-Mexican identity was shaped by the interplay of formal state affiliations, grassroots networks, transnational and cross-ethnic relationships, and his personal initiative.

This article explores changes and continuities in the lives and perspectives of Black South Africans at the beginning of the twentieth century, as portrayed in the Setswana-language newspaper Koranta ea Becoana. In studies of African responses to British colonization, scholars have tended to focus on evidence of nascent African nationalism in the English writings of Africans, but Koranta and other vernacular sources indicate that Africans during 1890–1910 were equally concerned with celebrating and preserving their various cultural and political traditions, advocating for a multiethnic liberalism that would not oblige them to choose between becoming either “Black Englishmen” or disenfranchised “Natives.”

This article introduces the open access ArcGIS database Weather Extremes in England's Little Ice Age, 1500–1700. The database maps narrative weather records from a range of sources, including historical chronicles, personal diaries, and extreme weather pamphlets. A source of particular note is the manuscript commonplace book of Richard Shann (1561–1627), a Catholic copyholder from Methley, Yorkshire. Shann included his weather notations in two distinct sections, with the first transcribing events between 1617–27, and the second, between 1586–1622. Falling between the genres of chronicle and diary, these records provide a sustained perspective on local weather conditions. In their turn-of-the-century focus, they also help to clarify the specific impact of the Little Ice Age on England, as their local observations reflect a national trend wherein seventeenth-century weather becomes not only more cold but also more unstable.

Constitutional democracies face significant threats. Such threats are countered by various theories of militant democracy and non-militant democratic self-defence, using a wide range of repressive, educational and social policy tools. The article introduces an alternative perspective on democratic self-defence policies, emphasising integration as a key component in maintaining the resilience of the constitutional community and draws on Rudolf Smend’s integration theory. It explores how constitutional design through its structures, powers, procedures, rituals and symbols shapes community cohesion and strengthens the constitutional order by deliberately using emotions.

Mugane (1997) identifies two types of individual-denoting nominalizations in Gĩkũyũ (Bantu): the [mu… a]-type and the [mu… i]-type. He argues that the [mu… i]-type nominalizations are phrasal and that the [mu… a]-type nominalizations exhibit a puzzling nature, displaying both lexical and syntactic properties. This study examines Mugane’s characterization, revisiting the notion of a lexicon-syntax divide. Applying Wood’s (2023) Complex Head analysis, I demonstrate that we can explain the [mu… a]-type nominalizations within a syntactic framework without resorting to the lexicon. The analysis reveals that the puzzle is resolvable and that syntax can account for both types of nominalizations in Gĩkũyũ.

It has long been recognized that the “Irish Question” was also an imperial question. The vast Irish diaspora in the settler colonies ensured that Home Rule had enormous consequences for the wider empire. But scholars have yet fully to appreciate the part that political elites in the self-governing Dominions played in this story. This article explores the role of colonial statesmen in Anglo-Irish affairs. Figures like Australia’s Billy Hughes or South Africa’s Jan Smuts were able to navigate the emotional complexities of Irish nationalist politics in a manner that transcended British party politics. In the process, they framed “colonial” Home Rule as a compromise between British rule and independence. This article shows how Irish nationalist politics became enmeshed with imperial politics in a manner that blurred the line between the local, national, imperial, and global.

This article critically examines George Woodcock’s travel writings on India between 1961 and 1981, exploring the tensions between his anarchist anti-imperialism and the cultural frameworks inherited from his upbringing in the heart of empire. While Woodcock admired Gandhi and sought to understand India through a lens of philosophical anarchism, his engagement was shaped by elite literary connections and orientalist tropes that complicated his vision. The article traces how Woodcock’s political ideals, literary influences, and charitable efforts intersected with postcolonial realities, revealing the paradoxes of Western radicalism in a decolonizing world. Drawing on archival sources and offering a close reading of his three major texts on India – Faces of India, Kerala: A Portrait of the Malabar Coast, and TheWalls of India – it highlights how Woodcock’s attempts to critique empire often carried unconscious cultural assumptions. Ultimately, it argues that Woodcock’s India writings offer a valuable case study in the complexities of cross-cultural intellectual encounter in the enduring shadows of imperial discourse.

Within the space of monotheistic options, trinitarian monotheism holds a puzzling place. It asserts that God is a single being who is, somehow, also three distinct persons. This form of monotheism has regularly been charged with being either inconsistent, unintelligible, or undermotivated – and possibly all three. While recent explorations of trinitarian monotheism have tended to rely on work in metaphysics, this paper turns to the philosophy of mind, showing that functionalist theories of mind prove to be surprisingly hospitable to trinitarian monotheism. This paper will address only the inconsistency and unintelligibility objections, showing that if role-functionalism (or something near enough) is both consistent and conceivable, then it is both consistent and conceivable that: God is a single being who is exactly three distinct persons because there is one primary divine person who interacts with exactly one system-sharing re-realisation of his own person-type.