Month: March 2019

Over spring break, I travelled to Amsterdam and Malaga, Spain with a childhood friend. Amsterdam is one of the cultural capitals of Western Europe and had a prolific art scene throughout its history. I didn’t know much about Malaga before

Two weeks ago, spring break was upon us at last: time to visit family, take a well-deserved break… and squeeze in as much reading as is humanly possible. Feeling rebellious, and drawn by my own long-neglected bookshelves, I decided that

Thus far into my project, I am still wrapped up with the philosophical implications of identity. While taking a break from the oh so exciting preamble of the EU, I did my weekly philosophy reading. This week’s topic is focused

In the week since the infamous St Patrick’s Day celebrations, I have become increasingly intrigued by the transnational, if not global, appeal of the Irish celebration. Each year it arrives in mid-March St. Patrick’s Day sparks a sense of joy,

First I should probably explain what Polandball is and why it is relevant. Polandball is a genre of user generated internet comics where different countries are represented by balls with eyes and the national flag on them. Polandball is a

At the conclusion of today’s Unconference, after successive rounds of collaborative writing, group discussions, and an extremely valuable debate over the superior chocolate in a box of Celebrations (the revisionist position: the Bounty has been widely and quite wrongly neglected

When Edmund Burke spoke at one of the many trials concerned with the impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788—1795), he offered a scathing diagnosis of the British East India Company. At the heart of his accusation, the idea that the Company

Although for many ‘the Miss World Beauty Pageant’ is no more than an out-dated guilty pleasure, in its heyday the contest was covered by the BBC and drew in over 27.5 million viewers for the 1968 finale.[1] Today, similar international

In the shadow of the Second International: Social-democratic colonial policy in France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, 1936-1958. Historical Context: Prior to the First World War, the parties of the Second International were bound to a firmly anti-colonialist and

Japan’s entry into the modern, globalised era arguably came in the 1850s with Commodore Matthew Perry’s expedition to Japan in 1853 and the forced opening of Japanese ports to Western trade and commerce. The bluntness of Western imperialism, as epitomised

The Opium Trade was an international network to behold. The diversity of actors involved in the trade make its history truly transnational. Over the course of the late modern period, Opium came to be the most important commodity in Western

Valide Sultans (the official mothers of the Ottoman Sultan), are ideally suited for transnational analysis. The Ottomans relied heavily on a slave system for filling high ranking positions, including in the Sultan’s harem, because they believed that slaves would not

The English Factory at Hirado, Japan. A Microhistory of English Merchants in the early 17th century. We often talk about the practicality of transnational history; why do we study it? What can we truly learn? It seems that transnational ideas

In 1788, French botaniste du roi Hyppolyte Nectoux received seven new plants from British crown botanist Dr. Thomas Clarke for his botanical station at Saint Domingue, and in 1789 he received twenty more. This remarkable example of cross-cultural knowledge exchange

Research Question:  To what extent do supranational organisations impact individual identity in the case of the European Union (EU)? Thesis While EU citizens identify themselves as Europeans, they foremost identify with their national roots. However, all Europeans share an identifying