Dr Mathias Seiter, Principal Lecturer and Subject Area Lead for History, has recently published an article in the journal German History on the importance of regional identities for Jews in imperial Germany. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click here.
The German Reich, 1871-1918 Wikimedia Commons
Abstract:
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a wave of interest in history among Jews in Germany. The popularity of the subject extended to those who lived at the geographic margins of the German Empire, in the Prussian Province of Posen and the Reichsland of Alsace-Lorraine. Living in borderlands in which national identities were contested, Jewish historians established and joined regional historical societies that looked to the local and regional past to construct identities. While Jewish historians in the German east worked alongside non-Jewish colleagues to create a German Heimat against the backdrop of ethnic strife between Germans and Poles, their co-religionists in Alsace-Lorraine tried to maintain a regional identity which preserved the cultural and historical uniqueness of the Franco-German borderland. These different visions of regional history and identity surfaced again in the responses to the establishment of a central German-Jewish archive in Berlin. Jews from Posen were instrumental in integrating the local Jewish past into a national German-Jewish narrative. However, in the Franco-German borderland, Jews were opposed to the idea of a national archive, which they saw as a challenge to their Alsace-Lorrainian Jewish identity. This article argues that Jewish historians engaged with and were part of the wider German discourses on Heimat, regionalism and localness. Although Jewish historians in Posen and Alsace-Lorraine differed in their understanding of these concepts, they used them as markers of identity which allowed Jews to define their position towards notions of Germanness and the idea of a German-Jewish community.
Recently, the internationally-renowned museum, The D-Day Story, published on their website a podcast recorded in 2022 by three second year History students, Amy Deighton, Jessie Rickman and Sam Marchetti. The students, who are now in the final year of their studies, worked with the museum’s archives as part of their assessment for the ‘Working with the Past’ module, coordinated by Mike Esbester. The second-year module encourages students to work with our local community partners where possible and produce work that has a benefit to them and the organisation they are working with. To hear the podcast, go to the D-Day Story website here.
On 14 December 2022 University of Portsmouth PhD researcher, Corey Watson, presented at the second joint Naval History/ History research seminar of the year. In the paper Corey, who is in the second year of his doctoral programme, discussed the crucial role that the small group of surveyors who worked for Lloyd’s Register in China played as middle-men in this global maritime system. If you missed the paper, the recording is available to watch here. You will need the following password MLFv8c.z to access the recording. An abstract for Corey’s paper is below. To read more about Corey’s PhD programme, generously funded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, see Dr Melanie Bassett’s blog on the Port Towns and Urban Cultures website.
Shanghai shortly after opening the port to foreign trade. Wikimedia Commons.
Abstract
In 1869, a Lloyd’s Register ship and engineer Surveyor was for the first time posted to Shanghai, China. The surveyor, Joseph John Tucker, upon arriving in Shanghai marked the beginning of a rapid and global expansion of the Lloyd’s Register Society’s influence. By the end of the First World War the society had hundreds of surveyors in post across all five continents. These marine surveyors – veteran marine engineers whose expertise covered shipbuilding and maintenance, maritime safety, and maritime technology – played important roles in facilitating the ever-expanding networks of maritime knowledge, trade, and migration that increasingly connected the late 19th century world. This paper will draw on the concept of ‘new imperial history’ to investigate how these imperial maritime networks of knowledge functioned by analysing the lived experiences of these Lloyd’s Register surveyors. It also develops on a burgeoning literature which stresses the importance of these transnational networks and the ‘infrastructural globalization’ of the ‘world system’ that they underpinned. This paper will specifically engage with the themes of maritime knowledge networks, the movement of people, and the resultingly complex cultural identities that were produced. It will be shown first that by studying these maritime professionals, there can be found a number of interesting contradictions in the workings of maritime networks as the long reach of London struggled, with mixed success, to keep a degree of control over its agents far from home. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that these surveyors, who played crucial roles as middle-men in these global maritime systems, found themselves with complicated and frequently shifting cultural identities and levels of professional agency as a result of their engagement with these networks.
In this blog, our Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, discusses the local history project he worked on with one of our local community partners, Pompey History Society, that culminated in the publication of a book which includes a chapter written by Rob and four of our History students, Sam Ewart, Maria Kopanska, Dan Ward and Jack Woolley. Rob’s research explores society’s leisure activities and feeds into a number of optional and specialist modules that he teaches in the second and third year.
‘POMPEY Champions of England’ front cover
On 26 October 2022, I attended the launch of the book POMPEY Champions of England: The sporting and social history of Portsmouth FC’s league title wins in 1949 & 1950, edited by the chair of Pompey History Society (PHS) Colin Farmery. The book launch, held at Portsmouth City Museum, was the culmination of the project ‘POMPEY: Champions of England’, run by PHS and generously funded by the Heritage Fund.
I have been involved with the project from its inception. Many years ago now, Colin Farmery contacted me and asked if I was willing to be on the steering committee of a project that intended to capture, through undertaking oral history interviews, the memories of fans who witnessed Portsmouth Football Club’s back-to-back title wins in the 1948-49 and 1949-50 seasons. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity to be involved in the project. It allowed me to be more closely involved with the history of the football club I’d supported for many years, and also provided me with an opportunity to get the University, and more importantly, our students, involved and working with a local community organisation.
Despite being disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the project progressed well, and around 40 interviews were conducted and archived, leading to the production of a supplement of fan memories in the local newspaper The News, and the unveiling of a permanent exhibition at Fratton Park in late 2021.
Pompey: Champions of England exhibition at Fratton Park
The final aim of the project was to publish a book that placed the fans’ memories within the social and sporting context of the time they were visiting Fratton Park to watch Pompey achieve their incredible feat of consecutive title wins. The book was divided into the themes that had been drawn out from the testimonies of the supporters who were interviewed, and these included their memories of living in war-torn Portsmouth, the match-day experience, and the important role the football club played (and continues to play) in the local community. As editor, Colin Farmery had already commissioned a number of the chapters, but he approached me and asked if our students would like to be involved in writing a chapter on the theme of ‘Women and Football’. Of course, I said yes!
First page of the chapter written by Rob, Sam, Maria, Dan and Jack
Fortunately, one of our second year core modules, ‘Working with the Past’, is specifically designed to enable our students to work with the many local organisations who the History team are involved with. My colleagues and I work with the module’s coordinator, Mike Esbester, to offer students a suite of choices that allow them to gain valuable experience by working with these community partners.
One of the choices I put forward was the opportunity to work with Pompey History Society, and we recruited four students, Sam Ewart, Maria Kopanska, Dan Ward and Jack Woolley, to work with the organisation. Colin invited the students to Fratton Park so that he could introduce them to the aims of the project. He also gave them a behind-the-scenes tour of the stadium, which included showing them the project’s permanent exhibition as well as a look at the Society’s archive. The task was set: the students were to be given access to all of the interviews that were conducted with female fans so that they could begin the research for their chapter.
History students visiting the exhibition at Fratton Park
For the project, four female fans – Joan Elder, Audrey Hawkins, Joan Phillips, and Maggie Thoyts – were interviewed. The students each took one of the testimonies, evaluated it, and wrote up a section for the chapter, which also coupled as part of their assessment for the module. I came back in at the end of the process and edited the students’ contributions so that the chapter ran along a thematic line, introducing additional contextual material to build a full picture of the women’s experience of being a female football fan in the 1940s and early 1950s.
Lady Mayor Maria Costa speaking at the book launch
So, there we have it, the book has been launched and the students are now published authors. That’s something to catch the eye of a prospective employer! Pompey History Society are thrilled with the work the students have done, and we are currently discussing what future projects our students could be involved with (I’m on the ‘125 Committee’ which is planning a series of activities to coincide with the 125th anniversary of the formation of Portsmouth Football Club in 1898). All in all, it’s been a great experience and I am so proud of our students’ achievements. Well done Dan, Jack, Maria, and Sam!
Colin Farmery, Sam Ewart and Rob James at the book launch
On 19 October 2022 our own Dr Cathryn Pearce, Senior Lecturer in Maritime History, presented at the first History research seminar of this academic year with a thought-provoking paper looking at the grounding of the coastal brig Lord Nelson at Liverpool, UK, and the civic and social responsibility for seafarers and the shipwrecked in a port dominated by shipping interest. If you missed the paper, the recording is available on the Port Towns and Urban Cultures website here (scroll down to find Cathy’s paper).
Recently, the internationally-renowned museum, The D-Day Story, published on their website a podcast recorded in 2021 by three second year History students, Joshua Bown, Angus Grieve and Shannen Smylie. The students worked with the museum’s archives as part of their assessment for the ‘Working with the Past’ module, coordinated by Mike Esbester. The second-year module encourages students to work with our local community partners where possible and produce work that has a benefit to them and the organisation they are working with. To hear the podcast, go to the D-Day Story website here.
