A NEW TWIST in Africa's soaring solar story: It's now manufacturing its own panels. The factories use imported Chinese cells, which are 40% of the value of panels, keeping much of the value domestically. 9 GW of cells+wafers in Mar/Apr alone🧵

Klaus Ensikat (German Artist, born 1937) Illustration from "Katzen" by Axel Eggebrecht Watercolor and Ink, 1997. #art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt #catlover

Conference on Renewing Economic History in East Africa, Makerere University, Uganda, 29 April - 1 May 2026, jointly organised with Wageningen University, Netherlands. Very well organised, exciting content. The study of economic history in East Africa has huge potential for further research

Attaques au Mali. « Une secousse monumentale dans l’histoire malienne »

Intergenerational rebalancing conference at IFS: will explore how the human life cycle can be better recognised in economics to empower disadvantaged young people in Britain and worldwide with resources and life skills, by allowing wealth creation to flow through to new generations more effectively.

Intergenerational Rebalancing Conference: The first day will be academic in context and the second, policy-based: with renowned speakers on both days including Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman, Baron David Willetts and Professor Sir Julian Le Grand.

Please join us for the Inter-generational Rebalancing Conference at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London on 14th/15th May, organised with the Faculty of Economics and King’s College Cambridge. No charge for in-person attendance, and bookings can be made via www.sharefound.org/conference

Last chance to register: major conference celebrating 250 years of 'The Wealth of Nations': the most famous text in the history of political economy and economics. Leading historians and economists will assess its legacy & ask what it means for the next century. Free, open to public, link below ⬇️⬇️

*Conference announcement* Modern Enquiries into the Nature & Causes of the Wealth of Nations: International Prosperity and Development 250 Years After Adam Smith. King's College, Cambridge. 5-6 MARCH 2026. Further information & to register via Eventbrite: www.econsoc.hist.cam.ac.uk/docs/Camb_WO...

@gareth-austin.bsky.social @cwpeconhist.bsky.social @pramospinto.bsky.social @kingscollege.bsky.social

Conference announcement (details to follow in mid-Jan): Modern Enquiries into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: International Prosperity and Development 250 Years After Adam Smith King's College Cambridge, 5-6 MARCH 2026 Convenors: Gareth Austin (Cambridge) and Alex Trew (Glasgow)

"La contrainte et les marchés : concilier les explications économiques et sociales de l’esclavage en Afrique de l’Ouest précoloniale, vers 1450-vers 1900" Gareth Austin (Cambridge) (tr. Darla Gervais) Revue d’histoire moderne & contemporaine 2025/3 n° 72-3, pages 101-131 DOI 10.3917/rhmc.723.0101

Why had it taken *nine years* for Labour to face up to what has been glaringly obvious since 2016? And even now #Starmer equivocates with the phrase “the Brexit deal”. No - it is #Brexit itself which is the colossal act of self-sabotage.

Peter Stefanovic@peterstefanovic.bsky.social · 10mo ago

“we must all now confront the reality that the Brexit deal we have has significantly hurt our economy” Keir Starmer

Watch! This is so fucking good. @bellingcat.com, you are the best

Mali Under Siege: Tracking the Fuel Blockade Crippling Bamako - bellingcatMali Under Siege: Tracking the Fuel Blockade Crippling Bamako - bellingcat

Attacks by a jihadist group on fuel convoys bound for Bamako, the capital of Mali, have destroyed more than 130 tankers since September, a Bellingcat investigation has found.  The systematic attacks by Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) have brought Bamako and other regions of the West African nation to a standstill as the Al Qaeda-affiliated […]

bellingcat.com

'Honest Bob' Jenrick, a politician obviously & deliberately embracing xenophobia, does some weapons grade xenophobia & the BBC *apologises* for a Thought For The Day contributor calling it xenophobic. Licence fee payers need to know who makes these decisions & why. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

BBC apologises after Robert Jenrick accused of xenophobia

A contributor to Radio 4's Thought for the Day slot made the remark about the shadow justice secretary.

bbc.co.uk

Just attended an excellent writers' conference exploring the paths to/causes of the Great Acceleration (of human-made environmental change, starting c. 1950), at the University of Basel, organised by Moritz von Brescius (UB) and Fredrik Albritton Jonsson (U of Chicago). Exciting stuff.

muse.jhu.edu/pub/19/artic...

Prof Peter Mandler’s (@petermandler.bsky.social) insatiable curiosity has fuelled an extraordinary career over more than two decades at Cambridge. As he steps back from formal teaching, the acclaimed historian reflects on a life of intellectual breadth, public advocacy—and no plans to slow down ⬇️⬇️

Cambridge Global Economic History Seminar, Monday 9 June, 17:15 BST in the Audit Room, King's College: John Tang (Utrecht University), "Superstition, fertility, and modernization: evidence from Japan, 1880-1980" This talk is hybrid: for zoom link see www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series...

Cambridge Global Economic History Seminar, 19 May: Lisbeth Rodrigues (Porto), ‘Beyond almsgiving: The financial role of charitable institutions in early modern Portugal and its empire’. 17:15 UK time in Audit Room, King's College, Cambridge. Or online: subscribe at www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series...

Travieso & Westland, "Resilience and decline of handicraft textiles in colonial northern Nigeria, 1911–52", Economic History Review (2024), examines the issue of deindustrialisation in what had been the leading centre of textile production in precolonial Africa. Read at doi.org/10.1111/ehr....

<em>The Economic History Review</em> | EHS Journal | Wiley Online Library

The Sokoto Caliphate of northern Nigeria was the workshop of West Africa in the pre-colonial nineteenth century, producing famous blue-black cloth that reached many markets south of the Sahara as wel...

doi.org

Congrats to Emiliano Travieso & Tom Westland for winning the Economic History Society's prize for best article in the Economic History Review (2024) by authors within 5 years of PhD. "What happened to the workshop of West Africa?"

<em>The Economic History Review</em> | EHS Journal | Wiley Online Library

The Sokoto Caliphate of northern Nigeria was the workshop of West Africa in the pre-colonial nineteenth century, producing famous blue-black cloth that reached many markets south of the Sahara as wel...

doi.org

🎙️ PODCAST | Listen to @camhistory.bsky.social’s Hank Gonzalez talk to David Runciman on the History of Ideas Podcast. 🎧 Find out more about the Haitian Revolution: the first time in history a slave revolt resulted in an independent free state ⬇️

Past Present Future Podcast@ppfideas.bsky.social · 2y ago

NEW EPISODE OUT NOW! Today’s episode is about a very different revolution from any we’ve discussed so far: David talks to historian Hank Gonzalez about the Haitian Revolution, which for the first time in history saw a slave revolt result in an independent free state. Find us at...🎧 ppfideas.com

The Zoom link for Tinashe Nyamunda's presentation on Monday 17:15 GMT will be sent to subscribers to the Global Economic History Seminar e-list 48 hours in advance. For the link to subscribe, go to www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series...

The excellent Zimbabwean financial historian Tinashe Nyamunda (now U of Glasgow) is presenting to the Global Economic History Seminar on Monday 17th, 17:15 GMT, in the Audit Room, King's College, Cambridge, on the financial origins of the Anglo-Boer War. Also on Zoom

It will output to an ugly default LaTeX/Word doc when I need to submit it to a journal but I can also write the paper with my own beautiful bespoke template that compiles essentially instantly.

Richard Reid's The African Revolution is a panoramic global history of Africa in the age of imperialism. Out now. Learn more about this monumental work of history: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Lots of discussions about mining and metals in Africa exaggerate their importance and this is a particularly obvious example. 10% of something is not enough to corner a market!

My chapter in Capitalism: Histories, edited by Robert G. Ingram and James M. Vaughn (Boydell Press, 2025) is titled "Capitalism in Africa: Two Histories, 1650s-1940s". Compares the partly similar, partly contrasting cases of South Africa and British West Africa (esp. Nigeria & Ghana).