Practitioners of what is often called 'histoire totale' (or ‘total history’)——have engaged with the question of contingency, determination, human agency, and change in several discernible phases.

How the Marxist notion of ‘historical materialism’ has developed is well illustrated by examining its conceptual engagement with cultural and intellectual history, which can be observed through at least two broad phases: what Anderson calls the ‘Classical Tradition’ and, later, what became known as ‘cultural Marxism’.

When historians and the public think about the end of domestic slavery in west Africa, they often imagine colonial governors issuing decrees and missionaries working to end local traffic in enslaved people.

I first read John Hirst (1942-2016) as an undergraduate in the late 1990s as part of a subject on 19th-century Australian history. We discussed convict history and explored contrasting views about its role and function in the early colonies. What was life as a convict like?

This essay will address the advantages and disadvantages of historical feature films and will compare them to other representations of the past.