Historian of Britain and the World at the University of York. Interested in cities, art-making and the future. Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain out now.
Joined January 2011
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On the eve of my paternity leave, I have made a Substack for intermittent reflections on the strange new work that history is being made to do in Britain. The first essay is about York Dungeon, carnivalesque violence and the past as a gigantic scrapheap. thehistoryfactory.substack.c…
Sam Wetherell retweeted
across the USA homeowners are asking why they can't be interred in their homes after death, accompanied by a ritually sacrificed doordasher and favorite appliances, the entire property set ablaze. "what 'gas lines'?" asks one "if i'm not alive, does the subdivision even exist?"
“I’m old. I’ve paid my home off,” said Ray Warner, a 72-year-old Akron resident. “Why would I pay property tax?”
Across the country, homeowners are asking the same question and revolting against property taxes at a scale not seen in a half century.
politico.com/news/magazine/2…
Sam Wetherell retweeted
On this weeks episode of Authors of History podcast.
From post-industrial decline to cultural renaissance—how does the story of Liverpool explain modern Britain? 🇬🇧 I'm joined by historian Sam Wetherell to unpack his brilliant work on cities, economics, and resistance and his @WolfsonHistory nominated book Liverpool: A story of Britain @samwetherell 🎧 Listen to the new episode now on all podcast platforms. Please Share and leave a review #History #Podcast #AuthorsOfTwitter #book #AuthorsOfHistory #Liverpool
shows.acast.com/67c5cc6ab48a…
This is disgusting language, yes, but we should mobilise that revulsion against a system in which asylum seekers in Britain are *already* housed in these conditions. Many refugees are as we speak concentrated in hastily constructed overcrowded prisons! theguardian.com/politics/202…
Sam Wetherell retweeted
Now released. Use discount code E26IMPRL
Just released: the Imperial Entanglements of Policing, co-ed with @stschrader1 @DukePress
Read the intro follow link
dukeupress.edu/imperial-enta…
Almost a hundred years since WEB DuBois referred to the mass rebellion of enslaved people in the US South during the Civil War as the biggest general strike in world history, we are left with "ordinary people" humbly effecting "social change." bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck98…
Cannot wait to read and teach this by @michael_romyn global.oup.com/academic/prod…
Sam Wetherell retweeted
every few years the right wing comes for Foucault using tactics that he spent his entire career taxonomizing—the same biographical pathologizations his opponents purport to hate. the ONLY valid critiques of him are from the left, and they have nothing to do with who he fucked
For @wolfsonhistory I selected some of the historical and theoretical works that I love and which have been most influential on my thinking.
From electricity's transformation of modern life to a thought-provoking collection of essays exploring the alternative worlds imagined by anti-colonial thinkers, these are the history books that have inspired @samwetherell.
Browse his selection on our @bookshop_org_UK page ⬇️📚
uk.bookshop.org/lists/sam-we…
📕 'Nature’s Metropolis' by William Cronon
📕 'Black Reconstruction in America' by W. E. B. Du Bois
📕 'Fin-de-Siecle Vienna' by Carl E. Schorske
📕 'Disenchanted Night' by Wolfgang Schivelbusch
📕 'Golden Gulag' by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
📕 'Worldmaking after Empire' by Adom Getachew
📕 'The Mushroom at the End of the World' by Anna Tsing
📕 'Empire of Guns' by Priya Satia
📕 'Impossible Engineering' by Chandra Mukerji
Utter, utter insanity.
Sally Rooney books withdrawn in UK over Palestine Action support bbc.in/4B82LFi
Me reading an extract from my book in front of the Liver Building, if that’s your thing.
"One of the tasks of the historian is to comb through the historical darkness in search of the connecting threads between then and now."
Listen to an extract from Liverpool: A Story of Britain by @samwetherell, then visit our website to discover why it was shortlisted for the #WolfsonHistoryPrize. @HoZ_Books ⬇️🎧
wolfsonhistoryprize.org.uk/p…
Sam Wetherell retweeted
"Humane, distressing, and yet curiously optimistic"
In the words of the #WolfsonHistoryPrize judges: what makes 'Liverpool: A Story of Britain' by @samwetherell an outstanding work of history. @HoZ_Books 🏢
I remember the moment when the first TARP bill failed Congress - reading about it on dialup internet connection in a Mongolian youth hostel while vomiting my brains out from food poisoning. Peak millennial experience.
Assembling a mass movement of almost but not quite millionaires.
🚨 NEW: The Tories are now targeting the "Waitrose Woman" to win the next election
"She is aspirational, not necessarily a millionaire but above all wants a lower tax burden, wants to work hard, get on and pay less tax"
[@MillardClothier]
Sam Wetherell retweeted
With the recent deaths of so many of the great Marxist thinkers of recent decades –– Jameson, Mike Davis etc, and now Chris Wickham –– i do worry about who will replace them, considering the conditions that allowed them to thrive and produce such generative work no longer exist
RIP Chris Wickham. Unlike so many historians who emphasise particularities and contingencies, he was the master of constructing grand, coherent, beautifully rendered worlds out of his evidence. This, from his 2021 Past and Present essay, is a masterpiece of historical writing.
From How did the Feudal Economy Work? The Economic Logic of Medieval Societies academic.oup.com/past/articl…
Sam Wetherell retweeted
New book argues that the nation-state as the foundation of the international order is a more recent invention than is commonly supposed. It was born between 1940 and 1955, out of the ruins of the collapsing empires of Japan, Britain, Netherlands etc (h/t Peter Rutland). global.oup.com/academic/prod…
Not, it turns out, the worst crime that OUP have committed but I’ve been thinking about this on and off for the last three years.
