History professors, teachers, and students across the United States are celebrating Black History Month in a time of crisis.
“Feb. 1 is the beginning of Black History Month, which for decades has recognized the contributions of Black people to American civic life and culture with festive luncheons, serious lectures, profitable merchandise lines and staid White House receptions,” according to The New York Times.
“But a month that was officially recognized nearly five decades ago by a Republican president, Gerald R. Ford, is dawning this year with new significance amid President Trump’s furious assault on diversity programs inside and outside the federal government.
“Suddenly the study of Black history — or at least the dark corners of slavery, segregation and bigotry — appears to be an act of defiance.
“‘Black History Month existed long before presidents endorsed it, and it will continue, even if presidents do not,’ said Martha Jones, a professor of history and a presidential scholar at Johns Hopkins University. Nonetheless, she added, ‘there’s a great deal to lament and even to decry’ about the suppression of American history.”
Many state governments, municipal governments, and universities continue to celebrate Black History Month.
Black History Month banner from the Chicago Cultural Alliance
President Trump has signed a proclamation recognizing Black History Month, although his support seems very tentative.
However, the Trump administration is acting to dismantle recognition of Black History across the federal government.
The Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and some other federal agencies have reportedly barred their departments from recognizing Black History Month or other designated historical months.
President Trump’s inauguration ceremonies in Washington, D.C., have been filled with royal rhetoric and regal symbolism, promoting the new President as a would-be king.
The New York Times reports that “At a late-night inaugural ball on Monday, President Trump, flush with his restoration to power, began waving a ceremonial sword he had been given almost as if it were a scepter and he were a king.”
“Perhaps it is a fitting metaphor as Mr. Trump takes control in Washington again this week with royal flourishes and monarchical claims to religious legitimacy. His return to the White House has been as much a coronation as an inauguration, a reflection of his own view of power and the fear it has instilled in his adversaries.”
According to The New York Times, ” His inaugural events have been suffused with regal themes. In his Inaugural Address, he claimed that when a gunman opened fire on him last summer, he ‘was saved by God to make America great again,’ an echo of the divine right of kings. He invoked the imperialist phrase ‘manifest destiny,’ declared that he would unilaterally rename mountains and seas as he sees fit and even claimed the right to take over territory belonging to other nations.”
American Revolutionaries overthrew King George III, separated from Great Britain, and rejected monarchy altogether. Presidents of the United States have often gone to great length to avoid any perception of association with monarchy. Meanwhile, critics of Presidents have often castigated them by calling them “king.”
“‘But in the annals of presidential history, one struggles to find a leader who wouldn’t have found the term ‘king’ at least somewhat insulting,’ said Jeffrey A. Engel, the director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. Not Mr. Trump, it seems. ‘In highlighting his family to such a degree during his swearing-in, President Trump furthers the notion that he and they are special, removed from regular society.'”
Historians of early modern monarchy, royal households, political patronage, and court culture have much to contribute to the analysis of modern presidential political culture in the age of Trump.
Here are a few works on the history of monarchy that provide frameworks for examining modern uses of royal symbolism and claims to monarchical power:
Adamson, J. S. A. The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture Under the Ancien Régime, 1500-1750. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999.
Asch, Ronald G. and Adolf M. Birke, eds. Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450-1650. London: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Collins, James B. The State in Early Modern France. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Duindam, Jeroen Frans Jozef. Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Major Dynastic Rivals, 1550-1780. Cambridge ; Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Duindam, Jeroen Frans Jozef, Tulay Artan, and Metin Kunt, eds. Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires : A Global Perspective. Leiden: Brill, 2011.
Elliott, J. H. and L. W. B. Brockliss, eds. The World of the Favourite. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
Elias, Norbert Elias. The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.
Friedeburg, Robert von, and J. S. (John Stephen) Morrill, eds. Monarchy Transformed : Princes and Their Elites in Early Modern Western Europe. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Henshall, Nicholas. The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern Monarchy. London: Longman, 1992.
Jouanna, Arlette. Le devoir de révolte: la noblesse française et la gestation de l’Etat moderne, 1559-1661. Paris: Fayard, 1989.
Kettering, Sharon. Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Major, J. Russell. From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles and Estates. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Zmora, Hillay. Monarchy, Aristocracy, and the State in Europe, 1300-1800 / Hillay Zmora. London ; Routledge, 2001.
The New York Times report on “‘The Return of the King’: Trump Embraces Trappings of the Throne,” is available online.
Historians across the United States are remembering Martin Luther King, Jr., today (20 January 2025) and interpreting the significance of the Civil Rights Movement. University professors and high school teacher are confronting politicized debates about how Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement are remembered and taught.
The New York Times reports on the coincidence of Inauguration Day falling on the same day as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 2025.
The Washington Post reports on remembrances of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington, D.C.
ABC 7 Chicago reports on the commemorations of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day are being held in the Chicago area.
WBEZ (Chicago’s NPR station) is rebroadcasting Studs Terkel’s famous recordings of interviews with Civil Rights activists heading from Chicago to Washington, D.C., to participate in the March on Washington in 1963, where Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Historian David Ikard (Vanderbilt University) was interviewed in 2023 on NPR concerning the political battle over the creation of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Holiday, which was established in 1983.
Historian Peniel Joseph (University of Texas at Austin) commented on interpreting Martin Luther King’s message and legacy on NPR.
Time Magazine published an article on teaching Civil Rights in the climate of the current “History Wars.”
Northern Illinois University published an article on the history of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Commons on campus.
On President-elect Trump’s glaring conflicts of interest….
“During his first administration, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s global business empire created an unprecedented number of conflicts of interest for a sitting president. Ethics experts worried that opportunists could try to curry favor by booking stays at Mr. Trump’s network of hotels, golf clubs and other properties,” according to The New York Times.
“Their predictions bore out: Foreign governments and lobbyists spent lavishly at his Washington hotel, which has since been sold, as well as at his Mar-a-Lago resort and other properties. The federal government itself also became an awkward customer by renting millions of dollars’ worth of rooms at his hotels and clubs.”
“Those concerns now seem almost quaint in light of some of Mr. Trump’s more recent business ventures. They include a publicly traded company, a cryptocurrency venture, new overseas real estate deals involving state-affiliated entities and numerous branding and licensing deals.”
Historians of early modern royalty, nobility, and state development will recognize many of the patterns of favor, corruption, patronage, and political influence described here. Here are a few key studies dealing with early modern political patronage and court culture:
Elias, Norbert. The Court Society. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1983.
Mulryne, J. R., and Elizabeth Goldring. Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics, and Performance. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.
Fenlon, Iain. The Ceremonial City: History, Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
Cochrane, Eric. Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527-1800. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
Zorach, Rebecca. Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Van Orden, Kate. Music, Discipline and Arms in Early Modern France. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen. Court Culture in Dresden: From Renaissance to Baroque. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002.
Frieder, Braden K. Chivalry ad the Perfect Prince: Tournaments, Art, and Armor at the Spanish Habsburg Court. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008.
Strong, Roy. The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabeth Portraiture and Pageantry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1977.
Peck, Linda Levy. Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England. New York, NY: Routledge, 1990.
Duindam, Jeroen. Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Dynastic Rivals, 1550-1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Mukerji, Chandra. Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
Additional studies of court culture, political patronage, and state development in early modern France by Kristen Neuschel, Sharon Kettering, James B. Collins, Jonathan Dewald, and other historians are also relevant.
The New York Times reports on President-elect Trump’s conflicts of interest.
A new report in The Atlantic focuses on the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) in contemporary Christianity and its growing influence in the political culture of the United States.
Stephanie McCrummen writes: “A shift is under way, one that scholars have been tracking for years and that has become startlingly visible with the rise of Trumpism. At this point, tens of millions of believers—about 40 percent of American Christians, including Catholics, according to a recent Denison University survey—are embracing an alluring, charismatic movement that has little use for religious pluralism, individual rights, or constitutional democracy. It is mystical, emotional, and, in its way, wildly utopian. It is transnational, multiracial, and unapologetically political. Early leaders called it the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, although some of those same leaders are now engaged in a rebranding effort as the antidemocratic character of the movement has come to light. And people who have never heard the name are nonetheless adopting the movement’s central ideas. These include the belief that God speaks through modern-day apostles and prophets. That demonic forces can control not only individuals, but entire territories and institutions. That the Church is not so much a place as an active “army of God,” one with a holy mission to claim the Earth for the Kingdom as humanity barrels ever deeper into the End Times.”
Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars have been tracking the transformations in evangelical Christianity for decades. However, many Americans seem to be unaware of the radical changes in contemporary Christian theology and politics. The concept of an Army of God draws simultaneously on old crusading discourses and new theological arguments for total Christian engagement in political and social change.
McCrummen explains that “I came to understand how the movement amounts to a sprawling political machine. The apostles and prophets, speaking for God, decide which candidates and policies advance the Kingdom. The movement’s prayer networks and newsletters amount to voter lists and voter guides. A growing ecosystem of podcasts and streaming shows such as FlashPoint amounts to a Kingdom media empire. And the overall vision of the movement means that people are not engaged just during election years but, like the people at Gateway House of Prayer, 24/7.”
The notions of prophesy, reformation, and an Army of God reminds us of the force of the historical Reformation movements that split Latin Christendom and produced the European Wars of Religion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Those conflicts produced religious transformations and confessional politics that continue to shape modern religious politics in many ways. My upper-division undergraduate and graduate course on HIST 414 European Wars of Religion addresses these historical contexts.
Stephanie McCrummen’s article on “The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows” is published in The Atlantic (9 January 2025).
This article will make a nice addition to the readings on contemporary religious politics and violence in my HIST 610 Graduate Reading Seminar on Religious Violence.
French far-right political leader Jean-Marie Le Pen died this week. In 1972, Le Pen founded the Front National (National Front) and gradually built it into the preeminent far-right political party in France.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was a former military intelligence officer in the Algerian War who was accused of torture and war crimes and who was an ardent proponent of the French Empire. Le Pen became a major force in French political culture, running for the office of president five times.
The New York Times reports that “For decades, Mr. Le Pen was a pariah of French politics, considered so odious that many opponents refused to debate him. That had much to do with the party’s history: Its founders in 1972 included former Nazi soldiers, collaborators with the wartime Vichy regime and onetime members of a group that carried out deadly attacks meant to thwart Algeria’s struggle to free itself from French colonial rule. Mr. Le Pen’s openly racist, antisemitic and anti-gay comments cemented the public’s perception of the party.”
The Front National party was later renamed as Rassemblement National (National Rally) in 2011 after Jean-Marie Le Pen was ousted from party leadership by his daughter, Marine Le Pen, in a bid to revamp the party’s image and make the far-right more marketable to a broader section of the French citizenry.
“For years, the far-right National Rally tried to distance itself from Mr. Le Pen’s racist and antisemitic remarks. But after his death Tuesday, it hailed him as a visionary,” according to The New York Times.
Now that Jean-Marie Le Pen has died, Rassemblement National party members have been praising his legacy in effusive eulogies.
The New York Times reports that “the party’s glowing remembrance of Mr. Le Pen was also a way to recast his image — and its own, some experts said.”
“‘Paying tribute to Le Pen ‘undemonizes’ the party even further’ by portraying him as an excessive but prescient politician, unfairly condemned for warning about the dangers of immigration, said Nicolas Lebourg, a historian who specializes in the far right. ‘People who voted for the first time last year have almost no memory of him,’ Mr. Lebourg said.”
The historical memory of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Front National political party are clearly being reshaped again in the wake of his death this week. French historians are following the political discourse and are already weighing in on Le Pen’s historical legacy. I aim to update this post as more French historians publish analyses.
The New York Times has published an article on “In Death, Jean-Marie Le Pen of France Is Embraced by Far-Right Party He Once Led.”
London’s Science Museum is currently displaying an exhibition on Versailles: Science and Splendour, which draws on recent studies in the history of science in early modern France.
The Financial Times reports that “The engine of the exhibition is the relationship between science and power in the 17th and 18th centuries (the reigns of Louis XIV, XV and XVI), a time when France was a dominant political, cultural and military force in Europe.”
French kings formed several scientific and literary academies during the seventeenth century and provided extensive royal patronage for scientific research.
According to The Financial Times, “Scientists were lured to Versailles from across Europe by the promise of a salary and whatever rare equipment they desired: among them were the Dutch physicist and mathematician Christiaan Huygens, the Danish astronomer Olaüs Roemer and the mathematician and astronomer Giovanni (or Jean) Domenico Cassini of Bologna. On display is the latter’s map of the Moon, whose surface he spent several years recording in minute detail through a telescope. Lunar distance, meanwhile, was among the early proposals for the calculation of longitude, a major scientific challenge of the time and a recurrent theme in the show.”
The exhibition also includes objects relating to medical practices in early modern France, including a obstetrics mannequin used to teach midwives how to deliver babies.
The Financial Times provides a review of the exhibition on Versailles: Science and Splendour at London’s Science Museum. The exhibition will be on view through 21 April 2025.
Northern Illinois University students in HIST 311 Early Modern France and HIST 422 Early Modern Europe will be interested in this exhibition.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the firebrand far-right French politician and one of the key architects of the modern neo-fascist movement in Europe, has died.
The New York Times reports that “Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founding father of France’s modern political far right, who built a half-century career on rants of barely disguised racism, antisemitism and neo-Nazi propaganda, has died. He was 96.” Le Monde underlines that “Jean-Marie Le Pen, l’homme qui a remis l’extrême droite au cœur du jeu politique français, est mort.”
Jean-Marie Le Pen was a notorious racist who consistently promoted neo-fascist and anti-immigrant ideologies. He served as a military intelligence officer in Algeria during the Algerian War and was accused of war crimes for torturing Algerians during the conflict. He denied all charges of war crimes and was an unabashed apologist for French Empire and militarism. He later became a far-right politician and founded the Front National (National Front), the leading neo-fascist political party in France, in 1972 and led it for decades.
He is best known for his outrageous and repeated denials of the historical reality of the Holocaust. The New York Times reports that “a French court in 1987 convicted Mr. Le Pen of Holocaust denial for saying that Nazi gas chambers were ‘a detail’ in history. He repeated the comment a decade later, and was convicted by a German court.”
According to The New York Times, “An arm-waving reactionary with the swagger of a circus pitchman making outrageous claims, Mr. Le Pen ran unsuccessfully for the French presidency five times, making it to a runoff in 2002, riding waves of discontent and xenophobia and raising specters of a new fascism as he excoriated Jews, Arabs, Muslims and other immigrants — anyone he deemed to be not ‘pure’ French.”
I followed Jean-Marie Le Pen’s rise while conducting doctoral research in France in the 1990s, and then observed his presidential campaign in 2002 from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
Le Pen shocked French citizens by besting the Socialist Lionel Jospin in the first round of the 2002 French Presidential Election and then heading into a runoff against conservative President Jacques Chirac. Although Chirac won the runoff in the second round by a landslide, Le Pen nonetheless scored a then record number of votes for a far-right candidate, opening the door for far-right politicians across Europe to launch their own candidacies.
Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter, Marie Le Pen, emerged as his successor as party leader of the Front National in 2011. She has attempted to rebrand the party and has renamed it the Rassemblement National (National Rally).
Political analyst Aurelien Mondon (University of Bath) argues that “The death of Jean-Marie Le Pen, former leader of the party once known as the National Front, occurs at a time when the mainstreaming of far-right politics in France seems almost complete. Le Pen was, for most of his career, considered the devil in French politics. Yet today, his party, headed by his daughter and now called National Rally (Rassemblement National), is at the gates of power.”
Italian journalist Michele Barbaro comments: “And it’s not just France. Modern versions of the far-right populism that Jean-Marie Le Pen embodied are thriving across the West. Italy is led by a postfascist prime minister. Nationalist-populist parties are in charge in Hungary and share power in Finland and Sweden. In the United States, Donald Trump, whose “America First” slogan is reminiscent of the old National Front posters, had already won the top job once and won it again in 2024. Jean-Marie Le Pen is dead, but his heirs are doing just fine.”
French historians will be confronting the legacy of Jean-Marie Le Pen for decades to come, as undoubtedly will French citizens.
The Storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then President Trump is one of the most documented individual episodes of mass violence in history.
As President-Elect Trump prepares to re-enter the White House, it is important to revisit the documentary record of the Storming of the U.S. Capitol. President-Elect Trump and his supporters continue to undermine the historical record of this event for their own personal and political purposes.
Social media platforms have amplified the ability of politicians such as President-Elect Trump to rewrite the historical record to serve their own political agendas. X (the former Twitter) has categorically opposed any fact-checking in order to serve Elon Musk’s personal political agenda and that of his far-right allies worldwide. It is telling that Facebook has just announced that it is suspending its (already inadequate) fact-checking services entirely. The New York Times reports on Facebook’s change in policy: “The social networking giant will stop using third-party fact checkers on Facebook, Threads and Instagram and instead rely on users to add notes to posts. It is likely to please President-elect Trump and his allies.”
Historians must continually address the politicized distortions of the historical record through archival collection and conservation, documentary research, academic publication, and public history diffusion of documentary evidence. Historians play a vital public role by documenting and interpreting past events, political actions, social movements, and everyday life based on a careful reading of the dense historical records of the past. Informed citizens and their societies rely on trained journalists and historians to access a documented and nuanced understanding of their present and past worlds.
The United States Congress has published documents from the Storming of the U.S. Capitol in several repositories.
The Library of Congress established a web archive on the Storming of the U.S. Capitol. The Library of Congress indicates: “On January 6, 2021, the U.S. Capitol was attacked by a crowd attempting to stop a joint session of Congress from certifying the electoral votes of the 2020 presidential election. The January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol Web Archive preserves a representative sample of websites related to the attack and its aftermath. The collection includes a selection of federal and state government websites, as well as sites from the military, law enforcement, advocacy groups, think tanks, academia, corporations, and the media.”
Lawfare also provides access to the Select January 6th Committee’s documents.
ProPublicapublished a large collection of first-person videos taken and diffused by participants in the Storming of the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021.
“As supporters of President Donald Trump took part in a violent riot at the Capitol, users of the social media service Parler posted videos of themselves and others joining the fray. ProPublica reviewed thousands of videos uploaded publicly to the service that were archived by a programmer before Parler was taken offline by its web host. Below is a collection of more than 500 videos that ProPublica determined were taken during the events of Jan. 6 and were relevant and newsworthy. Taken together, they provide one of the most comprehensive records of a dark event in American history through the eyes of those who took part.”
PBS reported on additional documents made available in 2024 by the prosecution in Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case.
Remembering the victims of the Charlie Hebdo Attacks on 7 January 2015 in Paris.
I was living nearby in the Marais at the time and remember that terrible day and its aftermath vividly.
It is hard to believe that 10 years have passed….
Parisian Mayor Anne Hidalgo and President Emmanuel Macron commemorated the attacks today at the site of the former Charlie Hebdo offices.
Le Mondehas published an article on “Dix ans après les attentats de 2015, la France toujours sous le choc,” and a series of pieces on the transformations of Parisian life and security since the attacks.
Reuters and the BBC report in English on the commemorations in Paris.
Le Monde has a profile of the cartoonist Riss, who survived the attacks: “Riss, dix années pour garder « Charlie » en vie.”
A brief video documentary by Le Monde recaps the Charlie Hebdo Attacks and flight of the killers.
Brian Sandberg: Historical Perspectives 