We begin with the announcement of our Books of the Year, for on this occasion there are two winners. We are delighted to honour Nicholas A. M. Rodger for the third and final volume of his history of the Royal Navy entitled The Price of Victory. A Naval History of Britain 1815-1945 (Penguin Books) and Jonathan (J. C. D.) Clark for The Enlightenment. An Idea and its History (Oxford University Press).
Professor Rodger’s book brings to a close his great history of British sea power from the early medieval period onwards. In the case of Professor Clark, his new history of the Enlightenment is a further study of the eighteenth century to add to his many books on the politics and thought of the period between the Restoration and the Great Reform Act. We are celebrating not only two books published in recent months but, in the case of both authors, their scholarship over long and distinguished academic careers, in the case of Professor Clark in the United States as well as in Britain. Both books have already been reviewed for History Reclaimed by Saul David and Jeremy Black respectively, and you can read their reviews here:
The Price of Victory: A Naval History of Britain 1815-1945 – Review
In recent weeks History Reclaimed, in association with members of Synod and other historians, has tried to explain to the Church of England’s Commissioners that the advice they’ve received about the Church’s investments in the slave trade in the eighteenth century is incorrect and thus, that the Church’s current determination to pay reparations for slavery under what is known as Project Spire, should be reassessed. As readers will recall, in common with the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Church of England, under instruction from its historical advisers, has confused South Sea Annuities with South Sea Securities.
A portion of ‘Queen Anne’s Bounty’ – a fund to support poor clergy established in the early eighteenth century – was invested in South Sea Securities, which were linked to the slave trade, but in the 1720s only. These holdings were sold off between 1728 and 1730. However, South Sea Annuities, in which the eighteenth-century Church invested far more, and over a much longer period, were government bonds simply marketed by the South Sea Company. This was explained by Robert Tombs in an essay in the Times Literary Supplement published in May. Subsequent correspondence in successive issues of the TLS not only dealt with the error but broadened into a discussion of the degree to which everyone living in the eighteenth century was implicated in slavery, a proposition that History Reclaimed contested.
The publication of a defence of their research by two historical advisors who were used by the Church Commissioners has given us the opportunity to lay out our objections, caveats, and corrections in full. In the long document published here on our website readers will find our extensive commentary on the research behind Project Spire.
A critical commentary on Church Commissioners’ historic links to African chattel enslavement
These historical disputes have attracted the attention of the Church Times, and also influenced and informed questions asked at the recent Synod. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/11-july/news/uk/historians-call-for-church-commissioners-to-scrap-100-million-slavery-justice-fund (‘Historians Call for Church Commissioners to Scrap £100-million Slavery Justice Fund’, 11 July).
Readers will be interested in subsequent letters published in the Church Times by Nigel Biggar (Lord Biggar of Castle Douglas) and most recently by Professor Richard Dale, both of them members of the group that, with History Reclaimed, has been contesting the assumptions underpinning Project Spire. https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/18-july/comment/letters-to-the-editor/letters-to-the-editor ; https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/25-july/comment/letters-to-the-editor/letters-to-the-editor. As Lord Biggar wrote,
‘In protesting that they are merely “acting in faithful service of the gospel”, the [Church] Commissioners turn a deaf ear to Christian brothers and sisters who sincerely doubt that the gospel is well served by a divisive policy based on a faulty understanding of data, a racially biased focus on historic wrongs, unsubstantiated assertions of continuing effects, and the disparaging neglect of heroic Anglican anti-slavery endeavour — all at the expense of resources that should be available to support parish ministry.’
On the subject of slavery we have published a new essay by Marcus Rutherford on the Somerset case of 1772:
Slavery and Reparations. The Relevance of James Somerset’s case in 1772
This is sometimes presented as a legal landmark that effectively abolished slavery in England, though it had not existed as an organised form of labour in the country for centuries before this. Yet as Mr Rutherford shows, Lord Mansfield’s judgment in the Somerset case was much narrower than an outright ban on slavery and has to be appreciated through the specific context of the case, which concerned the forced return to the West Indies of the enslaved man, James Somerset. It has been accorded much greater significance retrospectively than Mansfield intended.
We have also published a playful but serious piece on being a museum curator by Mark Stocker.
His ‘Ten Commandments’ might be described as the equivalent for museum professionals of the Hippocratic oath for doctors. ‘First, do no harm’ would be a very suitable rule for everyone working today in galleries and museums around the world.
We’re also delighted to have been cited in an important academic paper recently published in the July issue of the Law Quarterly Review, Britain’s leading academic legal journal, on the duty of charities, including universities, to uphold political neutrality. Universities enjoy the tax exemptions that follow from charitable status; but they forget the ‘rule against political charities’, which also applies to them. The essay, entitled ‘Universities and the Rule Against Political Charities’ is by Dr David Wilde, Associate Professor of Law in the University of Reading ((141 LQR 376, 2025). It’s behind a paywall but can be accessed via most university libraries.
In recent weeks readers have kindly sent us a number of egregious examples of historical distortion and manipulation which we’ll investigate and report on in subsequent articles on the History Reclaimed website. Please keep them coming, especially after your visits to galleries, museums and historic sites over the summer.
Please also consider a donation to History Reclaimed: we depend upon our ‘active users’ – of whom there are a staggering 163,000 – for more than moral support. There have been nearly a million visits to our website over the last twelve months and we’d like to increase that number in the coming year.
Lawrence Goldman
Robert Tombs
David Abulafia
Zewditu Gebreyohanes
Alex Gray
