We will be holding talks face-to-face and on-line during the 2024-2025 programme. More details will be added to the website as we have them available and we will also send email updates. We are using Ticketsource to provide on-line registration, if you are a member of the HA (local or national) or a student registration is free, guests will be asked to pay £4 (plus 34p booking fee) when booking. If you have any queries please contact us at histassocglos@gmail.com
Updated January 2025
2024 – 2025 programme
Monday 23 September 7.30pm, AGM
The AGM and talk will be held at the Exmouth Arms 167 Bath Road, Cheltenham, GL53 7LX and as a Zoom meeting. Food will be available at the Exmouth Arms before the AGM, if you wish to have a meal please contact us at histassocglos@gmail.com by 5 September for further information.
AGM was held by Zoom only due to weather conditions
Monday 14 October 7.30pm, Park Campus, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham and Zoom
Burma to Myanmar: From influential superpower to oppressive regime
Dr Alexandra Green, Henry Ginsburg Curator for Sout-East Asia, British Museum
From influential superpower to repressive regime, Myanmar – also known as Burma – has seen dramatic fluctuations in fortune over the past 1,500 years. Experiencing decades of civil war and now ruled again by a military dictatorship, Myanmar is an isolated figure on the world stage today, and its story is relatively little known in the West. Picking up the thread around AD 450, this talk explores how Myanmar’s various peoples interacted with each other and the world around them, leading to new ideas and art forms. The extraordinary artistic output of its peoples, over more than a millennium and a half of cultural and political change, attests to its pivotal role at the crossroads of Asia.
Monday 11 November 7.30pm, Oxstalls Campus, University of Gloucestershire and Zoom
Who Killed Cock Robin?’: The Rise and Fall of the First Labour Government in Britain, 1924
Professor Keith Laybourn, Diamond Jubilee Professor Emeritus of the University of Huddersfield and Visiting Professor at York St. John University
The first Labour Government was a minority Labour Government which gained power as a result of the unstable state of British politics in 1923 and 1924. It was a moderate government which was unable to implement many of the socialist policies it offered. It was a minority government, supported by the Liberal Party, and its fate was sealed when the issue of the Soviet Treaties and the bungled arrest and release of J. R. Campbell, editor of the Communist Workers’ Weekly drove Asquith and Lloyd George to abandon it. The publication of the Zinoviev Letter, the Red Letter Scare, suggesting that the Communists were using the Labour Party/ Government to get power was, perhaps, a contributory factor in its fall. Nevertheless, its very existence proved to have a vital impact upon the future of British politics.
The talk can be viewed on YouTube: https://youtu.be/tTT2SdBmrhE
Monday 9 December 7.30pm, The Exmouth Arms, 167 Bath Road, Cheltenham, GL53 7LX
A Gloucestershire (Archives) Christmas
John Putley, Community Heritage Office, Gloucestershire Archives
A look at the history of the midwinter festival and Christmas helped by material held in the Gloucestershire County archives.
Join us for a Christmas event at The Exmouth, food and drink will be available.
Monday 20 January 7.30pm, Zoom only
Byzantium the Forgotten Empire
Professor Jonathan Harris, Professor of the History of Byzantium, Royal Holloway, University of London
An exploration of one of the great cultural and political forces of the Middles Ages that somehow never made it onto the school curriculum. The lecture looks at who the Byzantines were and why their state endured for so long in very adverse circumstances between the fourth and fifteenth centuries. Finally, it will consider why and how, in the end, it disappeared.
If you wish to watch on Zoom please register via the link below:
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/historical-association-gloucestershire-branch/t-mopllxx
Monday 17 February 7.30pm, FCH Campus, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham and Zoom
Dead Ends and Grey Zones: The UN and Cold War Conflict Management
Dr Volker Prott, Aston University
Dr Volker Prott will revisit a crucial chapter of twentieth-century international history: the role of the UN in Cold War conflict management. His talk will examine to what extent the UN lived up to its original ambitions, how it dealt with failures and ‘dead ends’ in a Cold War setting dominated by great power interest – and how UN officials still sought to use ‘grey zones’ to exert political influence and ensure the growth of their organisation and its multiple agencies. The talk will use the early Kashmir conflict, the Congo Crisis of the 1960s, and the East Pakistan crisis of 1971 as case studies to trace the shifting strategies of UN conflict management. It will conclude with some historical reflection points, asking how the UN might become a legitimate and effective political force in the resolution of the multiplying conflicts and crises of the present.
2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the founding of the U.N.
To join us via Zoom please register below:
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/historical-association-gloucestershire-branch/t-xmlnnnv
Monday 17 March 7.30pm, Oxstalls Campus, University of Gloucestershire, Gloucester and Zoom
English Perceptions of Joan of Arc from the 15th to 21st Centuries
Professor Anne Curry, Emeritus Professor of Medieval History, University of Southampton
Joan of Arc was instrumental in undermining English rule in France in the early fifteenth century and it is hardly surprising that she was portrayed wholly negatively in English sources of the period. Yet views changed in later centuries and Joan became quite a heroine for English writers. Anne will trace this changing reputation through words and images of Joan from the middle ages to today.
If you would like to join us va Zoom please register below:
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/historical-association-gloucestershire-branch/t-avgpppk
Monday 14 April 7.30pm, Tewkesbury Methodist Church, High Street, Tewkesbury and Zoom
Heny VI and the Origins of the Wars of the Roses
Dr James Ross, University of Worcester
Dr Ross’s lecture will focus on Henry VI, king of England from 1422-61, and the ways in which his priorities as king diverged sharply from what was expected of medieval monarchs, and how his fitful engagement with government – in an age of personal kingship – was perhaps the worst of all worlds for the realm he ruled.
The Dr James Ross is Reader in Medieval History at the University of Winchester. He works on English political society in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, particularly on the nobility and on kingship. He has published a number of articles as well as biographies of John de Vere, Thirteenth Earl of Oxford, 1442-1513 (2011) and Henry VI: A Good, Simple and Innocent Man (2016) for the Penguin English Monarch Seriesextent to which this led to the bloody outbreak of the Wars of the Roses will be evaluated.
To join us via Zoom please register below:
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/historical-association-gloucestershire-branch/t-pqdnnnp
Monday 12 May 7.30pm, Park Campus, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham
Rural Crime, and Protest? Poaching and Incendiarism in Early 19th Century Gloucestershire
Tom Wilkinson, teacher and PhD student
Crimes such as poaching and incendiarism have been labelled by anthropologist James Scott as examples of ‘weapons of the weak’, covert actions that allow the powerless within a society to resist exploitation without having to resort to more overt deeds such as riot and rebellion. While these acts are conducted on a small scale, their cumulative impact can be considerable.
The stereotype of the lone poacher, forced into criminality through the desperation of poverty, taking food from the lands of an uncaring elite in order to support his family, has long been considered synonymous with the concept of protest through crime. Poachers have been represented as fighting in a ‘crusade against privilege and the class monopoly of the Game Laws’, and have come to represent a fundamental element in the creation of working-class consciousness in the nineteenth century. The reality, however, was far more nuanced.
The same concepts have been applied to incendiarism, particularly the targeting of agricultural property. Arson has been described as the ‘prime weapon of rural war […] a hallmark of social protest’ during the nineteenth century. Historians have pointed to the hopelessness felt by the rural poor during this period, a time that saw their quality of life ‘degraded to a state of wretchedness’, their living standards often worse than the animals to which they tended. It has been argued that incendiarism, and crime in general, provided the rural poor with a level of agency they otherwise lacked. Their crimes, therefore, were justified.
Early nineteenth century Gloucestershire provides a fascinating case study regarding these issues. This talk will examine examples of poaching and incendiarism within the county. The extent to which both crimes should be considered a justifiable form of protest will also be discussed.
If you would like to join us by Zoom please register below:
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/historical-association-gloucestershire-branch/t-rponnkp
Talk information
Meetings normally begin at 7.30 p.m., and are usually on Mondays.
Where we are holding Zoom webinars we will send out joining instructions to members and provide links from this website.
The venue for Cheltenham meetings is usually the University of Gloucestershire’s Park Campus, Cheltenham, (GPS: enter The Park, Cheltenham).
Gloucester meetings are usually at the Oxstalls Campus of the University of Gloucestershire.
Both venues have large car parks, for which a parking fee is charged.
If you are coming to the Park by car, there is a map at https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF-8&q=the+park+chelt+campus+map&fb=1&gl=uk&hq=the+park+chelt&ei=-SeCUu3mKsOqhQfhy4DgDA&ved=0CIQBEMgT. This shows the layout of the Park Campus itself; the main car park is to the left of the lake and bus stops are shown. We will be meeting in 1a the Elwes Teaching Centre shown on the Park Campus map. http://hagloucestershire.enablecomcloud.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Park-Campus-Map-Jan-23.pdf
At Oxstalls the parking is very close to the building where we meet. The map at https://www.google.com/maps/d/embed?mid=18WCko15FTlvDTEbwbzLk8TSjgGU shows the location of the campus within Gloucester (zoom out if necessary); and if you then centre the campus on the map and zoom in, you can see where the main car parks are situated. The bus stops are also shown. We will be meeting in the Business School, number 7 on the Oxstalls campus map. http://hagloucestershire.enablecomcloud.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/oxstalls-campus-map-1MB.pdf
Meetings are free for members, £4 for visitors. (School and university students are always welcome to attend free of charge.)
For further details please contact the secretary, Robert Sutton, tel: 01242 574889.
For details of previous years’ programmes, please go here.