A welcome to new readers...

This weeks Monday's Guardian (24 October) apparently kindly recommended a post of mine about The Battle of Trafalgar in its section 'Today on the web', while discussing Nelson. As 'Today on the Web' is, ironically, not freely available online, Bat generously transcribed what they said:

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Not everyone was celebrating [the Battle of Trafalgar]:

"Perhaps never before in the field of human conflict has so much imperial propaganda about a past battle been forced upon so many by so few. For socialists, our response should arguably be to recall the Haitian Revolution which defeated not just the tyrannical French and Spanish empires but also the murderous British empire as well. To hear the sound of liberty ringing down through the centuries, let us listen to Toussaint L'Ouverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution and a military genius at least the equal of Nelson."

histomatist.blogspot.com

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Anyway, Guardian readers - as well as others - are more than welcome to Histomat - which kind of aims to help in the development of an understanding of the past that is of use to us in the present - as opposed to the myths about how society changes that are propagated by ruling elites. Unfortunately, my 'Dead King Watch' (DKW) feature has of late rather encouraged a tendency for this blogger to focus overwhelmingly on British, indeed English, history. This is a problem - we need more global people's history on the world wide web - but one I hope to rectify at some point in the future. Fortunately, there are other bloggers out there who are far better historians than me on hand to help in this task - which it would be futile and arrogant in any case to think that one could pursue singlehandedly. History should be a collaborative intellectual discipline anyway - but for socialist historians, who tend to go against the grain of conventional fashion and recieved 'wisdom', co-operation should be second nature.