Category: British History

Colonialism and the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, by Kimberly Parry

Posted On By The Manchester Historian

“Manchester’s collection is worth almost as much as the Louvre’s” commented French art critic Théophile Thoré regarding the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857 – the largest art exhibition to be held in the UK and possibly in the world. While the British public milled pleasurably around the Exhibition’s ‘Oriental Court’, soaking in the triumphant collection of trophies seized from British colonies, public revolts against British rule erupted across India. The ‘Indian Mutiny’ was the country’s First War of Independence, resulting in over 100,000 deaths.

Category: British History

Fighting Fascists in Cheetham Hill: Radical Jewish Anti-Fascism in North Manchester, by Alvaro Novais Freire

Posted On By The Manchester Historian

The Jewish community in the UK went from numbering approximately 60,000 to roughly 350,000 from 1880 to the Second World War, the majority of which settled in Britain’s industrial hubs. Manchester became home to the largest community of Jews in the country, outside of London. The community developed in the northern districts of the city centred in Cheetham.

Category: British History

Votes for Women, not Votes for Ladies: Working Class Suffrage in Manchester, by Romy Nicholson

Posted On By The Manchester Historian

Manchester in the 19th and 20th century was a hub of activism, a city which witnessed the mobilisation of marginalised groups who were striving for better lives. The National Society for Women’s Suffrage (NUWSS) was founded in 1867 by Manchester-born Lydia Becker; as the first national organisation dedicated to women’s suffrage, the society was fundamental to women’s enfranchisement in 1928.

Category: British History

The Sinking of the Arandora Star, and its Links to the Italian Community of Manchester, by Daniel Galloway

Posted On By The Manchester Historian

The Arandora Star was a cruise liner, repurposed as a prisoner transport during the war. It set sail from Liverpool on the 2nd of July 1940 with an extremely overloaded cargo of over 1600 prisoners and crew. People were drawn from all over England, and among these were the Italian fathers, brothers and husbands of Ancoats’ ‘Little Italy’.

Category: British History

Forgotten Communities: The Hidden Faces of Manchester’s Slum Clearance, by Emma Breslin

Posted On By The Manchester Historian

Research on displaced populations across international borders has gained a lot of attention in recent decades, but research on internal displacement has been overlooked. The hidden narratives of Manchester’s slum clearance in the 1960s remain to be revealed, along with the entire neighbourhoods that were uprooted from their homes.