Tag: Primary Source

Fighting under Foreign Flags: Transnational Soldiering in the Early-19th Century

Fighting under Foreign Flags: Transnational Soldiering in the Early-19th Century

Published March 13, 2023

Written by Mario Draper

When considering which primary source to select for this blog post, I kept on coming back to the significance of a letter written by a Polish officer Armand von Brochowski to King Leopold I of Belgium on 24 November 1846. In it he explained why he, and dozens of other Polish officers, had made the perilous journey across Europe in the early 1830s to join the Belgian Army.

“The rockets, dearie? Can’t say I’ve ever noticed them” – Londoners respond to the V-2

Published November 23, 2022

By Charlie Hall

Asking a historian to choose their favourite primary source is a cruel assignment indeed. Any piece of historical scholarship we embark on necessarily involves engagement with a great volume of primary material, especially those of us who work on the abundantly well-documented modern period. With whichever primary sources we look at, we hope that we will gain an insight into the past – not just how events unfolded, or why, but also how contemporaries reacted to these developments. This enables us to humanise historical actors and witnesses and to draw out their stories in a way that has resonance for modern readers.