Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー

A view over the historic temple area of Asakusa from above

Writing about historiography again

A view of over Hiroshima from a high building. The Atomic Dome is in the foreground.

Hiroshima morning

One for @eui-history.bsky.social

Congrats on this piece @arturbanaszewski.bsky.social

Read @arturbanaszewski.bsky.social on Zygmunt Bauman

A deer on a beach

Me standing next to a torii gate that is further back in the sea

Today, I spent the afternoon writing about historiography beside the beach on Miyajima

Two herons on a ruin at dusk

Herons of Hiroshima

William Godwin, the lion who roared twice, is now at large
global.oup.com/academic/pro...

An historic Japanese bridge backgrounded by autumnal trees on a sunny day

Autumnal hues – a day away from the writing desk to the mountainside woods and shrines of Nikkō

Many thanks to the editor @tomaashby.bsky.social and to the reviewer Laura André Lombard! It’s truly heartwarming to see years of work get noticed and read. Now, more than ever before, we live in dangerous times in great need of cosmopolitan republicanism.

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The cover of the book, featuring a historic portrait of Cloots

Now online! Laura André Lombard (Université Panthéon Assas) reviews "The Political Thought of Anacharsis Cloots: A Proponent of Cosmopolitan Republicanism in the French Revolution (@degruyterbrill.bsky.social, 2023) by @fepoulsen.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The cover of the record of the string orchestra "Landfall in Unknown Seas" by Allen Curnow

Today, I gave a talk on 'Pākehā Poetry, History, and Imagination in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1939–1948' to my colleagues at the University of Tokyo. This included a discussion on the young John Pocock and Antipodean birds. Helpful comments! This article has been accepted, it is forthcoming next year.

[Exit Clown.]

Thoroughly enjoyed dipping my toes into the waters of the body politic - looking forward to more research in the future! Thanks to everyone for such inspiring discussions.

It has a cover...
uhpress.hawaii.edu/bookseries/p...

Democrats in Virginia may make big gains in the state legislature. By my count, 11 GOP state House incumbents are losing their races. Dems currently hold a 51-49 edge in the VA House of Delegates. +11 is a big shift.

Hugo Drochon *so* enjoyed speaking at the #MondaySeminar on, um, Monday that he has joined BlueSky and everything: @hdrochon.bsky.social.

This was a great coming together to discuss bodies, politic, physical, and otherwise, in republican political thought. These reflections by @rhammersley99.bsky.social offer details on the talks and discussion! @beccapalmer99.bsky.social

The notion of an ailing body politic feels sadly relevant today. My November blogpost reflects on a workshop held in September that explored how the notion of the body politic was deployed by republican writers in the C17 and C18.
www.rachelhammersley.com/new-blog/2025/10/28/republican-bodies

A coffee beside a copy of La Penseé sauvage by Claude Lévi-Strauss

Writing about bricolage, historiography, and the history of political thought

Thrilled to share that my book The Interpreters is out!
It explores how Britain engaged with the politics of Southeastern Europe—national questions, federations, and minority rights—and how those debates echoed from the Balkans to Ireland.
🔗 manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526160133/

Bravo!

The historic walls and moat of what was the complex that housed Edo castle

The walls of old Edo, mighty and defiant to time

Apologies for the paywall, not my choice! Friends, colleagues, mutuals, do DM if interested and access is difficult

The cover of the book

Now online! Giulio Talini (Università Bocconi) reviews "Science and Political Economy in Enlightenment Milan, 1760-1805" (@oxunienl.bsky.social @livunipress.bsky.social, 2024) by Lavinia Maddaluno www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A selfie of me backgrounded by Shibuya

33

A quotation from the text: What is a ‘free Liberty’ and, by implication, an ‘unfree Liberty’? As we have seen, Sidney describes érōs as ‘an intensive Desire of the Soul to enjoy Beauty’, which is naturally good, and ‘the Desire of a Lover is to be loved’, which is the mutually passionate, fruition of beauty103. Notably, within this ‘Union of Hearts’, Sidney states how the rational soul ‘finds rest within itself104’. It stands to reason, therefore, that the requitement of love is emancipatory. In loving the lover, the beloved frees the lover, who is no longer possessed by love as the desire to be loved. In fact, to the contrary, the lover now possesses love and is free to enjoy it. Accordingly, what is for the lover implied as ‘unfree Liberty’—a contradiction that results in slavery—is, in fact, the disorderliness of ‘the rejected Lover’s Torment105’. Unlike those subjected to unanswered érōs, the requited lover enjoys ‘a free Liberty’ to a mutually empowering good, ‘Lovers Happiness’, which is the ‘most absolute Happiness106’ available to fallen humans within the postlapsarian darkness of the saeculum. Fundamentally, therefore, the requited lover has no such domina in Venus—providing reciprocity continues. It is worth reflecting at this juncture how the older Sidney notably and repeatedly described freedom as the ‘height of temporal felicity107’, which only serves to indicate further the affinities between the earthly status of the liber homo and the lover who experiences love returne.

Detail from the 1901 painting La Belle Dame Sans Merci

What happens when the philosophy of love meets a neo-Roman sense of liberty as independence? Are lovers doomed to be "made Slaves to Venus"? Read my essay on érōs as an enslaving and emancipatory power in the first close analysis of Algernon Sidney's "Of Love": classiques-garnier.com/le-republica...

Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power. But the person who either acquires, or succeeds to a great fortune, does not necessarily acquire or succeed to any political power, either civil or military. His fortune may, perhaps, afford him the means of acquiring both; but the mere possession of that fortune does not necessarily convey to him either. The power which that possession immediately and directly conveys to him, is the power of purchasing a certain command over all the labour, or over all the produce of labour which is then in the market. His fortune is greater or less, precisely in proportion to the extent of this power, or to the quantity either of other men’s labour, or, what is the same thing, of the produce of other men’s labour, which it enables him to purchase or command. The exchangeable value of every thing must always be precisely equal to the extent of this power which it conveys to its owner.

Various; it pops up!

A photo of book shelves

The collection totals 315 books. Find more about it here: www.lib.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/english/?pag...