Within the Habsburg Empire of the late nineteenth century, nature became a central focus of political, economic, and scientific attention. A source of valuable natural resources and a platform for consolidating wider, territorial rule, its management and control was subsumed into a broader system of imperial governance. In this exacting analysis of the correlation between… Read More Jawad Daheur and Iva Lučić (eds.) (2025): Habsburg Natures Imperial Governance and Environment in Central Europe, 1850-1918. Berghahn: New York and Oxford.

n the nineteenth century, changes to the environment, driven by ideology, natural forces, and burgeoning fossil fuel power, shifted the course of the Habsburg Empire. Along the Danube—Europe’s second longest river—hydraulic engineering projects ranging from bridges to embankments and shipping hubs affected the river’s dynamics, as did new activities related to trade, industrialization, sanitation, recreation,… Read More Robert Shields Mevissen (2025): The Danube Empire: An Environmental History of Habsburg State Building and Civic Engagement. University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh.

What is commonly thought of as the centuries-old field of “the history of cartography” was invented after World War II through incomplete historiographies by Cornelis Koeman, Armando Cortesão, R. A. Skelton, and J. B. Harley. This monograph begins to replace those misleading historiographies with an empirically grounded analysis of the ways in which early maps… Read More Matthew H. Edney (2025): Comparative Map History and “the History of Cartography” Methodologies, Institutions, and Idealizations. Leiden: Brill.

Maps have played a central role in our understanding of what and where defines the North. At the same time, the northernmost reaches of our world have, for much of history, been difficult to navigate and verify, from the mythical islands on medieval maps to the itineraries of Arctic explorers in the nineteenth century. This… Read More Charlotta Forss (2025): Mapping the North: Myth, Exploration, Encounter. Bodleian Library: Oxford.

Der Geograph Johannes Justus Rein (1835-1918) wurde im Auftrag des preußischen Handelsministeriums im Jahr 1873 nach Japan entsandt, um der deutschen Wirtschaft das Wissen um die traditionellen Industrien (Papier-, Porzellan- & Lackherstellung) des über Jahrhunderte hinweg verschlossenen Landes zugänglich zu machen. Während seiner zweijährigen Reisetätigkeit führte er darüber hinaus zahlreiche geographische Untersuchungen durch, trat mit… Read More Tobit Nauheim (2025): Ein Geograph in Japan. Praktiken der Forschungsreise Johannes Justus Reins. (Colloquium Geographicum 40). Ferger: Bergisch Gladbach.

This strikingly colorful volume contends that modern mapping has never been sufficient to illustrate the complex reality of territory and political sovereignty, whether past or present. For Territorial Imaginaries, editor Kären Wigen has assembled an impressive slate of experts, spanning disciplines from political science to art history, to contribute perspectives and case studies covering three… Read More Kären Wigen (2025): Territorial Imaginaries Beyond the Sovereign Map. University of Chicaco Pres: Chicago.

This open access handbook aims to provide a definitive assessment of the historiography and the future of major themes and approaches within the history of the earth sciences, understood broadly. The volume is intended for a broad range of readers, including graduate students, other scholars, and scientists, both familiar with and new to the history… Read More Elena Aronova, David Sepkoski, Marco Tamborini (eds.) (2025): Handbook of the Historiography of the Earth and Environmental Sciences. Historiographies of Science. Springer: Cham.

Die Geschichtswissenschaft diskutiert seit Jahren intensiv über die Genese, Formen und Folgen weltweiter Verflechtungen und Austauschprozesse. Die Forschungen und Debatten auf dem Feld der Globalgeschichte knüpfen an etablierte Traditionen der außereuropäischen Geschichte, der Geschichte der europäischen Expansion sowie der Geschichte einzelner Weltregionen an, führen jedoch konzeptionell und methodisch über diese hinaus. Dem Wandel des wissenschaftlichen… Read More Oliver Krause (Hg.) (2024): Globalgeschichte / Global History 2,1. Themenheft: Geopolitische Narrative und geographical imaginations von der Frühen Neuzeit bis ins 21. Jahrhundert. Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden.