Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
LightNews LightNews
banner
tomaashby.bsky.social
Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
@tomaashby.bsky.social
14K followers 970 following 1.4K posts
Historian 思想史家 ∙ JSPS Fellow @utokyoofficial.bsky.social nominated @britishacademy.bsky.social ∙ Review Ed @global-ih.bsky.social ∙ Co-org @gpolthought.bsky.social ∙ PhD @eui-eu.bsky.social ∙ early modern English republicanism ∙ England & Sengoku/Edo Japan
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
tomaashby.bsky.social
Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー @tomaashby.bsky.social · Jul 8
After months of back-and-forth drafting, & over 10,000 words of dialogue, I am delighted that this discussion article co-authored with Quentin Skinner (@qmul.bsky.social) is now published @global-ih.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....
global-ih.bsky.social Global Intellectual History @global-ih.bsky.social · Jul 8
1/2 Out now! "Independence, Globality, and the Battle of Ideas: A Dialogue on Liberty" by Quentin Skinner (@qmul.bsky.social) & @tomaashby.bsky.social (@utokyoofficial.bsky.social), a wide-ranging, scholarly, & full-length discussion article - the first at GIH! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
The painting "La liberté" (c.1793-1794) by Nanine Vallain
tomaashby.bsky.social
Today, I spent the afternoon writing about historiography beside the beach on Miyajima
A deer on a beach Me standing next to a torii gate that is further back in the sea
November 18, 2025 at 8:42 AM
tomaashby.bsky.social
Herons of Hiroshima
Two herons on a ruin at dusk
November 17, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
pamelaclemit.bsky.social
William Godwin, the lion who roared twice, is now at large
global.oup.com/academic/pro...
November 13, 2025 at 6:13 PM
tomaashby.bsky.social
Autumnal hues – a day away from the writing desk to the mountainside woods and shrines of Nikkō
An historic Japanese bridge backgrounded by autumnal trees on a sunny day
November 12, 2025 at 7:19 AM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
fepoulsen.bsky.social
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.
global-ih.bsky.social Global Intellectual History @global-ih.bsky.social · 8d
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 book, featuring a historic portrait of Cloots
November 10, 2025 at 11:14 AM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
eui-history.bsky.social
Interested in pursuing a #PhD in #History in a uniquely multicultural environment?

📣 Applications for our fully-funded PhD programme are now open 👉 loom.ly/pvk17dc

⏰ Apply by 15 January 2026

Want to know more? Meet us on our:
🌐Virtual Open Day - 2 December 2025 👉 loom.ly/sp5lOKM

🎓 #academicsky
Doctoral Programme in History and Civilisation
strongImportant note: The deadline to apply for the 202627 academic year is 15 January 2026 at 14:00 CET Time in Italy Later applications will not be accepted
loom.ly
November 10, 2025 at 9:03 AM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
global-ih.bsky.social
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 book, featuring a historic portrait of Cloots
November 10, 2025 at 9:47 AM
tomaashby.bsky.social
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.
The cover of the record of the string orchestra "Landfall in Unknown Seas" by Allen Curnow
November 7, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
shakespeare.lol
[Exit Clown.]
November 5, 2025 at 2:15 AM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
beccapalmer99.bsky.social
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.
tomaashby.bsky.social Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー @tomaashby.bsky.social · 13d
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
@rhammersley99.bsky.social @rhammersley99.bsky.social · 15d
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
November 4, 2025 at 5:53 PM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
hildedw.bsky.social
It has a cover...
uhpress.hawaii.edu/bookseries/p...
October 22, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
jamiedupree.bsky.social
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.
November 5, 2025 at 2:18 AM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
thecambridgeschool.bsky.social
Hugo Drochon *so* enjoyed speaking at the #MondaySeminar on, um, Monday that he has joined BlueSky and everything: @hdrochon.bsky.social.
October 30, 2025 at 2:47 PM
tomaashby.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
 @rhammersley99.bsky.social @rhammersley99.bsky.social · 15d
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
November 4, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
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
November 2, 2025 at 5:54 PM
tomaashby.bsky.social
Writing about bricolage, historiography, and the history of political thought
A coffee beside a copy of La Penseé sauvage by Claude Lévi-Strauss
October 29, 2025 at 7:42 AM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
giannako.bsky.social
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/
October 27, 2025 at 11:45 AM
tomaashby.bsky.social
The walls of old Edo, mighty and defiant to time
The historic walls and moat of what was the complex that housed Edo castle
October 27, 2025 at 11:42 AM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
global-ih.bsky.social
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....
The cover of the book
October 27, 2025 at 10:57 AM
tomaashby.bsky.social
33
A selfie of me backgrounded by Shibuya
October 26, 2025 at 1:01 PM
tomaashby.bsky.social
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...
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
October 23, 2025 at 6:34 AM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
pamelaclemit.bsky.social
First proofs have arrived (618 pages, excluding plates). Miles to go before I sleep ...
pamelaclemit.bsky.social Godwin_lives @pamelaclemit.bsky.social · May 3
Anarchy in the UK: OUP hoists its standard for radical polymath #WilliamGodwin, author of Political Justice, 1793, & Caleb Williams, 1794; & (in timespan of this volume) Mandeville: A Tale of the Seventeenth Century, Of Population, History of the Commonwealth of England; & many more works. At press.
October 16, 2025 at 6:12 PM
tomaashby.bsky.social
Today I worked with Adam Smith's copy of Hobbes's "Leviathan" (1651)
The title page The first page of "Of Man" with extensive marginalia
October 22, 2025 at 8:18 AM
Reposted by Tom Ashbyトム ∙ アシュビー
thehistorywoman.bsky.social
Look what just arrived in the post! Essays on Sidney in French & English, edited by the wonderful @tomaashby.bsky.social and Christopher Hamel. #earlymodern #republicanism
October 20, 2025 at 10:21 AM
tomaashby.bsky.social
Submitted an article today
October 20, 2025 at 12:08 PM