Skip to content
Black and white headshot of author Matthew Wills

Matthew Wills

Matthew Wills has advanced degrees in library science and film studies and is lapsed in both fields. He has published in Poetry, Huffington Post, and Nature Conservancy Magazine, among other places, and blogs regularly about urban natural history at matthewwills.com.

Men in striped pants removing dirt or gravel from a ditch, 1911, Panama Canal Zone

Exporting the Convict Clause: Slaves of the State in the Canal Zone

The criminalization of Blackness enabled by the Thirteenth Amendment brought chain gangs to the construction projects of the Panama Canal Zone.
An aerial view of an open pit phosphate mine

Life According to Phosphorus

Phosphorus is essential for fertilizing high-yield agriculture. The US domestic supply, restricted to Florida, is expected to run out in a couple of decades.
A satirical print depicting the height of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, 1788

Of Heights and Men

Given its strong gendered associations, it may be surprising that height hasn’t been well studied by historians.
Color lithograph advertisement showing the interior of a Pullman dining-car, 1894

Walking the Race Line on the Train Line

Investigators never reached a conclusion about the death of Pullman porter J. H. Wilkins, but his killing revealed much about the dangers of his profession.
Tobacco leaves on a black background

The Ever-Lengthening History of Tobacco

People have been smoking in the Pacific Northwest for more than 4,500 years.
The Pantheon, Rome

One Thousand Years of Domelessness

For more than 900 years, between the fifth century and the Renaissance, Romans didn’t cap their buildings with domes. Why?
An act to carry into further execution the provisions of an act passed in the third and fourth years of His present Majesty, for compensating owners of slaves upon the abolition of slavery

Imperfect Memories of British Slavery

British abolition in 1833 was accompanied by £20 million paid in compensation to slaveholders, many of whom subsequently "forgot" slavery ever existed.
Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson: A Vote for Cutting Off Your Nose

To reduce Virginia’s use of the death penalty, Thomas Jefferson proposed using permanent disfigurement as a punishment for rape, polygamy, and sodomy.
A set of dummies propped up in the Sahara Desert awaiting a third atomic bomb explosion during the French nuclear testing.

Nuclear France’s Empire of the Bomb

The first French nuclear bomb test took place in the Sahara in 1960 in the midst of the Algerian War, but French history doesn’t connect the two events.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, bottom left, speaks during the Opening Ceremony of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at The Great Hall of People on October 16, 2022 in Beijing, China.

Autocratic Capitalism: An Introduction

Americans are taught that capitalism and democracy go together like motherhood and apple pie. It may be time to unlearn that lesson.
A map of the world showing the extent of the British Empire in 1886

A Primer on Settler Colonialism

What is this “settler colonialism” that’s become all the rage? Let’s take a closer look.
Elisha Gray

Gray’s Music: Over the Telegraph

Inventor of the telephone Elisha Gray also pioneered the world’s first purpose-built electric musical instrument.
Pausanias sacrifices a lamb to Greek and Roman pagan gods before fighting in the battle of Plataea

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Animal Sacrifice and the Greek Gods

The ritual of animal sacrifice in ancient Greece brought humans closer to the gods even as it defined their differences.
Frame from the 1935 film Carnival of Colours

Putting the Red in Soviet Color Film

A Soviet alternative to Disney cartoon became a state ideal, but the three-color process behind Silly Symphony cartoons wasn’t easy to perfect.
Operation Morning Light team members, dressed in specially designed arctic clothing, begin the painstaking process of searching the area with hand-held radiation detectors.

The Trouble with Reentry

Reentry of space junk in the 1970s forced First Nations communities into a reckoning with Cold War geopolitics and a burgeoning envirotechnical disaster.
Gaslighting illustration concept with two hands with tangled string over someone's head

Audacity and Gaslights: Empowering or Zombifying Citizens?

Political scientists Eric Beerbohm and Ryan W. Davis consider how citizens can protect against gaslighting while staying open to audacious ideas of change.
View of Baltimore, Maryland, ca. 1873

Justice in Baltimore

In an atypical case, a white policeman was convicted of killing a Black man at a private house party.
Abstract illustration of faceless man in dark suit.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Authoritarianism

Is the global state system in crisis, with authoritarianism, nationalism, populism, and illiberalism running amok?
California gold miners, ca. 1850-1852

A Gold Rush of Witnesses

Letters, diaries, and remembrances shared on JSTOR by University of the Pacific reveal the hardships of day-to-day life during the California Gold Rush.
President Nicolas Maduro on August 2, 2024 at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela.

Democratic Backsliding

Political scientist Javier Corrales uses Venezuela as a case-study of democratic backsliding that’s been initiated by the winner of an election, not the loser.
Illustration of space junk orbiting the Earth.

Garbage on the Final Frontier

We’ve trashed Earth, so let’s trash space… Oh, wait, we already have!
Green Iguanas

The Reptilian Renaissance

Think reptiles like crocodiles and caimans are slow learners? It’s probably because you’re human.
A unicorn, a squirrel and a mouse. Cut-out engravings pasted onto paper

The Undying Unicorn

What role could a mythical animal play in our lives—centuries after its existence came into question?
Court in session, Freedmen's Bureau offices, Richmond, Virginia, summer 1866

A Short Course in Justice: the Freedmen’s Bureau Courts

Freedmen’s Bureau courts provided a forum for newly emancipated people in the “uncertain legal landscape” of the defeated Confederacy.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cabildo_Supreme_Court,_New_Orleans,_La_(NYPL_b12647398-62248).tiff

Eulalie Mandeville’s Fortune in Court Records

Court records can function as a kind of archive for those without any other paper trail in history: free people of color and the enslaved.