Hello! I just thought I’d say something very quickly on here for those wondering where I might have gone. I’ve deactivated my Patreon and Twitter accounts. I’m not using my Mastodon account at the moment (though that’s still around). I’m accessible by email (siwaratrikalpa@gmail.com, al.west87@gmail.com) and in the clunky comment section on this blog, but if you’re thinking of emailing me — about anything, even to offer me a job or money or a free megayacht — I’d prefer it if you held off for a little while.

The term ‘premodern’ (or ‘pre-modern’) has become popular as a seemingly neutral way of referring to the world, or some part of it, before modernity — whatever that might be. It’s sometimes used as a way of saying ‘medieval’ without saying ‘medieval’. ‘Premodern’ has less obvious baggage than ‘medieval’ and…

THE AMERICAS are named after Amerigo Vespucci, a sailor and navigator born in Florence in 1451. The name ‘America’ famously first appears on a large 12-panel map drawn up by the cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in 1507, a map explicitly based on Vespucci’s accounts. (The map’s full Latin title is Universalis…

THE SPREAD OF CARD GAMES across Afro-Eurasia is an underappreciated phenomenon of the later Middle Ages. …

WHEN I TALK ABOUT what I mean by the ‘Middle Ages’, I tend to emphasise the absence of American contacts and of crops and commodities that arrived as part of the Columbian Exchange after 1492. The ‘medieval’ in Afro-Eurasia was, if you ask me, defined by the lack of tobacco…

2022 has been another rubbish year. Globally speaking, I mean: The coronavirus pandemic is ongoing, with the virus spreading across China as I write, and much of the world has been rocked by the effects of Russia’s pointlessly destructive and utterly unethical invasion of Ukraine. …

Over the last few years, I’ve found Twitter a handy platform indeed. I’ve learned a lot from other users and been privy to all sorts of interesting discussions. I’ve found opportunities there that I wouldn’t have been able to find elsewhere, particularly during my regrettably unfunded PhD, when I didn’t…

Here are some changes I’d like to see. Not massive societal overhauls, mind — just a few minor improvements to scholarship and publishing and public discourse on certain topics. Little desiderata. I’d love it if Euro-medievalists could find it within themselves to be specific about the places they’re talking about…

I recently quit Twitter because I didn’t like the fact that a load of total arseholes — Donald Trump, Andrew Tate, and others of that ilk — had been allowed back on the platform by new owner-operator Elon Musk. Things seem to be getting worse over there as I write…