London Historians' Blog

A guest post by LH Member Gail Spencer.

History is insanely wonderful. It has benefitted in recent years from having presenters on the tube and telly who could be described as ‘eye candy.’ Dans’ Snow and Jones are tattooed, muscular fellas – far from the Starkey or AJP Taylor mould the boomer generation grew up with. Our David would readily admit to making most of his money through and via presentation: who could deny how much this guy has contributed to our collective visions of the Henry VIII specifically or The Monarchy generically? History is inquiry, with the historian/investigator unravelling the past and telling us all the secrets we need to know. Taught, engaging narrative brings the drama of our historical stories to our hearts and minds, and don’t we just love it when History produces good drama like Elizabeth R? Historians are like detectives on a mission, sharing their enthusiasm and knowledge to satisfy our need to know who we are, where we fit and what it is from the past we can most or least identify with. To watch this in action, check out Dan Snow going through the history of England on Triggernometry. He takes us from the Roman Invasion to the present with the hosts of the show just sitting back and letting him get on with it, evidently taking it in like nourishment for the hungry.

This article is an avenue for, or of investigation itself, hoping to present to those with a love of history, the prospect of merging it with other disciplines to ensure both its attractiveness and its survival. In order to present the prospect of an online store with historic goods, designed, themed and uploaded as arena for the future, let’s have a look at how we deal with History and how these areas translate into active and healthy commercialism. Note how little time archeologists are given to deal with a dig when something of historic portent is unearthed. The developers in charge of the land, or the project will invariably dictate the boundaries. Would it not be great to have a cultural/historic algorithm that would prompt preservation? How much, for example did Game of Thrones do for Plantagenet history, or The Last Kingdom for The Dark Ages..? How many visitors have been to a Norman church? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if where you live, what happened there that could be commercialised, or exploited, or used as argument for preservation, or better still, be used as detail for a talk in a pub or church. No doubt there will be some that will have done this already. Overall though, its value could and should translate into cash, jobs and cultural/financial growth. It has happened in football, why not history?

It is commonplace now for podcasters to have associated goods online: monestisation of a TikTok or Your Tube account depends on various factors, notably providing ‘click bait’ – content, messages and overall theme of a podcast can act as a springboard for clicks to associated behavioural advertising. But the building of an online store does not necessarily mean building an online subscription base on You Tube or Tik Tok. Most if not all online stores are the purview of designers. So then, how can an historian make a viable online store?

Having a good concept helps. Dig into the specialism of choice and produce associated goods that will relay a message about the time. Say ‘Gay London’ is your bag, here, maps of ‘Pleasure Gardens’ or where Molly Houses used to reside can adequately accompany a story about The Vere St Coterie, or the Pillory of Charing Cross. Then there are the designs themselves: a politically pertinent collecton of Tees (T Shirts), in this instance, (the collections of Triple Tree Tours), depict the freedoms ‘Under Starmer’ – putting together the cruel punishments of the past with our delineating civil liberties. The use of taglines is important: tags make the goods searchable online and move the product forward. Pamphlets, the ideas in them, the concept and design are good territory as most are in the public domain and not subject to copyright. A good historian could make a decent living out of Broadsheets alone, satirising the issues of the day into headlines for a paper that looks like it was produced in the times of Samuel Pepys.

It is important to have some DTP skills. Desktop Publishing coupled with some copyright knowledge, product writing skill and visual flair will help the online store put over a sense of personal brand. Choice of platform. The most obvious are Amazon, Shopify and Etsy, but these require memberships, though they do have the added advantage of being transferable to other platforms where integration is possible. Printify is the best, though does not categorise the collections as well as Zazzle: Printify is UK based – Zazzle is US, so there is the issue of how long a product will take to get to the purchaser.

All in all, something in the ‘History fray’ could and should attract the young. Merging commercialism, social media, product design, branding, and marketing attracts more than digging into the past for it’s own sake, as exciting and wonderful that is. With universities failing and some going bankrupt, teaching History in partnership with these kind of skills better ensures the future of History itself and the amateur detectives who love it.

Gail Spencer
https://triple-tree.printify.me
https://zazzle.co.uk/store/tripletreetour_store