against Jews in the late middle ages. They demonstrate that the life-sustaining power of water was crucial for a community. Every threat to water supply — real or imagined — had serious consequences.

The history of cotton has been the subject of much recent research, but blind spots remain. International debates have barely acknowledged the role of early modern Switzerland as one of the most important European areas producing, marketing, and selling cotton cloth in the eighteenth century. This talk shows how Swiss producers and merchants were integrated into global cotton networks and reflects on how cultural history approaches may be reconciled with the debate, dominated by macro-economics, about the Great Divergence.

12 March (5.30pm)Hugo Drochon (Nottingham) and Philipp Felsch (Berlin) Born Posthumously: Two Lectures on Nietzsche’s Legacy

Hugo Drochon willand others) and the critical edition of Nietzsche’s works by the Italian antifascists Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Felsch will dedicate his talk to the latter’s political philology.

19 March (5.30pm)Prashant Kidambi (Leicester) ‘Greengrocer, Tailor and Champion Wrestler’: The Transnational Career and Times of Buttan Singh, c.1900–1914

This paper examines the extraordinary career of Buttan Singh, a Sikh wrestler who became the national wrestling champion of Australia in the early 1900s. Later in that decade, he travelled to Britain and Australia. The paper considers Buttan’s transnational peregrinations within three discrete historical contexts. First, it places his story into the broader streams of Sikh migration within the British Empire. Second, it shows how Buttan’s story became entangled in the making of a frontier society in Western Australia. Finally, the paper relates