A section of Samia Magazine
History
Essays that give the present a past: empires, trade routes, inventions, ordinary lives. A question the present is asking, answered from the record, with the sources read by the writer.
Nothing to read here yet.
The first History pieces are published with Issue 01 in January 2027. Until then this page is the editors' brief: what the section will publish, what it will not, and how to write for it.
The editors' brief
What we want,
what we do not.
History at the Magazine starts with a question the present is asking and answers it from the record. We want primary sources read by the writer, plain chronology, and ordinary lives alongside the rulers. Pieces run 2,500 to 4,000 words.
We want
- A question the present is asking, answered from the record rather than from memory
- Primary sources the writer has read: letters, ledgers, court records, maps, inscriptions, oral histories
- Ordinary lives as well as rulers: the clerk, the farmer, the sailor, the midwife
- Plain chronology, clearly dated, so the reader always knows when they are
- Where historians disagree, both sides stated as a disagreement, with names
We do not want
- "History proves" arguments for a current policy
- Great-man stories where one person explains a century
- Counterfactuals and what might have been
- Anything that cannot be dated or placed
- Nostalgia dressed as research
The standard
How a History
piece is checked.
The same rule as every section, with the parts that matter most here.
Two scholarly sources
Dates, names and figures are checked against at least two scholarly sources, one of them primary where one exists. Popular histories can point the way; they are not the check.
A second reader
Someone other than the writer and the editor reads every claim against its source. The log is published with the piece.
Translations credited
Every translated passage names its translator and edition. Where the writer translated it, the piece says so and the original is on file.
The other sections
Three more briefs.
Geopolitics
Not who is winning the news cycle, but what is actually changing, why, and for whom.
The editors' brief ↗Culture
Film, food, faith, architecture, language, craft. Close reading over hot takes.
The editors' brief ↗Science
Mathematics, medicine, the sky, the sea, and the machines we are building, explained with patience.
The editors' brief ↗Issue 01 · January 2027
Read it
the day it opens.
One email when Issue 01 opens, then a note when a new piece is published. Nothing else.