Recent Publications
This list provides information about some of our recent publications. Further details of these and other publications produced by staff in the School of History can be found within individual staff pages.
2017 |
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Candidates, Campaigns and Global Politics from FDR to Bill Clinton Andrew Johnstone and Andrew Priest While domestic issues loom large in voters’ minds during American presidential elections, matters of foreign policy have consistently shaped candidates and their campaigns. From the start of World War II through the collapse of the Soviet Union, presidential hopefuls needed to be perceived as credible global leaders in order to win elections—regardless of the situation at home—and voter behavior depended heavily on whether the nation was at war or peace. Yet there is little written about the importance of foreign policy in US presidential elections or the impact of electoral issues on the formation of foreign policy. In US Presidential Elections and Foreign Policy, a team of international scholars examines how the relationship between foreign policy and electoral politics evolved through the latter half of the twentieth century. Covering all presidential elections from 1940 to 1992—from debates over American entry into World War II to the aftermath of the Cold War—the contributors correct the conventional wisdom that domestic issues and the economy are always definitive. Together they demonstrate that, while international concerns were more important in some campaigns than others, foreign policy always matters and is often decisive. This illuminating commentary fills a significant gap in the literature on presidential and electoral politics, emphasizing that candidates’ positions on global issues have a palpable impact on American foreign policy. |
2016 |
Landscape, Place and Identity in the Bay of Bengal, 1790-2012 Clare Anderson, Madhumita Mazumdar and Vishvajit Pandya This innovative, multidisciplinary exploration of the unique history of the Andaman Islands as a hunter-gatherer society, colonial penal colony, and state-engineered space of settlement and development ranges across the theoretical, conceptual and thematic concerns of history, anthropology and historical geography. Covering the entire period of post-settlement Andamans history, from the first (failed) British occupation of the Islands in the 1790s up to the year 2012, the authors examine imperial histories of expansion and colonization, decolonization, anti-colonialism and nationalism, Japanese occupation, independence and partition, migration, commemoration and contemporary issues of Indigenous welfare. New Histories of the Andaman Islands offers a new way of thinking about the history of South Asia, and will be thought-provoking reading for scholars of settler colonial societies in other contexts, as well as those engaged in studies of nationalism and postcolonial state formation, ecology, visual cultures and the politics of representation.
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Urban History in the Twentieth Century This book offers a new perspective on Chinese urban history by exploring cities as habitable spaces. China, the world’s most populous nation, is now its newest urban society, and the pace of this unprecedented historical transformation has increased in recent decades. The contributors to this book conceptualise cities as first providing the necessities of life, and then becoming places in which the quality of life can be improved. They focus on how cities have been made secure during times of instability, how their inhabitants have consumed everything from the simplest of foods to the most expensive luxuries, and how they have been planned as ideal spaces. Drawing examples from across the country, this book offers comparisons between different cities, highlights continuities across time and space—and in doing so may provide solutions to some of the problems that continue to affect Chinese cities today. |
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Obligation, Entitlement and Dispute under the English Poor LawsThis volume brings together the world's leading poor law historians to reflect on the character and sentiment of welfare structures in Britain between the 1600s and early twentieth century. At its core is the question of how ordinary people experienced welfare and how they might seek to navigate and find power in local and state welfare systems which generally afforded them few concrete opportunities for agency. The chapters deal directly with the words and lives of the poor but also wider questions about the spatial dimensions of welfare, the construction of official attitudes and the conflicts felt by individual officials as they attempted to balance their potentially (and often actually) competing duties to taxpayers, the poor, fellow officials and even themselves. |
David Gentilcore offers a doctor's-eye view of changing food and dietary fashions: from Portugal to Poland, from Scotland to Sicily, not forgetting the expanding European populations of the New World. Food and Health in Early Modern Europe is both a history of food practices and a history of the medical discourse about that food. It is also an exploration of the interaction between the two: the relationship between evolving foodways and shifting medical advice on what to eat in order to stay healthy. It provides the first in-depth study of printed dietary advice covering the entire early modern period, from the late-15th century to the early-19th; it is also the first to trace the history of European foodways as seen through the prism of this advice. In addition to exploring European regimens throughout the period, works of materia medica, botany, agronomy and horticulture are considered, as well as a range of other printed sources, such as travel accounts, cookery books and literary works. |
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2015 |
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Combining scholarly insights with recipes and the experiences of chefs, heritage professionals, food and drink producers and other food and drink experts, this book encourages thoughtful reflection on what the term “authenticity” means. It considers how history, time and temporality can be used to make particular foods and drinks seem “authentic” or the “real” thing. Temporal categories like “origins”, “traditions” and “timelessness,” and the emotional connections they can evoke, like feelings of nostalgia and belonging, are at the heart of the book’s approach. We look in depth at four foods and drinks from different parts of the world: pulque, an alcoholic drink from central Mexico; flaounes, celebration Easter pies from Cyprus; Welsh craft cider; and acarajé, a street snack from Brazil. |
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2014 |
Against Immediate Evil: American Internationalists and the Four Freedoms on the Eve of World War II Andrew Johnstone (Cornell University Press 2014) ISBN 978-0-8014-5325-0 In Against Immediate Evil, Andrew Johnstone tells the story of how internationalist Americans worked between 1938 and 1941 to convince the U.S. government and the American public of the need to stem the rising global tide of fascist aggression. As war approached, the internationalist movement attempted to arouse the nation in order to defeat noninterventionism at home and fascism overseas. Johnstone's examination of this movement undermines the common belief that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor wrenched an isolationist United States into global armed conflict and the struggle for international power. |
2013 |
John Coffey (Oxford University Press) ISBN 9780199334223 This book offers the first survey of Protestant Exodus politics from the Reformation to the African American freedom struggle. It documents the deployment of biblical texts at critical junctures of British and American history, including the revolutions of the 1640s, 1688 and 1776 and the abolitionist movement of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book shows how African Americans appropriated and reshaped this inherited tradition, forging a distinct identity as the Children of Israel and throwing into question the scriptural construction of the United States. Using sermons, speeches, pamphlets, song, verse, and iconography, Exodus and Liberation argues that the political reading of the Bible powerfully informed Protestant debates over slavery and liberty. |
Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party in Britain, 1918-1945Stuart Ball (Oxford University Press, 2013) ISBN 978-0199667987 The Conservative Party is the least investigated and understood of British political parties, despite its long record of success. Using an original approach and an unparalleled range of sources, Stuart Ball analyses the nature and working of the Conservative Party during one of the most significant and successful periods in its history. The creation of a democratic franchise in 1918 was followed by nearly three decades of Conservative dominance: it was the largest party in the House of Commons and in government for almost 25 years between 1918 and 1945. |
2012 |
Crime and Punishment in African American HistoryJames Campbell (Pagrave Macmillan, 2012) ISBN 978-0-230-27381-8 African American history has been scarred by violent and discriminatory law enforcement—from the mass executions of rebel slaves, through to the present day in which more black citizens are incarcerated than ever before. This book provides an in-depth overview of crime, punishment and justice in African American history. It presents cutting-edge scholarship on major issues of criminal justice in the United States, and explores everyday African American experiences alongside famous trials and court decisions. It also highlights the way in which resistance to oppressive policing, punishment, and vigilante justice has advanced the broader struggle for black freedom, and driven an ongoing process of criminal justice reforms. |
Turncoats and Renegadoes: Changing Sides in the English Civil WarsAndrew Hopper (Oxford University Press, 2012) ISBN 978-0-19-957585-5, 258pp. This is the first monograph dedicated to examining the practice of changing sides during the English Civil Wars. It examines the extent and significance of side-changing in England and Wales but also includes comparative material from Scotland and Ireland. Through this study, Hopper explores how side-changing came to dominate strategy on both sides at the highest levels. Both sides reviled, yet sought to take advantage of the practice, whilst allegations of treachery shaped the internal politics of royalists and parliamentarians alike. The language applied to ‘turncoats and renegadoes’ in contemporary print is contrasted with the self-justifications of the side-changers themselves as they sought to shape an honourable self-image for their families and posterity. The book investigates the implementation of military justice, along with the theatre of retribution surrounding the trial and execution of turncoats. It concludes by arguing that far from side-changing being the dubious practice of a handful of aberrant individuals, it became a necessary survival strategy for thousands as they navigated their way through such rapidly changing events. This book reveals how side-changing shaped the course of the English Revolution, even contributing to the regicide itself, and remained an important political legacy to the English speaking peoples thereafter. |
The County Community in Seventeenth-Century England and WalesEdited by Jacqueline Eales and Andrew Hopper Studies in Regional and Local History, 5 (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2012) ISBN 978-1-907396-70-0, 164pp. This volume honours the memory of Professor Alan Everitt, a former head of Leicester's Department for English Local History. It explores the legacy of his research through a re-examination of his 'County Community' hypothesis, intending to signpost future directions for research into the relationship between the centre and localities in seventeenth-century England. The collection of essays extends the debate into periods and territories previously left largely untouched by it, such as early modern Wales and the post-Restoration period. Other chapters assess the cultural horizons of the gentry and ways of analysing their attachment to contemporary county histories. There is a methodological focus throughout on how to contextualise the local experiences of the civil wars into wider interpretative frameworks. Whatever the limitations of Everitt's original thesis may have been, historians studying early modern society and its relationship to the concepts and practice of governance must still reckon with the county and the primacy of local experiences which were at the heart of Everitt's work. |
Subaltern Lives. Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790-1920Clare Anderson (Cambridge University Press, 2012) ISBN: 978-1-107-64544-8, 232pp Subaltern Lives uses biographical fragments of the lives of convicts, captives, sailors, slaves, indentured labourers and indigenous peoples to build a fascinating new picture of colonial life in the nineteenth-century Indian Ocean. Moving between India, Africa,Mauritius, Burma, Singapore, Ceylon, the Andaman Islands and the Australian colonies, Clare Anderson offers fresh readings of the nature and significance of ‘networked' Empire. She reveals the importance of penal transportation for colonial expansion and sheds new light on convict experiences of penal settlements and colonies, as well as the relationship between convictism, punishment and colonial labour regimes. The book also explores the nature of colonial society during this period and embeds subaltern biographies into key events like the abolition of slavery, the Anglo-SikhWars and the Indian Revolt of 1857. This is an important new perspective on British colonialism which also opens up new possibilities for the writing of history itself. |
Cities and the Grand Tour. The British in Italy 1690-1820Roey Sweet (Cambridge University Press, 2012) ISBN: 978-1-107-02050-4, 338pp. How did eighteenth-century travellers experience, describe and represent the urban environments they encountered as they made the Grand Tour? This fascinating book focuses on the changing responses of the British to the cities of Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice, during a period of unprecedented urbanisation at home. Drawing on a wide range of unpublished material, including travel accounts written by women, Rosemary Sweet explores how travel literature helped to create and perpetuate the image of a city; what the different meanings and imaginative associations attached to these cities were; and how the contrasting descriptions of each of these cities reflected the travellers' own attitudes to urbanism. More broadly, the book explores the construction and performance of personal, gender and national identities, and the shift in cultural values away from neo-classicism towards medievalism and the gothic, which is central to our understanding of eighteenth-century culture and the transition to modernity. |
Dartmoor's Alluring Uplands: Transhumance and pastoral management in the Middle AgesHarold Fox (edited by Chris Dyer and Matthew Tompkins) (University of Exeter Press, 2012) ISBN: 978-0-85989-865-2, 304pp. This book provides a new perspective on a striking and famous feature of the English landscape, Dartmoor. This book describes, for the first time, the social organisation and farming practices associated with this annual transfer of livestock. It presents evidence for a previously unsuspected Anglo-Saxon pattern of transhumance. Harold Fox died before completing the final stages of the book. Devonian by origin, he researched many aspects of the county’s history. Written with elegance and authority, the book distills a lifetime’s work in original medieval records and draws together evidence from a remarkable variety of sources. Fox’s colleagues at Leicester’s Centre for English Local History: Matthew Tompkins and Christopher Dyer saw the book through to publication. A number of paperback copies are available for £25 from the Centre for English Local History. Contact Lucy Byrne for further details. |
Italy and the Potato: A History, 1550-2000David Gentilcore (Continuum, 2012) ISBN: 9781441140388, 272pp. Italy, like the rest of Europe, owes a lot to the ‘Columbian exchange’. As a result of this process, in addition to potatoes, Europe acquired maize, tomatoes and most types of beans. All are basic elements of European diet and cookery today. The international importance of the potato today as the world’s most cultivated vegetable highlights its place in the Columbian exchange. While the history of the potato in the Ireland, Britain and other parts of northern Europe is quite well known, little is known about the slow rise and eventual fall of the potato in Italy. This book aims to fill that gap, arguing why the potato’s ‘Italian’ history is important. It is both a social and cultural history of the potato in Italy and a history of agriculture in marginal areas. David Gentilcore examines the developing presence of the potato in elite and peasant culture, its place in the difficult mountain environment, in family recipe notebooks and kitchen accounts, in travellers’ descriptions, agronomical treatises, cookery books, and in Italian literature. |
Bede and the End of TimePeter Darby (Ashgate Publishing, 2012) ISBN: 978-1-4094-3048-3, 276pp. Taking account of Bede's beliefs about the end of time, this book offers sophisticated insights into his life, his works and the role that eschatological thought played in Anglo-Saxon society. Close attention is given to the historical setting of each source text consulted, and original insights are advanced regarding the chronological sequence of Bede's writings. The book reveals that Bede's ideas about time changed over the course of his career, and it shows how Bede established himself as the foremost expert in eschatology of his age. |
The Indian Uprising of 1857-8: Prisons, Prisoners and RebellionClare Anderson (Anthem Press India, 2012) ISBN: 9789380601526, 220pp. This fascinating book, based on extensive archival research in Britain and India, examines why mutineer-rebels chose to attack prisons and release prisoners, discusses the impact of the destruction of the jails on British penal policy in mainland India, considers the relationship between India and its penal settlements in Southeast Asia, re-examines Britain’s decision to settle the Andaman Islands as a penal colony in 1858, and re-evaluates the experiences of mutineer-rebel convicts there. |
The Making of the Middle Class: Toward a Transnational HistoryContributions by Simon Gunn and Prashant Kidambi (Duke University Press, 2012), 464pp. In this important and timely collection of essays, historians reflect on the middle class: what it is, why its struggles figure so prominently in discussions of the current economic crisis, and how it has shaped, and been shaped by, modernity. The contributors focus on specific middle-class formations around the world- in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas- since the mid-nineteenth century. |
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2011 |
The Papers of the Hothams: Governors of Hull during the Civil WarEdited by Andrew Hopper (Camden Society, 5th series, 39, 2011). The role of Sir John Hotham in denying Charles I entrance into Hull in April 1642 was a critical moment in the outbreak of the English Civil War. This volume publishes the civil war letters and papers of the Hotham family, along with the accounts of their garrisons at Hull and Beverley. The evidence highlights their kinship networks, military resources and place within the parliamentary coalition, connecting northern affairs to Westminster. The book also reconnects the trial of the Hothams for betraying their trust in December 1644 with the simultaneous Self-Denying Ordinance and the formation of the New Model Army. |
The World of John Secker, 1716-1795, Quaker MarinerEdited by Andrew Hopper (Norfolk Record Society, 75, 2011). This volume publishes John Secker’s reminiscences of his life at sea in the mid-eighteenth century. The son of a Quaker miller from North Walsham, Secker’s remarkable travels took him in vessels of many nations not only across maritime Europe and North America, but also to Arabia, India, the South Seas and Pacific Ocean. His travels encompass themes as diverse as religion, overseas cultures, migration, slavery, navigation, weather, maritime living conditions, commerce and cargoes, naval engagements, discipline and press-gangs, piracy, insurance fraud, foreign imprisonment and Jacobite exiles. Writing in his retirement from seafaring, Secker addressed issues of cultural and racial difference, providing an individual life history with global ramifications. |
Research Methods in HistoryEdited by Simon Gunn and Lucy Faire (Edinburgh University Press, 2011) ISBN: 978-0-7486-4204-5 paperback, 978-0-7486-4205-2 hardback, 256pp. A new book has been published that aims to put methods and methodology back onto historians’ agenda. Research Methods for History contains essays by leading historians like R.J. Morris and Ludmilla Jordanova on approaches such as visual methods, GIS and life-stories. Historians from Leicester’s Centre for Urban History, Simon Gunn and Prashant Kidambi, contribute chapters on the concept of performance and time respectively. Ranging across topics from landscape to ethics, the essays encourage historians and postgraduate researchers to think anew about the rich variety of ways now available to investigate the past. |
Dole Queues and Demons: British Election Posters from the Conservative Party ArchiveStuart Ball (Bodleian Library Press, 2011) ISBN: 1851243534, 186pp. Exploiting the Conservative Party Archive held at the Bodleian Library which contains over 700 posters, this book charts the evolution of the Conservatives' election posters. Divided into chapters along political periods, the book highlights the changing fashions in and attitudes to advertising, political ideology, slogans, combativeness and above all, propriety. Each chapter includes a brief introduction discussing the major themes of the period as well as captions explaining specific issues related to the individual posters. |
New Directions in Local History since Hoskins Edited by Andrew Hopper, Christopher Dyer, Evelyn Lord and Nigel Tringham (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2011) ISBN: 978-1-907396-12-0 Local history in Britain can trace its origins back to the sixteenth century and before, but it was given inspiration and a new sense of direction in the 1950s and 60s by the work of W.G. Hoskins. This book marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his Local history in England which was designed to help people researching the history of their own villages and towns. |
The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial BritainEdited by Simon Gunn and James Vernon (University of California Press, May 2011) ISBN: 978-0-98-459-095-7, 286pp. In this wide-ranging volume, leading scholars across several disciplines—history, literature, sociology, and cultural studies—investigate the nature of liberalism and modernity in imperial Britain since the eighteenth century. They show how Britain's liberal version of modernity (of capitalism, democracy, and imperialism) was the product of a peculiar set of historical circumstances that continues to haunt our neoliberal present. |
Women, Dissent and Anti-Slavery in Britain and America, 1790-1865Edited by Elizabeth J. Clapp and Julie Roy Jeffrey (Oxford University Press, April 2011) ISBN: 978-0-19-958548-9, 224pp. As historians have gradually come to recognize, the involvement of women was central to the anti-slavery cause in both Britain and the United States. Like their male counterparts, women abolitionists did not all speak with one voice. Among the major differences between women were their religious affiliations, an aspect of their commitment that has not been studied in detail. This book examines the part that the traditions, practices, and beliefs of English Protestant dissent and the American Puritan and evangelical traditions played in women's anti-slavery activism. Focusing particularly on Baptist, Congregational, Presbyterian and Unitarian women, the essays in this volume move from accounts of individual women's participation in the movement as printers and writers, to assessments of the negotiations and the occasional conflicts between different denominational groups and their anti-slavery impulses. |
2010 |
Sport and the Military: The British Armed Forces 1880-1960Tony Mason and Eliza Riedi (Cambridge University Press, 2010), ISBN: 978-0-521-70074-0, 298pp. On battleships, behind the trenches of the Western Front and in the midst of the Desert War, British servicemen and women have played sport in the least promising circumstances. When 400 soldiers were asked in Burma in 1946 what they liked about the Army, 108 put sport in first place - well ahead of comradeship and leave - and this book explores the fascinating history of organised sport in the life of officers and other ranks of all three British services from 1880–1960. Drawing on a wide range of sources, this book examines how organised sport developed in the Victorian army and navy, became the focus of criticism for Edwardian army reformers, and was officially adopted during the Great War to boost morale and esprit de corps. It shows how service sport adapted to the influx of professional sportsmen, especially footballers, during the Second World War and the National Service years. |
Pomodoro! A history of the tomato in ItalyDavid Gentilcore (Columbia University Press, 2010), ISBN: 978-0-231-15206-8, 272pp. The book looks at the presence of the tomato in elite and peasant culture, in family recipe books and kitchen accounts, in travellers’ reports, in Italian art, literature and film. Pomodoro! A history of the tomato in Italy at the presence of the tomato in elite and peasant culture, in family recipe books and kitchen accounts, in travellers’ reports, in Italian art, literature and film. It traces the role of the tomato as a botanical curiosity (in the sixteenth century), to changing attitudes towards vegetables (in the seventeenth and eighteenth); from the tomato’s gradual adoption as a condiment (in the eighteenth), to its widespread cultivation for canning and concentrate and its happy marriage with factory-produced pasta (both in the late nineteenth century); and from its adoption as a national symbol, both by Italian emigrants abroad and during the Fascist period, to its spread throughout the peninsula (in the twentieth). Pomodoro! A history of the tomato in Italy is part of a research project into the reception and assimilation of New World plants in Italy, from 1500 to the present, funded by a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. Find out more information about the Leverhulme Trust. |
The US Public and American Foreign PolicyEdited by Andrew Johnstone and Helen Laville (Routledge, 2010), ISBN 978-0-415-55315-5, 232pp. Though often overlooked, public opinion has always played a significant role in the development and promotion of US foreign policy and this work seeks to comprehensively assess the impact and nature of that opinion through a collection of historical and contemporary essays. |
Women, Welfare and Local Politics, 1880-1920Steve King (Sussex Academic Press, paperback 2010), ISBN: 978-1-84519-087-3 h/b, 978-1-84519-413-0 p/b, 376pp. Women, Welfare and Local Politics, 1880-1920 offers a reappraisal of the role of women in the politics and practice of welfare in late Victorian and early Edwardian England. Focusing on the Lancashire mill town of Bolton, it traces the emergence of a core of female social and political activists from the 1860s and analyses their achievements as they rose from the humble origins of a workhouse visiting committee to become pivotal players in the formulation and implementation of local welfare policy after 1894. Using a unique working diary written by the activist and female poor law Guardian Mary Haslam, the book portrays these Bolton women as sophisticated political operators. |
Deserted Villages RevisitedEdited by Chris Dyer and Richard Jones (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2010), ISBN 978-1-905313-79-2 Thousands of villages and smaller settlements were deserted in England and Wales during all periods, though many of them were abandoned between 1340 and 1750. Why were they deserted? Why did some villages survive while others were abandoned? Who was responsible for their desertion? What can we learn about life in the countryside from a study of the deserted sites? Since the 1970s these questions have been set aside while interest has shifted to the origin and planning of villages, and the regional differences which led to a 'village England' developing across the middle of the country, while everywhere else people lived in hamlets and individual farms. Now seems the right moment to return to the subject and with fresh eyes reopen the important questions which were not fully answered in the early days. In this book ten leading archaeologists, geographers and historians have come together to revisit the deserted villages and reveal much new evidence and new thinking about these fascinating sites. |
2009 |
Imprisoned by History. Aspects of Historicized LifeMartin Davies (New York: Routledge, 2009), ISBN: 978-0-415-99520-7, xiii + 259pp. Imprisoned by History: Aspects of Historicized Life offers a controversial analysis, grounded both in philosophical argument and empirical evidence, of what history does in contemporary culture. It endorses and extends the argument that contemporary society is, in historical terms, already historicized, shaped by history – and thus history loses sight of the world, seeing it only as a reflection of its own self-image. By focusing on history as a way of thinking about the world, as a thought-style, this volume delivers a major, decisive, thought-provoking critique of a crucial aspect contemporary culture and the public sphere. |
Art and Religion in Eighteenth-century EuropeNigel Aston (Reaktion Books, 2009), ISBN: 978-1-86189-377-2, 248pp. Eighteenth-century Europe witnessed monumental upheavals in both the Catholic and Protestant faiths and the repercussions rippled down to the churches' religious art forms. In this major new study, Nigel Aston chronicles the intertwining of cultural and institutional turmoil during this pivotal century. The sustained production and popularity of religious art in the face of competition from increasingly prevalent secular artworks lies at the heart of this book. Religious art staked out new spaces of display in state institutions, palaces and private collections as well as taking advantage of state patronage from monarchs such as Louis XIV and George III, who funded religious art in an effort to enhance their national projects and monarchial prestige. |
Seeing Things Their Way. Intellectual History and the Return of ReligionEdited by Alister Chapman, John Coffey and Brad S. Gregory (Notre Dame Press, 2009), ISBN 978-0-2680-2298-3, 280pp. 'This terrific collection of essays will give intellectual historians a lot to think about. With learning, courtesy and precision, the authors make clear that historians of early modern and modern thought, in Britain, Europe, and America, need to pay far more attention than they have to religious ideas and categories. At the same time, though, they show that historians of ideas can provide historians of theology with important methodological lessons'. |
William Dugdale, Historian, 1605- 1686: His Life, His Writings and His CountyEdited by Christopher Dyer and Catherine Richardson (Boydell, February 2009), ISBN 978-1-8438-3443-4 This collection of essays entitled William Dugdale, Historian, 1605-1686:His Life, His Writings and His County is edited by the Centre of English Local History's Director, Professor Christopher Dyer and Dr Catherine Richardson of the University of Kent. It emerged from a conference sponsored by the Dugdale Society and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon on 16 September 2006. Anyone interested in the development of local history, early modern social and cultural history or the seventeenth-century Midlands will find it of particular interest. |
Dilemmas of Internationalism. The American Association for the United Nations and US Foreign Policy, 1941- 1948Andrew Johnstone (Ashgate, January 2009), ISBN 978-0-7546-9315-4, 212pp. Dilemmas of Internationalism is a new political history of the 1940s which charts and analyses the efforts of private internationalists to define US internationalism and promote the establishment of the United Nations. Internationalists hoped that the United States would shake off the fear of entangling alliances that had characterised the nation's history, replacing isolationism and unilateralism with a new, involved and multilateral approach to foreign affairs. During and after World War II, a number of private individuals and organisations were at the forefront of the fight to change the nature of US foreign policy. This book focuses in particular on the most important internationalist organisation: the American Association for the United Nations (AAUN), known as the League of Nations Association through 1944. It situates the AAUN in the vast network of private organisations promoting an internationalist foreign policy during and after World War II, and analyses the connections between the AAUN and the US government and key public figures who proposed a more internationalist foreign policy. |
2008 |
Ordinary People as Mass Murderers- Perpetrators in Comparative Perspectives (The Holocaust and its Contexts Series)Edited by Olaf Jensen and Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann (Palgrave Macmillan, November 2008), ISBN 978-0-2305-5202-9, 256pp. Ordinary People as Mass Murderers offers a series of essays that explore one of the most fundamental questions of humanity, and a topic that is currently widely discussed within societies: How do ordinary people become mass murderers? Recent scholarship has presented a complex and heterogeneous picture of ‘ordinary’ perpetrators, and shows that no age group, gender, social, ethnic, religious or educational cohort proved immune to becoming mass murderers. This book brings together a mix of established and younger experts, to provide a unique and up-to-date overview of the current state of research that has either not been published in English, or makes accessible interpretations by well-known Anglo-Saxon scholars. Nine contributions and an introduction present complex findings in an accessible format, approach the topic from a variety of perspectives (history, gender, sociology, psychology, law, comparative genocide), address several unresolved questions, and show that our knowledge has moved on considerable since Christopher Browning’s path breaking Ordinary Men from 1992. This book is of crucial relevance for contemporary society seeking to understand various forms of genocide. With contributions from Andrej Angrick, Donald Bloxham, Thomas Kuehne, Harald Welzer, James Waller, Christina Herkommer, Irmtraud Heike, Gerd Hankel and Chris Szejnmann. |
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Falling from Grace: Reversal of Fortune and the English Nobility 1075- 1455James Bothwell (Manchester University Press, July 2008), ISBN 978-0-7190-7521-6 h/b, 978-0-7190-7522-3 p/b, 288pp. This original study examines how members of the English medieval nobility and their families fell, usually dramatically and often violently, from position and power in the period 1075–1455. It also considers what those who survived this fall did while out of favour and what some families did to attempt to revive their fortunes. For those noble dynasties that managed to survive such downturns, there was usually an attempt to return to position, if not power – though the road was never easy and, this book argues, increasingly involved sustained efforts by wives, mothers and daughters. |
East Meets West- Banking, Commerce and Investment in the Ottoman EmpireEdited by Philip L. Cottrell (Ashgate, June 2008), ISBN 978-0-7546-6443-7, 214pp. Bringing together cultural, economic and social historians from across Europe and beyond, this volume offers a consideration from a number of perspectives of the principal forces that further integrated the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe during the first century of industrialisation. The essays not only review and analyse the commercial, financial and monetary factors, negative as well as positive, that bore upon the region's initial stages of modern transformation, but also provide a ready introduction to major aspects of the economy and society of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. |