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This thesis is a social history of disease and mortality in the American Deep South before the Civil War. Yellow fever attacked the region at epidemic levels every two or three years between 1800 and 1860, killing about eight percent of the urban population, and as many as 20 or 30 percent of recent migrants from Europe. With little epidemiological understanding of mosquito-borne viruses-and almost no public health infrastructure to ameliorate disease-the only real protection from this scourge was to "get acclimated": fall sick with, and survive, yellow fever. About half of all people would die in the acclimating process. By placing the Deep South within an Atlantic disease diaspora uncontained by continental boundaries, the project shifts the fault-lines of the Southern past from North-South political conflicts onto similarly formative but overlooked ecological processes in the Greater Caribbean. Yellow fever and mass mortality are largely absent from the recent historiography on the cotton kingdom and "slave racial capitalism." But as well as being a “slave society,” this thesis suggests the Deep South was also a "disease society": Deep Southerners discussed yellow fever obsessively, worked according to its seasonal schedule, and judged others based on their perceived vulnerability to the disease. Yellow fever, and immunity to it, profoundly shaped the asymmetrical hierarchies of Deep Southern society, with acclimated "immunocapitalist" creoles on top, and unacclimated "foreigners" below. Slavers and their allies argued only intellectually-inferior but naturally-resistant black people could perform the arduous labour of sugar and cotton cultivation in the Deep South, as whites too frequently died. This became the region's chief argument for permanent racial slavery. However, almost every slave revolt in Louisiana coincided with a particularly bad epidemic, suggesting slaves found disease politically intriguing and understood that yellow fever left white society chaotic and vulnerable to attack.

This thesis explores the continuous British interest in the American Civil War from the war’s end to the late twentieth century and the British utilisation of the conflict at home and in the Atlantic arena. Contributing to the limited, yet burgeoning literature on the subject, this study emphasises the independent agency of both the Civil War and its British interpreters. It thus rejects a simplistic depiction of British adoption of American culture and applies a more sophisticated methodology that accounts for the active, versatile and autonomous British use of complex foreign images. This enables a meaningful analysis of the Civil War’s place and role in modern British culture. The thesis examines the British fascination with the conflict as reflected in four facets: politics, military thought, academe and popular culture. Additionally, it takes a transatlantic perspective and explores how Britons’ view of the United States has influenced their understanding of the Civil War. This study thus provides a first comprehensive and coherent overview as well as a nuanced picture of the American conflict as it travelled across the Atlantic from a historically distanced perspective. The thesis reveals that the Civil War achieved unique prominence in British culture and that this British fascination with the war was part of a greater transatlantic encounter between an epic American affair and sophisticated British interpreters. Accordingly, the two main questions underpinning this study are ‘why were the British particularly interested in the Civil War?’ and, following directly on that path, ‘how did Britons use the war both at home and in the transatlantic sphere?’ Answering these questions further establishes the war’s prominence in British culture and explores the character of the British encounter with the conflict. In so doing, it contributes to our understanding of the Civil War’s global impact and casts another light on Anglo-American relations.

This thesis examines the Anglo-Jewish community in the three decades following its so-called emancipation as legally equal citizens. Beginning with Lionel de Rothschild's entry into Parliament in 1858 and concluding with the Anglo-Jewish Exhibition's encomium to Jewish life of 1887, this era witnessed the reconceptualisation of Anglo-Jewish identity as the minority completely entered British society after centuries of marginalisation. This thesis focuses upon three interlinked case-studies of different strands of Jewish leadership as they experienced their new identity and numerous practical issues regarding everyday interaction: the first Jewish MPs; the representative Board of Deputies of British Jews; and the community's religious infrastructure. Through analysis and comparison of these elite groups this work explores questions of inter-faith and inter-ethnic dialogue, minority-majority relationships, acculturation, and subculture formation in late nineteenth-century Britain. It argues that Anglo-Jewry's emancipation was ambiguous; British acceptance was not neutral but carried reciprocal expectations. The community thus felt the dichotomy of Diasporic Jewish existence - being particularist in a universalist society - acutely in these years. Moving in tandem with British society forced many concessions from Jews' sectarian identity, the form and extent of which remained indeterminate as a result. The expected acculturation was forthcoming and the community fashioned itself a distinctive British variant of Jewish existence. However, this thesis contends that this was not always a forced or unpleasant experience. Many Jews willingly embraced aspects of British identity they appreciated. There were also numerous instances of the community being able to preserve its exceptionality. The British state and wider society showed a remarkable willingness to accommodate cases of Jewish particularity. This thesis demonstrates the tolerant nature of Britain's civil society (and indicates some of the boundaries to this), whilst also revealing the remarkable level of confluence between Anglo-Jewish and British ideals at this time. Fundamentally, it suggests, with some reservations, that Anglo-Jewry be viewed as an example of successful integration.