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The former slave owning class in The Bahamas fought a rearguard action to defend its political, economic and social hegemony. It shaped the local Abolition Act of 1834 to meet its own requirements, particularly to ensure apprentices would remain in a position of subservience and obedience. The initial period of concern for the welfare and rights of the freedmen on the part of the Imperial Government soon waned and the white oligarchy was left to govern the newly emancipated without much interference from London. Imperial Government policy also aided the elite in preventing the formation of a class of independent, peasant freeholders. On the Out Islands labour or sharecropping tenancies, squatting and the working of commonage were the norm. Coercive labour systems procured a stable and dependent workforce in a number of industries. The cash economy was limited outside of Nassau and the merchant/landowners were in possession of the little available capital. Tough laws, designed to keep the lower classes in awe and fear of authorities, were passed by a Legislature dominated by the white elite. Much more was spent on law and order than education or social reforms. The Bahamas continued to be governed under the seventeenth century Old Representative system and the ruling class stubbornly protected its rights and privileges. But the constitutional system was not a responsible one and hardly representative. Open voting, inequitable constituencies, a franchise weighted in favour of the propertied classes, non-payment of representatives and plural voting ensured the return of the white Nassau merchants. The agro-commercial elite had a limited vision beyond its own interests, particularly in regard to financial policy. There were many struggles between the Legislature and the Governors over control of finance and expenditure, reaching its climax in the 1930s when the Governor insisted on Reserve Powers. The Colonial Office investigated the possibilities but realised that, barring a crisis, the initiative had to come from the Assembly, which would never have arisen in The Bahamas. The ruling whites experienced little challenge from the coloured and black middle classes. They sought to assimilate themselves into white society and distanced themselves from the black lower classes. They were generally conservative in their views. The non-whites did not attempt to form a political party, despite the fact Bahamian society became more polarised in the 1920s and 1930s. No leaders emerged to take advantage of the discontent. After the 1942 Riot, the ruling whites made a few limited concessions that safeguarded their dominance.

This thesis is a study of the causes and drivers of political violence during Idi Amin's eight years as President of Uganda between 1971 and 1979. It is concerned with the relationship between political violence and order, the causes and function of political violence in post-colonial Africa, and the production and patterns of political violence, with a specific focus on the role of localised agency and coercive institutions in this production. It also seeks to contribute to a new wave of literature on the state and political life in Uganda under Amin. During Amin's rule political violence became widespread, and hundreds of thousands of Ugandans are estimated to have been killed. The following chapters draw on a range of primary materials including Ugandan government records, oral interviews, and the testimonies given to two investigations into human rights abuses in 1974 and 1986 that have made a reappraisal of the period possible. This thesis argues that the power and reach of the Ugandan state under Amin has often been overestimated. Political violence in this period was the product of a weak state, struggling to successfully reproduce what Mitchell terms the 'state effect', in which the state comes to be regarded as separate to society, with a monopoly on deadly force. Uganda's new rulers inherited the same constraints as their predecessors, and their approach to governance further undermined the functional capacity of the state apparatus. The spread of political violence that followed was driven by the vulnerability and insecurity of the new ruling clique, but it was also shaped by the localised agency and input of a wide range of state and non-state actors. Deteriorating and poorly controlled institutions, opportunistic crime and malicious denunciations, and the persistent failure of the new regime to impose and maintain consistent and disciplined practices within the repressive institutions through which they ruled all contributed to the apparently arbitrary and 'chaotic' pattern of violence for which the Amin era is typically remembered.

This thesis examines the office of poet laureate, and the wider cultural role of the court by whom the laureate was employed, in the long eighteenth century. This was the period in which the laureateship first came into being (1668), developed from an honorific into a functionary office with a settled position at court (c.1689-1715), and was bestowed upon Robert Southey (1813), whose selection precipitated a further transformation of the office and therefore marks the endpoint of this study. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis examines the institutional changes in the office, the mechanics of each laureate's appointment, the reputation and public reception of the office, and the works produced by the laureates both before and after their appointments. It demonstrates that the office was hugely prominent, relevant, and respectable throughout the period, and argues that it crowned and encapsulated some of the most vital trends in eighteenth-century culture. The analysis is framed within the question of whether (as tends to be postulated in scholarship on the long eighteenth century) this period witnessed the rise of a commercial, middle-class public at the expense of the court's previously central role in society and culture. In this postulation, the long eighteenth century was the period in which British society underwent various modernizing developments, becoming more commercial, more defined by middle-class activities, and more conscious of a British national identity; while 'literature' was first created as a concept and an institution, and literary production moved away from the court into the marketplace. While this thesis pays great attention to these developments, it argues that they did not occur so much at the expense of the court, but rather in close and fruitful interaction with it. The court retained an active but evolving role in literary production, cultural and commercial affairs more widely, issues of national identity, and the activities and interests of a middle-class public; it thus remained central to British society and culture. The laureateship, standing at the dynamic interface of court and public, is the definitive exemplar of this state of affairs.

In 1909, the British Medical Association published an exposé of the patent medicine trade, Secret Remedies: What They Cost and What They Contain. It was soon followed by More Secret Remedies: What They Cost and What They Contain (1912) and the Report from the Select Committee on Patent Medicines (1914). Such publications were imbued with a sense of moralism and portrayed patent medicines as a kind of confidence trick, and even as a 'weakness' of the public. Publications like these have long shaped perspectives on patent medicine culture, to the extent that some historians still use language like 'quack' and 'quackery'. However, this kind of language dismisses patent medicines and grossly oversimplifies consumers' motivations, when, in actual fact, the trade was still worth between £20-28 million in 1937. This thesis takes a different approach to understand why patent medicines continued to be so popular in the first half of the twentieth century. First, it uses a 'life stages' approach that contextualises the manufacture, development, advertising, commercialisation, purchase, and usage of patent medicines. Second, it examines sources that reveal the consumer perspective, including oral history interviews, market research, Mass Observation reports, memoirs, and letters. Such sources are contextualised and examined against photographs, newspaper editorials, manufacturing records, advertisements, packaging, and government reports. This approach shows that a greater emphasis on consumers and their motivations can provide a more rounded understanding of the trade and of consumption. This thesis also identifies key themes within patent medicine culture that reveal insights into everyday life, medicine, health, domesticity, manufacturing, and consumerism in the first half of the twentieth century, such as hygiene, modernity, tradition, authority, expertise, faith, and trust.

This thesis investigates the form and function of the Jewish representative organisations of western Europe during the Nazi occupation from a comparative perspective: the Dutch Joodsche Raad voor Amsterdam (JR), the Belgian Association des Juifs en Belgique (AJB) and the French Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF). It is the first study in which the three organisations are fully compared and contrasted. The aim in doing so is to move away from the inherently moral approach that has been taken towards their study. Methodologically, this thesis extends beyond individual national contexts within which these organisations have been scrutinised as isolated examples. Instead, it highlights their transnational nature, and shows that it is impossible to assess these Jewish organisations without understanding the broader western European context in which they were forced to operate. Three themes are investigated: the organisations' socio-historical foundations, their organisational structures and their connection to illegal networks. First, the thesis looks at those men who went on to become chairmen of the JR, the AJB and the UGIF between 1941 and 1943/1944. It examines how their status in the prewar Jewish communities affected their wartime position and the nature of their leadership. This, in turn, had an impact on the extent to which they were accepted by Jewish communities. Second, the thesis shows that the history of how the Jewish organisations' were established as well as ways in which they functioned, means that the Germans did not have a clear plan about what the remit of these organisations was supposed to be. As a result, the organisations' leaders relied strongly upon ad hoc decisions. Third, the thesis reflects upon the various ways in which the organisations were used as cloaks for clandestine activities and also highlights the participation of some of the central board members in these activities. It argues that the Jewish organisations facilitated clandestine activities and that these would not have been possible without their existence. The assessment of these themes contributes to a more inclusive perspective, in which the function of the JR, the AJB and the UGIF is considered within the broader themes of Jewish representation and the nature of the National-Socialist regime.

The study sheds light on local responses to 2013's Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, then the strongest storm to make landfall, by examining the local history and culture of the people of Samar and Leyte, Philippines, the area worst affected by the storm's strong winds and storm surges. It linked contemporary responses to the typhoon with the ways people in the region had historically coped with frequent adversity in one of the most environmentally-hazardous countries in the world and one that had also experienced centuries of foreign occupations and internal social conflict. Through a historical and cultural analysis of various written and oral sources, the study identifies local concepts and practices that helped to generate what has been called "community resilience" against various forms of crises across several generations. Previous studies in Philippine history have mainly focused on the emergence of Filipino nationalism from centuries of colonial rule while ethnographic studies on the Philippines have mainly concentrated on local practices and beliefs without establishing their historicity. As a result, little headway has been gained in understanding the cultural tenacity of various Philippine ethnolinguistic groups in the face of frequent crises. This study sought to bridge this gap by linking the two fields to explore people's responses to social and environmental adversity. The study argues that people in Samar and Leyte coped with frequent hardship in part by appropriating the colonial (Bisaya-Christiano ), national (Filipino ) and migrant (Waray ) identities imposed on them by outsiders. These labels evoked local solidarities that, although transformed by factors such as colonialism and outmigration, gave them several rallying points for collective action. The study ultimately suggests that understanding resilience cannot be achieved through quantitative methods alone but should be complemented with qualitative approaches that take into account the local history, culture, and environment of the study area/s under consideration.

The thesis is an examination of the phenomenon of the relic-quest or fund-raising tour with relics in England and France, from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, with a particular emphasis on the thirteenth century. Using a variety of sources, it aims to present a complete study of an important but overlooked subject. The first ambition of this thesis is to fill a historiographical gap for relic-quests in southern England, to match with their well-observed counterparts in northern France The second is to reveal the social and religious value of the practice, to find out why and how it influenced the decisions made in the thirteenth century by the Church to regulate it, and to follow its fortunes into the fourteenth century, through the writings of religious and lay literary critics, and the actions of the Church. Split in five chapters, the thesis follows a chronological and diachronic order. The first two chapters are devoted to the forms and functions of the relic-quest, and to its origins and development. The third chapter dwells on the aspects of the relic tour as opus pietatis, while the fourth chapter examines the shift in approaches and attitudes to relic tours in the thirteenth century, when the Church was prompted to regulate the practice. The fifth and last chapter analyzes the criticism of relic tours by religious and lay writers, reveals the nature of the changes, and investigates the role ecclesiastical authorities played in the fourteenth century, particularly in the multiplication of tours and indulgences.

Since the liberation of Paris in August 1944, an unceasing fascination with capital's four long 'dark years' of Nazi occupation has encouraged the publication of a bewildering number of journals, memoirs, popular histories and academic studies. This vast historiography has expanded our understanding of the political, social and cultural metamorphosis that Paris underwent during this period, and how these changes affected the lives of Parisians and their German occupiers. Yet in engaging with these sources, historians have continued to ignore the vital importance that spatial factors played in the shaping of occupation experience. Rather than serving as a neutral backdrop, the complex and profound changes to people's lives were intimately connected to their perceptions of, and interactions with, their surroundings. The spaces and places of Paris - both real and imagined - were thus an essential determinant in the development and course of the occupation of Paris. In focusing on the phenomenon of Parisian resistance, this thesis will explore the relationships between various forms of resistance and a diverse selection of Paris spaces - cafés, underground spaces, stores and marketplaces, statues and memorials - to demonstrate the value of a spatial approach. Drawing on a range of contemporary French, British and German archival sources, newsreels, literary works, oral histories, diaries and personal accounts, it argues for the recognition of space as a missing dimension of occupation and resistance history.

For roughly 15,000 years, the area of the St. Mary's River known as Baawitigong (rapids) has been home to the Anishinaabeg, whose identity and lifeways are inextricably linked to the river. The area became an important location for the first Indigenous populations on the Great Lakes, the Copper People, during the Seven Fires migrations, and later became a capital of the modern Niswi-mishkodewin (Three Fires Confederacy). Its location in the centre of the continent also made the St. Mary's River a target of colonial expansion, and thus made Baawitigong (a.k.a. Bawating, Baawitig or Pawating) a strategic location of Indigenous resistance against imperial forces from the seventeenth century until the present. This makes the River an ideal case study with which to understand the impacts of colonization. Colonial populations did not have the same relationship with the river as the Anishinaabeg had; the Colonists did not view the river as a living force, but instead as an impediment to their westward migration and a bank of natural resources to be exploited. Rather than looking to the Natural Baseline of the river to inform their lifeways, the Colonists worked to alter the river for their own purposes. In the early-nineteenth century, legislated land use and industrialization were destructive to the environment and the health of the river, its flora, fauna, and people. By the twentieth century, both the Natural Baseline of the St. Mary's River, and the Anishinaabeg's lifeways, were threatened by these colonial land use patterns. Both would become further threatened into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, demonstrating the link between Anishinaabeg people and this region. Within this history, is also the story of hope and resistance to these colonial land uses, which may provide a model for North American society, legal structures, and land use patterns moving forward.

The Spanish conquistadors arrived in the territory of today's Mexico in 1519 and immediately entered in contact with the indigenous people that inhabited this vast territory. This encounter put the Spaniards in contact with multiple social groups and with their languages, religions, socio-political and economic organizations, world views, and also technologies. This dissertation will focus on one of those technological encounters: the Indigenous-Spanish copper metallurgy of the 16th century in the region of Michoacán and its socio-cultural, political and economic background. During the entire colonial period, the South-Central region of Michoacán, Mexico was the main producer of copper in New Spain and one of the most important loci of production in the whole Spanish empire. Copper was a fundamental material for artillery, coinage and silver extraction, not to mention its importance in the manufacture of all sorts of daily life items (cauldrons, pans, knives, spoons etc.). However, when the Spaniards arrived, they had an almost complete lack of copper extraction knowledge. Spain did not have any copper mining operation at the moment nor an established copper production industry and all the copper consumed in Spain was acquired already in metallic form from production centers in Hungary and Germany, mostly through intermediaries in Flanders. On the other hand, the South-Central region of Michoacán had a natural occurrence of rich copper ore deposits and a well-established indigenous metallurgical tradition developed during the course of at least eight centuries and based on copper and its alloys. These set of factors and an increasing world demand of copper led the Spaniards to heavily rely on native knowledge, technology and labour, hence creating a long lasting relationship of production between them and the specialized native metalworkers of Michoacán. In order for this relationship to last and succeed, a dialogue was established; techniques and ideas were exchanged, and political and economic issues negotiated. The objective of this dissertation then is to explore the social, technological, economic and political aspects of copper production during the contact and early colonial periods of New Spain. This is done with the aim to understand how these communities of native miners, smelters, metalworkers, charcoal makers, and tamemes (load-bearers) adapted to a new socio-political and economic paradigm. How the encounter with the European metalworking technology (in the broader sense of the term) modified a nearly millenary tradition. And what was the role of these communities and their technology in the construction of a shared colonial world.

This thesis explores the ways in which medieval artists visualised the Trinity. It seeks to understand how an 'unimaginable' and paradoxical idea - that God is one being and yet three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit - was depicted in visual form. The study focuses primarily on English visual culture from c. 1000-1300, where the two most common representations of the Trinity, the Seated Trinity and the Gnadenstuhl, developed. It offers new perspectives on the eleventh- and twelfth-century contexts in which these influential Trinitarian images appeared, tracing their transmission across many types of media, from manuscript illumination to wall paintings, stained glass, metalwork and sculpture in stone, ivory and wood. It shows how, at the turn of the thirteenth century, the Seated Trinity and the Gnadenstuhl evolved from images known and used in relatively limited circles to the two most common representations of the Trinity. This process is contextualised within the broader shifts in theology and debate during this period, where both Trinitarian ideas and images underwent momentous and radical changes. This thesis also examines how the standardisation and proliferation of the iconography of the Seated Trinity and Gnadenstuhl over the course of the thirteenth century paved the way for new and exciting visualisations of the Trinitarian God. Whether adapting and manipulating conventional iconography, or crafting an image that departed radically from these more standardised forms, artists working in this period turned to increasingly inventive and unusual designs as a means of communicating something new about the triune nature of God. Both the invention of 'conventional' images of the Trinity and the re-invention of these standardised forms in the production of 'unusual' Trinitarian images demonstrate the remarkably imaginative, inventive and innovative nature of artistic and visual culture in this period.

The British army's officer cadet colleges of the Royal Military Academy (RMA), Woolwich, and the Royal Military College (RMC), Sandhurst, have hitherto been poorly understood and often frequently criticised institutions. This thesis redresses this 'blind spot' in the history of the Victorian army, by - and critically for the first time - using the archives of the institutions themselves. Through a detailed analysis of course textbooks, cadets' work and relevant correspondence, it shows that instead of being moribund and irrelevant, the colleges were in fact giving up to date instruction. It also shows how, in the main, staff were motivated and well qualified, and particularly in the late Victorian era played a significant role in the army's doctrinal development. Similarly, cadets' letters and biographies reveal that rather than a caricatured idleness, a picture emerges of individuals anxious about their studies but often enjoying them. Apart from the regular course of studies, the inculcation of values and behavioural standards as a part of 'officership' are examined, most notably through the influence of military culture, Christianity and sport. In this way a deeper understanding of the army is obtained which departs from the all too typical narrative of a rather unprofessional and amateurish officer corps.

At the heart of this project are in-depth case studies of the retinues recruited and commanded in 1415 by the dukes of Clarence and Gloucester. Drawing on their complete surviving muster rolls, nearly 1,760 of the men who mustered under their commands can be identified by name. This wealth of nominal data provides a solid foundation on which thorough study of these retinues can be built. Neither has been the subject of extensive research before. Employing a prosopographical approach will allow the methods by which the two dukes recruited men in 1415 to become apparent. Furthermore, we will be able to explore whether pre-existing ties, both vertical and horizontal, existed within these retinues. This project also engages with the significant historiographical issue relating to the 'dynamics of recruitment' in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. In addition to exploring the bonds between the men of these retinues, we will also explore their changing size and composition by utilising all the available administrative sources, for example the sick lists made after the fall of Harfleur and the post-campaign accounts. Particular focus will be given to ascertaining the comparative attrition rates between the two retinues. Before these case-studies a thorough examination of their complete muster rolls is undertaken, alongside all the other surviving 1415 muster rolls, in order to learn more about the process and mechanics of the muster. Following the case studies, a comparative analysis of the two ducal retinues is conducted in order to form a holistic study.

World Heritage Sites designated by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) are widely recognised as unique learning resources and in having the potential to foster cultural tolerance because of their Outstanding Universal Value. Through the Ironbridge Gorge case study, and desk-based research into the communication of World Heritage Values and the pedagogy of World Heritage Education, this research aims to identify if and how World Heritage Values are communicated during the onsite learning experience. The research is based upon interviews with Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust staff and volunteers, the observation of educational visits and interviews with the visiting teachers. Building on the limited research in this subject, for the first time an 'on the ground' perspective of educational visits will be provided. Despite a popular learning programme and the communication of the designation through onsite interpretative media, this research will propose that World Heritage Values are implicitly communicated in the formal learning process. This evidence of low awareness and prioritisation contrasts with the explicit communication desired by UNESCO. This study therefore raises profound questions about who is responsible for communicating World Heritage Values and highlights the disparity between theory and practice in relation to World Heritage Education.

World Heritage Sites are places recognised by UNESCO as possessing ' Outstanding Universal Value'. Despite decades of work investigating how to best protect and promote them there has been relatively little consideration of how their values are actually communicated. This thesis is a qualitative study into how the World Heritage values of one particular site, Ironbridge Gorge, are communicated to tourists, looking at how these values affect the construction of the site as a destination. The thesis encompasses examination of the ways that values are formally communicated alongside investigation into how different tourist performances affect individuals' encounters and engagement with the World Heritage aspects of the site. This revealed a gap between the values for which the site is designated on the World Heritage List, which are derived from the area's significance during the Industrial Revolution, and tourist perceptions of the site as a rural idyll. Additionally, there are differences in the ways that the outstanding and universal aspects of the site 's values are presented to tourists which inhibits the possibilities for deeper engagement. This is further affected by the intentions and interests of individual tourists, who ultimately define and shape the nature of their own experiences with the site.

This thesis examines the development of Birmingham's local administration from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, a period of intense reform policy in Britain. It presents an in-depth appraisal of processes that promulgated administrative change during a crucial period of the town's development. There has been a tendency in current literature to present Birmingham in this period as a badly managed town, governed by disparate, self-elected bodies. The research presented here challenges that perspective through a close analysis of Birmingham's administrations both pre-and post- the 1835 Municipal Reform Act. Under this legislation Birmingham was able to attain a Charter of Incorporation, with its first town council elected in 1838. The move to corporation status was badly managed, at a national and local level. As a result, the new administration was not well received, and the first years of its existence were blighted by uncertainty and opposition which, on occasion, descended into riot. Nevertheless, the new administrative system prevailed, and made achievements which current literature has failed to fully acknowledge. Birmingham's administrative reform has been set here in the context of heightened political tensions in Britain, to understand the complex, often intense, relationships between public, local governance and national legislation. The thesis offers fresh, overlooked examples of town planning and actual achievements in Birmingham, gleaned from a thorough investigation of half a century's worth of administrative documentation. These are presented alongside public responses to both local and national reform issues to give a more comprehensive insight into Birmingham's pre-Chamberlain governance than is currently available. The research presented here also opens the potential for further exploration of the way in which the so-called Age of Reform played out in Britain's burgeoning urban centres in the wake of Industrial Revolution. This is set in a context of change and continuity, challenging still prevalent notions of civic progress. As devolution has become an aspiration for many twenty-first century local administrations, it is useful to look back and understand past attempts at civic reform.

Exploring the role of local communities in the identification and subsequent management of World Heritage Sites (WHS) is particularly relevant, as it is not clear how to define local communities and how they can be included in the World Heritage process, which was initially designed for professionals. This thesis adopts two concepts - cognitive ownership and Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) - as overarching frameworks in an attempt to address the gap in research on communities and World Heritage and to bring new knowledge to the field. An overview of global representations of communities in the literature in the contexts of authenticity, integrity, management and OUV is complemented by a review of developments pertaining to the inclusion of communities within the World Heritage discourse, based on archival research at ICOMOS Paris, IUCN Gland, ICCROM Rome and on the study of World Heritage Centre decisions. The aim of this research is two-fold. It explores global representations of communities through the prism of self-defined communities in Ironbridge Gorge. The application of the cognitive ownership model in identification of communities at the micro level bring knew knowledge about the role of communities in the World Heritage process, both at the global and local level. The microcosm of Ironbridge gives an insight into how communities absorb, negotiate and transmit the concept of OUV.

This thesis examines the changing dynamics of Buddhist heritage in Bangkok in view of the various stakeholders engaged with the pressures of urban change. Using a variety of methods to understand the ways in which religious heritage is changing in relation to the wider pressures active in the City. Interviews were carried out with policy makers, site managers and leaders of the local community involved with the religious heritage sites and related activities. Along with document analysis and use of archives to map the changing uses of these religious heritage sites, observational research was undertaken at a selection of Royal Monasteries, Civic Monasteries and shrines in the core of city to assess the changes in the ways these sites are responding to competing pressures in terms of their protection, management and valorisation. The research outcomes highlight the important role that social and political hierarchies play in the heritage debates in Bangkok, the influence exercised in the management of the physical religious sites in the city and selectivity in the way that some sites are promoted and protected that relate to patronage and tourism. The work opens up wider discussion about the ways that religious heritage is used by local communities.

In 1851 Birmingham hosted the first national conference on juvenile criminality, one in a series of local events that influenced Parliament to adopt a new approach to child criminals and enact legislation supporting the development of reformatory institutions which favoured rehabilitation over punishment. This is the first study of Birmingham's reformatory institutions set within a cultural, national and international context. It adds to existing knowledge by illuminating how a series of pioneering activities, developed in and around Birmingham, contributed to the town becoming a centre for efforts to reform the treatment of juvenile criminals. In the early nineteenth century Warwick's magistrates established a reformatory institution at Stretton-on-Dunsmore and introduced the beginnings of probation. In 1819 Thomas Wright Hill established Hazelwood School in Birmingham. Renowned for its wide curriculum and unique ethos, it attracted contemporary social reformers and employed practices adopted by reformatory institutions. Various family members subsequently influenced reforms to the treatment of criminal and destitute children in Britain, Australia and America. A wide range of archival and printed material, including previously unused sources, is employed to highlight how this under-explored aspect of Birmingham's history directly connects the town to these fundamental national reforms.

This thesis charts the history of the cult of St Æthelthryth of Ely, arguing that its longevity and geographical extent were determined by the malleability of her character, as narrated within the hagiographical texts of her life, and the continued promotion of her shrine by parties interested in utilising her saintly power to achieve their goals. Arranged chronologically and divided into five distinct periods, the thesis demonstrates that this symbiotic relationship was key in maintaining and elongating the life of the cult. Employing digital humanities tools to analyse textual, archaeological, material, cartographic, and documentary sources covering the cult's eight-hundred-year history, the study charts its development firstly within East Anglia, and subsequently across the whole country, and internationally. Several spheres of the saint's influence are defined, revealing a number of potential short- and long-distance pilgrimage routes focussed on locations with links to Æthelthryth's shrine. This study's longitudinal approach also highlights a more general shift in the co-ordination of venerative practice away from the ecclesiastical centres and towards the parishes and the laity in the fifteenth century before summarising the overall impact of her cult, which was only curtailed by the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the sixteenth century.

This thesis has been written with the purpose of contributing to the existing general literature on the Levant trade while at the same time being informed by recent advances in research on Ottoman business history. Our aim in this thesis was to study the effect of institutional and organizational change that the Levant Company underwent in the 18th century on the evolution of individual business networks. This thesis is based on an examination of British and Ottoman archival documents and Lloyd's Lists and Registers, which have served as our main source of data and information for the purpose of identifying the initiatives undertaken by individual merchants that led to the creation of new business networks after the year 1753. The variables on which this change in the character of trade depended most and the areas in which the impact of such change was experienced most intensely is revealed during the course of our study. This thesis demonstrates the distinctive character of relationships between family merchants on the one hand and individual merchants on the other in different phases of the early, middle and late 18th century. Furthermore, it confirms the effects that the liberalization and easing of access to trade that the Levant Company introduced in the period between 1744 and 1753 as part of a broad institutional as well as legislative transformation. The character and scope of business activity undertaken by Levant merchants changed significantly in consequence. This thesis departs from the current historiography with its network analysis in favour of high-level programming language (Python). It also marks a departure in showing the trade routes of the Levant Company with web-based data visualization and analytical apps (Plotly) through utilising shipping registers for the 18th century.

There has been extensive historical research into child labour in industries such as textiles and coal mining, but there has been little focus on children employed in Birmingham industries such as pin making and button making. This thesis illuminates the extent and nature of child labour in Birmingham and the significant contribution made by child workers to industrialisation between 1750 and 1880. It draws attention to the importance of children's earnings for family incomes and suggests that some families migrated to the town in search of paid employment for their children as well as adults. The attitudes of employers, Poor Law officials, parents and children towards early work are explored, finding that child workers were regarded as an integral part of the Birmingham economy. This thesis provides a case study of child labour and child workers in an industrial town. It uses a wide range of primary sources to highlight the experiences of thousands of child workers who were not bound as apprentices to employers, but engaged on a daily or weekly basis. It challenges the view that the employment of children in manufacturing was a relatively short-lived phenomenon during the early stages of industrialisation, arguing that child workers were widely employed in Birmingham's factories and workshops until the 1870s. It highlights the strategies adopted by labouring families to provide their children with access to basic schooling, and identifies the specific threats to children's health from industrial employment. Finally, this thesis argues that nineteenth-century migration schemes which sent poor children to work on Canadian farms represented a global dimension in the history of child labour.

This thesis examines ideas of time and temporality in seventeenth-century England and their expression in the material culture of the home. It identifies and analyses a body of domestic objects inscribed with dates and establishes how they were used to record and reflect upon the passage of time. These objects survive in large numbers from the latter part of the sixteenth century through the seventeenth century but have thus far received insufficient attention in humanities scholarship. This thesis therefore provides the first sustained analysis of material dating practices and establishes a critical framework for interpreting these objects. It identifies and considers three categories of dated object in particular, which were highly symbolic of the very notion of 'household': wooden furniture, hearth equipment and decoration, and tablewares. It contextualises these objects within an understanding of the multitemporality of the domestic sphere, arguing for the need to move past seeing dated objects as merely commemorative of a single, specific event. Their dates might attest to a single moment in time, but through their use and subsequent circulation these objects reflect multiple temporalities at once; with everyday cycles of time sitting within broader ideas of posterity and the eternal. The interdisciplinary nature of this thesis provides a vital contribution to the field of material culture studies, and a timely intervention in the historiography on early modern English material culture.

This thesis explores the Ljubljana hardcore punk scene between 1983 and 1986. Utilising a combination of interviews with central participants and analysis of physical and musical artefacts, it contributes to wider understandings of alternative culture following the death of Tito, and during the pivotal final decade of Yugoslavia. The hardcore scene operated as an incendiary and somewhat utopian counterculture, and was created and maintained by young people as a component of the Ljubljana alternative cultural underground. Encompassing more than politics, incoherent rebellion or music alone, the scene facilitated instinctive reactions to local experiences, incorporated domestic specificities and provided opportunities for communication with like-minded people on a domestic and international basis. Studies of punk in Yugoslavia have tended to focus upon the significance of the popular first wave scene of the late 1970s, culminating in discussions of the short lived wave of stigmatisation that occurred at the beginning of the 1980s. This thesis documents how Ljubljana's counterculture was informed by these dynamics, but also grew to transcend them. In doing so, it outlines how punk survived, mutated and spread throughout the world. The Ljubljana hardcore scene drew upon musical and countercultural forms that were consciously internationalist, but were inspired by elements of western culture. However, they also utilised punk to address domestic realities and made direct contributions to the contemporary international punk scene. This thesis affords specific focus to the issues of sexuality and gender within Ljubljana hardcore, and investigates elements of compatibility with the influential New Social Movements that were also emerging in Ljubljana. Whilst relatively small, and largely confined to underground environments, Ljubljana hardcore left a tangible and enduring legacy, and provides a prism through which the values of it's young participants can be understood.

This dissertation examines how British and American people imagined and understood the transatlantic relationship in the second half of the nineteenth century. Specifically, it examines visitors' and observers' reactions to five world's fairs held between 1851 and 1893 in both nations to illustrate how these conceptions changed over the period. These events, unlike any others in the period projected national images created by government officials and industrialists in each country. They forced visitors and observers to renegotiate their understanding of the world through these curated presentations of foreign products and art. The dissertation employs newspaper reports, guidebooks, organisational documents, and other texts from these events which record visitors' changing conceptions of British and American industry, global power, and the two nations' cultural and historical bonds. These sources also record reactions from people who observed these fairs from afar without visiting them. By the end of the period British visitors and observers of these events saw the United States as part of an extended British world, bound by a shared "Anglo-Saxon" racial heritage. Americans initially highlighted their transatlantic connections at these fairs and used them to vindicate their displays. However, as American trade expanded, and its diplomatic clout blossomed in the century's final decades, American displays became more confident and robust, and U.S. visitors and observers desire for British vindication, and need to stress transatlantic connections dissipated. At these fairs British attendees became more firmly convinced of the two nations deep connections while Americans rejected any special transatlantic link by 1893. This study suggests that Americans, as their nation expanded abroad, became more firmly convinced of their national power, and did not see themselves as more similar to empires like Britain. Simultaneously British visitors and observers sought to co-opt the rising United States as an extension of themselves.

This dissertation examines the entangled relationship between ethnographic collecting and early British imperial expansion in present-day Uganda and neighbouring parts of Kenya. Between 1870 and 1920, thousands of objects from this region were accessioned by British museums and their colonial counterparts in eastern Africa. However, historians and curators alike know remarkably little about the contexts of their acquisition. Histories of the colonial period in Uganda and Kenya have rarely engaged with these crucial material sources, relying instead upon methodologies that privilege the textual and oral archive. Meanwhile in museum histories and displays, objects from eastern Africa are eclipsed by material culture from western Africa and Egypt. By combining close object analysis with archival and visual material, and by drawing on theoretical approaches to material culture from anthropology, this thesis reassembles the rich and complex histories of this important material archive for the first time. In doing so, it reveals the significant material underpinnings of both imperial and counter-imperial activity in the region. Focusing on a variety of different collectors ranging from colonial officials to missionaries, local leaders and museums, it shows that collecting was a pivotal tool for mediating different encounters, relationships, identities, and power structures within colonial society. In the process, this thesis makes three important interventions. It offers original new perspectives on early British imperial history in eastern Africa, it contributes to our wider understanding of imperial collecting, and it develops our knowledge of the colonial histories of museums and their collections.

Globetrotters were a new type of nineteenth-century traveller created from the confluence of three historic developments: British imperial dominance in India, the new presence of Britons in Chinese and Japanese Treaty Ports, and the improvements of steam technology, railway networks and the engineering that produced the Suez Canal. These technological advances accelerated the compression of time and space which meant that not only were the British colonies, with their mercantile and military concerns, nearer to home, but that tourists could 'trot' around the world in a matter of months. This dissertation considers how the gaze of globetrotters developed and changed during the period between 1870, when the opening of the Suez Canal promoted greater accessibility to the 'East', and 1920, when luxury Cruise Liners changed the culture of travel. Globetrotters' collections and accounts brought something new to those at home: the global East, which notwithstanding their 'orientalist' view, distinguished among Asian cultures. Travellers chronicled a 'cultural' journey of distinct cultures and customs that both challenged and confirmed pre-existing tropes of the 'East' by conjuring their own 'authentic' version through their experiences and the objects they brought home. They also charted a journey, that of the transformation of self through mutual encounter with local populations. In this dissertation, chapters assessing globetrotters' experiences through the cultural engagement of networks, space, food and collecting will explore these developments through three overarching themes: the gaze and mutual encounter, social distinction and authenticity, and cosmopolitanism and the differentiated East of India, China and Japan.

This thesis offers a re-reading of the intellectual and historical significance of the relationships that Frederick the Great of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia maintained with a number of leading French philosophes. It makes four overarching points. Firstly, these long-standing relationships were more than assertions of 'soft power' and vehicles by which rulers and philosophers cultivated their celebrity and posthumous glory. They were also sites of intellectual contestation, where all participants engaged seriously with contemporary ideas. Secondly, the philosophes exercised considerable power and enjoyed remarkable success in persuading Frederick and Catherine of the value of their philosophic causes and agendas. Thirdly, their exchanges and their contexts show that these causes and agendas were firmly rooted in the philosophes' political thinking, and revolved around determining the terms of the relationship between philosophy and government. Fourthly, the most important aspects of Frederick and Catherine's relationships with the philosophes-the correspondence and other negotiations that undergirded them-all took place in a space between, yet inadequately captured by conventional conceptions of the public and the private. The picture of Frederick and Catherine's relationships with the philosophes advanced here therefore not only revises existing pictures of the power dynamics between eighteenth-century Europe's intellectual and political elites; it also reveals their relationships to be valuable in enhancing our understanding of central issues in the intellectual history of and beyond the period, including conceptions of philosophy, enlightened despotism, and public opinion.

This dissertation investigates the environmental imagination of mid-nineteenth-century Americans, studying ideas about the natural world during a transformative period in which technological innovation revolutionised how Americans interacted with nature on the land, in the factory, and on the rails. The historiographical consensus holds that these developments fuelled Americans' belief that nature had become alienated from humanity, a savage realm to be civilised by new technologies. By studying the ways in which ideas about nature intersected with mid-nineteenth-century political culture, my research tells a different story, one in which a firm belief in the interconnections between humans and nature was central. In investigating sources such as newspapers, Congressional records, and personal correspondence, I show that Americans drew upon the latest scientific research to position their society in dialogue with the natural world, rather than alienated from it. While there was a clear awareness that technological innovation expanded human agency, the belief that human bodies and societies were subject to powerful environmental forces and should be brought into line with natural laws was pervasive. I trace how this conviction fed into a nexus of environmental ideas that underlay the dynamics of power at the heart of mid-nineteenth-century American politics, conditioning how Americans approached crucial political questions. Through a series of thematic chapters, my dissertation shows that political debates surrounding identities, expansion, trade, slavery, and emancipation were the products of diverging interpretations of what these natural forces and laws were and how best to construct policies in light of them. In short, the environmental imagination helps explain how and why mid-nineteenth-century Americans shaped and reshaped their world in the ways that they did.

Existing work on French factory workers during the German occupation has so far revealed striking variations between how workers behaved, depending on their town or region and even on their workplace. The same themes appear - hardship, wages, trade unions, protest - and yet they are configured completely differently depending on geography, local history and local populations. This thesis looks at the specific example of Le Havre where, in contrast to most other areas, the workers voiced their discontent from the very start of the Occupation. However, their discontent was not transformed into organised resistance in 1943 and 1944 to the same extent as elsewhere in France. This thesis therefore identifies three themes - memory, influence and leadership - in order to explain why the Le Havre workers behaved as they did. In particular, it is the focus on leadership - or lack of it - which provides its significant contribution to the understanding of French labour history during this period. Using archival sources, it traces the history of port and factory workers in Le Havre from the factory occupations that accompanied the Popular Front election victory in 1936, through to the end of the German occupation. The 1936 strikes gave workers a taste of victory and a memory of what they could achieve, which they took with them into the Occupation. These strikes ensured that trade unionism was the greatest influence on Le Havre's workers, providing workers with a resilience which they exhibited after the Germans had arrived. The town's trade union leaders had been present for many years, gaining the workers' trust and respect through many successful disputes. However, these leaders disappeared during the Occupation, in some cases virtually, because they co-operated with the authorities, in others, literally because they were deported. Without leadership, the workers were unable to turn their discontent into real and sustained action.

The Jordanian government had high expectations for its Association Agreement (AA) with the European Union (EU), hoping it would lead to increased exports to the EU, although the private sector feared competition from European industries (Abu Dalbouh, 2005, pp. 142-143). The early 1990s were politically and economically challenging to Jordan. The AA, which entered into force in 2002 following the Barcelona Process, stipulated the establishment of comprehensive partnerships and prosperity for the Euro- Mediterranean area (EEAS, 1995). This thesis attempts to answer the following question: To what extent has the 'Barcelona Process: Union for the Mediterranean' been economically beneficial to Jordan? It is necessary to examine EU-Jordanian trade relations both within and outside the scope of the Barcelona Process from 1995 until 2012. First, this study will set the theoretical framework for the thesis, then examine the Jordanian political economy that led to the signing of the AA. The actual negotiations that led to the AA will be analysed using components of non-cooperative negotiating theory to shed light on the division of power among the parties (Jordan and the EU). The agreement will subsequently be tested using ex-ante and ex-post-free trade agreement (FTA) assessment models to determine the most potentially advantageous outcomes versus the actual outcomes. The action plans contain the annual expectations of Jordan's implementation of the points stipulated in the AA. To measure the tangible successes of the action plans, they have been analysed using enterprise charter indicators, as developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

This thesis adds to the historiography on British foreign policy towards the Soviet Union in the early Cold War by closely examining the work of the Russia Committee, a secret organisation within the Foreign Office, in order to assess its influence on the formation of foreign policy in the early Cold War. The research undertaken was based on the scrutiny of the official Foreign Office Archives, of the meetings and papers of the Russia Committee from its inception in March 1946 to the early 1950s, as well as Cabinet papers, private papers of key individuals, diaries and memoirs and relevant secondary historical sources. It concludes that the Russia Committee was a vital piece in the jigsaw of intelligence provision to the British government on Soviet Communist expansionism, and for a time was the only body collecting and analysing all aspects of Soviet activities. It helped to determine how to deal with the emerging circumstances and tensions. It recognises that policy formation was a joint enterprise on the part of the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin for most of the years covered, and his Foreign Office advisers and helped Ministers to determine how to deal with the emerging threats. It concludes that the Russia Committee inevitably influenced the decisions taken by Ministers. The inability to prove the extent of that influence does not, it concludes, negate the case for such influence to have occurred. It further concludes that the strong relationship of trust and respect between Bevin and his official advisers aided his strong leadership both as Foreign Secretary and a towering figure of the two Attlee administrations from 1945 onwards.

In this thesis I consider the relationship between gender and singleness between 1960 and 1990, arguing that, as an identity category, singleness can shed light on the changing gender norms and broader context of social change. The 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were crucial decades in the development of new ideas about gender and sexuality. However, the perceived differences between single men and women, and what was socially sanctioned for each, highlighted the continuing influence of the sexual double standard. The persistence of stereotypes about spinsterhood well into the 1980s complicated the notion of social progress during the 1960s and 1970s, and shows that less progressive views about women were still readily accessible. Likewise, the bachelor playboy mythology that popularly defined single men simplified masculinity and desirable male behaviour. Divided thematically into chapters about single stereotypes, the home and single parenthood, this thesis looks at how single identity was categorised through language, popular culture, the press and sociological literature.

'Talking Legs in the English Renaissance' is an exploration of the multiple presentations of masculinity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. In it, legs are used as a metonym for the male body in its entirety, and looked at as a specific site of gender differentiation, a body part that in the early modern period was, I argue, closely tied to the expression of courtly and fashionable masculinity. My research merges sources and techniques traditionally pertaining to literature, history, and art history, such as close reading of literary and non-literary texts and of images, object-based investigations, reconstructions, and conversations with practitioners. Such a range of sources and perspectives is crucial to this thesis, which examines how the representation of the male leg in the context of a study of early modern fashion, medicine and surgery, and movement and physical activities can contribute to a reassessment of how the male body may have been felt and lived in in pre-modern England. In the first chapter, 'Proud Lookes and Brave Attires: legs, legwear, and the construction of the fashionable man', I examine the development of male fashion in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Through close analysis of the cut and style of hose and stockings, I pair work on portraits, extant garments, and reconstructions with close reading of literary and non-literary texts, including plays and moralist works. This analysis allows me to formulate new hypotheses on the reconfiguration of masculinity at the time of the crisis of the aristocracy, reframing the transformation of successful virility from courtly to civil and from civil to polite. The second chapter, 'On the Anatomist's Table, Under the Barber-Surgeon's Knife: masculinity embodied and dissected', traces the early modern efforts to better understandings of the human body, and is divided into two subchapters. The first subchapter looks at anatomical studies aiming to map the perfect body, and focuses on the various investigations into and representations of the lower body in medical and anatomical texts. This analysis sits alongside close reading of literary works, showing the investment that early modern culture at large had in the burgeoning medicalised discourse. The second subchapter explores the work of barber surgeons and physicians and is developed as a collection of two case studies looking at leg-specific conditions: lower limb amputation and gout. Here, I describe symptomatology, presentations, and possible cures, as found in medical texts, literature, and manuscripts. The two subchapters allow me to discuss the life of the early modern man in very practical terms, and additionally to create a parallel between fashion and anatomy when it comes to the description and representation of the male aesthetic canon. The third and final chapter, ''One paire of legges is worth two paire of hands': male legs and physical activities in early modern England', explores physical movement as the natural point of encounter between the cultural considerations regarding fashion, and the mechanical ones that emerged when discussing muscles and bones in the medical chapter. I discuss walking, dancing, and sword fighting, showcasing extraordinary examples of such activities (such as for example Ben Jonson's walk to Scotland, and Will Kempe's dance to Norwich), as well as describing how more mundane instances of these types of movement would have been considered in everyday early modern life. I look at how learning and performing these activities conformed to prescribed behavioural codes of early modern England and contributed to shape a man's standing within society. Having demonstrated the outstanding visual, social, and cultural relevance of male legs in the period considered, the conclusion, 'The Last Two Pairs: beauty, sex, power' applies many of the considerations brought forward in this thesis to an analysis of the portraits of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and of Captain Thomas Lee, who sport - respectively -the most celebrated and the most puzzling pairs of legs in early modern England. Choosing an object of enquiry as specific as male legs has allowed me to cast an all-encompassing look unto early modern English society and culture. By attending closely to the significance of legs in the history of masculinity, we can better understand the history of male bodies, stories, and lives.

This thesis presents the first history of the British mechanical bombsight, from 1918 to 1945. It provides new evidence on the efficacy of military scientists, the interventions of prominent war scientists, and the influence of the scientific elite. It demonstrates that British bombsight development was located entirely within the military, facilitated by specialist engineers, entrepreneurial inventors, and small firms located mainly within the environs of London. The bombsight story does not conform to the standard civilian centric role in techno-military invention: science, heroic private inventors, corporate laboratories, and large armament firms contributed little. This thesis shows that the military engaged effectively with the bomb dropping problem during the interwar years, as exemplified by the work of Leonard Bygrave, a quasi-paramilitary defender of the Empire, and his Air Ministry colleague, Frederick Meredith, a Soviet spy. Post 1935, bombsight development was disrupted by death, espionage, and ill-advised interventions by two members of the scientific elite: Henry Tizard and Melvill Jones. This, not development failures, led to what I call the 1940 Bombsight Crisis. Secondly, it shows that Frederick Lindemann invented, promoted, and politicized bombsights during the Second World War. Lindemann was instrumental in prioritizing the development of the SABS, Britain's most accurate bombsight. The SABS story, in turn, reveals the thinking behind the Barnes Wallis earthquake bomb, Tallboy, to be fundamentally flawed. Finally, the thesis recovers the lost history of Patrick Blackett's wartime career as a techno-military inventor and bombsight scientist. Blackett, Nobel laureate, 'father' of Operational Research, and noted scientific intellectual, has been extensively studied by historians and biographers. Until now his career as a bombsight scientist, which he sought to censor by omission, has remained closed. In the telling of this new history, our understanding of Blackett and the invention of the most important wartime bombsight, the Mk XIV bombsight, is transformed.

This dissertation uses the development of modern marine science to explore the complex relationship between science and socio-politics in socialist China. Using the case of Qingdao, the centre for marine science from the late Qing period to the present, this thesis argues that marine scientists always faced a dilemma between surviving political campaigns and developing marine science. Scientists struggled to survive attacks and persecution during Mao's era, while also trying to continue their research in marine science by any means possible. At that time, marine science was a double-edged sword: it gained them privileges and appreciation, but they were also persecuted and attacked because of their profession. This thesis follows a chronological structure. Chapters I and II explore the history of marine science from the Republican period through to the Socialist period. Chapter III examines how marine science was transformed into a socialist science. Chapter IV analyses marine science from 1956 to 1962 by expounding how marine scientists gained wider appreciation during the 'Great Leap Forward' and the 'Great Famine'. Using the example of Vietnamese students studying in Qingdao, Chapter V focuses on the higher education of marine science in Qingdao and addresses the question of how the new generation of socialist marine scientists was cultivated. The last chapter explores the period from 1966 to 1972, the time of the Cultural Revolution, and elaborates how the new 'ordinary' was built in this 'extraordinary' period.

Sir William Macpherson's conclusion - following his public inquiry into the racist murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993 - that the Metropolitan Police was 'institutionally racist', was a seminal moment for policing in Britain. The publication of the Macpherson report in 1999 has been rightly regarded as a victory for the Stephen Lawrence Family Campaign (SLFC), whose activities had been crucial in building pressure on the newly-elected Labour Government to hold a public inquiry into the Metropolitan Police's murder investigation. However, to focus solely on the Lawrence case, and the SLFC, is to obscure the existence of a longer struggle waged by black Londoners to expose the racism that had affected their experience of policing since the Second World War. This thesis explores the development of grassroots political activism within London's Afro-Caribbean community around the issue of policing from 1945 to 1993. Using material from local community archives, this thesis represents the first attempt at documenting the history of race and policing in London from the perspective of the capital's Afro-Caribbean population. Moreover, by taking the end of the Second World War as its starting point, it also breaks new ground in charting the way Afro-Caribbean people in London organised politically in opposition to racist policing prior to the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. Ever since people of Afro-Caribbean descent began to settle in London in increasing numbers in the aftermath of the Second World War, they have continually expressed concern about the way they were policed. While opposition to policing initially emerged in a highly unorganised form, this was fundamentally altered by the arrival of the British black power movement in the late 1960s. Despite its short existence, black power's emphasis upon independent black grassroots political activism outlived the movement and became a feature of the way black Londoners' challenged racist policing during the 1970s and 1980s. Therefore, this thesis contends that the grassroots political campaign that developed around the case of Stephen Lawrence cannot be viewed in isolation from the historical efforts of black people in London to expose racism within the Metropolitan Police.

This thesis explores urban historical texts from late medieval towns in England and the Counties of Holland and Flanders. The wealth of primary examples discussed in this thesis from England and the Low Countries disproves the conviction long held in the scholarly literature that medieval town chronicles only existed in Italy and Germany. Taking a broader view through the framework of historical culture, rather than a strict definition of (urban) chronicle, many previously ignored urban historical texts are explored. The separate chapters discuss the format, authorship, contents and function of these written examples of urban historical culture. The comparative approach identifies a remarkable level of similarities in variety of format, types of author, use of national narratives and record-keeping traditions between England, Holland and Flanders. Local differences are found in the scope of these elements, but show few fundamental differences. Moreover, when compared to the manuscripts recognised as traditional German and Italian medieval town chronicles, the similarities are also noteworthy. A main thread through the study of all aspects of these written sources is the close link there is between historical and administrative writing in towns. The main group of authors we find are town clerks or secretaries, and town registers and magistrate lists are two major categories of format that we find. The use of these texts was similarly a combination of pragmatic recording and history writing, memorialising past events as well as documents for a legal memory as much as to promote the city's status.

This thesis examines aspects of monastic engagement with sickness and healing in early medieval England through the study of medical recipes in non-medical manuscripts written or known in England up to A.D. 1100. The significance of these texts, which have been preserved outside of the much-discussed vernacular compendia, lies not only in their value as overlooked medical sources, but also in their demonstration of the variety in production and use of manuscripts in later Anglo-Saxon England. The relationship of these recipes to the vernacular medical compendia provides evidence for the existence of complex textual and monastic networks, and suggests that there was a vibrant and dynamic tradition of the study of medicine in late Anglo-Saxon England which was supported by a greater number of copies of medical recipe texts than have survived. The manuscript situation of these recipes indicates selection and curation on the part of the scribe or the person directing the copying and, consequently, invites consideration of the epistemological reasons for those devoted to a religious life to take an interest in the theory and practice of medicine.

This thesis examines how the social and cultural experience of becoming and being a merchant in early modern Newcastle upon Tyne contributed towards the formation of a merchant community in the town during the period 1660-1750. Chapters are arranged to broadly reflect stages in the lifecycle, beginning with apprenticeship, followed by housing, the acquisition of material goods and political participation. Chapter One offers an introduction to the topics covered and cites the thesis in the historiography as well as discussing the main primary sources used throughout. Chapter Two shows how apprenticeship brought youths to Newcastle and argues that this training provided the first critical stage of assimilation into the merchant community, teaching them the nature of urban life together with the mercantile culture of work. Chapter Three continues the apprenticeship theme with an in-depth look at the ways in which enrolments to the Newcastle Merchant Adventurers changed between 1600 and 1750, in terms of overall numbers and with respect to the social background of recruits and their pattern of migration (briefly extending the thesis chronology to highlight important long-term change). Chapter Four is concerned with merchant housing and uses the 1665 Hearth Tax to create a detailed picture of how merchant properties compared in size and location to the town as a whole. The use of domestic space is also considered and connected to the bourgeois values of sociability, respectability and dignity. Chapter Five continues this topic with a look at material culture. Urban life was associational in nature and this chapter will argue that material culture had a key role in developing a broader urban bourgeois culture between towns and regions. Chapter Six examines the political participation of Newcastle merchants and shows the extent of the control they held over the town corporation and considers the implications this had for social relations between the merchant community and the rest of the town population. Chapter Seven concludes the thesis and stresses the need to re-evaluate the role provincial merchants had in the development of society and culture across the early modern period.

This thesis examines vengeance as a concept and as a practice in late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman society, specifically in relation to the interplay between theological thought and social attitudes and practices. It brings together a wide variety of sources in which vengefulness and the pursuit of vengeance are prominent themes. These include homilies and theological treatises, narrative histories and chronicles, hagiographies and miracle collections, vernacular poetry, and documentary sources such as law codes. Much attention has been devoted to the prevalence and mechanisms of feud in medieval society, but in this body of source material, acts of vengeance were just as likely to come from heaven as they were to be inflicted by humans on each other. This thesis examines the theological concept of divine vengeance, the ways that God's vengeance was observed and experienced in the world in historical events and in the form of vengeance miracles, and the extent to which religious considerations affected the perceived morality of vengeance undertaken by humans. Vengeance emerges as a complex theological, moral and social issue in a society in which levels of religious understanding, engagement and belief varied greatly between different groups and individuals. This thesis argues that the idea of divine vengeance was consistently used as a rhetorical tool to support certain moral standpoints, and that the interpretation of any event as divine vengeance was never inevitable. God's right to take vengeance for sin was an integral part of the way that the relationship between heaven and earth was negotiated, the way that events on earth were interpreted and understood, and the way that the morality of human action was thought about. There was significant religious, cultural and institutional continuity in these respects in English society between the tenth and twelfth centuries. Changes were gradual and should largely be credited to wider European developments rather than the direct impact of the Norman Conquest.

Using the Borromeo family of Spanish Milan as an example, the thesis explores the transformation of the nobility from rebels to warriors and courtiers over the course of the seventeenth century. It argues that this transformation was neither the result of far-sighted impositions from above nor the product of the nobility's intrinsic motivation but the fallout from the collapse of the government of the minister-favorite. By opening up access to royal patronage for select members of the nobility successive validos inadvertently fostered a legitimacy crisis of the large-scale redistribution of commonly held resources that they had overseen. As village communities resisted the count-duke of Olivares's Union of Arms, the Spanish empire headed for a breakdown of order that reached its nadir in the 1640s. Picking up the pieces, the nobility, relying on a gendered division of the labor of domination, recomposed the Spanish monarchy, transforming it from an elite network animated by dynastic concerns to a monarcho-aristocratic regime whose members drew on symbolic violence and the ideology of disinterested service to wrest back control. Putting the ruled back into the story of the rulers, the thesis revises our understanding of the genesis of the crisis of the seventeenth century, repositioning the crisis of legitimacy of patronage at midcentury as the catalyst of a momentous reconfiguration of both the nobility and monarchical government. A study of both social elites and state-building, the thesis addresses ongoing historiographical debates on the nature of seventeenth-century paternalism and patronage, its affinity to corruption and its umbilical link to the rise of the baroque state.

Popular narrative has equated branded medicines with quacks selling patent medicines to a gullible public. This thesis provides an alternative picture of branded medicines in light of the 1875 Trade Marks Registration Act, which enabled proprietors to frame their medicines as respectable brands within a system of 'intelligent' market participants that included retail chemists, wholesalers, professional medical practitioners, and the lay consumer. In contrast to historians of medicines, like Young (1969), who dismiss consumers as gullible fools duped by patent medicine vendors, this thesis presents the sophisticated marketing efforts deployed by wholesale and manufacturing firms as evidence of a more informed consumer. Building on scholarship from business historians, this thesis shows that branding was redefined in the period as a result of trade mark legislation. In consequence, the materiality of pharmaceutical products was transformed and thereafter they formed new meanings within wider economic, regulatory, and medical contexts. Concentrating particularly on pharmaceutical product packaging and advertisements from the trade periodical The Chemist and Druggist, and supplemented with material from the trade and professional press between c.1870 and c.1920, this thesis also broadens our understanding of 'branding' to include all paratext found on products. Paratexts such as 'registered' and 'without which none are genuine' indicate how authority, ownership, and credibility were communicated throughout a supply chain that had become increasingly depersonalized with the onset of mass production separating the producer and the end-consumer. This thesis demonstrates that messages encoded in the branding of a commodity affected not only how it was understood by lay, trade, and medical communities at the time, but also subsequently by medical historians reflecting on the period.

John Witherspoon is known for many things - a thorn in the side of the Moderate Party in the Scottish Kirk, a successful president at Princeton, an influential moral philosopher, and, most famously, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. What the Presbyterian pastor is not known for is being a particularly insightful, significant, or even consistent Reformed preacher and thinker. This thesis explores the theology of John Witherspoon in his historical context, with special attention given to the Scottish half of his career. In particular, the thesis argues that Witherspoon cannot be properly understood until we see him not only engaged with the Scottish Enlightenment, but also firmly grounded in the Reformed tradition of High to Late Orthodoxy, embedded in the transatlantic Evangelical Awakening of the eighteenth century, and frustrated by the state of religion in the Scottish Kirk. Alongside the titles of president, moral philosopher, and founding father should be a new category: John Witherspoon as Reformed apologist. Like Benedict Pictet (1655-1724), Witherspoon held firmly to the tenets of confessional Calvinism. And like Pictet, Witherspoon was eager to show that the truths of supernatural revelation could be squared with reason. Witherspoon lived in an age of transition where the tenets of orthodox Christianity were under assault. His aim as a minister was to defend and rearticulate traditional Scottish Presbyterian theology, without ever altering or disguising it. This is Witherspoon the Reformed apologist (on both sides of the Atlantic) and the Witherspoon largely unknown today.

The geography and geology of the parish of Fletton attracted the railways and brickyards. To enable these industries to grow and develop workers were needed. Using Ravenstein's Laws as an initial starting point, this thesis will initially explore the composition and context of the migrants, who came to Fletton.1 However, migration research should be more than statistical analysis. As Pooley and Turnbull commented migration research should concentrate on viewing migration 'as a process of social and cultural change' which affected 'both individuals and communities'.2 Therefore this thesis will seek to place the individual migrant and their family at the heart of the process of migration and within the New and Old Fletton communities. To achieve this, record linkage will be used to create longitudinal migration narratives of Fletton inhabitants. These will be used to address issues which have previously been side lined or ignored through pressures of time and purpose. The migration narrative of the individual within their family context will enable the exploration of family migration. The equally important story of the stayer will be revealed, without which the migrant's experience cannot be fully appreciated. The link between migration and community will be re-established, so they can be considered together, not as separate entities. Joining this dialogue will be an appraisal of the impact of marriage. Marriage will be viewed as part of a longer transaction; including marriage horizons, the marriage market, social and occupational mobility through marriage, impact of marriage on community and the destination of the couple after marriage. This methodology will enable the study of Fletton to be a valuable addition in the breadth of migration and community research.

This thesis examines the role of place and the landscape in the construction and expression of gentry identity in late medieval Leicestershire. Land has been said to be the gentry's most prized possession, and the myriad ways in which the gentry have influenced the landscape have received substantial attention, particularly in an architectural and recreational context. But the multi-faceted influence of the gentry's lands on their identity, especially in the broader context of place, remains to be explored. The thesis addresses this lacuna through an innovative interrogation of litigation records, probate records and the inquisitions post mortem amongst others using digital visualisation and analysis. It considers the different approaches that can be taken to resolve the neglect of place in gentry studies. During this historical period of transition and development, ancestral and economic ties preserved and encouraged inter-generational gentry interests in the places occupied by them, and propelled gentry interaction and behaviour where they overlapped. The thesis offers a reconstruction of the Leicestershire gentry's landscape, comprising territorial extents and changing land use during the period. Together, this evidence shows that the relationship between the gentry and place was carefully cultivated throughout the gentry's lives, and culminated in their final statement in death. Ultimately, this thesis demonstrates that the gentry's affinity with and interpretation of the world around them shaped who they were, who they wanted society to think they were, and who they believed themselves to be.

This thesis challenges existing nationalist and colonialist interpretations of the 1767 expedition to Nepal on behalf of the British East India Company, and those encounters that followed before the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-1816. The thesis then posits an alternative interpretation that explores the agency and influence of previously neglected, marginalized figures, by drawing upon the works and criticisms of postcolonial/decolonial approaches and Subaltern Studies, and new interpretative frameworks pioneered by borderlands studies. Marginalized historical agents played a significant role within the events of 1767, determining the expedition's outcome and influencing subsequent approaches. There is furthermore a wider pattern of influential marginalized historical agency in Anglo-Himalayan encounters. Therefore, the inclusion of such marginalized experiences, agencies and agendas in our analysis of encounters proves critical to existing and emerging debates around who pulled the strings of EIC eighteenth-century colonialism.

Singapore was the stronghold of British intelligence in the Far East during the Cold War. The small city-colony played host to a diverse range of British intelligence organisations including regional outposts of MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), specialist technical intelligence centres, open source reporting centres and the police Special Branch. These intelligence outfits operated across three levels: the local, the regional and the national. This thesis investigates the British intelligence milieu in Singapore, focusing upon its organisation and status; its working culture and operations; and its impact or influence. In so doing, the thesis interrogates to what extent we can speak of a definable British intelligence 'community' in Singapore during the early Cold War. It concludes that there were instead two distinct communities: a local intelligence community, and a regional-national one. Nevertheless, there were two core similarities. Security intelligence was at the forefront of both communities as the most appropriate response to the nature of the Cold War both within Singapore and the Southeast Asian region. Secondly, both intelligence communities played a significant role not just in shaping official perceptions but as avenues for covert policy implementation. At the regional level, intelligence activities enabled Britain to fight the Cold War through clandestine measures, fulfilling the key policy goal of providing containment without (extensive) commitments. Locally, security intelligence was a major driving force in the engagement between the Singapore government, communist 'terrorists' and anti-colonial nationalists. This thesis is not just about British intelligence in the Cold War. It also provides original insight into Singapore's transition to self-government between 1946 and 1959 by focusing on the crucial role played by Special Branch. Intelligence services were vital in ensuring that Singapore was rendered 'safe' for decolonisation, and their activities indicate continuity between colonial and post-colonial government in Singapore.

This thesis examines the image of Great Britain in Fascist Italy. It traces the roots of Fascist Anglophobia in the Great War and in the peace treaties, where Britain was seen by many Italians as a 'false friend' who was also the main obstacle between Italy and its foreign policy aspirations. The Fascist movement and Mussolini embraced such views. While at times dormant, the Anglophobic sentiment did not disappear in the years that followed, and was later rekindled during the Ethiopian War. This thesis demonstrates that the peculiarly Fascist contribution to the assessment of Britain was ideological. Since the mid-1920s, the regime's intellectuals saw Fascism as the answer to a crisis in the Western world and as irredeemably opposed to Western civilization of the sort exemplified by Britain. Britain was described as having failed the 'problem of labour', framing Fascism as a salvation ideology, which nations would either embrace or face decay. The Great Depression strengthened such a mind-set and, although by the mid-1930s it was clear that it would not turn into a Fascist country, the perception of Britain as a decaying and feeble nation increased. The consequence was a consistent underrating of British power and resolve to resist Italian ambitions. This tendency was so pervasive among the Fascist elite that anti-British views shaped the reports of military attaches in the late 1930s while others sought ways to explain Britain's decline in racial terms. Furthermore, the analysis of the popular reception of the Fascist discourse shows that the tendency to underrate Britain had permeated large sectors of the Italian people, and that public opinion was more hostile to Britain than previously thought. Indeed, in some quarters hatred towards the British lasted until the end of the Second World War.