bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Essence of Medieval Urban Communities: the Vill of Westminster 12001540The Alexander Prize Essay
Authors: Rosser A. G
Published: March 2007

THE modern study of urban history began in the nineteenth century, and has since continued to reflect the preoccupations of its founders. For these historians, the towns of the European Middle Ages nurtured the seeds of political democracy and economic liberalism. Consequently, two great historians of the late nineteenth century, Charles Gross and F.W. Maitland, laid down criteria for the definition of towns which stressed above all the theme of administrative independence. It was declared that fundamental legal differences distinguished the borough from other forms of community, in particular the village. Burghal status, and the features associated with itsuch as the existence of a civil constitution, the right to representation in parliament, and the free tenure of propertyhave been exhaustively analysed by subsequent writers, not-ably James Tait. This emphasis upon the legal autonomy of towns has been strengthened by the prestige of the great medieval cities of Flanders, Germany and Italy, which repeatedly exemplify the trade centre fighting or bargaining to achieve communal independence from feudal overlords and control over the surrounding countryside. In accordance with this pattern of urban development, historians have tended to seek, as a necessary first stage of growth, evidence of such a struggle for self-governing independence.
The Baronial Context of the English Civil War
Authors: Adamson J. S. A.
Published: March 2007

WHEN rebellion broke out in England in 1642, the political nation had been, for over a decade, obsessed with medieval precedent and its gothic past. Practices and institutions which had seemed defunct revived, during the 1630s, into new and sometimes controversial life. Trial by combat was reintroduced in appeal of treason in 1631, and confirmed by the judges in 1637 as a legitimate legal procedure even in disputes of property; in 1636 a bishop was appointed to the Lord Treasurership for the first time since the reign of Edward IV; in 1639 England went to war without the summons of a Parliament for the first time since 1323; and the following year the Great Council of Peers met, for the first time since the reign of Henry VIII, to deal with a revolt of the Scottish nobility. At Court, the king was encouraging a gentleman of his Privy Chamber, Sir Francis Biondi, in his labours on a massive survey of the baronial struggles in England from Richard II to Henry VII—a work which, when it appeared in 1641 asThe Civill Warres of England, was shortly to be endowed with a profoundly ironic topicality.
Reflections on Entrepreneurship and Culture in European Societies
Authors: Pollard Sidney
Published: March 2007

The theme which I have been asked to consider refers to the whole of Europe, but the terms on which it has been defined made it clear that the focus of interest was still to lie in Britain. I shall bear that focus in mind.

After a brief review of the debate relating to entrepreneurship and culture in Britain in the late Victorian and Edwardian period, the period with which I shall be more specifically concerned, and a similarly cursory examination of the role of entrepreneurship in economic theory and in the writings of economic historians in recent decades, I shall turn to the main theme, entrepreneurship and its cultural setting in the decades before World War I in the rest of Europe. A return to the British problem will complete the paper.
Two Abbots in Politics: Wala of Corbie and Bernard of Clairvaux
Authors: Mayr-Harting Henry
Published: March 2007

ABBOTS in politics were surely a medieval commonplace, one might be tempted to say: what have these two egregious examples, Wala of Corbie (826–34, ob. 836) and Bernard of Clairvaux (1115–53), to say to us which countless others could not also say? If my two were not unique, however, they were comparative rarities, in that they became involved in politics (if that is the right word), not because of their feudal obligations, nor because they sought to propagate monastic reform on the basis of the observance of their own monastery, nor again because they associated the glory of their own house with a particular cause or royal line, but avowedly for the sake of moral principle, incurring enmities in the process, and, cloistered monks as they were, acting to some extent against the interests and wishes of their own flocks. The monk-bishop was a common enough figure, and the greatest men of this type, pre-eminently Augustine of Hippo and Pope Gregory the Great, have given us profound thoughts about how contemplation could and should be kept alive amidst the cares of the active and pastoral life. But neither Wala nor Bernard became a bishop, and paradoxically the latter's widespread and non-institutionalised influence might have been diminished had he done so. As one of Bernard's biographers felicitously but ingenuously put it in recounting that the saint had actually refused many bishoprics, ‘from under the bushel of his humility he gave a greater light to the church than others raised to the chandeliers’.
Constructing Mau Mau
Authors: Lonsdale John
Published: March 2007

WHY was the Mau Mau movement in colonial Kenya believed to be so evil? It was the horror story of Britain's empire in the 1950s. Less of a military or strategic threat, it was thought to be more atrocious than either the Communists in Malaya or the Cypriot EOKA. It has lived in British memory as a symbol of African savagery, and modern Kenyans are divided by its images, militant nationalism or tribalist thuggery. This essay explores some of these constructions of Mau Mau.
The Idea of ‘Character’ in Victorian Political Thought
Authors: Collini Stefan
Published: March 2007

When in the summer of 1902 Helen Bosanquet published a book called The Strength of the People she sent a copy to Alfred Marshall. On the face of it, this might seem a rather unpromising thing to have done. Mrs Bosanquet, an active exponent of the Charity Organisation Society's ‘casework’ approach to social problems, had frequently expressed her dissatisfaction with what she regarded as the misleading abstractions of orthodox economics, and in her book she had even ventured a direct criticism of a point in Marshall's Principles. Marshall, then Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge and at the peak of his reputation as the most authoritative exponent of neo-classical economics in Britain, was, to say the least, sensitive to criticism, and he had, moreover, publicly taken issue with the C.O.S. on several previous occasions. But perhaps Mrs Bosanquet knew what she was about after all. In her book she had taken her text from the early nineteenth-century Evangelical Thomas Chalmers on the way in which character determines circumstances rather than vice versa, and, as the historian of the C.O.S. justly remarks, her book ‘is a long sermon on the importance of character in making one family rich and another poor’. Although Marshall can hardly have welcomed the general strictures on economics, he was able to reassure Mrs Bosanquet that ‘in the main’ he agreed with her: ‘I have always held’, he wrote to her, ‘that poverty and pain, disease and death are evils of greatly less importance than they appear, except in so far as they lead to weakness of life and character’.
London and the Nation in the Nineteenth Century (The Prothero Lecture)
Authors: Sheppard Francis
Published: March 2007

The relationship between London and the rest of the nation is an important but perhaps somewhat neglected aspect of English history. In recent years this theme has, it is true, directly or indirectly, engaged the attention of a number of distinguished scholars, but it is still not generally recognised to be as vital an ingredient in the history of this country as is the rôle of Paris in the history of France. Henry James even went so far as to say that ‘all England is in a suburban relation’ to London, and the standpoint of this paper is equally metropolitan. Its theme is that the loss of its normal preeminence which London seemed to sustain in the nineteenth century was in reality short-lived, and more apparent than real.
Retained Legal Counsel, c. 1275–c. 1475 (The Alexander Prize Essay)
Authors: Ramsay Nigel
Published: March 2007

This paper is concerned with one aspect of the history of the English legal profession—the annual payment of sums of money to lawyers by institutions and private individuals in medieval England.
The Hispanic-Converso Predicament
Authors: MacKay Angus
Published: March 2007

The hispanic-converso predicament developed over a considerable period of time and was the consequence of intolerance. It affected both Jews and Muslims who converted to Christianity, frequently under extreme pressure. The former are generally known as conversos and the latter as moriscos. The rise of intolerance involved a reclassification of notions of purity and danger, most notably during the reign of Henry IV of Castile. It also eventually entailed the establishment of an Inquisition. But intolerance was not simply a matter of religion, for both conversos and moriscos found that their habits, customs, and styles of life were viewed with suspicion and hostility. This, then, was their predicament. This paper will consider the predicament in the light of developing intolerance, and brief attention will also be devoted to the possibility that conversos encoded secret predicament messages in literary works. The emphasis is on the kingdom of Castile but, where apposite, examples have been used relating to Portugal, the Crown of Aragon, and Italy.
Urban Decline in Late Medieval England
Authors: Dobson R. B.
Published: March 2007

More than four centuries have passed since the famous preambles to the various Tudor acts for the re-edifying of English towns generalized with such unnerving confidence about the lamentable state of provincial urban communities in the early sixteenth century; but no historian today who has the temerity to walk through those still perilous streets can be under any illusion as to the continued hazards of such an expedition. Yet that this journey, despite its dangers and frustrations, deserves to be undertaken more frequently and more urgently than ever before seems very clear. Even the most optimistic historian must occasionally suffer some qualms at a situation in which the single most important issue in pre-industrial English urban history—the exact contribution of the late medieval and early modern town to the society and economy of the nation as a whole—seems to be becoming more rather than less mysterious with every detailed monograph and every new methodological problem. For here of course, much more in 1976 than in 1894, we are in the presence of one of those ‘burning questions in which impetuous economists have outrun the historians, and have not found it pre-mature to set in order by the help of accepted theories the obscure chaos of social history in the Middle Ages’.
Mass Education and Modernization—The Case of Germany 1780–1850: The Prothero Lecture
Authors: Nipperdey Thomas
Published: March 2007

In the 1850s, school policy enjoyed very high priority in the fight against the revolution. The elementary school was to be brought back to simple subject matter, firmly grounded truths and to an education stressing authority; above all the teachers were to be given as simple a training as possible.
War and Society in The Tenth Century: the Maldon Campaign
Authors: John Eric
Published: March 2007

A general study of the effects of the Viking Wars on Anglo-Saxon society is much to be desired. These wars lasted from the last years of the Mercian hegemony to the last months of the life of William the Conqueror. It has been abundantly shown that the English did not catch institutions from the Vikings like a sort of social measles, but common-sense alone suggests that a three hundred years war with little more than one generation's respite must have had consequences. Such a study is far too large for a single paper. What I have sought to do, therefore, is take a single campaign, that culminating in the famous battle of Maldon, which occurred at a moment of intense crisis and to try to set this campaign in a context of the relevant political and military problems of the day, and most of what I have to say relates to the much-dismissed, little studied, but well-evidenced, reign of Æthelred II.
The Twilight War and the Fall of France: Chamberlain and Churchill in 1940
Authors: Dilks David
Published: March 2007

One evening early in the war, the First Lord of the Admiralty and Mrs Churchill invited the Prime Minister and Mrs Chamberlain to dine. By a happy chance the conversation turned to Chamberlain's early life in the Bahamas. He told the story of the struggle to recruit the family's fortunes by growing sisal on a remote and windswept island in the Bahamas, ‘living nearly naked, struggling with labour difficulties and every other kind of obstacle, and with the town of Nassau as the only gleam of civilization’. Chamberlain described how, for all his exertions, the scheme had failed. In the Chamberlain family, it appeared, it was felt that though they loved him dearly they were sorry to have lost £50,000. ‘I was fascinated’, Churchill recorded after the war, ‘by the way Mr. Chamberlain warmed as he talked, and by the tale itself, which was one of gallant endeavour. I thought to myself, “What a pity Hitler did not know when he met this sober English politician with his umbrella at Berchtesgaden, Godesberg, and Munich that he was actually talking to a hard-bitten pioneer from the outer marches of the British Empire!” ‘
The Aftermath of War: Scotland and England in the late Thirteenth and early Fourteenth Centuries
Authors: Barrow G. W. S.
Published: March 2007

From a selfish point of view the historian has reason to be grateful for war, for it has been a prodigious generator of record and stimulator of commentary and chronicle. This, I suppose, is merely another way of stating the adage ‘Happy is the country which has no history’. In modern times it seems to have become normal for the belligerent powers to produce massive official histories of the wars in which they were engaged. These will serve to demonstrate that the cause was just, that the population, troops and civilians alike, displayed exemplary courage and fortitude, that their leaders had an unerring grasp of strategy and could inspire love and devotion, and above all that the country concerned somehow acquired, under the strains and shock of war, a unity, even a personality, which transcended the pre-occupations, the ambitions, squabbles, triumphs, boredom and tribulations of the host of individual men and women who happened at the time to compose it. There seems, in contrast, to be much less enthusiasm for the idea of an official history of a country in peacetime, save (no doubt significantly) in the case of totalitarian, collectivist countries whose régimes are perpetually conscious of the need for self-advertisement and self-justification.
England turned Germany? The Aftermath of the Civil War in its European Context
Authors: Roy Ian
Published: March 2007

Many voices prophesied a destructive war for England on the eve of the Civil War. The miseries of the conflicts in Germany had been closely followed in the earliest newspapers published in England. With the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in 1641, and the consequent bloodshed, the wars were only a step away. In 1642 newsbooks and sermons vied with each other to paint the blackest picture possible of the evils in store for England, once it seemed that, at last, the nation was to be swallowed up in the general European conflagration.
Social Class and Social Observation in Edwardian England
Authors: McKibbin R. I.
Published: March 2007

In 1887 Charles Booth addressed the Royal Statistical Society on the condition and occupations of the inhabitants of the Tower Hamlets, after which Leone Levi, a well-known statistician of the hard school, posed a testing question:

‘Who was a poor man? … The author [Andrew Mearns, writer of The Bitter Cry of Outcast London] had not mentioned the causes of poverty … His own impression was that poverty proper in the district which had been described was more frequently produced by vice, extravagance and waste, or by unfitness for work, the result in many cases of immoral habits, than by real want of employment or low wages.’
Symbolic Meanings of Hair in the Middle Ages
Authors: Bartlett Robert
Published: March 2007

BEATNIKS, hippies, punks; marines, convicts, monks—it does not need much reflection to see that styles of head and facial hair in our own society convey meanings about status, attitude and role. The same is equally true of other societies, including those of the past, and the purpose of this paper is to explore some of those meanings as found in medieval Europe.
‘To Pluck Bright Honour from the Pale-Faced Moon’: Gender and Honour in the Castlehaven Story
Authors: Herrup Cynthia
Published: March 2007

For Hotspur, honour was a thing self-evident—easy to recognise and to defend. As his name suggests, the younger Percy equated honour with battle, with the supposed clarities of spilt blood and martial conquest. We can all agree, I think, that honour was a touchstone for both the fictional and the authentic Percies, as well as for most other early modern people. However, from the distance of three centuries (as well, of course, as from the perspective of other characters inHenry IV) the concept seems considerably more complicated than Hotspur's claims imply.
Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour in Early Modern England
Authors: Walker Garthine
Published: March 2007

Within the historiography of gender and reputation in early modern Europe, female and male honour are usually presented as being incommensurable; yet they are constantly compared. Female honour has been discussed primarily in the context of sexual reputation. Male honour is commonly imagined as ‘more complex’, involving matters of deference, physical prowess, economic and professional competence and die avoidance of public ridicule. Thus the predominant model of gendered honour has been oppositional—female to male, private to public, passive to active, individual to collective and, by extension, chastity to deeds. Such a model, however, is misconceived. Just as the honour of men could be bound up with sexuality and the body, so these constituted merely one—albeit powerful—concomitant of feminine honour. Sexual probity was indeed central to the dominant discourse of early modern gender ideology, and historians have quite properly noted the significance of a social code of female honour ‘which was overwhelmingly seen in sexual terms’. But the potency of this discourse has itself frequently led to the selection of sources in which sexual conduct and reputation are central issues, and in which sexual constructions of female dishonour are immediately visible Because women's honour has effectively been imagined in terms of dishonour, constructions of shame—especially those associated with sexuality and sexual behaviour—have been privileged over, or compounded with, those of affront. Even when it has been noted that sexual insult could be a mundane response ‘in every sort of local and personal conflict’, conceptualisations of women's honour have been defined overwhelmingly by the nature of such responses rather than the conflicts themselves.
G. R. Elton as a Legal Historian
Authors: Holmes Clive
Published: March 2007

‘I AM not’, Geoffrey Elton insisted, ‘I am not a legal historian.’ The provenance of this solemn denial is curious. Elton was giving a lecture in the Old Hall of Lincoln's Inn to the Selden Society, the pre-eminent learned society for the study of legal history in England, in 1978. He had been invited to join its Council in the previous year, and was to preside over the Society from 1982 to 1985. Even from that eminence, writing his study of F.W.Maitland, Elton persisted in his earlier denial: he was not ‘a historian of law’. Manifestly this was not an opinion shared by his colleagues in the Selden Society who invited him to lecture in 1978, and elected him to their presidency five years later. And it is certainly easy to discount Elton's denial as a false modesty. He was the mentor of a cadre of distinguished scholars whose work, more obviously than his own, centred on the study of courts, legal procedures or doctrines. He had emphasised in all his writings that those historians—particularly thosesocialhistorians—who had plundered the rich records generated by the courts, were obliged to recognise that the ‘stifling formality’ of the latter could conceal essential issues, and badly mislead the neophyte. ‘Critical analysis of the available sources’ was imperative; ‘only a precise knowledge of the machinery can really unlock the meaning of the record’. And, most important, Elton was a distinguished historian in his own right of an instrument of critical importance, one of the three Maine modes of juridical change, for constitutional and legal development and innovation: he was a preeminent student of legislation, more specifically, of parliamentary statute.
Elton onThe English: A Discussion
Authors: Wormald Patrick , Gillingham John , Richmond Colin
Published: March 2007

SIR Geoffrey Elton begins his 'essay' onThe Englishin 927, ‘the year in which Æthelstan, king of Wessex and Mercia, took over the Danish and English parts of Northumbria and thereby in effect also accepted the existence of a separate kingdom of Scodand’. It was a characteristic moment to choose. This is the date given by theHandbook of British Chronology, evidendy the consideration foremost in Sir Geoffrey's mind. Ædielstan was the first to declare (in effect) that ‘this realm of England is an empire’, which one might have suspected to be a factor too, had Elton not soon explicitly denied any Anglo-Saxon meaning to ‘such noise’. More pertinently, Ædielstan was actually the first king of about all of what is now England, and the first so to style himself officially. By any standards except his grandfather's he was one of die most gifted and well-counselled rulers in English history, whom only the quirks of surviving evidence and historiographical fashion have denied the status of a William the Conqueror or an Edward I.
Presidential Address: Britain and the World in the Eighteenth Century: I, Reshaping the Empire
Authors: Marshall P. J.
Published: March 2007

By the end of the eighteenth century Britain was a world power on a scale that none of her European rivals could match. Not only did she rule a great empire, but the reach of expeditionary forces from either Britain itself or from British India stretched from the River Plate to the Moluccas in eastern Indonesia. Britain's overseas trade had developed a strongly global orientation: she was die leading distributor of tropical produce diroughout die world and in the last years of the century about four-fifths of her exports were going outside Europe. Britain was at die centre of inter-continental movements of people, not only exporting her own population but shipping almost as many Africans across the Atantic during die eighteenth century as all the other carriers put together. It is not surprising therefore that British historians have searched for the qualities that marked out eighteeth-century Britain's exceptionalism on a world stage. Notable books have stressed, not only the dynamism of die British economy, but developments such as the rise of Britain's ‘fiscal-military state’ or die forging of a sense of British national identity behind war and empire overseas.
Identity, Enlightenment and Political Dissent in Late Colonial Spanish America
Authors: McFarlane Anthony
Published: March 2007

During the long crisis of the Spanish empire between 1810 and 1825, the Creole leaders of Spanish American independence asserted a new identity for the citizens of the states which they sought to establish, calling them ‘Americanos’. This general title was paralleled and often supplanted by other political neologisms, as movements for independence and new polities took shape in the various territories of Spanish America. In New Spain, the insurgents who fought against royalist government during the decade after 1810 tried to rally fellow ‘Mexicans’ to a common cause; at independence in 1821, die Creole political leadership created a ‘Mexican empire’, the title of which, with its reference to the Aztec empire which had preceded Spain's conquest, was designed to evoke a ‘national’ history shared by all members of Mexican society. In South America, die leaders of the new republics also sought to promote patriotic feelings for territories which had been converted from administrative units of Spanish government into independent states. Thus, San Martín and O'Higgins convoked ‘Chileans’ to the cause of independence in the old Captaincy-General of Chile; shortly afterwards and with notably less success, San Martín called upon ‘Peruvians’ to throw off Spanish rule. Bolívar was, likewise, to call ‘Colombians’ to his banner in die erstwhile Viceroyalty of New Granada, before advancing south to liberate Peru in the name of ‘Peruvians’, and Upper Peru in the name of ‘Bolivians’, where the Republic which his military feats and political vision made possible was named after him.
‘His Special Friend’ ? The Settlement of Disputes and Political Power in the Kingdom of the French (Tenth to Mid-Twelfth Century)
Authors: Martindale Jane
Published: March 2007

‘Failing help from God and Saint Martin, the canons found it necessary to renew their complaint before the lord Hugh, their abbot and count’.

‘For almost six years’, the canons of Saint-Martin de Tours had been trying to regain possession of land in the neighbouring diocese of Poitiers. They complained that through ‘the cupidity of Frankish men’ they had been deprived of two estates; and, because ‘they could never get justice for their claim’, they were asking their lay-abbot, Hugh, for his advice. Hugh counselled them ‘to go again and put their claim to the lord Count Ebles, his special friend’ and to Ebles' own faithful men (iterum ad domnum Ebolum comitem, suum specialem amicum, et praescriptos suos fideles). Where God and his saint had not come to the canons' aid, cooperation between the two most powerful laymen of these regions broke this judicial deadlock: after intervention by Counts Hugh and Ebles, the viscounts of Thouars recognised that they had unjustly deprived Saint Martin of his property, and the two estates could be returned to the community of Saint-Martin once diey had renounced their possession of thevillaeof Curçay and Antogné.
Presidential Address Britain and the World in the Eighteenth Century: II, Britons And Americans
Authors: Marshall P. J.
Published: March 2007

In my address last year I tried to offer some explanations for the great change of direction in Britain's territorial empire in the second half of the eighteenth century: the failure of empire over much of North America coinciding with the beginnings of great acquisitions in India. I would like now to look more closely at the American débâcle. In trying to account for it, I stressed the yawning gap between British ambitions as they developed from mid-century and any capacity to realise them in the colonies, where, in the absence of a strong imperial presence or adequate machinery to enforce metropolitan wishes, the effective working of the empire depended on the willingness of local populations to co-operate. In the 1760s the majority of the colonial elites refused to co-operate with what they regarded as new departures from the long-established constitutional conventions of the empire. British attempts to resolve the ensuing crisis by armed coercion were to be frustrated in seven years of unsuccessful war.
Thatcherism: An Historical Perspective
Authors: Green E. H. H.
Published: March 2007

Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party in November 1990, but both she and the political ideology to which her name has been appended continue to fascinate pundits and scholars. Indeed, since Thatcher's resignation in November 1990, curiosity about her political legacy has, if anything, increased, fuelled in part by the memoirs produced by the ex-premier herself and a large number of her one-time Cabinet colleagues. Since the early 1980s the bulk of work that has appeared on Thatcherism has been dominated either by what one might describe as the ‘higher journalism’ or by political science scholarship, both of which have been most exercised by the questions of what Thatcherism was and where it took British politics and society. In this essay I want to look at Thatcherism from an historical perspective and thus ask a different question, namely where did Thatcherism, and in particular the political economy of Thatcherism, come from?

Given that Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative party in 1975 this might seem a logical starting-point from which to track Thatcherism's origins. Some have argued, however, that Thatcher's election in itself was of little importance, in that the Conservative party's leadership contest in 1975 was a competition not to be Edward Heath, and that Thatcher won because she was more obviously not Edward Heath than anyone else. This emphasis on the personal aspects of the leadership issue necessarily plays down any ideological significance of Thatcher's victory, a point often reinforced by reference to the fact that key elements of the policy agenda that came to be associated with Thatcherism, notably privatisation, were by no means clearly articulated in the late 1970s and did not appear in the Conservative Election Manifesto of 1979.
The Politics of English Bible Translation in Georgian Britain (The Alexander Prize)
Authors: Hitchin Neil W.
Published: March 2007

The eighteenth century is a lost era in the history of English bible translation. The long tenure of the King James, or Authorised Version (AV), has caused historians to overlook the existence of the scores of translations which were attempted between 1611 and 1881–5, when the Revised Version was published. Darlow and Moule'sHistorical Catalogue of English Bibleslists the publication of at least forty-four new English translations of bibles, testaments, individual books, or groups of books between 1700 and 1800. There were many more translations of biblical texts than these, however, as the recent and more comprehensive catalogue by W. Chamberlin has conclusively demonstrated. Many have been lost to historical sight, or were never published, which could have easily been the fate of the celebrated translation by Anthony Purver, were it not for the patronage of the wealthy physician and fellow Quaker, Dr John Fothergill.
Narratives of Triumph and Rituals of Submission: Charlemagne's Mastering of Bavaria
Authors: Airlie Stuart
Published: March 2007

Among the more striking literary creations of Herman Melville is a short story entitiled ‘Bartleby’. The eponymous hero is a law-clerk who gradually withdraws from his employer's power, and ultimately from the world, by meeting all requests – to copy texts, to quit the premises, to co-operate with the authorities of the prison to which his intransigence finally leads him – with the phrase, ‘I would prefer not to.’ Melville's existential fable is disquieting on all sorts of levels and it has, perhaps, a special resonance for historians. The story's narrator is Bartleby's employer, a tranquil elderly man baffled by the latter's stubbornness. One of the problems the narrator faces is the shortage of sources: ‘this man … was one of these beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except trom the original sources and … those are very small’. After Bartleby's death, the narrator learns that he had worked in the Dead Letter Office in Washington, and the story ends with a vision of piles of lost ‘dead’ documents and artefacts whose texts and meanings remain unread and beyond recall. As a text haunted by notions of unknowability and by the crushing weight of dead letters, ‘Bartleby’ seems to speak directly to some of the pre-occupations of historians in a post-modernist era.
The Middle Ages Through Modern Eyes. A Historical Problem The Prothero Lecture
Authors: Oexle Otto Gerhard
Published: March 2007

The title of this essay can be interpreted in two ways. One possibility might be to show how our times in their thinking, patterns of behaviour, and institutional structures still continue to be shaped by that distant era of the Middle Ages. In other words, one could show the lingering impact of the Middle Ages until the present day. This sort of approach brings many things to mind: the division of Europe into East and West, through the Roman and the Byzantine church; medieval philosophy and the influential reception of Roman law and its effects which can still be discerned today; knighthood and courtly culture; the development of the ‘modern’ state; the continuing influence of social groups and their systems of values and institutions such as vassalage, the university, and the city state; and last but not least, the division into competing states and nations that is so distinctive for Europe.
Resiting French Resistance
Authors: Kedward H. R.
Published: March 2007

Exceptions, minorities, non-conformities, individual refusals and small group actions, these are words with which historians of the French Resistance learn to live. The words allow social detail to flourish, but they stand in the way of general social conclusions and question the kind of class representation which seems so convincing in René Clément's film of the resistance of railway workers, La Bataille du rail (1946), but which cannot be sustained for the working class as a whole. Is there a social history of the Resistance? Are all generalities suspect? The French nation as a category is far too large, so is the working class, and equally so the bourgeoisie and the peasantry: it has often been argued that social and political categorisation of the Resistance is nothing but a captivating mirage, tantalising every new interpreter who sets out to give much needed structure to empirical research.
Titelbild: Lock‐and‐Key Principle on a Microscopic Scale: The Case of the Propylene Oxide⋅⋅⋅Ethanol Complex (Angew. Chem. 13/2007)
Authors: Borho Nicole , Xu Yunjie
Published: March 2007

Das Schlüssel‐Schloss‐Prinzip kann auf mikroskopischer Ebene durch die Bindung von Propylenoxid (PO) und Ethanol veranschaulicht werden. PO verhält sich als starres Schloss, für das die (gauche+)‐, (gauche−)‐ und trans‐Konformationen von Ethanol einen Satz von Schlüsseln anbieten. In ihrer Zuschrift auf S. 2326 ff. analysieren Y. Xu und N. Borho die sechs wasserstoffbrückengebundenen PO⋅⋅⋅EtOH‐Konformere des 1:1‐PO⋅⋅⋅EtOH‐Komplexes (drei Konformere sind im Titelbild zu sehen). Dabei zeigt sich, welcher EtOH‐Schlüssel am besten in das PO‐Schloss passt.
Innentitelbild: Rings of Nanorods (Angew. Chem. 13/2007)
Authors: Khanal Bishnu P. , Zubarev Eugene R.
Published: March 2007

Stabförmige Nanokristalle ordnen sich üblicherweise parallel an – eine Folge ihrer anisometrischen Form und Steife. In ihrer Zuschrift auf S. 2245 ff. berichten E. R. Zubarev und B. P. Khanal über die spontane Selbstorganisation von polymerumhüllten Metallnanostäben zu ringförmigen Anordnungen (siehe Bild). Die Bildung dieser Überstrukturen – „Ringen aus Nanostäben“ – wird durch Wassertropfen ausgelöst, die auf der Oberfläche nichtpolarer Lösungsmittel kondensieren, und verläuft innerhalb von Sekunden nahezu quantitativ.
Thermal and photochemical degradation of PPO/HIPS blends
Authors: Saron Clodoaldo , Sanchez Elisabete M. S. , Isabel Felisberti Maria
Published: March 2007

In general, polymer blends show a degradation behavior different from a simple combination of the individual components, making any forecast difficult without experiments. Interactions between polymers can sensibilize or stabilize the blend against degradation. In this work, the thermal and photooxidative degradation of blends of poly(2,6‐dimethyl‐1,4‐phenylene oxide) (PPO) and high impact polystyrene (HIPS) have been studied under accelerated conditions. The extent of degradation was accompanied by infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy (FT‐Raman) and impact resistance and strain–stress testing followed its influence on the macroscopic properties of the blends. The results showed that HIPS and the blend containing 60 wt % of PPO are more susceptible to thermal and photochemical degradation, while the blends containing 40 and 50 wt % of PPO are more stable. Infrared and Raman spectroscopic analyses showed that the degradation of HIPS and its blends is caused not only by degradation of the polybutadiene phase. Effects of interactions, such as exchange of energy in excited state between the PPO and PS components of the polymeric matrix may also be responsible for the degradation and loss of mechanical properties of the PPO/HIPS blends. The chemical degradation directly affects the mechanical properties of the samples with photodegradation being more harmful than the thermal degradation at 75°C. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2007
Synthesis and molecular weight and structural determinations of (polyvinylpyrrolidone)‐ oximate‐silico‐benzoyl glycine copolymer with IR and NMR spectroscopy
Authors: Singh Man , Chauhan Sushila
Published: March 2007

Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)‐oximate‐silico‐benzoyl glycine (POSBG) copolymer has been prepared taking PVP and benzoyl glycine with tetraethylorthosilicate as binder. Average viscosity molecular weights (Mv) each of PVP‐oxime and POSBG were determined with dilute aqueous solutions. For molecular weights primarily a calibration curve between intrinsic viscosities [η] and different molecular weights of polyvinyl alcohol (marker) has been obtained to determine Mv of oxime as 42,042 g mol−1. Similarly the Mv of POSBG as 80,297.13 g mol−1 was determined with [η] of lysozyme (molecular weight = 24,000 g mol−1) egg albumin (40,000 g mol−1) and BSA (65,000 g mol−1). For structural illustration, IR spectra of PVP‐oxime and copolymer were recorded in Nujol, which do not depict band frequency of OH group of binder. The 1602, 1688, 1182, and 1127 cm−1 stretching vibration frequencies noted in spectra infer presence of CN, CO, SiOSi, and SiOC groups, respectively, in POSBG. Structures of PVP‐oxime unit of POSBG are supported with Proton NMR. The work is aimed to develop new valuable biosensor and conducting copolymer molecule to serve as useful biochip and a biocompatible template. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2007
Dynamically cured polypropylene/Novolac blends compatibilized with maleic anhydride‐g‐polypropylene
Authors: Cui Limei , Wang Shifeng , Zhang Yong , Zhang Yinxi
Published: March 2007

In this article, the dynamic vulcanization process was applied to polypropylene (PP)/Novolac blends compatibilized with maleic anhydride‐grafted PP (MAH‐g‐PP). The influences of dynamic cure, content of MAH‐g‐PP, Novolac, and curing agent on mechanical properties of the PP/Novolac blends were investigated. The results showed that the dynamically cured PP/MAH‐g‐PP/Novolac blend had the best mechanical properties among all PP/Novolac blends. The dynamic cure of Novolac improved the modulus and stiffness of the PP/Novolac blends. The addition of MAH‐g‐PP into dynamically cured PP/Novolac blend further enhanced the mechanical properties. With increasing Novolac content, tensile strength, flexural modulus, and flexural strength increased significantly, while the elongation at break dramatically deceased. Those blends with hexamethylenetetramine (HMTA) as a curing agent had good mechanical properties at HMTA content of 10 wt %. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis showed that dynamically cured PP/MAH‐g‐PP/Novolac blends had finer domains than the PP/MAH‐g‐PP/Novolac blends. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) results indicated that the incorporation of Novolac into PP could improve the thermal stability of PP. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2007
Reduction of joint pain in patients with knee osteoarthritis who have received monthly telephone calls from lay personnel and whose medical treatment regimens have remained stable
Authors: René Jonathan , Weinberger Morris , Mazzuca Steven A. , Brandt Kenneth D. , Katz Barry P.
Published: March 2007

Objective. We previously reported that monthly telephone contact by lay personnel, to promote self‐care for patients with osteoarthritis (OA), was associated with improved joint pain and physical function after 1 year of followup. The present study was a secondary analysis to determine whether improvement was contingent on intensified medical treatment.

Methods. We reanalyzed control/treatment group differences in all 40 subjects with radiographically confirmed knee OA who had had no changes in antirheumatic drug therapy or institution of physical therapy during the period of observation.

Results. Group differences in measured pain remained significant (effect size [ES] = 0.65 SD, P < 0.01). The same trend was observed for physical function (ES = 0.53 SD, P not significant).

Conclusion. The findings in this reanalysis suggest that periodic telephone support interventions are effective enough to be regarded as an adjunctive treatment for OA.
Salivary testosterone levels in women with systemic lupus erythematosus
Authors: Navarro Miguel A. , Vidaller Antonio , Ortolá Juan B. , Bonnin Maria R. , Pac Maria V. , Moga Isabel
Published: March 2007

Objective. To measure salivary testosterone in women with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

Methods. We investigated concentrations of salivary testosterone in 13 women with active SLE and 47 women with inactive SLE, and in 72 healthy female controls.

Results. We found a significant decrease in salivary testosterone concentrations in glucocorticoid‐treated SLE patients (mean ± SD 0.06 ± 0.04 nmoles/liter) but no differences in concentrations in untreated patients (0.09 ± 0.03 nmoles/liter), compared with the healthy controls (0.11 ± 0.04 nmoles/liter).

Conclusion. Glucocorticoid treatment appears to cause a decrease in the salivary testosterone level. Measurement of salivary testosterone is a simple way of monitoring androgen metabolism in patients with SLE.
Self-reported dark red bleeding as a marker comparable with occult blood testing in screening for large bowel neoplasms
Authors: Silman A J , Mitchell Patricia , Nicholls R J , Macrae F A , Leicester R J , Bartram C I , Simmons M J , Campbell P D J , Hearn C E D , Constable P J
Published: March 2007

The study was designed to determine the prevalence of large bowel symptoms in an adult working population and to assess their value in screening for large bowel neoplasms. A symptom questionnaire was sent to workers in two large organizations and the results were compared with faecal occult blood testing in the same individuals using Haemoccult (Eaton Laboratories). Completed symptom questionnaires and Haemoccult test kits were returned by 916 out of a total of 1805 employees over the age of 40 (compliance 50.7 per cent). Twenty-eight (3.1 per cent) were Haemoccult positive and 114 (12.4 per cent) had one or more symptoms. All positives (129 persons) were examined by flexible sigmoidoscopy and barium enema. No cancer was found but 7 patients with adenomas greater than 10 mm diameter were discovered. Each of the 7 patients reported at least one symptom (dark red bleeding in 4, bright red bleeding in 2 and diarrhoea in 1) and 6 were Haemoccult positive. There was no individual with a Haemoccult positive adenoma without symptoms. Predictive values for adenomas over 10 mm for Haemoccult positive tests (21 per cent), self-reported dark bleeding (16 per cent) and diarrhoea (17 per cent), were significantly higher than for other symptoms. The predictive value rose significantly to 46 per cent for Haemoccult-positive patients who in addition had at least one symptom (P < 0.05) and to 57 per cent for Haemoccult positive with dark bleeding. These combinations of Haemoccult- and symptom-positive results increased the specificity of 97.6 per cent for Haemoccult alone to values over 99 per cent without reducing sensitivity. These results indicate first that occult blood testing may not be identifying ‘asymptomatic’ cases as often as has been presumed by others. Second, the addition of self-reported large bowel symptoms improves the performance of Haemoccult as a screening test. Finally, the presence of dark red bleeding, which can be ascertained using a symptom questionnaire, has a predictive value for adenomas over 10 mm, comparable with Haemoccult and thus may have a separate role in screening.
Donor‐Functionalized Polydentate Pyrylium Salts and Phosphinines: Synthesis, Structural Characterization, and Photophysical Properties
Authors: Müller Christian , Wasserberg Dorothee , Weemers Jarno J. M. , Pidko Evgeny A. , Hoffmann Sandra , Lutz Martin , Spek Anthony L. , Meskers Stefan C. J. , Janssen René A. J. , van Santen Rutger A. , Vogt Dieter
Published: March 2007

A series of donor‐functionalized pyrylium salts have been prepared by classical condensation reactions which were further converted into the corresponding thienyl‐ and pyridyl‐substituted polydentate λ3‐phosphinines by reaction with P(SiMe3)3. Further chemical modification of these phosphorus heterocycles with Hg(OAc)2 in the presence of methanol resulted in the formation of λ5‐phosphinines. The photophysical properties of a selected series of thienyl‐ and pyridyl‐functionalized pyrylium salts, λ3‐ and λ5‐phosphinines, were investigated and the results compared and supported by theoretical calculations on the DFT level. Significant fluorescence was observed for the pyrylium salts and λ5‐phosphinines. In contrast, the heteroaromatic substituted λ3‐phosphinines show very little emission which is consistent with the low oscillator strength predicted by DFT calculations for this π→π* transition. Furthermore, all three classes of compounds show readily observable phosphorescence in solution, which was determined by time‐gated detection at low temperature.
Solitary fibrous tumor of the lung: A case report with a study of the aspiration biopsy, histopathology, immunohistochemistry, and autopsy findings
Authors: Baliga Mithra , Flowers Rhyne , Heard Ken , Siddiqi Anwer , Akhtar, Israh
Published: March 2007

Solitary fibrous tumor (SFT) is a rare mesenchymal neoplasm of ubiquitous location. In addition to its classic presentation as a pleural‐based mass, it can be encountered in a variety of other sites. A pleural‐based lung lesion can be easily accessed by radiologic guidance for cytologic study. Several reports have described the cytologic findings of SFT at various locations, including the lung. However, diagnostic difficulties can occur due to unusual clinical, radiologic, atypical cytomorphologic, and histologic features. We describe a case of intrapulmonary SFT in which a false‐positive malignant diagnosis was rendered on fine‐needle aspiration biopsy and concurrent surgical core biopsy prior to radiofrequency ablation. The patient died of procedural complications, and an autopsy was performed. Retrospective study of the case, especially correlation of cytologic, histologic, autopsy findings, and immunohistochemistry results were helpful in correctly diagnosing the case as SFT. We are reporting this case with emphasis on avoiding diagnostic pitfalls by being familiar with the accepted cytohistologic features and appropriate immunohistochemical results. Diagn. Cytopathol. 2007;35:239–244. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.