bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Copper metallurgy at the crossroads
Authors: Habashi F.
Published: November 2007

Copper technology changed from the vertical to the horizontal furnace and from the roast reaction to converting towards the end of the last century. However, the horizontal furnace proved to be an inefficient and polluting reactor. As a result many attempts were made to replace it. In the past 50 years new successful melting processes were introduced on an industrial scale that were more energy efficient and less polluting. In addition, smelting and converting were conducted in a single reactor in which the concentrate was fed and the raw copper was produced. The standing problem in many countries, however, is marketing 3 tonnes of sulfuric acid per tonne of copper produced as well as emitting large amounts of excess SO2 in the atmosphere. Pressure hydrometallurgy offers the possibility of liberating the copper industry from SO2 problem. Heap leaching technology has become a gigantic operation. Combined with solvent extraction and electrowinning it contributes today to about 20% of copper production and is expected to grow. Pressure leaching offers the possibility of liberating the copper industry from SO2 problem. The technology is over hundred years old. It is applied for leaching a variety of ores and concentrates. Hydrothermal oxidation of sulfide concentrates has the enormous advantage of producing elemental sulfur, hence solving the SO2 and sulfuric acid problems found in smelters. Precipitation of metals such as nickel and cobalt under hydrothermal conditions has been used for over 50 years. It has the advantage of a compact plant but the disadvantage of producing ammonium sulfate as a co-product. In case of copper, however, precipitation takes place without the need of neutralizing the acid, which is a great advantage and could be an excellent substitute for electrowinning which is energy intensive and occupies extensive space. Recent advances in the engineering aspects of pressure equipment design open the door widely for increased application. .
Total time minimizing transportation problem
Authors: Nikolic Ilija
Published: November 2007

This paper shows the total transportation time problem regarding the time of the active transportation routes. If the multiple optimal solutions exist, it is possible to include other criteria as second level of criteria and find the corresponding solutions. Furthermore, if there is a multiple solution, again, the third objective can be optimized in lexicographic order. The methods of generation of the optimal solution in selected cases are developed. The numerical example is included. .
British Diplomacy and the German Problem, 1848-1850
Authors: Orr William J.
Published: November 2007

Throughout much of the nineteenth century relations between Britain and Germany were blessed not only by the absence of any fundamental conflicts of national interest, but also by positive factors tending to encourage friendly ties. Memories of the common struggle against Napoleon, the predominantly Protestant character of tioth countries, and the marriage of Queen Victoria to a German prince all suggested a natural affinity between them. German liberals and conservatives alike found much to admire in English political institutions, while Englishmen in turn approved the steps, however halting, by which many of the German states adopted constitutions and representative institutions.

During the late 1840s British statesmen did appear to have recognized the benefits that would accrue for Britain through consolidation of the German Confederation, and there was also some discussion regarding the prospect of an Anglo-Prussian alliance. After 1846, thanks to Palmerston's stridency in the affair of the Spanish marriages, Britain lost the good will of France and thus remained diplomatically isolated in the face of the powerful conservative coalition of Austria, Prussia, and Russia.
Victorian Pressure Groups: Directions for Research
Authors: Malchow Howard LeRoy
Published: November 2007

In recent years there has been considerable interest in Victorian politics and the Victorian political system. This has provided a substantial and continuing literature, much of which, however, remains preoccupied with leadership and organization at a parliamentary level. It may, therefore, be valuable to suggest an area within this most traditional of fields which might provide an alternative approach to that of “high politics”—of cabinet intrigue and parliamentary speech-making. In fact, one might ignore, for the moment, Parliament altogether, and consider that side of Victorian political activity which has been largely obscured by Hatfield dinner parties and Highbury foxing. That is, the manner in which Englishmen from outside Westminster, and perhaps from outside the formal institutions of party and government, attempted to determine the substance of issues and solutions debated in Parliament and at Whitehall.

One should avoid confusing the visible and symbolic place Parliament has occupied with the reality of political initiative. In England the rapid growth of new economies and the cities they created in the North and Midlands at the beginning of the Victorian age detracted from the centralness of London and Westminster, blurring somewhat the focus of English economic and political life, and creating new urban hierarchies consciously opposed to domination from Whitehall. Within the vast new urban centers, fed by a rural migration and accellerated by the spreading railway system, voluntary associations of all sorts became a peculiarly Victorian characteristic—serving perhaps as surrogates for a sense of community lost in the passage from a rural to an urban environment. Reading and corresponding societies, social clubs, self-help and benevolent associations, charities—this kind of activity penetrated Victorian society from the respectable working classes to the very rich. Related to this social phenomenon was a growth in local and national political associations—what one might today call “cause lobbies.” It is this type of pressure group activity, predominantly urban and probably largely middle-class, which needs to be more systematically studied. This essay will attempt to indicate the value of such research into “low politics,” and to suggest some avenues of approach.
The English Fishing Industry in the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Great Yarmouth
Authors: Tittler Robert
Published: November 2007

For all the pride which it engendered among contemporaries, who saw in the Tudor fisheries a nursery for English seamen and even a hallmark for the national identity, the fishing industry in the sixteenth century has received scant attention from English historians. This neglect has been doubly unfortunate. On the one hand, it leaves us in general ignorance of the industry itself: its organization, personnel, productivity, and economic importance in both national and regional terms. On the other, it has denied us the opportunity to observe a tradition-bound industry of considerable antiquity as it faced the political, economic, and technological changes of the post-medieval era.

The format of an essay cannot reasonably encompass a detailed study of a major industry, but the selection of a particular case for study can at least present a helpful paradigm for the whole, and fill part of the void in the existing literature. The fishing industry of Great Yarmouth seems an appropriate choice. The fact that herring collected off the mouth of the River Yare each September for as far back as man can remember has made the association of Yarmouth and fishing as old as it is logical. Fishermen plied those grounds from at least the sixth century, making the town one of the earliest recorded fishing centres of Northern Europe, and well before the Conquest townsmen had dedicated their parish church to St. Nicholas, patron of fishermen. Throughout the Middle Ages Yarmouth stood alone as the chief supplier of herring, a dietary staple to the English market, and ranked near the top of the European fishing industry.
England Is The Country: Modernization and the National Self-image
Authors: Wiener Martin J.
Published: November 2007

In the last hundred years the British initiators of the Industrial Revolution have fallen behind one after another of their imitators. As a consequence, the issue of “modernization” has moved to the head of the political agenda in a nation that was for the nineteenth century world the very model of “modernity.” Much of this change in world position was inevitable — yet not all of it. Why, historians have recently been asking, did Britain between 1870 and 1900 lose the economic dynamism that had been her hallmark? Why, further, did the British fail to recover this lost dynamism in the twentieth century?

The British experience ought to be of particular interest to Americans today, for recently we have become aware of thecostsas well as the benefits of economic growth. Our faith in material progress is dimming. At the same time, our former economic dynamism seems now in question. Indeed, we may be repeating the experience of Britain.

To understand the change in British economic behavior, we must look at more than solely economic history. As Max Weber argued as far back as 1904, economic activity takes place in a wider social context. Attitudes and values play a vital role in shaping economic behavior. Development economists have discovered in the last two decades that economic change is not produced solely by economic means — by introducing technology and capital alone. To some degree at least, societies “choose” their economic futures by the values they hold. Because of this, intellectual and social history may tell us much about the difficulties of continuing modernization in twentieth century Britain.
Pythagorean Proportion and Music of the Spheres inRichard II
Authors: Scott Leighton R.
Published: November 2007

“The Pythagoreans … defined justice unqualifiedly as reciprocity.”

(Aristotle,Eth. Nic.V. 8. 1132b 21)

It is one of time's ironies thatRichard II, once troublesome to scholars for its “imperfection,” is now enjoying increasing appreciation for unity and harmony. One modern analysis of imagery even recognizes the play as “a succession of balances” whose theme advances “almost as the proof of a mathematical proposition”(italics mine). Other recent scholarship speaks in terms of a “symphony” of repeated key words and balanced scenes, and still another study defends its “emotional consistency,” and “logical continuity.”

Clearly, in spite of some diminution of quality in later acts, what emerges in the end-product is a well-balanced, well-tuned, completely metrical mechanism, whose major moving parts signify interaction, change, and integration in the realms of personal, political, and cosmic order, with an appropriate counterpoint of Pythagorean imagery, e.g., “heaven,” “soul,” “balance,” “time,” and “music” or “harmony.”
A Mid-Victorian Coverup: The Case of The “Combustible Commodore” and the Second Anglo-Burmese War, 1851–1852
Authors: Pollak Oliver B.
Published: November 2007

The origins of the Second Anglo-Burmese War in late 1851 were the subject of a Mid-Victorian bipartisan and bureaucratic coverup throughout 1852-53. The Government of India in Calcutta had successfully maintained a policy of “non-intercourse” following removal in 1840 of its diplomatic representatives from Burma despite frequent uncoordinated calls for remonstrance by merchants, missionaries and military administrators. In 1851, a convergence of factors, most notably the alleged mistreatment of British subjects in Rangoon, captured the President in Council's attention in Calcutta resulting in a policy change which led to armed intervention. Calcutta's renewed interest in Burma occurred while politicans in London prepared to scrutinize the bureaucratic relations between the London-based Cabinet and the East India Company.

Official discussions in Calcutta about Burma occurred while Governor General Dalhousie was “up country on progress” and at the very time that the Council wanted to test its capacity to act independently. The Council resorted to a unit of the Royal Navy then in Calcutta enroute from Acheh to the Persian Gulf. Commodore George Robert Lambert offered to deliver letters to Burmese authorities in Rangoon and negotiate on behalf of the English subjects. Lambert's reputation for moderation recommended him to Calcutta officials. His instructions from Council and private letters from Dalhousie advised caution and the avoidance of confrontation. Yet Lambert, a line officer, ultimately responsible to the Admiralty in London, could conceivably ignore Calcutta's wishes and chart his own course.
The Political Demography of Cambridge 1832-1868
Authors: Mitchell Jeremy C. , Cornford James
Published: November 2007

This paper is the first fruit of a study of electoral politics in the Borough of Cambridge between the first and second Reform Bills, in which we are attempting to explore in detail some of the most important general questions about the political history of mid-Victorian Britain.

The critical importance of the period between 1832 and 1868 to the transition from aristocratic rule to parliamentary democracy in Britain is not in doubt. In the terms of the most useful comparative study (Lipset and Rokkan 1967) 1832 represented an early, genuine but limited concession by the old elite to bourgeois and working class claims to political influence, a remarkably Whig view. The major works on the politics of the period (esp. Gash 1933 and Hanham 1959) have emphasised the limited nature of the concession while other have thrown doubt on the notion of concession, at all, pointing out the conservative intentions behind the First Reform Bill (Moore 1966, 1976) and the contingent pressures on the actual provisions of the Second (Cowling 1967). Control of Parliament remained largely where it had been before; the decline of aristocratic government was long drawn out; adaptation of the political system followed slowly in the wake of economic and social change. Middle class reform and militant labour were gradually accommodated in the parliamentary system, enlisted in the ranks of the aristocratic parties, which though transformed, even now, moderate, loyal, constitutionalist, bear the marks of their origin. Part of the explanation for the success of gradualism must be sought in the weakness of the labor movement and its failure at the revolutionary moment, which has been illuminated in detail by Foster's studies of industrial towns (1967, 1968, 1974).
A Contemporary Chinese View of British History
Authors: Clifford Nicholas R.
Published: November 2007

Few of us really know much about the way in which we are perceived by the rest of the world—we as Americans, we as scholars, we (in this case) as historians of Great Britain. Indeed, to many this last question probably appears irrelevant; insofar as we function as historians, we are members of an international community of scholarship, whose compass transcends national boundaries, and conscious as we may be of our cultural and temporal biases, we seek as far as possible in our work to throw them off, and as scholars we welcome any contributions by our fellows throughout the world if what they say adds to the store of knowledge.

So the studies, the monographs, the interpretive works pour out, year after year; certainly few specialists of the Stuart period could hope to master the vast mass of material which exists. Why then be concerned with what a group of professors and dockworkers in a provincial Chinese town has to say about British history? With one or two exceptions, their sources are a half-century or more old; have they read Hill, Stone, Trevor-Roper, Hexter? There is no evidence of it. Are they aware of the work which is being done in local history, in demographic history, in the studies of the composition of Parliament? Do they know anything of what court and country parties stood for? Do they appreciate at all the impact of Puritanism (which after all was perhaps not too far from Maoism in its techniques of mobilization and organization)?
George Berkeley and the Jacobite Heresy: Some Comments on Irish Augustan Politics
Authors: Conroy Graham P.
Published: November 2007

“In 1727 Swift met Bolingbroke, Pope, and Arbuthnot for the last time; that autumn he went back to Ireland for good, and the Augustan circle was dispersed. The next summer Pope took a riding tour on an elderly pony that rolled Lord Cobham's lawns at Stowe; only on his journey did he discover that this veteran had been brave Derwentwater's charger in the '15.”

So says Keith Grahame Feiling with great wistfulness of the passing of the turbulent times surrounding the abortive Second Stuart Restoration and its impact on English and Irish social and political life in the opening page of his The Second Tory Party, 1714-1832.

Prior to this time the Irish philosopher and patriot George Berkeley, author of the celebrated Treatise on the Principles of Human Nature and the ingenious Querist was a member of that same circle and after the breaking of the circle charges of Jacobitism that had been levelled at the members of this brilliant and select group trotted behind his footsteps as he moved through the remaining decades of his life. The following pages are an attempt to explain Berkeley's connections with the Augustan Circle and to mitigate the criticisms brought against him by those opposed to the views of some of that group.
The Transvaal, the Orange River Colony, and the South African Loan and War Contribution Act of 1903
Authors: Kesner Richard M.
Published: November 2007

Few crises in the British Empire demonstrated its vulnerability as did the Boer War. In addition to showing itself woefully ill prepared for military conflict, the British government strained its financial resources to the utmost during the South African struggles. Its war debt amounted to nearly one hundred and sixty million pounds and this figure did not include the effects of the dislocation of trade and long-term debt charges, and telegraph cable subsidies. From the Treasury's point of view, the War exerted extreme pressure on the fragile financial framework of taxation. Treasury officials therefore called for retrenchment and economy. But the South African conflict also demonstrated significant weaknesses in Britain's military preparedness. Many in the Cabinet, and in the country as well, called for army and admiralty reorganization and further naval construction. This in turn meant increased government expenditure which gave rise to acrimonious Cabinet debates and ultimately the Chancellor of the Exchequer Michael Hicks Beach's resignation.

The struggle between those concerned with the financial stability of the British government and those preoccupied with its political and strategic position in an increasingly hostile world provided the backdrop for the evolution of the South African Loan and War Contribution Act of 1903 (3 Ed. VII, c. 27). The Peace of Vereeniging, May 31, 1902, had solemnized Britain's annexation of the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony in the Previous year. With the war over and the Boer Republics now crown colonies, post-war rehabilitation was the order of the day. The South African Loan Act sought to facilitate the renewal of commercial, mining and agrarian enterprises in the new British possessions. Though divided on other party policies, the Salisbury and Balfour governments of 1902-3 agreed on the importance of reconstruction, but for different reasons.
The Artist as a Force for Change in W. B. Yeats
Authors: Lenoski Daniel S.
Published: November 2007

W. B. Yeats has often been accused of espousing the ideal of l'art pour l'art. For example in 1898 in an essay entitled “What Should be the Subjects of a National Drama” John Eglinton expressed fears that Yeats' interest in developing ideals of literary experience in Ireland would be corrupted by his association with the aesthetic movement. A.E., though he had defended Yeats earlier, soon found himself in agreement with Eglinton. Yeats, of course, publicly renounced any intimate intercourse with the principle of art for art's sake. On the other hand, he agreed with aesthetes such as Hallam, Wilde, and Pater when they cautioned the artist against contamination by the mores and concerns of society. He also knew that the artist's ideal of beauty affected his life in a very profound way and was therefore capable of having a similar effect upon the lives of other human be-beings. I should like, in this paper, to look at Yeats' ideas about the relationship between the artist and other human beings.

To Yeats the artist and his art bore a crucial relationship to society. Certainly, Yeats did feel that society was a corrupting influence. It was certainly necessary for the artist to be in society but not of it, and to fly by the nets of family, race, and religion. Nevertheless, Yeats felt that such a separation was not ideal, neither was it the fault of the true artist. Ideally, the artist and his society should share a unity of culture and a unity of being. Even during the early years of his career, he thought that art should arise spontaneously out of society as the expression of soul, just has it had in the Renaissance, in the fifth century B.C., in the Byzantine civilization, and around the turf fires in the west of Ireland.
The Mid-Victorians and the Two-Party System
Authors: McGowen Randall E. , Arnstein Walter L.
Published: November 2007

Twentieth-century historians of the development of British political institutions have been persuaded by the late Sir Lewis Namier that the eighteenth century cannot fruitfully be analyzed in terms of party politics. “In 1761,” Sir Lewis observed, “not one parliamentary election was determined by party, and in 1951 not one constituency returned a non-party member.” J. H. Plumb has admittedly discerned a temporary “rage of party” during the reign of Queen Anne, and Donald Ginter has noted significant anticipations of modern party rivalry during the 1780s and 1790s while the late Richard Pares found “a tendency to a two party system” present during the immediate post-Napoleonic War years. Yet the modern political party system is generally seen as a direct if unwitting consequence of the Reform Act of 1832. In J.B. Conacher's words:

First of all a political party should exist with the purpose of becoming the basis of government; secondly it should be composed of members sharing common principles and traditions; thirdly it should possess some definite form of organization inside and outside Parliament. For lack of one or more of these essential requirements the modern political party could not come into existence until after the Reform act of 1832.
Models of Government and Anglo-Irish Relations
Authors: Ward Alan J.
Published: November 2007

In 1922 the Irish Free State began life with a constitution which embodied two contradictory principles. The first recognized that all powers of government derive from the people and provided for a system of government in which the Irish Cabinet was clearly responsible to the popularly elected Irish lower house, Dail Eireann. The second recognized a monarch, King George V, as head of the Irish executive, with substantial prerogative powers derived not from the Irish people but from British common law. The constitution was a compromise between Britain and Irish republicans to end the Irish War of Independence. Though not every compromise in politics makes complete sense, for Britain this one represented more than a short-range expedient. Its contradictions represented the dying gasp in a long, often anguished, and ultimately futile attempt by Britain to devise a formula which would simultaneously permit the Irish a measure of self-government and protect vital British interests in Ireland.

This essay will review the attempts to construct a satisfactory Anglo-Irish relationship in the years between 1782 and 1949. It will concentrate on four models of government proposed for Ireland: (a) the independent Irish Parliament of the period from 1782 to 1800, (b) O'Connell's proposals to repeal the union with Britain in the 1830s and 1840s, (c) the devolution proposed in the home rule bills of 1886, 1893, 1912, and the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, and (d) the independence provided in the Irish Free State constitution of 1922 and its successor, the Irish constitution of 1937. It will also place these models in the context of the constitutional evolution of the British Empire. In the Canadian, New Zealand, Australian, and South African colonies, colonial self-government and British imperial interests were reconciled, beginning in Nova Scotia in 1848, by using a kind of constitutional double-think involving the Crown and the colonial Governor. But the problem of the troubled Anglo-Irish relationship could not be resolved so easily.
The Reception of Peter Kropotkin in Britain, 1886–1917
Authors: Shpayer-Makov Haia
Published: November 2007

The period between the early 1880s and the First World War marked the heyday of the British anarchist movement. Anarchism was then a popular topic of discussion. Various newspapers and periodicals expressed interest in the whereabouts and activities of anarchist supporters. Dictionaries and encyclopedias provided detailed information about the anarchist movement. Novels and short stories focused on anarchist figures, while the subject of anarchism arose in parliamentary debates and public speeches.

This extensive interest was not, however, beneficial to the movement. Discussions of anarchism usually took place in a hostile context and references to it were abusive. The movement was described as “a malignant fungoid growth … on the body politic,” and its members as “the very dregs of the population, the riff-raff of rascaldom, professional thieves [and] bullies.” Their humanist motivation was either ignored or denied. Violence appeared to be the characteristic mark of both the theory and practice of anarchism. The anarchist golden age “is to be ushered in … by bomb explosions and dynamic outrages … by inflammatory harangues and attempts at ‘expropriation,’ “ claimed the author of the entry “Anarchists and Anarchy” in the 1894 edition of Hazell's Annual. Anarchism was repeatedly defined as “another name for organised crime,” and its promoters were portrayed as “a pack of bloodthirsty and ferocious criminals who prey upon their fellows for their own gain.” Other references lumped all anarchists together as terrorists and denied that they had any program “but murder.” The style varied from rational analysis to emotional outbursts, but the message was the same: anarchism was society's worst enemy and anarchists the “most noxious beasts that have ever threatened civilised society.”
Was Laing Right?
Authors: Porter Bernard
Published: November 2007

I found Professors Wohl's and Schmiechen's replies informative and stimulating. Unfortunately I do not think they would upset the dreadful Laing. Before I go on to explain why, however, I should correct two misunderstandings.

Firstly: I offered “Laing's theorem” as a hypothesis, not necessarily as my view. Nowhere in my original article did I indicate my “acceptance” of it (Wohl). It is simply an idea to be tested, as a possible explanation for what I do regard as high Victorian Britain's artistic poverty, of which more in a moment. Secondly: I do not regard myself as a “basher” of Victorianism, of the kind that used to be common a few years ago. That is Professor Schmiechen's charge. As I understand and indeed remember it, the old bashers deplored Victorian taste. I on the contrary have a consuming passion for it. In particular, I have a high regard for Victorian architecture, which is one of the two areas I specifically exempted (though Professor Wohl has missed this) from my strictures against the quality of the high Victorians' cultural achievement. For what it is worth — and it is not worth much, being only my own personal opinion, but I feel I need to establish my credentials here — I would place All Saint's, Margaret Street, London, by Butterfield, high on my list of the most inspiring buildings anywhere in the world, and St. Mary's Church, Studley Royal, Yorkshire, by Burges, among the half-dozen most beautiful. There is dedication for you. This may lower one or two philo-Victorians' hackles. I hope so.
Exercise of the King's Will in Inheritance of Baronies: The Example of King John and William Briwerre
Authors: Turner Ralph V.
Published: November 2007

By the late twelfth century, the principle that hereditary succession guaranteed title had triumphed in English feudal land law, and this threatened lords' rights to choose their tenants freely. Henry II's assizes were providing mesne tenants with security of tenure. They separated title to a tenement from lordly acceptance of the tenant when the the tenant was a direct descendant of the previous landholder. An undoubted male heir could take possession at once, not waiting for his lord to put him into possession, denying the lord his right to take the land into his hand and hold it until relief was paid.

The new actions available to mesne tenants did not apply to direct tenants of the Crown, however. The Angevin monarchs resisted following rules that their courts were enforcing against other feudal lords in their treatment of their own tenants-in-chief. The king held to the old view that an heir does not succeed to his ancestor's property automatically, but only has a customary claim to be accepted as tenant. As Glanvill noted, the king claimed primer seizin, his right to take possession of a barony and to place the heir in possession only once the heir had done homage to him and made arrangements to pay relief.
The Tractarian Moment: The Incidental Origins of the Oxford Movement
Authors: Altholz Josef L.
Published: November 2007

Just what were John Henry Newman, Hurrell Froude, and John Keble up to in those hectic months of the summer and autumn of 1833 when the Oxford Movement began? It might seem unnecessary to ask such a question. The standard account portrays the three friends, agreed on common principles, working with substantial continuity (with the addition of E. B. Pusey and the loss of Froude) from 1833 at least to 1841. But the conventional literature has lost sight of the confusion and indecision of the initial moment of 1833.

The basis of the standard account, and the reason why it should be distrusted, is that it is based on Newman's own account in the Apologia pro vita sua, the work of a man obsessed by his own major continuities and discontinuities, at once truthful and misleading.
Early Modern British History, Here and There, Now and Again
Authors: Tittler Robert
Published: November 2007

Concern over the present state of British history in North American colleges and universities, and more specifically British history of the “Tudor and Stuart” or “Early Modern” era, becomes steadily more intense. Conference panels are devoted to it, on-line conversations frequently indulge in it, and its hard to find an extended conversation amongst colleagues which doesn’t eventually take it up. Much of this may be prompted by the near disappearance of entry-level employment in the field, but this is of course the symptom of far deeper realities. When asked to contribute to a recent colloquium on the state of Early Modern British history in general, I chose to present a North American perspective on the subject. I hoped to affirm that there is such a perspective, and to distinguish it from what I saw as a British perspective. Though the world of ideas may indeed be universal, the worlds of teaching, studying, and academic employment are not. They are peculiar to specific national traditions, educational systems, and cultures.
A Fictional-True Self: Margery Kempe and the Social Reality of the Merchant Elite of King’s Lynn
Authors: Myers Michael D.
Published: November 2007

The social reality of the merchant community of King’s Lynn played an integral role in the formation of Margery Kempe’s self-image throughout her life. In her young-formative years, Lynn’s merchant elite imparted personal, commercial, ethical, and religious values. As the daughter of John Brunham, one of the most influential members of Lynn’s elite, the merchant community also provided Margery with status, security, comfort, and self-worth. Even in her later years as Margery formulated her holy self-image as she questioned, and eventually rejected, the role imposed on her by Lynn’s merchant culture as the daughter of Brunham and wife of John Kempe, she continued to identify herself through that culture. When asked by the mayor of Leicester in 1416 or 1417 to identify herself, Margery confidently replied, “Sir, I am of Lynn of Norfolk, a good man’s daughter of the same Lynn, who had been mayor five time of that worshipful borough and alderman also many years, and I have a good man, also a burgess of the said town, Lynn, as my husband.”
Gender, Medicine, and Consumer Culture in Victorian England: Creating the Kleptomaniac
Authors: Whitlock Tammy
Published: November 2007

In his Crime and Society in England 1750-1900 Clive Emsley notes that “for England the subject of the middle-class woman ‘kleptomaniac,’ as opposed to the working-class woman ‘thief,’ awaits an historian,” and casts doubt on the significance of the respectable shoplifter in England. However, not only is there ample evidence that middle-class shoplifting was a rising concern in Victorian England, it is a key example of the way in which gender ideology and medical science were constructed to solve a commercial and legal problem. Early in the nineteenth century, a respectable woman accused of shoplifting only had the option of denying her crime and blaming the shopkeeper; however, as the number of middle-class women committing retail crimes such as shoplifting and fraud increased, the issue of representation in the nineteenth century became more complicated. Woman’s role as aggressive consumer and her role in retail crime clashed with her home-centered image. In trials, canting ballads, and scathing articles, critics presented an image of the retail female criminal as greedy, fraudulent, and middle-class. Women fought against this image by denying their crimes or by participating in the creation of the developing representation of criminal women as ill rather than greedy.
King John, the Braoses, and the Celtic Fringe, 1207–1216
Authors: Holden Brock W.
Published: November 2007

In 1210, King John led to Ireland an army that consisted of the feudal levy of England, mercenary knights from Flanders, and a large force of Serjeants and crossbowmen, supported in the course of the campaign by some seven hundred ships. Money paid out for the ships totalled over £3,800, while wages for the crossbowmen and Serjeants topped £2,380. The 1210 Irish expedition was an impressive operation and showed Angevin government at its most effective. Modern historians, needless to say, have been impressed by the organisation and scale of the undertaking. What makes John’s Irish campaign not only impressive but terrifying was that, in one sense, it was all done to hunt down one man and his family.
Seditious Sectaries or “Sober and Useful Inhabitants”? Changing Conceptions of the Quakers in Early Modern Britain
Authors: Greaves Richard L.
Published: November 2007

On 1 June 1683, ten proprietors of East Jersey gathered in London for one of their periodic meetings to discuss colonial business. Of the ten, nine were Quakers, including Robert Barclay, Gawen Lawrie, and Edward Byllynge. The tenth, who served as the group’s treasurer, was the London attorney Robert West.’ Unknown to the Friends with whom he met was West’s involvement in the Rye House plotting, the first details of which Sir Leoline Jenkins, secretary of state, learned about eleven days later. On the 19th, the government began its crackdown on the conspirators, in part by issuing an order to search West’s chamber in the Temple. Three days later, West, now in custody, began providing the authorities a detailed account of the conspiracy to murder the king and James duke of York. Among those he implicated were other non-Quaker proprietors of East Jersey, including the barrister Nathaniel Wade and the attorney John Ayloffe, both of whom were involved in the assassination plot. As the authorities pursued the investigation, they learned of plans for a general uprising, at the heart of which were James duke of Monmouth and Lord William Russell.
Virtue and Necessity: The Bonds of Marriage and the Political Economy of J. S. Mill and F. W. Newman
Authors: Lipkes Jeff
Published: November 2007

For his first review of someone else’s economic treatise following the publication of his ownPrinciples of Political Economyin 1848, John Stuart Mill chose to examine Francis Newman’sLectures on Political Economy(1851). One might expect that Mill’s review would be sympathetic. Both Mill and Newman were zealous reformers, much berated for pursuing endless “crotchets.” They were both great advocates of the two campaigns that, for Mill, eventually emerged as pre-eminent: land reform and the emancipation of women. It would be reasonable to assume that the political economy of each helped determine the scope and focus of his respective involvement in social reform, and there would be much commonality. Newman, moreover, had only the year before outraged orthodox opinion by his highly critical analysis of the New Testament inPhases of Faith. While Mill downplayed his own secularism, he would likely have felt more than a spark of kinship with someone who had managed to scandalize even liberal Unitarians.
Anti-Alienism and the Primrose League: The Externalization of the Postwar Crisis in Great Britain 1918-32
Authors: Hendley Matthew
Published: November 2007

Anti-alienism has frequently been the dark underside of organized patriotic movements in twentieth-century Britain. Love of nation has all too frequently been accompanied by an abstract fear of foreigners or a concrete dislike of alien immigrants residing in Britain. Numerous patriotic leagues have used xenophobia and the supposed threat posed by aliens to define themselves and their Conservative creed. Aliens symbolized “the other,” which held values antithetical to members of the patriotic leagues. These currents have usually become even more pronounced in times of tension and crisis. From the end of the First World War through the 1920s, Britain suffered an enormous economic, social, and political crisis. British unemployment never fell below one million as traditional industries such as coal, iron and steel, shipbuilding, and textiles declined. Electoral reform in 1918 and 1928 quadrupled the size of the electorate, and the British party system fractured with the Liberals divided and Labour becoming the alternative party of government. Industrial unrest was rampant, culminating in the General Strike of 1926. The example of the Russian Revolution inspired many on the Left and appalled their opponents on the Right, while many British Conservatives felt that fundamental aspects of the existing system of capitalism and parliamentary democracy were under challenge.
Popular Constitutionalism and the London Corresponding Society
Authors: Weinstein Benjamin
Published: November 2007

In early November 1790, Edmund Burke noted the existence in England of “several petty cabals, who attempt to hide their total want of consequence in bustle and noise, and puffing, and mutual quotation of each other.” Burke's observation both informed and amused conservative opinion, but its condescension masked the seriousness of the situation that it described. Throughout Britain men were assembling into societies organized in celebration of French liberty and motivated by the prospect of parliamentary reform at home. While it was true that the leading members of these clubs sometimes indulged in “puffing” and “mutual quotation,” their commitment to reform was nevertheless deeply held. Joseph Priestley, for one, sacrificed his home, his laboratory, and nearly his life in defense of the cause; Maurice Margarot, Joseph Gerrald, and Thomas Muir sacrificed their freedom; sadly, Thomas Hardy sacrificed his wife and unborn child. For their equally obstinate devotion to reform, the Revolution Society, which took its name in commemoration of the Glorious Revolution rather than in envy of the French uprising, and the Society for Constitutional Information, a longtime reform leader reinvigorated after the fall of theancien régime, became the objects of Burke's ridicule. But in his conviction that “contemptuous neglect” was the best method by which to defeat the “vanity, petulance, and spirit of intrigue” displayed by these societies, Burke exposed an embarrassing improvidence. For if, as he claimed, these associations were “inconsequential” in their own conduct, their agitation would eventually prompt the emergence of a new generation of populous and, therefore, menacing societies. By spring 1794, neither Burke nor Pitt would be able to ignore the reformers any longer. What were once “petty” had become “the mother of all mischief.”
Estate Management and Inflation: The Honor of Gloucester, 1183–1263
Authors: Latimer Paul
Published: November 2007

Long ago, in an ambitious and valuable study, Sidney Painter sought to trace the progress of incomes from the estates of lay baronies between 1086 and 1350. While Painter suggested that some of the nominal growth in baronial incomes he found represented a real increase, especially before 1250, he was astute enough to realise that at least most of the nominal growth had probably arisen from price increases. Since Painter wrote, opinions about the success or otherwise of estate management in outpacing or at least matching rises in prices during the period of the “long thirteenth century” have differed considerably, from the decidedly optimistic to the somewhat pessimistic.

This is certainly an important question. If the fortunes of landlords cannot tell us directly about the fortunes of peasants, they can, in conjunction with a view of the progress of the economy as a whole, throw some light on the relationship between the two groups. Dealing largely with the aggregates of the incomes of entire honours, as Painter did, is a pragmatic and useful approach. However, it does have the disadvantage of conflating two questions: the success or failure of a family or institution in preserving or increasing its estates, and their success or otherwise in preserving or increasing the real profits of individual holdings.
“An Echo of the Multitude”: The Intersection of Governmental and Private Poverty Initiatives in Early Modern Exeter
Authors: Evans Connie S.
Published: November 2007

On June 15, 1624, Dr. Robert Vilvane informed the mayor of Exeter by letter of his displeasure with the haphazard application of poor rates in the city. Vilvane, who owned property within the city and in the surrounding countryside, was protesting the high rates imposed on his modest holdings in the city, since he was already subject to what he felt were excessive assessments on his country properties. Vilvane pointed out that he had taken it upon himself to support the purchase of armor and powder for martial officers, along with voluntary contributions to the poor, to churches, and to “sundry other taxes.” Despite a debt to the city in the amount of £500 (on which he paid interest), he did “freely give 12d weekly to two poor families here, which else would fall into penury.” Having recounted all this, he considered that “there is little cause to hoist me so high to all payments, who (besides my house) have little here [in the city].” At the crux of his argument, he asserted, was “that a Rate to the Poor is no competent Rule…both because it is uncertain…and also unequal, because some are set up too high, and others too low, by fear or favour.” Vilvane had contributed to a certain collection for the poor in a particular part of the city and noted that “many murmur at this day” about the collection, since it appeared that the overseers “did not disburse above half the Contribution.” As an unwilling party to this scheme, the doctor was upset, as he felt others were: “[I] do profess myself in this but an Echo of the Multitude, which are much aggrieved.”
Public Scandal, Political Controversy, and Familial Conflict in the Stuart Courts in Exile: The Struggle to Convert the Duke of Gloucester in 1654
Authors: Greenspan Nicole
Published: November 2007

In late 1654, the fate of the Stuart restoration to the British and Irish thrones appeared to rest upon the professed religion of the fourteen-year old Henry, Duke of Gloucester, son of Charles I and Henrietta Maria and brother of Charles II. At Henrietta Maria's instigation, and with the aid of the court of France, serious efforts were undertaken to convert the Protestant duke to the Catholic faith. This attempt, which ultimately failed, preoccupied the English exiled courts in Paris and Cologne for its duration between October and December 1654 and caused scandal and division in royalist circles. It also generated international publicity: as one observer concluded, “this is one of the greatest actions now in foot in Christendome: wherein all Protestants of all countryes will thinke themselves concerned.”

To date the “Gloucester affair” has received little sustained scholarly attention or critical scrutiny, a neglect likely attributable to the tendency among historians to study successes rather than failures. Perhaps for this reason the Stuart courts and royalists in exile have not generated much systematic treatment in the last half-century. In this case, prince Henry remained Protestant, and it would be more than five years before Charles II reclaimed his thrones. The attempted conversion of the duke of Gloucester, however, affords a valuable opportunity to investigate the formation of political and religious policies, along with the conduct of diplomacy, in the exiled courts and within the royalist communities. Charles II essentially was a king in name only: he had scant economic resources, held his court at the pleasure of the rulers in whose territories he resided, and, after September 1651, no longer had his own army. The struggles to recover the crowns of England, Scotland, and Ireland for the House of Stuart during the 1650s required extensive negotiations for financial and military support from both Catholic and Protestant powers. Charles was forced to balance the demands of Catholic rulers for assurances that Catholics in the three kingdoms would be treated favorably, while simultaneously maintaining and strengthening the support of British and continental Protestants for his restoration.
Piscatorial Politics Revisited: The Language of Economic Debate and the Evolution of Fishing Policy in Elizabethan England
Authors: Sgroi R. C. L.
Published: November 2007

The historiography of Tudor economic legislation has been preoccupied with two questions: firstly whether any consistent economic planning, or simply expedient reactions to various problems, can be discerned in Elizabethan policy; and secondly whether and to what extent policy was imposed “from above” by William Cecil and the privy council, or influenced “from below” by local and factional lobbying. Since the 1980s the research of Geoffrey Elton and his successors has extended our understanding of Tudor parliaments; yet the standard accounts of Elizabethan policy-making have on the whole paid insufficient attention to contemporaries’ perceptions and interpretations of economic change, upon which their suggested solutions and arguments for reform were based. As several studies of particular policies have shown, such as Norman Jones’ analysis of usury statutes, and Paul Fideler’s work on poor relief, the evolution of economic policy in sixteenth-century England can fruitfully be approached by cutting through the rhetoric of preambles and policy statements, and by focusing on the strategies of persuasion underlying debates in Parliament and beyond.