Towns are imagined, lived and experienced, as much as they are conceived and constructed. They reflect cultural and intellectual currents, prevailing economic climates and unresolved tensions. They are physical entities, shaped by topography, time and technology, as well as social and spatial constructs. They are also always gendered and contested spaces. This volume, the last from the Gender in the European Town (GENETON) project, approaches life in the European town over time and across class and national boundaries. Through contextualized case studies, it provides scholars and students with new research—snapshots—of contemporary physical and built environments that explores how contemporary urban residents experienced and deployed gendered urban spaces over an important period of modernization.
During the nineteenth century Liverpool became the heart of an international maritime network. As the 'second city' of Empire, its merchants and shipowners operated within a transnational commercial and financial system, while its trading connections stimulated the development of new markets and their integration within an increasingly global economy. This ground-breaking volume brings together ten original contributions that reflect upon the development of the city's business community from the early-nineteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War with an emphasis on the period from 1851 to 1912. It offers the first detailed analysis of Liverpool's merchant community within a conceptual and historiographical framework which focuses on the economic, social and cultural role of business elites in the nineteenth century. It explores the extent to which business success was predicated on the maintenance of networks of trust; analyses the importance of business culture in structuring commercial operations; and discusses the role of ethics, trust and reputation within the changing framework of the business environment. Particular attention is paid to the role of women and the important contribution of the family to commercial success and the maintenance of social networks. Changes in business practice and social networks are also examined within a spatial context in order to assess the impact of the development of a distinct commercial centre and the clustering of commercial activity on interaction, reputation and trust, while particular attention is paid to the effect of suburbanization on existing associational networks, the social cohesiveness of business culture, and the cultural identity of the merchant community as a whole.
This study throws light on a little-studied but emerging field within Irish studies: Black history. It focuses on an American-born Black Shakespearean actor, Ira Aldridge, who, to follow his vocation and escape prejudice in America, travelled to England in 1824, aged only 17. Despite some racial stereotyping, his rise to prominence in the theatrical world was meteoric. Until his premature death in 1867, he played to audiences throughout Europe—from Galway in Ireland to St Petersburg in Russia—winning plaudits and accolades, and recognition as the leading Shakespearean tragedian of the day. Aldridge was not just an actor; wherever he performed, he also delivered a message about the cruelty of enslavement and the need for Black equality. This publication focuses on Aldridge’s special relationship with Ireland and its theatrical traditions over a period of three decades.
This book comprises a history of the anti-abortion campaign in England, focusing on the period 1966-1989, which saw the highest concentration of anti-abortion activity during the twentieth century. It examines the tactics deployed by campaigners in their efforts to overturn the 1967 Abortion Act. Key themes include the influence of religion on attitudes towards sexuality and pregnancy; representations of women and the female body; and the varied, and often deeply contested, attitudes towards the status of the fetus articulated by both anti-abortion and pro-choice advocates during the years 1966-1989.
This book conceives the role of the modern town as a crucial place for material and cultural circulations of luxury. It concentrates on a critical period of historical change, the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that was marked by the passage from a society of scarcity to one of expenditure and accumulation, from ranks and orders to greater social mobility, from traditional aristocratic luxury to a new bourgeois and even democratic form of luxury. This volume recognizes the notion that luxury operated as a mechanism of social separation, but also that all classes aspired to engage in consumption at some level, thus extending the idea of what constituted luxury and blurring the boundaries of class and status, often in unsettling ways. It moves beyond the moral aspects of luxury and the luxury debates to analyze how the production, distribution, purchase or display of luxury goods could participate in the creation of autonomous selves and thus challenge gender roles.
This book seeks to contribute a multi-dimensional, multi-layered and gendered approach to the illicit economy in the historiography of early modern Europe. Using original source material from several countries, this volume concentrates on a border and transnational area—approximately the Lyon-Geneva-Turin triangle—located at the heart of European trade. It focuses on three products—salt, cotton and silk—all of which fuelled the black market between the last decades of the seventeenth century and the French Revolution. This volume offers an original contribution to wider studies of smuggling, illicit markets and women’s economic roles by taking into account the economic life of remote mountain communities and industrious cities. Showing that irregular practices were a structural characteristic of early modern economies, it provides insight into the opportunities offered to women in a highly flexible economy where licit and illicit activities were intermingled in a very complex way. This research monograph is aimed at a historical audience and constitutes a useful resource for students and scholars interested in gender history, social and economic history, urban history and French studies.
Comfort, both physical and affective, is a key aspect in our conceptualization of the home as a place of emotional attachment, yet its study remains under-developed in the context of the European house. In this volume, Jon Stobart has assembled an international cast of contributors to discuss the ways in which architectural and spatial innovations coupled with the emotional assemblage of objects to create comfortable homes in early modern Europe. The book features a two-section structure focusing on the historiography of architectural and spatial innovations and material culture in the early modern home. It also includes 10 case studies which draw on specific examples, from water closets in Georgian Dublin to wallpapers in 19th-century Cambridge, to illustrate how people made use of and responded to the technological improvements and the emotional assemblage of objects which made the home comfortable. In addition, it explores the role of memory and memorialisation in the domestic space, and the extent to which home comforts could be carried about by travellers or reproduced in places far removed from the home. The Comforts of Home in Western Europe, 1700-1900 offers a fresh contribution to the study of comfort in the early modern home and will be vital reading for academics and students interested in early modern history, material culture and the history of interior architecture.
Provides a completely updated survey of the major issues in gender history from geographical, chronological, and topical perspectives This new edition examines the history of women over thousands of years, studies their interaction with men in a gendered world, and looks at the role of gender in shaping human behavior. It includes thematic essays that offer a broad foundation for key issues such as family, labor, sexuality, race, and material culture, followed by chronological and regional essays stretching from the earliest human societies to the contemporary period. The book offers readers a diverse selection of viewpoints from an authoritative team of international authors and reflects questions that have been explored in different cultural and historiographic traditions. Filled with contributions from both scholars and teachers, A Companion to Global Gender History, Second Edition makes difficult concepts understandable to all levels of students. It presents evidence for complex assertions regarding gender identity, and grapples with evolving notions of gender construction. In addition, each chapter includes suggestions for further reading in order to provide readers with the necessary tools to explore the topic further. Features newly updated and brand-new chapters filled with both thematic and chronological-geographic essays Discusses recent trends in gender history, including material culture, sexuality, transnational developments, science, and intersectionality Presents a diversity of viewpoints, with chapters by scholars from across the world A Companion to Global Gender History is an excellent book for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students involved in gender studies and history programs. It will also appeal to more advanced scholars seeking an introduction to the field.
This book is a survey of the history of work in general and of European urban artisans in particular, from the late middle ages to the era of industrialization. Unlike traditional histories of work and craftsmen, this book offers a multi-faceted understanding of artisan experience situated in the artisans' culture. It treats economic and institutional topics, but also devotes considerable attention to the changing ideologies of work, the role of government regulation in the world of work, the social history of craftspeople, the artisan in rebellion against the various authorities in his world, and the ceremonial and leisure life of artisans. Women, masters, journeymen, apprentices, and non-guild workers all receive substantial treatment. The book concludes with a chapter on the nineteenth century, examining the transformation of artisan culture, exploring how and why the early modern craftsman became the industrial wage-worker, mechanic or shopkeeper of the modern age.
