This volume presents a comprehensive study of the urban topography of Anglo-Jewry in the period before the mass immigration of 1881. The book brings together the evidence for the physical presence of at least 80% of the Jewish community. London and thirty-five provincial cities and towns are discussed.
Covering more than 300 sites, this work highlights major Jewish landmarks in England, ranging from Britain's oldest synagogue, Bevis Marks Synagogue in London, through the Georgian gems of the West Country to the splendid High Victorian 'cathedral synagogues' of Birmingham, Brighton and Liverpool.
In a compelling example of the cultural history of South Africa, Robert Ross offers a subtle and wide-ranging study of status and respectability in the colonial Cape between 1750 and 1850. His 1999 book describes the symbolism of dress, emblems, architecture, food, language, and polite conventions, paying particular attention to domestic relationships, gender, education and religion, and analyses the values and the modes of thinking current in different strata of the society. He argues that these cultural factors were related to high political developments in the Cape, and offers a rich account of the changes in social identity that accompanied the transition from Dutch to British overrule, and of the development of white racism and of ideologies of resistance to white domination. The result is a uniquely nuanced account of a colonial society.
An account of the central importance of money in the ordinary business of the life of different people throughout the ages from ancient times to the present day. It includes the Barings crisis and the report by the Bank of England on Barings Bank; information on the state of Japanese banking; and, the changes in the financial scene in the US.
Britain's tiny Jewish community (about 263,000 people) is the oldest non-Christian minority in the country. In 1656 Jews returned to England after an absence of nearly 400 years and the Jewish community has enjoyed a history of continuous settlement in England since 1656, a record unmatched anywhere else in Europe. Jewish Heritage in Britain and Ireland celebrates in full colour the undiscovered heritage of Anglo-Jewry. First published in 2006, it remains the only comprehensive guide to historic synagogues and sites in the British Isles, based on an authoritative survey carried out with the support of English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The guide is simple to use, covering more than 300 sites, organised on a region-by-region basis. Each section highlights major Jewish landmarks, ranging from Britain's oldest synagogue, Bevis Marks Synagogue in the City of London, through the Georgian gems of the West Country to the splendid High Victorian "cathedral synagogues" of Birmingham, Brighton, Liverpool and Glasgow. Relics of Anglo-Jewry's medieval past are explored in York, Lincoln and Norwich, and venerable burial grounds with Hebrew inscriptions are found in the unlikeliest of places. Curious oddities are not to be missed, including a 19th-century private penthouse synagogue in Brighton and an Egyptian-style Mikveh [ritual bath] in Canterbury. The new edition has been completely revised and features many new images including, for the first time, of sites in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. The easy-to-follow heritage trails around former Jewish quarters in the major cities have been updated and full postcodes are now given for SatNav users.
Ever since antiquity, but increasingly since the global transformation of the world order in the early modern period, communication between members of different cultural groups depended on translators, diplomats, traders, and other specialists with a knowledge of both cultures. Successful communication and traffic relied on the mediating agency of persons who had been exposed, often in their childhood or through captivities, to the customs and languages of both cultures involved in the contact. Other border crossers and go-betweens acted as missionaries, traders, political refugees, beachcombers, pirates, anthropologists, actors in zoos, runaway slaves, and itinerant doctors. Because of their frequently precarious lives, the written traces left by these figures are often thin. While some of their lives have to be carefully reconstructed through critical readings of the documents left by others (frequently by their enemies), others have left autobiographical texts which allow for a richer assessment of their function as cultural border crossers and mediators. With examples covering from various historical periods between the early modern period and the present, as well as geographical areas such as the Mediterranean, Africa, the Americas, Hawaii, New Zealand and northern Europe, scholars from various disciplines and methodological backgrounds - reaching from history to religious studies and from literary studies to ethnology - fathom the intricacies of in-betweeness and reflect on the impact which "agents of transculturation" have in situations of cultural, social and political encounters.
