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This article re-examines the place of the Middle Ages in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century English culture. In doing so, it presents an argument about the interrelationship of landscape, history and English national identity. Emphasising the importance of the medieval past to mainstream constructions of Englishness, the article shows how this importance largely derived from the felt presence of the Middle Ages in the physical environment, in the landscape of England. Their history congealed in the fields, forests, hills, towns and villages of the present day, the Middle Ages were readily accessible through imaginative agency and possessed of vital contemporary meaning. Embodied experience of landscape offered Victorians and Edwardians compelling evidence of the long continuities of English national history, from Anglo-Saxon times onwards. In an increasingly democratic context, the medieval presence in the landscape was evidence of the continuity not only of the institutions of the realm, but of the English people themselves. Until at least the First World War, and perhaps beyond, the tangible heritage of the Middle Ages in the English landscape served as an important source of reassurance of the nation's endurance and progress, amid the transformations of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains why Æthelflaed, ruler of Mercia, mattered to writers of history in twelfth-century England. It argues that these writers evaluated and compared rulers based not on sex or bloodline, but on the quality of a ruler's achievements relative to the set and scale of challenges the ruler faced. They thought Æthelflaed remarkable because her triumphs for Mercia distinguished her from other rulers. The article shows that a new understanding of attitudes in twelfth-century England towards rulers, past and present, is required. It accounts for the absence of gendered comments about rulers, as well as the presence of non-binary concepts of gender, in medieval writing. It also challenges the enduring idea that Latin writers imposed a shared, Wessex-dominated national vision on the English past. They asserted Mercia's independence under Æthelflaed's sole rule, which shows that English regional interests persisted in the historical imagination long after the Norman Conquest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there was no complete census in England until 1801, there had been counts of people for various purposes in towns and villages since the sixteenth century, and by the end of the seventeenth century political arithmeticians were trying to calculate the total population and its demographic characteristics from a range of documents, old and new. There had even been projects to collect new data from parish registers which in some respects anticipated the civil registers of vital events finally established in 1837. The aim of this paper is to look again at the invention in the sixteenth century of the sources later used for demographic investigation, especially parish registers and bills of mortality; to demonstrate that their value for such purposes was appreciated by contemporaries earlier than has often been assumed; and to show why, when their utility declined in the eighteenth century, it proved impossible to reform them. Pressure from political arithmeticians and a growing sector of the medical profession to redesign the established machinery of registration had no effect because it had become a monopoly in the hands of an ecclesiastical establishment determined to defend it. In the 1530s England acquired a precocious system of national registration, potentially adaptable to multiple uses, but it scarcely changed at all for three hundred years because there was no agreement on how to adapt or replace it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians of both the medieval and early modern eras have characterised the governing structures of rural communities as being dominated by local elites. However, interpretations are hampered by a lack of clear criteria against which to evaluate whether a village-governance regime was 'open,' and characterised by wide participation, or 'closed', and characterised by the narrow restriction of office to an elite group, making it difficult to draw comparisons across time and space. This article uses a set of quantitative methodologies to solve this problem. It examines presentment juries in the manorial court, a governing institution which straddles the late medieval and early modern period, in three case-study communities for the period from 1310 to 1600. By applying four measures of participation, the article reveals that post-Black Death juries were characterised by a nuanced system of restriction. They were open in the sense that a large proportion of the male population, drawn from a wide range of families, acted as jurors and there was a continuous turnover in jury panels. However, they were also closed in that a small group of prominent individuals and families served a disproportionately frequent number of times. The results also question an established narrative of increasing monopolisation of village governance by a new 'middling sort' over the sixteenth century. Instead, change over time and space reveals a variable set of trends, with no universal linear pattern. The inflexibility of manorial institutions, combined with local demographic regimes and trends in landholding, led to significant differences in political participation between communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John McTague, Things That Didn't Happen: Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678-1743 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2019). Things That Didn't Happen: Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678-1743 by John McTague (review) In the I History i , Defoe recounts the failed 1708 Jacobite invasion of Scotland, an episode which is the subject of one of McTague's best chapters. [Extracted from the article]

Britain's efforts to contain Irish rebellion in its various incarnations turned Ireland into a laboratory of experimental counterinsurgency. The display of the Imperial State Crown adorning the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II was a potent reminder that Britain still inhabits a past and present linked by symbols of empire. Elkins brings harrowing insights into the interconnecting and escalating violence flows circulating through a series of imperial trouble spots and the policing tactics used by the personnel who moved from one imperial outpost to another. [Extracted from the article]

"Refugees in Twentieth-Century Britain: A History" by Becky Taylor is a comprehensive study that explores the presence of refugees in modern Britain and its implications for the state and society. The book focuses on four key episodes in British history: refugees from Nazi Germany, Hungarian refugees, Ugandan Asians, and Vietnamese refugees. Taylor examines the social, economic, cultural, and political changes that occurred during these periods and delves into the policies, attitudes, and experiences of both the refugees and the British government. The book sheds light on the complexities of refugee resettlement and the challenges faced by refugees in finding acceptance and support in their new home. [Extracted from the article]

I When the Air Became Important i traces the history of consciousness of disease in the textile mills as work moved from the home into the factories in England and the United States. But by the Depression mill owners moved their plants away from reform-minded Massachusetts to the unorganized South, and later to Southeast Asia where even fewer safeguards are in place. But, as workers struck over the hot, humid, dusty factories with tired workers working ten-, twelve-, and sometimes fourteen-hour days the workplace was as well. [Extracted from the article]

By comparing the accounts of the martyrdom of the English proto-saint Alban written by Bede (c. 673-735) and John Foxe (1516/7-1587), this essay aims to analyse how the sixteenth-century author reworked the medieval genre of the passio to create a new history of the English Church that incorporated the martyrs of the Reformation movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shigeru Akita's research into global history is solidly based on his study of British imperial history. Starting his career as an imperial historian by probing the role of the Indian army in Britain's empire, he incorporated such concepts as gentlemanly capitalism, intra-Asian trade, and structural power into his historical analysis of British rule in Asia, an analysis that provided the framework for his picture of global history. Recently he has been studying the process of industrialization in Asian countries within the historical context of the Cold War and decolonization, focusing on the role of development aid. His organizational talent has been amply displayed by his presidency of the Asian Association of World Historians, by his instrumental role in organizing the early activities of the Study Group of British Imperial and Commonwealth History, and by his successful efforts to make Osaka University a leading research center of global history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1979 to 1991, Modern China , a landmark journal of Chinese studies, published a large number of articles in the field of peasant studies. These articles are of two types: studies of peasants in premodern China, which focus on the rural economy, politics, and ideology; and studies on the history of "peasant studies" itself, which focus on the problems, paradigms and directions of the field. Taken together, all these articles reveal the influence of three major approaches to history: the longue durée perspective of the French Annales school, the "bottom-up" approach to lived experience of the British new social history movement, and the time, space, and demography frame of reference of G. William Skinner. 摘要: 20世纪中后期西方新兴的农民学学科与区域研究具有内在的关联。在中美学术交流正常化时期，《近代中国》(1979–1991年) 作为中国学研究的标志性刊物，集中刊发了大量农民学领域的学术成果。这些成果可分为两类: 其一是农民问题研究，从乡村经济、政治与思想等方面探讨中国前现代社会时期农民的具体问题；其二是农民学学术史研究，讨论农民学研究本身面临的问题、范式与方向。《近代中国》的农民学研究延续了法国年鉴学派的"长时段"视域和社会史学派"自下而上"的材料意识，以及"施坚雅模式"区域细分的方法，这些学术成果展现了西方农民学发展历程以及美国的中国史研究思路与方法。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B Susannah Ottaway b (sottaway@carleton.edu) is Laird Bell Professor of History at Carleton College and the author of I The Decline of Life: Old Age in Eighteenth-Century England i (2004), as well as recent articles on English workhouses in I The Historical Journal i and the I Journal of Social History i . She is the author of I The Victorian Actress in the Novel and on the Stage i (2019) and of a book on reinterpretations of I Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde i (2005). She is the author of I Freud and the Institution of Psychoanalytic Knowledge i (1999), I The Pleasures of Memory: Learning to Read with Charles Dickens i (2011), and coeditor of I From Political Economy to Economics through Nineteenth-Century Literature: Reclaiming the Social i (2019). [Extracted from the article]

British working‐class adolescent girls wrote about their imagined futures in thousands of essays throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Producing narratives that were intended for the eyes of teachers and researchers, these writers' attempts to reflect accepted narratives about growing up offer us a window into how wider societal ideas about adulthood were reinvented in post‐war Britain. For these teenage girls, markers of adulthood remained traditional: marriage and motherhood were framed as the only route to becoming an adult woman. However, the category of adulthood itself was now conceptualised as the culmination of a series of discontinuous psychological stages of development, meaning that girls who did not achieve these goals could now be pathologised as psychologically and even biologically immature. This was especially problematic for young lesbians, who recognised that their sexual orientation both prevented them from straightforwardly conforming to heteronormative ideas of marriage and motherhood and was also identified as a 'phase' that was linked solely to adolescence. Nevertheless, these new ideas of adulthood shaped the choices of all adolescent girls, as they strove to prove that they were mature enough to no longer be defined as innately irresponsible teenagers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My name is Paul Christian. I am a Black British man with learning disabilities. The lives and experiences of Black people with learning disabilities are under ‐ represented in the UK history of learning disability. This article explains my involvement in activism to change this and shares the learning from these projects. It discusses the process of co‐writing and why research is needed to record and share the experiences of Black people admitted to the former institutions and the importance of accessible information about Black history, race and racism. Accessible summary: My name is Paul Christian. I am a Black British man with learning disabilities.We do not know much about the lives of Black British people with learning disabilities in the past. This article explains work I have begun to change this.It describes three pieces of activism in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. It shares learning from these projects and ideas for next steps. It tells the story of how I met Sue my co‐author and explains how we wrote this article together.This study is important because it shows more research is needed to understand the experiences of Black people admitted to long stay institutions. It demonstrates how people with learning disabilities are coming together to learn and talk about Black British history, discrimination and race, and to take action to stop racism. It encourages people interested in co‐writing to try it out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a detailed description and analysis of the map of Britain in British Library, MS Harley 1808, in its manuscript context and in comparison with the Gough map of Britain. It is argued that the map in MS Harley 1808, which can be dated to between 1422 and c.1450, was almost certainly copied in York. Detailed consideration of it in its manuscript context shows that it could be read as a support to the narrative of British history which traced the lineage of English kings back to the legendary founder of the kingdom, Brutus. Concluding remarks consider the implications of that reading for the Gough map. An appendix lists toponyms on the map of Britain in MS Harley 1808 and compares them with their equivalents on the Gough map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to make two contributions to the understanding of social insurance, a central policy tool of the modern welfare state. Focusing on Britain, it locates an important strand of theoretical support for early social insurance programs in antecedent developments in mathematical probability and statistics. While by no means the only source of support for social insurance, it argues that these philosophical developments were among the preconditions for the emergence of welfare policies. In addition, understanding the influence of these developments on British public discourse and policy sheds light on the normative principles that have undergirded the welfare state since its inception. Specifically, it suggests that the best model, or normative reconstruction, of social insurance in this context is a value-pluralist one, which pursues efficiency and equality or solidarity, grounded in group-based perceptions of risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent outbreaks of culture war have posed questions about how to respond to them politically and analytically. In this conversation we explore the ways in which culture war strategies aim to create new articulations of politics, culture and power. They do so as part of an ongoing effort to create narratives that construct and solidify political blocs and produce popular consent. We reflect on the problems such strategies cause for Labour - and for the left more generally. These are recurrent problems, reflecting a long-running distinction between 'real' politics and the ephemeral distractions of 'identity politics' and the 'merely cultural'. We suggest that this restrictive view of what constitutes 'real' politics tends to ignore the left's roots in cooperative, associational, mutual and internationalist forms of politics, perhaps for fear of being branded as 'socialist', while marginalising or refusing a diverse array of social movements and their struggles for rights and redistribution. In contrast, we argue for the importance of recognising and contesting the field of culture as a site of politics and political mobilisations, highlighting the value of building a view of how culture, politics and power are entangled. As Stuart Hall argued, a progressive politics involves crafting an identity in which we can recognise ourselves as a collective political force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning in January 2021, Twentieth Century British History asked a group of scholars to reflect on what decolonization means to the field of British history. Twentieth Century British History co-editor Erik Linstrum (University of Virginia) posed questions over email for three rounds of discussion which concluded in December 2021. Stuart Ward (University of Copenhagen), Vanessa Ogle (University of California, Berkeley), and Saima Nasar (University of Bristol) took part. Priyamvada Gopal (Cambridge University) offered a final comment from the perspective of postcolonial studies. Contributions have been lightly edited but the relatively conversational style and flow of ideas in the original exchange have been preserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trevor Wild's I Village England: A Social History of the Countryside i traces the evolution of rural England from the Dark Ages through the 20th century. Leaning primarily upon his background as a geographer, Wild engages these writers in his narrative in order to situate village England within the nation's larger cultural identity, even as he grapples with his own sense of nostalgia regarding rural English life. Beginning with a brief discussion on the emergence of village life prior to the 18th century, Wild turns his attention toward the "first transformation" (22) of village England with the parliamentary enclosures of the Georgian age. [Extracted from the article]

The Auchinleck Manuscript was produced in the 1330s in London and is best known to scholars of Middle English literature on account of the romances that it transmits. Several of these texts treat the establishment and defense of England and it has been argued that their interest in English history is matched by the language in which almost all of the manuscript's texts are written: English. This article reconsiders the Englishness of the Auchinleck Manuscript via a quantitative analysis of its lexis. We show that a comparatively large proportion of the Auchinleck lexicon has connections to French and that, of these words with French connections, many do not appear to have been much used in English writing before the 1300s. Our statistics are derived via program scripts that match Auchinleck lexicon items to headword entries in the Middle English Dictionary and collect data pertaining to word etymology and earliest dates of citation from those entries. Where previous studies have emphasized the porous boundaries between English and French in 14th-century English contexts, we posit that some poets might aim to make creative capital out of the deliberate juxtaposition of the languages. The argument is supported by a series of visualizations; interactive versions of these visualizations and the data on which they are based are archived at our project website (https://solliryc.github.io/AuchinleckDataViz/). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A history of the women who contributed to research of arachnids in Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is presented. Publication trends, notable achievements, and membership of the British Arachnological Society (BAS) and its Council are all discussed. A checklist of all published work by female arachnologists in publications of the British Arachnological Society from its inception (as the Flatford Mill Spider Group) in 1958 to the year 2000 is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A history of the women who contributed to research of arachnids in Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is presented. Publication trends, notable achievements, and membership of the British Arachnological Society (BAS) and its Council are all discussed. A checklist of all published work by female arachnologists in publications of the British Arachnological Society from its inception (as the Flatford Mill Spider Group) in 1958 to the year 2000 is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1970s saw representations of sex become ever more visible in Britain. This special issue is designed to stimulate further research into how shifts in cultural politics, media and society facilitated and responded to cultural depictions of sex and sexuality. To this end, our short introduction surveys some of the literature and offers a glimpse of what might be stacked along History's top shelf. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper traces the historical development of the serial comma in the history of English until its eventual decline over the course of the twentieth century. The serial comma (also known as the Oxford comma or Harvard comma) refers to the existence of a pause immediately before the conjunctions and/or (and sometimes nor) in a series of three or more elements in a clause. Although the use of this mark of punctuation is no longer a desideratum in Present-day British English, it was a disseminated practice among seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers. In light of this, this work has been conceived with the following objectives: (a) to study the use and distribution of the serial comma in the period 1500–1999; (b) to evaluate its distribution in the two types of writing, i.e. handwriting and printing, and the level of variation across text types; and (c) to ascertain whether the number of elements in the series participates in its deployment. The source of evidence comes from The Málaga Corpus of Early English Scientific Prose (MCEESP), the corpus of Early English Medical Writing (CEEM) and A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers (ARCHER 3.2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2014 and 2019, Great Britain and Northern Ireland undertook the largest public history project ever seen there. To mark the centenary of the First World War (1914-18) thousands of public arts projects, community histories, and acts of commemoration and remembrance took place across the country. This article explores a range of public arts projects, commemorative events, and community heritage projects to see what these widespread and diverse public histories can tell us about the cultural memory of the First World War in early twenty-first century Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Janet Greenlees's book, "When the Air Became Important: A Social History of the New England and Lancashire Textile Industries," compares the occupational health records of British and American industrial cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The focus is on air and noise pollution within textile factories and the resulting ailments such as tuberculosis, byssinosis, hearing loss, and fatigue. The book highlights that remedial action is not solely determined by medical knowledge or technology availability, but also by structural factors such as the influence of the state and community perceptions of health hazards. The cases presented in the book demonstrate the disagreements among workers, employers, and medical professionals regarding the impact of factory environments on health. The book also explores the differences in responses to health problems in different localities, as well as the lag in regulatory action despite the availability of technological solutions. It emphasizes the coping mechanisms employed by workers, such as changing employers or self-medication, and highlights the role of unions and individual capitalist paternalism in bringing about changes in working conditions. The book provides a valuable perspective on the workplace as a site of disease causation and health reform, and its insights can inform labor reform efforts in developing countries. [Extracted from the article]

Steven Reid's book, "The Early Life of James VI: A Long Apprenticeship 1566–1585," offers a reassessment of James VI's political engagement in Scotland before his kingship in England. Reid challenges the traditional notion that James was dominated by noblemen until 1585, arguing that James exercised his own agency and made decisions based on a desire to maintain loyalty and personal connections. The book provides a chronological narrative of the rise and fall of dominant factions, and explores how cultural activity impacted the political narrative. Reid's research is based on fresh archival research and intervenes in key debates in British and European history. Overall, the book is a landmark study and essential reading for scholars and students interested in early modern monarchy, politics, and culture. [Extracted from the article]

Julieanne Lamond's book, "Lohrey," explores the career of Australian author Amanda Lohrey and her seven novels, as well as her collection of short stories. Lamond discusses Lohrey's diverse writing style and how it has made her difficult to market and promote. The book delves into the themes and contradictions present in Lohrey's work, such as the search for truth and the impact of gender structures. It also examines the implications of the pastoral narrative in Australian history and the effects of British Imperialism. Lamond's book offers a balanced blend of author biography and thematic exploration, providing readers with an engaging and insightful perspective on Lohrey's writing. [Extracted from the article]

This document provides brief biographical information about several contributors to the journal Northern Scotland. Annie Tindley is a Professor of British and Irish Rural History and the Head of the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Newcastle University. John M. Mackenzie is a historian specializing in British imperial history. Juliette Desportes is a PhD student at the University of Glasgow, focusing on the transformation of the Highland landscape in the eighteenth century. Finlay Mckichan is a retired Senior Lecturer in the Education School of the University of Aberdeen, with expertise in landownership and the history of the Mackenzie family. Marjory Harper is a Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen, and Jim MacPherson is a Reader in History at the Centre for History, University of the Highlands and Islands. Eric Richards, who passed away in 2018, was a respected historian known for his work on Scottish and Highland history, emigration, and imperial questions. [Extracted from the article]

The article summarizes the book "English in the German-Speaking World" by Raymond Hickey. The book discusses the history and influence of the English language in Germany and other German-speaking countries. It contains 19 contributions divided into four parts: The status of English, the transfer of English, areas and characteristics of English, and the perspective beyond Germany. The authors discuss topics such as the status of English as a lingua franca, the influence of English on the German education system, and the role of English in the European Union. The book provides a comprehensive representation of the influence and significance of the English language in the German-speaking region. [Extracted from the article]

This article interrogates examples of alternative histories in contemporary British Jewish writing which redraw and reinterpret the topography of the Holocaust. More specifically, it explores the tensions which arise in Clive Sinclair's short story 'Ashkenazia' (1980) and Dan Jacobson's novel The God-Fearer (1992) between notions of a Jewish heterotopia, the re-inscription of historical topographies, and the imaginary of the Holocaust. Set in an imaginary Jewish state, which is mapped onto the pre-existing Jewish topography of the loosely defined Ashkenaz of historical reality, both texts unfold alternative histories which, though imagined, nevertheless cannot un-think the historical occurrence of the Holocaust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia (1624) was produced at a time when the English settlements in Virginia were in a perilous position. The English colonists were still reeling from an Indigenous attack in 1622 which had left hundreds of colonists dead and a number of settlements destroyed. Smith, while ostensibly producing a history of the early English settlements, also sought to provide a remedy to the dire circumstances his fellow Englishmen and women found themselves in. This article examines Smith's argumentative strategy, arguing that it is reliant on recasting the colonial past both textually and visually. Moving beyond the current scholarship that has largely focused on narrow sections of the text, this article demonstrates the productive power of print in the early modern period, illustrating how the Generall Historie provoked new ideas about Indigenous people, their character, and how they should be approached by English colonists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]