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This thesis, situated within the historiography of humanitarianism, seeks to explain how humanitarian evacuation came to be viewed as a solution to problems of civilian protection during crises, and how the US and UK, who evacuated the greatest number of civilians during the 20th century, instrumentalized evacuation to further their geostrategic goals. Four cases studies focus on major evacuations of the 20th century that illustrate how evacuation became a tool of both civilian protection and international relations. Spotlighting the nexus between military actors and non-governmental organisations, the case studies critically explore the motives of evacuators, the rationale they presented to the public, and the outcomes of the evacuation projects. While recognizing that states have mixed motives for their humanitarian operations, I claim that all evacuations essentially signify a series of political failures, and that in cases where the US and UK were aggressors and rescuers, they spun their failures into narratives of rescue and redemption. In this way, I argue, the militaristic state strategically communed itself with its victims, blurring the distinctions between aggressor and victim in service to a hegemonic rescue narrative in an attempt to limit criticism in order to defend national prestige and bolster geostrategic endeavours. In illustrating these points across the use of state-led humanitarian evacuation through four case studies, this thesis makes an original contribution to the field of humanitarian history by offering a new interpretation of humanitarian evacuation that gives insight into relationships between repressive and ideological state apparatuses within a humanitarian context. I contend that state and NGO performances of hegemonic rescue narratives strengthen state apparatuses through the reproduction of American and British foundational national myths and in turn relations of power.

This thesis offers the first examination of the Life Course in the late Byzantine period (1204-1453). The past decade of scholarship has demonstrated that representations of every stage of life - infancy, childhood, adolescence, maturity, and old age - can be found in Byzantine texts and visual culture. However, few scholars have examined representations of ageing across the Life Course, though social scientists have demonstrated that it is the transitions from one life-stage to the next that essentially define the process of growing up and growing old. By examining Byzantine authors' and artisans' portrayals of ageing across the Life Course, we may come to understand the importance of age as a component of both identity and of the structure of Byzantine society at large. This study takes as its chronological point of departure the year of the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204 and ends with the Ottoman conquest of 1453. This late period of Byzantine history, due in part to the altered nature of the source material after 1204, remains underrepresented in existing scholarship of ageing and the family. Nevertheless, in this thesis I demonstrate that the late Byzantine period offers a rich array of evidence, including biographical literature, visual portrayals of the life-stages, and burial archaeology, from which we can understand how the Byzantines constructed the Life Course during a rapidly fluctuating and dynamic period of the empire's history.

This thesis examines the multitude of factors involved in the development of contrasting experiences of worship, and particularly the nature and role of musical practices within worship, throughout the Reformation, until around 1642. Through the close study of the geographically adjacent yet highly contrasting regions of Bristol and Gloucestershire it challenges existing scholarly narratives surrounding changes in musical practices within worship throughout the Reformation by presenting a much more varied soundscape than hitherto expressed. It also nuances relationship - often polarised by modern historical and musicological scholarship - between certain musical practices and forms of religious identity, exposing the micropolitics that frequently informed such changes on the ground. Chapter One of the thesis seeks to identify many of the agents that influenced changes within practices of worship by thematically examining how financial and social factors, institutions, and people were all able to effect change. Chapters Two, Three, and Four examine how these various factors influenced musical practices within worship, focussing on the development of singing, organs, and bells within worship respectively. All four chapters draw heavily from a wide range of sources, including extant churchwardens' accounts, consistory court records, cathedral records, and records of civic institutions, to provide a detailed study into the development of experiences of worship throughout Reformation Bristol and Gloucestershire. Through the close examination of practices, this thesis will demonstrate how a whole host of agents were able to influence experiences of worship, either independently or interacting with a combination with other factors. It will also show the unique character of each church's soundscape of worship, illustrating the micropolitics involved in any change in musical practice. Whilst preferences for certain practices are certainly attributable to particular religious groups, the relationships between actual practices and identities were often more nuanced than hitherto recognised. As such, music within worship was, under the right conditions, often more flexible and durable than existing scholarship has suggested.

This thesis seeks to consolidate and examine the evidence for social and political change in the English county of Cumbria between 400 and 700. This date range covers the period between the end of direct Roman governance of what had long been the north-west frontier of the western Roman Empire and the end of the greatest period of expansion of the kingdom of Northumbria. The two key questions which currently tend to be asked in studies of the post-Roman period are, firstly, the extent to which the social and political structures of the fifth century and beyond represent continuity or change from what had gone before and, secondly, how power and identity were negotiated at a regional and supra-regional level between incursive groups and the Romano-British indigenes. This study seeks to answer those questions at a regional level through a synthesis of the archaeological, place-name and historical evidence. Contrary to established current thinking, it will be argued that a close and targeted study of the evidence calls into doubt the notion that a culturally British Cumbria was ever conquered by a culturally Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. Instead, it will be argued that Cumbria remained a politically distinct area, notwithstanding one that, from the mid-seventh century, may often have been allied to, or a client of, the Northumbrian kings. It is proposed that, notwithstanding the relative paucity of material evidence for Cumbria when compared to other parts of Britain, there is just sufficient when taken in conjunction with other evidence types to identify the cores of a relatively significant number of previously overlooked post-Roman polities across the county. These polities - or regiones, to use the terminology favoured by early medieval writers such as Bede - were resilient and formed the building blocks of the far less resilient hegemonies of the post-Roman centuries.

Despite the extensive historiography of all aspects of Great Britain's military operations in 1940, the question as to how well prepared the Army was to resist an invasion in the late summer of that year remains under-explored. To rectify this omission, this study has assessed the fighting capability of the specific front-line formations of the Home Forces that would have been tasked with repelling an invasion of Kent and Sussex in September 1940. This has been done through the lens of the modern British Army's 'Model of Fighting Power'. The Model's framework has enabled an assessment of morale, leadership, manpower, training, equipment and fighting doctrine. This has been combined with an analysis of the capability of the Royal Air Force to provide adequate tactical air support over the countryside of the south-east of England - at a time when Fighter Command was fully occupied fighting The Battle of Britain. The results show that the true fighting capability of these front-line Army formations in September 1940, be they the General Headquarters (GHQ) Reserve (positioned well back from the coastline) or the troops defending Kent and Sussex, was far lower than has previously been acknowledged. Morale within those formations was 'mixed' as the invasion crisis peaked, as was the overall quality of their senior commanders - few of whom had commanded formations in battle. Furthermore, key weapons such as anti-tank guns remained in short supply, whilst transportation continued to be a challenge (given the losses in France) and tanks that could be described as 'modern' were still relatively thin on the ground. Furthermore, despite a major training effort in the summer of 1940, the ability of these forces to conduct the (relatively new) fighting doctrine of mobile combined arms warfare was less than it needed to be. In short, the GHQ Reserve would have struggled to conduct the type of large-scale counter-attacks demanded by the Commander-in-Chief Home Forces, Lieutenant General Sir Alan Brooke. In addition, the ability of the Royal Air Force to provide the tactical air support such counter-attacks would have required is shown to have been extremely limited. In truth the Army was being asked to fight in a way it was not yet capable of doing - something that became all too apparent during the two major combined arms anti-invasion exercises that Brooke organised in 1941. Finally, down in Kent and Sussex, Brooke's edict that the linear defensive positions constructed by his predecessor, Lieutenant-General Sir Edmund Ironside, should be deprioritised, was only partially adhered to by the formations within XII Corps. Furthermore, his aim of freeing up local forces to counter-attack an invader risked being undermined by their limited mobility and by the construction of an extensive mosaic of new 'all-round' defensive positions across the two counties, partly driven by local civilian defence authorities that would, have tied down front-line troops even more. The idea that these positions could have been defended by either the Local Defence Volunteers or 'static' troops is shown to have been unrealistic at the time. Thus, the view (often stated in the historiography) that Brooke was a significant upgrade on Ironside at the helm of the Home Forces as the invasion crisis reached its peak seems misplaced, even though he went on to be an outstanding Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Crucially, the notion (implied by the Government) that, in the event of an invasion, the Army would have repelled a significant German beachhead in September 1940 is shown to have been even more optimistic than many have hitherto thought. Sadly, the defects in the British Army that had been exposed so cruelly in Norway and then in France were a long way from being resolved by the time the invasion crisis peaked.

The study addresses the production of urban heritage in South Korea by focusing on the historic cities of Jeonju and Gyeongju. Previous studies of South Korean heritage conservation have pointed out that development needs were frequently prioritised over conservation concerns. In a country characterised by rapid economic development and urbanisation this is not surprising however, the two case study cities have largely, successfully maintained their heritage resources, unlike the other cities in South Korea, based on the government-led conservation schemes. Using strong government initiatives, Gyeongju and Jeonju, through a process of heritage commodification, have gained popularity amongst domestic and international tourists, but they have also experienced negative impacts as both heritage sites and tourist attractions. This thesis examines the range of impacts and issues that infiltrate the everyday lives of local communities in the two historic centres, which has included de-population, social discontent, economic challenges and a loss in community vitality and sense of place, that plays amongst locals and tourists. To address these issues, I explore the discrepancy that exists among the key stakeholders in the case cities, particularly the national and city-based authorities, heritage professionals and the local communities. I investigate how the communities recognise their local heritage in the process of construction, reconstruction, and negotiation of 'place.' The authorised heritage and its firm narratives can be seen to marginalise communities, but I demonstrate that what remains important are the more intangible practices and traditions of non-authorised heritage. These aspects of heritage are more closely attached to peoples' everyday life and enhance the communities' connection to place. Though a substantive body of literature advocates community involvement in heritage production, my work in both of the case sites, demonstrates that there is still an evident asymmetry in power relations at work. By using grounded theory, semi-structured, in-depth interviews and observational work, I examine the dialogues of the heritage production and management processes and identify how notions of community voice and empowerment still manage to surface and negotiate these processes. The thesis synthesises implications and attempts to seek improved ways to employ community empowerment approaches to the heritage management building on the idea that heritage is a medium for progressive social and economic change.

Lacanian psychoanalysis has received increasing attention in the last few decades for its relevance to thinking about politics, mainly as a result of its key role in the work of the post-Althusserian philosophers of the Ljubljana School. This, however, has resulted in a portrayal of Lacan's position with respect to Marx that can seem obvious and uncomplicated, and that elides the complexities of the historical narrative of psychoanalysis's interaction with Marxist thought. This thesis offers a more complex historical picture of how Lacan relates to Marx. It argues that the political possibilities opened up by psychoanalysis, in particular with respect to its response to Marx, cannot be understood extraneously to this historical dimension. The thesis carries out readings of key texts in twentieth-century philosophy, science, and political theory associated with Marxist thought to construct this intellectual history. It finds that, at each moment of its development, Lacan's work responded to conceptual impasses precipitated by the legacy of this tradition. What also emerges, though, is a view of Lacan that cannot be reduced to a Marxist framework, precisely because of the pressure-points within it that he exploits. There is a history conditioning Lacan's position with respect to Marx that has been forgotten, and that haunts attempts currently being made, in the half-century after his work was completed, to come to terms with it. This thesis begins a study of the contours of this history, in order to register the political possibilities that Lacan opened up.

The body of work supporting this application comprises a book of around 100,000 words, two associated articles, and a chapter in a collection of papers published in the course of its writing. An earlier version of the book was entitled The Witches of Selwood Forest: Witchcraft and Demonism in the West of England, 1625-1700 (CSP, 2017). This was reviewed by Mark Stoyle, Professor of Early Modern History, University of Southampton, in Southern History: A Review of the History of Southern England, 40 (2018), and by Marion Gibson, Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures, University of Exeter, in The Seventeenth Century, 34:1, (2019). Certain themes in the book were elucidated and further developed in two articles published in the academic press: 'Witchcraft and evidence in a seventeenth century Somerset parish', The Local Historian: Journal of the British Association for Local History, Volume 48, Number 1, January 2018; 'Great News from the West of England: witchcraft and strange vomiting in a Somerset village', Magic, Witchcraft and Ritual (University of Pennsylvania), Volume 13, Issue 1, Spring 2018. I also discussed the subject in 'The Devil's Cloyster: putting Selwood Forest on England's seventeenthcentury witchcraft map', a chapter in Nate, R., and Wiedemann J. (eds.), Remembering Places: Perspectives from Scholarship and the Arts (Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt: Königshausen & Neumann, 2019). The advice of a dozen editors and anonymous expert referees, and scholarly developments and publications in the field of my enquiries, has culminated in the fully revised version of the original book under a new title: The Witches of Selwood: Witchcraft Belief and Accusation in Seventeenth-Century Somerset (Gloucester: The Hobnob Press, 2021). In addition to stylistic and structural revisions, the 2021 book is informed by extensive further research in key areas. This new version includes a foreword by Dr John Chandler, County Editor (2011-2016) Victoria County History (Gloucestershire) and chair of the Publishing Committee of the British Association for Local History.

This thesis explores the role distance played in shaping British masculinity and femininity in the early modern British Atlantic world. Focusing on gender as a foundation of individual identity, this research outlines the powerful effects of Atlantic crossings, maritime trade networks, and encounters with new landscapes and nations. It covers a century of colonial expansion across North America and the Caribbean, from the Restoration to the Seven Years' War. Building on an earlier study of Anglo-Virginian planter William Byrd II (1674-1744), this thesis uses a series of interconnected individuals as case studies. It explores these individuals' experiences through five key dynamics: credit, seafaring, communication and emotions, settler-Indigenous encounters, and race. This approach builds on prosopography, the 'serial microhistory' approach developed by Kristen Block, and Atlantic history more widely. Responding to historiographical questions posed by Susan Amussen, Allyson Poska, and Julie Hardwick, it draws on diverse fields of study. These include geography, maritime history, the spatial turn, studies of emotion, intersectional analysis, Indigenous scholarship, and gender studies. This thesis explores how distance and interaction created 'Atlantic masculinities' in Britain and its colonies. Furthermore, it asks if complementary or divergent 'Atlantic femininities' can be found in this period. In summary, this research shows how the 'New World' produced new identities over a century of British imperial expansion.

This thesis provides an analysis of the uses and meanings of historical memory of the Siege of Colchester of 1648 in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. The study has two main aims. The first is to contribute to historical understanding of the long-term significance of the history of the Civil Wars in British culture. The second is to deepen appreciation of how nineteenth century identity, both local and national, was constructed through active engagement with the past. Central to the argument of the thesis, is the recognition that the past needs to be viewed in pluralistic terms. Meanings of history vary according to age, gender, class and locality. They also shift over time and according to context. For this reason, the thesis takes a micro-historical approach that allows for a finely grained and multi-layered analysis of uses of the past that is sensitive to tensions between uses of the history of the siege by different individuals and groups, as well as between local and national historical narratives in the context of long-term processes of change. Taken together, the chapters demonstrate that the Civil Wars remained an influential historical reference in both nineteenth century Colchester and more broadly in British culture. They challenge historical emphasis on a growing national focus of popular understandings of the past and argue that local history remained one of the most important sites in which memory was constructed. Meaning was tied closely to the local events of the 1648 siege as well as specific spaces, and people in Colchester associated with that tragedy, long after living memory was lost. While some remained indifferent to its legacy, for many the history of the siege remained a central component in the construction of Colchester's collective identity until the second half of the twentieth century.

This thesis is a biographical study of the life of Aikaterine, the Bulgarian-born woman who arrived in Byzantium in 1018 as a prisoner-of-war, and became empress of Byzantium between 1057-1059. It utilises a structural approach influenced by methodologies from the social sciences. In this thesis, the political importance of the link Aikaterine established between the Komnenos family and the Bulgarian family of the Kometopouloi is demonstrated. Furthermore, it is shown that as the first empress to rule after the reigns of Zoe and Theodora and the end of the 'Macedonian' dynasty, Aikaterine's reign was a historically significant bridging period. In addition, Aikaterine is shown to be a politically important and visible actor during the first years of Constantine X's reign. Throughout the thesis, Aikaterine's life is explored as a paradigm for the lives of other women and men in middle Byzantine society and in other comparable medieval societies. This thesis is composed of six chapters: a prosopographical chapter, four thematic chapters, and a concluding chapter. The thematic chapters are focused upon the analytical categories of identity and power. They are organised as case studies orientated around Aikaterine's life course and targeted towards different subjects in Byzantine and medieval studies. Each chapter discusses how representations of Aikaterine were shaped and reshaped by messages communicated by different groups in Byzantium, to project messages about power. Each chapter also examines how Aikaterine herself was empowered through the shaping of the identities she carried. The findings of each chapter are located within wider scholarly discussions in different areas of Byzantine and medieval studies, with a focus upon women's studies. This thesis is intended as an exemplar which demonstrates the potential for biographical studies to bring about advancements in Byzantine and wider medieval studies. The concluding remarks offer suggestions for the way biographical studies can be further used to advance scholarly understandings of the patterns structuring the lives of people in Byzantium and other medieval societies.

Audio technology in the popular imagination had an ambiguous role in the culture and politics of the Weimar period, being both a medium of progressive modernism in the jazz-age, and, under Nazi control, an instrument of repression and conformity. The aim of this study is to understand the role of audio technology - the radio, gramophone, electronic musical instruments, sound film and their associated and interconnected ecosystems - in the musical, cultural and political ideas of the Weimar republic (1918-33) and the subsequent impact of these ideas on the transition to the Nazi State (1933-45). Studies of the culture and politics of the Weimar and Nazi period are largely delineated by genre: arts, music, literature, politics and their respective artefacts which position technology as the end result of a historic processes. In contrast, this study focuses on audio technology as a socio-political actor in the development of a broad range of cultural and political concepts of the time. I will argue that a primary driver of social change was the symbiotic relationship between technology and the social, political and economic ideas of the period - a relationship that had an often unintentional and unpredictable impact on German society. In contrast to the received image of the Weimar period where audio technology is depicted as a medium of progressive modernity, this study finds that it had a much more ambiguous disruptive influence on the era. Methodologically, this research is supported by secondary literature and primary sources: contemporary journals, literature and archival research and audio recordings. By analysing primary sources and secondary literature I demonstrate that in contrast to the received image of the Weimar period, audio technology had a much more ambiguous disruptive influence that contributed to the emergence and acceptance of totalitarianism.

Conservation decisions concerning vehicles often result in one of two outcomes: a vehicle in working, running order, or a vehicle on static display. These two routes depend upon a variety of factors, including previous decision-making and conservation ethical guidance, practicalities such as resource availability and visitor opinions. Traditionally, conservation ethics have differed from visitor views in their assessment of authenticity and identification of value aspects. By reassessing authenticity and redefining what visitors value, conservation decision suggestions can be produced that truly benefit visitors and fulfil museum ethical guidance to produce engaging, inspiring and relevant museum experiences. There is currently no set framework or decision-making process for the decision to run a tank or display it in static condition within The Tank Museum. Similarly, there is no set rationale for the decision to stop running a vehicle and display it in static condition. By considering and quantifying professionally identified and visitor-led factors through analysing and deconstructing current literature and carrying out visitor opinion studies, a rationale is contextualised, and decision-making framework formed that results in defined conservation routes.

This thesis explores the challenges the British Society of Friends (Quakers) faced in their missionary-humanitarian work in Palestine and neighbouring countries. The influence of nationality on their faith-based policies is a central theme. The core questions proposed focus on Quaker attempts to align their faith as Christian pacifists with their role as British citizens, how their sense of duty was constructed in such terms and the challenges they faced in adhering to both philosophies, especially in their reactions to violence, which differed depending on the perpetrator - British, Arab or Jewish. The actions of the British government repeatedly forced Quakers to consider their identity and their efforts to influence foreign policy, providing an opportunity for historians to investigate what was British and what was Quaker in this context. The research involved analysing particular projects and individual experiences through the Quaker press as well as private documents. The Quakers' sense of duty as British citizens and substantial confidence in their individual and collective ability to reconcile warring parties produced outcomes that significantly impacted their status in the region. British Quakers, who referred to themselves as Friends, used their multiple connections to senior British, Jewish, and Arab officials during several attempts at reconciliation. However, their loyalty to Britain saw certain individuals and groups act as Christian pacifists who assisted British hegemony, demonstrating a paternalist or orientalist attitude. The Arab Revolt, the creation of Israel, the humanitarian emergency that followed, and the Suez Crisis are the main case studies explored. This allows the thesis to not only investigate British Quaker activities in the Middle East, which has been little studied hitherto, but also to add to British imperial history and the history of humanitarianism.

The Green Belt is probably England's most popular and longstanding planning policy commanding widespread political support locally and nationally yet it is regularly critiqued as one of the main causes of England's Housing Crisis by academics, think tanks and housebuilders. More broadly, following Hall's seminal work The Containment of Urban England (1973), it is often argued that it contributes to wider inequitable outcomes in the planning system, which is disproportionately skewed in favour of campaigners and homeowners. This thesis critically evaluates the extent to which the Green Belt contributes to the housing crisis and whether the policy needs reforming. The broader question of power in planning is addressed through exploring why and how the public and campaigners support the Green Belt and oppose housebuilding generally. It therefore aims to add nuance to, and move forward the often polarised Green Belt debate by focusing principally on the views of planners, which are often under-represented in the Green Belt debate, despite being the main actor in the planning system. The study focuses on the importance of space through a geographically based case study of the West Midlands. The thesis finds that the housing crisis is a complex, multi-faceted problem consisting of multi-scalar factors although the Green Belt exacerbates the crisis in particular locations, especially on the edge of conurbations. It argues that the policy should not be abolished but modified for the 21st century with a focus on sustainability, especially recreation and environmental improvement, and that there should be national conversation on the policy's overall spatial extent and purpose, perhaps as part of a national plan. The study also finds that people primarily support the policy because of popular planning principles and place attachment rather than house prices. There is a gap between the attempted exercises of power and effective power of campaigners with significant circumscription and modulation of power in the planning system. Finally, many of the issues associated with the Green Belt and community opposition to development generally are related to the lack of strategic planning in the current system so the thesis underlines the need for integrated, strategic planning to protect the environment and meet housing need.

The former slave owning class in The Bahamas fought a rearguard action to defend its political, economic and social hegemony. It shaped the local Abolition Act of 1834 to meet its own requirements, particularly to ensure apprentices would remain in a position of subservience and obedience. The initial period of concern for the welfare and rights of the freedmen on the part of the Imperial Government soon waned and the white oligarchy was left to govern the newly emancipated without much interference from London. Imperial Government policy also aided the elite in preventing the formation of a class of independent, peasant freeholders. On the Out Islands labour or sharecropping tenancies, squatting and the working of commonage were the norm. Coercive labour systems procured a stable and dependent workforce in a number of industries. The cash economy was limited outside of Nassau and the merchant/landowners were in possession of the little available capital. Tough laws, designed to keep the lower classes in awe and fear of authorities, were passed by a Legislature dominated by the white elite. Much more was spent on law and order than education or social reforms. The Bahamas continued to be governed under the seventeenth century Old Representative system and the ruling class stubbornly protected its rights and privileges. But the constitutional system was not a responsible one and hardly representative. Open voting, inequitable constituencies, a franchise weighted in favour of the propertied classes, non-payment of representatives and plural voting ensured the return of the white Nassau merchants. The agro-commercial elite had a limited vision beyond its own interests, particularly in regard to financial policy. There were many struggles between the Legislature and the Governors over control of finance and expenditure, reaching its climax in the 1930s when the Governor insisted on Reserve Powers. The Colonial Office investigated the possibilities but realised that, barring a crisis, the initiative had to come from the Assembly, which would never have arisen in The Bahamas. The ruling whites experienced little challenge from the coloured and black middle classes. They sought to assimilate themselves into white society and distanced themselves from the black lower classes. They were generally conservative in their views. The non-whites did not attempt to form a political party, despite the fact Bahamian society became more polarised in the 1920s and 1930s. No leaders emerged to take advantage of the discontent. After the 1942 Riot, the ruling whites made a few limited concessions that safeguarded their dominance.

My published work can be said to illuminate the kind of writing that emerges from the intersection of academic history and public history. The project-focussed nature of museum work means that the range of topics covered in my submission is varied and reflects the exigencies of working in a very public-facing national museum. As the person who led the creation of two exhibitions designed to provide a wider public understanding of the Holocaust and genocide, and consultant on a third related project, I was on a number of occasions asked to explain the issues and challenges of these initiatives, usually to conference audiences made up of other museum practitioners, as well as academics, and these interactions were a distinctive element in my work from 2000 to 2007. Opportunities for more focussed writing on historical topics arose in other settings, when, for example, the museum was a partner in a funded project or conference. These articles and chapters drew on close readings of items in the museum's collections and often deployed either narrative or micro-historical approaches to put under scrutiny how a particular work of art or set of correspondence illuminated a historical episode. Narrative and micro-history is therefore the kind of history I tend to practise and is a particularly apt approach within museums, where the telling of stories is central, as can be the arrival of a newly acquired artefact or an encounter with an individual who entrusts their past story to the museum. In the words of Claire Zalc and Tal Bruttman, writing in the context of Holocaust research, micro-history 'grants renewed importance to individual practices and experiences' - a phenomenon familiar to history museum curators whose daily work is concerned with human experience.3 For Zalc and Bruttman, 'smaller spaces can better elucidate the complexities of decision-making ... and ultimately provide more compelling insights into the events that contemporaries faced in their day-to-day lives'.4 The editing work undertaken for the 'Beyond Camps and Forced Labour' conference series also has micro-history at its core, diverse academics from across Europe producing chapters which illuminate recovered voices and experiences of those under threat from Nazi persecution.

This thesis is the first history of bisexuality in Britain. It argues that gay liberation and lesbian feminism in the 1970s and 1980s played a significant role in creating and reinforcing a binary of 'gay' and 'straight', through dichotomous political logics that worked to prevent bisexuals and those attracted to multiple genders from developing a coherent identity politics. The 1970s and 1980s were a very particular historical moment, in which the use of the term 'bisexual' to describe sexual attraction was relatively new, and the binary of gay and straight was just becoming socially dominant. This thesis looks at the broader circumstances of the period to understand why and to what effect bisexuality was called into being at this particular point in time. It is therefore not a 'recovery' history, seeking to make bisexuality visible in the historical record for its own sake, but a case study that informs us about the late-twentieth-century political, social and cultural moment. Gay liberationists excluded bisexuals and people attracted to multiple genders because they were associated with 'straightness', heterosexual marriage and the family. They were also hyper- sexualised, and thus excluded from lesbian feminism because of a constructed dichotomy between the sexual and the political. This meant that the nascent bisexual communities that developed towards the end of the period were ultimately vague and inaccessible to many. The exclusion of bisexuality and multiple-gender-attraction from radical liberationist groups challenges historical narratives about the 'liberatory moment' of the 1970s and the 'queer' inclusivity of radical politics.

The violent and destructive potential of sound has long been known, extending back to at least antiquity with the alluring and fatal songs of sirens in Greek mythology. However, there is a surprising paucity of scholarship relating to the sounds associated with violence and punishment in the early modern world. With this in mind, this thesis sets out to enhance our understanding of the relationship between sound and punishment in early modern England by exploring the ways in which historical subjects experienced, interpreted, and responded to punitive soundscapes. Firstly, I explore sound's ability to cause both physical and psychological harm during rituals of unofficial, popular punishment. I demonstrate that the punitive and judicial dimensions of rough music and libelling can only be fully realised when we open our ears to their sounding qualities, ultimately amplifying the prevalence of sonic violence in early modern England. This thesis also explores the soundscapes of rituals of official (state-sanctioned) punishment, demonstrating that spaces such as the prison and the gallows were shaped and transformed through sonic production. Whilst sound could function as a means of violence and punishment, it also offered a medium for resistance, endurance, and self-expression within these contexts. Finally, I explore how communities engaged with the discourse of public execution through the singing and hearing of popular ballads, and how these songs helped shape attitudes towards capital punishment more generally. At the more conceptual level, this thesis interrogates the ways in which sound interacted with networks of power through a Foucauldian lens, opening our ears to the multifaceted power struggles that surfaced during punitive rituals, and the ways in which individuals navigated their surroundings in times of oppression. Drawing insights from musicological, historical, literary, and critical methodologies, this approach offers an original, nuanced, and interdisciplinary method for understanding a period of political and religious instability, ultimately helping us sharpen our ears to the violent and punitive, but also the consolatory power, of the sonic realm.

The thesis, "The Silent Missionary: The Role of the Bible in the Cultural Conquest of India, 1804 - 1904" examines the interplay between religious and spiritual change and material culture in colonial contexts, based on the case-study of the acculturation process implemented in British India through the Bible as the bringer of a new regime of Truth, a spiritual Talisman and as a channel for intellectual and socio-cultural Tyranny. It examines the role of the Bible as a physical entity in the missionary work. It suggests the need for a dramatic shift of concentration on the material artefacts employed by the missionaries in the mission field and addresses the central beliefs of the 19th century that orbited around the Bible which enthroned the Bible to be a Talisman. The project brings out the exact number of copies of the Bible that were printed and published in India during the 19th century and provides an understanding about the deep faith the missionaries had in Bible in culturally transforming the native population of India. Along with these significant focuses, the research also addresses the use of the Bible in the missionary classrooms, and a chapter is dedicated to the translation efforts of the missionaries. Whilst the chapter based on education examines the role of the Bible in becoming a - sureveilext - a book that was used for shape and prune the moral consciousness of the young minds of the indigenous population, the chapter on translation looks into the various missionary point of views in the efforts on translation.

Birmingham was known as the 'city of a thousand trades' because of its diverse industrial base, but one of these trades, brass manufacturing, has barely been explored by historians. This thesis examines the origins of the industry, explores its expansion throughout the eighteenth century, outlines the development of a national political presence through a network of brass founders, and places the trade within an international context. Using personal correspondence, Parliamentary records, trade cards, travel diaries and printed primary sources, this research provides the fullest picture of the development of the Birmingham brass industry to date. It reveals that the success of the industry was dependent on increasingly sophisticated organisational methods and political strategies, developed by a group of local industrialists. The collective political activities of Birmingham brass manufacturers enabled local businessmen to assert their interests over and against copper and brass businesses elsewhere in Britain, as well as continental Europe. This was achieved by using manipulative propaganda, lobbying politicians, and the dismantling of opponents' arguments. By 1801 the brass founders of Birmingham had established their trade as a significant local industry. Crucially, they had also successfully asserted Birmingham's economic interests on the national stage.

Even though camp society in Nazi concentration camps is a well-researched topic, and gender has become an established line of historical inquiry, homophobia in the prisoner society remains a lacuna in Holocaust research. This is a significant omission, as homophobia was constructed in the camps and permeated the prisoner society. Studies by Ulrike Janz, Insa Eschebach, Claudia Schoppmann, Cathy Gelbin, and Anna Hájková have called for further examination of queer conduct in the camps, as well as an analysis of 'homosexuality' and homophobia. My research builds on their work and it substantiates the hypothesis that there were gendered differences in homophobic expressions. Examination of gendered differences in homophobic expressions has hitherto been absent from the historical literature; my dissertation addresses this gap in studies of the Holocaust. The broad objective of my research is to examine the intersection of the history of the Holocaust, the history of Nazi Germany and the history of sexuality. I have sought to deepen our understanding of everyday life in the camps and the prisoner society, using sexuality and homophobia as a lens. My thesis reconstructs survivor stories, outlines homophobic accusations, and analyses survivors' understandings of 'homosexuality' and their expression of homophobic views. The thesis places homophobia in the camps in the context of attitudes to 'homosexuality' in war time and pre-war Germany. It also analyses the functioning of homophobia among different groups of prisoners with reference to sociology and gender theory. It further examines differences between men's and women's responses to 'homosexual' conduct by analysing their narratives and testimonies in detail. I show that women's attitudes towards queer conduct were more condemnatory than those of men, and I suggest possible reasons for this gendered difference. My sources include self-testimonies, both from the immediate post-war period and from later decades; oral histories; published and unpublished testimonies; and court proceedings. There is a notable lack of queer personal testimonies in the source material: homophobia is evident not only in the contents of the existing survivor source material, but also in the paucity of survivor literature which expresses queer perspectives or recounts the experiences of those accused of same-sex conduct.

The purpose of this thesis is to draw a new picture of the history of eunuchs in the Byzantine empire through the complehensive study of imperial legislation promulgated from the sixth century to the eleventh century. Eunuchs were one of the key components of the empire, especially known for their close relationship with emperors. This study complements the conventional study of eunuchs, which has depended on non-legal sources, with the perspective of Byzantine law and the imperial authority behind it, focusing on the transformation and continuity in imperial views towards eunuchs and castration. This thesis is arranged in the following way. Chapter 1 provides a list of laws concerning eunuchs in laws codified and promulgated under the name of Justinian I (527-65) and compares it with the laws of the Isaurian emperors in the eighth century. Chapter 2 deals with the introduction process of a new form of punishment, mutilation of the penis, in the Isaurian legislation. Chapter 3 provides an overview of a legal project carried out in the Macedonian period from the end of the ninth century and compares it with that of the preceding emperors. The following three chapters examine the context of new stipulations concerning eunuchs promulgated by Leo VI (886-912). Chapter 4 examines laws prohibiting castration. Chapter 5 deals with the right of eunuchs to adopt. Chapter 6 studies marriages of eunuchs. Chapter 7 finally moves on to imperial decisions made by Basil II (976-1025), especially a decision which restricted the inheritance rights of eunuchs. This thesis concludes that the laws about eunuchs were transmitted between the later Roman empire and the middle Byzantine empire, reflecting a variety of changes which occurred in relations to the Byzantine empire, law, and eunuchs, especially, the Christianisation of Roman law and the integration of eunuchs in society.

Managing heritage collections requires understanding of their response to storage and display environments. For heritage iron artefacts, and especially those from marine contexts, this environmental response is influenced by corrosion-instigating chlorides that remain after conservation treatments designed to remove them have been completed. Previous studies have shown that measuring chlorides extracted during treatment does not accurately inform on how many chlorides remain. Artefacts are then placed on display or in storage under the assumption it is safe to do so, when in fact their environment may be causing them to deteriorate at a rate that compromises their structural integrity and cultural value. It is this problem that faces the 1248 cast iron cannonballs from the Mary Rose, Henry VIII's Tudor-era warship that sank in 1545 and was excavated beginning in 1971. Many treatment methods have been employed on the cannonballs to mitigate their corrosion, yet they continue to show visible signs of corrosion in a range of humidities. Nearly all of the cast iron cannonballs are now in desiccated or passivating storage, robbing the public of crucial context their display would otherwise provide. This study set out to determine the corrosion rates of 56 variously treated cannonballs from the Mary Rose, to inform on and determine their best practices for their ongoing care. Using non-invasive oxygen consumption monitoring to determine their corrosion rates confirmed earlier studies on wrought iron showing the escalating risk faced with escalating humidity. All cannonballs exhibited negligible gains from 20-40% RH, followed by substantial increases at 50% RH and again at 60% RH. Selected cannonballs were then retreated in order to determine if their corrosion rates could be reduced. The results showed that not only did retreatment fail to reduce corrosion rates, doing so caused those rates to increase for most of the samples that underwent the procedure, thereby ruling out retreatment as a viable option until new methods are assessed. By using the methodology and data presented in this study, the Mary Rose Trust is now able to ascertain the risk to each of their cast iron cannonballs post-treatment, and can use that knowledge to mitigate the deterioration of the assemblage.

The 'problem' of youth has recently been high on the agenda of African governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). This perceived threat is compounded by the increasingly youthful demographics of the continent. World Bank estimates suggest that 42.28 per cent of those living in Sub-Saharan Africa are under the age of 14 years old. Globally, Zambia itself has the eighth lowest median age at 16.9 years. The turn towards often nefarious activities as a means of survival among this burgeoning - and disproportionately unemployed - group, has in many countries fed into the idea of youth being synonymous with violence. Emphasising primary source material in which youths speak for themselves, this thesis explores the historical roots of this connection and elucidates the drivers of youth political violence in late colonial and postcolonial Zambia between 1958 and 1991. By focusing on the long period during which the United National Independence Party (UNIP) rose to power and then dominated the newly independent country, the approach contextualises youth violence within broader processes and explores continuities and changes in the landscape of Zambian political violence and opposition politics. Here the African National Congress (ANC) party played a significant role. This study thus enhances understandings of the relationship between youth and violence, as well as anticolonial party politics and the workings of postcolonial African states. More specifically, and in line with recent 'revisionist' accounts of Zambian history, the thesis challenges two commonly held views: firstly, that negotiated independence in the country was an entirely peaceable affair; and secondly, that following independence from Britain in 1964, Zambia represented a relative 'oasis of peace' in an otherwise deeply troubled region. Arguing against these misconceptions, this thesis also demonstrates how youth formed a critical dimension of the workings of nationalist and postcolonial politics in the country, which has until now been overlooked or entirely neglected within Zambianist scholarship.

The 2nd Duke of Westminster, Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor (known as 'Bend'Or'), is usually seen as a super-rich landowner and spoilt playboy. This was the view of contemporaries, and previous biographers have reinforced it. Economic historians have analyzed the Grosvenor Estate, but this thesis is not concerned with the creation, husbandry or growth of the Grosvenor millions. The primary aim of this thesis is to reassess Bend'Or's reputation. It traces the life of a duke faced with the changing circumstances of the aristocracy in the early twentieth century. Access to the Grosvenor family archives has been fundamental to the task of re-evaluating the career of the 2nd Duke. By generous permission of the late Duke and the present Duke, I was granted approval to read private family papers. Various historians have visited the Grosvenor archive to research specific topics, but none has been given the breadth of access needed to write a sourced and researched biography on Bend'Or. The archive has yielded rich findings, especially on Bend'Or's early life. Bend'Or's childhood was outwardly idyllic, but my research shows that his family circumstances were not auspicious. His father died when Bend'Or was an infant. The correspondence between his mother Sibell and her second husband, George Wyndham MP, reveals that the 1st Duke gave consent for their marriage only on condition that Wyndham agreed to relinquish all authority over the young Bend'Or. Bend'Or was left exposed to an overprotective mother and the limited vision of the 1st Duke. Their folly contributed to Bend'Or's inadequate education, causing him to suffer for most of his adult life from a chronic lack of confidence and self-belief. It rendered him unable to navigate successfully the web of obligations and duties that his social station demanded. Nevertheless Wyndham emerges as a major influence on Bend'Or. It was Wyndham who stepped in to rescue Bend'Or when he failed to qualify for university or the army. Wyndham encouraged Sir Alfred Milner, High Commissioner for Southern Africa, to take the young Bend'Or to Cape Town as his aide-de-camp. Bend'Or's letters, stored in the Grosvenor archive, offer significant insights into the attitudes held in Government House as the Second Boer War approached. They reveal Milner's responsibility for precipitating a war for which the British were neither ready nor equipped to fight. After the war, Bend'Or bought an estate on ex-Boer territory. The enterprise began well but its success was overtaken by politics. Material in The National Archives has been found which shows that Winston Churchill, then Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, misjudged the strength of surviving Boer sentiment in southern Africa when framing policies for a post-war constitutional settlement. The Boers were successful in the election of 1907 and came to dominate the future of the new South Africa. Material from the archive of Wyndham's biographer, John Biggs-Davison MP, including a hitherto closed file opened for the author, reveals the extent to which Wyndham leaned to the politics of the Conservative right. Wyndham's influence on Bend'Or meant that Bend'Or was associated with diehard politics. It was not until Bend'Or came under the influence of a stronger character, Winston Churchill, that he abandoned Wyndham's style of politics. Churchill and Bend'Or's friendship stemmed from the Boer War but it was strengthened during the First World War. In spite of the mayhem, the war represented a contented period for Bend'Or. The thesis shows the extent to which Bend'Or and Churchill collaborated at the beginning of the war. Bend'Or used the opportunities afforded by his social position and wealth to progress the future of armoured cars and the tank. Archival documents reveal the depth, and success, of Bend'Or's involvement in the development of warfare weaponry; a topic which remained an abiding interest for him up to the Second World War. In the 1920s and 1930s Bend'Or largely based himself abroad, for which he was widely criticized. My research suggests that the reason he abandoned London Society was because he had been ostracized by the King from Court. In 1920 Bend'Or resigned as Lord-Lieutenant of Cheshire. The apparent reason for Bend'Or's resignation was his recent divorce from his first wife. My research in the Royal Archives reveals that the real reason was George V's insistence on pre-war standards and behaviours being maintained amongst his courtiers, especially from a duke such as Westminster, whose family was close to the throne. Exclusion from Court was a public humiliation from which Bend'Or found it hard to recover, and it left him rudderless as a duke. If Bend'Or found himself at odds with the King, he was also uncomfortable in the emancipated post-1918 society. Once hailed a war hero, Bend'Or became ten years later the butt of societal re-evaluation. His difficulties were compounded by his third marriage, to a woman twenty-three years younger than him. The marriage broke down largely because of generational differences. The Duchess's subsequent memoir did much to destroy Bend'Or's reputation. It is well known that before the Second World War Bend'Or was an appeaser. What has not been explained in previous biographies is why. Although Bend'Or may have had opinions which would be unacceptable today, I argue that his Nazist sympathies have been exaggerated by his critics. The thesis concludes that his attitudes were culturally ignorant rather than politically menacing. Bend'Or's friendship with Neville Chamberlain has never been acknowledged by historians. Chamberlain's letters to his sisters, in the Cadbury Research Library, Birmingham, confirm that each August during 1937-1939 Neville Chamberlain holidayed with Bend'Or in Scotland. It was personal loyalty to Neville Chamberlain that made Bend'Or support Chamberlain's politics. In 1940, once it became apparent that appeasement would not restrain Hitler, Bend'Or returned to Churchill's fold.

Research on fourteenth-century retinues has thrived in the last three decades, particularly in the context of Edward III's wars with Scotland and France. A number of studies have also been produced on knights in the household of the English kings. However, while there have been some studies on the overall followings of magnates like John of Gaunt and the Black Prince, as yet there has been no substantial investigation of household knights in the midfourteenth century more broadly. This thesis achieves this by focusing on a set of case-study households, investigating knights in the service of Thomas Beauchamp (earl of Warwick, d. 1369), William Bohun (earl of Northampton, d. 1360) and Henry of Grosmont (earl of Derby, later earl then duke of Lancaster, d. 1361). It explores the evolution of the followings and the knights' social background and recruitment; their varying levels of military engagement and the range of campaign experience they had; the different forms of non-military duties they could perform; what rewards and benefits they enjoyed; and what ties bound them together as a knightly brotherhood. By doing so, the thesis demonstrates that the knightly households of Beauchamp, Grosmont and Bohun were cohesive and closely connected groups that each had distinct characteristics and were shaped by the circumstances and requirements of these magnates. It also reveals the nuanced relationships that different knights had with their lord, as well as how the followings were entwined with the knights' localities and with the nobility and gentry of the realm in general. The thesis addresses a range of ongoing questions about medieval warfare, crime and justice, and the nature of bastard feudalism in the fourteenth century. By doing so, it offers medieval scholarship a more nuanced understanding of the period's social and military history.

This thesis concerns the treatment of the non-cremated dead in the Iron Age of eastern Britain, an area encompassing eight modern-day counties. The research presented here seeks to identify regional and chronological patterns in post-mortem treatment, furthering existing debates around excarnation practices, inhumation traditions and the 'invisible dead'. The material has been divided into three main categories; complete inhumations, partial remains, and disarticulated bones. To successfully approach this varied data, three methodologies were employed: 1. Macroscopic taphonomic analysis of disarticulated material provided data on the processes by which articulated individuals became fragmented. 2. Osteological analysis of inhumations allowed unpublished material to be considered together with more widely available data and inform on population demographics and health. 3. Archaeological analysis of excavated material and theoretical approaches to concepts of belief, death and burial provided the secondary data and the framework for understanding the primary material. The findings here add weight to arguments that excarnation in the Iron Age was not conducted through subaerial exposure, but instead through complex post-mortem processes likely involving primary burial and exhumation, or protected excarnation in covered environments. Inhumation practices are widespread temporally and geographically, though the Late Iron Age material dominates, with clear chronological shifts in practice. Cemetery inhumation emerges in the MIA-LIA, but settlement burials occur throughout the period, more consistent in context, position and alignment than previously thought. Regionality may be evidenced though large numbers of individuals in Cambridgeshire and Kent, though geology and excavation histories are clearly also a factor. There are novel findings within this research, but primarily it serves as significant, regionally specific support for certain existing assumptions, backing up theories with quantitative data and shining a light on an under-researched region.

The latter half of the nineteenth century in Britain was a period of huge technological and mechanical development, best recognised through the wider term of 'the industrial revolution'. The British military was at the forefront of this technological development, enabling Britain to vastly expand its empire. Improvements in small arms formed a core part of this development. In 1841, a British soldier would carry a muzzle-loading black powder musket, that was accurate to only 100 yards and capable of only around two shots per minute. From 1866, the same soldier would be equipped with a breech-loading rifle that was capable of firing fifteen shots in a minute, that could also achieve volley fire to over 1,000 yards. No field of research has explored this development before 1866, or the multitude of early trials which eventually led to the decision to generally adopt the breech-loading rifle. Originally, breech-loading was considered exclusively for the cavalry. This was because loading at the breech was much simpler when mounted on a horse. The cavalry in this era carried 'carbines', which were short muskets or rifles which could be loaded and fired on horseback. As a result, most of the early breech-loading designs were in the form of the cavalry carbine. The purpose of this thesis is to track the development of breech-loading, especially with regards to cavalry carbines, and to uncover which features and developments were the most important from historical, mechanical and statistical perspectives. The content of the thesis has been gathered from original patents, armourers' drawings and official reports which have never before been accessed for academic purposes. The thesis is arranged chronologically, first outlining the early breech-loading trials from as early as 1841, before finishing with the 1864 competition which led to the general adoption of a breech-loader in 1866. In doing so, the submission and impact of each breech-loading design can be assessed from a historical perspective. For each design, a mechanical description of how the submission worked is also provided. Finally, the thesis concludes with a series of ballistic experiments and statistical analysis, both of which establish what the most important developments were.

The study of prehistoric deposition is extensive. Nevertheless, while terrestrial deposition has been thoroughly investigated, wetland studies have focused intensely on mortuary traditions (i.e. bog burials) (e.g. Cowie et al. 2011; Giles 2020a; Stevens and Chapman 2020; Van der Sanden 1995). Object deposition research has long held a hyperfocus on metal pieces at the cost to 'the missing majority' (Hurcombe 2014), creating a biased interpretation of prehistoric wetland deposition traditions. As a result, holistic analyses of cross-regional trends for wetland object deposition for the British Iron Age has not been attempted. The project's overarching aim was to observe, analyse, and interpret wetland depositional practices for Iron Age Wales and Scotland, based on the object and site records acquired. The project collected object records from museums, online databases, heritage trusts, and archaeological units. Variables such as environment, tradition assemblage, object type, material, manufacture periods and discovery dates are evaluated for their commonality. The project's objective was to identify trends and patterns in the data to provide new or confirm pre-existing object depositional traditions. Wetland deposition practices allow for the study of socio-cultural traditions, communal identity, and social values due to the high level of preservation through anaerobic conditions. Regional traditions were observed through depositional practices (i.e. multi- or single-period hoard, pairs, and singular deposits), material preference (i.e. metal, organic fibres, wood), and common object types. The result of such analyses revealed Iron Age wetland deposition practices served as a reaffirmation of social identity, tradition, and cultural mnemonic. Depositional practices served both functionalist and traditionalist purposes, which is unsurprising as in prehistory, these roles tend to coincide. In the case of wetland deposition, we can surmise that the tradition intertwined these theoretical roles whereby collective memory benefited both the group and the individuals who participated, even marginally.

The identity disc has become an iconic piece of military kit, representing a physical embodiment of the soldier's identity. Despite their visual familiarity and their important role Zahrodisc was designed to facilitate the identification of soldiers who died on the battlefield, but a change in production material in 1914 had the unintended consequence of creating tens of thousands of missing and unknown soldiers. Identity discs are objects which transcended the military need to account for deaths, responding also to the Governmental need to mediate public grief. Their existence facilitated the development of graves registration practice resulting in the rapid transformation of burial practices during an ongoing war. On the Home Front, the delivery of an identity disc accompanied the confirmation of death, offering a final interaction with the deceased in the absence of a body or a grave within visiting distance. This thesis investigates the development of identity discs by the British Army, reflecting upon the various ways that they were used by soldiers fighting on the Western Front between 1914-18. By investigating the cultures associated with death and identification it has been possible to provide an explanation for the phenomena of 'the Missing' despite what appears to be a period of rapid innovation. It argues that the British developments need to be situated within the operational responses to the humanitarian requirements of the 1906 Geneva Convention. It also argues for a significant reappraisal of the role of Sir Fabian Ware, founder of what is known today as the Commonwealth Ware Graves Commission, and the role of humanitarian partners in managing the response to mass casualties in a prolonged conflict. Finally, in presenting a comprehensive history of the identity disc's material culture, including its physical composition and embodied use, this thesis offers explanation for the lack of representation of British identity discs within the archaeological record today.

This research project places the North Channel at the centre of an active and peopled seascape. Rather than viewing the foundations around its rim as peripheral in relation to more inland centres of power and modern understanding, the goal is to place the North Channel Zone at the centre of an active and connected region. Although modern scholarship widely accepts the existence of an ecclesiastical Community based around Columba and his foundation of Iona, and Dalriadan holdings on both sides of the North Channel, there has been less scholarship surrounding the idea of a North Channel seascape awash in the movement of peoples and community structures. In order to examine this idea more fully, a case study approach is employed on another proposed Community of monasteries linked by the sea: those related to, or potentially related to, St Comgall and his main monastery at Bangor. The main question asked focuses on whether a Community of Comgall wider than the monastery of Bangor itself existed between the sixth to eleventh centuries. This inquiry is made by selecting specific sites in the west of Scotland: Applecross and the islands of Lismore and Tiree, and undertaking an interdisciplinary analysis of the sites, including textual, art historical, archaeological, and toponymic evidence along with a general phenomenological approach. A chapter is devoted to each site in turn. The findings indicate that a Community of Comgall is discernible. Additionally, the importance and influence of Applecross, Lismore, and Tiree within their respective seascapes and landscapes are highlighted by the available evidence. The influence and importance of additional ecclesiastical foundations in the west of Scotland, especially those with connections to the Community of Comgall based at Bangor in Ireland, is brought into clearer focus. This allows a fuller understanding of the movement of people and ideas between the west of Scotland and north of Ireland in the early medieval period.

The image of the selfless, heroic, upper middle class V.A.D. being singled out for harsh treatment by the socially inferior, yet professionally superior trained nurses during the Great War has dominated popular histories and memories of the Great War since the publication of Vera Brittain's memoirs A Testament of Youth. Challenging this mythology, this thesis shows for the first time how the tensions between these two groups of women were more complex and far-reaching than the result of class differences. In so doing, it places the debate around the relationship between VADs and nurses within the wider politics of nursing and the battle for professional status of nurses which came to a head during the First World War. The debates over professionalisation distilled into the intimate and personal relationships between women working in military hospitals amid the pressures of war, and took shape in the awkward interpersonal engagements between colleagues. Drawing on a range of published archival material the thesis uses professional journals and institutional records to show the ways in which the British Red Cross Society and trained nurses themselves responded to these challenges before and during the Great War. Using the correspondence of two individual V.A.D.s as a case study, this study then explores the key narratives of professionalism and class. It demonstrates the central role that letter writing has played as a medium through which members of the V.A.D. negotiated those tensions in their working lives. Interweaving these case studies, the thesis demonstrates how the wider debate of professionalisation and patriotic duty was played out within the pages of professional journals and in the lives of two volunteer nurses - in public debate and private lives.

This thesis provides the first collective revision of four nearly contemporary eleventh-century historical accounts: Michael Psellos' Chronographia, Michael Attaleiates' History, and John Skylitzes' Synopsis and Continuation. Recent studies have attempted to further contextualise Byzantine historical narratives in order to form a better understanding of the past and the way it was perceived by contemporaries. Of special concern to this thesis is the mishandling of key concepts such as religion, theocracy, authorial originality, and the purposes behind Byzantine history writing. This study analyses how these authors and their literary activity have been framed within misleading dichotomies between either religion and secular, autocratic and republican thought, or traditional writing and original innovation. A narratological framework will be applied to the revision of the sources. Thus, the central chapters are devoted to the narratives' character focus, how the characters' morality is qualified in the sources, and the creative uses of narrative space and time to shape the message aimed at their respective intended audiences. In sum, this narratalogical revisionist appraisal of these accounts provides a new perspective on eleventh-century political thought in Byzantium.

The Nordic countries have been globally portrayed and perceived as exemplar nations in terms of gender equality, particularly in respect of women's political participation and representation. Yet, the history of women's socio-political contributions in the Nordic countries also involves a rich past entwined in grassroots feminist organising. From the late 1960s into the early 1990s, women across the Nordic region organised into what is known as the new women's movement - or rather the new women's movements, in the plural. This thesis applies a transnational approach to the study of feminist activism and its history, examining how border-crossing circulations shaped both ideas and practices in three Nordic countries - Finland, Sweden and Denmark. It explores the different shapes transnational Nordic feminist activism embodied by providing a rhizomatic reading of the ways in which transnational influences circulated into, within and out of the Nordic region. I posit that by focusing on three categories of thematic enquiry - people, texts, and places and spaces - a rich and largely unwritten history emerges, which both moves beyond yet deeply relies on its actors' local and national situatedness. In this thesis I engage with a myriad of analytical questions central to the study of the Nordic new women's movements, from how feminist activists in Finland, Sweden and Denmark approached notions surrounding 'a global sisterhood' to the ways in which transnational encounters shaped activists' subjective self-image. My research is based on extensive archival and oral history research across three countries and four languages (English, Finnish, Swedish and Danish). The thesis also includes an in-depth methodological discussion, which reflects on the challenges and possibilities that the transnational study of late modern gender history has to offer.

This study of leather examines material culture in England, c.1670-1800. Following raw hide to leather, leather to object, and object to possessed commodity, this thesis traces the production, retail, and consumption of three representative leather objects: saddles, chairs and drinking vessels. The analysis of these three objects is principally informed by materials, and draws on inventories, advertisements, literary and technical texts, visual sources and ephemera, and other object types with which they shared consumption contexts, practices of making or decoration. This thesis argues, first, that the meanings consumers derived from materials, which informed their responses to objects, were created across the full life-cycle of a material: from production to consumption. Second, while leather exhibited principal properties which made it useful across several objects, its meanings and associations played out differently and unevenly across different object types. Thirdly, and consequently, in the relationship between materials and object types, objects operated as the site in which consumers could access the meaning of materials. This thesis ultimately argues, therefore, that historians should consider the relationship between object types and materials, in which each contributed towards the meaning that consumers derived from the other, to address consumer experiences of objects in the eighteenth century.

This is the first dedicated study of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) from its foundation in 1709 down to the outbreak of the 1745 Jacobite Rising. The Society’s founding mission was to set up and maintain schools in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in order to secure the political and ecclesiastical settlement brought about in the wake of the Williamite revolution of 1689–90. In an era when an overwhelming majority of the region’s inhabitants adhered to Catholicism and Episcopalianism, and gave crucial military support to the Jacobite cause, the Society believed that schooling, in English literacy and Presbyterian doctrine, was the means by which hearts and minds would be won for the post-1690 Revolution settlement and, latterly, the British imperial project. Many scholars have acknowledged the historical importance of the SSPCK. However, present knowledge of the organisation is slanted and partial. The main scholarly treatments in the last generation—by Victor Durkacz and Charles Withers—concentrate upon the SSPCK’s role as an agent of Anglicisation due to its insistence on prioritising English, rather than Gaelic, literacy. This thesis instead approaches the Society from the perspectives of the history of education in Highlands, and governance in the fledgling British state and empire. The aims are twofold – first to come to a better understanding of how the Society operated ‘on the ground’, giving centre stage to its relationship with the Highland communities it sought to affect; second to establish how the SSPCK navigated, and was shaped by, the governing structures of the nascent British state and empire. It begins by examining the extent and nature of schooling in the Highlands prior to the SSPCK’s intervention, to provide context for how Highland communities would eventually respond to the Society and its schools. It then examines the origins of the Society, tracing developments in the Highlands as well as the Lowlands that led an influential core of Scottish Presbyterians to advocate a national charitable corporation to support Highland education. It then looks closely at the central management and finances of the Society up to 1731, a key juncture that saw the launch of its first American mission and the death of the influential SSPCK secretary John Dundas. Chapters four and five examine the growth and development of Society’s schools from 1709 up to c.1730. Finally, the thesis reconstructs the processes and motivations behind the SSPCK’s earliest missionary endeavours in British North America, gauging its successes and failures, before turning back to the Highlands to consider the perception and impact of the colonial mission on the home front.

This thesis examines the representation and function of masculinity in crusade narratives 1200-1309. It specifically considers elite masculinity as this was the concern of the authors of these narratives. This addresses an important scholarly gap and will demonstrate that masculinity was a vital concept to the historical representation of these crusades. To achieve this a close of analysis of the following texts will be undertaken: Richard of Templo’s account of the Third Crusade, Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi. Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay’s history of the Albigensian Crusade, Historia Albigensis. Robert of Clari’s Fourth Crusade recollection, La Conquête de Constantinople. The final text is John of Joinville’s memoir and personal account of the Seventh Crusade, Vie de Saint Louis. A gendered analysis of these texts will reveal that the representation and function of masculinity served a practical purpose either as a didactic tool or narrative device. The use of a variety of narratives about different crusades authored by a diverse selection of people reveal universal understandings of the importance of gender performance during the period under investigation. To achieve this both medieval ideas of gender and the following sociological theory will be applied to these texts: hegemonic masculinity, performativity, homosociality and hypermasculinity. This will demonstrate that crusade narratives are a rich and valuable source of information regarding elite masculinity and make a useful knowledge to our understanding of gender in the Middle Ages that have hitherto been overlooked.

This thesis examines the evolution of the nineteenth-century Birmingham and district machine-cut nail trade through the lenses of entrepreneurship and technological change. Cut-nail manufacture was a small but economically-significant and technologically-advanced West Midlands industry, and yet it has been largely ignored by historians. The lack of academic record can, in part, be explained by the absence of a discrete business archive for the trade. This research, however, shows that there are substantial surviving records to enable an evaluative history to be written. Guided by its two main themes, on the one hand, and by product life-cycle theory, on the other, the thesis analyses the development of the West Midlands trade from its origins in the United States to its decline at the turn of the twentieth century caused by, among other things, competition from American producers. In doing so, it crosses the disciplinary boundaries of economic, business and social history, as well as venturing into the realms of print and material culture.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s relation with bankers and military contractors is not the first aspect which springs to mind when one reflects on his rise to power. And yet, the support of the influential business lobby and its political allies played a determining role in his toppling of the Directory – the last French revolutionary government – on 18-19 Brumaire (9-10 Nov. 1799). Who then were these financiers who wielded such power? What was their relationship with Bonaparte and the directorial regime? And why did they forsake the Revolution and support the establishment of military dictatorship in France? By adopting a financial perspective and exploring the opaque networks connecting businessmen, politicians and military leaders during the directorial period, this thesis develops new interpretations of revolutionary events and assesses the influence exerted by leading magnates over the state’s political and economic policies. The thesis begins with Napoleon’s initiation in the business world by examining his financial apprenticeship with the Armée d’Italie’s civilian commissioners and private financiers during the 1796-1797 Italian Campaign. It then moves on to look at how elite banking circles reacted to moments of political crisis by conducting a detailed evaluation of the Caisse des Comptes Courants’s activities – the leading Parisian discount bank under the Directory. This analysis draws on a wide range of previously unpublished material from the Banque de France’s archives and relies on little known records the Treasury was forced to publish following the outbreak of the notorious Compagnie Dijon scandal. A case study of Neuchâtel banker Jean-Frédéric Perregaux is provided to illustrate how financiers remained at the heart of power from the Terror to the advent of the Napoleonic regime. The second part of the thesis presents an extensive review of the military contracting system under the Directory, which is followed by five case studies of army suppliers (the Michel brothers, Michel Simons, Pierre-Louis Hanet-Cléry, Armand Seguin and the Compagnie Bodin). These demonstrate how corrupt business practices, exploitation of foreign territories and aggressive speculations on currency and real estate corrupted the Directory from within and left it at the mercy of a looming military takeover. All these various facets of the activities of financiers converge in a final section which analyses Brumaire from a financial angle and traces the role of bankers in keeping Napoleon’s regime afloat with cash advances and establishing the Banque de France as their reward. Extensive supporting information is provided in the Biographical Index, the appendices and a set of maps.

This thesis examines political culture in Scotland between 1678 and 1685. Its specific focus is the presence of the people at events like processions, protests, and public executions. Print is considered as just one aspect of these multifaceted displays, illuminating ways in which this newly emerging means of communication interacted with - and even altered - these older participatory media, but also demonstrating that print was not imperative for popular political participation. Following chapters thus contend that any evaluation of early modern mass engagement is best structured by investigation of such multimodal cultural media, rather than any existing abstract theory or conceptual model. These were tense and turbulent years for the Scots, yet they remain under-represented in existing secondary literature. Inspired by work on early modern Europe and introducing new archival discoveries, following chapters also offer a fresh interpretation of Scottish history in these years. This thesis will question the idea that the Stuart dynasty was secure in its control of Scotland after 1660, and explore the kingdom’s diverse spectrum of ideological opposition. Through the key thematic lenses of ‘space’ and ‘spectatorship’, each chapter addresses a previously overlooked or unexamined medium, or channel, of communication. Chapter three explores royal celebration, entries, and progresses, whilst chapter four appraises the crown and Privy Council’s use of proclamations as political street theatre. Chapter five then considers protest activity, like rioting and mock processions, and chapter six examines the appropriation of proclamation conventions to stage treasonous declarations. Finally, chapter seven concludes analysis with a detailed investigation of public executions, which can be considered prominent platforms for conflicting interpretations over what constituted legitimate authority. These exchanges, staged on street and scaffold, were the politics of ordinary men and women in late Restoration Scotland, and it is their participation with the rich, cross-media debates that these performances built around their spectators that this thesis takes as its central concern.

The transition from hunting to farming started in the Fertile Crescent of the Near East, about 12 thousand years ago (kya). During the following millennia, farming spread across Europe largely due to migrations of people from a source in western Anatolia. The aim of this thesis is to investigate and assess the relative contribution of local hunter-gatherers and dispersing farming groups in a region of Western Europe where the archaeological evidence suggests potential complexity. In order to do so, two parallel approaches were carried out: i) the study of human remains from three archaeological sites in Belgium; and ii) a broader phylogeographic analysis of modern mitochondrial DNA sequences belonging to haplogroup HV. Here I report the first genome-wide analysis of one Mesolithic and 32 Middle to Late Neolithic Belgian individuals. The Mesolithic individual was largely similar to other Western European Mesolithic and Late Palaeolithic samples. However, within the Neolithic group I observed two genetic clusters. The first cluster appears to be the result of an admixture between local Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers of Anatolian descent. However, the Mesolithic component was much larger than seen to date in other west European Neolithic samples, with a possible sex bias towards local males carrying Y-chromosome haplogroup I and dispersing females. The second, less numerous genome-wide cluster revealed admixture from a Pontic-Caspian Steppe related population, further indicated by the presence of Y-chromosome R1b-M269. The phylogeographic analysis of modern mitochondrial haplogroup HV confirmed an Upper Palaeolithic Near Eastern origin. The new findings suggest an early introduction of several HV lineages into the north coast of the Mediterranean from the Late Glacial onwards, which increased during the Neolithic. In particular, the Mediterranean area appears to have served as a reservoir of HV lineages and as a source of later migrations in both the Neolithic and the Bronze Age.

The focus of this thesis is the intercultural Dancehall Queen (DHQ) scene, as manifested between Jamaica and Europe, within the broader culture of dancehall. Dancehall is a performance culture that first developed as a resistant expression toward a postcolonial Jamaican climate in the late 1970s (Cooper, 2004). According to several dancehall scholars including Carolyn Cooper, dancehall articulates the condition of a working-class black Jamaican population. As such, much of the academic research on dancehall to date has focused on its relationship to its Jamaican socioeconomic and cultural context. Dancehall has also been found to be relevant to women outside Jamaica (Bakare-Yusuf, 2006b), but very little of the literature looks specifically at this dimension. This thesis sets out to examine the practices of Jamaican and European women in dancehall from an intercultural perspective, looking at the connectivities and tensions within this diversely positioned collective. The research, which used a reflexive physical/digital multi-sited ethnographic methodology, offers a model for conducting research into intercultural black feminist phenomena that span transnational sites and virtual/physical embodiment and connectivity. The methodology recognises the ethnographic encounter as a performative space between researcher and participant, and develops accountable strategies for reading silence and embodied expressivity, in dialogue with verbal, textual and visual research materials in intercultural research settings. It reveals that in this study juxtapositions between hypervisibility and silence by certain black Jamaican and black European dancers amount to a decolonial articulation of the right to opacity (Glissant, 1990). The study finds that the women in the Jamaican/European DHQ scene engage in various forms of creative, embodied and digital labour practices in the construction of their dancehall identities. It argues that this labour is underscored by a black epistemology centred on the vernacular Jamaican notion of bruk out, which put simply means to break out. The research argues that bruk out is performatively enacted within DHQ performances that engage black feminist Caribbean aesthetics that centre on the pleasure taken in performative dares that break social respectability rules. The study subsequently introduces the concept of ‘bruk out feminism’, which it argues is a performative world view that focuses on the expressivity of pleasure and pain through the construction of digital visual cultures, forms of materialist self-determination and decolonial self-preservation. The research studies how these cultural specificities are negotiated in the intercultural exchanges between white and black, Jamaican and European, dancers. It argues that reflexive interculturalism, which centralises and empowers the practices of black women in dancehall and uses exchange, friction and dialogue to de-centre a privileged position of whiteness, enables forms of coalitional solidarity to take shape. It concludes that the scene reflects an agonistic (Mouffé, 2012) status quo, where exploitative and socially progressive predilections co-exist.

This thesis examines the gradual declining trend of the state level influence over the local development in Ningbo during most of the 19th century, and how a few local institutions at the society level responded to their own opportunities and difficulties during the Republican era while a newly authoritative regime gradually emerged. This thesis will also suggest that academic scholarship concerning the study of Ningbo’s history had underestimated the West’s and the Westernised Japan’s stimulating impacts over Ningbo’s economic and social development during the late Qing and early Republican era.

Archaeological approaches to socialisation are underdeveloped. As interpretative models are most often borrowed from other disciplines, rather than developed with a material-focus at their centre, archaeologists are left without effective object-centred frameworks with which to examine how individuals interacted with and learnt about their world. This thesis addresses these issues with a new approach, drawing upon Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who offer many analytical tools that can directly connect highly theoretical interpretations of ancient societies to archaeological data. By stressing how humans understand the world through their accumulated previous experiences, Deleuze and Guattari direct the archaeologist to consider how identifiable human interactions with objects and places informed their subsequent experiences, and therefore their developing perceptions of their surroundings. This approach is tested against three case studies, in the 3rd Millennium Jazira, 2nd Millennium Anatolia, and 1st Millennium Southern Levant, that stress the intersection of landscapes and religious practice, both of which are frequently highlighted as powerful agents of socialisation. The varying forms and resolutions available for these case studies allow for a comprehensive exploration of a Deleuzo-Guattarian framework’s effectiveness in reconstructing and understanding ancient experiences of the world, and new interpretations of how ancient individuals both shaped and were shaped by their experiences of religiously-loaded landscapes.

This is a comparative study of Scandinavian kingship in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, based on the themes of succession, acquisition, and consolidation of power. These themes con- stitute the study’s overarching questions: How did a king become a king? How did he keep his kingdom? And finally, how did he pass it on? In order to provide answers to these question this study will consider first the Scandina- vian rules of succession, what they were, to whom they gave succession rights, as well as the order of succession. Second, the study will look at different ways in which kings acquired the kingship, such as through trial by combat and designation succession. Third, the study will look at what happens when succession rules were completely disregarded and children were being made kings, by looking at the processes involved in achieving this as well as asking who the real kingmakers of twelfth century Denmark were. Finally, the study will determine how kings consolidated their power. This study shows, that despite some Scandinavian peculiarities, kingship in Scandinavia was not fundamentally different from European kingship in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It also shows that the practice of kingship was dependent on political circumstances making it impossible to draw general conclusions spanning centuries and vast geographical regions. We can look at principles that gave us a general framework, but individual cases were determined by circumstance.

This thesis addresses the question of how states, meaning organised political communities, were historically able to secure their sovereignty through gaining the recognition of other states. As sovereignty refers to the presence of a state’s authority, its existence is premised on states and other internal and external actors recognising claims to sovereignty. Therefore, states, such as the Ottoman Empire, which historically had a different understanding of legitimacy, faced challenges to their sovereignty following the emergence of new global understandings of sovereignty in the late nineteenth century. The Ottoman Empire was distinct in that it was the only Islamic state that was not subject to and was able to avoid completely falling under the influence of then-dominant European states. However, the Ottoman Empire still experienced European intervention and there was a desire to end forms of European extraterritorial jurisdiction. Ottoman elites, who were affiliated with the reformist Young Turks, sought to secure recognition of their state’s sovereignty by reconstituting it along novel international standards of legitimate statehood. These standards were based on the concepts of “civilised”, “militarist”, “popular” and “national” statehood, and were reinterpreted by the Young Turks in the course of their efforts to secure the recognition of European powers. These efforts included diplomacy with European powers, institutional reform and conceptual innovation. However, it also involved engaging in practices associated with sovereignty such as the control of territory. In all of these areas, the Young Turks reinterpreted aspects of the existing Ottoman legacy of statehood and international norms, to secure their claim to sovereignty. Therefore, the Ottoman state elites sought to convey an impression of governing a state that could be recognised as sovereign by other European powers. Ultimately, the remnants of the Young Turks, secured international recognition of their state, reconstituted as the nation-state of Turkey in 1923.

This thesis investigates the community of nomadic showpeople who provided entertainments and amusements as part of travelling fairs. The primary focus of the thesis is the development of the relationship between this marginal community and local and national authorities between 1889 and 1945. As part of this investigation the relationship between showpeople and settled British society is also examined. Exploring the physical space of the fairground is vital as this forms the encounter between showpeople and the public. The fair as a form of public leisure informs outside perceptions and understandings of the community behind it. The thesis provides an overview of travelling fairs and associated issues up to the 1880s, before analysing the impact of attempts at temporary dwelling legislation. These attempts proved a formative experience; causing a disparate showland community to amalgamate in the politically active union of The Showmen’s Guild. The thesis explores how this organisation was able to meet the legislative and practical challenges of the First World War. Through negotiation with authorities the Guild secured the viability of the showland business. In addition, they emphasised although separated by their commercial nomadism, travelling showpeople firmly considered themselves part of a British national identity. This concept is revisited in the final chapter which explores the experience of travelling showpeople during the Second World War. In addition to assessing how showmen were able to adapt to noise and lighting restrictions, the chapter also assesses the contributions of showland to the collective war effort, and to what extent the community was recognised as part of the collective narrative of ‘The People’s War’. The third and fourth chapters of the thesis explore the travelling fair in the interwar period which saw local authorities attempting to exercise increasing control over fairgrounds through rent and relocation, but also saw the significance of the fair as a public leisure pursuit confirmed. The fair was presented and perceived as a uniquely British form of leisure, with close links to rural and urban working class traditions. Overall the thesis concludes this unique group were transformed in the period assessed. The creation of the Showman’s Guild in 1889 was a crucial step towards this group developing from a fragmented and misunderstood community, into a recognised body of commercial professionals. Alongside an improving business relationship with local and national authority, the thesis demonstrates the fairground remained a relevant and popular public recreation throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

This thesis comprises a re-evaluation of the apotropaic Campanian Phallus: a highly familiar and desultorily implemented feature of our discipline’s conceptual toolkit, as well as an enduringly conspicuous element of popular engagement with the ancient world. The nature of the Campanian phallus’ apotropaism varies hugely from scholar to scholar and is yet to be directly interrogated or socio-historically contextualised. Furthermore, its role as an apotropaic device is regularly conflated with the Enlightenment notion of universal fertility worship, most notably articulated by the antiquarian Richard Payne Knight. This thesis’ re-examination of the ideological genealogy of phallic apotropaism in relation to late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century archaeological, anthropological and comparative-religious discourse highlights its particular import for the socio-cultural inquiries and concerns of that era. It will be demonstrated that the notion of the phallus as an apotropaic device has more in common with the nineteenth-century reinvention of Payne Knight’s ideas, and with the Enlightenment phallus’ coalescence with late nineteenth-century socio-cultural preoccupations, such as folklorism, mysticism and uncanny states of objecthood and representation. Accordingly, this thesis will expand our understanding of the place occupied by the Campanian apotropaic phallus in the modern imagination and the ways in which it relates to certain stages of our discipline’s history. Having evaluated modernity’s ideological and intellectual relationship with this fabled semiotic conundrum, the latter part of the thesis will revisit the apotropaic phallus at the ancient sites themselves. In this section, it will be shown that the phallus is rarely wholly solemn, apotropaic and symbolic nor wholly sexual, humorous and literal: indeed, its depiction in different contexts throughout the towns regularly capitalised on its capacity for double entendre, reflexive humour, social satire and semiotic ‘code-switching’. In this way, the apotropaic phallus proved a mercurial and perplexing image even for its ancient users and creators.