Bøker utgitt av University of London Press

A consideration of other-than-human elements defining history in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Latin American and Caribbean regions' historical trajectories have been shaped by complex human-nonhuman interactions. In these histories, people are important, even crucial, actors, but not the only ones. Offering a novel approach to the writing of Latin American history, this book brings eight thought-provoking chapters together with a historiographical introduction and critical afterword to center nonhuman beings and things. The oscillating glare of the sun, the allure and resourcefulness of animals, the reluctant genetic malleability of plant seeds, and the life-giving and intractable impassivity of rivers are some of the other-than-human agents driving history in the volume's chapters. This book problematizes Latin American(ist) historiography's tendency to frame "nature" as a separate ontological domain that is only acted upon--conquered, manipulated, devastated--lacking the self-propelled dynamics capable of shaping the course of events. With broad regional and temporal coverage across Latin America and the Caribbean from the pre-colonial period to the present day, More-than-Human Histories of Latin America and the Caribbean responds to environmental history's call to write biophysical environments into the human past--a reconsideration of historical agency that, in this era of climate change, is more necessary than ever.

A study of the 1832 Reform Act and its significance to the modern British state. The 1832 Reform Act was a landmark moment in the development of modern British politics. By overhauling the country's ancient representative system, the legislation reshaped constitutional arrangements at Westminster, reinvigorated political relationships between the center and the provinces, and established the political structures and precedents that both shaped and hindered Britain's slow lurch towards democracy by 1928. Mapping the State leads to a fundamental rethinking of the 1832 Reform Act by demonstrating how boundary reform and the reconstruction of England's electoral map by the little-known 1831-1832 boundary commission underpinned this turning point in the development of the British political nation. Eschewing traditional approaches to the 1832 Reform Act, it draws from a significant new archival discovery­­--the working papers of the boundary commission--and a range of innovative quantitative techniques to provide a major reassessment of why and how the 1832 Reform Act passed, its impact on reformed politics both at Westminster and in the constituencies, and its significance to the expansion of the modern British state.

A comparative analysis of the politics surrounding the welcome afforded to refugees in Zambia and South Africa. While state-based reception is frequently framed as one-off moments such as registration, Refugee Reception in Southern Africa proposes a new understanding whereby reception is a process that reflects the complex dynamics of contemporary refugee arrival. By adopting this understanding, the book demonstrates how reception is a complex and ongoing process of negotiations between refugees and the state. Indeed, the relationship between the refugee and host state often remains fragile and prone to ruptures, especially when less formal reception policies allow refugees to move back and forth between refugee camps and local areas. Nevertheless, through these negotiations, Refugee Reception in Southern Africa shows how reception policies are vital in shaping a refugee's ability to settle and engage with local communities and labor markets. Using the cases of Zambia and South Africa, the book explores why some countries maintain encampment reception policies for refugees and others use a more liberal "free settlement" approach, whereby refugees are granted freedom of movement and permitted to settle in cities and towns. This book offers an original and unique perspective on refugee hosting in southern Africa, one that does not look upon persons who flee across a border as a homogenous group whose movement abruptly ends once they arrive in a host state or refugee camp.

An essential teaching companion offering practical strategies for all teachers of history in higher education to enhance student learning. The eighteenth century has been a notable recent growth area in historical studies and related disciplines and is key in university research and teaching. Although widely taught in history departments, the eighteenth century also presents challenges, including new students' unfamiliarity with the period, the theoretical and interdisciplinary nature of the critical writings, and extensive online source material requiring digital skills for its evaluation. Focusing on pedagogical innovation and current developments in the discipline, this collection of essays reflects on how we teach the history of the long eighteenth century, exploring current subfields such as histories of material culture, the senses, gender, crime, race, empire, and colonialism. It presents practical case studies showcasing how novel teaching methods can be employed in the classroom that promote active learning and invite students to think critically about the nature of their discipline. Methods covered include decolonizing the curriculum, digital history, transferable skills, engaging with objects, working in non-classroom settings, and multisensory approaches. Grounded in real academic practice, this is a valuable guide for all history educators, whether specializing in the eighteenth century or beyond.

Since its founding in 1921, the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) at the University of London has seen students and teachers come together, socially and intellectually, to engage in lively academic seminars. But for what purpose and with what value? Talking History provides a defence of the seminar as a central element in historians' teaching, research and sense of community. Covering a range of the IHR's long-running seminar series, which are differentiated by historical period, region and/or theme, the book presents the seminars as a local, national and international hub for scholarship that emerges from and is sustained by the ongoing learning practices of historians as scholars and people. Talking History bears witness to a seminar culture of evolving, multifarious synergies between teaching, researching and learning, historiography and participation -- intertextual, interpersonal, intergenerational and intercultural. Viewed as such, the seminars constitute a living tradition, stimulating and incorporating dynamic change over time to contribute not just to the development of historiography but intellectual life more generally, often in conversation with major political events and cultural phenomena. This original and significant book therefore reflects upon, and gives further expression to, the ongoing evolution of historical research and its role in wider society today.

A revisionist history of anti-communism in Britain during the early Cold War. The Cold War produced in many countries a form of political repression and societal paranoia which often infected governmental and civic institutions. In the West, the driving catalyst for the phenomenon was anti-communism. While much has been written on the post-war American red scare commonly known as McCarthyism, the domestic British response to the "red menace" during the early Cold War has until now received little attention. Anti-communism in Britain During the Early Cold War is the first book to examine how British Cold War anti-communism transpired and manifested as McCarthyism raged across the Atlantic. Drawing from a wealth of archival material, this book demonstrates that while policymakers and politicians in Britain sought to differentiate their anti-communist initiatives from the "witch hunt hysteria" occurring in the United States, they were often keen to conduct--albeit less publicly--their own hunts as well. Through analyzing how domestic anti-communism exhibited itself in state policies, political rhetoric, party politics, and the trade union movement, Matthew Gerth argues that an overreaction to the communist threat occurred. In striking detail, this book describes a nation at war with a specific political ideology and its willingness to use a variety of measures to either disrupt or eradicate its influence.

A history of the development and importance of the office of poet laureate of Britain. The office of the poet laureate of Britain was a highly prominent, relevant, and respectable institution throughout the long eighteenth century. First instituted for John Dryden in 1668, the laureateship developed from an honorific into a functionary office with a settled position in court, and in 1813 was bestowed upon Robert Southey, whose tenure transformed the office. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book examines the office's institutional changes and public reception, the mechanics of each laureate's appointment, and the works produced by the laureates before and after their appointments. It argues that the laureateship played a key part in some of the most vital trends in eighteenth-century culture. At the core of the book is a new research paradigm that Leo Shipp calls the conceptual geography of culture. It shows that Britons routinely used spatial concepts to understand culture throughout the period, which became increasingly abstract over time. As part of this, Shipp shows, the court evolved from a concrete space in London to an abstract space capable of hosting the entire British public. The laureateship was a dynamic office positioned at the interface of court and public, evolving in line with its audiences. An important intervention in eighteenth-century historiography, this book presents a nuanced understanding of eighteenth-century culture and society, in which the laureateship exemplified the enduring centrality of the court to the British conceptual geography of culture.

A history of the development and importance of the office of poet laureate of Britain. The office of the poet laureate of Britain was a highly prominent, relevant, and respectable institution throughout the long eighteenth century. First instituted for John Dryden in 1668, the laureateship developed from an honorific into a functionary office with a settled position in court, and in 1813 was bestowed upon Robert Southey, whose tenure transformed the office. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book examines the office's institutional changes and public reception, the mechanics of each laureate's appointment, and the works produced by the laureates before and after their appointments. It argues that the laureateship played a key part in some of the most vital trends in eighteenth-century culture. At the core of the book is a new research paradigm that Leo Shipp calls the conceptual geography of culture. It shows that Britons routinely used spatial concepts to understand culture throughout the period, which became increasingly abstract over time. As part of this, Shipp shows, the court evolved from a concrete space in London to an abstract space capable of hosting the entire British public. The laureateship was a dynamic office positioned at the interface of court and public, evolving in line with its audiences. An important intervention in eighteenth-century historiography, this book presents a nuanced understanding of eighteenth-century culture and society, in which the laureateship exemplified the enduring centrality of the court to the British conceptual geography of culture.

An account of the systemic failures that led to the Grenfell tower fire. The 2017 Grenfell tower fire in London was a "slow disaster," the product of a long accumulation of faults and errors that resulted from erroneous assumptions and organizational and governmental decision-making. This book offers a critical perspective on the systematic failures that lead to one of the greatest tragedies in Britain in our time. Before Grenfell is a poignant and timely analysis of risk, fire, and safety in postwar Britain. Tracing the evolution of state housing policy in relation to multistory housing since the mid-1950s, the book adds to a burgeoning history of the British experience of fire and safety in high-rises and investigates a latent housing crisis in contemporary Britain against a backdrop of increasingly deregulated urban building development. Drawing on public inquiries, newspaper accounts, and oral histories, Shane Ewen details other avoidable disasters, including the Ronan Point tower block explosion in 1968, the Summerland leisure center fire in 1972, and the Bradford City Football Club fire in 1985. The book closes with a powerful chapter on fire safety campaigners, including survivor groups, who are seeking justice for the victims of fire disasters. Before Grenfell aims to exert pressure on policy-makers to act on the lessons of fatal disasters in order to both prevent future casualties and establish a legacy for those who lost their lives.

A history of the Old Poor Law, which was the primary support for the poor in England and Wales from 1601 to 1834. The Old Poor Law, which was established in 1601 in England and Wales and was in force until 1834, was administered by the local parish and dispensed goods and services to paupers, providing a uniquely comprehensive, premodern system of support for the poor. Providing for the Poor brings together academics and practitioners from across disciplines to reexamine the micropolitics of poverty in the long eighteenth century through the eyes of the poor, their providers, and enablers. Covering such topics as the providence of the parochial sixpence, which was given in order to get a beggar to move along to another parish, to coercive marriages, plebeian clothing, and the much broader implications of vagrancy toward the end of the long eighteenth century, this volume aims to bridge the gaps in our understanding of the experiences of people across the social spectrum whose lives were touched by the Old Poor Law. It brings together some of the wider arguments concerning the nature of welfare during economically difficult times and documents the rising bureaucracy inherent in the system to produce a radical new history of the Old Poor Law in astonishing detail.

A history of childbirth in the eighteenth century as told by women. This fascinating new book radically rewrites all that we know about eighteenth-century childbirth by placing women's voices at the center of the story. Examining childbirth from the perspective of the birthing woman, this research offers new perspectives on the history of the family, the social history of medicine, community and neighborhood studies, and the study of women's lives in eighteenth-century England. From "quickening" through to "confinement," "giving caudle," delivery, and "lying-in," birth was once a complex ritual that involved entire communities. Drawing on an extensive and under-researched body of materials, such as letters, diaries, and recipe books, this book offers critical new perspectives on the history of the family, community, and the lives of women in the coming age of modern medicine. It unpacks the rituals of contemporary childbirth--from foods traditionally eaten before and after birth, birthing clothing, and how a woman's relationship with her family, husband, friends, and neighbors changed during and after pregnancy. In this important and deeply moving study, we are invited onto a detailed and emotional journey through motherhood in an age of immense socio-cultural and intellectual change.

A powerful study of medieval London's urban fringe. The Margins of Late Medieval London seeks to unpack the complexity of urban life in the medieval age, offering a detailed and novel approach to understanding London beyond its grand institutions and social bodies. Using a combination of experimental digital, quantitative, and qualitative methodologies, the volume casts new light on urban life at the level of the neighborhood and considers the differences in economy, society, and sociability which existed in different areas of a vibrant premodern city. This book focuses on the dynamism and mobility that shaped city life, integrating the experiences of London's poor and migrant communities and how they found their place within urban life. It describes how people found themselves marginalized in the city, and the strategies they would employ to mitigate that precarious position.

. This period was one of rapid urban transformation in the parish, as the large aristocratic riverside houses of the 17th century gave way to a bustling centre of commerce and culture in the 18th. The slums that developed in the 19th century were then swept away by the grand constructions of the Royal Courts of Justice and the Victoria Embankment, followed by the new thoroughfares of Aldwych and Kingsway, which are still the major landmarks in the area. Characterised by its contrasts, St Clement Danes was home to a mix of rich and poor residents, including lawyers, artisans, servants and prostitutes. The history of this fascinating area introduces a cast of characters ranging from the Twinings tea-trading family, to the rowdy theatre-going butchers of Clare Market and from the famous Samuel Johnson, to the infamous pornographers of Holywell Street. This book also unpicks the complicated structure of local government in the parish, and provides detailed accounts of the parish schools and charities.

A compact history of the parish of St George Hanover Square in London. The parish of St George Hanover Square encompasses the wealthy London neighborhoods of Mayfair, Belgravia, and Pimlico, as well as part of Hyde Park. This book relates the history of the parish, from its inception in 1725 to its abolition with the establishment of the London County Council in 1900. The area was transformed through rapid urbanization from largely undeveloped fields on the western fringe of London into one of the most affluent parts of the metropolis, with developments centered on a series of grand squares, including Hanover, Grosvenor, and Belgrave Squares. Through detailed thematic treatments, the book explores the local government of the vestry, as well as institutions such as schools and charities and St George's Hospital, which is now based in South London. The wider political culture and the economy of the parish are also given their due, from the aristocrats and servants of Mayfair to the industries on the bank of the Thames, including factories and a distillery. Finally, it covers the religious life of the parish, the erection of new churches and chapels, and its division into ecclesiastical parishes and subdistricts as its population boomed in the nineteenth century.

Queer Between the Covers presents a history of radical queer publishing and literature from 1880 to the modern day. Chronicling the gay struggle for acceptance and liberation, the book demonstrates how the fight for representation was often waged between the covers of books in a world where spaces for queer expression were taboo. The chapters provide an array of voices and histories from the famous, Derek Jarman and Oscar Wilde, to the lesser known and underappreciated, such as John Wieners and Valerie Taylor. It includes firsthand accounts of seminal moments in queer history, including the birth of Hazard Press and the Defend Gay's the Word Bookshop campaign in the 1980s. Queer Between the Covers demonstrates the importance of the book and how the queer community could be brought together through shared literature. The works discussed show the imaginative and radical ways in which queer texts have fought against censorship and repression and could be used as a political tool for organization and production. This study follows key moments in queer literary history, from the powerful community wide demonstrations for Gay's the Word during their battle with the British government, to the mapping of Chicago's queer spaces within Valerie Taylor's pulp novels, or the anonymous but likely shared authorship of the nineteenth century queer text Teleny. Queer publishing also often involved fascinating creative tactics for beating the censor, from the act of self-publishing to anonymous authorship as part of a so-called "cloaked resistance." Collage and repurposing found images and texts were key practices for many queer publishers and authors, from Derek Jarman to the artworks created by the Hazard Press. This is a fascinating and topical book on publishing history for those interested in how queer people throughout modernity have used literature as an important forum for self-expression and self-actualization when spaces and sites for queer expression were outlawed. 

A handbook for establishing tax clinics. Tax clinics, a government-funded initiative to help people who may not be able to afford professional advice and representation with their tax affairs, have existed in the United States since the early 1990s. Now they are being established throughout the world, particularly in Australia, the UK, and Ireland. This practical handbook explores the benefits that a clinical tax education can have and equips readers with the tools needed to start a clinical tax project. It investigates the ways in which tax clinics can both educate and remedy tax positions for local communities in supporting those without access to the tax profession to understand their tax liabilities. It also explores the higher education setting, in which community tax projects rely on students for their success, offering them the benefits of an alternative learning environment in tax and experience in the tax profession while studying. Beyond identifying the practical benefits, this handbook uses learning from tax clinics to uncover the burdens and impacts of tax policy on more marginalized taxpayers, and how policymakers can tailor tax systems to overcome them.

An accessible guide to completing research projects and building a career as a practicing historian. Writing history is both an art and a craft. This handbook is designed as an instructional guide to support students, independent scholars, and more. Becoming a Historian guides prospective historians on how best to participate in this vibrant community of scholars. This friendly guide will teach readers how to design research projects, how to differentiate between quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, and how to follow a project through to a positive conclusion. Becoming a Historian is also frank about the pains and pleasures of sticking with a long-term project. Finally, this guide explains how to present original research to wider audiences, including the appropriate use of social media, the art of public lecturing, and strategies for publication. Written by esteemed historians Penelope J. Corfield and Tim Hitchcock, who bring more than forty years of collective experience to the project, Becoming a Historian explodes the myths and systems that can make the world of research seem intimidating. Instead, this guide offers step-by-step advice designed to make it easier to join this community of scholarship.

This topical new book views the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of the law, history, ethics, technology, economics and gender studies. By focusing on the implications of the virus in a wider interdisciplinary context, and looking at responses to the virus in Europe, South America, Asia and beyond, these essays set out a framework for understanding the COVID-19 virus beyond its epidemiological constraints, asking us to question the very definition of what it means to be human.