Böcker utgivna av Manchester University Press

Bestsellers and masterpieces investigates the strange fact that many of the texts we now study and teach as the most canonical representations of European and Middle Eastern medieval writing were, in fact, not popular - or even read at all - in their day. On the other hand, those texts that were popular, as evidenced by the extant manuscript record, are taught and studied with far less frequency. The most dramatic demonstration of this disparity can be found in the surprising number of medieval texts now regarded as 'masterpieces' that have survived in just one single copy, in an unicum manuscript. On the European side this list includes Beowulf, El Poema de mio Cid and others; similarly canonical Arabo-Mediterranean examples include Ibn Hazm's Tawq al-Hamama (The Neck-Ring of the Dove) and Usama ibn Munqidh's Kitab al-I'tibar (Memoirs of Usama ibn Munqidh). While respecting the complicated history of each, contributors explore the processes that have contributed to the rise or eclipse of these canonical or neglected texts. Bestsellers and masterpieces provides cross-cultural insight into both the literary tastes of the medieval period and the cultural and political forces behind the creation of the 'modern canon' of medieval literature.

Riddles at work assembles multiple scholarly voices to explore the vibrant, poetic riddle tradition of early medieval England and its neighbours. The chapters present a wide range of traditional and experimental methodologies. They treat the riddles both as individual poems and as parts of a tradition, but, most importantly, they address Latin and Old English riddles side-by-side, bringing together texts that originally developed in conversation with each other but have often been separated in scholarship. Following the introduction, which situates the book in its scholarly context, Part I (Words) presents philological approaches to early medieval riddles - interpretations rooted in close readings of texts - since riddles work by making readers question what words really mean. However, while reading carefully may lead to elegant solutions, such solutions are not the end of the riddling game. Part II (Ideas) therefore explores how riddles work to make readers think anew about objects, relationships, and experiences, using literary theory to facilitate new approaches. Part III (Interactions) then looks at how riddles work through connections with other fields, languages, times, and places. Together, the chapters reveal that there is no single, right way to read these texts but rather a multitude of productive paths - some explored here, some awaiting future work. Riddles at work will appeal to students and scholars of early medieval studies. It features a mixture of new and established voices, including Jonathan Wilcox, Mercedes Salvador-Bello, and Jennifer Neville.

Representing the first in-depth qualitative study of how social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are used to mediate contentious public parades and protests in Northern Ireland, this book explores the implications of mis-and dis-information spread via online platforms for peacebuilding in societies transitioning out of conflict. -- .

Intimacy and injury maps the travels of the global #MeToo movement in India and South Africa. Both countries have shared the infamy of being labelled the world's 'rape capitals', with high levels of everyday gender-based and sexual violence. At the same time, both boast long histories of resisting such violence and its location in wider cultures of patriarchy, settler colonialism and class and caste privilege. Voices and experiences from the global north have dominated debates on #MeToo which, although originating in the US, had considerable traction elsewhere, including in the global south. In India, #MeToo revitalised longstanding feminist struggles around sexual violence, offering new tactics and repertoires. In South Africa, it drew on new cultures of opposing sexual violence that developed online and in student protests. There were also marked differences in the ways in which #MeToo travelled in both countries, pointing to older histories of power, powerlessness and resistance. Through the lens of the #MeToo moment, the book tracks histories of feminist organising in both countries, while also revealing how newer strategies extended or limited these struggles. Intimacy and injury is a timely mapping of a shifting political field around gender-based violence in the global south. In proposing comparative, interdisciplinary, ethnographically rich and analytically astute reflections on #MeToo, it provides new and potentially transformative directions to scholarly debates that are rarely brought into conversation with one another. With contributors located exclusively in South Africa and India, this book builds transnational feminist knowledge and solidarity in and across the global south.

Knowing COVID-19 shows how COVID-19 moved from being a mysterious and frightening novel infectious disease to something that was subject to an enormous amount of knowledge production. This volume focuses specifically on the role of humanities research within this vast epistemological engine. Across eight empirical chapters, the volumes traces the role of researchers in the humanities as they brought their expertise to bear on vital unknown questions in and around the pandemic. These included: how to make at-home diagnostic tests understandable; how to communicate the risks of public transport without stigmatising people who use that transport; what problems a suddenly touch-free world would create for deafblind people; what forms of racism and racialized experience were likely to be worsened by the pandemic; and how workers in places like museums were going to be able to deal with sudden closures and furlough schemes. Across eight chapters, the volume shows how humanities research does not simply comprise a set of tools for interpretation and meaning, to be applied when a crisis has safely passed; rather it shows how collaborative, experimental, and risky humanities research has been vital to actually resolving - and living through - the COVID-19 crisis.

European cities: Modernity, race and colonialism is a multidisciplinary collection of scholarly studies which rethink European urban modernity from a race-conscious perspective, being aware of (post-)colonial entanglements. The twelve original contributions empirically focus on such various cities as Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Cottbus, Genoa, Hamburg, Madrid, Mitrovica, Naples, Paris, Sheffield, and Thessaloniki, engaging multiple combinations of global urban studies, from various historical perspectives, with postcolonial, decolonial and critical race studies. Primarily inspired by the notion of Provincializing Europe (Dipesh Chakrabarty) the collection interrogates dominant, Eurocentric theories, representations and models of European cities across the East-West divide, offering the reader alternative perspectives to understand and imagine urban life and politics. With its focus on Europe, this book ultimately contributes to decades of rigorous critical race scholarship on varied global urban regions. European cities is a vital reading for anyone interested in the complex interactions between colonial legacies and constructions of 'modernity', in view of catering to social change and urban justice.

This book, a companion to the author's acclaimed Emile and Isaac Pereire (2015), sheds new light on elite Jewish families in nineteenth-century France.

A range of European filmmakers in the 1970s sought ways of making commercially minded films that explored some of the key political questions of the 1970s. This HOME film dossier revisits them in short, accessible pieces that will inspire those who are new to them to seek them out, and those who remember have seen them before to rush to see them again. With street-fighting, political conspiracies and violent acts of terror taking place across the continent, the 1970s was a period of great social upheaval in Europe. Taking an accessible approach, this HOME film dossier gathers a range of contributors to revisit some of the key political thrillers that explored these issues on screen. Often marginalised in the writing about political cinema, this dossier offers an engagement with some of the films that were box-office successes, bringing politics to commercial cinema audiences. Taking examples from across Europe, States of danger and deceit offers insights into a range of films that contributed to some of the key debates of the era. Running throughout is a concern with the idea of what constitutes a political cinema that would be seen by audiences. This fact brought criticism from some parts of the film community whilst others championed the likes of Costa-Gavras, Francesco Rosi and Elio Petri as some of the most significant filmmakers of the time. States of danger and deceit brings back into focus some of the best and most influential, politically motived films made during one of Europe's most turbulent decades.

Based on an ethnographic study on the Andean Tri-border (between Chile, Peru, and Bolivia), this volume addresses the experience of Aymara cross-border women from Bolivia employed in the rural valleys on the outskirts of Arica (Chile's northernmost city). As protagonists of transborder mobility circuits in the Atacama Desert, these women are intersectionally impacted by different forms of social vulnerability. With a feminist anthropological perspective, the book investigates how the boundaries of gender are constructed in the (multi)situated experience of these transborder women. By building a bridge between classical anthropological studies on kinship and contemporary debates on transnational and transborder mobility, the book invites us to rethink structuralist theoretical assertions on the elementary character of family alliances. The women's life histories and the ethnographic data analyzed show that the limits of gender are configured as a triad between gender violence, kinship restrictions, and female mobility for the study's protagonists. This contributes to denaturalizing both the androcentrism of the classic arguments on kinship and the emphasis on the experiences of circulation of contemporary theories. Consequently, this book also contributes to the field of border studies by overcoming the insistent invisibility of the role of women in border regions through a model of analysis that privileges female discourses, experiences, affections, and practices. The book's focus on the reproductive tasks performed by the women allows a rethinking of the relationship between gender violence and female care as a key element to the survival of indigenous groups in border areas.

This groundbreaking book explores key methods for investigating emotions in medieval literary texts, proposing innovative approaches, drawing upon psychological theory, 'history of emotions' research and close critical reading, to uncover the emotional repertoire in play in English literary culture between 1200-1500. The extensive introduction lays out medieval philosophical and physiological theorisations of emotion, closely bound up with cognitive processes. Following chapters investigate the changing lexis for emotion in Middle English, examining how translations from French affect the ways in which feelings are imagined. Bodily affect, both involuntary displays and deliberate gesture, is discussed in detail. Performativity - getting things done with emotions - and performance are shown to become interlinked as more sophisticated models of selfhood emerge. Concepts of interiority and the public persona, the self and self-presentation complicate the changing modes through which feeling is expressed. Literary texts are pre-eminently devices for producing emotion of various kinds; the book proposes ways of tracing how authors built techniques for eliciting emotions into their narratives and their effects on their audiences. By the end of the medieval period two vital developments had expanded the possibility for varied and complex emotional expression in texts: the development of the long-form romance, encouraged by the advent of printing, and the concept of auto-fiction: new possibilities emerged for authors to write the emotional self. Through its comprehensive account of emotions in the medieval period, Approaches to emotion explores how literary texts educated and informed their audiences about changing ways to be human in medieval England.

A range of European filmmakers in the 1970s sought ways of making commercially minded films that explored some of the key political questions of the 1970s. This HOME film dossier revisits them in short, accessible pieces that will inspire those who are new to them to seek them out, and those who remember have seen them before to rush to see them again. With street-fighting, political conspiracies and violent acts of terror taking place across the continent, the 1970s was a period of great social upheaval in Europe. Taking an accessible approach, this HOME film dossier gathers a range of contributors to revisit some of the key political thrillers that explored these issues on screen. Often marginalised in the writing about political cinema, this dossier offers an engagement with some of the films that were box-office successes, bringing politics to commercial cinema audiences. Taking examples from across Europe, States of danger and deceit offers insights into a range of films that contributed to some of the key debates of the era. Running throughout is a concern with the idea of what constitutes a political cinema that would be seen by audiences. This fact brought criticism from some parts of the film community whilst others championed the likes of Costa-Gavras, Francesco Rosi and Elio Petri as some of the most significant filmmakers of the time. States of danger and deceit brings back into focus some of the best and most influential, politically motived films made during one of Europe's most turbulent decades.

Exile, loss of homeland through compulsion or choice, has confronted women from prehistory to the present day. Women in exile in early modern Europe and the Americas analyses the important yet largely untold stories of women exiles of diverse status, origin, and political and religious outlook between 1492 and 1790. They include Jewish women expelled from Spain, Indigenous women enslaved and taken to Spain, British indentured women crossing the Atlantic, and enslaved African women transported to the Americas. Religious and political upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries created other exiles: Huguenot women went to the Netherlands and England, English royalists left for the Netherlands and France, while English radicals went to the continent and even Connecticut. Women in exile explores how these women faced life-changing questions of whether and where to go and how to create a new life in a new home. The book's themes include women's crucial efforts to turn to religious, political, and family networks, although not always with success. Whether poor or royal, their financial circumstances remained precarious. Drawing on varied primary sources, the book captures women's narratives of exile. In many ways, the experience of exile could become a constitutive element of identity, shaping how these women viewed themselves and how they were viewed by others. Women often exercised extraordinary agency, many grasped new opportunities despite adversity. Women in Exile not only provides a new vantage point from which to enrich the study of exile but also contributes significant new scholarship to the history of women.

Who constructs, controls, and preserves the Official Record are often key to documenting and understanding events. However, partly because of the potential of the Official Record to contain evidence of controversial policies and malfeasance, its construction, control and preservation in the arena of national security is inherently contested: with those seeking greater openness and (democratic) accountability arguing 'sunlight is [...] the best of disinfectants', and others, not always unreasonably, urging stricter information control because, to their mind, sound government arises when advice and policy are formulated secretly. Across seven chapters, this edited volume explores the intersection of the Official Record, oversight, national security, and democracy. Via key US, UK, and Canadian case studies, all of which are backed up with primary documentation, this volume is designed to help higher level undergraduate readers and above explore the Official Record in the context of the national security operations of democratic states. All chapters are research-based pieces of original writing that feature a Document Appendix containing primary documents (often excerpts) that are key to a chapter's narrative. In short, via engagement with a broad range of primary material, this volume interrogates the boundaries between national security, accountability, oversight, and the Official Record.

European psychiatry underwent numerous transformations in the second half of the twentieth century. A variety of practices were experienced and routinised, contributing to reshape the boundaries of the mental health field. Case studies from across Europe allow one to appreciate how new 'ways of doing' contributed to transform the field, beyond the watchwords of deinstitutionalisation, the introduction of neuroleptics, centrality of patients and overcoming of asylum-era habits. Through a variety of sources and often adopting a small-scale perspective, the book takes a close look at the way new practices took shape and at how they installed themselves, eventually facing resistance, injecting new purposes, and contributing to enlarging psychiatry's fields of expertise, therefore blurring its once-more-defined boundaries. Studying psychiatry in its making and unmaking in the second half of the twentieth century allows one to see it less as a science grounded in theory or laboratory research than as an art of doing, which can be understood as the outcome of practices.

Reflecting on research carried out in a range of disciplines and contexts, the contributors offer a critical starting point for discussions on how to research the far right ethically, a topic that raises a number of urgent issues. Rejecting the idea of neutrality in research, the collection makes it explicit that this research is always political. Lived experience and reflexivity are key to this book, whether it is the many years spent grappling with the ethical dilemmas posed by researching and engaging with and against the far right, how to simply start in light of the practical and psychological barriers imposed by various actors and ourselves, or how to remain in service to and solidarity with the communities at the sharp end of such politics. Beyond explicitly ethical questions, this book also offers a critical intervention into the field of research on the far right to address issues such as racism, sexism, white supremacy, colonialism and positionality, which must be core to any ethical approach to social research. This collection aims to be a practical contribution to researching the far right and the range of contributors, issues, and approaches provide a broad applicability for researchers broadly understood. As such, it will be valuable to anyone interested in researching, understanding and combating the far right.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, arts and creative practitioners and cultural and community organisations produced work that addressed issues such as the challenges of isolation or created spaces that can enable recovery or renewal. In this collection, authors reflect on how individuals and communities coped, adapting and using creativity in ways that were sometimes everyday and sometimes extraordinary. A spotlight is placed on the rich diversity of research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in response to COVID in this area. Significantly, the volume's chapters look forward from the pandemic experience, presenting case studies and detailed examples that suggest how arts, culture and other community assets might be mobilised, including through co-creation and co-production, to enable greater and more equal access to resources in future. There are valuable lessons that might help us cope and develop resilience now and in similar crises. Threaded through all the contributions, readers will discover a focus on the experiences and voices of those marginalised during the pandemic, because of their lived experiences of structural inequalities, or due to mental or physical ill-health or age. These are difficult and complex topics, and there are vital lessons here for policy and for practice in the arts and for provision of health and care.

Adaptation and resilience in the performing arts shares important insights into the effects of the pandemic on live performance in the UK. It features eight projects funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council between 2020 and 2022 to undertake research that would address the problems caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The researchers share what they discovered from working with practitioners and companies in the live performing arts who rapidly adapted their working practices and the spaces in which they were able to connect safely with audiences, whether digital or outdoors. Several chapters provide evidence of the impacts of digital innovations and telepresence technologies on artists and audiences and shed light on how government discourses and the support structures within the industry affected the mental health of creative practitioners. Addressing policymakers and practitioners, others demonstrate how artists and local government events managers approached programming community-based work outdoors. Throughout, the essays are infused with practical energy, inspired by the creativity and dedication of the practitioners, and mindful of how the pandemic exacerbated the structural and financial precariousness of the workforce in live performing arts. They offer evidence-based reflections on values-led practices in the creative sector that model more inclusive, accessible, and sustainable ways of working. Adaptation and resilience thus contributes to shaping our understanding of the challenges faced by live performing arts at a time of crisis - and how these may be overcome.

Medieval afterlives presents ten new essays which examine the ways traditions of early drama were transformed over time, as well as the inherent capability of the traditions themselves to transform space, audience, time, and belief. The collection, which includes an afterword by Theresa Coletti, is unique in its focus on the dramaturgical and cultural traditions that shaped and were shaped by early English drama until the closing of the theatres in 1642. Framing its argument in terms of traditions, this collection moves beyond the biases imposed by period categories, thereby addressing the continuities of early English drama that persisted in the face of cultural and religious change. The essays demonstrate that, alongside textual records, it is also crucial to look at other physical traces of past theatre traditions, including evidence of embodied memory, non-literary sources and the acknowledgement of audience memory. In so doing, it seeks to refine and deepen our understanding of the richness of early English drama: its copiousness, versatility, and playfulness.

Off white uncovers the hidden history of race and whiteness in Central and Eastern Europe (including Russia/the Soviet Union). It traces the ideological work of whiteness back to the region's constitutive roots in nation-state building and global colonialism. The collection uncovers the work of race and racism through discourses and practices that have rendered them transparent and natural. It does so in studies of the international system of states and empires, from national self-determination struggles through geographic exploration to diplomacy and cultural representation in literature, film, the media industries, exhibition art and music; in intellectual and academic discourses; and across the many avenues of articulating banal nationalism, including everyday artefacts and language. This is an alternative history of Central and Eastern Europe that breaks through the shield of racial innocence in what may be the last geopolitical stronghold where white supremacy is still unacknowledged as the defining mechanism of state power, social hierarchization, and global interconnection.

Land and Labour charts the controversial history of the Potters' Emigration Society from its founding in 1844 to its dissolution seven years later. The brainchild of a Welsh-born trade unionist and editor, William Evans, it was the most widely discussed project of its kind in the era of mass migration. The Society aimed to solve the problems of surplus labour by transforming potters into farmers on land acquired on the Wisconsin frontier. The study examines the industrial background to the emigration scheme, and the establishment of the first settlement in America, the duly named Pottersville. Short of funds and facing competition from Feargus O'Connor's Chartist Land Plan, in 1848 it widened its membership to other trades and regions, opening branches in Lancashire, Scotland, and London and other industrial communities. Over-ambition, relentless criticism and the inherent difficulties of long-distance colonisation brought about its collapse at the beginning of 1851. While many emigrant families remained and prospered, others found less success, with an undetermined number returning to Britain. Land and Labour is based on intensive research into British and American newspapers, passenger lists, census, manuscript, genealogical and other sources. Despite its failure, the potters' emigration scheme was not an unrealistic response to the anxieties and displacements wrought by industrialisation, including fears over mechanisation. Its history offers unique insight into working-class dreams of landed independence in the American West and significantly contributes to our understanding of the complex and contingent character of transatlantic emigration in the nineteenth century.

With the outbreak of WWI and British expansion into the Middle East, certain Bahá'í, Muslim, and Jewish leaders found it necessary to form new relationships with that government and its representatives, relationships which would prove to be of pivotal importance for each and have a lasting impact on future generations. This book, based upon extensive archival research, explores how Bahá'ís in England and Palestine, Muslim missionaries from India based in Woking, and Jews in England on both sides of the Zionist debate understood interactions with the British state and larger imperial culture prior to and during the war. One of the most significant findings of this study is that while an appreciation of diversity tends to be regarded as a modern, postcolonial phenomenon, a way to remedy the unjust remnants of an imperial past, the men and women of the early twentieth century whose words and actions come to life on the pages of this book understood diversity as defining characteristic of the empire itself. They found real meaning and value in the variety of religions, races, languages, nations, cultures and ethnicities that comprised that vast, global entity. This recognition of its diversity, along with certain British liberal ideals, allowed extraordinary individuals to find common ground between that state and their own beliefs, goals and aspirations, thus helping to lay the foundation for the eventual development of the Bahá'í faith as a world religion, a new era of Muslim missionary activity in the West and a Jewish state in Palestine.

Redefining untouchability brings new light to the intellectual life of the B.R. Ambedkar, one of India's most important thinkers of the last century. Usually under the shadow of Indian nationalist such as Gandhi and Nehru, the importance of Ambedkar's political thought remains largely unexplored. Ambedkar's main concern throughout his life was the abolition of untouchability, which he fought throughout his writings and politics. Ambedkar's place in the history of Indian political thought is unique. Coming from one of the most oppressed communities in India, he received doctoral degrees from Columbia University and the London School of Economics. Similarly, Ambedkar familiarised himself with the newest anthropological, political and sociological theories emerging at the turn of the twentieth century. Influenced by the thought of Franz Boas and John Dewey, among others, Ambedkar showed his followers that their condition of oppression was fluid and malleable, it could be changed as it was not dependent on karma from previous lives. By analysing untouchability and its links to religion and ideologies of racial supremacy, Ambedkar exposed untouchability as an economic, political and cultural system designed to oppress Dalits. He demanded political and educational rights to bridge the inequalities present in the lives of his followers. For Ambedkar, India required a social and a political revolution beyond the scope of nationalist aspirations. At a time when inequality and injustice is still rampant in India and elsewhere, recovering the value of Ambedkar's thought is paramount.

The 'baby boom' generation, born between the 1940s and the 1960s, is often credited with pioneering new and creative ways of relating, doing intimacy and making families. With this cohort of men and women in Britain now entering mid and later life, they are also said to be revolutionising the experience of ageing. Are the romantic practices of this 'revolutionary cohort' breaking with tradition and allowing new ways of understanding and doing ageing and relating to emerge? Based on an innovative combination of ethnographic fieldwork in salsa classes and life history interviews, this book documents the meanings of desire and romance, and 'new' - or renewed - intimacies, among women in mid and later life. Beginning with women at a transition point, when they were newly single or newly dating in midlife, the chapters look back over life histories at prior relationship experiences at different life stages, engage with the fine-grain of navigating the terrain of dating and repartnering in midlife, and look forward to hopes for future intimacies. Fieldwork in salsa classes demonstrates the sensory, sensual and affective nature of heteronormativity whilst biographical interviews show how femininity is informed by memories of the past, of the generations that came before and class-based desires. Making important contributions to our understanding of ageing, intimacy and gender this book illuminates the intersections of age, class and whiteness in romance and desire. We see how rather than being revolutionary, a pervasive concern with being respectable throughout the lifecourse endured.

This volume is the first collection of essays to focus specifically on how Reformed theology and ecclesiology related to one of the most consequential issues between the Elizabethan Settlement (1559) and the Hanoverian Succession (1714), namely conformity to the Church of England. Stimulated by recent scholarship on England's 'long Reformation', this volume provides fresh perspectives on the multifaceted legacy of Reformed Protestantism to the Elizabethan and Stuart Churches, showing how competing notions of Reformed identity often dictated the terms of ecclesiastical and political debate, particularly concerning the boundaries of conformity. This volume enriches scholarly understandings of how Reformed identity was understood in the Tudor and Stuart periods, and how it influenced both clerical and lay attitudes towards the English Church's government, liturgy, and doctrine. In order to reflect how established religion pervaded all aspects of civic life and was sharply contested within both ecclesiastical and political spheres, this volume integrates chapters that focus variously on the ecclesio-political, liturgical, and doctrinal aspects of conformity. Its eleven chapters traverse issues of conformity to the Tudor and Stuart Church and show how intrinsically they reflected contesting notions of Reformed identity conceived within a broader European Reformed milieu, but marked by a distinctly English character due to the idiosyncrasies of the Church of England.

This is the first major study to explore the personal and professional lives of Jewish refugees who entered the nursing profession in Britain. In the mid twentieth-century, nursing was nominally a profession but with poor pay and harsh discipline. It was unpopular with British women and in the years preceding the Second World War, hospitals in Britain suffered chronic nurse staffing crises. Despite the opportunities war-work offered women, the highly gendered world of mid-twentieth century Britain, meant most remained in feminised occupations. Nursing was promoted as a critical mode of employment. Using a range of personal testimony, the book exposes the value the refugees placed on the profession as a means for escape and financial independence. It also brings into stark relief the Government and nursing elite's opportunistic use of refugees to fulfil an urgent need for nurses. Jewish refugees and the British nursing profession speaks not only to the historical challenges for women refugees, but current threats for migrant workers in the country's health care professions.Following the uneven trajectory of their lives, the book moves from the war years to the latter decades of the twentieth century when changes in the social order enabled more women to enter university and professional life. The refugee nurses, armed as they were, with education and intelligence could have moved out of nursing into more lucrative and socially advantageous work. Yet, most did not. Despite the relatively low numbers, the book demonstrates their considerable influence on nursing practice, education and research.

Agents of European Overseas Empire overhauls our understanding of the early modern European imperial history as well as the extent of the participation of early modern polities in the conduct of European overseas trade and colonisation. Contributions from historians based in Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States focus on the 'private' interests, as we would term them today, that initiated the pursuit of overseas commercial and colonising interests during the early modern period. They track the networking of various agents, be they colonisers, traders, and thinkers, who pursued early modern European global interests and who conducted their activities both with and without the approval of polities. These networksconstituted the ligaments that bound these far-flung endeavours to the respective sovereigns but also, paradoxically, exposed the laxity entailed in those ligaments in the form of smuggling and piracy as well as endemic jockeying for economic and political advantage.This collection relegates 'the state' to its appropriate secondary, reactive role in this history, but also avoids exaggerating the place of colonials, especially with respect to conflict with metropolitan interests, in the development of the Dutch, English, French, and Spanish Empires.

Although poverty in the eighteenth century has long been an object of focus for social historians, it has figured only marginally in the intellectual history of the period. This is because it has been assumed that the existence of poverty was rarely problematized before the transformative decade of the 1790s. Yet because the theme of poverty played important roles in many critical issues in European history, it was central to some of the key debates in Enlightenment political thought throughout the period, including the controversies about sovereignty and representation, public and private charity, as well as questions relating to crime and punishment. Indeed, leading thinkers like the Scottish political economist Adam Smith, the French Physiocrats and the Milanese jurist Cesare Beccaria had come to see the fate of the poor as an urgent political question in the middle decades of the century. This book examines some of the most important contributions to these debates, while also ranging beyond the canonical Enlightenment thinkers, to investigate how poverty was conceptualised in the wider intellectual culture, as politicians, administrators and pamphlet writers grappled with the issue. The volume also revisits the question of why and how many governments and men of letters began to address poverty as a social problem in the 1790s. It asks how far the drive to reduce or eliminate want was already underway before the French Revolution, as well as challenging the binary characterisation of debates in the period as a struggle between humanitarian radicals and cold-hearted reactionaries.

This volume of essays analyses the persuasive and sometimes deceptive means by which myths, information, and beliefs about medicine and the medical professions proliferated in English literary culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It explores how English vernacular medical texts of the this period invite cross-comparisons with literary representations of health and medical practitioners, to enrich the picture of medicine in the popular imagination and to provide important perspectives on those questions surrounding authenticity, agency, representation, and accessibility that we might similarly ask about literature. Drawing from a diverse spectrum of scholarly approaches, from medical history to book history, our essays engage with a wide range of primary source material. This ranges from canonical to less well known literary and book historical sources, including the poetry of John Arbuthnot and Jane Barker, the life writing of James Boswell, and the novels of Tobias Smollett, Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry Rider Haggard, and 'Mrs. Carver' of the Minerva Press; medical works by George Cheyne and Daniel Turner; and medical material aimed at popular and public audiences, including skincare remedies, anatomical flap-books, the various (self)representations and advertisements of dog-doctors, medical trademarks, and pharmacy labels. Together, this rich array of material demonstrates how popular understanding of medical work and medical figures was informed and misinformed, whether by dishonesty, false marketing or preconceived prejudice, or through being made subordinate to non-medical ends such as comic or satiric productions or political, religious, or socio-cultural priorities. What emerges is a centuries-long 'infodemic' which invites comparisons with our present moment.