On September 10, 1813, the hot, still air that hung over Lake Erie was broken by the sounds of sharp conflict. Led by Oliver Hazard Perry, the American fleet met the British, and though they sustained heavy losses, Perry and his men achieved one of the most stunning victories in the War of 1812. Author Walter Rybka traces the Lake Erie Campaign from the struggle to build the fleet in Erie, Pennsylvania, during the dead of winter and the conflict between rival egos of Perry and his second in command, Jesse Duncan Elliott, through the exceptionally bloody battle that was the first U.S. victory in a fleet action. With the singular perspective of having sailed the reconstructed U.S. brig Niagara for over twenty years, Rybka brings the knowledge of a shipmaster to the story of the Lake Erie Campaign and the culminating Battle of Lake Erie.

Kaufman examines the training and status of British military surgeons during the late 18th and 19th centuries. Their management of the sick and wounded during the wars with France leading up to and including the Peninsular War is also described. He concludes with an analysis of the medical problems associated with the Crimean War.

Using important contemporary texts, Kaufman describes the personalities who served in the British Army Medical Department during the late 18th and 19th centuries, when diseases caused a much higher mortality than injuries sustained in battle. Many military surgeons were only poorly trained, and the management of the sick and wounded only gradually improved over this period despite significant advances in medicine, surgery, and hygene. Government spending cuts after the Peninsular War greatly depleted the medical service of the army so that by the time of the Crimean War it was unable to cope with a European-style war. Deficiencies were recognized and, in the case of the medical services, this led to the establishment of the Army Medical School in 1860. This analysis should be of particular interest to serving military medical officers and to historians and other researchers interested in the management of 18th and 19th century armies in times of peace and war.

In the wake of the Indian Mutiny, the 1860s and 1870s marked an important period of change and imperial consolidation for the British. Here the author examines the imperial policies of Robert Cecil, the third marquis of Salisbury, who served as secretary of state for India for two administrations during this key era, which marked a significant turning point for relations with the local princes. Clearly defining the office of secretary of state, Salisbury was responsible for policies designed to ensure the smooth running of an empire whose administration was made more difficult by the British Parliament, which possessed the right to oversee Indian affairs. Hoping to prevent a frontier war, Salisbury stressed the importance of promoting progressive change in such a way as to avoid arousing Indian opposition. This conservative approach to Indian government was able to countenance radical ideas, but it did give rise to the hostility of Western-educated Indians who sought more say in the governing of India. At this time, their opposition lacked weight, but Salisbury warned of future dangers should the British fail to promote the welfare of the Indian peasant and to solve India's financial difficulties. Salisbury would carry with him ideas developed at this time to his future posts as foreign secretary and prime minister. Brumpton's study complements existing research into imperial ideology and the official mind of India under the British.

This introduction to the years of the Napoleonic wars (1793 to 1815) tells the story of one of the keys to that great conflict, the Ship of the Line - the deadly battleships that played such a vital role in the battles. The author describes the ships' construction and armaments, the daily life of the men who served and the problems faced by commanders of the time in battles that include the Glorious First of June, the Battle of the Nile and Trafalgar.

In the spring of 1865, when Japan was in the grip of a major civil war, 18 samurai and an interpreter risked their lives to embark secretly on a voyage to the unknown lands of the barbarian west. Their destination was Britain - at the hub of a vast empire. These were the Satsuma students, some of them still in their teens, all carrying orders from their domains to travel abroad. It was an extraordinary and daring expedition. Their experience of life in the west not only transformed their perception of the outside world, but through their diverse activities in later life, had a profound impact on commerce, education and culture in Meiji Japan. First published in 1974, Inuzuka Takaaki's study is still the classic work on the Satsuma students' revealing tale of discovery.

In the essays presented in this volume Bentham lays down the theoretical principles from which he develops his proposals for reform of the English poor laws in response to the perceived crisis in poor relief in the mid-1790s. These ideas were to be a significant influence on the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.

Continuing the context of Anglo-Japanese exchange and historic connections from the first volume, Volume II incorporates a further 20 studies of key personalities. This includes: Edmund Morel, pioneer railway builder in Meiji Japan; Alexander Shand, an important figure in the development of Japanese banking; Lafcadio Hearn, the great interpreter of Japanese culture; Rev Dr John Batchelor, whose work with the Ainu people of northern Japan is well-known; and, more recently, Shigeru Yoshida, Japan's first post-war prime minister, and Christmas Humphreys, founder of the Buddhist Society, whose work and writings provided a jey post-war bridge in East-West understanding.

Historians of the European Jewish experience have long marginalized the intellectual achievement of Jews in England, where it was assumed no seminal figures contributed to the development of modern Jewish thought. In this first comprehensive account of the emergence of Anglo-Jewish thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, David Ruderman impels a reconsideration of the formative beginnings of modern European Jewish culture. He uncovers a vibrant Jewish intellectual life in England during the Enlightenment era by examining a small but fascinating group of hitherto neglected Jewish thinkers in the process of transforming their traditional Hebraic culture into a modern English one. This lively portrait of English Jews reformulating their tradition in light of Enlightenment categories illuminates an overlooked corner in the history of Jewish culture in England and Jewish thought during the Enlightenment.

Ruderman overturns the conventional view that the origins of modern Jewish consciousness are located exclusively within the German-Jewish experience, particularly Moses Mendelssohn's circle. Independent of the better-known German experience, the encounter between Jewish and English thought was incubated amid the unprecedented freedom enjoyed by Jews in England. This resulted in a less inhibited defense of Jews and Judaism. In addition to the original and prolific thinkers David Levi and Abraham Tang, Ruderman introduces Abraham and Joshua Van Oven, Mordechai Shnaber Levison, Samuel Falk, Isaac Delgado, Solomon Bennett, Hyman Hurwitz, Emanuel Mendes da Costa, Ralph Shomberg, and others. Of obvious appeal and import to students of Jewish and English history, this study depicts the challenge of defining a religious identity in the modern age.

The letters of Joseph Symson provide a rare glimpse into the public and private life of an inland merchant who was also a member of England's urban elite. The volume reveals how Symson organised his trade and attempted to organise his family. It details his responses to the political, economic, and religious uncertainties of the early years of the eighteenth century. These letters portray both a closely-knit society of north west mercantile families based on regional affiliation and kinship; and a wider world of trade increasingly integrated with the economies of England, Ireland and Scotland - a world linked to the expansion of the Atlantic economy.

This is part of an eight-volume series providing short biographies of men and women from Roman to Victorian times. Each entry places the subject in the context of their age and evokes what was distinctive and interesting about their personality and achievement. The biographies are arranged in a broadly chronological rather than alphabetical sequence so that the reader may easily browse from one contemporary to the next. The index, with its many cross-references, reveals further linkages between contemporaries. Each volume is a portrait of an age, presenting history in a biographical form which complements the conventional approach.

Lacking the romantic imagery of the 1745 uprising of supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 has received far less attention from scholars. Yet the '15, just eight years after the union of England and Scotland, was in fact a more significant threat to the British state. This book is the first thorough account of the Jacobite rebellion that might have killed the Act of Union in its infancy.
Drawing on a substantial range of fresh primary resources in England, Scotland, and France, Daniel Szechi analyzes not only large and dramatic moments of the rebellion but also the smaller risings that took place throughout Scotland and northern England. He examines the complex reasons that led some men to rebel and others to stay at home, and he reappraises the economic, religious, social, and political circumstances that precipitated a Jacobite rising. Shedding new light on the inner world of the Jacobites, Szechi reveals the surprising significance of their widely supported but ultimately doomed rebellion.

A comprehensive look at Brunel's most famous and lesser known achievements. This remarkable book takes each of his triumphs and explores them in historical context, as well as from an engineering and architectural point of view. An excellent 'gazetteer' gives the reader a chance to go out and follow Brunel's engineering trail. Over 80 diagrams and 60 photographs bring the subject to life.

This brutal of attrition which devastated the South African economy and cost the war British over $22 billion in 1899, triggered by Cecil Rhodes' failed Jameson raid. It marked the end of the old wars of empire and the beginning of a new more recognizably 20th century style of warfare. It saw the invention of the 'concentration camp' and saw the British develop their own brand of guerilla warfare to combat the Boers. Eventually defeated by superior numbers and a scorched earth policy, the Boers finally surrendered, but a legacy of bitterness had been spawned which would last for decades.

In a biography of style and energy, Frances Wilson makes use of previously unseen letters, law reports and confidential Government correspondence to reveal the true story of the sexual celebrity who blackmailed the British aristocracy and held even the king to ransom. Harriette Wilson was the most desired and the most dangerous woman in Regency London. This biography reveals for the first time the true story behind her sensational life and scandalous 'Memoirs'. When her former lovers - including much of the British aristocracy - turned against her, she knew exactly how to take revenge ...

This unique volume, comprising Colm Toibin's acclaimed short text and a linked collection of key documents put together by one of Ireland's leading younger historians, offers a many-sided view of one's of history's most poignant and far-reaching catastrophes. This book will allow the reader to understand the complex way in which the fragmentary past is both available to us ... and distant from us.' We get those insights from Toibin's short history and from a rich collection of documents -- government papers, recipes, journalism, letters, statistics, personal statements, all linked so the book can be read as a whole.

Alan Macfarlane writes of F. W. Maitland:

When we consider that some five thousand pages of detailed findings, written about a hundred years ago, have been modified in only a few minor emphases and one or two facts, and that the bulk of Maitland's edifice still stands, we can begin to understand why he has an almost god-like status among historians who know the problems he faced and the elegance of his solutions.

The great legal historian Vinogradoff disagreed with Maitland on some specific points, but shortly after Maitland's death wrote of him as 'the greatest legal historian of the law of England' and as a man to whom lawyers, historians and sociologists were equally indebted: 'lawyers because of his subject, historians because of his methods, sociologists because of his results.'

J.H.Hexter referred to Maitland as 'the greatest of English historians' in his book on modern historians. R.G.Collingwood referred to the 'best historians, like Mommsen and Maitland'. Denys Hay in his overview of western historiography describes him as a 'giant' who, with Marc Bloch, is one of the 'two greatest historians of recent times'. Bloch himself referred to 'the great English jurist Maitland.' The medievalist Helen Cam ends her preface to his Selected Essays by concluding fifty years after his death. 'Let us say with Powicke, "Maitland is one of the immortals" and leave it at that.' G.O.Sayles wrote that 'In the range of his interests, the fineness of his intellect, and the considerable bulk of what he wrote in barely twenty-five years, Maitland has no match among English historians.'

Driven on by the sense of an impending early death Maitland tried to solve within a period of some twenty years the same riddle as earlier thinkers. How had the strange modern world, with its glimpses of liberty, equality and wealth, been made? Why had it found its expression in a certain part of the world and in its earliest and definitive form in England? What precisely were the constituents of this peculiar civilization? His solutions, much more deeply based on documents, were in substance the same as those put forward by Montesquieu, Adam Smith and Tocqueville. The essence of modernity lay in the separation of spheres, the tensions between religion, politics, kinship and economy. Out of these contradictions emerged certain liberties and a dynamic energy.

A whole set of factors, from the general (the nature of islandhood, the accident of the Norman Conquest, the absence of Cathar heresies and the inquisition), to the individual (the personality of Henry II or Edward I) played their part. What happened on one small island both reflected what happened on its neighbouring continent, but also transformed it. Like some new species of finch on the Galapagos, there developed a new kind of civilization. This would then be magnified and taken to its extreme through other accidents, the development of America, the expansion of the British Empire and the first industrial revolution and so to the modern world. With Maitland we have a developed theory which puts forward a believable answer to one part of the question of how the modern world has been made.

"Delane's War" is the story of how John Delane, editor of "The Times", brought about the resignation of the entire cabinet of the British Government over its conduct of the Crimean War. In the aftermath Britain came close to revolution. The British went to war ill-prepared, poorly equipped and desperately undermanned. Within a matter of weeks their numbers had been decimated by disease and the harsh rigours of the Crimean winter through their inadequate clothing. In addition, poor intelligence had not predicted a spirited Russian defence. Using the first war reporters and 'embedded correspondents' "The Times" revealed to England the terrible drama as it unfolded, in a premonition of modern war journalism. Lack of censorship allowed "The Times"' correspondent William Howard Russell to send back reports on astonishing military incompetence. Delane printed them verbatim and ran excoriating editorials against those in command. He also ran the world's first newspaper appeals, which would inspire Florence Nightengale to visit the Crimea and open her field hospitals. "Delane's War" describes the four months between October 1854 and January 1855, during which time the Government and Army tried to silence and deride Delane and his newspaper for his coverage of the war, accusing him of treachery, deception and exaggeration. Delane was steadfast in his editorial line and would not be ignored. Eventually a dramatic debate in Parliament brought about the largest ever defeat of a British Government in office. With the resignations of ministers, the lying of politicians, the aloofness of generals and the suffering of the troops, this book paints a sadly recognisable picture. From it, however, John Delane stands out as one of the heroes of Vitorian England.

In November 1841 Sir William Macnaghten reduced his payments of what were effectively bribes to the leaders of particular factions in Afghanistan--the precipitation of the events described in this book. The first part provides extracts of the official government account of events between October 1841 and January 1842; the second is extracted from the diaries of two of the survivors--Lieutenant Vincent Eyre and Lady Florentia Sale, both of whom were finally released in September 1842 after eight months of being moved around the region in dread fear of their lives. They provide critical and moving accounts of one of the most appalling captivities in history.

Story of the devastating effects of the Great Famine in Cork Workhouse.

Strong religious convictions enabled the nineteenth-century feminist Josephine Butler to withstand the on-slaught of abuse that she received from those both inside and outside of the woman's movement. Other women's rights activists felt she was far too radical and her efforts would harm their attempts at extending educational and employment opportunities and fighting for legal and political rights for women Her opponents viewed her as a threat to the moral foundations of society itself. In the second half of the nineteenth century in England, the Contagious Disease Acts created a class of women who were at the sexual mercy of any man in six military districts. According to that law, all prostitutes were required to have a government certificate which showed that they were free of disease, which on the face of its seems to be rather innocuous. But, as they say, the devil is in the details. Any man could denounce any woman as a prostitute for any reason. If she was a never married woman, public health officials would detain the woman and give her a virginity test, making sure that she failed the test and issued her a certificate indicating that she was disease free and therefore entitled to ply the trade of prostitution. Since the woman could be shown to have had sex outside of marriage, she was branded a prostitute and all opportunities for honorable employment were closed to her. Because she could not find employment because her reputation had been destroyed, she was essentially forced into prostitution to survive. Notice that the woman was never arrested and charged with a crime, she was never tried and convicted of anything; any man, a spurned lover, a pimp who needed more girls, or ajealous suitor could accuse the woman of having had sex outside of marriage and that was enough to ruin a woman for life. Also notice that men were not held accountable in any way for the spread of venereal disease, the ostensible justification for requiring the health certificates in the first place. Poor and working-class women could quite literally be snatched off the street and forced into prostitution. Butler's first public crusade was to halt the extension of the Contagious Disease Acts and then to repeal the existing laws. Laws similar to the British Contagious Disease Acts were in place on the Continent in France and Germany. Harassed, jostled, jeered, threatened, unable to find accommodations in many cities, smeared with excrement, even mobbed, Butler, "the moral reformer," toured the continent establishing committees in many cities to fight against such local laws. Returning to England, she founded an international organization to fight using pamphlets and the press, in the legislatures and the courts, against such laws. She even entered the fray when public health organizations in several American cities attempted to import the European styles into America, stopping the movement dead in its tracks before it was able to take root here. She fought the rich and powerful men in Parliament itself who didn't want to have their pastimes disturbed: her greatest support came from poor and working-class men who wanted to protect their mothers, their sisters, and especially their wives and daughters from a vicious system. Historically, poor, slave, and peasant women, and women of the artisan class had always been fair game for rich and powerful men. With universal male suffrage, thehusbands and fathers of such women were empowered to finally end this prerogative of the rich and powerful. This book celebrates the Josephine Butler Centenary 1828 to 1928, and is a facsimile of the 1927 edition.

This book overturns the prejudices of Victorian London's middle class moralists and reformers, who equated poverty with depravity, by presenting and analyzing an extraordinary range of hitherto unpublished firsthand documents: love letters and testimonies from working class women who faced pregnancy alone, and from their suitors, relatives and employers. These unique and moving writings provide the fullest and most accurate picture to date of love and sex among the poor in Victorian London.

While the Christian faith has played a major part in the history of both Wales and Scotland, there has been little previous work looking at their histories in a comparative manner. In the light of the establishment of the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament, this issue is of particular contemporary importance. This collection discusses religion in Scotland and Wales from a historical perspective and examines the contribution of religion to the sense of national identity in the period from the Evangelical Revival to the present day. It suggests that the histories of the two nations are only understood when the religious dimension is taken seriously. The various essays collected here offer new perspectives on particular denominations, from the Scottish Covenanters to Welsh Methodism, as well as discussing individual figures such as Howell Harris, Edward Irving and Arthur Price, in order to examine the complex relationship between language, national identity and religion. Religion and National Identity is an original and timely contribution, not only to the religious histories of Wales and Scotland, but also to the collective history of Great Britain in the modern period.

Benjamin Disraeli was the most gifted parliamentarian of the nineteenth century. A superb orator, writer and wit, he twice rose to become Prime Minister, dazzling many with his famous epigrams along the way. But how much do we really know about the man behind the words? How did this bankrupt Jewish school dropout and trashy novelist reach the top of the Victorian Conservative Party? And why does his reputation continue to have such a hold over British politics today? In this engaging reassessment, Douglas Hurd and Edward Young explore the paradoxes at the centre of Disraeli's 'two lives': a dandy and gambler on the one hand, a devoted servant and favourite Prime Minister of the Queen on the other. A passionately ambitious politician, he intrigued and manoeuvred with unmatched skill to get to - in his own words - 'the top of the greasy pole', but he also developed a set of ideas to which he was devoted. His political achievements are never quite what they seem: he despised the idea of a more classless society, he never used the phrase 'One Nation', and although he passed the Second Reform Act he was no believer in democracy. By stripping away the many myths which surround his career, Douglas Hurd and Edward Young bring alive the true genius of Disraeli in this wonderfully entertaining exploration of his life.