It is now almost impossible to conceive of life in western Europe, either in the towns or the countryside, without a reliable mains electricity supply. By 1938, two-thirds of rural dwellings had been connected to a centrally generated supply, but the majority of farms in Britain were not linked to the mains until sometime between 1950 and 1970. Given the significance of electricity for modern life, the difficulties of supplying it to isolated communities, and the parallels with current discussions over the provision of high-speed broadband connections, it is surprising that until now there has been little academic discussion of this vast and protracted undertaking. This book fills that gap. It is divided into three parts. The first, on the progress of electrification, explores the timing and extent of electrification in rural England, Wales and Scotland; the second examines the effects of electrification on rural life and the rural landscape; and the third makes comparisons over space and time, looking at electrification in Canada and Sweden and comparing electrification with the current problems of rural broadband.

This book provides a collective view of the five major English chartered trading companies which were active during the period 1688-1763: The East India Company, the Royal African Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, The Levant Company, and the Russia Company. Using both archival and secondary sources, this monograph fills in some of the knowledge gaps concerning the less well-studied companies, and examines the interconnections between international rivalry, the financial operations of the companies, and politics which have not featured prominently in the historiography.

Why did working-class women become the central labour force on assembly lines in the new consumer goods' industries of the inter-war period? What was the long-term significance of this for the pattern of women's work, both in paid employment and in the home? Originally published in 1990, Women Assemble fills a major gap in the history of women and work, and develops a theory of women's class relations, and of course gender and class more generally, by means of an original case-study. Taken from a wide variety of sources, it uses a multidisciplinary approach and is brought to life by interviews with people who worked in assembly-line industries during the inter-war period. This extremely readable study is important to feminists, historians, and sociologists, as well as to all those concerned with issues of gender, class, and the labour process.

This book looks at how the workplace was transformed through a greater awareness of the roles that germs played in English working lives from c.1880 to 1945. Cutting across a diverse array of occupational settings - such as the domestic kitchen, the milking shed, the factory, and the Post Office - it offers new perspectives on the history of the germ sciences. It brings to light the ways in which germ scientists sought to transform English working lives through new types of technical and educational interventions that sought to both eradicate and instrumentalise germs. It then asks how we can measure and judge the success of such interventions by tracing how workers responded to the potential applications of the germ sciences through their participation in friendly societies, trade unions, colleges, and volunteer organisations. Throughout the book, close attention is paid to reconstructing vernacular traditions of working with invisible life in order to better understand both the successes and failures of the germ sciences to transform the working practices and material conditions of different workplaces. The result is a more diverse history of the peoples, politics, and practices that went into shaping the germ sciences in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England.

This is a remarkable popular history of the English Civil War, from the perspectives of those involved in this most significant turning point in British history. This compelling history, culminating in the execution of Charles I, brings to life the people who fought in it, died in it, and in doing so changed the history of the world forever. In an excitingly fresh approach to the period, Diane Purkiss tells the story of this critical era not just in terms of the battle of ideas, but as the histories of the people who conceived them. The English Civil War builds a gripping narrative of the individuals involved and their motives, from those whose reputations were made on the back of this violent and brutal war, such as Oliver Cromwell and Lady Eleanor Davies, to witchfinders and revolutionaries; and ultimately, the ordinary men who fought and the women who lived with tragedy, finding their political voice for the first time. The consequences of ten years of bloody revolution were to stretch from the cities to the villages to the grand houses, form Ulster to East Anglia to the outer reaches of Cornwall.The tales uncovered by Diane Purkiss paint a picture of a world turned upside down, where madness and prophesy play their part, and where normal life and times are suspended. This important book uncovers forgotten lives and illustrates incisively the critical contribution of this extraordinary period in English history to contemporary politics and society.

The first volume in a pioneering account of Oliver Cromwell-providing a major new interpretation of one of the greatest figures in history "Hutton's book is intelligent, well documented, and stylish."-Keith Thomas, New York Review of Books Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)-the only English commoner to become the overall head of state-is one of the great figures of history, but his character was very complex. He was at once courageous and devout, devious and self-serving. As a parliamentarian, he was devoted to his cause; as a soldier, he was ruthless. Cromwell's speeches and writings surpass in quantity those of any other ruler of England before Victoria and, for those seeking to understand him, he has usually been taken at his word. In this remarkable new work, Ronald Hutton untangles the facts from the fiction. Cromwell, pursuing his devotion to God and cementing his Puritan support base, quickly transformed from obscure provincial to military victor. At the end of the first English Civil War, he was poised to take power. Hutton reveals a man who was both genuine in his faith and deliberate in his dishonesty-and uncovers the inner workings of the man who has puzzled biographers for centuries.

Thatcher provides an accessible and scholarly introduction to the personality and career of Britain's first female political leader and the twentieth century's longest serving Prime Minister. Providing a balanced narrative and assessment of one of the most significant figures of the post-war era, this new biography examines the reasons why Margaret Thatcher has been admired by many as an architect of national revival, yet loathed by others as the author of widening social and geographical division. The book begins by examining the making of Margaret Thatcher, her education, the beginning of her political career and her rise through the Conservative Party to her appointment as unexpected leader. Moving on to her tenure as Prime Minister, Graham Goodlad then examines her impact at home and abroad, covering her controversial economic policies and hard line with the trade unions, leadership through the Falklands conflict and during the last decade of the Cold War, and influence on Britain's relationship with a more closely integrated Europe. Finally, the biography closes with a review of Thatcher's legacy before and after her death in April 2013, and considers how far she shaped the politics and society of the 1980s and those of our own time. Thatcher is essential reading for all students of twentieth-century history and politics.

With devastating clarity and gentle humour, Mabel Hewitt relives her extraordinary childhood in the shadow of two world wars. Born in the thirties when the threat of the poorhouse hung over working families, 92-year-old Mabel remembers a chaotic home life dominated by a father traumatised after years in the trenches at Ypres. She was just 10 when war clouds gathered again, as sirens wailed and Mabel took shelter underground with her mother and sisters. Mabel's riveting account of the years that followed, and particularly Coventry's terrible Blitz, bombs whistling down and the cries of pain and fury all around her, mixes with her memories of every-day experiences of a child in wartime. Mabel was growing up fast and, by the end of the war, she was a young woman falling in love. This extraordinary account is an inspiring story of love and hope, following Mabel's journey right up to the present day.

This book is a detailed examination of the sources and protocols John Foxe used to justify the Reformation, and claim that the Church of Rome had fallen into the grip of Antichrist. The focus is on the pre-Lollard, medieval history in the first two editions of the Acts and Monuments. Comparison of the narrative that Foxe writes to the possible sources helps us to better understand what it was that Foxe was trying to do, and how he came to achieve his aims. A focus on sources also highlights the collaborative circle in which Foxe worked, recognizing the essential role of other scholars and clerics such as John Bale and Matthew Parker.

This volume offers challenging and imaginative new perspectives on the fiscal-military structures that underpinned the development of modern European states from the eighteenth century onwards.

The relations of Great Britain and its Dominions significantly influenced the development of the British Empire in the late 19th and the first third of the 20th century. The mutual attitude to the constitutional issues that Dominion and British leaders have continually discussed at Colonial and Imperial Conferences respectively was one of the main aspects forming the links between the mother country and the autonomous overseas territories. This volume therefore focuses on the key period when the importance of the Dominions not only increased within the Empire itself, but also in the sphere of the international relations, and the Dominions gained the opportunity to influence the forming of the Imperial foreign policy. During the first third of the 20th century, the British Empire gradually transformed into the British Commonwealth of Nations, in which the importance of Dominions excelled. The work is based on the study of unreleased sources from British archives, a large number of published documents and extensive relevant literature.

This book explores the hopes, desires, and imagined futures that characterized British radicalism in the 1790s, and the resurfacing of this sense of possibility in the following decades. The articulation of "Jacobin" sentiments reflected the emotional investments of men and women inspired by the French Revolution and committed to political transformation. The authors emphasize the performative aspects of political culture, and the spaces in which mobilization and expression occurred - including the club room, tavern, coffeehouse, street, outdoor meeting, theater, chapel, courtroom, prison, and convict ship. America, imagined as a site of republican citizenship, and New South Wales, experienced as a space of political exile, widened the scope of radical dreaming. Part 1 focuses on the political culture forged under the shifting influence of the French Revolution. Part 2 explores the afterlives of British Jacobinism in the year 1817, in early Chartist memorialization of the Scottish "martyrs" of 1794, and in the writings of E. P. Thompson. The relationship between popular radicals and the Romantics is a theme pursued in several chapters; a dialogue is sustained across the disciplinary boundaries of British history and literary studies. The volume captures the revolutionary decade's effervescent yearning, and its unruly persistence in later years.

How did England, once a minor regional power, become a global hegemon between 1689 and 1815? Why, over the same period, did she become the world's first industrial nation? Gary W. Cox addresses these questions in Marketing Sovereign Promises. The book examines two central issues: the origins of the great taxing power of the modern state and how that power is made compatible with economic growth. Part I considers England's rise after the revolution of 1689, highlighting the establishment of annual budgets with shutdown reversions. This core reform effected a great increase in per capita tax extraction. Part II investigates the regional and global spread of British budgeting ideas. Cox argues that states grew only if they addressed a central credibility problem afflicting the Ancien Regime - that rulers were legally entitled to spend public revenue however they deemed fit.

This volume discusses the development of governmental proto-bureaucracy, which led to and was influenced by the inclusion of professional agents and spies in the early modern English government. In the government's attempts to control religious practices, wage war, and expand their mercantile reach both east and west, spies and agents became essential figures of empire, but their presence also fundamentally altered the old hierarchies of class and power. The job of the spy or agent required fluidity of role, the adoption of disguise and alias, and education, all elements that contributed to the ideological breakdown of social and class barriers. The volume argues that the inclusion of the lower classes (commoners, merchants, messengers, and couriers) in the machinery of government ultimately contributed to the creation of governmental proto-bureaucracy. The importance and significance of these spies is demonstrated through the use of statistical social network analysis, analyzing social network maps and statistics to discuss the prominence of particular figures within the network and the overall shape and dynamics of the evolving Elizabethan secret service. The Eye of the Crown is a useful resource for students and scholars interested in government, espionage, social hierarchy, and imperial power in Elizabethan England.

By combining politics, culture, theology and psychology in this way - and by complementing the resulting narrative with key primary sources from the period - this book arms readers to study, explore and understand the British Reformations in new and important ways. Covering England, Scotland and Wales but placing Britain into the wider context of Europe, this book provides students which a comprehensive study of how the British Isles and its people were affected by the Reformation. Reformation was a process, not an event and this book charts both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations which took place under Henry VIII, Mary I and Elizabeth I to show students new to the period how these events shaped the course of the sixteenth century.

Originally published in 1910, this book traces the political role of the House of Lords during the first half of the seventeenth century, from its early years of defending the constitution against the crown, and the subsequent conflict with the Lower House during the Civil War, to its abolition in 1649 and restoration eleven years later.

Originally published in 1991, this book traces the evolution of the House of Lords as a court for private litigation during the critically important years from 1621 to 1675. It offers new insights into contemporary politics, government and religion, adding an important dimension to our understanding of the House of Lords. This book is primary reading for advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students on courses on early Stuart England, the Civil War and Restoration history.

Originally published in 1930 and reprinted in 1966 this book focusses on the social and economic developments of the Puritan revolution - aspects which are often overlooked in favour of the political. Using archival resources, this study shows that the period 1640-1660 was one of change and experiment in the social as well as political sphere. Particular focus is given to the depression in industry and agriculture and the resultant increase in poverty and unemployment. The extent to which the traditional authority of church and state was weakened, is also discussed.

How did England, once a minor regional power, become a global hegemon between 1689 and 1815? Why, over the same period, did she become the world's first industrial nation? Gary W. Cox addresses these questions in Marketing Sovereign Promises. The book examines two central issues: the origins of the great taxing power of the modern state and how that power is made compatible with economic growth. Part I considers England's rise after the revolution of 1689, highlighting the establishment of annual budgets with shutdown reversions. This core reform effected a great increase in per capita tax extraction. Part II investigates the regional and global spread of British budgeting ideas. Cox argues that states grew only if they addressed a central credibility problem afflicting the Ancien Regime - that rulers were legally entitled to spend public revenue however they deemed fit.

English Society, 1580-1680 paints a fascinating picture of society and rural change in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Keith Wrightson discusses both the enduring characteristics of society as well as the course of social change, and emphasizes the wide variation in experience between different social groups and local communities. This is an excellent interpretation of English society, its continuity and its change.

First published in 1963, Massacre at Amritsar recreates the terrible scene of the Jallianwala Bagh from the stories of eyewitnesses and survivors. General Dyer's action at Amritsar on April 13, 1919 flared up into one of the most heated political and moral controversies of 20th century. Was he right in firing without warning on the group which had gathered in defiance of his orders? And in continuing to fire after they had started to disperse? Did he thereby save Punjab from worse bloodshed, and all India, perhaps, from a second Mutiny? Or did he commit a cold-blooded, purposeless massacre, for which no excuse was possible? The Army, which had condoned his act on his first explanation, could not stomach his arrogant replies at the enquiry. The Government of India described Dyer's act as 'monstrous.' And perhaps more than any other single factor the massacre consolidated Indian opinion behind the campaign for independence. Yet a large section of the British public backed Dyer; a huge subscription was raised for him, and the House of Lords exonerated him. This book examines the circumstances that led up to the massacre and the deplorable actions that followed it and offers a new solution to the enigma of Dyer's mind, making it an important read for students of history, South Asian studies, area studies and for the people of any erstwhile colonized nation.

Anglo-Chinese Encounters Before the Opium War: A Tale of Two Empires Over Two Centuries studies the fascinating encounters between the two historic empires from Queen Elizabeth I's first letter to the Ming Emperor Wanli in 1583, to Lord Palmerston's letter to the Minister of China in 1840. Starting with Queen Elizabeth I's letter to the Chinese Emperor and ending with the letter from Lord Palmerston to the Minister of China just before the Opium War, this book explores the long journey in between from cultural diplomacy to gunboat diplomacy. It interweaves the most known diplomatic efforts at the official level with the much unknown intellectual interactions at the people-to-people level, from missionaries to scholars, from merchants to travelers and from artists to scientists. This book adopts a novel "mirror" approach by pairing and comparing people, texts, commodities, artworks, architecture, ideologies, operating systems and world views of the two empires. Using letters, gifts and traded goods as fulcrums, and by adopting these unique lenses, it puts China into the world history narratives to contextualise Anglo-Chinese relations, thus providing a fresh analysis of the surviving evidence. Xin Liu casts a new light on understanding the Sino-centric and Anglo-centric world views in driving the complex relations between the two empires, and the reversals of power shifts that are still unfolding today. The book is not intended for specialists in history, but a general audience wishing to learn more about China's historical engagement with the world.

This text chronicles all the surviving milestones and guidestones in Cornwall and places them within the context of the development of the road system.

With the death of Edward VI in 1553, England, for the first time, would have a reigning queen. The question was: Who?

Four women stood upon the crest of history: Katherine of Aragon's daughter, Mary; Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth; Mary, Queen of Scots; and Lady Jane Grey. But over the centuries, other exceptional women had struggled to push the boundaries of their authority and influence--and been vilified as "she-wolves" for their ambitions. Revealed in vivid detail, the stories of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Margaret of Anjou, and the Empress Matilda expose the paradox that England's next female leaders would confront as the Tudor throne lay before them--man ruled woman, but these women sought to rule a nation.

From Rhondda heroes chasing the American dream to rioters staking a claim in their society In the Frame is a powerful alternative history of twentieth-century South Wales, offered from the personal viewpoint of cultural historian Dai Smith. It takes the reader into a territory - a mythical and veritable Dai Country - formed by the influence of writers and painters, boxers and historians, friends and relatives, rioters and correspondents, critics and photographers. As well as the autobiographical overtones of a Tondypandy childhood and distinguished career, In the Frame contains the far wider undertones of a collective biography. Its mosaic pieces together the consciousness of a society which led its inhabitants in search of fame and fortune as well as the daily struggle for rights and recognition without sympathy or sentimentality. An alternative history of twentieth century Wales by TV presenter and the nation's leading cultural historian Dai Smith.