The replacement of the Roman Empire in the West with emerging kingdoms like Visigothic Spain and Merovingian Gaul resulted in new societies, but without major population displacement. Societies changed because identities shifted and new points of cohesion formed under different leaders and leadership structures. This volume examines two kingdoms in the post-Roman west to understand how this process took shape. Though exhibiting striking continuities with the Roman past, Gaul and Spain emerged as distinctive, but not isolated, political entities that forged different strategies and drew upon different resources to strengthen their unity, shape social ties, and consolidate their political status.

In the history of education, the question of how computers were introduced into European classrooms has so far been largely neglected. This edited volume strives to address this gap. The contributions shed light on the computerization of education from a historical perspective, by attending closely to the different actors involved - such as politicians, computer manufacturers, teachers, and students -, political rationales and ideologies, as well as financial, political, or organizational structures and relations. The case studies highlight differences in political and economic power, as well as in ideological reasoning and the priorities set by different stakeholders in the process of introducing computers into education. However, the contributions also demonstrate that simple cold war narratives fail to capture the complex dynamics and entanglements in the history of computers as an educational technology and a subject taught in schools. The edited volume thus provides a comprehensive historical understanding of the role of education in an emerging digital society.

Napoleon arrived on St Helena in October 1815 aboard the British 74-gun warship HMS Northumberland. For the first six weeks he stayed at the Briars, a property in the Upper Jamestown Valley where he enjoyed the hospitality of the Balcombe family. By the end of December, the re-building work on his destined home, Longwood, was completed, and Napoleon accompanied by his entourage moved there, much to Napoleon's annoyance. He found the site bleak, inhospitable, and considered it conducive to rheumatism. The British Government was paranoid about Napoleon being rescued and maintained a large military presence on the island, and numerous warships anchored offshore. This paranoia extended to the new Governor, Sir Hudson Lowe. He ran a typrannical and petty campaign against the residents at Longwood and had violent arguments with Napoleon, who refused to cooperate with him. This book is one of the best accounts of Napoleon's five-and-a-half years' imprisonment, which ended with his death from a stomach ulcer. It details all of the personalities, Napoleon's household, the domestic arrangements, the island residents, the military residents and the long-standing feud between Plantation House and Longwood. It also covers Betsy Balcombe, the Deadwood Races, Napoleon's habits and his garden and much, much more. The book has eighty colour and black & white illustrations.

This book is an interdisciplinary study aimed at re-imagining and re-routing contemporary migrations in the Mediterranean. Drawing from visual arts, citizenship studies, film, media and cultural studies, along with postcolonial, border, and decolonial discourses, and examining the issues from within a human rights framework, the book investigates how works of cultural production can offer a more complex and humane understanding of mobility in the Mediterranean beyond representations of illegality and/or crisis. Elvira Pulitano centers the discourse of cultural production around the island of Lampedusa but expands the island geography to include a digital multi-media project, a social enterprise in Palermo, Sicily, and overall reflections on race, identity, and belonging inspired by Toni Morrison's guest-curated Louvre exhibit The Foreigner's Home. Responding to recent calls for alternative methodologies in thinking the modern Mediterranean, Pulitano disseminates a fluid archive of contemporary migrations reverberating with ancestral sounds and voices from the African diaspora along a Mediterranean-TransAtlantic map. Adding to the recent proliferation of social science scholarship that has drawn attention to the role of artistic practice in migration studies, the book features human stories of endurance and survival aimed at enhancing knowledge and social justice beyond (and notwithstanding) militarized borders and failed EU policies.

This book provides a selection of private letters written to family and friends from a variety of people while they were on the Grand Tour in the eighteenth century. Although many have been published previously, this is the first time that letters of this kind have been brought together in a single volume. Readers can compare the various responses of travellers to the sights, pleasures and discomforts encountered on the journey. People of diverse backgrounds, with different expectations and interests, give personal accounts of their particular experiences of the Grand Tour. Unlike most collections of letters from the Tour, which recount the views of a single person, this selection emphasises diversity. Readers can juxtapose for example the letters of a conscientious young nobleman like Lyttelton with those of the excitable philanderer Boswell, or the well-travelled aristocratic lady, Caroline Lennox. While the travellers represented here follow much the same route via Paris, through France and across the Alps via the terrifying Mount Cenis, to Rome, in the pursuit of learning and pleasure, the Tour turns out to mean something quite different to each of them.

In 1942, the United States War Department distributed a handbook to American servicemen that advised them on the peculiarities of the "British, their country, and their ways."

Over sixty years later, this newly published reproduction from the rich archives of the Bodleian Library offers a fascinating glimpse into American military preparations for World War II. The guide was intended to alleviate the culture shock for soldiers taking their first trip to Great Britain, or, for that matter, abroad. The handbook is punctuated with endearingly nostalgic advice and refreshingly candid quips such as: "The British don't know how to make a good cup of coffee. You don't know how to make a good cup of tea. It's an even swap."

By turns hilarious and poignant, many observations featured in the handbook remain relevant even today. Reproduced in a style reminiscent of the era, "Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain" is a powerfully evocative war-time memento that offers a unique perspective on the longstanding American-British relationship and reveals amusingly incisive American perceptions of the British character and country.