A full colour map, based on digitised OS maps of Swansea of about 1919, with its medieval past overlain and important buildings picked out. The map includes an inset map of Mumbles and its medieval castle. In the Middle Ages, Swansea (Abertawe) became a centre for trade around the mouth of the river Tawe. Following Norman control of the area, Swansea Castle was established in the early 12th century and a borough charter was granted at the end of that century. Great growth began in the 17th century with the establishment of copper-smelting in the area of the lower Tawe valley, an industry which grew until Swansea was the world capital of the copper industry - hence its nickname of 'Copperopolis'. Initially using ore from Cornwall, Swansea took advantage of its local coal resources and its good port facilities to process copper, arsenic, tin, gold and other metals, using imported raw materials from all over the world. The port exported the final products, along with many tons of coal. At the time of the background map shown here, heavy industry and its spoil heaps dominated the lower Tawe valley, and extensive docks dominated the south of the town, but evidence of its medieval past and its street layout survived. The remains of the Norman castle became a workhouse and the course of the river Tawe had been altered to make access for ships easier.

Cities of Medieval Iran brings together studies in urban geography, archaeology, and history of medieval Iranian cities, spanning the Islamic period until ca. 1500, but also the pre-Islamic situation. The cities and their inhabitants take centre stage, they are not just the places where something else happened. Urban actors are given priority over external factors. The contributions take a long-term perspective and thus take the interaction between urban centres and their hinterland into account. Many contributions come from history or archaeology, but new disciplines are also methodologically integrated into the study of medieval cities, such as the arts of the book, lexicography, geomorphology, and digital instruments. Contributors include Denise Aigle, Mehrdad Amanat, Jean Aubin, Richard W. Bulliet, Jamsheed K. Choksy, David Durand-Guedy, Etienne de la Vaissiere, Majid Montazer Mahdi, Roy P. Mottahedeh, Jurgen Paul, Rocco Rante, Sarah Savant, Ali Shojai Esfahani, Donald Whitcomb and Daniel Zakrzewski.

This beautiful book is a lavishly illustrated look at the most important atlases in history and the cartographers who made them. Atlases are books that changed the course of history. Pored over by rulers, explorers and adventures these books were used to build empires, wage wars, encourage diplomacy and nurture trade. Written by Philip Parker, an authority on the history of maps, this book brings these fascinating artefacts to life, offering a unique, lavishly illustrated guide to the history of these incredible books and the cartographers behind them. All key cartographic works from the last half-millennium are covered, including: The Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, considered the world's first atlas and produced in 1570 by the Dutch, geographer Abraham Ortelius. The 17th-century Klencke - one of the world's largest books that requires 6 people to carry it The Rand McNally Atlas of 1881, still in print today and a book that turned its makers, William H Rand and Andrew McNally into cartographic royalty. This beautiful book will engross readers with its detailed, visually stunning illustrations and fascinating story of how map-making has developed throughout human history.

The Clyde is arguably the most evocative of Scottish rivers. Its mention conjures up a variety of images of power, productivity and pleasure from its 'bonnie banks' through the orchards of south Lanarkshire to its association with shipbuilding and trade and the holiday memories of thousands who fondly remember going 'doon the watter'. Its story reflects much of the history of the lands it flows through and the people who live on its banks. This book looks at the maps which display the river itself from its source to the wide estuary which is as much a part of the whole image. It discusses how the river was mapped from its earliest depictions and includes such topics as navigation, river crossings, war and defence, tourism, sport and recreation, industry and power and urban development.

In Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria in the Arabian Peninsula, Benjamin Reilly illuminates a previously unstudied phenomenon: the large-scale employment of people of African ancestry as slaves in agricultural oases within the Arabian Peninsula. The key to understanding this unusual system, Reilly argues, is the prevalence of malaria within Arabian Peninsula oases and drainage basins, which rendered agricultural lands in Arabia extremely unhealthy for people without genetic or acquired resistance to malarial fevers. In this way, Arabian slave agriculture had unexpected similarities to slavery as practiced in the Caribbean and Brazil. This book synthesizes for the first time a body of historical and ethnographic data about slave-based agriculture in the Arabian Peninsula. Reilly uses an innovative methodology to analyze the limited historical record and a multidisciplinary approach to complicate our understandings of the nature of work in an area that is popularly thought of solely as desert. This work makes significant contributions both to the global literature on slavery and to the environmental history of the Middle East-an area that has thus far received little attention from scholars.

Indigenous knowledge has become a catchphrase in global struggles for environmental justice. Yet indigenous knowledges are often viewed, incorrectly, as pure and primordial cultural artifacts. This collection draws from African and North American cases to argue that the forms of knowledge identified as "indigenous" resulted from strategies to control environmental resources during and after colonial encounters.
At times indigenous knowledges represented a "middle ground" of intellectual exchanges between colonizers and colonized; elsewhere, indigenous knowledges were defined through conflict and struggle. The authors demonstrate how people claimed that their hybrid forms of knowledge were communal, religious, and traditional, as opposed to individualist, secular, and scientific, which they associated with European colonialism.
"Indigenous Knowledge and the Environment" offers comparative and transnational insights that disturb romantic views of unchanging indigenous knowledges in harmony with the environment. The result is a book that informs and complicates how indigenous knowledges can and should relate to environmental policy-making.
Contributors: David Bernstein, Derick Fay, Andrew H. Fisher, Karen Flint, David M. Gordon, Paul Kelton, Shepard Krech III, Joshua Reid, Parker Shipton, Lance van Sittert, Jacob Tropp, James L. A. Webb, Jr., Marsha Weisiger

A full colour map showing London in about 1520 - its many churches, monasteries, legal inns, guild halls, and a large number of substantial private houses, in the context of the streets and alleyways that survived the Great Fire and can still be discovered. Dominating the city are the Tower of London in the east, the old St Paul's Cathedral in the west and London Bridge in the south. The city was largely contained within its medieval walls and ditches but shows signs of spilling out into the great metropolis it was destined to be. This is a second edition of a map first published in 2018, incorporating changes to the map as new information has become available. The map has been the Historic Towns Trust's number one best seller since publication and has been very well received. The new edition has a revised cover and illustrations.

A full colour map, based on a digitised OS map of Beverley of about 1908, with its medieval, Georgian and Victorian past overlain and important buildings picked out. Beverley is one of England's most attractive towns with two of the country's greatest medieval parish churches, the Minster and St Mary's, and a wealth of Georgian buildings. The medieval town had three main foci: to the south the Minster, the probable origin of the town in the Saxon period, with Wednesday Market; to the north Saturday Market and St Mary's church; and to the south-east a port at the head of the canalised Beverley Beck linking to the River Hull. In the 14th century the town was one of the most populous and prosperous in Britain. This prosperity came from the cloth trade, tanning and brickmaking as well as the markets and fairs, and the many pilgrims who flocked to the shrine of St John of Beverley. By the end of the Middle Ages, the town was in decline, not helped by the dissolution of the great collegiate Minster church in 1548. Beverley's fortunes revived in the 18th century when it became the administrative capital of the East Riding of Yorkshire and a thriving social centre. The gentry, who came here for the Quarter Sessions and other gatherings together with their families, patronised the racecourse, assembly rooms, theatre and tree-lined promenade. It was they and the growing number of professionals who built the large Georgian houses, often set in extensive grounds, many of which survive. In contrast the townscape and economy of Victorian Beverley was dominated by several thriving industries, notably tanning, the manufacture of agricultural machinery and shipbuilding. The map's cover has a short introduction to the town's history, and on the reverse an illustrated and comprehensive gazetteer of Beverley's main sites of historic interest.

In the nineteenth century the Dead Sea and the Tigris-Euphrates river system had great political significance: the one as a possible gateway for a Russian invasion of Egypt, the other as a potentially faster route to India. This is the traditional explanation for the presence of the international powers in the region. This important new book questions this view. Through a study of two important projects of the time -- international efforts to determine the exact level of the Dead Sea, and Chesney's Euphrates Expedition to find a quicker route to India -- Professor Goren shows how other forces than the interests of empire, were involved. He reveals the important role played by private individuals and establishes a wealth of new connections between the key players; and he reveals for the first time an important Irish nexus. The resulting work adds an important new dimension to our existing understanding of this period.