The prize was great -- not just land, but the riches it held, in the form of diamonds and gold. What became a country called South Africa was, until 1910, a vast and untamed land where great fortunes could be made (and lost); where great battles were fought (and lost); and where great men had their reputations forged, or dashed, or sometimes both.

Martin Meredith's follow-up to his magisterial The State of Africais an equally epic new history of the making of South Africa. Covering the extraordinarily eventful four decades leading up to the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, it covers some of the most iconic tales of imperial history. The Zulus at Rorke's Drift; the Jameson Raid; the diamond and gold rushes at Kimberley and Witwatersrand; the Boer wars; the titanic struggle between the arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes and his Boer rival, Paul Kruger -- DIAMONDS, GOLD AND WARbrings all of these and more together in a stunningly coherent and compelling narrative.

History, somehow, just isn't as colourful any more.

This book examines the complex interplay between industrial heritage and tourism. It serves to stimulate meaningful dialogue about the socioeconomic values of industrial sites and the use of tourism for the growth of the creative economy, and to better understand how the collective social memory and local identity connected to these sites have been shaped by different social groups over time. The volume presents a conceptual framework underpinned by case studies drawn from Asia, North America, Australasia and Europe and advocates the creation of mixed-use spaces and stakeholder collaboration to develop tourism at industrial heritage sites. These theoretical and practical perspectives will be of use to researchers and students of heritage tourism, urban and regional planning and tourism marketing.

During World War I, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) rose to prominence as an effective, militant union and then was destroyed by a devastating campaign of repression launched by the federal government. This book documents the rise and fall of this important industrial labor organization. The Industrial Workers of the World-or "Wobblies," as they were known-included legendary figures from U.S. labor history. Joe Hill, "Big Bill" Haywood, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn have become a part of American popular folklore. In this book, author Eric T. Chester shows just how dynamic a force the IWW was during its heyday during World War I, and how determined the federal government was to crush this union-a campaign of repression that remains unique in U.S. history. This work utilizes a wide array of archival sources, many of them never used before, thereby giving readers a clearer view and better understanding of what actually happened. The book leads with an examination of the three key events in the history of the IWW: the Wheatfield, CA, confrontation; the Bisbee, AZ, deportation; and the strike of copper miners in Butte, MT. The second part of the book deconstructs the IWW's responses to World War I, the coordinated attack by the federal government upon the union, and how the union unraveled under this attack. Offers an accurate portrayal of the Wobblies as a group of dedicated radicals who viewed workplace organizing as one aspect of a broader movement to bring about fundamental social change Presents information drawn from a wide range of documents held in the National Archives that were kept closed to the public for many decades after the World War I era Provides a unique case study of the profound impact that World War I had on those who remained at home and how the federal government stifled dissent to quell popular discontent Represents the only modern, in-depth, and scholarly examination of the IWW in its heyday

Katherine of Alexandria was a major object of devotion within medieval Europe, ranking second only to the Virgin Mary in the canon of female saints. Yet despite her undoubted importance, relatively little is known about the significance and function of her cult within the German-speaking territories that stood at the heart of Europe. Anne Simon's study adds a welcome new interdisciplinary perspective to the study of Saint Katherine and the wider ecclesiastical landscape of a medieval Europe poised on the edge of religious change. Taking as a case study the wealthy and politically influential merchant city of Nuremberg, this book draws on a wide variety of textual and visual sources to explore interrelated themes: the shaping of urban space through the cult of Saint Katherine; her role in the moulding and advertising patrician identity and alliances through cultural patronage; and patrician use of the saint to showcase the city's political, economic, cultural and religious importance at the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. Further , the book reveals the construction of exemplarity in Saint Katherine's legend and miracles and their resonance within the context of the city and the Dominican Convent of Saint Katherine, whose nuns came from the same status-aware, confident patrician elite that so loyally supported successive Emperors. Filling a significant gap in current research, the work has much to offer scholars of medieval history, hagiography, art history, German studies, cultural and urban studies. Hence it not only expands our understanding of Saint Katherine's importance in German-speaking territories, but also adds to the picture of her cult in its European perspective.

Art, Literature and Religion in Early Modern Sussex is an interdisciplinary study of a county at the forefront of religious, political and artistic developments in early-modern England. Ranging from the schism of Reformation to the outbreak of Civil War, the volume brings together scholars from the fields of art history, religious and intellectual history and English literature to offer new perspectives on early-modern Sussex. Essays discuss a wide variety of topics: the coherence of a county divided between East and West and Catholic and Protestant; the art and literary collections of Chichester cathedral; communities of Catholic gentry; Protestant martyrdom; aristocratic education; writing, preaching and exile; local funerary monuments; and the progresses of Elizabeth I. Contributors include Michael Questier; Nigel Llewellyn; Caroline Adams; Karen Coke; and Andrew Foster. The collection concludes with an Afterword by Duncan Salkeld (University of Chichester). This volume extends work done in the 1960s and 70s on early-modern Sussex, drawing on new work on county and religious identities, and setting it into a broad national context. The result is a book that not only tells us much about Sussex, but which also has a great deal to offer all scholars working in the field of local and regional history, and religious change in England as a whole.

2018 Choice Outstanding Academic Title ******************************** The Late-Victorian cultural mission to London's slums was a peculiar effort towards social reform that today is largely forgotten or misunderstood. The philanthropy of middle and upper-class social workers saw hundreds of art exhibitions, concerts of fine music, evening lectures, clubs and socials, debates and excursions mounted for the benefit of impoverished and working-class Londoners. Ginn's vivid and provocative book captures many of these in detail for the first time. In refreshing our understanding of this obscure but eloquent activism, Ginn approaches cultural philanthropy not simply as a project of class self-interest, nor as fanciful 'missionary aestheticism.' Rather, he shows how liberal aspirations towards adult education and civic community can be traced in a number of centres of moralising voluntary effort. Concentrating on Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, the People's Palace in Mile End, Red Cross Hall in Southwark and the Bermondsey Settlement, the discussion identifies the common impulses animating practical reformers across these settings. Drawing on new primary research to clarify reformers' underlying intentions and strategies, Ginn shows how these were shaped by a distinctive diagnosis of urban deprivation and anomie. In rebutting the common view that cultural philanthropy was a crudely paternalistic attempt to impose 'rational recreation' on the poor, this volume explores its sources in a liberal-minded social idealism common to both religious and secular conceptions of social welfare in this period. Culture, Philanthropy and the Poor in Late-Victorian London appeals to students and researchers of Victorian culture, moral reform, urbanism, adult education and philanthropy, who will be fascinated by this underrated but lively aspect of the period's social activism.

In the half millennium of their existence, guilds in the Low Countries played a highly significant role in shaping the societies of which they were a part. One key aspect that has been identified in recent historical research to explain the survival of the guilds for such a long time is the guilds' continued adaptability to changing circumstances. This idea of flexibility is the point of departure for the essays in this volume, which sheds new light on the corporate system and identifies its various features and regional variances. The contributors explore the interrelations between economic organisations and political power in late medieval and early modern towns, and address issues of gender, religion and social welfare in the context of the guilds. This cohesive and focussed volume will provide a stimulus for renewed interest and further research in this area. It will appeal to scholars and students with an interest in early modern economic, social and cultural history in particular, but will also be valuable to those researching into political, religious and gender history.

Set within a wider British and international context of post-war reconstruction, The Everyday Experiences of Reconstruction and Regeneration focuses on such debates and experiences in Birmingham and Coventry as they recovered from Second World War bombings and post-war industrial collapse. Including numerous images, Adams and Larkham explore the initial development of the post-Second World War reconstruction projects, which so substantially changed the face of the cities and provided radical new identities. Exploring these cities throughout the post-war period brings into sharp focus the duality of contemporary approaches to regeneration, which often criticise mid-twentieth century 'poorly-conceived' planning and architectural projects for producing inhuman and unsympathetic schemes, while proposing exactly the type of large-scale regeneration that may potentially create similar issues in the future. This book would be beneficial for academics and students of planning and urban design, particularly those with an interest in post-catastrophe or large-scale reconstruction projects within cities.

This interdisciplinary volume illuminates the shadowy history of the disadvantaged, sick and those who did not conform to the accepted norms of society. It explores how marginal identity was formed, perceived and represented in Britain and Europe during the medieval and early modern periods. It illustrates that the identities of marginal groups were shaped by their place within primarily urban communities, both in terms of their socio-economic status and the spaces in which they lived and worked. Some of these groups - such as executioners, prostitutes, pedlars and slaves - performed a significant social and economic function but on the basis of this were stigmatized by other townspeople. Language was used to control and limit the activities of others within society such as single women and foreigners, as well as the victims of sexual crimes. For many, such as lepers and the disabled, marginal status could be ambiguous, cyclical or short-lived and affected by key religious, political and economic events. Traditional histories have often considered these groups in isolation. Based on new research, a series of case studies from Britain and across Europe illustrate and provide important insights into the problems faced by these marginal groups and the ways in which medieval and early modern communities were shaped and developed.

Adopting Argentina's popular uprisings against neoliberalism including the 2001-02 rebellion and subsequent mass protests as a case study, The Mobilization and Demobilization of Middle-Class Revolt analyzes two decades of longitudinal research (1995-2018), including World Bank and Latinobarometer household survey data, along with participant interviews, to explore why nonpolitically active middle-class citizens engage in radical protest movements, and why they eventually demobilize. In particular it asks, how do they become politicized and resist economic and political crises, along with their own hardship? Theoretically informed by Gramsci's notions of hegemony, ideology and class consciousness, Ozarow posits that to affect profound and lasting social change, multisectoral alliances and sustainable mobilizing vehicles are required to maintain radical progressive movements beyond periods of crisis. With the Argentinian revolt understood to be the ideological forbearer to the autonomist-inspired uprisings which later emerged, comparisons are drawn with experiences in the USA, Spain, Greece UK, Iceland and the Middle East, as well as 1990s contexts in South Africa and Russia. Such a comparative analysis helps understand how contextual factors shape distinctive struggling middle-class citizen responses to external shocks. This book will be of immense value to students, activists and theorists of social change in North America, in Europe and globally.

The triumphal march of the automobile and its connection with American culture have often been acknowledged in scholarship. By contrast, the culture-specific, value-oriented advertising strategies of the most important US carmaker General Motors (GM) in its home market have received less attention, especially in American Studies. This study focuses on the connection between GM products and America and the fundamental values represented by politics, business, and society. The author examines which textual and visual strategies GM uses in its image advertising to establish and maintain its patriotic American image. He argues that GM's advertising campaigns follow a patriotic leitmotif and are consistently in line with American core values, often generating new patriotic ideas.

Originally published in 1981, Trade Unions in the Developed Economies is a collection of studies on the growth, structure and policies of trade unions in 7 developed economies. The early growth of trade unions has been summarised so that a post-Second World War analysis could be undertaken. The section on growth contains an examination of the extent to which conflict between the parties has either increased or decreased. All developments are viewed against a backcloth of general economic developments and the statistical data deal with trends rather than particular developments at any one point. The section on structure analyses how changes in the structure of the labour force have been reflected by changes in the structure of trade unions. Inter-union relations are examined in this and other contexts. The policy section examines the main bargaining issues and the methods employed to achieve these goals.

This is the first book to describe the early English woollens' industry and its dominance of the trade in quality cloth across Europe by the mid-sixteenth century, as English trade was transformed from dependence on wool to value-added woollen cloth. It compares English and continental draperies, weighs the advantages of urban and rural production, and examines both quality and coarse cloths. Rural clothiers who made broadcloth to a consistent high quality at relatively low cost, Merchant Adventurers who enjoyed a trade monopoly with the Low Countries, and Antwerp's artisans who finished cloth to customers' needs all eventually combined to make English woollens unbeatable on the continent.

What do we mean when we say that cities have altered humanity's interaction with nature? The more people are living in cities, the more nature is said to be "urbanizing": turned into a resource, mobilized over long distances, controlled, transformed and then striking back with a vengeance as "natural disaster". Confronting insights derived from Environmental History, Science and Technology Studies or Political Ecology, Urbanizing Nature aims to counter teleological perspectives on the birth of modern "urban nature" as a uniform and linear process, showing how new technological schemes, new actors and new definitions of nature emerged in cities from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.

Cities, Railways, Modernities chronicles the transformation that London and Paris experienced during the nineteenth century through the lens of the London Underground and the Paris Metro. By highlighting the multiple ways in which the future of the two cities was imagined and the role that railways played in that process, it challenges and refines two of the most dominant myths of urban modernity: A planned Paris and an unplanned London. The book recovers a significant body of work around the ideas, the plans, the context and the building of metropolitan railways in the two cities to provide new insights into the relationship of transport technologies and urban change during the nineteenth century.

In spite of the popularity she enjoyed during her lifetime, Charlotte Riddell (1832-1906) has received little attention from scholars. Silvana Colella makes a strong case for the relevance of Riddell's novels as narrative experiments that shed new light on the troubled experience of Victorian capitalism. Drawing on her impressive knowledge of commerce and finance, Riddell produced several novels that narrate the fate of individuals - manufacturers, accountants, entrepreneurs, City men and their female companions - who pursue the liberal dream of self-determination in the unstable world of London business. Colella situates novels such as Too Much Alone, George Geith, The Race for Wealth, Austin Friars and The Senior Partner in the broader cultural context, examining business manuals, commercial biographies, and essays to highlight Victorian constructions of the business ideal and the changing cultural status of the City of London. Combining historicist and formalist readings, Colella charts the progression of Riddell's imaginative commitment to the business world, focusing on the author's gendered awareness of the promises and disenchantments associated with the changing dynamics of capitalist modernisation. Her book enriches our understanding of Victorian business culture, the literary history of capitalism, and the intersections of gender, genre and economics.

From the perspective of trade unions, European integration makes it more necessary than ever before to establish common political positions. At the same time, increasing heterogeneity between the member states makes the crafting of such positions more and more difficult. Can, under these circumstances, a joint political line among European trade unions emerge? To answer this question, the book sheds light on transnational trade union cooperation in the three most important policy fields: the debate around the Freedom of services, the discussion over a European minimum wage, and the efforts of international wage coordination. Drawing on the results of extensive field research based on a qualitative study among trade unions from Hungary, Poland, Sweden, and Germany, as well as representatives from the European level, this book points to a significant gap in European trade union politics between pretensions and reality. The findings provide a solid theoretical framework, suitable not only to explain current dynamics in the field of European trade unionism, but also promising for further research on the topic. With its focus on a contested political field, Trade Unions in the Course of European Integration contributes to practical and theoretical debates within European trade unionism. As an adequate understanding of European trade unionism in general and collective bargaining requires a twofold perspective on European integration and the role of trade unions in European labor relations, two fields of scholarly interest are being addressed. Moreover, with its focus on European trade unionism as an internationalist project of labor politics, the book will also appeal to those interested in the field of Global Labor Studies.

Cities are built over the remnants of their past buried beneath their present. We build on what has been built before, whether over foundations formalising previous permanency or over the temporal occupations of ground. But what happens when you shift a city - when you dislodge its occupation of ground towards a new ground, bury it and forget it? Focusing on Berlin's destruction during World War II and its reconstruction after the end of the war, this book offers a rethinking of how the practices of destruction and burial combine to reform the city through geography and how burying a city is intricately tied to forgetting destruction, ruination and trauma. Created from 25 million cubic meters of rubble produced during World War II, Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain) is the exemplar of the destroyed city. Its critical journey is chronicled in combination with Berlin's seven other rubble hills, and their connections to constructing forgetting through burial. Furthermore, the book investigates Berlin's sublime relation to Albert Speer's urban vision to rival the ancient cities of Rome and Athens through their now shared geographies of seven hills. Finally, there is a central focus on the role of the citizens who cleared Berlin's streets of rubble, and the subsequent human relationships between people and ruins. This book is valuable reading for those interested in Architectural Theory, Urban Geography, Modern History and Urban Design.

This book explores the development of the putting-out system in hand-woven textile industries in late Qing Dynasty and China's Republican Period. In classic sociology theory, the putting-out system in handcraft production was regarded as traditional and inefficient. In the context of Republican China, it was believed that this kind of household-based production system would have totally failed in competition with the factory system of machinery production. However, this book exhibits the historical fact that the putting-out system was booming in handcraft textile production and subsequently provides an explanation to this phenomenon from the perspectives of institutional analysis and quantitative modeling. With rich county-level data and comprehensive analysis, this book is valuable for both researchers, academics and students in economics and social history studies.

The disastrous protestant defeat in the Schmalkaldic War (1546-47) and the promulgation of the Ausburg Interim (1548) left the fate of German Protestantism in doubt. In the wake of these events, a single protestant town, Magdeburg, offered organized, sustained resistance to Emperor Charles V's drive to consolidate Habsburg hegemony and reinstitute uniform Roman Catholic worship throughout Germany. In a flood of printed pamphlets, Magdeburg's leaders justified their refusal to surrender with forceful appeals to religious belief and German tradition. Magdeburg's resistance, interdiction and eventual siege attracted admiring attention from across Europe. The teachings developed and disseminated by Protestant thinkers in defence of the city's stance would ultimately influence political theorists in Switzerland, France, Scotland and even North America. Magdeburg's ordeal formed a signal crisis in the emergence of German Lutheran confessional identity. The Chancery of God is the first English language monograph on Magdeburg's anti-Imperial resistance and pamphlet campaign. The book offers an analysis of Magdeburg's printed output (over 200 publications) during the crucial years of 1546-51, texts which present a broad spectrum of arguments for resistance and suggest a coherent identity and worldview that is characteristically and self-consciously Protestant.

Until recently, historians tended to stress the perceived technological and ecological shortcomings of medieval agriculture. The ten essays assembled in this volume offer a contrary view. Based upon close documentary analysis of the demesne farms managed for and by lords, they show that, by 1300, in the most commercialized parts of England, production decisions were based upon relative factor costs and commodity prices. Moreover, when and where economic conditions were ripe and environmental and institutional circumstances favourable, medieval cultivators successfully secured high and ecologically sustainable levels of land productivity. They achieved this by integrating crop and livestock production into the sort of manure-intensive systems of mixed-husbandry which later underpinned the more celebrated output growth of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. If medieval agriculture failed to fulfill the production potential provided by wider adoption of such systems, this is more appropriately explained by the want of the kind of market incentives that might have justified investment, innovation, and specialization on the scale that characterized the so-called 'agricultural revolution', than either the lack of appropriate agricultural technology or the innate 'backwardness' of medieval cultivators.

Originally published in 2014, The Shaping of London chronologically examines the likely impact of wars, dynastic struggles, demographic change and economic growth on the physical fabric of London. The book traces the evolution of architectural style in London within the context of politics and economics, it looks at architecture over broad periods from Romanesque to Jacobean, and from Palladian to Victorian. Looking at the changes of London from 1066 to 1870, Balchin argues that London was created through a mixture of kings, merchants, governors and industrialists, which has lent itself to the creation of notable buildings, and public places in London and in turn their spatial dispersal has helped to determine the shape and areal extent of the metropolis.

This book investigates the causes and effects of modernisation in rural regions of Britain and Ireland, continental Europe, the Americas, and Australasia between 1780 and 1914. In this period, the transformation of the world economy associated with the Industrial Revolution fuelled dramatic changes in the international countryside, as landowning elites, agricultural workers, and states adapted to the consequences of globalisation in a variety of ways. The chapters in this volume illustrate similarities, differences, and connections between the resulting manifestations of agrarian reform and resistance that spread throughout the Euro-American world and beyond during the long nineteenth century.

First published in 1960. This title is a study of one of the most controversial alliances in British political history. The 'wage freeze', Bevanism, the block vote, nuclear disarmament: these are only a few of the points at which the unions' activities within the Labour Party had roused hot debate. Drawing extensively on previously unpublished material and on discussions with past members of the Labour Movement, the author creates a survey of what the partnership really amounted to.

First published in 1974. This book examines the mechanism of the Labour Party, its conference, the National Executive, constituency parties, the workings of Transport House, the Parliamentary party and that highly charged aspect of left-wing affairs, party relations with the trade unions. There is a good deal of closely observed material on key events, such as the 1964-70 Labour Government as well as lively comment on rivalry on big issues. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of history and politics.