![]() |
![]() |
Your cart is empty |
||
Books > History > History of specific subjects > Industrial history
This book vividly reconstructs the social world of upper middle-class Belfast during the time of the city's greatest growth, between the 1830s and the 1880s. Using extensive primary material including personal correspondence, memoirs, diaries and newspapers, the author draws a rich portrait of Belfast society and explores both the public and inner lives of Victorian bourgeois families. Leading business families like the Corrys and the Workmans, alongside their professional counterparts, dominated Victorian Belfast's civic affairs, taking pride in their locale and investing their time and money in improving it. This social group displayed a strong work ethic, a business-oriented attitude and religious commitment, and its female members led active lives in the domains of family, church and philanthropy. While the Belfast bourgeoisie had parallels with other British urban elites, they inhabited a unique place and time: 'Linenopolis' was the only industrial city in Ireland, a city that was neither fully Irish nor fully British, and at the very time that its industry boomed, an unusually violent form of sectarianism emerged. Middle-Class Life in Victorian Belfast provides a fresh examination of familiar themes such as civic activism, working lives, philanthropy, associational culture, evangelicalism, recreation, marriage and family life, and represents a substantial and important contribution to Irish social history.
Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta examines the history of labor relations and racial conflict in the Mississippi Valley from the Civil War into the late twentieth century. This essay collection grew out of a conference marking the hundredth anniversary of one of the nation's deadliest labor conflicts-the 1919 Elaine Massacre, during which white mobs ruthlessly slaughtered over two hundred African Americans across Phillips County, Arkansas, in response to a meeting of unionized Black sharecroppers. The essays here demonstrate that the brutality that unfolded in Phillips County was characteristic of the culture of race- and labor-based violence that prevailed in the century after the Civil War. They detail how Delta landowners began seeking cheap labor as soon as the slave system ended-securing a workforce by inflicting racial terror, eroding the Reconstruction Amendments in the courts, and obstructing federal financial-relief efforts. The result was a system of peonage that continued to exploit Blacks and poor whites for their labor, sometimes fatally. In response, laborers devised their own methods for sustaining themselves and their communities: forming unions, calling strikes, relocating, and occasionally operating outside the law. By shedding light on the broader context of the Elaine Massacre, Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta reveals that the fight against white supremacy in the Delta was necessarily a fight for better working conditions, fair labor practices, and economic justice.
Newspapers do more than provide information. They enter into the process of forming communities, from voluntary associations to cities to nation-states. Widely acknowledged as one of our most insightful commentators on the history of American journalism, David Paul Nord offers a lively and wide-ranging discussion of journalism as a vital component of community. In settings ranging from the religion-infused towns of colonial America to the rapidly expanding urban metropolises of the late nineteenth century, Nord explores the cultural work of the press. Nord perceives the daily press as an arena in which a broad cross-section of the populace -- ethnically diverse, geographically diffuse, and economically stratified -- could participate in a common culture. During times of crisis, such as the yellow fever epidemic that gripped Philadelphia in 1793, newspapers sustained the bonds of community life. Amassing concrete historical evidence, Nord also examines how ordinary readers make sense of what they read and how they use journalism to form community attachments and engage in civic life. Illuminating how newspapers have intersected with religion, politics, reform, and urban life over nearly three centuries, Communities of Journalism is a deeply satisfying contribution to the cultural history of American journalism and to the history of reading.
Glass plays an essential role in our lives and has done for centuries. Glass has not always been so ubiquitous and this book charts the development of the English glass industry from the medieval period to recent times. Medieval glass was a scarce, luxury material used to furnish the tables of the wealthiest members of society, and to glaze only churches and palaces. The industry was small and largely based in rural areas, where the necessary raw materials (in particular wood for fuel) were abundant. In the 16th century, glass manufacture increased and benefited from technological development (largely brought by immigrant glass makers). This encouraged a drop in prices for customers which probably helped to increase the demand for glass. Throughout the 17th century the English glass industry was transformed by the use of new coal-fuelled furnaces, and raw materials, especially seaweed and lead. By the 18th century, glass was routinely used to glaze houses even for the less wealthy members of society, store wine and beer, and serve drinks. The scientific analysis of glass and glass working waste from this period has advanced considerably in recent years and has enriched our understanding of the raw materials and technologies employed in glass manufacture.
In excerpts from a series of interviews, seven former Forest Service chiefs look back at the issues they faced throughout their 50 collective years of service and provide a glimpse into the inner workings of America's oldest and largest federal land-management agency. At times caught unaware by the forces of change, at times prescient, by turns humble and defiant, yet always candid, the chiefs endured a sea-change of increasing strife marked by vocabulary that still clangs with contention -- wilderness, clear-cutting, ecosystem management, environmentalism, timber salvage. Reflecting on their efforts during the last half of the 20th century to carry out the agency's mission in an era of escalating turbulence, the chiefs offer behind-the-scenes analyses of both the controversies and the agency's responses -- factors destined to influence federal land-management for the years to come.
Anyone interested in the real London needs to read this. - Andrew Marr No city can survive without water, and lots of it. Today we take the stuff for granted: turn a tap and it gushes out. But it wasn't always so. For centuries London, one of the largest and richest cities in the world, struggled to supply its citizens with reliable, clean water. The Mercenary River tells the story of that struggle from the middle ages to the present day. Based on new research, it tells a tale of remarkable technological, scientific and organisational breakthroughs; but also a story of greed and complacency, high finance and low politics. Among the breakthroughs was the picturesque New River, neither new nor a river but a state of the art aqueduct completed in 1613 and still part of London's water supply: the company that built it was one of the very first modern business corporations, and also one of the most profitable. London water companies were early adopters of steam power for their pumps. And Chelsea Waterworks was the first in the world to filter the water it supplied its customers: the same technique is still used to purify two-thirds of London's drinking water. But for much of London's history water had to be rationed, and the book also chronicles our changing relationship with water and the way we use it. Amongst many stories, Nick Higham's page-turning narrative uncovers the murky tale of how the most powerful steam engine in the world was first brought to London; the extraordinary story of how one Victorian London water company deliberately cut off 2,000 households, even though it knew they had no alternative source of supply; the details of a financial scandal which brought two of the water companies close to collapse in the 1870s; and finally asks whether today's 21st century water companies are an improvement on their Victorian predecessors.
Drawing on the papers presented at CEEJA's* first international conference addressing the long-neglected field relating to the generation, dissemination and application of technical knowledge in Japan from the Edo to the Meiji periods, this volume provides a valuable selection of new research on the subject, from Hashimoto Takehiko's detailed examination of Tanaka Hisashige's 'Myriad Year Clock', Regine Mathias's paper on mining and smelting, and Erich Pauer's overview of Japanese technical books in the pre-modern era, to Suzuki Jun's detailed account of boiler-making in late nineteenth-century Japan. * Centre Europeen d'Etudes Japonaises d'Alsace, 2017
Forbidding canyons, raging rapids and menacing rocks--this was the
daily challenge that faced whitewater men who worked the wild
rivers and creeks to bring freight and supplies to northern BC in
the years before the Grand Trunk Railway. In particular, the Grand
Canyon of British Columbia's Fraser River was infamous for
swallowing at least 200 luckless occupants of rafts and small craft
between the years 1862-1921. "Sternwheelers and Canyon Cats:
Whitewater Freighting on the Upper Fraser" is the story of the
"Canyon Cats" who made their living running the Grand Canyon and
other equally dangerous waterways; men such as George Williams,
affectionately known to his peers as "The Wizard of the River," and
Frank Freeman, a powder expert who tamed the wildest water by
blowing out many of the worst boulders and logjams thereby allowing
safer passage for the scows, sternwheelers, rafts and boats that
travelled the murky river.
It is 1615. Shakespeare is still alive and the country is at peace. James 1 of England (James VI of Scotland) has been on the throne since the childless Elisabeth I died in 1603. He claimed the throne by virtue of the fact that he was direct in line of descent from Henry VII, his great-grandfather. The English Navy, which had been founded as a standing force by Henry VIII and had defended the country from several Spanish Armadas during the Elisabethan era, had been neglected. It needed rebuilding and this meant new ships and plenty of stout English (and Welsh) oak. Luckily for James, one of his closest advisors was an admiral, Sir Robert Mansell, who having given up his naval career and become an industrialist and entrepreneur (as well as a Member of Parliament), saw an opportunity to secure his new-found business of coal mining and glass-making. Mansell applied to the King to grant him a patent forbidding the use of timber for smelting (mainly iron and glass) and on 23 May 1615 the papers were signed. Thus, with the stroke of his quill, the king started the industrial revolution that turned the British Isles from an agrarian economy, based upon wool, water power and wind power, to one where coal and steam brought about unimaginable developments in trade and industry. It was following the signing of the 1615 patent that glassmaking in Britain went from a peripatetic, nomadic business which chased the fuel from clearing to clearing in the dwindling forests, to one where the fuel travelled to the kilns. By virtue of the fact that kilns didn't have to move as the wood ran out, they could be bigger and better, brick-built with chimneys and flues, which made the glass stronger and more durable. It was into this exciting, changing world of glassmaking that Sir Kenelm Digby developed his strong verre Anglais bottles which enabled the production of (lightly) sparkling bottle-fermented ciders and wines. The Knight who invented Champagne is the story of King James I, Admiral Sir Robert Mansell and Sir Kenelm Digby and the part they played between 1615 and 1630 in revolutionising the production of glass. The changes they helped bring about led to the development and production of stronger glass that could be used for making bottles that would withstand the pressure caused by a secondary-fermentation in the bottle. By 1662 we know that it was common practice by cidermakers, vintners and coopers to add raisins and sugar to wine and cider at bottling to start a secondary fermentation in the bottle. All of this happened several years before Dom Perignon, often credited with 'inventing Champagne', took up his position as cellarer at the Abbaye Saint-Pierre d'Hautvillers.
Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula juts into Lake Superior, pointing from the western Upper Peninsula toward Canada. Native peoples mined copper there for at least five thousand years, but the industrial heyday of the "Copper Country" began in the late nineteenth century, as immigrants from Cornwall, Italy, Finland, and elsewhere came to work in mines largely run from faraway cities such as New York and Boston. In those cities, suburbs had developed to allow wealthier classes to escape the dirt and grime of the industrial center. In the Copper Country, however, the suburbs sprang up nearly adjacent to mines, mills, and coal docks. Sarah Fayen Scarlett contrasts two types of neighborhoods that transformed Michigan's mining frontier between 1875 and 1920: paternalistic company towns built for the workers and elite suburbs created by the region's network of business leaders. Richly illustrated with drawings, maps, and photographs, Company Suburbs details the development of these understudied cultural landscapes that arose when elites began to build housing that was architecturally distinct from that of the multiethnic workers within the old company towns. They followed national trends and created social hierarchies in the process, but also, uniquely, incorporated pre-existing mining features and adapted company housing practices. This idiosyncratic form of suburbanization belies the assumption that suburbs and industry were independent developments. Built environments evince interrelationships among landscapes, people, and power. Scarlett's work offers new perspectives on emerging national attitudes linking domestic architecture with class and gender identity. Company Suburbs complements scholarship on both industrial communities and early suburban growth, increasing our understanding of the ways hierarchies associated with industrial capitalism have been built into the shared environments of urban areas as well as seemingly peripheral American towns.
During the mid-nineteenth century, a quarter of a million travelers-men, women, and children-followed the "road across the plains" to gold rush California. This magnificent chronicle-the second installment of Will Bagley's sweeping Overland West series-captures the danger, excitement, and heartbreak of America's first great rush for riches and its enduring consequences. With narrative scope and detail unmatched by earlier histories, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them retells this classic American saga through the voices of the people whose eyewitness testimonies vividly evoke the most dramatic era of westward migration. Traditional histories of the overland roads paint the gold rush migration as a heroic epic of progress that opened new lands and a continental treasure house for the advancement of civilization. Yet, according to Bagley, the transformation of the American West during this period is more complex and contentious than legend pretends. The gold rush epoch witnessed untold suffering and sacrifice, and the trails and their trials were enough to make many people turn back. For America's Native peoples, the effect of the massive migration was no less than ruinous. The impact that tens of thousands of intruders had on Native peoples and their homelands is at the center of this story, not on its margins. Beautifully written and richly illustrated with photographs and maps, With Golden Visions Bright Before Them continues the saga that began with Bagley's highly acclaimed, award-winning So Rugged and Mountainous: Blazing the Trails to Oregon and California, 1812-1848, hailed by critics as a classic of western history.
Lockheed has been one of American's largest corporations and most important defense contractors from World War II to the present day (since 1995 as part of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company). During the postwar era, its executives enacted complicated business responses to black demands for equality. Based on the papers of a personnel executive, the memoir of an African American employee, interviews, and company publications, this narrative history offers a unique inside perspective on the evolution of equal employment and affirmative action policies at Lockheed Aircraft's massive Georgia plant from the early 1950s through the early 1980s. Randall L. Patton provides a rare, perhaps unique, account of African American struggle and management response, set within the context of the regional and national struggles for civil rights. The book describes the complex interplay of black protest, federal policy, and management action in a crucial space in the national economy and within the South, contributing to business history, policy history, labor history, and civil rights history.
For centuries lime was an essential ingredient in many aspects of life and work - such as farming, building and manufacturing - and the kilns in which lime was produced were a familiar sight across the country, not just in areas where limestone naturally occurred. The importance given to the industry is illustrated by the number of painters, notably Turner and Girtin, who chose to paint lime kilns either as the main focus or as an incidental element, and by the number of literary figures who brought lime burning into their novels. Lime Kilns: History and Heritage starts by discussing the uses and importance of lime, and how it has been portrayed artistically, then describes how lime kilns changed over time, from simple clamp kilns through small farmers' and estate field kilns to large commercially operated kilns. It is illustrated with contemporary and modern photographs, paintings and plans drawing on examples from across Britain. David Johnson has published and lectured widely on lime burning and is regarded as an authority on the subject.
The hands of Cornish miners bore scars of one of the most sophisticated traditions of hard-rock mining in the world. Toughened "Cousin Jacks" brought generations of toilsome underground experience to the Americas from one of the oldest mining regions of the world. Once here, their skill with granite and ore won their fame as the industrial elite of western mining camps. Heirs of a perfected system of excavation, a valuable terminology, and the technical edge of a culture immersed in sinkings, stopes, and winzes, they were the world's best hard-rock miners. Pioneers in American mine operation, Cornish miners utilized tribute pay to raise output and made themselves partners with a grueling industry. Expertise made them company men, superintendents, captains, and drillers, with their success dependent almost entirely on their own initiative, coolness, and skill. They are part of a culture that has survived because its very roughness gave a resilience and durability that could be transplanted and take root in an alien soil. The courage and determination of these "Cousin Jacks" in their struggle against overwhelming odds is dramatically illustrated in numerous personal stories. The Atlantic crossing, and the journey overland to the new mining districts, were exhausting trials. Although their skill in working with rock and water was soon recognized, the extremes of weather and temperature, strange sicknesses, the constant danger of accidents, and the lawlessness of the camps, all made life hard to endure. Many did not survive to send home for their families, yet the majority persevered to spread their legendary mining skills and to bring social as well as religious stability to mining areas that extended from Wisconsin to California. In the continent-wide search for bonanzas, Cornish miners and their families played a vital part in the opening-up of the American West, and in the shaping of modern industrial America. The author follows them across the Atlantic to the lead mines and farms of Wisconsin, along the trails to Oregon and Death Valley, the Sierras and the Sacramento in California, then to the copper and iron ranges in the Hiawatha country of Upper Michigan; from there to the silver and gold canyons of the Rockies and the notorious Comstock Lode in Nevada, and finally to the deserts of Utah, Idaho, and Arizona. Originally published in 1967, this new edition contains an updated introduction by Dr. Todd. With extensive footnotes and index, handsomely printed on acid-free paper stock with cloth cover which is stamped in gold foil on the spine and cover.
International Arms Trade has always been a powerful and multi-functional constituent of world politics and international diplomacy. Sending military advisors abroad and promoting arms sales, each legitimizing and supporting the other, became indispensable tools of alliance-making starting from the eve of the First World War until today. To the German Empire, as a relative latecomer to imperialistic rivalry in the struggle for colonies around the word in the late 19th century, arms exports performed a decisive service in stimulating and strengthening the German military-based expansionist economic foreign policy and provided effective tools to create new alliances around the globe. Therefore, from the outset, the German armament firms' marketing and sales operations to the global arms market but especially to the Ottoman Empire, under the rule of Sultan Abdulhamid II, were openly and strongly supported by Kaiser Wilhelm II, Bismarck and the other decision-makers in German Foreign Policy. Based on extensive multinational archival research in Germany, Turkey, Britain and the United States, Arming the Sultan explores the decisive impact of arms exports on the formation and stimulation of Germany's expansionist foreign economic policy towards the Ottoman Empire. Making an important contribution to current scholarship on the political economy of the international arms trade, Yorulmaz's innovative book Arming the Sultan reveals that arms exports, specifically under the shadow of personal diplomacy, proved to be an indispensable and integral part of Germany's foreign economic policy during the period leading up to WW1.
The birth of the railways and their rapid spread across the world triggered economic growth and social change on an unprecedented scale. From Panama to the Punjab, Tasmania to Turin, Blood, Iron and Gold describes the vision and determination of the pioneers who developed railways that would link cities that had hitherto been isolated, and would one day span continents. Christian Wolmar reveals how the rise of the train stimulating daring feats of engineering, architectural innovation and the rapid movement of people and goods around the world. He shows how cultures were enriched - and destroyed - by the unrelenting construction and how the railways played a vital role in civil conflict, as well as in two world wars.
Now widely recognized as a novelist and essayist, working-class writer Ethel Carnie Holdsworth first published as a poet. The three books collected here demonstrate her growth in this genre from her early poems, written when she worked full time in the mill, to her last book of poetry, Voices of Womanhood, which realizes her mature insights into the lives of working-class women. Carnie Holdsworth's poetry provides both a unique perspective on British life in the early twentieth century and an invaluable testament to the experiences of her gender and class.
|
![]() ![]() You may like...
Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement in Early…
Henrietta L. Wiley, Christian A Eberhart
Hardcover
R1,861
Discovery Miles 18 610
This Is How It Is - True Stories From…
The Life Righting Collective
Paperback
|