The Hanoverian succession of 1714 brought about a 123-year union between Britain and the German electorate of Hanover, ushering in a distinct new period in British history. Under the four Georges and William IV Britain became arguably the most powerful nation in the world with a growing colonial Empire, a muscular economy and an effervescent artistic, social and scientific culture. And yet history has not tended to be kind to the Hanoverians, frequently portraying them as petty-minded and boring monarchs presiding over a dull and inconsequential court, merely the puppets of parliament and powerful ministers. In order both to explain and to challenge such a paradox, this collection looks afresh at the Georgian monarchs and their role, influence and legacy within Britain, Hanover and beyond. Concentrating on the self-representation and the perception of the Hanoverians in their various dominions, each chapter shines new light on important topics: from rivalling concepts of monarchical legitimacy and court culture during the eighteenth century to the multi-confessional set-up of the British composite monarchy and the role of social groups such as the military, the Anglican Church and the aristocracy in defining and challenging the political order. As a result, the volume uncovers a clearly defined new style of Hanoverian kingship, one that emphasized the Protestantism of the dynasty, laid great store by rational government in close collaboration with traditional political powers, embraced army and navy to an unheard of extent and projected this image to audiences on the British Isles, in the German territories and in the colonies alike. Three hundred years after the succession of the first Hanoverian king, an intriguing new perspective of a dynasty emerges, challenging long held assumptions and prejudices.

This collection presents research results of the Collaborative Research Centre 600 'Strangers and Poor People. Changing Patterns of Inclusion and Exclusion from Classical Antiquity to the Present Day' at Trier University. It deals with central problems of social inclusion in societies of Europe and the Mediterranean World since Antiquity. The articles assembled here explore fundamental dimensions of the self-concepts of societies and social groups. From the perspectives of different disciplines, as History, History of Law, Literature Studies and Social Sciences, they focus on five main research areas: theoretical concepts of inclusion and exclusion, rights of membership and the inclusion of strangers in political spaces, religious dimensions of poor relief from the Middle Ages up into the twentieth Century, poor law and politics of poverty and the semantics of inclusion and exclusion.

This book brings together authors working on some of the most significant poverty and welfare research projects on the European stage. The contributions focus broadly on the experience of being poor in England, Scotland, Ireland and Germany between 1800 and the 1940s, a theme that has received inadequate attention in the European historiography thus far. The chapters are organised into three thematic sections. The first deals with the experience of being poor: networks, migration and survival strategies; the second with confinement, discipline, surveillance and classification: paths to the welfare state; and the third with the symbolism of poverty.

Whenever the British Press wants to attack the Royal Family, they make a jibe about a oetheir foreign rootsa . The Royalsa " as they saya " are simply a posh version of German invaders. But did German relatives really influence decisions made by any British monarchs or are they just an a oeimagined communitya, invented by journalists and historians? The Royal Archives at Windsor gave the authorsa " among others John RAhl, doyen of 19th century monarchical history a " open access to Royal correspondences with six German houses: Hanover, Prussia, Mecklenburg, Coburg, Hesse and Battenberg.

This title explores the experiences of the sick poor in modern Europe via an analysis of pauper narratives. This book provides a genuinely pan-European analysis of pauper narratives, focusing on the experiences of the sick poor in England, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Wales. The contributions highlight the value of pauper narratives for exploring the agency, rhetoric and experiences of the poor and sick poor, significantly enhancing our understanding of the ways in which national and regional welfare systems operated. By foregrounding the particular experiences and strategies of the sick poor, this volume helps to establish and understand the central sentiments of the relief system and the core experiences of those under its care. What emerges is a demonstration that how a relief system treated its sick poor and how those sick poor were able to navigate the system tells us more about welfare history than analysis of any other group.