Improvement was a new concept in seventeenth-century England; only then did it become usual for people to think that the most effective way to change things for the better was not a revolution or a return to the past, but the persistent application of human ingenuity to the challenge of increasing the country's wealth and general wellbeing. Improvements in agriculture and industry, commerce and social welfare, would bring infinite prosperity and happiness. The word improvement was itself a recent coinage. It was useful as a slogan summarising all these goals, and since it had no equivalent in other languages, it gave the English a distinctive culture of improvement that they took with them to Ireland and Scotland, and to their possessions overseas. It made them different from everyone else. The Invention of Improvement explains how this culture of improvement came about. Paul Slack explores the political and economic circumstances which allowed notions of improvement to take root, and the changes in habits of mind which improvement accelerated. It encouraged innovation, industriousness, and the acquisition of consumer goods which delivered comfort and pleasure. There was a new appreciation of material progress as a process that could be measured, and its impact was publicised by the circulation of information about it. It had made the country richer and many of its citizens more prosperous, if not always happier. Drawing on a rich variety of contemporary literature, The Invention of Improvement situates improvement at the centre of momentous changes in how people thought and behaved, how they conceived of their environment and their collective prospects, and how they cooperated in order to change them.

This volume is a tribute to one of England's greatest living historians, Sir Keith Thomas, by distinguished scholars who have been his pupils. They describe the changing meanings of civility and civil manners since the sixteenth century. They show how the terms were used with respect to different people - women, the English and the Welsh, imperialists, and businessmen - and their effects in fields as varied as sexual relations, religion, urban politics, and private life.

The tension between public duty and private conscience is a central theme of English history in the seventeenth century, when established authorities were questioned and violently disrupted. It has also been an important theme in the work of one of the foremost historians of the period, G. E. Aylmer. It makes, therefore, an especially appropriate subject for this volume. The contributors are leading historians, whose topics range from contemporary writings on conscience and duty to the particular problems faced by individuals and groups, both Puritan and Royalist, at the centre and in the localities. These scholarly and original studies throw new light on the innumerable dilemmas of conscience of seventeenth-century men and women, and together make a distinguished contribution to seventeenth-century history. Contributors: Christopher Hill, Gordon Leff, Austin Wollrych, Keith Thomas, Patricia Crawford, Kevin Sharpe, Conrad Russell, Neil Cuddy, Paul Slack, John Morrill, Claire Cross, P. R. Newman, Daniel Woolf, John Ferris, Richard S. Dunn, and William Sheils.

The poor law had a profound impact on English society between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Designed to reform the poor as much as to relieve poverty, it also shaped institutions of government and determined people's expectations and assumptions about social welfare. Over the last few decades there has been a good deal of detailed research examining how the law was implemented in different regions, its influence on social attitudes and social realities, and its significance as a major burden on local government and a source of political and social concern. The English Poor Law, 1531-1782 provides a concise synthesis of past work, explaining the origins of this unique system of welfare, and showing how the poor law played a central role in English social and political development from the Reformation to the Industrial Revolution.

Between the early sixteenth and the early eighteenth centuries, the character of English social policy and social welfare changed fundamentally. Aspirations for wholesale reformation were replaced by more specific schemes for improvement. Paul Slack's analysis of this decisive shift of focus, derived from his 1995 Ford Lectures, examines its intellectual and political roots. He describes the policies and rhetoric of the commonwealthsmen, godly magistrates, Stuart monarchs, Interregnum projectors, and early Hanoverian philanthropists, and the institutions - notably hospitals and workhouses - which they created or reformed. In a series of thematic chapters, each linked to a chronological period, he brings together what might seem to have been disparate notions and activities, and shows that they expressed a sequence of coherent approaches towards public welfare. The result is a strikingly original study, which throws fresh light on the formation of civic consciousness and the emergence of a civil society in early modern England.

Written by acknowledged experts in different fields - archaeology, history, and geography - in accessible form, this is an account of the evolution of human settlement in Britain over the last half-million years and its impact on the landscape from the beginnings to the present day. It reviews the way in which, over the centuries, the evolving human presence in Britain has shaped the British landscape and how, in turn, the British landscape has moulded the development of British communities.

Present anxieties about global warming and threats to biodiversity leave no doubts that environmental changes impact upon humans. Perceptions of the environment change as people try to define and shape 'nature' in different ways. The book explores the relationship between environmental change and society from the last Ice Age to the present. The book examines the environmental impact of fluctuations in climate and the demand for energy, and the patters which human societies have imposed on their surroundings, from boundaries to the cultural projections of legends and film. Together they show how insights from the disciplines of geography and geography, history and anthropology, can throw fresh light on the long-term attachment of people to place. The chapters in this book were originally delivered as Linacre Lectures at Linacre College, Oxford University

Rebellion, riot and popular unrest have been the theme of a succession of stimulating and influential articles in Past and Present. This selection shows how the various forms of popular protest in England from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries have been reinterpreted by modern scholars. Topics range from the great Tudor rebellions of 1536 and 1549 to the urban disorders in London and the food riots of the eighteenth century. Behind this variety, however, there were important continuities and similarities. Gathered in a single volume, the essays show how detailed studies of popular protest have transformed our knowledge of popular mentality and its relationship with social and economic change.

A multi-disciplinary analysis of the evolution of water politics and policy by an international team of distinguished experts. Water management in the Middle Ages in Europe, its evolution in the USA, the elaboration of the European Water Framework Directive, the British experience of water management, the over-exploitation of African aquifers, and the evolution of the water situation in Southern Africa are all examined.
This volume underlines the fact that only an integrative and interdisciplinary understanding can lead to genuinely improved water management practices that will not benefit some social groups at the expense of others.

The poor law had a profound impact on English society between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Designed to reform the poor as much as to relieve poverty, it also shaped institutions of government and determined people's expectations and assumptions about social welfare. Over the last few decades there has been a good deal of detailed research examining how the law was implemented in different regions, its influence on social attitudes and social realities, and its significance as a major burden on local government and a source of political and social concern. The English Poor Law, 1531-1782 provides a concise synthesis of past work, explaining the origins of this unique system of welfare, and showing how the poor law played a central role in English social and political development from the Reformation to the Industrial Revolution.

This book is a classic study of a disease which had a profound impact on the history of Tudor and Stuart England. Plague was both a personal affliction and a social calamity, regularly decimating urban populations. Slack vividly describes the stresses which plague imposed on individuals, families, and whole communities, and the ways in which people tried to explain, control, and come to terms with it.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Throughout history plague has been the cause of many major catastrophes. It was responsible for the 'Plague of Justinian' in 542, the Black Death of 1348, and the Great Plague of London in 1665, as well as for devastating epidemics in China and India between the 1890s and 1920s. In the 21st century Coronavirus pandemics have served as a powerful reminder that we have not escaped the global impact of epidemic diseases. In this Very Short Introduction, Paul Slack takes a global approach to explore the historical and social impact of plague over the centuries, looking at the ways in which it has been interpreted, and the powerful images it has left behind in art and literature. Examining what plague meant for those who suffered from it, and how governments began to fight against it, he demonstrates the impact plague has had on modern notions of public health, and how it has shaped our history. This new edition also includes evidence on the nature of plague taken from recent discoveries in ancient DNA as well as new research on plague in the Middle East. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Epidemic diseases have always been a test of the ability of human societies to withstand sudden shocks. How are such large mortalities and the illness of large proportions of the population to be explained and dealt with? How have the sources of disease been identified and controls imposed? The chapters in this book, by acknowledged experts in the history of their periods, look at the ways in which the great epidemic diseases of the past--from classical Athens to the present day--have shaped not only our views of medicine and disease, but the ways in which people have defined the "health" of society in general terms.

This collection of essays in English urban history covers a period which has been called 'the Dark Ages in English Economic History', on which it directs a revealing light. The essays range from a discussion of the role of ceremony in the civic life of Coventry at teh end of the Middle Ages to the influence of war on London Merchant class at the end of the seventeenth century. This book was first published in 1972.