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This book provides the historical background to the rise of the Big Society, surveying the history of voluntarism over the last century. Politicians and commentators have long bemoaned the supposed decline of civic life, fretting about its health and its future. In fact, the real story of voluntarism over the last hundred years has not been decline, but constant evolution and change. Whether we use the terms charity, philanthropy, civil society, non-governmental organisations, the third sector or the Big Society, voluntary endeavour is one of the most vibrant and dynamic areas of British public life. The scholars featured in this collection show how the voluntary sector's role in society, and its relationship with the state, has constantly adapted to its surroundings. Volumtary groups have raised new agendas, tackled old problems in new ways, acted as alternatives to statutory provision and as catalysts for further government action. They have emerged out of citizens' concerns, independent of government, and yet have remained willing to work with politicians of all persuasions. By surveying the sheer extent and diversity of the sector since the start of the First World War, the book demonstrates that voluntarism not only continues to thrive, but is also far larger than any political agenda that may be imposed upon it.

Although there has been much recent interest in the interaction of England and Ireland in the Viking Age, the links between the Anglo-Saxons and the Irish in the period before 800 have been much less studied. This book provides an interdisciplinary assessment of these connections. The chapters range widely in their scope. Seven chapters look at issues of language and literature, legal traditions, and ecclesiastical history; a further ten consider the evidence of material culture, through art history and archaeology. This overview of the field of Anglo-Saxon/Irish relations will be of use to people interested in early medieval studies.

The Union of the Crowns in 1603 is the cornerstone of the modern British state, but relations between England and Scotland did not always run smoothly in the following centuries. This volume examines how the neighbouring British nations regarded each other from 1603 to 1900. Why did this union last when many others in Europe fell apart? How close did it come to unravelling? What were the strengths and tricks that preserved it? As aggregations of individuals, as economies, or as systems of law and politics, how did England and Scotland mesh? Political, economic, legal, intellectual and literary historians examine the first three centuries of Union, including the reception of James in the south, the Civil Wars, the background to parliamentary union in 1707, the spoils of Empire, and the Victorian climax. Together with its companion Anglo-Scottish Relations, from 1900 to Devolution and Beyond, the volume provides a vivid account of two nations, which have often differed, remained very distinct, yet achieved endurance in European terms.

The chapters in this book trace the changing relationship between Scotland and England following the unifying reign of Queen Victoria, through the debates over devolution, and into a future where the Union will be under continuing pressure to evolve. Historians, social scientists and lawyers investigate the personal, social, financial and constitutional tensions between the Scots and the English, both before and after devolution, and ask have the Scots and the English been driven apart, or brought more closely together by this reconstruction of the Union?

This book looks at the Muslims in Mainland Tanzania, as well as what people in Southeast Tanzania understood by Islam, or by being Muslim, and what they sought to attain by becoming Muslim. This question may seem contrived: the personal reasons why a set of people, most of whom are now dead, changed their religious allegiance are unrecoverable. The most fundamental problem lies with the timing of the expansion of Islam. It is clearly shown that certain challenges and processes recurred over time in different guises.

Since independence in 1948, Burma has suffered from many internal conflicts. One of the longest of these has been in the Kachin State, in the north of the country where Burma has borders with India to the west and China to the east. This book explores the origins of the armed movement that started in 1961 and considers why it has continued for so long. The book places the problems that have led to hostilities between the political heartland of Burma and one of its most important peripheries in a longer perspective than usual. It explains how the experience of globalisation and international geopolitics from the late eighteenth century onwards produced the local politics of exclusion and resistance. It also uses detailed ethnographic research to explore the social and cultural dynamics of Kachin ethno-nationalism, providing a rich analysis that goes beyond the purely political. This analysis also provides new insights on the work of Edmund Leach and recent representations of Zomia proposed by James C. Scott. The research draws upon an extensive range of sources, including archival materials in Jinghpaw and an extensive study of ritual and ritual language. Making a wide variety of cross-disciplinary observations, it explains in depth and breadth how a region such as the Kachin State came into being. When combined with detailed local insights into how these experiences contributed to the historical development of modern Kachin ethno-nationalism, the book encourages new ways of thinking about the Kachin region and its history of armed resistance.

This volume provides a comprehensive analysis of women's involvement in British political culture in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is based on extensive archival research, but also engages with recent feminist theories in the social sciences, such as psychology and sociology. The volume looks at both rural and urban experiences of politics. The author throws new light on women's political activities and challenges many traditional assumptions about contemporary politics. The book gives fresh insights into the Reform Act of 1832, pays attention to continuities in political practice and ideas, and brings focus to the primary significance of parish politics within the day-to-day activities of the middling and gentry classes.

The content derives from the British Academy’s public lecture programme which presents specialist research in an accessible manner. The papers range in subject matter over anthropology, literature, psychology, history and linguistics, demonstrating the depth and breadth of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that the British Academy champions.

The content derives from the British Academy’s public lecture programme which presents specialist research in an accessible manner. The papers range in subject matter over music, psychology, history, economics and linguistics, demonstrating the depth and breadth of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that the British Academy champions.

The content derives from the British Academy’s public lecture programme which presents specialist research in an accessible manner. The papers range in subject matter over history, sociology, politics, psychology and literature, demonstrating the depth and breadth of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that the British Academy champions.

The content derives from the British Academy’s public lecture programme which presents specialist research in an accessible manner. The papers range in subject matter over archaeology, economics, sociology, religion, literature and modern languages, demonstrating the depth and breadth of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that the British Academy champions.

This book, which provides a collection from scholars in the field of the precolonial history of Western Africa (the region between Senegal and Sierra Leone), aims to bring the history of the region to wider historical attention. It spans the whole pre-colonial period between the first Portuguese voyages of discovery and the transition to legitimate commerce in the 19th century, and as a whole offers a synthesis of the importance of this region of Africa in the emergence of the Atlantic world between the 15th and 19th centuries. The book is divided into five parts. Part 1 looks at African‐European relations from a comparative perspective, analysing the themes of creolisation and Euro-African communities in Western Africa and beyond, in Elmina and Sao Tome. Part 2 looks at the Atlantic dimension of trade, with chapters looking at Dutch, English and French engagements with the region. Part 3 looks at island contexts, and the role of the Capeverde islands as transshippers of culture and connections to the Caribbean. Part 4 looks at the trade in slaves and commodities, and the effects this commerce had on African societies. Finally, Part 5 looks at Western Africa in the era of the transition to ‘legitimate commerce’ in the run-up to the colonial era.

These chapters survey the range of historical sources from the peoples who collided with the Byzantine Empire during this period of dramatic upheaval. The Empire that had been expanded and consolidated by Basil II (d. 1025) was to disintegrate in the face of incursions from the north and Muslim east. In addition, pilgrims and crusaders from the west passed through the Empire and settled – culminating in the capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. In order to understand the history of the region during this period, one must be aware of the rich source material created by these shifting populations, in a wide range of languages, and with differing traditions of historical writing. The 14 chapters give an overview of the material, highlighting any problems the historian may have in dealing with it, and provide detailed bibliographical surveys. Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Slavonic, Georgian, Armenian, and Syriac sources are all discussed.

This book is a guide to the complete range of medieval scholarship undertaken in twentieth-century Britain: history, archaeology, language and culture. Some of the twenty-nine chapters here focus on changes in research method or on the achievements of individual scholars, others are the personal account of a lifetime's work in a discipline. Many outline the ways in which subjects may develop in the twenty-first century. The book sets British scholarship in its international context and contains useful bibliographies.

This volume asks fundamental questions about the political impact of cultural institutions by exploring the power struggles for control over such institutions in Syria and Lebanon under French Mandate rule. Countering assertions of French imperial cultural ascendancy and self-confidence, the book demonstrates the diverse capacities of Arab and other local communities, to forge competing cultural identities that would, in later years, form the basis for rising political self-enfranchisement. Drawing on a wide array of written sources and oral testimonies, the book illuminates how political and religious leaders fought to harness the force of culture through projects as diverse as schools, cinema, scouting, and tourism. These leaders were to be found not only in the French colonial administration or the burgeoning Syrian and Lebanese parliaments, but also in student societies, missionary congregations, and philanthropic organizations. The book pays particular attention to the last decade of French rule before Syrian and Lebanese independence as a critical time of transition and debate. The rich individual histories of institutions such as the American University of Beirut, the secular French Mission laïque, or the Jesuit missionaries come together in a broader narrative that speaks to the ongoing Syrian and Lebanese journeys toward national identity.

Exploring the role of credit is vital to understanding any economy. In the past two decades historians of many European regions have become increasingly aware that medieval credit, far from being the preserve of merchants, bankers, or monarchs, was actually of basic importance to the ordinary villagers who made up most of the population. This study is devoted to credit in rural England in the middle ages. Focusing in particular on seven well-documented villages, it examines in detail some of the many thousands of village credit transactions of this period, identifies the people who performed them, and explores the social relationships brought about by involvement in credit. The evidence comes primarily from inter-peasant debt litigation recorded in the proceedings of manor courts, which were the private legal jurisdictions of landlords. A comparative study that discusses the English evidence alongside findings from other parts of medieval and early modern Europe, the book argues that the prevailing view of medieval English credit as a marker of poverty and crisis is inadequate. In fact, the credit networks of the English countryside were surprisingly resilient in the face of the fourteenth-century crises associated with plague, famine, and economic depression.

For generations of historians, 1789 was a defining moment in world history and it has been said to mark, amongst other things, the triumph of the bourgeoisie, the birth of modernity, the rise of nationalism, or even the invention of ideology. To explain an event of such magnitude, it was understandable that historians should seek no less portentous origins with factors such as the rise of capitalism, class struggle or the impact of the Enlightenment cited as the long-term causes of Revolution. In recent years, however, there has been a preoccupation with the actual course of the Revolution. The prevailing concern with political culture and gender as analytical tools has illuminated developments in Paris and in the French provinces, and has brought to prominence many themes inadequately explored during earlier scholarly generations. Rather less attention is given currently to how France was plunged into revolutionary turmoil, which is now taken largely as a ‘given’. This book by contrast focuses once again upon the origins of the dramatic events within and beyond France, which transformed later-eighteenth century Europe so comprehensively and established the terms of political and social struggle for the next two centuries. It presents a series of up-to-date essays which, collectively, provide a new interpretation of the origins of the Revolution.

This book offers a comparative approach to the study of the commemoration of war. It draws together a set of contributions that combine to produce a considered approach to the changes and continuities that marked the ways in which war, and in particular the war dead, were commemorated and remembered. Chapters explore the commemorative practices of Ancient Greece and Rome, and investigate how those practices have been reflected, adapted and abandoned in more recent Western cultures, from eighteenth-century France to twentieth-century Britain, Germany and the USA. The book concentrates on monuments set up by communities, from local communities to the state, but it also considers the role of ‘private’ memorials, since the interaction between private or more personalised monuments and the commemoration of the war dead by the community often lies at the heart of commemorative practices. It furthermore explores the relationship between memory and forgetting, in the context of the longer-term idea of cultural memory. Key questions addressed by the book include: What importance does such commemoration have for the cultures that continue to live with the legacies of the commemorative actions of the recent and distant past? How is the commemoration of the war dead of the past not only used but reused? The book demonstrates that our own understanding of the treatment of the war dead has absorbed and reinterpreted the treatments already developed by past societies.