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Drawing on Arabic, English, French, Irish, Latin and Spanish sources, the essays share a focus on the body's productive capacity - whether expressed through the flesh's materiality, or through its role in performing meaning. The collection is divided into four clusters. 'Foundations' traces the use of physical remnants of the body in the form of relics or memorial monuments that replicate the form of the body as foundational in communal structures; 'Performing the Body' focuses on the ways in which the individual body functions as the medium through which the social body is maintained; 'Bodily Rhetoric' explores the poetic linkage of body and meaning; and 'Material Bodies' engages with the processes of corporeal being, ranging from the energetic flow of humoural liquids to the decay of the flesh. Together, the essays provide new perspectives on the centrality of the medieval body and underscore the vitality of this rich field of study.
Between 1815 and 1870, when European industrialisation was in its infancy and Britain enjoyed a technological lead, thousands of British workers emigrated to the continent. They played a key role in several sectors, like textiles, iron, mechanics, and the railways. These men and women thereby contributed significantly to the industrial take-off in continental Europe. Artisans Abroad examines the lives and trajectories of these workers who emigrated from manufacturing centres in Britain to France, Belgium, Germany, and other countries, considering their mobilities, their culture, their politics, and their relations with the local populations. Fabrice Bensimon reminds us that the British economy was not just oriented towards the Empire and the USA, but also towards the continent, long before the European Union and Brexit, and shows the critical role played by migrant workers in the Industrial Revolution. Artisans Abroad is the first social and cultural history of this forgotten migration.