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A collection of essays on the history and relationships of the East India Company from 1600 to the early 1800s.
An innovative exploration of fake news and alternative reality in late Stuart and early Hanoverian political and literary culture, from the Popish Plot and the South Sea Bubble to the Dunciad. James Francis Edward Stuart, the Prince of Wales born in 1688, was not a commoner's child smuggled into the queen's birthing chamber in a warming pan, but many people said he was. In 1708, the same prince did not quite land in Scotland with a force of 5,000 men in order to claim the Scottish crown, but writers busied themselves with exploring what would have happened if he had succeeded. These fictions had as potent an effect on the political culture of late Stuart and early Hanoverian Britain as many ...
This study of the Black Death considers the nature of the disease, its origin, spread, mortality and its impact on history.
A gazetteer of the many fine Shropshire country houses, which covers the architecture, the owners' family history, and the social and economic circumstances that affected them.Shropshire is the largest English inland county, and has a wide variety of important landed country houses, with owners from diverse social groups, with links to trade in Liverpool, Manchester and London as well as the local gentry. This book is not simply about the houses they built, but also about the people who lived in them and the context in which the houses are set. The architecture is of course fully covered. What is distinctive about the author's approach is that he treats the histories of the families, their a...
Studies of varied ways in which medieval people imagined the future, reasons behind such representations, and the implications for an understanding of medieval society as a whole.
Completely revised and updated for this new edition, Benedictow's acclaimed study remains the definitive account of the Black Death and its impact on history. The first edition of The Black Death collected and analysed the many local studies on the disease published in a variety of languages and examined a range of scholarly papers. The medical and epidemiological characteristics of the disease, its geographical origin, its spread across Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe, and the mortality in the countries and regions for which there are satisfactory studies, are clearly presented and thoroughly discussed. The pattern, pace and seasonality of spread revealed through close scrutiny of these studies exactly reflect current medical work and standard studies on the epidemiology of bubonic plague. Benedictow's findings made it clear that the true mortality rate was far higher than had been previously thought. In the light of those findings, the discussion in the last part of the book showing the Black Death as a turning point in history takes on a new significance. OLE J. BENEDICTOW is Professor of History at the University of Oslo.
Drawing on a wide body of evidence, the book argues that the support of women was vital to the persistence of piracy around the British Isles at least until the early seventeenth century. The emergence of long-distance and globalized predation had far reaching consequences for female agency. Piracy was one of the most gendered criminal activities during the early modern period. As a form of maritime enterprise and organized criminality, it attracted thousands of male recruits whose venturing acquired a global dimension as piratical activity spread across the oceans and seas of the world. At the same time, piracy affected the lives of women in varied ways. Adopting a fresh approach to the sub...
'The Bestiary' is a book of animals. The 'Second-family' bestiary is the most important version. This study addresses the work's purpose and audience. It includes a critical edition and new English translation, and a catalogue raisonne of the manuscripts.
A clear and accessibly written guide to the medieval cloth-making trade in England. Cloth-making became England's leading industry in the late Middle Ages; clothiers co-ordinated its different stages, in some cases carrying out the processes themselves, and found markets for their finished cloth, selling to merchants, drapers and other traders. While many clothiers were of only modest status or "jacks of all trades", a handful of individuals amassed huge fortunes through the trade, becoming the multi-millionaires of their day. This book offers the first recent survey of this hugely important and significant trade and its practitioners, examining the whole range of clothiers across different ...
Text and facing page translation of key texts for the Tristan legend.