All Titles

98 Titles
Cover Image The Terms of Our Surrender: Colonialism, Dispossession and the Resistance of the Innu
Elizabeth Cassell
October 4, 2021

Based on extensive fieldwork and oral history, The Terms of Our Surrender is a powerful critical appraisal of unceded indigenous land ownership in eastern Canada. Set against an ethnographic, historical and legal framework, the book traces the myriad ways the Canadian state has successfully evaded the 1763 Royal Proclamation that guaranteed First Nations people a right to their land and way of life.

Focusing on the Innu of Quebec and Labrador, whose land has been taken for resource...

Cover Image Anti-Communism in Britain During the Early Cold War: A Very British Witch Hunt
Matthew Gerth
April 13, 2023

The Cold War produced in many countries a form of political repression and societal paranoia which often infected governmental and civic institutions. In the West, the driving catalyst for the phenomenon was anti-communism. While much has been written on the post-war American red scare commonly known as McCarthyism, the domestic British response to the ‘red menace’ during the early Cold War has until now received little attention. Anti-Communism in Britain During the Early Cold War is the first book to examine how British Cold War anti-communism transpired and manifested as...

Cover Image Law, Humanities and the COVID Crisis
Carl F. Stychin (ed)
January 26, 2023

While there has been an abundance of scientific works on the COVID-19 crisis, there has been relatively little research to date from the humanities. This striking new book seeks to address the immediacy of COVID-19 by focusing on the implications of the virus in a wider interdisciplinary context – through the lens of the law, history, ethics, technology, economics and gender studies.

From Europe to South America, Asia and beyond, Law, Humanities and the COVID Crisis sets out a framework for understanding the COVID-19 virus beyond its epidemiological constraints, asking...

Cover Image Ancient Athens and Modern Ideology: Value, Theory and Evidence in Historical Sciences
Mohammad Nafissi
December 1, 2022

For over a century the foundations of Athenian political economy have been debated by scholarly camps broadly described as primitivist/substantivist, modernist and Marxist and involving political economists, sociologists and anthropologists as well as historians and classicists.

Ancient Athens and modern ideology demonstrates the dialectic of intellectual and substantive history and offers a consensual resolution to the debate by examining the interplay of values, theories and evidence in the contributions of Max Weber (1864-1920), Karl Polanyi (1886-1964) and Moses...

Cover Image The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy: Scotland and Caribbean Slavery, 1775–1838
Stephen Mullen
November 10, 2022

This important book assesses the size and nature of Caribbean slavery’s economic impact in British society. The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy, a grouping of West India merchants and planters, became active before the emancipation of chattel slavery in the British West Indies in 1834. Many acquired nationally significant fortunes, and their investments percolated into the Scottish economy and wider society. At its core, the book traces the development of merchant capital and poses several interrelated questions during an era of rapid transformation, namely, what impact the private investments...

Cover Image The Social and Political Life of Latin American Infrastructures
Jonathan Alderman, Geoff Goodwin (eds)
October 5, 2022

From houses to roads, infrastructures offer a unique lens through which to explore social and political change. Serving as an important conduit between states and citizens, infrastructures provide governments with a powerful tool to mould subjects and control populations. Yet, at the same time they also give individuals, communities, and movements a platform to challenge the state and forge alternative forms of citizenship and politics. Infrastructures therefore shape social and political relations in unexpected ways and never dutifully follow the scripts of politicians, bureaucrats, and...

Cover Image Pieter Geyl and Britain: Encounters, Controversies, Impact
Stijn van Rossem, Ulrich Tiedau (eds)
September 29, 2022

Pieter Geyl (1887—1966) was undoubtedly one of the most internationally renowned Dutch historians of the twentieth century, but also one of the most controversial. Having come to the UK as a journalist, he started his academic career at the University of London in the aftermath of World War I (1919) and played an important role in the early days of the Institute of Historical Research. Known in this time for his re-interpretation of the sixteenth-century Dutch Revolt against the Habsburgs, that challenged existing historiographies of both Belgium and the Netherlands but was also linked...

Cover Image The Poets Laureate of the Long Eighteenth Century, 1668–1813: Courting the Public
Leo Shipp
August 31, 2022

The office of the poet laureate of Britain was a highly prominent, relevant and respectable institution throughout the long eighteenth century. First instituted for John Dryden in 1668, the laureateship developed from an honorific into a functionary office with a settled position in court (c.1689–1715), and was bestowed upon Robert Southey in 1813, whose tenure eventually transformed the office.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book examines the office’s institutional changes and public reception, the mechanics of each laureate’s appointment, and the works produced by...

Cover Image Providing for the Poor: The Old Poor Law, 1750–1834
Peter Collinge, Louise Falcini (eds)
August 30, 2022

The Old Poor Law in England and Wales, administered by the local parish, dispensed benefits to paupers providing a uniquely comprehensive, pre-modern system of relief. Remaining in force until 1834, the law provided goods and services to keep the poor alive.

Combining short- and long-form articles and essays, Providing for the Poor brings together academics and practitioners from across disciplines to re-examine the micro-politics of poverty in the long eighteenth century through the eyes of the poor, their providers and enablers. From the providence of the parochial...

Cover Image The Signature in Law: From the Thirteenth Century to the Facsimile
Stephen Mason
August 1, 2022

This book explores the judicial development of the concept of the signature from the thirteenth century to the age of the facsimile transmission. It puts the concept of the signature into a broad legal context to set out the purposes that can be attributed to a signature, and to explain the functions a signature is capable of performing. Drawing on cases from common law jurisdictions across the world, the book demonstrates that judges expanded the meaning of a signature as technologies developed and were used in unanticipated ways.

Following an overview of the methods used to...

Cover Image Becoming a Historian
Penelope J. Corfield, Tim Hitchcock
May 18, 2022

Writing history is an art and a craft. This handbook supports research students and independent scholars by showing how the historical profession works and how to participate in its vibrant community of scholars. It outlines techniques to help design large-scale research projects, demonstrates the difference between quantitative and qualitative research methodologies and provides advice on bringing projects to a positive conclusion. This friendly guide is frank about the pains and pleasures of sticking with a long-term project, and explains how to present original research to wider...

Cover Image Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England
Sarah Fox
April 13, 2022

This fascinating new book radically rewrites all that we know about eighteenth-century childbirth by placing women’s voices at the centre of the story. From quickening through to confinement, giving caudle, delivery and lying-in, birth was once a complex ritual that involved entire communities. Drawing on an extensive and under-researched body of materials, such as letters, diaries and recipe books, this book offers critical new perspectives on the history of the family and community. It explores the rituals of childbirth, from birthing clothing to the...

Cover Image The Mycenaean Seminar 2017-18
Greg Woolf (ed)
April 11, 2022

This annual publication contains summaries of the Mycenaean Seminar convened by the Institute of Classical Studies. The seminar series has been running since the 1950s, when it focused largely on the exciting new research enabled by the decipherment of Linear B. The series has now evolved to cover Aegean Prehistory in general, and is well known among subject specialists throughout the world. Taken together, the summaries provide a rich resource for Aegean Prehistory, and often provide the only citable...

Cover Image The Margins of Late Medieval London, 1430-1540
Charlotte Berry
February 15, 2022

The Margins of Late Medieval London is a powerful study of medieval London’s urban fringe. Seeking to unpack the complexity of urban life in the medieval age, this volume offers a detailed and novel approach to understanding London beyond its institutional structures.

Using a combination of experimental digital, quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the volume casts new light on urban life at the level of the neighbourhood and considers the differences in economy, society and sociability which existed in different areas of a vibrant premodern city. It focuses...

Cover Image Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London
Simon Newman
February 1, 2022

Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London reveals the hidden stories of enslaved and bound people who attempted to escape from captivity in England’s capital.

In 1655 White Londoners began advertising in the English-speaking world’s first newspapers for enslaved people who had escaped. Based on the advertisements placed in these newspapers by masters and enslavers offering rewards for so-called runaways, this book brings to light for the first time the history of slavery in England as revealed in the stories of resistance by enslaved workers....

Cover Image Achieving Access to Justice in a Business and Human Rights Context: An Assessment of Litigation and Regulatory Responses in European Civil-Law Countries
Virginie Rouas
January 14, 2022

Achieving Access to Justice in a Business and Human Rights Context explores the interplay between access to justice and business and human rights- a growing area of international human rights law- in European civil-law countries.

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) can contribute to economic prosperity and social development in the countries where they operate. At the same time, their activities may directly or indirectly cause harm to humans and to the environment. However, MNEs are rarely held accountable for their involvement in human rights abuses and environmental...

Cover Image The Control of the Past: Herbert Butterfield and the Pitfalls of Official History
Patrick Salmon
December 6, 2021

Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) was one of the earliest and strongest critics of what he saw as the British government’s attempts to control the past through the writing of so-called, ‘official histories’. His famous diatribe against the 'pitfalls' of government-mandated history first appeared in 1949, at a time when the British government was engaged in publishing official histories and diplomatic documents on an unprecedented scale following the Second World War. But why was Butterfield so hostile to official history, and why do his views still matter today?

Written by one of...

Cover Image The Politics of Women's Suffrage: Local, National and International Dimensions
Alexandra Hughes-Johnson, Lyndsey Jenkins (eds)
November 1, 2021

From 1832 to the present day, from the countryside in Wales to the Comintern in Moscow, from America to Finland and Ireland to Australia, from the girls’ school to the stage, women’s suffrage was the most significant challenge to the constitution since 1832, seeking not only to settle demands for inclusion and justice but to expand and redefine definitions of citizenship. This collection advances ongoing debates within suffrage history whilst also drawing on a range of new sources, different intellectual techniques and methodological approaches, which challenge established...

Cover Image Precarious Professionals: Gender, Identities and Social Change in Modern Britain
Heidi Egginton, Zoë Thomas (eds)
October 15, 2021

Precarious Professionals uncovers the inequalities and insecurities which lay at the heart of professional life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain. The book challenges conventional categories in the history of work, exploring instead the everyday labour of maintaining a professional identity on the margins of the traditional professions. Situating new historical perspectives on gender at the forefront of their research, the contributors explore how professional cultures could not only define themselves against, but often flourished outside of, the confines of...

Cover Image Star Chamber Matters: An Early Modern Court and Its Records
Krista Kesselring, Natalie Mears (eds)
September 30, 2021

An extraordinary court with late medieval roots in the activities of the king’s council, Star Chamber came into its own over the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, before being abolished in 1641 by members of parliament for what they deemed egregious abuses of royal power. Before its demise, the court heard a wide range of disputes in cases framed as fraud, libel, riot, and more. In so doing, it produced records of a sort that make its archive invaluable to many researchers today for insights into both the ordinary and extraordinary.

The chapters gathered here explore...

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