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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2006

        British representations of the Spanish Civil War

        by Brian Shelmerdine

        This book looks at the reception of the Spanish Civil War in British popular culture, and how supporters of both sides in Britain used the rhetoric and imagery of the conflict to bolster support for their respective causes in the arena of British public opinion. Brian Shelmerdine finds that traditional notions of Spain as a country of bullfighting, bandits and flamenco were pervasive and were significant in shaping wider UK government policy towards Spain. He carefully assesses the different political perceptions of the 1930s Spanish scene, the role of the Catholic Church, the depiction of the two sides in terms of class, race and ethnicity, humanitarian appeals, and the plight of the Basques. The book is fluently written, and should make fascinating and entertaining reading for scholars of British society and culture in the twentieth century, as well as those investigating international impact of the Spanish Civil War. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        The harem, slavery and British imperial culture

        Anglo-Muslim relations in the late nineteenth century

        by Diane Robinson-Dunn

        This book focuses on British efforts to suppress the traffic in female slaves destined for Egyptian harems during the late-nineteenth century. It considers this campaign in relation to gender debates in England, and examines the ways in which the assumptions and dominant imperialist discourses of these abolitionists were challenged by the newly-established Muslim communities in England, as well as by English people who converted to or were sympathetic with Islam. While previous scholars have treated antislavery activity in Egypt first and foremost as an extension of earlier efforts to abolish plantation slavery in the New World, this book considers it in terms of encounters with Islam during a period which it argues marked a new departure in Anglo-Muslim relations. This approach illuminates the role of Islam in the creation of English national identities within the global cultural system of the British Empire. This book would appeal to those with an interest in British imperial history; Islam; gender, feminism, and women's studies; slavery and race; the formation of national identities; global processes; Orientalism; and Middle Eastern studies.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2020

        The British political elite and Europe, 1959-1984

        A higher loyalty

        by Bob Nicholls

        This book offers an original interpretation of Britain's relationship with Europe over a 25 year period: 1959-84 and advances the argument that the current problems over EU membership resulted from much earlier political machinations. This evidence based account of the seminal period analyses the applications for EEC membership, the 1975 referendum, and the role of the press. Was the British public misled over the true aims of the European project? How significant was the role of the press in changing public opinion from anti, to pro Common Market membership? Why, after over 40 years since Britain became a member of the European community, does the issue continue to deeply divide not only the political elite, but also the British public? These, and other pertinent questions are answered in this timely book on a subject that remains topical and highly controversial.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Country houses and the British Empire, 1700–1930

        by Stephanie Barczewski

        Country houses and the British empire, 1700-1930 assesses the economic and cultural links between country houses and the Empire between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Using sources from over fifty British and Irish archives, it enables readers to better understand the impact of the empire upon the British metropolis by showing both the geographical variations and its different cultural manifestations. Barczewski offers a rare scholarly analysis of the history of country houses that goes beyond an architectural or biographical study, and recognises their importance as the physical embodiments of imperial wealth and reflectors of imperial cultural influences. In so doing, she restores them to their true place of centrality in British culture over the last three centuries, and provides fresh insights into the role of the Empire in the British metropolis.

      • Trusted Partner
        Medicine
        May 2024

        Jewish refugees and the British nursing profession

        A gendered opportunity

        by Jane Brooks

        This book follows the lives of female Jewish refugees who fled Nazi persecution and became nurses. Nursing was nominally a profession but with its poor pay and harsh discipline, it was unpopular with British women. In the years preceding the Second World War, hospitals in Britain suffered chronic nurse staffing crises. As the country faced inevitable war, the Government and the profession's elite courted refugees as an antidote to the shortages, but many hospitals refused to employ Continental Jews. The book explores the changes in the refugees' status and lives from the war years to the foundation of the National Health Service and to the latter decades of the twentieth century. It places the refugees at the forefront of manoeuvres in nursing practice, education and research at a time of social upheaval and alterations in the position of women.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Welsh missionaries and British imperialism

        The Empire of Clouds in north-east India

        by Andrew May

        In 1841, the Welsh sent their first missionary, Thomas Jones, to evangelise the tribal peoples of the Khasi Hills of north-east India. This book follows Jones from rural Wales to Cherrapunji, the wettest place on earth and now one of the most Christianised parts of India. As colonised colonisers, the Welsh were to have a profound impact on the culture and beliefs of the Khasis. The book also foregrounds broader political, scientific, racial and military ideologies that mobilised the Khasi Hills into an interconnected network of imperial control. Its themes are universal: crises of authority, the loneliness of geographical isolation, sexual scandal, greed and exploitation, personal and institutional dogma, individual and group morality. Written by a direct descendant of Thomas Jones, it makes a significant contribution in orienting the scholarship of imperialism to a much-neglected corner of India, and will appeal to students of the British imperial experience more broadly.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Wales and the British overseas empire

        Interactions and influences, 1650–1830

        by H.V. Bowen

        This unique collection of essays is the first book to explore the many relationships that developed between Wales and the British overseas empire between 1650 and 1830. Written by leading specialists in the field, the essays explore economic, social, cultural, political, and religious interactions between Wales and the empire. The geographical coverage is very broad, with examinations of the contributions made by Wales to expansion in the Atlantic world, Caribbean, and South Asia. The book explores Welsh influences on the emergence of 'British' imperialism, as well as the impact that the empire had upon the development of Wales itself. The book will be of interest to academic historians, postgraduate students, and undergraduates. It will be indispensable to those interested in the history of Wales, Britain, and the empire, as well as those who wish to compare Welsh imperial experiences with those of the English, Irish, and Scots.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        The British working class in postwar film

        by Philip Gillett

        An incidental pleasure of watching a film is what it tells us about the society in which it is made. Using a sociological model, The British working class in postwar film looks at how working-class people were portrayed in British feature films in the decade after the Second World War. Though some of the films examined are well known, others have been forgotten and deserve reassessment. Original statistical data is used to assess the popularity of the films with audiences. With its interdisciplinary approach and the avoidance of jargon, this book seeks to broaden the approach to film studies. Students of media and cultural studies are introduced to the skills of other disciplines, while sociologists and historians are encouraged to consider the value of film evidence in their own fields. This work should appeal to all readers interested in social history and in how cinema and society works.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Payment and philanthropy in British healthcare, 1918–48

        by George Campbell Gosling, Keir Waddington

        This book is available as an open access ebook under a CC-BY-NC-ND licence. At a time when payment is claiming a greater place than ever before within the NHS, this book provides the first in-depth investigation of the workings, scale and meaning of payment in British hospitals before the NHS. There were only three decades in British history when it was the norm for patients to pay the hospital; those between the end of the First World War and the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948. Payment played an important part in redefining rather than abandoning medical philanthropy, based on class divisions and the notion of financial contribution as a civic duty. With new insights on the scope of private medicine and the workings of the means test in the hospital, as well as the civic, consumer and charitable meanings associated with paying the hospital, Gosling offers a fresh perspective on healthcare before the NHS and welfare before the welfare state.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Civil war London

        by Jordan S. Downs, Jason Peacey

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Popular imperialism and the military, 1850-1950

        by John M. MacKenzie

        Colonial war played a vital part in transforming the reputation of the military and placing it on a standing equal to that of the navy. The book is concerned with the interactive culture of colonial warfare, with the representation of the military in popular media at home, and how these images affected attitudes towards war itself and wider intellectual and institutional forces. It sets out to relate the changing image of the military to these fundamental facts. For the dominant people they were an atavistic form of war, shorn of guilt by Social Darwinian and racial ideas, and rendered less dangerous by the increasing technological gap between Europe and the world. Attempts to justify and understand war were naturally important to dominant people, for the extension of imperial power was seldom a peaceful process. The entertainment value of war in the British imperial experience does seem to have taken new and more intensive forms from roughly the middle of the nineteenth century. Themes such as the delusive seduction of martial music, the sketch of the music hall song, powerful mythic texts of popular imperialism, and heroic myths of empire are discussed extensively. The first important British war correspondent was William Howard Russell (1820-1907) of The Times, in the Crimea. The 1870s saw a dramatic change in the representation of the officer in British battle painting. Up to that point it was the officer's courage, tactical wisdom and social prestige that were put on display.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2022

        Exiting war

        The British Empire and the 1918–20 moment

        by Romain Fathi, Margaret Hutchison, Andrekos Varnava, Michael Walsh, Alan Lester

        Exiting war explores a particular 1918-20 'moment' in the British Empire's history, between the First World War's armistices of 1918, and the peace treaties of 1919 and 1920. That moment, we argue, was a challenging and transformative time for the Empire. While British authorities successfully answered some of the post-war tests they faced, such as demobilisation, repatriation, and fighting the widespread effects of the Spanish flu, the racial, social, political and economic hallmarks of their imperialism set the scene for a wide range of expressions of loyalties and disloyalties, and anticolonial movements. The book documents and conceptualises this 1918-20 'moment' and its characteristics as a crucial three-year period of transformation for and within the Empire, examining these years for the significant shifts in the imperial relationship that occurred and as laying the foundation for later change in the imperial system.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation

        Passengers, pilots, publicity

        by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie

        The new activity of trans-continental civil flying in the 1930s is a useful vantage point for viewing the extension of British imperial attitudes and practices. Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation examines the experiences of those (mostly men) who flew solo or with a companion (racing or for leisure), who were airline passengers (doing colonial administration, business or research), or who flew as civilian air and ground crews. For airborne elites, flying was a modern and often enviable way of managing, using and experiencing empire. On the ground, aviation was a device for asserting old empire: adventure and modernity were accompanied by supremacism. At the time, however, British civil imperial flying was presented romantically in books, magazines and exhibitions. Eighty years on, imperial flying is still remembered, reproduced and re-enacted in caricature.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 1999

        The Irish and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

        by Robert Stradling

        The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War threw Irish politics, north and south of the border, into turmoil. Tragic events in Spain aroused emotive responses across the spectrum of Irish society. In contrast to most other communities of the British Isles, citizens of the Irish Free State were mainly pro-Franco. But many on the left felt a strong identification with the plight of the Republic. Ireland sent large organized bodies of men to fight on opposite sides in the Spanish Civil War. The International Brigade volunteers were led by the IRA warrior, Frank Ryan. Their rivals, who became a battalion of Franco's Foreign Legion were mostly members of the semi-facist Blueshirts, and were commanded by the ex-leader of that movement, General Eoin O'Duffy. In late 1936, two enemy crusades - Communist and Catholic - left Ireland to fight it out in Spain. This book, illuminated by personal histories, tells the story of what happened to those two sides. Starting with their eventful journey to Spain, it follows their footsteps across the battlefields of Spain. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2024

        Plagues of the heart

        Crisis and covenanting in a seventeenth-century Scottish town

        by Michelle D. Brock

        Using a wide range of archival material, Plagues of the heart provides a fresh understanding of religion and identity not only in seventeenth-century Scotland, but in protestant communities across the early modern world grappling with a range of interrelated crises. By examining the 'culture of covenanting' in the southwestern port-city of Ayr between the British civil wars and the Revolution of 1688, this book reveals how adherence to the National Covenant of 1638 and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643 informed the identities and lived experiences of a generation of Scots. This is the compelling story of one Scottish town and its remarkable minister, but it demonstrates how in the early modern period, especially when it came to matters of faith, the local was imbedded rather than isolated, engaged rather than insular.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Martial races

        The military, race and masculinity in British imperial culture, 1857–1914

        by Heather Streets

        This book explores how and why Scottish Highlanders, Punjabi Sikhs, and Nepalese Gurkhas became identified as the British Empire's fiercest, most manly soldiers in nineteenth century discourse. As 'martial races' these men were believed to possess a biological or cultural disposition to the racial and masculine qualities necessary for the arts of war. Because of this, they were used as icons to promote recruitment in British and Indian armies - a phenomenon with important social and political effects in India, in Britain, and in the armies of the Empire. Martial Races bridges regional studies of South Asia and Britain while straddling the fields of racial theory, masculinity, imperialism, identity politics, and military studies. Of particular importance is the way it exposes the historical instability of racial categories based on colour and its insistence that historically specific ideologies of masculinity helped form the logic of imperial defence, thus wedding gender theory with military studies in unique ways. Moreover, Martial Races challenges the marginalisation of the British Army in histories of Victorian popular culture, and demonstrates the army's enduring impact on the regional cultures of the Highlands, the Punjab and Nepal. This unique study will make fascinating reading for higher level students and experts in imperial history, military history and gender history.

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