One of the most recent developments within imperial historiography has been the consideration of specifically Scottish attitudes to the expansion of the British Empire and how it impacted upon Scotland from a social-economic, political and also cultural perspective. However an unproven consensus has taken root that Scots were generally enthusiastic about this process, demonstrated by increasing participation in Britain's imperial military and commercial institutions, mass emigration to North America and the emergence of new economic sectors which depended on Atlantic trade. This dissertation argues for the existence of scepticism within eighteenth-century Scottish society towards numerous aspects of the British Empire. Crucially these attitudes were present across multiple sections of society, expressed within the records of influential institutions such as the major burgh councils or the Church of Scotland, widely perused pamphlets and periodicals, the private correspondence of prominent aristocrats and even amongst the signature works of the Edinburgh literati. This scepticism, or ambivalence, will not be presented as simply expressions of direct hostility to empire itself. Much of it related to the British Empire becoming a very different type of entity than many Scots had hoped it would be. The most common expression of this anxiety revolved around the preferred benefits of a commercial empire, based on overseas trade and often through joint stock companies and fears over the ever greater influence of settler colonies in North America. Criticism of Britain's imperial trading companies was though still very much present, especially amongst the landed gentry towards returning “nabobs.” Chronologically, and structurally, this thesis will start by considering the impact of the Darien Scheme's failure on Scotland. This disaster forced Scottish society to largely focus on domestic improvement, particularly during the first half of the eighteenth century. The first half of this thesis will demonstrate the extent to which the country's economy was not centred on imperial commerce by examining the development of the Scottish banking and agricultural sectors. Banking will feature very prominently within this thesis, partly because of what Scotland's eighteenth-century financial crises say about the true influence of empire on the economy. Also the minutes of the chartered banks demonstrate that the chartered banking system did not offer significant levels of support to colonial trading links. The second part will show how scepticism existed as a consequence of the great, and often resented, human costs of imperial expansion; whether through emigration to Britain's North American colonies or military service overseas. In contrast to these sacrifices, the presumed benefits of empire, including the wider presence of colonial products, were frequently derided as being not only harmful for parts of Scotland's domestic economy but also a source of moral and social corruption.

This study examines the lived experience and perceptions of the wives of the Elizabethan parish clergy following the introduction of clerical marriage. It challenges the widespread, but mistaken conviction that the first ministers’ wives have vanished from the historical record and shifts the emphasis from the institution to the individual. This has been achieved by consulting a large and heterogeneous collection of archival material including more than 1000 parish registers, 1000 wills, marriage licences, church court records, memorials and some newly-discovered certificates for ministers’ wives. This body of evidence, assembled from twelve dioceses in the southern province and from the archbishopric of York, demonstrates that the story of parish clergy wives can indeed be recovered. Qualitative and statistical analyses of social origin, considered assessments of the extent and nature of the abuse aimed at minister’s wives and a re-evaluation of the persistence, structure and significance of the letter testimonial refute most of the common assumptions about clergy wives derived from speculation and generalization. The impact of clerical marriage on charitable giving is evaluated in relation to the demands of family and the lack of provision for the clergy widow. Scrutiny of clerical courtship, relationships within the clerical household and involvement with her husband’s pastoral ministry enables us to chart the emerging importance of the clergy wife and changing attitudes towards her. Engagement with such extensive archival material exposes the close involvement of ministers’ wives with the wider community and reveals the agency of the women themselves in the advent and evolution of their role. Women who have hitherto been defined by their supposed obscurity and unsuitability are shown to have anticipated and exhibited the character, virtues and duties associated with the archetypal clergy wife of later centuries. The breadth of this investigation, therefore, uncovers and explores a neglected but crucial aspect of religious, social and women’s history.

This thesis is a study of religious life in Coventry between 1485 and 1558. Studies of this kind are necessary if we are to extend our knowledge of what was happening at the local level during the religious upheavals of the Reformation. Only when we know enough about how people in different areas reacted to the Reformation can we begin to establish general characteristics of religious change in the society. A study in depth of a Midland town has not yet been done. Coventry, because of its size and importance is a community particularly deserving of attention. It was one of the great provincial capitals of the late Middle Ages, ranking in terms of its population among the top ten urban centres outside London. Its importance owed much to its position as a centre of textile manufacture and, because of its geographical position, of regional and national trade. Coventry's economic importance was matched by its ecclesiastical status. Within its walls stood the great Benedictine cathedral priory, whose church was the see church of the 'twin' diocese of Coventry and Lichfield. Though the Reformation naturally dominates the period, considerable space has been devoted to establishing the character of religious life well before the beginning of religious change. This provides a solid base for discussion of the changes and allows the Reformation to be viewed over an unusually long perspective. Particular attention has been paid here to those factors, especially economic, which affected religious life before the Reformation and continued to do so after it had begun. The study is to this extent concerned with all factors affecting religious life in the city during the period and not just the religious changes of the sixteenth century, with a view to presenting a balanced view of religious life in its widest context. A variety of sources have therefore been used, such as wills, records of the city and of the religious and craft guilds together with diocesan and national archives. The evidence has been treated thematically and covers the following major topics: popular beliefs and religion in the city from the late Middle Ages to the end of Mary's reign; the role of the religious and craft guilds, the place of the clergy; the significance of Lollardy and the growth of Protestantism. While the evidence is reasonably full for Henry VII's and Henry VIII's reigns, the process of dissolution and the disposal of the confiscated lands, there is unfortunately less material for studying in detail the changes of Edward Vi's reign and the Marian Restoration. The conclusion arrived at is that pre- Reformation Coventry seems to have been a traditionally devout and orthodox city. Apparently Lollardy was virtually a spent force. The progress of the Reformation owed much to the serious economic conditions in which Coventry found itself in the 1530s and 1540s. While Protestantism undoubtedly gained ground during Edward Vi's reign, Coventry was far from being a Protestant city by 1553.

This thesis critically examines how informal child-care, performed for money, was subject to sustained scrutiny between 1867-1908. This period saw women who took children into their home in exchange for payment being subject to judicial sanction,press comment and legislative intervention. The passage of the 1908 Children Act marked the point at which all women who took in children for money were subjected to legislation for the first time. Existing scholarship on this topic has largely been confined to a small and unrepresentative sample of women who were convicted of murdering children they were paid to look after and concentrated on exploring the manner in which these women were demonised and labelled with the pejorative term 'baby-farmer.' Thisthesis makes a contribution to scholarship by demonstrating the need to study a wider range of women who took in children for money. It also shows that the template of the criminal 'baby-farmer' was only one possible representation of such women who took in children for payment. To this end, the study utilises a selection of under-analysed case files, court records and campaigning literature. The thesis has found that the term 'baby-farmer' has limited analytical value. A range of social actors told different stories, in different contexts for different purposes. As the period covered by this study drew to a close, narratives were increasingly likely to emphasise functional aspects of childcare performed for money; a shift informed by and informing changing ideas around, female employment, the role of the state, parental authority and the value of the child.

The aim of this study is to use the concept of ‘mediatization’ to inform a critical, grounded and fine-grained empirical analysis of the institutional dynamics that operate at the interface between government and the media in a liberal democracy. This thesis applies a novel theoretical and empirical approach to the familiar narrative of ‘political spin’, challenging the common assumption that government communications is either a neutral professional function, or an inherently unethical form of distorted communication. In May 1997, Labour came into power on a landslide, bringing into government its 24/7 strategic communications operation, determined to neutralise what it saw as the default right-wing bias of the national media. In the process, the rules of engagement between government and the media were transformed, undermining the resilience of government communications and unleashing a wave of resistance and response. Much academic attention to date has focused on party political news management, while the larger but less visible civil service media operation remains relatively un-examined and undertheorised, although some northern European scholars are exploring mediatization from within public bureaucracies. This study takes a qualitative approach to analyzing change between 1997 and 2014, through 16 in-depth interviews with former, largely middle-ranking, departmental government communicators, most of whom had performed media relations roles. This was a group of civil servants that had spent their working lives in close proximity to ministers during a time of rapidly increasing media scrutiny. These witness accounts were augmented by interviews with six journalists and three politically-appointed special advisers, together with a systematic analysis of key contemporary and archival documents. The aim was to provide insights into change over time within a shared policy and representational space that is theorised here as the ‘cross-field’, where media act as a catalyst for the concentration of political power. What can and does government communication in its current form contribute to the democratic ideal of the informed citizen?

This is a study of British policy-makers and their perceptions of the Empire immediately after the First World War. It explores the post-1918 crises most frequently noted by historians – the nationalist challenges in Ireland, India and Egypt – and demonstrates how policy-makers came to view these challenges as interconnected. It argues, moreover, for the centrality of the Irish situation in shaping the responses of policy-makers to developments in India and Egypt. The thesis also investigates the impact of phenomena such as black nationalism in the West Indies, growing labour militancy in Britain and the Empire, and the politico-religious movement of pan-Islam. Policy-makers saw these as being enmeshed with one another, and frequently attempted to comprehend or explain them as ‘Bolshevik’ intrigue. Whereas nationalist challenges were viewed through an ‘Irish prism’, these phenomena were viewed commonly through a ‘Bolshevik’ one. Additionally, it is stressed that post-war political and socio-economic unrest was seen to be reverberating across areas of traditional British control, such as the Mediterranean, and newer areas, such as the Middle East. Worries about labour unrest, growing nationalisms and movements such as pan-Islam led to a re-shaping of British policy in these regions. The more autonomous parts of the Empire also presented post-war challenges. Increasing Dominion assertiveness meant that Anglo-Dominion relations changed significantly during this period. It is argued that this shaped key aspects of British military and foreign policy, and influenced Britain’s relationships with, notably, Japan and the United States. In the ‘informal’ Empire in South America, meanwhile, policy-makers registered a rapid decline in British influence immediately the War ended and acquiesced to growing American strength there. The major post-war concerns that are identified were not encountered by policy-makers individually. They were powerfully present simultaneously and were perceived in London as an entangled and interconnected challenge to British imperialism.

This thesis examines developments within the ministry of the Congregational churches of the north-west of England in the period 1689-1829, with a number of aims in mind. In focusing on the role of Scottish-born and Scottish-trained ministers within these churches the attempt had been made to get away from the narrow national and denominational dogmas that have constrained our understanding of English Congregationalism. In line with recent historiographical attempts to produce historical explanations that recognise the inter-connectedness of the nations of the Union, this study attempts to assess the contribution of other national church traditions within one English region and to understand the development of British Evangelicalism amongst British Reformed churches, of which the Congregational Churches of Lancashire in the 1830s were such examples. After providing the historical background of the Protestant Dissenting churches of Lancashire, an attempt to quantify the number of churches within emerging church traditions in the eighteenth century will be made and to assess the survival of orthodox Reformed churchmanship. The argument followed here, in contradistinction to the vast majority of denominational historians, is that denominational theories are poor in explaining the survival of orthodox piety amongst Dissent and that the social and economic profile of congregations provides a far better explanation of the ecclesiology of these churches. Cumberland and Westmorland are examined and an understanding of the geographical spread of Dissent is attempted, noting particularly the survival of orthodox piety in the rural north of the region and in particular the dependence of the churches of Cumberland on Scottish ministers, without whom Protestant Dissent in that county would have disappeared. Finally an attempt is made to assess the contribution of Scottish-born and Scottish-trained ministers in the emergent Congregational tradition in Lancashire in the period 1770-1829. Throughout the study an attempt is made to test all assumptions concerning the ministry by utilising a database of biographical information on ministers within these churches and thus providing figures on nationality and training, attempting to see whether the Scottish cohort within the sample was statistically significant before moving on to more qualitative assessments of their influence.

No description available.

When New Labour were elected in 1997, the party’s leader, Tony Blair, claimed the dawn of radical labour market reforms that would substantially reduce long-term unemployment and welfare dependency. This thesis is an evaluation of New Labour’s active labour market policy (ALMP), and focuses on the three central components of that policy agenda: the New Deal programmes, Tax Credit programmes and the National Minimum Wage. These reforms were targeted at key client groups such as the young (defined as those aged 18 to 25 year olds), the long-term unemployed, those aged over 50, the disabled and lone-parents. This thesis adopts Economics of Conventions (EC) as its focal theory, and uses a range of quantitative methods to analyse official labour market data while drawing into question the trajectories of improvement found in the official statistics. It also provides a systematic review of existing evaluative research including that conducted by the Department for Work and Pensions, Low Pay Commission and HM Treasury. This thesis found that rates of unemployment declined while New Labour were in power, arguably as a result of strong economic growth but potentially as a result of their ALMP. Rates of economic activity and inactivity did not significantly change, even after the introduction of additional obligations on lone parents. However, due to the introduction of programmes like the New Deal for Young People, individuals were re-categorised, drastically altering labour market statistics and trends. Indeed, when it comes to the justification and evaluation of their ALMP, New Labour made clear moral judgements about ‘the deserving poor’ and ‘the undeserving poor’ based on links between rights and responsibilities of benefit claimants. Indeed, the economic policies of New Labour continued and promoted neo-liberal precepts of labour market management, i.e. they focused on individual behaviour and personal responsibility, at the expense of potentially more effective policy alternatives.

This thesis examines how married couples bought and created a modern home for their families in suburban Glasgow between 1945-1975. New homeowners were on the cusp of the middle-classes, buying in a climate of renters. As they progressed through the family lifecycle women’s return to work meant they became more comfortably ensconced within the middle-classes. Engaged with a process of homemaking through consumption and labour, couples transformed their houses into homes that reflected themselves and their social status. The interior of the home was focused on as a site of social relations. Marriage in the suburbs was one of collaboration as each partner performed distinct gender roles. The idea of a shared home was investigated and the story of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ emerged from both testimony and contemporary literature. This thesis considers decision-making, labour and leisure to show the ways in which experiences of home were gendered. What emerged was that women’s work as everyday and mundane was overlooked and undervalued while husband’s extraordinary contributions in the form of DIY came to the fore. The impact of wider culture intruded upon the ‘private’ home as we see they ways in which the position of women in society influences their relationship to the home and their family. In the suburbs of post-war Glasgow women largely left the workforce to stay at home with their children. Mothers popped in and out of each other houses for tea and a blether, creating a homosocial network that was sociable and supportive unique to this time in their lives and to this historical context. Daily life was negotiated within the walls of the modern home. The inter-war suburbs of Glasgow needed modernising to post-war standards of modern living. ‘Modern’ was both an aesthetic and an engagement with new technologies within the house. Both middle and working-class practices for room use were found through the keeping of a ‘good’ or best room and the determination of couples to eat in their small kitchenettes. As couples updated their kitchen, the fitted kitchen revealed contemporary notions of modern décor, as kitchens became bright yellow with blue Formica worktops. The modern home was the evolution of existing ideas of modern combined with new standards of living. As Glasgow homeowners constructed their modern home what became evident was that this was a shared process and as a couple they placed their children central to all aspects of their lives to create not only a modern home, but that this was first and foremost a family home.