The following thesis examines both the individual and the societal confrontation with one particular aspect of the legacy of the GDR's Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS, or Stasi), that is the debate concerning onetime MfS informers (Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, or IM). The thesis is divided into two main sections. Section One describes and analyses specific aspects of the IM system. Characteristics of the population of IM are examined in Chapter 1, and the ten case studies which are referred to throughout the course of the work are presented. These former IM were interviewed by the author in 1994-95, and the MfS files of eight of them were subsequently viewed. The remaining chapters in Section One examine the following issues: the recruitment procedure (2); the daily work with an IM and his/her relationship to the MfS (4); the motivational factors behind an IM-Tätigkeit (3 and 5). Section Two turns to the private and public confrontation with the IM legacy. The debate over former Stasi collaborators currently active in the political forum is considered in Chapter 6, and the handling of the IM issue by the criminal justice system in Chapter 7. The final three chapters are devoted to personal and interpersonal issues. Chapter 8 addresses the Täter/Opfer debate. Chapter 9 focuses on the manner in which an IM sought to cope with this aspect of his/her biography at the time of active collaboration, and on how s/he seeks to justify this in retrospect. The final chapter examines the profound effect which the availability of the MfS files through the Stasi-Unterlagen-Gesetz has had and will have on the understanding of personal and collective history in the former GDR, and the work concludes that this is the most significant and far-reaching impact of this most extraordinary legacy.

The thesis proposes that the cruising voyages of Dampier, Woodes Rogers and Shelvocke were not, as David J Starkey suggests, ‘an anachronistic activity’ of minor historical significance, but were of considerable contemporary importance and provided a model of British maritime endeavour that was to be widely disseminated and through literature had an enduring impact on the public imagination. They were more successful in terms of financial return and more impressive as maritime achievements than has previously been recognised. The voyages are placed in the historical context of South Sea exploration and plunder beginning with Drake’s 1578 circumnavigation and ending with Anson’s 1740 expedition. The purposes, origins, costs and rewards of each voyage are investigated using HCA, Chancery and East India Company records (a number of which are cited for the first time), contemporary newspapers, manuscript and printed first-hand narratives, Such records confirm how each voyage embodied - in its attention to detailed plans, reliance on written agreements, constitutions and governing councils - British commercial values. A full account of the range and scale of commercial investment involved supports the argument that the voyages were of considerable contemporary interest and significance. Contemporary responses to the printed accounts are recorded and there is analysis of how they link to new and rapidly evolving literary forms. The total financial rewards of the three voyages were considerable – amounting, at a conservative estimate, to more than £240,000 (£17.65 million in today’s money). They were not repeated partly because the risks appeared to outweigh the potential rewards, but largely because efforts to take a share of South American wealth began to focus on a state solution involving a large naval force. Nevertheless the voyages and the narratives that followed provided an important contribution to the debate – central to British foreign policy during the first half of the eighteenth century – over how to exploit the ‘inexhaustible fountain of gold’ that was Spanish South America. They influenced trade and economic policy through their impact on the South Sea Company and naval strategy by providing models for Anson’s expedition. They were also, through their published narratives, instrumental in the development of a new literary form (the novel) and the genesis of an enduring literary genre (maritime fiction).They had a wide and long-lasting influence on English literature, its forms and styles. Robinson Crusoe (and therefore the whole novel form), Gulliver’s Travels and maritime literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have their origins in the books of Dampier, Rogers, and Shelvocke.

The objective of this thesis is to analyse the transition between Late Antiquity and the early Medieval period by examining urban change with regard in the towns of North Etruria in the period 400-900 AD. It is hoped to provide some insight in the debate between historians who view urban change as mainly 'decline' (the 'catastrophist' school) or those who view the change as a 'transformation' (the 'continuist' school). It is also hoped that the thesis will be able to provide some insight into the discrepancy between the documentary evidence which provides some examples of the survival of urban activity associated with the Roman town, and the archaeological evidence which indicates signs of decay, depopulation and abandonment. The area examined consists of Arezzo, Chiusi, Fiesole, Lucca, Pisa, Siena, and Volterra. The evidence consists of literary sources, charters, epigraphy, numismatics, as well as archaeological reports. The town of Lucca was selected as a model with which the other settlements are compared. This was due to the sheer amount of documentary and archaeological evidence available for this settlement. By using Lucca as a model, characteristics involved in the transformation of the Late Antique Roman settlement to the early medieval town could be seen. What is observed can be used as evidence of both 'transformation' and 'decline'. The changes to urban topography consist of fragmentation of public spaces and monumental buildings of the Roman town. This resulted in areas of depopulation, abandonment, and layers of organic matter called 'dark-earth'. But there is also evidence of urban vitality in areas away from the Roman town centre, new urban centres forming around peripheral areas within the town walls, frequently around cathedrals or urban cemeteries, others forming around suburban churches and cemeteries: population centres forming within the former Roman town wall, with areas of abandonment and neglect in between, which paradoxically could be described as 'urban villages'. It is this model which best explains the discrepancy between the documentary and archaeological evidence. The documentary evidence indicates building work, especially the foundation of churches and xenodochia, the re-use and sale of spolia, some of the services associated with the Late Antique city such as bath-houses, and examples of occupations associated with wealth and patronage, for example, goldsmiths and mosaic workers. But this activity only occurs in certain areas within the town walls. The areas where these activities took place very frequently form locations which would later form the hubs of the medieval town. Because these areas are extremely difficult to excavate, the uninhabited areas tend to be ones examined archaeologically and it is unsurprising that they reveal signs of abandonment and depopulation. With regard to the context in which to place these early medieval towns, it is tempting to make comparisons with northern Italian towns such as Trento, or Frisian towns such as Dorestad. An extensive excavation of Trento revealed evidence of glass workshops in what were formerly residential buildings. Excavations of Dorestad also revealed evidence of medieval cranes, but more importantly workshops arranged around a central market place. To be fair, the evidence of similar constructions in north Etruria is scarce. In some ways this is not surprising, as the best excavated town, Lucca, has only had 1% of its present day area excavated. But the thesis has also examined abandoned settlements in the areas surrounding these towns and they reveal some evidence of mosaic and marble-making. The thesis would argue that the towns of north Etruria examined would best fit the description of 'production-cities', not dissimilar to the Late Antique Imperial workshop cities. In other words, the period saw the transformation of the town from a 'consumer-town' to an economically productive entity in its own right, and it was this transformation which was to fuel the prosperity of the Italian towns through the medieval period.

This thesis explores the construction of difference in colonial discourse through the lens of the London Missionary Society c. 1840-1895. Writings produced by missionaries to India and southern Africa are used to explore the varied construction of difference across colonial sites. The central argument is that the missionary commitment to human universalism was mediated through understandings of cultural, gender, and racial difference. The thesis is structured around three important themes in missionary writing. Part one, 'Families and Households', examines the relationship between gendered domesticity and 'civilisation'. It discusses the idealisation of the missionary family, the denigration of indigenous 'home life' and the ambiguities posed to such a division by colonial experiences – from inter-racial sexuality to domestic service. Part two, 'Sickness and the Embodiment of Difference', considers the embodiment of difference in missionary thinking. It argues that metaphors evoking sickness were used to pathologise 'heathenism', and explores how medical missionaries drew on the shared language of spiritual and bodily sickness to position themselves as 'healers' to 'needy' Africans and Indians. Given this association between sickness and otherness, it then explores how missionaries dealt with their own experiences of illness overseas. Part three looks at 'Violence and Racialisation'. It argues that violence operates as a racialising mechanism in missionary thinking: from sati, to cannibalism, to tribal warfare, missionaries used accounts of violence to 'demonstrate' that 'heathenism' was 'cruel', 'violent' and 'different'. This is juxtaposed with a consideration of missionary reflections on colonial violence perpetrated by Europeans. Each theme demonstrates a complex interplay between self and other in missionary thinking. Each suggests that while principally articulating itself in terms of spirituality, missionaries also understood difference through the body. Each theme was manifested differently in India and southern Africa, suggesting that colonial discourse was significantly differentiated across sites of empire.

The aim of this research is two-fold. Firstly, to evaluate Jacobsen’s views on early political progress in southern Mesopotamia regarding his definition of the office and responsibilities of rulers, his image of ‘charismatic kingship’ and warring city-states in the late ED period and its formative impact on the rise of the Akkadian empire. This evaluation will be based on the analysis of the corpus of current relevant archaeological evidence but using only primary documentary sources. Secondly, using the analyses as a basis, to examine and trace the development of the ideology of power in the late Early Dynastic and Akkadian periods. The first section of the work contains discussions on the sources and analyses of those sources. They comprise primary documentary sources for both periods including rulers’ inscriptions, archives, land tenure documents, seals and seal impressions together with an overview of the archaeological sites from which the majority of evidence comes. The second section uses the analyses and evidence mapping to explore rulers’ level of involvement in the political, judicial, military, religious/cultic and the administrative and economic spheres of activity as outlined in Jacobsen’s definition of the rulers’ office and responsibilities. This evidence is summarised and then discussed with regard to the extent to which the primary sources support Jacobsen’s views. The final section again uses the analyses and evidence mapping to identify areas of ruler involvement in social power and how that power is institutionalised. This includes ruler activities in administrative and economic management, such as authoritative structures, their positioning and imagery as victorious leaders, monumental construction, ceremonial activities and their use of symbolic objects. It examines and traces continuity and change and hence development in the extent and expression of rulers' economic and military powers, social relationships and the symbolism and communication of their ideology between the late ED cities, where practicable, and between the late ED and Akkadian periods.

Young people flooded into the capital in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and for many their experiences were moulded by working and living in others' households. As metropolitan life-cycle service, the occupation of domestic service provided them with a means of maintaining themselves by providing access to remuneration amid the fluctuating metropolitan economy, but it also gave them shelter in a city most were experiencing as migrants. The historiography of this subject has been stymied by the concentration, often thanks to limited record availability, of an older generation of scholars on the writings and material evidence of elite employers. As a consequence, a picture has been painted of an occupation dominated by the male liveiy to the resident nobility and gentry, mirroring in miniature the polarised social relations allegedly found in London as a whole. This thesis has sought to revise the history of domestic service by exploring a wider range of sources, particularly the words of contemporary servants themselves found in the church court depositions, in order to examine the nature of the service experienced by most. Servants largely worked in the households of the middling sort, whose numbers were expanding in this period, and these households were overwhelmingly employers of female domestic servants. The gendered experience of service is one of the thesis's central themes: levels of remuneration, nature of work tasks, opportunities for a career in service, relationships with employers, all differed significantly between male and female servants. Examining the work servants did in London households, a pattern emerges of three categories of task - housewifery, luxurious consumption and 'production' - which demonstrated distinct differences according to household size and function, and in household relations, in which very real work generated social as well as economic value within a moral economy of service.

No description available.

This project sets out to enhance scholarly understanding of English Catholicism from 1570-1640. It begins with the unusual, unanswered, and vital question: what did it sound like to be a Catholic? By utilising music in the broadest sense possible to include vocal and instrumental sounds, performance, composition and the material culture of music, this thesis sheds new light on what it meant to be Catholic in post-Reformation England. The lives of English Catholics are unimaginable without music. Investigating Catholic exiles predominantly focused around the convents and seminaries established in the Spanish Netherlands, this thesis argues that the “soundscapes” of these institutions were crucial. Through music, exiles defined for themselves a sense of ‘place’ despite their detachment from England, and differentiated themselves within the European political landscape. In exploring their musical links with England, this thesis also challenges the prevailing view that English Catholic exiles were somehow different from Catholics living in England. By investigating forms of ‘sociability’, this thesis unearths the sounds of Catholic communities at home. The English Catholic community was undoubtedly multifaceted, and yet by using music Catholics were united in forms of expression. Through composing and singing they exhorted their pious, social and political response to living as a member of an underground religion. The final section of this thesis draws the focus in to explore Catholic response to direct forms of persecution, and reveals the ways Catholics creatively used music in their devotions in order to transform and appropriate ‘space’. Focussing on the interaction between groups and individuals, the relationship between individual and communal identity, and above all the adaptation of Catholic piety and the construction of devotional identities, this thesis reveals a more nuanced picture of what it meant to be an English Catholic in the late Elizabethan and early Stuart period.

This thesis examines the place of the past within the lives and works of three notable Anglo-Norman authors of history: Eadmer of Canterbury, Symeon of Durham, and Orderic Vitalis of the monastery of Saint-Évroul in Normandy. The first half of the twelfth century witnessed an unprecedented flowering of historical writing in England and Normandy. Scholarly interest and debate surrounding the historical texts produced in this context, and in particular the reasons for their composition, has grown significantly in recent years. This thesis examines the place of Eadmer’s, Symeon’s and Orderic’s historical writings within the wider corpus of works which they are known to have studied and composed, according to surviving manuscript evidence. Particular attention is placed on: their engagement with wider themes of learning such as exegesis and theology, Latin poetry and computistical studies; their participation in the organisation of monastic and ecclesiastical life, including record-keeping, revision and care of book-collections and their role as monastic cantors; and their experiences of training in and engagement with historical studies and resultant self-identification as authors of history. This thesis will argue that although all three authors had access to a concise framework through which medieval audiences understood the nature and purposes of historical studies (as shown in chapters three and four) the exact character and intended purposes of their historical texts was in fact heavily dependent on the degree to which each author interacted with the wider textual culture of contemporary Benedictine studies (as outlined in chapters five, six and seven). Conclusions will observe that the three examples considered demonstrate the multifaceted nature of historical studies in the medieval period, and especially the overlap between the various sub-genres of history, such as narrative text, annal, chronicle, and hagiography, and also reveal the resonances of the past within almost every aspect of monastic life and studies in the period.

The early modern period in British history is marked by religious, political and social upheaval. The reformations in England and Scotland in the second half of the sixteenth century form a watershed in British religious history and had a wide-reaching impact on many social, cultural and political issues in the following centuries. This dissertation considers the impact of the reformations in England and Scotland by considering change over time in relation to pilgrimage and tourism. Specifically, this study will show that while the religious changes initiated in the sixteenth century and enforced in the seventeenth century invalidated the practice of pilgrimage in northern Britain where pilgrimage shrines had been important features in the late medieval period, the reformations did not remove the impetus to travel. During the seventeenth century pilgrimage declined but was never completely eradicated, particularly in places where the saints, shrines or holy wells held strong social or cultural significance. On-going pilgrimages were witnessed by seventeenth-century leisure travellers who expressed their individual and national identity through contempt for such recusant beliefs, as well as through commentary on other social, cultural and economic factors that represented alterity. The regal and parliamentary unions that bookend the seventeenth century fostered distinct anxieties which furthered travellers' creation of a sense of Otherness. The intellectual developments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries further defined tourists' engagement with northern Britain and allowed for the reassessment of pre-Reformation religious sites as representative of romantic and artistic sentiments that gave spiritual and intellectual meaning to the act of travel. By the end of the eighteenth century, former shrines were included on tourist itineraries along with other sites of historic, literary and artistic significance forming a veritable 'Romantic' pilgrimage that was both a continuation and re-imagination of the medieval practice.