The events surrounding the collapse of the second Labour government in the summer of 1931 represented a watershed in twentieth century British politics. They brought to a close the ‘uneasy equilibrium’ which had characterised the country’s political life since 1918, ensconcing a Conservative-dominated National government in power for the remainder of a decade marked by continuing economic uncertainty and the mounting threat of war. They also precipitated a crisis of political identity within the Labour party. Deprived of the founding generation of its leadership and with its parliamentary strength decimated, the ‘gradualist’ approach which had long characterised its politics was seemingly left in tatters. Yet Labour returned to office in 1940 as a key partner in the wartime coalition; in 1945, it secured a sweeping electoral landslide of its own, allowing it to implement much of its traditional programme. It is the contention of this thesis that the party’s recovery during the 1930s was made possible by the crucial contribution of the trade unions. With Labour’s political leadership substantially weakened after 1931, the unions assumed a pivotal role in shaping the party’s direction, to the extent that by 1940, its political culture, organisation and policy had been decisively remade. The identity which developed in these years continued to characterise Labour’s politics for a generation, through the ‘high tide’ of the 1945 Attlee government, into the 1950s and beyond. This was a hugely significant and underappreciated achievement in the context of the destruction of labour movements that attended the retreat of political democracy across much of Europe during the 1930s. This thesis seeks to investigate and understand the crucial contribution of the trade unions to this redevelopment of Labour’s political culture through an exploration of key aspects of the party’s organisation in the period 1931-1940.

Car workers’ union activism has long held a strong grip on popular memories of the post­war period. Working in the quintessential industry of modernity, and as the “affluent worker” par excellence, their labour militancy has been linked to narratives of economic decline and of rising working­class living standards. Yet despite their centrality to understanding of this period, historians have often given their workplace activism superficial treatment. Seeing this period as one where class solidarity was eroded by the rise of “privatism”, scholars have been unwilling to see novelty in collectivism. Consequently, car workers’ capacity for collective action has often been taken for granted, with mobilisation attributed to a combination of uncomplicated economic motivations, the last gasps of a declining “traditional class consciousness”, and the effects of the post­war settlement. Existing study has thus suppressed the changing forms of agency and subjectivity expressed by labour militancy, something this thesis rectifies by considering workplace activism in the motor industry as a specific historical creation of post­war Britain, rather than a reflection of “tradition”. Studying the processes by which workers built their union cultures, I look to discern the origins of the shop­floor organisations that were established in the 1950s, and explore the capacity of car workers to generate new solidarities and collective values in this period. Turning to the 1960s and 1970s this thesis examines in detail the social practices and cultural norms that emerged from organisation, aiming to understand how worker activism shaped the agency of car workers in post­war Britain, influencing the forms that strike action took. Finally, using a mixture of oral history interviews, letters, meeting minutes and periodicals, I look at the meanings workers attributed to industrial conflict, asking whether factory activism generated attitudes distinct from the dominant values of wider British society.

This dissertation explores the origins and development of a Chinese diagnostic system based on the inspection of the tongue, and the transmission of this practice to Europe in the late 17th century. Drawing on the rich textual history of China, I will show that the tongue is cited as an indicator of illness or a portent of death in the classic texts of the Han dynasty, but these references do not amount to a system of diagnosis. I will argue that the privileging of the tongue as a diagnostic tool is a relatively recent occurrence in the history of Chinese medicine. Paying particular attention to case records kept by physicians from the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce) to the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), I will show that an increasing interest in the appearance of the tongue was specifcally due to its ability to refect the presence and intensity of heat in the body. Tongue inspection’s growing pervasiveness coincided with an emerging discourse among Chinese physicians concerning the relative usefulness of shanghan 傷寒 (Cold Damage) or wenbing 溫病 (Warm Disease) theories of disease progression. With the establishment of global trade routes in the 16th and 17th centuries the transmission of knowledge, objects and practices from China to Europe was facilitated. I will argue that among the various medical practices of China that fascinated European audiences, tongue diagnosis, unlike pulse diagnosis, was able to stand outside the constraints of Chinese medical theory in its transmission to Europe.

This dissertation investigates the development of therapeutic exercise known as daoyin 導引 (guiding and pulling) during the Sui dynasty (581-618 CE). The main research questions are 1) how and why did daoyin become an important component of state medicine during the Sui period, 2) why was it included systematically in Zhubing yuanhou lun 諸病源候論 (Treatise on the Origins and Symptoms of Medical Disorders), the earliest known nosological text compiled under the decree of the second Sui emperor Yangdi 隋煬帝and 3) in the context of the process of unification during the Sui, what is the larger significance of these initiatives for our understanding of the unique continuities in the history of imperial China? Central to this research is an investigation into the contemporary political, cultural and religious circumstances that influenced the decisions by the two Sui emperors to adopt therapeutic exercise, which was already widely popular among circles of literate elites and religious sects, into an official medical system. The vision of the second Sui emperor to promote therapeutic exercise as the main component of state medicine, in preference to all other medical treatments, led directly to the transformation of the state medical service with the employment of a disproportionally large number of daoyin specialists to the Sui court. This research argues that the inclusion of daoyin, together with advice on health regimes, under the newly-devised classification of disease in Zhubing yuanhou lun, is one of the most important medical innovations of the Sui. As a vignette that illustrates how the role of the state can extend its reach into social and community practice, this study also has wider implications for how, in contrast to the fragmentation of Europe after the fall of Rome, we understand the continuity of empire in China.

What follows is a study of the prevalence and value of practical work in seventeenth-century English optics. I argue, firstly, that practical work – involving instruments and experiments – was a major aspect of the discipline at this time and, secondly, that a major purpose of this work was what I call ‘polemical’ in character. The first claim is directed at histories of seventeenth-century optics, which have tended to focus on the development of theories about light and vision, at the expense of the practical work that was such a prominent feature of the field. The second claim is directed at works on the ‘rhetoric of science’, which have tended to focus on a scientist’s deployment of various means, such as practical work, in a bid to persuade an audience that he or she is right about an aspect of the natural world, whereas my take on seventeenth-century natural philosophy is that practical work could serve another important function: it could act to persuade an audience that the ideas of a rival were wrong. The four chapters take the form of case-studies, examining in detail the practical work of Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton, each man the leading English optical philosopher of his generation. Each chapter supports the first claim of the thesis, by emphasising its subject’s practical work in optics; each supports the second, by highlighting the polemical purposes to which that practical work was turned. In addition, each chapter identifies the audiences before whom practical work was deployed, with the result that the four chapters can be read as a narrative, one that charts the expanding audiences for practical work in the seventeenth century. A prominent take on the increasingly public character of natural philosophy in this period stresses the quest for assent and the desire to manage dissent. The story told here, by contrast, emphasises the ongoing presence of a disorderly spirit of dispute.

Modern scholarship understands myth to be neither fact nor fiction, only what is believed, and what is believed is subject to change. In order for the British war made myths of 1940 to prove sustainable post-war, they had to prove adaptable; they had to have the capability to evolve. Fortunately it is in the nature of myth to be both synchronic, transcending time, and diachronic, evolving through time. This study is an enquiry into how the Spitfire in performance has been one agent of the evolution of the war-made myth. Beginning in the 1950s, a new generation of adolescent boys wanted to experience the Battle of Britain as an imaginary playground. The Spitfire helped them to achieve this. By the late 1980s, those adolescent boys had grown up and had families of their own. A new generation wanted to know what the Battle of Britain had to say about nationality and collective identity. The Spitfire answered these questions too. It was able to answer these questions because almost from the day of its public debut, it has had the chameleon like facility of a palimpsest. The Spitfire has made an important contribution to the evolution of the war-made myth of the Battle of Britain, an evolution that has guaranteed the myth's cultural relevance post-war.

This thesis sheds light on the history of political and economic relations between the Ayyūbids and Baḥrī Mamlūks and the Ashraf of Ḥijāz (567–784 A.H./1171–1382 A.D.). It discusses rule legitimation in Sunnī jurisprudence and its development by some of the most prominent Sunnī jurists. The study examines legitimacy and its importance in the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk sultans’ political and economic policy towards the Ashraf of Ḥijāz. The study also focuses on political relations between the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk regimes in Egypt and the Ashraf of Mecca and conflict with other regional powers for hegemony over Ḥijāz. It also focuses on economic relations between the Ayyūbids and Mamlūks and the Ashraf of Ḥijāz, and the role of the economy in strengthening their overall relations through religious occasions and trade activities. The thesis comprises an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion. The first chapter analyzes the background of the three main protagonists, the Ayyūbids, Baḥrī Mamlūks and the Ashraf of Ḥijāz. This chapter discusses the emergence of the three regimes and their military systems, and the challenges that faced them at the beginning of their period of rule. The second chapter examines legitimation according to Sunnī jurisprudence and some Sunnī jurists’ views on rule. The third chapter discusses political relations between the Ayyūbids and Baḥrī Mamlūks and the Ashraf of Ḥijāz. This chapter studies the agencies and mechanisms of control and hegemony in Ḥijāz during the Ayyūbid and Baḥrī Mamlūk eras. The fourth chapter discusses economic relations between the Ayyūbids and Baḥrī Mamlūks and the Ashraf of Ḥijāz through religious and trading activities in Ḥijāz.

The Regulation of Railways by the Government in Great Britain: the work of the Board of Trade the Railway Commissioners. 1840-1867. Chapter I. The background of the problem. The trend of opinion on regulation of economic activity by the government. Parallel developments in other branches of public administration in the eighteen-thirties. Some international comparisons. The Board of Trade in l840. Parliament and the railways before l840. Chapter II. The Railway Regulation Act of l840. The setting-up of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade; recruitment, division of labour among officers, and decision-making. Administrative practice l840-l844; case-studies illustrative of the relationship between the Department and the companies. The Department and railway legislation. Chapter III. The rise and fall of the Railway Board, l844-l845. The Board's reports on railway schemes, 1845, their influence on companies and on Parliament. The aftermath of the Railway Board, 1845-1846. Administrative practice, l844-l846; inspection of new lines, accident enquiries, and the introduction of the Parliamentary train. The Department and legislation. Chapter IV. The Commissioners of Railways, l846-l851. The Commissioners and their officers; modes of decision-making. Administrative practice; attitudes to invention and research. The Commissioners and legislation. Chapter V. The Railway Department, l852-l867. The structure and working of the Department. Three levels of decision-making: Department, Joint Secretary, President or Vice-President. Relations with other departments. Administrative practice; the rarity of prosecutions and some reasons for it. The Department and legis- lation. Chapter VI. Railways and the Board of Trade. Relations with individual companies. The case of the Oxford, Worcester Wolverhampton Railway. The Board's advocacy of specific safety devices; continuous brakes; communication between passengers, guards and drivers; block telegraph working; and interlocking signals. The Requirements for new lines.

During the period 1660-1760, Glamorgan was a predominantly rural and peasant county. Arable and animal husbandry, and their ancillary tasks, provided the only sources of livelihood for the majority of the people who were concentrated mainly in the mixed farming areas of the lowlands of the Vale, and the Gower peninsula, while the pastoral areas of the Blaenau, or upland districts, sustained only a small community of scattered homesteads. Broadly speaking, the population of the county comprised the landlords, clergy, freeholders, tenant farmers, farm labourers, traders, and rural craftsmen. Occupiers of land, who were neither freeholders nor copyholders, were tenants whose tenure was determined by the nature of their leases. The labourers, however, who constituted the agricultural proletariat, had no legal title to the land, and their only means of livelihood was by selling their labour to those who required it. The numerous physical tasks connected with agriculture were performed within a social environment, conditioned by the established system of landownership. Most family groups lived primarily on what they grew, and made for themselves. Their tools, implements, and household furniture were constructed to serve several generations of the same family, and even their houses and cottages could be regarded as part of their agricultural equipment. Industry and commerce, however, were already exerting their influence upon the life of the county, and by 1760, the Glamorgan landscape had assumed, in many parts, the unmistakable features of industrialism, although, as yet, no industrial revolution was indicated. In the final analysis, agricultural interests, as modified by the industrial and commercial opportunities of the period, still dominated society in Glamorgan in 1760. The story of the transition from the peaceful pursuits of agriculture to the revolutionary development of modern industry was only beginning to unfold.

Rejecting the customary scholarly distinction between legal and illegal slave trades, this research explores the relationship between the Seychelles islands and the south- western Indian Ocean's slave trade to the Mascarenes from the time of the Seychelles' colonisation in 1770 to the demise of the slave trade in c. 1830. The work begins by locating the French colonisation of the Seychelles within the context of the changing dynamics of the trade, specifically the shift from Madagascar to Mozambique as the primary supplier of slaves for the Mascarenes and the growing slave-exporting role of the Swahili coast at the end of the eighteenth century. When set against this backdrop, the colonisation of the Seychelles appears in a novel light, and the thesis advances the argument that - contrary to what has commonly been assumed - slave trading ambitions and activity were central to the settlement project. Since growing numbers of slaving voyages between East Africa and Mauritius and Réunion made use of the Seychelles in subsequent decades, the dissertation next turns its attention to discussing the socio-economic life of early Seychellois and, specifically, the various services which they provided to slavers. It is here demonstrated that the Seychelles were used as a provisioning station and, most important of all, as a sanatorium for passing slaves. The Seychelles could perform this latter function - and thus impact on slave mortality rates during sea crossings - thanks to the presence of small islands which were employed as quarantine stations, the availability of clean water and the abundance of wild food sources, especially tortoise and turtle meat. The intermediary role of the Seychelles is shown to have increased in the aftermath of the British takeover and the subsequent criminalisation of the slave trade in 1810. Following repressive measures in the 1820s, the Seychelles became the centre of a wide-ranging smuggling network that drew on the outer islands of the archipelago to move East African and Malagasy slaves predominantly to Réunion. The inner islands, for their part, were more central to the large-scale abuse of the so-called ̳transfer system', which resulted in thousands of newly purchased slaves being imported into Mauritius following a period of acclimatisation in the Seychelles. The thesis' overarching argument is that the Seychelles were much more significant to the slave trade of the Mascarenes than has been previously assumed and that, were it not for the Seychelles, such trade might not have expanded as rapidly as it did in both geographical and demographic terms.