This thesis seeks to understand the variety of factors that influenced the fairly widespread defection of much of the Spanish paramilitary constabulary, the Civil Guard, during the military rebellion that sparked the 1936-1939 Civil War. The significance of this phenomenon for the initial stages of the uprising has been recognised in the literature, but the explanations presented for it have been often either overly deterministic or focus too much on structural aspects, at the expense of social and historical factors. Indeed, most academic studies have conflated the issue of the Civil Guard with that of the "military problem", that is, the ubiquitous presence of the military in the political evolution of modern Spain, which often allowed the Spanish armed forces to interfere and eventually assume the control of the governing of the nation. This study, while noting the importance of the links between the Civil Guard and the military, gives equal if not greater importance to the fact that the former is primarily a policing body, and thus a variety of other dynamics have to be considered when attempting to understand the attitudes and actions of the corps. Indeed, while much of the military was detached from the daily workings of society, civil guards were on the front line of social conflict, and this unavoidably affected attitudes within the corps towards the viability of the Republic, and the legitimacy of its left- wing governments. Furthermore, the Civil Guard was not immune to the political passions of the day. Indeed, the antagonism between the Left and the Civil Guard reached a new intensity in the wake of the October 1934 Revolution, leading to a further deterioration when the leftist Popular Front coalition won the February 1936 elections. The polarization that infected Spanish politics during this period, as well as the increasing levels of social unrest and political violence, were key factors in influencing civil guards' loyalties once the military rebellion began in July 1936.

This thesis looks at the rapid rise in living standards in western Europe during the 1950s. It argues that this rise occurred as a result of structural changes in the labour force, changes that were associated with the high growth rates and industrial expansion of the period. The thesis looks specifically at the Netherlands, where rising living standards went side by side with wage control. The purpose of wage control was to enable funds to be made available for industrial expansion. The wage control system and industrialisation polices are described, along with critiques that have argued that wage control failed to hold down wage levels. This alleged failure is rejected as the explanation of the rapid rise in living standards. A test of the effect of full employment on wage levels shows that wage rates in a number of industries where demand for labour was extremely high rose measurably by more than they otherwise would have done, but nowhere near enough to explain the rise in incomes during the period. The effects of sectoral change on male incomes are also calculated. Manufacturing increased its workforce during the period by recruiting young workers, new entrants into the workforce, who received higher pay than they would have received working in other sectors. Earnings have a tendency to rise with age, and the combination of these factors resulted in a median rise in male real incomes of over a hundred percent across the 1950s. A contribution to this rise was also made by the movement of older male industrial workers into office work, and by the movement of self-employed craftsmen into industrial employment. The rise in participation of unmarried women, particularly after 1952, increased the amount of earnings brought into households, with the result that household incomes rose even faster than male earnings.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This study is concerned with the Administration of Philip III of Spain and suggests that it was with that Administration rather than with the Duke of Lerma that real power lay. Lerma himself is seen as a courtier, concerned to enrich himself and his family and quite unconcerned with affairs of state - save where they impinged upon his own cupidity or upon his relationship with the King. It is therefore argued that he had no faction and hardly any interest in policymaking. The councils themselves are seen as being composed of independent, properly professional men, and the study is particularly concerned to analyse the councils of State, War and Finance; attendance registers for these councils are used here. Philip himself is described as a man at once reliant personally upon the superficially brilliant Lerma and also, and more profoundly, as a man who needed and valued enormously the advice of his councils. He separated Court and Government, relaxing with Lerma while leaving the business of government to the councils. Such policy as he had beyond this is generally described as being belligerent.

This thesis is a socio-historical analysis of the ways in which the myth of the Internal Threatening Other influences national politics and culture and inter-ethnic relations between the majority group (the dominant ethnic nation) and the minority (perceived as the foremost Threatening Other). The case-study under examination is that of the Polish Jewish minority vis-a vis the Polish ethnic majority from the rise of fully-fledged Polish exclusivist ethno-nationalism in the 1880s up to the year 1968 which marks a final watershed in the history of Polish Jews - the purge and exile of most of its post-war remnants. The thesis examines the multi-faceted structure of the myth, its persistence and adaptability to different historical and socio-political conditions, and the variety of its uses in political culture: such as the purification of the state and dominant nation from the influence and presence of an ethnic minority; its role in anti-minority violence; in raising national cohesion; and in the delegitimisation of political enemies. The thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter explores some theoretical issues which underlie the analysis of the thesis; the second chapter examines the roots of the myth, its nascent pre-1880 forms and its development as a fully-fledged myth from the 1880s up to 1939; the third chapter examines the impact of the myth on the rationalisation and justification of anti-Jewish violence between 1918 and 1939: the fourth chapter examines the presence of the myth within the underground state and society during the Second World War; the fifth chapter examines the presence of the myth within political elites and non-elites in the early post-war Communist period 1945-1948 and the last chapter examines the use of the myth by the Communist state between 1967 and 1968.

This thesis examines the experiences of the labouring poor who were suffering from chronic physical illnesses in the early modern period. Despite the popularity of institutional history among medical historians, the experiences of the sick poor themselves have hitherto been sorely neglected. Research into the motivation of the sick poor to petition for a place in a hospital to date has stemmed from a reliance upon administrative or statistical sources, such as patient lists. An over-reliance upon such documentation omits an awareness of the 'voice of the poor', and of their experiences of the realities of living with a chronic ailment. Research focusing upon the early modern period has been largely silent with regards to the specific ways in which a prospective patient viewed a hospital, and to the point in a sick person's life in which they would apply for admission into such an institution. This thesis hopes to rectif,r such a bias. Research for this thesis has centred on surviving pauper petitions, written by and on behalf of the rural labouring poor who sought admission into two territorial hospitals in Hesse, Germany. This study will examine the establishment of these hospitals at the onset of the Reformation, and will chart their history throughout the early modern period. Bureaucratic and administrative documentation will be contrasted to the pauper petitions to gain a wider and more nuanced view of the place of these hospitals within society. Chapters on family care, old age, and work will evaluate the poor's experience of illness prior to hospitalisation. The overarching theme of this thesis focuses upon the misconception of the poor as passive recipients of relief. Issues such as the way in which the poor coped with their physical infirmities prior to hospitalisation will play a large role in this study.

This thesis has aimed to investigate the value of photographs to the study of history. It argues that photographs, as "witnesses in spite of themselves," constitute a rich source of historical evidence, providing direct insight not into their ostensible subjects so much as the particular ideological and cultural cast of the society in which they function. It argues that a society's common attitudes and beliefs are present in photographs in a way they are not in more literal discourse, and that the study of photographs offers the historian privileged access to that society's perceptual framework. In proposing as its case-study the relationship between war and photography during the Spanish Civil War, this thesis has examined 3,000 photographs printed in six French and six British illustrated publications across the political spectrum. It has focused most intensely upon the months between July and December 1936 as the period of most concentrated propagandist activity, but includes two particularly valuable publications from 1938-39. It has explored a number of critical theories in analysing these images, drawing chiefly upon structuralism, semiology and the hisroire des mentalités. This thesis concludes that the photographs examined in the French and British press often had little beyond fortuity to do with the conflict in Spain. Instead, these images hollowed out the specificity of Spain and filled it with assumptions particular to 1930s Britain and France concerning issues such as soldiering, gender, urban and social life, and mortality. Although each image was mobilised in the interests of propaganda, like all photographs their meaning was nevertheless dependent upon the cultural assumptions outside them to which they referred, and was determined by their context and use. This thesis thus concludes that photographs are replete with information about the collective imagination of the society in which they have currency and can thereby offer the historian a specific means of recovering the past.

The thesis is a philological examination of the first part of the manuscript AM 764 4to, written in Northern Iceland in the latter half of the fourteenth-century. The first part of the dissertation deals with paleographical and orthographical features of the codex which reveal that the book was in all likelihood produced in a scriptorium in Skagafjorior c. 1376-1386. An overview is given of previous scholarship concerning the manuscript and its content. The main section is devoted to discussion of the content of folios 1-23o f the codex. It is argued that instead of being a haphazard collection of unrelated texts, the first half of the book was conceived as a whole, and that the aim of the scribes was to produce a survey of the history of the world organised into aetates mundi. The sources for the different passages in this history are clarified and the scribes' treatment of these sources is viewed against parallel Old Norse works. Special attention is devoted to Bible translations. The third section begins with an overview of the development of universal history in the Middle Ages which subsequently serves as a basis for discussion of the place AM 764 4to has within this tradition, with regard to Latin works as well as vernacular ones. It is argued that the book was written for the nunnery at Reynistaour in Skagafjoror and may have served as a schoolbook. The last part of the thesis contains a diplomatic transcription of the text of folios 1-23v4.