This thesis argues that in the wake of the Decembrist Revolt in Russia in 1825, the British Foreign Office was forced to address the tension between two conceptions of stability-one domestic and one international. It contends that the aristocratic ethos of the British diplomatic corps both magnified the fragile social condition of the Russian Empire and organized the political response which subordinated this concern to the international equilibrium of Europe. Ambassadors such as Lord Strangford and Edward Cromwell Disbrowe helped interpret the events of the Decembrist conspiracy while stationed in St. Petersburg and reported back to their Foreign Secretary, George Canning, who used the revolt as an attempt to realign British interests with Russia. In the end, elite Britons chose to protect the international balance of power in post-Napoleonic Europe instead of the traditional social hierarchies believed to be under siege in Russia. / by Kenneth Posner. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

An understanding of the nature and role of the parlements is essential to effective study of the French old régime, and of the origins of the Revolution. Much light can be thrown on this question by the study of the magistrates of these courts, their interests, and the conditions under which they passed their lives. The results of such enquiries have the added use of illustrating aspects of aristocratic life not directly connected with the parlements. The study of parlementaires, therefore, has relevance to political, institutional, social, economic, and intellectual history. Too often, studies have been too narrowly tied to their political or social and economic aspects, with no attempts other than the crudest to link them, and the result has tended to produce an unbalanced picture. In this thesis an attempt has been nade to bind together all the aspects of the lives of one group of parlementaires, to relate then one to another, and to to present a total view which will make the ways of parlementaires more understandable.

Texte remanié de: Th. doct.--Études médiévales--Paris 4, 2001. Titre de soutenance : Héritage, relations fraternelles et imaginaire familial dans la littérature narrative du XIIe siècle. / Bibliogr. p. 291-299. Index.

Texte remanié de : Thèse Doctorat : Philosophie : Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München : 1984. / Version commerciale de. Bibliogr. p. 152-158. Index.

This study looks broadly at the composition of the Scottish peerage in James VI's reign, and specifically at a subset, of the Scottish aristocracy who bore the titles of viscount or better between the years 1587 and 1625. Eighty-five subjects are identified, and classified according to the age of their titles, their religious leanings and the geographical regions from which their titles and powers were drawn, to form anumber of distinct groups---the established nobility, new peers, Protestants, Catholics (both overt and conforming), peers from the highlands and isles, peers from central Scotland, and peers from the Anglo-Scottish border region. / A social analysis of the total body of these peers and its sub-groupings is undertaken, and focuses on patterns associated with their birth, descent, education, succession, marriage, fertility and death. Where appropriate, the results are compared with data available from studies of the contemporary English aristocracy. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This thesis is a contribution to the social history of medieval Devon and the south- west in the lifetimes of the first two Courtenay earls, Hugh II (1275-1340) and Hugh III (1303-77). The fourteenth century was an era of particular importance to the region's social evolution, in which many sectors of the non-agrarian economy - cloth production, mining fishing, ship-building, intermational commerce - attained impressive levels of growth, interrupted perhaps only moderately by the demographic crises of the middle decades. Further encouragement to economic prosperity came from the war with France, which stimulated demographic and urban communities on the south coast and provided fresh opportunities for employment and personal advancement. Against this backdrop of economic change, the pattern of aristocratic power in the south-western peninsula was undergoing a fundamental transformation and shift in focus. Two great Anglo-Norman honors were united in 1297 under the Courtenays, giving a single aristocratic dynasty unprecedented influence and leverage over local society. Permanently resident in the county and led by vigorous personalities, the family rapidly became ubiquitous in all sectors of public life and the region experienced a quality and intensity of lordship rarely witnessed in the previous two centuries. The current work supplies a deficiency in the study of the medieval south-west, but also makes a case for extending the remit of a traditional county-based study to encompass a wider cultural and economic hinterland. Particular attention is paid to the influence of the physical landscape and geography on economic and seignorial development in medieval society. The thesis is divided into two parts: the first dealing with the economic and social infrastructure, and 'setting the scene' with a long-term historical survey; the second focusing specifically on the fourteenth century and placing a discussion of local power structures in a wider 'national' context.

Studying how firms and individuals respond to tax policy changes is key to assess their trade-off between equity and efficiency. Among individuals, taxpayers at the top of the income distribution have received special attention in the Public Economics literature. Progressive tax systems disproportionately rely on high income individuals to raise revenues, making them susceptible to strategies adopted by these taxpayers to reduce their tax liability. In the first two chapters of this dissertation, I provide new empirical evidence on the characteristics of high income individuals that can inform the design of tax policies. Chapter 1, focusing on the UK, shows that migrants have become more prevalent among high income individuals, thus altering the composition of individuals in the top 1 percent. Chapter 2, focusing on Italy, provides evidence of long term persistence in economic status among present-day descendants of noble dynasties. These chapters shed light on the characteristics of high income taxpayers and their path to the top of the distribution in these two countries. Understanding the composition of individuals at the top of the income distribution is key for analyzing their response to tax policies and for informing the trade-off between equity and efficiency. Firms too are a central part of the tax system of developed countries. They remit payment of the vast majority of government revenues, either fulfilling their own tax liabilities or on behalf of third parties. As a result, governments implement enforcement strategies to reduce evasion while minimizing their costs. In Chapter 3, I analyze one of these government interventions aimed at curbing tax evasion of Value Added Tax (VAT) in Italy and I provide evidence on a new margin of response adopted by businesses. As the government shifted the responsibility to remit VAT from the seller to the buyer for a subset of transactions in the economy, it altered the distribution of costs between the two sides of the transaction. I show that smaller firms face the largest increase in costs and, thus, exhibit higher exit rates, leading to higher market concentration. Chapter 1, which is joint work with Arun Advani, Felix Koenig, and Andy Summers, studies the contribution of migrants to the rise in UK top incomes.Using administrative data on the universe of UK taxpayers we show that migrants are over-represented at the top of the income distribution, with migrants twice as prevalent in the top 0.1 percent as anywhere in the bottom 97 percent. These high incomes are predominantly from labor, rather than capital, and migrants are concentrated in only a handful of industries, predominantly finance. Finally, we calculate the contribution of migrants and natives to the observed growth in the UK top 1 percent income share over the past 20 years. We find that almost all (92 percent) of the observed growth can be attributed to migration. Chapter 2 documents that present-day descendants of aristocratic dynasties enjoy high economic status in Italy, several decades or centuries after their ancestors received a title. Over this period of time, Italy experienced wars, annexations, political reforms, and a structural transformation of the economy. Yet, the income distribution of noble taxpayers living in Milan in 2005 is shifted to the right relative to the one of all other taxpayers. On average, noble descendants obtain 41,125 Euros (or 1.77 times) more, controlling for observables. Moreover, aristocrats are three times more likely to be involved in firms, either as shareholders or company officials. Chapter 3 analyzes how firms and markets adapt to a reform of the collection of Value Added Tax (VAT), combining a new administrative dataset on firm-to-firm links from Italy and a quasi-experimental research design. The reform shifted the responsibility to remit payments of VAT from sellers to “trusted" buyers, such as government entities and large firms. I present three main findings. First, firm-to-firm links subject to the new rules are more likely to become inactive after the introduction of the new rules. Second, I find that the reform was costly for the average firm. Firms more exposed to the reform experienced lower sales and higher exit rates, relative to the counterfactual. Third, I document that the burden of the reform was not evenly distributed across firms. Small firms were hit hardest, while large firms did not appear to be negatively affected. As a result, I show that markets more exposed to the reform became more concentrated.

No description available.

The attitudes of selected memoir authors are surveyed with regard to their commentary on London Society ranging from the late Nineteenth century to the Nineteen Thirties. The experience of these Society participants is divided between aspects of continuity and change before and after the First World War. During this time-frame, London Society, as the community of a ruling class culture, may be seen to have undergone the transition from having been an aristocratic entity dominated by the political and social prestige of the landed classes, to that of an expanded body, more reflective of democratic evolution and innovation. The memoir testimony treated in this inquiry affords a means of reflecting not only Society's passage of experience but also more pointedly, its evaluation, shedding light on the values and vulnerability of a hitherto assured, discreet and otherwise adaptive class character at a time of accelerated change and challenge.

No description available.