The thesis examines the seasonality of baptisms, marriages and burials in early modern towns, and demonstrates that seasonality (which measures how the frequency of vital events varied through the year) is a useful method of examining aspects of social history. Chapter 1 looks at the background to the use of the demographic tool of seasonality and suggests how seasonality may be able to address some of the concerns of urban historians. Chapters 2 to 4 discuss the sources and methodology of the study, and the results are summarised in Chapter 5. The baptismal, burial and marriage seasonality patterns are described, and urban patterns are compared and contrasted with rural patterns. The results are discussed in Chapter 6, which seeks to explain the seasonality patterns, and the similarities and differences between urban and rural patterns, by looking at the context in which they arise, principally living conditions and the prevalence of diseases, and working and leisure patterns. Chapter 7 looks more closely at the transition between urban and rural seasonality patterns. Plague and intestinal disease, due to overcrowded and insanitary living conditions, created a divergent burial pattern in towns up to 1700. Otherwise, the urban and rural seasonality patterns of all events were basically similar in shape. The crucial distinction between urban and rural seasonality was in the much `flatter' patterns in towns, due largely to the more even and varied routines of urban occupations compared to farming, which was inherently seasonal in its labour demands. It is argued that population size was the significant factor in the development of urban seasonality, with small towns being transitional between the high seasonality of rural parishes and the low seasonality of larger towns.

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Thesis advisor: Robin Fleming / Britain’s long fifth century, 350-550 CE, was a period of transformative change across the island. It was not simply the end of one civilization and the beginning of another, but rather was a period during which people made meaningful choices about how important it was to them to continue acting like Romans or start acting like their new neighbors when the economy and social structures that had defined life in Britain for centuries dissolved. Historians can study material culture and burial practices to make these fifth-century inhabitants of Britain – invisible in the scarce textual accounts of the fifth century – visible in our historical narratives. Where living communities chose to bury their dead, what they chose to send with the deceased, and how they chose to build monuments to their memory can tell historians how they connected with or distanced themselves from the past that was, materially at least, rapidly disappearing and being replaced. Careful analysis of data from 8,602 burials in 102 cemetery populations, as well as burials of dogs and infants on settlements, indicates that changes in burial practices were the result not of migration from the continent nor the “fall” of Roman Britain, but rather were part of a larger shift from a society based upon Britain’s relationship with the Roman Empire to one based upon its local communities, whether composed of natives, or newcomers, or both. No matter where people came from, no two communities reacted to the upheaval of the fifth century in the same way, and there were no monolithic or universal ways of relating the past to the present and future. New practices appeared, and old practices continued, some of which were better suited to some fifth-century inhabitants of Britain than others.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / The purpose of this study is to explain the British reaction to the principal events of the French Third Republic from 1870 to 1882, a significant period in Anglo-French relations. Previous historical investigation of these years has placed a disproportionate emphasis on diplomatic records, whereas the sentiments and views of the British nation have not previously been made the subject of a systematic study. The material for this research consists primarily of diaries, letters, biographies, autobiographies, monthly reviews, and newspapers. Each chapter traces the general trend and the variations of public opinion during a particular phase of the Republic's history. Despite the shift of European power from Paris to Berlin as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, the British nation continued its close interest in French affairs. In the eyes of Englishmen, France remained one of the most brilliant and troublesome nations of Europe [TRUNCATED]

This thesis examines representations of China and the Chinese in Britain in the interwar period. It selects key writers and texts that demonstrate the importance of genre, location and subjectivity in the imagination of China. This thesis tries to demonstrate that the genre of travel report and the Chinese subjectivity intervene in our rethinking of the relations between British modernism and China and of the very concept of modernism itself. Borrowing from recent theoretical discussions of transnationalism, this thesis looks at how the transnational flow of people, ideas and texts between Britain and China helps us identify modes of thinking of Sino-British relations beyond modernism-orientalism or imperialism-nationalism patterns. It argues for the interactive nature or mutual influence within the cultural contact zone by highlighting the role of the cultural translator or agency in the claim of cultural equivalence or transnational solidarity. I examine the ways in which Russell, Auden and Isherwood interact with and represent Chinese intellectuals to critique capitalism and imperialism. I also look at their ethical dilemmas in their cross-cultural and cross-class representations of the Chinese coolies and lower-classes that reflect how the establishment of socialist transnational solidarity has to face class and national barriers. I also examine the British Chinese writer Shih-I Hsiung's position as cultural translator in both the British and the Chinese contexts and how his works are a response to this inequality. To sum up, this study of the historical cross-border production, circulation and reception of these writers in question aims to demonstrate the interactivity in the cultural contact zone. It contributes to our rethinking of the Euro-centric notion of modernism and of the Western influence/local reception mode of cross-cultural relations. It argues for the positivity of the contact zone in which transnational solidarity is imagined in multiple ways to combat various forms of unequal power relations.

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In this industrial History of Birmingham and the Black Country, I have tried to trace the course of economic development from two points of view. In the first place, I have been concerned with the transformation which has occurred since 1860 in the general industrial character of the area and with the changes in the relative importance of the chief manufactures. This part of my work has involved a detailed description of Birmingham and District as it appeared in I860, and a consideration of the forces which have since been at work in causing the rise of some trades and the decline of others. My second object has been to examine the methods of manufacture and sale and the scale of production which has been associated with the leading industries at different times and so to indicate the general development which has taken place in industrial organisation.

The English Reformation was undeniably a period of change; this thesis seeks to consider how that change was managed by those who were responsible for its realisation and by individuals it affected directly, principally during the reign of Edward VI. It also considers how the methodology adopted contributes to the historiography of the period and where else it might be applied. Central to this study is the 1548 Dissolution of the Chantries, the related activities of the Court of Augmentations and the careers of clerics from five Midland counties for whom this meant lost employment. In addition to the quantitative analysis of original documentation from the Court, counties and dioceses, the modern understanding of change management for organisations and individuals has been drawn upon to extrapolate and consider further the Reformation experience. The conclusions show how clerical lives and careers were or were not continued, while emphasising that continuation requires an enabling psychological management of change which must not be overlooked. The evidence for the state demonstrates that its realisation of its immediate aims contained enough of formal change management requirements for success, up to a point, while adding to the longer-term formation of the state in ways unimagined.