This thesis focuses upon the osteological evidence for adult health in Dorset, England during the Iron Age and Romano-British period (N= 270). The study employed a standardised method of recording to collect data from 21 sites, which was analysed at the population level. The data was discussed using a combination of social archaeology and a medical ecology approach, which enabled the evidence for health and well being to be understood in terms of society and environment, and how these changed over time. The approach also permitted comparison to national and European health patterns, and sought to challenge existing interpretations of both periods. Iron Age health reflected the agrarian based economy of that period, in addition to social and environmental buffers and stressors, such as violence and the engendering of children. The Romano-British data demonstrated statistically significantly differences for many aspects of health, such as dental disease. The influence of environmental and sociocultural change was reflected in the life-ways of the region, with a decrease in the evidence for violence, and an increase in tuberculosis. In comparison to national data, the region displayed heterogeneity in many aspects of health through time, particularly the prevalence of trauma, as well as evidence for continuity, particularly for agrarian life-ways. However, overall, the consequences of Roman colonisation could be identified.

At different times between 1545 and 1642, the navies of England and France both grew in strength and declined. This thesis traces the advances and regression of both kingdoms’ sea forces and relates these changes to concurrent developments within the state. As a comparative study, it shows that, in sharing the Channel and with an increasing use of the early modern maritime theatre, English and French naval expansion was intertwined. First, approaching the administrative transformations of both navies and, then, progressing to discuss fiscal, technological, maritime and finally aesthetic developments, this thesis highlights the relationship between naval and state strength in early modern Europe. As a comparative study of early modern state and naval development, this project has been particularly inspired by the research of Jan Glete. Consequently, through quantitative statistical analysis and other techniques, it accounts for naval and state growth. It uses a large source base of archival evidence from national and regional archives in England and France, printed documentation, and resources from museums and art galleries. As well as engaging with the military revolution debate, where it is argued that early modern naval developments justly deserve greater prominence, the thesis also produces a framework that accounts for the rise and decline of naval strength. It suggests that three principal factors can account for these developments in early modern Europe. First, naval strength was reliant upon the will, enthusiasm and political stability of the monarch. Second, transnational influence and engagement helped to shape the size and appearance of state fleets. The English Channel was an international theatre of political and cultural exchange that facilitated English and French advances. Finally, the geography of both kingdoms is explored, because the size, composition, visual design and location of state navies were conditioned by it.

Although descriptions of civilian experience during the Second World War tend to stress concepts of unity and the nation 'pulling together', much literature ofthe period repeatedly suggests division and distrust, and fears of an 'enemy within' that can be seen directly in the numerous fifth columnist plotlines and more indirectly through stories of personal treachery and duplicity. Here the work of a number of authors writing during World War II is examined, with close comparison of how themes of betrayal and mistrust are woven into their texts. This is placed in context through consideration both of government propaganda warning citizens of the dangers of spies and fifth columnists during the war and social fracturings along gender, class and political lines that were already in existence when war began. The 'enemy within' motif exists in a number of forms and discussion of this is extended to consider, for example, contemporary concerns that the increasing authoritarianism of the British government meant the country was moving towards the fascism it had gone to war to defeat, presentations of the home as an enemy space, and repeated depictions of fragmented identity and trauma that suggest the enemy also exists within the individual psyche.

This thesis embodies the first systematic historical research of Black gospel music as a tradition in Britain, calling attention to the serious gap in knowledge so far concerning its growth amongst African Caribbean Pentecostals in Britain. Although it maintains that an underlying theme is the significance of Africa as the original birthplace of African descendants in Britain, the Caribbean and America; it opposes a one-size-fits-all universal historical account of Black gospel music, suggesting that historical knowledge so far is based on historical interpretations of the development of religious music amongst African ancestors in America. It makes the claim that African Caribbean Pentecostalism, in particular its worship practices, nurtured the musical talent of the youth in its congregations who were destined to advance Black gospel music as a tradition in Britain. Using first-hand accounts of African Caribbean Pentecostals of the post-war years in Britain, it identifies three main sources as retainers of “historical facts” representative of objects of the past that can help towards a new approach to history and heritage.

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This thesis analyses how martyrs’ blood was constructed in sixteenth-century English martyrological writings, confessional apologetics and polemics, c. 1520-c. 1625. It uses the topic of martyrs’ blood as a lens onto wider confessional constructions of both martyrdom and confessional theologies. It argues that, despite superficial similarities, Protestants and Catholics constructed martyrs’ blood in very different ways, and that this calls into question recent scholarly trends towards seeing the confessions as having a common conception of martyrdom. Chapter One surveys the treatment of blood and martyrdom from the Bible to the medieval West, demonstrating the main threads on which early-modern constructions of martyrdom drew. Chapter Two discusses Henrician Protestant constructions of martyrs’ blood. Chapter Three focuses on John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments. Chapter Four examines the relatively unbloody rhetoric of English Catholic discussions of martyrdom, from the 1520s to 1570s. Chapter Five looks at the emergence of a rich rhetoric of martyrs’ blood in English Catholic writings from the 1580s to the 1620s. Authors examined include William Tyndale, John Bale, John Foxe, Thomas More, Reginald Pole, Robert Persons and William Allen. The thesis focuses particularly on five key elements relating to the texts’ treatment of martyrs’ blood: Eucharistic theology; materiality; temporal worldview; bloody enemies; martyrs’ blood as witness.

This thesis will present a comparative and internationally contextualised history of Anglo-French relations in Japan between 1858 and 1868. It will introduce the concept of ‘enclave empires’ to describe the conduits for Western informal imperialism that were created in Japan by the imposition of the treaty-port system in 1858. It will aim to address longstanding gaps in the historiography by assessing that system as a multinational construct that depended upon the cooperation and collaboration of each treaty power operating within it. At the same time, it will show how the management of the Japanese treaty-port system was increasingly dominated by the British Empire and the French Second Empire, the two most powerful Western trading nations in Japan during the 1860s. It will examine how global contexts impacted upon British and French foreign policymaking during this period, and how this catalysed an increasingly bitter AngloFrench struggle for control over the ‘enclave empires’ in Japan. It will also seek to broaden the scope of the historiography beyond the sphere of diplomatic relations by considering the perspectives of prominent non-diplomatic British and French actors whenever relevant. Finally, it will address significant historiographical oversights in the use of relevant primary source material through the critical appraisal of contemporary private paper collections. By adopting this four-pronged methodological approach, this thesis will demonstrate that Anglo-French relations fundamentally defined the process of creating and developing informal ‘enclave empires’ in Japan in the decade between the conclusion of the ‘unequal treaties’ in 1858 and the Meiji Restoration in 1868.