This thesis has concentrated on one period of the historical relations which began over three centuries ago. Great Britain, or rather Englan~ during the 1620s when the Portuguese were still the lords of Muscat, was trying to explore the eastern coast of Oman. They made friends in the Masseera Island, but their relationship with the Portuguese was not a friendly one. They were welcome, indeed, by the local powers as rivals to the Portuguese in India and in Persia as well as in Oman. But despite the generosity of their help, they tried to strike a balance between the ambitions of the local powers and those of the Europeans. The English, for example, were reluctant to assist the Persian projects in Muscat against the Portuguese. In fact, if the Portuguese were expelled from there by the Persians, then it would be too difficult for the Omanis to occupy it. At the same time they offered evacuation for the wounded and the surrendered Portuguese garrison with their women and children. The English observed that, after all the people of South Persia and of Hunnuz, Arabs or Persians alike, revolted. against Shah Abbas and wanted. the Portuguese back, having discovered. them to be the lesser evil. English interest in Oman and the Persian Gulf during the seventeenth century seems to have been purely commercial. For example, during the sixteen thirties and forties stable relations with the Portuguese were maintained., partly no doubt a reflection of the marriage between their two royal families, but also because the English saw commercial value in establishing good relations with both the Omanis and the Portuguese. After the expulsion of the Portuguese, the English witnessed the establishment of the first known Omani sovereign in the modem world, and the establishment of an Omani Afro-Asian Empire. They established good relations with the Ya,aarribeh family; but for some reason they were reluctant to establish themselves in Muscat. Probably the Dutch were seen to be in a better position while the English were ~stracted. by civil war. But during the first half of the eighteenth century English policy seems to have changed, probably due to the struggle between various local and European powers which took the form of piratical activities on the seas, in which the Omani Ya,aaribeh took part. By the second half of the eighteenth century the English had witnessed the downfall of the Ya,aaribeh and Greater Oman, and the establishment of another dynasty in the interior of Oman under Albu Sa,eed with the Omani Coast in the Gulf ruled by EI-Qawaasem, highlighting the division of Oman. The English found it in their interest to support Ahmed bin Sa,eed in East Africa, against El-Mazaree,a, and to keep East Africa under the Yal-bu-Sa,eed rule. They found a mutual interest in challenging the Qawaasem of Rasel-khaymeh in the Gulf, and their allies the EI-Wahabyeen in Arabia., during the first half of the nineteenth century.

The following thesis is an examination of the professionalization of the British line infantry officer corps from 1870 to 1902. Beginning with a discussion of the extant theories of professionalization, it then looks at civil military relations and its relationship to the international situation in general. The deployment of the line infantry at home and abroad is then analysed. Finally, the organisational changes made to produce professional structures for education, remuneration and promotion are discussed.

Thesis examines the spread of socialist ideas and the growth of the socialist movement in Wales in the period 1880-1914. It pays particular attention to the way in which socialists related to Welsh national identity, and analyses the processes through which the universalist ideals of socialism were related to the particular and local conditions of Wales. It examines the interplay between Wales and the wider world that occurred through the medium of the socialist movement, and balances this against the internal dynamic and organic growth of socialism within Wales itself. Having surveyed and commented upon existing British and Welsh labour historiography, the thesis opens with a discussion of the first „modern‟ socialists to undertake propaganda in Wales in the 1880s. It then examines the way in which socialist societies began to put down roots in the 1890s, through case studies of the Fabian Society in Cardiff and the Social Democratic Federation in south Wales. The central part of the thesis is concerned with the rise of the most important of the socialist organisations, the Independent Labour Party. Attention is given to the way in which the ILP used the south Wales coal strike of 1898 to gain its ascendancy in Welsh socialist politics, and the nature of the political culture that was created by the party in south Wales. The remainder of the thesis discusses the nature of socialist growth beyond south Wales, and pays particular attention to indigenous Welsh forms of socialism. The thesis concludes with an examination of the rapid growth of the socialist movement in Wales after 1906, and the consequent debate that occurred about the relationship of socialism, Welsh nationalism and the Welsh language.

In the early 17th century Christian IV of Denmark created a highly impressive navy. This thesis investigates the uses to which the navy was put, and assesses the ships that were built to meet these needs. It shows that the Danish navy was for a time the largest state-owned navy in Europe and that the dockyard used to build and maintain these ships was one of the finest in Europe. The administration of the navy is analysed in detail. It is shown that the lower administration of the dockyards and the seagoing navy was highly organised, but Christian IV's failure to reform the higher levels of administration seriously hampered the effectiveness of the navy. The navy grew beyond the bounds of what the state of Denmark-Norway could afford and naval finance became a highly contentious issue in the modernisation of the state. To build the navy's ships Christian IV brought in master shipwrights from England and Scotland. The organisation of naval ship-building is examined in detail and the design of Danish warships is analysed. The Scot David Balfour is shown to be one of the most innovative and successful shipwrights of the early modern period. The figure of Christian IV dominates the Danish navy in the early 17th century. He was involved in all aspects of its organisation from its use as a political force to the design of specific vessels. He created a highly impressive navy in terms of ships and dockyards but failed to see that it also needed an efficient administration to operate effectively.

The Kindertransport – the government facilitated but privately funded movement that brought 10,000 unaccompanied mostly Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland to the UK by 1940 – has been celebrated as a humanitarian act of rescue by the British government and people. The existing literature on the movement has been dominated by a reductionist and redemptive narrative emphasising the children’s survival, minimising their less positive experiences and outcomes and erasing the parents from the story. The administrative details of the programme centred on the Refugee Children’s Movement have been well covered in existing academic studies that have utilised publicly available archival records, but the examination of Kindertransportees’ experiences in the UK has depended almost entirely upon the memoirs and testimonies of former child refugees, largely because of restrictions on their after-care records. Archival gaps and the extensive use of Kinder memory have resulted in a historiography that has not adequately addressed the complexity and range of the children’s experiences. This study challenges the dominant memory of the Kindertransport using newly discovered archival sources. The case files of more than 100 German-born children who were brought to England from Poland are the basis for an investigation of both the particularities of their lives and the universalities of their experiences to the Kindertransport as a whole. The perspectives of the major Kindertransport actors – the refugee organisations, the everyday carers, the children and their parents – inform this analysis, contributing new insights on their interactions, motivations, attitudes and actions. Particular attention is paid to issues of religion, agency, gender, identity and writing the parents back into the Kindertransport narrative. In addition to contesting the memory of the Kindertransport, the documentation facilitates a critical investigation of Kinder memory. Using both recorded testimony from this group of Kinder and interviews with many of the still-living Kinder and their families, Kinder memory and archival documentation are interrogated, resulting in a synthesis that challenges both sources and produces new understandings of the Kindertransport and its legacies.

This thesis tells the story of Shetland knitted lace. It is a history that comprises more than a series of chronological events which illustrate the development of a domestic craft industry; it is also the story of a landscape and the people who inhabited it and the story of the emergence of a distinctive textile product which achieved global recognition Focusing on the material culture of Shetland lace opens up questions about the relationships between the women who produce it, the men and women who sell it and the women who consume and wear it. In acknowledging these connected histories and by following Shetland lace over time and across, often wide, geographical spaces, Shetland knitted lace can be shown to epitomize and signify social relations. This research takes a life cycle, or biographical, approach to Shetland lace in which consideration is given not only to the circumstances surrounding its production, but also to recognising the different stages in its development and how it moved through different hands, contexts and uses. Shetland lace exists within a set of cultural relationships which are temporally, spatially and socially specific and it carries shifting historical and cultural stories about its makers, traders and wearers and the worlds that they inhabited. Recognising these relationships as an integral element in the formation of historical and cultural narratives it is possible to see the role Shetland lace played in defining self and community within Shetland while acknowledging difference in an expanding national and international market. This understanding of the production, marketing and consumption processes demonstrates the multiple relationships between Shetland lace and its market and between the producer and consumer. The focus on the highly skilled Shetland lace producers demonstrates the development of female enterprise and entrepreneurship in the Shetland lace industry in which local networks operated in an exchange of labour and goods, both as a barter and monetary economy. Identifying the economic and symbolic place of Shetland lace within Shetland society highlights the impact of external influences on the success, and perceived decline of this industry. From this perspective this research engages with many of the key questions concerning a specialised form of textile production dominated by women, its place within the female economy, and its position within the world of trade and fashion. In this it aims to make a new contribution to our knowledge of women's work, of the operation of markets, and the perception of skill and value in the past and the present and provide an understanding of an industry which was a crucial element of household economics and female autonomy in these islands. It acknowledges the community of unknown Shetland women who, over generations, introduced, produced and sustained the Shetland lace industry and where possible identifies, and gives a voice to, previously unknown individual producers.

Apart for a few episodes such as the battle of Cravant (1423), the defence of Paris (1429) and especially the capture of Joan of Arc at the siege of Com-piègne (1430), the military aspect of Anglo-Burgundian alliance in 1420-1435 war is little known to general audience. This stage of the Hundred Years War is presented largely as a series of English successes in the 1420s followed by the defeats and setbacks after 1429. The present study aims to uncover this large-ly ignored aspect of one of the most dramatic stages of the Hundred Years War, which at a certain point brought the English to the walls of Orléans – an undoubted peak of their centuries-long efforts to subdue the French kingdom. For the aims of research, the course of the Hundred Years War in the 1420s-early 1430s has to be considered not in the terms of the English fighting against the French but as a struggle of two alternative claims to the French throne, both of them relying on certain support among the French pop-ulation. One of these suggested that the French crown remained with the Va-lois dynasty represented by Charles VII, the other tried to introduce the Dual Monarchy of England and France under the governance of the House of Lancas-ter, as formalised by the Treaty of Troyes (21 May 1420). The role of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, the most high-ranking French partisan of the Dual monarchy, as the pillar of the Lancastrian power in France becomes the subject of study. This raises the question of the system of obligations between the duke and the Lancastrian government, the modes of its practical exploitation and the significance of the duke’s contribution to the Lancastrian war efforts. With this in mind, this study provides a chronological reconstruction of Anglo-Burgundian military cooperation in its development by placing it in a wider military and diplomatic context. Having assembled the evidence on the practice of military assistance it proceeds to discussing the most widely em-ployed models of cooperation and interaction between the allies eventually leading to a certain reconsideration of the whole nature of the Anglo-Burgundian alliance. What the research reveals is the scale and continuity of the alliance which retained its importance from December 1419 to September 1435, the significance of the allies’ efforts in supporting each other and variety of its models and, finally, the crucial influence of the military power or weak-ness factor on the diplomacy and politics in France.

Prime minister H.H. Asquith’s flawed handling of the third Home Rule Bill, the apparent exhaustion of the Irish Parliamentary Party leaders’ initiative, and the electoral decimation of the Liberal and Irish parties in the general election of 1918 are historical problems that have persisted since the publication of George Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England. A pervasive scholarly focus on the question of Ulster and the negotiations of British politicians to find a solution has left comparatively unexplored the Liberal/Irish nationalist political dynamic. This thesis examines the political manoeuvrings of the third Home Rule crisis from this unconventional perspective, and considers less extensively researched primary source material. It considers efforts to reanimate the issue of Irish self-government in Britain, and argues that the identification of Home Rule with British democracy caused Liberal enthusiasm to flare in 1914. The thesis presents evidence that the Irish Party leaders were much more strategic in their thinking than has been appreciated hitherto, and that John Redmond thwarted efforts at collusion between Asquith’s government and the Unionist opposition. It also suggests that seeds of the electoral disintegration of the Liberal and Irish Parliamentary parties may be found in the third Home Rule crisis, when the actions of the parties’ leaderships radically diverged from the aspirations and expectations of their respective political constituencies.

No description available.

This thesis examines the emergence of church cricket clubs in Halifax and the Calder Valley between 1860 and 1920. It encompasses the years of mature factory-based industrial society following Chartism as well as the upheavals of the Great War and its immediate aftermath. Though a period of relative tranquillity, from 1873 the staple textile trades began to stagnate, bringing economic uncertainty only partially offset by industrial diversification and a brief post-war revival. From the mid-1880s this brought ndustrial unrest and the emergence of labour politics. Churches, having experienced growth, were also betraying signs of decline towards the end of the century. Their role in welfare and education was being eroded and denominational influence on party political allegiance was being replaced by that of social class. And yet, religious organisations became the area’s biggest single source of popular organised cricket during its crucial formative decades. This study evaluates why, from such an unpromising situation around 1850, religious bodies became involved in cricket and what were the nature, extent and relevance of this. It addresses several key questions. What was the contribution of clergymen? Who were involved in the clubs and what did this mean for them? What was the significance of grounds and their development? How did the clubs finance themselves? What did their rules reveal? What part did they play in their local communities? Within these themes will be evaluated crucial factors such as social class, gender, religious denomination, identity, topography and demography as will important concepts such as cultural diffusion, muscular Christianity, social control and secularisation. This thesis shows that church sponsorship provided the platform for mainly working-class agency in developing cricket clubs. This agency manifested itself in a mutualism and self-reliance similar to that of the highly popular and consciously independent organisations such as Friendly Societies and Co-operatives, which operated in the same arduous economic context. Nonetheless, at a time when workers were becoming increasingly assertive in the world of industry and politics, church cricket exhibited class co-operation and harmony. Moreover, greater genuine popular adherence to ecclesiastical organisations was found to exist than has often been allowed. Those cricket clubs that became established initially reinforced their churches’ identity, helping them to retain a profile in their localities, and so retard the advance of secularism. However, as those clubs’ cricketing potential grew, they became ever more a part of their wider communities. This situation was aided by their crucial fundraising entertainments, which often secured a place in their districts’ social calendar. Increasingly the clubs became an alternative attraction to the church in their communities and ultimately a small agent of secularism. It is, in summary, contended that church cricket in Halifax and the Calder Valley was more the product of industrial society, and the adaptation of ordinary men and women and their culture to that society, than it was of muscular Christianity or clerical influence.