Edward Said's description of Orientalism as a constitutive element of the modern West is one of the enduring concepts of cultural history. The Orientalism thesis begins with the observation that in the 19th century Westerners began describing the "Orient," particularly the Middle East and India, as a place that was once gloriously civilized but had declined under the influence of incompetent Islamic governments. This construction was then employed to justify Western Imperialism and the expansion of Christianity into Asia. This dissertation examines a case of Orientalism with a twist. Between 1775 and 1830 a group of Anglophone writers and artists depicted Spain as a state with a cultural trajectory similar to that described by the Orientalists. But in the Spanish case, the glorious past was the age of the Islamic Moors who had ruled parts of the Iberian Peninsula from 700 until 1492, while the current Christian rulers were the backwards and religiously intolerant impediments to progress. Thus the case of Spanish Orientalism employs an argument structurally identical to Said's Orientalism, with the role of the Christians and Muslims reversed. In examining this phenomenon, I focus on three particular issues. The first is the representation of the Moors in early modern European popular culture. I argue that these earlier traditions use the Moors as an emblematic manifestation of oppositionality to the centralizing state and elite authority. The romantics found in the Moors a symbol comparable to such other proto-Europeans as the Celts and the Goths, worthy predecessors to the warlike, chivalric, and liberty-loving modern Europeans. The second is the political context of Spanish Orientalism. Like "classical" Orientalism, Spanish Orientalism had a clear political payoff. Its articulators meant to show that the Spanish government was an unworthy steward of its rapidly disintegrating empire, thus Spanish Orientalism is closely associated with attempts to assert Anglophone authority in the Caribbean. Third, I examine in detail the work of the author most clearly associated with Spanish Orientalism, Washington Irving. In the four books he wrote while in Spain during the 1820s, Irving became the individual most responsible for reframing the long representational tradition of the Moors into a modern idiom and bringing it to a mass audience.

The Moors have been regarded by Graeco-Roman authors with a mixture of ambivalence and admiration. From the highly positive characterizations of Moorish giants like Masinissa (238-148 BCE) whose achievements the Romans lauded, to figures like Jugurtha (fl. 118-104 BCE) and Gildo (fl. 396-398 CE) whose hostilities with Rome earned them both scorn and ridicule, Moorish figures loom large in the pages of ancient historians from Herodotus to Procopius. This thesis examines the shifting portrayal of Moors from their earliest literary depictions in Greek literary sources to the late Roman literary portrayals of the sixth century CE. It argues that certain stereotypes regarding Moors, a problematic term that will be discussed in greater detail, continued relatively unchanged in Graeco-Roman authors, and that this was highly dependent on genre, political context, and intertextuality. It further argues that negative vs. positive portrayals of Moors can be understood better via an examination of the context of an author on an individual level, where political background was key to an historian’s evaluation of a certain Moorish figure or of Moors in general.

On 6 May 1966 the ‘Trial of the Century’ came to an end. Chester Assizes court convicted Ian Brady and Myra Hindley for the murders of 12-year-old John Kilbride, 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, and 17-year-old Edward Evans. The court found Brady guilty on all three murder charges and sentenced him to three concurrent life sentences. Hindley received two life sentences for the murders of Downey and Evans, and a further seven years for being an after-the-fact accomplice in Brady’s murder of Kilbride. Following the description already given to the police investigation and trial, the newspapers gave Brady and Hindley the infamous label of the ‘Moors Murderers’ straight after the trial. The Moors murders have become a part of British folklore since the 1960s, but the case itself has hitherto received surprisingly little attention from academic historians. Following Martin Wiener’s injunction for historians to pay closer attention to murder stories, this doctoral thesis presents a cultural history of the Moors murders case. My study analyses the courtroom arguments, media coverage and post-trial books about the case, to interrogate broader themes of moral and cultural change in 1960s Britain. My thesis emphasises the multi-vocal nature of representations of both the case and the murderers in order to challenge the linear and progressive historiographies of the 1960s, associated in particular with Arthur Marwick. The thesis examines four major facets of the Moors murders story, dedicating a chapter to each. The first chapter explores how the news media (primarily the press, but also broadcast media) negotiated the story. The first detailed empirical analysis of newspaper coverage of the case reveals the limitations of studies structured primarily around social class. The thesis follows Stuart Hall and A.C.H. Smith in arguing that analyses of the press should not be reduced to a simple differentiation between popular, middle-brow and high-brow but should instead consider the ‘personalities’ of each publication and the moral relationships constructed with readers. Furthermore, the chapter engages with Adrian Bingham’s recent argument about the moral politics of the press, exploring his assertion that the popular press balanced commercial profits alongside a commitment to maintain their reputation as ‘family newspapers’. The chapter argues that content of the press coverage of the Moors murders case generated far greater concerns than the suspect practices of journalists. Chapters two and three focus in turn on the diverse representations of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Commentators debated the origins of the evil behind the murders, with some highlighting his illegitimacy, others his reading of ‘dangerous’ books, the writings of the Marquis de Sade especially. Hindley’s role was hotly contested: most commentators emphasised how she had changed under Brady’s influence, but disagreed over the extent of her own involvement in the murders. The thesis reveals for the first time how images of Nazi Germany shadowed the case. The thesis thus contributes to historical investigations of permissiveness in post-war England, engaging with debates about censorship, child-rearing, the changing role of women, and the popular memory of the holocaust. The fourth and final chapter analyses the tensions generated around a murder story which took place in urban settings, but which became indelibly associated with the rural locations of the moors. The story mobilised a distinctive combination of gothic imagery with a long literary heritage, and the more recent language of social realism.

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In its industrial heyday, Thorne Moors was the most extensive commercial peat operation in Britain. It became closely tied to nearby Hatfield Moors, and at both the methods of exploitation were essentially the same. Although much of Thorne Moors is situated in Yorkshire, the eastern extent lies in Lincolnshire. Recognizable differences in scale and methodology existed between the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire parts. After regional drainage in the 1620-30s, there was increased trade in the peat of Thorne Moors along the River Don. A succession of uses included unrefined and refined fuel, products from carbonization and distillation, and moss litter for working horses. From the mid-19th century, companies were formed to exploit the new uses, especially moss litter, and export became increasingly focused on railways. In 1896, the British Moss Litter Co. Ltd was set up (restructured 1899) to assume the Thorne/Hatfield interests of several smaller companies, including the Anglo-Dutch Griendtsveen Moss Litter Co. Ltd. The British Moss Litter Co. was acquired by Fisons Ltd in 1963. Following a contextual history, descriptions are given of both muscle-powered peat winning and transportation methodologies. These comprise exploitation in the 17th and 18th centuries, an examination of the 19th century writings of William Casson, and written allusions spanning 1863-1963. Information is imparted on the Griendtsveen Moss Litter Co. In addition to creating a 'Dutch' peat canal system, this company introduced an immigrant Dutch workforce, proficient in their native methods and intended inter alia to retrain local workers looking for employment with Griendtsveen. Dutch methodology persisted alongside the local methods for c.60 years. Accounts are also presented of the evolutionary limit of indigenous peat winning, and the use of narrow gauge railways. Finally the transition to mechanisation of peat cutting and narrow gauge haulage is outlined.

Don Juan Manuel’s laudatory portrayal of Saladin, the Muslim Sultan of Babylon, in Exempla 25 and 50 of El Conde Lucanor presents an interesting paradox, particularly when considering that the fourteenth-century text was intended as moral instruction for a Christian audience. This report addresses this paradox by determining Saladin’s placement within Juan Manuel’s moral and spiritual philosophy through textual and comparative character analyses. The first section applies Victor Turner’s social drama theory in a textual analysis of Exempla 25 and 50 to establish Juan Manuel’s representation of Saladin as a triumphant figure, capable of meeting and overcoming challenges to his honor and virtue. The second section applies M. M. Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism to engage in a closer examination of Saladin’s “voice” in relation to other characters of Juan Manuel’s exempla for the purpose of revealing the ambiguities and finer intricacies of Saladin’s character. These analyses serve to raise and address paradoxical questions relating to Juan Manuel’s presentation of Saladin as both a Muslim adversary and friend of Christendom. / text

The Bohemian Forest, a mountain range located in Central Europe on the border between the Czech Republic, Germany and Austria, has many well-known qualities. The areas of Modravské slatě moors and Trojmezná, are considered to be the most valuable biocenters in the Czech part of the Bohemian Forest. This Master thesis confirms the quality of these areas in a transboundary context Natura 2000 habitats and their representativeness. A new transboundary (European) biocentre is proposed and its importance for several species is discussed.

The work has consisted of the measurement of processes connected with the normal management of grouse moors in the Glen Clova area of Angus. The problems associated with burning have been summarised together with the remits of previous work. The geology and topography of Glen Clova have been described briefly, and the vegetation of the Rottal area of the glen has been described in detail with respect to the particular parts under consideration. A method of ring counts has been used to define the age of Calluna stands. The methods used for analysis of mineral nutrients have been described. One method, Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy, has required extensive calibration and has been described in more detail. It has been shown that the temperature and duration of heath fires depends upon the age of the vegetation. The temperature and duration of a fire determined the loss of nitrogen in the form of smoke. The temperature of a fire has been shown to affect the solubility of nutrients in ash. Increase in temperature caused a greater release of soluble potassium and calcium, but a decrease in soluble phosphate, The release of mineral nutrients from Calluna leaf litter has been compared with that from ash. Experiments were instigated to measure the effect of grazing upon the yield and mineral content of Calluna, the greatest effect being found 5 - 10 years after burning. The addition of mixed fertiliser to some of the stands was found to increase the yield and nutrient content of the leaven of Calluna. Soil samples from 22 stands of Calluna were analysed in November each year, for three years, and the total content of nitrogen, phosphate, potassium, magnesium, calcium and iron estimated. In the first instance other analyses including pH, conductivity, organic carbon and mechanical analysis were performed in order to distinguish between the two soil types present. Significant changes in the nutrient content of the soils have been discussed. A balance sheet of the losses and gains to the ecosystem was prepared to indicate the changes in mineral nutrients. it has been calculated that the potential losses of individual nutrients by leaching, ignition and grazing could be replaced over a period of 15 years from rainwater, with the exception of phosphate which is only present in small quantities in rainwater. The implications of the results have been discussed.