The research objective of this thesis is to re-examine womens labour in the eighteenth-century English sewing trades. Several aspects womens working lives in the sewing trades are explored in three sections. The first section examines diversity within the sewing trades, employment opportunities, working conditions and quality of life. The second focuses on garment construction practices and techniques. The third discusses social standings of needlewomen, and consumer economy issues as they pertained to the needletrades. Methods employed include building upon prior scholarship of womens work and aspects of pre-industrial English garment trades, primary source material, and object-based research using garment artefacts from the Museum of London, England, Berrington Hall, and the Royal Ontario Museum. The research findings indicate that pre-industrial English needlewomens working lives were highly nuanced, their skills more sophisticated than generally believed, and their role within the burgeoning consumer society worthy of further in-depth investigation. / Clothing and Textiles

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2010. / Title from screen (viewed on July 28, 2010). Department of History, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Jason M. Kelly, Melissa Bingmann, Eric L. Lindseth. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-91).

Over the eighteenth century, ancient history was increasingly read in English, appearing in new forms and interpretations. This reflected the development of history in universities as a subject not merely read, but taught. This teaching took on many forms: serving as a predecessor to other studies, building a knowledge base of case studies for 'higher' subjects, or (increasingly) an independent subject. What ancient history was taught, how was it taught, why was it taught, and what did students go on to use it for? Ancient history as an independent subject had a limited role in the curriculum despite the foundation of Chairs of History in most universities. When it was taught as such, the focus was on explaining modern institutions via ancient comparisons; on the training of statesmen by classical examples; or, more rarely, on demonstrating a particular conception of social development. These uses of history could be seen across both national and subject boundaries. Whilst differences between universities are evident, evidence in the teaching of history suggests the absolute dichotomy between the English and Scottish systems has been overstated. The interesting case of Trinity College Dublin suggests common features across Britain in how 'liberal education' was conceived of and how history fit into it. The practical application of ancient history to the education of statesmen may be seen in the variety of ways it was used in political discourse. This is explored mainly in Parliament, the ultimate destination of the "statesmen" in whose training history was supposed to play a large part, via debates over questions of empire and imperial rights in the second half of the eighteenth century. Superior knowledge of ancient history constituted a rhetorical claim to the twin statuses of gentleman, being classically-educated, and statesman - showing understanding of historical context and precedent.

The eighteenth century witnessed the proliferation of voluntary associations throughout the British-Atlantic world. These voluntary associations consisted of groups of men with common interests, backgrounds, or beliefs that were willing to pool their resources in order to achieve a common goal. Enlightenment Scotland was home to large numbers of clubs ranging from small social clubs to large national institutions. The records of these societies suggest that most, if not all, of the men who formed them believed that defining and performing Scottish identity was important to preserving the social and cultural traditions of Scottishness in the absence of state institutions. These patriotic associations followed Scots across the Atlantic and provided the model for similar clubs in the American colonies. This thesis examines the construction and performance of Scottish identity by Scottish clubs in Scotland and America from c.1750-1832. It, in contrast to the existing historiography of Scottish identity, asserts that associations were vehicles through which Scottish identity was constructed, expressed, and performed on both sides of the Atlantic. It demonstrates that clubs provided Scots with the tools to manufacture identities that were malleable enough to adapt within a wide variety of political and cultural environments. This was particularly important in a period that witnessed major political disruption in the shape of the American and French Revolutions. By directly comparing Scottish societies in both Scotland and America, the thesis also reassesses and revises common attitudes about the relationship between Scottish identities at home and in the wider diaspora. Often seen as distinct entities, this thesis emphasises the similarities in the construction of Scottish identity, even in divergent national contexts. Drawing on a variety of sources ranging from rulebooks, minute books, and published transactions to memoirs, newspaper articles, letters, and even material goods, this thesis reveals that the Scottish identity constructed and performed by associations in America was no less ‘Scottish’ than that formulated in Scotland, indeed it paralleled and built upon the practices and attitudes developed in the home country. It rested on the same foundation, yet followed a different political trajectory as a result of the differing environment in which it was expressed and the different communities of Scots that expressed it. Indeed, the comparison between Scottish clubs in Scotland and America demonstrates that modern Scottish identity is the creation of a diasporic, transnational Scottish experience.

In late-eighteenth-century Dublin, options were limited for an expanding reading public who wished to consult quality printed works. During this period of the Anglican Ascendancy, membership to institutional libraries or participation in associational activities was largely limited to elites and those from the Established Church. The Dublin Library Society provided a public reference library service without restrictions of confession, connection, elections, or status—with admission based only on ability to pay the initial two-guinea charge (and one thereafter). Using hitherto neglected primary sources, particularly contemporary newspapers, this thesis will examine the origins of the Dublin Library, public reaction towards it, and its position promoting cultural patriotism and inclusivity in public library service provision in late-eighteenth-century Dublin. Also, a detailed prosopographical analysis of the library’s founding subscribers, specifically for their occupational backgrounds and associational activities, will show that the library represented a cross-section of Dublin’s reading public and help identify the social and cultural milieu in the capital. Through a combination of historical and prosopographical research on the library and its members, this study aims to contribute to both library history and the wider fields of social, cultural, and urban history of Dublin. The library was founded amidst a backdrop of Irish patriotism evidenced by the achievement of legislative independence from Britain. Dubliners expressed their patriotism through participation in clubs and societies that promoted Irish cultural, commercial, political, and social improvement and self-sufficiency. Further Enlightenment ideals of toleration and intellectual cultivation were embodied in these associations. By the end of this examination, the Dublin Library Society will be regarded not only as significant in the expansion of Dublin’s literary public sphere, but also a noteworthy location of the Irish Enlightenment in the capital.

abstract: Tobias Smollett was an eighteenth-century surgeon, writer, novelist, and editor. He was a Scotsman who sought his fortune in south Briton. Throughout his life and career he experienced many of the cultural and political influences that helped to shape the British identity. His youth as a Lowland Scot, student and apprentice, and naval surgeon enabled him to embrace this new identity. His involvement in nearly every aspect of the publishing process in London enabled him to shape, define, and encourage this identity. His legacy, through his works and his life story, illustrates the different ways in which the United Kingdom and its inhabitants have been perceived throughout the centuries. As a prominent man of his time and an enduring literary figure to this day, Smollett offers an ideal prism through which to view the formation of the British identity. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. History 2011

It is a serious problem for some well-known accounts of moral motivation, that is, accounts of what ought to motivate us, that what is supposed to provide motivation to act well instead provides motivation to self-deceive. I term this the Self-Deception Problem. Any theorist who offers an account of moral motivation that has the Self-Deception Problem has reason for concern with our tendency to self-deceive. In this dissertation, I create a taxonomy of accounts of moral motivation, which provides a structural explanation for which accounts of moral motivation are liable to the Self-Deception Problem. Using this taxonomy, I am able explain why Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and Joseph Butler are concerned with self-deception as a moral problem in a way that Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Francis Hutcheson are not. But the application of my taxonomy is not limited to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I also show how it fits the work of the contemporary psychologist Augusto Blasi and the contemporary philosopher Christine Korsgaard. Neither Blasi nor Korsgaard discusses self-deception in any thoroughgoing way but, as I argue, since both their accounts have the Self-Deception Problem, both of them have reason to do so. The most interesting theorist of moral motivation and self-deception, though, is Joseph Butler. Through a close reading of his arguments for the authority of conscience, I show how his account gives rise to the Self-Deception Problem, and how his sermons on self-deception serve as explanations of and responses to that problem. But the link is even tighter than that: on my novel interpretation of Butler's arguments in favor of the authority of conscience, what he is in fact arguing for is an appropriate degree of self-trust. His discussion of self-deception can accordingly be understood as seeking a proper degree of self-suspicion. On Butler's view, moral agency is not just a matter of recognizing our divinely set proper ends. Nor is it just a matter of acting as a self-legislating agent. It is primarily a matter of correctly modulating self-trust and self-suspicion.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century the British presence in India meant that East India Company servants were at the forefront of European researches into the region's history, culture and religion. This thesis offers an analysis of the work of four such Company writers, all of whom produced accounts of what they perceived to be India's native and original religion: J.Z. Holwell (1711-1798), Alexander Dow, (1735-1779), N.B. Halhed (1751-1830), and Charles Wilkins (1749-1836). It argues that their particular interpretation of what they termed the 'Hindoo' or 'Gentoo' religion was based on their own preoccupations with European religious debates, from a perspective that can loosely be described as deist. At the centre of this thesis is the claim that these British interpretations of Hinduism instigated an important shift in the way that Indian theology and philosophy was understood in eighteenth-century Europe. This new paradigm moved away from characterisations of the religion according to eye-witness accounts, towards a construction of Indian religion based on the claim of British researchers that they were penetrating the original philosophical origins of a much maligned and ancient system of thought. This new interpretation of a philosophic Hinduism was both based in and shaped Enlightenment intellectual culture, to the extent that by the turn of the century it had firmly cemented its place in not only the thought of prominent figures such as Voltaire and Raynal, but also constituted a significant topic in the emergent discourses of German idealism. The notion of a British interpretation of Hinduism has previously been discussed as both a marker in what some have termed the invention of Hinduism, and by those researching the history of Orientalism as an academic discipline. In the first instance, these authors are characterised as moments in a process, with some suggesting that the real invention occurred as part of the nineteenth-century imperialist project. In the second place, these authors are most often seen as unscholarly precursors to the work of the first true British Indologist, Sir William Orientalist Jones (1746-1794). This thesis will challenge these positions by positing these four authors as the architects of the shift towards a European conception of Hinduism as a rational and philosophical religion.

This dissertation builds on existing work by members of the ‘Occupational Structure of Britain 1379-1911’ project, led by Leigh Shaw-Taylor and E.A. Wrigley. It addresses three central problems of the project, namely (a) the lack of geographical and temporal coverage by the project’s existing data sources before the nineteenth century, (b) the allocation of the numerous men with the indistinct denominator of ‘labourer’ to occupational sectors, and (c) the correction of occupational structures derived from single-occupation denominators for the (presumed) ubiquity of dual employments in the early-modern world. The solutions to these problems result in a set of estimates for the male occupational structure of England and Wales between 1600 and 1850, in twenty-year time intervals, at the level of sectors (primary, secondary, tertiary) and sub-sectors (farmers, miners, textile workers, transport workers, etcetera), at national, regional, and local geographical scales. These estimates raise important questions regarding the validity of conclusions drawn in the highly influential national accounts literature. Firstly, they place the structural shift from agriculture to industry firmly in the seventeenth and, to a lesser degree, even the sixteenth century, well before the Industrial Revolution. This, in turn, means that productivity growth in the secondary sector during the Industrial Revolution must have been much higher than previously thought, and thereby also the effects of technological and organisational innovation. Secondly, it provides strong evidence that although economic developments during the eighteenth and early-nineteenth century may seem to have been limited and gradual at the national scale, this surface calm hides diverging regional developments which were anything but limited and gradual, held together by a persistently growing transport sector. The result was a regionally specialised yet integrated economy, firmly in place at the eve of the Industrial Revolution which – in light of the known role of small, specialised regions as incubators of technological innovation and novel forms of economic organisation in present-day economies – may well have contributed to Britain’s precocious transition to modern economic growth.

This article proposes an approach to the integration of the city of Buenos Aires within the trade flow which connected the Atlantic area with the Viceroyalty of Peru, through a political-cultural analysis of the relationship between a peripheral space and the Crown, which lends meaning and legitimacy to the failure to comply with royal provisions and to the successive requests by local powers to bring about the commercial opening of the port. Specifically, we address the problem of building a political discourse at the heart of the cabildo of Buenos Aires, between the years 1610 and 1660, through which was revealed a conceptualization of the enclave, of its relationship with the Crown and of its function within a larger political body. / Este artículo propone una aproximación a la integración de la ciudad de Buenos Aires en el flujo mercantil que articulaba el espacio atlántico y el virreinato del Perú a través del análisis político-cultural de la relación de un espacio periféricoc on la Corona, en el que adquieren sentido y legitimidad el incumplimiento delas disposiciones reales y las sucesivas peticiones del poder local para conseguirla apertura comercial del puerto. Específicamente se aborda el problema de la construcción de un discurso político en el seno del cabildo de Buenos Aires, entre los años 1610 y 1660, por medio del cual se desplegó una conceptualización del enclave, de su relación con la Corona y de su función dentro de un cuerpo político mayor.