Early Modern Notes

Farewell, Blogger

2004-07-31T21:43:00.000+01:00

Yes, it's time to move on. Early Modern Notes has a new home at

http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emn
(DON'T use the link given in a previous post. It won't work any more.)

There will be no more new postings here. Please go over and visit, and change your bookmarks etc.

How not to address adult literacy problems...

2004-07-30T08:57:00.000+01:00

Now we turn to the government's policies for adults with literacy and numeracy difficulties. Alan Wells, director of the Basic Skills Agency and a man who clearly spent many years trying to get governments to take this issue seriously, is highly critical.

According to the latest government figures, four out of five adults officially need help in improving their basic literacy and numeracy skills. 82 per cent. How have they arrived at a figure that, surely, no one can take seriously? By including "anyone over the age of 16 who has not got what is called a level 2 qualification in literacy and numeracy - in rough terms, this means anyone without the equivalent of an A*-C at GCSE" (the exams taken at 16 in UK schools). As Wells points out, this includes himself, and he's pretty sure that he doesn't have a problem.

Now, as someone with three university degrees, I am not perhaps the best person to complain that we have become obsessed with qualifications. But I would never conflate the absence of a qualification with the absence of education, literacy, numeracy or any other intellectual skills (let alone use such a confusion to formulate government policy). And as Wells says, this conflation could have serious consequences for those who are in real need of help.

Some might say it's a good deal easier to reach national targets if you increase the size of the target audience to include most of the population. It also means that you don't have to try so hard to reach that minority of adults who really have a problem...

Wordpress is coming to town

2004-07-29T10:09:00.000+01:00

This won't excite you half as much right now as it does me, but here you will be able to find the up-coming new WP weblog powered by (drumroll...) Wordpress. Unexciting for you because it's currently just the default page post-installation. Exciting for me because, well, it's post-installation and it works! And unless you do the dumb goofy things that I tend to do, like getting it wrong in the configuration file at the beginning, it's true, WP installation really is a breeze. And if you do get something wrong, the documentation is very clear and helpful anyway. I'm impressed so far.

I'm not moving everything all at once (I want a few days to play with my new toy) so don't change your bookmarks yet. Just felt an irresistible urge to tell you, is all.

Summer at the National Library of Wales

2004-07-29T07:54:00.000+01:00

For those of you in Wales, check out the summer programme of events at NLW's spendid new venue, DRWM. They are varied, some in Welsh and some English: films, lectures, family history events, book and poetry readings...

What do they mean by 'Mickey Mouse' degrees?

2004-07-28T23:22:00.000+01:00

Here we go again. The Guardian reports on the fulminations of the chairman of the Professional Association of Teachers at its annual conference yesterday. As it's reported, Barry Matthews, managed to throw together concerns about a) the government's policy of widening participation to universities, b) vocational degrees and c) so-called 'Mickey Mouse' research in cultural studies. But there are two quite different issues here, which is why I'm doing this in two posts.

I have a good deal of sympathy when it comes to the concerns expressed about widening participation, and some ambivalence. I believe that access to the opportunities of higher education should depend only on ability (and willingness) to learn, not on ability to pay, or where you and your parents come from. But I'm inclined to agree with this view:

He told delegates from a wide range of educational fields that teenagers were being brainwashed into thinking that university was their only option as the government fretted about meeting its aim of getting 50% of young people a university education by 2010.

I'm not convinced that setting numerical targets, and simply expanding the numbers of young people in universities, can in itself resolve disparities of access. In practice, it seems to mean increasing numbers of mediocre middle-class students, rather than significant and stimulating changes in the social composition of the student population. And I fear that if you expand numbers without addressing inequalities in access, then 'grade inflation' will lead to the narrowing of job opportunities for those without degrees, which will simply increase social inequality. (My personal view is that we need, if anything, fewer 18-year-old full-time students and more mature and part-time students and 'lifelong learners'.)

Now, what about his complaints about vocational degrees? "Do you need a degree to prove you have a vocational qualification?... Do we need bricklayers with degrees or with practical ability?" Well, of course the main priority when you employ a bricklayer is the practical ability (although I refer you to the last sentence of the previous paragraph at this point; I'd quite like to see lots of brickies doing degrees for their own education and pleasure...) Conversely, universities should not compromise on their core 'academic' foundations; a degree without academic, intellectual content is not a degree.

But the rhetoric here is silly. There are no bricklaying degrees, nor any likelihood that building contractors will be expecting them on bricklayers' CVs. Vocational degrees are aimed at something quite different. If you take a look at the most comprehensive source in the UK, the UCAS database of courses for 2005 entry, there are courses to do with 'building' and 'construction'; but most of them are in fact one- or two-year vocational diplomas such as HNDs (and from small HE Institutes rather than universities). Where they are full degrees they're either focused on science (ie, engineering) or management. Similar points can be made about other examples mentioned in the article. 'Surfing' and 'golf' degrees turn out to be related to/part of sports studies, again focused either on science or management. There were, by the way, no courses, degree or diploma, in pilates. (I'll come back to pop music in the second part of the post.)

Looking closer at the 'management' degree courses does raise a few questions. It's not that they seem, on closer inspection, insubstantial or lacking in 'academic' content. It's more that you wonder about over-specialisation. How useful, in a job market that's all about flexibility and adaptability, is a degree in 'beach and surf management' or 'sports studies (golf)'? Of course, modularisation means that 'sports studies (golf)' is probably very little different from plain old 'sports studies', anyway. (So what's the point, in that case?)

Do managers need degrees? No, let me put that a different way, taking me back to my earlier point. Do all managers need degrees? And do all these degrees in business management mean that employers end up insisting that candidates for management jobs must have them? What then happens to the alternative, traditional ways of recruiting from the ranks?

I think these are serious issues. But talking about non-existent 'bricklaying' degrees does not help in addressing them.

And if you think I sound annoyed now, wait till you see part II.

Update: In the Guardian today, two economists making the same point about what happens to the degree-less 'bottom half' (as well as raising serious questions about the effects on the economy).

Jobs and Funding Bulletin (UK)

2004-07-28T22:09:00.000+01:00

This week's roundup from jobs.ac.uk

Lecturer in History (fixed term), University of Swansea Wales. One year, from £23,643 pa. This is to cover for the absence of two members of staff during the course of the year, and I know that one of them is the early modern cultural historian Stuart Clark (who will be at Princeton for the first semester). Deadline: 13 August 2004.

Lecturer in Early Modern History (maternity leave cover), University of Sheffield. 6 months, £23,600 pa pro rata. Deadline: 19 August 2004.

Research Fellow: 'Colonial Possessions: Personal Property and Social Identity in British India, c. 1750-1850', University of Warwick. 10 months, £22,507 pa pro rata. Deadline: 29 July 2004. (they only advertised it on the 23rd!)

2 Graduate Teaching Assistantships in History, University of Hull. 'The incumbent studies for a PhD degree, while contributing teaching (up to 180 hours p.a.), plus related preparation, assessment, and administration. Training, mentoring and staff development will be provided.' Stipend £3,600 + maintenance grant £5,400. Deadline: 20 August 2004.

Also one for any Welsh readers (well, there might be):

Research post: 'Urban Culture in South Wales: Processions and Public Space, c. 1835-1914', Board of Celtic Studies, University of Wales. (You will need reading ability in Welsh). One year, £19,460 pa. Deadline: 9 August 2004.

Research notes

2004-07-27T22:43:00.000+01:00

What follows is an example of why I love working with certain types of court records. Lately, I've been working my way through files largely consisting of indictments, for database-quantification purposes. Not thrilling (well, occasional flashes of interest). But now I'm on a nice meaty box of witness examinations and depositions, and I come across a teaser of a case, with the added bonus of interlinking national politics and local relationships. It's about seditious words again - or is it?

It's October 1680, and George Dutton tells two Cheshire magistrates that he

heard Mr William Winfeild of Tattenhall on the 17th day of June last was twelvemonthe [ie, 1679] say in his house that the queene had sent his matie three peares one wherof hee eate & if hee had eaten another all the doctors in London could not saved his life & that the duke of Yorke when hee went for Holland gave consent to his secretary to poyson the king yt Sr Jeffrey Shakerley was turnd papist his name being in the list & concerned in the plott & yt the then cheife justice of Chester was likewise in the plott & standing in his owne doare declared that the king leaned with the papists & was in the plott & would doe none of his true subjects any good & the countrys money went to maintayne his bastards...

At this point you need some national political context. 'The plott' is the Popish Plot, an anti-Catholic fabrication propagated by Titus Oates and others in 1678 that (playing on Protestant prejudice/paranoia) created a political furore. The allegations were that leading Catholics including the duke of York and the queen, Catherine of Braganza, were conspiring to murder the king and set up a Catholic government. (Sir Jeffrey Shakerley was a leading figure in Cheshire society and politics; I think he may have been MP, but I forgot to check in the library today.) And this was a set of lies with fatal consequences: a number of both leading and obscure Catholics lost their lives before the allegations were ultimately exposed.

You might already be wondering why the king himself would be 'in the plott' (but bear in mind that there was little that was logical about the Popish Plot business). However, the JPs questioned several witnesses, and they cast considerable doubt that Wyngfeild had ever said those words. No one else came forward to say that they had heard him say anything like it to them. A group of witnesses even disputed Dutton's claim that he had on one occasion within a couple of weeks - or, indeed, at any other time - told them what Wyngfeild had said.

Dutton's brother, however, said that about three weeks after midsummer 1679 George had said to him "that Mr Wyngfeild tould him [George] that if there was any plot the king was concernd in it". George's nephew said that George had told him (yes, there's a lot of "X told me that Y said that..." in this) that he had been dissuaded from reporting the words at the time by a neighbour, Charles Hughson, because "it would be a troublesome businesse and yt [Hughson] desired George to live peaceably & quietly as neighbours should doe".

Hughson himself confirmed that at midsummer 1679 "there was a quarrell between Mr Wyngfeild and George Dutton & that blows did passe betwene them", because, according to George again, "Mr Wyngfeild had spoken treason but ye next morneing Mr Wyngfeild threatned to sue George at London for ye scandell & George Dutton then threatned to goe and complaine to ye justices for ye treasonable words". It's ambiguous from this whether the quarrel and blows are supposed to have followed the initial speaking of the words or the subsequent threats and counter-threats. Hughson, too, could not swear that George had ever declared to him the exact words alleged, though "some thing was said yt ye king inclined towards being a papist". And he affirmed that he and his wife had "used their endeavours to make them freinds". So, Hughson's priorities were clear: neighbourliness and local peace were more important than vague allegations of seditious words about the king.

I haven't yet cross-checked other records to see if either man ended up appearing before the courts, or whether there's any record of previous contention (binding over to keep the peace, litigation, etc). It's not even entirely clear from the depositions whether, by that point (and why did it take so long?), the magistrates think that they're dealing with a case of seditious words (by Wyngfield) or of defamation (by Dutton), or whether Dutton went to them or they forced him to.

There was evidently a quarrel between Dutton and Wyngfield in June 1679, but what caused it is obscured. If, as I tend to suspect, Wyngfield never said anything stronger than that "ye king inclined towards being a papist", then it seems unlikely that Dutton would become quite so angry nor that the conflict would have intensified so easily unless there were already some kind of bad blood between them. Dutton complained that Wyngfeild "had don him wrong", which might refer to the threat of litigation (and yet it was only a threat), or to the fight they had. Or did it express already existing grievances? Equally, I do tend to think that Wyngfield probably said something prosecutable by the standards of the day, and that Dutton's claims were not pure invention. Another aspect of the law of seditious words is that it could make a useful weapon against indiscreet enemies and rivals. The disavowals of those witnesses may well indicate their desire, like Charles Hughson, to damp down this dispute in the name of neighbourhood cohesion.

But plenty of people had repeated those claims of Catholic plotting in 1678-9. Why not William Wyngfield? Maybe Dutton was telling the truth, or something very close to it, and the witnesses were closing ranks to protect Wyngfield (a man of higher status, by the way; 'Mr' was in this period still a title reserved to the wealthy gentleman). Why rake up old scandals, anyway? Especially if it might involve offending one's social superiors?

I don't, as you might realise by now, go to these records because they offer any reassurance that we can know what 'really' happened in the past. But I rather enjoy the uncertainties; I like being forced to think about the possibilities created by the gaps and ambiguities in the records. I really like 'maybe' and 'on the other hand'. Yesterday's post was about letting my brain wander around making odd connections. This one is about setting it to focus on one concentrated micro-slice of 'stuff' (good technical term there). Getting those two modes to play together is, basically, how I do history.

Wheeeeee!!!

2004-07-27T21:41:00.000+01:00

I've just learned that I've had a journal article accepted for publication in December. In an important social history journal at that, and the first one coming out of my PhD research to be accepted. (Not entirely sure what's happening with the book submission. I emailed the editor my revised proposal a few weeks ago and haven't heard anything yet. How long should I leave it before checking up? Don't want to look like a nagger at this stage of my career!) What I haven't done yet is to open the attached report and see what they want me to do to it. Hopefully, going by the phrasing of the email, not too much. But I'll leave it till the morning so I have the nice warm glow for the rest of today.

One day, if I succeed in finding a permanent academic job, this will no doubt be quite routine. Oh look, another one in the bag, that's my RAE* quota sorted then, now must go mark some essays. But not yet, thankfully. Right now, I'm one very happy bunny.

Except that it's just reminded me that I promised someone a chapter idea for an edited collection months ago, and I still haven't done anything about it. Oops. See, I am turning into a real academic. (Although so far I've avoided the book review industry, I have to admit. And I still only send paper proposals to conferences that I feel my work actually has some relevance to.)

*Research Assessment Exercise, for anyone outside the UK who doesn't know. Loathsome thing. Don't blame us academics for over-production of research. It's the bloody bureaucrats.

E. P. Thompson Memorial Bursary 2004

2004-07-26T22:41:00.000+01:00

Applications are invited for the E. P. Thompson Memorial Bursary 2004.

The Edward Thompson Memorial Bursary was established by the Society for the Study of Labour History in honour of one of its distinguished founders and past Presidents. It is tenable at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, up to the value of £200 per annum, in order to support research in the MRC archive.

Eligible applicants are postgraduate research students on a PhD topic in labour history. We take a broad view of 'labour history' that includes cultural and social aspects as well as political and institutional ones. The application should include a brief statement of the nature of the research topic and some comment on its importance; an explanation of the value of the MRC archive for the research; and a statement of need. ...

Your views on electronic resources

2004-07-26T22:32:00.000+01:00

The British Academy is conducting a policy study on research and information e-resources for the humanities and social sciences, and would like to hear from researchers in the UK. You can download their questionnaire here. To quote from the covering letter:

The British Academy is investigating the provision of, and access to, research e-resources, and we expect our Study's findings and recommendations to be significant inputs on this increasingly important matter to such bodies as HEFCE, AHRB and ESRC.

We are particularly concerned that researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences should be able to take full advantage of electronic developments, and should not be placed at a disadvantage because of strategies and practices specifically oriented towards research in science and technology.

The questionnaire should be returned by 27 August 2004.

Problems with domain migration

2004-07-26T19:57:00.000+01:00

I was wrong when I thought it was sorted, and I should have kept quiet. The 'new' EMR was definitely available a couple of hours ago (I have the special secret code to tell the difference!), but right now it's broken (all I'm getting is the home page of my old web host or an error message). I do not understand.

Anyway, you will know when - or if - things are up and running again, because you'll be able to see the picture in the sidebar (since the image resides over at EMR). Handy, that.

Fingers crossed.

And, here we go: a few minutes later, it's back. I don't like this. I want stability, please. Is this sort of thing normal in the process of domain migration? Or is it something to worry about?

One thought leads to another... Drugs, drink and devolution

2004-07-26T19:10:00.000+01:00

Well, British smokers (of whom I am one) should take note that smoking bans in pubs and restaurants (and other public places) are definitely on the way, although it's likely to take up to ten years. (The selfish addict in me, who can barely imagine a pint of beer without a fag, is dismayed; the responsible citizen knows perfectly well that it's indefensible to subject mostly minimum-wage bar workers and waiters to her noxious habit.) Some American readers will probably be shocked that it's taken us so long. They might also be surprised - unless I'm wrong in my sense that this is another of those things legislated at state level in the US? - that it is firmly agreed that this should be done nationally and not left to piecemeal local authority initiatives. "The one thing that unites all sides on this debate is that if the government is going down the route to a ban, it should not be left to local authorities to decide... You'll end up with strange situations where, say, Leicester allows smoking and Birmingham bans it."

... Reading which reminded me strongly of the situation created by the Welsh Sunday Closing Act of 1881. It used to be a standard complaint of tourists in Wales that you couldn't get a drink on a Sunday. But increasingly during the twentieth century, that was the case only in certain parts of Wales, since the Act allowed for polls every seven years, at district level, for voters to decide: 'wet' or 'dry'?

The movement was not always in the 'wet' direction, however. Even after a district had voted for Sunday opening, only 500 registered voters had to request it at the seven-year mark for a new poll to be held. (In)famously, that was what happened in Dwyfor (in Gwynedd) in 1989, and the district went 'dry' - on a turnout of less than nine per cent. And for the next seven years, there was a weekly exodus of Porthmadog drinkers down the road a couple of miles to Penrhyndeudraeth in neighbouring 'wet' Meirionydd for their Sunday pints. (Fortunately, Coleg Harlech, where I studied in 1994/5, is in Meirionydd...)

The last polls were held in 1996, after which all of Wales was 'wet'; a provision in the Sunday Licensing Act of 2003 pre-empted any further turnabouts that year, and for good. Time called on drink ban rule.

... Now, sometimes, it's stated that the 1881 Act was the first piece of specifically Welsh legislation in Parliament. Which is not quite true, since that leaves out the 'Acts of Union' (1536-43). Still, the Sunday Closing Act was the first of the 'modern' Parliamentary Acts for Wales, stemming from pressure within the country itself and associated with the rise of Welsh national(ist) consciousness (at that time, as the nature of the Act might suggest, very much a Nonconformist, middle-class, Liberal movement. Other landmarks included the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales in 1920.) And so let's leave out lots of complicated history now and fast forward to devolution.

In both the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, there have been plenty of teething problems and successes alike. For many of us, the lefty tendencies of both to stick two fingers up at New Labour is, naturally, a bonus (Labour may have the most seats in both institutions but a) their control is not absolute, and b) Labour here still has a strong Old Labour core. Makes a big difference). It's been a recurring feature of education policy; the latest in Wales is the decision to scrap testing of school kids at 11 and 14. The Scottish Parliament told Labour where to stick its up-front tuition fees; (some) Welsh university students still get (partial) grants (the Welsh Assembly doesn't have the powers to abolish tuition fees). Amongst other things.

But when it came to finding suitable homes for these key new institutions... oh dear. Escalating costs, rows over locations and designs, delays... The Welsh Assembly sacked its architect, couldn't make up its mind what project to go for (the moderately expensive cobbled-together or the much more expensive tailor-made?). Estimated costs started at £26.6 million, and will end up somewhere over £40m. But this is mere childs play compared to the Scottish disasters. Originally, this was going to cost £40m. Today, pretty much complete and ready for the MSPs to move in in a few weeks' time, it has in fact cost ten times that. The recent auditor's report is full of condemnation, quite rightly. the whole saga's been a disgrace. But, well, it's agreed that it's a fantastic piece of architecture. And both Wales and Scotland now have buildings designed for politics in the twenty-first century, which is frankly more than you can say about the Westminster Houses of Parliament.

Guardian special political reports: Scotland; Wales; Northern Ireland

Early Modern Resources

2004-07-25T22:22:00.000+01:00

Hopefully, the move is going to go alright - for you lot anyway. (I'm a nervous wreck. Largely my own fault, misreading instructions, forgetting to do simple things...) I don't think I'll know for sure until tomorrow morning (UK time), however.

(Update: 'tis done. And I think everything is where it should be.
Pissed off update: Spoke too bloody soon. What's going on now?)

And then, which shall it be? WordPress or MT? I'm moving more and more towards WordPress at the moment. Does anyone who's tried both have any thoughts before I make my final decision?

And does anyone know how much memory space/bandwidth a fairly small blog like this actually uses? It's one of those things that you can't get any sense of with Blogger.

Come worship at the feet of Kevin Brownlow

2004-07-24T22:29:00.000+01:00

For anyone who can get to London this September, a must-see season showing at the NFT devoted to film historian and director Kevin Brownlow. Early modernists may be familiar with Brownlow's superb film Winstanley (as in Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers), which is one of the films being shown. I've only ever seen it on video; it should be mind-blowing on a cinema screen. But they're also showing the controversial It Happened Here, which I've wanted to see for ages; it imagines a scenario in which the Nazis invaded Britain and won the war. These are Brownlow's only feature films; the others are documentaries, and Brownlow is perhaps best known in film circles as a historian of silent films, writer of an authoritative history on the subject, The Parade's Gone By. The great man will appear himself on 13 September. A friend of mine who's a member of the NFT is being charged with the responsibility of getting us tickets.

Around the 'early modern' world II: African Odysseys

2004-07-24T19:51:00.000+01:00

This has been a thought-provoking - and exhausting - exercise. My study of African history as an undergrad was confined to the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries (and largely to specific areas of 'British' west and east Africa); stir in a bit of post-grad work on orientalism, missionaries and related topics, and, er, that's about it. This thread on the periodization of African history at H-Africa is well worth reading. Importantly, some contributors argued very strongly for the need to focus on 'indigenous' perceptions and experiences (this one, by an archaeologist, I thought was particularly forceful). Except, perhaps, in terms of 'encounters' with Europeans from the fifteenth century up to imperial conquests, it's doubtful how much relevance the term 'early modern' has to African history. I mean not so much the loadedness of the term 'modern' here as the basic question of whether there is (however roughly) any identifiable, useful 'period', whatever you might choose to call it, that bears any relation whatsoever to these dates. And then, of course, there's the huge diversity of the continent to consider. That's why my brain is spinning today.

I found myself a little concerned at the very, well, 'modern' perspectives expressed by some commenters in the H-Africa thread, such as this otherwise very interesting one: that is to say, the thousands of years in this vast continent before the 'colonial' and 'postcolonial' periods are all to be lumped together as the 'pre-colonial' or 'independent' period? And it has to be said that much of what you can find on the web does just that: a wealth of detailed resources and studies on the last century can be contrasted with surveys that breathlessly cover centuries at a time for earlier periods, or on 'X topic' in some rather timeless 'pre-colonial' setting. I appreciate that the nature of source materials in many areas may not allow the kind of specificity that document-oriented historians are used to, but even so... (And book and article titles that popped up on Google searches indicate that there's interesting research going on out there.)

Anyway, I have tried to find resources that are not in the ultra-superficial league. There is a weighting towards 'political' narratives; more 'social' stuff would have been good, but never mind. I have included very little on Europeans in Africa or slavery and the slave trade - there are already some relevant links at Early Modern Resources. If you bear in mind that it was compiled by someone who was learning as she went along (search strategy? what's one of those then?), you may hopefully find it useful. (If you're reading it and thinking 'I could have done a better job than that' - then get off your arse and do it, OK?)

African Timelines: 15th to early 19th centuries
The Story of Africa: Slavery
The Portuguese in Africa 1415-1600
Exploring Africa: Maps and Travel Narratives
The Eye of the Beholder (maps of Africa)
Antiquarian Maps of Africa
The Black Man's Burden (1920)
Diffusion and other problems in the history of African states
Misunderstanding natives in the seventeenth century

Political African Women of the 16th-18th centuries
Pre-colonial Homosexuality in Africa
Pre-colonial Metalworking Bibliography
Ethnicity in Africa 1700-1850 Bibliography
African Political Entities before the Scramble
Zakat in pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa

Timeline: The Maghrib 1400-1600
Timeline: The Maghrib 1600-1800
Warfare and firearms in fifteenth-century Morocco
Sa'did Architecture
Tunisia's Andalusian Heritage
Libya: Ottoman Regency
Ottoman rule in Algeria
Timeline: Egypt 1400-1600
Timeline: Egypt 1600-1800
Egypt under the Ottoman Empire
History of Ottoman Egypt
Egypt: Ottoman Turk Period
Administration in Egypt from Ottoman Times (book review)
Cairo City Maps

The Story of Africa: West African Kingdoms
Timbuktu
Timbuktu Libraries
Songhay
Kingdoms of the Medieval Sudan
Timeline: Western and Central Sudan 1400-1600
Timeline: Western and Central Sudan 1600-1800
The Forest Kingdoms
Timeline: Guinea Coast 1400-1600
Timeline: Guinea Coast 1600-1800
Art,Innovation and Politics in Eighteenth-century Benin
Women in pre-colonial Nigeria

The Story of Africa: Central African Kingdoms
Timeline: Central Africa 1400-1600
Timeline: Central Africa 1600-1800
Luba
Luba and Lunda Empires
Kuba
Kuba Kingdom
The Kongo Kingdom and the Papacy
History of Angola

Timeline: Eastern and Southern Africa 1400-1600
Timeline: Eastern Africa 1600-1800
Timeline: Southern Africa 1600-1800
Kingdoms of Madagascar
The Dutch in South Africa

Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1669

2004-07-23T21:27:00.000+01:00

Great title from the BBC. I'm not altogether happy about the stereotypical view of 'Puritans' here: the claim that they "looked down on drinking". They may have looked down on alehouses (the most basic type of establishment, which served only beer, and was the usual haunt of poorer customers), and have been concerned to regulate them, suppress disorderly establishments and act against excessive drinking, but that's not quite the same thing. They were perhaps more exercised than most about drinking on the Sabbath (worst of all, during divine service!), but this view of Puritans as anti-drink in opposition to revelling Royalists is crude. (The notion that coffee, or the coffee house, was in its early days a straightforwardly respectable alternative is also a bit off the mark.)

In fact, Parliamentarians from 1643 - like modern governments - had some reason to want people to be patronising alehouses and the somewhat more up-market taverns and inns, since that was the year that excise duties were introduced. Initially, they were intended as a temporary measure to raise revenue for the war. But the returning Royalists at the Restoration happily adopted this lucrative measure, and spent the next twenty-odd years trying to work out the most effective ways of collecting it. (Try government officials, farm it out, take it back under government control again...) Only after the Revolution of 1688 was the machinery really honed to become part of the tax system that funded British war-making during the eighteenth century. (The classic account of this is John Brewer's The sinews of power; for the period before 1688, C D Chandamon, The English public revenue). It wouldn't be too far out to say that our drinking (in part) funded the Empire... even though the customs and excise generated a massive smuggling industry.

Anyway, however, the article is quite right to point out that drinking could be a political act during the seventeenth century, and into the eighteenth. Especially the drinking of toasts. Now, disaffected Royalist gentlemen drinking toasts to the man they considered to be Charles II certainly was a problem for Interregnum authorities. After the Restoration, of course, the position was reversed and toasting the king was a statement of loyalty. And later, after 1688, there was a choice: between toasting the monarch or the Stuart pretenders. A man who refused to follow the lead of the company he was in could end up being beaten up. One who toasted the Stuarts too publicly could find himself in court on sedition charges (though not in a Tory-run county like Denbighshire where the greatest magnate, Watkyn Williams-Wynn, was strongly suspected of being a Jacobite sympathiser himself, and was rumoured to have had to make a hasty and undignified exit from Shrewsbury to avoid charges of drinking toasts to the Pretender).

Well into the eighteenth century, hard drinking was part of what it meant to be a gentleman; a 'six-bottle man' was a real man. What with all the claret and beef, no wonder so many of them had gout.

Update: The Guardian has also reported on this research. It also tends to emphasise the gruesome and sensational, but it seems a more subtle take than the BBC's version. But I'm just jealous now. Nobody ever came to me when there was a big story about violence in the news asking for rentaquotes about the seventeenth century...

There is a Chronology of English alcohol-related legislation at the lovely website The Pub in Literature: England's Altered State
Eighteenth-century drinking glasses has a wealth of information about the politics of drinking.
Jacobite rebellions gives a quick overview of Jacobitism.
And apparently it wasn't so very different in the American colonies...

Early Modern Resources Newsflash

2004-07-23T15:11:00.001+01:00

I've finally made the decision to move EMR to a new host. Of course, once done, this will make no difference to users at all. But it seems safest to assume that at some stage during the move there's like to be some interrupted service. Be patient if you're trying to visit over the next few days and can't get access. I'll post again once it's done and normal service can be expected to have resumed.

This will mean changes over here at EMN too, as the new host offers the techie things required for blog publishing that my old (very basic) hosting account didn't. Watch this space...

Miscellany

2004-07-23T09:50:00.000+01:00

I think it's about time I did one of those roundups that are such fun at other sites. Spotted here and there...

Museums gain £20m art in lieu of tax

Tourist attraction carved from ruin. From the ashes...

Napoleon was killed by incompetent doctors. So, no more conspiracy theories. Boo.

Police recruits sent to university

Naked Olympics. Now that's what I call re-enactment.

Conference nightmares

US summer camps coming to Britain?

The real Merlin Arthur, move over.

Crime's up... no, it's down...

2004-07-22T23:50:00.000+01:00

Confusion all round, with the parallel publication of some rather contradictory crime statistics for England and Wales* (Scotland's legal system is separate). But handy for the politicians to play games with.

Row over figures as crime drops by 5%
Violent crime figures rise by 12%
Crime has fallen 39 per cent over the past nine years
A slightly different take: Extra police but detection rate still falls

What's happening here is that the British Crime Survey is suddenly being discounted by Tory politicians because it's showing falling crime levels (and, indeed, has been since the mid-1990s), whereas the police statistics record increases in violent crimes (but falls in most other categories). They've latched onto the one category and set of stats that are of use to them. David Davis, the shadow home secretary, will no doubt have criminologists everywhere in stitches - or in shock - with this assertion: "The most reliable measure of crime is that which is reported to the police".

This is absurd. More than half of the victims of crime do not report it. The BCS gets its data by interviewing 40,000 people a year about their experiences of crime (and also, by the way, their perceptions of it) in order to calculate crime rates. We can debate precisely how accurate it is (it doesn't cover all offences, nor does it interview under-16s; the representativeness of the sample will always be an issue). But, importantly, the way in which police statistics are recorded has changed substantially over the last few years, while the BCS methods have remained largely consistent.

Some government statistics are notorious for being continually revised to make the picture look better: unemployment figures, in particular. To their credit perhaps, this Labour government has for several years now been altering the recording of crimes reported to the police in ways that inflate the figures. In 1998, they included the very minor, and common, category of 'common assault' for the first time. Now, let me point out as a historian of crime that minor assaults are historically amongst the most unreliable of offences to attempt to quantify from official records of any kind. Decisions to complain about them are subjective, often related to existing hostile relationships between the parties and at worst downright malicious; decisions not to complain, conversely, may be motivated by fear of the attacker, by a wish not to make trouble, by mistrust of authorities. And those authorities will vary widely in their inclination, or ability, to intervene at all pro-actively in such matters. (This is why most statistical studies of medieval and early modern violence focus on homicide, which is - we hope - more reliably reported, even though we fear that it's hardly representative of violence in general.)

There was another important change in 2002: all reports to the police now had be recorded in the official statistics unless subsequently shown to be false. You might also add in to the mix increased numbers of police officers to take reports (from 125,000 to 140,000 since 1997). I'm not convinced that all of this quite explains why the discrepancy between the BCS and the police figures is quite so acute in the violence category compared to others, by the way. But when it comes to trends there should be little doubt that the BCS will be more reliable than the 'official' police figures. Unless it's inconvenient for you as an opposition politician in the early stages of the run-up to a general election.

And I'm not suggesting that Labour would be any less dishonest if the boot were on the other foot. If they choose to champion the BCS figures, one suspects that it's merely because it's in their own interests. In fact, they've pulled a fast one of their own here. Last week, they announced a target to cut crime by 15 per cent in the next three years. Today's BCS figures gave them a third of that all in one go. Easy-peasy. David Blunkett says he had no idea of the BCS figures when the 15 per cent target was announced. Yeah, right, David.

*I haven't yet read these because, for some reason I'm suddenly having all sorts of trouble with Adobe Acrobat and I'm downloading a new version (I needed to upgrade anyway), but it's going to take a little while. So I'm relying entirely on (shock! horror!) secondary sources here. Cut me some slack for the time being. I'll get back to you if I find anything worth adding.

Meeting the ancestors

2004-07-22T09:39:00.000+01:00

Cronaca has a list of recent archaeological finds in England. It's not just because we have a lot of archaeology. It's also because we have a helluva lot of archaeologists. I had an interesting conversation with an archaeologist from Europe (embarrassingly, I've completely forgotten where. Germany 'or thereabouts', maybe, thinking back to his accent) a couple of years ago, and he explained that they are deeply envious of British funding levels for archaeological work.

We Brits love archaeology. We gobble it up on TV. My favourite, rather than Time Team (Channel 4), was the original format of Meet The Ancestors (BBC2). (Actually, my real all-time favourite is probably the insane spoof We Are History (BBC). But let's be serious for now.) I loved Julian Richards' enthusiasm. The programme was a perfect miniature showcase for all the things that archaeologists do, and, more than that, made it human and personally accessible. Choose one burial - one 'ancestor' from a wide range of periods - as your point of departure. Interweave the exploration of the historical context, up-to-the-minute archaeological wizardry, all centred around - perhaps the inspired bit - a reconstruction of that particular individual including what they looked like. Sometimes they used computer imaging to get the face, but it was the painstaking process using clay that won every time for me. There was something compelling about our periodic visits to the artist's workshop, watching the layers build up, until that bizarre lump of clay with its little white sticks became a recognisable human face.

Meet The Ancestors no longer uses this particular format; fair enough, you could probably only do something so simple so many times before everyone - programme makers and viewers alike, even me - would tire of it. It's become more diverse - and remains a role model, I think, for combining entertainment and education. Still, I miss the original.

Another recent TV favourite, by the way: Terry Jones' Medieval Lives (BBC2). Terry's aiming to "rescue the Middle Ages from moth-eaten cliches and well-worn platitudes". And dress up in silly costumes at every possible opportunity. Does anyone else agree that Terry is the only Python who remains consistently funny (or funny at all, in some cases: step forward, Mr Cleese)?

Honorary degrees

2004-07-21T22:12:00.000+01:00

The Independent notes that it's honorary-doctorate-for-celebs-time again in our universities. And, indeed, some of the choices they reveal here are eyebrow-raising. Jenny Bond? Sir David Frost? Inviting people to share the initials that I worked so hard for simply because they are famous and it'll make a bit of good publicity stinks, right?

But.

Not all honorary degrees are like that. I'm not even convinced that the majority are like that. In my graduation year at Aberystwyth, the university awarded one of its honorary doctorates to someone (Trefor M Owen) who virtually no one outside folklore/folklife studies will ever have heard of, but whose work over several decades has contributed richly to his field. Another recipient has been Rachel Rowlands, Aber graduate and Welsh organic farming pioneer.

Let's have a random look around this year. Leicester University's honorary doctorates this year include Peter Preston (editor of the Guardian); Adam Hart-Davis (irrepressible, popularising historian of science, national treasure); Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys (discovered genetic fingerprinting). At Lancaster, there was Dr David Starkey; Professor Tim Berners-Lee (made possible what you're reading now); Dr Ahdaf Soueif (writer); Sir Ian McKellen (actor, definitely celeb, but does look amazing in his robes). Liverpool: Lord Renfrew (distinguished archaeologist); Professor Sir John Walker (biologist, Nobel Prize-winner)...

On closer inspection, as the list above suggests, many of those awarded honorary doctorates already hold 'real' ones; these awards are being conferred for outstanding lifetime achievements in their respective fields, academic, scientific, artistic or literary. And there is always an interesting 'local' sub-set, not usually for 'scholarly' achievement, but for people who are recognised as important contributors to community and social life. (If anything, on looking at a few of the lists, what niggles me are not the 'celebrity' awards so much as the civil servants and diplomats, who already have their knighthoods, OBEs, etc out of the honours system. But that's my prejudice.)

And honorary degrees are far from a new idea. Cambridge points out that it's been giving them for half a millennium (here's this year's line-up. Watch out for all those initials).

It's all very well to select and lampoon a few particularly dubious choices, as the newspapers seem to do every year. But it's bloody lazy. (And I don't necessarily agree that all the Independent's examples are unworthy, either.) I think there's a problem here, but it's not with individual recipients so much as the sheer scale of the thing. It's almost as though it's become compulsory to have at least two at every single degree ceremony (as if they aren't interminable enough already), and that adds up to a hell of a lot of honorary degrees. Do universities need to award quite so many? How many must some people have on their walls by now?

But then, of course, you could say that it simply mirrors the expansion of higher education, not least in the numbers of 'real' doctorates being awarded, of recent years and, indeed, why should it be any different?

Early modern bloodsports - sorry, ball games

2004-07-21T00:28:00.000+01:00

A post from Cronaca that I simply couldn't resist (and gives me an excuse to quote more obscure legal documents...). It reports on documents bringing into question the legend of the invention of baseball in 1839, including a 1791 prohibition on games including 'baseball' at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, within 80 yards of the town meeting house, in order to protect its glass windows. Now, in my first ever foray into the Welsh eighteenth-century court archives several years ago, I came across something rather similar from Pembroke, south-west Wales, in 1789. The governors of the town had enacted an order

putting a stop to a riotous assembly and meeting and to a nuisance... practiced on every Shrove Tuesday within the town and streets of the said borough of Pembroke in playing of football up and down and across the streets of the said town and borough in the pursuit and kicking of which the windows of the houses within the said town and borough were frequently broken and the inhabitants thereof greatly incommoded disturbed and annoyed by the said riotous and unlawful assembly...

The town crier was sent out to proclaim the new prohibition. However, some 'tumultuous and disorderly' inhabitants of the town were disinclined to leave off their game and went ahead anyway. (I wonder what happened in Pittsfield?)

If only windows were being broken, the Pembroke Shrove Tuesday football might in fact have been a relatively civilised affair compared to the violent and bloody ball games played in various parts of Europe during the early modern period (and earlier). These were frequently played between neighbouring parishes, involving all the local able-bodied men: a form, in fact, of minor warfare. There were few restrictions on kicking and throwing the ball, and cudgelling the opponent in possession until he dropped it was permitted in the best-known version played in south-west Wales, knappan or cnapan (possibly of Viking origin). There were other types of game; in Glamorgan, they played bando (or bandy), with long curved bats (akin to modern hockey sticks). Nor were these games only for the plebs; an eighteenth-century Anglesey gentleman, William Bulkeley, often recorded his prowess at football in his diary, and the blood, broken bones and bruises it produced.

What happened in the nineteenth century - and I strongly suspect that baseball is another example of this - was not so much the invention of games like soccer and rugby (with its own founding myth) as their re-invention: new rules, new discipline, for the new industrial age. Not least in the increasingly crowded streets of towns and cities with their vulnerable windows and polite middle class residents; a trawl through urban archives of the late eighteenth century would very likely reveal many more cases like those of Pittsfield and Pembroke. The new codes and institutions of the nineteenth century were, in one sense, a long-term solution to the problem encountered at Pembroke: it was just not so easy to make people give up their favourite games. And it's still not that easy to take violence out of the equation, on or off the pitch.

Update: I wanted to add some links for you (but I did have to go to work this morning, you know).

The radical history of football
Cnapan and Bandy
Cornish Hurling
Entertainments in early modern Dartford
Florentine football
Shinty
Kabaddi

Seventeenth-century rebellion, political responsibility, unrest and rumour

2004-07-20T22:51:00.000+01:00

I've been in the archives going through Cheshire court files for 1685-87 over the last few days, and realised that I'd just missed an anniversary that's worth commenting on. On 15 July 1685, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth was executed (a thoroughly botched job, apparently; beheading often was) on Tower Hill for leading an unsuccessful rebellion against the not-terribly popular Catholic James II.

Now, living in an age where politicians merely start wars and leave soldiers - and civilians - to pay the price, that really is taking ultimate responsibility for your political actions.

Anyway, the reason that the court files jogged my memory is because of prosecutions for seditious words. The formal record of a criminal trial in the English early modern legal system, the indictment, is usually an arid, formulaic document (written in Latin until 1733). However, indictments for seditious words included details of what the accused had allegedly said. Some say most about the fears of those in government, like the prosecution of a man in 1665 for saying that 'hee had rather fight against the king then drincke a cup of beare'. (I haven't found any in these particular files, although I've seen them elsewhere, of prosecutions for saying that one 'did not give a turd for the king'.)

But the indictments also show that for some in the stronger Protestant areas of Cheshire, the failure of Monmouth's rebellion was a terrible disappointment, one that could barely be faced; there was clearly much grasping at straws. Take this declaration, on 28 July, days after the news of the execution would have reached even the remotest villages: 'The Duke of Monmouth is alive he's alive, he's alive, and the king is dead King James the second, King Charles [II] his brother is dead, and Monmouth has an army within thirty two or thirty foure miles of Oxford God blesse him God blesse and prosper him and his army, I wish myselfe with him'. Eighteen months later, this woman was unbearably bitter: 'There is no king in England nor hath beene since midsumer last was twelve month'. And despite the public execution, the rumours that would not go away. February 1687: 'I have beene with the duke of Monmouth about a fortnight ago at sea where he hath a considerable fleet with him and will be here 'ere long with a more considerable army then he had before'. Anyone interested in the subject of political rumour can do no better than Adam Fox's marvellous book on Oral and literate culture in early modern England, by the way.

Seditious words, unlike treason, was not a capital felony, but that didn't mean that offenders got off lightly. The usual punishment was a spell in the pillory, sometimes a whipping, and a heavy fine. Those who could not pay were likely to find themselves spending months in prison, reduced to writing - or finding friends who would write on their behalf - begging petitions to the judges for mercy.

Not that the Glorious Revolution immediately brought freedom of speech. In the Old Bailey Proceedings (1674-1799), fifty people were tried for seditious words in London after 1688. But nearly all of these were before the mid-1720s (with one or two following the 1745 Rebellion). I haven't done the counting yet, but I suspect that will be outnumbered in the 20 years or so of seventeenth-century Cheshire indictments that I've recorded - in a much smaller population than that of eighteenth-century London. It's a fascinating subject that has yet to be extensively studied.

Anybody wanting references for the primary sources quoted or, indeed, the few secondary works that I've come across is welcome to get in touch with me.

Cliopatriarch of Wales?

2004-07-20T22:02:00.000+01:00

Some of you may have already spotted this.

Partly because I'm a sucker for a bit of flattery, I've accepted an invitation to blog at Cliopatria. (The title is not my invention, by the way. And I do fear that if it gets out beyond the blogosphere, it might get me shunned by two different groups of my acquaintance: a) feminists and b) those of the Cymry Cymraeg (the native Welsh-speaking Welsh) for whom y Saeson (the English) in Wales are only to be tolerated at the best of times. Well, I don't think they talk to me much anyway.)

I was surprised to be asked (actually, I was gobsmacked). After all, I don't blog about politics (well, not party politics) very often. I keep writing about obscure bits of the planet. I'm an early modernist. I'm not American. OK, we do share a concern with history and some affinities in political views. Anyway, I'm working on the presumption that they want me for the differences as much as the similarities. Let's hope that it produces some interesting results.

Wannabe Lords and Ladies

2004-07-19T19:06:00.000+01:00

I never cease to be amazed at what people will buy, or try to, in this case. This site warns you in no uncertain terms: "You cannot purchase a genuine British title, with one exception, the feudal title of a Scottish baron; and certainly cannot buy a peerage title". The author should know, seeing as he's the seventh earl of Bradford. Browse around for a spendid mixture of upper-class English snobbery (can't have the hoi-polloi calling themselves Lord This and Lady That, can we?) and what ought to be bleedin' obvious advice (but then, most advice against frauds seems blindingly obvious). His lordship does not, sadly, comment on the way in which the Jeffrey Archers of this world give the very strong impression that, in fact, any slimy git can acquire a peerage if they happen to have the right friends and give enough money to the right people.

I can understand why people buy fake degrees, but why, in the twenty-first century, does anyone still want one of these absurd anachronisms?

Jobs Bulletin (also studentship)

2004-07-19T18:30:00.000+01:00

More from jobs.ac.uk this week

Post-doctoral Research Assistant, Oxford Brookes University, working on CESAR, an online database of information about the French theatre between 1600 and 1800. You need a PhD on some aspect of early modern France; a high level of competence in French; and experience in using "electronic research-support methods, preferably online databases". Two years, £21,010-22,954. Deadline 13 August 2004.

Research Fellowships, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Four years, stipends starting from £14,455 p.a. living in college. Deadline 29 October 2004, to start October 2005. (These are for any subject; there will be hot competition.)

Research Studentships and Bursaries for MA study in English Literary Studies, Middlesex University. One of the research areas is English Literature and Culture 1500-1700 (there is a more detailed list of topics within that). Twelve months; the studentships pay tuition fees + living grant of £11,000; the bursaries pay tuition fees + £650 towards living expenses. Deadline 7 September 2004 (for October 2004 start).

A sample from H-Net Jobs

Assistant Professor, Mediterranean Europe, 1300-1700, University of Oregon. 'Priority' to applications received by 1 November 2004.

Tenured Scholar, Early Modern Europe, Columbia University. 'Would like all applications by' 15 October 2004.

Assistant Professor, Late Imperial China, University of California, San Diego. Reviewing applications from 1 October 2004 (start July 2005).

Modern science, meet the Old Masters

2004-07-18T19:30:00.000+01:00

Here's an interesting piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Art History Can Trade Insights With the Sciences. I saw a TV programme, last year I think, presented by David Hockney on the theory (proposed by Charles M Falco, a physicist) about the use of lenses in 15th/16th paintings. It seemed perfectly sane to me - and a good demonstration that practising artists now could have particularly useful insights into the work of other artists in the past... Not being an art historian, I didn't know that they were quite so upset about the whole idea.

The major arguments mounted by art historians against his theory fall into seven categories: (1) artists did not need to "cheat" because they were highly trained in drawing from observation; (2) artists did not need lenses because they were so talented; (3) such devices would have been too cumbersome; (4) no written proof, from artists or others, exists that lenses were used; (5) artists could have used a grid instead of a lens to get the perspective right; (6) the lens hypothesis has been overstated; and (7) even if true, it is of no interest to art historians.

Now, I do find myself wondering how fair this summary is. Are art historians quite as silly as (1) and (2) make them sound? But let's not quibble too much for the moment.

The problem with numbers 1-4 is that they fail to rule out the use of optical devices. Whether or not artists had the skill and/or training to draw without lenses, whether or not the lenses were cumbersome, and whether or not anyone at the time wrote about them, artists still may have used lenses. The arguments about training and talent are also inconsistent with the general acceptance by art historians that Renaissance artists used geometry to draw in perspective...[and] sometimes used tools such as strings, grids, and planes of glass... to get the perspective right. The problem with the grid argument is that the use of a grid might explain how artists got the perspective right, but not predict the smoking gun, the errors.

For my money, after reading the details of Falco's argument, it seems to me that it's that last point that stands out as the most compelling point in its favour. But I'm no scientist. As a historian, however, I don't think that (4) can be written off that easily. Yes, it's true that silence in written sources does not rule out the use of lenses (and arguing too much from silence is dangerous); but it does seem odd. Is there no documentary evidence at all? (Not even anything nicely ambiguous?) And, importantly, how does that compare with written evidence for other innovatory practices of the time? If important developments - including those listed - were usually recorded by somebody, then the silence really needs some explanation. It might, indeed, be related to (6) and (7), which seems a particularly crude reduction of an important issue: it isn't entirely unreasonable to suggest that a technique by that went unrecorded and was completely forgotten about (suggesting that few artists ever used it, perhaps) may not be that historically significant. Is it?

Still like the theory though.

Why I use the Guardian

2004-07-18T11:13:00.000+01:00

I'm not doing any statistics, but the Guardian's website is probably my single most common source of news here. It's the news site I head to first. Now that's partly because it's also the newspaper I read most often. But it's also because the web site is so bloody good. Clearly, I'm far from alone in thinking this. Their readers' editor, Ian Mayes, has this week had some respite from his usual postbag of complaints and corrections (following on from his column last week about the paper's plans for the future). The praise isn't just from us lefty-liberal types in the UK, either. The stats tell the tale, too: 100 million page impressions and 9 million users a month, "far ahead of any other newspaper website in the UK, and in the US second only to the BBC among favoured UK news sites". More people read the Guardian online than in print.

In contrast to so many other newspapers' sites, everything that appears in the print version (and considerably more, though there are a few subscription services) can be accessed free of charge and without any registration requirements. I am getting around to registering with some of the papers that demand it (NY Times, Washington Post, Telegraph, Scotsman), but it's hard to be bothered when all you want is a casual browse to pick up on interesting nuggets. Path of least resistance and all that. As for The Times, which you can't even search past the last seven days without a subscription...

And as a British academic looking for news, especially about higher education and the humanities and social sciences, the education section is hard to beat. BBC education news is better on schools than post-18; the Independent's education section is far less extensive (and a fair bit of it requires a subscription). Neither they nor the Telegraph have anything to match the Guardian's research section (unless you're a scientist). I also think the reporting of these stories tends to be better than its British rivals; remember my story last week about teaching on the Empire in British schools? Of these four news sources, only the Guardian seems to approach a balanced view of the Ofsted report concerned; the rest simply selected one part of it for a dramatic story. (I won't accuse them of outright misrepresentation, since I still can't get a view of the report in order to judge for myself. Ofsted sent me a link, but to something completely different...)

However, for all these reasons, I have a tendency to rely rather too heavily on this one source. Quite apart from the dangers of only reading papers whose politics you (largely) agree with, the Grauniad remains, for all its global reach and international coverage, primarily a British-oriented paper.* I need to get out more. So, a question for readers around the world: if it's serious, easily findable education and academic news - especially on humanities and social sciences - you're looking for, which (apart from HNN, naturally) are the best online sources and newspaper sites?

*And, as Scottish friends of mine would point out, specifically rather English (not to say London and south-eastern) in its outlook. But I think there may be worse offenders...

Resources around the early modern world

2004-07-17T21:16:00.000+01:00

I promised I was going to start looking beyond the Anglo-American and European, and this is the first instalment.

Indian History Sourcebook
The Mughals
The Mughal Empire
Shivshahi on the World Wide Web
British India
East India Company Ships
Trading Places: East India Company
Art of Mughal India
Gardens of Mughal India
Mughal India

The Ottomans
History of Turkish Jews
Turkey: History
Ottoman Empire Chronology
Ottoman Website
Ottoman
Harem in the Ottoman Empire

Early Modern Japan bibliographies
Early Modern Japan: course
Tokugawa Japan
Samurai Archives
Early Modern Japan: Politics
Sex in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan
Mining communities in early modern Japan

Qing China Bibliography
Missionaries and Mandarins: the Jesuits in China
Printing and Publishing in late imperial China
Chinese History: Ming Dynasty
Chinese History:Qing Dynasty
Chinese History: Imperial Period
The Peony Pavilion

It's interesting doing this; the most basic things that I'd take for granted normally (such as names for places, regions, dynasties, people) are often unfamiliar, but they're precisely what you need to do Google searches that get beyond general overviews. As a product of the British university system, it also reminds me of the merits of American broad world history survey courses (even if their downsides are that they can seem a bit superficial and conservative). I think quite a few of these resources are aimed at that market; some are really well done, but I'd really like to find more in-depth materials too. But this is enough for one day.

Update: That mischievous man Ralph Luker ;o) has started a conversation at Cliopatria about the question of the relevance of the term 'early modern' beyond the European world.

The first month

2004-07-17T11:20:00.000+01:00

Well, if I hadn't been so busy flouncing and massaging my wounded pride yesterday, I'd have had more time to appreciate the first part of that post by Ralph at Cliopatria. (I mean, all I could manage of a bit of praise like 'one of the best history blogs' was that it was 'nice'? No wonder Americans take the piss out of us Brits.) After all, this blog has only been in existence for a month.

Yep, one month old today. I've posted on average about twice a day so far - I don't know how long I can keep that up (especially as I have to get some work done on thesis-book revisions over the next few months, and I wish I could drum up more enthusiasm about it), but when you're drudging in the archives every day this makes a really refreshing change. I think it's fair to say that it's settled in nicely anyway. (Hell, there's that word again.)

No question that I'm outgrowing Blogger. There are certain things I want that Blogger doesn't do, especially categories and recent comments. I know, I keep talking about moving. But then I read the instructions for MT and the like and I get scared. I can write HTML (actually, I dislike WYSIWYG editors, and Blogger's just introduced one); I can use FTP after a fashion. But when it comes to Perl, cgi-bin, MySQL, and the rest... eek. And I'm fairly sure I'd need to upgrade my current web hosting to publish it on Early Modern Resources. So perhaps I should try TypePad? It seems to work for lots of people. Any comments from those with experience of the 'Basic' and 'Plus' options would be particularly appreciated. (I'm slightly concerned that these don't come with a full HTML-editing facility on templates, so how flexible is the interface?) Or from people who have installed MT or Wordpress or similar packages on their servers, and how easy it is for those who are only semi-literate in Computerese.

Who's reading this stuff? The numbers aren't large - they spiked yesterday, mostly first-timers, no doubt because of Ralph! - but they are growing little by little. There's a small cohort of returning regulars, even. I wouldn't expect a blog on this subject - even given my digressions from early modernity - to attract large numbers anyway. But, phew, the main thing is that I'm not just talking to myself. What pleases me isn't so much the numbers as the variety in where visitors have come from: the UK, US, Canada, Australia and NZ, Germany, Czech Republic, Japan, Philippines... I was worrying a bit about not getting many comments (am I boring you? is the Blogger system a bit off-putting?), but I read a thread about this at (I think) Crooked Timber recently and was reassured by someone who said that only a tiny minority of readers will ever leave comments anyway.

It's been a great experience regardless of who bothers to look. When it comes to writing, my tendency is towards the interminably slow pursuit of perfection. I can use blogging to practise a different kind of discipline: write now, write faster, stop picking over every semicolon and every nuance of phrase. Get it down, then bloody well leave it alone. Not to be recommended for scholarly articles, but a good exercise for a chronic fusspot like me. And it's fun finding things to write about, and to put my experience of tracking down online material and building up web resources to a new use. Actually, it can generate some personal insights: what bothers me enough to comment on it? What do I care about? And I can look back and see the recurring themes; no huge surprises, but sort of interesting anyway. (I'm reminded of this essay on the construction of personal identity in personal web pages - it's about static pages, but definitely relevant to blogging).

When I set up the blog, I didn't know what to expect. But it's been really great. I was worried that it would swallow my life (even worse than my usual surfing), and perhaps I'm still spending too much time on it. But the initial level of addiction is wearing off. It's no longer the new album that you have to listen to six times a day.

Three will do.

Urban myths and folklore in Aberystwyth

2004-07-17T00:09:00.000+01:00

My talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time persists. How often does Aberystwyth host a conference that I'd really like to go to? But now I'm away in London... Last month it was the Romanticism, history, historicism conference. Now it's folklorists focusing on urban myths and 'contemporary legends'. Papers include campus myths (I'm beginning to wonder just how many universities have sinking libraries? Ours is sliding down the hill, a nice variant); the blood libel and persecution of Jews; folklore in The X-files; Japanese visual story-telling; the banshee; Swedish witchcraft legends...

How Urban Legends Work, 21-24 July 2004

A controversial seventeenth-century shipwreck

2004-07-16T23:43:00.000+01:00

The Guardian reports on a British shipwreck believed to contain untold riches, which is about to be excavated by a commercial American company, with the proceeds to be shared between the company, Odyssey, and the British government.

"The Sussex, an 80-gun British warship sank with 12 vessels from its merchant fleet in tumultuous storms in 1694 while on a secret diplomatic mission for King William III." It - sorry, she - sank in the Straits of Gibraltar. If it is the Sussex (even this seems to be a matter of some controversy), it may contain "10 tonnes of bullion and precious coins worth up to £2.4bn today". Wheesh. No wonder little things like archaeologists' worries that the excavation amounts to little more than "looting" and "asset-stripping" aren't going to be allowed to get in the way. (The money, if it is there, was intended to bribe a French ally in Britain's wars against France. The disaster may have been a factor in the establishment of the Bank of England.)

The project's chief archaeologist is (naturally) stoutly defending the professionalism of the project. English Heritage views it as "a test case of how professionally firms like Odyssey can retrieve coins and artefacts". Well, another good test case might be the excavation that the firm is currently carrying out on a nineteenth-century US paddle steamer in Georgia. An American archaeologist commenting on that one points out that it isn't just about the excavation itself: "Field work and recovery are the fun part... It's the years of analysis and conservation and preparation of a detailed report that usually trip people up. It's hard to get the commitment of time and funds to do all those things." Archaeology is destructive by its very nature; it's the careful recording and analysis (of all the little mundane things in their context, not just the glistening valuable ones) that justifies the disruption and destruction. Is that really going to happen here?

There are a few 'ifs' and some 'maybes' in the way: the deal doesn't quite seem to have been finalised, it might not be the Sussex, it might not be that full of gold. Oh, and the Spanish may not be happy about it. But this could be one hell of a story.

Ouch; or, on exposing yourself to ridicule

2004-07-16T08:57:00.000+01:00

Early Modern Notes got (as far as I know) its first mention at Cliopatria yesterday. Starts well...

Over at Early Modern Notes, Sharon Haber maintains one of the best history blogs, which I read often, but...

That bit's nice (apart from the fact that the name's Howard, not Haber... probably partly my fault for forgetting to put in an 'about me' after I disabled the Blogger profile because I didn't like the way it looked on the screen).

But that 'but'... Ouch.

... she's apprenticing, too.

So, I'm reading her recommendation of July's Common-Place and her note that Cronaca still holds Common-Place accountable for giving "the infamous Michael Bellesiles a platform in their early issues." And, then, Sharon's Early Modern Notes says – I kid you not: "Who is Michael Bellesiles and what is wrong with him? What have I missed? (Or forgotten ...)" There, there, dear, no one's stolen your automobile. You've left it in the lot over at school. Now, I understand that Sharon is English and that she is one of those unusual people who become Early Modernists, but still ...

Ouch ouch ouch. Now, since those who know are too busy laughing to tell me the answer, I did what I should have done in the first place and googled it. And no, I hadn't forgotten. I didn't know the fraud story. No bells ringing. Nul points for my knowledge of US academic scandal.

I could excuse myself on the grounds that at the time I was completely wrapped up in writing my PhD thesis. But there's another reason, you know. It was reported over here (as was the book that caused the trouble, which I do faintly remember), but not extensively, I think (the Independent and BBC sites turned up no hits). It just did not cause the furore that it obviously did in the US.

Which is, of course, because it's about guns and gun control. I have my doubts that any eighteenth-century subject could cause quite that much of a stink in Britain. A study of gun ownership in probate inventories certainly wouldn't. If we have any debates on the matter, it's always about how we could tighten up our gun laws even further than they have been already, and why they're not policed effectively enough. We simply do not get the Americans on this one. Bowling for Columbine is like some weird alien universe. (Except for the bits about the export industry. We may not like guns, but hey, we're still going to keep selling them to everyone else.) The Bellesiles story, over here, would be just another example of the strangeness of our American cousins. And we've got plenty of those to keep us entertained/distressed/outraged.

So, I plead guilty to not always keeping up with American culture, politics and history. But I don't have to. There's quite a lot going on over here to keep me exercised, you know. And this is, after all, an explicitly British-orientated blog. (I'm pleased that it can nonetheless appeal to American readers.) I asked the question because I suspected it was an American story that had slipped under my British radar and I was genuinely curious.

British readers who think that these are entirely feeble excuses and that I should have known the story may, of course, throw as many rotten eggs at me as they like. But gently, eh?

Lindsey Davis rules

2004-07-15T22:25:00.000+01:00

Via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, an interview with the divine Lindsey Davis. Useless fact of the day (and an excuse for blogging this here)*: she wrote romantic serials set in the Civil Wars period before turning her hand to Ancient Rome. You may wish to vist her 'official' website. The rants page is fun. And the letters. And the FAQ...

*Not that I need one, seeing as this is my blog.

Fulbright funding

2004-07-15T19:23:00.000+01:00

To demonstrate that I do know that stuff happens beyond the UK, the Fulbright Scholar Program has sent out a reminder of the deadline (August 1) for their Traditional Scholar Programs (for US citizens only) for 2005/6. There are, for example, two postdoc awards (up to 12 months) to be taken up at the University of Wales, Cardiff, and history is one of the eligible subject areas. I mention this in particular a) because it's in Wales (!) and b) because I'm good friends with Garthine Walker, who teaches in Cardiff's history department and researches early modern crime and gender (her splendid book came out last year). There are of course many more awards around the world, including opportunities for early modernists.

July Common-place

2004-07-15T09:47:00.000+01:00

The July issue of Common-place is out (well, it's been out a little while, but I forgot to get my email newsletter renewed last year when I got a new email address...).

I particularly liked the article by Richard J Bell, on his experiences of researching his dissertation - on suicide in post-revolution America. He describes the way that many a research project develops; from the dawning realisation that what he'd rather naively planned just wasn't going to work, to the excitement of tracing new sources to end up with something very different. He also discusses the ways in which internet (and other electronic) resources have impacted on his research, helping him tremendously in his search for elusive needles in haystacks. He learned that while the numbers of recorded suicides may be small (and we'll never really know how many more there were), suicide's cultural significance went far beyond his early questions ("Who?" "how?" and "why?"); he found himself moving on to rather bigger themes ("so what?"): "How Americans in the early republic responded to suicide or the threat of it and what they understood that threat to be".

Also well worth reading is a historian's eye-view of historical reality TV, Is there a historian in the house?. Emerson W Baker worked on the US TV series Colonial House, and writes about his reasons for taking what he knew was a risk, about the "constant balancing act between the ideal and the practical, between the televisual story, the sound bite, and the historical record"; he's honest about his criticisms, but also why he was glad he did it: "I have spent my career as a historian and archaeologist trying to understand what life was like for the inhabitants of early New England. Last fall I had the opportunity to walk into a version of that past, and to share that experience with a few million students of history. Flaws and all, it was the opportunity of a lifetime".

Even if you're not interested in American history, Common-place is well worth bookmarking. It's always readable, enjoyable and stimulating. But one question. Cronaca has also flagged up the magazine, with the aside: "Yes, they did give the infamous Michael Bellesiles a platform in their early issues..." Who is Michael Bellesiles and what's wrong with him? What have I missed? (Or forgotten...)

George III, insanity and arsenic

2004-07-14T18:52:00.000+01:00

At least two bloggers so far (The Little Professor; Gnostical Turpitude) have spotted what may be the final word on The Madness of King George. Dammit, I didn't notice the programme in the TV listings before I left Aberystwyth so that I could set the video to record it.

Celebrating Bastille Day, 14 July 1789

2004-07-14T18:40:00.000+01:00

Well, here's one way to celebrate France's big day. (And here's another.)

And if you can still focus after doing that, some links.

Bastille Day: notes from the Guardian

The French Embassy in the US reminds Americans that they used to be real good friends

Absolutism, Ancien Regime and French Revolution, all from the splendid and unflashy Internet Modern History Sourcebook

The Rise and Fall of Absolute Monarchy

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution (fab site)

The French Revolution in British newspapers; the reaction this side of the Channel

There are a few more links over at Early Modern Resources, politics page

Get out of that study! It's summer time!

2004-07-13T10:10:00.000+01:00

Events, museums, exhibitions and the like of particular interest to early modernists. Some of them are even out-of-doors...

Prisoners of the Tower 1100-1941, Tower of London, London, UK. To 5 September.

City Merchants 1670-1720, Guildhall Art Gallery, London, England. To 22 August.

John Milton's Cottage, Buckinghamshire, England.

Kentwell Hall, Suffolk, England.

Gwydir Castle, Conwy, Wales.

Museum of Welsh Life, Cardiff, Wales.

The Word on the Street: Popular Street Literature 1650-1910, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland. To 31 October.

Master and Commander Museum Trail

Spanish Armada Museum Trail

For a wide range of UK museums, galleries and events, see 24 Hour Museum.

A couple beyond the UK...

Rijksmuseum Masterpieces, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Plimoth Plantation, Massachusetts, USA.

Secondhand books online - damaging the publishing industry?

2004-07-12T23:29:00.000+01:00

Via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, this report from the NY Times (registration required, I'm afraid), about the effect of online used book sales (especially through Amazon and e-bay) on new book sales. You hear these sort of complaints about secondhand books from the book industry from time to time, and as a regular buyer of secondhand books in shops and online, my response is not sympathetic. All secondhand books have been new books, and why shouldn't the owners of said books get rid of them when they don't want them any more, so other readers can appreciate them? When I was a student I couldn't afford to buy new books very often at all: secondhand books and their sellers were a lifeline. And, OK, I still don't buy that much new fiction, it has to be said (and hardbacks hardly ever); there have only ever been a handful of authors I'd rush out to buy as soon as their latest offering appears in the shops.

It's possible that Amazon in particular - since you can see the availability of secondhand copies right next to the new ones - is making inroads into new book business. But surely this can only go so far, since there will always tend to be a limited number of secondhand copies available (unless a book is so bad or dull that the buyers of the new copies can't wait to get rid of it, I suppose... in which case the secondhand market is hardly the problem). And I don't know about anyone else, but my secondhand book buying falls into certain patterns that are not exactly the same as my new book habits. When I buy a secondhand book, it is often NOT simply the case that I'd have bought a new copy if the used one hadn't been available. Sometimes it's because a book is out of print. Sometimes, well, it's there on the shelf, I sort of like it, I don't know if I'll ever read it, but at that price it won't matter, will it... Sometimes I just want a cheap trashy book to read on the train. Sometimes I get a duplicate just because I like the cover on an older edition (it's true!). And sometimes it's because I'm trying a new author - and if I like it enough, I may well buy new in future (and similarly with library books, incidentally). But it never seems to occur to the book industry that secondhand book buying could act as a stimulant to new sales.

Have there ever been any studies of secondhand book buying? I'd love to know.

More jobs for early modernists at jobs.ac.uk!

2004-07-12T19:18:00.000+01:00

Early Career Fellowship in Early Modern History, Oxford Brookes University. 2 year posts, £22,954 p.a. Deadline 2 August.

Data Converter/text-encoder for the 'Religion and Rebellion' (Carte calendar) project Oxford Bodleian Library. Up to 8 months, £26,327 p.a. Deadline 16 July 2004. (It looks as though this can be done from home, with part-time possibilities - could be ideal for PhD students writing up theses?)

Lecturer in Modern History, University of Dublin Trinity College. Duration not stated, salary from 30,781 euro p.a. Deadline 16 August. ('Modern' here definitely includes 'early modern' - in fact that seems to be the emphasis.)

Research Associate, 'Free-Thinking and Language-Planning in Late 17th-Century England', University of Cambridge. 3 years, £21,852 p.a. Deadline 21 July.

'Teach more about British Empire'

2004-07-12T10:16:00.000+01:00

A story noted over the weekend: 'Teach more about British Empire' (also at The Independent). Ofsted (official education standards 'watchdog') argues that the Empire is a key subject that gets too little attention in secondary schools, whilst too much time is spent on certain subjects such as Nazi Germany (the American West is also cited). I'm a little concerned that it is reported as though Ofsted were dismissing these other subjects as insignificant... But even the modern German historians I know agree that the Nazis are over-taught, and that far too many students come to university seemingly knowing - and wanting to know - about little else.

Traditionalists are delighted; someone from 'the Campaign for Real Education' is quoted as saying: "The key point is that the Empire was very beneficial to indigenous populations in many ways, even though it had its faults. The nice thing is that a lot of ex-colonial populations still think quite well of the British". I don't think, however, that what Ofsted has in mind is quite that trite or bland. What they say is that teachers should raise awareness of the Empire's "controversial legacy", and that "Pupils should know about the Empire and that it has been interpreted by historians and others in different ways".

And that would be an important contribution to British children's education and understanding of their history. 'The Empire' is potentially a way into many important issues: modern British history in its relationship to the rest of the world; the colonised as well as the colonisers; comparative perspectives on empires and power; migration and trade; historical debates and controversies...

Defenders of the schools point out that history is such a big subject that inevitably some parts get less coverage than others. So we always come back to the question: what matters most? How do we set priorities? How do we balance breadth and depth, skills and content, our own nations and other parts of the world, the policies of governments and the lives of the governed? However, it strikes me that Ofsted is aiming at the wrong target here. Secondary education, especially at 14+, is very much geared towards exam requirements. So don't blame the schools and the teachers: go and talk to the exam boards.

Update: I wanted to look at the report itself. But I can't find any reference to anything like it on the Ofsted site. Perhaps it takes them a few days to get these things online? Hrrmphh.

Further update: The Guardian has also reported on this, and it emerges that the Ofsted report goes back a few months; I think it's surfaced in the papers now (see also the Telegraph, but I haven't got round to registering to read the actual report) because of a lecture by Ofsted's specialist history inspector at a conference last week (wouldn't mind seeing the text of that, too). But I still can't seem to find anything about it at Ofsted's web site. I've now gone to the lengths of emailing them to find out about the thing - not least because The Guardian's report also comments that the report was, in fact, largely positive about history teaching in schools - it was rated 'as amongst the best of all subjects'... So I was right in my historian's instincts to try to get back to the source.

What I don't miss when I'm away from home

2004-07-12T00:13:00.000+01:00

Two things that I shan't be homesick for when I go back to London on Tuesday:

1. The seagulls on the roof. There's some kind of mini-colony up there, and Lord knows what they're getting up to with the banging and the rattling and the general racket. I hadn't quite realised before what a range of noises those birds can make, all of them unpleasant. And they keep crapping on my windows!

2. And then there's the Sunday afternoon 'entertainment' on the seafront, drifting in through the window. Some duo performing 50s- and 60s-lite (I think there might have been the occasional newer song), finishing off with a particularly ghastly, mawkish medley (ie, they don't really know more than the first couple of lines of any of the songs) of material including songs from the two World Wars. And Auld Lang Syne, I think, but I might have been hallucinating by then. It all wouldn't be quite so hideous if it weren't for the female singer, who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near anything remotely pop-like with that high-pitched quavery voice.

And this is supposed to be the Land of Song?!

The marching bands are coming

2004-07-11T11:45:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow is one of those historical anniversaries that does not, to put it mildly, produce universal celebrations. Or, to be precise, it's celebrated and loathed in equal measure. 12 July is the anniversary of the victory of William III at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, and it's still causing conflict between Protestants and Catholics. It's instructive to learn that, even now, there are 'more British troops in Northern Ireland during the Protestant marching season than there are in Iraq', for what is 'one of the biggest annual political and cultural street events in Europe'. At least it doesn't seem likely to descend into the violent depths of the late '90s and early '00s (not least, a cynic might argue, because the media post 9/11 lost interest in fanning these particular flames and turned their attention to other conflicts and religious divides). Nonetheless, 'the marching season' does annually reveal the continuing tensions in Northern Ireland, and just how much remains to be done if the peace process is to be a long-term success. It's also a reminder of just how much of today's conflict is rooted in the seventeenth century - however much that legacy has been subsequently reappropriated and reinvented.

Irish History Timeline
Plantation
William III
Battle of the Boyne
Battle of the Boyne 1690
The Penal Laws

CAIN (Conflict Archive on the Internet)

Northern Ireland Women's Coalition
Sinn Fein
Social Democratic and Labour Party
Ulster Unionist Party

Sutton Index of Deaths: lest we forget, this is what's at stake in the peace process.

Trackback

2004-07-11T00:05:00.000+01:00

I have installed a trackback facility using Haloscan (since Blogger doesn't offer this). I hope it'll work OK... If I start to get more comments I may well switch to Haloscan's comments service as well, but I'll stick with Blogger's own facility for the time being. But I think I'll be looking around for another host at some point before too long anyway. I'm debating whether to publish the blog on EMR, using Movable Type or something similar. But that's a slightly intimidating step...

Update: Yep, it looks as though this blog will be moving. I finally discovered 20six (I'd heard of it but never visited before) - and it has everything I could possibly want, plus they're about to introduce a bargain basement paid version WITH NO ADVERTS. Even the free version can do much, much more than Blogger. The only downside (I'm assuming) is that I'll lose this template, with which I fell in love the moment I saw it. But I can deal with that, for so many goodies in return. Watch this space...

Names and periods: notes on the 'early modern'

2004-07-10T10:24:00.000+01:00

A small change of title here, with apologies if it causes any inconvenience. Giving the blog the same name as my original web site, given that the two are supposed to be in some way complementary, seemed like a good idea to begin with. But it was just confusing, for me at least (although I am easily confused...). And in some posts that referred to both sites, it occurred to me that it might be confusing for others too. So it seemed best to create a clear distinction. And after some thought, 'Notes' (akin to Kristine Brorson's Historiological Notes) seemed to convey better the sense of what this blog is about.

The subtitle also just got less concise in the hope of being more inclusive and intelligible beyond the ranks of 'early modernists'. As my next-door neighbour Brandon Watson has recently commented from the perspective of early modern philosophy, not everyone knows what 'early modern' means. Even amongst those who would recognise it, it covers a pretty varied timespan; it can, I think, start as early as the mid-fifteenth century, even if c.1500 is regarded as more usual. As for endpoints: some would not allow it to extend beyond about 1750 (in fact, many books of 'early modern history', in British history at least, stop at 1640...); for others it can clearly go to 1800 and even beyond. Americanists, of course, have another (more commonly used?) name for it, with a very clear terminal date: 'the colonial period'. Or, if we are discussing the 'early early modern', up to the early seventeenth century, others - especially those focused on literature - may use the term 'Renaissance'; and the 'late early modern' might go under the headings 'Enlightenment', 'Industrial Revolution', 'Romanticism'...

And then there are nationally/regionally specific, often dynastic, titles covering various parts of the period: Tudor, Stuart, Ancien Regime, Tokugawa, Mughal, Ottoman. Those non-European ones, in their non-conformity to European periodisation, also pose some questions about spatial varieties (or even limits?) to the concept of 'early modern'. A Japanese historian may seem on the surface fairly comfortable with the idea of early modern Japan (with the dates 1600-1868) - or is that just a pragmatic way of giving Euroamerican students a label that they can recognise, to make them more comfortable?

The cultural historian Peter Burke discussed the problems with 'early modern' at some length in an interview (and he was also sceptical of the applicability of 'early modern' to Asian and African contexts).

What I am afraid of is the reification of the period, and because of division of labour we want to divide ourselves off from the mediaevalists on one side, the modernists on the other. But if we started to believe that our period is homogenous, then that would be the end. So I treat it just as a flag of convenience... the dates that matter vary according to the problem you are interested in. And so if political history need not have, probably should not have the same dates as economic history, and the history of high culture probably should not have the same dates as the history of popular culture. And yet we want to do total history, so what are we doing? I think the only thing is we use this term, but we don't pretend it's more than convenience.

I agree. (Though might a philosopher like Brandon argue that this is a typical bit of historians' fudging?) But I'd still be curious to know what historians of Asia and Africa in (roughly) the half-millennium to 1900 think about this.

And if you know of good online resources (in English) for the world beyond Europe and north America during that period, do let me know. I'm conscious that Early Modern Resources is rather Eurocentric, and will be trying to do something about it this summer.

The humble, indispensable index

2004-07-09T23:42:00.000+01:00

Philip Hensher in The Independent discusses the enjoyment to be had from indexes. It has to be said that few of the history books I read have the opportunities to be as gloriously bitchy as the biographies he mentions, but it is true that the index, besides being a useful tool for extracting information you need from a book when you don't have time or inclination to read the whole thing, is often a quick way to get a feel of a writer's priorities (and blind spots). A good index should tell you a lot about both a book and its writer. And an academic book without an index is surely a contradiction in terms.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside...

2004-07-09T09:33:00.000+01:00

Off home to Aberystwyth for the weekend: get some nice fresh sea air, pay bills (eugh), remind myself what the office looks like, that kind of thing. Funnily enough, I found a secondhand copy of Malcolm Pryce's Last Tango in Aberystwyth right here in Richmond last week (I just hadn't got round to buying it before). A fun read (as was the first book, which I did buy and a friend 'borrowed' it...). Parallel-universe Aberystwyth, with druid gangsters, ventriloquists and sheer surreal craziness. And Lampeter is just weird... so no difference there, then.

Job opportunities

2004-07-08T23:28:00.000+01:00

Associate Lecturer in Medieval / Early Modern History, The Australian National University, Canberra. 'The successful applicant will have completed a PhD, will have teaching experience and a record of research leading to publication in the area'. Starting salary from A$50,107 p.a. Deadline: 26 July 2004.

Post-doctoral Research Fellowship in American Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London. 'You will have recently gained a doctorate in American literature and be developing a major research project in any period of American literature'. Salary: £21,027 p.a. Deadline: 23 July 2004.

MA Studentships

2004-07-08T23:03:00.000+01:00

A couple of funding opportunities noted at Jobs.ac.uk:

University of Warwick: MA in the Culture of the European Renaissance, an interdisciplinary course. There are two bursaries available, each worth £2000. Deadline for applications: 27 August 2004.

University of Strathclyde, one studentship each for MRes and MPhil. Fees and stipends to the value of £6,500. Deadline: 27 August 2004.

Homophone corner

2004-07-08T22:43:00.000+01:00

The Guardian reports that researchers at the Concise OED have worked out exactly which homophones (words that are spelt very similarly but with completely different meanings, if you weren't sure) are causing us the most trouble. Apparently the most common one is diffuse/defuse.* The Guardian has provided a list, either (it's unclear) from the Oxford people or its own database of recurring mistakes, as featured in the daily corrections column. At least Guardian writers who have seen their work featured there can take comfort in knowing that they're not alone. These are, according to the researchers, mistakes made by relatively literate people, found "in texts that are otherwise quite well spelt". They suggest that the use of spellcheckers may be at least partly to blame (surprise, surprise). Additionally, they're finding a tendency to write on the internet "as if it was a spoken rather than a written medium, with all the mistakes which arise through doing that". (Shouldn't that be 'as if it were', Mr Dictionary?)

For the few of us fortunate enough to find spelling in English instinctively easy (for me, 'diffuse' and 'defuse' sound completely different: how could I ever confuse them?), this is often less irritating than a source of entertainment, especially when the result is a good suggestive pun. But publishers looking for the successor to Eats, Shoots and Leaves may want to take note.

By the way, the same researchers have noted that the 'grocer's apostrophe' is, in fact, on the decline.

*Update: I realised that if I'd been asked which homophone I thought was the most common, I'd have plumped for 'loose' (for 'lose'), which is some way down the Guardian's list. I keep seeing it everywhere!

Bad university accommodation

2004-07-07T21:57:00.000+01:00

Well, I had a very enjoyable conference (perhaps more thoughts later), except for one thing. I decided to stay on campus at the University of Hertfordshire - although it wasn't exactly cheap at £46 for the night B&B, compared to past experience of prices for student halls. Looks good on first sight - OK, usual boring sort of buildings, but they're only a year old, and they look clean and smart.

1. Getting into the building (and the rooms).
So many people had trouble with this. An electronic key card system had been installed. On the outside doors, the box to stick the card in had been installed so low down that you couldn't see the slot where the card was meant to go. I was actually quite relieved to discover that I wasn't the only person who stood in front of the door for a while puzzling over how was I supposed to get in (I had to ask somebody who happened to be nearby).

But even having worked it out, the key cards were ridiculously temperamental. It took me 3 goes to get the room to my door open on one occasion. At least two people couldn't get into their rooms at all: either the lock or the key was broken. One of them was in my flat; she had to call the security people to let her in at midnight.

2. But in a way, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Why? Because nowhere in any of the flats - not in the rooms, not in the kitchen - was there a single cup, mug or glass to drink from, let alone any coffee or tea (one of the organisers told me afterwards that in fact these things were supposed to have been provided). So the security guards - who were absolutely lovely - brought us some plastic vending-machine cups, which were better than nowt. We shared out the teabags that people had brought (and I had my own coffee for the morning anyway) and had a nice cuppa and complained at length about that and...

3. The buffet lunch. Now, this wasn't too bad for me (I don't eat much at lunchtime), although it wasn't exactly inspiring (coleslaw sandwich, anyone?). But one of my new neighbours had a wheat allergy and the only thing she had been able to eat was the fruit salad. And it was the same on the second day.

4. My neighbour got into her room to discover that the toilet seat (in a nasty cheap plasticky ensuite cubicle with the tiniest shower you've ever seen) was broken and on the floor. And when she got up during the night to go to the loo, the side of her bed fell off! (probably waking up any poor sod in the room below her)

5. There were fridges in each of the rooms (but not in the kitchens), which had clearly not been defrosted when the students moved out a couple of weeks ago at the end of term. One had so much ice that the door wouldn't shut and the occupant had to turn it off to defrost - and then get up during the night to empty the tray!

6. Oh, and when I went down to breakfast in the morning there was no toast left. Possibly no bread left in the kitchen at all; they'd 'just put some rolls on'. These hadn't arrived by the time I left to get to the conference. Yes, I was fairly late coming to breakfast, but there were still people coming in and officially another 15 minutes or so before they stopped serving. And how difficult is it to keep enough bread in the freezer to make toast with?

What on earth are these places like to live in for several months? They aren't cheap for students either - over £80 a week (self-catering, I think). I'm betting the soundproofing in these new halls isn't any better than usual, and they have those really annoying doors that slam, hard, unless you stop and catch them. I lived variously in old and new student accommodation as a student, and I have to say that the older buildings were consistently a) much less smart; b) better to actually live in; c) cheaper. Also, often, more care seemed to have gone into designing the furniture for the room rather than just buying bog standard furniture (the wardrobe/shelf/bookcase unit at York in particular was a space-saving miracle). And these furnishings and fittings had survived years of use by students. None had things like ensuite (I never had a problem with this, as long as there was a decent student/bathroom ratio and a regular cleaner!) - but we all know that that's not for the benefit of students but for conference business during vacations, isn't it?

The only plus point at UH was that the kitchens were much better equipped than anywhere I ever stayed in (a flat for 8 people had 2 sinks, 2 cookers, 2 microwaves and 2 freezers!) - except for the utterly stupid idea of putting mini fridges into the rooms instead of having a proper fridge where a fridge ought to be, in the room where you cook and eat. I've never, ever seen that in university accommodation before.

So, to finish this rant, if you're ever going to a conference on the de Havilland campus at the University of Hertfordshire, don't stay on campus. And if you or anyone you know is thinking of studying there, the same warning probably applies. Unless you like overpriced, shoddy quality accommodation, of course. Trouble is, off-campus accommodation in that area is probably hideously expensive too.

Oh, and feel free to share your university accommodation horror stories...

Conferences and conferencing

2004-07-04T22:18:00.000+01:00

Yippee! I'm off to the Tales from the Old Bailey conference tomorrow morning (not so looking forward to navigating the Tube in the rush hour, though) for a couple of days of listening to interesting-sounding papers and general schmoozing and catching up with old friends. Curious about the conference sub-title though: 'Writing a new history from below'. I wait to be convinced that this is 'new'. Has this become a seriously over-used adjective in historiography?

More Conferences...

It's probably a bit late, but there might be last-minute places at The Anglo-American Conference: Wealth and Poverty, London, 7-9 July.

Charisma and Religious Authority: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Preaching 1200-1600, London, 26-27 July.

Textual Afterlife: a conference on the uses and manipulations of texts, St Andrews, 3-4 September (papers on 'Medieval and Early Modern manuscript transmission, reception, revisions, borrowings and printed editions'). E-mail Sally Crumplin or Sumi David, sc42@st-and.ac.uk or sjd10@st-and.ac.uk.

Leviathan to Licensing Act (1650-1737): Theatre, Print and their Contexts, Loughborough University, 15-16 September ('theatre, culture and print in the "long" Restoration period').

Buyer Beware! The Business, Politics and Pleasures of Commerce, Wolverhampton, 15-16 September. Plenty of early modern, especially eighteenth-century, papers.

Looking ahead: CFPs

Foreign Policy, Religious Conflict and Public Discourse in post-Westphalian Europe (1648-1713), Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, 7-8 January 2005. Deadline: 15 August 2004.

Economic History Society 2005 Conference, Leicester, 8-10 April 2005. Deadline: 20 September 2004.

Social History Society 2005 Conference, Dublin, January 2005. Six thematic strands: Cultures and identities; Self and society; Lifestyles and lifecourses; Deviance, Inclusion and exclusion; Production and consumption; Mapping the past. Deadline: 30 September 2004.

Material Cultures and the Creation of Knowledge, The Centre for the History of the Book international conference, Edinburgh, 22-24 July 2005. Deadline: 1 November 2004. (Peter Burke, Robert Darnton and Roger Chartier are all headlined as speakers, which suggests plenty for early modernists.)

Conferences, especially the big ones over several days, can be exhausting. I came across this advice for surviving Bouchercon, the big crime fiction convention, much of which sounded equally relevant to academic conferences...

1) Stay at the convention hotel. This will minimize time wasted on travel.

2) Arrive the day before the con begins. The first day... begins early and you will want to be ready.

3) Scope out the schedule to see what you don't want to miss. ...

4) Pace yourself. B'con is intense and long. You won't see everything and that's okay.

5) Sleep when you can. The days are long and tiring. One hour power naps can really save you. [It's true! But don't forget your alarm clock.]

6) Hang out in the bar, even if you don't drink. Everyone will be in the bar and one point or another.

7) Don't be shy. People are there to meet each other and talk. If you see someone you want to meet, introduce yourself. [Why is this so hard?]

8) Prepare to go home with lots of books. Not only do you get freebie just for showing up [OK, not applicable to academic conferences], there will be tons of books to buy.

9) Please introduce yourself if you see me. I'll even let you buy me a drink! :)

10) Have the time of your life. There is no better company in the world than people who love mysteries. Make the best of it.

Since I'm away for most of two days, that of course means a break from blogging (shock! horror!). See you on Wednesday!

The 4th of July

2004-07-04T12:05:00.000+01:00

To USA readers: have a good Independence Day.

There were some related resources in yesterday's new links post, and more can be found at Early Modern Themes: Politics, Rebellions, Revolutions. I rather like this: Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents. It ranges from the earliest drafts of the Declaration to Jefferson's last thoughts on the achievement the Declaration represented, just a few days before his death:

... May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. ...

(On a much more frivolous note: Wales' slice of American pie)

Early Modern Resources updates

2004-07-04T11:08:00.000+01:00

Some cleaning and tidying over at Early Modern Resources I. Some stuff from the New Links page has finally made it to the appropriate pages:
Reference section
Bibliographies
Book and Web Reviews
And links posted here at the blog a week or two ago have been put on the New Links page.

This summer I'll be making an effort to do this kind of thing much more regularly than has been the case of late, and hopefully will catch up the backlog by the autumn...* My goal is fairly ambitious: to make Early Modern Resources the best and most comprehensive gateway site available for early modernists in the (important qualification) English-speaking world (if it isn't already: effusive praise always welcome).** I don't have the linguistic skills to seek out and evaluated web sites in other languages, unfortunately. If anyone reading this does, and would be interested in providing a service, get in touch: you write it, I'll post it (I can turn it into HTML for you if needed). It'd be great to expand the site in that direction.

I'd also like to add some more original content before too long. It's possible that some of the pieces posted to the blog might end up there in more carefully researched and thought-out versions. But I have older, ongoing projects at Early Modern Resources that have seen very little development of late:
Early Modernity on Film is in danger of becoming moribund. I've had an outline for a piece on films about gender, sex and double standards (including films such as Artemisia, Dangerous Liaisons, Elizabeth...) on a piece of scrap paper for over a year now.
Wales and the Law, which is meant to be a mix of primary sources and commentary, has seen some work lately, but not as much as it needs if it's to become the teaching tool I intended.

A webmaster's work is never done.

* but at least it's kept more up to date than my other History website, which really needs some cleaning out.

** as, indeed, are criticisms (honest!) and comments on what could be added and improved.

Help! Blogger quirks?

2004-07-03T21:50:00.000+01:00

Does anyone reading this know why it is that after using BLOCKQUOTE when writing a post the format changes to single line spacing? There are several examples in recent posts. Is it something to do with XML/XHTML? (At least I think that's what the Blogger editor is generating. I only know HTML.) The odd thing is that it doesn't show in the preview pane, so I didn't notice it was happening straightaway. (I checked Netscape and Opera in case it was a strange IE bug and they looked the same.) This is probably just me being picky, but it offends my aesthetic senses somewhat, so if anyone can explain - and tell me how to prevent it - I'd be very grateful. Oh lord, am I going to have to learn XML as well now?

Early Modern Links

2004-07-03T08:42:00.000+01:00

Another roundup of interesting links for early modernists. They're arranged roughly under the same thematic headings used at Early Modern Resources. But NB that these are categorisations based on very brief scans of the resource...

Many of these have come from Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web, a splendid resource from the Smithsonian Institute.

Old and New Worlds
Inuit and Englishmen: the Nunavut Voyages of Martin Frobisher
Trading Places:The East India Company and Asia 1600-1834 (via scribblingwoman
Italy on the Grand Tour (also from scribblingwoman)
Hudson's Bay Company (from scribblingwoman)
Spanish Exploration and Colonization of 'Alta California' 1774-1776
Virginia Runaway Slaves
Aaron Thomas: Caribbean Journey of a Royal Navy Seaman
History of Ukraine: Sixteenth Century; Seventeenth Century; Eighteenth Century

Material and symbolic cultures
The Festive Renaissance
Yesterday's News: Seventeenth-century English Broadsides and Newsbooks
Seeing what Shakespeare means
Connoisseurs, Collectors and Copyists
A Concert of Mourning: the Death of George Washington
A Nation of Shopkeepers

Social, economic, local
Early Modern Chester
Tudor Hackney
London 1753
Myer Myers: Jewish Goldsmith in Colonial New York

Politics, revolution, war
Elizabeth I, then and now
The Restoration 1660-1700
Declaring Independence: Drafting the Documents
The Decisive Day is Come: the Battle of Bunker Hill
Maps of the French and Indian War
George Washington
Revolution Rejected: Canada and the American Revolution
What is the Third Estate?

Religion, science, learning
Cardinal Pole's Mission to England
Biblical Metaphors of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
The Devil and the Religious Controversies of Sixteenth-century France
Leonardo and the Engineers of the Renaissance
The Measurers: a Flemish Image of Mathematics in the Sixteenth Century
The John Evelyn Archive
Scottish Thought and Letters in the Eighteenth Century
Origins of Modernity

Women, gender, sexuality
My Gracious Silence: Women in the Sixteenth Century
Shakespeare's Unruly Women
Women who Ruled: Queens, Goddesses, Amazons 1500-1650
A Woman's Work is Never Done

Crime, deviance, law
The Damned Art
Witchcraft, Demonology and Inquisition

Arts, literature, music
Jacob Cats' Emblem Book at Giornale Nuovo, via scribblingwoman
Impressions of Wenceslaus Hollar
Henry Purcell (also from scribblingwoman)
Musick of Sundrie Kindes
Early Modern French Literature
Tudor Poems

Umm... undecided, general
Tudor and Stuart Treasures and Exhibitions
Eighteenth-century Treasures and Exhibitions
Best of History Web Sites: Early Modern Europe

Early modern related blogs (or, 'Hey, that's my template!')

2004-07-02T22:07:00.000+01:00

To reciprocate on a link (thank you): Siris, a history/philosophy (slightly scary stuff) blog, whose author also runs Houyhnhnm Land, for early modern philosophy students.

Selling essays - with ethical standards

2004-07-02T19:14:00.000+01:00

It was irresistible, after yesterday's post about plagiarism. When I came to the blog this afternoon, the normally ignored Blogger ads at the top were for companies selling essays to students. What could I do but go and have a look?

This UK-based company is totally, utterly brazen. And clever. They take an investigative Sunday Times report into student cheating and turn it into an advert for their service (whilst complaining about the ' tabloidesque... sensationalism of the headline'). You might wonder how? Because the report demonstrates the quality of the essays provided, which is what students prepared to buy essays will care about.

And I hope you're sitting down before you read the next bit. "Welcome to the beginning of the advancement of educational standards in the UK. Welcome to the beginning of an academic revolution, and in short, welcome to knowledge." Yep, the world just turned upside down before your very eyes. In fact, the emphasis most of the time is rather more honest than that: "Our essays service allows you to get a whole lot closer to achieving that crucial 2:1 or 1st Degree, and that career and salary that you've always dreamed of."

And they've got moral standards, you know, unlike some of their competitors. They not only guarantee the marks, but also that the service is fully personalised, essays will never be re-used, and amendments will be made if requested. (But don't try asking for your money back if dissatisfied: they have a 'strict refund policy'. Legally, I'm not sure they can do that - but hell, what are you going to do about it if you're not happy with the essay? Take them to court?) And this may be the best bit of the lot: "The copyright in the all [sic] [the company's] work remains ours, under no circumstances is our work to be distributed or passed off as your own". Yep, they are serious. Go look at the FAQs page. "You must assure us that you will use [the essay] as an educational research tool only. The work remains our copyright and is not yours to hand in. It is there to inspire your final piece. If we believe any other motive exists for purchasing the work then we will not supply you." Those plagiarism and cheating FAQs are pure sophistry.* Read 'em and weep.

I've deliberately avoided giving the company's name (and any extra links) so as to minimise the possibility of adding further to their advertising; that may seem pointless, since any CHEATING BASTARD who happens on this page after a keyword search looking for places to buy essays can just follow the main link anyway. Ah well. But as academics, we need to know what people like this are up to, so I'll take that pretty small risk on the grounds that this is educational, OK?

* and covering of legal arses, of course.

What's the point of a PhD in history?

2004-07-02T09:52:00.000+01:00

A bit more from the British Academy report. This is concerned more broadly with arts, humanities and social science degrees, of course, but it may also be encouraging for all those students worried about what their history Phd might be any use for beyond the narrow confines of academia, and how they should 'sell' themselves to non-academic employers...

Benefits of an education in the arts, humanities and social sciences

The variety of subjects within the arts, humanities and social sciences means that different subjects will relate to employment in different ways. Graduates of subjects such as law, economics and business studies will often enter employment that has a clear and direct link to their subject of study. The starting salaries that these graduates can command are often high. For other subjects within the arts, humanities and social sciences, the link may be less direct and the transition from graduation to employment may be longer and more complex. But graduates with a non-occupation-specific degree are suitable for a wide variety of employment and are less pressurised to find work that exactly fits their training because they have skills that are applicable to a large number of different sectors. ...

Graduates in the arts, humanities and social sciences achieve leading roles in public life. History, for example, is the third most popular subject studied by the main board directors of the FTSE top 100 companies. Currently, seventeen of the twenty-one Cabinet Ministers hold degrees in subjects falling wholly within the arts, humanities and social sciences. Dr John Reid who has a PhD in History and is now Secretary of State for Health, formerly Northern Ireland Secretary, has been quoted as saying, when he was in Northern Ireland, that History presented a context and a perspective on one of the longest-running conflicts in European history – 'if you have some interest in the history of Ireland, it certainly helps you to appreciate why some of the present problems seem intractable to those on the outside'. ...

The UK economy is moving from one that is based in the industrial sector to one that is dominated by the service sector: in 2000, the traditional manufacturing and agricultural production occupations accounted for less than 15 per cent of all employment. Many of the most versatile people in the economy are coming from the arts, humanities and social sciences because the skills of analysis, research and presentation acquired by graduates in the arts, humanities and social sciences can be applied in a wide variety of nondiscipline-specific areas. ...

This is worth repeating, too: 'It has repeatedly been stressed that graduates have to be able to articulate their skills and aptitudes to employers. It has also been argued that academics in many subjects falling within the arts, humanities and social sciences are not always aware of the extent to which the skills that graduates gain whilst studying for their degree are valued by employers.' (Three qualities of graduates in English were appreciated by employers who took part in a recent study: 'persuasiveness, conceptual thinking and confidence'.) In other words, while you can turn to lecturers and supervisors for advice on many things, this may not be one of them. But in any case a PhD is supposed to foster independent thinking, right? Add that to versatility, skills in analysis, research and presentation, understanding of complexity and historical development (and other things I don't have time to think of because I have to go and do some work) ...

History research not just an indulgence

2004-07-01T23:01:00.000+01:00

I like to be reassured that the public money (ie a junior lecturer level salary for my post-doc fellowship) I'm getting for three years to do my pet research project is more than a wasteful indulgence. Report stresses importance of the arts: 'study and training in the arts, humanities and social sciences provide the high-level skills required to sustain an increasingly knowledge-based society and economy, at a relatively low cost'.

The report has been published by the British Academy*; see their press release. I quote:

This Review demonstrates that the arts, humanities and the social sciences provide high-level skills and ground-breaking research essential to a knowledge-based economy. It also shows how the cultural, intellectual and social well-being of the UK depends on the nurturing of these branches of knowledge. And not least it asserts their complementary function within the spectrum of intellectual discovery. Studying human beings as creative individuals and as social creatures is crucial not only in its own right but is also crucial to the study by natural scientists of human beings in terms of their biology and physical environment. The central point is not simply that every branch of knowledge makes an important contribution to the whole, but rather that no branch of knowledge contributes effectively unless the others are granted the same recognition.

Link to the full report in either HTML or PDF format. I think I'd better read this! (I'll maybe post a longer article about it later.)

The Guardian article also reminds us that one of the less publicised elements in the controversial Higher Education bill (voting today in the House of Commons) is to make the Arts and Humanities Research Board into a full Research Council (the AHRB and the Economic and Social Research Council are the main funders of history postgrads in the UK, for readers outside Britain). Does that mean they actually get any more money though?

*The nice people who gave me the fellowship and pay the aforementioned salary. (OK, so they're not exactly disinterested observers.)

The Ottomans website

2004-07-01T22:32:00.000+01:00

This is well worth a visit (plenty for early modernists).
Ottoman

Which reminds me: Why we have the Turks to thank for defeating the Armada

Plagiarism again

2004-06-30T21:20:00.000+01:00

The evidence is mounting that large numbers of UK students are plagiarising from the internet, and that Michael Gunn was merely an extreme example of a worrying trend. I had very little sympathy for Gunn, and still do. But I went on record somewhere to somebody's blog with the naive belief that he was a rarity. I was clearly wrong. Add this to the situation revealed in Mum, will you write my dissertation? (via PhD Weblogs), and it becomes clear that there are some out-and-out, deliberate cheats out there, but equally there are many students who are extremely fuzzy in their minds about what constitutes cheating in the first place.

You don't have to teach history undergrads for long to discover that some (certainly not all), no matter how many times you spell it out, do not understand footnoting. They do it, kind of, but badly and perfunctorily and without any discernible system for formatting the notes. And you strongly suspect that they've never read the departmental handbook - or any of the other booklets and handouts that we go to the trouble of preparing, either - where they might learn these things as well as seeing the bold-type page on plagiarism. They don't really care, they can't be bothered. They are the scraping-a-lower-second coasters; they have no real ambitions, they're just getting through their (increasingly expensive) three years because it's pretty much expected of middle-class kids rather than because they really want to be here. (And is it just me or are most of them male?)

Even if they know that it's wrong to buy other people's essays whole, or to copy chunks out of published history books, it does seem that students often think that cutting-and-pasting from the internet is somehow different. (Perhaps they just know that they're less likely to get caught.) Actually, I suspect that cut-and-paste isn't necessarily that easy an option; unless a student is lucky enough to find long chunks that match the set essay question, they have to select the right bits to cut and weave them together to make anything like a coherent discussion. (I do wonder if, rather than a wish to steal other people's ideas, is this sometimes in fact about stealing the writing itself, by students for whom the real difficulty is communicating on paper the perfectly good ideas that they have?)

The good thing is that according to the poll of students reported by The Guardian, 75 per cent said they had never cheated, and only 16 per cent had cheated more than once. It's more than a few rotten apples, but it could be a lot worse. As long as they were telling the truth, of course. Yet it does seem that if we're to get to the bottom of the causes of plagiarism we do need to get out there and ask students about it themselves. For some, it seems to have been a simple, practical matter of lack of time. And - guess what - the poll also found that boys were more likely to cheat than girls...

Anyway, we're going to have to get more sophisticated at catching internet plagiarism, that's for sure. (A three-day conference has just been taking place on precisely these issues.) We're also probably going to have to spell it out that this form of plagiarism is no different from any other. It shouldn't need saying, but there you go.

David Starkey pontificates

2004-06-30T10:28:00.000+01:00

A report in The Independent on a speech by David Starkey at the Prince of Wales' summer school a couple of days ago.

The cult of the celebrity historian is destructive to the way the subject is approached in schools, the historian and broadcaster Dr David Starkey told a teachers' conference yesterday.
There was too much concentration on "new'' theories of history, rather than a basic knowledge and understanding of the past, Dr Starkey said.

When you see 'celebrity historian', don't you think immediately of people like Starkey and Schama on TV? (I did anyway) And since when did that kind of TV history involve much 'theorising'? But the first line is just misleading: Starkey is not in fact complaining about that kind of history (which is a shame: I had the 'celebrity historian shoots himself in the foot' header lined up in my head), according to the rest of the article. He's criticising history education in schools for spending too much time on 'theories' - by which I think is meant historiography - and skills, rather than on 'factual content'. (I took a look at some GCSE History revision resources like these at the BBC and it didn't seem at all 'content indifferent' to me. Too heavily focused on the 20th century perhaps, but that's another matter.)

The report immediately goes on to an example of a recent AS-Level question that he thinks 'insane': "discuss the role of Archbishop Cranmer in the formation of religious policy between 1534 and 1540".

Dr Starkey said: "I'd love to have seen the examiner's notes as to what was the right answer to the question, because there are only two people in the country who can answer that question, and one of them is standing here."

'The right answer'? If Starkey doesn't know that there is no 'right answer' to a question that begins 'discuss', we should probably be glad that he's no longer teaching university students. Now maybe that question is rather narrow in focus, but given how much has been written on the English Reformation over the years, it's probably perfectly doable.* If at least two historians (and what about historians in other countries?) have published on it, you certainly have a starting point for a discussion. But there's the problem for Starkey, isn't it? I can't help wondering if his ego is a little uncomfortable with the idea of mere A-level students criticising his work. The trouble is precisely that 'discuss' word. His whole point is that school students should not be discussing the ideas of historians, they should be acquiring facts (whatever those are: the thousands of published words on the question of what is a 'historical fact' strongly suggest that it ain't that simple).

"One of the reasons we have lost the debate is we stopped teaching the history of our nation and of our own culture properly," he said. "I'm not calling for 'our island story' and tub-thumping accounts of the British Empire, but we need to have a sense of history's importance and also that it can be fun."

Have we lost the debate? (Umm... Which debate?) (This is like Schama telling us that boring historians are turning people off history when the bookshops are full of both popular and serious history and sales are through the roof.) And then... why do we need to study British history a) to get history's 'importance' and b) for it to be 'fun'? Don't get me wrong: I'm a British historian by trade. I don't think it's of no importance. But there's a whole world out there, and I fail to see how anyone understands the significance of history properly if they only really know the history of one country. Besides, we learn our own national histories (however badly) all the time, through the news, from the people we mix with. You can't avoid it. It's much harder to learn other countries' histories that way.

The only reason to focus heavily on British history in British schools is if we're going to subject the 'bad' history, the myths, the easy but dodgy stuff that we learn out on the street to serious, sustained criticism: to make us better-informed, questioning citizens. But that's precisely what it seems Starkey doesn't want taught. He doesn't want children in schools taught the critical skills that are the whole point of discussing and evaluating sources - whether they be secondary or primary sources (Starkey doesn't even mention - or isn't reported as mentioning - what I think is one of the best trends in recent history education, the turn to using primary source material far more than was ever done when I was at school). Skills that have far wider application than studying history (or utilitarian employment uses).

'He told the teachers: "It is not your job to reflect the latest little bit of academic fashion."' Historians all go 'out of fashion'. Even David Starkey (although, by implication, he apparently thinks G R Elton is still in fashion. Hmm). But that's such a superficial way to express it. Historians don't just go out of fashion like clothes; their ideas are tested against evidence, debated, revised, superseded, because history is much more about the contestable 'why' and 'how' than the relatively easily verifiable 'what' and 'when'. 'Content' cannot be so easily separated from the historians who communicate it, any more than the past can be neatly and safely separated from the perspectives and priorities and hangups of those who study it.

My view is fairly simple: you cannot study 'content' properly if you don't learn the skills and tools with which to do it. But learning 'skills' and 'theories' divorced from context and content is useless. (I've become a little concerned about stand-alone historiography courses - students all too often seem to finish with no idea of what relevance all that boring stuff about dead historians has for the rest of the degree.) And this isn't something to be reserved for university level study. Why shouldn't teenagers get their teeth into Dr David Starkey?

Still, you can't help kinda liking the guy: An interview with Dr Rude.

* I would be concerned if the entire exam consisted of narrow-topic questions like this. I hope not.

Never satisfied

2004-06-29T23:41:00.000+01:00

An interesting day in the archives today: rebels in and around Chester in the early years of the Civil Wars. I'm working in the Public Record Office (still stubbornly refusing to think of it as 'The National Archives'), going through seventeenth-century Cheshire court records. I've been bored lately because the gaol files have few of the depositions (witness statements) that I most enjoy working with; now I've got a huge box of them to work through and I'm feeling completely overwhelmed! Never satisfied, eh?

I'm staying at home to work tomorrow. I don't think I can face travelling there during the Tube strike (it's going to be a nightmare on the buses and the few overground trains that run from Richmond to Kew), so I'll have a go at working on thesis revisions for the book submission, which I want done by Christmas at the very latest. (I WILL NOT SPEND ALL DAY BLOGGING repeat I WILL NOT SPEND ALL DAY BLOGGING.) And maybe that 'Cultures of violence' conference proposal. And although I WILL NOT SPEND ALL DAY BLOGGING I'll post something here, no doubt.

St Winifred's still going strong

2004-06-29T22:14:00.000+01:00

Nowadays, a pilgrimage to St Winifred's Well at Holywell, Flintshire, is a curiosity to be reported indulgently by the BBC. In the seventeenth century, it was a much more serious, political, matter. Flintshire was, by the Restoration if not much earlier, one of the few Welsh counties with significant numbers of Catholic 'recusants' (the other main centre was Monmouthshire), and moreover the well attracted many Catholic pilgrims.

It's a wonder the well was never shut down (especially as, apparently, the Gunpowder Plotters went there); it's not that far from the English border and hardly in what you'd call remote moorlands. It did have some powerful patrons at various points. Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother, was its most important late 15th-century patron. Two centuries later, James II and his second wife made a pilgrimage in 1687, hoping for the saint's intervention to give them an heir. And we know the trouble that led to in 1688.* The well was ransacked by anti-catholic rioters after the Revolution, but was going strong again in the eighteenth century - more as a bathing 'spa' than a site of religious pilgrimage.

The Cistercian Way: Holywell
St Winefride's Well

The BBC recounts the well-known legend: a local chieftain beheaded the maiden Winefride after she rejected him. A spring rose from the point where her head fell (before it was miraculously restored to its owner's neck, which the BBC doesn't mention). And "the stones surrounding the fountain were stained forever with her blood, and the blood falling in the water coloured also the moss that grows there and which has the perfume of frankincense, though some say of violets." The BBC also doesn't go on to mention the story Celia Fiennes told about the moss, the locals and the pilgrims:

I saw abundance of the devout papists on their knees all round the well; poor people are deluded into an ignorant blind zeal and to be pitied by us that have the advantage of knowing better and ought to be better. There is some small stones of a reddish colour in the well said to be some of St Winifred's blood also, which the poor people take out and bring to the strangers for curiosity and relicts, and also moss about the banks full of great virtue for every thing - but its a certain game ['gaine' in my text] to the poor people, every one gives them something for bringing them moss and the stones.

This online extract doesn't add the postscript (and I don't have my notes here to quote it, unfortunately): Celia notes that she was told that the local poor didn't simply go down into the well to fetch moss for the pilgrims: at night they took moss taken from elsewhere and stuck it onto the sides of the well in order to meet demand!

BTW, if Winifred sounds familiar to crime fiction readers, she is the same saint who is so dear to Cadfael in Ellis Peters' A morbid taste for bones.

*For anyone reading this who doesn't know much seventeenth-century history, it was the birth of a male heir and hence the prospect of a Catholic succession that sparked off the 'Glorious Revolution'. This heir was James, 'The Old Pretender'.)

Early modern book reviews

2004-06-28T17:34:00.000+01:00

Recent H-Net reviews of books (English language) relating to the early modern period.

Essex pauper letters, 1731-1837
The evolution of the English churches, 1500-2000
German secular song-books of the mid-seventeenth century
Glimpses of glory: John Bunyan and English dissent
The ingenious Henry Care, Restoration publicist and The Restoration: England in the 1660s
Judaism and Enlightenment
Military governors and imperial frontiers, c.1600-1800: a study of Scotland and empires
Nobody's perfect: a new whig interpretation of history
Pamphlets and pamphleteering in early modern Britain
Queen Elizabeth I
Reading, society and politics in early modern England
The trials of Phyllis Wheatley: America's first black poet and her encounters with the founding fathers
A woman's kingdom: noble women and the control of property in Russia, 1700-1861
The age of Elizabeth in the age of Johnson
The Cambridge history of the book in Britain, 1557-1695
Crime, gender and social order in early modern England
Three books on George III and Georgian politics
Families and frontiers: recreating communities and boundaries in the early modern Burgundies
Puritan iconoclasm during the English civil war
The Cromwellian protectorate

Essay competition, Local History of England and Wales

2004-06-28T17:14:00.000+01:00

Early modernists may be interested in the following:

The John Nichols Prize is awarded annually by the University of Leicester through its Centre for English Local History for an essay on any aspect of the local history of England and Wales.

Essays must be submitted on or before 31 December. They must be typewritten, on one side of the paper only, with double spacing for the text, and single or double spacing for the footnotes. They must not exceed 20,000 words in length, excluding footnotes. References should be given as footnotes at the foot of the page and in a style recognized in Humanities publications (not Harvard and not endnotes). Unrevised dissertations may be submitted provided that they have been awarded a distinction by a Higher Education institution (HEI). Ph.D./D.Phil dissertation and thesis chapters may be submitted provided the chapter also elucidates the general context and importance for research into the local history of England and Wales.

Essays should be sent to: John Nichols Prize, Centre for English Local History, University of Leicester, Marc Fitch Historical Institute, 5 Salisbury Road, Leicester, LE1 7QR. A stamped addressed envelope should accompany the typescript for return.

Informal enquiries made be made to: pot@le.ac.uk

On 'history' and 'fiction' and 'literature'

2004-06-27T21:30:00.000+01:00

The Little Professor discusses the conventions of historical non-fiction and fiction (also posted at Cliopatria), sparked off by a letter by one Ken McGoogan (via a link at scribblingwoman), defending his book, Ancient Mariner: The Arctic Adventures of Samuel Hearne, and his methodology, following two highly critical reviews in The Arctic Review. (The reviewers were, it seems, particularly hostile to his habit of inventing passages of dialogue between his subjects.)

Anyway, McGoogan enthusiastically joins the ranks of those who blithely and crudely misrepresent current and recent historiography: 'One can't help wondering what would happen if superlative historians like Glyn Williams stopped pretending that they practice science and accepted that they write literature. Maybe history would begin to regain its audience?' 'The writer of historical fiction, I believe, has taken out a license to change dates, names and venues, and to invent, combine or kill off characters, whatever; the writer of historical nonfiction, on the other hand, must work within the known facts, changing and ignoring none of them. I take the position that, having assimilated the relevant journals, letters, biographies and histories, the non-fiction writer can then use imagination and craft to bridge gaps in the record.'

As the Little Professor comments, in what parallel universe does history need to 'regain its audience'? Popular histories have a huge readership (and quite scholarly ones sometimes cross over and sell well too), and although sometimes we academic specialists complain about them for being too broad-brush, insufficiently sceptical about sources, and so on, they do nonetheless adhere to certain 'rules' of evidence, without which writing, as she says, simply cannot be classed as 'history'.

Secondly, the characterisations of historical nonfiction vs. fiction are frankly absurd, crude and inaccurate polarisations. As a historian, I cannot simply write what I like, but I do not accept that abiding by the constraints of the sources entails dull writing and prevents all imaginative creativity. Any more than fiction is inevitably creative, interesting writing... The Little Professor also makes telling points about historical novels. Their writers are more bounded by 'fact' than we tend to realise; the best historical fiction is backed by serious research and is careful about what it does with 'real' historical actors. Here's a question: should we be asking more searching questions about the relationship between 'literature' and 'fiction', as well as that between 'literature' and 'history'? Good writers transcend the constraints of whatever genre (or discipline, or field) they work in; poor writers drag their genre down with them.

McGoogan's letter at the points quoted in fact reads like a certain kind of slightly pompous/naive undergraduate who has yet to encounter the slipperiness and ambiguity of real primary sources, the spaces (including the literal gaps) that they allow for imaginative (yet critical) interpretation. (Historical novelists use those gaps in exactly the same way as historians, even if they can get away with rather more invention and less criticism.) Possible doubts about his familiarity with primary source materials - and in particular, sources for early modern history - are heightened by a further justification of his technique in this book compared to a previous one. That, he says, came 'out of the well-documented nineteenth century, Ancient Mariner derives from the far sketchier eighteenth. Inevitably, the gaps are greater.'

Well, it is virtually a historical law that the nearer you get to the present the more source material there is available, even to the point of overload. David Starkey told the Guardian in an interview that 'he is fascinated by the Tudors because it is the first period that is suficiently well-documented to be revealing for a historian, but not so well-documented that it becomes a Sisyphean task'. Eighteenth-century historians have more, and more varied, sources than Tudor historians. Sketchy? Hmm. Certainly (unless McGoogan's field is highly unusual) not so sketchy that one is forced to resort to invention in order to have anything interesting to say. That's just cheating, bloody laziness.

I can only finish by concurring with the editor's tart response to McGoogan: 'We wish to clarify that we are certainly cognizant of the ways in which fact and fiction overlap, an ambiguity often further cloaked in the mists of incomplete records or conflicting testimony. What we object to is fiction that represents itself as fact to the reader -- who... deserves better.'

(By the way, I may be one of the few people who quite liked Simon Schama's Dead Certainties, which was also criticised for departing from the 'rules'. But Schama was honest about what he was doing, and it made for an intriguing, thought-provoking experiment.)

Web Review: Tyburn Tree

2004-06-27T15:05:00.000+01:00

Tyburn Tree: Public Execution in Early Modern England
http://www.unc.edu/~charliem/index.htm

(Created by Zachary Lesser of Columbia University in October 1995; expanded and maintained by Charlie Mitchell, Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)

Tyburn Tree is a fine and deservedly popular online resource. It covers a range of executions - from high-profile political beheadings, burnings, to the hangings of felons. It's divided into five main sections at the front page: Background and Documents, Dying Speeches, Pictures, Bibliography, Links to Other Sites.

Tyburn Tree is a remarkably plain and simple site in these high-tech days, which means that it's simple to access and quick to load. Still, a more distinct style - if only to give the site a clear identity – might not go amiss. More seriously, it could be more clearly organised and signposted. In particular, the front page gives no clues to the diversity of the 'Background and Documents' section, which is a mixture of primary and secondary sources of different types, with both internal and (slightly confusingly, given the 'Links to Other Sites' page) external links, on several topics. The bibliography is also extensive and varied; and there is also a very useful glossary of terms. However, a substantial number of the external links on several pages are broken.

The site's own material is generally excellent, perhaps especially its pages on the locations of executions, and the standard of transcribed material seems good – as far as it goes. There are distinct limitations to the content. Firstly, it isn’t really about executions in early modern England, as its title claims, but in London (although this emphasis is acknowledged in the about page). This risks giving the impression that the London experience was representative of the country as a whole, which is problematic to say the least. The capital city is the most fertile source of information about capital punishment, especially if one is dependent on printed sources. In terms of numbers, London was quite simply the foremost site of executions of all kinds in England and Wales, not least but not only high-profile political ones. (There has been to my knowledge no systematic comparative study of the use of capital punishment relative to population across the country, but even given its size, it's quite possible that London was exceptional.) Might greater familiarity with executions and their sheer scale have meant that execution had different social and cultural significances for Londoners?

It feels rather unfair to say that my first main criticism of Tyburn Tree is that it leaves me wanting more. Charlie Mitchell comments in an interview that he wanted to balance the disproportionate attention paid to the eighteenth century with more information on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the site indeed does this. But London is not England, and it would be equally useful to see more about the provinces to redress the similarly excessive focus on the capital by many writers. Secondly, judging by the broken links (and absence of any links to recent essential resources such as The Old Bailey Proceedings), little has been done to the site in some time. And, finally, it really does need a proper site map and/or (at the very least) a slightly more informative front page.

The Week in Early Modern History: 21-27 June 1604

2004-06-27T10:21:00.000+01:00

The first (hopefully) in a regular series. What was happening 400 years ago, according to Google? With some further links to put events in context.

GOVERNMENT
London, England: Parliament has been concerned with, among other things, the removal of benefit of clergy from certain types of manslaughter; ‘popery’ and recusancy; ‘abuses’ in buying and selling fish; poaching of deer; ‘deceits’ in clothing; the plague; swearing and blasphemy.
See also:
The 'Stabbing Act' removed benefit of clergy from cases of manslaughter by stabbing
Anti-catholicism: Parliamentary statutes and religious persecution; Persecution and toleration in Protestant England (book review)
Clothing: status and regulation; morality and fashion

WAR
Ostend, Netherlands: The three-year siege of Ostend, during the eighty-years of war for the Netherlands' independence from Spain, is at its height. It began in July 1601; the town did not surrender until September 1604.
See also: Dutch Declaration of Independence, 1581; The Dutch Revolt (multi-lingual)

BIRTHS & DEATHS
24 June, Gloucestershire, England: baptism of Thomas Kimberley, son of Abraham and Katherine. Thomas emigrated to New England sometime between 1628 and the mid 1630s, to become one of the original founders of New Haven, Connecticut.
See also: Emigrants and settlers; Original constitution of New Haven, 1639

24 June, London: death of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (possibly of the plague, poor sod). Some argue that this is the man who really wrote the works of 'Shakespeare'. Others use the date of his death as evidence that he did not (since there are works dated after this). Some wonder if it really matters.
And see:
Just one of the many, many web pages discussing the topic
Burial of the plague dead in early modern London

26 June, Scotland: Robert Weir was broken on the wheel for his part in the murder of John Kincaid of Warriston four years earlier (John's wife Lady Jean Kincaid and other accomplices had been executed, variously by beheading and burning, in July 1600).
See also: Execution by breaking on the wheel. Not for the squeamish. Breaking on the wheel was not used in early modern England and Wales, and was probably rare in Scotland; it's associated more with mainland Europe.

27 June, Surrey, south-east England: John Gardner has been completing his task as executor of his brother Raphe’s estate (the will is proved today).
See also: Probate records in England and Wales; Early Modern Death

THE NEW WORLD
c. 26-7 June, New France: French explorers found a (short-lived) settlement at St Croix Island (on the US/Canada border today) – the first French, and one of the earliest European, settlements in north America.
See also: There are many Canadian web pages at the moment celebrating these events. Try this one; or this, on the more long-lasting founding of Port Royal the following year.

Brian Manning

2004-06-26T17:57:00.000+01:00

Brian Manning, civil wars historian, has died. He was 76, a mere stripling compared to Christopher Hill. Another one I'll never get to meet or hear speaking (after E P Thompson, Gwyn Alf Williams, Jack Plumb, Peter Laslett, Roy Porter, Hill...).

Stonehenge i Gymru!

2004-06-25T23:28:00.000+01:00

I think the archdruid of Wales may have his tongue in his cheek here...

Archdruid wants Stonehenge back

What I wondered is, how can they tell from the teeth that these people were 'Welsh'? Traces of bara brith?

Early Modern MA courses in UK universities

2004-06-24T21:58:00.000+01:00

It's that time of year again: newly-fledged graduates are considering whether to take the plunge into taking post-grad courses - whether because they've been enthused by inspirational teachers, are putting off finding a 'real' job, or even think the 'real' job for them might just lie in academia - and there's an ever growing range of early modern options. Here's a list (in no particular order) for you, or anyone you know who's that way inclined. I'm sure it's not complete, of course.

MA in Early Modern History, Sussex University. Core courses include 'Society and Culture' and 'Literature, Politics and Religion'; options include 'Heretics, witches and jews'; 'France under Louis XIV'; 'The Atlantic World'. There is also a Early Modern Literature and Culture MA based in the English department.

MA in Early Modern History, Kings College London. The core course is 'Approaches to early modern history'; options include 'Composite monarchies and consensual states'; 'Ritual in early modern society'; 'The body and society'.

MA in Comparative History of Early Modern European Societies, Birkbeck University of London. Core: 'Themes in Early Modern History'; options including 'Early Modern London'; 'Death, Disease and the Early Modern City'; 'Power and Communication from the Reformation to the Enlightenment'.

MA in Medieval and Early Modern History, University of Bristol. Core: 'Themes and Problems in Medieval and Early Modern History'. Most of its early modern content focuses on the period to about 1600, eg: 'The English Reformation'; 'The first globalisation, 1400-1600'; 'The decline and fall of the GAelic World: Ireland and Scotland, 1300-1600'.

MA in British and European Cultural and Political History c.1400-1800, Manchester University. The core is 'Issues and debates in early modern history'; options include 'First Century of Spanish America'; 'Church, society and religion in seventeenth-century France'; 'People, work and wealth in English towns'.

MA in Early Modern History, University of East Anglia. Core courses include 'Authority and ideology in early modern England', 'Society and culture in early modern England'; options, 'Political cultures of eighteenth-century Britain', 'Colonial America', 'Landscape history'.

Interdisciplinary MA, Texts in History, 1500-1750, Reading University. Core courses focus on 'history and literature'; options include 'Riot, rebellion and popular protest'; 'Mid-tudor political narratives'; 'The early modern midwife'.

MA in Early Modern History, University of York. Focus on 'social and cultural' history; options include 'The radical reformation in Germany'; 'From the body beautiful to the body politic'; 'The politics of the parish'.

MA in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe, Royal Holloway, University of London. There is a core course on methodology, theory and skills; again ranges over medieval and early modern, options include 'The material culture of domestic life'; 'The body in culture/society'; 'Eighteenth-century women'.

MA in Seventeenth-century Studies, University of Durham seventeenth-century studies centre.

The Centre for 18th-century Studies at York runs several interdisciplinary MA courses, mainly on the period 1750-1850.

Think and look around carefully. Even if you're certain that you want to do early modern, you don't necessarily have to do a dedicated early modern history course. I didn't (my MA was in Women's and Gender History at York, which gave plenty of opportunities to do early modern subjects). It can be healthy to do something else from time to time! Apart from courses designated as 'early modern', there are many more 'general' Masters courses that include early modern 'pathways' or substantial early modern components. For example:
University of Durham
University of Sheffield
University of Wales Aberystwyth
Or, as with the different options at Sussex, there are plenty of early modern Literature courses in English departments - worth thinking about if you have strong interests in that direction. The Guardian online provides a very good postgraduate course search facility.

It's worth making sure that the course includes strong research training and preferably auxiliary skills training too (languages especially Latin, palaeography, computing skills). A dissertation, which may be up to 20,000 words long, is a key part of all Masters courses. And if you're planning to go on to a PhD, it will be essential preparation. Visit the department and the location if you possibly can. Find out from other students what the prospectus doesn't tell you, not least about IT and library facilities. And research resources for that all-important dissertation.

Bear in mind, if you're thinking about it for this year, that you've missed the competitions of the two governmental funding bodies in this area, the AHRB and ESRC. There may still be university and departmental opportunities, however. And I'm sure these courses will still be around next year.

Schama's favourite history before he had a TV series to plug

2004-06-24T09:33:00.000+01:00

I came across this list of Simon Schama's Top 10 popular history books. It's 2-3 years old (just after Rembrandt's Eyes, no mention of History of Britain), and in the light of his more recent pronouncements, interesting both for what it includes and what it doesn't. Gibbon is there, 'for the jokes and the fantastic footnotes' (yep, footnotes) and so is Carlyle, though only at no. 8 - but where's Macaulay? And the historian at the top spot, Richard Cobb, didn't get much of a look in when Schama was telling us who we should emulate in our history writing, did he? Also here is Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World and one of my all-time favourites, Carlo Ginzberg's Cheese and the Worms (that book turned me on to early modern history as a first-year undergrad).

This list, in fact, sums up my bemusement at Schama's statements this year, which seemed to me to contradict his own history as a wide-ranging historian ready to experiment with subject and form: he appeared to want us to narrow our options (in both respects). It didn't make too much sense unless you saw it as a fairly cynical exercise in plugging his new TV series (which I didn't find very interesting, despite the talents of the actors recruited to read the extracts; I wonder if it would have worked better on the radio), or a kind of defensive reaction to the criticisms of the History of Britain series for being old-fashioned.

This older list tells a rather different story, one in which diversity, the old and the new, different kinds of history (including the highly scholarly, if not the quantitative brand) and 'story' telling, are celebrated. Perhaps Simon ought to go back and read it himself.

CFP: 'Milestones' conference/cynhadledd ryngwladol 'Cerrig Milltir', 2005

2004-06-24T08:57:00.000+01:00

For researchers on Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and other Celtic countries and peoples - come to Aberystywth in summer 2005!

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth is holding an international conference 'for scholars to discuss significant junctures in the development of the archaeology, histories, languages, literatures and national identity of Wales and the other Celtic countries in any period', 28 June-5 July 2005. The conference will host sessions in English and Welsh, with a translation service for Welsh-language plenary sessions.

Send 250-word abstracts of papers to Professor Geraint H. Jenkins, Director, University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3HH or by e-mail to gcj@aber.ac.uk by 16 December 2004.

See the CFP in Welsh and English.

Now, about this blog

2004-06-23T09:08:00.000+01:00

Now that I'm settling in to the whole blogging thing, this seems a good moment to review what this blog is likely to be used for. As I wrote at the beginning, of course, there will be postings of newly-found resources that have not yet found their way on to Early Modern Resources, and news about the site itself. But there's much more that hadn't occurred to me at that point.

In particular, this is a good place for news-type items that are not suitable for a 'static' website like Early Modern Resources, which can only be updated periodically (due to inevitable constraints on time). So I hope to include regular posts about:

*Conferences, CFPs and other events of interest to early modernists
*Job opportunities, especially for new and recent PhDs
*New publications that have caught my eye
*News stories

And similar things, as and when. Some of these will be - certainly for the time being - very much orientated to early modernists in the UK. What with sites like H-Net and HNN, I think those of you in North America are already much better served in this respect anyway, so if I expand on geographical coverage at all, it will likely be first towards Europe and elsewhere. But it certainly won't only be for Brits.

This is also a handy place to do short pieces of essay-writing, without the need for extensive research, referencing and so on that's usually needed even when I write for Early Modern Resources, let alone 'traditional' publishing. (With the proviso that all such writing should be treated as highly provisional, speculative and correctable, of course.)

Similarly, I may let off steam from time to time. I have no wish for this blog to be highly politicised, and I will not talk at length about Iraq, Bush and Blair any more than I'll be sharing lots of personal detail. But there are plenty of current issues that exercise me, not least when it comes to higher education and the use and abuse of history.

Finally, I like varied blogs and although this is primarily for early modern related topics, you will also see other subjects cropping up, reflecting my particular, um, obsessions. As readers may have noticed, I'm deeply interested in Wales and the Welsh language. I make no apologies for my fascination with this tiny corner of the planet. I'm an English migrant to Wales, with many friends from the so-called Celtic 'periphery', and this all feeds into my wider interest in British identities. Also there are my bad reading habits to consider: crime fiction, historical novels, even some occasional 'literature' (but I am a bit of a philistine. No Joyce here, sorry. Mind you, no JK Rowlings either. Give me Philip Pullman any day). And after that, we'll see.

Renaissance weblog

2004-06-22T22:19:00.000+01:00

Claire at 17th century has alerted me to a cool and gorgeous Renaissance weblog. Unfortunately, its author is pretty much away for the summer (working hard in those archives?). But it makes the autumn look worth waiting for.

If anybody knows of any more early modern related (c.1450-1800) blogs on any topic, let me (and Claire!) know.

Learning Welsh in the sixteenth century

2004-06-22T18:24:00.000+01:00

I got round to reading some of William Salesbury's A briefe and a playne introduction, teaching how to pronounce the letters in the British tong... today. Rather different to Welsh pronunciation guides (this one has audio files with examples) for all us suffering Welsh learners today. I'm not at all sure that 'playne' is the right word.

The introductory note 'to the reader' was a fascinating read. Here the author, William Salesbury, sets out the reasons he wrote the book. (I've changed 'u' to 'v' where appropriate and silently expanded some contractions, but otherwise the spelling is unchanged, barring any typos I might have missed.) After he had compiled 'a little Dictionarye [1547] for the use and behove of my contry men', he says,

there came came certayne persons unto me, whereof some where Englysh marchers bordering upon Wales: and some not skilled in the Walshe tonge, nevertheles havyng good and honeste occasions, eyther for their promotions and lyvynges, eyther els for trade of marchaudice and other their affayres to be conversante in the sayd contrye of Wales...

And some other were such Walshmen that had been brought up from their yoth and tender age, oute of the precincte of their native contrye, who thoughte it reproch to be utterly ignoraunt in their mother tong, having a mind also to come to some knowledge therin, wherby they myght ye rather (semyng lesse straung) renewe frendshyp and familiaritie with their contrye folke and frendes...

Nowe the other some, were such Englishe men as had not so urgente a cause, nor so earnest an occasion to travell in thys behalfe, but yet were they so fervent... as they (whom I spake of before) whom the Grekes with one propre terme cal Philoglottous, whose gentle herted disposition is alwaies addicte, bente, & geven to be sene in al languages, but speciallye of their owne felow subiectes and contrey menne, thoughe they purchase thereby but small gaynes, lucre, or wynnyng, which thynges be the honied swete baytes of the avaricious beastly misers, and contrarywyse the defiaunce of all liberal and noble stomakes. ...

They asked Salesbury 'whether the pronounciation of the letters in Walshe, dyd dyffer from the Englyshe soundynge of them? And I sayde verye muche.' (I'll say.) And so they asked if he would write a short guide setting out 'a fewe englishe rules' for Welsh pronunciation. To which he agreed, for 'the encrease of mutuall amitie and brotherly love, and continuall frendshyppe, and some commoditie at the leaste wise, to suche as be desierous to be occupied thereaboutes.'

In practical terms, particularly relevant in considering the first group, it's worth commenting that this follows shortly after the 'Acts of Union' (1536-43). That legislation (among other things) uniformly replaced most of the final vestiges of Welsh native law with English law, established the Courts of Great Sessions and boosted the influence and business of the Council in the Marches of Wales, based at Ludlow - which between them would have meant many new opportunities for clerks, administrators and lawyers, who might well want some way of communicating with the largely Welsh-speaking population without always having to rely on interpreters. Businessmen, too, might have seen new opportunities across the Welsh border if the legislation was successful in one of its primary aims, reducing Welsh lawlessness and disorder.

But there's clearly more to it for Salesbury, a true Renaissance man, than that. I'm intrigued about those Welsh exiles, for a start. Were they perhaps the children of Welsh emigrants to London and other English cities (and it's interesting that they remained attached to their 'roots')? The 'London Welsh' certainly already existed. Or could they even have been from Protestant families who went into exile to avoid persecution under Henry VIII, now returning following the succession of the far more enthusiastically Protestant Edward VI?

And then there's Salesbury's final group: Englishmen (any women, one wonders?) who were eager to learn for the love of learning and to increase 'mutuall amitie and brotherly love' with their Welsh neighbours; clearly, a truly noble enterprise. Salesbury was far from being the only highly educated and intelligent, polyglot Welshman in mid-Tudor England (another well known case is John Dee). The Cecils remained interested in their Welsh origins; even the Tudors did on occasion (usually when it suited them politically, it has to be said). Did men like Salesbury help to stimulate English interest in Welsh literary culture and the language? Shakespeare was certainly interested in the ancient 'British' (ie, Welsh) past. It would be fascinating to know whether any of Salesbury's would-be Welsh learners were successful in their quest... and whether anyone ever used his little
book effectively (it does seem to depend on knowing several classical languages before you even begin, which might further suggest that it was his third, already deeply learned, group for whom it was primarily intended. His translation of the New Testament was also aimed at a scholarly audience).

William Salesbury is primarily celebrated in Wales for his part in the Tudor 'Welsh Renaissance' and his contribution to Welsh language and literary culture: for his dictionary, for his pioneering Welsh translation of the New Testament (1567) and Prayer Book (1567). Quite right, too. All of these are indeed major achievements. But I'm beginning to wonder if he should also be celebrated as a pioneer in Welsh language teaching for adults, who did not merely champion his language amongst his own people, but also strove to give it wider currency (not least by harnessing the power of print) and to aid those who wished (even for 'lucre'!) to learn it.

Job Opportunities for Early Modernists

2004-06-22T10:33:00.000+01:00

Jobs.ac.uk is advertising some posts in the UK for early modernists

Lecturer, early modern/medieval, University of Wales, Bangor (one year)

Post-doctoral Research Assistant, Glasgow Emblem Digitisation Project, Glasgow (three years)

Lecturer, British Imperial and/or World history 1600-1850, Leicester (3 years)

Lecturer, Early Modern Archaeology, Sheffield (seems to be permanent?)

Five-year Post-doctoral Research Fellowships, All Souls College, Oxford

All these posts are suitable for recent or nearly-there PhDs. There might be other posts that my rapid survey missed - and new ads appear on jobs.ac.uk all the time.

Language learning in Britain

2004-06-22T09:38:00.000+01:00

From the BBC: the man in charge of reviewing the national curriculum for 14-19 year olds wants foreign languages to have a much higher profile in British education. Mike Tomlinson says that 'when it comes to learning languages the British are "barbarians".' Can't really argue with that. And his emphasis seems to be on language learning for practical use rather than passing exams. Of course, the question is where this would be fitted into an already jam-packed curriculum which is largely orientated to passing exams. (Tomlinson also wants a move away from that, it seems.)

I don't know whether things are at all different here in west Wales where a second, 'foreign' language (foreign to most Brits, that is to say) is regularly spoken, bilingualism is common, and there are several Welsh-medium schools. Does that social and educational context create a different attitude to the importance of other languages? I'm not sure that those who are brought up bilingual from birth necessarily find learning new languages later in life any easier than us monoglots (I have some extremely limited anecdotal evidence to suggest not: ie, the occasional conversation in pubs), but increasing numbers of non-Welsh speaking parents are sending their kids to Welsh schools, and I wonder if being made to learn AND, more importantly, daily use a second language at 5+ might give advantages for ease of further language learning later on.

All I know is that my school O'level French is lamentable, ditto German almost non-existent, and learning Welsh is one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. (I can read some Latin for research purposes, but it's extremely limited.)

But as long as English remains such a global force, will we monoglot Brits ever become less barbaric? What real incentives are there to improve?

Caxton, Shakespeare and more

2004-06-22T09:24:00.000+01:00

From scribblingwoman, some cool Caxton and Shakespeare links, as well as some on children's literature.

A little boy did it and ran away*

2004-06-21T21:26:00.000+01:00

The Guardian reports on research suggesting that the numbers executed by the Inquisition were far lower than its bloody image has led us to believe - perhaps only 1% of those tried. Actually, I can believe that. Careful research into the use of capital punishment in early modern England and Wales over the last 30 years has shown that the 'Bloody Code' was less bloody than its image too, what with the extensive use of pardons and other legal loopholes, juries' discretionary verdicts and so on. But I thought this part of the researchers' apologia was a bit rich:

"Other experts told journalists at the Vatican yesterday that many of the thousands of executions conventionally attributed to the church were in fact carried out by non-church tribunals.

"What the church initiated as a strictly regulated process, in which torture was allowed for only 15 minutes and in the presence of a doctor, got out of hand when other bodies were involved."

Do they really think that blaming others, little people, lets the Church off the hook? This was still done under the auspices, the authority, and the legitimising influence, of the Inquisition. (I will not say anything about modern parallels re torture. You can work those out for yourselves.)

*One for Scottish readers and Christopher Brookmyre fans...

Gotta learn to walk before you run...

2004-06-21T10:08:00.000+01:00

This is shocking. I've only just got this blog running, I still don't know what I'm doing half the time, and I'm already thinking, well, Blogger's nice'n all, but it's a bit basic, isn't it? I feel like the kid in the sweet shop wandering round other people's much more sophisticated blogs... I want bells and whistles! (in a sweet shop? Watch those mixed metaphors.) Unless there's a lot more stuff Blogger can do that I haven't found out about yet.

This is a bad habit of mine with computers and especially things online. I'm a great one for getting enthused about some new toy and rushing in without reading the instructions properly, which would have told me (a) HOW TO DO IT (and particularly, how not to get stuck half-way through) or (b) YOU CAN'T DO IT, at least without also acquiring several other bits of software (or even hardware...). Result: it takes several times as long as it should have done (and if I'd realised how much hassle was involved I might not have bothered at all).

Thus, for example, it took two goes to get myself a good free HTML editor on download.com, simply because I didn't properly read the information on the first one which would have told me that it wasn't going to be able to do the job I needed. I now have HTML-Kit, by the way, which is great. Mind you, I haven't a clue what half of that's for either. But isn't that often the way online? Either far too basic or so complicated that only the truly dedicated really understand what's going on?

Early Modern Links

2004-06-20T17:26:00.000+01:00

Dynamic Directory: Eighteenth Century
Transatlantica (journal), special issue on the early American Republic (French & English)
Qing China (1644-1911) bibliography
Country House Database
18th century Costume Terminology
Flowers Underfoot: Indian Carpets of the Mughal Era
The Edible Monument: the art of food for festivals
Early Modern Thought
"He who destroyes a good book, kills reason it selfe"
Latitude: 15th-century navigation
Presbyterianism, Politics and Lunacy, a recent paper in the Winthrop Papers Electronic Seminar Series
Franklin and his Friends: portraying the man of science in eighteenth-century America (if it's not immediately obvious, you click on the image to enter the site)
Golden Age Spanish Sonnets (with English translations)
Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe
Shakespeare: Subject to Change
German Emblem Books
English Emblem Book Project
Figures of Speech in Early Modern Literature
Dictionary of the Scots Language
Medieval and Renaissance Musical Instruments
Eighteenth-century English Music
Gerrit Dou (seventeenth-century Dutch painter)
Seventeenth-century French Painting
Seventeenth-century Spanish Painting
Sixteenth-century Italian Painting
Pepys' Diary
Casanova Research Page
Samuel Johnson Soundbite Page
A critique of the history of history: the case of early modern England

I've found the Witchcraft Bibliography Project online again, after it disappeared from its old URL some months ago. But only as a pdf file, I'm afraid; not the most convenient way to access such a large document.

Upcoming Early Modern Conferences in Britain

2004-06-19T21:06:00.000+01:00

July

I'm off to Tales from the Old Bailey conference in two weeks' time (5-6 July at the University of Hertfordshire). The official registration deadline of 15 June has passed, but these things are rarely inflexible if anyone is interested. And it looks interesting (to me at least). I'm rather looking forward to the paper of an old teacher and friend from York, Mark Jenner, on the culture of London privies. But that's the sort of girl I am. More generally, it should be a fine showcase of what can be done with narrative-type crime records beyond the narrow study of 'crime'.

Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Britain and Europe", London. This sounds fascinating, although it's mid-week, and I'm not sure I can justify another two days away from my desk in the archives so soon after the Old Bailey conference...

Female Monasticism in Early Modern Europe, Oxford.

Europe and the Islamic World: Cultural Transformations 1453-1798, Reading.

Royalists and Royalism Cambridge.

Coming up in the autumn:

Restoration Ireland (no website, but further information available by e-mailing restoration_ireland@yahoo.ie): Dublin, September.

The Mistress-Court of Mighty Europe: Configuring Europe and European Identities in the Renaissance and Early Modern Period: Bangor, Wales, September.

Possible contender for conference title of the year: 'Six Degrees of Francis Bacon': Networks and Archives 1500-1800: a one-day postgraduate conference, London, November. (And yes, I did start to type Kevin instead of Francis.)

Domestic and Institutional Interiors in Early Modern Europe (frames-based site: go to 'Events'): London, November.

Looking further ahead:

You know what they say about buses... Well, there are to be two conferences on violence in history in the UK spring/summer 2005. Hopefully I'll be speaking at one, Assaulting the Past, at Oxford in July, on disputing neighbours. I have yet to decide what to submit as a proposal for the other, Cultures of Violence, at York in April. But I have until 1 November to make up my mind for that one.

Who or what am I?

2004-06-19T10:51:00.000+01:00

That wasn't mean to sound like an opener for one of those online quizzes...

I've said that I don't want this to be a very personal blog. But perhaps I should give a bit of academic background for passing readers. I'm currently the extremely lucky holder of a British Academy post-doctoral fellowship, which means that I have 3 years to do research on the pet project that I'd been formulating since the early days of my PhD (it's like being a student but with a salary; how cool is that?). It's on disorder and (violent) crime in the English/Welsh border counties of Cheshire, Flintshire and Denbighshire during the seventeenth century. (The PhD was on crime in Denbighshire 1660-1730.) Dunno quite what it'll end up looking like yet.

I got into researching crime largely because of the source materials available for the early modern period, if you were interested in researching 'ordinary' people. If it also had anything to do with the fact that I've been reading crime fiction since I was about ten, it was entirely subconscious. In fact, I think they don't have much in common. Crime novels: devious, clever plot with comforting resolution (even if it's a disturbing one, the comfort lies in the fact that there is a resolution, an ending). Crime in the archives: messy, mundane, much left frustratingly unexplained and unfinished. But the Welsh records (which I discovered as an undergrad) did share something with the fiction, in that they were full of stories told by frequently unreliable and sometimes conflicting participants. (You can see a few samples at Wales and the Law on Early Modern Resources.) And those are the kind of court records that get me excited.

The upshot is that I'm spending much time over the coming months away from home in Aberystwyth in west Wales (home of the National Library of Wales, which is where my beloved Welsh Great Sessions records are housed), working with the Cheshire records - and planning to take a look at Star Chamber - at the Public Record Office in Kew, London. I have a ridiculously expensive studio flat (paid for by the BA, not me) in what, for London, is a fairly quiet, pleasant suburban area of Twickenham. But it's still a culture shock. I've always lived in small provincial towns or large villages in England or Wales. Downsides: filthy, noisy, expensive, plays havoc with my sinuses. Upsides: real public transport, loads of free museums, shops open late... So I run away home to Aber for the weekend every few weeks to get some fresh sea air and friendliness.

I woke up this morning to some real west Wales rain. Now the sun is out and shining through the seagull crap on the window. The place really knows how to welcome you home.

The joys of secondhand bookshops

2004-06-19T00:10:00.000+01:00

Secondhand early modern books very recently picked up in London bookshops:

M Dorothy George, London life in the eighteenth century. One of those classics I've never got round to reading. I make the excuse that I'm not a London historian. (One of many, varied excuses for not reading what I ought to be reading.)
Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of manhood in early modern England. Looks a promising addition to the growing corpus of research on early modern masculinities. A whole section on disorder and violence, huzzah.
C V Wedgwood, The king's peace.

Also a nice varied haul of crime and other fiction: Val McDermid, Sarah Dunant, Alison Lurie, Margaret Atwood, Henning Mankell. Yum. (Although these books are one of the real reasons why I don't get round to reading things I'm supposed to.) And some cookery books.

I'm back in Aberystwyth for the weekend. Not so many secondhand bookshops as London (!), but there are some small treasure houses (Ystwyth Books being an old favourite). OK, I like new books too, and I buy far too many of them as well. But the pleasures of secondhand book shelves never cease. Partly the lure of bargain-hunting, partly the appeal of the unpredictable and unexpected.

Early Modern Resources Update

2004-06-18T09:42:00.000+01:00

New additions have been made to the following pages at Early Modern Resources:

Reference Section
Politics, Rebellions, Revolutions
Women, Gender, Sexuality
New Links
Early Modernity on Film Bibliography and Resources

The main page has a new hit counter, courtesy of Statcounter. They say that it will never bring adverts. That'd better be true. I might at some point get around to putting it on all the pages, I suppose.

British Toung

2004-06-18T09:08:00.000+01:00

Via Language Hat, an online version of A briefe and playne introduction, teachyng how to pronounce the letters in the British Toung (now commonly called Walsh) (pdf file) by William Salesbury in 1550, over 400 years ahead of the Welsh for Adults movement... Salesbury also published the first known printed book in Welsh, and the first Welsh translation of the New Testament.

Corrections Corner: Salesbury didn't publish the first book in Welsh. That was John Prys's Yny lhyvyr hwnn... ('In this book...', 1546).

Update: More thoughts on 'A briefe and playne introduction'

Some useful resources

2004-06-17T21:42:00.000+01:00

Claire George has recently set up a blog for the seventeenth century community. She hopes to create a sort of virtual 'coffee house' for those of us interested in the period.

British History Online from the Institute of Historical Research contains digitised versions of a growing number of important sources for early modern British historians - often those bulky multi-volume projects that are hidden away in university libraries (eg, Calendar of State Papers Domestic; Victoria County Histories; House of Lords and House of Commons Journals); and much more, including maps of London. It has both browse and search facilities. This is going to be an extremely useful research resource!

Teachers looking for ways of making effective use of the web for teaching may be interested in a new H-Net discussion network, H-OEH for Online Education in the Humanities.

Welcome

2004-06-17T18:49:00.000+01:00

This blog is an experiment. I've been wanting somewhere to log potential new links for the site for a while (not simply my bookmarks file in which they just get lost). A blog seems an ideal way of doing that, with the advantage that any readers (well, there might be some) can add their own comments. Links posted here will generally not have been checked out in anything more than the most cursory fashion (unless I really liked them). Some may turn out to be utter rubbish, or only to last a few weeks.

It'll also be used to post news about the site: when I've made additions and updates, that kind of thing.

Will it become anything more than that? I think I can safely say that it won't turn into a personal diary (I've never kept one of those in my life, and I don't want to start now). But there might be space - and time - for early modernist musings, professional monologues, rants or discussions. And some of my other interests - British history and identity, Wales and learning Welsh, feminism, ska music, crime fiction, etc - might get a look in. We'll just have to see...