History Of England Research Articles

Dennis C. Rasmussen. The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought.

Dennis C. Rasmussen. <i>The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought</i>.

The deformation history of southern England, and its implications for ground engineering in the London Basin

Structures in the basement beneath the London Basin affect the geology of relevance to geotechnical engineering within London. Unfortunately, the basement beneath London is covered by Cretaceous and Tertiary sediments. It is cut by major faults linked to the compressive phases of the Hercynian and Alpine orogenies and to the regional extension that occurred during the Mesozoic between these compressive events. Evidence is presented that movement on basement fractures beneath London played a major role in the distribution and deformation of sediments within the Basin, causing local folding and faulting significant to engineering works. Basement rocks are exposed in SW England, where the type and orientation of these fractures (faults and joints) can be examined in outcrop. This study, complemented by seismic sections in the southern UK, allows the architecture of this fault network within the basement to be determined. Understanding the fracture system in the basement provides a basis for (1) interpreting the lateral facies variations of sediments in the Basin and hence provides a means for predicting from a ground investigation the likely presence, activity or influence on site of such structures at depth and (2) understanding the extent of local, steeply inclined and subhorizontal planar zones of shearing when encountered on site. Thematic collection: This article is part of the Geology of London and its implications for ground engineering collection available at: https://www.lyellcollection.org/cc/london-basin

Mark Towsey. Reading History in Britain and America, c.1750–c.1840.

M<scp>ark</scp> T<scp>owsey</scp>. <i>Reading History in Britain and America, c.1750–c.1840</i>.

From the “Beginning”: Anglo-American Settler Colonialism in New England

In this article, I use the lens of critical family history—and the history of the Doane family—to undertake an analysis of Anglo-American settler colonialism in the New England region of the United States. My standpoint in writing this narrative is as a twelfth-generation descendant of Deacon John Doane, who arrived in Plymouth Colony circa 1630 and whose family history is intertwined with issues of settler colonial conquest and dispossession, enslavement, erasure, and the creation of myths of origin and possession. This analysis is also grounded in the larger contexts of the history of New England and the history of the United States. I conclude with a reflection upon the implications of settler colonial myths and historical erasure for current racial politics in the United States.

Anthologizing Poe: Editions, Translations, and (Trans)National Canons

Anthologizing Poe: Editions, Translations, and (Trans)National Canons

Slavery and the “American Way of War,” 1607–1861

AbstractSlavery and warfare were inextricably intertwined in the history of Britain’s North American colonies and, subsequently, the early republic. Yet this deep connection has not been acknowledged in the historiography. In particular, the debate about an “American way of war” has neglected the profound significance of slavery as a formative factor in America’s “first way of war.” Here, these two forms of organized, systemic violence are considered not merely within a comparative framework but as phenomena whose relationship is so deeply enmeshed that they cannot be meaningfully understood in isolation. Slavery is thus placed centrally in an examination of American war making, from the colonial to the antebellum period. Three main areas are highlighted: slave raiding against Native Americans, slavery as a factor in imperial and national strategy-making and diplomacy, and slavery as an “internal war.”

Nethercott , Frances Writing History in Late Imperial Russia: Scholarship and the Literary Canon (review)

REVIEWS 771 Nethercott, Frances. Writing History in Late Imperial Russia: Scholarship and the Literary Canon. Library of Modern Russia. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2020. x + 280 pp. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. £90.00; £28.99: £26.09 (e-book). No-one doubts that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian novelists and poets cast light on Russian history, but Frances Nethercott argues that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian historians reflect or embody trends in Russian literature. This is hardly surprising, for many of the historians who figure in the book received their training in what were once called ‘Historico-Philological Faculties’ (i.e. parts of universities in which both history and literature were studied), and until quite late in the nineteenth century historical writing in most European countries, not just in Russia, was thought to be a subdivision of belles-lettres rather than the less entertaining discipline it often is today. It was a rare historian in nineteenth-century Europe who did not derive a degree of inspiration from the historical novels of Walter Scott. Nethercott knows these things, and by way of contextualizing her Russian historians speaks of the literary dimension of the work of Jules Michelet, Augustin Thierry and Hippolyte Taine. She might have added Lord Macaulay, who was certainly style-driven and no less famous for his Lays of Ancient Rome than for his History of England. Nevertheless, the thesis of the book reminds readers of a truth they may have forgotten, and may also do something to broaden the modern understanding of what should be included in the classical Russian literary canon. Today, pre-1917 Russian historians are usually assigned to political, ideological, chronological, typological, or geographical (rather than literary) categories; they tend to be divided into statists and populists, idealists and postivists,modernistsandmedievalists,synthesizersanddocument-collectors, Russianists and Europeanists, or historians of the ‘Moscow School’ or the ‘St Petersburg School’ (rather than, say, writers of epics or lyrics). Nethercott cuts across such polarities by thinking of her historians as writers first and truthseekers second. Her chapters are thematic rather than chronological (let alone biographical). After discussing, in chapter one, the part that the state thought it should play in the management of historical instruction and publication in Russia (was it to be a hands-off patron or an interventionist overseer?), in chapter two she sketches the literary sensibilities of some of the historians whose work best enables her to make her case (especially Timofei Granovskii, Vasilii Kliuchevskii and Ivan Grevs, who are perhaps the scholars who appear most frequently in the book as a whole). The later chapters deal with Russian historians’ style; their interest in providing portraits of historical figures; the extent to which and the reasons why they made use of literary evidence; their SEER, 99, 4, OCTOBER 2021 772 depiction of place; and their work on poets and novelists (Grevs, for example, on Turgenev). In the final chapter the author returns to her over-arching question: whether we should be thinking of tsarist historiography not as art or science but, at the very least, as a literary-investigative hybrid. The book makes no attempt to embrace the work of all the historians at work in nineteenth- or early twentieth-century Russia. Indeed, Nethercott’s approach limits the number of historians on whom she can focus, for not all the historians at work in her period are grist to her mill. Different readers will have different views about who should have been included and who omitted. The present reviewer particularly welcomed the appearances in the book of Nikolai Kostomarov and did not regret the near-total absence of Nikolai Ustrialov and Sergei Solov´ev, but he was disappointed that Nikolai Polevoi did not attract much attention and that neither Ivan Beliaev nor Vasilii Semevskii rated a mention. But the book is not trying to supplant George Vernadsky’s Russian Historiography: A History (Belmont, MA, 1978), let alone the monstrous volumes of the collective Soviet Ocherki istorii istoricheskoi nauki v SSSR (5 volumes + 2 volumes of bibliography, Moscow, 1955–85). Dr Nethercott is putting forward a thesis. At times, she protests too much, for the endnotes take up more than a quarter of...

New Haven Town Records, 1769–1819

New Haven Town Records, 1769–1819

Michael Drayton’s Topographies: Ideas Mirrour (1594) and Poly-Olbion (1612–1622)

ABSTRACT Michael Drayton’s interest in the history and geography of England and Wales marks the evolution of his poetic career before the publication of his major work, Poly-Olbion (1612–1622). This article analyses the relation between Drayton’s chorography and his first sonnet sequence, Ideas Mirrour (1594). In his 1590 poems, Drayton links the portrait of his beloved to that of his native landscape. The topographical sonnets that place Idea in the river Anker forestall the descriptions of counties and rivers found in Poly-Olbion. The connections between these two works must be seen in reciprocal terms: while Ideas Mirrour prefigures the chorographic mode in the lyric style, Poly-Olbion looks back into the sonnets’ lyric perspective by eroticizing its rivers-nymphs and by placing Idea near the shores of the Anker, as Drayton had done in his earliest texts.

The North-South Divide, And Northernness in Road to Wigan Pier from George Orwell, A Novelist and Outsider’s View

During the time that George Orwell lived, the Britain society was on the edge of development and fluctuation, the north-south divide was an issue discussed by journalists and politics, nationally and regionally. George Orwell, by traveling up and down in the whole English territory, wrote down what exactly he saw and experienced in 1930s. In Road to Wigan Pier, he depicted the unemployment and living conditions in North of England, as well as the class division and his potential political views. Road to Wigan Pier influences historical and literature scholars and triggers huge amount of debates on the politics, economy and history of England. Most importantly, it is both a mirror of England in 1930s and a future-teller of the modern society that we are living in. As Benjamin Jonson has claimed, “ He was not of an age, but for all time!”. Most scholars consider the novel is in two parts: the first is the people he met and his physical experience in Wigan, Barnsley and Sheffield (the north). The second is his critical view on socialism in England and the middle class. In Road to Wigan Pier, and contemplating his personal background, what we can conclude is that George Orwell is a novelist, and he is neither a “north” nor a “south”. We have no persuading reasons of his work is not as the same value as those first-hand such as scientific data and photography. However, it is worth analysing his work with the record of the broad social condition in England. As a novelist and an outsider, we can see from the whole novel Road to Wigan Pier that he has his own perspectives on “northernness” from the aspects of employment, working-class and class difference. All these comments of George Orwell, since subjective and personal, especially trigger the politics’ thinking and the improve the social research orientation.

Walking, and Knowing the Past: Antiquaries, Pedestrianism and Historical Practice in Modern Britain

AbstractHow do those who write history know the past? This article addresses this question by examining the work of late eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century antiquaries, whose historical practice was closely tied to their embodied experience of the places about which they wrote. On‐foot out‐of‐doors observation provided them with evidence as important as that which might be derived from written sources, while also acting to stimulate their historical imaginations. This was the method of the Rev. Richard Warner, who made a 469‐mile ‘pedestrian tour’ of Wales in August 1797, and for whom walking (often more than 20 miles a day) was an essential element of his approach to understanding the past. Similarly, William Hutton’s History of the Roman Wall (1802) was not based on consultation of the accounts of others, or even on separate in‐person site visits, but on a single journey, on foot, along the course of the fortification. As argued here, these and other pedestrianised forms of historical knowing had a lasting influence on the writing of history in Britain.

Planning, regulation and space standards in England: from ‘homes for heroes’ to ‘slums of the future’

The regulation of housing quality has a long history in England. As the state itself increasingly became a housing developer in the twentieth century, design standards were subject to self-regulation. Through this, the idea that housing quality includes minimum dwelling sizes - space standards - has entered public consciousness. The 2010-2015 coalition government introduced suggested space standards through planning control, but also extended the range of ‘permitted development’ - a form of deregulation - where space standards could not be applied. In this paper we explore the history of space standards in England and what these tell us about planning regulation.

News, Events, Publications, and Awards

News, Events, Publications, and Awards

Teaching history in Japan and England: exchanging ideas and comparing knowledge

PurposeThis paper describes and discusses collaboration between history teachers in England and Japan. The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which history is taught in each country as a part of a general commitment to international collaboration and as a means by which we could explore the connection between history education and global citizenship education.Design/methodology/approachThe teachers created two lessons (one from England and one from Japan) about the Russian revolution. Both lessons were taught in each country. Data were gathered from students and teachers to aid reflections on the nature and outcome of the collaboration.FindingsThe collaboration was very positive. Teachers and students were excited to work together and to experience different ways of learning about the past. There were different approaches to the ways in which knowledge was characterized in each country (teachers in England emphasizing contextually based historical interpretations; teachers in Japan emphasizing content and contextual knowledge).Originality/valueThis work contributes to the limited amount of research that is currently available about professional collaboration between high school teachers and students of history in Japan and England. The arguments that are made about the opportunities for international collaboration in the context of different characterizations of pedagogical content knowledge contribute to a relatively unexplored field. The authors contribute to our understandings of the relationship between history education and global citizenship education.

What field? Where? Bringing Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History into View

ABSTRACT This historiographical article aims to do three things. First, to construct a working overview of historical and aligned scholarship focussed on the history of Britain’s Gypsy and Traveller populations, to give non-specialists an understanding of the key pieces of scholarship and debates within the field. Second, to argue that it is not sufficient for these histories to remain only a concern of ‘Romani’ scholars, and so exist largely separate from both mainstream histories and histories of Britain’s other minority populations. And third, to offer some thoughts on possible avenues for future research and the potential for more joined-up scholarship.

Nikolai S. Penn, a Man from Kuzbass (300th Anniversary of Kuzbass)

The article features the biography of Professor Nikolai S. Penn, who was the leading specialist in coal enrichment in Kuzbass in the 1930s – 1940s and a successful discoverer of coal deposits in Kuzbass and Eastern Siberia. At the Tomsk Institute of Technology, he organized the work of the mining department, edited scientific journals, and developed Siberian coal science. At the Kuznetsk Research Mining Institute (KuzNIUI, Novosibirsk, Prokopyevsk), N. S. Penn focused on the theoretical issues of coal origin and the mathematical analysis of coal, which made it possible to define coal components, washability, and type. The article also describes Prof. Penn’s personal qualities, as well as achievements of his famous ancestors who were involved in some major events in the history of England and the United States.

Phillipson’s Hume in Phillipson's Scottish Enlightenment

ABSTRACT The subject of this paper is the place of Hume in Nicholas Phillipson's account of the Scottish Enlightenment. I begin with Phillipson's reading of Hume as ‘civic moralist’. I then turn to his account of Hume the author of The History of England. And from there I proceed to the place of Hume in his intellectual biography of Adam Smith. I conclude with a brief description of Phillipson's understanding of Hume's place in the history of the Scottish Enlightenment as it mutated in the late eighteenth century and came to an end in the early nineteenth. I show how just as Phillipson's Hume cannot be understood apart from the Scottish Enlightenment, so also Phillipson's Scottish Enlightenment cannot be understood without Hume.

Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century, by Regenia Gagnier

Reviewed by: Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century by Regenia Gagnier Daniel M. Stout (bio) Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century, by Regenia Gagnier; pp. xiv + 247. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, $89.99, $59.99 paper, $69.99 ebook. The praise arrayed on the first pages and back cover of Regenia Gagnier's Literatures of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth Century uniformly portrays it as a sweeping methodological renovation: "a compelling new method" (Amanda Anderson qtd. in Gagnier xi), "a major methodological reconfiguration" (David Amigoni qtd. in Gagnier xi), "a completely new beginning, world-shaped and world-scaled, for Victorian studies" (Steven Connor qtd. in Gagnier). It is therefore on the question of method that I will concentrate our attention. Some of the assembled opinions refer to Gagnier's method in terms to which she herself gives prominent place, like "transculturation" (4) and "symbiology" (xii). Others use terms that are more marginal ("bibliomigrancy" [B. Venkat Mani qtd. in Gagnier 115]) or that do not appear in her study at all, like "differential reading" (Colin MacCabe qtd. in Gagnier). But in all cases the effort is to capture the expansive quality of the approach. Across seven chapters and a coda, Literatures of Liberalization moves through a vast set of geographies, political histories, and literary traditions. Chapter 1, "The Transcultural Transformation of a Field," offers the most explicit description of the project's methodology: "I bring together British, colonial, semi- post- and neocolonial, and settler literatures to take stock of one interconnected economic development of nationalisms and international competition that includes [Charles] Dickens's industrial revolution as well as [José] Martí's revolutionary Cuba" (8). It is a startlingly broad remit, and under its permissive scope subsequent chapters canvass a highly diverse set of authors and national traditions. Chapter 2, "Global Circulation and Some Problems in Liberalism, Liberalization, and Neoliberalism," looks at the impact of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty (1859) on early twentieth-century modernizers in China and India. It also surveys intersections of liberal individualism and Indigenous collectivism in East and South Asia, Central and South America, and the Arab world. Chapter 3, "Dialogical Imaginations: European Ideas of Plasticity, Freedom, and Choice in the Long Nineteenth Century," takes up Johann Gottfried Herder, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and D. H. Lawrence in order to consider "how imaginative literature has understood individual and collective freedom and choice" (62). Chapter 4 examines Anthony Trollope's reception history in England, Australia, New Zealand, China, and Russia; chapter 5 does the same for Dickens, measuring his cultural impact in Australasia, China, India, and Russia. Chapter 6 proposes that Decadence should be understood as a global and historically mobile (rather than European and fin de siècle) phenomenon. Chapter 7, "Crossed Histories: Social Formations in Friction 1783–Present," is a collection of disparate subsections: Little Dorrit (1855–57) as a "total environment" (168); the tractor in Norwegian and Indian literature; global commodities in literature (Gabriel García Márquez: bananas; Miguel Asturias: maize; John Williams: buffalo; Cormac McCarthy: cattle); and possible correspondences between Martí's revolutionary writing and George Gissing's novels. Chapter 8, "Coda on Processes of Sex, Gender, and Desire in the Anthropocene," dives into topics not previously central, arguing that sex and [End Page 284] gender are ontological facts (not just cultural constructions) and reading three novels—Sharona Muir's Invisible Beasts (2014), Dale Jamieson and Bonnie Nadzam's Love in the Anthropocene (2015), and Dave Eggers's The Circle (2013)—whose recentness, puzzlingly, is apparently no obstacle to their ability to represent "literatures of the Anthropocene 1750-present" (224). This capacious approach may reassure a Victorian studies increasingly concerned about its islanded procedures. Gagnier's book joins recent efforts to diversify or undiscipline the field by making it more international and multilingual, less hermetically historicist. Embracing these revisionary mandates, Gagnier projects a Victorian studies in which "international relations, rather than an island's literature," take pride of place (3); scholarship moves beyond the merely anglophone to become a project of "translation on a grand scale"; and the confines of historical period give way to a view of objects not according to birthdate but...

Oh, the Humanity: Deflating a Humean Concept

Abstract The concept of “humanity” is integral to David Hume's Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, but barely appears in his earlier Treatise. Many consider the later “humanity” theory superior, permitting a more “extensive” sympathy not limited by proximate associations. This paper argues for Hume's consistency on humanity by surveying The History of England. Hume's History discussions lend support to the associative, and thus limited, Treatise conception. Humanity is opposed to religious enthusiasm; its positive effects are local and particular. Moreover, Hume's historiography involves a hesitation on the content of “humane” judgments, which cannot fulfill the cosmopolitan function envisioned by many present-day interpreters.

Untranslatable: Gottfried Kinkel, Kulturgeschichte, and British Art Historiography

Abstract In 1934, Edgar Wind claimed there was no English equivalent for the word “kulturwissenschaftlich” and the method it denoted: it was untranslatable. Although German art history had been widely read in England since Victorian times, certain methods, as well as the discipline itself, were only hesitantly received. This article focuses on a decisive moment in this entangled history—an attempt to establish in Britain both art history as an academic discipline and a cultural-historical approach to the subject. The key figure is the dashing art historian Gottfried Kinkel, a close friend of Jacob Burckhardt (and archenemy of Karl Marx), who fled Germany after the 1848 revolution. In 1853, he gave the firstever university lecture in art history in England, the manuscripts of which were recently discovered. Kinkel’s case is a prime example of both a socio-historical approach to art history in Victorian times and an exile’s only partially successful attempt to transmit his methodology to a new audience.