We start today with Reconfiguring the Fifteenth-Century Crusade, edited by Norman Housley. James Doherty reviews an exploration of the interplay of established crusading ideals and practices with the issues that occupied the attention of 15th-century Christendom (no. 2235).
Then we turn to Jacques Carré’s La prison des pauvres: l’expérience des workhouses en Angleterre. Pierre Botcherby tackles a fine example of foreign-language scholarship on British society and history (no. 2234).
Next up is Episcopal Power and Local Society in Medieval Europe, 900-1400, edited by Peter Coss, Chris Dennis, Melissa Julian-Jones and Angelo Silvestri. Philippa Byrne praises a well-judged and timely volume which highlights the excellent work being done on the bishop and his diocese (no. 2233).
Finally Emily Winkler enjoys the Richard the Lionheart Exhibition at the Historisches Museum der Pfalz Speyer, where pageantry, stateliness and effective design help create a compelling narrative (no. 2232).
Entries are invited for this year’s Pollard Prize (sponsored by Wiley) awarded for the best paper presented at an IHR seminar 2017-18 by a postgraduate student or by a researcher within one year of completing the PhD.
First prize
Fast track publication in the prestigious IHR journal, Historical Research, and £200 of Blackwell books.
Runner up prizes
Publication in Historical Research, and a selection of Blackwell books.
Application
Applicants are required to have delivered a paper during the academic year in which the award is made. Submissions should be supported by a reference from a convenor of the appropriate seminar. Papers should be fully footnoted, although it is not necessary at this stage to follow Historical Research house style. All papers submitted must be eligible for publication.
The closing date for submissions is 24 May 2018.
Enquiries and submissions should be directed to the Executive Editor, Historical Research (julie.spraggon@sas.ac.uk).
We start today with Michael Provence’s The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Ramazan Hakkı Öztan and the author debate an exemplary reinterpretation of the history of the inter-war Middle East (no. 2231, with response here).
Then we turn to Female Administrators of the Third Reich by Rachel Century. Kate Docking praises an eye-opening, analytical and highly nuanced book that sheds light on ‘ordinary women’ (no. 2230).
Next up is Simon John’s Godfrey of Bouillon: Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Ruler of Latin Jerusalem, c.1060-1100. Andrew Buck and the author discuss a book which will be read and enjoyed by anyone with an interest in the political world of 11th-century Europe (no. 2229, with response here).
Finally we have a response from author Katherine Paugh to Trevor Burnard’s earlier review of The Politics of Reproduction: Race, Medicine and Fertility in the Age of Abolition (no. 2214, with response here).
The latest update to the Bibliography of British and Irish History was published on 23 March 2018. There are 3,738 new records. Of these some 633 new records relate to Irish history while 149 deal with the history of London, 276 with the history of Scotland and 90 with the history of Wales. The overall total of records available online is now 597,689.
To help students use the Bibliography we have created a “Guide for Students” page. It includes basic material on what a bibliography is, and why you should use one, as well as a case study. We plan to add additional material in the future.
Where to start? You’ll probably already been given a reading list by your tutor. This is a basic bibliography – a listing of relevant books and journal articles covering a particular subject usually listed by author name. You may very well access this listing through your local VLE or Moodle account in which case links to local library holdings, and often online text, will be included.
So there’s no reason to go “off piste” and use another bibliography is there? Well no, not really. But if you are interested in the subject and feel additional research is needed, fine. And if you want your essay to stand out from the crowd, and for your tutor to know that you’ve gone the extra mile, it really helps (and your tutor will probably appreciate reading something more original).
It’s also a good habit to explore other options so that when you come to write your dissertation or long essay you are more aware of the resources available. Also increasingly, courses are assessing students on such additional resources whether they be primary sources, bibliographies or online material. And certainly if you are preparing for any post-graduate course knowledge of additional resources is paramount.
But of course everything is supposedly on Google or Google Books/Scholar or even available in huge databases such as EBSCO or JSTOR. So you don’t need a bibliography or to search a bibliography. Right again. But try searching for the above subjects on Google; what search terms to use; how to narrow searches; or access only academic material?
Google also remembers your previous searches, your language settings, your location, what you clicked on last – all of which will skew your search results. And let’s face it who checks pages 3 onwards for Google results?
Again try searching EBSCO or JSTOR – full of incredibly useful academic material, but again what terms to use – The Great War, First World War, World War One, World War One? How can you filter these terms? Can you focus on one particular aspect of World War I, such as the impact of war on the people in northern England? Or how many resources were published in each decade afterward? Or, can you compile an historiographical outline on a given topic?
Using Henry III of England as an example: according to Wikipedia there are 16 entries for a “Henry III” from the Duke of Bavaria to the King of Navarre. Below lists the search results for a variety of resources looking for Henry III (of England).
Search/Resource
Henry III
“Henry III”
“Henry III” England
Specialist search
Google
60,900,000
744,000
453,000
74,000 “Henry III” England inurl:.ac.uk
Google Books
474,000
277,000
173,000
–
JSTOR
151,464
4,626
3,552
2,933 ((“Henry III”) AND disc:(history-discipline)
Copac
52,915
6007
2755
569 (Henry III, King of England 1207-1272)
Historical Abstracts (EBSCO)
262
221
28
26 (PE ” HENRY III, King of England, 1207-1272″)
International Medieval Bibliography
552
255 (default to Henry III, King of England)
–
–
BBIH
820
317 (default to Henry III, king, 1207-1272)
–
–
All searches conducted during October 2016.
From the above table it seems obvious that a search on JSTOR, Copac, Historical Abstracts, IMB and BBIH provide the student with easy access to quality academic material on a relatively manageable scale.
I’m not saying don’t use Google or other search engines; and I’m not saying an online bibliography is the one-stop shop for all your research needs, but it should certainly be the first stop. From that initial manageable listing it’s then easier to undertake your research using Google Books or better still Google Scholar.
For help in searching Google – try using some of the search options.
We are excited to announce that our sixth annual History Day will take place on 27 November 2018. The event is aimed at postgraduate and undergraduate students, academics, early career and private researchers who are looking for advice on how to find and make best use of sources in their historical research. It brings together libraries, archives and other organisations, all showcasing their collections together in one place. It is a great opportunity for researchers to learn about diverse collections and chat with experienced, specialist staff about their research.
Jenna Pateman, a third year undergraduate student, recommended the event for all students of history, writing of History Day 2017, “The fair allowed attendees to speak one-on-one with representatives from these institutions, and discover the many possibilities open to researchers. Thanks to some of these conversations, I have had quite a few ideas for my dissertation as well as new ways to look at my research, and discovered new places where I can hunt for sources.”
Sandra Freshney, archivist from the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences described it as “a really fun day” where “over 200 attendees including undergraduates, postgraduates and established academics ‘shopped’ among the 56 tables”. Claire Titley from the London Metropolitan Archives recommended History Day as “a good chance to catch up with colleagues in other offices and see the range of activities being undertaken across different archives and libraries” and was inspired by the breadth of the collections present.
History Day 2018 will include talks throughout the day, detailing to researchers how to work successfully with research materials held by different repositories. We invite researchers and collections professionals to share their experiences and projects in an open call for papers. We are particularly looking for papers aimed at a general audience on broad topics, including cross-repository research, interesting methodologies, or collaboration. The deadline for submissions of abstracts for 15 minute presentations (by individuals or groups) is 8 June 2018.
Organisations are already signing up for stands, and we’re keeping a running list of participating organisations. Find out more and register interest on behalf of an organisation via the registration form. Registration for individual attendees will begin in summer 2018. Follow the news of the event using the hashtag #histday18 and look out for blog posts about researchers’ experiences of working in libraries and archives on the History Collections blog. Save the date for the event described in previous years as “the single most effective networking opportunity for researchers in the UK.”
He founded perhaps the most famous dynasty in history: the Tudors. Yet, in 1485 when Henry Tudor defeated Richard III to become King Henry VII, he possessed the most anaemic claim to the throne since William the Conqueror. In defiance of the norms of medieval rule, he transformed England from an insolvent, often divided country in the waning years of the Wars of the Roses into an emerging modern state upon his death in 1509, a legacy inherited by his larger-than-life heir, Henry VIII. How did this happen? Through impressive archival research over several decades and a provocative perspective, Daring Dynasty illuminates what occurred by exploring key aspects of Henry’s reign, which included a dark side to royal policy. It will provide historians, students, history enthusiasts and devotees of “all things Tudor” with an understanding of how the populace and political players melded into a nation through the efforts of its king and his government.
Mark Horowitz’s new volume contains collected essays including articles originally published in the IHR’s journal Historical Research. For more information see here.
We start with Mark Condos’ The Insecurity State: Punjab and the Making of Colonial Power in British India. Michael Brunner and the author discuss a thought-provoking and profound analysis of colonial insecurities, violence and legislation (no. 2228, with response here).
Then we turn to American Sectionalism in the British Mind, 1832-1863 by Peter O’Connor. David Tiedemann recommends a book which does an excellent job linking intellectual history with politics and culture (no. 2227).
Next up is Michael Staunton’s The Historians of Angevin England. Colin Veach believes this book will influence the way we approach medieval English historiography (no. 2226).
Finally we have A Muslim Conspiracy in British India? Politics and Paranoia in the Early Nineteenth-Century Deccan by Chandra Mallampalli. Zak Leonard praises an elucidating and gripping account which will appeal to students of both British and South Asian history (no. 2225).
Philip Baker, former Research Fellow of the History of Parliament and Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, explains the background to and completion of a History of Parliament project for which he was Editor. This new online resource provides access to primary source material relating to the House of Commons during the Parliament of 1624.
394 years ago today, what was to be the final Parliament of King James I opened at Westminster. Unfortunately, bad weather meant that around half of the members hadn’t yet arrived and so the assembly was adjourned the same day. The 1624 Parliament eventually sat for some 80 days, however, and the History of Parliament is proud to announce today, on the anniversary of its opening, the completion of its project to provide free online access to the Commons’ debates of the entire Parliament. Hosted by British History Online, Proceedings in Parliament 1624: The House of Commons consists of around 800,000 words of political debate, religious argument, legal wrangling and legislative action from the so-called ‘Happy Parliament’.
Palace of Westminster in the 16th century. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Set against the European backdrop of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), and situated between the earlier, often rumbustious assemblies of James and the even more turbulent ones of Charles I that followed it, the Parliament is perhaps most notable for two things. The first is the unsuccessful attempt by Charles (as Prince of Wales) and the Duke of Buckingham to promote a war against Spain following Charles’ humiliation by the Spanish in his attempts to woo the Spanish Infanta. The second is that the Parliament saw an incredible seventy-three acts reach the statute book, the most in a single session since the reign of Henry VIII and almost the first notable legislation passed since 1610.
The proceedings themselves bring together for the first time some twenty manuscript sources that are scattered throughout England and America, the vast majority of which have never before been published. While some are fair hand copies of notes, others are certainly more difficult to read in their original form. Both Edward Nicholas and Sir Nathaniel Rich employed ‘speed writing’ techniques – a combination of shorthand symbols, abbreviations and longhand – the Star Chamber lawyer John Hawarde wrote in the Law French of the court system, while the appalling handwriting of John Lowther is a challenge for even experts of the period. Although the diary of the Staffordshire barrister Richard Dyott is in an extremely clear hand, large parts of it are now illegible even under UV light. It was placed in a safe in London during World War II, which did an excellent job of protecting it from the bombs of the Luftwaffe, but was rather less successful in preventing it from becoming seriously water-damaged.
Work on an edition of the proceedings of the 1624 Parliament actually began in America almost a century ago, under the guidance of the great parliamentary historian Wallace Notestein. Further research was undertaken in the US by Robert Ruigh and Mark Kennedy, and the project was subsequently taken over by the Yale Center for Parliamentary History. The 1624 materials were eventually transferred to the History of Parliament, which began working on them in 2012, generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Friends of the Yale Center for Parliamentary History and the Mercers’ Company of the City of London. On this day in 2015, the first in a progressive release of the proceedings appeared online, which culminates today in the release of the proceedings for the final month of the Parliament.
The publication of Proceedings in Parliament 1624: The House of Commons fills a considerable hole in early modern parliamentary history, as it means that a composite edition of materials on all of the Tudor and early Stuart Parliaments is available for the first time. But used in tandem with the articles already published online from the History’s volumes on The House of Commons, 1604-29 and those forthcoming on The House of Lords, 1604-29, it also offers the prospect of a connected set of electronic resources which will enable scholars to dig more deeply and more easily than ever before into the vexed political world of the early modern Stuarts.
This week in Reviews in History we are focussing on a single book, Jon Wilson’s India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire.
We invited five reviewers to contribute to a round table discussion and take up different aspects of the book, with the author then responding to each in turn.
Do let us know what you think, and make sure to send any suggestions for future roundtables to danny.millum@sas.ac.uk.
There is much on Roman villas and their mosaics as well as articles on their interior decoration and layout such as Classical reception rooms in Romano-British houses which argues that by the late antique period the reception facilities and associated social life and conduct were as those found in other parts of the Roman Empire.
Moving to Anglo-Saxon and Viking Britain there is coverage of household goods including toys, combs, doors and furniture. A similar pattern is followed in the medieval period with highlights including Beds and chambers in late medieval England : readings, representations and realities which claims to be the first interdisciplinary study of the cultural meanings of beds and chambers. The book uses a range of literary and visual sources, including manuscript illumination, household goods, romances, saints’ lives, plays, wills, probate inventories as well as church and civil court documents. The article Space and gender in the later medieval English house uses “The Ballad of the Tyrannical Husband,” a late fifteenth-century text, that associates men with the outdoors and women with the home and the domestic. The article also draws upon probate inventories as well as archaeological evidence and contrasts peasant and bourgeois society as shown in the physical fabric and furnishings of homes.
Probate records and inventories are a useful source for not only furnishing but also the arrangement and interior decoration of the household. The book Women’s voices in Tudor wills, 1485-1603 : authority, influence and material culture has a chapter The dispersal of assets: undressing the house, undressing the body that looks specifically at the household arrangements including the use of the parlour as a dining room and, as women aged, a bedchamber.
The work of Robert Adam is discussed in Fashion and function : the decoration of the library at Kenwood in context (contained in The country house : material culture and consumption; edited by Jon Stobart and Andrew Hann). The Stobart and Hann book leads us nicely into the Victorian/Edwardian country house era made popular by the Downton Abbey effect.
The ruins of Moore Hall, County Mayo, abandoned after being burnt down by the IRA in 1923 (Wikipedia)
Of course not everyone lived in country houses. The growth in philanthropy and social reform led to a concern for the living conditions of the rural and urban poor in slums. Attempts to rectify the situation included the gardens city movement, new towns, local and central government involvement, private charity including the establishment of almshouses, and the work of town planners and architects.
The title of this piece opened with Roman villas and ended with Brutalist architecture – for which we have “Group-cum-Brutalism”? Highgate Spinney, London, 1964–66, discussion of a five-story block of 30 flats designed by John Howard and Bruce Rotherham. Ben Highmore’s The art of Brutalism : rescuing hope from catastrophe in 1950s Britain not only explores the style adopted by painters, sculptors and other artists but also examines the styles influence on consumer culture and the domestic settings including the impact on the Ideal Home Exhibition.
We start today with Reconfiguring the Fifteenth-Century Crusade, edited by Norman Housley. James Doherty reviews an exploration of the interplay of established crusading ideals and practices with the issues that occupied the attention of 15th-century Christendom (no. 2235).
We start today with Michael Provence’s The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Ramazan Hakkı Öztan and the author debate an exemplary reinterpretation of the history of the inter-war Middle East (
Jenna Pateman, a third year undergraduate student, recommended the event for all students of history, 
We start with Mark Condos’ The Insecurity State: Punjab and the Making of Colonial Power in British India. Michael Brunner and the author discuss a thought-provoking and profound analysis of colonial insecurities, violence and legislation (
This week in Reviews in History we are focussing on a single book, Jon Wilson’s India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of Empire.
