Performing Imperial Masculinity in British Theatre in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on theatrical representations of India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, with special reference to two stage productions, Ramah Droog (1798) and The Cataract of the Ganges (1823). It argues that whilst the plays may have intended to deploy India as a space upon which to outline a militaristic British national identity and bourgeois gender norms, they in fact reflected contemporary anxieties about the fragility of British imperial masculinity. Moreover, it proposes that though theatre directors sought to impress upon audiences a sense of imperial dominance over the subcontinent through the deployment of visual technologies, such attempts were not wholly successful, with spectators having the capacity to deconstruct the façade that lay before their eyes.     

Disentangling the ‘Native’ Guide

ABSTRACT

This article explores the experiences of nineteenth and early twentieth century Indigenous and Euroamerican men who worked as guides in the Adirondacks for urban, upper-class sportsmen. It also examines entanglements between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Adirondackers in work and family contexts. The results create a complex understanding of the term ‘Native’ there as outsiders combined the two inhabitants to describe their wilderness vacation. This article argues that scholars who study the history of Indigenous societies should consider rural and urban culture alongside ethnicity, class and gender as important categories of analysis, especially in the nineteenth century and later.     

Crime Reporters at Work: Investigating the Underworld in Wartime Leeds, 1944-45

ABSTRACT

Crime news was a media staple throughout the twentieth century. What Britons read, heard and watched shaped public understanding of crime, prompted police inquiries and initiated legislation. While we know much about the content of crime news and something of its reception, we know little about its production. This article addresses this known unknown. Using a unique police investigation into press reports of black marketeering and corruption in wartime Leeds, it reveals the investigative methods reporters used and the rules under which they operated.     

Foppish Masculinity,Generational Identity and the University Authorities in Eighteenth-Century Oxbridge

ABSTRACT

This article aims to bring Oxford and Cambridge back into the debate about elite masculine socialization in eighteenth-century England. The ancient universities in this period are too often described by historians as bastions of moral stability and man making. Here, a more complicated view of the universities' role in shaping the identities of young men in the eighteenth century is presented, which takes into account the significant effect of rising student ages and generational and class tensions. In particular, the article traces the characteristics and development of foppish masculine styles among Oxbridge undergraduates, highlights their opposition to book-learning and academic regulations, and analyses the increasing suspicion which they incurred from the university authorities against the background of the American and French Revolutions.     

‘An Era of Domesticity’? Histories of Women and Gender in Interwar Britain

ABSTRACT

This article considers one specific strand of discussion around HIV/AIDS, in order to think about the uses and limitations of human rights discourse in late twentieth century Britain. HIV/AIDS presented particular problems for prisons, which were initially presented as breeding grounds of infection. This shifted with the rise of human rights language and laws in the 1990s, but talk of rights for prisoners was not as comfortable a fit as talk of equivalence of care. This story is situated in the broader context of attitudes towards crime, HIV/AIDS, and rights in late twentieth century Britain.     

The ‘Golden Age of Quackery’ or ‘Medical Enlightenment’? Licensed Charlatanism in Eighteenth-Century Italy

The history of medicine during the enlightenment is full of paradoxes, and nowhere is this more evident than in the phenomenon of charlatanry. On the one hand, for the charlatans' numerical abundance and sheer audacity, historians have sometimes singled out the eighteenth century as the ‘golden age of quackery’. At the same time, it was one of increasing control and severity by the medical elites.

In Italy, from the mid-sixteenth century, protomedicato tribunals, colleges of physicians, or health offices (jurisdiction varied from state to state) had required ciarlatani to submit their wares for inspection and, upon approval, pay a licence fee in order to set up a stage from which to perform and sell them. This procedure became an administrative routine, and the ‘licensed charlatan’ – not the paradox it might seem – became a common sight in Italian towns. The licensing regime gives the historian unparalleled opportunities when it comes to the investigation of suspect but generally tolerated categories such as charlatans. This article is partly based on a database compiled from the licences issued to some 1100 different charlatans by the various medical authorities in the states of Italy from 1550 to 1800.

During the eighteenth century we notice a downward trend in the number of licences issued (in places such as Siena, Mantua, and Turin), especially from the middle of the century onwards. This was not part of a policy to discontinue the licensing of charlatans, for various reasons (which the article examines), but it did reflect a stricter licensing regime. This is especially evident in the attitude of the authorities to oral (or internal) remedies. Moreover, as of the early 1760s, both the Venetian and Milanese authorities began to reject charlatans' petitions to sell remedies that were not original, resembled medicines already stocked by apothecaries, or were judged to be either harmful or ineffective. The similarity to established remedies that had once helped ensure a charlatan's acceptance and licensing now prevented it. Fewer licence applicants met these criteria; there also appear to have been fewer applicants. The harsh policy may have made charlatanry a less attractive career option or economic opportunity than in previous centuries, reducing the supply and marginalizing charlatanry, economically and geographically.     

‘Mothers Have Become Monsters’: Danger,Distress and Deviance in British Evangelical Depictions of Indian Motherhood, 1757–1857

ABSTRACT

Images of maternal distress and maternal deviance were frequently invoked in order to mobilise British women in support of her ‘heathen’ sisters overseas. Yet these accounts were not uniform in their interpretation of Indian maternity, or its relationship to emerging Victorian ideals of motherhood. This paper explores ideas of maternal danger, distress and deviance as they appeared in evangelical and colonial discourses of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, revealing complex and ambivalent responses and challenging the idea that Indian woman were simply one-dimensional signifiers of victimhood within gendered constructions of the ‘civilising mission’.     

Theatre,Law and Society in the Provinces: The Case of Sarah Baker

Sarah Baker was one of the eighteenth century's most successful provincial theatrical managers and entrepreneurs, but her career does not fit happily with the conventional image of the provincial theatre of that era. By considering her activities in the context of the Licensing Act of 1737 and the Theatrical Representations Act of 1788 this article explains the discrepancies and, in so doing, also reveals the cultural, social and political significance of her presence in the burgeoning Kentish towns where she built her theatres in the last decade of the eighteenth century.     

‘The Talke of the Towne’: News,Crime and the Public Sphere in Seventeenth-Century London

This article reconsiders ideas of the public sphere in the seventeenth century, by focusing on how public opinion is shaped by the movement of information between media and between receivers. It contends that the scholarly preoccupation with a public sphere viewed exclusively in terms of politics obscures the fact that contemporaries did not distinguish between politics and subjects such as crime in their newsgathering. Examining the case study of James Turner, a burglar in the 1660s who became a cause célèbre in London and beyond, this article shows how crime news were eagerly exchanged, informing discussions and constructing public opinion.     

The Local: A History of the English Pub. By Paul Jennings.

ABSTRACT

The period between 1950 and 1975 marked a dramatic shift in food retailing in Britain with the introduction of self-service stores and supermarkets. It also witnessed a significant rise in shoplifting, which many contemporary observers blamed on the introduction of self-service retailing. Using material from the retail trade press, newspaper reports, contemporary academic and marketing studies, and the publications of consumer associations, this article reflects on the fractured nature of the public discourse surrounding shoplifting in the early post-war period and looks at the factors that made self-service food retailing such a potentially problematic innovation. We argue that an ambivalence arose because shoplifting was regarded as a ‘housewives' crime’, and because of some of the specific characteristics of the self-service innovation. The introduction of self-service retailing not only fundamentally altered the relationship between consumers and retailers, and between consumers and goods, but had the effect of throwing into question existing definitions and perceptions of consumer crime. This article will show that there was considerable public debate and disagreement over who was to blame for the sudden surge in the crime, over what could be done to prevent it, and over how to treat those accused and convicted of shoplifting. Some of the ambiguities in public responses to shoplifting evident in our period were witnessed in the earlier experiences of the nineteenth-century department store. Then, as in the 1950s, public debate on the causes of shoplifting occurred within the context of broader critiques of consumerism.     

The Print Cultures of the Celtic Languages, 1700–1900

ABSTRACT

While the cultural trajectories of the Celtic language communities have some broad similarities in the long term, their histories in the medium term were quite different. The article approaches this issue through a comparative analysis of the print cultures of Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Breton and Irish in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The approach is both quantitative and qualitative, surveying total production in the four languages as well as looking at the presence and absence of different genres in the different languages. It also examines diaspora publishing in America and Australia. The different patterns are explained primarily in terms of the nature and extent of institutional church support for publishing in those languages.     

Other Mothers’ Milk: From Wet Nursing to Human Milk Banking in England, 1900-1950

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the continuities between wet nursing and the emergence of human milk banking in England in the first half of the twentieth century. It revisits the assumption that wet nursing had disappeared in England at the beginning of the twentieth century, and focuses attention on a continuing, albeit diminished, practice of private wet nursing after 1900 and the re-emergence of the institutional employment of lactating mothers in the interwar period. The article explores how changes in infant welfare preoccupations, medical views of breastfeeding and breast milk, and conceptualisations of the lactating body were embedded in the development from wet nursing to human milk banking.     

Representations of Bandits in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Spain

ABSTRACT

This article adopts a cultural historical approach to novels and plays about bandits in Spain, developing methods pioneered for other countries and periods, and examines the significance of stories about such famous criminals as Diego Corrientes and Jaime el Barbudo. Although nineteenth-century Spanish bandits superficially resemble Hobsbawm's social bandits, it is argued that these characters were reinvented as vehicles to explore the nature of legitimate government. The significance of these bandit stories as sources depends on an appreciation of their historical resonance and the danger and ambiguity of their association with real crime and the masses.     

Evolution,Civilization and History

ABSTRACT

This article will offer a fresh perspective on media attitudes towards working-class youth in late Victorian London by looking in detail at a case study of violent youth crime. It offers an analysis of gang crime in the late nineteenth-century capital and explores the use of class and stereotyping in the reporting of working-class youth. It considers the extent to which the problems of violent youth gangs were manipulated by the press to portray the capital as a ‘city out of control’. Finally, it will argue that these contemporary representations of youth helped create a fear that exaggerated the threat posed by gangs.     

Adultery and the double standard in a Dutch city in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Abstract

Analyzing Dutch criminal cases of adultery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this article shows that the legal definition of adultery as well as its prosecution changed in this period. Until 1811 both men and women received equally hard punishments and were prosecuted in similar numbers. Only with the introduction of the French Code Pénal in the Netherlands in 1811 did the double standard find its way into laws on adultery. But at the same time, sentences became more lenient and prosecution declined. The changes in the laws, as well as the discrepancies between the law and prosecution practice, show adultery’s constructed character and its differing meanings, the variability of the double standard and the precarious nature of heterosexuality.     

Government,Church and Māori Responses to Mākutu (Sorcery) in New Zealand in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

ABSTRACT

Traditionally Māori attributed disease to supernatural causes, including mākutu (sorcery) and, as with some other indigenous cultures, considered that killing sorcerers was both just and right. Belief in mākutu ran counter to the Church's desire to gain religious primacy, and mākutu-related murders challenged the State's claim to sovereignty, and its desire to ‘civilize’ Māori. Each indigenous society possesses unique characteristics, just as the nature of each settler society develops within its own environment. While some similarities with other colonized societies can be identified, distinctive local conditions influenced the relationship of Māori to the New Zealand colonial state, and thus attitudes and actions relating to sorcery-related crime. This article explores how mākutu brought Māori communities into conflict with both Church and State, and how the latter in particular was constrained by political realities. As the nineteenth century came to an end, the murders had largely ceased and the State and Church became more concerned with Māori spiritual healers. The article also shows that Māori reformers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries took a lead in changing Māori attitudes.     

Witchcraft in the Early Modern Isle of Man

ABSTRACT

This article examines evidence relating to witchcraft beliefs and official attitudes to witchcraft in the Isle of Man during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is based mainly on court records, and above all those of the Manx ecclesiastical courts. It demonstrates that there was a rich popular culture relating to witchcraft on the island, with a number of individualistic features. It places Manx witchcraft beliefs in relation to two other phenomena that were central to the island's popular culture: fairy beliefs and the belief in the efficacy of the curse. It also demonstrates that the island's authorities maintained a relatively low-keyed approach to witchcraft (only two people are known to have been executed as witches in the island), treating it as a sign of popular ignorance and a regrettable source of neighbourly disputes rather than as a satanic heresy.     

Progressivism and the History of the Public House, 1850–1950

ABSTRACT

In a recent article, Alistair Mutch suggests that twin concepts – ‘control’ and ‘interpretation’ – explain the evolution of the public house over a century of dramatic changes between 1850 and 1950. This article argues that these concepts are confusing, ambiguous and misleading. It was not regulatory pressures, the temperance movement, local politicians, pressure groups or magistrates that most shaped the history of drinking premises, but developments outside the brewing industry, most notably Progressivism. Emerging in the late nineteenth century, Progressives set out to reform drinkers and drink premises, first in the trust house movement, and then in the Liquor Traffic Central Control Board during the First World War. Appropriating their ideas and philosophy immediately following the war, England's foremost brewers launched the public house improvement movement, the most far-reaching attempt to transform the nature of public drinking in the twentieth century.     

Movement,Space and Social Mobility in early and mid-Twentieth-Century Britain

ABSTRACT

The enthusiasm for creating new histories of social mobility has grown at a moment when sociologists in Britain have been engaged in a high-profile project to update the models of class they have used for more than 50 years. These endeavours share the same intellectual ambition: to show class and social mobility are multi-dimensional phenomena. However, as this article shows, these developments recall the infancy of British social mobility research, during the first three decades of the twentieth century, when the relationships between disciplines, institutions and ideas had yet to take the shape we now recognise.     

Caliphal Imperialism and Ḥijāzī elites in the second/eighth Century

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the debate over the effectiveness with which late Umayyad and early ?Abbāsid caliphs negotiated their respective rights and duties with provincial elites during the second/eighth century. The focus is on the relationships that evolved between the caliphs and those elite families residing in the ?ijāz whose ancestors had helped to establish the Muslim community and the early caliphal empire in the mid-first/seventh century. The article's analysis centres on a series of four revolts in the ?ijāz over the second/eighth century and examines developments in the enthusiasm with which local elites either supported or opposed those revolts. This discussion demonstrates that, aside from a brief period during the first decades of ?Abbāsid rule, Umayyad and ?Abbāsid caliphs during the second/eighth century were actually quite successful at inspiring loyalty among the local elites of the ?ijāz.