{"title":"ALIVE – AND STILL KICKING: THE RHS AT 150","authors":"M. Finn","doi":"10.1017/S0080440118000154","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080440118000154","url":null,"abstract":"Marking and reflecting on the Royal Historical Society’s major anniversaries has not typically been a function of our Transactions. In his presidential address of February , C. W. C. Oman unsurprisingly made no mention of the Society’s fiftieth anniversary. Noting that he was employed at Whitehall in three different types of war work and had read only one book of history in the past year, Oman identified himself ‘as one of the much-cursed tribe of censors’ employed by the government to police dissemination of contemporary historical records, and proceeded to use this vantage point to reflect on what we now term ‘fake news’, that is ‘the genesis and development of Rumours, Reports, and Legends of a false or exaggerated sort, during times of military or political crisis’. Like Oman before him, R. A. (Robin) Humphreys, president of the Society at its centenary in , failed to note this milestone in the Transactions – indeed, no presidential address from was published by the Society, with A Centenary Guide to the Publications of the Royal Historical Society – instead appearing to mark this anniversary. Ian Archer’s ‘ Years of Royal Historical Society Publishing’ in this volume thus represents an innovation – one that merits being read alongside both the articles here (drawn from our past year of public lectures and symposia), and also our new anniversary blog, Historical Transactions (https://blog.royalhistsoc.org/). Archer’s survey, informed not only by our archive and publications but also by his many years of sterling service for the Society as a literary director, provides several salutary reminders that the RHS is not now as pioneering as we may wish to think. He observes that women historians were prominent in the Society’s publications – winning two-thirds of the RHS Alexander Prizes between and and accounting for per cent of published papers in the s, for example – long before the advent of second-wave feminism. Furthermore, earlier incarnations of the RHS (like the Society in )","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"28 1","pages":"1 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0080440118000154","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45539836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"SACRED LANDSCAPES, SPIRITUAL TRAVEL: EMBODIED HOLINESS AND LONG-DISTANCE PILGRIMAGE IN THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION","authors":"Elizabeth C. Tingle","doi":"10.1017/S0080440118000051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080440118000051","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Long regarded as a medieval tradition which declined into insignificance after Luther, pilgrimage expanded considerably from the mid-sixteenth century, until well after 1750. This paper examines long-distance journeys to shrines, rather than sacred sites themselves, to explore how landscapes travelled were perceived, experienced and used by pilgrims in the Counter-Reformation. Using theory such as phenomenology, the focus is on autobiographical accounts of pilgrimages to two case-study sites, the Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, northern France, and Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, north-west Spain, roughly between 1580 and 1750. These were shrines with origins in the early medieval period and which attracted a clientele over long distances. These pilgrimages were also in some way affected by religious conflict in the sixteenth century, whether by direct attack by Huguenots as at the Mont, or by war-time disruptions of its routes as with Compostela, as well as the theological and polemical attacks on the practice of pilgrimage itself by Protestant authors. Pilgrimage studies have examined ‘place’ – the shrine – but a focus on ‘landscape’ allows for a consideration of wider religious and cultural contexts, relations and experiences in this period of religious change.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"28 1","pages":"89 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0080440118000051","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43239488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"MATERIAL TURNS IN BRITISH HISTORY: I. LOOT","authors":"M. Finn","doi":"10.1017/S0080440118000026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080440118000026","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This address explores the writing of history in Britain during the Georgian and Victorian eras, arguing for the need both to trace British historiographical genealogies along routes that extend from Europe to the Indian subcontinent and to acknowledge the importance of material histories for this evolution. Focusing on military men who served in the East India Company during the Third Anglo-Maratha and Pindari War (1817–18), it examines the entangled histories of material loot, booty and prize on the one hand, and archival and history-writing practices developed by British military officers on the other. Active in these military campaigns and in post-conflict administration of conquered territories, a cadre of Company officers (assisted by ‘native’ interlocutors trained in Indian historical traditions) elaborated historical practices that we more conventionally associate with the Rankean historiographical innovations of the Victorian era. The Royal Historical Society's own history is shaped by these cross-cultural material encounters.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"28 1","pages":"5 - 32"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0080440118000026","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49562188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"RHT volume 28 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0080440118000014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0080440118000014","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"28 1","pages":"f1 - f5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/s0080440118000014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44261850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"150 YEARS OF ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY PUBLISHING","authors":"I. Archer","doi":"10.1017/S0080440118000130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080440118000130","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The 150th anniversary of the Royal Historical Society offers an opportunity for an investigation into its publications over the longue durée. Its slow transformation from an association of literary dilettanti to a body of professional historians in the period 1890–1910 was accompanied by changes to its publication programme: the appointment of a literary director, an improvement in the quality of papers read, the merger with the Camden Society and the commitment to a programme of historical bibliographies established the basis of the Society's publishing programme for much of the twentieth century. The interwar years saw new initiatives including the launch of Guides and Handbooks, but the Society was already losing momentum, and an ill-fated foray into the publication of diplomatic records stymied its reputation. The 1950s and 1960s were a period of ongoing stasis, from which the Society was rescued in the early 1970s by G. R. Elton and his allies, who promoted a monograph series and the Annual Bibliographies. The momentum of change was sustained by the early commitment to an electronic version of its bibliographies, and still more recently by a commitment to open access monographs. The changing profile of the Society's publications by gender of author, period and area is charted, raising questions about future directions.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"28 1","pages":"265 - 288"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0080440118000130","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56803498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"BUILDINGS, LANDSCAPES AND REGIMES OF MATERIALITY","authors":"W. Whyte","doi":"10.1017/S0080440118000075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080440118000075","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Beginning with a surprisingly exuberant response to the landscape recorded by a distinguished scholar, this paper explores the agency of things and places though time. It argues that the recent ‘material turn’ is part of a broader re-enchantment of the world: a re-enchantment that has parallels with a similar process at the turn of the nineteenth century. Tracing this history suggests that within the space of a single generation the material world can be enchanted or disenchanted, with things and places imbued with – or stripped of –agency. In other words, different periods possess what we might call different regimes of materiality. Any approach which assumes the existence of material agency throughout history, or which imports our assumptions into a period which did not share them, will necessarily fail. Before we look at the material world, therefore, we need to examine how the material world was looked at, how it was conceptualised and how it was experienced. We need to apprehend its regime of materiality.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"28 1","pages":"135 - 148"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0080440118000075","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47701350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"THE TROUBLES WITH A LOWER CASE t: UNDERGRADUATES AND BELFAST'S DIFFICULT HISTORY","authors":"Sean P O'connell","doi":"10.1017/S0080440118000117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080440118000117","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper explores the risks and rewards involved in directing undergraduate students engaged on an oral history project in Belfast. It advocates the role of oral history as a tool through which to encourage students’ engagement with research-led teaching to produce reflective assignments on the nature of historical evidence, particularly autobiographical memory. The particular challenges of conducting oral history in a city beset by ethno-sectarian divisions are discussed. This factor has ensured that the historiography of Belfast has focused extensively on conflict and violence. The city's social history is poorly understood, but employing oral history enables the exploration of issues that take undergraduate historians beyond the Troubles as a starting point. This project probed what is called the troubles with a lower case t, via an analysis of deindustrialisation and urban redevelopment in Sailortown (Belfast's dockland district). It provided evidence with which to offer a new assessment on existing historiographical discussions about working-class nostalgic memory and urban social change, one that supports those scholars that problematize attempts to categorise such memory. The testimony also differed in significant ways from previous oral history research on post-war Northern Ireland.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"28 1","pages":"219 - 239"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0080440118000117","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48222674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"THE WOMAN TO THE PLOW; AND THE MAN TO THE HEN-ROOST: WIVES, HUSBANDS AND BEST-SELLING BALLADS IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND","authors":"Christopher D. Marsh","doi":"10.1017/S008044011800004X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S008044011800004X","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper investigates the representation of marital relations in some of the most successful broadside ballads published in seventeenth-century England. It explains the manner in which these have been selected as part of a funded research project, and it proceeds to question an existing historiographical emphasis on ballads in which marriages were portrayed as under threat due to a combination of wifely failings (scolding, adultery, violence) and husbandly shortcomings (sexual inadequacy, jealousy, weakness). Best-selling ballads were much more sympathetic to married women in particular than we might have expected, and the implications of this for our understanding of the ballad market and early modern culture more generally may be significant. These ballads, it is argued, were often aimed particularly at women, and they grew out of an interesting negotiation between male didacticism and female taste. Throughout the paper, an attempt is made to understand ballads as songs and visual artefacts, rather than merely as texts.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"28 1","pages":"65 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S008044011800004X","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56803480","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"THE RISE AND FALL(?) OF AMERICA'S NEOLIBERAL ORDER","authors":"G. Gerstle","doi":"10.1017/S0080440118000129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080440118000129","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper argues that the last eighty years of American politics can be understood in terms of the rise and fall of two political orders. The first political order grew out of the New Deal, dominating political life from the 1930s to the 1970s. The history of this order (the New Deal Order) is now well known. The other order, best understood as ‘neoliberal’ in its politics, emerged from the economic and political crises of the 1970s. This paper is one of the first to elucidate the political relationships, ideological character and moral perspective that were central to this neoliberal order's rise and triumph. The paper's narrative unfolds in three acts: the first chronicles the 1980s rise of Ronald Reagan and the laissez-faire Republican party he forced into being; the second shows how the collapse of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s accelerated the globalization of capitalism and elevated neoliberalism's prestige; and the third reveals how a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, facilitated his party's capitulation to neoliberal imperatives. Political orders encourage such capitulation, the paper argues, by universalizing their own ideological principles and making alternative ideologies seem marginal and unworkable. A coda shows how the Great Recession of 2008 fractured America's neoliberal order, diminishing its authority and creating a space in which different kinds of politics, including the right-wing populism of Donald Trump and the left-wing populism of Bernie Sanders, could flourish.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"28 1","pages":"241 - 264"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0080440118000129","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47183774","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘WHO THE HELL ARE ORDINARY PEOPLE?’ ORDINARINESS AS A CATEGORY OF HISTORICAL ANALYSIS","authors":"Claire Langhamer","doi":"10.1017/S0080440118000099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080440118000099","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Ordinariness was a frequently deployed category in the political debates of 2016. According to one political leader, the vote for Brexit was ‘a victory for ordinary, decent people who've taken on the establishment and won’. In making this claim, Nigel Farage sought to link a dramatic political moment with a powerful, yet conveniently nebulous, construction of the ordinary person. In this paper, I want to historicise recent use of the category by returning to another moment when ordinariness held deep political significance: the years immediately following the Second World War. I will explore the range of values, styles and specific behaviours that gave meaning to the claim to be ordinary; consider the relationship between ordinariness, everyday experience and knowledge; and map the political work ordinariness was called upon to perform. I argue that the immediate post-war period was a critical moment in the formation of ordinariness as a social category, an affective category, a moral category, a consumerist category and, above all, a political category. Crucially, ordinariness itself became a form of expertise, a finding that complicates our understanding of the ‘meritocratic moment’.","PeriodicalId":23231,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Royal Historical Society","volume":"28 1","pages":"175 - 195"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0080440118000099","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42342496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}