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This is a major study of the 1549 rebellions, the largest and most important risings in Tudor England. Based upon extensive archival evidence, the book sheds fresh light on the causes, course and long-term consequences of the insurrections. Andy Wood focuses on key themes in the social history of politics, concerning the end of medieval popular rebellion; the Reformation and popular politics; popular political language; early modern state formation; speech, silence and social relations; and social memory and the historical representation of the rebellions. He examines the long-term significance of the rebellions for the development of English society, arguing that the rebellions represent an important moment of discontinuity between the late medieval and the early modern periods. This compelling history of Tudor politics from the bottom up will be essential reading for late medieval and early modern historians as well as early modern literary critics.

How landowners, drainage projectors, and investors worked with the Crown to transform England's waterlogged Fens. 2017 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The draining of the Fens in eastern England was one of the largest engineering projects in seventeenth-century Europe. A series of Dutch and English \"projectors, \" working over several decades and with the full support of the Crown, transformed hundreds of thousands of acres of putatively barren wetlands into dry, arable farmland. The drainage project was also supposed to reform the sickly, backward fenlanders into civilized, healthy farmers, to the benefit of the entire commonwealth. As projectors reconstructed entire river systems, these new, artificial channels profoundly altered both the landscape and the lives of those who lived on it. In this definitive account, historian Eric H. Ash provides a detailed history of this ambitious undertaking. Ash traces the endeavor from the 1570s, when draining the whole of the Fens became an imaginable goal for the Crown, through several failed efforts in the early 1600s. The book closes in the 1650s, when, in spite of the project's enormous difficulty and expense, the draining of the Great Level of the Fens was finally completed. Ash ultimately concludes that the transformation of the Fens into fertile farmland had unintended ecological consequences that created at least as many problems as it solved. Drawing on painstaking archival research, Ash explores the drainage from the perspectives of political, social, and environmental history. He argues that the efficient management and exploitation of fenland natural resources in the rising nation-state of early modern England was a crucial problem for the Crown, one that provoked violent confrontations with fenland inhabitants, who viewed the drainage (and accompanying land seizure) as a grave threat to their local landscape, economy, and way of life. The drainage also reveals much about the political flash points that roiled England during the mid–seventeenth century, leading up to the violence of the English Civil War. This is compelling reading for British historians, environmental scholars, historians of technology, and anyone interested in state formation in early modern Europe.

Medieval Englishmen were treacherous, rebellious and killed their kings, as their French contemporaries repeatedly noted. In the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, ten kings faced serious rebellion, in which eight were captured, deposed, and/or murdered. One other king escaped open revolt but encountered vigorous resistance. In this book, Professor Valente argues that the crises of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were crucibles for change; and their examination helps us to understand medieval political culture in general and key developments in later medieval England in particular. The Theory and Practice of Revolt takes a comparative look at these crises, seeking to understand medieval ideas of proper kingship and government, the role of political violence and the changing nature of reform initiatives and the rebellions to which they led. It argues that rebellion was an accepted and to a certain extent legitimate means to restore good kingship throughout the period, but that over time it became increasingly divorced from reform aims, which were satisfied by other means, and transformed by growing lordly dominance, arrogance, and selfishness. Eventually the tradition of legitimate revolt disappeared, to be replaced by both parliament and dynastic civil war. Thus, on the one hand, development of parliament, itself an outgrowth of political crises, reduced the need for and legitimacy of crisis reform. On the other hand, when crises did arise, the idea and practice of the community of the realm, so vibrant in the thirteenth century, broke down under the pressures of new political and socio-economic realities. By exploring violence and ideas of government over a longer period than is normally the case, this work attempts to understand medieval conceptions on their own terms rather than with regard to modern assumptions and to use comparison as a means of explaining events, ideas, and developments. Contents: Preface; Why study revolt? Theories of resistance 1215-1399; Prelude: 1215-1217, the crisis of Magna Carta; 1258-1265, the community of the Realm; Interlude: 1297-1301, successful reform; 1308-1327, transitions; Interlude: Edward III, the Peasants' Revolt; 1386-1399, personal agendas; Postlude: 1400-1415, Fragmentation and dynastic revolt; Conclusions; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.

Calculating compassion examines the origins of British relief work in late-nineteenth-century wars on the continent and the fringes of Empire. Commencing with the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71, it follows distinguished surgeons and ‘lady amateurs’ as they distributed aid to wounded soldiers and distressed civilians, often in the face of considerable suspicion. Dispensing with the notion of shared ‘humanitarian’ ideals, it examines the complex, and sometimes controversial, origins of organised relief, and illuminates the emergence of practices and protocols still recognisable in the delivery of overseas aid. This book is intended for students, academics and relief practitioners interested in the historical concerns of first generation relief agencies such as the British Red Cross Society and the Save the Children Fund, and their legacies today.

Starting from the tremendous fascination with images of 9/11, Karen Engle asks what, in the context of a national trauma, makes an image appropriate or scandalous, exploring how diverse visual media have been mobilized in political projects of identification and personal narratives of empathy. Focusing on themes of memory, mourning, and history, Engle examines sculptural, photographic, and new media responses to the 9/11 attacks in both contemporary and historical contexts, considers the public's reaction to these visual productions, and suggests that earlier presentations of America at war play a pivotal role in the representations of 9/11 in both official and popular media.

When United Flight 93, the fourth plane hijacked in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the gash it left in the ground became a national site of mourning. The flight's 40 passengers became a media obsession, and countless books, movies, and articles told the tale of their heroic fight to band together and sacrifice their lives to stop Flight 93 from becoming a weapon of terror. InAngel Patriots, Alexander Riley argues that by memorializing these individuals as patriots, we have woven them into much larger story of our nation-an existing web of narratives, values, dramatic frameworks, and cultural characters about what it means to be truly American. Riley examines the symbolic impact and role of the Flight 93 disaster in the nation's collective consciousness, delving into the spontaneous memorial efforts that blossomed in Shanksville immediately after the news of the crash spread; the ad-hoc sites honoring the victims that in time emerged, such as a Parks Department-maintained memorial close to the crash site and a Flight 93 Chapel created by a local Catholic priest; and finally, the creation of an official, permanent crash monument in Shanksville like those built for past American wars. Riley also analyzes the cultural narratives that evolved in films and in books around the events on the day of the crash and the lives and deaths of its \"angel patriot\" passengers, uncovering how these representations of the event reflect the myth of the authentic American nation-one that Americans believed was gravely threatened in the September 11 attacks. A profound and thought-provoking study,Angel Patriotsunveils how, in the wake of 9/11, America mourned much more than the loss of life.

On Monday 19 September 1803, the most significant trial in the history of Ireland took place in Dublin. At the dock stood a twenty-five year old former Trinity College student and doctor’s son. His name was Robert Emmet and he was standing trial for heading a rebellion on 23 July 1803. The iconic power of Robert Emmet in Irish history cannot be overstated. Emmet looms large in narratives of the past, yet the rebellion, which he led, remains to be fully contextualized. Patterson’s book repairs this omission and explains the complex of politicization and revolutionary activity extending into the 1800’s. He details the radicalisation of the grass roots, their para-militarism and engagement in secret societies. Drawing on an intriguing range of sources, Patterson offers a comprehensive insight into a relatively neglected period of history. This work is of particular significance to undergraduate and post-graduate students and lecturers of Irish history.

Shows the historical importance of challenges to the state and powerful groups. Demonstrates how rights we take for granted have been acquired and set into Law over time thanks to the actions of committed men and women.

Between 1916 and 1923, Ireland experienced rebellion and mass mobilization, guerrilla and civil war, partition and ethnic conflict, and the transfer of power from British to Irish governments. The essays in The I.R.A. at War propose a new history of this Irish revolution: one that encompasses the whole of the island as well as Britain, all of the violence and its consequences, and the entire period from the Easter Rising to the end of the Civil War. When did the revolution start and when did it end? Why was it so violent and why were some areas so much worse than others? Why did the I.R.A. mount a terror campaign in England and Scotland but refuse to assassinate British politicians? Where did it get its guns? Was it democratic? What kind of people became guerrillas? 3What kind of people did they kill? Were Protestants ethnically cleansed from southern Ireland? Did a pogrom take place against Belfast Catholics? These and other questions are addressed using extensive new data on those involved and their actions, including the first complete figures for victims of the revolution. These events have never been numbered among the world's great revolutions, but in fact Irish republicans were global pioneers. Long before Mao or Tito, Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army were the first to use a popular political front to build a parallel underground state coupled with sophisticated guerrilla and international propaganda and fund-raising campaigns. Ireland's is also perhaps the best documented revolution in modern history, so that almost any question can be answered, from who joined the I.R.A. to who ordered the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson. The intimacy and precision with which we are able to reconstruct and analyse what happened make this a key site for understanding not just Irish, but world, history.

This article examines the military organization and expertise of Cade's Rebellion in 1450. Contrary to the views of some modern historians that late‐medieval rural populations lacked military skills or arms, it offers evidence that the rebels possessed an instrument of military organization through the traditional structure of the posse comitatus or militia under the command of locally‐elected constables, was led by men with considerable and current skill in warfare, and was at least as well‐armed as most other military forces in the era. It argues that the rebellion should be understood not as the incoherent ‘jacquerie’ of Shakespeare's (and latter historians') version, but as an attempt by the politically responsible element of Kent's common population to assert a right of participation in the national political dialogue through armed protest. It concludes by suggesting that for late‐medieval English society the right to political expression was still largely defined in ‘chivalric’ terms, as the monopoly of the literally armigerous or arms‐bearing elite, and that for a common population, which had its own arms and the organizational wherewithall to use them effectively, rebellion was a way to interrupt this monopoly in order to interject its voice in the national political dialogue.