Dr. John Slight, Lecturer in Modern History, has published three articles on OpenLearn related to the First World War and its aftermath in the Middle East.
The first article examines the British ‘dash’ for Mosul, Northern Iraq, in November 1918.
The second article explores the fall of Medina, in Arabia, in January 1919.
The third article covers the Egyptian Revolution of 1919.
Annika Mombauer, Professor of European History, has published an article on OpenLearn on on the fate of Matthias Erzberger, the most hated man in post-war GermanyÂ
Erzberger concluded the Armistice of 11 November 1918 on behalf of Germany with the Allied powers.
Lecturer in History Dr. Neil Younger has published How Protestant was the Elizabethan regime? in the English Historical Review. Recent historiography on the Elizabethan regime has argued that it was strongly dominated by convinced Protestants, most prominently Lord Burghley, the earl of Leicester and Sir Francis Walsingham. This article argues that this consensus glosses over many important political figures whose religion was much more conservative, who were often sympathetic to Catholics and in several cases were probably essentially Catholic themselves. These individuals, although prominent at the time, have been seriously neglected by historians, often because of the nature of the archival record. The article surveys the prominence of such men throughout the reign, examining their religious inclinations. It goes on to assess the extent of their influence on the politics of the period, arguing that they were capable of mounting major political initiatives, and indeed scored several important successes against more strongly Protestant policies. Likewise, it argues that very often forward Protestant policies met with failure, in which the conservativesâ influence can often be detected. Finally, it discusses some of the consequences of these findings, proposing a more complex picture of Elizabethan politics, in which religious division and indeed conflict was a significant factor, and arguing that the Elizabethan regime should therefore be seen as a much less united and univocal entity than is often assumed.
Senior Lecturer in History Dr. Rosalind Crone has published a Guide to the Criminal Prisons of Nineteenth Century England.
The penal system in nineteenth-century England was incredibly complicated. It comprised two types of prison: convict prisons and local prisons. While convict prisons were under the direct control of the Home Office, local prisons were, until the 1877 Prison Act, managed by a whole host of different local authorities, from counties and boroughs to liberties and even cathedrals. Moreover, included among convict prisons were penitentiaries, public works prisons and prison hulks (also known as floating prisons), while local prisons included gaols, bridewells and lock-ups. This complexity has led to a raft of studies of individual institutions. Nevertheless, big gaps in our knowledge remain. Simply put, we don’t even know how many prisons existed in nineteenth-century England. This Guide to the Criminal Prisons of Nineteenth-Century England recovers much of that lost landscape. It contains critical information about operational dates, locations, jurisdictions, population statistics, appearances in primary and secondary sources and lists of surviving archives for 844 English prisons-including local prisons (419), convict prisons (17), prison hulks (30) and lock-ups (378)-used to confine those accused and convicted of crime in the period 1800-1899. Furthermore, through analysis of the accumulated data, the book challenges several important assumptions on the emergence of the modern prison in Britain. It also draws attention to previously unexplored patterns in the preservation and management of penal records.
Professor Paul Lawrence has published Historical criminology and the explanatory power of the past in Criminology and Criminal Justice. To what extent can the past âexplainâ the present? This deceptively simple question lies at the heart of historical criminology (research which incorporates historical primary sources while addressing present-day debates and practices in the criminal justice field). This article seeks first to categorize the ways in which criminologists have used historical data thus far, arguing that they are most commonly deployed to âproblematizeâ the contemporary rather than to âexplainâ it. The article then interrogates the reticence of criminologists to attribute explicative power in relation to the present to historical data. Finally, it proposes the adoption of long time-frame historical research methods, outlining three advantages which would accrue from this: the identification and analysis of historical continuities; a more nuanced, shared understanding of micro/macro change over time in relation to criminal justice; and a method for identifying and analysing instances of historical recurrence, particularly in perceptions and discourses around crime and justice.
Dr. Richard Marsden, Lecturer in History and Staff Tutor, has published Scottish parliamentary record scholarship in the devolution era. In 1707 Scotlandâs parliament ceased to exist. Yet it has since been the subject of two monumental acts of record scholarship; the Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland (1814-1875) in the nineteenth century and the Records of the Parliaments of Scotland (2007) in the twenty-first. Using the first of these as a touchstone, this article examines the ways in which the records of the pre-1707 parliament are presented, positioned and interpreted in the second. Unlike the nineteenth-century edition, which was produced in an era when adherence to the 1707 Act of Union with England went all but unquestioned, the twenty-first-century version was created during a period of constitutional devolution amidst a national debate over the question of independence from the United Kingdom. Approaching this new edition of parliamentary records as a cultural product, shaped and informed by the context in which it was created, therefore enables us to learn much about how the relationship between history and national identity in Scotland has changed since its predecessor was published. From there, the article questions the assumption that present-day understandings of Scottish identity are primarily civic and forward-looking, and argues that they are in fact partly based on claims which, whether secessionist or devolutionist, are fundamentally historical.
Ole Peter Grell, Professor of Early Modern History, has published It All Depends on the Dose: poisons and medicines in European history, edited with Andrew Cunningham and Jon Arrizabalaga. This is the first volume to take a broad historical sweep of the close relation between medicines and poisons in the Western tradition, and their interconnectedness. They are like two ends of a spectrum, for the same natural material can be medicine or poison, depending on the dose, and poisons can be transformed into medicines, while medicines can turn out to be poisons. The book looks at important moments in the history of the relationship between poisons and medicines in European history, from Roman times, with the Greek physician Galen, through the Renaissance and the maverick physician Paracelsus, to the present, when poisons are actively being turned into beneficial medicines.
Dr. John Slight, Lecturer in Modern History, has published ‘Global war and its impact on the Gulf States of Kuwait and Bahrain, 1914-1918’ in War and Society. The article provides the first detailed analysis of the Gulf States of Kuwait and Bahrain during the First World War. It argues that the war had a disruptive effect on these statesâ politics, societies, economies and trans-regional networks. As well as writing the wartime experiences of Kuwait and Bahrain into the conflictâs global history, it aids our understanding of the effects of world-wide conflict on states which are not major belligerent powers.
Dr. Luc-Andre Brunet, Lecturer in Twentieth Century European History, has published ‘The Creation of the Monnet Plan, 1945-46: A Critical Re-evaluation’, in Contemporary European History. Drawing on an extensive range of French archival sources as well as Jean Monnet’s papers, this article challenges several commonly held views regarding the establishment of the Monnet Plan by re-examining the domestic political context in post-war France. It reveals that the distinctive âsupra-ministerialâ structure of the Monnet Plan was developed only after, and in direct response to, the October 1945 legislative elections in which the French Communist Party won the most seats and subsequently gained control of France’s main economic ministries. Furthermore, Monnet managed to convince communist ministers to surrender important powers from their ministries to Monnet’s nascent planning office on false premises, a finding that challenges the usual depiction of Monnet as an open and honest broker.
