Eliza’s Babes: Poetry ‘Proceeding from Divinity’ in Seventeenth–Century England

This article examines the poetry and prose meditations in the anonymous 1652 volume Eliza’s Babes: or The Virgins–offering. The article begins by reconsidering Liam Semler’s recent assertion that Eliza was a Parliamentarian and religiously radical, arguing instead that she was a centrist, loyalist Protestant. The article then examines the handbooks to devotion and meditation from this loyalist tradition that helped define Eliza’s understanding of public and private and how these concepts were gendered. In keeping with writers such as Joseph Hall and Daniel Featly, Eliza views her private devotion as on a continuum which leads to public worship, or ‘thanks’ as she terms it. Eliza uses this paradigm of public and private to justify both the printing of her poems and her very unusual theology of marriage, in which she considers Christ her only true husband. The final section of the article considers whether Eliza’s understanding of public and private offers her more ‘freedom’ than other women writers, and concludes that any judgement of her freedom must be carefully calibrated to the religious and political contexts of her book.     

‘The Gospel of Health’: American Missionaries and the Transformation of Ottoman/Turkish Women's Bodies, 1890–1932

This article explores an overlooked aspect of American missionary modernisation efforts in the late Ottoman Empire: the attempted transformation of women's bodies. By the late nineteenth century, American missionary women and Ottoman government officials both viewed Ottoman women's bodies as a visible reflection of the empire's weaknesses, yet also as central to its survival and revival. The transformation of women's bodies from ‘uncontrolled’ to ‘robust’, they believed, was a prerequisite for a modern society. Through a close reading of missionary reports, correspondences and student memoirs, this study traces the development of physical education, hygiene and recreational sports at the missionary‐run American College for Girls (ACG) in Istanbul. Over time, the female teachers at the ACG partnered and collaborated with male Ottoman/Turkish government officials to implement these courses at girls’ schools across the region. While the government endorsed physical education as key to national progress and regeneration, the ACG educators framed it as a mode of international, feminist self‐empowerment. In reality, the missionaries continued to assert their own Western superiority and advance Orientalist notions through the education courses. By highlighting the shifts in women's body ideals, curricular development and nationalist rhetoric, I argue that women's bodies must be studied as a crucial site of missionary and republican reform.     

‘A Rather Novel Constitutional Experiment’: The Formation of the 1977–8 ‘Lib‐Lab Pact’

By March 1977, the Labour government which had narrowly been re‐elected in the October 1974 election, had lost its parliamentary majority, and was facing a vote of confidence tabled by the Conservative opposition. Senior Labour figures thus desperately sought to secure support from one of the minor parties. Unable to broker a deal with either the Ulster Unionists or the Scottish National Party (SNP), largely due to ideological differences, the Labour leadership entered into negotiations with the Liberal leader, David Steel. The result was that the Liberal Party agreed to provide the Labour government with parliamentary support, in return for consultation, via a joint committee, over future policies, coupled with the reintroduction of devolution legislation, and a pledge to provide for direct elections for the European parliament (ideally using some form of proportional representation). There was some surprise that Steel had not pressed for more, or stronger, policy commitments or concessions from the Labour prime minister, James Callaghan, but Steel was thinking long term; he envisaged that Liberal participation in the joint consultative committee would foster closer co‐operation between Liberals and Labour moderates/social democrats, and eventually facilitate a realignment of British politics by marginalising both the Labour left, and the increasingly right‐wing Conservatives Party.     

The Women's Emancipation Union and Radical‐Feminist Politics in Britain, 1891–99

This paper considers the ideals and activism of the fin de siècle feminist organisation, the Women's Emancipation Union (WEU). Active between 1891 and 1899, the WEU held a prophetic vision of the future and an appraisal of women's subjection more comprehensive than any contemporary feminist group. Members were the first to link the possession by women of their bodily autonomy directly to the acquisition of the parliamentary vote, and thus redefined the terms upon which citizenship was constructed. One member raised the matter of armed insurrection in support of the women's franchise, an issue which would have serious implications for the future of suffragist campaigns. The political roots of WEU members lay chiefly within the utopian‐socialist and Radical‐liberal traditions, but it was an organisation which resisted party‐political allegiance to become anchored in the Progressive movement. Adopting what has been defined as the ‘muckraking’ tradition associated with Progressive authorship, the WEU suffragists constructed a rhetoric of resistance to women's subjection from social, sexual, economic and political standpoints. Many points they raised, including for a woman's right to consent to maternity to be enshrined in law, were to become the bedrock of the philosophy of the militant suffragette movement.     

‘Subjective Testimonies’: Women Quaker Ministers and Spiritual Authority in England: 1750–1825

It was generally believed by historians that the increasingly formal regulation of belief and practice in the Society of Friends (Quakers) during the eighteenth century led to a decline in the influence and authority exercised by women in the denomination. Recent research has indicated, however, that although women were denied equal status and roles in the Society's new disciplinary bodies, the period also saw them beginning to outnumber men as the principal upholders of charismatic spiritual leadership through the ministry. These conflicting trends suggest that there were tensions and ambiguities within Quaker discourses on the meaning of gender and its implications for the exercise of religious authority. Using the testimonies of religious experience constructed by women ministers, this paper explores those discourses and illuminates the ways in which they were exploited, questioned and transformed by women. It argues that belief in the equal capacity of men and women for divine service was cut across by the conviction that sexual difference played a crucial part in shaping religious experience. Ministering women negotiated and manipulated the relationship between spirituality and femininity, both to understand themselves as instruments of divine power and to challenge the establishment of a male hierarchy in their church.     

Parishes under Pressure ‐ The Church of England in South Buckinghamshire 1913–1939

Secularisation, or the reducing social significance of religion in the twentieth century, has been widely researched in terms of “demand” factors, but less so on the “supply‐side,” considering the contributory effects of the strategies and actions of religious organisations themselves. This article explores these strategies in a group of Anglican churches in South Buckinghamshire in the period leading up to the Second World War, as industrial and population development shifted proportionally to the southeast. This rapid growth and accompanying demographic change posed major challenges to the Church of England, subjecting the parish system to severe pressure. The availability, allocation, and suitability of clergy were a constant concern. The very basis of the Church of England's “offer” to the average citizen — of being the established, national church, there for everyone — seemed under threat: in some places, there was simply no church to “belong” to. Money was in short supply — perhaps both a cause and a symptom of other problems. A general issue was how to reach young people, but a specific concern was the funding of church schools. More widely, the church seemed to be losing touch with the changing cultural and moral landscape in which it operated.     

‘The Dining Room Should Be the Man's Paradise,as the Drawing Room Is the Woman's’: Gender and Middle‐Class Domestic Space in England, 1850–1910

In the middle‐class home in late nineteenth‐century England, drawing rooms, morning rooms and boudoirs became increasingly associated with women, while dining rooms, studies and smoking rooms were viewed as male spaces. Historians have linked this to the exclusion of women from social power and a male ‘flight from domesticity’. This article questions these interpretations and explores gendered space through advice manuals, inventories and sale catalogues, and autobiographies. While the notion that domestic space should be divided between men and women had considerable cultural purchase, the ways in which this should occur were subject to dispute and limited by the practical contingencies of everyday living. In homes where gendered material culture was present, it exerted a powerful influence on childhood experience and the formation of adult identities.     

‘The Manager in Distress’: Reaction to the Impeachment of Henry Dundas, 1805–7

Impeachments have long since ceased to be a feature of British politics. Much scholarly attention has been given to past impeachments, particularly the unsuccessful prosecution of Warren Hastings. Little consideration, however, has been given to the last such case, the impeachment of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, from 1805 to 1807. The Melville scandal held the interest of the country until the middle of 1806, when it was diverted by naval battles. Although generally neglected by historians of the period, the Melville affair was a significant event in the course of then‐contemporary British politics, and of wider society. Examination of the reactions to the attempted impeachment can illuminate a number of developing themes and concerns within both elite circles and in the wider political nation. These include dislike of patronage and the Pittite ‘system’, anti‐Scottish bias, and advocacy of financial and parliamentary reform. Moreover, it helped to revive the radical movement both in parliament and out of doors. While the affair may not have been as significant as the later Mrs Clarke and Queen Caroline scandals, the reactions to it were generally comparable. In fact, reactions to the attempted impeachment presaged reactions to these later events. The issues and passions stirred forth by the proceedings will be shown to have significantly contributed to the revival of a dynamic national political atmosphere which itself enabled and fuelled those reactions.     

Contextualising ‘Turkification’: nation‐building in the late Ottoman Empire, 1908–18*

Abstract. This article offers an analytical framework for understanding the peculiarities of the Ottoman Empire's nationality policies in the second constitutional period (1908–18). It will examine the extent to which the nationality policies of the Young Turks can be perceived as a nation‐building project, and question whether it is reasonable to apply the term ‘Turkification’ to these policies. The primary goal of the paper in this context is to identify how and to what degree a nationalist outlook shaped imperial polices of the late Ottoman Empire. Engaging in a critical dialogue with the existing historiography, the article argues that ‘Turkification’ should be conceptualised solely as a project of nation‐building in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire. It was only one of the policies employed by the imperial elite and it coexisted with other imperial policies ranging from centralisation to decentralisation, assimilation to dissimilation and integration to homogenisation. The paper concludes by contending that only by contextualising and understanding this complexity and only by taking geographical variations into account can the peculiarity of ‘Turkification’ be grasped.