The Poor Law,the Parish Apprentice,and the Textile Industries in the North of England, 1780–1830

Abstract

This article combines evidence from a variety of Poor Law sources, including apprenticeship registers and indentures, and minutes of discussions of parish officials, and information from business records, to assess the relationship between textile entrepreneurs and Poor Law officialdom in the development of the early textile factory labour force in the North of England, of which parish children formed an important component. It reveals the distribution of parish apprentices over long and short distances to the early northern textile mills. The impact of such labour on textile manufacturing in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries will be considered; and finally the experience of parish children as they became accustomed to novel working conditions will be explored. The analysis of Poor Law and business documentation reveals a meticulous record-keeping process, and a formality of procedure not previously acknowledged. It has been possible to trace apprentice children, both individually and in groups, from their parish of origin through their years of apprenticeship to adult employment. Reports of factory visits and correspondence between parish officials and employers are examined to analyse the relationship between parish and employer through the course of the apprenticeship term. It concludes that parish children were more important to the formation of the early textile factory workforce than conventionally believed, and that their apprenticeship enhanced their longer term employability.     

The Safavid-Qizilbash Ecumene and the Formation of the Qizilbash-Alevi Community in the Ottoman Empire,c. 1500–c. 1700

Alevis, the largest religious minority of Turkey, also living in Europe and the Balkans, are distinguished from both Sunnis and Shi?ites by their latitudinarian attitude toward Islamic Law. Conceptualizing this feature as “heterodoxy,” earlier Turkish scholarship sought the roots of Alevi religiosity in Turkish traditions which traced back to Central Asia, on the one hand, and in medieval Anatolian Sufi orders such as the Yasawi, Bektashi, Qalandari, and Wafa?i, on the other. A new line of scholarship has critiqued the earlier conceptualization of Alevis as “heterodox” as well as the assumption of Central Asian connections. In the meantime, the new scholarship too has focused on medieval Anatolian Sufi orders, especially the Bektashi and Wafa?i, as the fountainhead of Alevi tradition. Critically engaging with both scholarships, this paper argues that it was the Safavid-Qizilbash movement in Anatolia, Azerbaijan, and Iran rather than medieval Sufi orders, that gave birth to Alevi religiosity.     

Constructing British Authority in Australasia: Charles Cooper and the Legal Status of Aborigines in the South Australian Supreme Court,c. 1840–60

In 1840 the South Australian judge Charles Cooper wrote an opinion in which he suggested that Aborigines who had not been in contact with British settlers were not within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The resulting controversy led the Colonial Office to clarify its view on the subjecthood of Aborigines within the colony and the colonial courts' jurisdiction over all subjects in the colony. The criminal jurisdiction of the Supreme Court over Aborigines became politically important because it raised wider questions of imperial authority and colonial policy. By placing Cooper's views in a broader Australasian perspective, the formation of Colonial Office policy and the distinctions between legal categories that informed that policy may be better appreciated. Cooper continued to question the general application of Supreme Court jurisdiction to Aborigines into the late 1840s. This caused a clash with Lieutenant-Governor Robe, who felt that any weakness in the formal authority or jurisdiction of the courts threatened the ability of the government to implement effective policies.