Illegitimacy and Authority in the North of England,c. 1450–1640

Abstract

This article explores the impact of illegitimacy upon the social, judicial and political landscape of the North of England, from the late medieval period to the eve of the English Civil War. Historiographies of the gentry and of marriage might suggest that irregular unions and resulting bastardy were increasingly frowned upon and of declining significance. At a time when civil strife and Reformation settlements altered the political structures of the North of England and provided alternative approaches to office holding, social and religious commentators expressed concern about the ordering of society at elite levels. In the face of that, this article considers some of the evidence which suggests the extent of bastard-bearing among the elite throughout the period. It further demonstrates the degree of acceptance of this phenomenon among gentry families, including the inheritance of land, property and goods, and involvement in informal political networks, and demonstrates that base-born sons of the nobility and gentry were often accepted into the Church and ranks of northern officialdom, holding highly localised but strategically important offices as Wardens of the Marches in the far North and acting as Justices of the Peace.     

Faith in war: the religious experience of Scottish soldiery,c.1100–c.1500

This paper examines the comparatively patchy evidence for the pastoral provision and personal faith of late medieval Scottish combatants below the rank of knight. By examining such sources as papal supplications, royal financial accounts, parliamentary rolls, chronicles, poetry and the cartularies of Scottish monastic houses and burgh collegiate churches, it is possible to identify elite and parish provision of churchmen serving the needs of Scottish troops as they mustered, trained and prepared for battle. In addition, this evidence also highlights a number of cults and relics popular with the social ranks of the ordinary Scottish soldiery, including those of SS Ninian, Leonard, Thomas Becket, Columba, the Blessed Virgin Mary and — often cast as the nemesis of Scottish troops — Cuthbert. However, this survey also points to some tensions between the spiritual interests of Scottish servicemen and their ruling elites.     

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.     

Merchants,Overseas Trade,and Urban Decline: York,Beverley, and Hull c. 1380–1500

Abstract

Between 1642 and 1660, the Church of England was directed and administered by centrally-appointed government committees, who oversaw the appointment of clerics, arranged generous salaries for many ministers, and undertook ambitious policies that would have revolutionised the medieval parochial structure of the Church. Yet these committees have rarely been discussed, largely because historians remain sceptical about the nature of the Church in this period, and have too often been distracted by doctrinal matters. This essay will analyse the key activity of these committees within Lancashire, the augmentation of clerical wages, and demonstrate that there was a functioning, national, established Church in existence during this period, and that, for some of the clergy at least, this was a golden age of doctrinal tolerance and financial remuneration.     

Conscripting the breast: lactation,slavery and salvation in the realms of Aragon and kingdom of Majorca,c. 1250–1300

This essay examines the ideals and practices surrounding motherhood and wet nursing in the realms of Aragon and kingdom of Majorca c. 1250–1300. Despite powerful messages — from ecclesiastical pronouncements to lay devotional manuals to artwork in churches — that linked maternal breastfeeding to an educative and caring ideal of mothering, social and economic pressures on wealthy urban and knightly women to remain as sexually available and as fecund as possible caused a shift to increased use of wet nurses, many of whom were of Muslim origin. Although the latter would have been nominally baptized, in practice, if not normative legal ideal, they maintained their enslaved status no matter how many children they bore. Indeed, it is possible that such women's bodies were doubly exploited: first, as sexual chattel available to their masters and other men, and then, having been made pregnant, as nursing mothers whose own children could be put away in favour of their mistresses'. Only fragmentary examples of such women ‘conversing’ with one another have been found, but the observations offered here open up to the historian's view a social scenario in which we know many conversations among women must have taken place.     

Conscripting the breast: lactation,slavery and salvation in the realms of Aragon and kingdom of Majorca,c. 1250–1300

This essay examines the ideals and practices surrounding motherhood and wet nursing in the realms of Aragon and kingdom of Majorca c. 1250–1300. Despite powerful messages — from ecclesiastical pronouncements to lay devotional manuals to artwork in churches — that linked maternal breastfeeding to an educative and caring ideal of mothering, social and economic pressures on wealthy urban and knightly women to remain as sexually available and as fecund as possible caused a shift to increased use of wet nurses, many of whom were of Muslim origin. Although the latter would have been nominally baptized, in practice, if not normative legal ideal, they maintained their enslaved status no matter how many children they bore. Indeed, it is possible that such women's bodies were doubly exploited: first, as sexual chattel available to their masters and other men, and then, having been made pregnant, as nursing mothers whose own children could be put away in favour of their mistresses'. Only fragmentary examples of such women ‘conversing’ with one another have been found, but the observations offered here open up to the historian's view a social scenario in which we know many conversations among women must have taken place.     

Passion,Parliament, and the Pen: Articulations of Female Citizenship in Britain,c.1790–1890

Among the plethora of political shifts that defined the Age of Reform, this article will uncover a female narrative of changing conceptions of citizenship, asserting that, despite their formal exclusion, women articulated a distinctly female understanding of citizenship through writing. Furthermore, it will explore the significance of parliament to women's experiences. The spaces in which citizenship was performed are integral to understanding its conception, and the significance of the franchise in 19th-century political culture made parliament a fundamental space for those pursuing citizenship rights. Women from a diverse range of backgrounds articulated their inherently female experiences in their writing as they engaged with the discourses of citizenship that surrounded them. A collection of central themes and issues characterised their writing: honour and legality; representation and the franchise; local and municipal politics; marriage; education; and professional and employment opportunities. These texts illuminate the emerging self-conception of female citizenship by women whose lived experiences were coloured by the historical shifts of reform. Consequently, the tapestry of these texts is formed of an intricately connected web of threads that both merge and deviate from one another around their individual focus, intention, or argument. However, collectively they suggest a resoundingly harmonious image, demonstrating that, although varying between individuals, a whole multitude of women from across society were experiencing this realisation of their right to equal citizenship.     

Politics of place: political representation and the culture of electioneering in the Netherlands,c.1848–1980s

Abstract

This article is a first attempt to explore how a politics of place has manifested itself in Dutch electoral culture since the middle of the nineteenth century. It aims to move beyond a narrow interpretation of a politics of place as an ‘old-fashioned’ feature of electoral politics to be associated with a distinct, long-gone era of political representation. Instead, this article shows how it was continuously negotiated. This gives us a better understanding of the changing nature of political representation in the Netherlands. Compared to Britain at the turn of the nineteenth century, local senses of community and their clash with ideology-based party politics were far less prominent. There was, however, on-going debate about the degree to which Parliament should reflect the various regions of the country, so that local party associations and voters could feel represented and address ‘their’ MP for issues pertaining to their locality. Moreover, after 1918 parties were concerned about the need to maintain political communication on the spot to counter lack of political involvement and feelings of alienation among the electorate. The article ends with a call for further reflection on the nature of clientelism in the Netherlands by exploring direct interaction between voters and their representatives.     

Drinking the Fruits of Revolution: Common Land Privatisation and the Expansion of Viticulture in Languedoc,c.1789–1820

This article demonstrates the links between Revolutionary privatisation of village common land and an expansion of viticulture in the department of Gard, southern France. The Jacobin decree of 10 June 1793 authorised the partition of common land, but it was two laws that were passed in reaction to this decree that finally moved considerable amounts of common land into the private domain. Under the law of 9 Ventôse XII and the Royal Ordinance of 23 June 1819 much communal land was privatised in the Gard, through either sale or lease. Most of this land took the form of Mediterranean garrigue hillsides, which were ideal for viticulture. Specific evidence from the implementation of these laws shows that a significant amount of this newly privatised land was planted with grape vines. This scenario makes sense as viticulture and the wine market remained buoyant throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic decades.

Résumé:?Cet article démontre les liens entre la privatisation des communaux sous la révolution et l'expansion de la viticulture dans le département du Gard. Les décrets du 10 juin 1793 autorisaient les répartitions des communaux mais ce sont les deux lois suivantes qui finalisèrent cette redistribution des terres. Sous la loi du 9 Ventôse XII et l'ordonnance royale du 23 juin 1819 les communaux du Gard furent privatisés ou loués. Ces terres, principalement des collines de garrigue, étaient propre à la viticulture et furent plantées participant à la production nationale de cette période.     

Of peasants and settlers: ideals of Portugueseness,imperial nationalism and European settlement in Africa,c.1930–c.1945

This article examines policies and ideas of European settlement in Africa through the lens of imperial rhetoric and nationalist imaginations in Portugal during the first decades of Salazar’s dictatorship. Even though European settlement in Africa was under discussion since Brazil’s independence, the debate was invigorated in the 1930s. This article will place the renewed interest within the wider context of transnational migration, world economic crisis and inter-European competition for colonial dominance before the Second World War. Although European settlement was perceived as necessary both in terms of domestic social regulation and international competition at the time, state-sponsored settlements in Portuguese Africa were not a reality until the worldwide process of decolonization had started. On the contrary, not only did Portuguese political elites not invest in settlement schemes, but they actually adopted measures to curb migration to the colonies up until 1945, contradicting their imperialist rhetoric at home. The author argues that the contradiction between rhetoric and practice needs to be analysed in light of the growing desire to intensify control over space and people in European settlements in Africa. Barriers to block undesirable migrants from the metropole were only one part of the process of forcing an idealized vision of Portugal and Portugueseness into reality in both the colonies and the metropole. This article concludes that policies and ideas of European Settlement cannot be dissociated from the anti-urban rhetoric and anti-modernizing agenda of Estado Novo.     

Kinship and identity in eleventh-century Normandy: the case of Hugh de Grandmesnil,c. 1040–1098

Hugh de Grandmesnil was one of the co-founders of the Norman monastery of Saint-Evroult. It was no doubt his part in this foundation that led Orderic Vitalis, a monk of that house, to provide an account of Hugh's career in his Historia ecclesiastica. The information found there provides an almost unique opportunity to observe an individual of the eleventh century in the context of nearly all of his family connections. This article uses that evidence first to examine Hugh's relationships with his kinsmen and to ask whether they acted together so as to form, in Sir James Holt's words, a ‘mutual benefit society’, and secondly to consider the extent to which Hugh's identity was defined by his relations with his kinsmen. The findings of this inquiry reveal, amongst other things, that the importance of Hugh's relationships with his kinsmen varied over the course of Hugh's career, and that the pool of kinsmen, friends, and allies to whom Hugh could turn in time of need was equally fluid. Hugh's career therefore stands as a corrective to frequently held assumptions that the relationships forged by kinship and marriage between members of the secular elite of eleventh-century Normandy remained stable throughout an individual's life.     

Entangled allegiances: Ottoman Greeks in Marseille and the shifting ethos of Greekness (c. 1790–c. 1820)

Abstract

An attempt is made here to consider ‘the Greek experience of Ottoman rule’ beyond the frontiers of the Empire itself, by focusing on the resilience of the Ottoman aspect of collective identity among the Greeks in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Marseille. Beyond the classic questioning of political, social and cultural categories and labels, this article makes a plea for taking this resilience seriously, as part and parcel of a broader process of identity formation in a diaspora context. Making the case for a richer and more complex analysis of the phenomenon of ‘entangled identities’ among the Greeks in Marseille, some suggestions are made for what this claim might bring to the analysis of identity formation in the context of diaspora communities.