The husbandry,perception and ‘improvement’ of turkeys in Britain, 1500–1900

The introduction of the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) to Britain is documented during the first half of the 16th century. These birds initially featured on the tables of the powerful and served as living garden ornaments or pets. Shifting human perceptions, driven in part by the ‘ethic of improvement’, affected turkey husbandry methods and animal-human relationships as well as the bird’s symbolic role. This transition was complicated; the turkey remained a palimpsest of attributes throughout 1500–1900, with different associations assuming prominence over time.     

The invention of the basset hound: breed,blood and the late Victorian dog fancy, 1865–1900

In this article the authors explore the practices and conceptualisations of British dog breeding and the showing of pedigree dogs by the ‘the dog fancy’, focusing specifically on the story of a single breed: the basset hound. This was not simply a story of British dog fanciers appropriating a French dog breed; indeed, this was impossible because the very notion of a dog ‘breed’, defined by conformation and legitimated by pedigree, was in the process of invention. They show how the British dog-show fancy chose one, from many and varied types of French hound, to be the basset hound, and how this choice was legitimated by reference to an imagined history, where the British dog fancy rescued a noble animal from French indifference to breed and blood. The chosen physical form was standardised to arbitrary ideal, but was by means no static. In the spirit of the times, it was ‘improved’, first by the empirical methods of animal breeders, using pedigrees to secure good and pure ‘blood’, and then by the application of science, particularly artificial insemination and hereditarian theories.     

Towards a history of emotion, 1562–1660

Abstract

This article examines uses of the word emotion during the seventeenth century, arguing that the term's meaning at this time was in flux. OED gives three principle definitions of emotion, the first as meaning ‘political turmoil or agitation’, the second as meaning literally ‘movement or motion’, and the third as meaning ‘strong feelings or passing’. I argue that a great many uses of emotion during the seventeenth century apply the word in the second sense to the physiological movements of humours. This being so, I suggest that in emotion's seventeenth-century uses it is possible to read a transition in the word's meaning. Through its frequent use with references to humours in motion, the word begins to take on the characteristics which would allow it to develop into meaning ‘feelings or passions’.     

The emergence of a Presbyterian evangelical: a religious and social history of Isaac Nelson's pastorate at First Comber Presbyterian Church, 1838–42

The Revd Isaac Nelson was one of the most controversial figures in nineteenth-century Ulster Presbyterianism, who achieved transatlantic recognition for his involvement with anti-slavery and later became notorious for his advocacy of Irish Home Rule. Owing to his opposition to the 1859 revival, Nelson has been castigated by both fundamentalists and moderate evangelicals as the enemy of vital religion. This view has been disseminated in popular mythologies of the Ulster awakening, especially in the works of Ian Paisley and John T. Carson. An objective examination of Nelson's public career, however, does not support this conclusion. This essay seeks to substantiate the claim that Nelson was an evangelical by considering his early experience as minister of First Comber Presbyterian Church. By means of a micro-history case study, it also usefully illuminates our understanding as to how the dominance of evangelicalism within Ulster Presbyterianism was experienced at a local level. Accordingly, the essay also considers Nelson's role in disputes with Episcopalians and Unitarians during this early part of his career as well as his early involvement in ecclesiastical politics.