Early Medieval Settlement and Social Power: The Middle Anglo-Saxon ‘Home Farm’

THE LAST TWO DECADES have witnessed a marked rise in middle Anglo-Saxon settlement research, as archaeologists have become increasingly aware of the way in which this transformative period in English history can be recognised through habitation sites. Though a period during which individuals and institutions seemingly wielded unprecedented new power, archaeologists have struggled to identify many of the processes or ‘motors’ by which such authority was articulated in the landscape. This paper concerns itself with understanding one such driver, demonstrating how early medieval kings shifted power from tribute-orientated regimes to ones rooted in agricultural exploitation. The Church was fundamental to this shift in authority, and was used as a means of consolidating new power relations. In order to sustain more permanent clerical communities, the Church developed core agricultural areas surrounding their centres, known as inland, upon which were established early types of ‘home farm’. In addition to their functional purpose middle Anglo-Saxon ‘home farms’ were subject to exceptionally high degrees of spatial ordering. Such definition of settlement space, which now included property plots and houses defined by boundaries of unprecedented permanence, allowed elites to shape and consolidate perceptions of social order in the landscape. Power was now being materialised, not only through agricultural production but also through the lived experience of rural communities, as a social hierarchy which considered the place of kings as divinely appointed became firmly established.     

‘Playing the Game to the Army’: The Royal Army Medical Corps,Shell Shock and the Great War

Abstract

The utilization and role of female combatants in modern armies is a subject generally fraught with half-truths and misinformation. The mobilization of women in supporting roles during the Second World War is generally well understood, but the German use of women as combatants in the last years of the war raises important issues of women's place in the Nazi state and ideology as well as considerations of gender and military service.     

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.     

‘In aid of civil power’: The colonial army in Northern India,c.1919–42

India's tribal northeast continues to be a footnote in national and international historiography. Influenced by James C. Scott's recent characterisation of the non-state hill peoples of Zomia and their deliberate evasion of subject status, this article reappraises the 1826 treaty between the British political agent and Khasi leader U Tirot Sing, and the subsequent Nongkhlaw massacre. It further explores a set of British expectations of the hills as a potential site for missionisation and white colonisation. In this way, it asserts the purchase of Scott's theories, but argues for the further potential of micro-history and the colonial archive to render indigenous histories more visible.     

Peasant Settlers and the ‘Civilising Mission’ in Russian Turkestan, 1865–1917

This article provides an introduction to one of the lesser-known examples of European settler colonialism, the settlement of European (mainly Russian and Ukrainian) peasants in Southern Central Asia (Turkestan) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It establishes the legal background and demographic impact of peasant settlement, and the role played by the state in organising and encouraging it. It explores official attitudes towards the settlers (which were often very negative), and their relations with the local Kazakh and Kyrgyz population. The article adopts a comparative framework, looking at Turkestan alongside Algeria and Southern Africa, and seeking to establish whether paradigms developed in the study of other settler societies (such as the ‘poor white’) are of any relevance in understanding Slavic peasant settlement in Turkestan. It concludes that there are many close parallels with European settlement in other regions with large indigenous populations, but that racial ideology played a much less important role in the Russian case compared to religious divisions and fears of cultural backsliding. This did not prevent relations between settlers and the ‘native’ population deteriorating markedly in the years before the First World War, resulting in large-scale rebellion in 1916.     

The People of Northern England and Attitudes Towards the Scots, 1639–1651: ‘The Lamb and the Dragon Cannot be Reconciled’.

Abstract

During the late eighteenth and first part of the nineteenth century, certain moors and fields in south Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire were repeatedly used as sites for meetings, demonstrations, and other political gatherings. Historians have recently indicated how rituals, symbols, and texts helped to shape the political culture of radical societies and trade unions in this period. This article argues that the semirural landscape was another, perhaps more enduring, layer to this culture. Luddites, strikers, radicals, and Chartists employed particular sites, not just as venues for political activity, but also as an essential part of the symbol and ritual of protest. Mass meetings on moors and fields were spectacles: liminal spaces where free speech could be expressed and radical histories could be formed. Yet everyday life also influenced the nature of moorland protests. The daily uses and perceptions of landscape could be as significant in shaping inhabitants' political outlooks as occasional set-piece demonstrations. Demonstrations on moors reflected popular defiance of restrictions on public space and wider awareness of the effects of industrialization upon use of the land and communications.