Crusade narratives in French and German history textbooks, 1871–1914

This article is a comparative study of crusade portrayals in French and German history textbooks published between 1871 and 1914. The crusades had been events that had moved practically all of Europe in the Middle Ages. In the course of the nineteenth century the crusades once more became a matter of scientific, cultural and therefore public interest. Crusade narratives portrayed these events as the climax and the heroic period of the Middle Ages and thus offered highly varied patterns of interpretation. Although in this nationalist age France and Germany consigned themselves to national history and thus the glorification of one's own nation, this article will not only analyse the national and sub-national (denominational, Laicist …) images conveyed via this European event. It will also ask if and how the tension between nationalism and concepts of Europe were made subject of discussion in this historical ‘European event’. Therefore, it focuses on school textbooks as a source that, during the period in question, was responsible for a significant portion of national mythology and cultural memory as conveyed by media.     

This Sporting Cloth: Tweed,Gender and Fashion 1860–1900

Abstract

This article explores the manufacturing, design and consumption of tweed cloth in relation to issues of gender in the late nineteenth century. It focuses on tweed produced on mainland Scotland by factory methods and the wider influence of that industry on woollen manufacturers in other areas of Britain. Exploring the history of this textile reveals the shifting ambiguities linked to male and female social and sartorial identities and the gender coding of tweed in the late nineteenth century.     

Revolutions in music and physics, 1900–30

Abstract

The period 1900 to 1930 saw fundamental changes in the basic laws of physics. The discoveries of the special and general theories of relativity and those of quanta and quantum mechanics transformed profoundly physicists' understanding of the nature of space and time, as well as the fundamentals of physics at the atomic level, which have no counterpart in classical physics. Almost coincidentally, major changes took place in the processes of musical composition – that same period seeing the development of atonality, the liberation of rhythm, and twelve-tone music. This essay reviews in non-technical terms the profound changes in the thinking of physicists and compares the intellectual struggles involved with the extraordinary parallel changes in the approaches of composers to musical composition. No causal connection is suggested, but the common theme of the processes of innovation and creativity within very strict sets of rules in both physics and music is emphasised.