Regional patterns in the experiences and treatment of the sick poor, 1800–40: rights,obligations and duties in the rhetoric of paupers

Abstract

This article focuses on three individual paupers who wrote a series of letters about sickness to their home towns in Essex, Northamptonshire and Lancashire. While it would be wrong to claim that the rhetoric and strategies employed by the three writers are representative of all pauper writers, they are representative of those who wrote multiple letters to their parish of settlement and a detailed exposition of their writing can tell us much about sickness and its relief by communities in the last decades of the Old Poor Law. While sick paupers have largely escaped historiographical attention in a literature that has tended to focus on the elderly, widows, children and the unemployed able-bodied man, more detailed study of the life- and dependency-cycles of poor people is beginning to show that sickness was the pivotal experience of people on the margins and that sickness relief swallowed up a very sizeable chunk of poor law resources in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The strategies, thoughts and experiences of the sick poor are thus not just important in their own right, but also for what they tell us about the sentiment of communities towards the poor and the experiences of paupers in those communities.     

Cycling towards the nation:the use of the bicycle in Germany and the Netherlands, 1880–1940

This article explores the role of commodities in the construction of identities by examining the use of the bicycle in the Netherlands in comparison with and contrast to Germany. It argues that cyclists in Germany and the Netherlands used the bicycle to construct and display a certain identity and to express certain views of themselves as well as of the society in which they lived. The popularity of the bicycle in Dutch society can thus be explained by its particular meaning in that society. The vehicle became an important object in Dutch national identification, whereas in Germany, despite its widespread use especially among the working class, the bicycle was viewed as outdated and inferior technology by the 1920s.     

Lancastrian rule and the resources of the prince of Wales, 1456–61

This paper challenges the idea that the Lancastrian regime of the late 1450s was distinctive for its reliance, from the midlands, on the principality of Wales and the palatinate of Chester. The common emphasis on its association with Cheshire is a product of the late sixteenth century, and, beyond that, contemporary and near-contemporary perceptions even of a link with the midlands were limited. When the court moved to the midlands in 1456 the resources of the principality and earldom were far from easily accessible, and even thereafter the efforts made to draw on them were limited in their ambition and impact. Financial flows to the regime were restricted, and the political networks established, especially in the North and in Cheshire, were limited and highly dependent on the Stanleys. By 1459–60, therefore, the regime found little to rely on there, and the Yorkists were able to supplant them with relative ease.     

Closer settlement in the Western District of Victoria: a case study in Australian land use policy, 1898–1914

The promotion of closer settlement in the Australian state of Victoria between 1898 and 1914 was viewed as a panacea to many of the problems that beset the state. The region known as the Western District of Victoria was seen as particularly suitable for the application of land re-settlement policy. The study of this region highlights several important features of the closer settlement experiment in Victoria. First, it illustrates how the basic principles of closer settlement were used to further the interests of particular groups. Second, it highlights the flaws in foundations of the Closer Settlement Act which impacted on the settlers chances of success. And thirdly it points to the disastrous implications of policy implementation that paid little attention to the geographical and economic parameters governing the outcome of farming enterprises.     

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.     

Practising the British way of famine: technologies of relief, 1770–1985

In the past 200 years Britons have responded to famines in particular ways. This article explores these particularities by focusing not simply on the remarkably unchanging humanitarian representation of the victims of famine but on the changing technologies through which relief was collected and distributed. It shows how technologies of famine relief were created from the need to govern colonial populations rather than from the development of new sentimentality and ethics. The authors seek to demonstrate that, despite the changing nature of these technologies, the forms of expertise that sustained them, a set of routines and practices developed that allowed the performance of a British way with famine that slowly extended from the empire to the world. In the wake of two world wars these forms of expertise were extended to Europe and became internationalised through the work of voluntary organisations. After the formal end of Empire, these technologies were retooled and used to assist places in postcolonial Africa. They also helped create a new type of global citizen, informed of technologies of relief and invested in the Global South through the rise of a humanitarian culture.     

German volunteers in the armed conflicts of the Italian Risorgimento 1834–70

Abstract

Between 1834 and 1870, Germans participated in the armed conflicts of the Italian Risorgimento in the ranks of both Mazzini and Garibaldi and of the Pope and Francis II of Naples. While acknowledging the difficulty in analysing the motives of historical actors, the essay compares the reasons that led these Germans to volunteer and fight. For those who fought for the cause of Italian unity, the networks created in exile in the 1830s remained decisive down to 1870, whereas the mobilization of volunteers in Germany for the Papal states reached its height only later between 1867 and 1870. Despite these chronological differences, the methods used in terms of the media and forms of organization to mobilize the volunteers and to legitimize war were very similar across the political spectrum. The foreign volunteers were described by their own side as brothers, but as mere mercenaries by the respective enemy side. At the same time, Germans and Italians brought their national stereotypes to the various armed groups and armies in which they served and in ways that made the latter important places for the staging of national ‘re-virilization’ achieved through heroic fighting.     

On the correlation between the formation of the “Maowusu Desert” and land use in Liuhu sub-prefecture in the Tang dynasty

The historical changes of the “Maowusu Desert” can be divided into three phases: the late Tang dynasty phase, the Song-Yuan-Ming dynasty phase, and the late Ming dynasty to the present phase. Different parts of the desert were formed in different times, with the northwestern part being the earliest to form. As all evidence shows, the Maowusu Desert in its early stage is believed to have taken shape largely around the ancient site of the You state during the years of Tianbao in the Tang dynasty, which is nowadays the eastern half of the Etuoke banner and Prior-Etuoke banner. The formation of the initial Maowusu Desert is not attributed to the so-called over-cultivation from farming but to the long-time exceedingly quartered husbandry starting from the 4th year of the Zhenguan to the years of Tianbao in the Tang dynasty, which resulted in the destruction of the ecology of the natural grassland. __________ Translated from: Shaanxi Shifan Daxue Xuebao 陕西师范大学学报 (Shaanxi Normal University Journal), No.3, 2004     

Between nation and land in Zionist teaching of Jewish history, 1920–1954

The article discusses the representation of Jewish history in the Zionist school system of the Yishuv and the early State of Israel (1920–1954). In the Yishuv period the history curriculum was centered on “shifting Jewish centers” in the spirit of historian Simon Dubnow, an approach that also integrated Jewish and non-Jewish history. From the 1930s, Ben Zion Dinur and the Teachers' Council of the Keren Kayemet le-Yisrael (Jewish National Fund) attempted to make the Land of Israel the central axis uniting Jewish history, a focus that downplayed non-Jewish history. Because of the opposition to this approach within the education system, this change, which Dinur regarded as essential for the integration of the new immigrants from the Muslim countries into Israeli society, was implemented only after he was appointed minister of education in the early 1950s.     

Common property mapping and the preservation of traditional rights in Chesapeake Bay's oyster fishery, 1892–1914

Conflicts over oysters intensified along the US mid-Atlantic coast as traditional management of these valuable resources broke down in the late nineteenth century. In response, states founded management agencies, and mapping oysters was one of their first activities. Virginia and Maryland's first cartographers favored privatizing common property, an alteration that would have displaced thousands of oystermen and benefited wealthier segments of the industry. Cartographers sought to use maps to expand privatization; however, Chesapeake Bay oystermen were numerous enough to wield political influence, and they rejected one of the first major surveys and shaped the production of the other two, using them to protect their common property while making these rights visible to the State. Many conservation practices in the eastern USA grew out of local people's traditions, and this study explores the role of the mapping process amid the broader context of a shift in the scale of management to state agencies.     

The role of charity in public relief, 1708–1871: Copenhagen as case

This article explores when and why charity vanished from public relief in Copenhagen and thereby differentiates itself from the traditional research field on welfare that focuses on studying the growth of taxation and social spending in the 19th century. This article reveals that charity was not solely a transfer of financial resources, but that charitable donations also entailed a cultural symbolism, which implied that charity was meant to support the local worthy poor. When the function of public relief underwent a transformation, especially at the beginning of the 19th century, the cultural symbolism of charity became incompatible with public relief. After the 1830s, the inhabitants of Copenhagen ceased to donate to public relief and instead donated charity to private philanthropy, which usually targeted the worthy poor for its help.