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Introduction

Peter Coss

in The Foundations of Gentry Life: The Multons of Frampton and their World 1270-1370

This introductory chapter begins by setting out the purpose of the book, which is to show how the English gentry was formed in an accelerating process from the latter half of the 13th century to the ... More

This introductory chapter begins by setting out the purpose of the book, which is to show how the English gentry was formed in an accelerating process from the latter half of the 13th century to the middle decades of the 14th. Emphasis is placed upon two analytically separated but interconnected phenomena: the development of a partnership in governance between the state and the lesser nobility on the one hand, and on the other the internal dynamics within the lesser nobility itself which led to the crystallization of a graded and relatively stable gentry. It then presents an overview of the various aspects of gentry life.Less

The Facilitators: Elites in the Victory of the Women’s Suffrage Movement

Brooke Kroeger

in Front Pages, Front Lines: Media and the Fight for Women's Suffrage

Key to the suffrage movement’s remarkable turnaround in the 1908-1920 period was a swath of new elite supporters: women with high social standing and powerful, influential men who served prominently ... More

Key to the suffrage movement’s remarkable turnaround in the 1908-1920 period was a swath of new elite supporters: women with high social standing and powerful, influential men who served prominently among the movement’s most active framers, funders, and facilitators. They provided underwriting, funding, and access to government leaders, legislators, and other important influencers. With their own celebrity-like aura, they also brought mainstream media attention to the suffrage movement as popular writers, publicists, editors, and publishers. This chapter uses the insights of social movement theorists who focus on success to assess the concrete actions of these elites and their media influence. In that final, determinative decade, they enlivened both the stalled state-by-state suffrage campaigns and the long-awaited passage and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.Less

University and Society

Stephen Porter

in The History of the University of Oxford: Volume IV Seventeenth-Century Oxford

After a period of change and adaptation, the university's role in the post-reformation order had been established before the beginning of the 17th century. The nature of its responsibilities was ... More

After a period of change and adaptation, the university's role in the post-reformation order had been established before the beginning of the 17th century. The nature of its responsibilities was recognized in both government and ecclesiastical circles and in a much wider cross-section of society. Although there were those whose dealings with the university were primarily because its constituent colleges acted as landlords and impropriators, its greatest point of contact was, of course, through those who studied there. As one of the two universities in early modern England and Wales, Oxford had an important function in providing an education for many members of the social elite, the future administrators of church and state, the clergy, the bureaucracy, and the burgeoning professions. The numbers who gained this experience were not especially large, but nor were they restricted to one social group, for throughout the century Oxford drew its recruits from a broad spectrum of the community. Moreover, they came with varying intentions and prospects and this too considerably affected the character of the university.Less

Political arena

Filippo De Vivo

in Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics

This chapter moves from government to the political arena around it. In the broglio's canvassing and squabbles, written and oral information were tools of political activity. The focus here is on ... More

This chapter moves from government to the political arena around it. In the broglio's canvassing and squabbles, written and oral information were tools of political activity. The focus here is on elites, defined not so much by census or birth as by proximity to governmental business: patricians, but also secretaries, foreign ambassadors, spies, and writers of avvisi. The chapter starts in the archive — a treasure less secure than many thought — and discusses the private appropriation of public documents by individuals such as Marin Sanudo, Giovan Vincenzo Pinelli, and Claudio Cornelio Frangipane. Leaking documents such as Venice's famous ambassadorial reports (relazioni) was itself an instrument of both power squabbles and commercial transactions, as illustrated by the case study of ambassador Ottaviano Bon's 1619 report disclosure. The chapter also offers a novel understanding of diplomacy and spying as information activities, and it discusses the mechanisms and reach of Venice's thriving manuscript newswriting.Less

Reformation of Manners

Ronald Hutton

in The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700

This chapter discusses the importance historians came to attach to what they called the ‘reformation of popular culture’ or the ‘reformation of manners’ in early modern Europe in the 1970s. This is ... More

This chapter discusses the importance historians came to attach to what they called the ‘reformation of popular culture’ or the ‘reformation of manners’ in early modern Europe in the 1970s. This is defined in two complementary ways, one being the growth of a more obvious distinction between the tastes and pastimes of social elites and those of the bulk of the population, and the increasing disparagement of the latter by the former. The second was a greater readiness by the wealthy to police the behaviour of their poorer neighbours and to prosecute practices which had formerly been regarded with a greater tolerance. All over western and central Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries reformers attacked popular festivity and tried to enforce a stricter standard of sexual mortality and of personal decorum.Less

Ubiquitous Display: The Earl of Strafford, 1672–1739

Helen Jacobsen

in Luxury and Power: The Material World of the Stuart Diplomat, 1660-1714

By contrast with the other four men in these case studies, the earl of Strafford was never an arbiter of taste and was concerned only with following the latest fashions. Yet paradoxically it was by ... More

By contrast with the other four men in these case studies, the earl of Strafford was never an arbiter of taste and was concerned only with following the latest fashions. Yet paradoxically it was by emulating prevailing styles in personal and material display rather than by creating them that he looked to manage his identity as a successful diplomat, and his career demonstrates the increasing importance of the material world in diplomatic life. By 1700 a diplomat’s overseas residence had become an important locus of display, and not just his carriages, plate, and dress but also his furniture, pictures, and furnishings fulfilled a significant role in ambassadorial etiquette. Strafford patronized architects, cabinet-makers, silversmiths, artists, upholsterers, and decorative painters to ensure that his position as a senior minister was clearly evidenced by his material world – to both the English social elite and to his foreign diplomatic colleagues.Less

Guilds and Elites in the Face of Domestic and Foreign Challenges

in Modern China's Network Revolution: Chambers of Commerce and Sociopolitical Change in the Early Twentieth Century

The Lower Yangzi chambers of commerce represented the collective responses of social elites, especially guild leaders and other elite merchants, to domestic and foreign challenges. This chapter ... More

The Lower Yangzi chambers of commerce represented the collective responses of social elites, especially guild leaders and other elite merchants, to domestic and foreign challenges. This chapter discusses the growth of guilds and the elite merchant leadership; links of guilds and elite merchants beyond commercial and community bounds; and reactions of literati and elite merchants to Western chambers of commerce.Less

Domesticity and Social Life

Rebecca S. Graff

in Disposing of Modernity: The Archaeology of Garbage and Consumerism during Chicago's 1893 World's Fair

This chapter considers domesticity and social life within two “houses”: the fair’s Ohio Building and the Charnley House. It begins with an overview of American ideologies of domesticity and domestic ... More

This chapter considers domesticity and social life within two “houses”: the fair’s Ohio Building and the Charnley House. It begins with an overview of American ideologies of domesticity and domestic spaces through historical and archaeological accounts. Next discussion moves to the Ohio Building, a small structure from the fair that operated as a sort of clubhouse for tourists. Many conceived of the fair’s quasi-domestic state buildings as domestic because of their non-monumental scale, their intended use as spaces for informal social life, and the cutting-edge sanitary infrastructure, such as toilets, that tourists could experience within them. The chapter turns to a detailed residential history of the Astor Street home, to reveal further interconnections and entanglements of elite social networks in Chicago. Adding to these experiences, a look at the limited documentary record of servants from the Charnley House and the Ohio Building expands upon domestic life, architecturally, materially, and socially.Less

Electoral Competition, Polarization, and the Breakdown of Elite-Led Social Learning

Eric M. Patashnik, Alan S. Gerber, and Conor M. Dowling

in Unhealthy Politics: The Battle over Evidence-Based Medicine

This chapter evaluates the politics of the Obama administration's effort to promote comparative effectiveness research (CER) as the scientific foundation of health care quality improvements and cost ... More

This chapter evaluates the politics of the Obama administration's effort to promote comparative effectiveness research (CER) as the scientific foundation of health care quality improvements and cost control. It argues that elite polarization and a near parity of partisan competition degrades government problem solving in two ways. First, it creates incentives for politicians to transform what plausibly could be consensual “valence” issues, on which nearly all candidates and parties adopt the same stance, into contentious “position” issues, on which candidates and parties take different stances in a zero-sum competition for voter support. Second, elite partisan polarization can stimulate polarization among ordinary voters. Taken together, these twin dynamics can undercut the processes of elite-led social learning and technocratic problem solving on which social progress to no small extent depends. The chapter shows how these distortions played out in 2009–10, when the Obama administration moved forward with its proposal for a major investment in research on the comparative effectiveness of medical treatments, despite the lack of public buy-in for this reform project.Less

Conclusion: The Viking Age Dynamic

Jón Viðar Sigurðsson

in Scandinavia in the Age of Vikings

This chapter reviews the main elements that characterize the Viking Age in Scandinavia — the Danish kings were dominant, and politics consisted of building networks; power bases were built from the ... More

This chapter reviews the main elements that characterize the Viking Age in Scandinavia — the Danish kings were dominant, and politics consisted of building networks; power bases were built from the bottom up; the political situation was unstable but relatively peaceful; and the Scandinavians were prone to war, but the violence was largely practiced abroad. It also reiterates that leaders competed by displaying their wealth and power, and their power centers were important for purposes of conspicuous consumption. Furthermore, the chapter emphasizes that there were clear ideas about distinct social ranks in the Viking Age society; the social elite controlled the practice of religion; and the farm was the fundamental societal unit. To participate in the political game, a person needed great riches, which they had to give away generously to remain powerful. To become powerful, one also needed to gain as many friends as possible. The chapter lays down some internal and external factors that brought about the end to this period, which is sometimes referred to as Scandinavia's contribution to world history.Less

Americanizing Hawai‘i’s Japanese: A Transnational Partnership and the Politics of Racial Harmony during the 1920s

Hiromi Monobe

in Hawaii at the Crossroads of the U.S. and Japan before the Pacific War

This essay presents how four different parties—local Issei leaders, Hawai‘i's white elites, Japanese diplomats, and social elites of Japan—became involved in a “campaign of education” (keihatsu undō) ... More

This essay presents how four different parties—local Issei leaders, Hawai‘i's white elites, Japanese diplomats, and social elites of Japan—became involved in a “campaign of education” (keihatsu undō) in Hawai‘i during the 1920s. Studies on Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i considered this campaign as part of the Americanization Movement that took place throughout the islands as well as in the continental United States. Conducted by white progressives, the Americanization Movement was a liberal political project intended to assimilate new immigrants into dominant Anglo-American culture. According to the theory, the vestiges of ethnic cultures were to disappear completely in the process of their metamorphosis from “foreigners” to full-fledged “Americans.”Less

The Parties

Geoffrey Evans and James Tilley

in The New Politics of Class: The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class

Chapter 6 documents three major changes in the main political parties, and especially Labour. First, party policy converged during the 1990s towards a more right-wing set of positions. The two main ... More

Chapter 6 documents three major changes in the main political parties, and especially Labour. First, party policy converged during the 1990s towards a more right-wing set of positions. The two main parties now cover a far less extensive ideological range. Second, in both manifestos and party speeches group appeals to voters changed. Labour, and to a lesser extent the Conservatives, regularly referred to the working class in both speeches and policy documents in the past, but they now display little or no recognition of the working class, or class per se. Both parties have adopted more class-neutral terminology referring to families. Third, politicians are now drawn from a similar pool of highly educated, upper middle class people. All of these changes have combined to transform perceptions of the parties. The chapter shows that people now see the main parties as more similar in terms of policy, elites, and which class they represent.Less

The ‘Hyperreal’ and the Narrowing Nation: Om Shanti Om (2007)

M.K. Raghavendra

in The Politics of Hindi Cinema in the New Millennium: Bollywood and the Anglophone Indian Nation

‘Bollywood’ is a recent term to apply to mainstream Hindi cinema because, before the new millennium, it was even resisted. After it was first used outside India, ‘Bollywood’ has become a global ... More

‘Bollywood’ is a recent term to apply to mainstream Hindi cinema because, before the new millennium, it was even resisted. After it was first used outside India, ‘Bollywood’ has become a global brand. The chapter examines a film which made waves internationally, but which is essentially constructed as an advertisement for Bollywood and tries to speculate on what Bollywood has come to mean politically in relation to the Nation, and if Hindi cinema, rather than being ‘escapist fantasy’, is not promoting ‘simulacra’. The chapter also looks at a minor motif in the film, that of a traffic accident with a fatality and links it to the creation of a charmed circle of elite Indians, who stand outside the Nation’s laws. Bollywood appears to be staking a claim to belong within the circle.Less

Introduction: Frederick Douglass and the Atlantic World

in Frederick Douglass and the Atlantic World

Frederick Douglass was the most prolific African American writer of the nineteenth century. After his escape from slavery in 1838, he entered on a public career that would cross the century and three ... More

Frederick Douglass was the most prolific African American writer of the nineteenth century. After his escape from slavery in 1838, he entered on a public career that would cross the century and three continents. Transnational encounters were central to Douglass's project of American self-fashioning, and it is his association with the world beyond the United States that is the focus of this book. His career presented a tactical synthesis of national and transnational concerns, including slavery, citizenship, manhood, and broader debates addressing the link of the individual with the nation state. This book specifically deals with Douglass's writing as it relates to premodern and non-western groups on the suburb of Ireland, Haiti, and Egypt, as well as his literary interactions with Garrisonian abolitionism and the British social elite. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in the book is given.Less

The Years of Economic Prosperity

Alan Forrest

in The Death of the French Atlantic: Trade, War, and Slavery in the Age of Revolution

This chapter examines the prosperity of the Atlantic port cities across the eighteenth century—their so-called ‘golden age’—and the rise to prominence of great merchant houses and trading firms, with ... More

This chapter examines the prosperity of the Atlantic port cities across the eighteenth century—their so-called ‘golden age’—and the rise to prominence of great merchant houses and trading firms, with a discussion of the degree to which they became dependent on Atlantic shipping for their profits. It shows how merchant families rose to positions of social prominence and distinction, and shows how nobles, too, from Brittany and the Atlantic region came to invest in colonial shipping. But the century was not a period of unbroken prosperity. War frequently intervened, leading to the disruption of the shipping lanes and the loss or capture of French vessels by enemy ships. It also drove many French merchants to privateering, which was a customary and longstanding response in times of war.Less

In the Beginning

Jürg R. Schwyter

in Dictating to the Mob: The History of the BBC Advisory Committee on Spoken English

The early BBC was meant to entertain and to educate the masses, according to John Reith, its first managing director. This led, in 1926, to the establishment of the Advisory Committee on Spoken ... More

The early BBC was meant to entertain and to educate the masses, according to John Reith, its first managing director. This led, in 1926, to the establishment of the Advisory Committee on Spoken English, comprising members of Britain’s social elite (Robert Bridges, Logan Pearsall Smith, G. Bernard Shaw, Daniel Jones, Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, and Arthur Lloyd James), with a remit, initially, of advising its broadcasters and, soon after, also the BBC’s audience on ‘correct’ pronunciation, principally via the Radio Times. The Committee established itself as the absolute authority for regulating a uniform pronunciation both for announcers and the audience. Eventually this led to a ‘listening BBC’, which nonetheless vetted and approved the language that was being transmitted; and to the publication of the widely successful booklet series Broadcast English. However, communicating a standard via the medium of radio cannot be successful, because changes in pronunciation require interaction with interlocutors.Less