This volume revisits a classic book by a famous historian: R.H. Tawney's Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (1912). Tawney's Agrarian Problem surveyed landlord-tenant relations in England between 1440 and 1660, the period of emergent capitalism and rapidly changing property relations that stands between the end of serfdom and the more firmly capitalist system of the eighteenth century. This transition period is widely recognised as crucial to Britain's long term ec...

The reinvention of art-history during the 1980s has provided a serious challenge to the earlier formalist and connoisseurial approaches to the discipline, in ways which can only help economic and social historians in the current drive to study past societies in terms of what they consumed, produced, perceived and imagined. This group of essays focuses on three main issues: the demand for art, including the range of art objects purchased by various social groups; the conditions of artistic ...

In this groundbreaking history of Ireland, Neil Hegarty presents a fresh perspective on Ireland's past. Comprehensive and engaging, The Story of Ireland is an eye-opening account of a nation that has long been shaped by forces beyond its coasts.The Story of Ireland re-examines Irish history, challenging the accepted stories and long-held myths associated with Ireland. Transporting readers to the Ireland of the past, beginning with the first settlement in A.D. 433,...

"A fascinating account of the gathering and dissemination of news from the end of the Middle Ages to the French Revolution" and the rise of the newspaper (Glenn Altschuler, The Huffington Post).Long before the invention of printing, let alone the daily newspaper, people wanted to stay informed. In the pre-industrial era, news was mostly shared through gossip, sermons, and proclamations. The age of print brought pamphlets, ballads, and the first news-sheets...

A brisk, concise, and readable overview of Irish history from the Protestant Reformation to the dawn of the twenty-first centuryFive centuries of Irish history are explored in this informative and accessible volume. John Gibney proceeds from the beginning of Ireland’s modern period and continues through to virtually the present day, offering an integrated overview of the island nation’s cultural, political, and socioeconomic history. This succinct, scholarly study ...

David Hackett Fischer, one of our most prominent historians, has garnered a reputation for making history come alive--even stories as familiar as Paul Revere's ride, or as complicated as the assimilation of British culture in North America. Now, in The Great Wave, Fischer has done it again, marshaling an astonishing array of historical facts in lucid and compelling prose to outline a history of prices--"the history of change," as Fischer puts it--covering the dazzling sweep of Western hi...

Stretching from the Ice Ages to the present day, this masterful account traces the political, social and cultural history of the land that has come to be called Wales.Spanning prehistoric hill forts and Roman ruins to the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution and the series of strikes by Welsh miners in the late twentieth century, this is the definitive history of an enduring people: a unique and compelling exploration of the origins of the Welsh nation, its development and its ro...

In the century before the great famine of the late 1840s, the Irish people, and the poor especially, became increasingly dependent on the potato for their food. So when potato blight struck, causing the tubers to rot in the ground, they suffered a grievous loss. Thus began a catastrophe in which approximately one million people lost their lives and many more left Ireland for North America, changing the country forever. During and after this terrible human crisis, the Briti...

A “brilliant” (Los Angeles Review of Books) history of accounting, showing how financial and political accountability has shaped the rise and fall of nations and empiresWhether building a road or fighting a war, leaders from ancient Mesopotamia to the present have relied on financial accounting to track their state's assets and guide its policies. Basic accounting tools such as auditing and double-entry bookkeeping form the basis of modern capitalism and the nation-state. Yet our a...

Scotland has long had a romantic appeal which has tended to be focused on a few over-dramatized personalities or events, notably Mary Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Highland Clearances-the failures and the sad - though more positively, William Wallace and Robert the Bruce have also got in on the act, because of their heroism in resisting English aggression. This has had its own satisfaction, and has certainly been very good for the tourist industry. But, fuelled by theexplosion...

The Renaissance was a diverse phenomenon, marked by innovation and economic expansion, the rise of powerful rulers, religious reforms, and social change. Encompassing the entire continent, Renaissance Architecture examines the rich variety of buildings that emerged during these seminal centuries of European history. Although marked by the rise of powerful individuals, both patrons and architects, the Renaissance was equally a time of growing group identities and communities - and architect...

The Scottish Nation examines the social, political, religious and economic factors that have shaped modern Scotland. Drawing on extensive research and exploring everything from the high politics of the devolved parliament to the everyday effects of huge and growing levels of social inequality, Devine places Scotland firmly within an international context and provides a key focus for the ongoing debate regarding Scotland's future.