First published in 1962. This volume is a collection of the papers from the Mercantile College that preserved as examples of the 'accounts of many distinguished and eminent merchants deceased ... who trod the Royal Exchange with supreme credit and dignity'. They bring together the commercial pride which was reached in the eighteenth century, before the challenge of industry and an economic interpretation based on its predominance brought its sobering influence to bear on 'the great mercant...

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...

The Great Fire of London was the greatest catastrophe of its kind in Western Europe. Although detailed fire precautions and fire-fighting arrangements were in place, the fire raged for four days and destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 churches and 44 of the City of London's great livery halls. The 'great fire' of 1666 closely followed by the 'great plague' of 1665; as the antiquary Anthony Wood wrote left London 'much impoverished, discontented, afflicted, cast downe'.In t...

The ebook of the critically acclaimed popular history book: the story of the South Sea Bubble which in Balen’s hands becomes a morality tale for our times. A classic collision of political ambition, mercenary greed and financial revolution.The early years of the 18th-century produced two great monuments: one, Christopher Wren’s new cathedral of St Paul’s, an enduring testament to principled craft and masterful construction; the other, an empty fraud of such magnitude that its colla...

"The most definitive guide yet in print of researching Ulster based Ancestry" from the Irish genealogy expert and author (Discover My Past, England and Scotland).Tracing Your Northern Irish Ancestors is an expert introduction for the family historian to the wealth of material available to researchers in archives throughout Northern Ireland. Many records, like the early twentieth-century census returns and school registers, will be familiar to researchers, b...

The birth of the modern world as told through the remarkable story of one eighteenth-century familyThey were abolitionists, speculators, slave owners, government officials, and occasional politicians. They were observers of the anxieties and dramas of empire. And they were from one family. The Inner Life of Empires tells the intimate history of the Johnstones--four sisters and seven brothers who lived in Scotland and around the globe in the fast-changing e...

Published for the first time is R.J. Hunter's MLitt dissertation, a fascinating study of two counties that were an integral part of the Plantation of Ulster. In his penetrating analysis of the impact of Plantation in Armagh and Cavan, R.J. Hunter demonstrates his mastery of the sources, his eye for detail and his succintness of presentation. Hunter's command of his subject - in places magisterial - was grounded on a strong chronological foundation, in which each development was located in ...

The Canada Company was responsible for the opening and settling of over two million acres of land in Upper Canada. Author Robert C. Lee focuses his attention on the extensive parcel of land on the shores of Lake Huron that became known as the Huron Tract. His comprehensive research explores the underlying forces leading to the formation of the Company, the intriguing mix of people charged with responsibilities for the Company and the overall impact of its operations, leading to its present...

"A lucid, fluent and fascinating account of the Zong. The book details the horror of the mass killing of enslaved Africans on board the ship in 1781."—Gad Heuman, co-editor of The Routledge History of SlaveryOn November 29, 1781, Captain Collingwood of the British ship Zong commanded his crew to throw overboard one-third of his cargo: a shipment of Africans bound for slavery in America. The captain believed his ship was off course, and he...

The Great Famine in Ireland was a catastrophe of immense proportions. Eviction, emigration and death from starvation were widespread. Landlords, eager to dispose of 'surplus' tenants, engaged in 'assisted passages', whereby tenants were given financial incentives to emigrate. The clearances of uneconomic tenants from the 85,000-acre Coolattin Estate in County Wicklow by Lord Fitzwilliam were the most organised in Ireland during and after the Famine years. From 1847 to 1856 Fitzwilliam remo...

SirYour name is down amongst the Black hearts in the Black Book and this is to advise you and the like of you, who are Parson Justasses, to make your willsYe have been the Blackguard Enemies of the People on all occasions, Ye have not yet doneas ye ought- SwingIn our increasingly mechanized age, the Swing revolts are a timely record of the relationship between technological advance, labour and poverty. With th...

Britain's rise to global dominance from the 16th century owed as much to the vision and creativity of traders, industrialists and bankers as it did to wars of conquest fought by military men.DRAGONS tells the story of British business endeavour through the lives of ten titans of commerce. Beginning with the Tudor merchants who transformed England's economy via trade with the New World, Liam Byrne traces an entrepreneurial golden line through men such as Thomas Pitt, saviour of the ...