Kirjahaku

A minority and the state looks at the relationship between Travellers, or ‘Gypsies’, and the wider settled society in Britain throughout the twentieth century. This detailed study considers the ways in which the state has tried to create and enforce legislation to regulate their lifestyles, as well as the Travellers’ responses, and resistance, to these efforts. The book is a much needed history of Britain's travelling communities in the twentieth century, drawing together detailed archival research at local and national level to explore the impact of state and legislative developments on Travellers, as well as their experience of missions, education, war and welfare. It offers a new perspective on British ethnic history by arguing that Travellers' experiences should not be understood as the history of a nomadic group, but in terms of the wider history of British minorities.

This timely history explores the entry, reception and resettlement of refugees across twentieth-century Britain. Focusing on four cohorts of refugees – Jewish and other refugees from Nazism; Hungarians in 1956; Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin; and Vietnamese 'boat people' who arrived in the wake of the fall of Saigon – Becky Taylor deftly integrates refugee history with key themes in the history of modern Britain. She thus demonstrates how refugees' experiences, rather than being marginal, were emblematic of some of the principal developments in British society. Arguing that Britain's reception of refugees was rarely motivated by humanitarianism, this book reveals the role of Britain's international preoccupations, anxieties and sense of identity; and how refugees' reception was shaped by voluntary efforts and the changing nature of the welfare state. Based on rich archival sources, this study offers a compelling new perspective on changing ideas of Britishness and the place of 'outsiders' in modern Britain.

This timely history explores the entry, reception and resettlement of refugees across twentieth-century Britain. Focusing on four cohorts of refugees – Jewish and other refugees from Nazism; Hungarians in 1956; Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin; and Vietnamese 'boat people' who arrived in the wake of the fall of Saigon – Becky Taylor deftly integrates refugee history with key themes in the history of modern Britain. She thus demonstrates how refugees' experiences, rather than being marginal, were emblematic of some of the principal developments in British society. Arguing that Britain's reception of refugees was rarely motivated by humanitarianism, this book reveals the role of Britain's international preoccupations, anxieties and sense of identity; and how refugees' reception was shaped by voluntary efforts and the changing nature of the welfare state. Based on rich archival sources, this study offers a compelling new perspective on changing ideas of Britishness and the place of 'outsiders' in modern Britain.

Gypsies, Roma and Travellers are some of the most marginalized and vilified people in society. They are rarely seen as having a place in a country, either geographically or socially, no matter where they live or what they do. Another Darkness, Another Dawn is a new history that charts their movement through time and place: from their roots in the Indian subcontinent, across the Byzantine and Ottoman empires to western Europe and the Americas, to their place in the contemporary world.This history of Romani people demonstrates how their experiences provide a way to understand mainstream society’s relationship with outsiders and immigrants, both in the past and present. Rather than seeing these peoples as separate from the societies in which they have lived, and as untouched by history, this book sets Gypsies’ experiences in the context of broader historical changes. Understanding their history is to take in the founding and contraction of empires, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, wars, the expansion of law and order and of states, the Enlightenment, nationalism, modernity and the Holocaust, as well as the increasing regulation of modern society. It is as much a history of ourselves as it is a history of ‘others’.Ultimately Taylor demonstrates that history is not always about progress: the place of Gypsies, Roma and Travellers remains as contested and uncertain today as it was upon their first arrival in western Europe in the fifteenth century.To visit Becky Taylor’s website please click here.