Kirjahaku

This book examines the activities of William Blundell, a seventeenth-century Catholic gentleman, and using the approaches of the history of reading provides a detailed analysis of his mindset.Blundell was neither the passive victim nor the entirely loyal subject that he and others have claimed. He actively defended his family from the penal laws and used the relative freedom that this gave him to patronise other Catholics. Not only did he rewrite the histories of recent civil conflicts to show that Protestants were prone to rebellion and Catholics to loyalty, but we also find a different perspective on his religious beliefs. Blundell’s commonplaces suggest an underlying tension with aspects of Catholicism, a tension manifest throughout his notes on his practical engagement with the world, in which it is clear that he was wrestling with the various aspects of his identity. This is an important study that will be of interest to all who work on the early modern period.

This book examines the activities of William Blundell, a seventeenth-century Catholic gentleman, and using the approaches of the history of reading, provides a detailed analysis of his mindset.Blundell was neither the passive victim nor the entirely loyal subject that he and others have claimed. He actively defended his family from the penal laws and used the relative freedom that this gave him to patronise other Catholics. Not only did he rewrite the histories of recent civil conflicts to show that Protestants were prone to rebellion and Catholics to loyalty, but we also find a different perspective on his religious beliefs. Blundell’s commonplaces suggest an underlying tension with aspects of Catholicism, a tension manifest throughout his notes on his practical engagement with the world, in which it is clear that he was wrestling with the various aspects of his identity. This is an important study that will be of interest to all who work on the early modern period.

In the busy round of work, church and family there is rarely time left for friends. And yet we need them - not only to help us learn and grow, but just because that's how we were made. Geoff Baker believes in the inestimable value of real friendship, and urges us to invest much more of our precious time in building quality relationships.

This tale starts in 1830 on the West Coast of Africa during the latter days of the slave trade when "palm oil ruffians" began trading in the swamps of the Niger delta, bartering their coloured beads and cases of gin for the golden oil and ivory which, if they did not die first from black water fever, malaria or dysentery, would make them rich. This book is about their struggles in the area now known as Nigeria that led to the formation of the Royal Niger Company Chartered and Limited with its private army in 1886, the takeover of the Company by Lever Brothers Ltd in 1920 and its amalgamation in 1929 with its rival, the African and Eastern Trade Co-operation to form the United Africa Company, which then became the largest trading organization of its type in West Africa, if not in the world. Obviously, the old trading methods of Nigeria had to give way eventually, not only to more modern techniques, but also to the pressures of national independence, and so the book is finished by recording the affairs of the latter day agents and managers as they diversified the Company's activities and restructured its establishment until by 1971, when the book ends, it had been able to sell off its large river fleet, which had been for so long the backbone of its enterprise in Nigeria, but was now redundant, and yet still remain the leading commercial conglomerate in both Nigeria and West Africa.