Kirjahaku

Crowds have long been part of the historical landscape. Professor Nicholas Rogers examines the changing role and character of crowds in Georgian politics through an investigation of some of the major crowd interventions in the period 1714-1821. He shows how the topsy-turvy interventions of the Jacobite era gave way to the more disciplined parades of Hanoverian England, a transition shaped by the effects of war, revolution, and the expansion of the state and the market. These changes unsettled the existing relationship between crowds and authority, raising issues of citizenship, class, and gender which fostered the emergence of a radical mass platform. On this platform, radical men (and, more ambiguously, women) staked out new demands for political power and recognition. In this original and fascinating study, Professor Rogers shows us that Hanoverian crowds were more than dissonant voices on the margins; they were an integral part of eighteenth-century politics.

Whigs and Cities is the first major study of the urban politics of the early Hanoverian era. The book challenges the view that the political nation was of minimal significance, highlighting the critical contribution of the larger towns to the agitations which beset Walpole and swept Pitt to power. At the same time the book is attentive to the different rhythms and trajectories of urban politics and seeks to show, through a study of Bristol, Norwich, and the metropolis, the relative strength of the opposition sentiment and its social configurations, the persistence of local antagonisms, and the interplay of economic interest and political clientage. It ends with a discussion of crowds and political festivals which sheds new light on the grass-roots dynamics of urban political culture.

After the end of the War of Austrian Succession in 1748, thousands of unemployed and sometimes unemployable soldiers and seamen found themselves on the streets of London ready to roister the town and steal when necessary. In this fascinating book Nicholas Rogers explores the moral panic associated with this rapid demobilization. Through interlocking stories of duels, highway robberies, smuggling, riots, binge drinking, and even two earthquakes, Rogers captures the anxieties of a half-decade and assesses the social reforms contemporaries framed and imagined to deal with the crisis. He argues that in addressing these events, contemporaries not only endorsed the traditional sanction of public executions, but wrestled with the problem of expanding the parameters of government to include practices and institutions we now regard as commonplace: censuses, the regularization of marriage through uniform methods of registration, penitentiaries and police forces.

The Yazidis were a largely unknown people until they faced a genocide a few years ago. They inhabit mostly the region of the north of Syria and Iraq. When the so-called, self-styled Islamic State group launched their barbaric 'mission' to radicalise and exterminate large groups of 'unbelievers' who stood in their way, the Yazidis were targeted as devil-worshippers and many women and children were abducted as 'spoils of war'. The Yazidis are a peaceful race and their faith likewise. I was touched by their simplicity and great courage in the face of their 72nd genocide. Aveen, in real-life, is a nineteen year old Yazidi woman who fights for the PKK and is prepared to face head on her abducters in battle. Her story and others likewise touched my heart.

This is my second novel in front of the back drop that came to pass during the struggles in Syria and Iraq. The Kurds have never known total independence, despite weighing in with 40 million citizens; bold and proud women, men and children. I identify totally with their cause.

How the death of a fifteen-year-old girl aboard the slave ship Recovery shook the British establishment. On 2 April 1792, John Kimber, captain of the Bristol slave ship Recovery, was denounced in the House of Commons by William Wilberforce for flogging a fifteen-year-old African girl to death. The story, caricatured in a contemporary Isaac Cruikshank print, raced across newspapers in Britain and Ireland and was even reported in America. Soon after, Kimber was indicted for murder - but in a trial lasting just under five hours, he was found not guilty. This book is a micro-history of this important trial, reconstructing it from accounts of what was said in court and setting it in the context of pro- and anti-slavery movements. Rogers considers contemporary questions of culpability, the use and abuse of evidence, and why Kimber was criminally indicted for murder at a time when kidnapped Africans were generally regarded as 'cargo'. Importantly, the book also looks at the role of sailors in the abolition debate: both in bringing the horrors of the slave trade to public notice and as straw-men for slavery advocates, who excused the treatment of enslaved people by comparing it to punishments meted out to sailors and soldiers. The final chapter addresses the question of whether the slave-trade archive can adequately recover the experience of being enslaved. NICHOLAS ROGERS is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at York University, Toronto.

Far from the romanticised image of the swashbuckling genre of maritime history, the eighteenth-century Caribbean was a 'marchlands' in which violence was a way of life and where solidarities were transitory and highly volatile. This book paints a picture of the eighteenth-century British Caribbean as a frontier zone in which war, international rivalry, disease and slavery are paramount themes. It explores the lure of the region as a vaunted site of potential wealth and derring-do, the fragility of tropical campaigns, the nature of slave insurrection, and the efforts of indigenous peoples (here, the Miskito of the Mosquito Coast and the Black Caribs of St Vincent) to carve out some autonomy from the British and Bourbon powers. It also explores the mutiny of a slave-ship and its unsuccessful raiding ventures in order to show how the dominant European powers sought to contain piracy in an expanding plantation complex. The book emphasizes the contrarieties of struggle, the difficulties preventing subaltern groups, whether slaves, free blacks, indigenous peoples or soldiers and sailors, from forging broader alliances, and the importance of tropical disease in shaping military outcomes. It warns against romanticizing resistance in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, showing that it was instead a 'marchlands' in which violence was a way of life and where solidarities were transitory and highly volatile.

Explores the maritime history of Bristol, a leading slave port in the eighteenth century Delves into the hazards of the slave trade, its recruitment of seamen, its fractious labour relations and mutinies, and how these were resolved by law. One chapter examines in detail how a shipwright sought redress for his ill-treatment aboard a slave ship and how sensitive the merchant elite were to insider criticism; another reveals how partial the Admiralty courts were to captains as sovereigns of their ships. The book also tracks the chequered fortunes of a New York/Bristol merchant family during the American war, the patterns of investment in mid-century privateering, which illustrate how money from slave-trade activities was mobilized for this speculative enterprise, and how naval impressment was used for political purposes. The book concludes with a chapter on why Bristol failed to emulate other culturally vibrant towns and cities in opposing the slave trade in the first phase of abolition. In the wake of the Edward Colston controversy, this book contributes to the ongoing debate as to how slavery has shaped British society.

Nicholas Rogers' book gives the reader a detailed and illuminating insight into the world and ways of the press gang. The press gang, and its forcible recruitment of sailors to man the Royal Navy in times of war, acquired notoriety for depriving men of their liberty and carrying them away to a harsh life at sea, sometimes for years at a time. Nicholas Rogers explains exactly how the press gang worked, whom it was aimed at and how successful it was in achieving its ends. He also shows the limits to its operations and the press gang's need for cooperation from local authorities, who were by no means prepared to support it. Written by an expert in the social history of eighteenth-century Britain, it is both well-researched and highly readable.

The Yazidis were a largely unknown people until they faced a genocide a few years ago. They inhabit mostly the region of the north of Syria and Iraq. When the so-called, self-styled Islamic State group launched their barbaric 'mission' to radicalise and exterminate large groups of 'unbelievers' who stood in their way, the Yazidis were targeted as devil-worshippers and many women and children were abducted as 'spoils of war'. The Yazidis are a peaceful race and their faith likewise. I was touched by their simplicity and great courage in the face of their 72nd genocide. Aveen, in real-life, is a nineteen year old Yazidi woman who fights for the PKK and is prepared to face head on her abducters in battle. Her story and others likewise touched my heart.