Search results for ""author merchant"
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Wars of the Roses: The People, Places and Battlefields of the Yorkists and Lancastrians
The Wars of the Roses, which saw England and Wales ravaged by warfare for three decades and dynasties rise and fall, decimated the nobility of an entire generation, and saw the rise of the merchant class, the decline of medieval feudalism and opened the country to the enlightened ideals of the Renaissance. Such has been its lasting effects the red and white rose of the Tudors is still a national symbol. This book is an exploration of the buildings, monuments, towns and battlefields of that turbulent era across both England and Wales - places that can still be visited and experienced today. The stories of the great battles of St Albans, Stoke Field, Wakefield, Townton, Barnet, Tewksbury and, of course, Bosworth, are told along with beautiful photographs to help guide the reader round these important sites, as well as the dozens of smaller engagements where the supporters of the Houses of York and Lancaster fought and died. Here are castles and manor houses galore, all of which played their part in this protracted struggle for the throne of England, such as Richard of York's imposing powerbase of Lulow Castle and the magnificent Tudor stronghold of Bamburg. These are compared with the scant remains of Fotheringhay Castle, the birthplace of Richard III - the man whose remains were so dramatically uncovered in Leicester - and Micklegate Bar, York, was where Richard's head was placed on a spike. We see the Clocktower of St Albans and Gabriel' the bell that was rung in 1455 alerting of the Yorkist advance, as well as the Tower of London where Henry VI met his death and the possible burial place of the two princes. These, and scores of other places, monuments, plaques, buildings and battlegrounds, represent not only a journey across England and Wales, but a journey back in time to the bloody conflict that was the War of the Roses.
£22.50
New York University Press Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health
An engaging history of the role that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin played in the origins of public health in America Before the advent of modern antibiotics, one’s life could be abruptly shattered by contagion and death, and debility from infectious diseases and epidemics was commonplace for early Americans, regardless of social status. Concerns over health affected the founding fathers and their families as it did slaves, merchants, immigrants, and everyone else in North America. As both victims of illness and national leaders, the Founders occupied a unique position regarding the development of public health in America. Revolutionary Medicine refocuses the study of the lives of George and Martha Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John and Abigail Adams, and James and Dolley Madison away from the usual lens of politics to the unique perspective of sickness, health, and medicine in their era. For the founders, republican ideals fostered a reciprocal connection between individual health and the “health” of the nation. Studying the encounters of these American founders with illness and disease, as well as their viewpoints about good health, not only provides us with a richer and more nuanced insight into their lives, but also opens a window into the practice of medicine in the eighteenth century, which is at once intimate, personal, and first hand. Perhaps most importantly, today’s American public health initiatives have their roots in the work of America’s founders, for they recognized early on that government had compelling reasons to shoulder some new responsibilities with respect to ensuring the health and well-being of its citizenry. The state of medicine and public healthcare today is still a work in progress, but these founders played a significant role in beginning the conversation that shaped the contours of its development.
£52.20
Little, Brown Book Group The Black Song: Book Two of Raven's Blade
The Black Song is the action-packed conclusion to the Raven's Blade series by Anthony Ryan, which began with The Wolf's Call. The Steel Horde has laid waste to the Venerable Kingdom, unleashing a storm of fire and blood. Now the leader of this mighty host - Kehlbrand, the warlord who thinks himself a god - turns his eyes to the other merchant kingdoms. No one can stop his divine conquest. No one, perhaps, except Vaelin Al Sorna. Yet Vaelin is on the run, his own army in disarray. Worse, the new blood song he has acquired is as much a curse as a blessing, and seeks to guide him down a path far darker than he could have imagined...Praise for the Raven's Blade series:'Robin Hobb meets Joe Abercrombie . . . This is fantasy with a totally legendary feel' Fantasy Book Review'The Wolf's Call is everything a fantasy fan could ever wish for' Booknest'Anthony Ryan's best work since the release of his incredible debut . . . fantastic storytelling' Novel Notions'An immensely satisfying, top-notch adventure fantasy' KirkusBooks by Anthony Ryan:Raven's ShadowBlood SongTower LordQueen of FireRaven's BladeThe Wolf's CallThe Black Song Draconis MemoriaThe Waking FireThe Legion of FlameThe Empire of Ashes
£20.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Commemorating the Seafarer: Monuments, Memorials and Memory
A generously illustrated survey of memorials to different kinds of seafarers, recounting the stories behind them. This book discusses memorials - stained glass windows, church, cemetery and public monuments - commemorating British seafarers, shipbuilders and victims of shipwreck from the sixteenth century to the present. Examples have been chosen mainly from Great Britain and Ireland with a few from wider afield. They include important works by major British artists as well as more modest productions by anonymous carvers. The book retells the dramatic stories behind them, illustrating significant social and cultural changes in Britain's relationship to the sea. Memorials vividly illustrate the hazards of seagoing life and the impact these had both upon the family of the deceased and the general public. The book has a cultural historical focus. Each chapter includes case studies of both high status and popular memorials, showing how iconography such as the depiction of the wrecked ship was widely transmitted. The book covers both naval and commercial aspects of seafaring and includes memorials to naval officers, merchants, explorers, fishermen, leisure sailors, victims of shipwrecks and lifesavers, with around 100 illustrations of memorials. Barbara Tomlinson was Curator of Antiquities at Royal Museums Greenwich (part of which is the National Maritime Museum) for over thirty-five years and is Hon. Secretary of the Church Monuments Society. Publishedin association with the National Maritime Museum, part of Royal Museums Greenwich.
£50.00
Harvard University Press Giannozzo Manetti: The Life of a Florentine Humanist
An introduction to one of the premier humanists of the Italian Renaissance, whose extraordinary work in biography, politics, religion, and philosophy has been largely unknown to Anglophone readers.A celebrated orator, historian, philosopher, and statesman, Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) was one of the most remarkable figures of the Italian Renaissance. The son of a wealthy Florentine merchant, he was active in the public life of the Florentine republic and embraced the new humanist scholarship of the Quattrocento.Among his many contributions, Manetti translated from classical Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, bringing attention to great works of the ancient world that were previously unknown. He also offered a humanist alternative to the Vulgate Bible by translating into Latin the Greek text of the New Testament and the Hebrew Psalms. His other works included biographies of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio; A Translator’s Defense, an indispensable treatise on the art of translation; and Against the Jews and the Gentiles, an apologia for Christianity.Manetti is most remembered for his treatise On Human Worth and Excellence, a radical defense of human nature and of the new world view of Renaissance humanism. In this authoritative biography, the first ever in English, David Marsh guides readers through the vast range of Manetti’s writings, which, despite growing scholarly interest, are still largely unfamiliar to the English-speaking world. Marsh’s fresh appraisal makes clear why Manetti must be considered among the great expositors of the spirit of his age.
£42.26
University of Notre Dame Press Travel In The Middle Ages
Travel in the Middle Ages is filled with the stories and adventures of those who hazarded hostile landscapes, elements, and people—out of want or necessity—to get from place to place. While most journeys involved very short distances (home to market or village to village), longer trips were not uncommon in the Middle Ages. Clergy were frequently called upon to act as ambassadors, messengers, and overseers to the various monasteries and churches within their jurisdiction. Merchants, agents of the king, and pilgrims were also frequently required to travel. While sharing the fascinating stories of these ordinary wayfarers, Verdon also relates colorful tales of the journeys of notable historical figures such as Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus. Part I of Travel in the Middle Ages addresses the means by which people traveled. This section contains vivid descriptions of modes of conveyance, road systems, sea lanes, tolls, taxes, and even pirates. Knowing the risks involved, why did people brave the uncertainty of travel? Part II of the book addresses this question by identifying five main motivational categories of medieval travel. Part III deals with travel myths, monsters, and fictitious journeys of medieval fantasy writers. Verdon concludes with a pithy critique of travel in the modern world. Appearing for the first time in an English translation, Travel in the Middle Ages will delight anyone with an interest in medieval culture or travel books.
£27.99
Columbia University Press Barbary Captives: An Anthology of Early Modern Slave Memoirs by Europeans in North Africa
In the early modern period, hundreds of thousands of Europeans, both male and female, were abducted by pirates, sold on the slave market, and enslaved in North Africa. Between the sixteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, pirates from Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Morocco not only attacked sailors and merchants in the Mediterranean but also roved as far as Iceland. A substantial number of the European captives who later returned home from the Barbary Coast, as maritime North Africa was then called, wrote and published accounts of their experiences. These popular narratives greatly influenced the development of the modern novel and autobiography, and they also shaped European perceptions of slavery as well as of the Muslim world.Barbary Captives brings together a selection of early modern slave narratives in English translation for the first time. It features accounts written by men and women across three centuries and in nine different languages that recount the experience of capture and servitude in North Africa. These texts tell the stories of Christian pirates, Christian rowers on Muslim galleys, house slaves in the palaces of rulers, domestic servants, agricultural slaves, renegades, and social climbers in captivity. They also depict liberation through ransom, escape, or religious conversion. This book sheds new light on the social history of Mediterranean slavery and piracy, early modern concepts of unfree labor, and the evolution of the Barbary captivity narrative as a literary and historical genre.
£27.00
University of Pennsylvania Press Adventures in Photography: Expeditions of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Since 1887 the University Museum has been one of the leading archaeology and anthropology museums in the world and has sponsored field research in every corner of the globe. A key outcome, from its first expedition to Nippur, in modern-day Iraq, through more than 300 expeditions in the past century, to its research in fifteen different countries today, has been a wealth of primary photographs capturing both expeditions and excavations and also images of modern peoples on every inhabited continent of our planet. These vintage photographs, carefully selected from hundreds of thousands, range from mundane record-keeping pictures to glorious aesthetic treats, and they are in demand by international scholars and students and researchers worldwide. One of the most powerful of media to convey information about—and to advance understanding of—foreign peoples and places is photography. Soldiers, missionaries, merchants, and other travelers carried out early anthropological photography in distant lands. Field photography was extremely difficult when the Museum began its research program in the late 1880s, requiring the transport of a complete dark room and other heavy equipment. The Museum's intrepid adventurers sought scientific accuracy, with no artifice that may have obscured the realism of the image. An engaging narrative essay highlighting the Museum's fieldwork explains the contexts of the range of photographs from the Museum's Archives and the role of photography in studying human cultures.
£27.41
Yale University Press Cloth that Changed the World: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz
The story of India’s exuberantly colored textiles that made their mark on design, technology, and trade around the world Chintz, a type of multicolored printed or painted cotton cloth, originated in India yet exerted influence far beyond its home shores: it became a driving force of the spice trade in the East Indies, and it attracted European merchants, who by the 17th century were importing millions of pieces. In the 18th century, Indian chintz became so coveted globally that Europeans attempted to imitate its uniquely vibrant dyes and design—a quest that eventually sparked the mechanical and business innovations that ushered in the Industrial Revolution, with its far-reaching societal impacts. This beautifully illustrated book tells the fascinating and multidisciplinary stories of the widespread desire for Indian chintz over 1,000 years to its latest resurgence in modern fashion and home design. Based on the renowned Indian chintz collections held at the Royal Ontario Museum, the book showcases the genius of Indian chintz makers and the dazzling variety of works they have created for specialized markets: religious and court banners for India, monumental gilded wall hangings for elite homes in Europe and Thailand, luxury women’s dress for England, sacred hangings for ancestral ceremonies in Indonesia, and today’s runways of Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai.Distributed for the Royal Ontario MuseumExhibition Schedule:Royal Ontario Museum (April 4–September 27, 2020)
£35.00
Simon & Schuster Empire of Blue Water: Henry Morgan and the Pirates who Rules the Caribbean Waves
Henry Morgan, a twenty-year-old Welshman, arrived in the New World in 1655, hell-bent on making his fortune. Over the next three decades, his exploits in the Caribbean in the service of the English became legend. His daring attacks on the mighty Spanish Empire on land and sea changed the fates of kings and queens. His victories helped shape the destiny of the New World. Morgan gathered disaffected English and European sailors and soldiers, hard-bitten adventurers, runaway slaves, cutthroats and sociopaths and turned them into the fiercest and most feared army in the Western Hemisphere. Sailing out from the English stronghold of Port Royal, Jamaica, 'the wickedest city in the New World', Morgan and his men terrorised Spanish merchant ships and devastated the cities where great riches in silver, gold, and gems lay waiting to be sent to the King of Spain. His last raid, a daring assault on the fabled city of Panama, helped break Spain's solitary hold on the New World for ever. Awash with bloody battles, political intrigues, and a cast of characters more compelling, bizarre and memorable than any found in a Hollywood swashbuckler, EMPIRE OF BLUE WATER brilliantly re-creates the passions and the violence of the age of exploration and empire. What's more, it chillingly depicts the apocalyptic natural disaster that finally ended the pirates' dominion.
£14.99
Princeton University Press Market Threads: How Cotton Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity
What is a global market? How does it work? At a time when new crises in world markets cannot be satisfactorily resolved through old ideas, "Market Threads" presents a detailed analysis of the international cotton trade and argues for a novel and groundbreaking understanding of global markets. The book examines the arrangements, institutions, and power relations on which cotton trading and production depend, and provides an alternative approach to the analysis of pricing mechanisms. Drawing upon research from such diverse places as the New York Board of Trade and the Turkish and Egyptian countrysides, the book explores how market agents from peasants to global merchants negotiate, accept, reject, resist, reproduce, understand, and misunderstand a global market. The book demonstrates that policymakers and researchers must focus on the specific practices of market maintenance in order to know how they operate. Markets do not simply emerge as a relationship among self-interested buyers and sellers, governed by appropriate economic institutions. Nor are they just social networks embedded in wider economic social structures. Rather, global markets are maintained through daily interventions, the production of prosthetic prices, and the waging of struggles among those who produce and exchange commodities. The book illustrates the crucial consequences that these ideas have on economic reform projects and market studies. Spanning a variety of disciplines, "Market Threads" offers an original look at the world commodity trade and revises prevailing explanations for how markets work.
£61.35
Bodleian Library Treasures from the Map Room: A Journey through the Bodleian Collections
This book explores the stories behind seventy-five extraordinary maps. It includes unique treasures such as the fourteenth-century Gough Map of Great Britain, exquisite portolan charts made in the fifteenth century, the Selden Map of China – the earliest example of Chinese merchant cartography – and an early world map from the medieval Islamic Book of Curiosities, together with more recent examples of fictional places drawn in the twentieth century, such as C.S. Lewis’s own map of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien’s map of Middle Earth. As well as the works of famous mapmakers Mercator, Ortelius, Blaeu, Saxton and Speed, the book also includes lesser known but historically significant works: early maps of the Moon, of the transit of Venus, hand-drawn estate plans and early European maps of the New World. There are also some surprising examples: escape maps printed on silk and carried by pilots in the Second World War in case of capture on enemy territory; the first geological survey of the British Isles showing what lies beneath our feet; a sixteenth-century woven tapestry map of Worcestershire; a map plotting outbreaks of cholera and a jigsaw map of India from the 1850s. Behind each of these lies a story, of intrepid surveyors, ambitious navigators, chance finds or military victories. Drawing on the unique collection in the Bodleian Library, these stunning maps range from single cities to the solar system, span the thirteenth to the twenty-first century and cover most of the world.
£35.00
Princeton University Press African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa
A groundbreaking history that puts early and medieval West Africa in a global context Pick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book, the first on this period of the region's history in a generation, tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, including Arabic manuscripts, oral histories, and recent archaeological findings, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history more generally. Scholars have long held that such distinctions arose during the colonial period, but Gomez shows they developed much earlier. Focusing on the Savannah and Sahel region, Gomez traces the exchange of ideas and influences with North Africa and the Central Islamic Lands by way of merchants, scholars, and pilgrims. Islam's growth in West Africa, in tandem with intensifying commerce that included slaves, resulted in a series of political experiments unique to the region, culminating in the rise of empire. A major preoccupation was the question of who could be legally enslaved, which together with other factors led to the construction of new ideas about ethnicity, race, gender, and caste--long before colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade. Telling a radically new story about early Africa in global history, African Dominion is set to be the standard work on the subject for many years to come.
£37.80
Basic Books Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans
In the 1600s, over 350,000 intrepid English men, women, and children migrated to America, leaving behind their homeland for an uncertain future. Whether they settled in Jamestown, Salem, or Barbados, these migrants-entrepreneurs, soldiers, and pilgrims alike-faced one incontrovertible truth: England was a very, very long way away.In Between Two Worlds , celebrated historian Malcolm Gaskill tells the sweeping story of the English experience in America during the first century of colonization. Following a large and varied cast of visionaries and heretics, merchants and warriors, and slaves and rebels, Gaskill brilliantly illuminates the often traumatic challenges the settlers faced. The first waves sought to recreate the English way of life, even to recover a society that was vanishing at home. But they were thwarted at every turn by the perils of a strange continent, unaided by monarchs who first ignored then exploited them. As these colonists strove to leave their mark on the New World, they were forced-by hardship and hunger, by illness and infighting, and by bloody and desperate battles with Indians-to innovate and adapt or perish.As later generations acclimated to the wilderness, they recognized that they had evolved into something distinct: no longer just the English in America, they were perhaps not even English at all. These men and women were among the first white Americans, and certainly the most prolific. And as Gaskill shows, in learning to live in an unforgiving world, they had begun a long and fateful journey toward rebellion and, finally, independence
£27.00
John Blake Publishing Ltd Goose Green: The decisive battle of the Falklands War – by the British troops who fought it
*As featured in the landmark BBC2 documentary Our Falklands War: A Frontline Story*Published to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Falklands war'There was a time when we did extraordinary things.' On 28 May 1982, 450 men of the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment - 2 Para - went into action to retake the settlement of Goose Green on East Falkland, where more than 1,000 Argentine soldiers were holding 119 Falkland Islanders - men, women, children and one baby - in squalid conditions. Forty years on, Goose Green is still the biggest and bloodiest battle the British Army has fought in modern times. This book is the living narrative of the battle told by the very men who fought it; not just the soldiers of 2 Para, but also the SAS, the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy, and others, in more than a hundred exclusive and untold personal accounts.Some are extremely funny, some touching, and some heart-breaking. All were recorded face to face, the speakers' own words adding a gritty authenticity to each account and conveying the confusion and terror of battle, as well as the courage and selflessness of men in action. Goose Green is a book that goes beyond the official histories and the many memoirs to bring to life the first and, as it turned out, the decisive battle of this country's outstanding campaign to retake the Falkland Islands from a foreign invader. This is a true story of a great victory against all the odds, told by the men who fought it.
£9.99
Stanford University Press Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962
For more than century before World War II, traders, merchants, financiers, and laborers steadily moved between places on the Indian Ocean, trading goods, supplying credit, and seeking work. This all changed with the war and as India, Burma, Ceylon, and Malaya wrested independence from the British empire. Set against the tumult of the postwar period, Boats in a Storm centers on the legal struggles of migrants to retain their traditional rhythms and patterns of life, illustrating how they experienced citizenship and decolonization. Even as nascent citizenship regimes and divergent political trajectories of decolonization papered over migrations between South and Southeast Asia, migrants continued to recount cross-border histories in encounters with the law. These accounts, often obscured by national and international political developments, unsettle the notion that static national identities and loyalties had emerged, fully formed and unblemished by migrant pasts, in the aftermath of empires. Drawing on archival materials from India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, London, and Singapore, Kalyani Ramnath narrates how former migrants battled legal requirements to revive prewar circulations of credit, capital, and labor, in a postwar context of rising ethno-nationalisms that accused migrants of stealing jobs and hoarding land. Ultimately, Ramnath shows how decolonization was marked not only by shipwrecked empires and nation-states assembled and ordered from the debris of imperial collapse, but also by these forgotten stories of wartime displacements, their unintended consequences, and long afterlives.
£72.90
Yale University Press The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England
What was the life of an eighteenth-century British genteel woman like? In this lively and controversial book, Amanda Vickery invokes women’s own accounts of their intimate and their public lives to argue that in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the scope of female experience did not diminish—in fact, quite the reverse. Refuting the common understanding that in Georgian times the daughters of merchants, the wives of lawyers, and the sisters of gentlemen lost female freedoms and retreated into their homes, Vickery shows that these women experienced expanding social and intellectual horizons. As they embraced a world far beyond the boundaries of their own parishes through their tireless writing and ravenous reading, genteel women also enjoyed an array of emerging new public arenas—assembly rooms, concert series, theater seasons, circulating libraries, day-time lectures, urban walks, and pleasure gardens.Based on the letters, diaries, and account books of over one hundred women from commercial, professional, and gentry families, this book transforms our understanding of the position of women in Georgian England. In their own words, they tell of their sometimes humorous, sometimes moving experiences and desires, and of their many roles, including kinswoman, wife, mother, housekeeper, consumer, hostess, and member of polite society. By the nineteenth century, family duties continued to dominate women’s lives, yet, Vickery contends, the public profile of privileged women had reached unprecedented heights.
£14.38
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Safavid Persia in the Age of Empires: The Idea of Iran Vol. 10
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the establishment of the new Safavid regime in Iran. Along with reuniting the Persian lands under one rule, the Safavids initiated the radical transformation of the religious landscape by introducing Imami Shi‘ism as the official state faith and in this as in other ways, laying the foundations of Iran’s modern identity. In this book, leading scholars of Iranian history, culture and politics examine the meaning of the idea of Iran in the Safavid period by examining contemporary experiences of both insiders and outsiders, asking how modern scholarship defines the distinctive features of the age. While sometimes viewed as a period of decline from the high points of classical Persian literature and the visual arts of preceding centuries, the chapters of this book demonstrate that the Safavid era was nevertheless a period of great literary and artistic activity in the realms of both secular and theological endeavour. With the establishment of comparable polities across western, southern and central Asia at broadly the same time, the book explores some of the literary and political interactions with Iran’s Ottoman, Mughal and Uzbek neighbours. As the volume and frequency of European merchants and diplomats visiting Safavid Persia increased, especially in the seventeenth century, and as more Iranians recorded their own travel experiences to surrounding Muslim lands, the Safavid period is the first in which we can document and explore the contours of Iran’s place in an expanding world, and gain insights into how Iranians saw themselves and others saw them.
£26.99
Fordham University Press A Dependent People: Newport, Rhode Island in the Revolutionary Era
This work tells a story about the sea, an American colonial town, and the British. It relates how Newport's dependence on the Atlantic Ocean dominated nearly every aspect of its existence. Newport learned early from its watery surroundings that its survival and prosperity were inextricably linked to commerce. Dependent on a thriving trade, Newporters were willing to explore and combination of routes which suggested a successful return in voyage and investment. Newport's single-minded commitment to commerce produced a society in which people were also dependent on each other. Merchant and dockworker, sailmaker and rope-walk owner developed symbiotic relationships as a result of their common efforts to ensure the success of each voyage. Dependency also extended to social networks where the affluent took responsibility for other members of the community. Because of their dependence on unobstructed trade, Newporters had evaded British customs for generations, using methods which cast some doubt on their commitment to the law. Thus, when it became clear in 1764 that Britain would go to great lengths to enforce new duties, the stage was set for confrontation. In the end, events outstripped the ability of Newport to chart its own course as the violence escalated. The Revolution prematurely ended Newport's golden age and destroyed the town both physically and spiritually. A dependent people had gained independence but at a cost only a few could foresee.
£31.00
Princeton University Press Bankers to the Crown: The Riccardi of Lucca and Edward I
Throughout the thirteenth century Western European monarchs were hampered by the failure of their traditional revenues to meet their new expenses. Edward I of England solved the primary problem of acquiring adequate funds with the imposition of a duty on wool and leather and by more frequent direct taxes. But collection was slow and irregular; there still remained the problem of liquidity. To ensure a steady flow of cash to meet his military, administrative, and diplomatic needs Edward developed a special relationship with a company of Italian merchant-bankers, the Societas Riccardorum de Luka. Richard W. Kaeuper analyzes this relationship to provide valuable information on the financial needs of the king's government and its daily routine at a critical stage in its development. Equally interesting is the examination of the operations of the Italian banking houses that were becoming prominent in the economic life of northwestern Europe and were to become famous in the fourteenth century. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
£94.50
Princeton University Press Bankers to the Crown: The Riccardi of Lucca and Edward I
Throughout the thirteenth century Western European monarchs were hampered by the failure of their traditional revenues to meet their new expenses. Edward I of England solved the primary problem of acquiring adequate funds with the imposition of a duty on wool and leather and by more frequent direct taxes. But collection was slow and irregular; there still remained the problem of liquidity. To ensure a steady flow of cash to meet his military, administrative, and diplomatic needs Edward developed a special relationship with a company of Italian merchant-bankers, the Societas Riccardorum de Luka. Richard W. Kaeuper analyzes this relationship to provide valuable information on the financial needs of the king's government and its daily routine at a critical stage in its development. Equally interesting is the examination of the operations of the Italian banking houses that were becoming prominent in the economic life of northwestern Europe and were to become famous in the fourteenth century. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
£37.80
University of California Press Bazaar India: Markets, Society, and the Colonial State in Bihar
The role of markets in linking local communities to larger networks of commerce, culture, and political power is the central element in Anand A. Yang's provocative and original study. Yang uses bazaars in the northeast Indian state of Bihar during the colonial period as the site of his investigation. The bazaar provides a distinctive locale for posing fundamental questions regarding indigenous societies under colonialism and for highlighting less familiar aspects of colonial India. At one level, Yang reconstructs Bihar's marketing system, from its central place in the city of Patna down to the lowest rung of the periodic markets. But he also concentrates on the dynamics of exchanges and negotiations between different groups and on what can be learned through the 'voices' of people in the bazaar: landholders, peasants, traders, and merchants. Along the way, Yang uncovers a wealth of details on the functioning of rural trade, markets, fairs, and pilgrimages in Bihar. A key contribution of "Bazaar India" is its many-stranded narrative history of some of South Asia's primary actors over the past two centuries. But Yang's approach is not that of a detached observer; rather, his own voice is engaged with the voices of the past and with present-day historians. By focusing on the world beyond the mud walls of the village, he widens the imaginative geography of South Asian history. Readers with an interest in markets, social history, culture, colonialism, British India, and historiographic methods will welcome his book.
£27.90
The University of Chicago Press The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps
In the thirteenth century, Italian merchant and explorer Marco Polo traveled from Venice to the far reaches of Asia, a journey he chronicled in a narrative titled Il Milione, later known as The Travels of Marco Polo. While Polo's writings would go on to inspire the likes of Christopher Columbus, scholars have long debated their veracity. Now, there's new evidence connected to this historical puzzle: a very curious collection of fourteen little-known maps and related documents said to have belonged to the family of Marco Polo himself. In The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps, historian of cartography Benjamin B. Olshin offers the first credible book-length analysis of these artifacts, charting their course from obscure origins in the private collection of Italian-American immigrant Marcian Rossi in the 1930s; to investigations of their authenticity by the Library of Congress, J. Edgar Hoover, and the FBI; to the work of the late cartographic scholar Leo Bagrow; to Olshin's own efforts to track down and study the Rossi maps. Are the maps forgeries, facsimiles, or modernized copies? Did Marco Polo's daughters - whose names appear on several of the artifacts - preserve in them geographic information about Asia first recorded by their father? Or did they inherit maps created by him? If the maps have no connection to Marco Polo, who made them, when, and why? Regardless of the maps' provenance, Olshin's tale takes readers on a journey into Italian history, the age of exploration, and the wonders of cartography.
£39.00
Oxford University Press The Private Life of William Shakespeare
A new biography of William Shakespeare that explores his private life in Stratford-upon-Avon, his personal aspirations, his self-determination, and his relations with the members of his family and his neighbours. The Private Life of William Shakespeare tells the story of Shakespeare in Stratford as a family man. The book offers close readings of key documents associated with Shakespeare and develops a contextual understanding of the genres from which these documents emerge. It reconsiders clusters of evidence that have been held to prove some persistent biographical fables. It also shows how the histories of some of Shakespeare's neighbours illuminate aspects of his own life. Throughout, we encounter a Shakespeare who consciously and with purpose designed his life. Having witnessed the business failures of his merchant father, he determined not to follow his father's model. His early wedding freed him from craft training to pursue a literary career. His wife's work, and probably the assistance of his parents and brothers, enabled him to make the first of the property purchases that grounded his life as a gentleman. With his will, he provided for both his daughters in ways that were suitable to their circumstances; Anne Shakespeare was already protected by dower rights in the houses and lands he had acquired. His funerary monument suggests that the man of 'small Latin and less Greek' in fact had some experience of an Oxford education. Evidences are that he commissioned the monument himself.
£35.00
British Museum Press The Lewis Chessmen
This lively book considers the various fascinating stories which have evolved to explain the ownership, concealment and discovery of the pieces whilst also placing them in the wider context of the ancient game of chess and secular art of the middle Ages. The Lewis Chessmen consist of elaborately worked walrus ivory and whales’ teeth in the forms of seated kings and queens, mitred bishops, knights on their mounts, standing warders and pawns in the shape of obelisks. They were found in the vicinity of Uig on the Isle of Lewis, but were probably made in Norway, in around 1150-1200 AD. At this time, the Western Isles where the Chessmen were buried were part of the kingdom of Norway, and not Scotland as they are today. Although very few details of the origins of the Chessmen are known, it is possible that they belonged to a merchant travelling from Norway and that they were buried for safekeeping on route to be traded in Ireland. This seems likely as there are enough pieces, though with some elements missing, to make four sets. No exact account of the discovery remains, but they apparently came to light after the collapse of a sand-bank on the coast of the island revealed their hiding place to a passing islander. All that is certain is that they were found some time before 11th April 1831 when they were exhibited at the Society of the Antiquaries in Scotland. Of the original 93 pieces discovered on the Isle of Lewis, 82 pieces are now housed in the British Museum. An exciting read for anyone interested in the history of the famous chess pieces.
£6.84
Oxford University Press Inc Abina and the Important Men
Winner of the James Harvey Robinson Prize from the American Historical Association, and widely acclaimed by educators and students, Abina and the Important Men, 2e is a compelling and powerfully illustrated "graphic history" based on an 1876 court transcript of a West African woman named Abina, who was wrongfully enslaved and took her case to court. The book is a microhistory that does much more than simply depict an event in the past; it uses the power of illustration to convey important themes in world history and to reveal the processes by which history is made. The story of Abina Mansah--a woman "without history" who was wrongfully enslaved, escaped to British-controlled territory, and then took her former master to court--takes place in the complex world of the Gold Coast at the onset of late nineteenth-century colonialism. Slavery becomes a contested ground, as cultural practices collide with an emerging wage economy and British officials turn a blind eye to the presence of underpaid domestic workers in the households of African merchants. The main scenes of the story take place in the courtroom, where Abina strives to convince a series of "important men"--a British judge, two Euro-African attorneys, a wealthy African country "gentleman," and a jury of local leaders--that her rights matter. "Am I free?" Abina inquires. Throughout both the court case and the flashbacks that dramatically depict her life in servitude, these men strive to "silence" Abina and to impose their own understandings and meanings upon her. The story seems to conclude with the short-term success of the "important men," as Abina loses her case. But it doesn't end there: Abina is eventually redeemed. Her testimony is uncovered in the dusty archives by Trevor Getz and, through Liz Clarke's illustrations, becomes a graphic history read by people around the world. In this way, the reader takes an active part in the story along with the illustrator, the author, and Abina herself. Following the graphic history in Part I, Parts II-V provide detailed historical context for the story, a reading guide that reconstructs and deconstructs the methods used to interpret the story, and strategies for using Abina in various classroom settings. This edition adds crucial value to Abina's story and the reader's experience. These include: - new, additional testimony uncovered in the National Archives of Ghana - a gender-rich section in Part V that explores the Abina's life and narrative as a woman, focusing on such important themes as the relationship between slavery and gender in pre-colonial Akan society, the role of marriage in Abina's experience and motives, colonial paternalism, and the meaning of cloth and beads in her story. - a forum on the question of whether Abina was a slave with contributions by three senior scholars working from different perspectives: Sandra Greene, Antoinette Burton, and Kwasi Konadu .
£33.20
Liverpool University Press Black Salt: Seafarers of African Descent on British Ships
During the Age of Sail, black seamen could be found in many shipboard roles in the Royal Navy, such as gunners, deck-hands and ‘top men’, working at heights in the rigging. In the later Age of Steam, black seamen were more likely to be found on merchantmen below deck; as cooks, stewards and stokers. Nevertheless, the navy was possibly a unique institution in that black and white could work alongside each other more than in any other occupation. In this fascinating work, Dr. Ray Costello examines the work and experience of seamen of African descent in Britain’s navy, from impressed slaves to free Africans, British West Indians, and British-born Black sailors. Seamen from the Caribbean and directly from Africa have contributed to both the British Royal Navy and Merchant Marine from at least the Tudor period and by the end of the period of the British Slave Trade at least three percent of all crewmen were black mariners. Black sailors signed off in British ports helped the steady growth of a black population. In spite of racial prejudice in port, relationships were forged between sailors of different races which frequently ignored expected norms when working and living together in the isolated world of the ship. Black seamen on British ships have served as by no means a peripheral force within the British Royal and Mercantile navies and were not only to be found working in both the foreground and background of naval engagements throughout their long history, but helping to ensure the supply of foodstuffs and the necessities of life to Britain. Their experiences span the gamut of sorrow and tragedy, heroism, victory and triumph.
£109.50
University of Toronto Press Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire Biographique du Canada: Volume XV, 1921-1930
This new volume of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography / Dictionnaire Biographique du Canada (DCB / DBC) presents well-written, carefully documented and meticulously edited biographies of Canadians from all walks of life. Its literary and scholarly standards make it, like its predecessors, the definitive biographical reference for its period of history. The 619 biographies by 446 authors present a panoramic view of the origins of modern Canada, its political landscapes, economic changes, educational institutions, cultural developments, and athletic achievements. The volume's coverage is inclusive, ranging from murderers to artists, from business magnates to religious leaders, from Canada's First Peoples to new immigrants. There are labour leaders, farmers, feminists, and naturalists as well as all the prominent leaders in all aspects of Canadian life. The dominant theme of this volume is the emergence of a country engrossed by material gains and aware of broadening horizons. Sir Clifford Sifton, federal minister of the interior, Sir Lomer Gouin, premier of Quebec, and Sir Robert Bond, premier of Newfoundland, symbolize this age of development. The lives of Sir Adam Beck, father of Ontario Hydro, Gordon Morton McGregor, founder of the Ford Motor Company of Canada, and Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, illustrate how new technologies harnessed natural energy sources and created new ways to communicate. Such innovations drove the transformation of Canada in the early years of the twentieth century. An expanding nation required thousands of new people to answer the demands of the agricultural enterprises in the west, the manufacturing industries of central Canada, and the fishing and lumbering businesses of British Columbia and the Atlantic region. Many newcomers were drawn from eastern Europe and Asia as well as the British Isles and western Europe, traditionally the homelands of new Canadians. The Doukhobor leader Peter Vasil'evich Verigin, the housemaid Angelina Napolitano, the Chinese teacher and merchant Yip Sang, and the Orthodox clergyman Nestor Dmytriw all took their places in the increasingly complex ethnic mosaic. Social and economic changes inspired demands for other types of change. The movement of women into the professions is exemplified by the life of Clara Brett Martin, the first woman called to the bar in Canada. Jeanne Lajoie, an embattled Franco-Ontarian teacher, joins writers Sara Jeannette Duncan, F licit Angers (known as Laure Conan), Jos phine Marchand (Dandurand) and Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall in the cast of women prominent in this volume. Among those representing arts and sports are the painter James Wilson Morrice and the brilliant goalkeeper Georges V zina. Without question Volume XV of the DCB/DBC will take its place as one of the finest to appear in this distinguished ongoing series of Canadian lives. To all purchasers of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume XV 1921-1930. Please be advised that there is an error in some volumes on the staff page. It should read: Ramsay Cook General Editor R al B langer Directeur G n ral Adjoint The Press regrets this error and will provide a corrected tipped-in page, at no expense, if you return the volume. Alternatively, if you contact me, I will send you an erratum slip or a label to correct the error. Bill Harnum Senior Vice President Scholarly Publishing University of Toronto Press 416 978 2239 ext 243 bharnum@utpress.utoronto.ca
£115.20
Kettle's Yard Gallery Alfred Wallis Ships & Boats
Alfred Wallis (1855-1942) is one of the most original and inspiring British artists of the 20th Century. Promoted by the artist Ben Nicholson amongst others, Wallis’s paintings influenced the development of British art between the wars. The directness of Wallis’ vision reflected a lifetime of living by and from the sea. His paintings are of what he knew, remembered and imagined. Yet they are also timeless stories about survival and the nature of our relationship with the world. As Jim Ede commented “Wallis is never local.” With over 70 illustrations, excerpts from letters and texts by Michael Bird, Ben Nicholson and Jim Ede, this book takes a fresh look at this extraordinary artist and his relationship to Kettle's Yard. It includes some of Wallis's best works from the Kettle’s Yard collection including many that are not normally on display, from ambitious paintings such as Saltash to what Wallis knew and loved best: ships and boats. Kettle's Yard, the University of Cambridge's modern and contemporary art gallery, holds the largest public collection of works by Alfred Wallis. Wallis was born in Devon. He was a fisherman and later a scrap-metal merchant in St. Ives. He took up painting in his later years, following the death of his wife in 1922. He was admired by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood, who came across his work when visiting St. Ives in 1928 and included it in the Seven & Five Society’s exhibition of 1929. He died in Madron Poorhouse.
£12.00
Penguin Books Ltd The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
Daniel Defoe's bawdy tale of a woman's struggle for independence and redemption, Moll Flanders is edited with an introduction and notes by David Blewett in Penguin Classics.Born in Newgate prison and abandoned six months later, Moll Flanders' drive to find and hold on to a secure place in society propels her through incest, adultery, bigamy, prostitution and a resourceful career as a thief ('the greatest Artist of my time') before her crimes catche up with her, and she is transported to the colony of Virginia in the New World. If Moll Flanders is on one level a Puritan's tale of sin and repentance, through self-made, self-reliant Moll, Daniel Defoe's rich subtext conveys all the paradoxes and amoralities of the struggle for property and power in the newly individualistic society of Eighteenth-century England.Based on the first edition of 1722, this volume includes a chronology, suggestions for further reading, notes on currency and maps of London and Virginia in the late seventeenth century.Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) had a variety of careers including merchant, soldier, spy, and political pamphleteer. Over the course of his life Daniel Defoe wrote over two hundred and fifty books on economics, history, biography and crime, but is best remembered for the fiction he produced in late life, which includes Robinson Crusoe (1719), Moll Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724). Defoe had a great influence on the development of the English novel and many consider him to be the first true novelist.If you enjoyed Moll Flanders, you might like Samuel Richardson's Pamela, also available in Penguin Classics.
£9.04
The Catholic University of America Press Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study in Religion and Literature
Shakespeare, Lee Oser argues, is a Christian literary artist who criticizes and challenges Christians, but who does so on Christian grounds. Stressing Shakespeare's theological sensitivity, Oser places Shakespeare's work in the "radical middle," the dialectical opening between the sacred and the secular where great writing can flourish. According to Oser, the radical middle was and remains a site of cultural originality, as expressed through mimetic works of art intended for a catholic (small "c") audience. It describes the conceptual space where Shakespeare was free to engage theological questions, and where his Christian skepticism could serve his literary purposes. Oser reviews the rival cases for a Protestant Shakespeare and for a Catholic Shakespeare, but leaves the issue open, focusing, instead, on how Shakespeare exploits artistic resources that are specific to Christianity, including the classical-Christian rhetorical tradition. The scope of the book ranges from an introductory survey of the critical field as it now stands, to individual chapters on A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, the Henriad, Hamlet, and King Lear. Writing with a deep sense of literary history, Oser holds that mainstream literary criticism has created a false picture of Shakespeare by secularizing him and misconstruing the nature of his art. Through careful study of the plays, Oser recovers a Shakespeare who is less vulnerable to the winds of academic and political fashion, and who is a friend to the enduring project of humanistic education. Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study in Religion and Literature is both eminently readable and a work of consequence.
£31.46
Louisiana State University Press Bourbon Street: A History
New Orleans is a city of many storied streets, but only one conjures up as much unbridled passion as it does fervent hatred, simultaneously polarizing the public while drawing millions of visitors a year. A fascinating investigation into the mile-long urban space that is Bourbon Street, Richard Campanella's comprehensive cultural history spans from the street's inception during the colonial period through three tumultuous centuries, arriving at the world-famous entertainment strip of today.Clearly written and carefully researched, Campanella's book interweaves world events- from the Louisiana Purchase to World War II to Hurricane Katrina- with local and national characters, ranging from presidents to showgirls, to explain how Bourbon Street became an intriguing and singular artifact, uniquely informative of both New Orleans's history and American society.While offering a captivating historical-geographical panorama of Bourbon Street, Campanella also presents a contemporary microview of the area, describing the population, architecture, and local economy, and shows how Bourbon Street operates on a typical night. The fate of these few blocks in the French Quarter is played out on a larger stage, however, as the internationally recognized brands that Bourbon Street merchants and the city of New Orleans strive to promote both clash with and complement each other.An epic narrative detailing the influence of politics, money, race, sex, organized crime, and tourism, Bourbon Street: A History ultimately demonstrates that one of the most well-known addresses in North America is more than the epicenter of Mardi Gras; it serves as a battleground for a fundamental dispute over cultural authenticity and commodification.
£33.95
Pan Macmillan Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks
‘I read everything he writes. Every time he writes a book, I read it. Every time he writes an article, I read it . . . he’s a national treasure.’ Rachel MaddowPatrick Radden Keefe’s work has garnered prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US to the Orwell Prize in the UK for his meticulously reported, hypnotically engaging work on the many ways people behave badly. Rogues brings together a dozen of his most celebrated articles from the New Yorker. As Keefe says in his preface: ‘They reflect on some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.’Keefe brilliantly explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines, examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a fabulist, spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain, chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black-market arms merchant, and profiles a passionate death-penalty attorney who represents the ‘worst of the worst’, among other bravura works of literary journalism.The appearance of his byline in the New Yorker is always an event, and collected here for the first time readers can see his work forms an always enthralling but deeply human portrait of criminals and rascals, as well as those who stand up against them.
£16.99
The University Press of Kentucky Surface and Destroy: The Submarine Gun War in the Pacific
World War II submariners rarely experienced anything as exhilarating or horrifying as the surface gun attack. Between the ocean floor and the rolling whitecaps above, submarines patrolled a dark abyss in a fusion of silence, shadows, and steel, firing around eleven thousand torpedoes, sinking Japanese men-of-war and more than one thousand merchant ships. But the anonymity and simplicity of the stealthy torpedo attack hid the savagery of warfare -- a stark difference from the brutality of the surface gun maneuver. As the submarine shot through the surface of the water, confined sailors scrambled through the hatches armed with large-caliber guns and met the enemy face-to-face. Surface and Destroy: The Submarine Gun War in the Pacific reveals the nature of submarine warfare in the Pacific Ocean during World War II and investigates the challenges of facing the enemy on the surface.The surface battle amplified the realities of war, bringing submariners into close contact with survivors and potential prisoners of war. As Japan's larger ships disappeared from the Pacific theater, American submarines turned their attention to smaller craft such as patrol boats, schooners, sampans, and junks. Some officers refused to attack enemy vessels of questionable value, while others attacked reluctantly and tried to minimize casualties. Michael Sturma focuses on the submariners' reactions and attitudes toward their victims, exploring the sailors' personal standards of morality and their ability to wage total war. Surface and Destroy is a thorough analysis of the submariner experience and the effects of surface attacks on the war in the Pacific, offering a compelling study of the battles that became "intolerably personal."
£25.98
Oxford University Press Inc Crying the News: A History of America's Newsboys
From Benjamin Franklin to Ragged Dick to Jack Kelly, hero of the Disney musical Newsies, newsboys have long intrigued Americans as symbols of struggle and achievement. But what do we really know about the children who hawked and delivered newspapers in American cities and towns? Who were they? What was their life like? And how important was their work to the development of a free press, the survival of poor families, and the shaping of their own attitudes, values and beliefs? Crying the News: A History of America's Newsboys offers an epic retelling of the American experience from the perspective of its most unshushable creation. It is the first book to place newsboys at the center of American history, analyzing their inseparable role as economic actors and cultural symbols in the creation of print capitalism, popular democracy, and national character. DiGirolamo's sweeping narrative traces the shifting fortunes of these "little merchants" over a century of war and peace, prosperity and depression, exploitation and reform, chronicling their exploits in every region of the country, as well as on the railroads that linked them. While the book focuses mainly on boys in the trade, it also examines the experience of girls and grown-ups, the elderly and disabled, blacks and whites, immigrants and natives. Based on a wealth of primary sources, Crying the News uncovers the existence of scores of newsboy strikes and protests. The book reveals the central role of newsboys in the development of corporate welfare schemes, scientific management practices, and employee liability laws. It argues that the newspaper industry exerted a formative yet overlooked influence on working-class youth that is essential to our understanding of American childhood, labor, journalism, and capitalism.
£74.42
Harvard University Press The Global in the Local: A Century of War, Commerce, and Technology in China
The story of globalization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as experienced by ordinary people in the Chinese river town of Zhenjiang.Fear swept Zhenjiang as British soldiers gathered outside the city walls in the summer of 1842. Already suspicious of foreigners, locals had also heard of the suffering the British inflicted two months earlier, in Zhapu. A wave of suicides and mercy killings ensued: rather than leave their families to the invaders, hundreds of women killed themselves and their children or died at the hands of male family members. British observers decried an “Asian culture” of ritual suicide. In reality, the event was sui generis—a tragic result of colliding local and global forces in nineteenth-century China.Xin Zhang’s groundbreaking history examines the intense negotiations between local societies and global changes that created modern China. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, world-historic political, economic, and technological developments transformed the textures of everyday life in places like Zhenjiang, a midsize river town in China’s prosperous Lower Yangzi region. Drawing on rare primary sources, including handwritten diaries and other personal writings, Zhang offers a ground-level view of globalization in the city. We see civilians coping with the traumatic international encounters of the Opium War; Zhenjiang brokers bankrolling Shanghai’s ascendance as a cosmopolitan commercial hub; and merchants shipping goods to market, for the first time, on steamships.Far from passive recipients, the Chinese leveraged, resisted, and made change for themselves. Indeed, The Global in the Local argues that globalization is inevitably refracted through local particularities.
£34.16
F&W Publications Inc How to Draw Fantasy Art and RPG Maps: Step by Step Cartography for Gamers and Fans
The power of creation is at your fingertips! Orcs prepare for battle against high Elves, Dwarves retreat to the mountains and men march to the sea to reclaim crumbling fortresses. Fortunes are decided. Kingdoms are lost. Entire worlds are created. This book will teach you to bring your fictional realm to life with simple step-by-step instructions on how to draw authentic fantasy maps. Set the stage for adventure by illustrating domains, castles and battle lines, mountains, forests and sea monsters! Learn to create completely unique and fully functional RPG maps time and time again on which your world can unfold. All the skills necessary to create awe-inspiring maps are covered! Landscapes. Add depth, balance and plausibility with rocky coastlines, towering mountains, dark forests and rolling plains. Iconography. Mark important places--towns and cities, fortresses and bridges--with symbolic iconography for easy-to-understand maps. Typography. Learn how to place readable text and the basics of decorative script. Bonus instruction teaches you to create fonts for Orcs, Elves, Vikings and dragons. Heraldry and shield design. Depict cultural and political boundaries with shields and colors. Advanced cartography. Includes how to draw landmarks, country boundaries and political lines. Build roads to connect merchants and troops, troll cairns and dragon lairs. And complete your maps with creative backgrounds, elaborate compasses and thematic legends. 30+ step-by-step demonstrations illustrate how to construct an entire fantasy world map from start to finish--both digitally and by hand!
£20.69
University of Texas Press On the Lips of Others: Moteuczoma's Fame in Aztec Monuments and Rituals
Moteuczoma, the last king who ruled the Aztec Empire, was rarely seen or heard by his subjects, yet his presence was felt throughout the capital city of Tenochtitlan, where his deeds were recorded in hieroglyphic inscriptions on monuments and his command was expressed in highly refined ritual performances. What did Moteuczoma’s “fame” mean in the Aztec world? How was it created and maintained? In this innovative study, Patrick Hajovsky investigates the king’s inscribed and spoken name, showing how it distinguished his aura from those of his constituencies, especially other Aztec nobles, warriors, and merchants, who also vied for their own grandeur and fame. While Tenochtitlan reached its greatest size and complexity under Moteuczoma, the “Great Speaker” innovated upon fame by tying his very name to the Aztec royal office.As Moteuczoma’s fame transcends Aztec visual and oral culture, Hajovsky brings together a vast body of evidence, including Nahuatl language and poetry, indigenous pictorial manuscripts and written narratives, and archaeological and sculptural artifacts. The kaleidoscopic assortment of sources casts Moteuczoma as a divine king who, while inheriting the fame of past rulers, saw his own reputation become entwined with imperial politics, ideological narratives, and eternal gods. Hajovsky also reflects on posthumous narratives about Moteuczoma, which created a very different sense of his fame as a conquered subject. These contrasting aspects of fame offer important new insights into the politics of personhood and portraiture across Aztec and colonial-period sources.
£35.00
Princeton University Press Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt
How the nature illustrations of a Renaissance polymath reflect his turbulent ageThis pathbreaking and stunningly illustrated book recovers the intersections between natural history, politics, art, and philosophy in the late sixteenth-century Low Countries. Insect Artifice explores the moment when the seismic forces of the Dutch Revolt wreaked havoc on the region’s creative and intellectual community, compelling its members to seek solace in intimate exchanges of art and knowledge. At its center is a neglected treasure of the late Renaissance: the Four Elements manuscripts of Joris Hoefnagel (1542–1600), a learned Netherlandish merchant, miniaturist, and itinerant draftsman who turned to the study of nature in this era of political and spiritual upheaval. Presented here for the first time are more than eighty pages in color facsimile of Hoefnagel’s encyclopedic masterwork, which showcase both the splendor and eccentricity of its meticulously painted animals, insects, and botanical specimens.Marisa Anne Bass unfolds the circumstances that drove the creation of the Four Elements by delving into Hoefnagel’s writings and larger oeuvre, the works of his friends, and the rich world of classical learning and empirical inquiry in which he participated. Bass reveals how Hoefnagel and his colleagues engaged with natural philosophy as a means to reflect on their experiences of war and exile, and found refuge from the threats of iconoclasm and inquisition in the manuscript medium itself. This is a book about how destruction and violence can lead to cultural renewal, and about the transformation of Netherlandish identity on the eve of the Dutch Golden Age.
£54.00
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Last Witches of England: A Tragedy of Sorcery and Superstition
"Fascinating and vivid." New Statesman "Thoroughly researched." The Spectator "Intriguing." BBC History Magazine "Vividly told." BBC History Revealed "A timely warning against persecution." Morning Star "Astute and thoughtful." History Today "An important work." All About History "Well-researched." The Tablet On the morning of Thursday 29 June 1682, a magpie came rasping, rapping and tapping at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Frightened by its appearance, his servants and members of his family had, within a matter of hours, convinced themselves that the bird was an emissary of the devil sent by witches to destroy the fabric of their lives. As the result of these allegations, three women of Bideford came to be forever defined as witches. A Secretary of State brushed aside their case and condemned them to the gallows; to hang as the last group of women to be executed in England for the crime. Yet, the hatred of their neighbours endured. For Bideford, it was said, was a place of witches. Though ‘pretty much worn away’ the belief in witchcraft still lingered on for more than a century after their deaths. In turn, ignored, reviled, and extinguished but never more than half-forgotten, it seems that the memory of these three women - and of their deeds and sufferings, both real and imagined – was transformed from canker to regret, and from regret into celebration in our own age. Indeed, their example was cited during the final Parliamentary debates, in 1951, that saw the last of the witchcraft acts repealed, and their names were chanted, as both inspiration and incantation, by the women beyond the wire at Greenham Common. In this book, John Callow explores this remarkable reversal of fate, and the remarkable tale of the Bideford Witches.
£12.99
Johns Hopkins University Press Maryland Voices of the Civil War
The most contentious event in our nation's history, the Civil War deeply divided families, friends, and communities. Both sides fought to define the conflict on their own terms-Lincoln and his supporters struggled to preserve the Union and end slavery, while the Confederacy waged a battle for the primacy of local liberty or "states' rights." But the war had its own peculiar effects on the four border slave states that remained loyal to the Union. Internal disputes and shifting allegiances injected uncertainty, apprehension, and violence into the everyday lives of their citizens. No state better exemplified the vital role of a border state than Maryland-where the passage of time has not dampened debates over issues such as the alleged right of secession and executive power versus civil liberties in wartime. In Maryland Voices of the Civil War, Charles W. Mitchell draws upon hundreds of letters, diaries, and period newspapers-many previously unpublished-to portray the passions of a wide variety of people-merchants, slaves, soldiers, politicians, freedmen, women, clergy, slave owners, civic leaders, and children-caught in the emotional vise of war. Mitchell tells the compelling story of how Maryland African Americans escaped from slavery and fought for the Union and their freedom alongside white soldiers and he reinforces the provocative notion that Maryland's Southern sympathies-while genuine-never seriously threatened to bring about a Confederate Maryland. Maryland Voices of the Civil War illuminates the human complexities of the Civil War era and the political realignment that enabled Marylanders to abolish slavery in their state before the end of the war.
£44.77
Johns Hopkins University Press Governed by a Spirit of Opposition: The Origins of American Political Practice in Colonial Philadelphia
During the colonial era, ordinary Philadelphians played an unusually active role in political life. Because the city lacked a strong central government, private individuals working in civic associations of their own making shouldered broad responsibility for education, poverty relief, church governance, fire protection, and even taxation and military defense. These organizations dramatically expanded the opportunities for white men-rich and poor alike - to shape policies that immediately affected their communities and their own lives. In Governed by a Spirit of Opposition, Jessica Choppin Roney explains how allowing people from all walks of life to participate in political activities amplified citizen access and democratic governance. Merchants, shopkeepers, carpenters, brewers, shoemakers, and silversmiths served as churchwardens, street commissioners, constables, and Overseers of the Poor. They volunteered to fight fires, organized relief for the needy, contributed money toward the care of the sick, took up arms in defense of the community, raised capital for local lending, and even interjected themselves in Indian diplomacy. Ultimately, Roney suggests, popular participation in charity, schools, the militia, and informal banks empowered people in this critically important colonial city to overthrow the existing government in 1776 and re-envision the parameters of democratic participation. Governed by a Spirit of Opposition argues that the American Revolution did not occasion the birth of commonplace political activity or of an American culture of voluntary association. Rather, the Revolution built upon a long history of civic engagement and a complicated relationship between the practice of majority-rule and exclusionary policy-making on the part of appointed and self-selected constituencies.
£35.00
Harvard University Press Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America
In the mid-eighteenth century, colonial Americans became enamored with the rich colors and silky surface of mahogany. This exotic wood, imported from the West Indies and Central America, quickly displaced local furniture woods as the height of fashion. Over the next century, consumer demand for mahogany set in motion elaborate schemes to secure the trees and transform their rough-hewn logs into exquisite objects. But beneath the polished gleam of this furniture lies a darker, hidden story of human and environmental exploitation.Mahogany traces the path of this wood through many hands, from source to sale: from the enslaved African woodcutters, including skilled “huntsmen” who located the elusive trees amidst dense rainforest, to the ship captains, merchants, and timber dealers who scrambled after the best logs, to the skilled cabinetmakers who crafted the wood, and with it the tastes and aspirations of their diverse clientele. As the trees became scarce, however, the search for new sources led to expanded slave labor, vicious competition, and intense international conflicts over this diminishing natural resource. When nineteenth-century American furniture makers turned to other materials, surviving mahogany objects were revalued as antiques evocative of the nation's past.Jennifer Anderson offers a dynamic portrait of the many players, locales, and motivations that drove the voracious quest for mahogany to adorn American parlors and dining rooms. This complex story reveals the cultural, economic, and environmental costs of America’s growing self-confidence and prosperity, and how desire shaped not just people’s lives but the natural world.
£20.95
Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press Qatar and Arabian Gulf States in Indian Archive -- Book 2
Text in Arabic. We are pleased to present the second volume of the project "Qatar and the Arabian Gulf States in the Documents of the Indian Archives, Selections from the Indian National Archives in Delhi", which includes the translation of documents related to Qatar and the Arabian Gulf States and their relationship with the various international powers, as well as regional and local ones, in the period (1872-1875), as monitored in the records of the British Government and the Indian British Government. These documents include correspondence and telegrams exchanged between residents, agents, captains on the Indian Navy's ships, their superiors at the Ministry of Indian Affairs and the British Ministry of Foreign Affairs in London, as well as letters from the Sheikhs and merchants of the region. Its contents cover wide aspects including their conditions, reactions, and their interactions with the conflicts and events they went through, especially since many of them have been participants of at least eyewitnesses in such events. Therefore, the topics vary between political, military, economic, social, and others. The timeline of the documents included in this volume are arranged in chronological-historical order; as it covers historical events and facts occurred during the period it is presenting, the most important of which is the Ottoman campaign against Najd, the Ottoman military reinforcements in Al Ahsa, Al Qatif and Qatar, the repercussions of the conflict between Abdullah and Saud, the sons of Faisal bin Turki Al Saud, and the tribal stance in each of Al Ahsa, Al Qatif, Qatar and Bahrain, and the subsequent Ottoman movements, and the British position on these events, especially after Qatar raised the Ottoman flag.
£19.79
Princeton University Press The Sky Is for Everyone: Women Astronomers in Their Own Words
An inspiring anthology of writings by trailblazing women astronomers from around the globeThe Sky Is for Everyone is an internationally diverse collection of autobiographical essays by women who broke down barriers and changed the face of modern astronomy. Virginia Trimble and David Weintraub vividly describe how, before 1900, a woman who wanted to study the stars had to have a father, brother, or husband to provide entry, and how the considerable intellectual skills of women astronomers were still not enough to enable them to pry open doors of opportunity for much of the twentieth century. After decades of difficult struggles, women are closer to equality in astronomy than ever before. Trimble and Weintraub bring together the stories of the tough and determined women who flung the doors wide open. Taking readers from 1960 to today, this triumphant anthology serves as an inspiration to current and future generations of women scientists while giving voice to the history of a transformative era in astronomy.With contributions by Neta A. Bahcall, Beatriz Barbuy, Ann Merchant Boesgaard, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Catherine Cesarsky, Poonam Chandra, Xuefei Chen, Cathie Clarke, Judith Gamora Cohen, France Anne Córdova, Anne Pyne Cowley, Bożena Czerny, Wendy L. Freedman, Yilen Gómez Maqueo Chew, Gabriela González, Saeko S. Hayashi, Martha P. Haynes, Roberta M. Humphreys, Vicky Kalogera, Gillian Knapp, Shazrene S. Mohamed, Carole Mundell, Priyamvada Natarajan, Dara J. Norman, Hiranya Peiris, Judith Lynn Pipher, Dina Prialnik, Anneila I. Sargent, Sara Seager, Gražina Tautvaišienė, Silvia Torres-Peimbert, Virginia Trimble, Meg Urry, Ewine F. van Dishoeck, Patricia Ann Whitelock, Sidney Wolff, and Rosemary F. G. Wyse.
£22.50
Transworld Publishers Ltd The Streets Of Ankh-Morpork: the principal city of Sir Terry Pratchett’s much-loved Discworld, mapped for the very first time
Lose yourself in the glorious technicolour of Ankh-Morpork, mapped in meticulous detail for the very first time. A beautiful gift edition, complete with fold-out map and pull-out information booklet, and a fantastic accompaniment to the novels.'Tells you the answers to all the questions you had about Ankh Morpork' -- ***** Reader review'The whole thing is really charming. Every time you look at it, something new is revealed' -- ***** Reader review'A fascinating look into the streets of Terry Pratchett's mind...' -- ***** Reader review**************************************************************************************'THERE'S A SAYING THAT ALL ROADS LEAD TO ANKH-MORPORK. AND IT'S WRONG. ALL ROADS LEAD AWAY FROM ANKH-MORPORK, BUT SOMETIMES PEOPLE JUST WALK ALONG THE WRONG WAY' from Moving PicturesAnkh-Morpork! City of One Thousand Surprises (according to the famous publication by the Guild of Merchants)! All human life is there! Although, if it walks down the wrong alley, often quite briefly!The city celebrated in the bestselling Discworld series by Sir Terry Pratchett has been meticulously mapped for the first time. It's all here - from Unseen University to the Shades, from major landmarks like the Patrician's Palace to little-known, er, nooks like Dwarf Bread Museum in Whirligig Alley.See the famous streets beaten by Sam Vimes and the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, the cobbles along which so many heroes have walked - in some cases quite hurriedly! As leading Ankh-Morpork entrepreneur C.M.O.T. Dibbler would say, a nip at any price - and that's cutting our own throat. Well, close.A deluxe and stunning gift edition with pull-out booklet and fold-out map - the ultimate present for every Discworld fan who has ever dreamed of seeing the world of Sir Terry Pratchett come to life...
£16.99
James Currey African Women in the Atlantic World: Property, Vulnerability & Mobility, 1660-1880
An innovative and valuable resource for understanding women's roles in changing societies, this book brings together the history of Africa, the Atlantic and gender before the 20th century. It explores trade, slavery and migrationin the context of the Euro-African encounter. HONORABLE MENTION FOR AFRICAN STUDIES REVIEW BEST AFRICA-FOCUSED ANTHOLOGY OR EDITED COLLECTION, 2019 While there have been studies of women's roles in African societies and of Atlantic history, the role of women in Westand West Central Africa during the period of the Atlantic slave trade and its abolition remains relatively unexamined. This book brings together scholars from Africa, North and South America and Europe to show, for the first time,the ways in which African women participated in economic, social and political spaces in Atlantic coast societies. Focusing on diversity and change, and going beyond the study of wealthy merchant women, the contributors examine the role of petty traders and enslaved women in communities from Sierra Leone to Benguela. They analyse how women in Africa used the opportunities offered by relationships with European men, Christianity and Atlantic commerce to negotiate their social and economic positions; consider the limitations which early colonialism sought to impose on women and the strategies they employed to overcome them; the factors which fostered or restricted women's mobility,both spatially and socially; and women's economic power and its curtailment. Mariana P. Candido is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame; Adam Jones recently retired as Professor of African History and Culture History at the University of Leipzig. In association with The Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame
£65.00
University of Pennsylvania Press The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French Saint-Domingue and British Jamaica
Jamaica and Saint-Domingue were especially brutal but conspicuously successful eighteenth-century slave societies and imperial colonies. These plantation regimes were, to adopt a metaphor of the era, complex "machines," finely tuned over time by planters, merchants, and officials to become more efficient at exploiting their enslaved workers and serving their empires. Using a wide range of archival evidence, The Plantation Machine traces a critical half-century in the development of the social, economic, and political frameworks that made these societies possible. Trevor Burnard and John Garrigus find deep and unexpected similarities in these two prize colonies of empires that fought each other throughout the period. Jamaica and Saint-Domingue experienced, at nearly the same moment, a bitter feud between planters and governors, a violent conflict between masters and enslaved workers, a fateful tightening of racial laws, a steady expansion of the slave trade, and metropolitan criticism of planters' cruelty. The core of The Plantation Machine addresses the Seven Years' War and its aftermath. The events of that period, notably a slave poisoning scare in Saint-Domingue and a near-simultaneous slave revolt in Jamaica, cemented white dominance in both colonies. Burnard and Garrigus argue that local political concerns, not emerging racial ideologies, explain the rise of distinctive forms of racism in these two societies. The American Revolution provided another imperial crisis for the beneficiaries of the plantation machine, but by the 1780s whites in each place were prospering as never before—and blacks were suffering in new and disturbing ways. The result was that Jamaica and Saint-Domingue became vitally important parts of the late eighteenth-century American empires of Britain and France.
£27.99