This new edition extends and brings up to date the story of political, economic, and social change among the British. An entirely new chapter covers the Thatcher years, discussing such events as the Falkland Island crisis and the General Election of 1983. Other sections have been revised to reflect information only recently available. Throughout, Havighurst has incorporated material from official documents, monographs, biographies, articles, and the press. His fascinating narrative fully captures the ongoing importance of change itself in shaping the character of Britain.

This edited collection presents new research on the development of printing and bookselling throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, addressing themes such as the Reformation, the transmission of texts and the production and sale of printed books.

Major account of the fourteenth-century crisis which saw a series of famines, revolts and epidemics transform the medieval world.

What does it mean to focus on the decade as a unit of literary history? Emerging from the shadows of iconic Victorian authors such as Eliot and Tennyson, the 1880s is a decade that has been too readily overlooked in the rush to embrace end-of-century decadence and aestheticism. The 1880s witnessed new developments in transatlantic networks, experiments in lyric poetry, the decline of the three-volume novel, and the revaluation of authors, journalists and the reading public. The contributors to this collection explore the case for the 1880s as both a discrete point of literary production, with its own pressures and provocations, and as part of literature's sense of its expanded temporal and geographical reach. The essays address a wide variety of authors, topics and genres, offering incisive readings of the diverse forces at work in the shaping of the literary 1880s.

This significant new work by a prominent medievalist focusses on the period of transition between 1250 and 1550, when the wealth and power of the great lords was threatened and weakened, and when new social groups emerged and new methods of production were adopted. Professor Dyer examines both the commercial growth of the thirteenth century, and the restructuring of farming, trade, and industry in the fifteenth. The subjects investigated include the balance between individuals andthe collective interests of families and villages. The role of the aristocracy and in particular the gentry are scrutinized, and emphasis placed on the initiatives taken by peasants, traders, and craftsmen. The growth in consumption moved the economy in new directions after 1350, and this encouragedinvestment in productive enterprises. A commercial mentality persisted and grew, and producers, such as farmers, profited from the market. Many people lived on wages, but not enough of them to justify describing the sixteenth century economy as capitalist. The conclusions are supported by research in sources not much used before, such as wills, and non-written evidence, including buildings.Christopher Dyer, who has already published on many aspects of this period, has produced the first full-length study by a single author of the 'transition'. He argues for a reassessment of the whole period, and shows that many features of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries can be found before 1500.

Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism is a sustained exercise in historical sociology that shows how the slave-based societies of Ancient Greece and Rome eventually became the feudal societies of the Middle Ages. In the course of this study, Anderson vindicates and refines the explanatory power of historical materialism, while casting a fascinating light on the Ancient world, the Germanic invasions, nomadic society, and the different routes taken to feudalism in Northern, Mediterranean, Eastern and Western Europe. Through this work and its companion volume, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Anderson presents a Marxist history of Western political development that takes readers from the first stirrings of political consciousness in the classical world to the rise of absolutist monarchies in Europe and the birth of the modern epoch.

China’s rising status in the global economy alongside recent economic stagnation in Europe and the United States has led to considerable speculation that we are in the early stages of a transition in power relations. Commentators have tended to treat this transitional period as a novelty, but history is in fact replete with such systemic transitions—sometimes with perilous results. Can we predict the future by using the past? And, if so, what might history teach us? With Transition Scenarios, David P. Rapkin and William R. Thompson identify some predictors for power transitions and take readers through possible scenarios for future relations between China and the United States. Each scenario is embedded within a particular theoretical framework, inviting readers to consider the assumptions underlying it. Despite recent interest in the topic, the probability and timing of a power transition—and the processes that might bring it about—remain woefully unclear. Rapkin and Thompson’s use of the theoretical tools of international relations to crucial transitions in history helps clarify the current situation and also sheds light on possible future scenarios.