"Property rights" and "Russia" do not usually belong in the same sentence. Rather, our general image of the nation is of insecurity of private ownership and defenselessness in the face of the state. Many scholars have attributed Russia's long-term development problems to a failure to advance property rights for the modern age and blamed Russian intellectuals for their indifference to the issues of ownership. A Public Empire refutes this widely shared conventional wisdom and analyzes the emergence of Russian property regimes from the time of Catherine the Great through World War I and the revolutions of 1917. Most importantly, A Public Empire shows the emergence of the new practices of owning "public things" in imperial Russia and the attempts of Russian intellectuals to reconcile the security of property with the ideals of the common good. The book analyzes how the belief that certain objects—rivers, forests, minerals, historical monuments, icons, and Russian literary classics—should accede to some kind of public status developed in Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. Professional experts and liberal politicians advocated for a property reform that aimed at exempting public things from private ownership, while the tsars and the imperial government employed the rhetoric of protecting the sanctity of private property and resisted attempts at its limitation. Exploring the Russian ways of thinking about property, A Public Empire looks at problems of state reform and the formation of civil society, which, as the book argues, should be rethought as a process of constructing "the public" through the reform of property rights.

Because of the exceptionally high proportion of imports in Britain’s food supply and the determined efforts of the enemy to sever the supply lines, efficient management of food resources was an essential element in the British national war effort. This volume was the first comprehensive study of this vital aspect of government strategy and fills a gap in the historiography of this period. This volume provides a balanced picture by drawing together the diverse elements that went into food policy: economic and social trends, international trade relations and labour issues. The author also traces the evolution of food policy during the pre-war planning period and the early part of the war, and analyses the roles of the United States and the labour organizations.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Published papers whose appeal lies in their subject-matter rather than their technical statistical contents. Medical, social, educational, legal,demographic and governmental issues are of particular concern.

The First World War appears as a fault line in Britain’s twentieth-century history. Between August 1914 and November 1918 the titanic struggle against Imperial Germany and her allies consumed more people, more money and more resources than any other conflict Britain had hitherto experienced. For the first time, it opened up a Home Front that stretched into all parts of the British polity, society and culture, touching the lives of every citizen regardless of age, gender and class. Even vegetables were grown in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Britain and World War One throws attention on these civilians who fought the war on the Home Front. Harnessing recent scholarship, and drawing on original documents, oral testimony and historical texts, this book casts a fresh look over different aspects of British society during the four long years of war. It revisits the early war enthusiasm and the making of Kitchener’s new armies; the emotive debates over conscription; the relationships between politics, government and popular opinion; women working in wartime industries; the popular experience of war and the question of social change. The book also explores areas of wartime Britain overlooked by recent histories, including the impact of the war on rural society; the mobilization of industry, and the importance of technology, as well as exploring responses to air raids, food and housing shortages; the challenges to traditional social and sexual mores and wartime culture. Britain and World War One is an essential book for all students and interested lay readers of the First World War.