Richard Brome's satirical travel drama The Antipodes of 1636-1638 is a late example of the Renaissance vogue for English plays which engage with the idea of New Worlds and colonial politics. This chapter focuses on another influential source for Brome's play, Mandeville's Travels, and examines the significance of the relationship between the texts in two related ways. Firstly, Brome's importation to 1630s 'London' of Mandevillian monstrousness is explored, specifically with regard to gender behaviour and sexual appetite. Secondly, the chapter examines the status accorded to Mandeville's text in The Antipodes and in the early to mid-seventeenth century more generally, in order to pose larger political and generic questions concerning the ways in which dramatic texts use travel writing in this period. In The Antipodes, Brome represents the characters' various social problems and health issues as types of madness or moral sickness.

The history of marriage equality in Ireland concludes with a note for the future regarding Northern Ireland. The law extending marriage to same-sex couples came into effect in England and Wales on 29 March 2014. On 29 April, a third attempt was made to pass a bill in the Northern Ireland Assembly. The vote lost by 51 against to 43 in favour. The opposition once again was predominantly from by unionist parties including the Democratic Unionist Party, Ulster Unionist Party and Traditional Unionist Voice, with all nationalist MLAs voting in support of marriage equality. This afterword provides an assessment of the current situation.

In the late nineteenth century there began to be an increasing sense that philanthropy had failed. In part this was because of the emergence of a rival, altruism; declaring a religion of humanity, altruism claimed that, shorn of Christianity, it represented a purer form of love of humanity than philanthropy. The bigger challenge, however, came from those within the philanthropic world who did not disguise their feeling that what they called ‘the machinery of philanthropy’ was often doing as much harm as good. Toynbee Hall became the centre of a ‘new philanthropy’ in which the call was not for money but for yourselves. Socialists were wary even of this and called for an increasing role for the state, something that began to be achieved in the Liberal reforms of the early twentieth century. Another possibility that was aired was that millionaire philanthropists could help solve social problems. They were in fact rare on the ground. Bernard Shaw offered them some barbed advice.

In the first half of the nineteenth century it was still possible to experience philanthropy simply as a feeling. But for many ‘philanthropists’ were lined up with ‘statesmen’ as the people with a responsibility to address social problems at home and more directly political ones abroad. There was a strong feeling that the British were the most philanthropic people in the world. Philanthropy’s opponents, however, were not silenced. Philanthropy was under suspicion for too often disobeying the tenets of political economy – or, alternatively, for being too wedded to them. The Times mounted attack after attack on those it described as mere talking philanthropists; they were, amongst other deficiencies, insufficiently manly, effeminate. A particular target was what Dickens described as ‘telescopic philanthropy’, a concern for those at the farthest reaches of the world rather than those on your doorstep. The campaigns against slavery, particularly after British slavery emancipation in 1833, came under unrelenting scrutiny. This came to a head with Thomas Carlyle’s ‘Occasional discourse on the Negro question’ where he spared no invective against philanthropy in all its guises. John Stuart Mill made a temperate reply. By mid-century there was what one journal described as ‘The Reaction against Philanthropy’.

Auguste Comte was the main promoter of the concepts of ‘sociology’ and ‘positivism’. This chapter examines his early programmatic text ‘Plan of the Scientific Work Necessary for the Reorganization of Society’ (1822-24) that sets out what the new science of sociology was to be all about: the safeguarding of the changes brought about by the French Revolution, but also the safeguarding of (modern, still precarious) society from the perceived danger of more revolutions to come.

This chapter examines the final stages of the campaigns for and against voting for marriage equality in the forthcoming referendum in May 2015. This includes an examination of the Catholic Church’s stance and their actions in the weeks before the referendum.

This chapter examines the different approaches to femininity displayed by the men. It presents four paradigms that are the outcome of research blending questions raised within the spheres of gender research and feminist theory with the research methodology of social history. They are the family paradigm, negative male paradigm, Hasidic paradigm, and community paradigm. Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac's entire oeuvre points to the central role of the family and particularly the key position and importance of the woman as the pillar of the Jewish family. In the sections of Sefer Hasidim that describe how a man progresses along the Hasidic path, coping with the female presence, and the constant danger on account of the strong sexual desire is always aroused. In many of the sources the attitude towards women stems from the male sages' conviction that the interests of the community must be given the highest priority.

This chapter is concerned with one of the staples of Mandevillian lore, the figure of Prester John, whom the 'knight of transmission' portrays as 'a grete Emperour of Ynde'. It attempts to retrieve part of the Priest-King Arthur's complex itinerary through medieval and early modern imaginations. The emergence of the Prester John legend and its success are first and foremost the products of crusading Europe's ambivalent attitude towards the East. A cited extract shows how, from his very first appearance, Prester John is an embodiment of the ambivalence, caught half-way between the pagan past of classical authorities and the present of Christian Crusaders. A look at the appellations for some of the early manuscripts and editions bears witness to the diversity of responses which the work elicited from its early audiences: it was described with terms as diverse as 'livre', 'geste', 'romant', 'tractatus', 'itinerarium', 'voiage and trauayle'.

Philanthropy, the love of humankind, has expressed itself in many different ways. In the Conclusion I rehearse these and argue that it is only by close attention to context, to political, economic, social and cultural change, that it is possible both to understand how philanthropy has changed and how it has been part of the motor of change.

This chapter guides researchers through the writing up process. While much of this advice will apply generally to historical writing, this chapter pays particular attention to specific skills and conventions associated with writing about material culture – the use of images and diagrams, appropriate referencing styles and acknowledgements. The chapter discusses writing about material culture in different contexts, for example dissertations and theses as well as object labels and blog posts.

This chapter discusses negotiation of certain problems of representation of the Far East and of the Eastern ethnic other, the 'Mandevillian drama' both in the early seventeenth century and in the early twenty- first. It focuses on a particular dramatic text - John Fletcher's 1621 tragicomedy, The Island Princess - and, on a particular production of that text: the Royal Shakespeare Company's revival in 2002-3. The chapter seeks a sense of continuity and difference in medieval and early modern negotiations of the Far East. It discusses the feasibility or otherwise of producing a play inevitably seen primarily in relation to the history of colonialism yet which, in its moment of origin, predated the colonial. The chapter finally addresses the unforeseeable simultaneity of the production and of the Bali bombing of autumn 2002, reflects on a specific postmodern (or post- '9/11') problem.

By the outbreak of the First World War there was talk of the services offered by the state working in harmony with voluntary organisations. It was notable in such discussions that ‘philanthropy’ was rarely mentioned. In the war itself there was a huge increase in the number of charities and some attempt to give them a voice in the National Council of Social Service. Post-war the tone of discussion changed in ways damaging to philanthropy. It was seen as ‘Victorian’, condescending. The new language was about citizenship, democracy, social work, voluntary organisations and volunteering. But if philanthropy was in many ways redundant there were attempts to revive it, most notably by Elizabeth Macadam in The New Philanthropy (1934) and by William Beveridge in Voluntary Action (1948). Neither had much impact. It was easy to imagine that philanthropy and philanthropists would soon belong to the past. Revival came with growing criticism of the welfare state and, from the 1970s, the renewed confidence in markets that led eventually to the implementation of a neoliberal agenda. It was less a distrust of markets, more the accumulation of vast individual wealth that markets had made possible, that opened the door for another ‘new philanthropy’.

In the search for Sir John Mandeville that occupies Giles Milton's The Riddle and the Knight (1996), Milton identifies a range of connections and differences between the 'religions of the book' (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) with the intention of indicating Christian legitimacy in opposition to misguided Islam and demonised Judaism. Regardless of the nature of Mandeville's reflections, there is no doubt that his presentation of Islam was hugely influential. Milton chooses not to refer to Mandeville's depiction of the Prophet Muhammad; this is the focus of this chapter. The chapter considers the source for a small part of The Travels. It is concerned with the uneven character of Mandeville's conception of Islam and Muhammad. The portrayal of Islam in Mandeville's Travels appears ambivalent - the emphasis upon religious common ground between Islam and Christianity does not demonise with the same polemic found in many contemporary texts.