The concluding chapter summarizes the Arab liberals’ alternative agenda for relations between individual and state, religion and politics, Islam and the West. The confidence of the liberals in the rightness of their path did not dispel doubts about whether the contemporary Arab peoples were ready for enlightenment. However, these liberals still sought internal renewal and continued to search for Arab enlightenment.

The acquisition and development of legal consciousness among those who were not themselves lawyers or judges are significant features of the political history of the period 1215-1381. An individual's obligations within a particular community and his or her awareness of those obligations contributed further to the level of consciousness of the law. Attendance at public courts was an important way of acquiring legal knowledge. Attendance at church, required by the 1215 Lateran Council, provided various opportunities for the acquisition of legal knowledge. At all levels of the court system, legal knowledge was a concomitant of experience gained from, and in many cases a necessary requirement for, employment as a court official and service as a juror. Finally, an understanding of the law could be acquired either directly or indirectly from the growing documentary culture, from book learning and/or from exposure to literature relating to legal matters.

This chapter traces the origins of the two Opium Wars; it charts the development of both of these Anglo-Chinese conflicts and discusses their consequences. It introduces students to the illustrious historiography and current debate and points out gaps in existing scholarship.

The FANY, a small, patriotic, imperialist organisation that epitomised Edwardian Britishness in both its modern and reactionary forms, was founded in a period of intense anxiety about and scrutiny of the country’s readiness for a future conflict. While much of the reorganisation of civic life focused on boys and men in order to improve their physical fitness, the FANY sought to attract strong athletic women who were motivated by a desire to assist their country as mounted first aiders. While couching his vision in very conventional terms of feminine compassion that harked back to Florence Nightingale, the FANY founder, Edward Baker, simultaneously visualised a much more modern, extended, active and physically demanding role for women. This chapter utilises Corps ephemera such as its magazine, minutes of meetings and regulations, as well as newspaper articles, published and unpublished FANY memoirs, and archived interviews to examine the climate in which the Corps was formed, the dual rationale of nursing and equestrianism that was central to the notion of the organisation, and the social composition of its membership.

This chapter discusses the liberal endeavor to reduce the power of the state, and liberals’ intensive engagement with personal liberties and the empowerment of individualism in the Arab landscape. The defying liberal discourse regarding Arab politics also revealed internal tensions on such issues as the individual’s relations with the collective, the features of the socioeconomic structure, and the inclusion of Islamists in the democratic process.

Harvey was an actor who apparently delighted in generating his own publicity. This chapter discusses how an overseas-born star created his own image – including his screen name – which attracted much critical opprobrium. Early miscasting as a conventional juvenile lead is contrasted with Harvey’s skill at depicting villains and outsiders. A contract with the producer James Woolf eventually resulted in the actor being cast in Room at the Top, which, together with Expresso Bongo, consolidated his appeal as a leading character. Harvey’s career in the 1960s was marked by attempts at Hollywood stardom, alternated with incisive performances in British films, especially Life at the Top. The chapter concludes with an assessment of his last major British film, A Dandy in Aspic and Harvey’s importance to cinema.

The afterword draws together the key messages of the book, reiterating the strategies for researchers to undertake effective work in this field. It also conveys the significance of this field and how historical material culture studies are capable of shaping the wider field of history in exciting ways in years to come

The oath of 1190 reveals a common practice in peacemaking of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, namely that of a representative taking an oath in the name of his ruler. The oath of 1190 allows the historian to address an issue, namely the verbal connection between an oath and an agreement. The fact that the text of the 1190 oath is recorded in Latin raises the issue of whether the oath would have been sworn in Latin or in the vernacular. The oath in the medieval West was an appeal to God that included actual physical contact with a sacred object, usually a relic or a Gospel book. The oath was an essential part of guaranteeing agreements through the appeal to faith, personal honour and obligation that it invoked on behalf of the oath-taker.

The introduction of civil partnerships in Ireland is discussed. This chapter further examines one of the major concerns for marriage equality campaigners who highlighted that civil partnerships did not offer equivalent rights to civil marriage, especially in relation to the children of such partnerships.

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the four poems discussed in this book. It indicates how often they convey a sense of urgency in the speeches, a sense of drama in the situations. Pearl is the test case. Of the four poems it is stylistically the most ornate, metrically the most complex, the one in which 'art' is most in evidence. Pearl combines a language of great expressive potential with a demanding poetic form. The language of Cleanness conveys an intense reaction against filth, in which physical and metaphysical notions of filth are inextricably mixed. The message of God's love is present in Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience too, but the poet shows no confidence that people can grasp it. With Gawain too it is possible that the public and the personal intermingle to shake his faith in chivalry and the feudal model of social order.