Lamb in the 1820s and Dickens in the 1830s had written about some of those who made their living or advertised their services in the streets of London: beggars, chimney sweeps, cab drivers, the vendors of baked potatoes and kidney pies. When, in the late forties, Henry Mayhew began his extensive study of the street-folk, he found reason to cite both these chroniclers. London Labour and the London Poor, however, is an enterprise different in kind from the essays and sketches it occasionally quotes. Somehow, in the middle years of the nineteenth century, the street-folk became a subject worth four volumes and sixteen hundred pages.

The decision to devote so much attention to the people of the streets came at a crisis-point in Mayhew's journalistic career. He had undertaken for the Morning Chronicle (1849) a comprehensive study of the metropolitan poor. Defining the poor as “those persons whose incomings are insufficient for the satisfaction of their wants,” Mayhew proposed to discuss them “according as they will work, they can't work, and they won't work.” He had progressed part way through the first of these classifications when he quarrelled with the editors of the Chronicle and ended by severing his ties with them. On his own, Mayhew commenced the publication in parts of London Labour. The “will, can't, won't” division, which persists in these volumes, was supplemented or perhaps superseded by another. Mayhew's ultimate object was still to study all the London poor but he now began with a trade-by-trade survey of the street-folk.

But often in the world's most crowded streets
And often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life ….

The Buried Life, Matthew Arnold

Any comparison between historical phenomena is fraught with many dangers, particularly where a century separates their occurrence. Nevertheless, it is proposed to compare certain aspects of social protest in 1916-17 with the disturbances more closely associated with the final decade of the eighteenth century — the form of protest in question being taxation populaire. For, while examples of such riots can be found from the late seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, as R. B. Rose has written, “… we shall be justified in regarding taxation populaire as primarily and typically an eighteenth century phenomenon.” E. P. Thompson, moreover, considers that “… the final years of the eighteenth century saw a last desperate effort by the people to reimpose the older moral economy as against the economy of the free market.” In both periods the country was suffering from wartime inflation, and food shortages caused by failures in domestic harvests and interruptions in imported supplies, threatened to cause breaches in social harmony. And in both cases the two national governments that emerged were fully prepared to repress the threat to national security posed by outbreaks of working-class unrest. Besides such central parallels, others of a more trivial nature spring to mind. Not too much imagination is needed to see the spirit of the Church and King Mobs marching amongst the ranks of those who attacked pacifist meetings and the property of those with German names; though it may be considered outrageously fancilful to see the devilry of Arthur Thistlewood behind Mrs. Wheeldon's plot to poison Arthur Henderson and Lloyd George.

During the decade before the American Revolution, the dissenting schoolmaster, James Burgh, became one of England's foremost propagandists for radical reform. All of the recent works on English radicalism and the ideological origins of the American Revolution recognize the important place of Burgh's magnum opus, the Political Disquisitions, in these movements. Burgh himself, however, has remained a shadowy figure. The process whereby he became a radical has not been explored; important nuances of his political philosophy are unknown; the scope of his radical actions are insufficiently appreciated; and the extent of his influence has not been fully evaluated. In short, there exist some rather incredible gaps in our understanding of the author of a work uniformly agreed to be the “standard source book for reform propagandists in the 1780's,” and “perhaps the most important political treatise which appeared in England in the first half of the reign of George III.” More importantly, in rectifying this situation it becomes obvious that Burgh's career raises some important questions about the character and development of late eighteenth-century English radicalism and suggests the need to qualify or modify certain current perceptions of that movement.

One of eleven children, Burgh was born in late 1714 in the rural Scottish community of Madderty, Perthshire. His father Andrew was minister of the parish Church of Scotland. His mother Margaret was an aunt of the famous Scottish historian William Robertson. Although almost nothing is known of James's youth, his writing indicates that his childhood was happy and the force of his parents' example was considerable.

In recent years the interest of English historians in poverty and poor relief during Tudor-Stuart times has grown appreciably. Besides new research on certain cities, towns, and counties, a number of studies, both published and unpublished, focus attention on the vital center of English poor relief operations — the parish. This growing emphasis on parochial responses to the problems associated with poverty and the poor in England reflects the view of a recent student of English poor relief, Geoffrey W. Oxley, who has insisted that there really can be no history of poor relief per se, “only the history of poor relief in particular parishes.”

It is common knowledge that London parish records have enormous value for students of English poor relief. A careful survey of essential documents such as accounts of the churchwardens and overseers of the poor, vestry minutes, and parish registers which survive for London's 108 parishes led to the selection of the seven parishes in this study. Regrettably, the ravages of time and circumstance have destroyed a substantial proportion of the City records of this type which once existed for the period. Almost without exception the larger, densely populated, and generally poverty-stricken parishes outside London's walls suffered the greatest losses. Consequently, the study which follows represents only the range of responses for ameliorating poverty which emerged within a limited sample of smaller, less highly congested, intramural City parishes.

At the same time this group of London parishes provides a fuller awareness of the ways in which England's poor relief regime developed and functioned in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

A significant aspect of the religious scene in the early Stuart period was the survival of vibrant religious nonconformity in spite of Bancroft's “reconstruction of the English Church.” Historians have recently concentrated on the periods of excited religious politics under Elizabeth and the latter part of Charles I's reign and have tended to accept Hacket's Restoration apology that there was no serious opposition to official religious policy in the intervening years. But attempts to explain the phoenix-like rise of Puritanism in Caroline England by reference to socio-economic disequilibrium are not fully satisfactory.

Decades ago, Roland G. Usher, who did much to highlight Bancroft's reconstruction, explained the origins of the resurgent Puritanism of the Laudian period by pointing to the mid-Jacobean period. W. H. Clark concurred: lax ecclesiastical administration under Abbot made it possible for Puritans to re-group, starting from about 1614. Both men assumed that there had been effective enforcement of the new Canons of 1604, and of the official policy enunciated at the Hampton Court Conference, until Abbot came on the scene. Analysis of the Church court records indicates that this was simply not so. The number of Puritans continued to rise while vigorous enforcement was spasmodic.

Ironically, the years to which Usher and Clark attributed the origins of Caroline Puritanism were in fact the period when enforcement was possible. First, the Pamphlet War aroused by the new settlement had died down. Second, only two bishops, John King and George Mountain, held the See of London between 1611 and 1628.

At the close of the seventeenth century the English House of Lords played an important role in government. It was the highest court in the kingdom as well as the upper house of the legislature; and, as A. S. Turberville observed, the Lords still considered themselves the “hereditary counsellors” of the crown. The prestige of the peerage was such that well into George I's reign most leading ministers were, or sought to become, peers. Although over twice as large as a century earlier, the English House of Lords retained its exclusive character with a total membership of only 165-169 lay peers plus twenty-six bishops. Furthermore, thanks to William III's bipartisan creations, the upper house remained more or less evenly balanced between Whig and Tory sympathizers so that it acted as a counterweight to party fluctuations in the Commons. In addition, a number of peers exerted extensive control over elections to the Commons.

The Irish House of Lords between 1692 and 1727 did not constitute so influential a part of the Irish government, yet in most respects it resembled its English counterpart. It too served as a high court, with all members (as in England) joining the law lords in considering and rendering judicial decisions. As counsellors to the lord lieutenant (viceroy) Irish peers and bishops were, in fact, more active since they provided about half the membership of the Irish privy council. Unlike the English privy council, that in Ireland was a relatively small functioning body, meeting regularly with the lord lieutenant to review all proposed legislation.

Strikes are like certain bitter-sweet varities of sin. However frequently and violently they are denounced and however painful the consequences to those who indulge, they continue to flourish. V. L. Allen noted this curious role of strikes in industrial society some time ago. “Strikes,” he wrote,

Strikes have become so common in modern society that they seem to be a normal part of the social landscape. This is perhaps one reason why historians have tended to ignore them and their history. Upon reflection, it is indeed surprising how little attention the history of industrial conflict has received from historians. Of course, certain dramatic events, like the General Strike of 1926 or the London dock strike of 1889, are relatively well chronicled, but even these are sorely under-analyzed. There are not even competent narratives of other episodes, like the explosion of militancy just after the First World War; and we know still less about the persistent dynamics of strikes throughout British industry. In this respect, historians lag well behind other social scientists who have been studying industrial strife for many years, but whose work is unfortunately limited by their frankly ahistorical or even anti-historical approach. It is time for historians to remedy this deficiency, and this essay is intended as a first, very small effort in that direction.

The Arctic Council (AC) has been accorded the status of knowledge holder and knowledge provider for the Arctic region. This paper probes the broader definition-making power of Arctic knowledge, challenging the common notion that this knowledge is value neutral. It argues that attention should be paid to the ways in which power is exercised in, and though, the various reports and assessments published under the auspices of the AC. The specific focus of the paper is human development and gender as an aspect of that development. The research analyses the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR) in order to examine the ways in which knowledge defines human development and its agents in the Arctic. The paper draws on Foucault-inspired and feminist approaches to analyse three vocabularies of rule in particular: strength of the community, vulnerability and the need for adaptation. These vocabularies are coexistent and share an emphasis on communities. Yet, questions of gender seldom figure in them, a lack of salience that reveals the power of the partiality of knowledge. The politics of knowledge operate by placing in the foreground only certain accounts of Arctic development.

Arctic sea routes have for long been of interest for shipping because of much shorter distances between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Sea ice prevented real development of significant traffic, but did not prevent research from trying to assess their economic viability. With the melting of sea ice in the Arctic, this effort at modeling the profitability of Arctic shipping routes has received a new impetus. However, the conclusions of these studies vary widely, depending on the parameters chosen and their value. What can be said of these models, from 1991 until 2013, and to what extent can a model be drawn, capitalising on twenty years of simulations?

For historians, as for revenue officers, the bold English smuggler of the eighteenth century has been an elusive figure. His motives, the structure of his business, and his relationship to broader social and economic trends, remain far from clear. This is partly because the sources for histories of smuggling are fragmentary and obscure, but it also reflects the inadequacies of proposed interpretations. The early chroniclers of the smuggling trade represented it as an assertion of popular rights, bravely, if at times violently, defended against the agents of an intrusive government. This somewhat romantic view has recently been reformulated by Cal Winslow, who has depicted southcoast tea smuggling in the 1740s as a “social crime,” sanctioned by the laboring classes but condemned by those in authority. Conversely, economic historians have written of smuggling as a “big business” that accounted for one-third of English trade with France and Holland and had an effect both on the level of prices and the distribution of goods. The tea smuggler, as Hoh-cheung Mui and Lorna Mui have noted, “was indeed an important complement to his legal counterpart and as such contributed to the commercial expansion of the kingdom.” He “became a virtual pioneer in developing trade facilities,” especially in remote areas, and helped to expand the market for luxury commodities like brandy and tea by undercutting the prices of the great merchants and established companies.

In 1795, Dugald Stewart, the professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and reigning Athenian of the North, observed in a famous estimate of the career of Adam Smith that “the most celebrated works produced in the different countries of Europe during the last thirty years” had “aimed at the improvement of society” by “enlightening the policy of actual legislators.” Among such celebrated productions Stewart included the publications of François Quesnay, Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot, Pedro Campomanes, and Cesare Beccaria and, above all, the writings of Smith himself, whose Wealth of Nations “unquestionably” represented “the most comprehensive and perfect work that has yet appeared on the general principles of any branch of legislation.” One of the more striking achievements of recent scholarship on eighteenth-century social thought has been to make sense of this description of Smith's Inquiry and to enable us better to appreciate why Smith chose to describe his system of political economy as a contribution to the “science of a legislator.” In a cultural setting in which, as J. G. A. Pocock has put it, “jurisprudence” was “the social science of the eighteenth century,” law and legislation further featured, in J. H. Burns's formula, as “the great applied science among the sciences of man.” Moralists and jurists of the period, echoing earlier political conventions, may readily have acknowledged with Rousseau that “it would take gods to give men laws.” Nevertheless, even in Rousseau's program for perfecting “the conditions of civil association”—“men being taken as they are and laws as they might be”—a mortal “legislator” appeared plainly “necessary.”

In 1832, a royal commission was appointed to investigate the operation of the poor laws in England and Wales, and two years later legislation was adopted on the basis of the commission's recommendations. For most contemporaries the passage of this measure, the so-called New Poor Law, seemed to promise significant, perhaps even radical, change in the administration of poor relief. An ancient system of parochial government was to be supplanted in the localities by a series of larger poor law unions and boards of guardians, whose discretion was to be limited by responsibility to a national bureaucratic authority in London. No less dramatic was the relief policy that the new law envisioned. It was generally understood that the poor law commissioners appointed under the act were to direct their main efforts to the establishment of a system of workhouses, wherein relief could be accorded under conditions that rendered the pauper's lot “less eligible,” that is, less attractive, than that of the poorest independent laborer. Through such means, it was hoped, an end might be made to what was seen as a long-established and widespread practice of supplementing the inadequate wages of the laboring poor out of the poor rates.

While the tendency of recent work has been to question the practical effect of this legislation on the actual distribution of aid, the problem remains of explaining the motivations and intentions of the men who promoted a measure of such seemingly abundant and far-reaching implications.