This chapter is an assessment of the disciplinary problems facing the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), based on the court martial records. It also deals with the perceived disciplinary problems in the BEF during this period. With reference to Irish units, Sir Roger Casement's attempt to form a German–Irish Brigade in early 1915 does suggest that even the relatively apolitical regular soldier did maintain certain ideals and values which made him actively anti-German, even when other factors that would have retained his loyalty to the British Crown had vanished. Consideration is given to the morale problems faced by the BEF in this period, especially the difficulties involved in keeping the force supplied with both trained personnel and essential equipment. Finally, the chapter throws light on a number of courts martial held in Irish infantry battalions during the period from the arrival of units in France until 30 September 1915.

Tom Mills considers the impact of transatlantic cultural crosscurrents though analysis of the Beatles’ 1964 conquest of the American popular music market and the apex of the cultural phenomenon known as Beatlemania. Placing Anglo-American musical transference into context with US consumer capitalism, the bourgeoning youth movement, and increasingly turbulent gender and racial politics, Mills reveals how Beatlemania fundamentally challenged many social norms of the era even while the group’s humor and charm, as well as American perceptions of British respectability, helped to mask its culturally subversive elements from the white American middle class.

This chapter is comprised of annotated and translated source texts that provide alternative and more 'popular' perceptions of the law and justice. The pivotal position of the king concerning with 'popular' concepts and activities is noteworthy and suggests an acceptance of the quasi-divine royal characteristics that were displayed on coins, seals and other royal images and were part and parcel of official ideology and propaganda. The sources accordingly reveal an underlying grasp of natural law concepts of fairness and justice, right and ius, often underpinned by reference to custom, reason and a symbolic body of law or quasi-law. Proclamation of statutes, decrees and royal instructions in public places within the county was a common occurrence. Since they were delivered in English, the stock phrases would be well known and easily repeatable, thereby creating a sense of quasi-royal authority.

This chapter highlights Spenser’s talent for communicating the comic vulnerability of lovers through acute psychological observation and situational comedy. It argues that romantic love epitomises the intersection of sin and redemption in Christian life, and that humour foregrounds this intersection in the central books of the poem. Specifically, it shows how Spenser characteristically blurs the distinctions between love and lust, noble suffering and self-indulgence, altruism and self-interest even in heroes such as Britomart and Arthur. If there is cynicism in this amusement, it tends to be directed at the notional ideals themselves (and at the conventions of chivalric romance) rather than at the human imperfections that belie them. Working from the premise that a narrative and its allegorical suggestions are mutually revealing, the chapter as a whole defends our impulses to read The Faerie Queene ‘literally’ as well as allegorically.

The introduction surveys historical patterns of interest in, and resistance to, the humour of The Faerie Queene. It introduces comic theory via its traditional schools (‘superiority’, ‘incongruity’, ‘relief’) and by exploring three largely interdependent principles that have been linked to humour since antiquity: ‘reduction’, ‘ambiguity’, and ‘play’. The second half of the introduction characterises Spenserian humour in relation to these latter principles. It draws a connection between The Faerie Queene’s insistent bathos and the Christian – and especially Protestant – understanding that humans cannot be heroes. The central role of Spenser’s humble and unreliable narrator is emphasised.

This chapter looks beyond the Stalinist caricature of historical materialism to the powerful methods of anti-Stalinist Marxism. A number of Marxist reviewers of Richard Evans's book made similar criticisms that his refusal to engage in a debate over the nature of the selection of evidence left his criticism of post-modernism fundamentally flawed. Victoria Bonnell and Lynn Hunt argued about Marxism. They argued that 'in the face of these intellectual trends and the collapse of communist systems in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Marxism as an interpretive and political paradigm has suffered a serious decline'. While Bonnell and Hunt rightly suggested that Marxism as a political and intellectual movement had suffered a number of setbacks since the 1970s, it would be a mistake to equate Marxism with the Soviet system.

This chapter begins with an overview of the contribution of V. Gordon Childe, perhaps the twentieth century's most influential archaeologist, who was deeply influenced by Karl Marx. Marx had sketched humanity's prehistory as including, 'in broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production'. In addition to a discussion of Childe's work to an examination of later Marxist attempts, the chapter explains some of the historical processes analysed by Childe. It outlines some of the Marxist contributions to the explanation of the decline of classical antiquity, including the accounts of Perry Anderson, Chris Wickham and Ellen Wood. The chapter then discusses the debates on the nature of pre-capitalist peasant societies. It further discusses the debates on the transition from feudalism to capitalism generally, and the concept of bourgeois revolution specifically, particularly the contributions made to this literature by Anderson, Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm and Edward Thompson.

The growth in the number and prominence of Roman Catholics in Victorian England from the beginning 1830s caused public invocations of the Virgin Mary. One aspect of this was a greater willingness to appropriate the Virgin Mary as a symbol of a dangerous and foreign religion. Religious tensions were not, however, the only reason why the Virgin Mary became a controversial figure. Discussions about the Virgin Mary, especially in her role as the mother of Jesus, were a way for Victorians to articulate what characteristics were essentially feminine and which were reserved for the masculine. In recent years the rise of feminism has affected representations of the Virgin Mary: Mary also provided a justification for female priests. Historians usually define Victorian Christianity in terms of a division between the Protestant majority and an occasionally problematical Roman Catholic minority.

Robert Hendershot investigates a broader pattern of Anglo-American ‘places of memory’ on both sides of the Atlantic to demonstrate how historical markers, statues of historic figures, and churches have been used to create and preserve, via generational transmission, notions of an Anglo-American imagined community. Exploring the government agendas behind (and popular reception of) a hegemonic Anglo-American narrative designed to celebrate US–UK cooperation and cement perceptions of collective culture, Hendershot illustrates how a heavily manipulated but influential version of the past has become physically as well as rhetorically ambient in both nations.

This chapter examines the Basque-set historical drama Vacas/Cows, which places the civil war within the context of the Basque country's violent past and highlights the importance of understanding the conflict's nationalist dimension. It engages with the cyclical view of history that the film presents, contrasting it with the historiographical perspectives outlined previously, and also explores Julio Medem's own relationship with Basque politics and the importance of Basque history to any understanding of the civil war.

This chapter begins with a consideration of disciplinary problems in Irish regular battalions serving on the Western Front during 1916. The discipline and morale of the 10th (Irish) Division at Gallipoli and Salonika are evaluated. The experiences of the 16th (Irish) and 36th (Ulster) Divisions in adapting to active service are considered, especially in terms of their courts martial records. The experiences of the 10th (Irish) Division at Gallipoli and Salonika, the 16th (Irish) Division at Hulluch and Ginchy, and the 36th (Ulster) Division at Thiepval are also assessed with an emphasis on discipline. Furthermore, the impact of the Easter Rising on Irish units serving on the Western Front is assessed. Finally, consideration is given to the development of measures, official and unofficial, designed to maintain morale.

This chapter outlines Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's theory of history and its relationship to their revolutionary political practice. In opposition to both Gerry Cohen and Steve Rigby, the chapter follows Draper's argument of Marx's revolutionary method. If Marx's revolutionary method is judged as a totality, rather than by decontextualised statements, then a much more powerful interpretation of historical materialism is possible. At its heart, historical materialism is a theory of historical change through the evolving contradictions between the forces and relations of production of various modes of production. Marx's discussion of capitalist development in India can best be understood within the context of his broader analysis of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Through this historical analysis of the rise of capitalism, Marx debunks one of the key myths of bourgeois economics: that consumers and producers meet in the marketplace as free and equal agents.