Fantasy, Speculation, and the British State Lottery in the Eighteenth Century

Author(s):  
Bob Harris

The state lottery in the eighteenth century was a striking success, both as a support to public finance and as a financial product. This chapter seeks to explain this success, but also examine who adventured in the lottery and with what motivations. Systematic data on purchase of tickets is sparse, but overall patterns are fairly clear, as is the extent to which lottery speculations fed off fantasies of easy and rapid enrichment and, for many, a consequent transformation in social circumstances and status. In this way, the success of the lottery can shed light on contemporary preoccupations with upward social mobility and the achievement of independence, as well as attitudes towards risk and economic gain.

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Christopher Bischof

The illegitimate son of a servant from the Scottish Highlands, William Campbell effected his own upward social mobility by becoming a teacher. The state paid for his apprenticeship as a pupil teacher in the small village of Durness and then his teacher training programme in bustling Edinburgh. After his training and an initial job in the village of Nethybridge, he settled into a position as an elementary teacher in the scattered crofting community of Rogart in Sutherland in 1898. Though he followed Whitehall policymakers’ directives and taught quite a bit of English history and literature during school hours, he went to great lengths to acquire Gaelic dictionaries, grammars, and works of literature so that he could teach the language and literary culture to children and adults alike in the evenings. This was no defiant gesture of nascent Scottish cultural nationalism. Campbell was determined to serve the distant British state ...


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-137
Author(s):  
Gerald Stell

Despite regular objections, creole research tends to regard Europeans-to-non-Europeans ratios in colonial settings as a decisive factor in degrees of restructuring. As a result, relatively high proportions of Europeans are seen as the explanation for the emergence of partially restructured varieties. Quite problematic, however, is that some colonial settings with relatively low proportions of Europeans show little historical evidence of restructuring. To address this apparent paradox while avoiding too locale-specific explanations, I attempt to sketch a unified sociolinguistic account of restructuring, or the absence thereof. Central to the account I propose is the notion of upward social mobility in colonial societies, whose linguistic impact I illustrate by means of a comparison between Orange River Afrikaans (ORA)1 and Cape Malay Dutch (CMD), i.e. two partially restructured non-European varieties of Dutch that arose at the colonial Cape. I emphasize that ORA, which developed in socially fluid frontier settings, seems in certain respects to display less restructuring than CMD, which developed in increasingly segregated settings. I present the fact that Europeans were less represented where ORA developed than where CMD did as evidence that social mobility might to an extent override European/non-European demographics as a factor in degrees of restructuring. I finally discuss the extent to which a socio-historical reconstruction of ORA and CMD can shed light on historical sociolinguistic developments elsewhere than the Cape, such as in particular colonial Ibero-America.


2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Lenman

This article begins with the idea that there was a vigorous political life in Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century which could focus on issues other than Jacobitism or government patronage. The article focuses on the non-dynastic issues in Scottish politics that predated the Union and which carried on into the Westminster parliament to the accompaniment of considerable activism in Scotland, and a distinctive contribution from Scottish members of both houses of the legislature. The example here examined is the burning issue of securing commercial access to the forbidden lands of Spanish America. Studying it reveals very clearly that ‘The theme of Scotland's partial integration into the British state’ and the way in which it ‘was never wholly successful’, goes back to the very start of the eighteenth century.


This volume charts the development of protestant Dissent between the passing of the Toleration Act (1689) and the repealing of the Test and Corporation Acts (1828). The long eighteenth century was a period in which Dissenters slowly moved from a position of being a persecuted minority to achieving a degree of acceptance and, eventually, full political rights. The first part of the volume considers the history of various Dissenting traditions inside England. There are separate chapters devoted to Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers—the denominations that traced their history before this period—and also to Methodists, who emerged as one of the denominations of ‘New Dissent’ during the eighteenth century. The second part explores the ways in which these traditions developed outside England. It considers the complexities of being a Dissenter in Wales and Ireland, where the state church was Episcopalian, as well as in Scotland, where it was Presbyterian. It also looks at the development of Dissent across the Atlantic, where the relationship between Church and state was rather more loose. The third part is devoted to revivalist movements and their impact, with a particular emphasis on the importance of missionary societies for spreading protestant Christianity from the late eighteenth century onwards. The fourth part looks at Dissenters’ relationship to the British state and their involvement in campaigns to abolish the slave trade. The final part discusses how Dissenters lived: the theology they developed and their attitudes towards Scripture; the importance of both sermons and singing; their involvement in education and print culture; and the ways in which they expressed their faith materially through their buildings.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Bouldin

This chapter explores the range of ideas and activities that engaged Quaker women educators during the eighteenth century, a critical period in the development of Friends’ educational efforts. It analyses key writings of Deborah Bell, Rebecca Jones, and Priscilla Wakefield. These women adopted a variety of approaches to instructing youth, ranging from informal mentorship to formal teaching that stressed a ‘guarded’ (Quaker-only) environment. Bell, Jones, and Wakefield shed light on the leading role that Quaker women played in the education and socialization of young Friends. Their writings highlight the importance of the meetinghouse, the schoolhouse, and the printed word as public venues for women who sought to instil Quaker values in future generations.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarit Laiho ◽  
Essi Saru ◽  
Hannele Seeck

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the interplay between human resource management (HRM) and emergent factors in constructing a strong HRM climate. Specifically, the paper aims to shed light on how employee perceptions of the HRM process and emergent factors together construct a strong HRM climate, i.e. employees' shared perceptions of HRM.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses qualitative interview data (managers and employees) from two organisations operating in Finland. The data are analysed based on a systematic data analysis and gives an illustration of the interplay between high-performance work system and the emergent factors.FindingsThe findings illustrate the three types of interplay between HPWS and emergent factors – supplementation, substitution and suffocation – that construct employee experience.Originality/valueThe paper extends earlier discussions on the relationship between HRM and employee experience by empirically examining how the HRM process – together with emergent factors – constructs a strong HRM climate. The present study contributes to further theorising and increasing our understanding of the creation of employee experience.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document