'Sent from Town': Commissioning Clothing in Britain During the Long Eighteenth Century

Costume ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles Lambert

The long period from the Restoration to the accession of Queen Victoria saw a rise in 'popular consumerism' affecting many aspects of British society and commerce, nowhere more so than in the market for textiles and clothing. Consumers were offered an increasing range of finished goods, rather than merely materials, but many of these were available only in larger towns. To access goods, customers often relied on the long-established process of commissioning at a distance through the offices of family members, friends or business contacts, acting as agents. This formed a significant channel for elite and popular consumption.

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 397-443
Author(s):  
David L. Schoenbrun

Abstract:Many studies of ethnic formation find metaphors of descent at the core of largely masculinist discourse about belonging and difference. This study integrates the meaning, affect, and information-sharing prompted with the other-than-human beings – in particular, trees – enlisted during rhythmic assembly at an Island shrine in east Africa’s Inland Sea (Lake Victoria), in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Fostering ethnic identification there drew on lateral connections that crossed language, region, and standing without creating boundaries. A gendered discourse exceeding the masculine was likely indispensable to this sort of belonging. The beginning of a long period of bellicose state expansionism and the deep history of public healing in the region framed these developments.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Priya Satia

Abstract This article briefly summarizes the place of guns in British society and culture in the long eighteenth century. My approach is that of a historical anthropologist, examining the meaning of guns from the way they were used and depicted. I examine the way guns were used and understood in civilian and military realms, especially their meaning and role in the expansion of the British Empire. Finally, the essay discusses whether and how this history should influence our understanding of the Second Amendment, which was written in the eighteenth century. It concludes that history substantiates both sides of the current debate about gun use in America and that we must therefore turn to other ethical systems of judgment to resolve that debate.


Few scholars can claim to have shaped the historical study of the long eighteenth century more profoundly than Professor H. T. Dickinson, who, until his retirement in 2006, held the Sir Richard Lodge Chair of British History at the University of Edinburgh. This volume, based on contributions from Dickinson's students, friends and colleagues from around the world, offers a range of perspectives on eighteenth-century Britain and provides a tribute to a remarkable scholarly career. Dickinson's work and career provides the ideal lens through which to take a detailed snapshot of current research in a number of areas. The book includes contributions from scholars working in intellectual history, political and parliamentary history, ecclesiastical and naval history; discussions of major themes such as Jacobitism, the French Revolution, popular radicalism and conservatism; and essays on prominent individuals in English and Scottish history, including Edmund Burke, Thomas Muir, Thomas Paine and Thomas Spence. The result is a uniquely rich and detailed collection with an impressive breadth of coverage.


2019 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-240
Author(s):  
W. W. J. Knox

This article challenges a series of orthodox propositions put forward by historians writing on the decline in homicide levels over the last three hundred years. Firstly, there was a decline in impulsive violence; secondly, there was a shift from stranger to intimate killing; and thirdly, there was a transition of the site of murder from the public to the private sphere. It will be argued that murder remained a mainly spontaneous action, a response to highly charged or impassioned insults and words, sometimes alcohol-fuelled and while the killing of spouses and other immediate family members increased over the course of 150 years (1700–1849), the pattern established in the second half of the eighteenth century was hardly disturbed since most victims were known to their assailants as family, friends or workmates. Stranger killing became more commonly associated with drunken brawls in taverns or in the streets; homicides that involved premeditative action, such as robbery, were rarely the cause of death. It is also clear that the street rather than the home was the most common location, again reflecting the spontaneous and opportunistic character of homicide.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.


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