The Humanitarian Movement of the Early Nineteenth Century to Remedy Abuses on Emigrant Vessels to America

1931 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 197-224
Author(s):  
K. A. Walpole

There are few more remarkable developments during the nineteenth century than the movement overseas from the United Kingdom, which was to people first the backwoods of Canada and later the other Dominions. The history of this great exodus has been written only in part and one aspect has been practically neglected—the story of the Atlantic passage. Not only does this form a most important chapter in the history of emigration, but it also reveals an aspect of the humanitarian movement which has never been emphasized. It is therefore proposed in the following pages to trace the efforts made to secure the enactment of laws enforcing humane conditions on the passage to America, to follow the steps taken to secure the efficient administration of these laws, and to consider whether these efforts led to any radical improvement.

Author(s):  
Paul Huddie

This chapter will show that the Russian conflict was a distinct period in Ireland’s economic history, being a catalyst for Ireland’s post-Famine agricultural recovery. It will be shown that this was caused by the increase in prices and demand which in turn encouraged farmers to alter the distribution of their tillage, export more livestock, hire more labourers and increase the latter’s wages. It will also include various (largely neglected) aspects of industry; showing Irish shipping companies’ comparable astuteness in relation to government contracts, which many entrepreneurs and merchants also eagerly sought, but also the inflexibility of the linen sector and the consequent problems experienced. Finally this chapter will show that the war was, much like the 1850s as a whole, a distinct period in the history of Irish taxation and Irish society’s relationship with its government in London in the nineteenth century and its relationship, or place within, the wider society of the United Kingdom.


1990 ◽  
Vol 122 (2) ◽  
pp. 359-369
Author(s):  
S. Gunasingam

Since the time South Asia, together with other Asian and African countries, became an integral part of the British Empire, the significance of manuscripts, published works and other artefacts, relating to those regions has stimulated continued appreciation in the United Kingdom, albeit with varying degrees of interest. It is interesting to note that the factors which have contributed in one way or another to the collecting of South Asian I material for British institutions vary in their nature, and thus illuminate the attitudes of different periods. During the entire nineteenth century, the collectors were primarily administrators; for most of the first half of the twentieth century, it was the interest and the needs of British universities that led to the accumulation of substantial holdings in many academic or specialist libraries.


2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
AMBROGIO A. CAIANI

ABSTRACTThe recent bicentennial commemorations of the Napoleonic empire have witnessed a proliferation of new studies. Scholars now possess much more sophisticated conceptual tools than in past decades with which to gauge the problems faced by French imperial administrators throughout Europe. Well-trodden concepts, like centre/periphery or collaboration/resistance, have been reinvigorated by more sophisticated understandings of how rulers and ruled interacted in the early nineteenth century. This article argues that, while much progress has been made in understanding problems of ‘resistance’, there is more to be said about the other side of the same coin, namely: ‘collaboration’. Using the micro/local history of a scandal in Napoleonic Bologna, this article wishes to reaffirm that collaboration was an active agent that shaped, and often shook, the French imperial project. The biggest problem remained that, despite ‘good intentions’, collaborators sometimes simply did not collaborate with each other. After all, imperial clients were determined to benefit from the experience of empire. The centre was often submerged by local petty squabbles. This article will use a specific micro-history in Bologna to highlight the extent to which Napoleonic empire builders had to thread a fine line between the impracticalities of direct control and the dangers of ‘going native’.


2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 623-642 ◽  
Author(s):  
UGANDA SZE PUI KWAN

AbstractThe University of London was the first institution in the United Kingdom to establish a professorship in Chinese. Within a decade of the first half of the nineteenth century, two professorships in Chinese were created at its two colleges: the first at University College in 1837 and the second at King's College in 1847. Previous studies of British sinology have devoted sufficient attention to the establishment of the programme and the first Chinese professorship. However, despite the latter professorship being established by the same patron (Sir George Thomas Staunton; 1781–1859) during the same era as the former, the institutionalisation of the Chinese programme at King's College London seems to have been completely overlooked. If we consider British colonial policy and the mission of the Empire in the early nineteenth century, we are able to understand the strategic purpose served by the Chinese studies programme at King's and the special reason for its establishment at a crucial moment in the history of Sino-British relations. Examining it from this perspective, we reveal unresolved doubts concerning the selection and appointment of King's first Chinese professor. Unlike other inaugural Chinese professors appointed during the nineteenth century at other universities in the United Kingdom, the first Chinese professor at King’s, Samuel Turner Fearon (1819–1854), was not a sinophile. He did not translate any Chinese classics or other works. His inaugural lecture has not even survived. This is why sinologists have failed to conduct an in-depth study on Fearon and the genealogy of the Chinese programme at King’s. Nevertheless, Samuel Fearon did indeed play a very significant role in Sino-British relations due to his ability as an interpreter and his knowledge of China. He was not only an interpreter in the first Opium War (1839–1842) but was also a colonial civil servant and senior government official in British Hong Kong when the colonial government started to take shape after the war. This paper both re-examines his contribution during this “period of conflict and difficulty” in Sino-British relations and demonstrates the very nature of British sinology.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-189
Author(s):  
Tim Hannigan

The “upas tree” is one of the most enduring European myths about Southeast Asia. Accounts of a tree so toxic that it renders the surrounding atmosphere deadly can first be identified in fourteenth-century journey narratives covering what is now Indonesia. But while most other such apocrypha vanished from later European accounts of the region, the upas myth remained prominent and in fact became progressively more elaborate and fantastical, culminating in a notorious hoax: the 1783 account of J. N. Foersch. This article examines the history of the development of the upas myth, and considers the divergent responses to Foersch’s hoax amongst scientists and colonial administrators on the one hand, and poets, playwrights, and artists on the other. In this it reveals a significant tension within the emerging “Orientalist” discourse about Southeast Asia in the early nineteenth century.


2000 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 206-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
V.V. Raut ◽  
M.W. Yung

Although peritonsillar abscess (quinsy) and peritonsillitis are common ENT emergencies, management strategies in the United Kingdom still vary among otolaryngologists. In order to obtain data on the success of the various strategies, we conducted two surveys—one concerned itself with patient outcomes, while the other sought information on physician preferences. The survey of 571 practicing ENT surgeons revealed that 83% advise interval tonsillectomy only for patients who have a history of tonsillitis; they prefer to take a wait-and-see approach for a single attack of quinsy. Conversely, 15% advise a routine interval tonsillectomy following even a single isolated attack of quinsy/peritonsillitis. Only 6.8% still perform a quinsy tonsillectomy in selected cases. Survey responses from 192 adults and 15 children who had been hospitalized for the treatment of quinsy/peritonsillitis revealed that the vast majority of patients who did not undergo an interval tonsillectomy were still asymptomatic 2 to 8 years later. These results indicate that a wait-and-see policy is indeed suitable for most patients who present with an isolated attack of quinsy/peritonsillitis without a history of tonsillitis. We recommend that tonsillectomy be performed as a definitive treatment for quinsy/peritonsillitis in patients who have a history of tonsillitis. Such a history is a reliable indicator of recurrent quinsy or tonsillitis following an attack of quinsy/peritonsillitis in both children and adults. Quinsy tonsillectomy should be reserved for those few patients who do not respond to conservative measures.


1972 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-713 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hurst

Throughout its history the United Kingdom Liberal party has been a conglomerate. On the other hand, it was very rarely just an anti-Conservative Front, feeding off the grasslands of negation. Whatever the manifold stresses and strains of a given moment, the liberty-loving and reforming mentality almost invariably held together the disparate elements for purposes of positive action. And with the Conservative party essentially standstill and inherently strong at most times, this was scarcely surprising in the context of the battle for political power. That context was shaped by the break-up of the vast Liverpool-style coalition and the emergence under Lord Grey of a left-centre administration. The bundle of ideologies and interests behind Grey stuck together until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, although economic and social changes, along with alterations in the constitutional structure both springing from and causing them, did much to shift the influence they exercised. While it is true that the first and second Reform Acts were of crucial importance, the forces behind their passing should not be ignored. The hens did come before the eggs, even though the eventual arrivals were uncommonly large chickens, and hatching out was far from automatic


1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 275-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. R. Ward

Everyone has his favourite squibs to illuminate the animosity of the devotees of the Christian application of modern knowledge towards the partisans of religious revival. R. B. Aspland, the unitarian, summed them all up succinctly in the early nineteenth century in his case against Wesleyanism. ‘Wine’, he declared, ‘is the beverage of the gentleman, spirits of the herd. So with religion’. Something of this edge had been there from the beginning, long before attitudes had been struck and the French Revolution had become a divider of spirits everywhere. Much of the fascination of the Turretini correspondence is provided by the conscious sense of intellectual superiority of the Swiss fathers of rational orthodoxy. ‘We are here much occupied with the scandalous affairs of Toggenburg’, writes Jean Gaspard Escher with an almost audible turn of the nose. ‘These are mountain people rather like Vaudois, Miquelets or Camisards’, and their murderous politics were of the Ulster variety. Neither the Toggenburgers, nor the Vaudois or Camisards were part of the history of religious revival, but they were very like Protestant minorities from Central Europe who were; the Salzburgers, for example. ‘The majority of these men’, writes Escher of the latter, ‘can neither read nor write; their fundamental doctrine is that worship is due to God alone and that salvation is by Jesus Christ. This doctrine fills them with a horror of popery: . . . they are ill-instructed in the other articles of religion. They know by heart some fine passages of scripture and some Lutheran hymns to which they hold’. Pastorally, if not confessionally, the mountain men were a different cup of tea from the practitioners of polite learning; but as late as 1800 it was possible to turn American methodists and baptists out in droves to vote for the deist Jefferson, and it is the purpose of this paper to suggest that the fate of the revivalist and that of the men of enlightenment was more closely linked at an early stage than the text-book categories usually suggest.


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