Property, Privilege and Politics: The Coroner in Pre-Famine Ireland, 1801–1846

Author(s):  
Michelle McCann

This chapter examines the function, status and qualifications of the men that served in the role of county coroner in Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth century. This remains an under-researched area when compared to other local government figures of authority. The history of the office exposes tensions within a politically polarised society and the need for changes in legislation. A combination of factors initially undermined the social standing and reputation of coroners. An examination of the legislation on coroners that the administration subsequently introduced suggests that the authority of the office in early-nineteenth-century Ireland was not strictly jurisprudential, but political and confessional by nature. By analysing the personal background, work experience, social standing, political alliances and religious patronage of coroner William Charles Waddell (1798-1878), the paper charts the wider social and political narrative that allowed this eminently respectable Presbyterian figure to secure the role of coroner of County Monaghan.

1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Jaffe

The role of evangelical religion in the social history of the English working class has been an area of both bewildering theories and un-founded generalizations. The problem, of course, was given a degree of notoriety by Elie Halévy who, according to the received interpretation, claimed that the revolutionary fervor characteristic of the Continental working class in the first half of the nineteenth century was drained from its British counterpart because of the latter's acceptance of Evangelicalism, namely, Methodism.It was revived most notably by E. P. Thompson, who accepted the counterrevolutionary effect of Methodism but claimed that the evangelical message was really an agent of capitalist domination acting to subordinate the industrial working class to the dominion of factory time and work discipline. Furthermore, Thompson argued, the English working class only accepted Methodism reluctantly and in the aftermath of actual political defeats that marked their social and economic subordination to capital. This view has gained a wide acceptance among many of the most prominent labor historians, including E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rudé who believe that Evangelicalism was the working-class's “chiliasm of despair” that “offered the one-time labour militant … compensation for temporal defeats.”There could hardly be a starker contrast between the interpretation of these labor historians and the views of those who have examined the social and political history of religion in early industrial Britain. Among the most important of these, W. R. Ward has claimed that Methodism was popular among the laboring classes of the early nineteenth century precisely because it complemented political radicalism.


Author(s):  
Sarah Collins

This chapter examines the continuities between the categories of the “national” and the “universal” in the nineteenth century. It construes these categories as interrelated efforts to create a “world” on various scales. The chapter explores the perceived role of music as a world-making medium within these discourses. It argues that the increased exposure to cultural difference and the interpretation of that cultural difference as distant in time and space shaped a conception of “humanity” in terms of a universal history of world cultures. The chapter reexamines those early nineteenth-century thinkers whose work became inextricably linked with the rise of exclusivist notions of nationalism in the late nineteenth century, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and John Stuart Mill. It draws from their respective treatment of music to recover their early commitment to universalizable principles and their view that the “world” is something that must be actively created rather than empirically observed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan

Abstract According to a well-known narrative, the concept of Weltliteratur and its academic correlative, the discipline of comparative literature, originated in Germany and France in the early nineteenth century, influenced by the spread of scientism and nationalism. But there is another genesis story that begins in the late eighteenth century in Spain and Italy, countries with histories entangled with the Arab presence in Europe during the medieval period. Emphasizing the role of Arabic in the formation of European literatures, Juan Andrés wrote the first comparative history of “all literature,” before the concepts of Weltliteratur and comparative literature gained currency. The divergence of the two genesis stories is the result of competing geopolitical interests, which determine which literatures enter into the sphere of comparison, on what terms, within which paradigms, and under what ideological and discursive conditions.


Author(s):  
Bill Jenkins

The introduction sets the scene by exploring the role of Edinburgh as a centre for the development and propagation of pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories. It gives essential background on natural history in the Scottish capital in early nineteenth century and the history of evolutionary thought and outlines the aims and objectives of the book. In addition, it explores some of the historiographical issues raised by earlier historians of science who have discussed the role of Edinburgh in the development of evolutionary thought in Great Britain.


2019 ◽  
pp. 167-190
Author(s):  
Mary Wills

This chapter examines officers’ contributions to the metropolitan discourses about slavery and abolition taking place in Britain in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Furthering the theme of naval officers playing an important part in the social and cultural history of the West African campaign, it uncovers connections between the Royal Navy and domestic anti-slavery networks, and the extent to which abolitionist societies and interest groups operating in Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century forged relationships with naval officers in the field. Officers contributed to this ever-evolving anti-slavery culture: through support of societies and by providing key testimonies and evidence about the unrelenting transatlantic slave trade. Their representations of the slave trade were used to champion the abolitionist cause, as well as the role of the Royal Navy, in parliament, the press and other public arenas.


2015 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 41-51
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Koniusz

Co-existence of languages in the area of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the light of the works of Jan KarłowiczThe article discusses the issues of the co-existence of languages in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the consequences of the phenomenon as documented in the works of Jan Karłowicz – the outstanding scholar of the second half of the nineteenth century, an expert and researcher of the “Lithuanian” version of Polish language. The article emphasizes the fact that the research on languages in the area of The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and results of their co-existence goes back to the second half of the nineteenth century and Jan Karłowicz was the pioneer of this research. He was the first to observe the following phenomena of their co-existence: interference; bilingualism and multilingualism; prioritization of co-existing languages with the unique role of the Polish language in focusing various functions in the history of The Grand Duchy of Lithuania; the diversity of Polish with sociolinguistic classification of its provincia­lisms and their division in the view of their origin; and the dangers to the Polish language in the period of Russification. Karłowicz struggled with the lack of terminology to describe the linguistic phenomena characteristic for the area. The article focuses on the classification of provincial qualities of the “Lithuanian” Polish language executed by Karłowicz in the social and ethnolinguistic area; and on the presentation of the phenomenon of linguistic interference visible in the provincial vocabulary in The Grand Duchy of Lithuania collected in “Dictionary of Polish dialects” by Karłowicz. Сосуществование языков на территории бывшего Великого княжества Литовского в свете произведений Яна КарловичаЦель данной статьи – показать сосуществование языков на землях бывшего Великого княжества Литовского (ВКЛ) и последствий этого явления, засвидетельствованных в работах Яна Карловича, видного ученого второй половины девятнадцатого века, знатока и исследователя „литовского” польского языка. Автор статьи указывает на то, что изучение языков в Великом княжестве Литовском, последствиям их сосуществования относятся ко второй половине девятнадцатого века, а их первым исследователем был Карлович. Им впервые были отмечены такие проявления этого сосуществования, как языковая интерференция, билингвизм и многоязычие, иерархия сосуществующих языков и диалектов. Выделена особая роль польского языка, объединившего целый ряд функций в истории ВКЛ, дифференциация внутри польского языка, социолингвистическая классификация его диалектизмов и их деление по происхождению, угрозы для польского языка в период сильной русификации. Особое внимание автор статьи сосредоточил на классификации провинциальных особенностей „литовского” польского языка, осуществлённой Карловичем в социальном и этнолингвистическом плане, а также на проявлениях интерференции в провинциальной лексике, ведущей своё происхождение из Великого княжества Литовского, собранной в „Словаре польских диалектов” Карловича.


Author(s):  
U.A. Nebesnyuk

The article presents the analysis of composition, forms and functions of a calendar as a cumulative text of mass media in the ethnic culture of Germany from the mid-fifteenth until the early nineteenth century. It was revealed that, in connection with the growing role of narrative entertainment part since the 10s of the nineteenth century and the politicization of social consciousness during the great French Revolution, the calendar as a truly national medium of information has been undergone literarization, having lost its original meaning. Calendar stories have formed an independent literary genre which had received the name «Kalendergeschichte» in German tradition.


2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
GRETA JONES

Whereas there has been considerable debate about the social context of Darwin's theory of natural selection, much less focus has been placed upon Alfred Russel Wallace. This article looks at Wallace's socialism and, in particular, the influence upon his thought of the early nineteenth-century socialist Robert Owen. It argues that a case can be made for seeing Wallace's thought about nature and natural selection in the years up to 1858 in the context of Owenism. Three aspects of his thought are singled out for examination. These are, first, Wallace's views on the role of instinct in animal and human behaviour; second, the idea of colonization in human society and in nature; and third, a re-examination of the role of Malthus in Wallace's thought, emphasizing the influence upon him of the early nineteenth-century socialist critique of Malthusianism.


2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul White

ArgumentDarwin's narrative of the earthquake at Concepción, set within the frameworks of Lyellian uniformitarianism, romantic aesthetics, and the emergence of geology as a popular science, is suggestive of the role of the sublime in geological enquiry and theory in the early nineteenth century. Darwin's Beagle diary and later notebooks and publications show that the aesthetic of the sublime was both a form of representing geology to a popular audience, and a crucial structure for the observation and recording of the event from the beginning. The awesome spectacle of the earthquake proved in turn the magnitude of the forces at stake in earth history, and helped to make geology an epic conjoining the history of civilization with the history of the earth.


Author(s):  
Helena Simonett

This chapter presents a brief history of the accordion, from its experimental beginning in the early nineteenth century to its phenomenal rise as a truly global commodity, emphasizing the social predicament that relegated this instrument to a marginal position within the (educated) musical world. While the accordion at first was an expensive and hence exclusive instrument in upper-class drawing rooms, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century it had spread to the middle and working classes. The accordion of the nineteenth century was a symbol of progress and modernity as well as of mass culture and industrialization. This dichotomy is one of the reasons for the elite's ambivalence towards and uneasiness with the accordion.


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