Catherine Hall

Who are you Spencer Little? Why are you here? During the long, hot summer of 1976, a young Cambridge mathematician arrives in a remote village in the Lake District and takes on a job as a farm labourer.

The Proof of Love

Days of Grace

Keith McClelland

Nicholas Draper

Rachel Lang

Katie Donington

This book re-examines the relationship between Britain and colonial slavery in a crucial period in the birth of modern Britain. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of British slave-owners and mortgagees who received compensation from the state for the end of slavery, and tracing their trajectories in British life, the volume explores the commercial, political, cultural, social, intellectual, physical and imperial legacies of slave-ownership. It transcends conventional divisions in history-writing to provide an integrated account of one powerful way in which Empire came home to Victorian Britain, and to reassess narratives of West Indian 'decline'. It will be of value to scholars not only of British economic and social history, but also of the histories of the Atlantic world, of the Caribbean and of slavery, as well as to those concerned with the evolution of ideas of race and difference and with the relationship between past and present.

Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain

Legacies of British Slave-Ownership

How did the English get to be English? In Civilising Subjects, Catherine Hall argues that the idea of empire was at the heart of mid-nineteenth-century British self-imagining, with peoples such as the "Aborigines" in Australia and the "negroes" in Jamaica serving as markers of difference separating "civilised" English from "savage" others. Hall uses the stories of two groups of Englishmen and -women to explore British self-constructions both in the colonies and at home. In Jamaica, a group of Baptist missionaries hoped to make African-Jamaicans into people like themselves, only to be disappointed when the project proved neither simple nor congenial to the black men and women for whom they hoped to fashion new selves. And in Birmingham, abolitionist enthusiasm dominated the city in the 1830s, but by the 1860s, a harsher racial vocabulary reflected a new perception of the nonwhite subjects of empire as different kinds of men from the "manly citizens" of Birmingham. This absorbing study of the "racing" of Englishness will be invaluable for imperial and cultural historians.

Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867

Civilising Subjects

"Nora was a girl of twelve when the war broke out and she was forced to join the train-loads of evacuees leaving London's East End for rural Kent. Her surrogate family, the Rivers family, are unlike anyone she has met before and she soon comes to love her new life with them, and in particular with twelve-year old Grace. Over the next few years, as the dog-fights rage ever more fiercely over head and it becomes clear that the Rivers marriage contains deep and irreparable cracks, Nora and Grace grow as close as sisters - though, to Nora's confusion, even this is not quite as close as she would like. What happened next is a secret that will gnaw away at Nora for the rest of her life - a secret that she can only begin to tell when she is certain that she is approaching the end."--Publisher description.

Reveals how Edward Long's History of Jamaica helped to shape ideas of White and Black as essentially different and unequal.

Edward Long and the History of Racial Capitalism

Lucky Valley

Leonore Davidoff

Family Fortunes has become a seminal text in class and gender history. Published to wide critical acclaim in 1987, its influence in the field continues to be extensive. It has cast new light on the perception of middle-class society and gender relations between 1780 and 1850. This revised edition contains a substantial new introduction, placing the original survey in its historiographical context. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall evaluate the readings their text has received and broaden their study by taking into account recent developments and shifts in the field. They apply current perceptions of history to their original project, and see new motives and meanings emerge that reinforce their argument.

Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780–1850

Family Fortunes

This book puts the legacies of slavery squarely back into modern British history.

Legacies of British Slave-ownership

At the beginning of World War II, twelve-year-old Nora Lynch is one of thousands of London children sent away to the safety of the English countryside. Her surrogate family, Reverend and Mrs. Rivers and their daughter Grace, are like no-one she has ever met, offering shelter, affection, and the sister she never had. But Nora is too young and too naïve to understand the cracks beneath the surface of her idyllic new life at the rectory, or the disappointments of the Riverses' marriage. And as her friendship with Grace grows more intense, she aches to become even closer. What happens next is a secret that she keeps for more than fifty years, a secret that she can begin to reveal only when, elderly and alone, Nora knows that she is close to the end. A beautiful meditation on love, friendship, and family, Days of Grace is a stunning debut that brings a tumultuous era to life. Nora tells her story in alternating chapters from the past and present, projecting her childhood nostalgia with a cinematic glow.

A Novel

Sonya O. Rose

This pioneering 2006 volume addresses the question of how Britain's empire was lived through everyday practices - in church and chapel, by readers at home, as embodied in sexualities or forms of citizenship, as narrated in histories - from the eighteenth century to the present. Leading historians explore the imperial experience and legacy for those located, physically or imaginatively, 'at home,' from the impact of empire on constructions of womanhood, masculinity and class to its influence in shaping literature, sexuality, visual culture, consumption and history-writing. They assess how people thought imperially, not in the sense of political affiliations for or against empire, but simply assuming it was there, part of the given world that had made them who they were. They also show how empire became a contentious focus of attention at certain moments and in particular ways. This will be essential reading for scholars and students of modern Britain and its empire.

Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World

At Home with the Empire

My memories of Grace never added up to how she really was. She was always impossible to pin down, dancing just out of my reach, exactly as she did when she was alive. Nora was a girl of twelve when the war broke out and she was forced to join the train-loads of evacuees leaving London's East End for rural Kent. Her surrogate family, the Rivers, are unlike anyone she has met before and she soon comes to love her new life with them, and in particular with twelve-year-old Grace. Over the next few years, as the dogfights rage ever more fiercely over head and it becomes clear that the Rivers marriage contains deep and irreparable cracks, Nora and Grace grow as close as sisters - though, to Nora's confusion, even this is not quite as close as she would like ...What happened next is a secret that will gnaw away at Nora for the rest of her life - a secret that she can only begin to tell when she is certain that she is approaching the end.

Days Of Grace

Thomas Babington Macaulay's History of England was a phenomenal Victorian best-seller which shaped much more than the literary culture of the times: it defined a nation's sense of self, charting the rise of the British Isles to its triumph as a homogenous nation, a safeguard of the freedom of belief and expression, and a central world power. In this book Catherine Hall explores the emotional, intellectual, and political roots of Thomas Macaulay's vision of England, tracing the influence of his father's career as a colonial governor and drawing illuminating comparisons between the two men.

Macaulay and Son

Slavery and the slavery business have cast a long shadow over British history. In 1833, abolition was heralded as evidence of Britain’s claim to be the modern global power. Yet much is still unknown about the significance of the slavery business and emancipation in the formation of modern imperial Britain. This book engages with current work exploring the importance of slavery and slave-ownership in the re-making of the British imperial world after abolition in 1833. The contributors to this collection, drawn from Britain, the Caribbean and Mauritius, include some of the most distinguished writers in the field: Clare Anderson, Robin Blackburn, Heather Cateau, Mary Chamberlain, Chris Evans, Pat Hudson, Richard Huzzey, Zoë Laidlaw, Alison Light, Anita Rupprecht, Verene A. Shepherd, Andrea Stuart and Vijaya Teelock. The impact of slavery and slave-ownership is once again becoming a major area of historical and contemporary concern: this book makes a vital contribution to the subject.

Emancipation and the remaking of the British Imperial world

What are the relations between feminism and history, feminist politics and historical practice? What are the connections between gender and class? What part have racial identities and ethnic difference played in the construction of Englishness? Through a series of provocative and richly detailed essays, Catherine Hall explores these questions. She argues that feminism has opened up vital new questions for history and transformed familiar historical narratives. Class can no longer be understood outside of gender, or gender outside of class. But English identities have also been rooted in imperial power. White, Male and Middle Class explores the ways in which middle-class masculinities were rooted in conceptions of power over dependants - whether black or female.

Explorations in Feminism and History

White, Male and Middle Class

" ... Explores the emothional, intellectual, and political roots of Zachary Macaulay, the leading abolitionalist, and his son Thomas's visions of race, nation and empire. The story moves from late eighteenth-century Scotland to the plantations of Jamaica, from the new colony of Sierra Leone to India, from Leeds and Edinburgh to London. The Macaulay family with its intense dynamics and complex relationships provides one thread while the politics of abolition, of reform, of empire and of history writing is another. The contrasting moments of evangelical humanitarianism and liberal imperialism are seen through the writings and careers of father and son."--P [2] of cover.

Architects of Imperial Britain

The contributors include Joanna de Groot, Nancy Leys Stephan, Gyan Prakash, John Barrell, Nicholas Thomas and Patricia Hayes.

Catherine Hall

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