History
History at the University of Exeter is backed by leading academics with a range of research interests and outputs.
Explore their recently published and edited volumes below.
Books by our departmental staff
Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy: Caste, Class and Indenture Abroad, 1914-67
Over the centuries, millions of migrant labourers sailed from the Indian subcontinent, across the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, to shape what is now the world’s largest diaspora. This book recovers the histories and legacies of those ‘coolie’ migrants, and presents a new paradigm for the diplomatic history of independent India, going beyond high politics to explore how indenture, emigration and international relations became entangled.
Before and after independence, Indian notions of the international realm as a sanctified space were shaped by migrant journeys; this was a space of anxiety in which to negotiate the ‘coolie stain’ on the country’s reputation. Discourse was defined by intersections of caste, class, race and gender—and framed the migrant worker as the quintessential ‘other’ of Indian diplomacy.
Drawing on rich, multi-archival analysis spanning the vast geographies of labour migration, Kalathmika Natarajan pieces together the stories of quarantine camps en route to Ceylon; cultural and educational missions in the Caribbean; discretionary passport policies in India; and the mediation of immigrant life in Britain. The result is a nuanced history from the interwar period to the decades after independence, and a critical analysis centring both caste and the negotiation of ‘undesirable’ mobility as foundational to Indian diplomacy.
Early Modern Bodies
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Early Modern Bodies is a wide-ranging and detailed introduction to a variety of different approaches to and perspectives on bodies in the early modern period, circa 1500–1750.
The collection guides readers through an examination of bodies at every stage of life, from birth to death and the afterlife, as they are situated in different social, cultural, and geographical contexts. It considers the bodies of numerous potential identities, such as criminals, prostitutes, witches, soldiers, and non-conforming sexualities. Though its focus is primarily Western Europe, the volume also pays attention to the wider world, especially with respect to developing ideas about race and ‘other’ bodies in what has been dubbed an ‘age of exploration’. Chapters are also dedicated to analysing what it was to be human, how humankind was considered in relation to the natural world, and how those adhering to non-Christian faiths were thought about.
This book is an accessible, essential text for students and established scholars alike who are interested in the history of the body, early modern history, and gender and sexuality.
A Cultural History of Beauty in the Early Modern Age, Vol.3
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A Cultural History of Beauty in the Early Modern Age covers the period from 1400 to 1700. During these years, the Bible and the ancient world continued to inspire ideas about beauty but a combination of urbanization, exploration, the rise of consumerism related to dress, and most especially the expansion of print culture, wrought significant change in the understanding of beauty and its depiction. Developments in artistic techniques and the revival of classical artistic theory prompted more positive representations of the nude body.
Change in this period was also visible in the dressing of the body: fashions altered over time, emphasizing, revealing, or hiding different parts of the male or female anatomy. Between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the artist’s creation of beauty took on a new importance, as did the discerning eye and the cultivated tastes of patrons, consumers, and collectors. But it was the development of printing that led to the proliferation of treatises on beauty, together with medical works that connected bodily health with appearance and advised on how to improve both.
Drawing upon both visual and textual sources, A Cultural History of Beauty in the Early Modern Age presents an overview of the period and examines key cultural case studies on the themes of ideas of beauty; art and beauty; beauty, ugliness, and ideas of difference; nakedness and beauty; grooming and hygiene; making the body beautiful; material culture, clothing, and consumer practices; and desire, sexuality, and beauty.
Birth, Death, and Domestic Religion in early modern London
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Early modern London has long been recognised as a centre of religious diversity, yet the role of the home as the setting of religious practice for all faiths has been largely overlooked. In contrast, this study offers the first examination of domestic religion in London during a period of intense religious change, between the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the Gordon Riots of 1780. Emily Vine considers both Christian and Jewish practices, comparing the experiences of Catholics, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, Huguenots, and conforming and nonconforming Protestants alike. Through its focus on the crowded metropolis as a place where households of different faiths coexisted, this study explores how religious communities operated beyond and in parallel to places of public worship. Vine demonstrates how families of different faiths experienced childbirth and death, arguing that homes became 'permeable' settings of communal religion at critical moments of the life cycle. By focusing on practices beyond the synagogue, meeting house, or church, this book demonstrates the vitality of collective devotion and kinship throughout the long eighteenth century.
The Experience of Work in Early Modern England
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This book applies the innovative work-task approach to the history of work, which captures the contribution of all workers and types of work to the early modern economy. Drawing on tens of thousands of court depositions, the authors analyse the individual tasks that made up everyday work for women and men, shedding new light on the gender division of labour, and the ways in which time, space, age and marital status shaped sixteenth and seventeenth-century working life. Combining qualitative and quantitative analysis, the book deepens our understanding of the preindustrial economy, and calls for us to rethink not only who did what, but also the implications of these findings for major debates about structural change, the nature and extent of paid work, and what has been lost as well as gained over the past three centuries of economic development.
This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
The Reclamation of Exmoor Revisited Rethinking the Consequences of Nineteenth-Century Landscape Change
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In 1818 the Royal Forest of Exmoor was sold by the Crown to the Worcestershire ironfounder John Knight. Through the nineteenth century the Knight family embarked on the largest upland reclamation scheme in southern England, on the biggest remaining area of uninhabited land. Their efforts were enormously costly, and only a partial success. The story of thwarted agricultural ‘improvement’ was told by C.S. Orwin’s ‘The Reclamation of Exmoor’, first published in 1929. With funding from The Leverhulme Trust, Henry French, Ralph Fyfe and Leonard Baker have undertaken a new study of the reclamation of the Royal Forest. Based on their findings, this book rewrites the reclamation of Exmoor in several ways.
The Cambridge Companion to Matthew Paris
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Matthew Paris is one of the most remarkable and renowned figures in the cultural history of medieval England. A career-monk at the influential Benedictine abbey of St Albans, Paris' creative work bears witness to the rich intellectual, artistic, social and political environment of the monasteries and their lasting impact on the wider world. His compelling accounts of recent history and the lives of legendary saints and churchmen are a distinctive and valuable guide to the emergence of the English kingdom and its place in European Christendom. His accomplished and vivid artwork brings into focus both the craft skill and visual sensibility stimulated by the medieval Church. This systematic survey, the first published for almost seventy years, brings together expert scholarship and offers fresh, interdisciplinary perspectives on Paris', his life's work as writer, artist, cartographer and maker of manuscript books, and its enduring legacy.
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The French Revolutionary Wars catapulted Britain into a conflict against a new enemy: Republican France. Britain relied on the Royal Navy to protect its shores and empire, but as radical ideas about rights and liberty spread across the globe, it could not prevent the spirit of revolution from reaching its ships.
In this insightful history, James Davey tells the story of Britain’s Royal Navy across the turbulent 1790s. As resistance and rebellion swept through the fleets, the navy itself became a political battleground. This was a conflict fought for principles as well as power. Sailors organized riots, strikes, petitions, and mutinies to achieve their goals. These shocking events dominated public discussion, prompting cynical—and sometimes brutal—responses from the government.
Tempest uncovers the voices of ordinary sailors to shed new light on Britain’s war with France, as the age of revolution played out at every level of society.
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Robert Wedderburn (1762-1834/5) was one of the most charismatic and radical intellectuals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Black Atlantic. Among the few abolitionists bold enough to publicly call for the enslaved in the British West Indies to rise up and violently overthrow their colonial ‘masters’, Wedderburn was also among the most outspoken and – for an increasingly repressive British establishment – dangerous advocates for domestic political reform and working-class rights. Since the 1980s, Wedderburn has been celebrated by historians for his uncompromising and self-consciously ‘unrespectable’ transatlantic radicalism as much as for his extraordinarily eventful life. Academic interventions on Wedderburn have traditionally focused on his unique approach to generating spaces of solidarity between British radicals and the enslaved in the West Indies. Over the past decade, a new generation of scholars and activists have become interested in Wedderburn as an inspirational and compelling example of early nineteenth-century Black radical political consciousness in the imperial metropolis. This book is the first every biography of a figure who is increasingly recognized as central to the evolution of Black radical political thought in the Revolutionary Atlantic. It contains a raft of newly-rediscovered evidence detailing Wedderburn’s extraordinary life and his intimate family connections to enslaved women, colonial elites and London’s destitute poor, along with fresh analysis of his major contributions to British political thought and activism.
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Infanticide and Baby-farming in Victorian England: The Torquay Murder of 1865
Professor Mark Jackson
This open access book explores the tragic case of the Torquay Murder of 1865, when the body of a young boy was discovered abandoned on the outskirts of Torquay in Devon, England. Having identified the child as three-month-old Thomas Harris, local police arrested the child’s mother, Mary Jane Harris, and his nurse, Charlotte Winsor, and charged them both with murder.
Through careful analysis of a range of original sources including police and inquest reports, court and prison records, witness depositions, newspaper accounts, census records, medical and legal texts, Home Office documents and letters, Mark Jackson reconstructs the complex story of the Torquay murder and explores the personal and political consequences of England’s first baby-farming scandal. Situating the case within the context of mid-Victorian concerns over rising rates of illegitimacy and infanticide, debates about the abolition of capital punishment and attempts to regulate child-care and adoption practices, this book examines the impact this landmark trial had on British law and society.
View Professor Jackson's Profile »
Purchase from Bloomsbury Press »
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This book is about the famines and food shortages that struck India and Britain at the close of the eighteenth century, and it explores how these crises and episodes of scarcity gave rise to scientific efforts to explain and quantify ‘famine’. Focusing on the time period between the Bengal famine of 1770 and the food shortages in Britain in 1800, it explores the development of the concepts of ‘artificial scarcity’ (and ‘artificial famine’), and how statistical science and philosophy played a role in the naturalization of famine. During this time, Britain’s first ‘Board of Agriculture’ was established, creating political opportunities for a rising class of agriculturalists interested in the promotion of their science as a means of confronting and solving the empire’s food insecurity during a time of war and upheaval. Following the networks and collaboration between this Board of Agriculture and the East India Company, the book explores the careers and correspondence of agriculturalists, economists, Company officials, scientists, hack writers, and politicians. In conclusion, Explaining Famine shows how these debates over the anthropogenic and natural causes of scarcity and famine shaped the subsequent development of the field of food security and modern concerns over carrying capacity, environment, and population.
On Leaders and Tyrants
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The first complete English translation of a controversial Renaissance debate centering moral questions on power and leadership.
Poggio Bracciolini was a prominent scholar-official of the early Renaissance and a leading representative of Florentine humanism. He was employed as a secretary to seven popes and ended his career as Chancellor of the Republic of Florence. On Leaders and Tyrants contains texts, the majority by Poggio, relating to a controversy on the relative merits of the lives and deeds of Scipio Africanus and Julius Caesar. The debate addressed the nature of tyranny and military glory, as well as the qualities necessary for republican leaders, such as Stoic virtue, lawfulness, and good citizenship. Poggio’s primary opponent was the educator Guarino of Verona, a humanist in the service of the duke of Ferrara. The psychology of power, the demands placed on public servants, and the dividing line between leadership and tyranny are as topical today as they were when Poggio wrote. This volume contains a fresh edition of the Latin texts and the first complete translation of the controversy into English.