Exeter Studies in History – serie

In this collection specialist authors consider the growth and workings of the Roman Empire from the end of the first war with Carthage, to the accession of Septimus Severus, through such aspects as Roman governors, cities, non-urban areas and client kings.

Essays designed to illuminate the nature of politics at the end of the late Republic and during the first dynasty of the Principate.

The essays in this volume assess the influence of intelligence on the Second World War and open up a number of other important areas for research. Studies of the growth of the imperial intelligence network cast new light on subjects ranging from Canadian surveillance of Vancouver Sikhs to signals intelligence in the Middle East. Studies of Japanese intelligence indicate the significance of Asian intelligence systems as a factor in modern international relations.A number of contributors emphasize the slowness with which governments and high commands learned to assess and use the intelligence they received.

Colonisation by the European powers has always had its seamier side and the first attempt to settle English people on the North American mainland - by one of Queen Elizabeth's favourite courtiers, Sir Walter Raleigh - was no exception. The hunt for prize ships and cargoes was a major attraction for the sea-captains and their crews who sailed across the Atlantic in the years 1584-7. For the promoters, including Raleigh, it was usually the prime consideration, the only way of making the voyages financially viable. But for many generation of Americans, especially the people of North Carolina, Raleigh's colonising efforts, however immediately unavailing, sowed seeds of endeavours whose fruits were later gathered by the settlers of Virginia, Maryland and also New England. Englishmen wintered on Roanoke Island a generation before Jamestown.The papers published here, each by an expert in the period, were delivered at a conference held at the University of Exeter in May 1985 to mark the Quadricentennial of the founding of English America. Privateering, ship design, contemporary English society, the Lost Colonists, the drawings of John White and, of course, Sir Walter Raleigh himself and his adoption as one of America's folk heroes, are all dealt with in an authoritative way, each essay embodying the results of the most recent research, and all are eminently readable, making this a book both for the more informed reader and also for the general public.

The four essays in this book examine aspects of Portugal’s first overseas empire, the maritime and commercial empire that was founded in the fifteenth century and which, during the sixteenth century extended from Brazil to China.

In November 1792, an iron wall-safe, or armoire de fer, was discovered hidden within a wall in the Tulieries palace. It contained secret correspondence which Louis XVI had kept from the outbreak of the Revolution until he overthrew on 10 August. The discovery of the armoire de fer gravely compromised the cause of the King, who was awaiting trial, and who would be executed on 21 January 1793. Much cited by historians of every viewpoint writing on the Revolution, the actual contents of the armoire are often misrepresented and remain surprisingly little-known.In this fresh and innovatory study, Andrew Freeman provides a cool and dispassionate survey of the contents of the armoire de fer, and finds contents which throw new light on the mentality of Louis XVI. The King emerges as a more thoughtful and perspective critic of the discovery of the armoire in the political context of 1792, and shows that the secrecy which the existence of such a cache of documents represented was perhaps more damaging than their actual content. The volume contains a representative sample of documents culled directly from the contents of the armoire. Many of these have never been published before and all are available in English translation for the first time.

The period between the two World Wars saw the emergence of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in most European countries, and the development of powerful communist and fascist movements in most others. The book examines the reasons why such movements did not flourish in Britain.

In August 1589 Henri III, the last of the Valois Kings of France, was assassinated by a Dominican monk, Jacques Clement. This ill-fated and much maligned son of Henri II and Catherine de Medici was succeeded by the first of the Bourbons, Henri IV and King of Navarre. This collection of studies by international experts in the field examines fresh evidence and casts new light upon the interpretation of the character and politics of the last of the Valois and Henri IV and the Bourbon dynasty. This book is valuable for all those who take an interest in French history whether they be students, academics or general readers.

Volume 4 of this acclaimed series of documents with commentary is the most substantial study of the German home front in World War II available in English. It illuminates the nature of Nazism and the regime it established by documenting politics and life in wartime Germany: government and party, law and terror, welfare and social planning, sex and population policy, women, youth, propoganda, morale and resistance.

This volume presents a summary of the latest state of knowledge of each of the ten forts that originally girdled the south-eastern corner of England from Brancaster on the Wash to Portchester on Portsmouth Harbour.

These essays explain how satire can, and cannot, be used as a source for Roman social history: the possibilities and the limitations.

A collection of essays by specialist authors covering both belligerent and occupied countries: Britain, Germany, the United States, the former Soviet Union, Japan, Italy, Poland, France and the Netherlands. It explores the impact of the Second World War on the civilian population by looking at such aspects as propaganda, morale, labour mobilization, the role of women, resistance and collaboration within a comparative framework.

This book examines recent views on the emerging settlement patterns of early medieval Britain and their relation to land use, drawing on both archaeological and documentary sources. Simon Esmonde Cleary takes the study from the later Romano-British into the post-Roman period; Christopher Holdsworth examines the re-emergence of Christianity in sixth-century England, the location of minsters and their role in the economy. The problematic theme of continuity or dislocation recurs in a number of chapters and is closely investigated by Peter Rose and Ann Preston Jones in their chapter on Cornwall, a region marginal to the main thrust of Anglo-Saxon cultural influence. Ethnicity as a factor for change is challenged and Colleen Batey, looking at Northern Britain, finds that archaeology fails to identify with any degree of certainty the specific Scandinavian house type in the uplands. Della Hooke presents a more general summary of the period across England, noting the evidence for the emerging landscape regions which were characterized by particular settlement types and field systems and, in a case study of the Failand ridge in North Somerset, James Bond sets the evidence within a much broader time scale, revealing the gaps which still caracterize our knowledge of the early medieval period.

This volume provides a valuable introduction to the key concepts of witchcraft and demonology through a detailed study of one of the best known and most notorious episodes of Scottish history, the North Berwick witch hunt, in which King James was involved as alleged victim, interrogator, judge and demonologist. It provides hitherto unpublished and inaccessible material from the legal documentation of the trials in a way that makes the material fully comprehensible, as well as full texts of the pamphlet News from Scotland and James' Demonology, all in a readable, modernised, scholarly form. Full introductory sections and supporting notes provide information about the contexts needed to understand the texts: court politics, social history and culture, religious changes, law and the workings of the court, and the history of witchcraft prosecutions in Scotland before 1590. The book also brings to bear on this material current scholarship on the history of European witchcraft.

From the hovels of peasants to the palaces of monarchs, this book provides an architectural picture of Roman society through a study of domestic buildings.

The Book of Marvels, a compilation of marvellous events of a grotesque, bizarre or sensational nature, was composed in the second century A.D. by Phlegon of Tralles, a Greek freedman of the Roman emperor Hadrian. This remarkable text is the earliest surviving work of pure sensationalism in Western literature. The Book is arranged thematically: Ghosts; Sex-Changers and Hermaphrodites; Finds of Giant Bones; Monstrous Births; Births from Males; Amazing Multiple Births; Abnormally Rapid Development of Human Beings; Discoveries of Live Centaurs. This volume also contains and Introduction and commentary on the texts, as well as translations of fragments of two other works and a translation of Goethe's well-known vampire poem, The Bride of Corinth, which was inspired by Phlegon's Book of Marvels.

Roman Public Buildings was first published in the Exeter Studies in History series in 1989. It examines the development of Roman architecture and the significance of different types of buildings for the political, social and economic history of the period. A glossary of technical terms is included.

The emergence of central Europe and the Balkans as a major area of interest and international concern in post-Cold War Europe have given the fall of the Habsburg Empire and the consequences of that fall considerable contemporary resonance. The Empire was an experiment in multi-national politics, and how different ethnic and religious groups live or do not live together is very much what this book is about. The eight essays in this volume seek to unravel the complexities of the final twenty years of Austria-Hungary and its eventual disintegration, tackling from different angles the political, social and international challenges to the Empire's existence. The book aims to fill a gap in the market between expensive textbooks and very specialist articles and monographs and as such should appeal both to students and to the general reader interested in the Habsburgs and the Great War.

This is the first volume of a new integrated documentary history of the Soviet Union. The Soviet story—the revolution, Lenin, Stalinism, the Great Patriotic War, the era of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Cold War, and the dramatic collapse under Gorbachev—looms large in history syllabuses across the world. This book will be a valuable resource for students at all levels, drawing upon the primary material that has come to light since the collapse of Communist rule in 1991. Combining lucid narrative commentary and a rich selection of evocative documents, it provides a lively entrée to current debate over humanity’s most momentous and tragic experiment. This volume is organised chronologically, subdivided thematically and incorporates over 200 documents. Key terms and references to individuals, places, events and institutions are explained and guidance provided on significant features of the primary sources. Conceived as companion to the highly-regarded, best-selling 4- volume Nazism 1919–1945: A Documentary Reader by Noakes & Pridham, also published by UEP, it assumes no prior knowledge of the subject.

Volume Two of this new documentary history of the Soviet Union comprises over 270 documents and is organised into four chronologically distinct parts, subdivided thematically; it runs from the fraught diplomatic and military preamble of the Great Patriotic War to the final fracturing of the USSR along the national fault-lines of its 15 Union Republics. Slight overlap of chronological coverage with Volume One allows increased attention in Volume Two to foreign affairs. Areas in this volume that attract greatest student interest are the epic dramas at the beginning and end of the period — the Great Patriotic War and Perestroika.The commentary is by Edward Acton, Professor of Modern European History at the University of East Anglia, who has published widely on the Russian revolution and the history of Russia and the USSR. The documents have been translated by Tom Stableford, Assistant Librarian, Slavonic and East European Collections, Bodleian Library, Oxford

Volume 1 of this series of documents with commentary covers the period from the founding of the Nazi Party in 1919 to Hitler's assumption of the office of Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor of 1 August 1934. The documents in the four volumes of this series are drawn from a wide range of sources - official and party documents, memoirs, letters, diaries and newspapers - and are linked with a commentary. The combination of documents and commentary represents at the same time a textbook, a contribution to scholarship and a source book for students and historians.

Volume 2 of this series of documents with commentary covers the domestic aspects of the regime between 1933 and 1939: the political stystem, the economy and society, propaganda and indoctrination, policies towards youth and women, the SS system of terror, antisemitism and popular attitudes towards the regime - consent, dissent and resistance. The documents in the four volumes of this series are drawn from a wide range of sources - official and party documents, memoirs, letters, diaries and newspapers - and are linked with a commentary. The combination of documents and commentary represents at the same time a textbook, a contribution to scholarship and a source book for students and historians.

This is a new edition of Volume Three of the four volume collection of documents on Nazism 1919-1945, with substantial revisions to three chapters and the inclusion of many new documents, an index and a revised bibliography. The volume contains the most systematic documentation available in English of the Nazi programmes of racial and eugenic extermination, including a case study of the occupation of Poland.

This volume provides a valuable introduction to the key concepts of witchcraft and demonology through a detailed study of one of the best known and most notorious episodes of Scottish history, the North Berwick witch hunt, in which King James was involved as alleged victim, interrogator, judge and demonologist. It provides hitherto unpublished and inaccessible material from the legal documentation of the trials in a way that makes the material fully comprehensible, as well as full texts of the pamphlet News from Scotland and James' Demonology, all in a readable, modernised, scholarly form. Full introductory sections and supporting notes provide information about the contexts needed to understand the texts: court politics, social history and culture, religious changes, law and the workings of the court, and the history of witchcraft prosecutions in Scotland before 1590. The book also brings to bear on this material current scholarship on the history of European witchcraft.