Ignored by their own governments, and forced to endure the harshest of conditions, very few lived to tell the tale. Using the firsthand testimony of a Cornish cabin boy named Thomas Pellow, Giles Milton vividly reconstructs a disturbing, little known chapter of history. Pellow was bought by the tyrannical sultan of Morocco who was constructing an imperial pleasure palace of enormous scale and grandeur, built entirely by Christian slave labour. As his personal slave, he would witness first-hand the barbaric splendour of the imperial court, as well as experience the daily terror of a cruel regime. Gripping, immaculately researched, and brilliantly realised, WHITE GOLD reveals an explosive chapter of popular history, told with all the pace and verve of one of our finest historians.

    The younger William Pitt -- known as the 'schoolboy' -- began his days as Prime Minister in 1783 deeply underestimated and completely beleaguered. Yet he annihilated his opponents in the General Election the following year and dominated the governing of Britain for twenty-two years, nearly nineteen of them as Prime Minister. No British politician since then has exercised such supremacy for so long. Pitt presided over dramatic changes in the country's finances and trade, brought about the union with Ireland, but was ultimately consumed by the years of debilitating war with France. Domestic crises included unrest in Ireland, deep division in the royal family, the madness of the King and a full-scale naval mutiny. He enjoyed huge success, yet died at the nadir of his fortunes, struggling to maintain a government beset by a thin majority at home and military disaster abroad; he worked, worried and drank himself to death. Finally his story is told with the drama, wit and authority it deserves.

    Two men conspired to save the continent from French rule: John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and Prince Eugène of Savoy. Deep in Germany, these two committed allies sought to engage Louis's superior forces. At Blenheim, their daring plans came to fruition. The French were utterly destroyed. From the deliberations of kings and princes, to the eyewitness accounts of frontline soldiers, ‘Blenheim: Battle for Europe’ is a compelling account of an often overlooked but major turning point in European history. ‘Not only a highly accomplished account of the battle and its wider consequences, but also a shrewd and persuasive reassessment of the personalities involved’ – Sunday Telegraph ‘Charles Spencer’s new study offers not only a highly accomplished account of the battle and its wider consequences, but also a shrewd and persuasive reassessment of the personalities involved...Spencer’s account maintains the detachment of the professional historian, and is safely ancestor-worship free’ – John Adamson, Sunday Telegraph ‘Charles Spencer has written a history of the War of Spanish Succession — the struggle for European dominance between France and her major European rivals in the early 18th century — in a splendidly old-fashioned style, full of bold epithets and broad judgments...The result is a book that is compulsively readable...the pages of this vividly written book are populated by memorable secondary characters’ – Andrew Roberts, Mail on Sunday ‘Where Spencer has made a real contribution to our understanding of the war of the Spanish succession is in his exploitation of the French sources — diplomatic and military, including the correspondence between Louis XIV and his generals and diplomats’ – John Crossland, Sunday Times ‘There is much to enjoy in this racy, fast-paced narrative, well stocked with larger-than-life characters...The account of the storming of the Schellenberg heights...is truly gripping’ – Tim Blanning, Times Literary Supplement Charles Spencer was educated at Eton College and obtained his degree in Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford. He is the author of five books, including the Sunday Times bestseller ‘Blenheim: The Battle for Europe’ (shortlisted for History Book of the Year, National Book Awards), 'Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I', ‘The Spencer Family’ and ‘Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier’.

    There he finds none other than Benjamin Franklin, who reveals the brilliant soldier's assignment: He is to travel to Russia disguised as a British mercenary and convince Catherine the Great not to join the British in their war with America. It is not a quest for the weak of heart, for to succeed, Selkirk must survive savage terrain, starving wolves, secret assassins, marauding Cossacks, a court of seductive young women, and even a dramatic romantic face-off with the legendary Tsarina herself.

    No English dictionary before it had devoted so much space to everyday words, been so thorough in its definitions, or illustrated usage by quoting from Shakespeare and other great writers. Johnson’s Dictionary would define the language for the next 150 years, until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary. Johnson’s was the dictionary used by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Wordsworth and Coleridge, the Brontës and the Brownings, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde. Modern dictionaries owe much to Johnson’s work. This new edition, created by Levenger Press, contains more than 3,100 selections from the original, including etymology, definitions, and illustrative passages in their original spelling. Bristling with quotations, the Dictionary offers memorable passages on subjects ranging from books and critics to dreams and ethics. It also features three new indexes created out of entries in this edition: words found in Shakespeare’s works, words from other great literary works, and piquant terms used in eighteenth-century discussions of such topics as law, medicine, and the sexes. Finally, Johnson’s “Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language,” seldom seen in print, which he wrote eight years before the Dictionary, is reproduced in its entirety. For those who appreciate literature, interpret the law, and love language, this a browser’s delight—an encyclopedia of the age and a dictionary for the ages.

    Created as sets of consecutive images, the works portray racial mixing among the main groups that inhabited the colony: Indians, Spaniards, and Africans. In this beautifully illustrated book, Ilona Katzew places casta paintings in their social and historical context, showing for the first time the ways in which the meanings of the paintings changed along with shifting colonial politics. The book examines how casta painting developed art historically, why race became the subject of a pictorial genre that spanned an entire century, who commissioned and collected the works, and what meanings the works held for contemporary audiences. Drawing on a range of previously unpublished archival and visual material, Katzew sheds new light on racial dynamics of eighteenth-century Mexico and on the construction of identity and self-image in the colonial world.

    Fullerton shows how the Regencyworld was really a dangerous place with a fast rising crime rate and alegal system that handed out ferocious sentences. Her book will beessential reading for every Janeite.

    Four years before the French Revolution, some priceless diamonds were purchased in elaborate secrecy from a court jeweler. The jewels, not yet paid for, were delivered into the hands of the first Prelate of the Church of France. He, in turn, gave it to a countess who claimed to be acting for Marie Antoinette. Although essentially an innocent bystander, the Queen became embroiled in a scandal that fatally weakened the monarchy.

    Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean covers the history of the Barbary Pirates.Heraklion Press has included a linked table of contents for easy navigation.

    A disciplined mind is one of the most conspicuously missing things in our society. This book can help alleviate that malady. The subtitle of this book is, "Communication of useful knowledge in religion, in the sciences, and in common life." This is a lithograph of an 1833 edition printed in London which also contains "A Discourse on the Education of Children and Youth."

    independence. Through actual fighting, provision of supplies, and money, Spain helped the young British colonies succeed in becoming an independent nation. Soldiers were recruited from all over the Spanish empire, from Spain itself and from throughout Spanish America. Many died fighting British soldiers and their allies in Central America, the Caribbean, along the Mississippi River from New Orleans to St. Louis and as far north as Michigan, along the Gulf Coast to Mobile and Pensacola, as well as in Europe.Based on primary research in the archives of Spain, this book is about United States history at its very inception, placing the war in its broadest international context. In short, the information in this book should provide a clearer understanding of the independence of the United States, correct a longstanding omission in its history, and enrich its patrimony. It will appeal to anyone interested in the history of the Revolutionary War and in Spain's role in the development of the Americas.

    The experience of eighteenth-century Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did not fit the pattern of integration and universalization—in short, of westernization—that historians tend to place at the origins of Jewish modernity. Hundert puts this experience, that of the majority of the Jewish people, at the center of his history. He focuses on the relations of Jews with the state and their role in the economy, and on more "internal" developments such as the popularization of the Kabbalah and the rise of Hasidism. Thus he describes the elements of Jewish experience that became the basis for a "core Jewish identity"—an identity that accompanied the majority of Jews into modernity.

    Yet, relegating fashion to the realm of frivolity and femininity is a distinctly modern belief that developed along with the urban culture of the Enlightenment. In eighteenth-century France, a commercial culture filled with shop girls, fashion magazines and window displays began to supplant a courtly fashion culture based on rank and distinction, stimulating debates over the proper relationships between women and commercial culture and between morality and taste. The story of how "la mode" was "sexed" as feminine offers compelling insights into the political, economic and cultural tensions that marked the birth of modern commercial culture. Jones examines men's and women's relation to fashion at this time, looking at both consumption and production to show the origins of the idea of shopping and fashion as specifically feminine.

    --David W. Tracy A major contribution to Jewish-Christian relations. --Marc Tanenbaum It will bring the Catholic community an entirely new development in their thinking about the people of the Jewish faith. --Robert F. Drinan It comes from the heart of an honest priest who is deeply moved by the poisonous horror of anti-Semitism, and who appeals to his people to remember that...it is a denial of Christian faith, a failure of Christian hope, and a malady of Christian love. --Abram Sachar A definitive work. --Benjamin Epstein This revised and updated edition of THE ANGUISH OF THE JEWS - a classic history of anti-Semitism written by a Roman Catholic priest and now with a foreword by Philip Cunningham is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1964. Hailed by Jews and Christians alike as a groundbreaking book that did much to expose the reality of historical anti-Semitism in the United States and around the world, it includes material covering the last two decades; it considers developments in the Middle East, and it explores the impact that Judaic studies have had on Christian thought. +

    Blenheim was scene of the greatest military victory for a British commander.

    In a single-minded quest for ideal beauty, he created many of the celebrated icons of the Victorian era, yet the progressive ideas that underpinned his life and art have previously remained cloaked in shadow.Robyn Asleson's monograph - the first to be published on the artist for over 100 years - seeks to restore the artist to his rightful place in art history, while also shedding fresh light on his mysterious personality and lifestyle. Asleson presents new evidence to debunk the myth of his hermetic existence, re-examines his notorious exclusion from Royal Academy membership, and documents his close relationship with James MacNeill Whistler - demonstrating that Moore's influence on his older and more famous friend was far greater than has hitherto been assumed.Moore emerges as the most radical exponent of English Aestheticism and a passionate and audacious crusader for abstract beauty who anticipated, to an incredible degree, the aesthetic concerns of twentieth-century Modernism.

    Many of the items that have been specially photographed for these books have rarely, if ever, been seen by the public because of the vulnerability of the collection. These books give access to superb shoes and hats; forthcoming books will include funky buttons and beautiful embroideries. From bergeres to boaters, this book provides a unique journey through the styles of a period that saw major radical and social changes, from the French Revolution to the emancipation of women.

    Principal themes explored are the consort's formal and informal power, her religious role, and her cultural patronage. Courts surveyed include those of France, Spain, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, the Imperial court at Vienna, and three German electorates linked to monarchies: Brandenburg-Prussia, Saxony-Poland and Hanover (Great Britain). The fourteen contributing authors include distinguished scholars and researchers from Britain, the U.S. and the continent.

    Their turbulent and complicated relationship shocked their contemporaries and continues to intrigue observers of Russia centuries later. Lovers, companions, and, most likely, husband and wife, Catherine and Potemkin were also close political partners, and for a time Potemkin served as Catherine's de facto co-ruler of the Russian Empire. Their letters offer an intimate glimpse into the lovers' unguarded moments, revealing both ecstatic expressions of love and candid insights on eighteenth-century politics.In February 1774, the Russian empress took Grigory Potemkin for her lover and, it is now believed, secretly married him a few months later. Particularly in the first two years of their relationship, Catherine was consumed by her passion for Potemkin. The hundreds of letters and notes she dashed off to him between assignations in the Winter Palace during this time attest to the giddy exuberance of the new love that so fully embraced her. Love and Conquest contains the most historically significant and personally revealing of these letters, only a few of which have ever before been translated into English.Beginning with Potemkin's letter to Catherine written while off fighting the Turks in 1769 and concluding with his farewell note scribbled the day before his death in 1791, the correspondence spans most of Catherine's reign. The letters are at once personal and political, private and public. Many of Catherine's love letters to Potemkin written during their stormy affair reveal the empress's passionate personality. Potemkin's letters provide rare insight into his arrogant and mercurial character, while serving to dispel the myth of Potemkin as little more than a corrupt sycophant.Love and Conquest reveals the complexity of Catherine and Potemkin's personal relationship in light of dramatic changes in matters of state, foreign relations, and military engagements. After their love cooled, Catherine and Potemkin continued to discuss and debate a wide range of state affairs in their letters, including the annexation of the Crimea, court politics, wars against the Ottoman Empire and Sweden, and the colonization of southern Russia. Together they carried out the most dramatic territorial expansion in the history of imperial Russia, transforming Catherine into a powerful world leader and creating a bond of affection that would never fully fade. Readers will find in the letters new insights on Russia's most famous empress, her passions, and her world.

    An account of the street life, riots, public fights and violent crime in 18th-century London, and how this changed between the late 17th century and 1800.

    Neglected authors and themes, as well as new and emerging genres within the expanding print market, are discussed in their social and historical contexts. The volume also includes a complete chronology and bibliographies.

    This was the golden age of graphic satire: thousands of prints were published, and they were viewed by nearly all sections of the population. These prints both reflected and sought to shape contemporary debate about the role of women in society. Cindy McCreery's study examines the beliefs and prejudices of Georgian England which they revealed.

    Schroeder. Constantly challenging conventional views, and drawing upon a masterly command of the sources and literature, Schroeder provides new answers to old questions about international history and politics since the age of Napoleon. Were European international relations really driven by balance of power politics, or has that traditional view blinded us to an underlying normative consensus on the "rules of the game" that frequently contributed to cooperation among the leading states in the system? Are alliances primarily a means of the aggregation of power against stronger states, or do states often use alliances as instruments of influence or control over their allies? Was World War I contingent upon a confluence of independent processes that intersected in 1914, or was it the product of more deeply-rooted and interconnected structural forces that pushed inevitably toward war? What is the role of moral judgment in historical investigation? Raising new questions and offering provocative new interpretations, Schroeder encourages historians and political scientists alike to reconsider their long-standing beliefs about the evolution and dynamics of modern diplomacy.

    The author shows how the growing and changing Library was influenced by - and in turn affected - major intellectual, social, historical and political trends that occupied the sphere of public discourse in late 18th- and early 19th-century America.

    However, Davidson also concludes that eighteenth-century writers from Locke to Austen believed that the public practice of vice was far more dangerous for society than discrepancies between what people say and do in private.

    Soundly based on a multitude of sources, including many original plans and surveys as well as recent archaeological evidence, the book begins with the earliest Court built by Lord Daubeney in the 15th century; a structure that has almost entirely disappeared. Thurly goes on to examine the plans and structures of Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII and the Tudors, demonstrating how the rapid and sometimes astonishing turns in Henry's private life' impacted on his building programme at Hampton Court. The book compares and contrasts the use of the Court by the Stuarts, who largely regarded it as a place for entertainment and hunting, before examining its transformation under William and Mary who saved it from a long decline. The evolution of the gardens, the embellishments of the Georgians, the destruction of the Victorians, the influx of tourists and the conservation efforts of today are all illustrated and authoritatively discussed by the Chief Executive of English Heritage.

    This was a sudden transformation, says Dror Wahrman, and nothing short of a revolution in the understanding of selfhood and of identity categories including race, gender, and class. In this pathbreaking book, he offers a fundamentally new interpretation of this critical turning point in Western history.Wahrman demonstrates this transformation with a fascinating variety of cultural evidence from eighteenth-century England, from theater to beekeeping, fashion to philosophy, art to travel and translations of the classics. He discusses notions of self in the earlier 1700s—what he terms the ancien regime of identity—that seem bizarre, even incomprehensible, to present-day readers. He then examines how this peculiar world came to an abrupt end, and the far-reaching consequences of that change. This unrecognized cultural revolution, the author argues, set the scene for the array of new departures that signaled the onset of Western modernity.

    In part a study of Creek foreign relations, this book examines the creation and application of the “neutrality” policy—defined here as the Coweta Resolution of 1718—for which the Creeks have long been famous, in an era marked by the imperial struggle for the American South. Also a study of the culture of internal Creek politics, this work shows the persistence of a “traditional” kinship-based political system in which town and clan affiliation remained supremely important. These traditions, coupled with political intrusions of the region’s three European powers, promoted the spread of Creek factionalism and mitigated the development of a regional Creek Confederacy. But while traditions persisted, the struggle to maintain territorial integrity against Britain also promoted political innovation. In this context, the territorially defined Creek Nation emerged as a legal concept in the era of the French and Indian War, as imperial policies of an earlier era gave way to the territorial politics that marked the beginning of a new one.

    Seen primarily as a venue for apolitical social gatherings, the salon's influence is generally believed to have ended during the French Revolution. In French Salons, Steven Kale challenges conventional thinking about the salon. Drawing on an impressive range of primary sources, he offers a nuanced history of this institution from the eighteenth century through the Revolution of 1848 which emphasizes continuity and evolution over disjuncture and highlights its shifting political character and relevance.Salons, Kale shows, originally provided opportunities for the exchange of literary and philosophical ideas among the French aristocracy. Central to the maintenance of salon culture were salonnières, aristocratic women such as Madame de Staël who opened their homes to fellow elites and nurtured a sociability that united the members of high society. Salons provided ready-made venues for aristocratic politics during the early years of the French Revolution, when salons were transformed into places where the upper classes could express their political opinions and concerns. Even at the height of the Terror, salons did not dissolve but, rather, were displaced as aristocrats moved their social networks of influence to such cities as Coblenz, Brussels, and London. Napoleon sought to manipulate salon culture for his own ends, but with his fall from power, salons reemerged and proliferated. Although never intended to serve as political clubs, salons became informal sites for the cultivation of political capital and the exchange of political ideas during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy.By 1848, the conditions that sustained aristocratic sociability declined, and salons became increasingly marginal to French public life. At the same time, new political institutions—parties, the press, legislative bodies—emerged that more effectively disseminated and shaped political opinion and led to real political change.Challenging many of the conclusions of recent historiography, including the depiction of salonnières as influential power brokers, French Salons offers an original, penetrating, and engaging analysis of elite culture and society in France before, during, and after the Revolution.

    Full of torment and torture, heinous homicides, and cataclysms of nature, these pages contain multiple murders, horrendous hauntings, and audacious thefts.  Have you heard the story of the pub landlord who attempted to end it all by leaping down his own well? All he achieved was a broken ankle. Also featured here are the Watchfield farmer who tried to turn his wife into cooking fat, the family who charged people to view their relative's decapitated body, and the violent poltergeist activity that took place at the old forge at Finchampstead and made national news headlines in 1926. This compilation of grim deeds contains a veritable plethora of poisonings, assaults, drownings, kidnappings, suicides, and disasters. If you have ever wondered about what nasty goings-on occurred in the Berkshire of yesteryear, then look no further—it's all here. But do you have the stomach for it?

    Drawing upon vivid first-hand material and private letters, Julie Peakman explores eighteenth-century heterosexual behaviour, male and female homosexuality and more curious or abnormal activities, such as foot-fetishism, flagellation, necrophilia and cross-dressing. Lascivious Bodies is the definitive account of a period of diverse sexual pleasures, and how they have shaped the way we think about sex today.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Africans brought aspects of their culture such as folklore, music, language, religion and dress with them to the Americas. The African cultural features were retained and nurtured in Jamaica because they guaranteed the survival of Africans and their descendants against European attempts at cultural annihilation. This book illuminates the complexities of accommodation and resistance, showing that these complex responses are not polar opposites, but melded into each other. In addition, the Language of Dress reveals the dynamics of race, class and gender in Jamaican society, the role of women in British West Indian history and contributes to ongoing interest in the history of women and in the history of resistance.

    It served as a major outlet for the transatlantic slave trade. Between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, Ouidah was the most important embarkation point for slaves in the region of West Africa known to outsiders as the Slave Coast. This is the first detailed study of the town’s history and of its role in the Atlantic slave trade.Ouidah is a well-documented case study of precolonial urbanism, of the evolution of a merchant community, and in particular of the growth of a group of private traders whose relations with the Dahomian monarchy grew increasingly problematic over time.

    But while Nan immediately sets her sights on an older but extremely wealthy bachelor, Arabella is not content to marry purely for money. She firmly believes in true love and is sure she can find a husband who will both provide for her financially and satisfy her romantic desires . . .

    Born into a family of struggling potters, Josiah Wedgwood amassed a fortune that, at his death in 1795, was valued at the equivalent of $3.4 billion in today’s dollars and helmed an empire that stretched from England to Russia to the United States. As a member of the famous Lunar Society, whose members included James Watt, Joseph Priestley, and Erasmus Darwin, he combined rationality with bold experimentation, revolutionizing the business model of his time with a series of innovations that have continued to this day: • Organizing skilled labor in one of the world’s earliest factories • Encouraging employee loyalty by offering long-term contracts that included health insurance and pension plans • Changing the very notion of shopping by utilizing showrooms and traveling salesmen The story of how phenomenal wealth affected the lives of a family and of the turbulent political climate that threatened their very livelihood, this vivid and compelling portrait of a pioneer of commercial culture is sure to be a hit with loyal collectors and the business market alike.

    This edition makes his plays, and his rich gift for theatrical comedy, accessible for the first time in modern form.Includes: Love in Several Masques, The Temple Beau, The Author's Farce, Tom Thumb, Rape upon Rape (The Coffee-House Politician), The Tragedy of Tragedies, The Letter-Writers.

    This volume contains 429 letters.