ISTFEST 2015
Lancaster University 29th-31st May
Programme of Events
Department of History, Lancaster University
Day One - Friday 29 May
13:00 – 14:00
Registration (Charles Carter Building Foyer)
14:00 – 14:15
Welcome by Professor Andrew Jotischky, Head of
Department
14:15 – 15:45
Session One (George Fox Lecture Theatre 1)
Panel One: Technologies of History
Chair: Connor Wilson
James Perry (Lancaster University)
Immigration Patterns in Nineteenth Century England
Alex Mankoo, (University College London)
Teargas - we haven't got the foggiest: Deconstructing the Ambiguities of Creeping
Legitimisation
Vanessa Longden (Lancaster University)
‘When you are the camera and the camera is you’: Tracing Techno-Feminism through
the Woman Photographer
15:45 – 16:15
16:15 – 17:30
Break
Keynote Address
Introduction: Vanessa Longden
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‘Historical Understanding’
Professor Ludmilla Jordanova, Durham University
17:30 – 18:30
Wine Reception (Ruskin Library)
Introduction by Professor Stephen Wildman, Director of the
Ruskin Research Centre
19:30
Conference Meal at Nice Bar & Restaurant
******
Day Two – Saturday 30 May
9:00 – 9:30
Coffee (Charles Carter Building)
9:30 – 11:00
Session Two (Charles Carter Building, A15)
Panel Two: Expressions
Chair: Philip Booth
Sarah Ann Robin (Lancaster University)
Jewels of the Flesh: The Corporeal Relationship between Jewellery and the Body in
the Early-Modern Period
Olivia Havercroft, (The University of Manchester)
Trickery, tactics and everyday life in the post-war library
Kate Bailey (Lancaster University)
‘You Have To Go To The Streets’: The Evocation of Memory through Street Art in
Guatemala and Argentina
11:00 - 11:30
Break
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11:30 – 12:30
Session Three
Panel Three: Contested Spaces and Places
Chair: Sarah Ann Robin
Jacob Ward (University College London)
Relocating Research, Contesting Space: The Post Office Research Station 1958-1975
William Walker (University of Central Lancashire)
“Not Waiting for Pugin?” A defence of the early Commissioners’ Churches built under
the Church Building Act of 1818
12:30 – 13:30
Lunch
13:30 – 15:00
Session Four
Panel Four: Transition & Turning Points
Chair: Adrienne Wallman
Matthew Pawelski (Lancaster University)
“Women”, “Lads” and “Workmen”: Gender, Household, Labour and the Derbyshire
Lead Industry
Mike Pilkington (Sheffield Hallam University)
‘Fu Manchu’ and the British Empire, 1931 – 1937
Kelly Maddox (Lancaster University)
‘As for those who fail to understand…we have no other alternative than to
exterminate them': Resistance and the Emergence of ‘Genocidal Moments’ in
Japanese Imperialism, 1937-1945
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15:00 – 16:30
Session Five
Panel Five: Rhetoric & Reason
Chair: James Perry
Martin Walker (Lancaster University)
“Reason is such a box of quicksilver that it abides nowhere; it dwells in no settled
mansion”: The differing conceptions of “Right Reason” in mid- to late Seventeenth
Century England
Hervin Fernández-Aceves (University of Leeds)
Michael Mann’s theory for the study of Italo-Norman Nobility
Connor Wilson (Lancaster University)
‘Et reuera scias quia hoc bellum carnale non est sed spirituale’: Battle Rhetoric in the
Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum
17:00
Informal Historical Tour of Lancaster
******
Day Three – Sunday 31 May
9:00 – 9:30
Coffee (Charles Carter Building)
9.30 – 11:00
Session Six (Charles Carter Building, A15)
Panel Six: Processes of Power
Chair: Matthew Pawelski
John Aspinwall (Lancaster University)
“Drink of the lute chords and the songs of Ma‘bad, no living is serene, save in the
sweet heights of Sicily in a dynasty that rivals the empires of the Caesars” – The
Historia Sicula and the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily
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Daniel Feather (Liverpool John Moores University)
Britain, South Africa, and soft power diplomacy: initial findings
Lynsey Wood (Lancaster University)
‘The very next blood of the King’: the Law of Female Dynastic Succession in English
History
11:00 – 11:30
Break
11:30 – 13:00
Session Seven
Panel Seven: Social Order
Chair: Martin Walker
Hattie Lloyd (University College London)
Science Lectures in the Press: Davy's Audience at the Royal Institution 1801-1812
Carrie de Silva (Harper Adams University)
The Agricultural Educational Provision for Women in England to 1939
Pushpa Kumbhat (University of Leeds)
Independent working class education (IWCE) – a 'sub-culture' of the British Labour
movement building socialism in Yorkshire 1918 – 1939
13:00 – 14:00
Lunch
14:00 – 15:15
Keynote Address
Introduction: Vanessa Longden
History meets Biology: Human Experience as a History of the Species
Dr Claudia Stein, (University of Warwick)
15:30
Conference Closes
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******
John Aspinwall (Lancaster University)
j.aspinwall@lancaster.ac.uk
“Drink of the lute chords and the songs of Ma‘bad, no living is serene, save in the
sweet heights of Sicily in a dynasty that rivals the empires of the Caesars” – The
Historia Sicula and the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily
Retrospectively interpreting the Norman Conquest of Sicily the anonymously written Historia Sicula,
likely composed between June 1146 and July 1148, remains one of only two extant sources that
specifically chronicle the conquest of the island from the Muslims. As such, the broad basis of the
Historia’s sources act as an important check and balance upon the traditional conquest narrative.
However, the Historia further stands as the only surviving chronicle written during the reign of King
Roger II and, therefore, the Historia is uniquely important in evidencing a formative period in the
history of the Norman Kingdom and indeed the Medieval Mediterranean. Here, the Historia
constitutes a window of unsurpassed importance upon state formation in the South Italian Kingdom
and intersects the critical junction that had witnessed the embryonic monarchy seek to establish a
political settlement that was not only perpetually threatened by hostile foreign influence, but further
bedevilled by complex processes of antagonism and acculturation acting upon its ‘Trinacian’
population of Western Europeans, Greek Christians and Muslims.
Nevertheless, despite the Historia’s suggested importance, nineteenth century accusations that the
Historia was little more than ‘a paltry excerpt... written in barbarous Latin’ from that of Geoffrey
Malaterra’s De Rebus Gestis has ensured its virtual anonymity to modern scholarship. The Historia,
therefore, still remains a rich and underexploited asset – the utilisation may shake the bedrock of
South Italian historiography and throw new light upon a seminal period in the history of the Medieval
Mediterranean.
Kate Bailey (Lancaster University)
k.bailey1@lancaster.ac.uk
‘You Have To Go To The Streets’: The Evocation of Memory through Street Art in
Guatemala and Argentina
‘The collective unconscious dwells in the streets, in the public space...So if you want to really address a
lot of people or society, you have to go to the streets.’ The streets are a place of power; as the
previous quotation from Daniel Hernandez-Salazar suggests, they are a space in which the public
become united, and where expressed thoughts and ideas can influence a great number of people. This
paper will be examining the art that has been created and installed on the streets and in the public
spaces of Guatemala and Argentina, in response to the recent periods of violence that have been
inflicted on both countries. It will explore several examples of street art: Hernandez-Salazar’s ‘Street
Angels’; Traverso’s bicycle silhouettes; and Galindo’s ‘¿Quien Puede Borrar Las Huellas?’ (Who Can
Erase The Footprints?), questioning how the pieces took shape, what the artists’ motivations were, and
the impact that this street art had, in order to examine how effective street art is as a political tool for
evoking memory within Guatemala and Argentina.
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Daniel Feather (Liverpool John Moores University)
D.J.Feather@2012ljmu.ac.uk
Britain, South Africa and soft power diplomacy: Initial findings
This paper will analyse the various debates surrounding Britain’s relationship with South Africa from
1958 to 1994. There are three different aspects to this paper; the first theme will be an analysis of the
current debates on the formulation of soft power diplomacy, what it is, its strengths and its
weaknesses. The next strand will assess Britain’s soft power apparatus and how it has been deployed
throughout the world. The final part of this paper will analyse the existing literature on the relationship
between Britain and South Africa in the years 1958 to 1994. It will be explained that despite the fact
Britain and South Africa still had a persistent and close relationship in the years of apartheid very little
scholarly attention has been given to this association. What little has been written about this topic has
largely focused on the political and economic relations between these two countries. Despite the
breakdown of political relations in this period Britain remained very active in South Africa’s cultural
sector. Indeed Britain began to seek a more prominent role in this area from 1958 with the
appointment of a cultural attaché to the High Commission in Pretoria. It will be explained how the
British policy towards South Africa in this period can be used as a fascinating case study to analyse
British cultural diplomacy in a former imperial possession.
Hervin Fernández-Aceves (University of Leeds)
ms11@hfa@leeds.ac.uk
Michael Mann’s theory for the study of Italo-Norman Nobility
Sociologist Michael Mann has presented an extensive theoretical and historical account of the history
of power in human history in his four-volume work on the sources of social power. In this corpus,
Mann offers a historical sociology based upon a systematic insistence on the contingency and
conjunctural character of history. As a sociologist who is not prisoner to a single methodology or a
single avenue of approach to these supremely complex social processes, Mann attempts to trace
causal mechanisms and sequences to show how various social structures and circumstances led to
specific kinds of changes in the social order. This approach can be summed up in two premises that
can be applied for the study of pre-modern political organisations: 1) societies are constituted of
multiple overlapping and intersecting socio-spatial networks of power, and 2) a general account of
societies, their structure, and their history can best be given, independently of the existence of a fixed
institutional framework, in terms of the interrelations of sources of power: ideological, economic,
military, and political relationships. A new frameworks is hence suggested in order to study social
power: the "IEMP model:" ideological, economic, military, and political. Mann proposed that these
aspects of social reality are largely independent sets of institutions and processes, and they create
different though complementary sources of power for individuals and groups within a given state of
society. If now I apply these concepts to the medieval aristocracy of the Norman Mezzogiorno, I will
be able to identify relevant social aspects despite the fragmentary and pre-modern image that the
available sources provide: the social identity and function of the count, the noble baron, the justiciar,
and the constable emerge within a system of military, land-holding, honorific and political
interactions.
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Olivia Havercroft (The University of Manchester)
olivia.havercroft@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Trickery, tactics and everyday life in the post-war library
In 1959, Joe Orton and his boyfriend Kenneth Halliwell began stealing books from Islington Library.
Through the act of collage, Orton and Halliwell transformed the books in often explicit, sometimes
respectful, and usually humorous ways. They then replaced the books on the shelves and observed the
reactions of the library users. In 1962 they were arrested and sentenced to six months in prison.
This unlawful act has been characterized as a moment of notable cultural importance; a queer,
working-class rebellion against the post-war library. Historian Richard Hornsey wrote that it subverted
‘interwoven assumptions about knowledge, truth and heterosexuality’ by exposing the reader to
‘queer reading practises’. Hornsey’s work aligns with a wider body of historiography that engages
critically with Michel Foucault’s theories to craft non-linear and spatial reworkings of historiographical
arguments pertaining to sexuality.
This paper seeks to challenge these perceptions and recast the crime as an act of mild cultural elitism
rather than a systematic destabilisation of the library space. To do so, I undertake close and contextual
analysis of the book covers, analyse the incentive behind the crime and the reactions of the library
staff and users, and review the fluctuating ideologies of the library in the 20 th century. Using Michel de
Certeau’s theory of everyday life, this paper also argues for consideration of the agency of people
within historical spaces and the legacy events acquire in order to understand the significance of
moments in the past.
Pushpa Kumbhat (University of Leeds)
hy12cpk@leeds.ac.uk
Independent working class education (IWCE) – a 'sub-culture' of the British Labour
movement building socialism in Yorkshire 1918 – 1939
The British IWCE phenomenon was an integral part of the labour movement led and organised by
working class people. Primary providers of IWCE were the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) and
the National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC). Each organisation founded itself on the principle that
the working class had a fundamental right to access adult education. The WEA supported the classical
liberal education of Oxbridge believing that it would enable working class people to participate as well
informed citizens in public life. In contrast, the NCLC rejected Oxbridge education and all State
assistance believing that the only way to raise class-consciousness was to disseminate Marxist
ideology through adult education. Despite their differences the WEA and NCLC co-existed promoting
socialist principles albeit contrarily through education to working class students and, were supported
by institutions such as the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).
I hypothesise that the inter-war IWCE network formed a ‘sub-culture’ of British life offering working
class adults an alternative social, economic and political outlook that was not based in traditional
conservatism. It exposed students, directly or indirectly, to a different way of living based on socialist
ideology and, transformed a small but important minority of working class people enabling them to
participate in public life at a municipal as well as national level. In this respect IWCE could be
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perceived as a catalyst stimulating social change. My paper will present evidence of how IWCE in
Yorkshire between the Wars achieved this.
Hattie Lloyd (University College London)
harriet.lloyd.12@ucl.ac.uk
Science Lectures in the Press: Davy's Audience at the Royal Institution 1801-1812
Humphry Davy (1778-1829) lectured at the Royal Institution in London from 1801-1812. He gave
lectures on chemistry, but also on geology and agriculture. Davy’s lectures at the Royal Institution
became newsworthy items, and were widely reported in the contemporary newspaper and magazine
press.
In this paper I will argue that accounts of Davy’s lectures in the press have yet to be fully utilised. Few
complete accounts of Davy’s lecture courses are known to exist, few of Davy’s lecture notes survive,
yet The Observer, Caledonian Mercury and the Morning Chronicle newspapers all committed to
publishing weekly accounts of Davy’s lecture courses in 1811 and 1812. Thus far, analysis of the
newspaper reports of Davy’s lectures has yielded some surprising evidence; for example that Davy was
promoting sodium and potassium as weapons of war, that the Royal Institution becoming a
membership organisation in 1810 led to more newspaper reports of Davy’s lectures, and that over half
of Davy’s audience was female.
Journalists and editors would not have given every word that Davy said equal importance, they
selected their highlights: Davy’s focus on natural theology and his use of patriotic rhetoric in both his
chemical and geological lectures were quoted in most newspaper articles. Newspapers obtained these
accounts of Davy’s lectures from correspondents in Davy’s audience. Members of Davy’s audience
thus played a role in controlling the dissemination of scientific ideas to the reading publics of the
early-nineteenth century.
Vanessa Longden (Lancaster University)
v.longden1@lancaster.ac.uk
‘When you are the camera and the camera is you’: Tracing Techno-Feminism through
the Woman Photographer
It’s hard to tell where you leave off and the camera begins’ reads the 1976 advertisement for the
Minolta 35mm SLR. Here, the machine is deemed a natural extension of its owner. The previous year,
advertisers of the Polaroid SX-70 stated the machine won’t let you stop looking, ‘The SX-70 becomes
like a part of you, as it slips through life effortlessly...’ These cameras, like the Kodak Brownie and later,
Polaroid’s New Instant Movies, were primarily marketed at the American suburban housewife. The
machine offered convenience while the advertisement created desire. The camera was easy to use, so
easy that even a child could do it. All she had to do was point the camera, click the shutter, and relive
the moment. While the machine challenged people’s perspectives of the world and of one another, it
was first portrayed as preservative tool and only later as an instrument of self-expression.
Referring to the works of Haraway, Butler, Kristeva and Irigaray, I argue that the camera enables us to
trace the fluidity of the body through lived experience while the photograph itself provides a space
where women’s self-articulation can occur. Yet the boundaries between body and machine become
increasingly blurred. How can we theorise the fleshiness or materiality of lived bodies and of bodily
capabilities when they become increasingly hybridised with the machine? My aim is to explore further
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the active transformation and reconfiguration of the body that occurs when the role of photographer
is performed.
Kelly Maddox (Lancaster University)
k.maddox@lancaster.ac.uk
‘As for those who fail to understand…we have no other alternative than to
exterminate them’: Resistance and the Emergence of ‘Genocidal Moments’ in
Japanese Imperialism, 1937-1945
Between 1937 and 1945, in the pursuit of imperial objectives, the Japanese military perpetrated
heinous atrocities against those they sought to dominate. These atrocities, though systematic,
widespread and purposeful, have rarely been seen in terms of genocide. This is largely due to the
dominance of the Holocaust as a model for analysis of genocidal cases. Certainly, if viewed through
this narrow lens, the actions of Japan’s military would not neatly fit the requirements for genocide.
However, recent work on the relationship between imperialism and genocide, particularly the dynamic
analytical framework proposed by A. Dirk Moses, has moved away from this rigid model. Instead,
Moses argues that, rather than a pre-meditated, sustained policy, violence in the colonial field was
characterised by ‘genocidal moments’; moments in which an intention to destroy a group as required
by the UN Genocide Convention emerge.
Using this framing as a foundation, in this paper, I explore the role of resistance in the emergence of
one of these ‘genocidal moments’ in the Japanese Empire. In particular, I utilise the radicalisation of
violence in the Philippines between November 1944 and March 1945 to deconstruct the relationship
between resistance and the emergence of genocidal violence. I argue that the idea of an outright
‘master-plan’ for the destruction of Asian populations can be dismissed and in fact, genocide was
often in opposition to Japan’s pan-Asian-inspired, imperial objectives. However, when faced with
instances of resistance from local inhabitants, the Japanese military resorted to extremely violent,
sometimes genocidal, methods. Indeed, the quotation used as the title to this paper, taken from a
speech given in January 1939 by Prime Minister, Hiranuma Kiichiro, in which he stated; ‘as for those
who fail to understand and persist to the end in their resistance to Japan, we have no other alternative
than to exterminate them’, is illustrative of an attitude that was fundamental to Japanese policy in
dealing with resistance and, in which, the impulse to ‘genocidal moments’ can be located.
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Alex Mankoo (University College London)
a.mankoo@ucl.ac.uk
Teargas – We haven’t got the foggiest: Deconstructing the Ambiguities of Creeping
Legitimisation
The past century has seen both the widespread introduction and persecution of chemical agents as
weapons of warfare. In the aftermath of WWI, the 1925 Geneva Protocol enforced the prohibition of
these technologies. However, since then, teargas has followed a very different technological trajectory
to its chemical weapons counterparts, transitioning into a civil context as well as returning to military
battlefields. This paper examines the legitimisation of teargas in colonial Palestine during the 1930s,
through an analysis of declassified records from the National Archives. It argues that the colonial
governments adopted a deterministic approach to science and technology, framing teargas as an
inherently non-lethal technology. Colonial policy makers initially based their claims for the legitimacy
of teargas in their knowledge of its use in the US, and employed expert judgment to iron out the
technology’s uncertainties. This process effected its creeping legitimisation throughout the British
colonial empire. It reveals how this colonial determinism represents an attempt to maintain hegemony
in knowledge, culture and governance. Furthermore, this approach failed to account for divergent
interpretations of the technology, cultivating ambiguities around and ambivalences toward teargas
that have characterised discussions regarding its legitimacy since. Science & Technology Studies (STS)
provides a means of analysing and deconstructing this fog through a social constructivist approach to
teargas. Grint & Woolgar’s onion model of technology is employed to demonstrate the social shaping
and interpretative flexibility of teargas technologies, and the paper concludes by highlighting the
pragmatic value such an analysis has for policy-making.
Matthew Pawelski (Lancaster University)
m.pawelski@lancaster.ac.uk
“Women”, “Lads” and “Workmen”: Gender, Household, Labour and the Derbyshire
Lead Industry.
Studies of British metallurgical industries of the eighteenth century have been plagued by a lack of
substantive evidence related to the roles played by women, children and young adults both in the
mines and above ground. This lack of evidence contradicts the wealth of recent research conducted by
economic and social historians which suggests that these groups were of vital importance to the
efficient functioning of any mining or industrial enterprise. However, the contributions of these groups
has been left obscured, even invisible, by the paucity of references in the account books and official
business records belonging to these industries. Identifying and recognising the vital role played by
women and children is of clear benefit to any historian wishing to study the process of
industrialisation in the eighteenth century, as the role of a substantial proportion of the workforce has
not been properly understood.
This issue has been highlighted in my own research of the Derbyshire Lead Industry. However one
particular series of account books called the “coper accounts” are made conspicuous by their inclusion
of a detailed breakdown of the responsibilities and payment of different groups of people working at
the mine, specifically referencing the categories of “Women” and “Lads” alongside “Workmen”. These
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coper accounts provide a unique window into the work carried out by women and reveal a great deal
about the gendered roles and wages of workers in the metallurgical industries of the eighteenth
century.
James Perry (Lancaster University)
j.perry2@lancaster.ac.uk
Immigration Patterns in Nineteenth Century England
Since the arrival of the Empire Windrush on 22 June 1948, there has been a steady stream of
immigrants arriving in England, from around the world. The vast majority of immigration studies deal
with the post-war period, partly due to the sheer number of immigrants who came to the country
since that time. Consequently, only a few specific studies explore the volume and impact of
immigration into England during the nineteenth century. The works that are relevant for this period of
English immigrant activity are focused almost exclusively upon the history and experiences of
particular ethnic and cultural groups, such as Jews, Italians, and Germans. This presentation will build
upon the existing works of Panikos Panayi, Colin Pooley, and Colin Holmes, by examining the mobility
behaviour of immigrants. Two simple yet informative questions will be asked in this study, they are;
where did immigrants come from, and where did they choose to live in England? This paper will draw
upon the recently completed I-CeM dataset and will be examined in conjunction with GIS software, to
map and depict immigrant residential activity. A discussion and informative analysis of immigrant
activity can provide a useful contextual framework regarding contemporary immigrant behaviour
within society. This study will argue that there are inherent conditions that persist to this day in
influencing and affecting an immigrant’s decision to move to a country, and where they choose to
reside.
Mike Pilkington (Sheffield Hallam University) Michael.J.Pilkington@student.shu.ac.uk
‘Fu Manchu’ and the British Empire, 1931 – 1937
‘Fu Manchu’ was an enduringly popular pulp fiction character created by the British hack writer Arthur
Sarsfield Ward in 1913, under the pen name of Sax Rohmer. This ‘Chinese devil doctor’ has been
described as the ultimate manifestation of the ‘Yellow Peril’ phenomenon which originated in 1890’s:
the groundless fear that Oriental hordes were about to overwhelm the West.
Although the Fu Manchu stories have received sporadic academic attention their imperial context is
under-investigated. In this paper I will show the extent to which the history of the ‘real’ British Empire
had a bearing. The texts I will concentrate on are those published in the 1930’s when, in response to
public demand, Ward resurrected the character after a 13 year gap. Here I will pay particular attention
to the personas of Fu Manchu and ‘Sir Denis Nayland Smith’, the British official tasked with thwarting
him.
Moreover I shall argue that the values articulated in these texts cannot be entirely explained by the
post-colonialist critique of the West demonising the East. Rather, a number of historical approaches
contribute. Those which I will forward suggest are the legacy of European depictions of the unknown
East, the shorter term history of resistance to British informal control in both the Near and Far East,
and domestic anxiety over the global status of Britain and her Empire following World War One.
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Sarah Ann Robin (Lancaster University)
s.a.robin@lancaster.ac.uk
Jewels of the Flesh: The Corporeal Relationship between Jewellery and the Body in
the Early-Modern Period
The relationship between the body and jewellery is an ancient one. The purpose and appearance of
this relationship has shifted and adapted, but the connection between jewel and body is still an
important part of our society, our life-cycles and certainly of our emotions and emotional bonds. In
this paper, I will analyse body and jewellery through three approaches. The first is in how jewellery was
worn; sometimes on or between clothing, as well as against the flesh. The second approach will focus
upon how jewellery imitated the body or body parts, with surviving pieces cast as bones and organs.
Finally, jewellery incorporated body parts. For example, brooches, bracelets and rings were made with
hollowed spaces to keep hair. Analysis will reveal the various dynamics and ‘sides’ of jewellery; some
private and intimate with sensual purposes; others public, with visual functions. Discourse will question
whether this relationship infers a preoccupation with death or ritual, instead suggesting a desire to
materialise feeling and emotional bonds.
Carrie de Silva (Harper Adams University)
cdesilva@harper-adams.ac.uk
The Agricultural Educational Provision for Women in England to 1939
An interim report on a part-time PhD on the history of the agricultural educational provision for
women in England to 1939, and how that provision emerged. The study approached three strands;
Firstly, the practical education of rural women, particularly through the work of the Women’s Institute.
The WI had its British roots in the Agricultural Organisation Society and was under the administration
and funding of the Board of Agriculture in its early years. No studies of the WI have particularly drawn
out the agricultural educational role in both the development and practice of the movement.
Secondly, the education of women for independent employment, particularly through the
development of the Women’s Land Army in WWI with a consideration of how this impacted a lasting
provision in college courses. Thirdly, a consideration of women studying at university level and
engaged in agricultural research, particularly through case studies on women research scientists
Rothamsted [Agricultural] Experimental Station from 1906. An overarching theme is to consider how
much the provisions in place at the outbreak of WWII were the result of coherent policy answering
national need or were, rather, a function of the drive and ambition (whether personal or with a vision
for the opportunities of others) of a small number of influential and energetic individuals.
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Martin Walker (Lancaster University)
m.walker3@lancaster.ac.uk
“Reason is such a box of quicksilver that it abides nowhere; it dwells in no settled
mansion”: The differing conceptions of “Right Reason” in mid- to late Seventeenth
Century England
Much has been written about the concept of ‘right reason’ and its usage in English literature
throughout the course of the seventeenth-century. P. M. Rattansi and Christopher Hill argued for a
dramatic shift from the private illuminist epistemologies of the Civil War years to a reliance on natural
reason occasioned by the relatively widespread acceptance of the mechanical philosophy in the
Restoration era. Robert Hoopes offered a different yet related thesis. Lotte Mulligan has challenged
such a view, arguing that there was no sharp discontinuity between the middle and later seventeenth
century in regarding the usage of the phrase ‘right reason’. John Spurr has also put a case for the
persistence of ‘right reason’. This paper also argues for the prevalence of ‘right reason’ in mid- to late
seventeenth-century England, albeit with a few revisions. First, whilst the history of the concept has
been usefully reviewed by Hoopes, and others, it is not always as illuminating as one might wish. This
paper, therefore, begins the task of developing an improved understanding of ‘right reason’ in
seventeenth-century England. A more rigorous and accurate terminology and better nuanced
appreciation of theological differences makes for a better framework in which to consider its usage by
the many groups of English Christians in seventeenth-century England. Second, whilst Mulligan’s
thesis is essentially correct, it brushes over ways in which various post-Restoration divines differed in
their conception of right reason – this paper will attempt to flesh out these differences and offer some
reasons for their existence.
William Walker (University of Central Lancashire)
billandpamwalker@supanet.com
“Not Waiting for Pugin?” A defence of the early Commissioners’ Churches built under
the Church Building Act of 1818.
In 1818 a remarkable and never repeated Parliamentary initiative dispensed £1 million in order to
trigger an assertive church building programme by the Established Church. 82 of the churches were in
Lancashire. Although they had to be designed and built to maintain the dignity of the Church of
England, they also were expected to house the largest number of hearers possible at the lowest
feasible price. In1836, the ambitious A.N.W. Pugin published Contrasts, which denigrated recent
church architecture in comparison with authentic medieval styles. He was particularly harsh on the
Commissioners’ Churches: “a more meagre, miserable display of architectural skill never was made!”
The Oxford Ecclesiologists soon weighed in with similar criticism, in particular objecting to the
inclusion of galleries and the lack of true chancels. Architectural historians since have routinely
denigrated or simply ignored the Commissioners’ churches when describing the Gothic Revival.
This paper suggests that the Commissioners’ Churches were not of deplorable design. Pugin himself
asserted “fitness for purpose” was key and it is arguable that this rule was well observed in these early
nineteenth century buildings. Furthermore, many of the northern Commissioners’ churches were fine
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works in their own right and the extension programme played a significant part in the creation of what
became known as Victorian or English Gothic.
Jacob Ward (University College London)
jacob.ward.12@ucl.ac.uk
Relocating Research, Contesting Space: The Post Office Research Station, 1958-75
This paper explores how the relocation of a government research laboratory creates a number of
contested spaces, and highlights how politics, industry, and science values and devalues these spaces.
In 1958, the Post Office decided to move its research station from Dollis Hill, North-West London, as it
had outgrown its current site. In 1975, the new Post Office Research Establishment finally opened in
Martlesham Heath, Suffolk. Along the way, the Post Office had to negotiate with the Civil Service
policy of dispersal, which directed the relocation of government establishments to areas of
unemployment. Competing with this demand were the needs and values of the Post Office’s own
research staff, who represented a valuable body of knowledge and experience, and without whom,
there could be no research station.
Drawing on a broad range of Post Office and other government documents, this paper addresses how
the relocation of the research station was shaped by the spatial demands of the government, Post
Office officials, and research staff, but also how the relocation shaped these spaces. The history of Post
Office telecommunications research has been neglected in the wider literature, and I will argue that a
synthesis of this history with interdisciplinary perspectives from geographies of science, industry, and
labour, demonstrates a fundamental tension between the spatial demands of relocating knowledge
and creating employment.
[Note: This is part of my larger thesis project (in progress), “Research Transplanted and Privatised: Post
Office/British Telecom R&D in the Digital and Information Era].
Connor Wilson (Lancaster University)
c.wilson5@lancaster.ac.uk
‘Et reuera scias quia hoc bellum carnale non est sed spirituale’. Battle Rhetoric in the
Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum.
Rousing pre-battle speeches, exhorting warriors to deeds of valour, form a prominent element in
many medieval Latin chronicles. In his study of battle rhetoric in Anglo-Norman accounts written
between 1000-1250 A.D. John Bliese argued that such speeches, despite often being written long after
and far from the events they describe, are valuable as rhetorical inventions. Such invented, and often
self-consciously literary, speeches are highly revealing of their authors’ perceptions of motivation in
warfare. The First Crusade coincided with, and to some extent enabled, a proliferation of
contemporary narratives on the subject of war. The creation of battle rhetoric in crusade narratives
provided writers opportunities to engage with the fusion of just war, pilgrimage and penance: ideas
that came together conceptually in the Crusade. The foundation of many of the narrative accounts of
the First Crusade is the anonymous Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum – the Deeds of
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the Franks and the Other Pilgrims to Jerusalem. This paper will argue that while the battle orations
found within the Gesta contain motivational appeals identifiable with the typology established by
previous scholarship they have not been deployed by rote in order to merely add believability or
liveliness to the text. Rather the battle rhetoric of the Gesta both reinforces and provides insight to the
wider themes, particularly the spiritual themes, of the text as a whole. They provided the author with a
way of displaying how important religious ideas were lived in the context of fighting, through the
actions of early crusaders.
Lynsey Wood (Lancaster University)
l.wood2@lancaster.ac.uk
‘The very next blood of the King’: the law of female dynastic succession in English
history
The passage of the Act Concerning the Regal Power in 1554 was the moment when the doctrine that a
woman could not succeed to the English throne in her own right was finally disposed. This Act was the
culmination of centuries of development in royal succession law which had largely affirmed the rule of
male primogeniture, but at times had also acknowledged the succession rights of females and
negotiated their role in the transference of dynastic power. There were no specific legal prohibitions
to the accession of a female to the throne or the transference of her claim in England, unlike the Salic
law which was introduced in France in 1328. The brief elevation of the Empress Matilda in the twelfth
century and the principle of representation through the female line highlighted during the Wars of the
Roses are the most well-known aspects of this narrative. However, a total of four English kings – Henry
I, Edward I, Edward III and Henry IV – also created an entail of the crown which clarified the succession
rights of their female issue. By the sixteenth century the emergence of ruling queens in England
demonstrated the structural need for a female inclusive rule of primogeniture in royal succession law.
This paper will explore changing attitudes to female dynastic succession between the twelfth and the
sixteenth centuries, examining the development of the legal framework which culminated in the
succession statutes introduced by Henry VIII (and revised by his children) which sought to legitimate
the female contender in sixteenth century England.
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Notes
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Notes
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Acknowledgments
The Histfest 2015 organizing committee would like extend a special
thank you to Prof. Ludmilla Jordanova, Dr Claudia Stein, Prof. Andrew
Jotischky, the Department of History, I. B. Tauris and to everyone else
involved in this endeavour.
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