This volume provides a comparative study of the growth and impact of mass literacy across Europe between 1750 to 1950. It outlines the main features of the comparative growth of literacy, and relates them to the later growth of electronic media. It assesses the ways in which mass literacy has transformed ways of living and thinking, by exploring broader social and cultural issues such as gender, age, consciousness of time and space, and our relationship with the natural world. The author begins by considering the evolution of methods of teaching and learning across the centuries, and examines...

This important book provides a comparative study of the growth and impact of mass literacy across Europe between 1750 and 1950. The volume outlines the main features of the comparative growth of literacy, and relates them to the later growth of electronic media. It assesses the ways in which mass literacy has transformed ways of living and thinking, by exploring broader social and cultural issues such as gender, age, consciousness of time and space, and our relationship with the natural world.


Vincent begins by considering the evolution of methods of teaching and learning...

This book offers a comparative analysis of the major systems of servitude present in the world since 1500. Slavery, serfdom, debt bondage, indentured service and convict labour all provided labour and service through the legal subjection of one person to another, but remained very different. By comparison and contrast, this study seeks to establish their distinctive character.



Servitude in Modern Times concentrates on the forms of servitude that figured in the process of early modernization: notably the white bonded labour, convict and indentured, used to settle...

This book offers a comparative analysis of the major systems of servitude present in the world since 1500. Slavery, serfdom, debt bondage, indentured service and convict labour all provided labour and service through the legal subjection of one person to another, but remained very different. By comparison and contrast, this study seeks to establish their distinctive character.



Servitude in Modern Times concentrates on the forms of servitude that figured in the process of early modernization: notably the white bonded labour, convict and indentured, used to settle...

In this major new book, Wolfgang Behringer surveys the phenomenon of witchcraft past and present. Drawing on the latest historical and anthropological findings, Behringer sheds new light on the history of European witchcraft, while demonstrating that witch-hunts are not simply part of the European past. Although witch-hunts have long since been outlawed in Europe, other societies have struggled with the idea that witchcraft does not exist. As Behringer shows, witch-hunts continue to pose a major problem in Africa and among tribal people in America, Asia and Australia. The belief that certain...

'Mark Harrison's book illuminates the threats posed by infectious diseases since 1500. He places these diseases within an international perspective, and demonstrates the relationship between European expansion and changing epidemiological patterns. The book is a significant introduction to a fascinating subject.' Gerald N. Grob, Rutgers State University In this lively and accessible book, Mark Harrison charts the history of disease from the birth of the modern world around 1500 through to the present day. He explores how the rise of modern nation-states was closely linked to the threat posed...

This volume represents an approach to the analysis of glass and paint as they occur as trace evidence in forensic cases. Each chapter is written by an expert in their particular area. The book is divided into two sections: one refering to paint and one referring to glass. Each section covers an introduction to the compositon of these materials and the analytical approach to obtaining information from these types of exhibits, together with an interpretation of that evidence in the context of the forensic cases.

Nature is a deceptively simple and ahistorical term, suggesting intrinsic, unchanging reality. Yet nature has a history too, both in terms of human attitudes and human impacts. This text outlines the major understandings of nature in the western world since classical times, from nature as higher authority to its more recent meaning of threatened physical space and life forms. It places the history of attitudes to nature within the story of human-induced changes in the material environment. A distinctive unifying theme is Coates's interest in how green writers over the last thirty years have...