Prophets and Patrons is the first detailed account of the emergence of sociology and related social sciences in France. It emphasizes three social and intellectual groupings in the period from 1880 to 1914: the social statisticians who grew out of governmental ministries, the Durkheimians who were consistently housed in the university, and the "international sociologists" around René Worms, in neither ministries nor the university.

Unlike most histories of ideas, Prophets and Patrons portrays the institutional developments that encouraged, discouraged, and rechanneled different styles of research. To understand these developments, a sociological analysis of the French university system is presented. At its center are the patrons (generally Sorbonne professors) who served as informal linkages for the entire system. Around them developed clusters of researchers and teachers throughout France. The workings of this system of relations, analyzed here for the first time, are crucial to understanding the French university.

The university is also immersed in the political and ideological currents of the Latin Quarter. Thus Clark's investigation of conflicting elements of French culture and social structure helps illuminate his analysis of the university. This study will be invaluable to social scientists, intellectual historians, and students of French culture and comparative education.

At the start of the Second World War, Poland was invaded by both the German and the Soviet armies. The country was unable to withstand the assaults and thousands of Polish soldiers and civilians were shipped to labour camps and prisons, where starvation, disease, and mistreatment were their daily expectations. With the signing of an amnesty between the Polish and Soviet governments in 1942, many of these soldiers were engaged in rebuilding the Polish army, and travelled through the Mideast to fight in the Italian campaign.After the war, Canada accepted over 4000 Polish immigrant soldiers and their families who did not want to return to a communist regime in their country. This book is a moving oral history of the experiences of forty-five individuals during that transition period between the outbreak of war and their eventual relocation in Canada. Their memories of those times remain clear, not so remarkably perhaps, as they recount how they struggled in labour and prison camps, refugee camps, and exile in freezing northern climates, often arriving with the clothes they wore and nothing else. There are stories here of families torn apart and reunited, courageous escapes, underground resistance, friendship and emnity, and above all of survival. To read these memoirs is to understand how the inhumanity of war is confronted and defied by the indomitable human spirit.

A history of the Old Poor Law, which was the primary support for the poor in England and Wales from 1601 to 1834.
 
The Old Poor Law, which was established in 1601 in England and Wales and was in force until 1834, was administered by the local parish and dispensed goods and services to paupers, providing a uniquely comprehensive, premodern system of support for the poor. Providing for the Poor brings together academics and practitioners from across disciplines to reexamine the micropolitics of poverty in the long eighteenth century through the eyes of the poor, their providers, and enablers. Covering such topics as the providence of the parochial sixpence, which was given in order to get a beggar to move along to another parish, to coercive marriages, plebeian clothing, and the much broader implications of vagrancy toward the end of the long eighteenth century, this volume aims to bridge the gaps in our understanding of the experiences of people across the social spectrum whose lives were touched by the Old Poor Law. It brings together some of the wider arguments concerning the nature of welfare during economically difficult times and documents the rising bureaucracy inherent in the system to produce a radical new history of the Old Poor Law in astonishing detail.

It is commonly agreed that the history of France at the end of the eighteenth century was influenced powerfully, at times decisively, by collective interests and group actions. Yet, as Philip Dawson shows, this consensus has been the foundation of endless scholarly argument over the purposes of group actions and their effects on economic, political, and intellectual life, the accuracy of facts reported, the validity of different methods of analysis, and the significance of the whole topic for previous and subsequent human experience. In probing these questions, this monograph contributes research findings to the historical controversy over the political motives and conduct of the upper bourgeoisie during the French Revolution.

Chosen for study is a well-defined occupational group near the pinnacle of the bourgeoisie, the 2700 judicial officeholders in the bailliages and sénéchaussées--royal courts from which appeals were taken to the parlements. These lower-court magistrates were generally well-to-do and esteemed personages in the provincial bourgeoisie, who could potentially be drawn to either side in a political struggle between nobility and bourgeoisie. They constituted more than 20 percent of the bourgeois representation in the Estates General of 1789. Revolutionary legislation abolished their offices, but many of them remained active in politics even under the revolutionary republic.

Dawson makes use of a variety of manuscript materials pertinent to the magistrates as he treats their activities as members of corporate groups before 1790 and follows many of them as individuals through the revolutionary years to 1795. In part, the book is based on biographical data relating to 230 magistrates--all who were in office in the provinces of Burgundy and Poitou at the outbreak of the revolution.

By the end of 1789, the author concludes, most of the magistrates came to accept revolutionary change because alternative courses of action had been made more unacceptable to them. It was their support that helped to make possible the revolutionary process itself. "They were not the leaders of the revolutionary bourgeoisie. Before 1789, they had been in the highest rank of the bourgeoisie and they remained a notable part of it, but most of them had come to support revolution hesitantly, cautiously, with moderation and many a backward glance."

When Austrian soldiers first set foot in Lombardy-Venetia in October, 1813, they were greeted everywhere as liberators and friends. In the spring of 1815, when Joachim Murat's efforts to establish a united Italy ended in miserable failure and when the Habsburgs announced the main features of the regime they intended to establish in their Italian provinces, the Venetians were still strongly pro-Austrian, but considerable anti-Habsburg feeling had developed among the Lombards.

This carefully documented study of the first two years of Austrian reoccupation of Lombardy-Venetia examines all aspects of the Habsburg provisional regimes and draws some conclusions about the reasons for the different attitudes in the two provinces. In detailed sketches of the provisional governments of Venetia (Chapter I) and Lombardy (Chapter II) and an examination of Austrian economic policies and practices in both provinces (Chapter III), the author shows that although the governments of the two provinces shared many common traits, they differed in a number of significant ways. Actually, Venetia was much less efficiently governed than Lombardy; and the Lombards enjoyed at least a small measure of self-administration that was largely denied the Venetians. The Lombards were much more prosperous than their neighbors, yet they paid much less in taxes and were exempt from most of the burdensome military requisitions that the Austrians inflicted on the Venetians. In spite of these advantages, the relatively small nationalist movement in Austria's Italian provinces was almost entirely confined to Lombardy.

The author examines public opinion in Lombardy-Venetia about liberal intrigues (Chapter IV); the relationship of secret societies to liberalism (Chapter V); the Brescian-Milanese conspiracy (Chapter VI) and the Austrian handling of that affair (Chapter VII); and the fiasco of Joachim Murat's "War of Italian Independence" (Chapter VIII).

In 1753, at the request of the London Jewish community, the Peiham administration passed an act repealing the religious test that prevented Jewish aliens from being naturalized. This act, formally known as the Jewish Naturalization Act, was of negligible practical importance, but political opponents exploited the issue for an upcoming election campaign. The "Jew Bill" became a battle cry that swept across England. The Peiham administration, sensing the political damage that could be caused by the bill, bowed to the clamor and then took the initiative in defeating its own act.

This book is the first thorough account of that notorious but little-understood episode in English history. Using a largely narrative form the author first discusses the position of the Jews in the mid-eighteenth century and explains why they sought and obtained passage of the bill. He then recounts the beginnings of opposition to it and discusses the religious, economic, political, and psychological reasons for the opposition. He describes in detail the propaganda campaign against the bill and the resultant effect on the election.

The author concludes that this was not an isolated explosion of anti-Semitism, but rather a renewal of a long-standing debate over general naturalization policy. He further concludes that Parliament was more sensitive to public opinion than is generally supposed and that the terms "Whig supremacy" or "trusteeship" are not entirely accurate.

The reader will find that this study reveals much of the English political system of that era: the style and structure of parliamentary politics and electioneering; religious attitudes and economic notions; and the methods and ethical and intellectual standards of journalism and political propaganda.

Italian preachers during the Reformation era found themselves in the trenches of a more desperate war than anything they had ever imagined. This war—the splintering of western Christendom into conflicting sects—was physically but also spiritually violent. In an era of tremendous religious convolution, fluidity, and danger, preachers of all kinds spoke from the pulpit daily, weekly, or seasonally to confront the hottest controversies of their time. Preachers also turned to the printing press in unprecedented numbers to spread their messages.

Emily Michelson challenges the stereotype that Protestants succeeded in converting Catholics through superior preaching and printing. Catholic preachers were not simply reactionary and uncreative mouthpieces of a monolithic church. Rather, they deftly and imaginatively grappled with the question of how to preserve the orthodoxy of their flock and maintain the authority of the Roman church while also confronting new, undeniable lay demands for inclusion and participation.

These sermons—almost unknown in English until now—tell a new story of the Reformation that credits preachers with keeping Italy Catholic when the region’s religious future seemed uncertain, and with fashioning the post-Reformation Catholicism that thrived into the modern era. By deploying the pulpit, pen, and printing press, preachers in Italy created a new religious culture that would survive in an unprecedented atmosphere of competition and religious choice.

A sociological investigation into maritime state power told through an exploration of how the British Empire policed piracy.
 
Early in the seventeenth-century boom of seafaring, piracy allowed many enterprising and lawless men to make fortunes on the high seas, due in no small part to the lack of policing by the British crown. But as the British empire grew from being a collection of far-flung territories into a consolidated economic and political enterprise dependent on long-distance trade, pirates increasingly became a destabilizing threat. This development is traced by sociologist Matthew Norton in The Punishment of Pirates, taking the reader on an exciting journey through the shifting legal status of pirates in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
 
Norton shows us that eliminating this threat required an institutional shift: first identifying and defining piracy, and then brutally policing it. The Punishment of Pirates develops a new framework for understanding the cultural mechanisms involved in dividing, classifying, and constructing institutional order by tracing the transformation of piracy from a situation of cultivated ambiguity to a criminal category with violently patrolled boundaries—ending with its eradication as a systemic threat to trade in the English Empire. Replete with gun battles, executions, jailbreaks, and courtroom dramas, Norton’s book offers insights for social theorists, political scientists, and historians alike.
 

Contemporaries regarded rich, strategic Essex County, located northeast of London, as the “first born of Parliament,” the area from which the rebellious Parliament drew its most decisive support in the Civil War of 1642. Any consideration of the English Civil War can profit from a long look at Essex, which encapsulated so many of the forces that lead to war. William Hunt's analysis of demographic and economic change in this region provides a comprehensive picture of day-to-day life, population growth, the commercialization of agriculture, and the class of men and women rendered socially marginal as a result.

To account for the radicalism of Essex, however, Hunt looks beyond the details of socioeconomic discontent and finds a cultural validation for rebellion in Puritanism. This broad cultural explanation of the factors leading to war provides a fresh interpretation of the Puritan Revolution. The Puritans' desire to impose a strict moral code upon society as a whole, accompanied by an aggressive, imperialistic concept of England's national destiny, eventually came into conflict with national policy and resulted in open rebellion against the Crown.

The achievement of unity and perfection in human action begins with a struggle for these ideals in human thought. Dr. Klaus Vondung in his collection of essays that span four decades explores examples of this in different fields of human inquiry: striving for harmonious existential unity of talents and morals, intellect and emotion; seeking to make natural sciences consonant with the humanities and thereby moving toward a more universal, “perfect” science; and establishing unity in political structures and cultivating in this unity a homogenous society. Vondung devotes himself especially to exposing National Socialism, and revisits its perverted motivations and the murderous consequences of its ideology.
     Particular focus in following the thread of unity and perfection in human intellectual and practical ambitions ultimately hones in on the combination of religion and politics. Vondung in these essays unpacks the ways in which this continues to fascinate and disturb us, and in his expertise he uses National Socialism to connect this pursuit of unity and perfection to what he calls one of the signature marks of modernity––namely, secular apocalypticism. This claim stands in opposition to Eric Voegelin’s remark that Gnosticism, rather, is “the nature of modernity.” Vondung, who studied and wrote his dissertation under Voegelin, grapples with the contrast of these positions. Vondung is willing to challenge Voegelin, but ultimately his treatment of the latter bears the quality of tribute to this great scholar.
      Vondung also explores the points of contact between apocalypticism and Hermetic speculation. Despite the independence of the religious and philosophical doctrines of Hermeticism, there are parallels to be found. Apocalypticism and Hermeticism originated in antiquity and yet each represents a tradition that still holds footing today. Vondung furthermore leads the reader to see the project of salvation found in both even as each operates with a different scope.
     This collection of essays centers itself on a perspective of the human pursuit of unity and perfection, directly or indirectly, as objectives of intellectual endeavors, existential ideals, as social or political outcomes, and in the case of National Socialism even as perverse aberrations that led to the Holocaust. Vondung’s particular treatment of Voegelin’s work likewise establishes what the former identifies as a stand-out question of this study: Does the search for order in history show us the unity of the history of humankind?

As the driving force behind the Allied effort in World War I, France willingly shouldered the heaviest burden. In this masterful book, Robert Doughty explains how and why France assumed this role and offers new insights into French strategy and operational methods.

French leaders, favoring a multi-front strategy, believed the Allies could maintain pressure on several fronts around the periphery of the German, Austrian, and Ottoman empires and eventually break the enemy's defenses. But France did not have sufficient resources to push the Germans back from the Western Front and attack elsewhere. The offensives they launched proved costly, and their tactical and operational methods ranged from remarkably effective to disastrously ineffective.

Using extensive archival research, Doughty explains why France pursued a multi-front strategy and why it launched numerous operations as part of that strategy. He also casts new light on France's efforts to develop successful weapons and methods and the attempts to use them in operations.

An unparalleled work in French or English literature on the war, Pyrrhic Victory is destined to become the standard account of the French army in the Great War.