An heroics of empire: Benjamin West and anglophone history painting 1764--1774 (2024)

This paper explores the Conquest of England as documented by William of Poitiers in the Gesta Guillelmi. The paper challenges the rapid conquest described in the Gesta and presents a case for a prolonged Conquest of England. Considered here are the issues prior to the invasion of England and the rebellions (especially those on the English-Welsh border) of 1067.

The American Historical Review, 2008

Renaissance Quarterly, 2020

Ken Trotman Publishing, 2024

Volume 2: 1759-1760 – 29 coloured contemporary maps and 26 orders of battle.I came across the original copy of this book by Sir Charles Hotham (published in 1764) many years ago. At that time it cost a fortune and is undoubtedly even more valuable now. My desire to purchase it was two-fold. Firstly a fascination to have a monstrously rare early account of this vital phase of the Seven Years War that included of course the great battle of Minden, and secondly, the sheer beauty of the volume with its spectacular hand-coloured maps. This was one of the most intricate reconstructions that I have had the pleasure to create. Clearly the volume demanded a large format facsimile reprint. This is not just a simple crude scan like so many such volumes these days, but one that reflects the beauty of the original volume and addresses its major problem. To the rescue, as so often happens, came my very dear friend Stephen Summerfield. I know of no other person who can feel the shape of book’s narrative and who has a genius for breaking text into understandable sections to clarify the progress of events. This is hugely important, for the original volume was one vast body of unbroken text, without even chapters, contents page or index although full of valuable information.The book now reads like the campaign diary for the Army of Frederick of Brunswick, separated into three volumes. The chapters refer to months or battles with immensely detailed dated section headings. Each volume can be referred to and read with ease. Stephen is also a rather skilful scanner, although he will tell you between gritted teeth that it took him several goes through the book to get it to the state it is in this facsimile (that also included at least one page made largely illegible by an original ink stain – I challenge you to discover which page it is!). And what we know from previous works, Stephen is a genius at maps. This superb facsimile contains 106 contemporary hand-coloured maps and 63 orders of battle to make your journey through the story easier to follow, whilst retaining the joyousness of so many delightful coloured originals from the volume.This is just the stuff we want to do with our facsimiles. The price is not cheap because we wanted to provide you with a highest quality we could, to add ever greater value to the original. Stephen, fascinated with the story of the Hessen Cassell and Hanoverian troops’ progress in England, has added even more by setting the scene of the action. We do hope you are as delighted with all of this as we are.

Archivium Hibernicum, 2021

This article discusses the use of poetry and drama in the quest for patronage at the vice-regal courts of Henry Cary, Lord Falkland and Thomas Wentworth in Ireland 1622-1641.

The Review of English Studies, 2007

Journal of Early Modern Studies

The maps tasked with charting English new-found seafaring prowess in the latter half of the sixteenth century constitute an ambivalent archive. They participated in the imaginative work of conceptualising the world as whole and singular, held within a unified cosmos. At the same time, they were distinctly partisan, helping to advance English adventurism and construct an elevated vantage point where, the would-be English colonialist, might imagine traversing oceans to subdue far-flung lands and their peoples. By reading and re-reading Baptista Boazio’s beautiful hand-painted map, ‘The Famouse Weste Indian Voyadge’, a visual account of the voyage Francis Drake undertook in 1585 endorsed by Elizabeth I to make the case for English primacy in the Americas, the essay reflects on the interpretative tool kit that might be helpful in laying bare the racial violence that infused the early period of English expansionism. Reading, as presented here, becomes a matter of excavation. Maps such as...

The Economic History Review, 2014

The Ottoman Empire was a geographically, economically, religiously and politically powerful empire that lasted from the late thirteenth century to the early twentieth century, expanding its influence not only to Europe but also to the Middle East, Asia Minor and North Africa. Especially in the late fifteenth century and the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire, as the leader and spreader of Islam, began to have a profound impact on three continents and achieved several military victories, which led Western Europeans to fear that it would bring the downfall of Christianity. The conquest of Constantinople (contemporary İstanbul) by Mehmed II giving the Ottomans a foothold in Europe, and Selim I’s becoming the caliphate in the Muslim world strengthened the idea that the Ottoman Empire was the leader of Islam which made the Ottomans a growing threat to Europe with its unavoidable advances. Accordingly, this article intends to discuss the representations of the Turks/Ottomans affiliated with the Muslims/Saracens in both medieval and the Elizabethan English poetry within the framework of The Turke and Gowin, Roland and Vernagu, The Romance of Otuel, Richard Coer de Lyon, Octovian, King Horn, Sir Ferumbras, The Sowdone of Babylone, The Sege off Melayne, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella and The Defense of Poesy and their associations as the religious, cultural and ethnic ‘other’ in both periods.

International Journal of the Classical Tradition

('Classical Presences' series), 2010

This volume brings together scholars of modern and ancient culture to explore historical, textual, material and theoretical interactions between classics and imperialism during the heyday of the British Empire from the late eighteenth through to its collapse in the early decades of the twentieth century. It examines the multiple dialogues that developed between Classics and colonialism in this period and argues that the two exerted a formative influence on each other at various levels. Most at issue in the contexts where Classics and empire converge is the critical question of ownership: to whom does the classical past belong? Did the modern communities of the Mediterranean have pre-eminent ownership of the visual, literary and intellectual culture of Greece and Rome? Or could the populations and intellectual centres of Northern Europe stake a claim to this inheritance? And in what ways could non-European communities and powers – Africa, India, America – commandeer the classical heritage for themselves? In exploring the relationship between classics and imperialism in this period, this volume examines trends that are of current importance both to the discipline of Classics and to modern British cultural and intellectual history. Both classics and empire, this volume contests, can be better understood by examining them in tandem: the development of classical ideas, classical scholarship and classical imagery in this period was often directly or indirectly influenced by empire and imperial authority, and the British Empire itself was informed, shaped, legitimised and evaluated using classical models.

I t is more than a century since JR Seeley remarked in The Expansion of England (1H83) that the British Empire developed in 'a fit of absence of mind'.' The rea,sons for and motives unt.lerlying its expansion, whether ptilitical. diplomatic, economic, social, intellectual, or religious, are fairly well known, however much they continue tt) be debated.In recent years scholars have also begun to explore the impact of the empire on the so-called metropolitan centre. es[xrcially ¡politically.̂ and have even questioned the ver\ boundaries between métropole and periphery' particularly in the cultural realni.^ Yet serious and fundamental questions remain about the place of the empire in the British mint!. Howdid Britons conceive of and represent their empire, especially during the 19th century, the period of its greatest expansi()n? How did they come to regard it as being more unified than it actually was at the administrative level?^ What, if an>'thing, gave the emp...

Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Vol. 19, Nos 1-2, Fall 2006), 2006

The Chaucer Review, 2014

This paper explores the tendency for English historical narratives of the late twelfth century to develop rounded portraits of royal characters by juxtaposing one or more kings. Linguistic choices could combine with the selection and ordering of events to thrust royal characters into narrative apposition, and to render implied judgment about their respective qualities. I analyze a major work of narrative history – William of Newburgh’s Historia rerum Anglicarum – which evinces this approach to royal characterization, and try to show that its seeming eccentricities of narrative time and focalization are best explained by just such a program of characterization and juxtaposition. This in turn serves to emphasize the significance of this narrative as a culturally situated commentary on the universal practice of kingship and its relationship to English history.