Thesiss

This dissertation seeks to show that Pero Tafur's Andanças é viajes, far from being a mere geographical and historical compendium, the aspect most emphasized by his prior critics, is, in fact, the record of a man pointedly seeking greater recognition and social standing through …

Key to an understanding of the broad political developments in Ireland and Scotland in the 1650s is an appreciation of the relationship between the English governments of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate and the Irish and Scottish landed elites. Political power and landhold…

This dissertation argues that the traditional connection between chivalry, noble identity and noble violence persisted in France until the middle of the seventeenth century. It therefore contributes both to the scholarly literature on noble culture in early modern France and to …

This thesis examines the social impact of horses on French elites between 1150 and 1300. Using courtly literature, a veterinary treatise, manuscript illuminations, archeological studies, material artefacts, and account books, it explores the place of horses in elite society—prac…

From the 1490s into the 1630s, French military literature saw a transformation in the representation of French noblemen at war. Depictions of noblemen shifted from medieval knightly images to more modern militaristic ones of noblemen as captains. This alteration in the represent…

Did masculine honour exist in the private sphere in Renaissance England? This key question is the cornerstone of the dissertation. We challenge earlier interpretations of honour and privacy in order to arrive at our understanding of private masculine honour of that period. Our m…

On 8 April 1783 Catherine II annexed the Crimean khanate, introducing a predominantly Muslim population into Russia for the first time in over two hundred years. The new territory brought roughly 300,000 new subjects into the imperial fold, and Catherine endowed them with a set …

This thesis is a detailed study of the political and social history of the native earls of Strathearn from the late 1120s to the middle of the fourteenth century. It examines the impact and penetration of Norman ideas of feudalism in a region which was strongly Celtic in charact…

This dissertation has been a study of how changes in types of social stratification (over time, space, and social location) impact upon how people are ordered and relate to each other, and how they are grouped. I ask where there are competing systems of stratification, how are m…