P.D.A. Harvey is a historian of medieval rural England with a wide interest in the history of cartography; this collection of his essays brings together both these strands. It first looks at the English countryside from the 10th century to the 15th, investigating problems in particular documents, in the village community and in underlying long-term changes. How landlords drew profits from their property in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, how and why there followed changes in the way landed estates were run and in the written records they produced, what new light their personal seals can throw on medieval peasants, are all among the topics discussed, while the local management of large estates and the development of the peasant land market are themes that recur throughout. There follow essays on the way maps were brought into the management of landed estates in the 16th and 17th centuries, starting with the introduction of consistent scale into mapping, a new concept crucially important in the general history of topographical maps. The collection closes by looking at some of the traps that both documents and maps set for the historian of the English countryside.

"Enclosure marshals bold new and persuasive arguments about the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians. Revealing the Israel-Palestine landscape primarily as one of enclosure, geographer Gary Fields sheds fresh light on Israel's actions. He places those actions in historical context in a broad analysis of power and landscapes across the modern world. Examining the process of land-grabbing in early modern England, colonial North America, and contemporary Palestine, Enclosure shows how patterns of exclusion and privatization have emerged across time and geography. That the same moral, legal, and cartographic arguments were copied by enclosers of land in very different historical environments challenges Israel's current rationale as being uniquely beleaguered. It also helps readers in the United Kingdom and the United States understand the Israel-Palestine conflict in the context of their own, tortured histories"--Provided by publisher.

Every year, the Bibliography catalogues the most important new publications, historiographical monographs, and journal articles throughout the world, extending from prehistory and ancient history to the most recent contemporary historical studies. Within the systematic classification according to epoch, region, and historical discipline, works are also listed according to author’s name and characteristic keywords in their title.

P.D.A. Harvey is a historian of medieval rural England with a wide interest in the history of cartography; this collection of his essays brings together both these strands. It first looks at the English countryside from the 10th century to the 15th, investigating problems in particular documents, in the village community and in underlying long-term changes. How landlords drew profits from their property in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, how and why there followed changes in the way landed estates were run and in the written records they produced, what new light their personal seals can throw on medieval peasants, are all among the topics discussed, while the local management of large estates and the development of the peasant land market are themes that recur throughout. There follow essays on the way maps were brought into the management of landed estates in the 16th and 17th centuries, starting with the introduction of consistent scale into mapping, a new concept crucially important in the general history of topographical maps. The collection closes by looking at some of the traps that both documents and maps set for the historian of the English countryside.

This volume brings together articles (including two hitherto unpublished pieces) that Susan Reynolds has written since the publication of her Fiefs and Vassals (1994). There she argued that the concepts of the fief and of vassalage, as generally understood by historians of medieval Europe, were constructed by post-medieval historians from the works of medieval academic lawyers and the writers of medieval epics and romances. Six of the essays reprinted here continue her argument that feudalism is unhelpful to understanding medieval society, while eight more discuss other aspects of medieval society, law, and politics which she argues provide a better insight into the history of western Europe in the Middle Ages. Three range outside the Middle Ages and western Europe in considering the idea of the nation, the idea of empire, and the problem of finding a consistent and comprehensible vocabulary for comparative and interdisciplinary history.

In the present collection of articles by Malcolm Parkes two overarching concerns emerge: the palaeography of manuscript books in relation to what Parkes has previously called the 'grammar of legibility'; and the importance of considering the circumstances in which medieval books were produced, copied and read. The individual studies discuss the handwriting of individual scribes, and the evidence script can provide of the circumstances of a book's production, the effect of punctuation and layout of text on the reader's interpretation of a work, and the provision and production of books for communities of readers, both clerical and academic. From a discussion of the scribe of the Hereford Mappa Mundi to a comprehensive study of book provision in the medieval University of Oxford, a wealth of information is conveyed in these articles, now conveniently accessible in one volume, about books and their histories by one of the most knowledgeable of manuscript scholars today.

The Social Topography of a Rural Community is a micro-history of an exceptionally well-documented seventeenth-century English village: Chilvers Coton in north-eastern Warwickshire. Drawing on a rich archive of sources, including an occupational census, detailed estate maps, account books, private journals, and hundreds of deeds and wills, and employing a novel micro-spatial methodology, it reconstructs the life experience of some 780 inhabitants spread across 176 households. This offers a unique opportunity to visualize members of an English rural community as they responded to, and in turn initiated, changes in social and economic activity, making their own history on their own terms. In so doing the book brings to the fore the social, economic, and spatial lives of people who have been marginalized from conventional historical discourse, and offers an unusual level of detail relating to the spatial and demographic details of local life. Each of the substantive chapters focuses on the contributions and experiences of a particular household in the parish-the mill, the vicarage, the alehouse, the blacksmith's forge, the hovels of the labourers and coalminers, the cottages of the nail-smiths and ribbon-weavers, the farms of the yeomen and craftsmen, and the manor house of Arbury Hall itself-locating them precisely on specific sites in the landscape and the built environment; and sketching the evolving 'taskscapes' in which the inhabitants dwelled. A novel contribution to spatial history, as well as early modern material, social and economic history more generally, this study represents a highly original analysis of the significance of place, space, and flow in the history of English rural communities.

But these hand-drawn maps, often displaying elaborate cartouches and elegant coats of arms, served as far more than mere records of property ownership - they were treasured works of art, exhibited for pleasure and as symbols of wealth, and passed down from generation to generation.