Thèses sur le sujet « Tariff, Great Britain, 1830 »

This thesis focuses on three principal areas: the reception of Chopin's music in Great Britain, both during his lifetime and following his death; early sound recordings of Chopin's music, particularly those from the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries; and differing approaches to the performance of Chopin's music, including those by the composer himself, and interpretations by some of his contemporaries, students and 'grandstudents'. These three areas are presented in four chapters, which complement one another by exploring links between cultural, social and historical contexts of Chopin's music in Great Britain in the period from 1830 to 1930. The thesis addresses some of the varied features that contribute to an understanding of historically-informed performance practice, and ultimately demonstrates how these features - which allow for greater comprehension of nineteenth-century pianistic styles and techniques - have enriched the author's own interpretations. The written thesis is accompanied by the author's own performance of several of Chopin's works informed by late nineteenth-century expressive techniques.

This thesis compares criminal defences of insanity and idiocy between 1660 and 1830 in northern England and southern Scotland, regions which have been neglected by the historiographies of British crime and "insanity defences". It is explained how and why English and Scottish theoretical principles differed or converged. In practice, however, courtroom participants could obtain to alternative conceptions of accountability and mental distraction. Quantitative and qualitative analyses are employed to reveal contemporary conceptions of mental afflictions and criminal responsibility, which provide inverse reflections of "normal" behaviour, speech and appearance. It is argued that the judiciary did not dictate the evaluation of prisoners' mental capacities at the circuit courts, as some historians have contended. Legal processes were determined by subtle, yet complex, interactions between "decision-makers". Jurors could reach conclusions independent from judicial coercion. Before 1830, verdicts of insanity could represent discord between bench and jury, rather than the concord emphasised by some scholars. The activities of counsel, testifiers and prisoners also impinged upon the assessment of a prisoner's mental condition and restricted the bench's dominance. Despite important evidentiary evolutions, the courtroom authentication of insanity and idiocy was not dominated by Britain's evolving medical professions (including "psychiatrists") before 1830. Lay, communal understandings of mental afflictions and criminal responsibility continued to inform and underpin the assessment of a prisoner's mental condition. Such decisions were affected by social dynamics, such as the social and economic status, gender, age and legal experience of key courtroom participants. Verdicts of insanity and the development of Britain's legal practices could both be shaped by micro- and macro-political considerations. This thesis opens new avenues of research for British "insanity defences", whilst offering comparisons to contemporary Continental legal procedures.

Female Enterprise in Georgian Derbyshire, c.1780-c.1830 analyses quantitatively and qualitatively the continuing and increasing presence of middle-ranking women in the commercial environment of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century England. It challenges an older and more pessimistic interpretation of decline, narrowing opportunities and withdrawal from business in response to intensifying separate spheres ideology. Instead, alongside significant levels of continuity in opportunities within a narrow range of 'feminine' economic sectors, it demonstrates the increasing presence of women as owner-managers of enterprise, and the ability of women to enter and survive in 'masculine' business environments. Whilst never more than a significant minority, women are, nevertheless, regarded as material, rather than peripheral players, in the development of the late-Georgian economy. Despite the less regulated spaces and greater dynamism of more rapidly developing industrial towns (which provided women with opportunities to engage in business), emphasis is placed on a woman's ability to enter and remain in business being contingent upon her continued utilisation and reinforcement of familial, business and social connections. Whilst businesswomen were more constrained than men by legal, moral and social codes of conduct, it is evident throughout the research that the marketing, managing and organisation of their enterprises was comparable to their male counterparts. In a predominantly rural county like Derbyshire, proportionately more women were to be found engaged in enterprise than they were in towns and cities undergoing significantly greater industrial expansion and urban growth. For those women who out of necessity or choice took the decision to enter the business arena, their status and reputations as middle­ranking women were not compromised, but forged by their experiences.

This study addresses the roles women played in Glasgow during a period of economic, demographic and cultural change. Glasgow in the eighteenth century was rapidly expanding and fast establishing itself as an international trading centre and an important industrial region. Despite the considerable interest that these developments have received, the gendering of Glasgow’s economy remains relatively unexplored. This research adds to the work of redressing that imbalance, by exploring the economic activities of women of middling social status in the urban economy, focusing on women’s enterprise and also financial management as a form of work.

This thesis draws on the extensive, underexplored records of the Court of Great Sessions for the period 1730-1830 to examine the nature and extent of Welsh women’s involvement in a range of serious crimes. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, it provides an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of women indicted for various criminal activities, including crimes against the person and against the public peace, and offers explanations for their involvement, as far as the records allow. Information regarding the age, social position, and marital status of the female defendants has been compiled and analysed, and the extent to which these factors affected judicial outcomes is demonstrated. The broad geographical and chronological scope of this study also provides an insight into links between levels and types of crime involving women and their location, as well as changes over time. It is argued that there were distinctly gendered elements in the offences committed by women, the motivations attributed to them, and their treatment by the courts. There is no comparable study of female crime in the period encompassed by this thesis. Many historians of crime have wrongly assumed that experiences in Wales and England were the same, and both countries have often been analysed interchangeably. Welsh criminals, women included, have rarely been considered in their own right. Studies of crime in ‘England and Wales’ have too often failed to fully appreciate the distinctiveness of Wales. This thesis addresses these shortcomings, demonstrating that Welsh experiences of crime were unique in many respects. In so doing, it provides an unparalleled contribution to our understanding of female crime and gender relations in Wales during the long eighteenth century.

In this dissertation I consider the travels, and the travel and other non-fictional writings, of five women who travelled within Scotland during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century: the anonymous author of A Journey to the Highlands of Scotland; Sarah Murray (later known as Sarah Aust); Anne Grant of Laggan, Dorothy Wordsworth; and Sarah Hazlitt. During this period, travel and tourism in Scotland changed radically from a time when there were few travellers and little provision for those few, through to Scotland's emergence as a fully organised tourist destination. Simultaneous with these changes came changes in writing. I examine the changes in the ways in which travellers travelled in, perceived and wrote about Scotland during the period 1770-1830. I explore the specific ways in which five women travel writers represented themselves and their travels. I investigate the relationship of gender to the travel writings produced by these five women, relating that to issues of production and reception as well as to questions of discourse. Finally, I explore the relationship between the geographical location of travels and travel writing.

This study of the theatre of the British Labour Movement had its roots in 1985 when History Workshop published a collection of documents relating to the Workers' Theatre Movements in Britain and America between 1880 and 1935. In his introductory essay in Theatres of the Left, Raphael Samuel concludes that there are no traditions in British Labour Theatre except those which have been broken or lost, that There is no continuous history of socialist or alternative history to be discovered, rather a succession of moments separated from one another by a rupture (1). Since this conclusion was reached, others have repeated Samuel's assertion in varying forms. So, Andrew Davies talks of "scanty Chartist theatrical activity" and of the mainstream lab6ur movement in the 1920s remaining "uninterested in cultural matters" and Ian Saville asserts that the conception of a partisan, organised theatre devoted to spreading the socialist message throughout the working classes only began to take shape in Britain in the mid-1920s (2). Yet a cursory glance at the theatre which preceded the Workers' Theatre Movement, a glance which Raphael Samuel provides in his introductory essay on theatre and socialism in Britain, reveals I a plethora of activity in the labour movement. From the Chartists and the Owlenites in the nineteenth century, through the Socialist Sunday Schools and the Socialist League to the Clarion movement, the Independent Labour Party and the Labour Party, the theatrical activity pointed to by Samuel is startling in comparison to anything we can see today. What follows is an attempt to look at some of those moments, to look at the plays they produced and at both how and why working class political organisations looked to the theatre, to try to ascertain if they were indeed no more than broken threads and if so to try to account for why this may be the case. It is also an attempt to re-examine some of our notions of what is political theatre, for since the discovery of the work of the Workers' Theatre Movement and subsequently of the Actresses Franchise League much has been made of these as the starting point of political theatre in Britain. Yet, for a country with one of the longest traditions of organised working class movements, such assertions seem at best strange, at worst dishonest. One clue as to the reason for such claims can be found in the characterisation of the theatre of the organised working class prior to the Workers' Theatre Movement which has become common currency. It was, in the words of Colin Chambers, primarily of ethical and anti-militarist rather than directly political", or in the words of Raphael Samuel: First, the belief that it is their mission to bring the working class into contact with "great" art (ie capitalist art) and second, the tendency to produce plays which may deal with the misery of the workerss may even deal with the class struggleg but which show no way out, and which therefore spread a feeling of defeat and despair (3). Such definitions of what is (or rather what is not) political theatre rest very heavily on a notion that political is most importantly propaganda. If the theatre that existed in connection with political organisations prior to 1926 was not propagandist then it follows for some that it was not political. What follows is therefore also an attempt to uncover a different approach, by looking at the groups own justifications for their involvement in theatrical ventures as part of the struggle for socialism.

This thesis examines the work of the bishop's consistory court of the Diocese of Lichfield and Coventry through the cause papers and administrative documents generated between 1680 and 1830. These courts were extensively used through the century, business peaking in the 1730s and 1780s at between 200 and 250 causes per year. The overall pattern of the work of the courts is established in relation to its constituent elements of defamation, tithes, matrimonial, testamentary and Office causes. The social and spatial provenance of the plaintiffs is considered. Almost all of the plaintiffs were of the 'middling sort' and lower social levels, and many were women. Comparative material from Birmingham in 1770 would suggest that the users of the courts mirrored the overall occupational structure of the period. A re-evaluation of the work of the ecclesiastical courts shows that the Lichfield courts represented a source of arbitration for intractable disputes of predominantly rural origin. Causes arose from within the community, rather than being imposed externally by the church authorities, and formed a channel for public censure of those who offended against local mores, regardless of sex or social standing. Judgements in the form of sentences were often invisible and the courts have been considered to have been useless. The fact that these courts could harm neither purse nor person was not a failing, but a strength in a 'face to face' society, where an individual insisting upon the incarceration or financial deprivation of another could seriously escalate conflicts within a community. The medieval function of these courts was merely to 'correct and punish the disobedient, the unquiet and the animous', and case studies from Lichfield demonstrate that this function continued into the nineteenth century.

From 1830 to 1960 the parish ministry of the clergy of the Church of England underwent a transformation, which was expressed in the gradual abandonment of the parson model and the adoption of the professional model. Staffordshire provides a good case-study area because of its wide variety of urban and rural parishes where this development can be assessed. Amongst the many causes of the change, the population size of the parishes and the sources of clerical funding are considered to be crucially important. The evidence suggests that where parishes exceeded 2000 people and where the worshiping community became the main provider of financial support, the parson model was increasingly difficult to operate. Out of necessity, and sometimes subconsciously, the clergy developed a model with significant professional features, even though the parson model continued to be promoted as the ideal. There was a narrowing of the remit of the clergy and within their local communities they were less involved and less influential. If as a consequence the incarnational aspect of local ministry has been eroded then there are far reaching implications. This study shows how practical circumstances, such as those that relate to geography and economics, although not always recognised, have an important effect upon the practice and the theology of ministry.

This thesis examines six factors that helped to shape beliefs and expectations about death among evangelical Nonconformists in England from 1830 down to 1880: the literary conventions associated with the denominational magazine obituaries that were used as primary source material, theology, social background, denominational variations, Romanticism and the last words and experiences of the dying. The research is based on an analysis of 1,200 obituaries divided evenly among four evangelical Nonconformist denominations: the Wesleyan Methodists, the Primitive Methodists, the Congregationalists and the Baptists. The study is distinctive in four respects. First, the statistical analysis according to three time periods (the 1830s, 1850s and 1870s), close reading and categorisation of a sample this large are unprecedented and make it possible to observe trends among Nonconformists in mid-nineteenth-century England. Second, it evaluates the literary construct of the obituaries as a four-fold formula consisting of early life, conversion, the living out of the faith and the death narrative as a tool for understanding them as authentic windows into evangelical Nonconformist experience. Third, the study traces two movements that inform the changing Nonconformist experience of death: the social shift towards middle-class respectability and the intellectual shift towards a broader Evangelicalism. Finally, the thesis considers how the varying experiences of the dying person and the observers and recorders of the death provide different perspectives. These features inform the primary argument of the thesis, which is that expectations concerning death and the afterlife among evangelical Nonconformists in England from 1830 down to 1880 changed as reflections of larger shifts in Nonconformity towards middle-class respectability and a broader Evangelicalism. This transformation was found to be clearly revealed when considering the tension in Nonconformist allegiance to both worldly and spiritual matters. While the last words of the dying pointed to a timeless experience that placed hope in the life to come, the obituaries as compiled by the observers of the death and by the obituary authors and editors reflected changing attitudes towards death and the afterlife among nineteenth-century evangelical Nonconformists that looked increasingly to earthly existence for the fulfilment of hopes.

The strategic role of the Procurement function in manufacturing firms has received increased attention in the literature over the past two decades. Before the 1970s, the supply environment was seen to be stable for most firms, with no particular strategic opportunities or threats. Procurement was treated as an administrative or service function. The oil crisis in the early 1970s changed the situation, bringing in its wake acute inflation and material shortages. The 1980s saw a revolution in manufacturing with the advent of JIT, increased automation and global operations. Theoretical researchers saw the potential for a proactive and strategic role for the Procurement function. This was, however, not reflected in empirical research, which failed to find consistent evidence of firms considering Procurement as strategic. This thesis addresses the gap between precept and practice evident in the literature. A major criticism of the empirical literature is the treatment of the strategic (value) activities on the supply side and the activities of the Procurement department as synonymous. This thesis questioned that view and made a distinction between the two activities. A theoredcal framework was built up from the literature to identify the contexts in which Supply considerations would be strategic. Propositions were generated which allowed for strategic Supply activities both through the Procurement department as well as outside it. The empirical work looked at 25 UK manufacturing firms through the case study approach. The cases were scrutinised for evidence of strategic activities on the supply side, as well as the strategic importance of the Procurement department. The results confirmed that (1) Supply considerations were strategic for a majority of firms. (2) Strategic consideration of Supply depended on a number of contingent variables.(3) Strategic Supply activities were not necessarily reflected in the strategic importance given to the Procurement department.

As part of the UK’s energy system transition to a low-carbon electricity supply, decentralised energy sources such as small and medium scale wind turbines have become increasingly relevant. Decentralised energy generation has a central role in a proposed societal pathway to deliver a low-carbon energy system transition. Given the vast onshore wind energy potential of Great Britain, small and medium scale wind turbines will be a key part in this transition. With the introduction of the Feed-in Tariff (FIT) in April 2010, small and medium scale wind turbine deployment was expected to increase towards the technical potential of the technology, estimated to be up to 400,000 turbines. However, only 6,000 wind turbines have been installed in Great Britain since April 2010, highlighting there is still significant potential for small and medium scale wind turbine deployment. To fulfil this potential, an understanding of the influencing factors on previous wind turbine adoptions is required. A key part of this analysis is an investigation of the wind resource assessment methodology prescribed in the FIT policy. The Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) is designed to offer a low-cost and quick scoping tool for prospective wind turbine installations. Analysis carried out in this work shows that long-term mean near surface wind speed predictions from the MCS method have a mean percentage error of 2.36 %. Over the same sample of 124 sites across Great Britain, a Boundary Layer Scaling (BLS) method, developed in this work, using UK wind map data offered wind speed predictions with a mean percentage error of 1.43 %. While these errors appear small, they equate, in the most extreme cases, to a difference of over £500 in annual FIT payments for a single wind turbine. While the MCS method is mandated in the FIT accreditation process, there is a risk that the potential financial returns of an installation can be severely miscalculated. Using the more accurate wind speed predictions available from the BLS model, it is possible to understand the influence of available wind resource on wind turbine adoption patterns. Throughout this work, wind turbine adoptions in Great Britain from 1995 until 2015 at both local authority and statistical geography resolution were analysed. Using a regression model, it is shown that wind resource explains up to 34 % of the spatial variance in adoption patterns. A threshold wind speed of 4.5 ms−1, above which wind turbine deployment is likely, was found in the current adoption patterns. These results highlight that while wind resource is an important factor, it is not the sole factor which influences wind turbine deployment in Great Britain. Previous literature has identified a number of socio-economic factors that have influenced adopters of other microgeneration technologies. Using a regression model and additional variables, such as land availability and agricultural statistics, it is possible to understand the influence of these socio-economic factors on wind turbine adoption patterns. The Socio-Economic and Resource (SER) model developed in this work highlights that wind turbine adoptions are more likely to occur in rural areas where wind resource, availability of land and prevalence of agriculture are high. Wind adopters are more likely to be older, hold degree-level qualifications and live in a detached home. This regression model however, only accounts for up to 65 % of the spatial variance in adoption patterns. This is an improvement over using only the resource model, however, there are still additional factors which influence wind turbine adoption patterns. The additional factors examined in this research were the influence from changes to the subsidy level of the FIT and the potential visibility of neighbouring turbines on adoption patterns. The visibility of neighbouring microgeneration installations has been cited as a factor which raises awareness in adopters, a factor particularly prevalent to wind turbines, which are highly visible to close neighbours. The influence of these factors was examined using a peer effects model in areas of high installations. The model shows that reductions in the FIT subsidy level have severely affected deployment. A peer effect from visible neighbouring turbines can be seen in these clusters of installations, however, it is secondary to the level of FIT subsidy available. In some clusters, evidence for a slow diffusion of wind turbines between peers was observed. Overall, the model indicates that the subsidy level available from the FIT was more influential than the visual peer effects. However, it is anticipated that this peer effect, will increase as deployment increases. In conclusion, the research has found that adoptions of wind turbines in Great Britain are influenced by a number of factors, namely available wind resource, rurality of turbine location, income of individual adopters and the subsidy level available for energy generation. These findings indicate that the small and medium scale wind turbine market in Great Britain is approaching a critical stage in its adoption lifecycle. Additionally, the results were used to develop a number of potential deployment estimates to understand where future growth in the market may occur. To meet these potential deployment estimates, there needs to be higher levels of deployment in order to help reduce capital costs. To achieve this future deployment, the levels of subsidy available from the FIT need to be maintained, in addition to the introduction of a BLS methodology in the FIT policy to facilitate more accurate financial assessments. A reduction in capital costs and maintaining of FIT subsidies will increase the number of sites which are financially viable for wind turbine installation. Potential new sites must still have a sufficient long-term mean wind resource of 4.5 ms−1 or above to be economically viable, highlighting the need for the introduction of the more accurate BLS methodology. If these conditions occur, deployment of small and medium scale wind turbines can increase towards the technical potential and play a central role in the transition to a low-carbon electricity market in Great Britain.

This thesis examines the experiences of the sailors who worked in the Royal Navy from the 1830s to the early days of continuous service contracts. With the coming of peace, the Royal Navy had dropped rapidly in size, from nearly 950 ships in 1815 to 128 by 1821, and relied entirely on volunteers to man these ships. It nonetheless remained in operation all over the world as an instrument of British foreign policy, with ships on the West African coast in anti-slave patrols, on the China station, in Australasia and North America, and in home waters and the Mediterranean. This period also saw the start of the change from sail to steam. By 1850 there were 71 steam ships and vessels in the Royal Navy compared to 106 sailing ships. This study considers the reasons sailors volunteered to serve with the Royal Navy, their training, promotion and career prospects, as well as their daily lives on board different types of ship at home and overseas, and how these changed during the period. Continuous service contracts provided for centralised administration, which made manning ships quicker and meant that for the first time most adult sailors joined the Navy rather than a specific ship. However, many of those who served in the Royal Navy before 1853 already regarded it as their main employer and had long and successful careers within it, with some signing up for longer periods of service. Recruitment was not a problem for the Navy in this period, and rating systems, pay, training and conditions were already being improved to provide incentives for long service and the development of skills. The new contracts recognised changes that had already taken place in the way sailors saw themselves and the Royal Navy.

This thesis examines provincial literary culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, through the printed and manuscript records of reading associations, the diaries of their members, and a range of other print materials. These book clubs and subscription libraries have often been considered to be polite and sociable institutions, part of the cultural repertoire of a new urban, consumer society. However, this thesis reconsiders reading associations' values and effects through a study of the reading materials they provided, and the reading habits they encouraged; the intellectual and social values which they embodied; and their role in the performance of gender, local and national identities. It questions what politeness meant to associational members, arguing for the importance of morality and order in associational conceptions of propriety, and downplaying their pursuit of structured sociability. This thesis examines how provincial individuals conceived of their relationship to the reading public, arguing that associations provided a tangible link to this abstract national community, whilst also having implications for the 'public' life of localities and families. The thesis also considers how these institutions interacted with enlightenment thought, suggesting that both the associations' reading matter and their philosophies of corporate improvement enabled 'ordinary' men and women to participate in the Enlightenment. It assesses English and Scottish associations, which are usually subjected to separate treatment, arguing that they constituted a shared mechanism of British literary culture in this period. More than simply a 'polite' performance, reading, through associations, was fundamentally linked to status, to citizenship, and to cultural participation.

Anglo-American kinship, as a set of historical continuities linking the United States to Great Britain and as a reckoning of relatedness, constituted a valuable cultural resource for Southerners as they contemplated their place within the American nation and outside in the nineteenth century. Like the more conventional calculations of consanguinity and familial belonging it referenced, the Anglo-American kinship was contingent, convoluted, and, not infrequently, contested. Articulated at various times by masters and former slaves, ministers and merchants, plantation mistresses and politicians, this sense of belonging to an imagined transatlantic family transcended the boundaries of gender, race, and class as readily as it traversed national borders. Though grounded in biogenetic factors, the language of Anglo-American kinship encompassed claims of belonging predicated on confessional faith, language, and institutions as well as blood. This thesis considers the interaction between conceptions of Anglo-American kinship and the formation of Southern national identity, both unionist and separatist, between 1830 and 1890 by examining institutions and social rituals that both inculcated filiopietism and constructed Southerness in the Civil War era and beyond. The subjects under consideration in this study include the role of European travel in forging Southern distinctiveness before the war, ring tournaments and the ethos of medieval chivalry they promoted, the Protestant Episcopal Church and its role in managing the sectional crisis, postbellum immigration societies and their vision of the plantation South remade in the image of British manors, and the role that state historical associations played in reunion and the entrenchment of the Lost Cause mythology as the predominant historical framework for interpreting the American Civil War.

This thesis investigates the nature of work culture and industrial relations at the Linwood car plant during the period 1963-1981. In Part One, Chapter One provides an overview of the historical debate over the use of oral testimony as well as introducing the methodology employed within the oral history project encompassed within the thesis. Chapter Two provides an analysis of the nature of work at the Linwood car plant and the ways in which this impacted on behaviour and attitudes in the workplace. This is further developed in Chapter Three where the focus is on organisational mischief, and consideration is given to the nature, consequences and explanations for this behaviour. The analysis developed in Part One, focuses on the dominant explanations for problematic industrial relations based on the notion of a ‘clash of work cultures’ due to an absence of intrinsic rewards in automated assembly-line work. Within the thesis such dominant narratives are not entirely supported by the Linwood sample, as a wide variety of attitudes towards work are exhibited, leading the thesis to question the validity of the categories of intrinsic and extrinsic reward. In Part Two of the thesis there is a shift in focus as the analysis concentrates on structures of authority at Linwood and the impact on industrial relations. Chapter Four gives consideration to the influence of historical contingency on management decision-making. Part of the 1976 government rescue package was a Planning Agreement incorporating employee participation in management decision-making that articulated with the Labour government’s manifesto commitment to industrial democracy. Yet throughout the different phases of ownership, interactions between management and workers at the Linwood plant explored in this thesis reveal a dichotomy between the rhetoric and reality of industrial democracy and worker participation. The final chapter of the thesis offers an exploration of shop floor industrial politics, and causes of strikes, to highlight the narratives of tension underpinning interactions at Linwood. The thesis provides a nuanced approach, highlighting variety of experience and importantly a complex interplay of interests shaping work culture and the nature of industrial relations in the car plant.

Affordability of energy in the domestic sector is the product of three interrelated factors - level of household income, level of energy bills (which are a product of prices and levels of energy demand, mediated by tariffs and the retail market), and the amount of energy that a household needs to maintain a healthy living environment. This thesis focusses on the factors of affordability which are most relevant to the energy policy which are energy bills and energy efficiency, both of which are considered in the context of household income. Affordability of energy in Great Britain is important for separate, but over-lapping reasons. Firstly, it has important political impacts - as energy prices continue to rise, energy is repeatedly highlighted as one of the biggest financial concerns for households (uSwitch, 2013; YouGov, 2015; DECC, 2014f), leading affordability of energy to become an increasingly political issue (Lockwood, 2016). Secondly, affordability of energy has social implications which stem from the fact that the impact of rising energy bills is felt particularly strongly by those on low incomes and in inefficient homes – the fuel poor. In spite of it being twenty-five years since Brenda Boardman published her first book defining the issue of fuel poverty (Boardman, 1991), millions of households in Great Britain today still cannot afford adequate amounts of energy. This is significant because being able to afford access to basic levels of energy services such as warmth and light is essential for maintaining physical and mental health (Harrington et al., 2005; Stockton and Campbell, 2011). Thirdly, affordability has important implications for design of the energy system –a system focussed on minimising long-term costs, both through micro-scale features such as efficient network revenue regulation which keep costs down on a year-by-year basis, and macro-scale aspects such as through the development of a low-demand, highly flexible energy system which has the potential to bring costs down in the long term (Sanders et al., 2016), is likely to differ from one which in which affordability is less of a focus, or only a focus over the short term. This thesis responds to a gap in the literature in relation to the role that governance plays in affecting levels of affordability of energy for domestic consumers in Great Britain. It examines the impact of governance on energy prices and tariffs, and the impact of governance on energy efficiency of the housing stock in Great Britain. Both of these are examined in the context of levels of household income. Greater insight is gained by examining the impact of the energy governance structure in Denmark on Danish domestic energy efficiency standards, which are widely accepted to be very good (IEA, 2011). 7 This thesis makes use of existing academic and policy literature in tandem with data from fifty-six interviews with individuals from across the energy sectors in Great Britain and Denmark. The governance structure of energy in Great Britain is shown to be, on balance, not supportive of delivering affordable energy to domestic consumers. A number of specific issues within the current governance structure in Great Britain are identified. These include the presence of a limiting narrative, whereby policymakers consider affordability to be achieved principally through delivery of low prices; insufficient institutional capacity within OFGEM to keep network prices low, and monitor suppliers’ costs and profits; lack of wholesale market transparency; an anti-interventionist ideology leading to weak energy efficiency requirements for new-build and private rental properties; suppliers as poor executors of energy efficiency policy; weak demand-side interests; tariffs designed around the needs of suppliers, not consumers; an over-reliance on an uncompetitive retail market; a lack of institutional capacity amongst policy makers regarding energy efficiency, and network regulation; and weak consumer representation. A number of recommendations are put forward, including the fostering of a new narrative centred on energy efficiency; the redesign of tariffs to better protect the interests of consumers; the reallocation of responsibility for energy efficiency to local authorities; the development of greater institutional capacity among policymakers; the support for a more interventionist ideology supporting use of regulation; financial support for energy efficiency retrofit; the fostering of greater policy stability; development of new tariff structures; and the formation of a new consumer representative. Overall this thesis demonstrates that affordability of energy in unlikely to be delivered to domestic consumers in Great Britain unless significant changes are made to the governance structure of the energy sector.

This thesis explores divorce and judicial separation as it occurred in nineteenth-century Scotland, between the years 1830 and 1890, predating the phenomenon it came to be in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As Scotland’s history has frequently been incorporated within a general history of Great Britain, this thesis separates it from the widely researched accounts of marriage and marital breakdown in England to highlight the different approach to regulating marriage, divorce and separation under Scots law. Applying Scotland’s distinctive legal, demographic and economic context has provided a social and gender history of marriage breakdown unique to the country, and filled a historiographical gap for the nineteenth century. This research will be presented through separate analyses of divorce for adultery, desertion—both official and unofficial, and marital cruelty in the civil and criminal courts. To present individual experiences inside the courtroom, Court of Session divorce and separation cases are used and supplemented with newspaper accounts of Court of Session trials. To provide context to the related discourses, Parliamentary papers and newspaper articles are used. Lastly, to address the unofficial instances of marital breakdown, criminal court trials of wifebeating and poor relief applications from deserted wives are also analysed. This thesis argues that despite comparably liberal divorce and separation laws established in the sixteenth century, legal, economic, social and cultural factors and discourses imposed on the accessibility of these legal forms of marital breakdown.

This study examines the value of travellers’ written records of their trips with specific reference to the journals of five French travellers who visited Scotland between 1780 and 1830. The thesis argues that they contain material which demonstrates the merit of journals as historical documents. The themes chosen for scrutiny, life in the rural areas, agriculture, industry, transport and towns, are examined and assessed across the journals and against the social, economic and literary scene in France and Scotland. Through the evidence presented in the journals, the thesis explores aspects of the tourist experience of the Enlightenment and post -Enlightenment periods. The viewpoint of knowledgeable French Anglophiles and their receptiveness to Scottish influences, grants a perspective of the position of France in the economic, social and power structure of Europe and the New World vis-à-vis Scotland. The thesis adopts a narrow, focussed analysis of the journals which is compared and contrasted to a broad brush approach adopted in other studies.

My dissertation argues that national tropes are continually in a state of flux as they are employed to respond to historical, socio-political and cultural events and trends, and demonstrates that their state at a specific moment encapsulates struggles between various concepts of national identity. I trace shifts in the configuration of Anglo-Scottish relations by undertaking a microanalysis of two specific recurring tropological categories - familial and homosocial tropes — in a number of key moments in cross-border relations between 1707 and 1830. The first chapter, directed at the years surrounding the Union of Parliaments, traces the suppression of cross-border dissonance in homosocial egalitarian tropes which define Anglo-Scottish relations in the work of pro-union pamphleteers, and contrasts this strategy of containment with the disruptive presence of familial tropes in the pamphlets of anti-union writers. The second chapter traces the reappearance of this conflict in the decade following Culloden. Roderick Random, written from the margins by Tobias Smollett, reveals a discomfort with unifying tropes, although it ends with a cursory gesture towards a national marital union. James Ramble, in contrast, written by the English Edward Kimber, deflects dissonance onto Jacobitism, suggesting through tropes of friendship that all aspects of Anglo-Scottish relations are seamlessly integrated into British unity. Chapters three and four foreground the 1760s, a decade in which Scottish agency, in the person of Lord Bute, the Lord Treasurer, seems to reach new heights. Yet it is also a decade of rampant Scotophobia, incited by the Wilkites to undermine Bute's authority. Tropological warfare is an important element of this rhetorical conflict. In chapters five and six, I uncover two competing concepts of Britishness, primarily created by English and Irish writers, which emerge in the 1790s. The first engages with homosocial tropes to foreground Scottish agency in nation-building and empire-building projects, but does so at the expense of a distinct Scottish culture. The second, also produced by English and Irish writers, reifies and celebrates Scottish culture through tropes of cross-border courtship, but tends to represent the emergent concept as endangered, lacking national agency. Chapter six analyzes the Scottish response to this tropological binary.