8,936 research outputs found
Apprenticeship in England
No full textEngland was the only pre-modern European country with national legislation covering apprenticeship (the 1562 Statute of Artificers), setting unusually long and uniform seven-year terms. England was also unusual because around three-quarters of all English urban apprentices went to London for their training. Apprenticeships were regulated by a combination of guild rules and private contracts. The latter set individual conditions within the general framework. English apprenticeship fees varied widely, depending on the trade and the master’s reputation. Apprentices were rarely tutored by relatives and commonly choose other trades than their parents had exercised. Many apprentices left their masters early; only those aspiring to become masters themselves stayed on for the whole seven-year period. There was no formal examination at the end, nor other form of certification
Apprenticeship and economic growth in early modern England
No full textIn this extract from the introduction to his new book, The Market for Skill: Apprenticeship and Economic Growth in Early Modern England, Patrick Wallis explains how apprenticeship transformed England’s workforce from the 16th to 19th century, fostering human capital, innovation, urbanisation and economic growth. The Market for Skill: Apprenticeship and Economic Growth in Early Modern England. Patrick Wallis. Princeton University Press. 2025
Introduction: Apprenticeship in Early Modern Europe
No full textApprenticeship has been discussed from two angles. The first sees apprenticeship as a response to the challenges of adolescence: how can unruly youths, primarily males, be tamed and prepared for adulthood? The second angle looks at apprenticeship as an economic phenomenon: how can youngsters be prepared for skilled jobs? Training usually happens on the job. But how it was organised, under what conditions and with what consequences for the youths and masters involved varied significantly in the past. A range of institutions such as guilds, private notarial contracts and public courts all influenced the structure of apprenticeship before the twentieth century. This book examines their roles, and the characteristics of the system they shaped: what were the social profile and the future prospects of apprentices? Despite the centrality of apprenticeship to the life cycle of Europe’s artisans and economic activity across the continent, there are remarkably few systematic comparisons or surveys of the topic. New quantitative and qualitative evidence helps the contributors to this volume to investigate apprenticeship in novel ways for a wide range of settings across Europe, and in this chapter we set out the main issues in understanding the social and economic history of apprenticeship
Editorial: On Trauma
No full textThe idea of trauma has become so used in the public sphere as to become almost meaningless in its ubiquity. But this is also to say that we live in a historical moment in which society feels bound to its traumatic experiences. Trauma, it would seem, has become a cultural trope. Furthermore, contemporary trauma theory suggests a performative bent in traumatic suffering itself – the trauma-symptom is, after all, a rehearsal, re-presentation, re-performance of the trauma-event. This is not to trivialise traumatic suffering or detract from the insistence that trauma narratives must adequately, truthfully, be borne witness to so as not to diminish the weight of the original event. ‘On Trauma’ explores a range of instances in which performance becomes a productive frame through which to address traumata and/or where trauma theory illuminates performance. With papers examining topics from African funeral rituals to witnessing, and ethics to Argentinean escraches, this issue of Performance Research benefits from a cross-cultural dynamic which brings together academic articles on and artistic responses to performance that embodies, negotiates, negates or provokes trauma
Introduction: Medicine and the market in England and its colonies, c.1450 - c.1850
No full textWhat was the medical marketplace? What is a 'medical marketplace'? This book provides the first critical examination of medicine and the market in pre-modern England, colonial North America and British India. Chapters cover the most important themes in the social history of medicine from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, addressing healthcare in town and country, among rich and poor, women and men, and examining both patients and practitioners. Drawing on recent developments in the history of exchange, they offer new understandings of the ways in which diverse aspects of healthcare operated and changed in this period of social and economic transformation. Each chapter offers significant new interpretation of its field based upon a critical examination of the applicability of the medical marketplace model and presents substantial new research in an accessible styl
Art, Biography, Sexuality: Patrick Procktor and Keith Vaughan
No full textThis critical review forms a reflection on the research published within the following publications:
Patrick Procktor: Art and Life (Unicorn Press, 2010)
Keith Vaughan: The Mature Oils 1946-1977, (Sansom & Co., 2012)
The research is on two artists, Patrick Procktor (1936-2003), and Keith Vaughan (1912-1977). The monograph on Procktor – previously one of the least documented of the generation of artists who came to prominence in London in the Sixties – positions him in a history of art from which he had been notably absent. The research on Vaughan asserts a new reading of his work, one that is both deeper and more nuanced in its analysis of the ways in which personal experience and sexuality are encoded autobiographically within his work. Crucially, in both artists biography and work are symbiotically linked; the research therefore examines the links between life and art.
Revisionary in intent, the work examines trajectories of experience of gay British (or rather, English) artists in the twentieth century, artists who sought to express themselves and forge careers within the constraints of a heteronormative society, albeit one in which attitudes to sexuality were undergoing change. As gay men, both were constrained by the social mores of their times, and each used painting as a means to affirm personal and sexual identities. A key research interest is in the ways in which sexuality and persona are reflected in critical responses to the artist’s work: in Vaughan, Procktor and other gay male artists of the period. The writing on both Procktor and Vaughan examines the relationship between their personal and professional/artistic lives, framed within a broader socio-political and art historical context. It asserts the place of biography as a means to understand and form new readings of the work. The work adds substantially to the literature and wider discourse on post-war British painting and social history
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