Halperin traces the persistence of traditional class structures during the development of industrial capitalism in Europe, and the way in which these structures shaped states and state behavior and generated conflict. She documents European conflicts between 1789 and 1914, including small and medium scale conflicts often ignored by researchers and links these conflicts to structures characteristic of industrial capitalist development in Europe before 1945. This book revisits the historical terrain of Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation (1944), however, it argues that Polanyi's analysis is, in important ways, inaccurate and misleading. Ultimately, the book shows how and why the conflicts both culminated in the world wars and brought about a 'great transformation' in Europe. Its account of this period challenges not only Polanyi's analysis, but a variety of influential perspectives on nationalism, development, conflict, international systems change, and globalization.

https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/18063/sample/9780521818063ws.pdf

War and social change in modern Europe : the great transformation revisited

This essay develops and tests a formal time-series model of the pressures leading to state breakdown in England in 1640-42. The model has several novel features: it applies a quantitative analysis to the logic of structural-historical studies of revolution that generally proceed in a qualitative fashion; it yields a strong prediction of political crisis in mid-17th-century England and of relative stability in the preceding and succeeding centuries; and it helps resolve several problems in the historiography of the English Revolution and the current theory of revolutions.

State Breakdown in the English Revolution: A New Synthesis

This thesis examines attitudes towards individuals who were born illegitimate in England between the Restoration in 1660 and the New Poor Law of 1834. It explores the impact of illegitimacy on individuals' experiences of family and social life, marriage and occupational opportunities, and sense of identity. This thesis demonstrates that illegitimacy did have a negative impact, but that this was not absolute. The stigma of illegitimacy operated along a spectrum, varying according to the type of parental relationship, the child's gender and, most importantly, the family's socio-economic status. Socio-economic status became more significant as an arbiter of attitudes towards the end of the period. 

This project uses a range of qualitative evidence - correspondence, life-writing, poor law records, novels, legal and religious tracts, and newspapers - to examine the impact of illegitimacy across the entire life-cycle, moving away from previous historiographical emphasis on unmarried parenthood, birth and infancy. This approach adds nuance to a field dominated by poor law and Foundling Hospital evidence, and prioritises material written by illegitimate individuals themselves. This thesis also has resonance for historical understanding of wider aspects of long-eighteenth-century society, such as the nature of parenthood, family, gender, or emotion, and the operation of systems of classification and 'othering'. This thesis demonstrates that definitions of parenthood and family were flexible enough to include illegitimate relationships. The effect of illegitimacy on marital and occupational opportunities indicates how systems of patronage and familial alliance operated in this period, as well as the importance of inheritance, birth or familial connection as measures of social status. Finally, it questions the assumption that condemnation of illicit sex led to community exclusion of the illegitimate child, and calls for more nuanced understandings of how historians measure and define shame and stigma.

Michael W. Mccahill

Papers

Peerage creations and the changing character of the British nobility, 1750–1830