Books in the The Past & Present Book Series series

Peter Coss brings to life the day-to-day domestic life of the medieval gentry, from their obsession with display, to social codes of conduct and the treatment of guests. Drawing on the rich and rarely studied archive of the Multon family of Frampton, Coss provides an essential contribution to the study of 'gentry culture'.

Presents an account of West African slavery in Cuba and Bahia from 1790, arguing that the large numbers of slaves brought to the same plantations from the same areas of West Africa was a factor in many of the slave uprisings of the time, connecting people and events in a fascinating and unique narrative.

This volume examines the concept of bushido - 'the way of the samurai' - to provide an overview of modern Japanese social, cultural, and political history

Studies the way in which status symbols operated as a key tool for defining and redefining identities, relations, and power in the hierarchical world of Louis XIV's court.

The first comparative account of the engagement of all major European empires with Islam in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, exploring an array of themes, ranging from the accommodation of Islam under imperial rule to Islamic anti-colonial resistance and contributing to our understanding of religion and power in the modern world.

Inferior Politics explores how social policy was created in Britain in a period when central government was not active in making it. Despite the lack of consensus, there was a lively and inclusive 'politics' of social policy-making, in which 'inferior' officers of government (what we might call 'local authorities') figured prominently.