Explore our Collection

Language
Format
Type

showing over 10,000 library results

Not made by slaves : ethical capitalism in the age of abolition /Bronwen Everill. "'East India Sugar Not Made By Slaves'-with these words on a sugar bowl, consumers of the early nineteenth century declared their power to change the global economy. Bronwen Everill examines how abolitionists in the Atlantic world shaped emerging ideas of ethical commerce to fight the system of plantation slavery that had become an engine of modern capitalism. How did consumers define ethical commerce? How did producers create markets for their products? Everill focuses on the everyday economy of the Atlantic world rather than on the more familiar boycott movements against slave-produced goods. Different approaches to making money in ethical commerce-through commercial agriculture, government contracts, international trade, and money management-shaped the relationship between production, consumption, and morality in ways that determined how slavery and freedom came to be defined in the market economy. Companies such as Macaulay & Babington in Sierra Leone, Roberts & Colson in Liberia, and Forster & Smith in the Gambia used commercial networks and government subsidies to make 'legitimate' commerce pay. Ethical commerce was also promoted by former slaves in such organizations as the Colored Free Produce Society, which promoted the idea that consumers bore responsibility for the plight of the slave and could change their buying behavior. This book illuminates global consumer society and industrial capitalism at the turn of the nineteenth century, as well as underscores the roles of slavery and antislavery movements in the development of international capitalism. It also reminds us that concerns over fair trade and labor conditions remain relevant today"--Provided by publisher. 2020. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 174/.409182109034
From a girl to a man : how Laura became Michael /Liz Hodgkinson. "Born in 1915 into the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, Laura Dillon had a difficult start in life. Her mother died when she was 10 days old and she was brought up along with her elder brother Robert by two maiden aunts, Toto and Daisy. The aunts tried to raise her as a genteel young lady who would eventually marry a suitable man with plenty of money, but Laura had other ideas. She desperately longed to be a boy, and she was also determined to get an education. Against all odds, in 1934 she won a place to St Anne's College, Oxford - then women-only. At Oxford, she realised something was seriously wrong and she could never take her place in the world as a woman. She eventually found a doctor in Sir Harold Gillies, known as the father of plastic surgery. Always sympathetic to 'nature's mistakes' he performed 13 horrendous operations on Laura over a number of years to turn her into a man. With the change of gender, and now legally a man, he became heir to the baronetey of Lismullen. Meanwhile, he trained as a doctor at Dublin University. During this time, he met and fell passionately in love with Robert (later Roberta) Cowell, whose own sex-change story became a worldwide media senstaion in 1954. The love was not returned and, rejected by Roberta, Michael became a ship's doctor for five years. This career was abruptly curtailed when the press discovered that the masculine-looking, bearded Dr Michael Dillon had begun life as a woman. A 15-year-old secret was now out in the open, and Michael was devastated beyond belief. He felt he had to 'disappear' and went to India where he eventually became the first Western man to be ordained a Tibetan monk. This meant another name change, to Lobyang Jivaka. He had always wanted to be a writer and now began to achieve a fair fegree of success. He died suddenly in India in May 1962, just a few days after completing a candid autobiography."--Provided by the publisher. 2015. • BOOK • 1 copy available. txt
German entanglements in transatlantic slavery / edited by Heike Raphael-Hernandez and Pia Wiegmink. "Germany has long entertained the notion that the transatlantic slave trade and New World slavery involved only other European players. Countering this premise, this collection re-charts various routes of German participation in, profiteering from, and resistance to transatlantic slavery and its cultural, political, and intellectual reverberations. Exploring how German financiers, missionaries, and immigrant writers made profit from, morally responded to, and fictionalized their encounters with New World slavery, the contributors demonstrate that these various German entanglements with New World slavery revise preconceived ideas that erase German involvements from the history of slavery and the Black Atlantic. Moreover, the collection brings together these German perspectives on slavery with an investigation of German colonial endeavors in Africa, thereby seeking to interrogate historical processes (or fantasies) of empire-building, colonialism, and slavery which, according to public memory, seem to have taken place in isolation from each other. The collection demonstrates that they should be regarded as part and parcel of a narrative that ingrained colonialism and slavery in the German cultural memory and identity to a much larger extent than has been illustrated and admitted so far in general discourses in contemporary Germany."--Provided by the publisher. 2019. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 306.3/620943
Italian Battleships : Conte di Cavour and Duilio Classes 1911-1956 /Erminio Bagnasco and Augusto de Toro. "Originally comprising five vessels in two related classes, these battleships entered service at the beginning of the Great War. As designed, they were powerful examples of the second generation of dreadnoughts, with a combination of twin and triple turrets producing a unique main armament of thirteen 12-inch guns. One ship, Leonardo da Vinci, was sunk by an explosion at Taranto in 1916, and although the hull was raised post-war, te plan to rebuild the ship was abandoned as it was not deemed cost-effective. However, the remaining four ships were to undergo one of the most radical reconstructions of any battleship class during the 1930s, emerging with an entirely new profile, an up-gunned main armament, more powerful machinery and all the characteristics of a modern fast battleship. In this form they became an important element in the Italian fleet that opposed the British from 1940. This book covers all the technical details of the shis, both as built and as rebuilt, but also provides an extended history of their active service, including battle plans and track charts, as well as their post-war fates. Thoroughly illustrated with photographs, ship and armament plans, detail drawings and colour camouflage schemes, the book is a fitting companion to the author's previous work, The Littorio Class."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 623.82520945
A passion for exploring new countries : Matthew Flinders & George Bass /Josephine Bastian. "'Australian history ... does not read like history', Mark Twain complained in 1897, 'but like the most beautiful lies ... It is full of surprises and adventures, incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.' He might have been thinking of Matthew Flinders and George Bass, two obscure young men from Lincolnshire, who had arrived in Sydney in 1795 determined to achieve greatness. Flinders wanted to be an explorer 'second only to Cook', Bass a naturalist, another Sir Joseph Banks, and a rich Sydney trader. For eight years these two pursued their destiny. Their voyage changed the map of Australia, and Flinders gave it its name. They were ready for even greater ventures. And then it was all over. Bass had set out on a voyage he would never finish. His life ended when he was thirty-two years old. Flinders was standing bareheaded and bedraggled before the governor of Ile de France (Mauritius), who told him that his claim to be the commander of a great expedition of discovery was frankly incredible, all lies; he was thrust into prison as a spy and detained for six and a half years. His career as an explorer ended when he was twenty-nine years old. But a strange new adventure was just beginning... Their incredible story is all true - everything in it did happen. This book is historically rigorous, yet its protagonists' fascinating and contrasting characters, the powerful background of the Napoleonic War, and the extraordinary events of their lives make it as gripping as any novel."--Provided by the publisher. 2016. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 919.40420922
The Kaisers cruisers : 1871-1918 /Aidan Dodson and Dirk Nottelmann. "While bookshelves groan with works on the capital ships of the German Third Reich, there is little in English devoted to their predecessors of the Second Reich, so this new book will fill a clear gap in its study of German cruisers of the period, from wooden-hulled corvettes, through the fusion of 'overseas' and 'home' vessels into the modern small cruisers that evolved and fought in the First World War. The book covers the full range of cruising vessels operated or ordered by the Imperial German Navy between 1871 and 1918, excluding the large cruisers, previously covered by the author's companion volume The Kaiser's Battlefleet. These include corvettes, avisos, sloops, torpedo cruisers, III- and IV-class cruisers and small cruisers, and are described and arranged in a chronological narrative. This includes both design and operational histories, the latter continuing down to the end of ships' service after the fall of Imperial Germany, and it is accompanied by an extensive selection of many rare photographs. The ships' technical details are tabulated in the second half of the book which also includes sketches of ships' internal layouts and armour and changes in appearance over time. The authors have made extensive use of archival material, particularly relating to the political and technical background to design and procurement, and present a developmental history of this ship class which is unique in the English language. It will have huge appeal to all those with an interest in the German navy and to those who have been waiting avidly for the sequel to The Kaiser's Battlefleet."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 623.8253