The Early Modern British Isles, 1485-1691: Society and Politics in Five Nations

The project aimed to facilitate the completion of two chapters a book dealing with the social and political history of Britain and Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to be published by Polity Press. This survey work aims to be accessible to a wide audience. The book as a whole focuses especially on the interactions of the inhabitants of the islands on the personal, local and national levels.
One of the chapters covered by the award considers the issues of migration within and beyond the British Isles, the stereotypes the English, Irish, Cornish, Scots and Welsh held about one another, and the ideas each group held about their own characteristics, languages, history and national identity.
The second deals with interactions within families: ideas about kinship, the notion of fictive kinship (bonds created by baptism, fosterage and other ritual events), the making of marriage and experiences within it, relationships between parents, grandparents, children, siblings, in-laws and step-relations, the responsibilities of individuals within families, and the gendering of roles in societies where patriarchy was a central organising principle.