Soon after the publication of Ariel, Rodó started work on what he privately called Proteo, a project which shared a common pedagogic purpose with that 1900 essay. Rodó conceived of the task as a series of volumes but only the first, Motivos de Proteo, was published in his lifetime, in 1909. This is generally seen by critics as his most ambitious book and Rodó himself referred to it in those terms to some of his closer correspondents. In January 1904, he informed Juan Francisco Piquet that he devoted any time he had available to “sculpting” his Proteo, and that he was confident that this would be “mi obra de más aliento, hasta hoy” (my work of greatest scope so far) (OC 1342); in a later letter to Piquet, probably of July 1904, he stated in confidence, and with uncharacteristic immodesty, that the work would “remain” in the literature of the continent, “superando acaso el éxito de Ariel” (perhaps even surpassing the success of Ariel) (1347). In a further correspondence sometime between these two, Rodó provided the same friend with a taster of the contents and style of his book, which would alternate moral philosophy and descriptive prose, tales and apothegms, biographical sketches and psychological observations; the writing is both sophisticated and varied, and draws both on the gravity of traditional Spanish prose and on the lightness and elegance of its French counterpart, generally “recorriendo las inflexiones más diversas del sentimiento y el lenguaje” (covering the most diverse variations of feeling and language) (1343).

Rodó went on to add that the work's essential variety in form and content is nevertheless controlled by a clear structure and an overarching goal. He provided more detail of the overall subject in another contemporary letter (March 1904), this time to Unamuno, saying it related to “‘la conquista de uno mismo’: la formación y el perfeccionamiento de la propia personalidad” (“the conquest of the self”: the formation and refinement of one's own personality) (1393).

AS with widows, offspring who served as executors often acted generously. One such was Richard Haddon who, in the middle decades of the fifteenth century, provided for the souls of his parents, John and Christine Haddon, with remarkable liberality. None of the Haddons has a surviving will, so the benefaction list in the All Saints’ Church Book and various parish deeds furnish most of what we know concerning this family – a perspective which, in this case, sheds welcome light on a productive collaboration between parishioners and clergy. But this story has a sting in its tail: where the desire for commemoration ordinarily exercised a constructive influence, in more difficult circumstances, parishioners – both clerical and lay – might put pressure on individuals, or even punish them, by ensuring that intercession be restricted or even withdrawn.

And so without the Grace of God: Calculating obscurity

We focus upon two generations of the Haddon family. The first generation, John Haddon, vintner, and his wife Christine, had died by the time that the story starts to unfold in the early 1440s. Our protagonist is their son, Richard, also a vintner, who remained active in All Saints’ until the early 1470s. When working for his parents’ benefit, he regularly acted with his co-executor, John Gyllard, who served as Prior of the Kalendars’ Guild until his death in 1451. Gyllard's contribution demonstrates how serving the Kalendars’ interests worked to the parish's advantage, for Richard Haddon and John Gyllard collaborated closely not only for the benefit of John and Christine Haddon but also to profit All Saints’ as well as the Kalendars.

THE TESTIMONY OF THE BENEFACTION LIST

As noted above, All Saints’ benefaction list survives in two redactions, one compiled c.1480 and the other very early in the sixteenth century; each arranges material under headings, for instance treating clerical donors separately from lay benefactors. John Gyllard surfaces in the first redaction itemising the clergy's contribution. On his own account, he clearly sought the profit of his host parish. He embellished liturgical celebration within the church by donating both a paxbread of silver, said to weigh 9. oz., and a pair of processionals; he also improved parish fittings by commissioning what are referred to as ‘the four seats in the Cross aisle’ at a cost of ￡3.

After Ariel, and conscious of the success of his essay both locally and in the Spanish-speaking world at large, Rodó started work on his most ambitious book, Motivos de Proteo, eventually published in 1909. This is also a time of intensified personal involvement with party politics, first as he continued to campaign with other young men for the unification and galvanization of the Colorados; and then, from March 1902 to November 1904, in the first of three periods as a member of parliament for the party. A highlight of this political activity was Rodó's participation in a polemical debate following the decision of the government's Charity Commission to ban all crucifixes from public hospitals. Rodó was asked for his opinion, and he provided it in a disapproving letter to the newspaper La Razón in early July 1906; in reaction, a member of the Liberal Club, Pedro Díaz, gave a lecture refuting Rodó's position. In September, Rodó countered with a series of nine further letters to the same newspaper; these, plus his prologue to a book on religion, were published later that year as a volume entitled Liberalismo y jacobinismo.

We shall approach this work by considering, first, the wider political and religious background; second, Rodó's argument against both the original decision and the response from Díaz, a brilliant and highly committed politician who was three years younger than his opponent and would, four years later, become the only ever deputy of the short-lived Liberal Party. In the third place, and bearing in mind Rodó's own long relationship with spirituality, idealism and, especially as a child, with Catholicism, we shall seek to answer the question: how religious was he?

The Political and Religious Context

A few months after the publication of Ariel in February, on 19 June 1900, President Juan Lindolfo Cuestas appointed Rodó as interim director of the National Library while the incumbent was on sick leave. He held the post for two months; at the same time, Rodó was part of a working party of four (including Víctor Pérez Petit) charged with the revision of the institution's catalogue system and general regulations, after which he remained on the library's advisory board for two years.

In 1987 the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) called a national mineworkers strike: an epic twenty-one-day showdown between the five-year old NUM and the far more established South African mining industry backed by the might of the apartheid state. One of the many consequences of this strike was that some forty thousand workers lost their jobs. The dependence of South Africa’s mining industry on migrant labour meant these workers returned to homes scattered across the sub-region, with the largest numbers returning to the rural Transkei, in South Africa, and the small neighbouring mountain Kingdom of Lesotho.

In the aftermath, and as a response to these events, a job creation unit was established within NUM, but the job losses from the strike proved to be just the start of a period of restructuring in the mining industry during which over three hundred thousand jobs were shed over the next fifteen years. This period also coincided with dramatic changes in South Africa. At the start of the period, the political system of white minority rule known as apartheid was still in place; by the end of it, South Africa’s transition to democracy was nearly a decade old. Over the same period, democratic struggles were also unfolding in neighbouring states such as Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland – with their fates closely tied to events in South Africa.

While this book relates the story of one particular job creation initiative in a particular southern African and historical context, it nevertheless has wider implications and contemporary relevance for enterprise development strategies that aim to create jobs and reduce poverty in developing contexts. A core part of this challenge involves grappling with the role of markets in development, and whether and under what conditions enterprise development strategies in rural and peri-urban contexts can provide pathways out of poverty: or simply serve to lock people into it instead. These issues remain a current development priority.

The story that unfolds in this book is told from a particular perspective: I joined NUM in 1988, tasked with heading the new job creation unit and creating alternative forms of employment for workers dismissed in the strike.

The fifteenth century in European history is traditionally seen as marking the end of medieval times and the dawn of a new age, “the renaissance”. The “the” is important, because other “renaissances”, such as that dubbed Carolingian and that ascribed to the twelfth century, are distinguished by a temporal qualifier not apparently needed by their later incarnation. The significance of the last of the renaissances, however, is that it was accompanied by the significant changes in economy and society that truly mark out new times. The scientific and artistic progress recorded in each renaissance was based on recovering the lost secrets of the ancients, and fifteenth-century humanists were no less anxious than Charlemagne that their work should be understood in this light, not as a revolution that marked the beginning of a new age. This is ironic in light of the massive transformation getting underway during these decades. By the sixteenth century, world-changing events included the first overseas expansion of Christian states, led by Portugal (which had started early in the fifteenth century) and then by newly unified Spain, leading to the extortion of vast wealth from the Americas at the cost of the virtual annihilation of the native populations. While the “universal” authority of the Church now reached new continents, in Europe it was forever overturned by the protestant reformation, which was also deployed as cover by many rulers to reinforce their efforts to establish independent states. The biggest changes simultaneously occurred in society and the economy, where feudal social structures gave way to the progressive enrichment of traders, merchants and manufacturers and the continuing development of capitalism. This new class was achieving a weight in society that would in due course assert a political voice. Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press brought mass production of reading material to Europe from the middle of the fifteenth century with growing social impact. Some of the military engineering texts discussed here were among that material. Countries that did not develop this way (even if printing was already available, as in China) would be overtaken in economic, scientific and technological progress by Europe for the first time, Ming China being a classic example once the dynasty resolved to close itself off from the outside world in mid-century.

The contribution of foreigners to the development of Sweden during the 17th century has been firmly established for some time. The roles of Dutch and German migrants have been singled out in particular. However, an appreciation of the significance of Scottish immigration to Sweden in this period is much less widespread, and development of this has been largely left to the efforts of Scottish historians in recent times. Comprehension of the role played by the English has remained largely overlooked. Continuing the study of British migrants to Sweden during this period advances our understanding of migrant groups as a whole. By viewing the experience of the English and Scots we increase our knowledge of mobility during the period. This is achieved in two respects: in regard both to mobility through migration and mobility through social elevation. We also begin to touch upon ideas of interaction in several ways: how the British elements of Swedish migrant communities interacted with members of their host society, as well as with other foreign ethnicities and members of their own nation. Furthermore, the study of British migrants enriches our understanding of Sweden as a place of cultural diversity and a centre of impact of foreign activity.

This chapter outlines some of the key features in the historiography of British migration to Sweden in the 17th century. The discovery of unexploited archival material in Sweden, as well as the undertaking of a new research project focusing on Anglo-Swedish trade in this period, warrants an evaluation of the subject. The chapter therefore seeks to readdress previous conclusions, whilst querying how new material might add to present understandings.

Two days after the death of Louis IX at Tunis on 25 August 1270, his brother Charles of Anjou arrived from Sicily. Two months later, on 30 October, as Dunbabin records, ‘he made an agreement with the emir of Tunis which clearly benefited the king of Sicily if no-one else; on the following day the crusade was abandoned. The bulk of the army, including the new king Philip III, retreated with Charles to Sicily, and from there made its way back to France. Vast amounts of money and manpower had been expended for no gain to Christendom.’ Charles was widely blamed, both for the abandonment of the crusade and for the decision to head for Tunis in the first place. His treaty with the emir brought him an annual tribute in gold, some trading privileges and the banishment from Tunis of some major figures of Ghibelline sympathies who had fled there after the battle of Tagliacozzo in 1268, and he was accused of diverting the crusade for his own purposes. Dunbabin argues that the second instance the case against him is weak; but ‘the total abandonment of any expedition to the Holy Land or to Egypt can be fairly laid at Charles's door’. This, she reports, ‘evoked sharp criticism in some quarters, most vociferously in the entourage of the English prince Edward who appeared to take his agreed part in the crusade just after the army arrived back in Sicily’. Charles continued to figure in the crusading context for nearly another twenty years in criticisms of his conduct, both by the Catalan troubadour Cerveri de Girona in the aftermath of the Council of Lyon in 1274 and by an unknown troubadour just before the outbreak of the War of the Sicilian Vespers (Easter 1282). The latter war would then spark off a political, internecine crusade against Christians in Spain, the so-called Aragonese crusade.

Charles of Anjou

Criticism of Charles of Anjou in the entourage of the English prince Edward is borne out by a particularly vitriolic sirventes composed by the troubadour Austorc de Segret and sent through a jongleur to Viscount Arnaud-Othon II of Lomagne and Auvillars in Gascony (BdT 41.1).

From a position of almost total anonymity in the tenth century, there are records of the names of engineers, builders, master craftsmen and master miners in the twelfth. There is still no evidence that a separate category of military engineer was coming into existence, and there remain numerous accounts of events requiring engineering in which no engineer was named, but over the course of around 150 years between the middle of the eleventh and the end of the twelfth centuries a trend towards both the identification of individuals and a certain level of specialisation can be suggested that is not entirely due to the accidental survival of the records. In this chapter I will present the economic background, the possible relevance of advances in science and the evidence for technological improvement. I will then review what happened in actual campaigns and the role of the engineer within these contexts.

An Age Of Economic Growth – And Some Of Its Consequences

Underpinning these and many other important historical developments was a long period of economic growth rooted in a substantial increase in population, leading to extensive clearance of lands as well as the settlement of new territories – one feature of this period was a powerful drive eastwards by German rulers to take over the lands and peoples of the Slavs in what is now eastern Germany, as well as the establishment of new monarchical states in largely Slav lands such as Bohemia (which was part of the empire), Poland, and the western Balkans, and Magyar Hungary (which were not). It is not possible to more than guess at the size of medieval populations, based on very tenuous evidence, but it is generally accepted that in the tenth century Europe was a very empty continent by comparison with later ages and there was plenty of uncultivated land to spare. It has been argued that the return of (relative) stability following the ending of the Scandinavian, Magyar and North African raids that had caused disruption and insecurity in many areas, and the establishment of new political entities (which sometimes included the former invaders, as in Normandy and England) exercising control over their states, based in agriculturally fertile areas, encouraged the production of an economic surplus beyond what was required for subsistence.

Introduction

Following Aristotle, I understand the rhetoric of Old French and Occitan crusade songs to comprise their stylistic devices and ideological content. If, as I believe, literary and philological studies ought to make use of the discipline of discourse analysis, this is particularly important for a crusading text, which is essentially a rhetorical appeal for action. It is from the perspective of analysis of literary discourse that I shall examine the chief characteristics of the argumentation elaborated by the authors of crusade songs, and I shall also attempt to assess the extent to which they can be regarded as an echo of crusade preaching.

In the context of the present project a crusade song is understood as any lyric text linked to the phenomenon of crusading and to the political, religious or social history of the expeditions. This study will attempt to describe the art of writing associated with crusading: in other words, the art of writing the crusade. I shall not therefore address the question of the typology of the genre, but proceed via themes rather than sub-genres. The crusade song is a thematically based poetic genre and includes texts linked to other genres such as the canso or sirventes, and it presents an emblematic case of the interference of registers.

The great majority of pieces include a crusading appeal urging the listener to follow the poet's example. Many of the texts are ideological – political or religious – and are assimilable to the sirventes. They therefore very often constitute a reasoned argument based on the idea of proof of the need to take the cross or correct the conduct of the crusade, whether or not this ‘proof’ is rational. But there are perceptible changes in the articulation of this discourse, and hence the argumentation underpinning it, as it aims to convince and sway the audience. Such changes are bound up with the chronological development of the genre and hence, for political reasons, its renewal, as well as with the events of the crusades and its individual authors.