The background to English lies in the forms of Germanic taken from the North Sea rim to the island of Britain in the fifth century. In this introduction the chapters of this volume dealing with the roots of this input, both in earlier Germanic and in more distant Indo-European are discussed. Contact with Latin, Celtic, Scandinavian and northern medieval French in the several centuries after settlement in England by the Germanic tribes is a major focus among the chapters of the present volume as is the nature of the contact situation, which is regarded as responsible for the transfer effects which can be observed. The typological reorientation which English experienced is a further focus in the volume as is the later development of the history of English as a subject of academic research. In addition, there are several ‘long view’ chapters which present overviews of linguistic areas and levels for the entire history of English.

This chapter introduces the growing field of world history and its intellectual predecessors to make the argument why Greco-Roman society needs to find its place within this fast evolving discourse. Recontextualizing the classical experience within a wider world history will allow Greco-Roman history to be aligned more closely with the global norm, rather than remain an anomaly in European history. But ancient history does not simply have to be at the receiving end of the putative dialogue. The field has a long prior record of engaging in a creative dialogue both with anthropology and historical sociology. The former favoured the study of culture; the latter promoted societal comparison. Currently, world history is torn between a focus on cultural connection and on historical comparison. Building on the past experience of classics, this chapter will equally show how a glance at Greco-Roman society may help the field of world history both to overcome this division. An Afro-Eurasian arena is identified as the context for parallel and interconnected developments of peasantries and slavery, universal empires, literary cultures, world trade in charismatic goods and rebellions.

The courts of universal emperors presided over the spread of cosmopolitan elite cultures, literary, artistic and conspicuous. The Indologist Sheldon Pollock has studied this phenomenon for classical Sanskrit, but his vision of cosmopolitan and classical language cultures can easily be extended across Afro-Eurasia to comprise Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian and Classical Chinese, among others. Starting from the Alexander Romance and the image of Orpheus, the chapter explores how Greco-Roman literary culture created an elite language cosmopolis, much as the other examples mentioned here. Rather than studying Greek and Latin, as is often done, as the precursor of the modern Romance and national languages, it is rather in this context of imperial civilizational cosmopoleis that they should be analyzed. Themes include the formation of classical canons and elite distinction, the size of literary cultures based on manuscript rather than the printing press, and the development of transcendental and monotheist forms of religious belief such as Christianity, Buddhism and Islam.

This chapter examines how the local issue of notes, wage payments, and the brokerage of bills of exchange over longer distances came together in the form of county banks after 1760. Certain tradesmen and industrialists moved from financing their own businesses to providing finance on a more exclusive basis to their communities in the form of institutions they then decided to call banks. This chapter will show how trust in individual local brokers was gradually transformed into institutions that their owners termed banks, and how they became a part of local society. They emerged out of local practice, and did not generally copy London institutions such as Child’s or Hoare’s banks. It will also examine just how important the payment of industrial wage labour was in the formation of county banking. The chapter will end by placing Adam Smith’s advocacy of banking and his discussion of capital in the context of the developments described in this book. It was Smith’s contention that the value of labour converted into abstract capital was the wealth of a nation. His was a ‘capitalism’ based on the ethics needed to create the conditions to make capital keep its value.

The Celtic hypothesis is a cover term used to refer to a number of structural features of Old English (and later stages of English) which might have their origin in language contact and shift between the BrythonicBrittonic-speaking Celtic population and the Germanic invaders in the early Old English period. Among such features are the internal possessor construction, the isomorphy of intensifiers and reflexives, two forms of the verb be, the progressive and periphrastic do. This chapter reviews the literature on this area and considers the case to be made for contact and transfer during language shift but accords equal weight to internal factors in an attempt to reach a balanced appraisal of the Celtic hypothesis.

Constructivism emphasizes the role of ideas, identities, and norms in shaping state behavior and international politics, as well as the intersubjective and relational nature of these ideational factors. Social relations “make or construct people – ourselves – into the kinds of beings that we are. Conversely, we make the world what it is, by doing what we do with each other and saying what we say to each other” (Onuf, 1998, 59). Constructivism therefore highlights the intangible yet relational aspects of our reality: a world in which the meaning of objects and actions is not fixed but socially constructed through our interactions; states are held together by collective belief and actively participate in the social construction of anarchy. Norms play a significant role by defining appropriate behavior and enabling action by providing a framework for actors to understand and interact with the world.

Any book that claims in its title to be about the origins of capitalism might well seem hostage to the accusation of either arrogance or rhetorical abandon. It is hardly a small subject – it refers to a whole economic system. The use of the term capitalism is so pervasive today that trying to define what it means in practice seems as impossible as, say, defining Christian, Muslim, or Buddhist society. However, I will argue that England, Scotland, and some of the American Colonies, between roughly 1680 and 1760, became the first economies in which the use of capital spread widely enough throughout society to change not just economic practice, but culture and society as well. I will, though, primarily focus on England as it was by far the largest of these economies, as well as being the centre of an Atlantic economic system. It was also where the intellectual impetus for change originated in an outpouring of printed works. But this will certainly not be a nationalist history. The institutions of merchant capital all evolved – and were used throughout – Europe and other parts of the globe, and capital as paper money first became socially embedded in the Italian Renaissance cities, most notably Florence and Naples, and certain forms were also then used in Antwerp and the Dutch Republic. But unless further research throws up new evidence, it seems that it was in England and Scotland between c.1680 and 1750 that the practices, morals, and institutions of capital formation and maintenance spread throughout a national and imperial economic system.

English is a member of the Germanic subgroup of Indo-European, sharing with other Germanic languages a distinctive set of hallmarks, though recent developments have made it in some respects an outlier in this group. In addition, English shares some features with successively smaller subsets of these languages. The observed pattern of similarities and differences arises from a history of shared inheritance, divergence and subsequent interaction which can be reconstructed in detail by systematically comparing the languages, guided by a rigorous methodology. A focus of scholarship for two centuries, this enterprise has taken on renewed vitality in recent decades, informed by new understandings of the role of language contact in shaping linguistic histories. After a brief introduction to the process of comparative reconstruction and the traditional representation of the pedigree of English derived from it, this chapter will introduce the more intricate picture emerging from recent studies.

The immense reserves held at the central banks in London and Paris might be tapped to help solve the American Panic of 1907. Attracting those resources presented a clear addition to US liquidity rather than simply rearranging the US reserves. We turn now to the five attempts Morgan made to funnel excess reserves from European sources to alleviate the New York crisis. Two were meant to shore up his own firm’s liquidity position and faith in his bills of exchange. The other three were attempts, some successful and some not, to draw gold from Paris to alleviate liquidity stringency at the Bank of England, and in New York and Toronto. These are less well-known actions that Morgan and his London partners took during the panic.

Suárez offered a rich analysis of three types of distinction, which continued to be important in early modern philosophy: the conceptual distinction (distinction of reason), the real distinction, and the modal distinction. They are commonly understood in terms of separability, but for Suárez, separability was merely a sign of specific types of distinctions. And he argued that mutual separability is neither necessary nor sufficient for a real distinction. Furthermore, he required knowledge of actual cases of mutual separation as a sign of real distinction. This chapter examines the real distinction and modal distinction in early modern philosophy. Descartes inherited Suárez’s view that separability is a mere sign and examination of Suárez’s theory results in elegant solutions to thorny problems in Descartes’s theory of body. Finally, the notion of a mode played an important role in arguments for immaterial beings in Descartes and various other early modern philosophers, including Leibniz.

Following the colonisation of Ireland, North America, and the Caribbean, British society, politics, and the economy were forever transformed by the growing transatlantic empire. The University of Cambridge was intimately connected to that Atlantic world. The introduction provides context on Cambridge’s history and the long-term development of racial slavery, examining how enslavement and the plantation economy were of incredible significance to British life from the beginning of the seventeenth century through to the end of the American Civil War and beyond. More than a history of plantation owners purchasing stately homes or consumers eagerly consuming sugar, a case study of Cambridge’s town and gown communities highlights the vast spectrum of connections, ties, and interests that many Britons held to a slave empire.