The final chapter examines the ways in which rulers responded to slaving, arguing that their attempts to control the terms by which individuals could be enslaved and sold appear to have always been reactionary. From the tenth century they indicate a mounting concern in the face of escalating slaving, and this is most evident in England, where law codes and penitentials survive from the entire early medieval period, though a similar, if slower-paced, concern is hinted at by law fragments in Bohemian texts. Where centralization programmes occurred later or were poorly documented, as in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, these concerns were not codified. Although English and Bohemian rulers attempted to extend limited control over slaving in law, they were active beneficiaries of the trade through taxes and involvement in raiding.
Before the second half of the ninth century, in the British Isles and the tenth century in the Czech lands, slave trading primarily operated on a small scale and was primarily fuelled by opportunistic sales that were themselves motivated by individual circumstances or, to a lesser degree, commercial trading. Networks of liminal markets such as emporia and politically central high-status sites attracted slave sales through the concentration of merchants and buyers, and slaves could either remain locally with a buyer or be transported along long-distance trade routes. Case studies of England and Great Moravia illustrate the networks along which enslaved people were transported and the mechanisms by which slave trading operated.
By the early 1990s, a drastic increase in malignant melanoma rates—mainly in the UK, Europe, America, and Australia—sparked significant concern about skin cancer. In Britain, medical experts and the media attempted to curtail overall sunbed use but failed. Skincare providers and research institutions, on the other hand, realized that they could capitalize on people’s concerns by providing the most advanced “UV-free” tanning technologies. This chapter focuses on two of these technologies: dihydroxyacetone (DHA) fake tanning serums and the entirely novel invention of MelanoTan injections. An evaluation of media coverage and publications in medical journals demonstrates how such “UV-free” technologies were introduced as entirely “safe” alternatives to sunbeds and sunbathing. As Creed argues, however, both products counterintuitively promoted former risk-laden practices, and reinvigorated tanning culture overall. Tanning injections, moreover, introduced a new host of health risks for twenty-first century consumers. Such technologies therefore provide insight into the history of controversial health, beauty, and risk reduction technologies. They also demonstrate the extent to which commercial industries have simultaneously taken the lead in resolving and profiting from public health concerns since the second half of the twentieth century.
In 1980, the media alerted women to a new and frightening illness associated with menstrual periods and tampon use: toxic shock syndrome (TSS). Early symptoms deceptively resembled the flu, which quickly deteriorated into septic shock and death in otherwise healthy women. With tampons precipitating illness, the relationship was less about technology and the patient consumer, but rather the consumer who became a patient due to the use of a stigmatized and gendered technology. Subsequent epidemiological studies conducted by The Centers for Disease Control determined that all super-absorbent tampons carried risk for TSS. The Rely tampon, however, manufactured by Procter & Gamble (P&G) showed the highest rate of all. Drawing on new research, Vostral shows that while P&G publicly received accolades for voluntarily withdrawing its product and alerting women to the dangers of Rely, behind-the-scenes the company fought for access to their data. The chapter uses archival documents and oral histories to trace arguments amongst FDA, CDC, and corporate lawyers concerning the nature of the right to medical privacy, and how womens’ roles and needs were construed in lawsuits. Procter & Gamble proceeded to subpoena records, a strategy which the CDC contested with the lawsuit Farnsworth v. Procter & Gamble (1985). The ruling in favour of the CDC hinged upon the reasonable expectation for informants to retain anonymity, however it was derived from the premise of respectability and embarrassment, rather than the more meaningful right to medical privacy or equal protection for women.
Technology and consumerism are two characteristic phenomena in the history of medicine and healthcare, yet the connections between them are rarely explored by scholars. In this edited volume, the authors address this disconnect, noting the ways in which a variety of technologies have shaped patients’ roles as consumers since the early twentieth century. Chapters examine key issues, such as the changing nature of patient information and choice, patients’ assessment of risk and reward, and matters of patient role and of patient demand as they relate to new and changing technologies. They simultaneously investigate how differences in access to care and in outcomes across various patient groups have been influenced by the advent of new technologies and consumer-based approaches to health. The volume spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, spotlights an array of medical technologies and health products, and draws on examples from across the United States and the United Kingdom.
Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Zionism has become a significant part of British Jewish identity for the majority of British Jews and their institutions. This chapter explores the histories of those Jews who have stood in opposition to the incorporation of Israel and Zionism within British Jewish life and analyses the often fraught relationship between Israel-critical Jews and the Zionist majority. The chapter historicises Israel-critical thinking, placing contemporary British Jewish opposition to Zionism in the context of earlier challenges from the interwar period onwards. It probes the theoretical and theological roots of Israel criticism among Jewish people, arguing that attitudes towards Zionism highlight long-standing debates about the essence of Judaism and its purpose in the modern world. Attitudes towards Zionism, the chapter argues, also offer a window into British Jewish thinking about belonging, and the place of Jewish people in Britain. Finally, this chapter considers why Israel criticism has become so challenging to the British Jewish community, and what hostility towards Israel-critical Jews tells us about Jewish values and Jewish anxieties.
In a period of anxiety about the decline of the British Jewish community, concerns about Jews marrying non-Jews were ever present across Jewish communal bodies. Jewish groups created a raft of strategies and programmes to stem the flow of ‘marrying out’ as the practice became ever more common as a result of increasing everyday contact with non-Jewish Britons. This chapter focuses on conflicts between Orthodox and Progressive theologians and leaders about how best to address the issue. While some Orthodox groups promoted a tough line against those who married out, Progressive synagogues increasingly began to welcome interfaith families and draw them into congregational life. Key here were different Orthodox and Progressive approaches to conversion. Within Progressive Judaism, easier access to conversion and recognition of the Jewishness of people with Jewish fathers (patrilineal Jews) enabled a different response to interfaith relationships to emerge. Ultimately, this chapter explores the stakes involved in debates about Jewish/non-Jewish marriage and relationships, both in terms of individuals and couples and at a communal level. It asks what changing attitudes towards such relationships might tell us about evolving Jewish values and explores the thinking behind communal anxieties and shifting policies.
An Unorthodox History offers a new analysis of the British Jewish community since the Second World War. Rather than focusing on the persistence of antisemitism, the history of famous Jewish people or communal leadership, it takes an unorthodox approach to telling the British Jewish story, seeking out the histories of individuals and groups that have hitherto been missed out or dismissed as marginal in other accounts. As well as exploring changing cultures of religiosity, activism and heritage in Jewish Britain, An Unorthodox History explores some of those Jewish lives which have been lived, for various reasons, beyond the communal mainstream. It tells the stories of British Zionists who moved to Israel and set up new communities, as well as giving space to the histories of Israel-critical Jews who have been marginalised in British Jewish politics. It charts the development of pioneering gay Jewish organisations in Britain and changing community responses to Jews who have married non-Jews. At its most controversial, it explores the history of Messianic Judaism in Britain (and specifically Jews for Jesus), probing the community’s borders and core values. Through these diverse and often personal stories, An Unorthodox History offers new insight into British Jewish lives, challenging the idea that the British Jewish community is in terminal decline or divided beyond recognition, and arguing instead that Jewish Britain is vibrant and thriving, evolving into the multicultural tapestry of the British landscape.
This chapter demonstrates how the evidence of raiding illustrates a dramatic surge in captive-taking practices in both the British Isles and the Czech lands at a period coinciding with rising demand for foreign slaves in the Islamic world, the Viking North Atlantic, and Byzantium. Up until the late ninth century documented raiding in our slaving zones was primarily political, with captive taking serving primarily a social rather than economic function. In the late ninth and tenth centuries a dramatic shift occurs in both slaving zones, in which the escalation of raiding created huge numbers of captives that could not feasibly be absorbed by the demand established in Chapter 1. The resulting picture is one in which warfare altered in style and frequency to support increased slave taking throughout the tenth century. From the middle of the eleventh century captive taking clearly experienced a decline, in line with decreased external demand and major political shifts within the slaving zones.
This chapter explores cultures of political activism in the Jewish community, focusing on two significant post-war campaigns; the campaign to support Israel in the Arab/Israeli (Six-Day) War of 1967, and the campaign to support the Jews of the Soviet Union (which began in the mid-1960s and lasted until the end of the USSR in 1991). In both cases, British Jewish activists mobilised in significant numbers on behalf of beleaguered Jews abroad, determined to use their political weight and financial resources both to support directly the affected Jewish people, and to lobby the British (and international) governments on their behalf. These two campaigns, the chapter argues, reveal much about the values and practice of Jewish people in post-war Britain and the changing nature of political campaigning beyond the Jewish community. In a period when Jewish religious practice was losing meaning for some, many Jews defined their commitment to Judaism in terms of political solidarity. Key to this change was ongoing grief and guilt about British Jewish inaction in the face of the Holocaust and a corresponding determination ‘never again’ to fail international Jewry at times of need. Beyond the community, both these campaigns reflected changing cultures of British political activism, focusing on single issues (instead of party politics) and demanding justice for oppressed peoples on similar terms to the anti-apartheid and Civil Rights movements.