Welfare, Conflict and Memory during and after the English Civil Wars, 1642-1700

最近的估计表明，超过3%的英格兰和威尔士人口直接死于1642年至1651年的内战：这比英国在第一次世界大战期间遭受的人口损失更大。这个项目将通过发布数千名受伤的退伍军人和战争寡妇为获得经济援助而提交的原始请愿书，比以往任何时候都更深入地说明17世纪中期英国灾难的社会，经济和文化后果-在一个免费访问，完全可搜索的网站上。这些请愿书是在1642年至1700年间起草的，生动地展示了普通人在可怕的伤口、创伤、痛苦和损失中生活的感受。通过免费提供这些资料，这个项目将这些战争给个人带来的可怕后果展现了出来。它将使广大公众了解这场冲突期间在外科手术、医院和养恤金方面取得的重大进展，同时强调在武装敌对行动结束后，战争的后果如何持续了几代人。2015年5月，国家内战中心在纽瓦克博物馆开幕，该项目特别及时，PI自2011年以来一直与该组织合作。自2013年以来，该项目获得了4个AHRC博士学位，并成功向沃尔夫森基金会（Wolfson Foundation）申请资助纽瓦克的一个研究中心。这也是第一次组建了一个内战请愿专家小组，他们来自学术阶梯的各个层次。PI和co- i将各自负责协调商定的地区（霍珀-北，斯托尔-南，阿普尔比-东，鲍文-威尔士和马尔克斯）。这将包括识别档案文件、有限的转录工作、元数据捕获、从季度会议的订单簿中输入数据、安排照片和将内容提供给IT团队以组装到网站上。该项目将分析伤残士兵和战争寡妇为获得慈善救济所使用的策略。它将审查在请求援助的请愿书中使用的语言，以及寡妇向地方法官和中央政府请求确保其已故丈夫的拖欠工资的不同方式。它还将研究上访者如何代表服兵役，他们如何将自己塑造成“应得的案例”，他们如何发挥政府的期望，以及上访在哪些方面反映了权利感。请愿书中的信息将加深我们对早期现代穷人如何努力通过所谓的“临时经济”来维持自己的理解。还将审议请愿书的地域分布情况，以及给予救济的各种制度的目的。县档案管理员将提供请愿书的数字图像，以及散落在全国各地的医疗证明。然后，我们的博士后研究员将转录这些文件，这些文件将在网站上搜索，并与上下文评论一起指导用户。档案库将保留数字图像和抄本的副本，以丰富和提高对自己馆藏的访问。该网站将可以搜索姓名、性别、教区、县、服务细节、军事单位、所受创伤的性质、请愿人的职业、请愿的结果、奖励或养老金的数额等字段。这将允许对数据进行映射和比较。分面搜索也将可用。该网站将为英格兰和威尔士的内战历史提供全国性资源，其规模与欧洲旗舰数字化项目——爱尔兰1641年的证词——相当：http://www.1641.tcd.ie/

Recent estimates suggest that over 3% of the population of England and Wales died as a direct result of the Civil Wars of 1642-51: a greater proportional loss of population than Britain suffered during World War One. This project will illustrate the social, economic and cultural consequences of England's mid seventeenth-century catastrophe in greater depth than ever before by publishing the original petitions which thousands of wounded ex-soldiers and war widows submitted in order to gain financial aid - on a free-access, fully searchable website. These petitions, drawn-up between 1642 and 1700, provide graphic testimonies of what it felt like for ordinary people to live with horrific wounds, trauma, suffering and loss. By making them freely available, this project brings to life the appalling personal consequences of these wars. It will expose a wide public audience to the significant advances in surgery, hospitals and pensions made during this conflict, while at the same time underscoring how the war's consequences persisted for generations after armed hostilities had come to an end.The project is particularly timely with the opening of the National Civil War Centre at Newark Museum in May 2015, an organisation with which the PI has collaborated since 2011. It builds upon the award of four AHRC PhD studentships on this topic since 2013, and a successful application to the Wolfson Foundation to fund a research centre at Newark. It is also the first time that a team of experts on civil war petitions has been assembled, drawn from every level of the academic ladder. The PI and Co-Is will each be responsible for co-ordinating agreed regions (Hopper - north, Stoyle - south, Appleby - east, and Bowen - Wales and the Marches). This will involve identifying the archival documents, limited transcription work, metadata capture, inputting data from the quarter sessions' order books, arranging photos and feeding content through to the IT team to assemble onto the website.The project will analyse the strategies which were used by and on behalf of maimed soldiers and war widows to obtain charitable relief. It will examine the language used in the petitions to appeal for aid and the different ways in which widows pleaded with local justices and central government to secure their deceased husbands' arrears of pay. It will also examine how petitioners represented military service, how they fashioned themselves as 'deserving cases', how they played upon magisterial expectations, and in what ways petitions reflected feelings of entitlement. The information in the petitions will develop our understanding of how the early modern poor endeavoured to sustain themselves through what has been well-termed the 'economy of makeshifts'. The geographical spread of the petitions will also be considered, as will the aims of the various regimes in granting relief. County archivists will provide digital images of the petitions and supporting medical certificates which survive in collections scattered across the country. Our Postdoctoral Researcher will then transcribe those documents, which will be made available for searching on a website, together with contextual commentaries to guide users. Archival repositories will retain copies of both the digital images and transcriptions to enrich and enhance access to their own holdings. The website will be searchable across fields such as name, gender, parish, county, details of service, military unit, nature of wounds sustained, occupation of petitioner, outcome of petition, and size of gratuity or pension awarded. This will allow data to be mapped and compared. A faceted search will also be available. This website will provide a national resource for Civil War history in England and Wales on a scale to parallel that of the flagship European digitisation project, the 1641 Depositions in Ireland: http://www.1641.tcd.ie/