Tales from the ‘Yarmouth Hutch’: civic identities and hidden histories in an urban archive

All archives have a purpose; their collection, organization and deployment is never neutral. Historians take from the archive those fragments that seem to us to prove a particular case, or to enrich the story we wish to tell. But it is hard for us — in our teaching, in our writing, perhaps also in our thinking — to capture the endlessly protean nature of the archive. This article tries to capture some of the ways in which an archive sustained certain stories and how it frustrated others. The tale told here is unapologetically local: it engages with a particular community at a particular time. The objective is to reconstruct something of the way in which archives made sense to early modern people. The article resituates the town archive of Great Yarmouth — the ‘Yarmouth Hutch’ — in its original context at the heart of an urban community. We will see that the Hutch sustained a detailed sense of the past that reached back to the fourteenth century and spawned two remarkable histories of the town, written respectively by Thomas Damet in 1594–9 and Henry Manship in 1619. It is argued that rather than representing a novel expression of early modern civic humanism, these histories were formed within a longer tradition of urban historical writing, one that reached back to the late Middle Ages. Yarmouth’s corporate sense of the past was generated for a middling, bourgeois audience that was partial and, in many ways, exclusive. Urban political culture — encompassing not just political affairs, but the writing and archives within which it was recorded — thereby emerges as more elitist and divisive than recent historiography has supposed. A closer look at both the histories and at the archive that supported them, reveals the fissures and tensions that were the reality of ..

‘Some banglyng about the customes’: Popular Memory and the Experience of Defeat in a Sussex Village, 1549–1640

This article deploys a body of remarkably detailed witness statements to interrogate the nature of popular memory and social conflict in Petworth, Sussex. These depositions are located in two specific contexts: a struggle between the tenants of Petworth and the ninth earl of Northumberland (1591 – 1608) and the broader pattern of resistance and negotiation in the village between the ‘commotion time’ of 1549 and the calling of the Short Parliament. The essay presents a micro-history of local struggles over land, rights and resources and the findings open up questions within the recent historiography of early modern social relations, undermining the notion that authority was flexibly negotiated between ruler and ruled. Instead, it locates negotiation within social structures that gave a powerful advantage to the gentry and nobility. In this respect, the essay builds upon the return in social history to questions of economic inequality and imbalances of political agency

Supplier search in industrial clusters: Sheffield metal working in the 1990s

Industrial clusters can be characterised by high levels of personal interaction between the owners/managers of firms. It has been argued that within industrial clusters community and firm tend to merge. One result of the notion of a cluster as a community is that it might be expected that personal interaction between members of the community will have an important influence on intra-cluster trading patterns. Whereas there appears to be a number of anecdotal stories of the impact of the 'personal' upon the 'economic' within clusters we do not know whether such relationships are uniquely part of cluster behaviour or whether they are found more widely within the industrial system. The paper reports the result of a new interview survey of seventy small metal working firms in the Sheffield metal working cluster in the UK. Although dealing with a traditional industrial sector the analysis is focused upon contemporary business patterns. It explores the ways in which owner/managers of small metal working firms search for new suppliers. In the empirical analysis the search process is conceptualised as being characterised by two stages: the identification of potential new suppliers and the selection of a specific new supplier. The research is in undertaken in two parts. It first measures the role of the personal networks of the owner/managers of small firms in the identification and selection of suppliers. Second, the research examines whether personal factors are more important in the identification and selection of within cluster suppliers than in the identification and selection of suppliers based outside the cluster. It is shown that, overall, personal networks are of major significance in the identification of suppliers and that information received from third parties are more important than direct contacts between the owner/manager and the potential supplier. However, in the selection decision, price and availability are dominant considerations and personal factors such as trust and reputation of only minor significance. It was not possible to identify a cluster effect in disaggregation of the data to separate out the relationships with cluster suppliers and relationships with suppliers based outside the cluster. There was no evidence that personal factors play a more important role in the establishment of within cluster links. In sum, personal networks are important in the identification of within cluster links but they are equally important in the establishment of links outside the cluster. This suggests that the importance of personal interaction within clusters has been overplayed.

Supplier search in industrial clusters: Sheffield metal working in the 1990s

Industrial clusters can be characterised by high levels of personal interaction between the owners/managers of firms. It has been argued that within industrial clusters community and firm tend to merge. One result of the notion of a cluster as a community is that it might be expected that personal interaction between members of the community will have an important influence on intra-cluster trading patterns. Whereas there appears to be a number of anecdotal stories of the impact of the 'personal' upon the 'economic' within clusters we do not know whether such relationships are uniquely part of cluster behaviour or whether they are found more widely within the industrial system. The paper reports the result of a new interview survey of seventy small metal working firms in the Sheffield metal working cluster in the UK. Although dealing with a traditional industrial sector the analysis is focused upon contemporary business patterns. It explores the ways in which owner/managers of small metal working firms search for new suppliers. In the empirical analysis the search process is conceptualised as being characterised by two stages: the identification of potential new suppliers and the selection of a specific new supplier. The research is in undertaken in two parts. It first measures the role of the personal networks of the owner/managers of small firms in the identification and selection of suppliers. Second, the research examines whether personal factors are more important in the identification and selection of within cluster suppliers than in the identification and selection of suppliers based outside the cluster. It is shown that, overall, personal networks are of major significance in the identification of suppliers and that information received from third parties are more important than direct contacts between the owner/manager and the potential supplier. However, in the selection decision, price and availability are dominant considerations and personal factors such as trust and reputation of only minor significance. It was not possible to identify a cluster effect in disaggregation of the data to separate out the relationships with cluster suppliers and relationships with suppliers based outside the cluster. There was no evidence that personal factors play a more important role in the establishment of within cluster links. In sum, personal networks are important in the identification of within cluster links but they are equally important in the establishment of links outside the cluster. This suggests that the importance of personal interaction within clusters has been overplayed

A Hybrid Course Designed to Increase Managerial Export Motivation and Export Engagement

The paper reviews and explains a new course format at West Virginia University. The content of this course focuses on initiating exporting by companies located in the home state of the university. The attendees include university students and representatives of companies that are interested in starting to export. The content of the course and the participation by company representatives created the need for an atypical delivery of Friday evenings and all day Saturday meeting at two to four week intervals between class sessions. Practical exporting experience is shared by experts from the Department of Commerce, the Export Council, and representative of companies that are successful exporters. As noted in the paper the dynamics of the course delivery as well as the practical nature of the content leads to substantial student learning while promoting the economic benefits of exporting to the companies in particular and the state economy in general

Review on the development of truly portable and in-situ capillary electrophoresis systems

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a technique which uses an electric field to separate a mixed sample into its constituents. Portable CE systems enable this powerful analysis technique to be used in the field. Many of the challenges for portable systems are similar to those of autonomous in-situ analysis and therefore portable systems may be considered a stepping stone towards autonomous in-situ analysis. CE is widely used for biological and chemical analysis and example applications include: water quality analysis; drug development and quality control; proteomics and DNA analysis; counter-terrorism (explosive material identification) and corrosion monitoring. The technique is often limited to laboratory use, since it requires large electric fields, sensitive detection systems and fluidic control systems. All of these place restrictions in terms of: size, weight, cost, choice of operating solutions, choice of fabrication materials, electrical power and lifetime. In this review we bring together and critique the work by researchers addressing these issues. We emphasize the importance of a holistic approach for portable and in-situ CE systems and discuss all the aspects of the design. We identify gaps in the literature which require attention for the realization of both truly portable and in-situ CE systems

A Kinetic Model of Furfural Hydrogenation to 2-Methylfuran on Nanoparticles of Nickel Supported on Sulfuric Acid-Modified Biochar Catalyst

Lignocellulosic biomass can uptake CO2 during growth, which can then be pyrolysed into three major products, such as biochar (BC), syngas, and bio-oil. Due to presence of oxygenated organic compounds, the produced bio-oil is not suitable for direct use as a fuel and requires up-grading via hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) and hydrogenation. This is typically carried out over a supported metal catalyst. Regarding circular economy and sustainability, the BC from the pyrolysis step can potentially be activated and used as a novel catalyst support, as reported here. A 15wt% Ni/BC catalyst was developed by chemically modifying BC with sulfuric acid to improve mesoporous structure and surface area. When compared to the pristine Ni/BC catalyst, sulfuric activated Ni/BC catalyst has excellent mesopores and a high surface area, which increases the dispersion of Ni nanoparticles and hence improves the adsorptive effect and thus catalytic performance. A liquid phase hydrogenation of furfural to 2-methylfuran was performed over the developed 15wt% Ni/BC catalyst. Langmuir–Hinshelwood-Hougen-Watson (LHHW) kinetic type models for adsorption of dissociative H2 were screened based on an R2 value greater than 99% demonstrating that the experimental data satisfactorily fit to three plausible models: competitive (Model I), competitive at only one type of adsorption site (Model II), and non-competitive with two type of adsorption sites (Model III). With a correlation coefficient greater than 99% between the experimental rates and the predicted rate, model III, which is a dual-site adsorption mechanism involving furfural adsorption and hydrogen dissociative adsorption and surface reaction, is the best fit. The Ni/BC catalyst demonstrated comparative performance and significant cost savings over previous catalysts, a value of 24.39 kJ mol-1 was estimated for the activation energy, -11.43 kJmol-1 for the enthalpy of adsorption for H2, and -5.86 kJmol-1 for furfural. The developed Ni/BC catalyst demonstrated excellent stability in terms of conversion of furfural (96%) and yield of 2-methylfuran (54%) at the fourth successive experiments. Based on furfural conversion and yield of products, it appears that pores are constructed slowly during sulfuric acid activation of the biochar