Patterns in the lives of ETA members

Abstract

Based on 48 fairly detailed personal case histories, and more limited data on 447 other individuals, this article describes significant patterns in the lives of members of the Basque insurgent organization Euzkadi ta Askatasuna (ETA). The article discusses the age and sex of ETA members, the socioeconomic background of the members and their families, and their ethnic and linguistic characteristics. The article also describes life in ETA, the radicalization of Basque youth, how new members are recruited into the organization, how they live and what they do as members, how ETA members relate to family, friends and loved ones, and how they terminate their relationship to the organization. The study finds ETA members to be not the alienated and pathologically distressed individuals who join other insurgent organizations, but rather they are psychologically healthy persons for the most part, strongly supported by their families and their ethnic community.     

‘The time of storms’: managing bourgeois girls’ puberty in France, 1800–1870

This article examines the medical literature published in France in the period 1800–1870 on the subject of puberty and menstruation to argue that, in conjunction with the extension of school life for bourgeois girls, the period saw the emergence of a distinctive conception of feminine adolescence that pre-dates the better-known concepts articulated in the late nineteenth century. It goes on to look beyond the scientific discourse to ask what impact this new medical understanding had on the management of girls’ puberty, examining first the way it affected school practice, before using a detailed case-study of the life of Solange Dudevant to highlight the ways in which medicalised understandings of puberty and menstruation co-existed with other forms of knowledge.     

Parliament and the army in England 1659: Constitutional thought and the struggle for control

Summary

Thomas Secker, archbishop of Canterbury from 1758 to 1768, was one of the most notable Anglican bishops of the eighteenth century. This article traces his involvement with Parliament throughout his career. The shorthand notes he made of speeches he had heard between 1735 and 1743, which he wrote up afterwards, were used by William Cobbett in assembling his Parliamentary History of England. Secker was an able speaker in the Lords and possessed a vein of independence, judging each bill on its merits, sometimes voting with and sometimes against the Court. This independence weakened his standing with the king and ministry and resulted in his being left in the see of Oxford from 1737 until 1758, when the king at last spoke to him again. Secker strongly opposed the Pretender's rebellion of 1745, but he was not always successful in other causes he espoused, notably his support for the Jew Bill of 1753. His years as archbishop were dogged by ill health, although he remained a person of weight in the Upper House. These were years when the Church of England was on the defensive, with Convocation prorogued, and Seeker found himself in a straitjacket. However, his devotion to the Hanoverian succession and the Church never wavered.