Social

New Hampshire meat-packer to national symbol - Alton Ketchum recounts the rise and rise of Uncle Sam Wilson.

'The greatest Instances of publick Spirit the Age has produced', but confessional strife between Anglicans and Nonconformists, as well as the bitter battles of Whigs and Tories, was the stimulus for an educational programme for the poor. Craig Rose investigates.

Juan Cole looks at the pacifist, prophetic and millenarian 'world religion' whose leader emerged from the social and political unrest of 19th-century Iran and whose followers have since been persecuted by shah and ayatollah alike.

Richard Welch charts the extraordinary explosion in American music and argues for its impact on society as a whole.

Bruce Nelson traces how the magic of FDR and his practical social programmes welded American labour to the Democratic Party, and discusses the tensions that eventually weakened that union.

William Bird looks at how American business and commerce turned to the techniques of advertising and Hollywood to extol the merits of capitalism and free enterprise in response to the anti-corporate liberalism of the New Deal.

Sharp practice or sharp 'prentice? Paul Seaver argues that the tale of how a Bristol notary and his erstwhile trainee fell out and went to court in 1620 tells us much about the social aspirations and intimacies of 17th-century England.

Clare Thomson on the pace of change in the Baltic States.

David Stephens discerns an undercurrent of social protest and complaint beneath the usual exuberance of the bagpiper in medieval art.