bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Genesis
Authors: Borsay Peter
Published: October 2023

This chapter explores the genesis of Bath’s Georgian image. It examines the way contemporaries in the eighteenth century perceived their city, and its past. Such an approach is adopted for two reasons. First, though much of this book is about the manner in which Georgian Bath came to be represented in the Victorian and modern eras, the ‘primary’ sources upon which such views were based are of the eighteenth century, and were themselves representations and not mere reflections of the world. When reading nineteenth- and twentieth-century accounts of Georgian Bath it is necessary, therefore, to be conscious of being subject to a process of double-imaging, and to understand this process it is important to comprehend the original image itself. Secondly, Bath was a city dependent upon image-making. Perhaps more than any other town in eighteenth-century Britain, its success and its very identity depended not upon what it was, but what it was imagined to be. This arose from its role as a resort and fashionable residential centre. In a Manchester or a Birmingham product and place were separate, if interrelated entities, and the goods made could be freely consumed beyond the point of manufacture. At Bath the services and facilities which the city offered for sale were inextricably associated with their location and had to be consumed in situ The product was the place. Moreover, the value of what Bath produced relied heavily upon ascribed rather than inherent meaning. The waters of the city were health-giving, and the hills beautiful, because they were portrayed as such rather than because some innate qualities proclaimed them to be so. Image, therefore, was central to Bath’s economic livelihood. It must also be added that, because of its social and cultural functions, Bath attracted an extraordinary concentration of the verbally and visually literate, and encouraged authors and artists to ‘textualize’ the city to an extent only matched by London. By the end of the Georgian era Bath was encrusted with layer upon layer of imagery.
Causes Of The Agricultural Depression, 1870-1914
Authors: Offer Avner
Published: October 2023

The depression of British agriculture during the last quarter of the nineteenth century loosened the grip of British landowners on society and politics, it impelled the Irish to revolt, and it helped to split the Liberal party down the middle and to keep it out of power for a generation. As we shall see, it was also one of the distant causes of the First World War. Now what exactly do we mean by agricultural depression? The first symptom that meets the eye is the collapse of prices, followed by the decline of production and finally by the contraction of landed incomes and wealth, of rents and of land values. Hundreds of thousands of labourers left the countryside. The price of wheat fell from 46 shillings a quarter in 1870 to 22 shillings in 1894. The price of meat and wool also declined. Land under grain co ‘ntracted by some two-thirds in thirty years, most of which reverted to rough pasture. By 1913 Britain imported some four-fifths of its wheat and flour.
Wheat And Empire In Canada
Authors: Offer Avner
Published: October 2023

In England, where there was “ni terre sans maitre”, every bit of ground was fenced off and grazed, cultivated or hunted. In Canada, the grain frontier was open almost to all: farmers ‘ sons, small tradesmen, skilled artisans, together with many native-born Canadians from the towns and countryside of Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes and experienced farmers from the United States. Enough capital for a start could even be raised by a few seasons ‘ wage labour.
Fear of famine in british war plans 1890-1908
Authors: Offer Avner
Published: October 2023

Kipling ‘s rhymes capture the gist of Part Two and its implications for national security. The Edwardian economics of blockade are related to economics as this ditty relates to strategy (or, for that matter, poetry). The point is a serious one: international specialization in agriculture affected the balance of power and generated new problems of national security. In so far as these problems were operational and strategic ones, they fell within the realm of the Admiralty and the Royal Navy. Naval officers had, how-ever, no training in economics, and showed little aptitude for the subject.
The Dominion Dimension
Authors: Offer Avner
Published: October 2023

The pressures of international rivalry turned Britain’s attention towards the settler societies even before the turn of the century. At the Imperial Conference of 1897 Joseph Chamberlain, the British Colonial Secretary, probed the possiblities of stronger political ties. By the next conference in 1902 he had a more coherent conception. Britain would grant the white colonies favoured access to its markets, in return for stronger military and political bonds. The Empire would become a free-trade zone, with preference for colonial staples in the British market, and protection for British manufactures in colonial markets as well as at home. Under the name of “tariff reform”, this project became the central and most divisive issue in British politics before the First World War.
Morality And Admiralty: ‘Jacky’ Fisher, Economic Warfare, And International Law
Authors: Offer Avner
Published: October 2023

One foggy summer night during the naval manreuvres of 1888, a squadron of the Royal Navy crept up the river Mersey and lowered anchors two hours after midnight. Liverpool and Birkenhead lay at its mercy. Admiral Tryon, in command, announced he would spare the two cities for a ransom of one million pounds. Other towns were not so “lucky”. ‘Greenock is in ashes,’ wrote The Times, ‘Ardrossan has been destroyed, Campbelltown has been punished for some unknown sin-perhaps that of helping to return a Gladstonian at the late election.’ Aberdeen was bombarded, the Forth Bridge (in construction) blown up, Filey laid waste. A distinguished jurist wrote a letter of protest to The Times. Many officers responded, and one of them wrote, ‘the talk about international law is all nonsense.
Blockade And Its Enemies, 1909-1912
Authors: Offer Avner
Published: October 2023

The Royal Navy commanded by far the largest national array of warships, but only had a smallish brain relative to its missions. The Board of Admiralty was absorbed in detail. A few planners worked in the intelligence department and the war college, but there was no regular General Staff. Strategic authority was centralized in the person of Admiral John Fisher and he made a principle of never discussing his plans.
Preparation And Action, 1912-1914
Authors: Offer Avner
Published: October 2023

The CID meeting of 23 August 1911 made it more likely that Britain would send its regular army to help France if Germany attacked. Neither Hankey nor Esher or Fisher considered that this foreclosed the issue. Hankey acknowledged the navy's poor showing, but the fact that no formal decision was taken he regarded as a defeat for the army. 1 In the autumn the Cabinet, Liberal back-benchers and Liberal newspaper editors all reacted to the prospect of a continental intervention. A majority of cabinet members opposed it. 'The net result was a continuation of the contradiction and confusion that had characterised British grand strategic planning. '2 The strategic issue remained in suspense.
Germany: Economic Preparation And The Decision For War
Authors: Offer Avner
Published: October 2023

The perils of dependence on overseas trade began to attract serious discussion in Germany around the turn of the century, in conjunction with the tariff and naval construction debates. According to the naval office, some 74 per cent of Germany’s imports arrived by sea, directly and indirectly. Was it possible to prepare in advance for the loss of imports and the closure of markets? This was not merely a technical problem. It could not be separated from the large questions of foreign policy and military strategy.
‘A Second Decision For War’: The U-Boatcampaign
Authors: Offer Avner
Published: October 2023

THE decision to begin unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February 1917 was Germany’s most critical action during the course of the war. On the eve of the Russian revolution and of Britain’s impending bankruptcy, it fortified the Allied side with all the wealth and power of the United States. In its consequences for Germany, it was rightly likened by the German Chancellor to ‘a second decision for war’.1 In the deliberations of July 1914 economic considerations had entered the calculations, but they were buried in the background. In 1916 economic considerations were no longer marginal: economic warfare was the decisive strategy.
The Expansion of the Conflict August 1914-April 1917
Authors: Stevenson David
Published: October 2023

The war of 1914 originated in a sequence of decisions that seemed rational to the Governments that made them yet in their cumulative effects brought no belligerent what it sought. States went to war on the assumptions that its international ramifications could be limited, its domestic repercussions managed, and that military operations would yield a rapid and decisive result that could be translated into a corresponding political gain. In the event, the opening offensives brought not victory, but frustration or disaster: to the French, in Lorraine and the Ardennes; to the Austrians, in Serbia and Galicia; to the Russians, at Tannenberg; and to the Germans, on the Marne. Nor were the succeeding counter-offensives more conclusive. From now on, the outstanding feature of the conflict was stalemate. From Switzerland to Flanders there formed an unbroken line of trenches that the attacks of neither side displaced by more than a few miles for the next three and a half years. In Eastern Europe large tracts of territory did change hands, and smaller belligerents were overrun; but Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia remained in the field. Stalemate on land was matched by stalemate at sea, where the expected clash of battlefleets failed to materialize and neither the Allied blockade nor German submarine warfare had rapid results. And stalemate in battle was paralleled by stalemate on the home fronts and in the diplomacy that intermittently continued across the barbed wire. Neither side could end the war by military operations. But neither could end it by inducing a collapse in enemy morale and revolution behind the lines. Nor could either end it by negotiation and compromise on its political objectives, or war aims.
Conclusions
Authors: Moreton C E
Published: October 2023

A study of the Townshends which failed to consider the political and economic as well as the social aspects of their time would be incomplete, for during the one hundred years or so covered by this book each aspect played an interrelated part in their affairs. Too often our knowledge of the English gentry in this period is hampered by lack of evidence, but the relatively abundant source material associated with the Townshends makes possible a discussion of several of these aspects, making them too important to ignore.
The Caliphate in the West
Authors: Wasserstein David J
Published: October 2023

This is a study of the caliphate as a political institution in Islamic Spain, from its inception in 316/939 until the disappearance of the Umayyads in Cordoba in 422/1031. David J. Wasserstein explores the caliphal claims of the Hammudid dynasty in the south of the peninsula, and examines the caliphal practices of two Slav rulers of the eleventh century. He shows that the caliphal insitution was not abolished at any stage, and that it served rulers throughout the eleventh century as, among other things, an important source of legitimacy. Professor Wasserstein's important new interpretation is thoroughly grounded not only in the documentary sources, but also in the little-studied and revealing numismatic evidence. This is a significant contribution both to the Islamic history of the Iberian Peninsula and to our understanding of the nature of the caliphate within Islam in general.
Introductory
Authors: Doyle William
Published: October 2023

In 1660 Europe was emerging from half a century of violent convulsions. It was, many contemporaries thought, a ‘time of shaking’, an ‘age of iron’. Yet until fairly recently historians tended to ignore the Jeremiahs of the seventeenth century. Was this not the ‘grand’, the ‘golden’, the ‘splendid’ century? The solemn magnificence of classical literature, of Baroque architecture and music, spoke for themselves. The heavy pomp of Versailles seemed to epitomize the aspirations of a whole century. Such glories diverted attention from over forty years of savage warfare which had left no part of the continent untouched, and from the bitter rebellions and civil wars which had convulsed every major state at some time during that same period. And the intellectual life of the time was seen as an inexorable progress towards enlightenment, rather than a desperate search for certainty where all former authorities had been called into doubt.
The Ruled: the Town
Authors: Doyle William
Published: October 2023

The social structure of the countryside, diverse and varied though it was, was simple compared with that of the towns. Yet, with the exception of the Netherlands, towns housed only a minority of the population. By the later eighteenth century the proportion of Englishmen living in towns was still only about a third. In France it was around 23 per cent in 1800. Elsewhere the proportion was even less, especially towards the east. In Sweden in 1760 it was 6 7 per cent. In Russia, although it nearly doubled over our period, it was still only 4 per cent in 1796. Yet this urban minority provided the most dynamic and the most vital sections of the population.
Religion and the Churches
Authors: Doyle William
Published: October 2023

The lines dividing western Europe into Catholic and Protestant in 1660 had not changed significantly in 1800. France, Spain, Italy, the Habsburg dominions, Poland, and southern Germany were Catholic. Great Britain, the United Provinces, northern Germany, and Scandinavia were Protestant in one form or another. Russia and certain neighbouring territories observed their own variant on Greek Orthodoxy. In 1660, however, France harboured an important Protestant minority, Poland an Orthodox one, Protestant Holland was in fact half Catholic, and in Ireland Protestant England ruled an overwhelmingly Catholic population. Such dissident communities were profoundly mistrusted by governments, associated as they were with civil wars and attempts for over a century to change the established order. Only in the United Provinces, where a Protestant government ruled a fairly evenly divided population, was toleration implemented with any goodwill and even there formal Jaws forbade Roman practices.
Watching From Curiosity
Authors: Gatrell V A C
Published: October 2023

Did Polite People Ever Feel An Unabashed Excitement And curiosity when they attended executions? Could they ever have attended without disgust or guilt overlaying those simpler feelings? Is it thinkable that readers of Pamela or Sense and sensibility were moved by the same impulses as the vulgar crowd? If so, what within their secret natures accounted for that ‘strange fascination’ and ‘dark and dreadful interest’ which Dickens discerned whenever the scaffold was in view? When did it cease to be permissible to contemplate executions in these open ways? The supposition which shapes our answers was stated in the last chapter. It is that fascination with what happened on the scaffold was primal. It was common to all people regardless of social standing. At its most self-regarding, the fascination spoke for pleasure that it was others who died, and it expressed an elemental curiosity about how they died. ‘I never saw a man hanged but I thought I could behave better than he did,’ James Boswell declared; or as a New Grub Street character admitted when he read of a Newgate hanging, ‘There’s a clear satisfaction in knowing that it is not oneself’ Provided that identification with the vic tim was checked, a fantasy about one’s own relative longevity might be savoured as the other’s fate was settled before one’s eyes. Add to that the gratification of watching a life extinguished which law or morality had defined as deserving of extinction, and add again the crowd’s self loving solidarity as it watched-and the ‘pleasures’ of witnessing become more intelligible, even to those who would prefer not to admit such proclivities in themselves or their fellow creatures.
The Pursuit Of Victory
Authors: Bond Brian
Published: October 2023

In Western Europe and North America the idea that war can deliberately be used as an 'instrument of policy' has become unfashionable, not least because of the carnage of two World Wars and the Americans' humiliating experience in Vietnam. But wars are still fought. Those who start wars clearly believe they are worthwhile. Why? In this original study, Brian Bond discusses the successes and failures of military and political leaders in their pursuit of victory over the last two centuries. Professor Bond argues that in order to be counted victorious, a leader has to progress beyond military triumph to preserve the political control needed to secure an advantageous and enduring peace settlement. Napoleon was a brilliant general, but failed as a statesman. Bismarck, on the other hand, was a success in skilfully exploiting Moltlike's victories on the battlefield to create a unified Germany. In the First World War, Germany and her allies were defeated but at such great cost that confidence in the idea that war could be controlled, and the pursuit of victory made rational, received a terrible shock. Germany and Japan exploited their military opportunities between 1939 and 1942, but lack of political control and moderation brought them catastrophic defeat. After 1945, nuclear weapons and the increased complexity of international relations blurred the identity of 'victors' and 'losers' and seemed to make the idea of a 'decisive' victory almost unthinkable. But this study warns against the assumption that war as an instrument of policy has now been completely discarded. The Falklands and Gulf conflicts show that aggressors are still prepared to risk war for tangible goals, and that their opponents are quite capable of responding successfully to such challenges.
The Napoleonic Legacy: The Influence of Jomini and Clausewitz
Authors: Bond Brian
Published: October 2023

Of the numerous historians, military theorists, and polemicists who in the nineteenth century contributed to the legend of Napoleon as the ‘God of War’ the two most influential were surely the Swiss Antoine-Henri Jomini (1779-1869) and the Prussian Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831). Although there were many contrasts in their careers as professional soldiers, their political and cultural outlooks, and their approaches to the study of war, Azar Gat argues persuasively that the recent tendency to put them at opposite poles as interpreters of Napoleonic warfare is somewhat exaggerated. Both in fact ‘reflected the spirit and outline of Napoleonic strategy’.1
The Quest for Victory in the Schlieffen Era 1890–1914
Authors: Bond Brian
Published: October 2023

Historians are very properly reluctant to use the word ‘inevitable’, but from about 1890 onwards public figures displayed an almost uncanny sense of an impending great war between the European powers. This was surely the last period when war could be discussed not simply in terms of catastrophe, but also positively and even ecstatically as a social and biological necessity, even a tonic. For serious students of the phenomenon, the prevailing model was that bequeathed by the elder Moltke: total victory in a short decisive campaign.
Court And Household
Authors: Vale Malcolm
Published: October 2023

What was ‘the court’ in the later Middle Ages? What did contemporaries mean by the term? Satisfactory answers to these questions are notoriously difficult to arrive at, partly because the term could carry different meanings according to the context in which it was used. There is, how- ever, a broad measure of agreement that a ruler’s household (domus, hospitium, hôtel ) played a fundamental part in giving substance to the idea of ‘the court’. The material infrastructure, or underpinning, of all princely courts—in both the medieval and modern periods—was provided by the household. Court and household were never entirely synonymous, yet courts could not have existed without household organizations behind and within them. When a ruler ‘held court’, for example, the resources, and resourcefulness, of his household and its officers were necessarily brought into play. The holders of household office might be required to perform domestic functions, sometimes on a hereditary basis, and these services formed an essential element in court ceremonial. Furthermore, the holding of ‘full’, ‘solemn’, or plenary courts, summoned by a ruler on specific occasions, obviously depended upon the wide range of services provided to those present by household departments—lodging, catering, provisioning, and stabling all fell within the purview of the household.
Visual Language: Setting the Scene
Authors: Gameson Richard
Published: October 2023

On a small Anglo-Saxon boxwood casket, probably of mid-eleventh-century date, which is now in Cleveland, Ohio, are carved scenes of the Nativity, the Baptism of Christ, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Crucifixion, the Ascension, and Christ en throned in a mandorla, attended by four angels. Nowhere on the object is there a text or an inscription. As the scenes depict key events from the life of Christ, it might be said that the relevant biblical texts are ‘presumed ‘; and clearly the depictions cannot be dissociated from the context of contemporary familiarity with, and thought about, the events in question. Nevertheless no words are actually present, and it is clear that the carver of this Christological cycle was guided less by ‘presumed ‘ texts than by visual models. Most of the scenes relate to, and draw on, familiar iconographies, and the point is underlined by the one that does not-the Baptism of Christ. Here, in contrast to the biblical accounts and to most depictions of the scene,3 Christ stands not in a stylized River Jordan, but in a large vessel. The vessel is flanked by two figures, one holding up a book, the other ladling water on to Christ.
Society And Status
Authors: Sawyer Birgit
Published: October 2023

Since a rune-stone was a sign of social and economic status we can assume that all sponsors were landowners, among whom different social strata can be distinguished. The various indications that a rune-stone was erected by or to commemorate a person of high status include titles and honorific epithets, as well as the number and (relative) size of the stones, the length of the inscription, the use of more than one face, and the elaborateness of the ornament. Individuals who sponsored or were commemorated by two or more inscriptions appear to have been unusually important, while rune-stones placed close to such prestigious monuments as large burial mounds or ship-settings (where stones are arranged in the shape of a ship) show even more clearly that they were the work of families of exceptionally high rank.
The History Of Government From The Earliest Times
Authors: Finer S E
Published: October 2023

No one has hitherto had the breadth of imagination and intellectual boldness to describe and analyse government throughout recorded history and throughout the world. This unique study of government is the culmination of the work of the late S. E. Finer, one of the leading political scientists of the twentieth century. Ranging over 5,000 years, from the Sumerian city state to the modern European nation state, five themes emerge: state-building, military formats, belief systems, social stratification, and timespan. The three volumes examine both representative and exceptional polities, and focus on political elites of different types. Ancient Monarchies and Empires opens with Finer's masterly Conceptual Prologue, setting out the entire scope and structure of The History. Books One and Two then consider early examples of the predominantly `palace' type of polity, notably in respect of the Kingdoms of Egypt and the Empires of Assyria, Persia, Han China, and Rome; interspersed with consideration of the `exceptional' Jewish Kingdoms and the Greek and Roman Republics. Professor Finer's cogent descriptive analysis offers both an invaluable reference resource and an exhilarating journey across time and space.
The Egyptian Polity at Zenith: The New Kingdom
Authors: Finer S E
Published: October 2023

The ‘high’ period of Egyptian government and administration really lasted 1520-c.u50 BC (the middle of the XXth dynasty). It was the era of the ‘empire’, the period when it had conquered Nubia in the south, exerted hegemony over and planted colonies in Syria-Palestine, and was engaged in full diplomatic intercourse with such powers as the Hittites, the Mitanni, and the Assyrians. For virtually all these 370 years the country was governed stably and well. There were only two brief intervals of indecision and dynastic confusion: in the aftermath of Akhnaton’s Amarna experiment (1335-1315) and in the late XIXth dynasty (1204-u90). For any comparison we must turn to China, where the Han Empire lasted some four centuries with only a brief interval of usurpation and civil war between AD 9 and 23. Neither Persia nor Rome nor Byzantium could show such stability over so long a period. After the Hyksos seized Memphis in c.1630 Egypt had fallen apart. The Hyksos ruled as suzerains over a number of principalities in the Delta, while in the Sudan beyond the third cataract lay the partially Egyptianized Kerma state which enjoyed its heyday in the Second Intermediate Period (i.e. 1640-1520). At Thebes, however, a line of Egyptian princes ruled Upper and most of Middle Egypt. For a long time in coexistence with the Hyksos north, these kings, having consolidated a tightly centralized riverine kingdom and equipped themselves Hyksos-fashion with chariots and advanced weaponry, defeated the Hyksos, drove them right out of Egypt, then turned south to crush the Kerma state.
The Assyrian Empire, 745-612 BC
Authors: Finer S E
Published: October 2023

government? It was never free from revolts and secessions, and when it collapsed after the sack of Nineveh in 612 its ruler and its statehood disappeared. Yet a history of government would be very pedantic to ignore a power which in its time was the scourge and master of the entire Middle East. And in fact, there is a better case for including it. It is that the Assyrian Empire represents a new type of state formation. So far we have encountered in Sumer the city-state and in Egypt we met with the country-state. Here for the first time in history we encounter Empire. Conventionally speaking [writes Garelli], ‘imperial’ domination connotes a political and often, a spiritual hegemony exercised over a significant portion of the known world at a given moment. We next introduce the criteria of territorial extent and of ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity. From this standpoint the Assyrian ‘empire’ can be contrasted with the former ‘kingdoms’ which comprised only small areas and thin populations.
The Jewish Kingdoms, 1025-587 BC
Authors: Finer S E
Published: October 2023

mall, poor, ill-managed, divided, and short-lived: the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were two of the petty monarchies extinguished by the Assyrians and their Babylonian successors. But these states, and Judah in particular, represent, however, a revolutionary breakthrough in the tradi tion of government traced so far. After a span of 2,000 years-since 3200 BC-there appeared, briefly, a form of government with a wholly original and totally different characteristic. After AD 132 the political community itself was uprooted, driven out, and dispersed. Yet the memory of its peculiar polity was preserved as part of the sacred writings of the late Roman world. As such, it served as an exemplar for the new, barbarian peoples of Western Europe. In this way it entered into the Western state tradition and, through that, into the governmental norms of our entire contemporary world.
The First Republics-The Greeks
Authors: Finer S E
Published: October 2023

history of mankind had a crisis in the fifth century BC, an explosion of light which affected everything and still does so today. Europe is the result, and Greece is the key:1 No less than anything else, perhaps more so, the Greeks affected the practice and the theory of government. What they worked here was a revolution. From the beginning of recorded history in Sumeria and Egypt-for some two-and-a-half thousands of years-every constituted state had been a monarchy: not only in the known world of the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean, but in the worlds of India and distant China too. These monarchs had all been absolute, and godlike too, except for the Jewish kingdom where God ruled the kings. Suddenly there was government without kings or god. Instead, there were man-made, custom built republics of citizens. These Greek polities speak to us in a modern idiom and it was the Greeks who coined such terms as monarchy, autocracy, tyranny, despotism, aristocracy, and oligarchy, as well as democracy.
The Later Roman Empire: From Diocletian to Theodoric, 284-526
Authors: Finer S E
Published: October 2023

In 235, when Alexander, the last Severan, was murdered, the empire plunged into crisis. Barbarians in the north and Persians in the east penetrated the frontiers, Roman armies fought their brothers to put short lived emperors on the throne, and the currency collapsed. The empire that emerged from this ordeal was very different from the Antonines’. The Dominate, conventionally dated from Diocletian in 284, represents the empire adapting to permanent military siege. Its central characteristic was an unremitting and vast bureaucratic effort to mobilize the empire’s human and natural resources. These were inadequate and in any case the govern ment lacked the administrative techniques to marshal them. Nevertheless, every check only emboldened it to redouble its bureaucratic interference, and with every such advance the human and natural resources dwindled still further.
Introduction
Authors: Collinson Patrick
Published: October 2023

For much of the twentieth century, history enjoyed a privileged pos ition in sixth-form and university syllabuses. And in England history meant primarily English history, which more often than not included that old faithful, Tudors and Stuarts’. In Scotland, the subject taught was, naturally, Scottish history. It is a not uncommon experience for a product of an English education to find, in conversation with a Scot, striking differences in what they think happened in their interrelated pasts, not least in the sixteenth century. Ireland, too, had its own nationalist historians. As for anything which could be called British history, it hardly existed, so that in 1975 the distinguished historian John Pocock was able to publish an article with the title ‘British History: A Plea for a New Subject’.1 But is British history a subject, or rather, when did it become one?
The limits of power: the English crown and the British Isles
Authors: Ellis Steven G
Published: October 2023

The chief legacy of the Tudors in terms of state formation was perhaps to create the circumstances in which a multiple monarchy coterminous with the British Isles emerged in 1603. This development was the product of two separate processes. In the first place, the reduction of all Ireland to peace and civility-which, in effect, meant the conquest of the hitherto-independent Gaelic parts-had long been an English ambition. It represented the final phase of a process of monarchical expansion and centralization in the Tudor state which also saw the imposition of standard English structures of local government in other outlying parts, notably Wales and the English far north. Essentially, this involved the welding into a composite monarchy of those territories ruled by medieval kings as ‘parcels’ or dominions of the English crown. Second, there was the Union of the Crowns with Scotland, which brought together under one king two very different, and traditionally hostile, kingdoms. This was the half intended result of the dynastic marriage in 1503 between Henry Tudor’s daughter, Margaret, and King James IV of Scots, and it was foreshadowed too in the projected but abortive marriage involving the future Edward VI and Mary, queen of Scots.
Conclusion
Authors: Aylmer G E
Published: October 2023

Many historians have emphasized the importance of symbols and ceremonies as a feature of government and an aspect of state power. Whether these were of greater significance in the seventeenth century than in the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries need not concern us here. It is, however, hard to believe that two civilized powers of today would regard a maritime dispute over saluting the flag as a casus belli, though stranger things have happened in our time. The English claim to sovereignty over the narrow seas around the shores of these islands (but extending far outside what have come to be defined as territorial waters in modern international law) was symbolized by the demand that vessels of all other nationalities should strike their flags and dip their topsails to the ships of the English Crown (or State-for the Commonwealth had applied this doctrine with at least equal vigour).
Spies and Covert Operations
Authors: Hanhimäki Jussi , Westad Odd Arne
Published: October 2023

The Cold War was always fought on numerous ‘fronts’, of which none has inspired as much popular mythology as that of intelligence activities and other covert operations. Throughout the Cold War the two principal spy agencies the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB)-engaged in a series of activities aimed at uncovering secret information of the other side’s plans and activities, monitoring the military development (particularly the development of nuclear weapons) of the adversary, and arresting unfavourable developments in third countries. While the details of many of these activities are still largely not declassified, the end of the Cold War has dramatically enhanced our knowledge about the hidden war of Western and Eastern intelligence agencies.
The Nile
Authors: Collins Robert O
Published: October 2023

The Nile is one of the great natural and romantic wonders of the world. It is the longest river, flowing south to north 6,825 km (4,238 miles) over 35° of latitude through civilizations of great antiquity. Its basin is broad and big, embracing some three million km ( r, r 96,000 sq. miles) of equatorial and north-east Africa. It flows irresistibly through every natural formation, from mountainous highlands to barren deserts. Today its basin includes nine independent States-Ruanda, Burundi, Zai :re, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Sudan.
The Sudd
Authors: Collins Robert O
Published: October 2023

Although the difficulties of navigation through the Nile swamps had long been known, the exact character of the obstructions, called sudd, remained obscure until the British began methodically to clear the rivers at the beginning of this century. Sudd is derived from the Arabic word sadd ( ) meaning barrier or obstacle, and came into general use among the European and Arab merchants and traders whose passage through the swamps in the nineteenth century was impeded by large dams of aquatic vegetation blocking the channels. Today the term is used to describe the permanent swamp of the Nile or, more loosely, to refer to the whole of the Nile flood-plain, including the seasonal wetlands as well as the permanent swamp.’
The Years of Indecision, 1920-1946
Authors: Collins Robert O
Published: October 2023

The resignation of Sir Murdoch MacDonald in 1921, combined with the political upheavals in Egypt following the war, left the future planning of the Nile in total disarray. MacDonald’s position as adviser to the ministry of public works was never again filled, and upon the independence of Egypt in 1922 the British high commissioner in Cairo could no longer play the political and financial role of Cromer, Gorst, or Kitchener. Their successors became bogged down in a swamp of disputations and frustrating negotiations between Britain and Egypt over their own relations and the role each was to play in the Sudan. British power to intervene at the Egyptian ministries was emasculated.
The Equatorial Nile Project
Authors: Collins Robert O
Published: October 2023

In the autumn of 1946 the Egyptian ministry of public works published The Nile Basin, volume vn: The Future Conservation of the Nile by H. E. Hurst, R. P. Black, and Y. M. Simaika. It was a dramatic event, ending the years of indecision. Hurst himself was fully conscious of its importance. Having just sent the manuscript to the press he wrote to Nimmo Allan, irrigation consultant to the Sudan government, in August. ‘Anyway the first thing is to have the engineering and scientific side on a sound basis, and this we think we have done. Of course, the scheme can be modified in detail, but it is useless to devise schemes only for immediate development as has been the practice in the past.’1 For the first time since the publication of Nile Control in 1920, a comprehensive plan for Nile development had been conceived, which included three major innovations in planning. First,
Napoleon’s War with His Empire, 1810-1812
Authors: Schroeder Paul w.
Published: October 2023

Late 1809 to mid-1812, like late 1939 to early 1940, was an interlude of Sitzkrieg, without new military campaigns or critical developments in those under way. Yet most of the era was tense with expectation of a new collision, this time between France and Russia. Many contemporaries believed, as some historians have argued since, that Napoleon brought on this great conflict because of his other failures and omissions. Had he not neglected the Spanish ulcer but seriously worked at ending it himself, or had he given his Continental System enough time to work, he might have won in the peninsula and even defeated Britain, and thereby kept Russia in line or at least had no reason to fight it. Failing to win these campaigns, or even to make an allout effort to do so, he tried instead to save his Empire and bring Britain down by conquering Russia.
Introduction
Authors: Housley Norman
Published: October 2023

This book began life as a proposal for a short survey of the crusading movement between the Second Council of Lyons and the fall of Granada in 1492. In the course of negotiations with possible publishers the book expanded in several ways. I agreed to take the subject as far as the late sixteenth century, and to write not only about crusading expeditions and projects, but also about the associated processes of conquest and settlement, both Christian (in Spain, the Baltic region, Greece, and Cyprus) and Muslim (in the cases of the Mamluk and Ottoman Sultanates). These changes in time-span and scope in turn necessitated a much longer book. In the event I am pleased that the changes were introduced. It is true that they bring with them the danger of mental indigestion for anyone who is new to the subject. Unavoidably, the shortage of space available to handle complicated and contentious issues has resulted in generalizations, while the sheer size of the historical landscape involved will have led to omissions; reviewers and colleagues will doubtless point these out. But I am convinced in hindsight that to conclude any account of the later crusades earlier than 1580 would be to neglect events of intrinsic interest and significance. It will be apparent from Chapter 101 that I now regard the fall of Granada in 1492 as the starting-point for a series of extraordinary developments in Iberian crusading. But the matter goes deeper than that: in a nutshell, it is impossible to regard the crusading movement as a dead or even ‘residual’ expression of Catholic belief or behaviour in the sixteenth century, before or after (perhaps especially after) the Protestant Revolution. I also think that any account of crusading which does not deal with what the crusaders or their enemies achieved, in terms of government, economy, and society, is incomplete.
The Church of England 1559-1625 a Church designed by a Committee?
Authors: Russell Conrad
Published: October 2023

‘The Devil take him, whomsoever he be, that had a design to change religion’. These words were part of Charles I’s off-the-cuff reply when presented with the Grand Remonstrance, and they mark out the ground on which he and the majority in the House of Commons joined issue. They agreed that there could be only one church and only one religion, and they agreed that it was a crime to alter or innovate that religion. Granted their agreement that this was a crime, they were forced to join issue on the question which of them was guilty of that crime. Since what was at stake was the claim to lawful succession, innovation was necessarily one of the major charges to be substantiated: as Laud said at the trial of Burton, Bastwick, and Prynne, ‘they, which are the only, or the chief, innovators of the Christian world, having nothing to say, accuse us of innovation’. Since it was a rule of the contest that the more persuasive claim of orthodoxy won the debate, it was necessary to claim it at all points. Even Anthony Lapthorne, Dr Fincham’s favourite bad penny, was-described in 1642, when installed as lecturer in the parish from which the High Commission had deprived him in 1617, as’ an orthodox divine’.
The Poverty of the Crown and the Weakness of the King
Authors: Russell Conrad
Published: October 2023

‘And for my particular I may say thus much that if sitting so near the storm and seeing it coming in the air, I should have suffered it to break and bemoaned myself in a private corner without resorting to the natural place for remedy, I were not worthy to carry this staff in my hand’. These words were not spoken by Lord Treasurer Juxon about the Second Bishops’ War, though we might have had a higher opinion of Juxon if they had been: they were spoken by Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, in his opening speech to the Parliament of 1610. Many, indeed most, of the storm clouds which met in 1642 were ones Robert Cecil could not have seen coming, but in this speech, he saw and plotted with exemplary accuracy one of the storm-tracks which met in the hurricane of 1642: the failure of the King’s finances.
Class and Poverty in Edwardian England
Authors: Mckibbin Ross
Published: October 2023

IN 1887 Charles Booth addressed the Royal Statistical Society on the condition and occupations of the inhabitants of the Tower Hamlets, and this was to be the pilot study for the great Life and Labour. After he had spoken the statistician Leone Levi asked the question:

Who was a poor man? … The author [Andrew Mearns, writer of The Bitter Cry of Outcast London] had not mentioned the causes of poverty … His own impression was that poverty proper in the district which had been described was mon frequently produced by vice, extravagance and waste, or by unfitness for work, the result in many cases of immoral habits, than by real want of employment or low wages.
Class and Conventional Wisdom: The Conservative Party and the ‘Public’ in Inter-war Britain
Authors: Mckibbin Ross
Published: October 2023

IN a previous chapter I argued that the British constitutional and political system promoted its legitimacy in two ways: by excluding the relationship of the organized working class to civil society from the sphere of ‘politics’ and by discreetly undermining the authority of the employing class. This strategy was pursued with consider able success until the outbreak of the First World War. Yet it was also faltering. The argument that the claims of the industrial working class on society could indefinitely be confined to the margins was by 1914 increasingly unconvincing. Equally, it is doubtful that the employing class would accept for long a situation in which it seemed more and more disadvantaged, or would refrain from seeking allies amongst social groups who also felt themselves oppressed by the weight of the organized working class. By 1918, it was clear that the strategy had not simply faltered, it had failed: society’s relations with the working class had at last become the central political problem, while the ‘middle classes’ had made it clear that they were not prepared to play a subordinate role in the new order. It is the purpose of this chapter to examine one of the most significant consequences of that transformation: the Conser vative Party’s electoral domination of inter-war Britain.
Palmerston and After, 1855–1868
Authors: Theodore Hoppen K
Published: October 2023

The most natural outcome of the collapse of Aberdeen’s coalition in late January 1855 was the emergence of Palmerston as Prime Minister. Derby and Russell had both very publicly failed to construct administrations. Russell’s efforts had been dismissed by almost everyone because few were prepared to grant their author absolution for his part in bringing about the coalition’s collapse. Derby in turn had given up in the face of refusals from Palmerston, Gladstone, and Herbert to join a Conservative-dominated ministry. Being the natural successor did not, however, mean that every crooked thing was suddenly made straight or that Disraeli’s comments of February 1855 about the 71-year-old Prime Minister were not widely shared: ‘He is really an imposter, utterly exhausted, and at best only ginger-beer, and not champagne, and now an old painted pantaloon, very deaf, very blind, and with false teeth, which would fall out of his mouth when speaking if he did not hesitate and halt so in his talk.’ ‘Progressive’ Conservatives like Derby’s son, Lord Stanley, believed Palmerston ‘would break under the weight of the premiership’ while Cobden expressed the Radicals’ view that ‘to call in an exploded sham to master a crisis like this is merely proof that we as a nation are in a state of collapse’. Indeed, Palmerston’s position in parliament was never secure during the whole of his first ministry. He survived partly by luck and partly because his own undoubted political skills were rarely put to the test by an opposition as cautious as it was disunited.
Gladstone and Disraeli 1868–1880
Authors: Theodore Hoppen K
Published: October 2023

The period 1868–80 was remarkable for the starkness with which political differences were epitomized by dramatic confrontations between its two leading men. Even when the behaviour of the ministries led by Gladstone and Disraeli converged under the impress of circumstances, the passion of colliding philosophies and rhetoric usually managed to disguise the fact. Not that the general election of 1868, which cleared the way for such things, was itself either especially fierce or especially novel in character. If more constituencies were fought than at any election since 1832, this was because extensive franchise reforms always made it necessary to survey the political map anew. In almost every other respect contests followed familiar lines. There was much electoral violence. About eighty seats remained under the control of landed patrons, while in the industrial North factory owners were emerging as political godfathers in their own right. The Tory campaign showed few signs of imperialist stridency. Religion still counted for much (and Disraeli, despite attempts to rally the ‘Protestant’ vote, lacked finesse in that department). Most of the members returned came from the usual backgrounds: aristocracy, landed gentry, and (but no more than before) the purple of commerce.