bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Failure of Liberal Racialism: The Racial Ideas of E. A. Freeman
Authors: Parker C. J. W.
Published: June 2009

He might be regarded indeed as a representative specimen of the Teutonic type.1 He was essentially Teutonic in his whole personality, physical, as well as moral and mental; in his square, sturdy frame, his ruddy hair, his fair complexion, his plain and simple habits of life, no less than in his love of truth, and straightforwardness in deed and word. For the pure Celt he entertained a kind of natural antipathy, mingled with something like contempt, which often manifested itself in odd and amusing ways, suggestive of Dr Johnson's attitude towards the Scotch.
The Politicization of the Irish Catholic Bishops, 1800–1850
Authors: MacDonagh Oliver
Published: June 2009

It has been argued that the general election of 1852 marked the zenith of clerical influence in Irish politics in the nineteenth century. If so, it marked a barren use of power. The present paper is concerned with how such influence was acquired and why it was so curiously exercised; or, more precisely, with these questions in so far as the catholic hierarchy was concerned.
The Mission of Sir Frederick Leith-Ross to the Far East, 1935–1936
Authors: Rothwell V. H.
Published: June 2009

From August 1935 to July 1936 Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, the Chief Economic Adviser to the British Government, was away from Britain on an official mission to the Far East. While accepting that, as Hankey, the secretary to the cabinet, put it, after Leith-Ross had been away for several months, he was a ‘distinguished Civil Servant’ whose ‘services could, with difficulty, be spared from European problems’, the aim of this paper is not to describe in detail what Leith-Ross did during his lengthy Far Eastern sojourn: on that he himself wrote an account which was published just before his death. The purpose is rather, by studying the origins of the mission and the reactions to it in British Government circles concerned with Far Eastern policy, to cast light on that policy during Britain's last few years as a great power in the Far East.3 Within die Foreign Office itself, Far Eastern policy was to a large degree the preserve of die professional staff concerned with it. The most senior of these in 1935 were C. W. Orde, head of the Far Eastern department, Sir John Pratt and Sir Victor Wellesley.
IV. J. S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform, and the Integrity of the Empire, 1865–1870
Authors: Steele E. D.
Published: June 2009

The first part of this study of Mill sought to show how much less radical he was on the subject of Irish land reform than is often supposed. In the earlier editions of the Principles of Political Economy from 1848 to 1857 there were passages which constituted a terrible indictment of landlordism, and insisted on the need for legislation to convert the tenant farmers into joint owners of their holdings: but in another passage this harsh criticism was substantially withdrawn, and the demand for fixity of tenure effectively retracted. Although they continued to reproduce the criticism and the call for a drastic measure, the editions of 1862 and 1865 were more moderate still in their conclusions on Irish land. With the progress of the changes in the economy and society set in motion by the Great Famine, Mill became more strongly convinced that the country should be left to evolve slowly under the existing law of tenure, only slightly amended. One cannot imagine Mill saying, ‘tenant-right…is equivalent to landlords' wrong’: but he and Palmerston were none the less in nearly complete agreement by 1865 on the degree of laissez-faire that was desirable in Ireland. For all his strictures upon aristocratic misgovernment and middle-class prejudice, Mill was too warm an admirer of British institutions to want to undermine their social basis over a wide area of the United Kingdom. The second part of this study deals with his action and his motives, in briefly advocating, without any reservations this time, the revolutionary land legislation from which he had always previously shrunk, despite his brave words written for the earlier editions of the Principles.
VII. The Liberal Party Divided 1916–1918
Authors: David Edward
Published: June 2009

A great deal of published historical work has been devoted to establishing the causes and chronology of the demise of the Liberal party in British politics. The downfall of the Liberals has been ascribed to the inevitable outflanking development of the Labour party; to the mutilation of Liberal principles involved in waging the first ‘total’ war; to the personal rifts and feuds between the rival followers of Asquith and Lloyd George—and to various combinations of these factors. Yet there has been no detailed analysis of the division within the Parliamentary Liberal party during the First World War. Although at the end of 1916 obviously certain Liberals supported Asquith and others Lloyd George, no attempt has been made to examine the way in which the rifts in the party were reflected in political action in the House of Commons during the time of the second coalition government, nor to determine accurately the lines of division in the party. An answer to the question of ‘How did the Liberal party divide during the First World War?’ has proved elusive, although some historians of the period have been more successful than others.
III. Prophecy and Pragmatism: Gobineau's Confrontation with Tocqueville
Authors: Biddiss Michael D.
Published: June 2009

The history of social and political ideas is often brilliantly illuminated by personal intellectual confrontations. Our understanding of the concept of progress is enhanced by consideration of the divergences between Diderot and Rousseau; our attitudes to revolutionary change cannot fail to be influenced by the debate between Burke and Paine; our appreciation of communist and anarchist ideals is refined by contemplating the dispute between Marx and Bakunin. Similarly our view of certain questions important to mid-nineteenth-century social philosophy may be sharpened by an examination of another confrontation, less famous though scarcely less revealing than the foregoing, embodied in the exchange of letters between Alexis de Tocqueville and Arthur de Gobineau. The present discussion of some aspects of their correspondence makes no attempt at a full-scale comparison of the two figures. Rather, it places an emphasis upon him who is now the lesser known—a stress which is all the more defensible in view of much of the debate's previous treatment at the hands of historians. Into such historiographical questions there is no need to venture—at least, not beyond stating the two broad considerations which seem to justify an essay in reinterpretation along the lines suggested here.
VII. The Naval Question in Anglo-German Relations, 1912–1914
Authors: Langhorne Richard
Published: June 2009

When Sir Llewellyn Woodward wrote his distinguished book Great Britain and the German Navy in 1935, the last volumes of Gooch and Temperley were not yet published, and the original papers were still subject to the fifty-year rule. In 1971, all of the Gooch and Temperley collection of documents has long since been available; and the archives have been open since 1965. It is therefore possible to add to what Sir Llewellyn wrote, and this article seeks to show, not differently from him, but more fully, how the naval holiday proposals unfolded and how the general tenor of Anglo-German relations remained unaltered in this most vital area. Nothing that the Haldane Mission had done, nor even the general co-operation between London and Berlin during the Balkan Wars, could change the fundamental position—despite Baron Marschall's hopes.
Religion and the Collapse of Gladstone's First Government, 1870–1874
Authors: Parry J. P.
Published: June 2009

Gladstone has not been well served by the historiographical tradition dominant for much of this century. It has disseminated an image of him that emphasizes little more than an undefined ‘reformism’ and a moralizing populism; this is as unhelpful and distorted as is the interpretation, emanating from the same source, of much of the rest of nineteenth-century politics. It is no longer enough to judge public figures of this period by the degree of their commitment to nebulous platitudes like ‘social reform’ or ‘progress’: historians have recently exposed the flimsy foundations that sustain the reputations of even those most frequently celebrated in these spheres. It is misleading to concentrate attention on the development of institutional reform, centralized government, trade union legislation, or welfare statutes for the poor; franchise extension apart, advances here were often provoked solely by bureaucratic agency or by the concern of philanthropic backbenchers, and contributed only occasionally to the major disputes of Victorian political society. If we are to shed light on the domestic issues of vital importance to contemporary politicians, we need a far more coherent account than is now available of financial, taxation and land policy on the one hand, and, on the other, of the main subject of this article, the role of religion in politics.
Salisbury and the Lords, 1868–1895
Authors: Weston Corinne C.
Published: June 2009

During the period from the Reform Act of 1832 to the early 1880s, when a change set in, the house of lords was perceptibly weaker than the house of commons. The prevailing view of its position, accepted for the most part even by the peers themselves, was expressed in Walter Bagehot's highly influential English constitution (1867, rev. 1872), where the house of lords is described as safe from rough destruction but not from inner decay, the danger coming not so much from assassination as atrophy, not from abolition but decline. This description drew on Bagehot's distinction between the dignified and efficient parts of the constitution. The house of lords belonged to the first category: that house in its dignified capacity inspired a reverence in the people that attached them to the government. Yet, paradoxically, in view of the great respect for the aristocracy, the house of lords had been subordinate as a legislative chamber to the house of commons even before the Reform Act of 1832; and since then this subordination had grown ever more pronounced.
The Kildare Rebellion and the Early Henrician Reformation
Authors: Ellis Steven G.
Published: June 2009

In the 1530s, Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell carried out fundamental changes in the Tudor state. These changes amounted to a revolution in which three elements may be distinguished: the erection of the commonwealth into a sovereign empire, the king's divorce of Catherine of Aragon, and important alterations to the nature and structure of the English church. Because of the fundamental nature of the issues involved and the threat to the established order, the revolution very soon provoked widespread discontent among all sections of society. Nevertheless, opposition was spasmodic and uncoordinated, with each group of conspirators relying on another to rise, and all looking to the emperor, Charles V, to rectify the evils which, it was thought, the king's policies had brought about. Lack of effective leadership and failure to agree about what constituted the major grievances enabled the government to deal with the dissidents one by one. Cromwell was allowed to use parliament to ratify the government's programme and to manipulate public opinion. By constant vigilance and an intelligent use of the constraints placed on the populace by the penal clauses in the statutes, he secured the observance of the more unpopular measures. In spite of the overall success of this policy, the difficulties were many, and the final outcome always in doubt. Its enforcement was thus ‘a political task of some magnitude’ for the government. Probably the most determined challenge to the revolution was presented in Ireland, where rebellion broke out in June 1534.
The Relief of the Poor in Coventry, 1830–1863
Authors: Searby Peter
Published: June 2009

Recent writers have pointed out that the 1834 act often made little immediate difference to the practice of local poor-law authorities. The poor-law commissioners lacked the means or the will to enforce their programme. Poor law unions did not replace the township as the effective unit of administration. The same men (albeit with different titles) remained in control. Authorities continued to vary greatly in efficiency and generosity, strong determinants of leniency or harshness being the fortunes of the local economy and the strength of local impulses towards paternalism or frugality. In Nottinghamshire, for example, relief policy became steadily more stringent from the 1820s onwards, largely owing to the work of cost-conscious magistrates; 1834 speeded the current, rather than changed its course. On the other hand, in the Durham unions surveyed by Peter Dunkley, relief was generous throughout the 1830s, but stingy when the local economy was hit by slump after 1840; in the Hungry Forties, the Durham unions were as ruthless as the poor law commission in their attitude towards the poor – and sometimes, indeed, were more so, the commission protesting vainly against the overcrowding of workhouses. Even local authorities' generous phases reflected a shrewd assessment of the ratepayers' best interests: Rhodes Boyson has shown how the north-east Lancashire unions' insistence on continuing outdoor relief was due in part to a realisation that to enforce indoor relief in all cases would be much more costly.
The Formation of the Foreign Office Economic Relations Section, 1930–1937
Authors: Boadle Donald Graeme
Published: June 2009

In December 1930 Sir Victor Wellesley, the deputy under secretary at the Foreign Office, and its expert on Far Eastern finance, circulated a 29-page ‘Proposal for the establishment of a Politico-Economic Intelligence Department in the Foreign Office.’ This memorandum was prompted by the growing importance of tariffs, and various forms of investment, as instruments of foreign policy, and concern at his colleagues' failure to understand the political consequences. With economic nationalism in the ascendant, Wellesley recognized that Britain soon would have to consider whether she would ‘take part in the scramble for economic hegemony’. He hoped Cabinet would decide against tariffs and imperial preference, but was worried that the Foreign Office would be ill-equipped to defend this viewpoint. It was not that the Office lacked adequate sources of economic information, but rather that the division of duties between the Department of Overseas Trade and the Foreign Office precluded their assimilation with political appreciations. Although seventy five per cent of the work of the average mission was economic or commercial, this was generally left to the commercial counsellor, who reported directly to the Department of Overseas Trade. Political dispatches were forwarded to the appropriate Foreign Office department and there examined in virtual isolation. Moreover, the dominant attitude of mind among senior diplomats was, if not actually predisposed against economic work, at least so lacking in understanding that their efforts were often misdirected.
British Government Inspection, 1832–1875: Some Observations
Authors: Bartrip P. W. J.
Published: June 2009

Many historians now recognize that the establishment of central government inspection was of great importance in advancing mid-nineteenth-century social and administrative reform. MacDonagh, for example, calls the appointment of inspectors ‘a step of immense, if unforeseen, consequences’. Parris, in many respects MacDonagh’s critic, acknowledges that inspectors ‘played a leading role in legislation, including the development of their own powers’. Other authorities have taken a similar line; indeed, Burn maintains that the period could be characterized ‘the age of the inspector’, so pervasive was his influence.
‘The Single Person's Confidants and Dependants’? Oliver Cromwell and his Protectoral Councillors
Authors: Gaunt Peter
Published: June 2009

Little has happened in the century since Masson wrote those words fundamentally to alter his assessment and both the operation of Protectoral central government 1653–8 and the role of the Council within it remain sadly under-studied. Although recent historians would doubtless deny that they have simply forgotten the Protectoral Councillors, in practice most surveys either ignore the Council or allude to it in a few passing and usually dismissive sentences. For example, the Councillors are mentioned only once in Kenyon'sStuart England, a reference to their ‘clumsy decision’ to exclude M.P.s in 1656. And the assessment of the Council as a politically powerless vehicle for the Protector's will still generally prevails, albeit expressed in more cautious tones. Thus in his recent study of interregnum Britain, Barnard asserts that ‘in practice the Council seldom deflected him [Cromwell] from his chosen courses’ and that it is ‘likely that the councillors would usually defer to him’. Barnard himself laments the dearth of surviving evidence about the Council's work, a dearth which has all but stifled serious examination of the operation of Protectoral central government and which may have led contemporaries and later historians alike to under-rate the role of the Council and correspondingly to inflate that of Cromwell. For despite the paucity of evidence, there are clear indications that the Council was not the impotent cypher nor Cromwell the boundless autocrat of so many histories and biographies.
The International Financial Commission and Anglo-Greek Relations (1928–1933)
Authors: Andreopoulos George J.
Published: June 2009

The final phase of Venizelism (1928–1933) has traditionally been considered as a period of considerable foreign policy accomplishments (e.g. friendship treaties with Italy, Yugoslavia and Turkey). Yet despite the attention which has been paid to these agreements, the period was clearly marked by the government's drive towards internal infrastructural changes via its commitment to extensive public works programmes. This effort necessitated a huge influx of capital from abroad; in fact, in the period between 1924 and 1931 more money entered the country than at any time since 1875–90. In this context, Britain's influential role was further enhanced as a result of the indispensability of the London credit market, and her financial presence in Greece was to set the tone and pace of Anglo-Greek relations. Probably no institution reflected this uneven relation more accurately than the International Financial Commission (I.F.C).
Neo-Mercantilism andThe Wealth of Nations: British Commercial Policy after the American Revolution
Authors: Crowley John E.
Published: June 2009

Few works of economic thought have such a close association with the intellectual and economic history of their period as Adam Smith'sAn inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Three recent careful assessments of the ‘influence’ of Smith's work, however, have found little direct evidence for its positive significance for economic policy in the 1780s and 1790s. Parliamentary debate seldom referred to theWealth of nations, and then usually negatively unless by Smith's friends, or ‘radicals and Foxite whigs’. John Locke, David Hume, Charles Davenant, Sir Josiah Child, William Petty, Josiah Tucker and Arthur Young were all cited more frequently. A wide range of parliamentary leaders read Smith carefully, and several ministers knew him well and sought his advice, but with the exception of Shelburne they appear to have applied Smith's thought eclectically. Salim Rashid has noted that in 1776 there were already influential economic authorities, notably Arthur Young and Josiah Tucker, who advocated freer markets. Conversely, for over a decade after the publication of theWealth of nations, articles on economic matters in the major periodical reviews made scanty reference to Smith's work, while the protectionist views of Sir James Steuart, whom Smith had ignored, were often authoritative. Smith's views became respectable among the political after negotiation of the Anglo-French commercial treaty of 1786, but it was this liberal economic policy which gave thewealth of nationscurrency, not the reverse.
Revolution as Vendetta: Napoleonic Piedmont 1801–1814 II
Authors: Broers Michael
Published: June 2009

The virus of violent, personal vendetta had poisoned the blood of elite society in Piedmont by the time the country was formally annexed to France in April 1802. The turbulent events of the period 1794–1801 had inflamed and then politicized a society ‘whose customs steadfastly retained something of the unruly and fiercesome’, as Sauli d'Igliano, the son of a petty count from Ceva, chose to describe it when writing of his childhood in the mid-1790s. The revolutionary process unleashed and, finally, entrenched that penchant for violence among ‘men of the second order’ that Giuseppe Baretti had informed the whole of Europe of a generation earlier in his widely read An account of the manners and customs of Italy: ‘they are withal so punctilious and so ready to draw the sword, that more duels are fought in Piedmont than in the rest of Italy taken together’. The venom of revolution mingled with the poison of personal vendettas and brought their ferocity to the centre of political life. It was a virus the French would strive to stamp out, but one that would malinger in the subalpine body politic throughout their own rule and long after they had gone. As late as 1813, a substantial landowner of Bene, in southern Piedmont complained of his patriot maire's ‘despotisme et ses actes arbitraires…sans nombre’.
John Thelwall and the Eighteenth-Century Radical Response to Political Economy
Authors: Hampsher-Monk Iain
Published: June 2009

John Thelwall was born in 1764 in Covent Garden, London. The son of a silk mercer, he was unsuccessfully apprenticed to his father after leaving school at 13, and then successively, an apprenticed tailor, and an articled legal clerk; but he failed to impress at any of these, apparently reading during working hours. Turning to his pen, he published two volumes of poems and became literary editor of theBiographical and Imperial Magazine. Speaking at the Coachmakers' Hall, he caught the attention of John Home Tooke, who offered to send him to university. But by this time he was already enthusing about the revolution in France and had joined both the whiggish Society of the Friends of the People, and the more down-market London Corresponding Society. In the midst of all of this, and getting married, he attended some courses on anatomy and medicine at one of the London medical colleges.
Earning and Learning in the British West Indies: an Image of Freedom in the Pre-Emancipation Decade, 1823–1833
Authors: Blouet Olwyn M.
Published: June 2009

In 1833 slavery was abolished in the British West Indian colonies. A labour system that had been in operation for two hundred years, ended. A campaign based on the concept of freedom came to fruition. The idea of freedom was central to enlightenment thought. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, freedom of movement, a free press, free trade and free labour were all part of enlightenment ideology. The institution of slavery, which limited all freedoms, came under pressure in an enlightened environment. Unlike the ancients who believed there could not be a civilized society without slaves, enlightenment philosophers developed the view that slavery was antithetical to civilization.
The Question of Western Allied Co-operation with the German Anti-Nazi Conspiracy, 1938–1944
Authors: Hoffmann Peter
Published: June 2009

When emissaries of the German underground opposition against Hitler's dictatorship sought contacts and co-operation with the British government in 1938, prime minister Neville Chamberlain said they reminded him of the Jacobites in King William's reign; but until May 1940, the British government was not averse to co-operating with Germans conspiring to overthrow their own government.
Creative accounting in the age of Philip II? Determining the ‘just’ rate of interest
Authors: Marino John A.
Published: June 2009

Deficit financing, revenue projections and interest rates in Spanish Naples provide the context to reflect upon the exigencies of debt resolution, the illusions of mathematical certainty and the perils of temporizing in political decision-making. ‘Creative accounting’ explores the micro-history of an equation, which provided the mathematical rationale to lower Spanish interest rates to 3·3 per cent and to resolve the controversy over the ‘just’ rate of interest. In an attempt to generate revenues during the Spanish financial crisis of the 1570s that surrounded Philip II's second bankruptcy in Castile, Philip's Castilian accountants devised a proposal to suspend the hearth census in the Kingdom of Naples for fifteen years in exchange for a prepayment at discount. An analysis of the mathematics of the discount schedule raises questions about early modern economic realities. Changes in the significance of figures and quantitative relationships, like changes in the meaning of words, reveal the mental processes used to represent economic fact and to construct solutions to economic difficulties even in the midst of crises.
‘Like amphibious animals’: Irish protestants, ancient Britons, 1691–1707
Authors: Smyth Jim
Published: June 2009

Ireland in the 1690s was a protestant state with a majority catholic population. These protestants sometimes described themselves as ‘the king's Irish subjects’ or ‘the people of Ireland’, but rarely as ‘the Irish’, a label which they usually reserved for the catholics. In constitutional and political terms their still evolving sense of identity expressed itself in the assertion of Irish parliamentary sovereignty, most notably in William Molyneux's 1698 pamphlet, The case of Ireland's being bound by acts of parliament in England, stated.In practice, however, the Irish parliament did not enjoy legislative independence, and the political elite was powerless in the face of laws promulgated at Westminster, such as the i6gg woollen act, which were detrimental to its interests. One possible solution to the problem of inferior status lay in legislative union with England or Great Britain. Increasingly in the years before 1707 certain Irish protestant politicians elaborated the economic, constitutional and practical advantages to be gained from a union, but they also based their case upon an appeal to the shared religion and ethnicity of the sovereign's loyal subjects in the two kingdoms. In short the protestants insisted that they were English. This unionist episode thus illustrates the profoundly ambivalent character of protestant identity in late seventeenthand early eighteenth-century Ireland.
Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, and the ‘Conjured League’
Authors: Brigden Susan
Published: June 2009

This essay reexamines the fall of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, in the last coup of Henry VIII's reign. Further evidence of Surrey's purported treason is uncovered. A study of his poetry reveals his allegiances, in religion and politics. The nature of the group which aligned against him – the ‘conjured league’ – is analysed, and the way in which he was betrayed, by whom and why, is discovered.
Arguments on billeting and martial law in the parliament of 1628
Authors: Christianson Paul
Published: June 2009

Debates over billeting and martial law arose in the parliament of 1628 in conjunction with such other grievances as the forced loan and discretionary imprisonment employed by royal servants from 1626 onward to keep alive the war effort against the monarchs of Spain and France. Both houses dealt with billeting rather quickly, the Lords by resolving a dispute among magistrates and military officers in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and the Commons by hearing general and particular complaints from civilians, expelling a member who signed an order for billeting, and petitioning the king. Attacks upon the employment of military law internally when a state of war did not exist in England originated in the Commons, reawakened fears over the perceived threat of Roman or civil law superiority to the common law, and set off fierce debates in which royal servants and civil lawyers supported and leading common lawyers denounced as illegal the commissions of martial law issued by the privy council. Underlying these debates, as with those over discretionary imprisonment, were conflicting interpretations of England's ancient constitution with practical consequences for the governance of the realm.
Opposition to the Personal Rule of Charles I: The Diary of Robert Woodford, 1637–1641
Authors: Fielding John
Published: June 2009

Robert Woodford was an obscure man, the steward of Northampton from 1636 until his death in 1654, whose diary, which covers the period 1637 until 1641, tells us much about how provincial men viewed the growing political crisis which was to culminate in civil war. There are very few sources available from which to assemble a biography of the diarist. He warrants no article inDictionary of national biography, he is not recorded as having attended either university, nor to have registered at any of the inns of court. In a brief biography, his eldest son Samuel stated that his father was born in 1606, the son of a gentleman, Robert Woodford of Old in Northamptonshire, that ‘he had but Ordinary Education’, and that his ‘meane Fortune’ meant that ‘he could never provide for us in Lands or Money’. He married Hannah, daughter of Robert Hancs, citizen of London, in 1635 at the church of Allhallows-in-the-Wall. The minute book of the Northampton Town Assembly furnishes us with a few brief details of his career as a provincial legal practitioner. In 1636, he was elected steward of the town of Northampton by the good offices of his patron John Reading, the outgoing steward, who relinquished the office in his favour. The climax of his career would seem to have been his appointment as under-sheriff of the county in 1653 until his death in 1654: he remained a provincial lawyer.
Bluff, Bluster and brinkmanship: Andrew Bonar Law and the Third Home Rule Bill
Authors: Smith Jeremy
Published: June 2009

The article attempts to show that Bonar Law had an effective and coherent strategy towards home rule. Previous interpretations have stressed his weakness and inexperience, either his ‘pandering’ to the extremists in the Tory party or his readiness to seek a compromise, when civil war began to loom large, in the autumn of 1913. Much of the blame for the political stalemate from 1912 until 1914 is directly, or implicitly, laid upon Bonar Law. Yet the tory leader was a more consummate politician. He sought to use the home rule crisis not only to reinforce his own fragile leadership but to return the Conservatives to office. This he proposed to do by allowing the political system to reach an impasse over home rule, by not helping the Liberals reach a compromise and yet inciting Ulster to resist the bill on its implementation. This left Asquith, the Liberal prime minister, with the impossible choice of imposing the bill onto Ulster (so provoking civil war) or of holding a general election when his government was perceived as unpopular. Bonar Law counted on Asquith preferring to hold an election though Asquith was saved from such a decision by the outbreak of war. It was, then, a ‘high-risk’ strategy to win office for the party he led.
Persecution and Protestantism: Toulouse, 1562–1575
Authors: Davies Joan
Published: June 2009

Who became protestant in sixteenth-century France? This question has long exercised historians. A contemporary, La Popelinière, himself a huguenot, pointed to the varied attractions of the reformation for the politically ambitious and for the socially and economically underprivileged. Moving on to the beginning of this century, Henri Hauser postulated a protestantism dominated by artisans and the lower urban classes, although he later emphasised the appeal of the new religion to all social groups, a point of view endorsed by Lucien Romier and E. G. Léonard. Despite the political and military significance of the adherence of both some high court nobles and lesser ruralhobereaux, it is nevertheless clear that Calvinism was predominantly and intentionally an urban phenomenon; Genevan missionaries were directed primarily to the cities and towns, though there were some notable exceptions such as the Cévennes area in southern France. It is, however, possible to advance from these rather cautious generalizations and to ask whether the social and economic profile of those who converted to Calvinism reflects that of the French people as a whole or whether there is some special relationship between status and religion, and whether there is any regional differentiation. Some of the answers, which in the current state of research must remain tentative, may be drawn from lists of huguenots drawn up by judicial and municipal authorities in the course of the civil wars. These lists provide, as Jean Delumeau has recently pointed out, a marvellous introduction to the sociology of French protestantism and indeed, one of the few ways of approaching the issue. Very few registers of theétat-civilof protestant churches survive from the sixteenth century and those that do often fail to note occupational status. Lists of refugees in Geneva and elsewhere offer some evidence from a protestant point of view, but are distorted by a number of factors and may be unreliable in respect of geographical distribution and occupations.
Social Imperialism and Wilhelmine Germany
Authors: Forbes Ian L. D.
Published: June 2009

In recent times the historiography of the Wilhelmine Reich has clearly reflected the influence of Eckart Kehr and of later historians who have adopted and developed his work. The Rankean dogma of the Primat der Aussenpolitik (primacy of foreign policy) has been replaced by a new slogan, Primat der Innenpolitik (primacy of domestic policy). The resultant interpretive scheme is by now quite familiar. The social structure of the Bismarckean Reich, it is said, was shaken to its foundations by the impact of industrialization. A growing class of industrialists sought to break the power of the feudal agrarian class, and a rapidly developing proletariat threatened to upset the status quo. The internecine struggle between industrialists and agrarians was dangerous for both and for the state, since the final beneficiary might be the proletariat. Consequently agrarians and industrialists closed their ranks against the common social democrat enemy and sought to tame the proletariat, which had grown restive under the impact of the depression, by means of a Weltpolitik which would obviate the effects of the depression, heal the economy, and vindicate the political system responsible for such impressive achievements. Hans-Ulrich Wehler and others call this diversionary strategy against the proletarian threat social imperialism; and this, it is said, is the domestic policy primarily responsible for Wilhelmine imperialism.
The Divisiveness of Palestine: Foreign Office Versus Colonial Office on the issue of Partition, 1937
Authors: Klieman Aaron S.
Published: June 2009

Divide et impera. So much of Western imperial behaviour reflected a wilful policy of ‘divide and rule’ in order first to establish and then to perpetuate control over subject peoples in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Accordingly the administration of foreign rule often amounted to artfully manipulating, emphasizing and exploiting local divergencies, whether tribal, sectional, ethnic or economic, and playing off one group or state against another. As a shorthand summary and epigram for imperialism divide et impera may be satisfactory. But it suggests merely one stage of the process: for in asserting its mastery over others the imperial power often opened itself to internal cleavages on the more technical question of exactly how to rule, or, during the decline of empire, whether or not to yield control. This was certainly the British experience. And one of the more dramatic manifestations of ‘divide and rule’ in reverse (‘rule and be divided’) came in 1937 in the instance of partition for Palestine.
The Revenue Commission of 1552
Authors: Alsop James
Published: June 2009

The reform of crown finances was one of the most urgent and complex problems facing the English government in the second half of Edward VI's reign. As one aspect of the general regeneration of the financial system the crown appointed in1552a royal commission to study the state of the revenue courts. This was only one in a long series of temporary commissions established in the mid-sixteenth century to examine various aspects of the crown revenue and its administration. However, several features of this commission set it apart from similar initiatives. It was probably the most comprehensive and thorough investigation performed during this period, and the commission's findings represent the sole surviving detailed analysis of the mid-Tudor revenue system. Moreover, the commissioners went beyond a survey of the courts to make explicit recommendations for reform which have traditionally been linked to the reorganization of the royal finances in 1553–4. Although the commission's report has recently been published, both this document and the agency which produced it have hitherto escaped the detailed analysis which they well deserve and which is essential for an assessment of the report's significance.
The Poacher: A Study in Victorian Crime and Protest
Authors: Jones D. J. V
Published: June 2009

A study of the Victorian poacher raises several points of interest for historians of nineteenth-century society. First, he was such an ordinary figure, an accepted and normal part of rural life. In recent works of oral history, old people recall just how important poaching had been for their predecessors, and for the family and village economy. An examination of the statistics of rural crime in the nineteenth century reveals that, together with theft, trespass, vagrancy and Poor Law offences, poaching offences absorbed a major share of the magistrates' time. For example, in 1843, one in four convictions in Suffolk were against the Game Laws, whilst in Norfolk over 2,000 poachers were fined or imprisoned in the years 1863–71. Landowners such as Lord Ashburnham of Battle in Sussex, and Lord Musters and Sutherland in the Midlands, fought a daily, and sometimes losing battle, against these people. In the second quarter of the century poaching was widely regarded as one of the fastest growing crimes in Britain, and, unlike arson, highway robbery, cattle, horse and sheep stealing, it continued to be a prominent and permanent part of the rural scene. Even in the 1880s and 1890s contemporaries were periodically shocked by the bitterness and violence which accompanied this particular criminal activity. A study of poaching, therefore, tells us a good deal about the secret world of the village and the labourer.
Unionist Politics and Theaftermath of the General Election of 1906: A Reassessment
Authors: Dutton David
Published: June 2009

The internal dissessions and upheavals in the Unionist party following the catastrophic defeat incurred at the general election of 1906 have been the subject of frequent examination by historians. Despite, or perhaps because of, the importance of the issues involved there has been general agreement that questions of policy were at the centre of this struggle. Balfour's official biographer has commented that any rumours of ‘disputed leadership’ were ‘ludicrous in the light of the correspondence that was passing in private’, while Chamberlain's biographer has asserted that he was staking ‘everything on policy’. Recently Dr Judd has suggested that Chamberlain ‘envisaged…a reunited Unionist party…very probably under his leadership not Balfour's’, but he took this analysis no further and Mr Fraser's judgement is typical that what took place was ‘a polite but ruthless struggle for the control of the Unionist party's machinery and policy’. The Birmingham leader is characteristically seen to have played through the whole episode with the straightest of bats, bound above all by personal loyalty to Balfour. Contemporaries, however, saw a different Chamberlain – one whose ruthless ambition bordered on fanaticism. Balfour noted that Chamberlain ‘cannot realize that because he is only thinking of one thing, it does not follow that every one else has the same limited intensity of vision’. Some were prepared to interpret Chamberlain's machinations in terms of a dual personality: ‘You know there aretwoJoes and that one honestly sees no harm in prosecuting such a manoeuvre’, but others were ready to place more sinister constructions upon them:
‘Seminarys of Faction and Rebellion’: Jacobites, Whigs and the London Charity Schools, 1716–1724
Authors: Rose Craig
Published: June 2009

During Queen Anne's reign it was thought noteworthy that, in an age otherwise disfigured by party rancour, the charity school movement had won general acclaim. ‘No colourable Objection has been made against it’, declared the high churchman Andrew Snape in 1711, ‘nor indeed can it meet with Opposition from any, but those who are unwilling that the Empire of the Devil should be weaken'd, that Vice and Immorality should lose any Ground, and who are the declar'd Enemies of God and Goodness’. Charity schools were viewed as a force for unity in a politically divided society. Writing to Robert Harley in August 1710, John Hooke expressed his hope that Harley would lead a non-party ‘Coalition of Honest Men’, and noted universal praise for the charity schools as a sign of optimism for the future. At the 1709 anniversary service of the London charity schools, Samuel Bradford, a whig divine, bemoaned divisions in the body politic, but happily remarked that ‘The design which we are here pursuing has a natural tendency to unite the serious and pious of different persuasions amongst us’ Bradford's joy, though, was tempered with a warning. Just as there was ‘nothing more likely to unite us, than the zealous Prosecution of such a design’, so there was ‘nothing could so effectually defeat our endeavours in this case, as the espousing or promoting any particular Party or Faction’. The Reverend Lord Willoughby de Broke also feared that the charity schools would be dragged into the arena of party conflict. The charity would flourish, he commented in 1712, “if our political Discords do not withhold the Mercy of God from prospering this good work”.
Joel Brand's ‘Interim Agreement’ and the Course of Nazi–Jewish Negotiations 1944–1945
Authors: Rose Paul Lawrence
Published: June 2009

Recent archival research has elucidated the German purpose in sending Joel Brand to Istanbul in May 1944 to negotiate the exchange of Hungarian jews for ‘goods’. Himmler's aim was to enlist the zionist leadership in an effort to detach the western allies from Russia and obtain a separate peace. It is also known now that the allies were initially willing to ‘keep the door open’ by negotiation, but suddenly broke off contacts in July. And we know too how Moshe Shertok – the jewish agency's ‘foreign secretary’ – was tricked by a British promise that Brand would be allowed after meeting him in Aleppo to return to Budapest.
Decision-Makers and Decision-Making in the English Criminal Law, 1750–1800
Authors: King Peter
Published: June 2009

In theory the eighteenth-century criminal law was a rigid, fixed and bloody penal code laying down the penalty of death for a broad range of property crimes. In practice it was a flexible and highly selective system. The legal process had no effective police force to provide an organizational core and it was therefore a private and negotiable process involving personal confrontation rather than bureaucratic procedure. All the major published studies of the administration of the criminal law in this period have stressed its highly discretionary nature. They have also shown that the law was important as ideology. The widely held notions that every freeborn Englishman was protected by the rule of law and that all were equal before the law both constrained authority and legitimized and strengthened it.
The Vatican, France and the Roman Question, 1898–1903: New Archival Evidence
Authors: Larkin Maurice
Published: June 2009

The benevolence of Leo XIII towards France has puzzled historians, just as it exasperated many contemporaries – especially during the anticlerical high tide of the Dreyfus crisis. The opening of the Vatican archives for Leo's reign (1878–1903) has put investigation of the issue on a much firmer footing, as have the latest releases of documents at the Jesuit archives in Rome. This article indicates some of the ways in which thisnew material enlarges and qualifies the impressions given by older sources – notably the valuable holdings of the Assumptionist archives in Rome and the more familiar contents of the various governmental archives in France, Italy and elsewhere.
The Limits of Commitment: Rosebery and the Definition of the Anglo-German Understanding
Authors: Martel Gordon
Published: June 2009

The 1890s can easily be portrayed as the era of missed opportunities in Anglo-German relations. Before the Kruger telegram, the Boer War, the Boxer rebellion and the Berlin to Bagdad railway, and most particularly before the naval race, it seems possible that Britain and Germany might have drawn closer together and that areas of mutual interest might have led to co-operation rather than antagonism. The failure to draw together in the 1890s, it can be argued, precipitated the series of disputes that progressively embittered Anglo-German relations. If only an understanding had been reached before each side became convinced of the other's enmity, if only men on both sides had been more reasonable, more judicious, more temperate, perhaps Europe could have avoided the division into armed camps, and perhaps the cataclysm of 1914 could have been averted.
The Womanpower Problem in Britain during the Second World War
Authors: Smith Harold L.
Published: June 2009

At the national women's conference convened by the government in September 1943 Winston Churchill assured the women delegates that the contribution to the war effort by British women had ‘definitely altered those social and sex balances which years of convention had established’. His belief that the war had brought about profound changes in the status of women was shared by contemporary authors attempting to evaluate the effect of the war on British women. Studies written near the end of the war by Margaret Goldsmith and Gertrude Williams refer to a wartime ‘revolution’ in the position of women. Both authors defined this revolution primarily in terms of the changed position of women workers.
The Making of the Secret Treaty of Dover, 1668–1670
Authors: Hutton R.
Published: June 2009

Few international agreements have provoked more controversy among historians than that concluded at Dover, on 22 May 1670, by representatives of the English and French Crowns. Its main provisions were for an offensive war against the Dutch republic of the United Provinces, leading to its destruction as a European power, and for the public profession by the English king, Charles II, of the Roman Catholic faith, which had been regarded by most English people for a hundred years as the bitterest enemy of their own church. The existence of this treaty was concealed not only from the other European states and the subjects of the respective monarchs, but from the greater number of their own ministers. The motives of Charles in making this amazing pact have remained a mystery. In the present century, they have been represented by Sir Keith Feiling as an attempt to unite Catholics and Protestant dissenters as a foundation for a stronger monarchy; by Cyril Hartmann, K. H. D. Haley, David Ogg and Lady Antonia Fraser as a decision to hitch England to the fortunes of Europe's strongest state, France; by Sir Arthur Bryant as a wish to ensure his country a share of the Spanish empire and his throne a dependable group of supporters in the form of the Catholics; by Maurice Lee and J. R. Jones as a grand design to make himself independent of his subjects in general and of parliament in particular; and by John Miller as a desire for vengeance upon the Dutch.