bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Art and the State
Authors: Prendergast Christopher
Published: November 2023

During the Revolution, Vivant Denon, future director of the Musée Napo léon, found himself in the company of Robespierre-who had just emerged from a lengthy meeting of the Comité de Salut public--discussing David’s drawings of the revolutionary costumes that were to be used in the great public fêtes (Denon himself had been commissioned to produce some engravings of these drawings).
Introduction: The Earliest German Ramism
Authors: Hotson Howard
Published: November 2023

Ramism was rediscovered as a major cultural force by Samuel Eliot Morison in a trilogy of stout volumes published to celebrate the tercentenary of Harvard College in 1936. The thorough integration of this hitherto little-known philosophical tradition into the curriculum of the young college was seized upon as a highly distinctive feature of the American intellect in its infancy; and three years later Perry Miller gave Ramism a central place in his sympathetic and enormously influential account of The New England Mind.1 After tracing the transmission of Ramism back through William Ames to Cambridge Puritanism, American scholars, like their colonial predecessors, were happy to regard Ramism like Puritanism as a more or less self-contained, Anglo-Saxon phenomenon.
Acting Between the Lines
Authors: Richtarik Marilynn J
Published: November 2023

Acting Between the Lines is the first full-length study of Northern Ireland's Field Day Theatre Company. Since its creation in 1980 by actor Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) and playwright Brian Friel (Translations, Dancing at Lughnasa), Field Day has established itself as one of the most important elements in contemporary Irish culture. From its base in Northern Ireland, the Company has brought challenging drama to the entire island, 'from Coleraine to Kerry'. With the addition to its board of directors of poets and critics such as Tom Paulin, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Deane, and broadcaster David Hammond, Field Day has ventured into the realm of the more explicitly political with a controversial pamphlet series. Marilynn Richtarik has written a fascinating introduction to Field Day, providing a senstive analysis of the complex interrelationship of Irish history, politics, and culture.
Decadents and Wagnerites: Beardsley and Wilde
Authors: Sutton Emma
Published: November 2023

The publication of Wilde’s Dorian Grayin 1891 has become a landmark in histories of British decadence.2 The novel’s preface was a manifesto of amoral anti-utilitarian art; its pages were littered with references to French decadent literature; and its protagonist was an effete hedonistic aesthete. It became one of the most contentious British novels of the decade, and an exemplary ‘decadent’ work. A seminal text from many critical perspectives-aesthetic, biographical, sexual, and legal-its centrality rests both on its subject and stylistics, and on the crucial part that it played in Wilde’s trials of 1895.
King Charles’s Inheritance II: The Matter of Religion
Authors: Woolrych Austin
Published: November 2023

So large did religious differences and fears loom in the course of Charles’s reign that it may come as a surprise to find how relatively stable the religious situation was when he came to the throne, at least in England and Scotland. James had inherited a Church of England which had won the loyalty of the great majority of the English people, and thanks to the firm measures of Elizabeth’s later years it had little to fear from either catholics on the one side or Presbyterians or separatists on the other. That was still true when he died.
Climacteric I: ‘a Posture of Defence’
Authors: Woolrych Austin
Published: November 2023

In the autumn of 1640 all three Stuart kingdoms were heading towards crisis. Ireland would come to the point of confrontation a little later than Scotland and England, but the waters of rebellion were already being stirred. All three countries, though they did not know it, were on course for a decade or more of intermittent war, which would bring varying degrees of subjection to Scotland and Ireland and a period of startling political convulsion to England. The coming twenty years indeed are apt to seem so anarchic in their complexity, so bewildering in their pace of change, that it may help to preface them with a rough chart of the shoals ahead.
Between Two Wars
Authors: Woolrych Austin
Published: November 2023

Between the last battle in the first Civil War and the first military action in the second, just over two years elapsed in which the British peoples licked their wounds and counted the cost of civil strife. Their experience naturally coloured their attitudes to the quest for a peace settlement and, when that quest failed, their animus against those whom they counted responsible for the renewal of war.

Enough has probably been said already about the unprecedented weight of taxation, the forcing of unwilling conscripts into a hard and dangerous service, the burden of free quarter, the commandeering of goods and horses, the unauthorized plunder by the soldiery of both sides, and the often oppressive demands made by the parliament’s county committees and by royalist commanders. Here is perhaps the place to take stock briefly of the toll that civil war had so far taken in human lives, in the scars physical and mental that it had left on the survivors, and in the lasting material damage that it had inflicted. The main emphasis will be on England and Wales, because they were the main theatres of war and their peoples took the heaviest casualties. Ireland’s agony still lay mainly in the future, and will be considered in its place.
The Commonwealth in Crisis
Authors: Woolrych Austin
Published: November 2023

The navy had a vital role to play in the defence of the Commonwealth, but it was not in a healthy state when the republic was first established. The second Civil War and the execution of the king had, as has been seen, alienated many captains and crews. In addition to those who openly declared for Charles II and joined Prince Rupert, many others, while stopping short of changing sides, felt a strong dislike for the New Model Army and for sectaries and radicals in general. Warwick, the Lord Admiral, had been openly opposed to the king’s trial and the abolition of the Lords; moreover he was 61, old for his age and in poor health. He had to be removed, but it was scarcely less necessary to get rid of the excessive personal authority and patronage that attached to his office. The navy needed to be brought more closely under the control of parliament and the council, so before discharging Warwick the Rump enlarged the powers of its Navy Committee. It dealt with Warwick simply by repealing, in February 1649, the act that had appointed him Lord Admiral, and then leaving that office in abeyance. The actual command of the fleet was entrusted jointly to three Generals at Sea, Robert Blake, Richard Deane, and Edward Popham, all former army colonels. Warwick had served the parliament well in his time and he suffered no disgrace, though he was unable to save his brother Holland, who had fought for the king in 1648, from execution. Warwick withdrew from public life for some years, but he was to support Cromwell as Lord Protector. He carried the sword at his second investiture in 1657, and a grandson of his was to marry Cromwell’s youngest daughter.
A New Order in Three Nations
Authors: Woolrych Austin
Published: November 2023

With Barebone’s Parliament gone, nothing stood in the way of Lambert’s Instrument of Government; indeed there was no other practicable way of filling the constitutional hiatus, short of bringing back the king. The day after the resignation, Lambert summoned a large concourse of army officers—considerably larger, it appears, than the regular General Council—to the Council Chamber in Whitehall, where he himself read the Instrument to them. He asked for their assent so that it could be formally presented to Cromwell in the name of them all. Some raised objections to it, as Harrisons’s Fifth Monarchist faction was bound to do, but there may also have been a few uncompromising republicans among the unconvinced. Some may have remembered the many days spent in constitutional debate at Reading and Putney years earlier. But he persuaded the company that this was not a time for disputing over the document, for it had been under consideration for two months already, and it was important to keep the present Interregnum as brief as possible, with Feake and his brethren still ranting away and the cavaliers awaiting their chance. He secured the meeting’s concurrence in general terms, promising that any suggested amendments would be considered. Cromwell’s acceptance was already assured, for his title and other matters had been agreed in the course of close discussions with Lambert and his collaborators over recent days. A few details still probably remained to be settled, as did the important selection of the council, to which the constitution allotted a major role. But the new government was publicly inaugurated only three days after Lambert’s meeting with the officers, and Cromwell was solemnly admitted to the office of Lord Protector on 16 December 1653.
Unfinished Business
Authors: Woolrych Austin
Published: November 2023

When Cromwell reopened parliament for its second session on 20 January 1658, it wore a very different aspect from the one it had presented when he last addressed it. It now consisted, of course, of two Houses, but the Commons themselves were transformed by two changes that were bound to make them harder to manage. In the first place the Petition and Advice ruled that no member could be excluded except by authority of the House itself, so all those who had been excluded by the council in 1656 were free to take their seats, and most did so. Secondly, thirty MPs had been nominated to the Other House, and they included many of the Protectorate’s staunchest and ablest supporters.
The Monarchy Restored
Authors: Woolrych Austin
Published: November 2023

It is not often that historical turning-points fall on neatly memorable dates, but in a real sense the story of the Restoration can be said to have begun on 1 January 1660, for that was the day on which Monck’s army began its march on London. The return of the monarchy had been inevitable for the past two months or more, but how and when it would come about were wide open questions. Monck held the key to the answers. He alone now commanded a coherent and obedient army, partly because he had recently purged and reorganized it, partly because his officers and men—those he had not displaced— felt a personal loyalty to ‘honest George Monck’ (their own name for him), and partly because he had shrewdly obtained enough money to keep them in regular pay, while Lambert’s and Fleetwood’s soldiers went penniless. Yet his intervention was not a foregone conclusion, for he knew perfectly well before he set forth that the Rump had already been restored, and the letter it sent to thank him for his support said nothing about marching into England. Haselrig and his party, now they were back in the saddle, would surely have much rather he stayed quietly in Scotland. He had indeed written to the Council of State on 29 December, promising absolute obedience to parliament’s orders, and saying that while he was ready to march ‘I shall attend your farther commands’.1
Landed Society
Authors: Pollard A J
Published: November 2023

The possession of land was the key to social dominance and political power in fifteenth-century England. Nobility of blood and legal privilege may have enhanced local authority, but, as the senior branch of the Nevilles discovered, without the material resources secured by land, power was diminished and influence curtailed. An analysis of the political elite of any region of the realm needs to start therefore with the question of who held the land. What was the distribution in north-eastern England between clerical and lay, and, within the laity, between peerage and gentry? How important was clerical wealth? What was the balance between peerage and gentry landholdings? These are the questions which first need answering in an examination of the social and political structure of the region.
The Triumph of Henry VII, 1485-1502
Authors: Pollard A J
Published: November 2023

Even if a question mark hangs over the continued commitment of the political elite of north-eastern England to Richard III at the end of his reign, there can be little doubt that in the event defeat at Bosworth left the king’s old affinity in disarray. Should those who had once so fervently followed Richard III continue to champion his cause, that of the white rose, in the name of the earl of Warwick, the earl of Lincoln, or even an impostor such as Perkin Warbeck? Or should they come to terms, accept that a brief interlude of exceptional royal grace had come to an end, and make what they could of the new situation? The lords and gentry of the north-east were uncertain, indecisive, and divided. Most sat on the fence to wait on events. The new king, too, was unsure of himself. He was eventually able to take advantage of the wariness of his new subjects to impose
A New Ireland
Authors: Connolly S J
Published: November 2023

At five o’clock on the evening of Tuesday, 13 December 1659, three soldiers from a company quartered in an outbuilding of the castle of Dublin approached the main gate of the fortress. The guard, who knew the three men, let them in. As soon as he had done so, he was overpowered, and the rest of the company, led by Colonel William Warden, rushed in to surprise the garrison. Inside the castle they took prisoner Colonel John Jones, the acting commander-in-chief of the Irish army. Soon after, in another part of the city, soldiers under Major Edward Warren apprehended the two commissioners who, with Jones, controlled the country’s civil and military administration. Meanwhile, parties of horsemen rode through the streets, breaking up any groups that attempted to come together. In less than two hours the operation was complete, and the government of Ireland had been bloodlessly overthrown.
2 [L] An Élite and its World
Authors: Connolly S J
Published: November 2023

Let us 1urn from events to context. This chapter seeks to describe some of the main features of the world in which the events just described and the continuing political, religious, and social conflicts that will be discussed in the chapters that follow took place. It begins with a short account, descriptive and then interpretative, of the economic system. Next it discusses the question, by no means as straightforward as appears at first sight, of who exactly made up the ruling elite of early and mid-eighteenth-century Ireland. Finally there is an attempt, brief but necessary, to account for some of the distinctive features of the social and cultural life of that élite. The other half of the picture, the relationship between the governing class and other ethnic, religious, and social groups within Irish society, will be explored in a later chapter.
‘Reasonable Inconveniences’: The Theory and Practice of the Penal Laws
Authors: Connolly S J
Published: November 2023

We come, finally, to the penal laws. An account of the legal restnct10ns, political, religious, and economic, imposed on Irish Catholics in the period after 1691 is a standard set piece in textbook accounts of the eighteenth century. For some, indeed, the whole period remains the ‘penal era’.1 Against this background, the present chapter has two main purposes. The first is to make clear the extent to which the legislation concerned was the product of a particular political context and of a complicated and often muddled legislative process. Far from being a systematic ‘code’ reflecting a consensus among the Protestant elite as to how its security could best be preserved, penal legislation against Catholics was in fact a rag-bag of measures, enacted piecemeal over almost half a century. These were drawn up in response to a variety of immediate pressures and grievances and to the accompaniment of continual disagreement over both the principle and the detail of the measures taken. The second purpose of the chapter, taken up in the final section, is to ask to what extent the penal laws, despite the importance accorded them both by contemporaries and by later generations, can really be said to have made the Ireland of Queen Anne and the first two Georges a radically different society from what it would have been otherwise.
Charity
Authors: Harvey Barbara
Published: November 2023

SIR THOMAS MORE, in his retirement, defended monks as almsgivers, and he singled out for this purpose the almonry at Westminster Abbey. To the ‘dolehouse’ at Westminster, he wrote, the poor came in such numbers ‘that my self for the preace of them haue ben fayn to ryde another waye’. And he added: ‘as farre as euer I harde, the munkes vse not to sende awaye many vnserued’.
From Dangerous Partisan to National Possession: John Stuart Mill in English Culture 1873-1933
Authors: Collini Stefan
Published: November 2023

In a fine passage in his essay on Malthus, Keynes celebrates, with a nicely judged sense of pride in his own intellectual ancestry, what he calls ‘the English tradition of humane science’. It is a tradition, he suggests, which has been marked by an extraordinary continuity of feeling, if I may so express it, from the eighteenth century to the present time-the tradition which is suggested by the names of Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Paley, Bentham, Darwin, and Mill, a tradition marked by a love of truth and a most noble lucidity, by a prosaic sanity free from sentiment or metaphysic, and by an immense disinterestedness and public spirit. There is continuity in these writings, not only of feeling but of actual matter. It is in this company that Malthus belongs.1
Community and Clergy Bristol and the Reformation C.1530ˉC.1570
Authors: Skeeters Martha C
Published: November 2023

This is a study of Bristol during the sixteenth century, when it was the third largest city in England and an important provincial capital. The local focus of the book belies the breadth and innovation it brings to the study of the English clergy, the Reformation, and the early modern city. Martha C. Skeeters examines the clergy of Bristol in its entirety - monks, friars, and the parish clergy - and integrates it into the urban context. Dr Skeeters demonstrates that by the early sixteenth century these various sorts of clergy had become co-operative rather than competitive, and formed a community which was a fundamental part of the city's collective identity. She explores the impact of the Reformation on the clerics of Bristol and its lay citizens in an original and scholarly account which has much to offer both ecclesiastical and urban historians.
Community and Conflict: The 1530s
Authors: Skeeters Martha C
Published: November 2023

When religious controversy erupted in Bristol in 1533, incited by the preaching of reformist Hugh Latimer, little did the participants know what dramatic changes in the Church and the clerical community it signalled. Latimer’s preaching turned out to be not a passing challenge to the status quo but one element among several that would decimate the local church and fragment the clerical community. Conflict in the 1530s demonstrated interaction among the various groups involved— the municipal authorities, the local clergy, the populace, the diocesan authorities, and the Crown—and placed the Corporation at the centre of events. The difficulties the local government had in dealing with religious conflict and the exacerbation of these difficulties by the independent action of some local clergy help to explain the lay elite’s response to the clerical crisis which developed during the Reformation. Struggling to assert their authority and to maintain order, they did little to stem the disintegration of the clerical community or the decline of the parish clergy.
The New Diocese and its Clerical Elite
Authors: Skeeters Martha C
Published: November 2023

The establishment of the diocese of Bristol in 1542 signalled the creation of a new clerical elite in the city. Unlike their medieval counterparts, however, the cathedral clergy were not an integral part of a diverse clerical community nor did they enjoy independence from the lay elite. Their roles as clerical tax collectors and ecclesiastical judges separated them from the parochial clergy whose lives they regulated, while their superior educational qualifications and multiple preferments gave them more in common with the lay elite than with the lesser clergy, whose qualifications were declining. They were nevertheless subordinate to the lay elite, largely because of institutional realities. The new diocese, which could not have been erected without local lay support, was poorly endowed and its existence continuously threatened. Its clergy were extremely vulnerable to local lay influence except during the reign of Mary when new personnel relied on the Crown. Although canons were required by the cathedral statutes to preach and to maintain a grammar school, lay-controlled institutions lessened the cathedral clergy’s influence in these areas.
Richard II and the Higher Nobility
Authors: Given-Wilson Chris
Published: November 2023

The nobles who exercised the greatest individual influence on the politics of Richard reign were his uncles-especially John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster and Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester: it is worth noting, for example, that when a ‘continual ‘ council was established at the 10-year-old king ‘s coronation in July 1377, the three royal uncles were empowered to ‘surveye and correcte the defautes of them that were appointed for to be of the kingis counseil ‘. Kinship ties remained crucial. It was Gaunt ‘s relationship with his nephew which above all wrought division in political circles during the first nine years of the reign, and Gloucester ‘s during the next eleven. Richard never fully trusted either of them. (His third uncle, Edmund of Langley duke of York, may have been trustworthy, but he was a political lightweight.) This may be why Richard strove to augment the power and status of other kinsmen such as his half-brother John Holand, his nephew Thomas Holand, and his cousin Edward earl of Rutland.
Richard II and the Wider Realm
Authors: Bennett Michael J
Published: November 2023

In the spring of I 399 Richard II set in train his second expedition to Ireland. Though not as large a force as he had taken five years earlier, it was still a right royal expedition. His host included about a dozen English peers, no less than six English bishops, and the abbot of Westrninster. Foreign visitors joined the expedition, anticipating great deeds and merriment. From the outset the undertaking was made to appear portentous. While provisions and men were being assembled at Milford Haven, the king held court at Windsor, where he made his will, ‘very prejudicial to the realm ‘, on 16 April, held the traditional feast for the Order of the Garter on St George ‘s Day, and bade fond farewell to his child-bride, kissing her forty times and offering her the curious consolation that she would eventually follow him to Ireland. There were other signs that the king intended more than a brief show of arms in the lordship.
The Breakdown of Equilibrium in the West, 1908 —1912
Authors: Stevenson David
Published: November 2023

In Western as in Eastern Europe, until the Agadir crisis of 19II, diplomatic and military lines of tension still coincided only partially. As Habsburg armaments efforts remained directed against Italy and Serbia rather than against Russia, so German rivalry with France on land remained less acute than German rivalry with Britain at sea. Competition between the two great Continental military blocs · proceeded in slow motion. This chapter will focus on the events of 19u, and the extent to which they marked a watershed in armaments policies. It will concentrate especially on Germany’s reorientation of priorities from the naval to the land race, which became manifest in 1911-12 although its origins dated back further. Already before Agadir the German navy was losing the initiative against Britain; and the army was beginning to revolt against the constraints placed on it while the capacities of its potential enemies grew.
Vials of Wrath, I913 —I914
Authors: Stevenson David
Published: November 2023

This book began with two questions: what caused the pre-war arms race, and did the arms race cause the war? The analysis thus far has concentrated on the former. By 1913 the transformation of European armaments competition was complete, and it was dominated by the confrontation between the two alliance blocs, the rivalry between the Habsburg Monarchy and its Balkan neighbours supplying an additional incendiary ingredient. There remains the interconnection between this evolution and the outbreak of war. The first half of this chapter will take stock of the position in early 1914. It will readdress the underlying pressures for armaments expansion, the balance between the central and the peripheral arms races, and examine the stage that the central race had reached. The second half will turn to military preparedness in the July crisis.
Richelieu And Reform
Authors: Briggs Robin
Published: November 2023

Among the letters of congratulation which greeted Richelieu on his appointment to the council, that by the future surintendant d’Effiat stands out for its harsh realism about the state of France. In a remarkably succinct analysis he pointed out the decline in royal authority, the divisions of the church, the Protestant problem, the behaviour of the grandees, and the results of the sale of office. Justice was venal, merchants were leaving trade to invest in office, and France was unable to trade on equal terms with her neighbours; in consequence the people were poor, revenues did not match expenditure, and the problems were made worse by the need to pay pensions to the grandees.
III-timed Approaches, 1804-1808
Authors: Ingram Edward
Published: November 2023

Soon after the British deprived the Qajars of a future as the most western outpost of Wellesley’s Indian Empire, they offered them the alternative role of Great Britain’s necessary ally in the Middle East. In the years leading up to the second embodiment of the Persian Connection-the preliminary treaty of Tehran, negotiated by John Malcolm’s great rival, Harford Jones, in the spring of 1809-the British began an argument about where to find their enemy and what to expect of him. Should the Qajars be asked to limit Russian expansion in the Middle East, close the overland routes to India against a French force marching eastwards from Poland, or, by coming to terms with Russia, help Great Britain to bring down the Napoleonic empire in Europe? Nor could the British decide whether Persia might play the role of necessary ally most effectively merely by standing as a strategic barrier between the Indian Empire and the European states system. Nothing need be asked of the Qajars, because the best Persia could offer was supplied by her turbulent political and social structure, her harsh climate, and her barren terrain.
The Admiralty and the Ministry of Marine
Authors: Hamilton C I
Published: November 2023

The Ministry of Marine was well housed in the more easterly of a fine matching pair of buildings flanking the rue Royale and fronting the place de la Concorde. These buildings—and, indeed, the whole square, originally called the place Louis XV—had their origins in the eighteenth century. The plans were drawn up by the architect J.-A. Gabriel, and approval came in letters patent dated 1757. The building that concerns us was constructed in 1766, intended as the Garde meuble de la Couronne, for which purpose it was conveniently close to the royal palace of the Tuileries.
Duke Richard of York 1411-1460
Authors: Johnson P A
Published: November 2023

This first biography of Richard, third Duke of York, examines the political opposition of a great lord to Henry VI's regime. Active in the government of Lancastrian Normandy, he served twice as lieutenant of Ireland where, on his second visit, he did much to consolidate the trend towards Irish autonomy. The major interest of his career, however, lies in the increasing isolation of a once loyal subject. Suspect in the late 1440s, and even more so after the great revolt of 1450, he was driven into opposition during the following decade despite serving for two effective periods - here evaluated for the first time - as Protector of England. In 1455 violence replaced politics at St Albans, and England collapsed into the Wars of the Roses. Five years later, following his unsuccessful claim to the throne - an event for which fresh evidence is presented - he resorted once again to violence, dying in battle and leaving to his son Edward the claim which brought the first Yorkist to the throne.
Charity, the Poor, and the Aftermath of the Black Death, 1348-1400
Authors: Henderson John
Published: November 2023

This chapter begins and ends with a dramatic natural disaster: the Black Death of 1348 and the so-called Moria dei Bianchi of 1400.1 Both these mortality crises were catastrophic in terms of human life, though in the long term they were beneficial for the standards of living of survivors. But in neither case was poverty eradicated, as Villani suggested happened in 1348;2 3 the scale was simply reduced. There remained a continued need for charitable initiatives to cater for both endemic and epidemic poverty in Florence through the combination of public and private welfare: communal grain subventions, the services of fraternities and hospitals, and the informal networks otparenti, amici e vicini.
Towards Conclusions
Authors: Rogers R
Published: November 2023

In examining Latin siege warfare in the twelfth century we have maintained a close focus on operations, emphasizing how the employment of techniques and machinery was related to the resources and capabilities of besiegers, as well as to particular military conditions. In drawing together some of the strands we have followed, it is appropriate to address questions concerning the spread and development of siegecraft and technology. Such a discussion may highlight the factors through which this took place. Moreover, it will allow reflection upon the relationship between the military experience of the Latin west and this growth and diffusion. Let us first turn to the personnel important in the organizational and technological dimensions of twelfth-century siege warfare.
The Empire Industries Association
Authors: Marrison Andrew
Published: November 2023

After 1925 the NUM was joined by another stable group, the EIA, whose position in the spectrum between safeguarding and preference was less defined. Initially, faced with some internal conflict over the two semi-alternatives, the EIA elected, on the surface, to go for both, and never gave such clear indications as did the NUM that safeguarding had primacy over preference. Earlier in the decade this might have caused misgivings amongst business supporters. But, as a latecomer, the EIA’s choice was relatively easy. Manufacturing reaction to the inadequacies of the White Paper of 1925 was increasingly impatient, whilst the prospect of Empire markets at a time when the visible trade balance was worsening appeared to give the Empire a strategic importance in British trade that it lacked in the Edwardian period. After 1926, an apparently heightened emphasis on imperial policy was unlikely to lose the EIA significant business support amongst those demanding an extension of safeguarding.
Planning for Self-Government
Authors: Follis Bryan A
Published: November 2023

In making provision for the establishment of a parliament and government of Northern Ireland, the Government of Ireland Act made possible the creation of Northern Ireland. However, at the stage when the Act became law, Northern Ireland existed not as an entity but only in name and on paper. Not only had Northern Ireland no parliament and no government: it had no civil service to support and serve it, no police or defence force to enforce whatever laws it might make, protect its people, or defend its territory from possible (and indeed likely) attack, nor had it a judiciary to uphold its laws and administer justice. The problems involved in the creation of Northern Ireland must have seemed daunting, and the sheer size of the task to be undertaken almost overwhelming. Yet within six months of the passage of the Act, a government of Northern Ireland had been formed and had taken office.
The Rhetoric of the Image
Authors: Scribner R W
Published: November 2023

The argument that has developed throughout this book has something of paradox about it. The Reformation was undeniably part of a movement from an image to a print culture, and was directed against popular culture and popular belief. We have seen Reformation propaganda using, and thus accepting, popular culture; not breaking images but remaking them. The puzzle is even deeper: would not the advocates of the old order have attempted to marshal all the powerful emotive force attached to the images of the old belief in order to combat the new? Curiously, however, there was surprisingly little counter-propaganda from the side of orthodoxy. There seems to be little or no reason why the same weapons of popular propaganda could not be turned against the Reformation. Although there were a few attempts to do so, they rarely attained the creative brilliance of the evangelical propagandists.
Industrializing England
Authors: Prest Wilfrid
Published: November 2023

In the opening pages of Headlong Hall (1816), Thomas Love Peacock’s first published novel, the ‘perfectibilian’Mr Foster holds forth ‘with great energy on the subject of roads and railways, canals and tunnels, manufactures and machinery: “In short”, said he, “everything we look on attests the progress of mankind.”‘ His pessimistic opposite Mr Escot does not attempt to deny the existence of these ‘improvements’. But he asserts that, far from evidence of human progress, they constitute ‘so many links in the great chain of corrup¬tion, which will soon fetter the whole human race’, thanks to the ‘factitious wants and unnatural appetites they engender’. The moral and social benefits, or otherwise, of industrialization have continued to be debated down to the present day.
Landowners And Farmers
Authors: Gash Norman
Published: November 2023

The purchase of land in Surtees’ day was a social rather than an economic speculation. A landowner would be fortunate if his purely agricultural rents yielded as much as 5 per cent on the capital value. Professor Thompson suggests 3.3 per cent as a typical return in the earlier part of this period, declining to 2½ per cent in the 1860s as a result of increased competition for land. The general picture in the novels confirms that estimate. Mr Jorrocks, looking at it with a businessman’s eye, thought that ‘landownin’s a werry poor trade’. It was true that the standard 3½ or 3 per cent government stock offered no better return; but, as the same authority observed, ‘money i’ the funds may pay small interest; but blow me tight, funds pay punctual, and the gates never want repairin’. He was not the only new landowner in the novels to make that discovery. In Ask Mamma the first thing that struck Sir Moses Mainchance when he became a land owner was how little interest he got on investment. In the City he had scorned any transaction that would not pay him 10 per cent; as a novice proprietor he found he could hardly recover 3 per cent from his acres. That cautious banker, old Mr Hall, making (on his own statement) from 15 to 20 per cent from his business, not surprisingly showed little enthusiasm for acquiring land. As Surtees philosophically observed in another place, land was like family plate, valuable to sell, but unprofitable to keep.
The Mirror Of Society
Authors: Gash Norman
Published: November 2023

While Surtees forfeits any claim to be ranked among the ‘social novelists’ of the period by what (to borrow Miss Nightingale’s phrase) could be called his brutal indifference to the wrongs and rights of the poor, he deserves perhaps a cautious mention for the attention he gives to the domestic servant. After all, they were, as he pointed out, part of the working classes. They possibly did not regard themselves in that light and they are not alone in this. Socio-political historians too have generally neglected them in favour of the industrial proletariat of the towns. It is easy to see why. They did not form a separate political interest; they did not burn down their employers’ houses, riot on the streets, petition parliament, join trade unions, or go on strike. Yet though they were politically quiescent, their social importance is considerable. Their sheer numbers are impressive. In England and Wales in 1841 they totalled 999,000: the second largest occupational group after agriculture, being slightly more than all those employed in manufacture and mining put together, and a third more than the fourth largest group, the general labourers. Indeed, if from the crude figure of 1½ million for the agricultural industry as a whole are deducted farmers, graziers, gardeners, gamekeepers, and landagents, the basic work-force of agricultural labourers numbered only 965,371. On this calculation the domestic servants in the middle of the century formed the largest distinct class of worker.
A Railway Society
Authors: Gash Norman
Published: November 2023

The railway revolution happened so quickly and touched Victorian life at so many points that the danger perhaps is of over-rather than underestimating its effects. The railways themselves were the product of a society which saw in the expansion of manufacture and commerce the secret of wealth and power, and in the application of science and mechanical invention the key to that expansion. Wealth and science made railways possible; the economic demands of British society made them, one might almost say, necessary. Much that happened in the nineteenth century would have happened in any case. The increasing influence of the middle classes, the sharper political consciousness of the nation as a whole, the growth of ‘public opinion’ as a source of power, the loosening of provincial ties, the weakening of class distinctions, the dominance of the large towns, the steady rise in population—all these tendencies were visible before the coming of the railways. There is no reason to think that they would not have continued; only that the pace would have been slower. The railways did not so much create as accelerate change. They acted as agents rather than initiators; but with such unprecedented force as to make them seem even more significant than they really were.
Administration
Authors: Zweiniger-Bargielowska Ina
Published: November 2023

During the Second World War civilian consumption of food, clothing, and miscellaneous goods was reduced drastically as economic resources were directed towards the war effort. In order to economize on raw materials, labour, and shipping space a comprehensive system of controls was introduced which regulated imports, production, and distribution, as well as demand. During this period of scarcity the price mechanism ceased to function and ‘allocation was a mixture of price controls, rationing … and uncontrolled black market prices. The extent to which any of these three methods prevailed determined the social experience of the war for most people’. Controls were necessary to reduce personal consumption as well as to achieve a balanced redistribution of resources between military and civilian requirements which ensured that civilian efficiency was maintained. Rationing and controls were retained after the war in order to achieve anti-inflationary and dollar economy policy objectives and as part of Labour’s wider commitment to economic planning and fair shares. After 1945 only the negative aspect of controls, that is the deliberate suppression of civilian consumption, remained and since ‘government needs no longer took automatic precedence over those of the private sector’ the policy became increasingly controversial. The process of decontrol began under Labour in the late 1940s but decontrol proceeded steadily only from the early 1950s onwards, that is after the Conservative government—committed to a speedy ending of wartime controls—had been elected.
The Feudal Structure and the Beginnings of State Finance
Authors: Ormrod W M , Barta Janos
Published: November 2023

There is no precise moment when the fiscal state can be said to have come into existence, and any attempt to define such a moment would be profoundly unsatisfactory. The chronological limits of the present project presuppose that something changed, or was changing, in the emergent states of Europe at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries. In fiscal terms, there is indeed much to be said for that thesis, as later parts of this chapter will show. However, before discussing the more specific precedents for a ‘modem’ system of state finance, it is as well to emphasize the earlier structures out of which that system evolved. Such a discussion has perforce to be selective and general, with a bias towards those monarchical states for which at least some direct documentary evidence survives. This naturally gives a somewhat artificial prominence to the two major kingdoms of north-western Europe, England and France, while underrating the importance of other embryonic fiscal systems in central Europe, Spain, Italy, Scandinavia and elsewhere. It is hoped, however, that any resulting imbalance will be redressed by the discussion of the Empire and the eastern kingdoms appended to this chapter and the more detailed case studies that follow.
The Emergence and Consolidation of the ‘Tax State’. II. The Seventeenth Century
Authors: Hart Marjolein ‘t
Published: November 2023

lf we accept that’ centralized, productive revenue-expenditure systems began to emerge’ in the early modem period, it may be argued that it was in the seventeenth century that a significant increase in the scale of warfare accelerated this process. Military innovations and recurrent wars posed new challenges. Inflation resulting from the inflow of Spanish-American silver had raised the overall costs of government. As a result, the competition for resources was intensified between central states, provincial governments, cities and landlords. This intensity increased, in tum, the likelihood of war. Moreover, in much of Europe an economic recession altered the underlying conditions of the race for cash: private and public funds were restricted by the capacity of the population at large to pay, affected as they were by subsistence crises and recurrent outbreaks of plague. This was particularly true in the Mediterranean area, though less so in the north and west of Europe.
Law and the Making of the State in Medieval Sweden: Kingship and Communities
Authors: Lindkvist Thomas
Published: November 2023

Scandinavia, and Sweden in particular, entered the world of medieval European culture and its state system late. Until the twelfth century the political structure was very primitive and based upon pillage, plunder, and the taking of tributes, both at home and abroad. Power was unstable and belonged to local chiefs, petty kings, and warlords. However, the political culture and the pillage economy of the Viking age faded away during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Conversion to Christianity was later in Sweden than in Denmark and Norway. But from the turn of the millennium the new creed gained ground and during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a domestic ecclesiastical organization was built up.
Legal Tools of the Public Power in the Netherlands, 1200-1600
Authors: Cauchies H de Schepper andJ -M
Published: November 2023

Between 1384 and 1543, because of the weakening of medieval feudalism as the European political system, the territorial union of the Low Countries (Lage landen bider see), those principalities and lordships on the outskirts of the Empire and the kingdom of France, around the estuary of those great rivers, the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheldt, could take as its basis some earlier unions existing beyond the borders between the Empire and France.
Centre and Locality: The Nature of Power Elites
Authors: Aylmer G E
Published: November 2023

Some definition of locality and centre is essential before we can attempt to consider relations between elites. Localities may be thought of as the collective sum of the units comprising an area of territory over which a single central authority exercises more-or-less effective control. It is at once obvious that there were great changes over time in the geographical pattern of such authority in Europe between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. Perhaps the most useful single criterion to adopt in considering local-central relations is that of physical extent: the size of a territory together with the relative density of its population. The smaller the area and the less the number of people within it, then other things being equal the easier it would be for the central authority (the ruler or rulers) to be in a direct relationship with all of their subjects, and correspondingly the less the need for any intermediate regional or local elites.
Clerics in the State
Authors: Millet Hèlène , Moraw Peter
Published: November 2023

The Catholic Church, without rival in the western world at the end of the Middle Ages, called ‘clerics ‘ those of her sons who had professed to serve her and who had received the tonsure. Youths given to the Church by their families, or adult men, whether unmarried or widowers, who wished to become clerics, had no obligation to fulfil, other than to be of free condition and have married parents. The clerical order to which they belonged ensured them a special status in society: they were spared both the responsibilities and the privileges attached to their original condition and, in principle, only the laws of the Church could be applied to them. The Pope based his power on the international hierarchy of clerics of which he was the head, even more than upon the patrimony of St Peter, over which he had full jurisdiction, both temporal and spiritual.
Conclusion
Authors: Blickle Peter
Published: November 2023

Let us conclude with some essential points. In Spain, the Cortes of the constituent kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Catalonia possessed neither legislative nor fiscal powers. However, they continued to exercise rights of proposal and control up to the seventeenth century and beyond. In territories like Navarre, they maintained some authority and certain closely defined juridical and political privileges (fueros) until the twentieth century. The Crown also had to take account of demands made by borough and town councils as well as Hermandades, even after the great revolt of the Comunidades in the sixteenth century. Medieval communal traditions were therefore not abolished, but integrated in an absolutist system which continued to offer its services of mediation.
Popular Concerns and Influences on the Legislative Process
Authors: Blickle Peter
Published: November 2023

‘The legislative process in the territorial states of southern Germany (which, as noted above, is the only area considered here) was frequently, even if not over-whelmingly, initiated by the complaints of the subjects themselves. Even where it was not legally documented, the right of petition was an accepted custom of great power.’Its significance has become particularly clear in the last few years in the context of German research into resistance;and will probably prompt important revisions in traditional assessments of the subjects’ capacity to exert political influence. In any case, it should be emphasized that, even in territories where there was no institutionalized representation of the subject, legislation was still influenced by their complaints, as is now apparent from regional case-studies. This approach thus offers some fascinating insights into German, and no doubt also European, constitutional history.