bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Preplague Population of England
Authors: Russell Josiah C.
Published: February 2004

Sometime in the period 1300-48, English population reached its high point in the Middle Ages. All agree that it rose rapidly in the thirteenth century and dropped catastrophically in 1348-77. Its course in the first half of the century, however, is the subject of two sharply divergent opinions. One is that population increased gradually to about 3,700,000 at the outbreak of the plague, a point at which “the agricultural people were being crowded.” The other opinion is less exact: population reached its height about 1315, when the great famine and pestilence of 1315-17 reduced the population markedly and started a decline, restrained perhaps by a mild recovery in the two decades before 1348. According to this second theory population was much denser than the 3,700,000: even in the late thirteenth century, England had a “starving and over-populated countryside,” with “the poor sokemen of Lincolnshire — [struggling] to support five people on five acres of land,” and “a society in which every appreciable failure of harvests could result in large increases in deaths in a society balanced on the margin of subsistence.”

This study will discuss first the pattern of English society as it appears in Domesday Book and the descriptions of manors called extents, which must be understood in order to estimate population properly. Next, it will consider some interesting evidence concerning social class differential mortality. Third, it will try to estimate the mortality of the 1315-17 famine and pestilence. Fourth, it will take up the trend of population change from 1300 to 1348. Fifth, it will consider the reliability of the poll tax data. Lastly, it will discuss the problem of household size and its relationship to the total population of England in the period.
The Rise and Fall of Bishop Bilson
Authors: Lamont William M.
Published: February 2004

Thomas Bilson, in the eyes of his contemporaries, soared like a Jewel or a Hooker above his fellow writers; unlike Jewel or Hooker his fame has not endured. He seems at first sight to be another writer with a tiny talent, overpraised in his lifetime. If this were all that there was to Bilson, then better to leave him to “such as delight in things obsolete and antique” (as an unsentimental critic said of a later, more prolix, writer).

Yet there are curiosities about the rise and fall of Thomas Bilson. He was born in 1547, became Bishop of Winchester in 1597, and died in 1616. He is a shadowy figure, whose fame rests principally on two works: The True Difference Betweene Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion (1585); The Perpetual Government of Christes Church (1593). If one were to plot a graph of his public reputation, it would show a steady rise after his death, reaching a peak as late as the 1640s, and then followed by a precipitous decline. Now this is not what common sense would have led us to expect. If he had been merely an overvalued mediocrity, one would have expected a redress of the critical balance to follow close on his death. Neither the length of time taken up by the rise nor the abruptness of the fall could have been anticipated. It is true that Bilson lacked the stamina for enduring greatness, but he was not exactly shortwinded either.
William Haller, Historian of Puritanism
Authors: Trinterud L. J.
Published: February 2004

Since the days of Samuel Rawson Gardiner and Charles Harding Firth, no one has studied English Puritanism more thoroughly than William Haller of Columbia University. Yet Haller came to his study of the Puritans not by way of history and politics but by way of poetry. The occasion of his turning to read several thousands of Puritan sermons and tracts was John Milton. His early guides and inspirers were Professor William Peterfield Trent and Sir Herbert Grierson. His attention was also directed to this material by Sir Charles Firth. Puritan theology he learned, in the then approved Columbia University method, “by doing it.” So the man, the approach, and the method were all sufficiently unorthodox to produce a fresh study of the long-neglected sources of Puritanism.

Haller began his career as an original interpreter of Puritanism when he became a member of the editorial board for the then projected Columbia Edition of the Works of John Milton. He soon came into print with an article, “Before Areopagitica,” on the immediate contemporary background of Milton's plea for unlicensed printing. Next came his edition of the Areopagitica and other tracts for the Columbia Milton, followed by a three-volume opus, Tracts on Liberty in the Puritan Revolution, 1638-1647. Then The Rise of Puritanism appeared. Despite the turmoil of World War II, a second collection of documents, The Leveller Tracts, 1647-1653, edited by Haller and Godfrey Davies, was published. After forty-one years on the faculty of Barnard College and the graduate school of Columbia University, Haller retired in 1950 and became a fellow, later honorary fellow, of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Procedure in the House of Lords During the Early Stuart Period
Authors: Foster Elizabeth Read
Published: February 2004

On June 4, 1610, in an unusual joint session of Parliament, Henry, eldest son of James I, was created Prince of Wales. The King and lords, magnificent in medieval splendor, gathered in the ancient room of old Westminster Palace, known as the White Hall. The Lords' chamber, used at other times, would not suffice; for on this occasion, the commons, instead of standing crowded behind the bar, as they did at the opening and closing of Parliament, sat in seats especially provided, their Speaker and clerk with them. Observers noted that burgesses, fine in gold lace and velvet, were no less splendid than the lords. Special guests, noblemen's little sons, ambassadors who had jockeyed for the most honorable places, the Princess Elizabeth, and Charles, Duke of York, also gathered to honor the occasion — one of the great moments in James's reign. For all the King's shortcomings, already apparent, he brought one gift to the English people, which a far greater monarch, Elizabeth, had never bestowed: a safe succession, the Prince who would secure their realm from civil strife.

It was altogether fitting, the Earl of Salisbury had explained to the commons, that the Prince should be created in Parliament. So the most fortunate of medieval princes had been proclaimed. Others came to an evil end. Alas for these joyous predictions. Salisbury's own death in April 1612 saved him from the bitter knowledge that Henry would die a few months later in November, to be succeeded as heir by his younger brother, Charles.
The Role of King William III of England in the Standing Army Controversy — 1697-1699
Authors: Schwoerer Lois G.
Published: February 2004

During the years from 1697 through 1699, King William III of England was engaged in a struggle with a radical Whig press and a Tory coalition in the House of Commons over the size of England's standing army in peacetime. Both sides regarded the contest as one of particular importance; for the King there was no issue during his entire reign which involved him more deeply in English domestic politics. The parliamentary debates on the matter were notably stormy. For what was at stake, just ten years after the Glorious Revolution, was the relative power of King and Parliament. For the first time Article VI of the Bill of Rights, that is, that Parliament must consent to an army in peacetime, was applied and tested. The army question has intrinsic importance but can also be seen as part of a broader struggle between King and Parliament for power. Among such questions as Irish land grants, “placemen,” foreign advisers, and the Land Bank, the standing army was the most complex and emotion-filled issue between the House of Commons and William. Although some of the political implications of the standing army controversy have been suggested, historians have not investigated the part played by William. The King's role is worth isolating for it casts fresh light on William's talents in dealing with domestic politics, illustrates the relationship between a King who, at the end of the seventeenth century, still retained power and a House of Commons which increasingly claimed power, and shows that, however disparate the strength of the two sides in the standing army controversy, a genuine contest took place.
Parties and Issues in Early Victorian England
Authors: Aydelotte William O.
Published: February 2004

It has never been established how far, in the early Victorian House of Commons, voting on issues followed party lines. It might in general seem plausible to assume — what political oratory generally contrives to suggest — that there are ideological disagreements between parties and that it makes a difference which of two major opposing parties is in control of the Government. This is, indeed, the line taken by some students of politics. A number of historians and political observers have, however, inclined to the contrary opinion and have, for various reasons, tended to play down the role of issues in party disputes. Much of what has been written on political history and, in particular, on the history of Parliament has had a distinct anti-ideological flavor.

One line of argument is that issues on which disagreement exists are not always party questions. Robert Trelford McKenzie begins his study of British parties by pointing out that Parliament just before 1830 was “divided on a great issue of principle, namely Catholic emancipation,” and just after 1830, on another, parliamentary reform. He continues: “But on neither issue was there a clear division along strict party lines.” The distinguished administration of Sir Robert Peel in the 1840s was based, according to Norman Gash, on a party “deeply divided both on policy and personalities.” The other side of the House at that time is usually thought to have been even more disunited. It has even been suggested that, in the confused politics of the mid-nineteenth century, the wordsconservativeandradicaleach meant so many different things that they cannot be defined in terms of programs and objectives and that these polarities may more usefully be considered in terms of tempers and approaches.
Colonial Policy and Education in British East Africa, 1900-1950
Authors: Beck Ann
Published: February 2004

Since World War II much emphasis has been placed on the key role which education must play in East African affairs to promote the economic and cultural growth of the new African states. The problems of the intensification and the spread of education in East Africa deserve particular attention because they are different in nature from those of well-established countries and have been complicated by peculiarities in the history of the region.

Between 1900 and 1920 the groundwork for native education was laid by missionary schools. Though limited in their objectives, they achieved tangible results. In spreading the knowledge of reading and writing among a substantial number of natives, they facilitated native contact with western civilization. After 1919 British officials in East Africa, humanitarians, and leaders in missionary movements became concerned with the spread of native education and demanded a change in the existing system. At the same time there emerged new native political movements, the leaders of which took a determined stand on matters of native education. They criticized the existing facilities and demanded the right of the African to be educated. To analyze the complexity of the problems of East African native education, particularly in the period from 1920 to 1950, is the purpose of this paper. It is necessary, however, first to look at the broader picture of the situation in East Africa in the immediately preceding decades and then to examine the achievements and limitations of East African education in the period from 1900 to 1914.
The Nuclear Deterrent and the British Election of 1964
Authors: Epstein Leon D.
Published: February 2004

There was little reason to have expected Britain's international policies to be of major concern to most voters in casting their ballots in the 1964 General Election. Party disagreement over entering the European Economic Community was at least temporarily in abeyance after de Gaulle's veto. No great imperial question remained to divide Conservatives from the Labour or Liberal Parties. Membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was firmly bipartisan (or tripartisan). Moreover, British power was now so limited, in relation to the rest of the world, as to provide little basis for Englishmen to think that their nation could make important international decisions. At the same time, there were domestic economic problems about which, it was widely thought, a British government could and should do something. In short, every likelihood existed for electoral attention to be fixed almost entirely on domestic affairs. This would hardly have been unusual. Democratic elections ordinarily seem so conducted. Even if it were clearly desirable to have sharp partisan disagreement over a substantive international question, it is doubtful whether genuine alternatives often exist except perhaps for the super-powers.

It is surprising, then, to find that a question of international policy was contested in the British General Election of 1964. The question was whether Britain should continue trying to have an independent nuclear deterrent. Labour (and the Liberals) proposed that the effort be abandoned. The governing Conservative Party was committed to its continuation. These divergent party policies did not, it is true, make the deterrent issue overwhelmingly important in the electoral decision.
The King's Penny: the Headquarters Paymasters under Edward I, 1295-1307
Authors: Freeman A. Z.
Published: February 2004

By his skillful use of England's resources, more than by his generalship in the field, Edward I became one of the most effective military commanders England produced between the Conqueror and Oliver Cromwell. King of a country rich in men, money, and resources, he was well provided with raw materials, but it was Edward's accomplishment to use them to create and support a large and tenacious army. He called for fighting men from all classes of the population, regardless of tenure; he required all sections of the realm to send provisions; and he required all people in his kingdom to support his wars by granting subsidies. Organization of this nature called all of Edward's political acumen into play, for it implied the existence of a corporate nature for England, one where the people not only must approve measures that touched them, they must also contribute to them. When the matter touching them was the defense of the realm, they responded to royal leadership by forming a proto-national army.

In spite of the importance and implications of this subject, there has been sparse treatment of it by historians. A handful of articles and a few books deal with the subject of military organization directly, while it forms a small part of a number of general works. William Stubbs described the make-up and use of both the militia and the mounted forces of England as pieces in the great game between king and barons and as evidence for the growing sense of nationality in England. J. E. Morris's Welsh Wars of Edward the First is a careful analysis of Edwardian armies based largely upon Exchequer sources.
Could Charles I Be Trusted? The Royalist Case, 1642-1646
Authors: Daly J. W.
Published: February 2004

The followers of King Charles I in the Civil War, long among the whipping boys of English history, have been receiving better treatment since the Whig interpretation of the seventeenth century lost its pristine vigour. This is particularly true of their constitutional position as set forth in the great outpouring of manifestoes and pamphlets during the war. Edward Hyde, perhaps the key figure in this aspect of royalism, has recently profited from a capable defence of his opinions and policy. Similarly, pamphleteers such as Henry Ferne, Dudley Digges, and John Bramhall are now fairly well known, thanks largely to J. W. Allen's pioneering study of their writings. From work like this it is clear that the royalist spokesmen accepted the increased importance of Parliament, the end of prerogative courts and nonparliamentary taxation, and the supremacy of common and statute law. Like their armies in the field, they were defending the monarchy as overhauled in 1641, not as the Tudors left it, much less as James I may have conceived it. Indeed the classical doctrine of the mixed or balanced constitution, glorified by Blackstone and widely accepted until nearly 1830, is now credited, not to Philip Hunton, but to the royalists. Such rehabilitation has done much to remove the patronizing label of “wrong but romantic,” which was once the best which they could hope for from historians or the general public.

Allen and those who followed him naturally concentrated on the legal and constitutional analysis of the origins of authority, the veto power, sovereignty, nonresistance, and so forth.
Parties, Connections, and Parliamentary Politics, 1689-1714: Review and Revision
Authors: Horwitz Henry
Published: February 2004

The notion that parliamentary politics in the days of William III and Queen Anne revolved around the conflict of the Whig and Tory parties is deeply rooted in the historiography of the later seventeenth century. Nourished by the many contemporary references to the existence and activities of the Whig and Tory parties, the “two-party concept” had its first flowering in the nineteenth century and came to full blossom in the early decades of the twentieth in the works of W. C. Abbott, K. G. Feiling, W. T. Morgan, and G. M. Trevelyan.

The canons of orthodoxy of one generation of historians, however, have often proved to be little more than the cannon fodder of their successors. In this case, it was one of Abbott's own students, Robert Walcott, who has led the way in the task of reinterpretation. As early as 1941, Walcott — remarking upon the obscurity enveloping accounts of party groupings in the period 1689 to 1714 — advanced the hypothesis that “the description of party organization under William and Anne which Trevelyan suggested in his Romanes Lecture on the two-party system is less applicable to our period than the detailed picture of eighteenth-century politics which emerges from Professor Namier's volumes on the Age of Newcastle.”

Walcott's invocation of Sir Lewis's studies of mid-eighteenth-century politics was, of course, a testimony to the advance in historical methodology that had gained prominence with the appearance in 1929 of The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III.
The Imperialism of Free Trade: Lancashire, India, and the Cotton Supply Question, 1861-1865
Authors: Harnetty Peter
Published: February 2004

It is now more than a decade since John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson first challenged the conventional interpretations of nineteenth-century imperial history and employed the term “The Imperialism of Free Trade” to describe the “ever-extending and intensifying development of overseas regions” — a term which characterizes British imperial policy in the middle decades of the last century. The general validity of this thesis has been illustrated by reference to British policies in India in this period. There was the extensive program of railway construction, financed by British capital at favorable rates of interest guaranteed by the Government of India. There was the manipulation of the Indian tariff in response to pressure from the Lancashire cotton manufacturers. There was the cotton improvement program, the object of which was to relieve Lancashire's dependence on the United States as the major source of its raw cotton. In this case, the desired object was not achieved, despite considerable effort and expenditure sustained over more than a decade. But the approach of civil war in America revived interest in India as an alternative source of supply, notwithstanding the many difficulties that stood in the way. Indian cotton was raised on small holdings as a secondary crop every third or fourth year; its quality was poor; climatic conditions were uncertain; demand was irregular; communications between the cotton-producing areas and the ports were bad; and trade was hampered by lack of a contract law and a bankruptcy act. The Lancashire cotton manufacturers demanded energetic action from the state in overcoming these difficulties.
The Politics of Democracy: the English Reform Act of 1867
Authors: Himmelfarb Gertrude
Published: February 2004

The Reform Act of 1867 was one of the decisive events, perhaps the decisive event, in modern English history. It was this act that transformed England into a democracy and made democracy not only a respectable form of government (the United States was never quite respectable), but also, it was soon taken for granted, the only natural and proper form of government. To be sure, the act had to be supplemented by others, household suffrage in the boroughs, as provided by the Act of 1867, being several steps removed from universal suffrage. But once this first step was made, no one seriously doubted that the others would follow. The Act of 1867, perhaps more than that of 1832, deserves the title of the Great Reform Bill. For while 1832 had no necessary aftermath in 1867, 1867 did have a necessary aftermath in 1884, 1918, 1928 — the later acts that genuinely universalized the suffrage, not only for Britain but for all those countries that took Britain to be the model of a parliamentary government.

It is all the more bewildering, therefore, to inquire into the history of this act and to find it so meandering, purposeless, fortuitous, so full of what Herbert Butterfield has called “the most useless things in the world” — useless, that is, if one expects meaning or sense in history. John Morley, trying to make sense of an affair that struck him as “one of the most curious in our parliamentary history,” wistfully concluded: “When we have made full allowance for blunder, caprice, chance, folly, craft, still reason and the nature of things have a share.”
The Federation of the West Indies: a Study in Nationalisms
Authors: Hurwitz Samuel J.
Published: February 2004

There is a West Indian proverb, “If you kill me, bury me, too.” The concept of a West Indian federation has been killed, but it refuses to be buried and may, phoenix-like, rise out of the ashes at some future date. Perhaps this is the case because it is so much more difficult to bury ideals than it is to kill off their immediate results. As a factual reality, the Federation of the West Indies expired almost at the very moment of its birth. The funeral rites were without ceremony. Friends of the deceased grieved, while others grinned, and all shared in the paltry inheritance. Yet, as an ideal, it is enshrined in the hearts of many West Indians who continue to look beyond their very narrow geographical limits for a bond that will unite them with others for the greater glory of the entire West Indian community.

If the Federation of the West Indies becomes a reality — and the initial failure may be a necessary step in its ultimate success — it will be but another demonstration that the spirit of nationalism cannot be checked by the facts of geography and economics. In politics, vision and the sense of mission often enable men to climb mountains even if they are unable to move them. Man's indomitable spirit, which enables him to deny God and nature, is exemplified in the nationalistic movements so characteristic of the last hundred years and more, which are reaching new heights of intensity, if not frenzy, in our own day.
The Sound of Stubbs
Authors: Brentano Robert
Published: February 2004

“The biscuit is certainly exceedingly dry; but at any rate there are no weevils in it,” Lytton Strachey wrote, praising slightly one “scientific” historian that he might more thoroughly attack another. Strachey's amusing, contorted, perceptive, and sometimes ignorant burlesques of Victorian behaviour have lost favor; but they remain, more brightly outlined and self-mocking versions of common prejudices. Certainly the belief that the “scientific” historians produced dry biscuit is still commonly held even among those who one would suppose had read them; and the belief is probably held more clearly and widely about William Stubbs than about either Mandell Creighton or S. R. Gardiner, because as an historian his name is more eminent, more people have heard of him, or more people who have heard of him know that he is a “scientific” historian from the authoritative, the “dry” period. He was born in 1825 and died in 1901.

In fact the problem with Stubbs is in quite a different direction. Stubbs is more compelling than his evidence demands and more fascinating than his subject would predict. F. W. Maitland, before he was forced by profession to that sort of reading, found Stubbs's Constitutional History “in a London club, and read it because it was interesting.” Even at his weakest and dullest Stubbs is interesting; at his strongest and most flamboyant, as in his Benedict of Peterborough and Walter of Coventry introductions in the Rolls Series and in parts of his Constitutional History, he is dazzling. The problem is not overcoming Stubbs's dullness but explaining his brilliance.
Making the Instrument of Government
Authors: Heath George D.
Published: February 2004

The Instrument of Government was England's first and, if we except the Humble Petition and Advice, its only written constitution. It lasted only a little over three years, from 1653 to 1657, and was soon cast aside and all but forgotten in the rapid sequence of events which followed Cromwell's death: the restoration of the Rump, then of the Long Parliament, and finally of the King himself. Thus it is definitely an aberration so far as English constitutional development is concerned, but to an American, in whose country the principle of the written constitution and its concomitant principle of the limitation of legislative sovereignty have won out, the Instrument is of much greater interest.

In order to comprehend fully why the Instrument was made and what it was designed to achieve, the role of the New Model Army and its relation to Parliament must be considered. This army had become a quasi-political body as far back as the summer of 1647 when it first assumed the role of champion of political reform. In its Declaration of the Army it declared that it was not “a mere mercenary army, hired to serve an arbitrary power of a State, but called forth and conjured by the several declarations of Parliament to the defense of their own and the people's just rights and liberties.” From there it had gone on to submit various proposals for the settlement of the kingdom, such as the Heads of the Proposals and the Agreement of the People.
New Buildings, New Taxes, and Old Interests: an Urban Problem of the 1670s
Authors: Edie Carolyn Andervont
Published: February 2004

“The country towns are grown poor,” declared Hugh Boscawen, member for Tregony, to his colleagues in the House of Commons in November 1670, “the inlands grow generally poor. The trading people abroad deal only with London.” Sir Robert Howard agreed: “It was ever said by the wisest men he could meet with that the greatness of London … would be the ruin of the country.” But in 1670 the complaint was hardly new. For well over a century English men and monarchs alike had watched with an anxiety increasingly acute as London, already a giant among English towns, continued to add to her size and population. Many in the country had feared, as did Boscawen and Howard, the effects of such growth upon the rest of England, while those close by tended to be aware of the special economic, political, and social problems which the unhealthy and crowded conditions in the overgrown old city presented.

On March 12, 1564, Queen Elizabeth had issued a proclamation stating “Rules to prevent crowding, in plague ridden Westminster, close by London.” And on July 7, 1580, she proclaimed from Nonsuch Palace that

The city of London, aunciently termed [The Queen's] Chambre, is becoming too crowded with families in one house or small tenements, to the danger of Plague. Until order is taken by Parliament, no new building is to be erected within 3 miles of the gates of London. Not more than one family to inhabit any house…. Undersitters, Indwellers or Inmates [lodgers] must find new homes in other boroughs before All Saints next.
Horace Walpole and W. S. Lewis
Authors: Johnson James William
Published: February 2004

English literary history is full of the colorful individualists variously referred to as “characters,” “personalities,” or “eccentrics”; and the literary scene in eighteenth-century England had its full share of “originals,” to use Tobias Smollett's term. They ranged from the tendentious clergymen (Conyers Middleton, William Warburton, William Stukeley) to the Grub Street hacks (John Dennis, John Trenchard) to profligate rakehells (Charles Churchill, John Wilkes) and artistocratic dilettantes (the Duke of Chandos, the Earl of Eglinton, and scores more). Though some of these men wrote prodigious amounts — notably Middleton, Warburton, and Dennis — most of them are known today largely because they drew the anger of Alexander Pope and were amberized in The Dunciad or because Dr. Johnson dissected their opinions or because Boswell encountered them in his serendipitous career and recorded the fact in his Journals. A few of them, like Wilkes, were famous or infamous within political or social contexts; these have survived in historical works dealing with Georgian politics. For the most part, however, intellectual historians of the twentieth century are inclined to treat the Warburtons and the Monboddos as a rather bizarre species, now extinct: the overspecialized freaks thrown out by the current of ideological evolution.

For a very long time Horace Walpole has been viewed by many scholarly critics as a similar sort of oddity. His literary productions were so varied, so numerous, and so uneven in quality that he defied placement in a single area of interest. Walpole's own account of his writings in the Short Notes of his life provokes in the reader wonder at a mind at once interested in making Latin verses on the marriage of the Prince of Wales, parodies of Macbeth with political overtones, Fontainesque fables about little white dogs, catalogues of oil paintings, bagatelle verses, vehement periodical essays and pamphlets, scores of cenotaphs for deceased acquaintances, and Historic Doubts on Richard III.
“The Steam Engine of the New Moral World”: Owenism and Education, 1817-1829
Authors: Harrison John F. C.
Published: February 2004

The inscription on Robert Owen's monument in Kensal Green cemetery, London, begins: “He originated and organized infant schools.” This claim, though disputed during his lifetime, is now generally acknowledged and has become part of the familiar story of Owen. For fifty years after his death in 1858, however, Owen was remembered chiefly as a cooperator, secularist, and Utopian socialist, and Frank Podmore in his definitive biography of Owen published in 1906 observed that “the name of Robert Owen is little known to the present generation as an educational reformer.” Thanks to Podmore's work and later that of another Fabian, G. D. H. Cole, Owen's role as an educator became more fully recognized. Subsequent biographies and educational dissertations elaborated (or, perhaps more accurately, repeated) details of Owen's educational activities and ideas. More recently A. E. Bestor, through a brilliant examination of the American material, showed the close relationship between education and Owenite communitarianism.

In modern evaluations of Owen and his work a large place has thus been rightly accorded to education. The spectacular nature of the experiment at New Lanark, the advocacy of a nonviolent and widely acceptable method of social change, and Owen's repeated emphasis on the importance of education in character formation all contributed to a focusing of attention on this aspect of his achievement. “The basis of Owenism,” wrote Cole, “was his [Owen's] theory of education.” Evidence for this view came from Owen's statements on the relation between education and social reform and from descriptions of the detailed workings of his infant school.
Britain, Russia, and the Revival of “Entente Diplomacy”: 1934
Authors: Lammers Donald N.
Published: February 2004

In the annals of European diplomacy the year 1934 belongs to Louis Barthou. Coming to office in the Doumergue ministry formed in the wake of the bloody rioting of February, Barthou brought to the Quai d'Orsay a combination of clear vision, steady purpose, and nicely judged audacity which gave to French policy in the 1930s almost all the little luster it can fairly claim. Put shortly, Barthou's plan was to safeguard the French against the menace of German nationalism by reconstituting as nearly as possible the Triple Entente of prewar years. The spirit which animated him may be traced to his former mentor, Raymond Poincaré, but the design was his own, and the approaches to Britain and Russia which it entailed demanded far more insight and finesse than Poincaré had showed in the years of his postwar premiership.

Historians, faced by the whole horrific record of the Hitler regime, have tended to treat Barthou's effort approvingly despite its eventual ill success. The accounts they have produced so far, however, have been focussed on Franco-Soviet or Anglo-French relations. The Anglo-Soviet side of the diplomatic triangle, never a match for the other two in prominence, has not come in for much sustained attention. Yet relations between Britain and Russia, developing in the context powerfully shaped by Barthou's initiative, were never more cordial and hopeful than over the years 1934-35; in view of the fateful consequences of their later deterioration, it is surely worth inquiring closely into the circumstances and implications of their original improvement.
Paperbacks on British History
Authors: Havighurst Alfred F.
Published: February 2004

(In this commentary all titles mentioned may be assumed to be available in paperback unless explicitly stated otherwise.)

According to E. J. Hobsbawm in an article in the Times Literary Supplement in the spring of 1966, the number of history titles published in Britain in 1965 increased by 15 per cent over 1964, and in the United States by 24 per cent. Just where paperbacks figure in this rise, it is impossible to say, but for the United States the Bowker catalog, Paperbound Books in Print, for February 1965 lists 30,700 titles; the catalog for June 1966 lists 38,500 titles. The February 1966 issue of Paperbacks in Print … and on Sale in Great Britain, published by J. Whitaker & Sons, Ltd., incorporates 18,000 titles; the catalog for October 1966, 22,000 titles. Thus far have paperbacks come since July 30, 1935, the day of birth of Penguin Books, London, with ten titles.

American booksellers, generally speaking, are less articulate than English. It is not difficult to get an English dealer to talk about the boon of the paperback. And some talk lyrically. I. P. M. Chambers, director of the Bryce Bookshop, Museum Street, London W.C. 1, may be taken as representative. “Paperbacks have been a conveyor belt to prosperity,” were approximately his words, “for without them many a bookshop in this country would have closed after the war. The paperback has done more for education than any institution.
Inheritance Customs and Succession to Land in the Chiltern Hills in the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries
Authors: Roden David
Published: February 2004

Since G. C. Homans first published his accounts of inheritance customs in medieval England, there has been some revival of interest in this aspect of English social history. It has been found that arrangements were less rigid, and hence more varied, than once thought, while it is now clear that regional patterns can often be recognized only as broad generalizations — different practices were sometimes followed in close proximity, even within a single township. Recent work has concentrated on forms of partible inheritance, emphasizing apparent differences between the effects of this and impartible inheritance, and stressing the practical advantages of partibility. In comparison, there are few detailed studies of customs of single son inheritance as followed in a peasant community. The present paper is an attempt to reduce this gap by examining succession to property in the Chiltern Hills, an area of primogeniture, during the thirteenth and early fourteeenth centuries, that is, the period for which adequate documentary evidence is available before the widespread depopulation and social disruptions of the mid-fourteenth century. Chiltern custom was similar to the third of the three main forms of impartible descent outlined by Homans in that it “preserved the principle that a tenement ought to descend to only one son of the last holder, while allowing the holder himself to choose which one of his sons was to be heir.” Apart from the actual mechanism of inheritance and succession, considerable interest attaches to the practical implementation of Chiltern custom — how, in fact, descent of property was related to the general economic situation — and especially to an examination, in the Chiltern context, of the contention that partible inheritance tended to favour an increase in population whereas impartibility meant stability of population.
English Money and Irish Land: the “Adventurers” in the Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland
Authors: Bottigheimer Karl S.
Published: February 2004

Much needs yet to be learned about the Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland. Statistically that event can be described as the transfer from Catholic to Protestant ownership of about seven million acres of Irish land, occurring between 1641 and 1688. The Protestant share of Ireland increased in that period from 41 to 78 per cent, from a minority interest to that of an overwhelming majority. Although 1641 and 1688 are the most convenient termini for measuring that expansion, it was substantially begun in 1652 and completed by 1660. Except by main force, little land changed hands before the Cromwellian acts; and the Restoration modified, but in no significant sense reversed, the verdict which had been brought against Catholic Ireland by the recent conquest and settlement.

Much attention has been given the cruelty of the settlement, particularly the attempt to transplant the Catholic Irish to Connaught and Clare. But the origins of the scheme, indeed the entire genesis of Parliament's policy towards Ireland, has been left in obscurity. Cromwell himself contributed to that neglect by his insistence that the settlement was merely simple justice for the crimes committed against Protestants in 1641. As a result, historical interest has focused upon the cruelty of the rebellion and the cruelty of the settlement in a vain attempt to determine whether they balanced. Irishmen, minimizing the rebellion and maximizing the settlement, tended to find that they did not. Englishmen, reversing the process, came to understandably opposite conclusions. Neither took very great interest in the important years between the two events.
The Duke of Newcastle and the Imperial Election Plan, 1749-1754
Authors: Browning Reed
Published: February 2004

To many of his contemporaries and to most of the historians who have subsequently dealt with him, Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle (1693-1768), represents unredeemed mediocrity, or even the buffoon, in power. Lord Hervey ridiculed his “egregious folly and formal absurdity”; Horace Walpole described him as “a Secretary of State without intelligence, a duke without money, a man of infinite intrigue, without secrecy or policy, and a Minister despised and hated by his master, by all parties and Ministers”; Lord Waldegrave concluded that he “wants both spirit and capacity to be first in command: neither has he the smallest particle of that elevation of mind, or of that dignity of behaviour, which command respect and characterise the great statesman.”

More recent commentators, while often readier to look for redeeming characteristics in the Duke, have likewise tended to come to negative assessments. Basil Williams dismissed Newcastle as “woolly-minded and touchy … an essentially weak man without clear conceptions of his own”; Sir Lewis Namier wrote that “his nature and mind were warped, twisted, and stunted” and that “there was unconscious self-mortification in Newcastle's tenure of office”; J. H. Plumb portrayed a “dithering and twittering” Newcastle, a minister of unprepossessing intellectual gifts and given to excessive complaining and anxiety.

All these criticisms must face, however, one serious and recurring counterargument. Newcastle held major office for almost forty years – as Secretary of State (1724-54), as First Lord of the Treasury (1754-56, 1757-62), and as Lord Privy Seal (1765-66). Moreover, as early as 1717 he had been appointed to the Privy Council and been made Lord Chamberlain.
Herbert Spencer and the Spectre of Comte
Authors: Eisen Sydney
Published: February 2004

“It is very interesting to compare Spencer and Comte,” wrote George Sarton in an essay lauding their efforts to embrace all knowledge in a grand synthesis. The comparison, indeed, was tempting for contemporaries, as it has been for students of ideas. Both Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer were authors of new philosophic systems which, they believed, had been built on the firm foundations of science, and both were convinced that society should be reconstructed in accordance with the truths of their philosophies. The insistence of Positivists and some who were not Positivists that Spencer, consciously or not, had been influenced by Comte, and Spencer's repeated and fervent denials, made for a series of controversies that extended over half a century and ranged from the minutiae of priority to the more important issues of the classification of the sciences and the nature of religion.

The eclipse of both the Positive Philosophy of Comte and the Synthetic Philosophy of Spencer in the twentieth century hardly suggests the interest they aroused in the nineteenth. The unification of knowledge and the discovery of the laws of man and society were dreams which nineteenth-century science and philosophy hoped to realize. Comte and Spencer made their contribution in this area; and while both were attacked for erecting systems on questionable assumptions, and for their weakness in details, their extraordinary ability to amass quantities of information and to come up with penetrating generalizations attracted admirers and disciples. Few of their critics thought that what they had set out to do was not worth doing, or could not be done.
Lord Dufferin and the Indian National Congress, 1885–1888
Authors: Martin Briton
Published: February 2004

In the spring of 1884 shortly before his viceroyalty came to an end, Lord Ripon wrote in an urgent manner to Lord Kimberley, then Secretary of State for India, about one of the more critical questions of policy confronting the Government of India: “You may rely upon it that there are few Indian questions of greater importance in the present day than those which relate to the mode in which we are to deal with the growing body of Natives educated by ourselves in Western learning and Western ideas.” Ripon was pointing to the existence of a new class of English-educated Indians within British-Indian society and to the failure of the Government of India to acknowledge this class and to absorb its talents and influence within the structure of British-Indian administration. That this problem begged for a realistic solution by 1884 and that it would continue to do so in the years ahead, he had no doubts whatsoever; it had been left too long to fester in a mode both damaging to the class itself and dangerous to British rule. In short, the English-educated Indian class had become a question of policy.

Simply stated, as the opportunities for Western collegiate education expanded and the avenues leading towards entry into the East India Company's service became available, the doors either failed to open or were placed out of the reach of the educated Indians seeking entry. By 1850, with the new class in existence in limited numbers in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Delhi and with additional graduates appearing annually to swell its ranks, frustrations began to emerge as the graduates found themselves unable to secure the public employment which the Charter Act of 1833 had implied was to be their just right.
Australia's Reactions to the Boer War—a Study in Colonial Imperialism
Authors: Penny Barbara R.
Published: February 2004

“After God I dearly love the British Empire.” Imperialism is a belief as well as a political phenomenon, and one can often come closer to understanding it by exploring the emotions underlying significant events than by describing the events themselves.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, for example, British imperialists were inspired with fervour and confidence. Nowhere was the inspiration stronger than amongst Australian colonists, who were beginning to thrill not only with the vicarious agony of exiles, but also with the virility of frontiersmen. Although the pull to the heart of the Empire was strong, the void beyond the red pale of civilization was beckoning too. In an increasingly hostile world it was encouraging to measure one's strength as part of the force of an Empire greater than Greece or Rome had known, and inspiring to feel that a colony's achievements were part of the historic mission of an imperialist power. It is not surprising, although it has been overlooked by European-centred historians of empire and by parochial historians of emerging nations, that the convinced and practising colonial imperialists were a significant force in shaping the ideals if not the strategy of European expansion, and in popularizing the creed, to the great comfort of the planners at “home” and the discomfort and bewilderment of local republicans.

The Boer War has become a symbolic episode in British imperial history and the spontaneous colonial participation a notable feature of it.
Joseph Chamberlain and the Genesis of Tariff Reform
Authors: Zebel Sydney H.
Published: February 2004

This paper is concerned solely with the genesis of the 1903 Tariff Reform Movement. Why did a veteran, realistic politician like Joseph Chamberlain challenge Britain's long-sacrosanct free trade policy? What political, economic, social, or other factors influenced him to make his decision? Was he really the originator of the program which he championed? What empirical lessons can be learned about the methodology and rationale of political decision making? The existing scholarly works dealing with the Chamberlain agitation, although exceedingly numerous, provide no really satisfactory answers to these questions. Thus a fresh appraisal of the origins of the Tariff Reform Movement seems clearly warranted.

I

The Liberal journalist-statesman John Morley, who became acquainted with Chamberlain in 1873, is reported as once saying that his friend's faith in the free trade policy was always “only skindeep.” Chamberlain himself said that he was first shaken in his free trade beliefs in 1881 when, as President of the Board of Trade in the second Gladstone Government, he was asked to reply to a protectionist speech by a then-obscure Conservative M.P. named C. T. Ritchie. Contrary to Chamberlain and Morley, however, one of the Birmingham leader's official biographers states that he has found no indication that his hero entertained any fiscal heresies prior to the winter of 1902-03; and though the date he gives may be disputed, the view that Chamberlain was a late convert to protection is substantiated by considerable evidence. Chamberlain's reply to Ritchie, despite his later admission of doubt, reveals no misgivings about the free trade credo.