bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
VII. The Labour Party and the Unemployment Question, 1906–1910
Authors: Brown Kenneth D.
Published: June 2009

During the eighteen months which immediately preceded the general election of 1906 many workers in Britain were adversely affected by the generally stagnant state of the economy and there was a considerable amount of agitation on behalf of the unemployed, particularly in 1905. Nevertheless, the economy began to improve in November of that year and unemployment as such did not play a very important part in the election, although the Labour candidates frequently gave it a leading place in their manifestos, putting forward a great variety of remedies. These ranged from demands for the recognition of the ‘right to work’ and the eight-hour day to pleas for the creation of a labour department with ministerial status. When Unionist candidates mentioned unemployment it was usually in the wider context of tariff reform, while Liberals who bothered to refer to the subject at all generally contented themselves with a passing reference to the need to approach the problem by reforming the land laws.
Influence, Power, and the Policy Process: The Case of Franz Ferdinand, 1906–1914
Authors: Williamson Samuel R.
Published: June 2009

The death of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo galvanized the Habsburg monarchy into its most fateful decision: the initiation of local war against Serbia. His demise, among other things, ensured Berlin's fidelity to its alliance commitment, convinced (mistakenly) the decision-makers in Vienna that monarchical solidarity would keep Russia in check, and allowed the Hungarians to breathe more easily. But the heir apparent's death may also have had an importance generally overlooked in analyzing the crisis of July 1914.1 Put simply, his disappearance suddenly altered the decision-making processes of the Habsburg monarchy. The elaborate consultative procedures involving the archduke, his military chancellery, and advisers were abruptly terminated. No longer did the joint ministers, the national ministers, the military hierarchy or the emperor's court officials have to consider the archduke and his strong, often peaceful, views on foreign policy. Even Franz Joseph was now spared the irritation of having to explain a decision to his insistent nephew. Sarajevo thus not only supplied the occasion for Vienna's decision for war, it helped, by drastically revising the political process, to accelerate that decision.
British Parliamentary Politics, 1784–1786
Authors: Kelly Paul
Published: June 2009

The triumph of Pitt's ministry in 1784 over the Fox-North Coalition is a familiar event in British political history. But the consolidation of the ministry after 1784 has yet to be analyzed in detail. Though the general election of 1784, accompanied by spectacular demonstrations of public opinion in support of the government, clinched Pitt's victory, there was no immediate return to tranquillity. Within two years, Pitt was defeated on four major issues: the Westminster scrutiny, the Irish Resolutions, parliamentary reform, and the duke of Richmond's scheme for the fortification of the dockyards.
Legitimist Opposition to the Revolution of 1830 in the French Provinces
Authors: Price Roger
Published: June 2009

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent and character of the early legitimist opposition to the Orleanist regime. It seeks to demonstrate the secondary importance of their political loyalties for most of those with a significant material stake and status in the existing society. The basic theme is thus one of the effective formation of a conservative alliance pursuing the politics of selfinterest and prepared to sacrifice its ideals to do so. The cause of the legitimate monarch after 1830 could only have succeeded, and only came close to succeeding, if and when it promised to serve as the most efficient guarantor of social order. It failed because it appeared too concerned with ideology and ideals and not sufficiently with compromise, conservative unity and material progress. Its weakness was evident in 1830 in the manner in which its potential supporters reacted to the change of government.
‘Joy Rides’?: British Intelligence and Propaganda in Russia, 1914–1917
Authors: Neilson Keith
Published: June 2009

The work of one member of the British intelligence mission in Russia was once described as ‘consist[ing] chiefly in passing little notes to other noodles of his calling all over the world to warn them of this or that innocent and bar their exit from or entry to all and sundry countries’. Others, even less charitable, characterized the intelligence mission and the war propaganda bureau as ‘joy rides’ and dismissed them entirely, discounting as worthless their efforts to promote closer understanding and coordination between Britain and her eastern ally.
Wesleyanism and Empire
Authors: Koss Stephen
Published: June 2009

Much as late-Victorian Nonconformists were inclined to take a simplified view of national politics, which they saw as a perpetual conflict between the agents of darkness and the apostles of light, students of the period have tended to take a simplified view of political Nonconformity, which was as multifarious in its secular loyalties as in its theological variations. The self-appointed guardians of the Nonconformist Conscience spoke with many voices, rarely in unison. Indeed, the individual who gave currency to that catchphrase, the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, was - much by his Wesleyanism as by his idiosyncrasy - among the least typical of those whom he was alleged to represent.
IV. The Irish Board of Works in the Famine Years
Authors: Griffiths A. R. G.
Published: June 2009

The field of Anglo-Irish administrative history, comprehensively surveyed by Dr R. B. McDowell, has been subjected to little detailed analysis. This article attempts to fill the gap in one important respect. It sets out to examine the role of the Irish Board of Works during the famine years. In 1846–7, at a time of grave national crisis, the Board of Works tackled the near-impossible task of providing public works for the relief of almost every family in Ireland. Despite the Treasury's efforts to control abuses, the Board of Works proved unequal to the task, and had to be replaced as the main tool of government policy.
V. The British Radicals and the Balance of Power, 1902–1914
Authors: Weinroth Howard S.
Published: June 2009

On 3 August 1914 a short-lived Radical body of intellectuals, the‘Neutrality Committee’, issued a statement to the press calling upon Britain not to depart from a policy of strict neutrality. A similar organization, which went under the title of the British Neutrality League, and supported by an imposing array of Liberals—Lord Welby, the Lord Provost of Glasgow, the Lord Mayor of Manchester, the Bishop of Hereford and C. P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian—did much the same. It implored the nation not to take part in a Continental war, since no British interest was involved: ‘the violation of Belgian neutrality was insufficient to bring us into war’. Other spokesmen of moderate and left-wing Liberal opinion followed suit, among them a fairsized number of Cambridge scholars. Meetings and demonstrations were held throughout the country to protest against possible British intervention. Organized by the socialists in Trafalgar Square, these were of impressive proportions. In Parliament, too, a small group of dissenting M.P.s withstood the gathering war hysteria and urged the Government to accept the German guarantee of Belgian ‘integrity’, though this might mean a temporary invasion of her frontiers. All in all this last-minute spectacle of opposition to British involvement in the 1914 War has sometimes led to the historical assessment that the Radicals, together with their socialist allies, were men of an insular mind and isolationist in their approach toward European politics.
VII. Great Britain, Japan and the Fall of Yuan Shih-K'ai, 1915–1916
Authors: Lowe Peter
Published: June 2009

Until August 1914 the European powers dominated the Far East. Japan was growing rapidly in stature and strength following her victories over China in the war of 1894–5 and over Russia in the war of 1904–5 but she was not in a position to challenge the European powers. Britain was concerned primarily with maintaining the status quo in the Far East and in particular with defending British commercial supremacy in China, especially in the great Yangtze valley. These objectives had involved her in growing friction with her ally, Japan, for Japanese leaders wished their country to play a more effective political and economic role in China. The outbreak of war in August 1914 transformed the situation in the Far East. The European powers were divided and interested principally in winning the conflict in Europe. War spread to the Far East, however, as a result partly of German naval strength necessitating a British request to Japan for assistance but essentially because of Japanese determination to seize the opportunity to extend Japanese power in the region. The German fortress at Tsingtao in Shantung province of China and the German islands in the Pacific north of the equator were in Japanese hands by November 1914. The next Japanese objective was to replace European hegemony in China with Japanese hegemony and in January 1915 a list of twenty-one demands was handed to the president of the Chinese republic, Yuan Shih-k'ai. Yuan had become president after the revolution of 1911–12 which had terminated the ancient Chinese empire.
The General Settlement of 1577: An Aspect of Spanish Finance in the Early Modern Period
Authors: Lovett Albert
Published: June 2009

The states of sixteenth-century Europe fell into two financial groups. France and Spain, in a class of their own, enjoyed an apparently total freedom for much of the time from the normal constraints, and this in spite of their rapidly escalating debts. The other European states which made up the second category were compelled to observe far more stringent controls. The distinction between the two groups was further underlined by the question of credit. Although the Habsburg and Valois monarchs spent in a way that was both financially reckless and socially unpitying, the moneyed classes were only too eager to advance additional funds. Repeated, and sometimes spectacular, failures seemed rarely to have damped their enthusiasm. The smaller states seldom found such ease of access to credit. For most of the time they were obliged to maintain a semblance of order by sustained and sordid frugality - the bilking of minor creditors, the levying of dubious ‘loans’, or the dissipation of capital. While no strangers to these devices, France and Spain were able to operate for prolonged periods free from ordinary limitations. But even for these privileged beings the moment of truth eventually arrived. Resources were finite; and even an imperial state could exhaust the credit, if not the credulity, of its principal bankers. Such an intrusion of reality took the form of a public bankruptcy.
A Liberal Chief Secretary and the Irish Question: Augustine Birrell, 1907–1914
Authors: Jalland Patricia
Published: June 2009

Augustine Birrell performed the thankless task of chief secretary for Ireland for a longer period than any of his forty-nine predecessors. His nine years of office from 1907 to 1916 included some of the most critical years of Anglo-Irish history, and ended tragically when he accepted blame for the 1916 Easter rebellion, which has haunted his political reputation ever since. Birrell has been generally condemned by the English and consigned to oblivion by the Irish. This article will reassess Birrell's work as Irish secretary by relating his actual achievements and failures to the complex problems which constituted the Liberal dilemma in Ireland. Emphasis is placed on the earlier and more successful period of Birrell's administration, which has been almost entirely neglected by English historians.
Community and Consensus in Ante-Bellum America
Authors: Collins B. W.
Published: June 2009

American local history has been much studied, but rarely integrated into the general history of the country. Although greater attention is now being paid to the connexions between local political, social and economic developments and national trends, there is still a very real disparity in historiographical emphasis between national issues and the problems of community life experienced by Americans in the past. For no period, perhaps, is this disparity so graphic as for the mid-nineteenth century; the years from about 1840 to the 1870s or the 1880s were convulsed by sectional rivalries, civil war and reconstruction, to which matters historians have devoted their attention. Steadily, however, the local communities themselves have come under scrutiny. But the major interpretation currently accepted reinforces, rather than qualifies, the general picture we have of that period, since the North, at least, is regarded as buoyant and expansive in the mid-century, pursuing with relentless self-confidence such aims as help to explain the coming, and the winning, of the Civil War; reform, moral and educational improvement, and the opening of economic opportunities to yeomen farmers, artisans and small merchants.
VI. Konrad Henlein, The Sudeten Question and British Foreign Policy
Authors: Robbins Keith G.
Published: June 2009

The Munich agreement of 1938 continues to be a source of controversy, and differences concerning the reasons for British policy are unlikely to be resolved for some time to come.1 There is, however, one minor but important aspect of that policy which has been little discussed—the activities of Konrad Henlein. His supposed aims played an important part in British calculations in the years before Munich. It is the purpose of this article to take a fresh look at his visits to London. While contemporary impressions can now be compared with evidence drawn from a variety of sources, the full truth about Henlein remains elusive. Since certain crucial documents or records of conversations cannot now be traced, a certain amount of conjecture is inevitable and dogmatism about his rather enigmatic conduct would be unwise.
The Italian War of 1859 and the Reorientation of Russian Foreign Policy
Authors: Thurston G. J.
Published: June 2009

On the face of it, the war between Austria and the allied forces of Piedmont and France in the summer of 1859, and the ensuing struggles that culminated in the unification of most of Italy under King Victor Emanuel, would seem to have little to do with the evolution of Russian foreign policy. Russia took care not to be drawn into the fighting and greeted the unification process with loud disapprobation. Yet that war could not have been fought as a limited war without Russian collusion. Napoleon III required – besides the tacit approval of England (where public opinion supported ‘Italy for the Italians’) – the aid of another nation in order to be what Bismarck later called ’à trois’ in a Europe of five great powers. For Russia to provide that aid obliged her to abandon the responsibilities shouldered by Alexander I and Nicholas I, ‘the gendarme of Europe’, champion of Europe's conservative instincts and guarantor of its treaties.
Edmund Bohun and Jus Gentium in the Revolution Debate, 1689–1693
Authors: Goldie Mark
Published: June 2009

The events of the Revolution of 1688 were the subject of an explosive pamphlet debate in which conservatives and radicals sought to capture the ideological initiative by imposing their rival interpretations upon events. The tories, who in large part brought about the Revolution, attempted to account for the nation's acceptance of the setdement in terms which could be accommodated within the traditional tory principles of non-resistance, hereditary right and monarchical prerogative. Recent scholarship has emphasized the extent to which the settlement was a compromise between conflicting whig and tory attitudes to monarchy, and within die context of this revision of the ‘whig’ interpretation a number of the arguments deployed by tories in 1689 and in subsequent years have now been elucidated.
The Coalitions of 1827 and the Crisis of Whig Leadership
Authors: Wasson E. A.
Published: June 2009

On 17 February 1827 Lord Liverpool suffered a paralytic stroke. His physical disintegration was followed by the break-up of the alliance which he had built and presided over for fifteen years. He had been a living guarantee that catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform could not be passed, which secured the support of the king and the country gentlemen. At the same time, he had guarded the backs of his liberal foreign and finance ministers against the threat of conservative attack, and thus enabled the government to adapt its policies in those departments to the pressures of the post-war world.
The Growth of Liberalism and the Crisis of the Bourbon Restoration, 1827–1830
Authors: Pilbeam Pamela
Published: June 2009

In 1830 the French Bourbon monarchy fell in the midst of a.political crisis that had developed rapidly between 1827 and 1830 after the Restoration settlement had operated, apparently harmoniously, for fifteen years. The two general elections of 1827 and 1830 resulted in the very swift growth of a liberal majority in parliament, and Charles X, unwilling to defer entirely to the majority in the choice of his ministers and unable, because of custom established since 1814, to defy that majority, attempted to alter the constitution by decree in 1830. The ‘three glorious revolutionary days’ led to the replacement of Charles by his cousin Louis-Philippe. In the last election of Louis XVIII's reign in 1824 only 40 liberals were elected in the whole of France. In 1827 about 180 were successful, making their representation roughly equal to that of the supporters of the Villèle government, with between 60 and 80 ultra-royalists to their right. In by-elections in 1828 and 1829 the liberals won 50 of the 75 seats fought. The election of 1830 confirmed the growth of support for the liberals with 202 of the 221 who voted the motion of no-confidence in the government being re-elected, and a total of 270 opponents, whereas the Polignac government had a mere 145 adherents. This dramatic swing in the elections of Charles X's reign was national in scale but was most complete in northern and eastern France. In 1829 four of the five most liberal departments in terms of parliamentary representation were in the east.
The Bank of Ireland, 1721: Land, Credit and Dependency
Authors: Ryder Michael
Published: June 2009

In December 1721 the Irish parliament threw out the heads of a bill to establish a national bank in Ireland, and both houses passed resolutions which leave no doubt that the bank was perceived as a major constitutional threat. It has been clear to all historians that opposition to the bank was not based on a simple assessment of its economic viability, but it is much less clear that the political considerations that were involved have been as fully appreciated. L. M. Cullen has drawn attention to the extent to which eighteenth-century accounts of the Irish economy are coloured by non-economic criteria, and in particular ‘by a nascent constitutional agitation and economic nationalism’ in the 1720s. ‘An economic mythology established itself very quickly with the writings of the 1720s and the political concerns which manifested themselves in that decade providing the base of arguments which were repeated in subsequent writing.’ If this is true, then it is no less necessary to have a clear account of those political concerns than to have an economic history that is free of them.
Arthur Henderson and the British Political Crisis of 1931
Authors: Thorpe Andrew
Published: June 2009

‘No matter how often it is told, the story remains fantastic’, wrote Margaret Cole in 1956, referring to the British political crisis of a quarter of a century before. It would be rash to make such a comment today, for in recent years sober research has answered many of the more ‘fantastic’ questions. The role of the Labour opposition, though, remains somewhat neglected; most spectacularly, no attempt has been made systematically to analyse the actions and motivations of its leader during the crisis, Arthur Henderson. A reappraisal is both necessary and possible.
The Alien Office, 1792–1806
Authors: Sparrow Elizabeth
Published: June 2009

This investigation and my ability to describe alien office structure is due more to chance than prior intention as it arose out of a difficult examination of the life of Thomas Pitt, second Lord Camelford (1775–1804). Lacking direct sources about him, I turned to an examination of his friends and associates and gradually a pattern emerged: an international network of secret agents. But who directed them, and from where? For a time the answer eluded me, and I was not helped by the statement in the guide to the public record office, that no alien office correspondence remains. In fact there is a considerable quantity, but with the exception of H.O. 5, which is entirely alien office, it is scattered in other H.O. classes as well as various F.O., W.O., and A.D.M. classes. But the late Alfred Cobban provided a lead and he had clearly recognized 1792 as a turning point in secret service. Others who have written before on this subject limited themselves to an examination of one of William Wickham's principal agents, Dandré, no doubt chiefly because at the time they wrote, much material that I have been able to consult was not then available to the public; i.e. a large part of the Wickham collection; the Talbot papers and the residue of Lord Grenville's papers.
The Unionists and Ireland, 1914–18
Authors: Stubbs John O.
Published: June 2009

The thirteenth edition ofThe campaign guide: A handbook for unionist speakerswas published on the eve of the Great War. This massive 900 pageGuide, like its predecessors, was ‘prepared with a view to giving to Unionist Candidates and Speakers…a handy reference work covering the whole field of contemporary political controversy.’ The fourth largest chapter in the book (74 pages) dealt with Ireland and was reflective of the ‘present position’of ‘THE IRISH QUESTION’ being ‘in the front rank of political controversy’ Four years laterElection notes, an 87 page pamphlet assembled prior to the 1918 election as a hasty substitute for what would have been an entirely inappropriateCampaign guide, had no chapter on Ireland, no reference to the Irish question in the index and, in fact, conveyed not a single word on the subject.
Taxation and the Working Class, 1915–24
Authors: Whiting R. C.
Published: June 2009

The working class's experience of the tax system is an important aspect of its relationship with the state. This article examines the nature of this connexion during the First World War and its aftermath when fiscal policy was subject to intense political pressure. Two themes are paramount, those of resistance and appropriation. From the point of view of governments the less tax collection encouraged class-based opposition the better. Because the level of tax payments depended on varied circumstances within social groups – caused by family size or patterns of consumption, for example – the lines of differentiation were more finely drawn than the contours of social class. Many tax payments affected the individual as a citizen within the political system rather than as a producer within the economy. The articulation of resentment about tax burdens with conflicts in the economy was not therefore automatic. However, when governments were closely involved in the running of the economy, as in the First World War, it was helpful to use the tax system as an instrument of social justice, so that efforts to generate a common purpose might not be impaired by resentment of the disproportionate gains of others. In these circumstances taxpayers might well be encouraged to see the tax system as a way of appropriating or limiting the wealth of other classes, in a way which did bring it into closer relationship with the economy.
The Dublin Society of United Irishmen and the politics of the Carey–Drennan dispute, 1792–1794
Authors: Durey Michael
Published: June 2009

This article is concerned with political divisions within the Dublin Society of United Irishmen in a period, 1792–1794, which historians, accepting the contemporary argument of its leaders, have generally agreed demonstrated the society's unity of purpose. It is argued that ideological tensions existed between the middle-class leadership and the middling-class rank and file which reflected the existence of two different conceptions of radicalism, one ‘Jacobin’ and one ‘sans-culotte’. These tensions are brought to light through an examination of the dispute between William Paulet Carey and William Drennan, which culminated in the latter's trial in 1794, and the career of the former until he exiled himself from Ireland after the ijg8 rebellion. It is further argued that, because these ideological differences have been ignored, historians have wrongly assumed that Carey was a political turncoat. In reality, he remained true to the sans-culotte principles of direct democracy and rotation of office, even after his ostracism. Carey's deep suspicion of the motivation of the United Irish leaders came to be accepted by Drennan in retrospect.
English catholicism and the Jesuit mission of 1580–1581
Authors: Carrafiello Michael L.
Published: June 2009

Historians have misunderstood the fundamental nature of the English Jesuit mission of 1580–1. Beginning with A.O. Meyer in 1916 and continuing through John Bossy and Christopher Haigh in the 1970s and 1980s, historians have mistakenly characterized this mission as essentially pastoral. They have admired the Jesuit priests for their personal courage in the face of persecution but have simultaneously criticized them for their inability to sustain English catholicism among the laity. But in fact the mission was fundamentally political in nature, and Robert Parsons in particular hoped to use the mission to return England to the catholic fold, by force if necessary. Parsons's designs on Scotland and on James VI in the early 1580s are especially illuminating in this regard. The English mission failed in this its principal goal, and the exact nature of the missioners' failure must be understood for what it was.
Dedominionization: the Anglo-Australian experience, 1939–1945
Authors: Tsokhas Kosmas
Published: June 2009

The role of decolonization in the decline of the British empire has received a great deal of attention. In comparison there has been little research or analysis of the process of dedominionization affecting Australia and the other dominions. During the Second World War economic ties were seriously weakened and there were substantial conflicts over economic policy between the British and Australian governments. Australia refused to reduce imports in order to conserve foreign exchange, thus contributing to the United Kingdom's debt burden. The Australian government insisted that the British guarantee Australia's sterling balances and refused to adopt the stringent fiscal policies requested by the Bank of England and the British treasury. Australia also took the opportunity to expand domestic manufacturing industry at the expense of British manufacturers. Economic separation and conflict were complemented by political and strategic differences. In particular, the Australian government realized that British military priorities made it impossible for the United Kingdom to defend Australia. This led the Australians towards a policy of cooperating with the British embargo on Japan, only to the extent that this would be unlikely to provoke Japanese military retaliation. In general, the Australians preferred a policy of compromise in the Far East to one of deterrence preferred by the British.
Henry VIII's wills: a comment
Authors: Houlbrooke R. A.
Published: June 2009

Professor Ives has demonstrated the weakness of some of the grounds for thinking that Henry VIII's will was tampered with after 30 December 1546. But he has not mentioned Paget's later testimony suggesting that the ‘unfulfilled gifts clause’ was inserted in the will after 12 January 1547. Even if it was part of the will by 30 December, the gifts implemented by its authority resulted from later skilful and ruthless manipulation of the king. Henry's ‘unwritten will’ greatly strengthened Edward Seymour and his allies and gave William Paget, who was largely responsible for its final shape, the means of buying off potential objectors to Seymour's elevation to the protectorship.
Revisionists and Fundamentalists: the Labour Party and Economic Policy during the Second World War
Authors: Brooke Stephen
Published: June 2009

‘Labour Comes of Age’, Kingsley Martin observed a few days after the party's electoral landslide of 1945. This might have been more precise if a chorus had added, sotto voce, ‘…And Comes Into an Inheritance’, for since the publication of Paul Addison's The road to 1945 (1975), the history of the Labour party during and after the war has been dominated by the notion of a political consensus forged during the Churchill coalition and left as a legacy to the Attlee government. According to Addison, it was the consensus of Keynes and Beveridge that shaped post-war politics rather than any distinctive contribution from Labour.
Literacy and the Social Origins of Some Early Americans
Authors: Galenson David
Published: June 2009

An issue that has long concerned historians of colonial America is that of the social origins of the English men and women who came to the New World in bondage. It has been estimated that half of all white immigration to the thirteen colonies was made up of indentured servants; therefore no quantitative description of the labour force or the social structure of colonial America is possible without some knowledge of what kinds of people bound themselves to serve in return for passage to the colonies. Historians' assessments of these early immigrants have ranged widely, from Abbot Emerson Smith's judgment that they were ‘the most ignorant and idle’ of English contemporaries to Mildred Campbell's view that ‘most were drawn from the middling classes…the productive groups in England's working population’.
The Maréichal De Castries and the Anglo-French Commercial Negotiations of 1786–1787
Authors: Donaghay Marie
Published: June 2009

In March 1786 a special envoy from Great Britain, William Eden, notified the French foreign minister, the comte de Vergennes, of his arrival. Eden's appearance in France represented the culmination of three years of careful diplomacy designed to force the British government into serious commercial negotiations. Ostensibly, the negotiators were to replace the moribund commercial convention of Utrecht (1713) with a new agreement that would extend Anglo-French trade. But for Vergennes, the negotiations involved more than trade: they formed an essential part of his post-war English policy – a policy designed to maintain British isolation and demonstrate the possibilities of Anglo-French co-operation while bringing Great Britain under French influence through penetration of the British economy. Discussions during the next ten months produced a commercial treaty, an additional convention and a draft consular agreement. When the new commercial arrangements were promulgated in May 1787, the French economy was depressed and the French government was in disarray following the death of Vergennes and the dismissal of two other ministers. Hopes for rapprochement vanished when the Dutch crisis ended in a French humiliation at British hands a few months later, but the treaty continued to govern Anglo-French commercial relations until 1793.
The Abyssinian Expedition of 1867–1868: Disraeli's Imperialism or James Murray's war?
Authors: Rodgers Nini
Published: June 2009

In the summer of 1867 Lord Derby's minority Conservative government, scarcely recovered from the political steeplechase which ended in the Second Reform Act, launched an expedition into Abyssinia, the declared aim of which was to free a group of British captives in duress there. This expensive little war is now remembered, if at all, as a lavish and triumphant picnic for the Indian army yet, as a recent historian has pointed out, it does not deserve to be dismissed as a ‘military curiosity’. Certainly for contemporaries its origins were a vexed issue and one which was never satisfactorily resolved. Critics in the press and parliament laid the blame on the previous Liberal administration. They maintained that back in 1863 the Foreign Office had lost an important letter from Theodore of Abyssinia. When the king failed to receive a reply, he reacted to this snub by throwing the British consul and a group of missionaries into fetters. Responsibility for any such blunder lay in the last resort with the foreign secretary of the day, Lord John Russell. Elderly, frail, and with a reputation for rashness untarnished by time, Russell's term of office (1859–65) had been marked by a series of crises which had brought Britain into dangerous or ignominious confrontation with the U.S.A. over the Trent incident, with Russia over the Polish rebellion, and with Prussia over Schleswig-Holstein.
Gladstone, the Whigs and the Leadership of the Liberal Party, 1879–1880
Authors: Jenkins T. A.
Published: June 2009

The return of Gladstone as prime minister, after the Liberals had secured a decisive majority at the polls in April 1880, has for long been established in the mythology of the Liberal party. In retrospect, the series of events which had drawn Gladstone back into active politics after his retirement in 1875 – his opposition to Beaconsfield's Eastern policy, the oratorical campaigns in Midlothian, and the rout of ‘Jingoism’ at the general election – came to be seen as a natural, linear development, whereby his special sense of affinity with the ‘;people’ was re-established and the great election victory assured. His subsequent resumption of the premiership accordingly became surrounded by an air of inevitability: the hesitant leadership of the whigs giving way to that of the man who had inspired the struggle against Beaconsfield's ‘system of government’ and who alone could command the allegiance of all sections of the great Liberal majority.
The Politics of Marvell's Horatian Ode
Authors: Worden Blair
Published: June 2009

Andrew Marvell's ‘AnHoratianode uponCromwel'sreturn fromIreland’ is the most private of political poems. It may be a solitary meditation; it may be written, after Horace, for a forward youth now unknown to us; but it scarcely seems addressed to the public audience of Marvell's tribute to Cromwell in ‘The first anniversary’. We enter an imaginative landscape beyond politics, outside the movement of history, where the figures of the ode – restless Cromwell, the royal actor, the clapping soldiers, the frighted architects, the tamed Irish, the luring falconer, the hunted Pict – appear stilled as upon some ancient vase. Yet the poem's transcendence of events need not be taken for detachment from them, nor its privacy for retreat. I want to suggest that the celebrated poise and urbanity of the ode have been created from energy and urgency of feeling. Marvell has given timelessness to a desperate and portentous moment in his country's history, the arrival of Cromwell in England in the summer of 1650. Language has been immortalized too: the language of ephemeral tracts and newspapers, which is close enough to the surface of the poem to suggest a younger Marvell as politically engaged as the restoration M.P. and whig pamphleteer.
Churchill, De Gaulle, Spears and the Levant Affair, 1941
Authors: Gaunson A. B.
Published: June 2009

After the fall of France in 1940, Britain's predicament in the Middle East became worse still when the French authorities in Syria and Lebanon aligned themselves with the new Vichy government. The British, already outnumbered by Italian forces and uncertain of Arab loyalties, now found their northern flank controlled by men susceptible to Axis pressure. Both Churchill and de Gaulle responded with the determination that the Levant should be denied to the Axis and placed in friendly hands. Despite this common resolve, however, fundamental differences emerged during the Anglo-Free French invasion of Syria in 1941. This hastily improvised venture was marred by rash political tactics, poor liaison, bad diplomacy and the interventions of Churchill and de Gaulle. Although the Syrian flank was secured, this affair did serious damage to Anglo-Free French relations, created new problems in the Levant, and precipitated personal antagonism between Churchill and de Gaulle.
Blutmai 1929: Police, Parties and Proletarians in a Berlin Confrontation
Authors: Bowlby Chris
Published: June 2009

In May 1929 illegal Communist demonstrations in Berlin led to several days' fighting as the Prussian police sought to restore order. Over thirty civilians were killed. Communist publications hailed events as an heroic defeat, in which lessons had been learned for the ‘final struggle’ to come; the Social Democrats hailed a decisive victory over Bolshevik aggression. Liberals expressed concern at the soverity of police action; National Socialists expressed sinister satisfaction at a significant portent of the distintegration of social and political stability. Above all, the dramatic events of Blutmai (‘Bloody May’) reinforced an element of emotional tension in Weimar and Prussian politics of great importance in understanding the final collapse of 1933.
Britain, the United States, and the Recognition Of Communist China
Authors: Ovendale R.
Published: June 2009

During the years following the end of the Second World War the British Labour government was preoccupied with the threat posed by Russia. Britain could not contain Russia on its own; indeed, only the United States possessed the necessary power. At the beginning of 1949 this was emphasized by the newly formed permanent under secretary's committee headed by William Strang. That committee considered the Anglo-American special relationship as the pivot of British foreign policy: British interests were best likely to be ensured by its maintenance and consolidation. An inequality was, however, inherent in the association, and Britain thought that the alliance would be least effective in Asia and the far east, an area where American naivety and selfishness were particularly evident. The spread of Mao Tse Tung's communists across the Chinese mainland emphasized Britain's predicament, especially as, initially, the Chinese were regarded as orthodox communists.
‘An odd question enough’. Charles James Fox, the crown and British policy during the Hanoverian crisis of 1806
Authors: Simms Brendan
Published: June 2009

The essay aims to close a longstanding gap in the political historiography of later Georgian Britain by examining the ‘Hanoverian Crisis’ of 1806. Drawing on a broad range of British, Hanoverian and Prussian records, the essay demonstrates that the British–Prussian conflict of that year was caused not – as conventionally assumed – by the closure of the North Sea ports to British shipping, but by the Prussian occupation of George III's electoral land of Hanover. The essay then shows how the commitment of the British government to its restitution was largely motivated by the desire of Charles James Fox and the incoming Ministry of All the Talents to build bridges to the crown. This stance was in complete contradiction both to the broad thrust of the new ‘maritime’ foreign policy of the Talents and to Fox's previous policy in matters Hanoverian. Subsequently the implications of this for our understanding of Fox's political biography are assessed. Finally, the essay illuminates the existence of a coherent ‘Hanoverian Faction’ in London headed by Count Münster which together with a highly activist George III was often able to tip the balance in the formulation of British policy.
Obligations, Utopias, and their Historical Context
Authors: Goldie Mark
Published: June 2009

‘For the moment, anyway, political philosophy is dead.’ Peter Laslett's remark of 1956 is well known. His lament was echoed in 1962 in Bernard Crick's extended pleaIn defence of politics. They surveyed a wasteland laid bare by a sociology which announced the exhaustion of political ideals, and a philosophy, logical positivism, which declared that nothing significant could be said about ethics or politics. According to Laslett, one of the original culprits of the former kind was Karl Mannheim, because he had taught that all thinking and all knowing were sociologically determined.
The Unionist Social Reform Committee, 1911–1914: Wets Before the Deluge
Authors: Ridley Jane
Published: June 2009

‘So Arthur Balfour is really leader – and Tory Democracy, the genuine article, at an end!’ Conventional historical wisdom has endorsed Randolph Churchill's judgement of 1891, attributing the demise of tory democracy partly to Balfour himself and partly to the inexorable forces of class division. Balfour's tactical ingenuity secured the defeat of Joseph Chamberlain's tariff reform, a valiant bid to revive tory democracy and turn back the tide of class politics; thereafter the Liberals, anxious to retain their working-class support, made the running on social reform, while the Unionists fell back on ‘negative’ policies and the middle-class vote. Yet perhaps historians have become the prisoners of their own orthodoxy. Though the ideology, the policies and the electoral bases of the new Liberalism have been extensively explored, the Unionists have been relatively neglected. Because it is assumed that before 1914 the Conservative party was devoid of proposals for social reform, one of the most obvious sources for such proposals has been overlooked: the Unionist Social Reform Committee of 1911 to 1914.
2. Local Improvements And Centralization In Nineteenth-Century England
Authors: Gutchen Robert M.
Published: June 2009

By the middle years of the nineteenth century, Englishmen were in full revolt against the principle of centralization. Parliament's experiments in centralized administration had almost all ended in failure. A powerful and independent Poor Law Commission had given way, in 1847, to a more timid Poor Law Board under ministerial and parliamentary control. A strong Board of Health, ruled by that uncompromising centralizer and bureaucrat, Edwin Chadwick, was sheared of a large part of its influence when, in 1854, the government decided to release Chadwick from their employment. The Times responded to this event with a jubilant leader article which announced that, ‘If there is such a thing as a political certainty among us, it is that nothing autocratic can exist in this country.... Mr Chadwick and Dr Southwood Smith, have been deposed, and we prefer to take our chance of cholera and the rest than be bullied into health’.
Henry VIII, Rebellion and The Rule of Law
Authors: Ellis Steven G.
Published: June 2009

It has been traditional to regard the reaction of Henry VIII in the face of treason and rebellion as savage and extreme. Perhaps for this reason, historians for long considered it superfluous to examine in any detail what fate actually befell those who took up arms against their king. More recently, however, findings that relatively few persons were executed by Henry, despite the savagery of his reign, and that in general his bark was worse than his bite,1 have suggested that this question could profitably be pursued further. There seems, for instance, to be a significant difference between the 178 executions in the aftermath of the Lincolnshire rebellion and the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536–7 and the rather larger number for which Elizabeth was responsible following the much less dangerous Northern Rising of 1569.2 Yet how these figures were achieved and what considerations shaped and determined the extent of the government's retaliation is much less clear. Perhaps the surviving evidence will not normally admit of answers to such questions, for it was not in the government's interests to disclose that external considerations might influence the enforcement or otherwise of the law. The manifestation of this fact was therefore inconvenient, but exceptionally such disclosures might be unavoidable.
Raffles and the Slave Trade at Batavia in 1812
Authors: Wright H. R. C.
Published: June 2009

British opinion in the East became sensitive to propaganda against slavery and the slave trade surprisingly early. Thus in 1772 the Committee of Circuit in Bengal, when recommending the enslavement of the families of hereditary dacoits, thought it necessary to explain that slavery in India involved only a mild domestic subordination, since ‘the ideas of slavery borrowed from our American colonies will make every modification of it appear to our countrymen in England a horrible evil’. In 1789 Cornwallis prohibited the collection of slaves for export, and was contemplating a gradual abolition of slavery in Bengal.2 David Scott, a hard-headed East-India merchant and a Director of the East India Company, wrote in a private letter in 1796 that the salt workers in Bengal must be freed from compulsory labour, ‘for slaves cannot work so cheap as free men, besides we ought to give all our subjects liberty‘. In 1804 Wellesley ordered proposals to be made for the prohibition of slavery on Penang, since there could be no great difficulty about it on so recent a settlement.
1.The Charities of London. By W. K. Jordan. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1960. Pp. 463. 45s.
Authors: Elton G. R.
Published: June 2009

Professor Jordan has now brought out the first of two volumes which are to supply the detailed evidence for the statistical arguments in his study of Philanthropy in England 1480–1660. That book showed that the London merchant classes were among the most active and generous benefactors both in London itself and elsewhere in the kingdom, and the bulk of this one consists of masses of illustrative detail digested under three main heads: the geography of the London parishes; the classes of people and their charitable aims; the classes of charities served. These categories and the main conclusions are familiar from the earlier book which was reviewed at length in these columns (vol.III, pp. 89 ff.). Here, with a wealth of facts and pernickety percentages worked out to two places of decimals, Professor Jordan once again declares that in the century under discussion the rich were remarkably ready to provide for the less fortunate, and that charity was turning from religious to secular purposes. There can be no doubt that his enthusiasm and powers of research make his work an important repository of information, nor that up to a point his arguments carry conviction. Unfortunately, however, the main effect of the new book is to increase one's doubts of his methods and conclusions. And again, these are enforced rather than silenced by his lavishing of superlatives: when one reads that Edward Alleyn, the actor, was ‘almost fanatically interested in the plight of the poor’ because he endowed an almshouse for ten persons, one wonders if Professor Jordan is perhaps employing a different version of the English language.
III. Swift and Science
Authors: Kiernan Colin
Published: June 2009

While Swift's contribution to most fields of thought has generally been well received, his science is normally considered along with the third book of Gulliver's Travels; and the usual practice is to condemn both. At first it was thought that Swift's criticism of Newtonian science in the third book of Gulliver's Travels was written at short notice, in which case it would be peripheral to the work as a whole. In this event, science would be of little concern to Swift. The important achievement of Professors M. Nicolson and N. M. Mohler was to demonstrate diat Swift's assault on Newton's science was not only premeditated, but carefully executed as well: ‘The sources for nearly all the theories of the Laputans and the Balnibarians (sic) are to be found in the work of Swift's contemporary scientists and particularly in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.’