bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Influence, Parties and the Constitution: Changing Attitudes, 1783–1832
Authors: Gunn J. A. W.
Published: June 2009

The existence of royal ‘influence’ was central to the political system of eighteenth-century England. However, the influence of the Crown occupies a curiously tangential place in the political thought of the period. Always difficult to ignore, influence gained recognition chiefly from those groups intent on destroying it – the Old-Whig enemies of corruption, the Country opposition to Walpole and the radical reformers late in the century. But the constant ambiguity as to the exact nature of the balance of the constitution may be explained primarily by the presence of opposed views about influence. While the numerous enemies of influence seem to have had their way in the law-books and other standard accounts of die constitution, an interpretation of British government,
leaning more to realism than to legalism, sometimes surfaced in those ministerialists who defended places for M.P.s as the essential lubricant to die machinery. A realistic assessment of influence not only departed from die model of three equal and independent estates, it was also to provide a basis for understanding political parties within the framework of the balanced constitution.
Capital, Government and Politics in the Transvaal, 1900–1907: A Revision and a Reversion
Authors: Mawby A. A.
Published: June 2009

Over seventy years ago J. A. Hobson put forward the theory that the Anglo-Boer War had been created by the Rand mining magnates and their financial allies, in their search for increased profits. Subsequently this interpretation was extended to the immediate post-war period of British Crown Colony administration, for it was argued that the politics of the post-war period were equally dominated by the Rand mining magnates. More recently, increasing doubt has been cast on this interpretation, for it has been found, inter alia, that the idea of the mining industry engaged in politics as a coherent and monolithic group did not accord with the great variety of behaviour to be found in practice amongst the mining magnates. In the 1960s, however, an attempt was made to overcome this weakness and to return to a strictly economic interpretation of the period, by grafting on to Hobson's basic interpretation the concept of financially-based rivalry between conflicting groups of mining magnates as the key to Transvaal political divisions.
Asquith, Bonar Law and the First Coalition
Authors: Pugh Martin D.
Published: June 2009

The debate over the reasons for the establishment of the Coalition Government in May 1915 continues to resist a conclusion despite the use of new collections of private papers. Unless the papers not so far available to researchers happen to contain an unusually convincing letter in the hand of one of the three mens responsible for the decision, this question seems well placed to defy solution indefinitely. It is the purpose of this article, therefore, to attempt a clarification of the immediate causes by taking a slightly wider perspective than is normally done. In this way one can recognize the Coalition of 1915 for what in essence it was, an attempt to avoid a ‘ Khaki Election ’ on the pattern of 1900.
Sir George Clarke's Career at the Committee of Imperial Defence, 1904–1907
Authors: Gooch John
Published: June 2009

Not much is generally known about the career of Sir George Sydenham Clarke as first secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence other than his arrival at Whitehall in 1904 and his departure under something of a cloud three years later. Yet Clarke's career is in many respects worthy of study. He can lay strong claim to being the first defence ‘bureaucrat’, and as such his career served to establish a pattern into which his successors had to fit themselves. His activities during his three years of office do much to illuminate the methods by which strategic decisions were reached and demonstrate the obstructions that beset the professional civil servant in such a milieu. The influence of the committee which he served has been the subject of considerable analysis and comment; Clarke's personal disposition helps to explain die remark of one scholar that, for a body occupying its influential position, the CID achieved relatively little.1 Finally, the manner of Clarke's going illustrates the political strength of the navalist lobby and of Sir John Fisher at a crucial time in the making of defence policy.
The Calthorpe Family and Birmingham, 1810–1910: A ‘Conservative Interest’ Examined
Authors: Cannadine David
Published: June 2009

In the provincial cities the existence of protected estates like the Calthorpe Estate, which owned and managed Edgbaston in Birmingham, had a strategic influence on the whole development of the city. The owners of such estates, served by solicitors, and themselves serving as patrons of urban parishes, governors of grammar schools and presidents of charitable associations, often provided the backbone of a ‘conservative interest’ in cities whose flavour was essentially radical (Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities, p. 38).
The Political Alignment of the Centre Party in Wilhelmine Germany: A Study of the Party's Emergence in Nineteenth-Century Württemberg
Authors: Blackbourn David
Published: June 2009

Less than a month before Bismarck's dismissal as German chancellor, the Reichstag elections of February 1890 destroyed the parliamentary majority of the Kartell parties - National Liberals and Conservatives - with whose support he had governed. The number of Reichstag seats held by diese parties fell from 221 to 140, out of the total of 397; they never again achieved more than 169. To the multitude of problems left by Bismarck to his successors was therefore added one of parliamentary arithmetic: how was the chancellor to organize a Reichstag majority when the traditional governmental parties by themselves were no longer large enough, and the intransigently anti-governmental SPD was constantly increasing its representation? It was in this situation that the role of the Centre party in Wilhelmine politics became decisive, for between 1890 and 1914 the party possessed a quarter of the seats in the Reichstag, and thus held the balance of power between Left and Right.
VIII. The German Administration in Luxemburg 1940–1942: Toward a ‘de facto’ Annexation
Authors: Fletcher William Allen
Published: June 2009

Histories of the Second World War rarely describe the impact of that conflagration upon the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. Such omission is not surprising, yet the German efforts to assimilate this allegedly Germanic borderland reveal interesting aspects of National Socialist totalitarian methods.
Lord Beaverbrook's Fabrications in Politicians and the War, 1914–1916
Authors: Fraser Peter
Published: June 2009

In spite of occasional protests Lord Beaverbrook's narrative of British domestic politics during the first world war seems to retain the authority of a primary source. This is particularly true of the passages in Politicians and the war, 1914–1916 which cover the events in which he, then Sir Max Aitken, claimed to have taken an influential part. Mr A. J. P. Taylor in his appraisal of Beaverbrook's second volume covering the fall of Asquith in 1916 declares: ‘ It provides essential testimony for events during a great political crisis — perhaps the most detailed account of such a crisis ever written from the inside... The narrative is carried along by rare zest and wit, yet with the detached impartiality of the true scholar. ‘ Beaverbrook's apparent advantages might well seem conclusive. He was a contemporary agent as well as observer, summed up in his jaunty ‘ I was there!’. He was supposed to have enjoyed the complete confidence of Bonar Law, to have run a newspaper and to have kept a diary. An M.P. and virtual parliamentary private secretary to Bonar Law, whose rise to the Commons party leadership he appeared to have engineered, Aitken could be presumed to be politically on the ‘inside’. A tycoon of Canadian business ‘mergers’ and a self-made millionaire at a young age, he was esteemed by Law to be one of the cleverest men he knew.
III. Rural Revolt in the Great Rebellion of 1857 in India: A Study of the Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar Districts
Authors: Stokes Eric
Published: June 2009

In most accounts of the rural uprisings of 1857 the moneylender, whether described as ‘sleek mahajan’ or ‘impassive bania’, is cast as the villain of the piece. It is he who is seen as the principal beneficiary of the landed revolution that occurred in the first half-century of British rule in the North-Western Provinces and gave the non-agricultural classes of the towns a mounting share in the control of land. And his ascendancy is attributed directly to the institutional changes effected by British rule, among the
most important of which were the transformation of the immediate revenuecollecting right {malguzari) into a transferable private property; the heavy, inelastic cash assessments; and above all, the forced sale of land rights for arrears of revenue or in satisfaction of debt. ‘The public sale of land’, says Professor Chaudhuri, ‘not merely uprooted the ordinary people from their smallholdings but also destroyed the gentry of the country, and both the orders being victims of British civil law were united in the revolutionary epoch of 1857–8 in a common effort to recover what they had lost.’.
Sir James Graham at the Home Office
Authors: Donajgrodzki A. P.
Published: June 2009

One of the perquisites of having been a high ranking Conservative politician is the near-certain admiration of future biographers, even when, as in the case of Sire James Graham, the biographers have no political axe to grind and do not rise to hero worship. Professor Erickson and Professor Ward, Graham's most recent biographers, do not ignore the fierce contemporary condemnation that Graham evoked: Ward, indeed, takes Graham's unpopularity as the starting point for a re-evalution of his career. But both have distinguished between his skills in political management, his political acumen and personality, on the one hand, and his vision, ability, enterprise and industry on the other, and by concentrating on the latter have produced a picture of which Graham would have approved. What results is, in many respects, a typical Peelite self-portrait – of a bold, resourceful, tireless and courageous reformer, valiantly struggling against vested interest, ignorance and apathy, saddened but not surprised by the hostility which he experienced.
The Formation of Lloyd George's ‘Garden Suburb’: ‘Fabian-like Milnerite Penetration’?
Authors: Turner J. A.
Published: June 2009

A little body ofilluminati, whose residence is in the Prime Minister's garden, and their business to cultivate the Prime Minister's mind. These gendemen stand in no sense for a Civil Service cabinet. They are rather of the class of travelling empirics in Empire, who came in widi Lord Milner, whose spiritual home is fixed somewhere between Balliol and Heidelburg. Their function is to emerge from their huts in Downing Street, like the competitors in a Chinese examination, with answers to our thousand questions of the Sphinx.
English Perceptions of Treachery, 1583–1640: the Case of the American ‘Savages’
Authors: Kupperman Karen Ordahl
Published: June 2009

English observers in North America before 1640 found much to praise in the character of the Indians. They were a cheerful people, sharing what they possessed with each other, and especially loving as parents. Churlishness was a great crime among them. They were often said to be trustworthy. Above all, they were dignified and courteous; their chief men were grave and wise. In fact, even the most hostile critic allowed the dignity of the Indian. Typical is George Percy in his Discourse of Virginia of 1606, writing of the Werowance of Rapahanna: the Werowance ‘entertained us in so modest a proud fashion as though he had been a Prince of civill government, holding his countenance without laughter or any such ill behaviour’. These words of praise for the Indian were virtually universal, appearing even in the works of men like Ralph Lane, who was fundamentally hostile to them. Moreover, the praise continued from all other colonies after the massacre of 1622 temporarily ended the favourable attitude in Virginia. William Wood, writing in New England in 1634, said that they ‘be wise in their carriage, subtle in their dealings, true in their promise, honest in defraying of their debts…constant in friendship, merrily conceited in discourse, not luxuriously abounding in youth nor dotingly froward in old age…’.
The Role of Family and Religion in the Local Politics of early Elizabethan England: The Case of Hampshire in the 1560s
Authors: Fritze Ronald H.
Published: June 2009

Factionalism among the nobility and gentry was a common although by no means universal phenomenon of local politics in Tudor England. During the 1560s it was the foremost fact in the political life of Hampshire. Co-operation among the gentry is at least as significant a phenomenon for the historian as conflict. At the same time conflict is much more likely to have left documen tation. The amiable resolution of local issues would usually be celebrated by silence while a dispute was likely to culminate in a lawsuit. For Hampshire in the 1560s the survival of one of the earliest and most fully preserved disputed election cases in Star Chamber from the reign of Elizabeth provides crucial evidence of the occurrence of conflict and the motivations of the participants. Thanks to the existence of this material, which includes lists of voters for both sides, the members of both factions are clearly identified. In addition the local issues at stake are further clarified. As a result all of the evidence surviving for the entire decade can be tied together to produce a comprehensive picture of the local political situation in Hampshire.
The Political Economy of Burke&s Analysis of the French Revolution
Authors: Pocock J. G. A.
Published: June 2009

There are, perhaps, in the end only two ways in which a historian may undertake the study of a document in the history of political thought. One may consider it as a text, supposed to have been intended by its author and understood by its reader with the maximum coherence and unity possible; the historian's aim now becomes the reconstitution of the fullest possible interpretation available to intelligent readers at the relevant time. Alternatively, one may consider it as a tissue of statements, organized by its writer into a single document, but accessible and intelligible whether or not they have been harmonized into a single structure of meaning. The historian's aim is now the recovery of these statements, the establishment of the patterns of speech and thought forming the various contexts in which they become intelligible, and the pursuit of any changes in the normal employment of these patterns which may have occurred in consequence of the statements’ being made.
The Economic Crisis of 1827–32 and the 1830 Revolution in Provincial France
Authors: Pilbeam Pamela
Published: June 2009

A spectre is still haunting historians of nineteenth-century France, the spectre of the bourgeois revolution of 1830, surviving despite the exorcism of revisionists. It is a spector that distorts our image of the liberal opposition to Charles X and of the victors after the July Days. Restoration prefects, moved from department to department with increasing rapidity in Charles X's reign, were content to categorize critics of the Polignac government as bourgeois. In the July Monarchy socialists vilified the elite as an established bourgeoise who robbed the real revolutionaries, the artisans, of their rights.3 Early socialists, including Marx, defined bourgeois broadly, to embrace landowners, but later marxists, writing when France was less of an agrarian state, labelled the bourgeoisie of 1830 as a business and industrial elite. The most recent generation of revisionist historians has shown, by empirical and detailed investigations, that the development of industry and accompanying social change occurred over several centuries and that revolutions, in particular, 1789, were mainly political events and more likely to retard than to facilitate the evolution of bourgeois capitalism. Thus revisionist historians of nineteenth-century France refer to ‘notables’ and stress the numerical dominance of landowners rather than businessmen in the elite of both the Restoration and the July Monarchy.
The Liberal Party and Gladstone's Land Purchase Bill of 1886
Authors: Goodlad Graham D.
Published: June 2009

It is hardly surprising that, for many years, historians of the political crisis of 1885–6 gave relatively little attention to the land purchase proposals which accompanied Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill. For the Land Purchase Bill progressed no further than its first reading on 16 April 1886, one week after that of its partner. Within weeks it was recognized by its sponsors as a political liability and, unlike the Home Rule Bill, never reached a parliamentary division. In recent years, there has been a re-evaluation of its significance as a policy initiative for Ireland. Two major works published in the centenary year of the crisis challenged Professor John Vincent's claim, in an article which appeared just over a decade ago, that the Land Bill was a ‘dummy’ whose place in Gladstone's scale of priorities was dictated by the exigencies of the parliamentary timetable and of internal cabinet manoeuvrings. Both Dr James Loughlin and Dr Alan O'Day see purchase as part of a coherent policy designed by Gladstone to tackle the problem of agrarian violence and to lay the foundations of a more secure social order in Ireland. For the first time, then, the content of the Bill has received serious and lengthy treatment. What remains to be discussed in some depth is its reception in the country in the spring and summer of 1886.
To Strengthen the King's Hands: Dynastic Legitimacy, Militia Reform and Ideas of National Unity in England 1745–1760
Authors: Gould Eliga H.
Published: June 2009

A national militia has been the cry of every patriot since the Revolution, and this measure, both in Parliament and in the field, was supported by the country gentlemen or Tories, who insensibly transferred their loyalty to the House of Hanover. In the language of Mr. Burke, they have changed the idol, but they have preserved the idolatry.
Humanism and Empire: Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Cicero and the imperial ideal
Authors: Nederman Cary J.
Published: June 2009

The paper argues that theDe ortu et auctoritate imperii Romaniof Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1446) has been unjustifiably ignored by historians ofquattrocentohumanist political thought simply because of its adherence to the ideal of universal imperial government. At present, whenDe ortuis addressed at all, it is considered merely as an anachronistic product of a ‘medieval’ mentality. It is shown, however, that Aeneas, by working within a demonstrably Ciceronian framework, actually articulates a philosophically coherent defence of a single universal empire by exploiting a conceptual ambiguity in Cicero's own presentation of the foundations of social and political association. Aeneas suggests that Cicero's account of the communal nature of human beings, so far from sanctioning republican civic institutions, actually justifies the imposition of universal empire. A study of Piccolomini's political thought thus points to a greater diversity within the political viewpoints associated with humanism than current scholarship on the subject acknowledges. Moreover, it reveals the level of philosophical sophistication to which renaissance defences of empire could aspire.
Black mischief: crime, protest and resistance in colonial Kenya
Authors: Anderson David M.
Published: June 2009

This article examines the history of African resistance to colonial rule among the Nandi and Kipsigis peoples of Kenya's Western Highlands. Anti-colonial protest centred on the activities of a group of ritual leaders, the orkoiik of the Talai clan, who were believed to possess supernatural powers of prophecy and divination. Between the late 1890s and 1905, the orkoiyot Koitalel had come to prominence as a leader of resistance to conquest. After his defeat the British briefly attempted to harness his Talai clansmen to the system of colonial government, promoting them as chiefs. This move was based upon a misunderstanding of the status of the orkoiik, whose powers often stood in direct conflict with the authorityof the elders and who were greatly feared by many Nandi and Kipsigis. By the igsos the orkoiik were deeply implicated in much criminal activity, especially the theft of livestock from European settler farmers. On three occasions orkoiik attempted to organize armed risings.

The article concludes with a discussion of the place of the orkoiik in the historiography of Kenya. Although Koitalel and Barserion are commonly presented as heroes of a glorious resistance to colonialism, it is suggested that this interpretation fails to reflect the deep ambiguity of the status of the orkoiik, and the complexity of the struggles that took placewithin African societies under colonial rule.
Two dons in politics: Thomas Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner, 1503–1533
Authors: MacCulloch Diarmaid
Published: June 2009

This article contrasts the early careers of Thomas Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner, two Cambridge dons of approximately the same generation who diversified into politics in the late 1520s. It attempts to assess their developing attitudes to the religious changes of the period, and considers the nature of humanism in Cambridge University; it suggests, with the aid of new evidence, that in the 1520s, Cranmer was more conventional in his religion than Gardiner, but already showed an especial interest in the authority of a general council. Attention is drawn to their similar patterns of church preferment up to 1531. The crucial change in both men's careers is here seen as occurring in 1532; this change projected them in opposite theological directions for the rest of their intertwined careers. Gardiner took a leading part in the church authorities' unsuccessful attempt at taking a firm stand against Henry VIII's plans, while Cranmer made a clear breach with the medieval rules on clerical celibacy by marrying the niece of a Lutheran theologian.
The lawful bonds of Scottish society: the Five Articles of Perth, the Negative Confession and the National Covenant
Authors: Fodr John D.
Published: June 2009

The origins of the Scottish National Covenant of 1638 in the traditional practice of banding have been explored in the past, as have the links between the Covenant and a millenarian perception of the Scots as an elect or covenanted nation. By locating the Covenant in the context of the sort of debate that went on about the legitimacy of the Five Articles of Perth after 1618, and in particular by considering the use in that debate of arguments relying on the Negative Confession of 1581, this paper suggests that the Covenant may have had less to do with asserting the particular heritage and destiny of the Scottish people than with re-tying the bonds of the universal law of God.
Not the Radical republic: liberal ideology and central blandishment in France, 1901–1914
Authors: Wileman Donald G.
Published: June 2009

Madeleine Rebérioux was right to wonder whether France was truly a ‘Radical republic’ in the years between the Dreyfus affair and the Great War. Archives only opened or explored since Rebérioux published in 1975, and the re-interpretation of older newspaper sources, show that control of the Third Republic was still hotly contested in those years. The Radicals tried to build a republic in their own image, but in a situation where left and right were closely balanced, they were almost always foiled. Crucial to this process was a politically republican but socially conservative centre – best typified by the A.R.D. The A.R.D. wanted a Third Republic frankly favourable to the interests of big business. Since it held the parliamentary balance of power between the left and a right only partly republican, it generally got its way. Statistical sources also support this interpretation.
Medicine, Property and the Law in Britain 1800–1914
Authors: Crowther M. A. , White Brenda M.
Published: June 2009

Property, in spite of its solid sound, is an elusive idea. As C. B. MacPherson puts it:

The actual institution, and the way people see it, and hence the meaning they give to the word, all change over time… The changes are related to changes in the purposes which society or the dominant classes in society expect the institution of property to serve.
The Comintern and the Origins of the Popular Front 1934–1935
Authors: Haslam Jonathan
Published: June 2009

Although many in the West have written on the Popular Front and its role in French or Spanish politics during the thirties, very little has been revealed about its origins. Indeed, one of the foremost historians of the Popular Front has expressed perplexity on this matter. Daniel Brower asks: ‘What brought on this change? Why had fascism suddenly assumed such threatening proportions in the eyes of Comintern leaders? To this day the answer remains obscure.’ The aim of this article is to throw some light on this question.
A New Look at Churchill'S ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech
Authors: Ryan Henry B.
Published: June 2009

Churchill's ‘iron curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri, on 5 March 1946, was a major effort to promote both a strengthened Anglo-American combination and a firmer western front against the Soviet Union. In the months between his electoral defeat and his talk at Fulton he had viewed Soviet consolidation in Europe with continuing concern, probably coupled with despair at his own inability to do very much about it. This presidential invitation, however, to deliver an address at an American college could provide a means to push to the fore the policies that he believed in. Certainly, the effect of his talk can be overestimated, but, despite its failure to create the very close alignment Churchill hoped for with the United States, it undoubtedly contributed to hardening western positions towards the Soviets.
Elections, Statistics, and the Rise of the Labour Party, 1906–1931
Authors: Tanner Duncan
Published: June 2009

Between 1900 and 1918 the Labour party changed from being a new organization operating on the fringes of the Liberal party, to being the largest British opposition party. This change has attracted a great deal of historical attention. The analysis of electoral results in general, and municipal election results in particular, rightly plays a major part in the conflicting explanations of why this realignment took place. Negatively, this paper seeks to establish that many of the methods of examining electoral material common in the literature are in fact inadequate. It is also suggested, more positively, that despite problems with the way results are currently used, even a modestly elaborated treatment of municipal election results can reveal significant information about the origins and location of Labour's support. Accurate ‘quantification’ cannot of itself explain the rise of Labour, or the pattern of electoral politics more generally. It can, however, be an important component of broader attempts at establishing why political changes took place both in Edwardian Britain and in the still under-researched period between 1918 and 1931.
Livestock and Sugar: Aspects of Jamaica's Agricultural Development from the Late Seventeenth to the Early Nineteenth Century
Authors: Shepherd Verene A.
Published: June 2009

The study of the agricultural history of Jamaica, particularly after the seventeenth century when England seized the island from Spain, has traditionally been dominated by investigations of the sugar industry. Recently a few scholars have deviated from this path to examine in varying degrees of detail, agrarian activities which did not represent the standard eighteenth-century West Indian route to wealth. Foremost among this growing body of literature are articles and papers on the livestock industry (and livestock farmers), arguably the most lucrative of the non-sugar economic activities in rural Jamaica, perhaps until the advent of coffee later in the eighteenth century. Intended as a contribution to the historiography of non-staple agricultural production in colonial Jamaica, this article traces the early establishment and expansion of the important livestock or ‘pen-keeping’ industry. But the history of pens must also be located within the context of the dominant sugar economy; for during the period of slavery, pens were largely dependent on the sugar estate to provide markets for their outputs. Indeed pens expanded as a result of the growth of the sugar industry and, therefore, the importance of the livestock industry in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Jamaica is best appreciated by examining its economic links with the estates.
Cain and Abel: Two Aristocrats and the Early Victorian Factory Acts
Authors: Mandler Peter
Published: June 2009

In November 1844 the young Lord Ashley, not for 16 years to become the seventh earl of Shaftesbury, was in search of a public school for his son and heir, Anthony. ‘I fear Eton,’ he confided to his diary:

…it makes admirable gentlemen and finished scholars, fits a man, beyond all competition, for the dancing-room, the Club, St James' Street, and all the mysteries of social elegance; but it does not make the man required for the coming generation. We must have nobler, deeper, sterner stuff; less of refinement, and more of truth; more of the inward, not so much of the outward gentleman; a rigid sense of duty, not a ‘delicate sense of honour’; a just estimate of rank and property, not as manners of personal enjoyment and display, but as gifts from God, bringing with them serious responsibilities, and involving a fearful account; a contempt of ridicule, not a dread of it; a desire and a courage to live for the service of God, and the best interests of mankind, and by His grace, to accomplish the baptismal promise… Unless we have such men as these for our successors, goodbye to the British Empire.
A Contrast in Styles at the Office of Works. Layard and Ayrton: Aesthete and Economist
Authors: Port M. H.
Published: June 2009

‘The rapid growth of wealth, especially among the classes of the greatest activity and enterprise, has led, for a number of years past, to a diminished watchfulness, outside the walls of Parliament, respecting the great and cardinal subject of economy in the public charges, and the relation between the income of the State and its expenditure. I earnesdy desire that the paramount interest of the lately enfranchised classes in thrifty administration may operate powerfully to bring about a change.’ So Gladstone trumpeted the leitmotif of his administration, at the outset of the general election campaign in October 1868. The fundamental importance of fiscal strategy in Gladstone's politics has recently been emphasized. Faced with an ineluctable increase in civil expenditure and rising expectations of governmental contributions to the public weal – what he termed ‘scattering grants at the solicitation of individuals and classes’, the system of ‘making things pleasant all round’ and stimulating ‘local cupidity to feed upon the public purse’ – Gladstone was determined that his ministry, backed as he believed by the votes of the thrifty working classes, should reduce such expectations. ‘I t is the special duty of public men’, he told his constituents soon after taking office, ‘to watch the very beginnings of evil’ in regard to any relaxing of the general principles of economy and thrift; and he promised to reduce expenditure in the coming year.
Launching Canadian Confederation: Means to Ends, 1836–1864
Authors: Martin Ged
Published: June 2009

Canadian Confederation took shape at a conference at Charlottetown in September 1864, was designed in detail at the Quebec conference in October 1864 and revised into final form in London in 1866–7. The sequence of conferences forms part of the stately tread of Canadian nationhood, and provides a counterpart to the Annapolis and Philadelphia conventions which originated the other great nation of North America, just as the Fathers of Confederation echo the Founding Fathers of the United States. Subsequent meetings in other cities were to reinforce the aura of the nation-building conference, through Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Durban to the less resounding triumphs of Montego Bay and Victoria Falls. Intercolonial unions, it seemed, were formed by calling conferences. From this assumption it could be deduced as a corollary that if no conference was called, there was no interest in intercolonial union. In Canada, the preservation of the Province House at Charlottetown as ‘the cradle of Confederation’ is a gesture to national feeling, but the mystique thus fostered risks creating historical distortion.
‘Mission Civilisatrice’: French Cultural Policy in the Middle East, 1860–1914
Authors: Burrows Mathew
Published: June 2009

Mission civilisatnce was one of the bywords of French colonial expansion under the Third Republic. Unfortunately until now there have been few works devoted to its study. Indeed, the notion itself has not been taken very seriously by scholars. As long ago as 1960 when Henri Brunschwig published his seminal work on French colonialism, he stated quite categorically: ‘en Angleterre la justification humanitaire l'emporta’ while ‘en France le nationalisme de 1870 domina’ even if that nationalism ‘ne s'exprima presque jamais sans une mention de cette “politique indigène” qui devait remplir les devoirs du civilisé envers des populations plus arriérées.’ Since then academics both in France and outside have tended to concentrate (in what few works have been written on French colonialism) on the political and economic aspects of the French Empire to the detriment of its cultural components.
The navy, parliament and political crisis in the reign of Charles II
Authors: Davies J. D.
Published: June 2009

During the 1670s, the navy was the focus of increasingly critical scrutiny from parliament and the political nation. This article considers the causes and nature of this criticism, which had its roots in the perceived dominance of the catholic James, duke of York, in the field of naval appointments, and examines the political context of the various inquiries into the state of religious affection in the fleet. By so doing, the article identifies a dilemma which confronted the crown's opponents in the period 1678–81, namely the conflict between the requirement for a strong navy to oppose France and the risk that, because of York's influence over it, that same navy might in fact be an instrument of French and catholic designs. Finally, the response of the officers and men of the navy to the events of the popish plot, exclusion crisis and ‘tory reaction’ is examined, placing the navy in the mainstream, rather than on the periphery, of the political and religious history of the period.
Empire and Social Reform: British Overseas Investment and Domestic Politics, 1908–1914
Authors: Offer Avner
Published: June 2009

Two central developments in the economic history of Edwardian Britain are rarely considered in conjunction. Large flows of investment overseas between c. 1905 and 1914 have been regarded as a feature of ‘high imperialism’, or more innocuously, as a phase in the growth of an international economy. In domestic politics, the ‘New Liberal’ achievement of tax and welfare reforms has been viewed as a stage on the road to the ‘welfare state’, and as a bid for political survival. Was there any link between the export of capital and domestic politics? This article will describe how capital flows affected the choice, timing and scope of Liberal social and economic policies.
Sword, Word and Strategy in the Reformation in Ireland
Authors: Bradshaw Brendan
Published: June 2009

The single most intriguing problem posed by the history of the Reformation in Ireland is the failure of the state-sponsored religion to take root in any section of the indigenous population. Perhaps because this outcome has been taken so much for granted a satisfactory explanation of it has yet to be offered. Historians are now coming to recognize that the central question cannot be properly discussed without a prolegomenon ranging over the political, social and intellectual history of the period. What follows is intended as a contribution to such a series of preliminary studies. It investigates the sources of tension within reforming circles in sixteenth-century Ireland and considers the implications of this aspect of its internal history for the external history of the movement.
A Study in Failure: Thomas Attwood, M.P. For Birmingham, 1832–1839
Authors: Moss D. J.
Published: June 2009

Contemporary reactions to the 1832 Reform Act were diverse. Concomitant with the feeling of relief that a revolution had been avoided was a fear even among some of the Bill's most earnest advocates that the whigs had perhaps gone too far. The long period of political agitation by extra-parliamentary associations suggested that a radical House of Commons might emerge from the forthcoming elections. In fact, the expected radical onslaught never really materialized. Although they were returned to the Commons in strength by the election of December, the radicals failed to find common ground for action and the whigs successfully defended the pact given royal assent the previous summer. That sentence of failure is not unreasonable. Radicalism in the early nineteenth century was by its very nature the province of the individualist whose imagination often ranged beyond the bounds of practicality and who found compromise irksome. Membership of the House of Commons was to prove a chastening experience for men accustomed to the adulation of the common people. Rules of procedure and the traditional circle of agenda so circumscribed these enthusiasts that energy became sapped and their sense of mission vitiated. Woodward's suggestion, too, that the radicals floundered because they ‘defended the interests of a class to which they did not belong’ may contain a measure of truth. But apart from the odd chapter in the occasional biography, there has been a marked lack of interest in proceeding beyond these general conclusions; failure is too often equated with justified obscurity.
Harriet Martineau and the reform of the invalid in Victorian England
Authors: Winter Alison
Published: June 2009

This article argues that within the debates over medical reform which took place throughout the Victorian period, there flourished a variety of models of authority with respect to illness and the body. The controversies surrounding the illness and cure of the journalist, Harriet Martineau, provide a particularly useful vehicle for exploring some of these different models. During a time when many doctors were anxious to establish the medical profession as an authoritative body within British society, Martineau put forward a portrayal of invalidism that gave invalids, especially women, a degree of authority that made many medical men uneasy. By examining the question of the status of the sick individual during this period, and especially Martineau's case, historians can gain a new perspective on broader issues of reform and the status of women in Victorian society.
The structure of British official attitudes: colonial Mauritius, 1883–1968
Authors: Ballhatchet Kenneth
Published: June 2009

This article seeks to demonstrate the structure of attitudes in British colonial officialdom through a case study of Mauritius from the governorship of Sir John Pope Hennessy to decolonization. It suggests that officials consistently saw Mauritians as a whole as ‘the Others’, while seeking both to divide and rule them – into an émigré French elite left over from the French colonial period at the time of British conquest (1810), a Creole community, and an Indian community – without assimilating them; and to suspect each in turn of disloyalty and treachery. By a grim irony, many of the governors and their officials were suspected by the colonial office of joining the Others. This is thus a story of an adaptable imperial paranoia.
The boundary between voluntary and statutory social service in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Authors: Lewis Jane
Published: June 2009

In the debate between the charity organisation society and the new forms of personal service societies that grew up during the Edwardian period, disagreement centred on the nature of the boundary to be drawn between state and voluntary action. The paper reviews the theory and practice of the COS and suggests that while the new societies had much in common with the COS regarding their methods, the nature of their ‘partnership’ with the state was significantly different. While the COS operated a division of labour based on client groups, the new societies preferred a task-based division. The paper argues that while the new societies were determinedly more civic-minded and pragmatic regarding their attitudes towards state welfare provision, they offered no coherent rationale for voluntary effort to replace the theory developed by the COS.
Some Aspects of Female Resistance to Chattel Slavery in Low Country Georgia, 1763–1815
Authors: Wood Betty
Published: June 2009

Although often differing dramatically in their methodologies and conclusions, most studies of the slave societies of the American South either draw to a close by the middle years of the eighteenth century or begin their story only in the 1820s and 1830s. Moreover, whilst some scholars have differentiated between particular patterns of black behaviour, as for example between African- and country-born slaves, field hands and domestic slaves, until quite recently comparatively little interest has been shown in delineating the ways in which black women perceived and responded to their status and condition.
III. English Ideals in French Politics during the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Zeldin Theodore
Published: June 2009

The strength of the English ideal in France in the eighteenth century is well known, but its history in the nineteenth is far more obscure. Every reader of Montesquieu and Voltaire knows of their theoretical admiration for England and every student of French history has been told how their disciples were defeated at the Revolution. It is generally believed, nevertheless, that their day came at length with the fall of Napoleon, for then France seemed to follow in England’s footsteps with extraordinary fidelity. It emerged from a revolution and a military dictatorship as England had emerged in 1660 from the great rebellion and the rule of Cromwell; its restoration produced first a cautious king like Charles II and then a more violent one like James II; its glorious revolution of 1830, like that of 1688, ensured the victory of constitutional monarchy. The Jacobites found their counterparts in the legitimist conspirators; Walpole’s system of government by corruption and influence was reproduced by Guizot with his parliaments packed full of civil servants. France now conquered Algeria as England had conquered India: it underwent an Industrial Revolution as England had done, financed to a considerable extent moreover with English capital.
The Origins of Sir Edward Dering's Attack on the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, c. 1625–1640
Authors: Salt S. P.
Published: June 2009

Kevin Sharpe has recently offered a new interpretation of English politics and government in the 1630s in which he seeks to assess the events of the decade as they might have seemed to contemporaries, rather than to use them as a vehicle to explain the events of the Long Parliament and the subsequent outbreak of civil war. Without questioning the validity of such an exercise, it may none the less be observed that the picture of the 1630s which results does raise the question of how the mood of the Long Parliament in its early stages is to be explained. Sharpe characterizes the 1630s as a period of ‘calm and peace’ in which, though tensions and grievances existed, in particular as a consequence of Charles's religious policies, they ‘neither stymied government nor threatened revolt’. If politics and government operated so smoothly during the 1630s, why were such extensive and radical demands for reform in church and state put forward when the Long Parliament met in November 1640? Was the critical attitude of so many members of the political nation in that November merely the product of short-term factors, such as Charles's use of force to impose a new prayer book in Scotland, or even of political opportunism, or was it a reflexion of grievances which had earlier lain beneath the political surface? This paper seeks to investigate the question of how far the attitude of 1640 was rooted in the experiences of the previous decade in one particular aspect: the career of Sir Edward Dering, with special reference to his position with regard to religion and the church. Dering's career is an appropriate object for a study of this kind because it is illuminated by an unusual variety of sources; this makes it possible to compare Dering's political actions with his ideological position as implied by documents which remained private. Apart from the well-known published Long Parliament speeches and a substantial collection of family papers (embracing both correspondence and documents arising from the offices which Dering held) and apart from the evidence of Dering's antiquarian and historical interests, there survive two published works of polemical theology (together with partial drafts for others), and a number of personal memorandum books.
The World of Alexander Johnston: The Creolization of Ambition, 1762–1787
Authors: Karras Alan
Published: June 2009

Eighteenth-century Jamaica, the ‘devil of a country’ to which Dr Alexander Johnston referred, seems an unlikely candidate, at the historian's first glance, for consternation. Today's visitor would find that the ‘Garden Parish’, St Ann's, truly exudes everything warm and wonderful associated with tropical stereotypes. Yet two hundred years ago Dr Alexander Johnston, ‘Practitioner of Physick and Chiurgery’ rarely observed this very paradise, the foothills of coastal St Ann's, in a positive light. To this particular Scot, the bright reds and greens clearly took second place to the shabby problems of daily life in the Caribbean.
Note: The Decline of the Chancellor's Authority in Medieval Cambridge: A Rediscovered Statute
Authors: Ullmann W.
Published: June 2009

In accounts of the medieval constitution of the University of Cambridge insufficient attention is paid to the gradual decrease of the Chancellor's authority and the concomitant increase of powers of the regent masters. This development very clearly reflects the growing awareness of the University of itself as an autonomous institution, that is, a body with its own inherent rights and within which the supreme jurisdictional power resided. Although the premisses and presuppositions are different, this development might well show some kinship with contemporary developments elsewhere, namely in the institutional growth of Parliament and in the conciliarist form of church government. This rather important evolution of the University constitution has not yet been properly appreciated, mainly because the individual statutory enactments by which the gradual transfer of authority from the (ecclesiastical) Chancellor to the whole University took place had not been known. What was known was one Statute, through which alone the stages of the development could not, of course, be recognized. Moreover, when touching upon this point, G. Peacock and C. H. Cooper relied on a Statute which substantially differs in its wording and in its subject-matter from that printed by the Commissioners in 1852, on which J. B. Mullinger, Sir Stanley Leathes and Dean Rashdall drew. Fortunately, the Statute in its original form has been preserved as an original document in the Archives of the University of Cambridge, and it enables us to trace, at least in rough outline, this process of displacement of authority which ended in the control by the regent masters (through their proctors) over the chancellor and vice-chancellor. As far as can be established, there was no corresponding development at the University of Oxford.