bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Whig History and Present-centred History
Authors: Wilson Adrian , Ashplant T. G.
Published: June 2009

Of the many books written by the late Herbert Butterfield, the most influential by far was The whig interpretation of history. The importance of that essay is not just that it attained the status of a classic in Butterfield's own lifetime, and has continued to be reprinted for over fifty years. Its main significance is that the historical profession in Britain came to accept its polemical terminology. The phrase ‘whig history’ has long been used as a term of historiographical criticism, in such a way as to imply, firstly, that everyone knows what it means, and secondly, that nobody wants to be ‘whiggish’. This usage is much in accordance with Butterfield's intentions: he succeeded in implanting the term in the professional language of historians.
Trading with the Enemy 1585–1604
Authors: Croft Pauline
Published: June 2009

It has been the standard wisdom of historians that whereas the rebel Dutch continued to trade with Spain and the Spanish possessions throughout the Armada war, the English did not. As the letter-writer John Chamberlain resentfully complained, ‘We for their sake and defence entering into the war, and being barred from all commerce and intercourse of merchandise, they in the meantime thrust us out of all traffic to our utter undoing’. The evidence assembled here suggests instead that English trafficking with the enemy was much greater than has been assumed, although it probably never reached the huge proportions of the Dutch effort. Moreover the substantial volume of illicit trade should point to a re-consideration of some important Elizabethan attitudes to Anglo-Spanish relations both before and during the war, and hence also more generally to religious attitudes.
War and Politics in Spain, 1808–1814
Authors: Esdaile Charles
Published: June 2009

For most British readers, the Peninsular War is synonymous with the campaigns of Sir John Moore and the duke of Wellington. That this should be the case is hardly surprising in view of the fascination which they have exercised for many historians at the expense of other aspects of the struggle. In defence of such anglocentrism, it might be argued that British involvement was the decisive factor in the war and, further, that without the duke of Wellington the Iberian Peninsula would never have been freed from French domination. That is true enough, but it is also true that Wellington could never have been successful but for the continued resistance of the Spaniards and the Portuguese. Indeed, it is fair to say that without the thousands of Portuguese soldiers who served in his army, and the indirect assistance provided by the Spaniards in pinning down a large proportion of the French forces, the Duke was so outnumbered that he could never have carried the war into Spain at all. Given that Wellington could probably have maintained a British presence in Portugal almost indefinitely, the Spanish contribution is of particular importance. While the British were still bottled up in Portugal during 1810 and 1811, however, the French all but destroyed the basis for Spanish resistance. Had not the Russian campaign intervened to divert Napoleon's attention eastwards, and with it the vital reinforcements that might have completed the French conquest, Spain could conceivably have been subdued. Wellington's victories of 1812 and 1813 would then have been an impossibility.
Attitudes to Credit in Britain, 1680–1790
Authors: Hoppit Julian
Published: June 2009

The history of economic ideas in Britain is dominated by a great tradition which in its early stages focuses on Adam Smith. For the century before the publication of the Wealth of nations in 1776, economic ideas are most often studied in relation to the ‘arrival’ of Smith and commented on with regard to the degree to which they may be considered precursors of his ideas. Though this imposes a sense of order and establishes some principles with which to select from the vast range of economic writings, the dangers of certain whiggishness in this approach are readily apparent. Writers can appear to be winners or losers depending on the extent to which their ideas were denied, adapted or adopted by Smith and the other classical economists.1 Such problems have been acknowledged by many historians, not least by those who have fruitfully examined the political and philosophical bases of the emergence of political economy, particularly with regard to the Scottish enlightenment. Despite this, the force of the great tradition remains very strong. The authors and ideas that are examined are the ‘major’ ones, that is to say contributions that were, or attempted to be, either comprehensive or clearly attached to what, with hindsight, were the main strands of development. The emphasis has been upon theories or systematic explanations of the economic order. Not surprisingly the unsystematic and more casually formulated reflections of non-economists and ‘amateurs’, such as Defoe, are often swept under the carpet, even if their ideas on economic matters were more widely disseminated (and perhaps more influential) at the time. Consequently, our perception of economic ideas between the Restoration and the Wealth of nations continues to be highly and perhaps atypically selective.
The Police and the People: Gambling in Salford, 1900–1939
Authors: Davies Andrew
Published: June 2009

Gambling has received surprisingly little attention from social historians, especially considering the wide growth of interest in working-class leisure over the last decade. The leading historians in this field, including Peter Bailey, Hugh Cunningham and Stephen Jones, have been more concerned with the development of institutional forms of leisure such as the music-hall and the cinema. In the only detailed study of gambling, Ross McKibbin considered the growth of betting on horse racing and the football pools between 1880 and 1939, claiming that gambling constituted a rational pursuit within the economic and intellectual environment of working-class life. McKibbin's pioneering article established that betting was a central feature of working-class leisure, and in a case study of Salford I propose to develop this argument by looking at a wider range of forms of gambling, and by an examination of the survival of betting as an illegal activity. McKibbin dealt only briefly with the question of the policing of gambling. I propose to relate some of the findings of my research to a second concern of recent social history, the impact of policing upon popular recreation.
The Abolition of the English State Lotteries
Authors: Raven James
Published: June 2009

On 18 October 1826 the final English state lottery was drawn at Coopers' Hall. It was the one hundred and seventieth of the state lotteries to be held since their parliamentary inauguration in 1694. Although the economic importance of the lotteries to the eighteenth-century exchequer has been widely recognized, their demise has received scant historical attention. This is despite stark contrast between the promotion of the lottery by government or government contractors, and the strident protests against the lottery's allegedly corrupt and ruinous influence. Why exactly was the lottery abandoned as an instrument of public revenue? Was it in response to moral argument or as a matter of fiscal policy? At issue is not only the effectiveness of organized opposition in transforming participation and policy-making, but also the relationship between Treasury strategies, systems of management and the response of the market.
The Scottish aristocracy, anglicization and the Court, 1603–38
Authors: Brown Keith M.
Published: June 2009

This article seeks to analyse the extent to which the Scottish aristocracy was anglicized in the years between the union of the crowns and the national covenant. The question is one which has a bearing upon the origins of the Scottish revolution in 1637–8, and on the wider issues of elite integration in multi-state monarchies in the early modem period. Topics discussed are aristocratic education, exposure to a new court culture, office holding in England, the effects on income and expenditure of English patronage and lifestyles, changes in the honours system, and new patterns in births, marriages and deaths. The conclusions are firstly that the Scottish presence at court was such that it does not make sense to talk of an English court after 1603. Secondly, there was very little anglidzation of the Scottish aristocracy outside a handful of court families, and even these retained a strong sense of national consciousness.
London Debating Societies in the 1790s
Authors: Thale Mary
Published: June 2009

Of the popular societies that government repressed in the 1790s, the public debating societies in London are probably the least known although some of them had been meeting without interruption for over fifty years. Since these societies admitted all who paid the weekly entrance fee and allowed anyone to stand up and speak, they were quite different from the private, limited debating clubs where new members had to be approved and where the speeches were often prepared orations. Because of their size, the public debating societies attracted men who wanted to practise speaking before a large audience. Burke is said to have gained his first experience in public speaking at one of these debating societies. Pitt not only spoke at them; he helped found one. Boswell and Goldsmith attended them. Most of the speakers and auditors, however, were men of a lower class; and in the 1790sin reaction to the French Revolution, these societies were repressed. Although they constitute a significant social phenomenon, their history has not beenj traced, as has that of the London Corresponding Socie-ty (LCS) or the United! Irishmen (UI). In a sense the debating societies form an adjunct to, and complement the history of the declared reform societies of the 1790s: Members of the Corresponding Society might go from their meeting to a debating society in order to hear an LCS member speak. The few known managers of debating societies were also prominent members of the LCS or the UI or both; 1 and when a political topic was debated, most of the speakers would take a reformist position.
1848 and Parliamentary Reform
Authors: Quinault Roland
Published: June 2009

1848 has gone down in history – or rather in history books – as the year when England was different. In that year a wave of revolution on the Continent overthrew constitutions, premiers and even a dynasty but in England, by contrast, the middle classes rallied round the government and helped it preserve the status quo. This interpretation of 1848 has long been the established orthodoxy amongst historians. Asa Briggs took this view thirty years ago and it has lately been endorsed by F. B. Smith and Henry Weisser. Most recently, John Saville, in his book on 1848, has concluded that events in England ‘demonstrated beyond question and doubt, the complete and solid support of the middling strata to the defence of existing institutions’. He claims that ‘the outstanding feature of 1848 was the mass response to the call for special constables to assist the professional forces of state security’ which reflected a closing of ranks among all property owners. Although some historians, notably David Goodway, have recently stressed the vitality of Chartism in 1848 they have not challenged the traditional view that the movement failed to win concessions from the establishment and soon declined. Thus 1848 in England is generally regarded as a terminal date: the last chapter in the history of Chartism as a major movement. Thereafter Britain experienced a period of conservatism – described by one historian as ‘the mid-Victorian calm’–which lasted until the death of Palmerston in 1865.
Feminism and the state in later Victorian England
Authors: Roberts M. J. D.
Published: June 2009

Victorian feminists faced a dilemma in their dealings with the state. This dilemma intensified in the years following the 1867 Reform Act. Radical feminist leaders (Josephine Butler, Lydia Becker, Elizabeth Wolstenholme) eagerly adopted an ‘equality before the law’ stance in order to link women's credentials for citizenship with conventional principles of liberal individualism. Yet the same leaders were recurrently angered and frightened by the sex-insensitive uses to which male politicians were prepared to put state power, even while claiming to be defending and improving a liberal social order. This article traces feminist responses to the dilemma from the high point of libertarian individualism accompanying the 1870s campaigns against the Contagious Diseases Acts to the more complicated appraisals of the potential of state agency made during following decades. The democratization of English political life, it is argued, may ultimately have persuaded feminists of the worth of the state as a sponsor of social change; but the half-democratized form of politics characteristic of the later Victorian period left key feminists with an ideologically entrenched suspicion of state intervention which even mid-eighties repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts and ‘maiden tribute’ child prostitution revelations could not efface.
The end of an ideology? Right-wing antisemitism in France, 1944–1970
Authors: Vinen Richard C.
Published: June 2009

It is normally assumed that antisemitism in post-war France needs to be understood primarily in the light of the German occupation of 1940–4. This article seeks to describe the relationship between political antisemitism and events after 1945. Special attention is given to the issue that obsessed a large part of the French right: the loss of Algeria. It is argued that between 1954 and 1962 right-wingers came to took on the Jewish population of Algeria, which was often fervently opposed to French withdrawal, with new favour. Furthermore, many right-wingers began to admire Israel, which seemed so successful in combating Arab nationalism and which was widely believed to have links with the Organisation de l' Arméte Secrète. Changes in attitudes to Israel and the Jews were linked with a wider change in the French right that had been going on since 1945: most of the right now focused their loyalties around ‘l' occident’ a block of nations led by America and including Israel rather than around the France that was so important to Gaullist thinking. Finally, an attempt is made to show how the French right's new attitude to the Jews influenced its reaction to the 1965 Presidential election campaign, de Gaulle's denunciation of Israel in 1967 and the student riots of 1968.
Wilberforce and Huxley: a Legendary Encounter
Authors: Lucas J. R.
Published: June 2009

The legend of the encounter between Wilberforce and Huxley is well established. Almost every scientist knows – and every viewer of the BBC's recent programme on Darwin was shown – how Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford, attempted to pour scorn on Darwin'sOrigin of speciesat a meeting of the British Association in Oxford on 30 June 1860, and had the tables turned on him by T. H. Huxley. In this memorable encounter Huxley's simple scientific sincerity humbled the prelatical insolence and clerical obscurantism of Soapy Sam; the pretension of the Church to dictate to scientists the conclusions they were allowed to reach were, for good and all, decisively defeated, the autonomy of science was established in Britain and the western world, the claim of plain unvarnished truth on men's allegiance was vindicated, however unwelcome its implications for human vanity might be, and the flood tide of Victorian faith in all its fulsomeness was turned to an ebb, which has continued to our present day and will only end when religion and superstition have been finally eliminated from the minds of all enlightened men. Even churchmen concede that it was a disastrous defeat. Only Owen Chadwick strikes a note of caution, observing that the account given of the incident in Wilberforce's biography seems hardly consistent with an overwhelming defeat, and maintaining that the received account must be a largely legendary creation of a later date.
Eugenics and Progressive Thought: a Study in Ideological Affinity
Authors: Freeden Michael
Published: June 2009

The issues raised by eugenics are of more than passing interest for the student of political thought. In itself a minor offshoot of turn-of-the-century socio-biological thought which never achieved ideological ‘take-off’ in terms of influence or circulation, there was certainly more in eugenics than nowadays meets the eye. The following pages propose to depart from the over-simplistic identification of eugenics, as political theory, with racism or ultra-conservatism and to offer instead two alternative modes of interpretation. On the one hand, eugenics will be portrayed as an exploratory avenue of the social-reformist tendencies of early-twentieth-century British political thought. On the other, it will serve as a case-study illustrating the complexity and overlapping which characterize most modern ideologies. While recognizing, of course, the appeal of eugenics for the ‘right’, a central question pervading the forthcoming analysis will be the attraction it had for progressives of liberal and socialist persuasions, with the ultimate aim of discovering the fundamental affinities the ‘left’ had, and may still have, with this type of thinking.
French War Aims and the American Challenge, 1914–1918
Authors: Stevenson David
Published: June 2009

Between 1917 and 1919 the United States made its first, spectacular intrusion into European power politics. For President Wilson, entry into the First World War was a chance not only to eliminate an immediate threat to American interests but also to transform international relations. The time had come to weld the industrialized countries into a community of interest, based on a shared loyalty to representative government and the market economy, expressed by membership of a League of Nations, and in which economic and territorial causes of tension would have been removed. But hardly had the German obstacle to this programme been overcome before, at the peace conference of 1919, Wilson ran up against almost equally determined obstruction from his former allies. This article examines one source of that antagonism, in the latent conflict before the armistice between American war aims and those of France. It argues that French policy was moulded by a tension between the Paris leaders' own desires for the settlement with Germany and their need to preserve a system of alliances deemed essential for French security in the future as well as for the war itself. By 1917 French governments were already confronted with dilemmas which were to harass them for the succeeding twenty years.
‘The More Posed and Wise Advice’: The Fourth Earl of Dorset and the English Civil Wars
Authors: Smith David L.
Published: June 2009

‘To me he was always the embodiment of Cavalier romance.’ Thus Vita Sackville-West on her seventeenth-century ancestor, Edward Sackville, fourth earl of Dorset. Such labelling indicates the problems which still bedevil any study of Civil War royalism. Brian Wormald'sClarendonbrilliantly revealed that the men who joined Charles I in 1642 represented a broad range of opinion. Above all, he made us aware of a coherent group of moderate (‘constitutional’) royalists who throughout sought accommodation. There was a palpable difference of strategy between these people, who favoured royal concessions in order to prevent further military initiatives, and others who favoured military initiatives in order to prevent further royal concessions. Within these two basic matrices, there were further subtle inflections of attitude between individuals and within the same individual over time. But many such inflections remain murky. Wormald's lead was never followed through. Charles's supporters have consistently received less attention than those who remained with parliament; and among the royalists, moderates have attracted fewer studies than ‘cavaliers’ and ‘swordsmen’. There is thus an urgent need to clarify different varieties of royalism and especially to bring the constitutional royalists into sharper focus. However, before we can assess their wider aims and impact, we must first identify them; and here the inappropriate labels bestowed on so many of Charles's supporters create real problems. Anne Sumner has recently ‘de-mythologized’ John Digby, first earl of Bristol, revealing him as more complex and less intemperate than the ‘hawk’ of legend.
The Lutheran Influence on the Elizabethan Settlement, 1558–1563
Authors: Horie Hirofumi
Published: June 2009

Historians have long debated which continental sources gave a major impetus to the early Elizabethan religious reform. While many have examined the alleged Reformed influence on the English church, that of the Lutherans has also been discussed by some. However, these have in the main failed to appreciate the full implications of this German influence which was linked closely with ongoing diplomatic developments on the continent. During the early years of Elizabeth's reign, political considerations more than religious actually dominated the minds of politicians like William Cecil in formulating the nation's ecclesiastical policy. In fact, some key decisions on religion were the direct result of contemporary diplomatic talks with Lutheran princes.
Republicanism and Public Virtue: William Godwin's History of the Commonwealth of England
Authors: Morrow John
Published: June 2009

Between 1824 and 1828, the aged William Godwin, who thirty years before had written the speculative but highly successful Enquiry concerning political justice, published a four volume study of the English Republic, the History of the commonwealth of England. Godwin's publisher, Henry Colburn, paid an advance of five hundred pounds for what was originally conceived of as a work in two volumes, and he no doubt did so because he expected that the book would appeal to a public that showed a great deal of interest in the civil war period. One reason for this interest was that historical studies of the seventeenth century, and commentaries upon them in the reviews, played a significant role in contemporary political argument.
The Opening of the Long Parliament
Authors: Lambert Sheila
Published: June 2009

The most recent survey of the early years of the long parliament has restated the traditional view that the parliament was united against the king from the first, under the leadership of John Pym. This opinion is so deeply ingrained in the historical consciousness that one reviewer has expressed surprise at the evidence adduced by Mr Fletcher of divisions of opinion in the Commons as early as 1641. Some of these disagreements were noticed four years ago by Professor Ashton, yet he calculated that there was a majority of 400 to 80 against the king, and titled his chapter ‘From Consensus to Confrontation’; according to Dr Manning, the king was ‘almost powerless’. It is surprising that this view has held the field so long, when the most cursory reading of the Commons Journal shows it to be a myth. In a period for which we have so little hard evidence of the course of events, the evidence of the journals should not be ignored; none the less, it will be suggested that the role of peers, in and out of parliament, was at least as important as anything that happened in the lower house in the first few months. Not all the issues involved can be discussed here: this paper will consider, in outline, some of the evidence concerning finance, the reforming legislation, and the impeachment of Strafford.
A Mysterious Dispute Demystified: Sir George Fletcher vs. the Howards
Authors: Reinmuth Howard S.
Published: June 2009

‘A mysterious dispute arose in Cumberland between the Earl of Carlisle, lord lieutenant, and Sir George Fletcher.’ So wrote Professor J. R. Western in 1965 as he speculated that the matter stemmed from party conflicts in parliament at the time of the Exclusion Crisis. While that had some bearing on the matter, the dispute can be understood more fully only by a study of county politics in Restoration Cumberland and Westmorland. The controversy originated around 1679 between the earl's son, generally known by his courtesy title of Lord Morpeth (c. 1646–92) and Sir George (1633–1700). At the time the earl, Charles Howard (1628–85), was in Jamaica as governor. When he returned to England in September 1680 he sided with his son and became Sir George's principal antagonist.
The Burden of Imperial Defence and the Continental Commitment Reconsidered
Authors: Peden G. C.
Published: June 2009

Over ten years have passed since Michael Howard offered what he himself called a controversial thesis about British defence policy before the Second World War. This was that ‘the Empire brought Britain no strength in her dealings with Germany. Yet British strength had nevertheless to be dissipated in the Empire's defence.’ By 1937 the needs of home defence against air attack and of imperial defence seemed so overwhelming toBritish policy-makers that the cabinet decided that no expeditionary force could be spared to help maintain the European balance of power. Howard stressed that he was offering only a ‘very rough preliminary sketch’, which was ‘probably distorted and certainly incomplete’, in view of the limited range of documents which he had had time to consult. In particular, what was missing from his thesis was any attempt to give weights to the relative importance of home and imperial defence problems as explanations for lack of preparation to commit land forces to help allies on the European continent.
Strategies and Stratagems for the Employment of Women in the British Civil Service, 1919–1939
Authors: Zimmeck Meta
Published: June 2009

When faced in 1920 with allegations of unfair treatment of women civil servants, Austen Chamberlain, the chancellor of the exchequer, expressed some surprise and countered that the postwar settlement not only ‘marked a great advance in the position of women in the Civil Service, but appeared to provide the most suitable machinery for ensuring that the opportunities afforded to women in the Civil Service should be full and liberal. Indeed…the proposals are the best that could be adopted in the interests of women themselves.’ Was the chancellor right? And if not, why not? Such questions may seem surprising or even wilfully obscure to more traditional administrative historians: of what importance anyway are the real or imagined grievances of a gaggle of women, most of whom were humble rank and file? That view, however, is appropriate only if the civil service is taken at its own estimation or, rather, that of its masters, those men at the top in what was called, variously, the first division, class I, and the administrative grade. Behind its façade of bland homogeneity raged both class and gender conflict. The former has been studied at some length. The latter has not. In beginning to remedy this deficiency this article inspects the treatment by the civil service, with the Treasury at its head, of one category of staff, women; an inspection which illuminates its public image as a rational and professional body representative of society and responsive to its needs.
Great Britain, Poland and the Russian Alliance, 1763–1767
Authors: Scott H. M.
Published: June 2009

The central place occupied by Russia in the calculations of British statesmen after the Seven Years War has long been realized. For ministers in search of a ‘system’ on the continent to set against Choiseul's threatening Système du Midi, alliance with Catherine II seemed to offer an obvious means of providing for Britain's future security. The quest for alliance with St Petersburg, indeed, formed the leitmotif of British foreign policy in the age of the American Revolution. Negotiations with Russia went on infinitely longer, and were pursued with considerably more vigour on the British side, than any comparable discussions for a continental alliance. Even before the treaties of peace were signed in 1763, Britain had made the first move in the direction of St Petersburg, and the negotiations thus initiated continued intermittently for a whole decade. Only in the late spring of 1773 did the British government finally and reluctantly concede that, without a subsidy (which London had long refused to countenance), no firm commitment could be hoped for from Russia.
Private Detective Agencies and Labour Discipline in the United States, 1855–1946
Authors: Weiss Robert P.
Published: June 2009

As a professional and bureaucratically organized institution of social control, the police in the United States originated less than 150 years ago. Traditionally, this development has been explained as an inevitable response to a dramatic rise in felonious crime. According to this type of account, a criminal reaction was a natural by-product of such factors as urbanization, immigration, and industrialization. Other investigators have disputed this interpretation, arguing that there is little evidence to support the occurrence of a crime wave. Rather, the municipal police in America originated as part of a larger class control apparatus designed to regulate working class social and political activities, including ‘subversive’ speeches, strikes, riots, and daily breaches of the ‘public order’. Those who argue that the ‘new police’ developed as a crime fighter typically neglect to discuss one of the oldest forms of professional policing in die nation, the private detective agency.
Pressure Groups, Tory Businessmen and the Aura of Political Corruption Before the First World War
Authors: Coetzee Frans
Published: June 2009

When Gladstone's Liberal government passed the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act in 1883, its supporters hoped that the future conduct of politics would be purer and more equitable. Not only would the grosser forms of corruption (such as bribery or intimidation) now be punished more severely, but the advantages previously enjoyed by wealthier candidates would now be minimized because the new law imposed strict limits on campaign spending which applied equally to all candidates for a particular constituency. But these noble goals, it soon appeared, were little closer to realization because the law contained a crucial loophole by failing to constrain the expenditure of the numerous pressure groups active in British politics. Because of this loophole, electoral corruption might continue to flourish, even if the perpetrator would no longer be the candidate's agent, but rather the pressure group treasurer. This view that the intent (if not the letter) of the law was being subverted was a common theme of Edwardian political journalism. As the Westminster Gazette observed, ‘when a by-election takes place each candidate has the assistance of a cloud of outside organizations which spend on the election a large sum of money which is not included in the official election expenses… clearly the result is to drive a coach-and-six through the Corrupt Practices Act.’ On the floor of the House of Commons similar arguments were aired. One Liberal MP contended that the statute ‘had been of great service in securing more honest representation than before, but no one who had followed political events closely could fail to see that its whole purpose was avoided, and that its terms were entirely circumvented, by the action which political organizations took on behalf of a candidate, which he was wholly unable to do for himself.’ Such assertions remained unsubstantiated, however, because infringements by pressure groups were rarely subjected to legal review in the election courts, being considered too difficult to define and expensive to prove.
High Summer at Nun Appleton, 1651: Andrew Marvell and Lord Fairfax'S Occasions
Authors: Hirst Derek , Zwicker Steveb
Published: June 2009

Andrew Marvell's country-house epic, Upon Appleton House,has long been understood as a meditation on conventional philosophical themes. An exact dating allows us to see the topical and polemical force of those themes. Moreover, situating the poem within particular chronological and geographical confines, the summer of 1651 and the household of the recently retired Lord General as well as the political geography of the vale of York, reveals the continuities and the patronage-afflicted contours of the poet's engagement with the crisis of the English revolution, a crisis he had so searchingly explored inAn Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's return from Ireland.
The choice of Hercules: Henry IV as hero
Authors: Dickerman Edmund H. , Walker Anita M.
Published: June 2009

In February 1610, the English chargé d'affaires reported that Henry IV of France, having decided to go to war in the Spanish Netherlands, had lately been measured for a new suit of armour, and had also displayed in his chamber a table or tableau, ‘wherein is paynted a man fleeing from Venus and the image of gaming, and following Hercules after two other images, of hope and fortune, with these verses: I go to the temple of virtue, hope and fortune precede me; farewell damned pleasure.’ This piece of visual propaganda encoded a variant of the Choice of Hercules, which appealed to the king's lifelong self-construct as heroic warrior. We trace the complex history of his heroic self-fashioning, showing how Henry IV after 1598 compensated for the absence of war through the hunt, gambling, and sexual domination. The dissonance between what Henry IV perceived himself to be and what he feared by 1610 he had become makes it easier to understand what drove him to his appointment in the rue de la Ferronerie.
North Britishness and the nature of eighteenth-century British patriotisms
Authors: Kidd Colin
Published: June 2009

The identity of eighteenth-century North Britons needs to be disaggregated: there were significant variations in North British attitudes to the Anglo-Scottish relationship in areas such as politics, economics, language, religion and manners. In the first-order spheres of politics and economics North Britons generally subscribed to an Anglo-British identity and tended to welcome anglicization of Scotland's feudal institutions and laws as an acceleration along the pathway of modernization. Although this crucial aspect of North British identity became widespread only from the 1730s its roots can be traced back to the sophisticated debates which hadprecededScottish agreement to incorporating Union. This adherence to an Anglo-British form of patriotism was a common feature of political discourse in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. North British patriotism also shared another prominent characteristic with Anglo-Irish and American identities. The aspiration to share English liberties to the full, when thwarted, could trigger anglophobic responses, as occurred in America in the 1760s and 70s, and in the Irish constitutional revolution of 1780–2. Among North Britons, a coherent Anglo-British ideology of improvement co-existed with a traditional Scottish chauvinism, which was normally dormant, but whose occasional eruptions tended to be provoked by perceived exclusions of North Britons from the liberties of Englishmen.
‘To Raise and Dare Resentment’: The Bristol Bridge Riot of 1793 Re-Examined
Authors: Harrison Mark
Published: June 2009

It is nearly twenty years since the seminal discussions of the English crowd by Hobsbawm, Rose, Rudé and Thompson, and almost forty years since Wear mouth's extraordinary catalogue of eighteenth-century disturbances.1 These studies established that if we examined the composition, organization, objectives and beliefs of eighteenth-century crowds, then we would find them to have been informed, disciplined, and in possession of broad notions of the necessity and legitimacy of their actions. Crowds were not ‘rabble’, or criminal, or ‘society's dregs’. Such conclusions were based upon the examination of the crowd in its most visible and vocal form: the riot.
The Radical Right and the Crisis of Conservatism before the First World War
Authors: Sykes Alan
Published: June 2009

The study of the Edwardian Conservative party is rapidly becoming as much of a minefield as that of the Edwardian Liberal party. Both parties were in serious difficulties in the years immediately preceding the First World War. But whilst the condition of the Liberal party is at least openly acknowledged as a disputed area, its perils clearly marked, the condition of the Conservative party is treacherous ground, the hazards uncharted. From one point of view, ‘it would be easy to give an account of Edwardian politics in which the emphasis fell on “the crisis of Conservatism” and on the parlous state of the Conservative party on the eve of the War… The fundamental weakness of the Conservative party lay in its inability to win elections.’ Alternatively, ‘Both at the local-government level and in national by elections in 1912 and 1913, what was at work was not so much “The Strange Death of Liberal England” as “The Strange Revival of Tory England”. The most likely outcome, moreover, was not apocalyptic, merely a Conservative triumph in the general election scheduled for 1915.’ By a curious coincidence, or perhaps editorial perversity, these two views are juxtaposed on consecutive pages of the same collection of essays.
Britain, the United States, and the Security of the Sa‘udi Arabian Oilfields in 1942
Authors: Silverfarb Daniel
Published: June 2009

In the spring and summer of 1942 the German military forces in north Africa and southern Russia made significant advances. In June the German army reached EI Alamein, only seventy miles west of Alexandria, while in August the German army reached the outskirts of Stalingrad. As a result of these German advances, Britain, which was the allied country with primary responsibility for defending the Middle East against the Axis powers, became concerned about the possibility that the German air force might attempt to bomb the oilfields and oil refineries in the Middle East in order to deny the oil in that area to the allied governments. Britain was also alarmed about the possibility that, instead of bombing the oil installations, the Germans might attempt to capture them intact in order to utilize the oil for their war machine. In 1942 total Middle Eastern oil production constituted only about six per cent of total world oil production. However, all Middle Eastern oil was refined locally - about two-thirds at Abadan in Iran - and played a vital role in the conduct of British military operations in the Middle East and southeast Asia.1 In 1942 Britain had troops stationed in Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Bahrain, the four main Middle Eastern oil-producing nations, and thus was well placed to defend and, if necessary, to destroy the oil facilities in those countries. However, at this time Sa'udi Arabia, the remaining Middle Eastern oil producing nation, was a neutral power with no British or American troops stationed on its territory. As a result of Sa'udi neutrality it was difficult for Britain to defend the Sa'udi oilfields against German air attack. It was also difficult for Britain to make the necessary preparations to destroy the Sa'udi oilfields in the event that the German army advanced into the Arabian peninsula. The purpose of this communication will be to discuss the manner in which the British government attempted to deal with these problems. It will also discuss the reaction of the United States government and the American-owned oil company in Sa'udi Arabia to this situation.
Constitutional Consensus and Puritan Opposition in the 1620s: Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match
Authors: Lake P. G.
Published: June 2009

In 1620 Thomas Scott published a notorious pamphlet entitled Vox Populi. This purported to recount the proceedings of the Spanish council of state and denounced the devious machinations of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, and by implication the pro-Spanish policy of King James. Once Scott's authorship became known he took the traditional way out and fled to the Low Countries. There he served as a preacher with the English regiments and as a minister at Utrecht. He also continued his pamphlet commentary on events in England. Scott, then, was that well-known figure, the radical puritan opponent of the Jacobean regime. He has certainly been cast in that role and until recently such a view of his career would have seemed unexceptionable enough. However, of late there has emerged a corpus of work which might be thought to render any such view of Scott untenable. On the one hand, the existence within the mainstream of English protestantism of anything approaching a coherent body of puritan attitudes has been challenged, at least until the emergence of Arminianism polarized religious opinion and almost created a self-conscious and aggressive puritanism where there had been none before. In the political sphere it has been claimed that within the predominant view of constitutional and political propriety any attempt at concerted opposition to royal policy was both conceptually and practically impossible.
Techniques of Repression: The Control of Popular Protest in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France
Authors: Price Roger
Published: June 2009

The purpose of the article is to examine the official response to the widespread series of disorders occurring in France following poor harvests in the 1840s and 1850s. A large number of studies of popular protest have been written in recent years. Most have failed to consider the forms of repression employed, and yet this is an essential means of understanding both the scale and the characteristics of protest. Our essential concern is thus with the techniques of repression employed in this period prior to the development of modern police and bureaucratic systems.
The Politics of the Osborne Judgment
Authors: Pelling Henry
Published: June 2009

The Osborne judgment is always mentioned in political histories of the early twentieth century as one of the two principal judgments affecting the trade unions and the growth of the Labour party-the other being the Taff Vale decision of 1901. In both cases officers of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants were acting upon what they believed to be constitutional lines; in both cases, after lawsuits which went to the highest court in the land, the House of Lords, they were found to be behaving illegally; and in both cases parliament was eventually persuaded, if not precisely to reverse the Lords’ decision, at least to modify the law drastically in the unions’ favour. The repercussions upon the Lords themselves were not insignificant: the ordinary voter found it difficult to distinguish between the judicial and the legislative functions of the Upper House; and so both cases strengthened the willingness of trade unionists to support the Liberal government in its constitutional struggle against the Lords. Such was the outcome of Disraeli's decision in 1875 to retain the final appeal to the Lords, despite Gladstone's attempt, in the Judicature Act of 1873, to abolish it altogether.
The Recent Historiography of the English Reformation
Authors: Haigh Christopher
Published: June 2009

The English Reformation was not a specific event which may be given a precise date; it was a long and complex process. ‘The Reformation’ is a colligatory concept, a historians’ label which relates several lesser changes into an overall movement: it embraces a break from the Roman obedience; an assertion of secular control over the Church; a suppression of Catholic institutions such as monasteries and chantries; a prohibition of Catholic worship; and a protestantization of services, clergy and laity. Though the political decision to introduce each phase of change and the legislative alteration of statutes and canons may be dated easily enough, it is much harder to ascribe responsibility and motive for such measures. Moreover, as the interest of historians has in recent years moved on from such political issues towards the administrative enforcement of new rules and popular acceptance of new ideas, so the identification and explanation of change have become even more difficult: the pace is likely to have varied from area to area, and the criteria by which progress should be measured are far from clear. It is therefore not surprising that there has been much dispute over the causes and chronology of developments in religion, and recent interpretations of the Reformation in England can, with some simplification, be grouped in relation to two matrices. One matrix relates to the motive force behind the progress of Protestantism: at one extreme, it could be suggested that Protestant advance was entirely the result of official coercion, while at the other it could be said that the new religion spread horizontally by conversions among the people. The second matrix relates to the pace of religious change: on the one hand, it could be suggested that Protestantism made real progress at an early date and had become a powerful force by the death of Edward VI, while on the other it could be said that little had been achieved in the first half of the century and the main task of protestantizing the people had to be undertaken in the reign of Elizabeth. These two matrices provide us with four main clusters of interpretations.
I. John Methuen and the Anglo-Portuguese Treaties of 1703
Authors: Francis A. D.
Published: June 2009

Much has been written about the Methuen Commercial Treaty and its influence for good or bad. Rather less has been said about the negotiations which related to it, though Sir Richard Lodge wrote a good summary of the three Methuen treaties in Professor Prestage's Chapters in Anglo-Portuguese Relations and there is an excellent and much fuller account in German by Johann Albrecht. Some of the facts relating to these negotiations are still little known and there may, therefore, be scope for the following article, which attempts to set out some of the difficulties with which John Methuen had to contend and to place the commercial treaty in perspective.
IV. The Anti-League and the Corn Law Crisis of 1846
Authors: Lawson-Tancred Mary
Published: June 2009

The repeal of the corn laws in 1846 has generally been regarded as the result of a clash between the old agricultural order and the rising industrial and commercial classes of the era. Whether or not this view is altogether correct, it is certain that there was another side to the story that deserves a closer scrutiny than it has hitherto received—namely that of the difficulties which took place within the ranks of the agriculturists of the Conservative party. The outcome involved an event that was just as interesting and perhaps more important than the fate of the corn laws. In bringing about the downfall of Sir Robert Peel, it radically altered the fortunes of Benjamin Disraeli, who could never have found any considerable place in Peel's Conservative party. On the disruption of that party, he was able to make himself indispensable in the building of a new one and thus ensure for himself a destiny that it had seemed might well elude him. How closely he concerned himself with the early stages of the agricultural intrigue that ended in the downfall of Peel it is not intended here to inquire. Suffice it to remember that he had been involved in agricultural conspiracies long before 1846 and had doubtless been for some time aware of the possibilities of the kind of rupture which eventually occurred. At all events he always seems to have kept a very calculating eye on the differences that sprang up between Peel and his agricultural following.
2. James II's Whig Collaborators
Authors: Jones J. R.
Published: June 2009

The purpose of this communication is to describe the composition, and to analyse the character and motives, of those who collaborated with James II in his attempts in 1687–8 to pack a subservient parliament by intensive canvassing and by prearranging elections. These attempts have usually been dismissed as foolish, futile, provocative and inevitably disastrous, with the result that both the techniques and the agents employed in the campaign have not been thought worthy of serious attention.
VI. The French Army Law of 1832
Authors: Porch Douglas
Published: June 2009

Sandwiched between the Saint-Cyr law of 1818 and Niel's dazzling if futile effort to reform the army in 1867, the Soult law of 1832 has been sadly neglected by historians. Not only is the law a crucial piece of military legislation, but by studying its history one can trace the conservatism of the July Monarchy under the Périer Ministry.