The religious reforms of the sixteenth century exerted a profound impact upon the liturgy of baptism in England. While historians' attention has been drawn to the theological debates concerning the making of the sign of the cross, the new baptism liturgy contained within the Book of common prayer also placed an innovative importance on the public performance of the rite in the presence of the whole congregation on Sundays and other holy days. Both religious radicals and conservatives contested this stress on ceremony and publicity throughout the early modern period. Through the collection of large numbers of baptism dates from parish registers, it is possible to measure adherence to these new requirements across both space and time. Before the introduction of the first prayer book in 1549, there was considerable uniformity among communities in terms of the timing of baptism, and the observed patterns are suggestive of conformity to the requirements of the late medieval church. After the mid-sixteenth century, parishes exhibited a range of responses, ranging from enthusiastic adoption by many communities to complete disregard in religiously conservative parts of Lancashire and Cheshire. Additionally, the popularity of saints' festivals as popular days for baptism fell markedly after 1660, suggesting a decline in the observance of these feasts.

Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, is a neglected statesman. A sometime diplomat, he was Charles II's longest-serving secretary of state, held the highest household office for ten years, and married his daughter to a royal bastard. It is, however, his artistic patronage that has most conspicuously been overlooked and, consequently, its political significance underestimated. Informed by his experiences abroad, he appreciated the power of the arts to influence and impress and used the cultural mediation of the English diplomatic network in his control to help skilfully fashion his domestic political identity. Through judicious display of architecture, paintings, sculpture, and furniture, Arlington created a cultural world that confirmed both his close relationship with Charles II and his dominance of foreign affairs. Even after he resigned as secretary of state in 1674, Arlington continued to deploy artistic patronage for political ends: as lord chamberlain, he controlled the largest government department and was formally responsible for fashioning the royal image. This article reconsiders Arlington's contributions as a statesman through his considered use of material consumption and artistic patronage and thereby illuminates corners of cultural practice which are situated firmly in the political sphere.

This article makes use of the data-rich sources, little used by historians, relating to rank and file soldiers, especially those who became Chelsea Hospital outpensioners. It particularly seeks to find out the migration history of such men in the years after Waterloo, focusing on Scots. The conclusion is that Scots were under-represented among soldiers who became imperial settlers. There appear to be good reasons for Scots finding colonial conditions uncongenial, and, in this respect, there was little difference between the ‘Napoleonic’ soldiery and the succeeding generation who belonged more definitely to an imperial service army. Most, in fact, returned to Scotland, and then to that part of the country familiar to them. Moreover, they refute an image of veterans as marginalized men. They are shown, on the whole, to have settled back into civilian society with surprising ease, law-abiding rather than lawless, respected rather than despised or feared.

Harold Temperley's The foreign policy of Canning, 1822–1827 (1925) has been widely acknowledged as the standard work on George Canning's foreign policy in 1822–7. Since its publication, historians have accepted its central theme: that the principal aim of Canning's foreign policy in 1822–7 was to destroy the post-1815 system of great-power concert in Europe. Temperley's book is remarkable for its consistency, and his account of Canning's policy with regard to the Spanish crisis of 1822–3 – that Canning's main concern was not to prevent foreign intervention in Spain, but to weaken the power and authority of the Concert of Europe by exploiting differences among the European allies over the question of Spain – is certainly consistent with its central theme. This article re-examines Canning's diplomacy on the Spanish question from the start of his second tenure in the foreign office to the French invasion of Spain, and contends that its reality fits neither Temperley's account of this particular subject nor his general thesis on Canning's foreign policy. A careful examination of Canning's early diplomacy indicates that its primary object was to prevent foreign military intervention in Spain, and that it was not influenced by a supposed dislike of great-power concert.

William Gladstone's views on slavery and the slave trade have received little attention from historians, although he spent much of his early years in parliament dealing with issues related to that subject. His stance on slavery echoed that of his father, who was one of the largest slave owners in the British West Indies, and on whom he was dependent for financial support. Gladstone opposed the slave trade but he wanted to improve the condition of the slaves before they were liberated. In 1833, he accepted emancipation because it was accompanied by a period of apprenticeship for the ex-slaves and by financial compensation for the planters. In the 1840s, his defence of the economic interests of the British planters was again evident in his opposition to the foreign slave trade and slave-grown sugar. By the 1850s, however, he believed that the best way to end the slave trade was by persuasion, rather than by force, and that conviction influenced his attitude to the American Civil War and to British colonial policy. As leader of the Liberal party, Gladstone, unlike many of his supporters, showed no enthusiasm for an anti-slavery crusade in Africa. His passionate commitment to liberty for oppressed peoples was seldom evident in his attitude to slavery.

As British efforts to secure the approaches to India intensified in the closing years of the nineteenth century, expert knowledge of the states bordering the subcontinent became an increasingly sought-after commodity. Particularly high demand existed for individuals possessing first-hand experience of Qajar Persia, a state viewed by many policymakers as a vulnerable anteroom on the glacis of the Raj. Britain's two foremost Persian experts during this period were George Nathaniel Curzon and Edward Granville Browne. While Curzon epitomized the traditional gentleman amateur, Browne embodied the emerging professional scholar. Drawing on both their private papers and publications, this article analyses the relationship between these two men as well as surveys their respective views of British policy toward Iran from the late 1880s until the end of the First World War. Ultimately it contends that Curzon's knowledge of Persia proved deficient in significant ways and that Anglo-Iranian relations, at least in the aftermath of the Great War, might well have been placed on a better footing had Browne's more nuanced understanding of the country and its inhabitants prevailed within the foreign policymaking establishment.

Recent studies of ‘total war’ depict a process of inexorable expansion leading to an often nebulous linkage of everything to war. This article takes the study of ‘total war’ in the opposite direction by studying a specific example of strategic restraint. It examines how the French bombing strategy that was developed over the course of the First World War went to considerable lengths to maintain a distinction between the civilian and the military. The article studies France's restraint by highlighting the strategic, geographical, institutional, and economic factors upon which it was built. It then goes on to examine the political pressures for an expansion of bombing which proved incapable of overturning this policy. Finally, it contrasts French restraint with that of its key ally, Great Britain. There, bombing developed into a strategic weapon designed to destroy the ‘home front’. This study of restraint underscores the importance of limits, and the attendant choices government has to make, in understanding the course and intensity of a country's mobilization for modern war.

This article makes the case for incorporating music into the history of war commemoration in 1920s Britain by examining John Foulds's A World Requiem, performed at the British Legion's first Festivals of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall between 1923 and 1926. A simultaneously modernist and spiritual work, Foulds's Requiem challenges Jay Winter's conclusion that modernism was unconcerned with public grief. The controversy which the Requiem caused also reveals the contested nature of public memory, particularly where music and religion were concerned. The Requiem's axing in 1927 points to a hegemonic process which, although it had yet fully to take shape, found no room on Armistice Night for Foulds's progressive ideals.

This article surveys recent research on the German Wehrmacht's anti-partisan campaign in the Soviet Union during the Second World War. German anti-partisan warfare in the Soviet Union was conducted not just against partisans, but also as cover for annihilating the Reich's ‘ideological enemies’ and plundering ‘bandit areas’ for resources. The Wehrmacht's role was significant, constituting an important element of its wider participation in Nazi crimes. The review sketches the historical background and surveys the historiography's development to the late 1990s. It then examines at length the significant works that have emerged since, dividing them according to the operational levels on which they focus: higher command, individual regions, and, finally, middle-level units.

This article surveys the literature on American neoconservatism since 1979, emphasizing those monographs which include assessments of developments in neoconservatism since 1995. It analyses the origins of neoconservatism in the anti-Stalinist Left and in the ideological divisions of the Democratic party. It assesses the position of neoconservatism in the American conservative tradition and its influence on Republican party policy. It places neoconservatism within the broader context of American foreign and domestic policy. It examines the emergence of networks of support which have sustained neoconservatives as a group of policy intellectuals independent of universities. It concludes by asking whether neoconservatism can be productively viewed as an expression of American ethnic politics, in particular as a response to the varying guises which anti-Semitism has assumed in the United States. The article asserts that, although commentators on neoconservatism from varying ideological standpoints have avoided the question of the neoconservatives' ethnicity, it offers a plausible explanation for the protean nature and apparent inconsistency of neoconservatism over the last forty years.