Two thousand people bought tickets for the civic ceremony to welcome Joseph Chamberlain and his young American bride, held in Birmingham Town Hall on 8 January 1889. The Times newspaper was at pains to point out how unstintingly the more warm-hearted of the local Gladstonian Liberals had given of their goodwill, even though the occasion was mainly due to initiatives from the leaders of Radical Unionism. It seemed to bode well for the health of the Unionist alliance that among the worthies listed as present was no less a person than Sir James Sawyer, President of the Conservative Association.

It is surprising that while there is a considerable literature dealing with the reform of the civil service from the time of Burke to the setting up of the Civil Service Commission in 1855, very little attention has been paid to the final stages of reform following the introduction of open competition in 1870. Yet it was in this period that patronage ceased to be of importance and the modern civil service developed. The Order in Council of 4 June 1870 which made open competition the normal method of entry to the civil service enormously reduced the scope of patronage, but it did not kill it immediately. Right up to the First World War remnants of the old system lingered in most departments, although by then a lavish system of honours and subsidies from the party funds had displaced the most objectionable forms of political patronage. The purpose of this article is to give some indication

On 31 March 1939, Britain, breaking with hitherto steadfastly pursued policy, declared her commitment to the defence of Poland in the event of a German attack. This gesture was a dramatic change in Britain's foreign policy, not merely in relation to one East European state, but more notably in relation to Europe as a whole. Not surprisingly, the declaration has been the focal point of historical attention, although the events following have received less attention. The crisis days of March 1939 saw a chain of events, not necessarily of the same origin or character but which in sum total caused disquiet in European capitals, most clearly in London. Because of this it is easy to over-look the long-term nature of some of the events which culminated in March 1939 and thus, in consequence, to overestimate the effect of the British guarantee upon Polish foreign policy.

Modern historians of the Jamaica rebellion of October 1865 have attached much causal importance to a document of 14 June the same year, known as ‘the Queen's Letter’. This was the official response to a petition in which ‘certain poor people’ of St Ann's parish in the island had naively asked their sovereign for ‘a quantity of land’ and other means of relief from distress. Drafted by Henry Taylor, clerk and senior clerk in the West India department, of the colonial office since the mid-1820s, and approved by permanent under-secretary Sir Frederic Rogers and secretary of state Edward Cardwell, it has acquired an unmitigatedly bad reputation. It is not merely that it was naturally based on the knowledge that no imperial funds or other competence existed or could exist for relieving the consequences even of admittedly bad seasons in colonies (or at home), but rather that it thrust austere advice upon the suffering petitioners. Any labouring population, it stated, whether in Jamaica or England, could provide against adversity only by ‘industry and prudence’: above all, by undertaking – what was understood to be notoriously lacking amongst creoles – regular work for wages. Even the most sympathetic critics have considered this to be ‘harsh’ and ‘callous’. One writes that it reflected the sentiments of an imperial bureaucracy whose expectations had been influenced by the remarkable changes in English society, whose attitudes were governed by evangelical propriety, and whose notions of progress were inextricably tied to productivity, trade figures, accumulating property, and the refinements which these entailed.

The resignation in May 1730 of Charles, second Viscount Townshend (1674–1738), as Secretary of State for the Northern Department, is an event that has attracted little attention. Aware of Sir Robert Walpole's determination to get rid of Townshend, scholars have tended to treat Walpole's success as inevitable. The major study of British political history in these years, that contained within Professor Plumb's valuable biography of Walpole, is disappointingly brief in its treatment of the crisis. This reflects the general tendency of the work to concentrate on domestic politics and to devote less attention to the interrelationship between them and foreign policy. As a result Plumb's treatment of Townshend's departure is less probing and comprehensive than most of his book. The failure of scholars to study the ministerial crisis of 1729–30is far from exceptional, for the years of Walpole's ascendancy have escaped the same degree of scrutiny by political historians that has marked the reigns of Anne and George III. A host of major figures lack scholarly biographies: George II; William Stanhope, who succeeded Townshend and was ennobled as Lord Harrington in 1730; the earl of Chesterfield, Townshend's principal supporter in the ministry in 1729–30; William Pulteney, the leader of the opposition Whigs; Lord Wilmington, the duke of Dorset and George Dodington, ministerial opponents of Walpole; and Queen Caroline.

Were the knowledge of the ablest farmers in the best-cultivated parts of the island collected, - English Agriculture would be found, at this day, to be far advanced towards perfection… In short, the art of agriculture must ever remain imperfect while it is suffered to languish in the memory, and die with the practitioner: RECORD, only, can perpetuate the art; and SYSTEM, alone, render the science comprehensive. William Marshall, The rural economy of Norfolk, 1 (London, 1787), vi–vii.

After almost forty years of discussion and analysis, British policy at Munich in 1938 remains as controversial a subject as ever. But despite the fact that many thorough and important studies have been written, the focus of the controversy has not shifted very substantially. Much emphasis is still placed upon the ‘men of Munich’ and the question of whether they were guilty men who betrayed Czechoslovakia or reasonable and astute statesmen who sought to preserve the peace of Europe. And, in consequence, both their defenders and their critics have invested a great deal of effort in scrutinizing their contemporary writings to see whether their intentions in September 1938 were laudable or contemptible. However, it is by no means certain that the fundamental causes of governmental behaviour during a crisis are revealed in their clearest perspective by a concentration upon the contemporary utterances of policy-makers. For, by the time such a situation has been reached, the available options are normally strictly limited so that the task of the ‘decision-maker’ is often to provide a rationalization, both for himself and posterity, for a course of action which has been all but predetermined by earlier decisions. This article seeks to demonstrate that the Munich crisis was of such a type: that it represented a continuity in Britain's Central European policy and that the behaviour of the ‘men of Munich’ can only be judged in the context of this continuity. It argues, in fact, that the British adopted a policy of ‘passive pragmatism’ in defence of their world position throughout the inter-war period and that it was this which accounted both for their inaction between 1933 and 1937 and the Munich policy in 1938.

Agricultural distress following the Napoleonic wars evoked various responses from those classes whose interests were most immediately bound up with the land. Such factors as decreasing market prices and hence wages, a falling standard of living, and rising indebtedness incited, on the one hand, the disciples of Captain Swing to attempt to restore to the agricutural labourer his dispossessed inheritance, or at least to register protest at its loss. For the landowners and farmers, on the other hand, constitutional means of redress were clearly more acceptable, and between 1815 and 1845 there were several attempts to develop a protectionist organization of farmers’ associations, led, particularly in the early years, by George Webb Hall, and in the latter often associated with Lord Chandos.

This article explores an understudied aspect in Asia's Cold War history: how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used Hong Kong as a Cold War pivot to produce and disseminate left-wing literature for overseas Chinese living in Southeast Asia. It argues that the CCP's expanding cultural influence can be attributed to the Party's commercial acumen. Operating within a permissive colonial regulatory regime, the CCP expanded its control of local and regional markets for left-wing printed materials. The content of CCP literature was inevitably propagandistic – that is, shaped by the changing demands of the Chinese government's foreign policy and by a need to attract foreign remittances and accommodate socialist transformation at home. Hong Kong's emergence as a pivot in propaganda wars that were global in scope created tensions between the United States and Britain, and led governments in Southeast Asia to strengthen state controls on imported communist media. As such, this article makes an original contribution to Hong Kong colonial history and deepens our understanding of transnational dynamics within Southeast Asia.

The article analyses the processes that preceded the construction of sanctuaries in the Holy Land through the prism of the Church of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, deconstructing and uncovering layers of political power struggles which led to its formation and present shape. This study, based on extensive archival research and a field survey, demonstrates how the reconstruction of the basilica of Gethsemane, and hence the concretization in stone of some of the most depicted evangelical traditions, was not merely the result of an ecumenical consideration. In fact, it reflects the narrow, and sometimes very down-to-earth, interests of various denominations and political forces. The study also demonstrates how the unique setting of the Holy Land encouraged simultaneous multi-layered political processes, comparing the case-study of the Church of Gethsemane to those of other symbolic and national religious monuments: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the basilica of Sacré-Coeur in Paris, and the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow.

Focusing on A smoking club (1793/7) by James Gillray, this essay presents satiric representations of smoking clubs in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British prints, arguing that they reflect and mediate contemporary understandings of tobacco as an intoxicant in British associational life. The breadth of potential cultural connotations – from political and social parody to light-hearted humour – is traced through the content and imagery of selected prints. These prints rely on the familiarity of contemporary audiences with political and social knowledge, as well as a visual iconography iconically realized in William Hogarth's A midnight modern conversation (1732).

This article re-evaluates the role and importance of the thirteenth earl of Eglinton as president of the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights (NAVSR). Departing from the established historiography, which depicts his career as a romantic absurdity because of his organization of a medieval tournament in 1839, it shows Eglinton to have been a political figure of substance, who played a significant role in public life during the mid-Victorian era. The article emphasizes the importance of ‘administrative devolution’ as a feature of long-term Conservative political thought and points to activities of Eglinton and his circle as an example of the need to give more weight to the importance of Conservatives in modern Scottish history.