I propose in the present article to mention the additions which have been made during recent years to our knowledge of the medieval, Turkish and modern periods of Greek history, especially by the Greeks themselves. In the fifth edition of Paparregopoulos' standard History of the Greek Nation, edited and continued by Professor P. Karolides, we have an account of the whole history of the Greeks from prehistoric times down to the annexation of Thessaly and Arta in 1881. The editor, who sat in the Turkish parliament and is particularly strong in all that regards the Moslem world, has, by large additions to the text and by footnotes, brought the classic masterpiece of his author up to date, while for the first time this work is illustrated and indexed. In the general field of medieval Greek history the Annual of the Society of Byzantine Studies, which first appeared in 1924, has published a number of articles by Greek specialists, while the Byzantinisch-Neugriechische Jahrbücher of Professor Nikos A. Bees, started at Berlin in 1920, has been published since 1926 in Athens, where a similar periodical, Helleniká, edited by Professors Amantos and Kougeas, is announced. The local medieval and modern history of Epeiros is being collected in the Epeirote Chronicles, of which two volumes and a biographical supplement have appeared; that of Thrace in the similar periodical, Thrakiká, of which one complete volume has been issued. Dr Franz Dölger has produced two instalments of the Corpus der griechischen Urkunden des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit, planned by Krumbacher, and giving German summaries of documents from 565 to 1204, and Beiträge zur Geschichte der byzantinischen Finanzverwaltung besonders des 10. und 11. Fahrhunderts. Messrs A. E. R. Boak and James E. Dunlap have contributed Two Studies in Later Roman and Byzantine Administration on “The Master of the Offices” and “The Office of the Grand Chamberlain” respectively to The University of Michigan Studies, Humanistic Series (vol. XIV, New York, 1924).

The question of the publicity of State Papers obviously has two aspects. Certain transactions of diplomacy can never be made known immediately. Personal comments and attacks creep occasionally into dispatches and have to be cut out on publication. But these omissions, though interesting, are unimportant except to the historian. Certain other and more important transactions have to be concealed altogether, because a confidence would be betrayed, or too much be made of a tentative or false step in diplomatic transactions. Even in such cases, however, there is usually no objection to revealing the reasons that led to the conclusion finally adopted. So much can be done in a completed negotiation or decision. But most diplomats would agree that it is sometimes dangerous to publish details as to abortive negotiations. It is very often necessary to do so, but the announcement of the failure of a negotiation, if accompanied by clouds of papers, is not likely to produce a good impression and may sometimes prevent a remedy from being found.

A Study of the historiography of the Revolution of 1688—the Revolution considered not only as an event in space and time but also in the minds of men—is long overdue. Although such a study would far transgress the decent limits of this paper, it is possible to isolate here a single phenomenon in the historiography of 1688; to examine the posthumous reputation of one of the central figures in that Revolution, to uncover the sources from which it rose, and assess the validity of the evidence upon which it is based.

In a book published twenty years ago, the present writer expressed the following opinion on the European wars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: ‘It was not that the wars of that period meant less in expense and suffering than those of later times. Armies and navies were smaller, and even smaller in proportion to the number of the peoples; but they were as large as the poorer and simpler societies of those days could afford. In every great war there was some state that fought until it came within sight of revolution at home.’ The purpose of the present article is to consider, for the special case of the Nine Years War, whether this opinion may still be maintained or ought to be modified in the light of the many relevant publications of the intervening twenty years. The words quoted above relate to the social and economic aspects of the wars, but these, of course, cannot be entirely detached from the military aspects, and it will be well to begin by stating an assumption as to these military aspects. This assumption is that those who directed the fighting, whether on land or on sea, apart from such exceptions as the weaknesses of human nature must always occasion, fought to win and fought as hard as they could. For the present purpose this will be assumed, but it is not accepted as true by all historians. Some of them have applied to this period a famous sentence of Gibbon: ‘in War the European forces are exercised by temperate and undecisive contests’.

On 26 April 1915 the governments of Great Britain, France, and Russia signed a treaty with the Italian Government settling the terms for Italy's entrance into the war on the allied side. The Treaty of London was the result of hard bargaining, particularly because of extensive Italian claims in the Adriatic which were resisted by the Russian government, and which would leave a difficult legacy for the postwar period. Nevertheless, the evolution of Italy from membership in a rival alliance system and potential foe to an active ally was completed after less than a year of neutrality. Italy's defection from the Triple Alliance was hardly a surprise to anyone with the slightest idea of Austro-Italian relations, and for over a decade before the outbreak of the war the strength of her commitment to Austria and Germany had been diluted by secret agreements with France.In Austria-Hungary leading naval and military officials took little trouble to conceal their mistrust; while unpopular measures by Habsburg officials could be counted upon to produce hostile demonstrations before the Austro-Hungarian embassy or consulates in Italy. Nevertheless, the French, although well aware of Austro-Italian friction, were never really sure of their southern neighbour and at times exhibited a suspicion of Italy which rivalled that of the Austrians. France and Italy were in a sense Mediterranean rivals and the development of the Italian fleet was followed closely by the French naval staff.

Thomas Cranmer's register is important in shedding valuable shafts of light on the nature of the episcopal office in Tudor England. Despite the government's break with Rome in the 1530s, much of the archbishop's routine administration continued unaltered. Nonetheless, there were profound changes in Cranmer's role. Royal commissions, proclamations, injunctions, letters missive and acts of parliament all served to modify Cranmer's position as principal minister of the king's spiritual estate. When the crown issued a commission to the archbishop for the exercise of his jurisdiction, the prelate's position as a royal official was clear for all to see. It is sure, however, that the impact of Christian humanism and reformed theology also did much to shape Cranmer's work. The enforcement of the English Litany and, most notably, of the 42 Articles reveal the changing nature of the episcopal office at this time. In contrast to received orthodoxy, it is now clear that the bishops mounted a widespread campaign at the end of Edward VI's brief reign to secure use of this reformed formulary. There can be little doubt that Thomas Cranmer's years at Canterbury were of great significance in reshaping the role of the episcopate in early modern England.

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

The ripening of the Anglo-American friendship in the first half of the nineteenth century was truly an evolutionary process, but most observers agree that in the diplomatic sphere the significant aspects of that early rapprochement took place about the time of the Webster–Ashburton agreement. One previously unknown factor involved in this development centred on British and American cooperation in the Belgian indemnification dispute in the late thirties and forties. This struggle by several major powers aimed at receiving indemnities from the newly created state for property damages incurred during the Belgian revolution of 1830 in Antwerp.

In a whimsical scene of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, the pope and the Cardinal of Lorraine enter the banquet hall only to have an invisible Faustus snatch away their dinners and, in a truly spectacular exit, scatter the banquet hall with fireworks.1 The Cardinal of Lorraine has been surrounded by fireworks for four hundred years. This is an effort to give him some peace at last.

The concern here is a symposium of quite another sort, the Colloquy of Poissy. Poissy, the last great Colloquy of the Reformation, was an attempt at religious reconciliation of Calvinist and Catholic within the framework of the Gallican Church.

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.’.