This article takes issue with the influential recent interpretation of Henry VIII's religious position as consistently ‘Erasmian’. Bringing to the discussion not only a re-evaluation of much familiar evidence but also a considerable quantity of hitherto unknown or little-known material, it proposes instead that Henry's religious position, until the 1530s, sat squarely within the parameters of ‘traditional religion’ and that the subsequent changes in his attitudes to the cult of the saints, monasticism, and papal primacy were so significant as to be understood and described by Henry himself in terms of a veritable religious ‘conversion’. This conversion, which was very much sui generis, is not easily to be fitted within the confessional frameworks of other sixteenth-century religious movements (though it was by no means unaffected by them). It hinged upon Henry's new understanding of kingship as a supreme spiritual responsibility entrusted to kings by the Word of God, but long hidden from them by the machinations of the papacy. His own providential deliverance from blindness was, he believed, but the beginning of a more general spiritual enlightenment.

This article presents the first survey of the full range of diplomatic interactions between the Mughal Empire and the English and Dutch East India Companies (EIC and VOC) in the period 1608–1717. It proposes a typology of the six different modes of diplomacy practised by the EIC and VOC as a means to understand better the distinct nature of corporate diplomacy. Moving its focus beyond exceptional embassies, this article demonstrates that by far the most common forms of Company diplomatic activity consisted of low-profile petitioning at the imperial centre and ongoing political interactions with provincial and local power-holders. It draws on c. fifty distinct episodes to chart how Dutch and English diplomatic repertoires in South Asia took shape in response to local demands and conventions. Both Companies petitioned Mughal emperors in much the same way as Indian subjects did, and both relied on Mughal patrons to do so. Cast in the role of supplicants seeking imperial favour and protection, Company envoys presented themselves as obliging participants in the ceremonial performance of an asymmetrical relationship. By tying commercial privileges to expectations of submission and service, the imperial government proceeded to incorporate these foreign actors into a domestic political framework.

The paper considers reactions to William III's Declaration of reasons, the manifesto issued by the prince of Orange on the eve of his invasion of England in 1688. It questions recent historiography, which has argued for the importance of this document in William's success by claiming that it achieved a virtual hegemony of English political discourse in the period of the Glorious Revolution. The paper first shows that James II's supporters mounted an effective challenge to the Orange Declaration by reversing its claim that liberties were in danger under the existing regime. It then suggests that William lost control of his manifesto over the winter of 1688–9 by making moves to secure power and authority which were unadvertised in the document. Once this had happened, various groups opposed to Orange ambition were able to adopt the rhetoric of the Declaration and quote it back at the prince in attempts to block his advance. The paper concludes with the irony that the ubiquity of the Declaration in 1688 may have been a result of its failure as publicity for the Orange cause; and by suggesting that scholars should look in places other than the manifesto for an effective Williamite propaganda.

How and why did the civil wars begin? Were they the result of fortuitous circumstances – rebellion in Scotland and Ireland and financial crisis? Were they the product of an inexorable, inevitable slide which began at some indeterminate date in the 1620s (or indeed before)? Or does the answer lie somewhere between these two extremes?

The Elizabethan religious settlement was meant to secure the unity of England by means of religious uniformity. As a political compromise it brought eighty years of relative peace and prosperity, but as a religious compromise it failed to satisfy either Catholic or Puritan. The problem of enforcing the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity of 1559 was complicated by the lack of adequate administrative machinery. The delay in purging the commissions of the peace, the failure to promote sufficient zeal among the justices of the peace, coupled with the decline of episcopal power and disenchantment with the High Commission and the various diocesan ecclesiastical commissions, led the government in the late 1580s and early 1590s to issue special royal commissions to carefully selected magistrates for dealing with seminary priests and recusant affairs. Thus, the Elizabethan government's policy towards recusants at any given period of time was a reflection not only of the degree of tension in the international situation, but also of the need to devise effective ways of enforcing die penal laws.

From the perspective of the 1990s, scarcely an eyebrow would be raised by the news that in 1946 India complained internationally about South Africa's treatment of persons of Indian origin. It would be regarded as fully in keeping with the ethos – both domestic and international – of the age. Moreover, it would be seen as entirely appropriate that the complaint should have been lodged with the United Nations. For that body has not only become South Africa's scourge but has also played the leading role in the now-orthodox campaign against racism. Furthermore, if it were pointed out that this was, in fact, the very first occasion when anti-racist sentiments were given a significant international airing, the response might well be that the UN was set up to deal with just this kind of issue.

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.

This article investigates propaganda deployed in support of the Covenanting revolution in Scotland during the Bishops' Wars (1638–40). It attempts to broaden the category of ‘British’ history by focusing on discourse instead of high politics, and analyses printed tracts – complemented by select manuscript sources – to reconstruct the Covenanters' theoretical approach to creating an English public to support their cause. The novelty of the ‘explosion’ of print in England in the 1640s is now widely acknowledged, and numerous books and articles have argued about whether or not this constituted a public sphere. This article, however, presupposes a ‘space’ for public debate and focuses instead on the conceptual framework driving Covenanter appeals. It concludes that the Covenanters believed that rational debate in a public forum would expose truth, which would naturally persuade the English people to support their cause and, in turn, pressure the king into making the desired concessions. But this was not how the actual English public functioned: there was an important disparity between the theory of godly rational debate and the reality of a rather ‘wild’, competing, and self-interested plurality of publics.

Historians are only just beginning to take the study of what Georges Sorel called ‘la révolution dreyfusienne’ beyond the courtroom and the newspaper, and thus, despite the volume of literature devoted to ‘the Affair’, many of its main features as a socio-historical phenomenon have remained shrouded in the clouds of metaphysical drama. A prime example of diis conspiracy of silence is provided by die antisemitic riots of 1898. The historian Jules Isaac, himself the son of a Jewish army officer like Dreyfus, had reason to remember that year when, he recollected in old age,’ …la France semblait revenue au temps des guerres de religion; la possibilité d'une nouvelle Saint-Barthélémy - contre les Juifs et Protestants, bon gré mal gre associés dans la tourmente - n'était pas exclue’. However, if one turns to general histories of die period and of ‘ die Affair’, one finds litde or no mention of what was the main popular movement of the time in diis direction, indeed die high-point of active popular involvement, in the whole Dreyfus Affair: die riots of January and February 1898. From die administrative and police reports it is possible to redress die balance, and to establish how serious and how widespread diese riots really were, and to place diem in die wider perspective, not only of French antisemitism, but also of popular emeutes in general in nineteendi-century France. First it will be necessary to analyse die riots diemselves in some detail

This article analyses the reception and understanding of the Indian village council (panchayat) among East India Company officials, British politicians, and Indian intellectuals during the first third of the nineteenth century. One of the several ways in which the panchayat was imagined was as an institution analogous to the English jury. As such, the panchayat took on significant meaning, especially for those influenced by the Scottish Orientalist tradition and who were serving in India. The issue became especially salient during the 1820s and 1830s as the jury system was debated and reformed in England. In this context, there was a transnational interplay of both ideas and policies that shaped both Company rule in India as well as the first generation of Indian nationalists.

One of the standard points mentioned in discussions of the failure of Chartism is that it did not gain any strong support in London. The capital city, with a considerable part of the total population of the country, was very largely apathetic to Chartism, although we have little knowledge beyond this generalization. This contrasts strangely with the attitude of other capital cities during revolutionary movements (since Chartism, in the existing political atmosphere, had to have incipient revolution written into its programme if it were to succeed); Paris obviously played the formative part in 1789, as did St Petersburg in 1917, while most other European radical movements found considerable support among the discontented elements in capital cities. That Chartism did not gain similar success in London was of considerable importance for the movement since, although opposition to the six points was strong in the legislature, a mass following in the capital would have furthered the chances of the Chartists.

The granting of an extension to James Watt's patent for an improved steamengine (or fire-engine as it was then called) might be considered the most important single event in the Industrial Revolution. Its implications have been fully debated. Some have argued that without it Watt's steam engine might never have been perfected and that consequently the steam revolution might have been delayed; others have said that it proved a block to progress, and in particular hindered the work of Trevithick and others who appreciated the importance of high-pressure steam. Whichever view one takes of it, it is a crucial event in the history of steam power, and therefore it is important to understand fully the circumstances in which it came about, so that we can assess the motives of those who promoted the measure and those who opposed it. And when we consider that the opposition to it was led by Edmund Burke himself, an added interest is given to the matter, for we may expect to learn something of Burke's attitudes to monopolies and patents. Lastly, the material on which this paper is based has a further interest. It gives a detailed account of a parliamentary lobby in the later eighteenth century, giving the names of those who were approached, and allowing us to see the methods which were pursued by an eminent manufacturer, Matthew Boulton, and his partner, James Watt, in getting such a measure through Parliament. As is so often the case during the early years of the Industrial Revolution what appears at first sight to be a local affair proves to be a matter of national, even international importance, in its repercussions. The history of Birmingham becomes the history of the world.

In July 1905 Lord Kitchener, the Indian chief of General Staff, wrote at the krequest of the viceroy a memorandum entitled A note on the Military policy of India, which was in due course sent to England for consideration by the home government. Its plea was for a consistent policy with regard to the North-West Frontier. At the moment, Kitchener complained, this was ‘apt to change with every ministry and almost with every minister, while each incoming Viceroy probably develops a policy of his own’. The main danger facing India was uncompromisingly described as ‘the menacing advance of Russia towards our frontiers’.

In a letter to Erasmus dated 3 September 1516, Thomas More wrote: ‘I am sending you my “Nowhere”, which is nowhere well written’. More's use of the Latin word ‘nusquam’ in this sentence (not ‘Utopia’, as one might have expected) made explicit what would have been apparent to any reader of the book with a knowledge of Greek: that the island of Utopia which the character Raphael Hythloday describes is ‘nowhere’. The name ‘Utopia’, those readers would have known, was a compound of the Greek adverb ‘ou’, meaning ‘not’, with the noun ‘topos’, or ‘place’. The non-existence of Utopia operates throughout the work as a joke with at least two dimensions. On one level, the story Hythloday tells is ostensibly presented as fact, whereas humanist readers with a knowledge of Greek would have known it to be fiction. But additionally, Hythloday's argument (against the objections to communism voiced by ‘More’) that communal living really does work in Utopia is ironically undercut by the fact that Utopia is nowhere at all. Why More should choose to make this second joke is in a way the most fundamental question for the interpretation of Utopia, for if we do not understand why More thinks it is important that the commonwealth Hythloday describes is ‘nowhere’, we will not be able to understand what More is doing in the work as a whole.

On 3 December 1621 the House of Commons resolved to submit a petition to King James I, asking him for stricter enforcement of the laws against Catholic recusants, asking ‘that your Majesty would propose to yourself to manage this war with the best advantage, by a diversion or otherwise, as in your deep judgement shall be found fittest, and not to rest upon a war in these parts only, which will consume your treasure and discourage your people’, and that ‘our most noble prince may be timely and happily married to one of our own religion’.

On 9 February 1933 the Oxford Union debated and carried by 275 votes to 153 the motion ‘That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country’. After a few days this became a major news story, first in Britain then also in the world press: the British embassies in Madrid and Santiago cabled the Foreign Office in alarm at the appearance of the story in the Spanish and Chilean press. The motion was taken up also by student debating societies all over Britain and overseas: in the United States, for example, any pledge to take no part in war came to be known as the ‘Oxford pledge’ or the ‘Oxford oath’. Since the debate, which took place ten days after Hitler had become chancellor of Germany, appeared to contrast British liberal, pacifist effeteness with fascist martial virility it was seized on in Germany and Italy. The Liberal M.P. Robert Bernays told the house of commons how he had been asked about the debate later in 1933 by a prominent Nazi youth leader: ‘There was an ugly gleam in his eye when he said: “The fact is that you English are soft.”’ And on 7 July 1934 Alfred Zimmern, professor of international relations at Oxford, wrote from Geneva to the former Union president responsible for the debate: ‘I hope you do penance every night and every morning for that ill-starred Resolution. It is still going on sowing dragons’ teeth. If the Germans have to be knocked out a second time it will be partly your fault.

Many of the most important political changes of the nineteenth century have been studied exclusively from the standpoint of London. Clear-sighted contemporaries have been long aware of the consequent misrepresentation. ‘Londoners are the lapidaries of the nation’, wrote Holyoake, ‘they polish the diamond found in the counties, and sometimes if no one challenges them, they take credit for the jewel.’ Only too often no one has challenged them. The result has been not so much a failure to render credit where credit is due as a failure to understand the mainsprings of national political action. It is only when the local element has obtruded unmistakably, as in the story of Chartism, that it has been examined with care. Where it has not obtruded, historians have often been more willing to accept things as they seemed from the standpoint of the capital rather than to investigate them as they arose.

The working class's experience of the tax system is an important aspect of its relationship with the state. This article examines the nature of this connexion during the First World War and its aftermath when fiscal policy was subject to intense political pressure. Two themes are paramount, those of resistance and appropriation. From the point of view of governments the less tax collection encouraged class-based opposition the better. Because the level of tax payments depended on varied circumstances within social groups – caused by family size or patterns of consumption, for example – the lines of differentiation were more finely drawn than the contours of social class. Many tax payments affected the individual as a citizen within the political system rather than as a producer within the economy. The articulation of resentment about tax burdens with conflicts in the economy was not therefore automatic. However, when governments were closely involved in the running of the economy, as in the First World War, it was helpful to use the tax system as an instrument of social justice, so that efforts to generate a common purpose might not be impaired by resentment of the disproportionate gains of others. In these circumstances taxpayers might well be encouraged to see the tax system as a way of appropriating or limiting the wealth of other classes, in a way which did bring it into closer relationship with the economy.

Making peoples: a history of the New Zealanders from Polynesian settlement to the end of the nineteenth century. By James Belich. London: Penguin, 2001. Pp. 497. ISBN 0-14-100639-0. £9.99.

Paradise reforged: a history of the New Zealanders from the 1880s to the year 2000. By James Belich. London: Allen Lane, 2002. Pp. 606. ISBN 0-7139-9172-0. £25.00.

The Enlightenment and the origins of European Australia. By John Gascoigne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xviii+233. ISBN 0-521-80343-80. £45.00.

Australian ways of death: a social and cultural history, 1840–1918. By Pat Jalland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002. Pp. vi+378. ISBN 0-19-550754-1. £15.99.

White flour, white power: from rations to citizenship in central Australia. By Tim Rowse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xiii+255. ISBN 0-521-62457-6. £40.00.

The five books covered here might seem a random sample: antipodean oddments from the edge of a review editor's desk. Their subject matter – from ‘ways of death’ in Australia to rationing policies for indigenous Australians – is diverse, as are their approaches: a scholarly assessment of the influence of Enlightenment ideas in the Australian colonies through to a massive two-volume general history of New Zealand to 2000. Yet even in this eclectic mix there are common themes, reflecting current interests and models in the writing of history in both countries. For some time, Australia and New Zealand have been productively positioned in relation to European social change as ‘born modern’ experiments, or at least as colonies which forced or anticipated aspects of the modernity shaping metropolitan centres. There have been several phases of historiography advancing this thesis, each reflecting a desire on the part of historians ‘down under’ to relate their account to wider dynamics, or to incorporate models that redress or refute the ‘isolation’ of their history by exploring categories extending beyond the national chronicle. More recently, historians of post-colonialism have returned the interest. They have traced in the extension of colonialism many of the crucial factors shaping core elements of nineteenth-century European nationalism, even the concept of Europe itself. In complex patterns of interdependence within ‘empire’, these historians have also identified several themes of ‘modernity’: reflexive approaches to ‘self’ and identity; discursive matrices of liberal government; the application and testing of the Enlightenment project of ‘reason’ and the ‘disenchantment’ of scientific knowledge and classification.