To what extent has the recent war in Northern Ireland influenced Irish historiography? Examining the nomenclature, periodization, and the use of democracy and state legitimization as interpretative tools in the historicization of the Irish Civil War (1922–3), the influence of a southern nationalist ideology is apparent. A dominating southern nationalist interest represented the revolutionary political elite's realpolitik after 1920, though its pan-nationalist rhetoric obscured this. Ignoring southern nationalism as a cogent influence has led to the misrepresentation of nationalism as ethnically homogeneous in twentieth-century Ireland. Once this is identified, historiographical and methodological problems are illuminated, which may be demonstrated in historians' work on the revolutionary period (c. 1912–23). Following the northern crisis's emergence in the late 1960s, the Republic's Irish governments required a revised public history that could reconcile the state's violent and revolutionary origins with its counterinsurgency against militarist-republicanism. At the same time many historians adopted constitutional, later democratic, state formation narratives for the south at the expense of historical precision. This facilitated a broader state-centred and statist historiography, mirroring the Republic's desire to re-orientate its nationalism away from irredentism, toward the conscious accommodation of partition. Reconciliation of southern nationalist identities with its state represents a singular political achievement, as well as a concomitant historiographical problem.

At an International Historical Congress of some years ago, one speaker explained that, so long as Europe had possessed one Church and one learned language (the Latin), nationalism was suppressed. This dictum received both contradiction and support; but the occasion was unsuited for any but the most superficial discussion. Ever since, however, I have noted passages which seemed to bear upon this important question; and I print them here, with the minimum of comment, by way of assistance to other students who may find time and inclination to pursue the matter further. Professor Marcel Handelsman of Warsaw has surveyed the subject, in brief, with a refinement of philosophical analysis to which I make no pretence. I try to use the term nationalism consistently within my own rough limits, but without attempt at scientific definition. My main object is to present evidence for the reader's judgment, without disguising the direction in which I lean myself: evidence varying a good deal in cogency from case to case, but with variations which any careful reader can estimate. Only thus can one start any really fruitful discussion. The multiplicity of indications collected in this comparatively short time convinces me that these are no more than the merest fraction of that which might be revealed by a concentrated search; but even this fraction may be enough to give a general idea of the whole.

In January 2003 Enoch Powell's personal archive was opened to the public. The release shed new light on the nature of Powell's thought on immigration, and in particular, his reasons for making the so-called ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech of 1968. Historians have suggested that Powell's primary concern was a post-imperialist desire to sever all links with the New Commonwealth. However, papers written immediately after Powell's time in India (1943–6) reveal that his objections to immigration were established long before he abandoned his fierce love of empire in 1954. These objections were rooted in a seemingly liberal commitment to national homogeneity as a prerequisite for democracy. The imagery, reasoning, and political context of Powell's speeches in 1968 demonstrate a striking continuity with his ideas of 1946. Powell's example suggests that British attitudes to mass immigration may owe more to the experience of empire than to post-war changes in national identity.

Just over fifty years ago, Prime Minister Macmillan made an extensive tour of Africa, culminating in his ‘wind of change’ speech in Cape Town, 1960. This article traces Macmillan's progress through Africa with particular emphasis on his intervention in South African politics. It offers a novel reading of the ‘wind of change’ speech, arguing that the message was far more conciliatory with respect to white South African interests than is usually assumed. Pragmatism rather than principle was always the prime consideration. Far from being cowed by Macmillan's oratory or his message, Verwoerd stood up to Macmillan and, at least in the eyes of his supporters, gave as good as he got. The shock of the ‘wind of change’ speech was more evident in Britain and in British settler regions of Africa than in South Africa. Macmillan's advisers had an inflated view of the import of the speech and in many ways misread Verwoerd's brand of Afrikaner nationalism. One of the consequences of the speech was to embolden Verwoerd politically, and to prepare him for the declaration of republican status in 1961 and departure from the commonwealth.

This article discusses the meaning of material culture in early modern Italian convents. Although nuns were required to give up private property rights and embrace religious poverty, many of them brought into the convent a vast range of material objects and goods for their personal use. These goods could also be given away, exchanged, or lent to others within the monastic community and even outside it. By exploring the circulation of objects, money, and goods, we get an interesting picture of how female monastic institutions worked internally and interacted with the city. We also gain a better understanding of the role of objects in articulating religious discipline and regulating the networks of interpersonal relations within cloistered communities.

Ten years after German unification, this historiographical review discusses how the cascade of published material reflects on two questions vital for contemporary history on this subject: first, why and how did unification happen, and second, what kind of sources and evidence are used by authors to justify their particular interpretation of events? In answering these questions, this review will not only give an overview of published accounts – official, scholarly, and autobiographical – but go beyond the immediate confines of the 1990s to shed light on the question of why Chancellor Helmut Kohl was able to win a prize that had eluded all of his predecessors since Konrad Adenauer.

The article examines the intellectual and ideological debate about the notions of duelling, courtesy, and honour in the Jacobean anti-duelling campaign. Particular attention is paid to the two most important contributions to this campaign – Francis Bacon's The charge touching duells (1614) and A pvblication of his matiesedict, and severe censvre against priuate combats and combatants (1614), written by Henry Howard, the earl of Northampton. By placing these two treatises into their intellectual context of courtesy and duelling manuals, the article seeks to demonstrate their sharply contrasting responses to the problem of duelling. Northampton accepted the notions of courtesy, honour, and insult underlying the duelling theory, but still wanted to abolish duelling. His solution was therefore a court of honour which would solve all the disputes of honour between noblemen and gentlemen. Bacon, on the other hand, argued that the only efficient way of getting rid of duelling was to question the entire intellectual framework on which duelling rested. To accept the notions of honour, courtesy, and insult inherent in the duelling theory and to set up a court of honour, he insisted, was tantamount to encouraging duelling itself. In The charge touching duells Bacon was thus arguing as much against Northampton's plans to suppress duelling as against the theory of duelling itself.

When I had the pleasure of reviewing Nicholas von Maltzahn's study of Milton's History of Britain, I had nothing but praise for the scholarship he brought to the whole intellectual background of the work, and for his judicious placing of it in the Miltonic canon. His book gives an excellent account of the state of British historiography in the first half of the seventeenth century, and shows how Milton's essentially humanist and literary conception of what a history should be, and his exclusive interest in narrative sources, made him already out of date in his method at a time when Spelman and Selden were pioneering a recognizably modern form of historical scholarship. He carefully traces the development of Milton's ambition to write a great national history, explaining why his first conception of a verse epic, singing the heroic past, gave way to that of a lofty prose narrative that would culminate in a celebration of God's presence with his elect nation in the struggle for religious and civil liberty in his own time. He deals fully and learnedly with the influences upon the style and content of the History, from Sallust (Milton's favourite exemplar) and Tacítus through Bacon (possibly) to the preachers of the Fast Sermons before the Long Parliament. He is illuminating about the close association in Milton's mind between eloquence and virtue, and about the ways in which his beliefs about the operation of divine providence modified his predominantly classical approach to the writing of history. He is thoroughly informative about the textual history of the work, and especially about the fragment published in 1681 as Mr John Miltons Character of the Long Parliament, whose editor he convincingly identifies as the arch-Tory Roger L'Estrange.

The work of one member of the British intelligence mission in Russia was once described as ‘consist[ing] chiefly in passing little notes to other noodles of his calling all over the world to warn them of this or that innocent and bar their exit from or entry to all and sundry countries’. Others, even less charitable, characterized the intelligence mission and the war propaganda bureau as ‘joy rides’ and dismissed them entirely, discounting as worthless their efforts to promote closer understanding and coordination between Britain and her eastern ally.

Twenty years ago, the study of modern China in the west was heavily focused on rural China. It used the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party as its overarching narrative, and treated the communist victory of 1949 as a watershed. This review surveys several recent trends in the writing of Chinese history in the west which have challenged these models. Among the changes of emphasis in the field that are noted are: a new interest in China's place in global history, urban history, and the history of consumption; a rethinking of the significance of nationalism and imperialism; warfare as a vehicle of sociocultural change; and a reinterpretation of Chinese modernity that stresses the similarities, as well as the differences, between the Chinese Communist Party and its predecessors, the Nationalists, and also stresses continuities as well as changes across the ‘barrier’ date of 1949. The review highlights areas of interest to non-specialists in Chinese history, and concentrates on studies of the Republican period (1912–49) published since the 1990s, although it also covers work covering topics in the late imperial and early People's Republic periods.

Historians have examined in great detail the dramatic debate in American politics over the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles which culminated in the physical collapse of President Wilson and the defeat of his peace programme. The failure of Wilson to carry his programme through the United States senate represented also a distinct setback for the peacemaking strategies of the British government whose policies at the peace conference had been based in large measure on the hope that an enduring trans-Atlantic partnership could be established. The British government followed closely the American treaty debate, sending Viscount Grey, the former Liberal foreign secretary, as a special ambassador, and played a significant if unsuccessful role in the outcome of the drama. It is the intention of this article to examine the attitudes and role of the Lloyd George government through the latter part of 1919 and into 1920 with regard to the fate of the Treaty of Versailles in America, and in particular to reassess the part played by Viscount Grey. It is hoped to shed some new light on the dilemmas of foreign policy and defence strategy encountered at this time by Britain and the empire, as well as to elucidate certain aspects of the American struggle. Since the Covenant of the League of Nations lay at the heart of the American fight over the treaty, it is hoped also that new insight will be provided on the uncertain inauguration of the League.

This article reinterprets the post-Suez British role in the Middle East through a comparison of the military interventions in Jordan in 1958 and Kuwait in 1961. Moreover, it places these operations in the broader context of the debate about British decline. It is argued that in addition to the familiar constraints on British action imposed by limited resources and the changing international climate, the projection of power in the region proved to be a great test of nerve for British ministers and officials. Paradoxically, this proved to be true as much of the successful interventions in Jordan and Kuwait as of the earlier failure over Suez. Utilizing very recently released documents from British and American archives, the article aims to shed light on the dynamics of decline at the microcosmic level, in the belief that insights gleaned here may well be of value in revising macrocosmic theories of the process.

[This article has been inspired by Dr Stella Kramer's recent book, The English Craft Gilds (Columbia University Press, 1927), and is, in fact, an inquiry into it. In this, her second work on the subject, she has dealt with the last phase, from the middle of the sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth. Her material is drawn principally from the published records of towns and gilds, of which she has made so thorough an investigation that any one who has the temerity to follow in her steps will have an unprofitable task. To one who, some years ago, covered a fraction of the same ground with the same object in view and arrived at some tentative conclusions, the temptation to use Miss Kramer's exhaustive study to test and amplify those conclusions is irresistible.]

On 28 July 1540 Thomas Cromwell went to execution, and two days later Robert Barnes, Thomas Garret and William Jerome, leading protestant preachers and the minister's protégés, were burned at the stake.1 These reformers were sacrificed to implicate Cromwell in apostasy, but their deaths were more than judicial murder; they died for making a reality of the conservatives’ old fears that religious radicalism would engender social disorder. With the coming of the Reformation issues of faith for the first time deeply divided the people, and the rift went beyond the schism between orthodox and reformed alone. Many who witnessed the confusion thought that ‘the devyll reyneth over us nowe’ and believed that ‘alle thys devysyon comyth through that ffalse knave that heretyke Doctor Barnys and such other heretiks as he ys’.2 The faction struggles in court and council which dominated the last years of Henry VIII's reign produced the shifting policies of reaction or toleration towards reform, but while political intrigue determined the incidence of persecution and decided the victims the events of 1540 were to reveal that Protestantism was spreading independently, thwarting the restoration of Catholic orthodoxy, whatever the policy of government. The religious history of London was inextricably linked with the feuds of contending factions at court in the confused months of the spring and summer of 1540, not least because many of the protagonists and persecuted were Londoners themselves. The tensions witnessed in the capital between orthodox and reformed, and popular disturbance there, underlay all the machinations in high politics and influenced the outcome.

This article re-examines the resistance to literary modernism in interwar Britain from the angle of popular literary theory and practice. Drawing on the papers of some of the notable working-class writers of this period, it disputes Jonathan Rose's claim that a rejection of modernist ‘obscurantism’ was a response distinctive to working-class autodidacts. Moreover, many middle-class readers responded to modernism in the same terms that Rose takes to be peculiar to a working-class intelligentsia. Negative reactions to modernism are better explained as a response conditioned by a literary discourse in which plebeian autodidacts as well as middle-class readers participated. The article approaches this discourse via the aspiring authors who joined writing clubs in the interwar period. Because these people were at once fairly typical readers and writers, their ideas and practices disclose more about popular understandings of literature than debates in the national press or literary reviews do. Their ideas about what constituted good writing and their hostility to modernism were underpinned by a popular conception of literature that derived from English romanticism.

In one fundamental sense, a British post-war consensus certainly existed: repudiation and denigration of interwar governments and their leaders. Stanley Baldwin was the chief victim, as it became widely believed during the 1940s that he had ‘failed to rearm’ the nation in the 1930s. Examination of the history of Baldwin's reputation after his retirement – precisely why and how it collapsed – reveals a striking case of the contingent construction of historical interpretation. Partisan politics, legitimation of a new regime, a Churchillian bandwagon, self-exoneration, and selective recollection together reinforced hindsight and a wartime appetite for scapegoats to create a public myth, which despite manifest evidence to the contrary was accepted as historical ‘truth’ by historians and other intellectuals. The main indictment was accepted even by Baldwin's appointed biographer, who added a further layer of supposed psychological deficiencies. Attempts to establish an effective defence were long constrained by official secrecy and the force of Churchill's post-war prestige. Only during the 1960s did political distance and then the opening of government records lead to more balanced historical assessments; yet the myth had become so central to larger myths about the 1930s and 1940s that it persists in general belief.

After the execution of Charles I in 1649 a series of daring and desperate attempts were made on the lives of agents and ambassadors dispatched to continental Europe by the fledgling republic. This essay explores the evidence relating to these plots, and to the murders of Isaac Dorislaus and Anthony Ascham, in an attempt to show that the royalists responsible were not merely desperadoes seeking revenge for the murder of their king, but the employees and emissaries of prominent exiled courtiers. The complicity of Montrose, Cottington and Hyde in such conspiracy can be both documented and explained, in the context of the struggle for diplomatic recognition and financial assistance in the months of shock, outrage and uncertainty after the regicide. The concerns of diplomacy and high politics which lay behind these plots also helped to determine the reaction of European leaders, as it gradually became clear on whose side fortune smiled in Britain.