In 1830 the French Bourbon monarchy fell in the midst of a.political crisis that had developed rapidly between 1827 and 1830 after the Restoration settlement had operated, apparently harmoniously, for fifteen years. The two general elections of 1827 and 1830 resulted in the very swift growth of a liberal majority in parliament, and Charles X, unwilling to defer entirely to the majority in the choice of his ministers and unable, because of custom established since 1814, to defy that majority, attempted to alter the constitution by decree in 1830. The ‘three glorious revolutionary days’ led to the replacement of Charles by his cousin Louis-Philippe. In the last election of Louis XVIII's reign in 1824 only 40 liberals were elected in the whole of France. In 1827 about 180 were successful, making their representation roughly equal to that of the supporters of the Villèle government, with between 60 and 80 ultra-royalists to their right. In by-elections in 1828 and 1829 the liberals won 50 of the 75 seats fought. The election of 1830 confirmed the growth of support for the liberals with 202 of the 221 who voted the motion of no-confidence in the government being re-elected, and a total of 270 opponents, whereas the Polignac government had a mere 145 adherents. This dramatic swing in the elections of Charles X's reign was national in scale but was most complete in northern and eastern France. In 1829 four of the five most liberal departments in terms of parliamentary representation were in the east.

This article studies the political significance of the schism that occurred at Liverpool's single professional football club in 1892 and which led to the incorporation of two clubs, Everton FC and Liverpool FC. Significantly, the management and direction of professional football had become bound up with community politics and identity at a time of important change in municipal politics when the tories' ascendancy faced a Liberal challenge partly predicated on the success of a virulent moral crusade over the influence of alcohol, social decay, and corruption in local government. At its simplest, the dispute at the club concerned allegations of commercial exploitation by the largest financial stakeholder. More fundamentally, rival factions were championing competing models for the role they believed a successful football club should be performing within the community which, in turn, embraced attempts by the political parties to engage male, working-class voters. Interestingly, the schism was within Protestant ranks for, despite the prominence often assigned to the role of sectarianism in Liverpool politics, differences between Catholics and Protestants played very little part in the dispute. This case study highlights the complexity of Liverpool political activities and alliances and reveals the importance of a multi-layered interplay of local and national issues.

This is an article highlighting the limitations of Lord Salisbury as foreign secretary in an age when foreign policy was for the first time taking on a truly global character, and yet its practitioners still possessed a rather parochial, almost exclusively European experience, and distrusted ‘experts’. It was of course the late nineteenth-century spread of European imperialism that first called for such global policy making, and thus most of this Europe-dominated world was still for the time being quite susceptible to a Eurocentric approach.

But if any area was the exception it was eastern Asia, in due course to be mainly responsible for decline of Western imperial world hegemony. And in the vanguard of this counter-challenge was to be Japan, a country with which Salisbury personally was to find himself all at sea. By contrast, Ernest Satow, more than any other figure of his time, found the key to Japan, and it is a sign of how poorly general Western understanding of that country has progressed since then that his voluminous diaries and papers sit in the Public Record Office, still largely untouched by researchers.

Recent interest in the early-modern British composite state has neglected Hanover, despite evidence of frequent and informal co-operation between the countries in foreign affairs. This article explores one aspect of diplomacy with particular import for the British–Hanoverian union, British policy in North Africa, and finds a greater degree of integration in trade policy than has been hitherto recognized. Britain's government came to recognize and treat Hanoverians in Morocco as British subjects during the eighteenth century, a policy which was expanded to the rest of North Africa and elsewhere after the acquisition of the maritime state of East Friesland at the Congress of Vienna increased the Hanoverian government's commercial responsibilities beyond its ability to cope. British policy did not reflect a consensus, and it was criticized by some who regarded Hanover as an entirely foreign state beyond the purview of the British government. But British sponsorship of Hanoverian trade prevailed over such dissent until the union's end, so that Britain's experience of composite statehood lasted until 1837.

Only at four by-elections in twentieth-century British history has there been a turnover of more than 18,000 votes: at Dudley in 1968, at Orpington in 1962, at East Fulham in 1933 and at Dartford in 1920. Dartford and Orpington have been commented upon as landmarks in the histories of the Labour and Liberal Parties respectively, and Dudley is likely to be seen as the outstanding manifestation of discontent with the economic policies of the Labour Government in the 1960s. East Fulham, however, is the most notorious of all the “boilover’ by-elections. Taking place in a decade troubled by depression and fear of war, it resulted in a National Government majority of 14,521 votes being transformed into a Labour Party majority of 4,840, on a massive swing of 26–5 per cent.

The history of reading is a comparatively recent field. Work to date has been diverse both in period and methodology, ranging from case studies of individuals to statistical analyses of populations. This diversity means that it can be hard to discern either a broadly agreed narrative of reading practices or a clear set of debates. However, a range of scholars have emphasized contrasts between intensive and extensive reading, oral and silent reading, utilitarian and recreational reading, and public and private reading. These contrasts have been aligned with historical periods, with oral reading, for example, being associated with early modern reading in contrast to later periods. This article analyses the reading practices of Samuel Pepys and concludes that his example supports a contrast between a more intensive, oral, utilitarian, and public reading in the seventeenth century and that of later periods. Pepys's reading practices are also shown to have profound effects on his interpretation of texts. He sees texts of all genres as scripts to be performed by particular individuals, and judges them according to their suitability for this performance in a specific context.

While recent research in the English context on the so-called ‘economy of makeshifts’ has demonstrated the importance of alternative welfare options outside of the poor law, less work has been conducted on the situation in larger towns and cities. This article seeks to remedy this imbalance by examining the different welfare systems available in one city, Oxford, during the early nineteenth century. Poor law provision in the city, while extensive, was significantly less per capita than in rural parts of Oxfordshire. There was a high degree of charitable provision, not only from the continued survival of endowed charity, but also from the creation of newer subscription charities. The contribution made by charity to medical provision for the poor was especially significant, as was the role of emergency subscriptions in alleviating short-term economic and other crises. With such a varied range of assistance, traditional assumptions concerning the importance of the poor law in urban areas may require revision, with implications not only for the scale and measurement of poverty, but also for the ways in which both poor and wealthy alike managed and negotiated the supply of welfare.

It is well known that the Tudor monarchs exerted highly effective control over the financial resources of the English Church, particularly in the years after the Henrician Reformation. So marked a feature of the sixteenth century were the demands which the Crown, followed by the rest of the leading laity, made upon the Church in order to gain easy profit, that the period has on occasions been characterized as the ‘ age of plunder ’ The dissolution of the monasteries, and its economic and social consequences, have long been the subject of scholarly attention and debate. The fortunes of the secular church, in contrast, have roused relatively little interest, except as a background to the Laudian revival. This is, of course, in part because the crisis which the parochial clergy, cathedral chapters and bishops, experienced, was less dramatic than that of the monks and chantry priests, and, perhaps partly because demands upon the secular church were often for taxation rather than for outright gifts of lands. None of the Tudors showed the slightest inclination to disturb the fundamental tithe relationship within the parishes, and there were very few, even among the most ardent advocates of reform, who spoke openly for the old Lollard concept of making tithe dependent upon the quality of the incumbent.

Debates over billeting and martial law arose in the parliament of 1628 in conjunction with such other grievances as the forced loan and discretionary imprisonment employed by royal servants from 1626 onward to keep alive the war effort against the monarchs of Spain and France. Both houses dealt with billeting rather quickly, the Lords by resolving a dispute among magistrates and military officers in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and the Commons by hearing general and particular complaints from civilians, expelling a member who signed an order for billeting, and petitioning the king. Attacks upon the employment of military law internally when a state of war did not exist in England originated in the Commons, reawakened fears over the perceived threat of Roman or civil law superiority to the common law, and set off fierce debates in which royal servants and civil lawyers supported and leading common lawyers denounced as illegal the commissions of martial law issued by the privy council. Underlying these debates, as with those over discretionary imprisonment, were conflicting interpretations of England's ancient constitution with practical consequences for the governance of the realm.

This article revisits the controversy surrounding the protection that Britain accorded the high commission territories on the advent of South African unification in 1910. Instead of incorporating these regions into the new Union from the start, the imperial government retained responsibility for them and further issued a schedule stipulating the terms on which transfer could take place later. The historiographical controversy centres around the respective roles of the high commissioner, the Liberal government, and the African inhabitants of these regions in formulating Britain's policy on this question. The present author agrees with Ronald Hyam that London made the decision to withhold the areas from the Union and that this decision has proved of critical importance to the welfare of the people concerned. This article, however, emphasizes that in the context of 1909 the question of transfer did not appear to possess the importance that it later took on, for all statesmen assumed that, sooner or later, the Territories would be transferred. What seemed more important at the time was the schedule governing transfer. This was primarily the work of the high commissioner – Lord Selborne. Though not without a trace of old-fashioned paternalism, his proposals display a modern enthusiasm for bureaucratic state building.

During the first half of the French Third Republic, before 1914, certain regions of France established themselves as ‘red’, areas where the extreme left of the political spectrum could rely on strong and regular popular support. One of the outstanding features of this geographical ‘partition’ of French politics was the extent to which the ‘red’ areas were located in the countryside, notably in the departments of small peasant property in the south. Radicals, socialists and latterly communists have all benefited from this fact of French political life, consistently carrying at elections departments such as the Creuse, the Haute Vienne, the Allier, Gard, etc. Contemporaries and historians alike have observed this phenomenon with some surprise, and we are now witnessing a concerted effort by French historians and political scientists to find convincing explanations for it. This article is intended as a contribution to the continuing debate.

The first object of this article is to present some findings from an analysis of criminal activity in an early modern society, as measured primarily through various records of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature, Court of Assize, and General Jail Delivery (the Assizes) from its creation in 1692 to the eve of the American Revolution. Since the amount of serious criminal behaviour revealed by this evidence seems small, the article will then seek to identify the most important components of the system of social control over criminality evidently at work in provincial Massachusetts. These include a conscious effort to maintain a homogeneous population, a pattern of collective settlement in townships, an effective system of prosecuting serious breaches of the criminal law, the commitment of elite groups in town, church, county, and province to law and order, and the role of the family in teaching and assuring appropriate behaviour.

Among the many apparent paradoxes of Jean Bodin's personality one of the most striking was the sudden transformation of the defender of royal sovereignty and religious toleration into the apologist of the rebelling Catholic League at Laon in 1589. Throughout the middle period of the Wars of Religion (1572–84) Bodin had been attached to the parties opposing the Guise and the Catholic League; he had been active first in the royalist party of Henri III and subsequently he rose to prominence in the retinue of the king's brother, the politique duke of Alençon. After the duke's death in 1584 Bodin seems to have been attached loosely to Henri of Navarre, supporting (so it seems) his claim to the French throne and earning through his services to Navarre the promise of a reward in 1587. Yet despite this royalist and politique history Bodin in March 1589 to all appearances threw overboard his old loyalties and went over to public support of the League. In so doing he appears at first sight to have repudiated political, religious and jurisprudential convictions of long standing. The League demanded that the king of France be Catholic whereas Bodin had never regarded a religious test as a fundamental law of the French crown; the League demanded sectarian religious war of the kind which the République had proscribed; the League abhorred the principle of religious toleration advocated in the République; the League overruled the juristic right to the throne of Henri of Navarre which Bodin had justified as late as 1586. What motives could conceivably have driven Bodin to commit this act of apostasy (if such it really be)? The answer is of the greatest significance for an understanding of Bodin's mind not only in his later years but from his youth onwards. For Bodin's change from politique to ligueur is but one of the several conversions which punctuate his life and the details of this particular alteration may illuminate his personality and thought in general.

Christian ideals of manliness were articulated by writers across the religious spectrum throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At their heart was the shared ideal of the imitation of Christ, an all-encompassing Christian ideal of personhood. Whilst non-partisanship was itself an important ideal, theological differences and disagreements over the strictness of ideals led to accusations that some Christians, attacked as ‘moralists’ or ‘enthusiasts’, undermined or neglected ideals of manliness. At the same time, there were attempts to associate Christian ideals of manliness exclusively with the emerging ‘Evangelical’ party. In the historiography of masculinity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, Christian ideals have often been marginalized, and, when considered, they have tended to be misconstrued by the adoption of church-party approaches. This review offers a detailed critique of Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall's account of Evangelical ideals of manliness in Family fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850 (1987; rev. edn, 2002). Their notion of distinctive ‘Evangelical’ ideals of manliness does not withstand scrutiny, and the key concepts associated with them, including ‘domesticity’, ‘the calling’, ‘the world’, ‘public’, and ‘private’, demand revision. At the same time, they gave insufficient consideration to ‘solitude’ and ‘charity’.

This essay examines the relative power of the Rhodian and Ottoman fleets in the first decades of the sixteenth century, taking as its context the commercial and diplomatic relations of the eastern Levantine states. After the Aegean wars of 1499–1503 Rhodes failed to mobilize a Christian alliance against the Ottomans. Nor did the rise of Ismail Safavi in Iran provide the hoped for relief from Ottoman expansion. While the Ottoman state was preoccupied with the succession struggle for Bayezid's throne and with plans to extend its hegemony to the Indian Ocean, Rhodes was fighting for survival. Although the development of the Ottoman fleet provoked great fear in Rhodes, Venice and the Mamluk kingdom, Ottoman naval power until the conquest of Cairo in 151J was directed primarily to defensive and transport activities. Further the Ottoman fleet provided security against corsairs for merchant shipping. By supporting the corsair activities of Order members, Rhodes alienated the Mamluk state, Venice and France (allpotential allies in an anti-Ottoman coalition) but refrained from directly challenging the Ottoman navy. Naval engagements during this period cannot be understood without taking into consideration the prolonged conditions of grain shortage in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. Both aggressive and defensive measures taken by the Ottoman, Venetian and Rhodian fleets Were ordinarily related to the competition for foodstuffs during this period rather than the conquest of territory or the establishment of commercial dominance (as in the Indian Ocean).

The tax strategy of the Labour governments of 1964–70 was intended to be both radical and reforming. That is, it had to fulfil the demands generated by the Labour movement as well as address issues of tax reform which were less closely tied to party politics. This article assesses Labour's ability to do this by paying particular attention to the contrasting budgets of 1965 and 1966. It examines the ideas of Nicholas Kaldor and the interests of the trade unions as two of the forces which shaped tax policy. While recognizing the difficulty of introducing new taxes, the article none the less sees much that was traditional in Labour's approach and offers a pessimistic view of the capacity of the party to change its outlook in the 1960s.

Much recent historiography has adopted a revisionist approach to Habsburg policy in restoration Italy, jettisoning the ‘black legend’ which long surrounded Austrian rule of Lombardy-Venetia. Nevertheless the Habsburg police still tend to be portrayed as essentially repressive, constantly preoccupied with the threat of revolution. This case study of the police in the Venetian provinces during the reign of Francis I challenges such a view. It looks first at the problem of establishing forces of law and order in the aftermath of Napoleonic rule, demonstrating how under-funding conservatism and a desire for uniformity with the rest of the empire meant that the Venetian constabulary was often ill-suitedfor the prevention of crime. Then follows an examination of the part played by the police in the administrative machine. This emphasises a number of roles performed by higher-ranking police officials and the secret police, and suggests their major concerns were not merely with the threat of revolution, but with gathering information essential for efficient government, and with maintaining a watchful eye over other branches of the bureaucracy. These in turn contributed considerably to the efficiency of Habsburg rule and the remarkable political passivity of the Venetian provinces in this era.