This review suggests that recent historiography on nationalism can help us to see that the English Civil War was, in part, a conflict about national identity and ethnic difference. It argues that, even before the war began, the supporters of the parliament were associated with a narrowly intolerant strain of Englishness, and that this helps to explain why the Celtic peoples of Wales and Cornwall rallied to the king. During 1642–4, parliament's close links with the Scots – together with the presence of many foreign mercenaries in the roundhead armies – prevented the identification of parliament's cause with that of England itself from becoming absolute. Following the creation of the New Model Army, however – an army from which ‘strangers’ of all sorts were deliberately excluded – relations between the Scots and parliament rapidly deteriorated, and it became possible for the parliamentarians to make an unequivocal appeal to English patriotic sentiment. The defeat of the king – and of the Welsh and Cornish troops who had done much to sustain his cause – was the result.

This review summarises the current state of knowledge and present trends in German historiography on the Third Reich. In Germany, assessment of the Nazi past has moved first from silence, and then from an emotionally charged engagement, to the more critical analyses of today. There has been a closer examination of the involvement of particular professional groups during the Nazi era, such as historians and lawyers. The ideological background of Hitler and the Nazi elite are being examined closely. Particular interest has also been shown in the ordinary aspects of living and coping in Hitler's Germany, the daily struggle and the moral dilemmas. An enormous interest in the German opposition against Hitler continues. In unified Germany, the memory of the struggle of the German resistance is kept alive in public consciousness as a positive line of continuity.

National identity, nationalism, patriotism, state formation, and their present-day policy implications now constitute one of the most vital areas of scholarship on British history. In no other period is the debate currently as focused as it is in the long eighteenth century, that crucially contested territory in which older assumptions about a fundamental transition between pre-modernity and modernity have now been called in doubt. This article offers an overview of recent work. It argues that much writing on these years has framed misleading models both of state formation and of national identity. It adds that this period is nevertheless a key one in revealing that the processes at work in sustaining collective identities in the British Isles did not originate with ‘nationalism’ in its historically correct meaning, and need not follow its trajectory.

The relationship between intellectual secularization and the writing of academic history has long been one of the major neglected themes in British historiography, and its unexamined presuppositions are explored here in relation to the religious history of the eighteenth century. A great deal of the history of eighteenth-century religion has been written from a confessional standpoint, and this has served further to marginalize discussion of the subject in a period of history concerning which secular interpretations continue to prevail. A reunion of the religious and the secular is a major desideratum in the writing of eighteenth-century history, and this applies not only to historians of religion but also, a fortiori, to political, social, and cultural historians. The perspectives offered by such historians are critically examined, and the need for them to take seriously the integral part of religious history in the broader history of the period is emphasized accordingly.

The ‘middle sort of people’ is a social group that has been the subject of increased historical research in the last decade. Many studies have been written, and many definitions offered of the group, its identity, and its membership. As a result, these overlapping groups and contrasting methods of definition have caused the nature and identity of the group to remain elusive. This study charts the evolution of the historiography of the ‘middle sort’, and the many attempts to produce positive and accurate definitions of the group. It suggests that the identity of the ‘middle sort’ may, in fact, be more complex than is allowed for by existing studies, with different identities being adopted according to social context. It concludes that while the term ‘middle sort of people’ is an appropriate contemporary collective term for use by historians, it is much more problematic as a description of an active, cohesive social group in the early modern period.

Recent work on the Enlightenment continues to bear out the importance of context in shaping both what is written and how it is read. In the case of the French Revolution, largely thanks to the work of Robert Darnton, studies have come to focus on how, if at all, different layers and styles of dissidence helped to bring down the French monarchy. But not all writing has, or need be suspected of, such an obvious or immediate outcome. This period, for instance, sees the birth of ‘philosophical’ history, as John Pocock and others have made us aware. Here again, contexts and individual experience shape what is studied and written, but it is clear that the project common to the best-selling work of, for instance, Gibbon, Hume and Robertson was to explain how civil society emerged and thrived. This inquiry, and what it says about the separate states and common principles of Europe then and now, is unfinished business; so, too, is determining what historical knowing is, and cannot be. What the eighteenth century undeniably saw, even from the slightly educated, was a growing appetite for understanding and for improvement: these have proved necessary, if not sufficient, conditions for modernity.

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.

Historians have generally accepted the notion that Hitler's war against France was planned and conducted as a Blitzkrieg from the very beginning. Recent research, however, has shown the fallacy of this assumption by firmly establishing that Hitler and his generals expected the war in the West to become a re-enactment of the First World War. This review puts the new findings in military history in the context of other recent studies on Nazi plans to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ after the surprisingly fast victory over France. It links Nazi war and extermination planning with Hitler's underlying ideology and strategy and looks more closely at the still controversial Madagascar plan. One of the questions discussed is why there were no plans to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ under the cover of the war against France, a war expected to last for years.

Australian public debate in the 1990s was dominated by issues surrounding the ‘impending’ republic. At the same time, Australian historiography experienced a return in the attention of historians to Australia's relations and ties with Great Britain, paralleling the increasing interest of Australians in severing the remaining constitutional links with the United Kingdom. Australian ‘Britishness’ has, unarguably, been a common theme in many contemporary histories. In subjects ranging from war, ‘dedominionization’, and republicanism, historians have noted with interest the challenges in history which have faced the imperial connection in Australia. This paper reviews the exploration of Britishness in recent historiography, and pays particular attention to a few key publications.

The arming of Europe and the making of the First World War. By David G. Herrmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. xiii+307. ISBN 0-691-03374-9. £29.50.

Armaments and the coming of war: Europe 1904–1914. By David Stevenson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Pp. xi+463. ISBN 0-19-820208-3. £48.00.

Authority, identity and the social history of the Great War. Edited by Frans Coetzee and Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee. Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995. Pp. xxii+362. ISBN 1-57181-017-X. £40.

Dismembering the male: men's bodies, Britain and the Great War. By Joanna Bourke. London: Reaktion Books, 1996. Pp. 336. ISBN 0-948462825. £19.95.

Passchendaele: the untold story. By Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996. Pp. xv+237. ISBN 0-300-066292-9. £19.95.

Battle tactics of the western front: the British army's art of attack, 1916–1918. By Paddy Griffith. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996 (paperback edition). Pp. xvi+286. ISBN 0-300-06663-5. No price given.

Government and the armed forces in Britain, 1856–1990. Edited by Paul Smith. London, Hambledon Press, 1996. Pp. xviii+324. ISBN 1-85285-144-9. £35.

Whether or not arms races cause wars was a historiographical preoccupation of the Cold War era. The issue was then of more than academic concern. Those opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons saw previous arms races as having destabilized the international system at best and as having led ineluctably to war at worst. Their critics countered that arms races possessed the capacity to increase terror and so promote more effective deterrence.

Intertextual war: Edmund Burke and the French Revolution in the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, and James Mackintosh. By Steven Blakemore. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1997. Pp. 256. ISBN 0-8386-3751-5. £32.

Radical expression: political language, ritual, and symbol in England, 1790–1850. By James Epstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp. xi+233. ISBN 0-19-506550-6. £30.

Tom Paine: a political life. By John Keane. London: Bloomsbury, 1996. Pp. xxii+644. ISBN 0-7475-2543-9. £8.99.

Gothic images of race in nineteenth-century Britain. By H. L. Malchow. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Pp. xii+335. ISBN 0-8047-2664-7. £35 (hb). ISBN 0-8047-2793-7. £12.95 (pb).

Popular contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834. By Charles Tilly. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Pp. xvii+476. ISBN 0-674-68980-1. £31.50.

Radical culture: discourse, resistance and surveillance, 1790–1820. By David Worrall. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. Pp. ix+236. ISBN 0-7450-0960-3. £40.

Most of these books are influenced by current philosophical or methodological concerns which might be labelled, according to taste, as poststructuralism, postmodernism, or the linguistic turn; but they are influenced to very varying degrees. At one end of the spectrum stands Tilly's substantial study, essentially modernist, rejecting the latest fashions. At the other stand the books by Blakemore and Malchow, their colours firmly nailed to the mast of deconstruction. Blakemore teaches in a department of English, and although Malchow's institutional affiliation is as an historian, his book is a hermeneutic of literary texts. The great majority of ‘postmodern’ analyses of texts from this period have come from the stable of literary studies, perhaps especially from scholars concerned, as Malchow is, with the construction of gender, that great growth area of the present time. None of these books subscribes in practice to a postmodern relativism, declaring itself to be merely a construction or representation of the past: all arrive at some kind of closure, explicitly or implicitly asserting the truth of their interpretations. Historians concerned to justify their subject to funding bodies may judge this to be prudent; nevertheless a greater degree of reflexivity, of self-doubt, would have been welcome in some instances, as we shall see.

Archives of the scientific revolution: the formation and exchange of ideas in seventeenth-century Europe. Edited by Michael Hunter. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 216. ISBN 0–8511–553–7. £45.00.

The peasantries of Europe from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Edited by Tom Scott. London: Longman, 1998. Pp. xi + 416. ISBN 0–582–10131-X. £19.99.

Civil society and fanaticism: conjoined histories. By Dominique Colas. Translated by Amy Jacobs. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Pp. xxx + 480. ISBN 0–8047–2736–8. £14.95.

The quest for compromise: peacemakers in Counter-Reformation Vienna. By Howard Louthan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi + 185. ISBN 0–531–58082-X. £35.00.

Each of the four volumes at hand examines a different yet vital aspect of European society between the late middle ages and the beginnings of industrialization. The field is far too diverse and the approaches too complex to expect a commonality among these works, excepting a shared temporal and geographic concentration. Still, the themes and subjects reveal some of the issues that have captured recent attention and show how scholars propose to go about exploring them. They suggest the interests of historians of early modern Europe, their distinctive perspectives, and varying methodologies. The collective reach extends from deciphering the papers and manuscripts left by participants in the scientific revolution to an exploration of the immense yet largely reticent peasant world, an attempt to establish the origins and trace the development of today's ongoing discussion over civil society and fanaticism, and finally a study of four peacemakers who urged religious moderation at the imperial court of Counter-Reformation Vienna. Put slightly differently, these studies raise fundamental questions about the sources upon which scholars depend, the nature and utility of historical models, and the relationship between contemporary concerns and our collective past, whether they be issues of civil society or irenic accommodation.

Winston Churchill: studies in statesmanship. Edited by R. A. C. Parker. London and Washington: Brassey's, 1995. Pp. xxi+259. ISBN 1-857-53151-5. £30.

Winston Churchill's last campaign: Britain and the Cold War, 1951–1985. By John W. Young. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. ISBN 0-198-20367-5. £45.

Churchill peacetime ministry, 1951–1955. By Henry Pelling. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1997. Pp. ix+216. ISBN 0-333-67709-9. £16.

Churchill as peacemaker. Edited by James W. Muller. Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Center and Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xii+344. ISBN 0-521-58314-4. £35.

Churchill and secret service. By David Stafford. London: John Murray, 1997. Pp. xiii+386. ISBN 0-719-55407-1. £25.

Churchill and Hitler, in victory and defeat. By John Strawson. London: Constable, 1997. Pp. xxxi+540. ISBN 0-094-75840-9. £20.

Over the course of the last decade, historians have set themselves the task of rescuing Churchill from the restrictive embalmment of hero worship. This has been no easy task. His 1930s campaign for rearmament and opposition to appeasement, his ‘finest hour’ in 1940, and his 1946 ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri, secured for him on both sides of the Atlantic an almost unparalleled relevance in the rhetoric of the following forty years' Cold War. To Western politicians of this period, his career offered pertinent ‘lessons’ – particularly the need to appear resolute in the face or threat of aggression. To this was added the fact that his magnificent command of English made him a rich quarry of quasi-prophetic quotes for an endless succession of political speeches and journalistic articles.

This review provides an overview and critique of recent scholarship on German National Socialism. It focuses on four problems through which historians have recently challenged the Marxist scholarship that played a significant role in shaping debates on Nazism in the sixties and seventies : the composition of the Nazi electorate, the Nazi ‘racial state’, Nazi social policy, and the Holocaust. Although acknowledging the importance of such themes in recent work as the Nazi regime's racism, anti-Semitism, and modernity, the review maintains that the key issue in Marxist scholarship, the polarization between left and right during the interwar period in Europe, provides the essential context for understanding the Nazi regime's ideological extremes and racial practices. To make its case, it explores four examples of the left's influence, the German left's relative cohesion as political and social movements, its place in the discourse of ‘racial hygiene’, its role in debates on the ‘standard of living’, and finally, its relevance to Nazi expansionism and the ‘Final Solution’.

L'ordine è già stato eseguito: Roma, le Fosse Ardeatine, la memoria. By Alessandro Portelli. Rome: Donzelli, 1999. Pp. vii+448. ISBN 88-7989-457-9. L.50.000.

The battle of Valle Giulia: oral history and the art of dialogue. By A. Portelli. Wisconsin: Wisconsin: University Press, 1997. Pp. xx+354. ISBN 0-299-15374-6. $21.95. [Inc. ‘The massacre at Civitella Val di Chiana (Tuscany, June 29, 1944): Myth and politics, mourning and common sense’, in The Battle of Valle Giulia, by A. Portelli, pp. 140–60.]

Operazione Via Rasella: verità e menzogna: i protagonisti raccontano. By Rosario Bentivegna (in collaboration with Cesare De Simone). Rome: Riuniti, 1996. Pp. 147. ISBN 88-359-4171-7. L.6.900.

La memoria divisa. By Giovanni Contini. Milan: Rizzoli, 1997. Pp. 275. ISBN 88-17-33027-2. L.30.000.

Anatomia di un massacro: controversia sopra una strage tedesca. By Paolo Pezzino. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997. Pp. 243. ISBN 88-15-06054-5. L.26.000.

Processo Priebke: Le testimonianze, il memoriale. Edited by Cinzia Dal Maso. Rome: Il Mondo, 3 edn., 1996. Pp. 220. ISBN 88-8175-010-4. L.18.000.

Morte a Roma: il massacro delle Fosse Ardeatine. Nuova edizione aggiornata. By Robert Katz. Rome: Riuniti, 1996. Pp. xxiv+257. ISBN 88-359-4057-5. L.6.500.

Dossier Priebke. By Robert Katz. Milan: Rizzoli, 1996. Pp. 176. ISBN 88-17-84503-5. L.24.000.

Le radici e le ali: partigiani a Roma (and video). By Fabio Grimaldi et al. Rome: Manifestolibri, 1996. Pp. 160. ISBN 88-7285-098-3. L.29.900.

Via Rasella: leggenda e realtà della resistenza a Roma. By Aurelio Lepre. Bari: Laterza, 1996. Pp. 87. ISBN 88-420-5026-1. L.9.000.

Via Rasella, cinquant'anni di menzogne. By Pierangelo Maurizio. Rome: Maurizio edizioni, 1996. Pp. 123. L.20.000.

Storia e memoria di un massacro ordinario. Edited by Leonardo Paggi. Rome: Manifestolibri, 1996. Pp. 165. ISBN 88-7285-103-3. L.14.000.

Il linciaggio di Carretta: Roma 1944: violenza politica e ordinaria violenza. By Gabriele Ranzato. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1997. Pp. 254. ISBN 88-428-0418-5. L.25.000.

I grandi processi. 2. Herbert Kappler. Edited by Wladimiro Settimelli. Rome: L'Unità, 1994. Pp. 191. Supplement with L'Unità.

‘Identity history is not enough’. By Eric Hobsbawm in idem, On history. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997, pp. 266–77. ISBN 0-297-81915-1. £20.

The facts: what happened? On 23 March 1944, a column of 156 police troops from the Bolzen regiment attached to the German army were marching through the centre of occupied Rome. Between 15.45 and 15.50 a bomb exploded in the narrow street of Via Rasella killing thirty military policemen (three more were to die later) as well as at least two Italian civilians. The bomb had been placed by an official armed Gap partisan unit which had been active in Rome for some months. The German troops responded by firing indiscriminately into the houses on the street and rounding up the residents of Via Rasella. The next day, 335 people were taken to the Fosse Ardeatine Caves just outside the city and shot over a period of four and a half hours.The best account of the massacre remains that of Robert Katz, Death in Rome (London, 1967), Morte a Roma (Rome, 1996). The victims had been taken from various official and unofficial prisons, Via Rasella, and other areas. Only three had already been condemned to death (for partisan activity), 154 were under investigation by the Germany military police, and seventy-five were in custody purely because they were Jewish. Other victims were taken from Regina Coeli (Rome's prison) or selected from those picked up around Via Rasella. The next day (25 March) a German army poster appeared across Rome and in newspapers. It accused ‘criminal elements’ of planting the bomb and added that ‘The German Command … has ordered that for every German killed ten communist-Badoglian criminals will be shot. This order has already been carried out.’