Although the field of peasant and rural studies has done much to redeem the reputation of peasants in general, historians generally continue to consider the Italian rural population in the early nineteenth century largely extraneous to the story of national unification. However, police reports, court records, and chroniclers from Bologna provide descriptions of collective action that suggest a complex pattern of interaction with both local authorities and the shifting political context. While it remains true that with few exceptions rural communities had little to do with the Risorgimento directly, already during the Revolutionary and Restoration eras they engaged in collective action that reflected independent initiative in engaging with various types of authority rather than political ignorance or blind adherence to religion.

By 1939 expectations in France of a major colonial contribution to the impending war effort were high. The idea of le salut par l'empire, literally ‘salvation by the empire’, even gained some currency among ministers, officials, and the wider public. This article examines the nature of the economic and military demands imposed on France's major overseas territories in the immediate pre-war years, focusing on the two pre-eminent colonial groupings of the empire: French North Africa and the Indochina federation. It suggests that colonial economies and working populations were poorly placed to meet French expectations of them. The colonies were severely affected by the economic depression of the early 1930s and slower to recover than metropolitan France. Structural economic difficulties imposed limits on the mobilization of colonial resources, a problem made appreciably worse by the earlier disagreements among ministers, colonial officials, and business leaders over the merits of colonial industrialization. The reversal of planned social and constitutional reforms after 1936 added to the political volatility and social divisions of colonial societies as war drew near.

In 1856 the British government held an international competition for the design of public offices to be located near Whitehall and the houses of parliament. Comprising a Foreign Office and War Office, the project was radically altered in 1858 when the War Office component was abandoned and replaced with a new India Office. The controversy that surrounded this competition and its aftermath has attracted the attention of scholars for decades, not least for its importance to the history of Victorian architecture. The current study seeks a wider interpretation of this project by examining the way it became a conflict over ideas concerning British identity and nationhood. It is argued that, at a time when Britain had reached the relative height of its international power, these buildings were seen as a means of not only improving London's urban environment but also celebrating its unrivalled political and economic status. The India Office, often neglected by historians, was significant in this regard, symbolizing the reach and authority of the British empire. Here the Foreign and India Office are reconsidered for what they reveal about British national/imperial self-perception and its representation in architecture during the mid-Victorian period.

This article explores some of the tensions and interaction between two rival conceptions of the relationship between citizenship and patriotism in twentieth-century England. The first was widespread among the intellectual elite and greatly qualified the role of patriotism in sustaining a higher ideal of citizenship. The second was generally the preserve of popular writers and activists who conceived citizenship in terms of patriotic attachment to the English and English-British nation. However, the article maintains that the Edwardian intellectual elite often assumed an homogeneous national culture as the basis of successful citizenship, both local and international. In this regard, despite subjection to increasing strain, continuity as much as change is apparent in conceptions of citizenship up to and including the interventions of Enoch Powell in the debate over mass immigration. Subsequent attempts to ground citizenship in difference rather than sameness have greatly intensified the tension with a more persistent culture of patriotism.

This article examines the ‘republicanization’ of the Aveyron under the Third Republic, exploring issues of the practice and meaning of politics in this rural département. I look at the impact of the Republic's efforts to secularize education and ask on what grounds a département that emphatically rejected the secular/anti-clerical programme of the Republic could nonetheless eventually vote republican. This opens up questions of peasant understandings of politics. In particular I refer to the work of P. M. Jones who has written on this area, attributing republican success to the material benefits offered by the ‘milch-cow state’ and forceful administrative intervention. I argue that whilst the action of the Republic was significant, the success of the republicans rested on more than their ability to deliver local services. Republican politics in the Aveyron succeeded in redefining republicanism, arriving at an alternative conception of the Republic that was acceptable to the strongly Catholic and politicized electorate. We need to move away from any ideas of a single opportunist republicanism to realize that there were multiple conceptions of the Republic and a range of local republicanisms forged in relation to the circumstances of the individual French peripheries.

This article explores the middle-class response to life under the early Communist state in Hungary. It is based on an oral history of the Budapest bourgeoisie, and challenges some of the dominant indigenous representations of the central European middle class as persecuted victims who were forced into ‘internal exile’ by the Stalinist state. Despite being officially discriminated against as ‘former exploiters’, large numbers achieved educational and professional success. Their skills were increasingly needed in the rapid modernization of the 1950s, and the state provided them with semi-official opportunities to remake themselves into acceptable Communist citizens. Middle-class testimony revealed how individuals constructed politically appropriate public personas to ensure their own upward mobility; they hid aspects of their pasts, created ‘class conscious’ autobiographies, and learnt how to demonstrate sufficient political loyalty. The ways in which individuals dealt with integrating into a system which officially sought to exclude them and which many disliked ideologically is then examined. In order to ‘cope with success’, respondents in this project invented new stories about themselves to justify the compromises they had made to ensure their achievements. These narratives are analysed as evidence of specifically Communist middle-class identities.

The popular movement for parliamentary reform after 1830 managed to sustain its campaign for over eighteen months. The popular movement itself has largely been studied at a local level, and undoubtedly local contexts were influential in conditioning responses to reform. Reformers, however, predominantly represented themselves as patriots involved in a pan-British struggle, and this was a key factor in sustaining the mobilization. This article explores the reform movement on its own terms in one ‘national’ context, that of Scotland. If the immediate political context of reform was a spur to unity, the languages and strategies of reformers provided the real glue. Scottish reformers represented themselves as patriots involved in a ‘national movement’ and this article will analyse how the reform movement could act as a solvent for apparently conflicting aspects of Scottish and British national identities. It will argue that reformers deployed a language of ‘unionist-nationalism’ – which coupled demands for greater access to the British constitution with appeals to popular understandings of Scottish history – to call for reform, mobilize support, and maintain the unity of the movement.

It is clear that a strand of anti-Stalinism had firmly entered the political discourse of British Labour and the Left by the late 1940s. This was largely a response to mounting Cold War tension and is rightly seen to contrast with their earlier broad support for the Soviet experiment. This article adds to this picture by arguing that anti-Stalinism was first adumbrated in the late 1930s in reaction to the Stalinist purges. Whereas previous accounts have given the impression that the Labour party and the wider Left were largely uninterested in the purges, this article shows instead that they provoked sharp criticisms of Stalin from across the range of Labour and Left opinion. Moreover, it also demonstrates that while certain figures and groupings did choose not to discuss the purges publicly, this was not necessarily because of a lack of interest or knowledge. For the Left the domestic political necessities of supporting the united front meant that, at least temporarily, their real views had to be concealed. More generally, the international pressure of endorsing the Soviet Union as an ally against international fascism inhibited an even more forthright condemnation of Stalin.

For most of the Second World War, German and Italian agents were actively engaged in a variety of intelligence gathering exercises in southern Africa. The hub of this activity was Lourenço Marques, the colonial capital of Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique). One of the key tasks of Axis agents was to make links with Nazi sympathizers and the radical right in South Africa, promote dissent, and destabilize the imperial war effort in the dominion. Using British, American, and South African archival sources, this article outlines German espionage activities and British counter-intelligence operations orchestrated by MI5, MI6, and the Special Operations Executive between 1939 and 1944. The article, which is part of a larger study, examines three broad themes. First, it explores Pretoria's creation of a humble military intelligence apparatus in wartime South Africa. Secondly, it examines the establishment of several British liaison and intelligence-gathering agencies that operated in southern Africa for most of the war. Finally, it assesses the working relationship between the South African and British agencies, the tensions that arose, and the competing interests that emerged between the two allies as they sought to contain the Axis-inspired threat from within.

This article investigates the attempt by Russian theatre people to ‘professionalize’ their vocation during the late tsarist period. It argues that theatrical professionalization differed from standard paradigms because fundamentally it was designed to address material impoverishment, rather than to protect existing occupational privileges. Theatre people believed that ‘professional’ status would defend them from the effects of the burgeoning commercial entertainment market. Thus they represented the gradual ‘democratization’ of the professional ideal, its diffusion amongst occupational groups not traditionally classified as ‘professions’. From 1894, a national regulatory association, the Russian Theatre Society, represented theatre people's interests and persuaded the government to subsidize its activities. Yet the boundaries between state involvement and self-regulation were never clearly defined, creating an underlying tension within the Society about the extent of its relations with the state, a problem that was exposed during the 1905 revolution.

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.

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.

This article examines the role of the British popular press in the campaign against venereal diseases during the Second World War. Concern about the rapidly rising incidence of syphilis and gonorrhoea prompted the Ministry of Health to ask the press to carry a series of informative advertisements about VD, but the Newspaper Proprietors' Association refused to publish them until they had been made less explicit. A major controversy erupted in Fleet Street as the two most popular dailies, the Mirror and the Express, took opposing views about the suitability of ‘family newspapers’ educating the public about sexual health. While the Express refused to print even the edited VD advertisements, the Mirror broke away from the popular press's tradition of evasiveness on this issue and discussed the problem in unusual detail. The Mirror's bold approach won widespread public support, with investigations by Mass-Observation and the Wartime Social Survey finding that information about VD was, in general, gratefully received by a public hungry for more knowledge about sex. Although many editors continued to treat the subject very cautiously, the article argues that the campaigns run by the Mirror and the Ministry of Health marked an important moment in the public discussion of sex and encouraged the belief that all citizens should be sexually informed.

The ‘religious right’ came to prominence in the US during the late 1970s by campaigning on ‘social issues’ and encouraging many fundamentalist and evangelical Christians to get involved in politics. However, the fact that it clashed with ‘born again’ President Jimmy Carter over tax breaks for religious schools believed to be discriminatory, together with its illiberal stances on many issues, meant that it was characterized as an extremist movement. I argue that this assessment is oversimplified. First, many Christian schools were not racially discriminatory, and their defenders resented being labelled as racists. Secondly, few historians have recognized that the Christians involved in the religious right were among the most secularized of their kind. The religious right was often mistakenly categorized alongside earlier American Christian political movements that had displayed extremist and anti-democratic tendencies. The Carter administration's records and oft-ignored religious right ephemeral literature partly substantiate the movement's contention that it was defensive rather than theocratic in nature. One of my conclusions is that more attention must be paid to the subtle nuances of the political and theological views of religious right leaders, because the confusion surrounding the religious right is partly a function of its leaders harbouring internally inconsistent views.

The Cromwellian Protectorate. By Barry Coward. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. Pp. viii+248. ISBN 0-7190-4317-4. £14.99.

Cromwell's major generals: godly government during the English Revolution. By Christopher Durston. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. Pp. x+260. ISBN 0-7190-6065-6. £15.99.

John Lambert, parliamentary soldier and Cromwellian major-general, 1619–1684. By David Farr. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003. Pp. x+268. ISBN 1-84383-0043. £50.00.

Oliver Cromwell, soldier: the military life of a revolutionary at war. By Alan Marshall. London: Brassey's, 2004. Pp. 320. ISBN 1-85753-343-7. £20.00.

Arguably the closest that Britain has ever come to military rule was at certain times during the period from 1647 to 1660. English forces conquered Ireland and Scotland in 1649–50 and 1650–1 respectively, and the two kingdoms were then forcibly ‘settled’ and incorporated into an English commonwealth. In England, meanwhile, the army repeatedly intervened to purge or disperse parliaments: in 1647, 1648, 1653, 1654, and 1659 (twice). For about fifteen months, in 1655–7, England and Wales were governed by major-generals who exercised sweeping powers to enforce order, preserve security, and enforce a ‘reformation of manners’. All these developments raise profound questions about the nature of Cromwellian government in general, and the relationship between politics and military rule in particular. Austin Woolrych argued, some years ago, that the Cromwellian Protectorate was not a military dictatorship in any meaningful sense. He suggested that the regime possessed neither the will, nor the means, to impose military rule, that it generally respected the rule of law, and that the military presence in local government even during the time of the major-generals was limited. Yet the nature of the interaction between the military and the political – in shaping government, in influencing policies, and in forming the careers of Oliver Cromwell and other leading figures – remains complex and merits much fuller exploration. The four books under review address these and related themes from a range of different viewpoints.

Interwar England witnessed the emergence of a new generation of socially and financially independent young working-class women who worked in offices, shops, and factories, ‘dressed like actresses’, and were prominent leisure consumers, indulging in cosmetics and confectionery and frequenting the cinema and dance hall. This article analyses that development. A synthesis of qualitative and quantitative material indicates that age- and gender-specific roles were shaped by material factors rather than by ‘custom’ as existing social histories imply. It is argued that individuals' financial contribution to their household shaped the allocation of leisure and spending money, and that young women's increasing earning opportunities, and rising economic importance to the household, thus enabled them to become prominent leisure consumers. However, close attention to life histories also demonstrates that mother–daughter relationships were not simply economically determined, being characterized by mutual emotional as well as financial support. Maternal aspirations for their daughters, and expanding employment opportunities, shaped the emergence of youth as a life stage marked by a degree of personal independence and commercial consumption.

For at least a decade, many American historians have bemoaned the downfall of synthesis in the writing of the history of the United States. A wide variety of subfields has replaced a single national narrative. This fragmentation has been caused in part by methodological changes in the historical profession worldwide, but also because of the collapse of American exceptionalism. However, there are still some distinctly American themes that are interwoven throughout these subfields. These themes include the rise of transnational and regional history as replacements for an exceptional national history, and above all the influence of the American present on the study of the American past.

This article summarizes the apparent fragmentation of the history of the United States before discussing some of the distinctively American themes that remain. The article then focuses in detail on five subfields in modern American history – the new western history, the new history of the segregated South, the cultural turn in Cold War history, and the histories of modern conservatism and modern evangelicalism – to show how these distinctively American themes recur in seemingly disconnected debates.

Reading, society and politics in early modern England. Edited by Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. ix+363. ISBN 0-521-82434-6. £50.00.

The politics of information in early modern Europe. Edited by Brendan Dooley and Sabrina A. Baron. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Pp. viii+310. ISBN 0-415-20310-4. £75.00.

Literature, satire and the early Stuart state. By Andrew McRae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. ix+250. ISBN 0-521-81495-2. £45.00.

The writing of royalism, 1628–1660. By Robert Wilcher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xii+403. ISBN 0-521-66183-8. £45.00.

Politicians and pamphleteers: propaganda during the English civil wars and interregnum. By Jason Peacey. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Pp. xi+417. ISBN 0-7546-0684-8. £59.95.

The ingenious Mr. Henry Care, Restoration publicist. By Lois G. Schwoerer. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Pp. xxvii+349. ISBN 0-8018-6727-4. £32.00.

In 1681 the Italian newswriter Giacomo Torri incurred the wrath of the French ambassador to the Venetian Republic with his anti-French reporting. The ambassador ordered Torri to ‘cease and desist or be thrown into the canal’. Torri, who was in the pay of the Holy Roman Emperor, responded to the ambassador's threat with a report that ‘the king of France had fallen from his horse, and that this was a judgement of God’. Three of the ambassadors' men were then found attacking Torri ‘by someone who commanded them to stop in the name of the Most Excellent Heads of the Council of Ten … but they replied with certain vulgarities, saying they knew neither heads nor councils’. Discussed by Mario Infelise in Brendan Dooley and Sabrina Baron's collection, this was a very minor feud in the seventeenth-century battles over political information, but it exemplifies several of the recurring themes of the books reviewed here. First, the growing recognition by political authorities across Europe that news was a commodity worthy of investment. Secondly, the variety of official and unofficial sanctions applied in an attempt to control the market for news publications. Thirdly, the recalcitrance of writers and publishers in the face of these sanctions: whether motivated by payment or principle, disseminators of political information showed great resourcefulness in frustrating attempts to limit their activities. These six books investigate aspects of seventeenth-century news and politics or, alternatively, seventeenth-century literature and politics – the distinction between ‘news’ and certain literary genres being, as several of these authors show, often difficult to make.

This article departs from traditional writing on British economic warfare against the Axis during the Second World War by highlighting the efforts made by the British government to evade German ‘counter-blockade’ measures and secure access to European sources of supply. It does so by examining British efforts to obtain Swiss industrial equipment and manufactures after June 1940, when German military success effectively severed normal communications between the two countries. In practical terms, Britain's smuggling operations were enormously successful. Some £1.8m worth of Swiss contraband reached British hands by October 1944. They also, however, exercised considerable influence over the development of Anglo-Swiss relations and Switzerland's relations with its neighbours. In illuminating the scale of Britain's commercial interest in Switzerland after June 1940, the article lends weight to new writing on the Second World War, which emphasizes the neutrals' importance to the war economies and political ambitions of the two belligerent camps.

In the past decade, ‘internationalizing’ or ‘globalizing’ American history has become the mantra of the historical profession. This essay reviews this new body of literature that situates American history within a global framework, searches for connections between the United States and the rest of the world, and explores how American practices and culture have been exported. The ‘globalizing’ project, it shall be argued, has helped historians move beyond the limiting concept of American exceptionalism, whilst providing new explanations for the distinct and, at times, unique, history of the United States. It has also shed new light on the history of American foreign relations. Though historians need to balance the international with the national and better apply transnational methods to the study of the nineteenth century, the global perspective has already added a new texture to our understanding of American history.