Despite being coined only in the early 1970s, ‘peer review’ has become a powerful rhetorical concept in modern academic discourse, tasked with ensuring the reliability and reputation of scholarly research. Its origins have commonly been dated to the foundation of the Philosophical Transactions in 1665, or to early learned societies more generally, with little consideration of the intervening historical development. It is clear from our analysis of the Royal Society's editorial practices from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries that the function of refereeing, and the social and intellectual meaning associated with scholarly publication, has historically been quite different from the function and meaning now associated with peer review. Refereeing emerged as part of the social practices associated with arranging the meetings and publications of gentlemanly learned societies in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Such societies had particular needs for processes that, at various times, could create collective editorial responsibility, protect institutional finances, and guard the award of prestige. The mismatch between that context and the world of modern, professional, international science, helps to explain some of the accusations now being levelled against peer review as not being ‘fit for purpose’.

The histories of ancient Greece and Rome are part of a shared European heritage, and a foundation for many modern Western social and cultural traditions. Their printing and circulation during the Renaissance helped to shape the identities of individual nations, and create different reading publics. Yet we still lack a comprehensive understanding of the forms in which works of Greek and Roman history were published in the first centuries of the handpress age, the relationship between the ideas contained within these texts and the books as material objects, and thus the precise nature of the changes they effected in early modern European culture and society. This article provides the groundwork for a reassessment of the place of ancient history in the early modern world. Using new, digital resources to reappraise existing scholarship, it offers a fresh evaluation of the publication of the ancient historians from the inception of print to 1600, revealing important differences that alter our understanding of particular authors, texts, and trends, and suggesting directions for further research. It also models the research possibilities of large-scale digital catalogues and databases, and highlights the possibilities (and pitfalls) of these resources.

This article addresses the perennial debate over the origins and nature of female power by examining the significance of ‘Women of Discord’ in Aztec (more properly, Mexica) culture. Influential, but often troublesome, these formidable figures embody the complex significance of female power, rooted in women's privileged access to the awesome earth forces through childbirth. This chaotic energy lent cosmological and dynastic significance to the mytho-historical Women of Discord, but also led to a persistent female association with disorder which had tangible (and often overlooked) consequences for the lives of ‘real’ women in Aztec culture. This article explores the ways in which beliefs about the female capacity for disruption both reflected and shaped reality, ensnaring all women in a cycle of myth and history which made femininity a source of both authority and apprehension. Importantly, in Tenochtitlan ideas about ‘disorderly women’ did not lead inevitably to their practical subordination or suppression; women held practical markers of influence and esteem in Aztec culture. Thus, the Women of Discord challenge our assumptions about gender by offering a distinctive perspective on the ways in which femininity and fertility may be seen as disruptive, without necessarily debasing women or depriving them of individual agency.

By reconstructing the multiple contexts that prompted the production, in 1601, of a single tract, this article evokes and analyses the febrile political atmosphere of the Elizabethan fin de siècle, produced by the spectre of regime change consequent upon the death of the queen, and by the visible connections between central elements in the regime and certain Catholic loyalists involved in the notorious Archpriest Controversy. Certain men, most notably Sir Francis Hastings, who were used to regarding themselves as insiders and believed that they were some of the Protestant state's most trusted agents in the struggle against popery, now found themselves typed as ‘puritans’ and thus, at least potentially, on the outs with a regime engaged in a (to them) extraordinarily dangerous flirtation with allegedly ‘loyal’ papists. Adopting the politique hermeneutic mode of the Jesuit Robert Parsons, Hastings all but outed the guilty men and did so via a thoroughly self-conscious exercise in public politics. Throughout, the full range of contemporary media was in play, with printed polemic framing parliamentary debate, that debate in turn feeding into the pamphlet press, which prompted yet more rumours, in London and on the continent, before provoking the state's recourse to those ultimate forms of official publicity, a royal proclamation, treason trials, and the gruesome performativity of the scaffold.

In the 1650s, after a century of increase, the population of England stopped growing. It was not to increase substantially again before 1750. Over the same interval, and not wholly coincidentally, scholars and theologians were trying to defend the orthodox account of how global population had increased since the Creation and must continue to do so, and the first political arithmeticians were trying to measure and analyse demographic change. This article seeks to throw fresh light on this many-sided discourse by examining William Petty's attempt to write an account of the multiplication of mankind, and the reasons why he failed to complete it. It focuses particularly on Petty's part in developing methods of measuring population density which highlighted the potential for future growth, and on the equally important demonstration by John Graunt that high and rising mortality in cities was hindering population growth in reality. As Petty's cousin Robert Southwell pointed out, Graunt's ‘rule of mortality’ was wholly incompatible with any coherent account of the future multiplication of mankind. At the end of this particular discourse, newly discovered facts about demography triumphed over the presuppositions of divinity.

Beyond charters, printed propaganda, and cosmographies, aspiring statesmen in Jacobean England engaged with Native Americans in commonplace books, poetry, court masques, and political debate. Rather than representing a remote ‘other’, this article contends that barristers and students of the law were fascinated by the perceived savagery of indigenous peoples because it allowed them to explore, interrogate, and define their own civility. The result was a cross-over between developing English articulations of their own behaviour and political responsibilities, and a rising enthusiasm for colonizing America. With their Whitehall masques and passionate pleas in parliament on behalf of Virginia and Virginian tobacco, members of the Inns engaged in a subversive wit culture that reconciled the exotic with the language of duty and good conduct, and helped turn colonization into a recognizable – and, for the first time, fashionable – element of early seventeenth-century political culture. By considering written discourse alongside tobacco smoking and court masques, this article contends that a broad approach to the socio-cultural world of Jacobean politics reveals some ways through which gentlemen consciously projected their civil state as one that might be strengthened, rather than weakened, by turning to America as a viable theatre for political involvement.

Orality had an important role in many aspects of early modern experience, and political institutions and counsel are no exceptions. Conversational manners, voice, style of speech, wit, and erudition were all key elements in counselling and for the self-representation of counsellors. Moreover, oral communication was crucial at court and contemporaries aimed to influence and control the distribution of such information to different ends. Scholars have extensively used documentation produced by councils as the basis for minute recreations of political events and administrative changes, but the oral practices of counsel have been largely ignored. This article examines the orality of Habsburg councils and focuses on actual modes of performing counsel. In particular, it reconstructs the complex process of production of written documentation as part of a broader communicative flow and aims to show that notions of style and voice affected the ways in which councils were perceived as instruments for government. Finally, it analyses how conversations were regulated, obstructed, or manipulated and the value attributed to voting procedures, consensus, and dissent within an aristocratic and hierarchical notion of council.

This article explores the ways in which John Locke was claimed by liberalism and refashioned in its image. It was Locke's fate to become the hero of what I term ‘the fable of liberalism’, the story liberalism recounts to itself about its origins and purposes. Locke is a pivotal figure – perhaps the pivotal figure – in this story, because he put into currency conceptions which contributed centrally to the emergence and spread of liberal ways of thinking about politics which continue to ramify. It was Locke who established that the legitimacy of a political authority was a necessary condition of obedience to it and that its legitimacy was a product of the consensual route by which it came into existence; it was Locke who established that the route by which it came into existence determined the ends for which it existed and, with these, the scope of its authority. All this was explained in an exemplary way by Locke (the story goes), and he remains the great exemplar for understanding and conducting politics legitimately even today. This article puts question marks beside the Locke who emerges from this story. It substitutes a new and very different Locke in his place.

The requirement to proclaim Richard Cromwell lord protector in September 1658 forced town leaders to engage with an unstable political context through the production of a large-scale public event. This article examines the ceremonies used in a range of provincial towns to offer a new perspective on urban culture in 1650s England. By analysing both contemporary print and the records of civic government, it reveals how urban inhabitants could maintain a variety of performative responses to state directive whilst approaching the moment of succession actively and pragmatically to confront issues specific to their respective locales. Crucially, there was no standard ritual experience and civic authorities remained relatively free to modify existing codes and apply them in the way/s that made most sense to their particular situation. In addition to confirming the essentially ambiguous nature of ceremonial expectation in this context, the findings presented in this article complicate our understanding of urban government during the last months of the protectorate by emphasizing the capacity for towns of varied religious and/or political complexion to use public ritual to further corporate interests and negotiate a range of specific concerns in both a national and a local framework.

Evidence from the Piovego, the fraud magistracy of early modern Venice, offers a critical perspective on the documentary record of credit and the ways in which this was used in practice. Although it was formally illegal to charge interest on personal loans, a variety of legal fictions were employed to evade the ban. Such fictions significantly reduced the transparency and certainty of exchange, pushing personal loans into a world of semi-legality. This was a ‘baroque economy’, in which people were aware of the potential discrepancy between surface form and underlying substance, and private agreements might be contested on grounds of substantive fairness. The ‘hidden transcripts’ presented by litigants indicate that the formal record must be interpreted through a ‘thick description’ that considers its role as a resource in a broader process of negotiation. Far from being a ‘market’, characterized by price competition, choice, and transparency, the informal economy of credit was embedded in long-term power relationships. Rather than celebrating intermediaries such as brokers and notaries as facilitators of ‘market’ relations, we need to understand them as part of a hierarchical network of power and wealth, embedded in long-term relationships.

Between its first meeting in January 1664 and the final session held under unfree labour in December 1838, the volume of legislation passed by the house of assembly in Jamaica increased exponentially. As in Britain and Ireland, this reflected the growing administrative capacity and political power of the legislature and also the enormous demand for laws and law-making among local interest groups. The rise and fall of slavery and the slave society in the island was therefore underpinned in a large part by the power of its colonial legislature, which also operated within the broader transatlantic constitution structured by imperial politics and law. There was very little though to distinguish the house of assembly from others in British North America, at least in legislative terms, and even after the traumatic imperial disjuncture of 1783 the reformed transatlantic constitution continued to provide a supportive environment for the expansion of legislation within the island of Jamaica.

Around 1520, at the court of Henry VIII of England, a new meal type emerged. Called the ‘banquet’, this took place after the main meal, in a distinct space, and consisted of sweet foods, spiced wine, and sculptural sugarwork. Originally developing at court, the sweet banquet was quickly embraced by the nobility and gentry. This article investigates the adoption of this dining practice in the wealthy country houses of early modern England and the reasons for its popularity in this specific context. It draws on state papers, published works, and household accounts to establish the ways in which the banquet was utilized and understood by early modern elites. This evidence makes it clear that a high-status person would have expected to be entertained with a sweet banquet at any important social occasion involving their peers. An examination of the visual and material cultures associated with the banquet establishes that it was a highly effective means by which to express class status at a time of anxiety regarding social mobility. As an appropriation of the ancient symposium, it provided opportunities to engage with the intellectual and visual cultures of the classical world and the Renaissance.

Maximilien Robespierre was deposed on 27 July 1794/9 Thermidor Year II when the charge that he was a tyrant burst spectacularly into open political discussion in France. This article examines key aspects of how that charge had developed, and been discussed in veiled terms, over the preceding months. First, it analyses a war of words which unfolded between Robespierre and the duke of York, the commander of the British forces on the northern front. This involved allegations that Robespierre had used an assassination attempt against him in late May as a pretext for scapegoating the British – including the orchestration of a notorious government decree of 7 Prairial/26 May 1794 which banned the taking of British and Hanoverian prisoners of war. Second, the article explores how these developments fitted within a larger view of Robespierre as aiming for supreme power. In particular, they meshed closely with a reading of French politics which likened Robespierre to the ancient Athenian leader Pisistratus, a figure who had subverted the city's constitution – including posing as a victim of violent attacks – in order to establish his tyranny. Pisistratus's story, we argue, offered a powerful script for interpreting Robespierre's actions, and a cue for resistance.

Recent historians have highlighted the importance of the web of illicit commercial transactions which connected competing imperial networks to create an integrated Atlantic economy but have paid little attention to how co-operation worked across borders. Of necessity, participants acted without the legal institutions which are often afforded a central role in narratives of modernization. In the case of Jamaica, a hub of illicit trade, most merchants found it difficult to survive in this high-risk environment but members of the Sephardic diaspora, a traditional, communitarian group, had competitive advantages which they exploited with vigour. They did not rely on innate attributes of kinship, ethnicity, or religion. They closed entry and built on a favourable historical and geographical legacy to cultivate attributes which maintained high levels of social discipline with credible rewards and punishments which were reinforced by their outsider status. Their competitive advantages did stimulate retaliation but also allowed the Sephardim to combine with the Christian elite to capture rent-seeking opportunities. Far from falling away as modernization gained pace, the Sephardic diaspora survived and flourished by constructing the strong private-order institutions needed in large swathes of the economy where neither impersonal corporations, nor state enforcement mechanisms, were able to manage risk.

The prize question of the Berlin Academy of Sciences for 1780, on the utility of deception, has attracted both controversy and scholarly interest. Yet very little attention has been dedicated to the question's peculiar beginnings in the correspondence between the philosopher and mathematician Jean Le Rond d'Alembert and Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, in a discussion concerning the expulsion of the Jesuits from France. This correspondence not only reveals the prize question's complex genealogy in long-standing debates on the true ends of philosophy, but also helps revise conventional frameworks for understanding the relationship between philosophy and politics in Enlightenment Europe. Far from an adornment intended to boost the ‘Enlightened’ credentials of an absolutist king, d'Alembert held the momentum in this relationship, and recruited Frederick to his own campaign of promoting publicly useful philosophy. ‘Philosophy’ here amounted to a commitment to the truth and its public defence, rather than subscription to or belief in a specific set of ideas or political reforms. Placing pressure on rulers to disavow deceitful politics, the far-reaching implications of this conception of philosophy for political life were no less ambitious than the agendas espoused by protagonists of a supposed ‘radical Enlightenment’.

This article examines the role of the House of Lords as the high court from the Restoration of 1660 to the passage of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act in 1876. Throughout this period, lay peers and bishops judged appeals on civil law from the central courts of England and Wales, Ireland (aside from between 1783 and 1800), and Scotland after the Union of 1707. It has long been known that the revolution of 1688–9 transformed the ability of parliament to pass legislation, but the increased length and predictability of parliamentary sessions was of equal significance to the judicial functions performed by peers. Unlike the English-dominated profile of eighteenth-century legislation, Scots constituted the largest proportion of appellants between 1740 and 1875. The lack of interaction between Westminster and Scotland is often seen as essential to ensuring the longevity of the Union, but through comparing the subject matter of appeals and mapping the distribution of cases within Scotland, this article demonstrates the extent of Scottish engagement. Echoing the tendency of Scottish interests to pursue local, private, and specific legislation in order to insulate Scottish institutions from English intervention, Scottish litigants primarily sought to maintain and challenge local privileges, legal particularisms, and the power of dominant landowners.

In 1789 in Leipzig, a slim pamphlet of 128 pages appeared that sent shock waves through the German republic of letters. The pamphlet, bearing the title Mehr Noten als Text (More notes than text), was an ‘exposure’ whose most sensational element was a list naming numerous members of the North German intelligentsia as initiates of a secret society. This secret society, known as the German Union, aimed to push back against anti-Enlightenment tendencies most obviously manifest in the policies promulgated under the new Prussian king Frederick William II. The German Union was the brainchild of the notorious theologian Carl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–92). But who was responsible for the ‘exposure’? Using material culled from several archives, this article pieces together for the first time the back story to Mehr Noten als Text and in doing so uncovers a surprisingly heterogeneous network of Freemasons, publishers, and state officials. The findings prompt us to reconsider general questions about the relationship of state and society in the late Enlightenment, the interplay of the public and the arcane spheres and the status of religious heterodoxy at this time.

The young Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) had perused many of the Epicurean writings of the French Enlightenment. According to Carlyle, such ‘Epicureanism’ consisted primarily in an emphasis upon pleasure and pain as the springs of human action, and a positing of self-interest as the foundation of sociability. However, Carlyle soon came to reject such notions, seeking salvation in the writings of Kant and Schiller, who stressed the possibility of disinterested virtue, and the importance of free, moral activity. Indeed, the Epicureanism debate continued to resonate in Carlyle's subsequent political writings, and particularly his notorious polemics against laissez-faire and ‘public opinion’. Finally, in Carlyle's last major work, Frederick the Great, he found himself faced with the unenviable task of painting an Epicurean into a patina of heroic virtue. Despite his best efforts, however, Carlyle's biography remained haunted by the spectre of Epicureanism. Nonetheless, as Carlyle's contemporaries recognized, his writings had done much not only to discredit the Epicureanism of the French eighteenth century, but also to shape the moral and political ideals of the British nineteenth.

This article explores the locally specific (re)construction of a biblical figure, the Apostle St Paul, in India, to unravel the entanglement of religion with British imperial ideology on the one hand, and to understand the dynamics of colonial conversion on the other. Over the nineteenth century, evangelical pamphlets and periodicals heralded St Paul as the ideal missionary, who championed conversion to Christianity but within an imperial context: that of the first-century Roman Mediterranean. Through an examination of missionary discourses, along with a study of Indian (Hindu and Islamic) intellectual engagement with Christianity including Bengali convert narratives, this article studies St Paul as a reference point for understanding the contours of ‘vernacular Christianity’ in nineteenth-century India. Drawing upon colonial Christian publications mainly from Bengal, the article focuses on the multiple reconfigurations of Paul: as a crucial mascot of Anglican Protestantism, as a justification of British imperialism, as an ideological resource for anti-imperial sentiments, and as a theological inspiration for Hindu reform and revivalist organization.

In 1896, the Russian empire established a territorial concession in the Chinese treaty port of Hankou. Russian activity in the treaty ports has usually been subsumed into a wider ‘European’ or ‘Western’ presence, the assumption being that the Russian empire copied existing British and French concessions. This article traces the development of the idea of establishing a Russian concession from its inception to the early years of its development. The various arguments made at different stages in this process make clear that the decision was not a simple case of imitation of existing concessions, but was reached in the context of a broader shift in ideas about the proper relationship between economy, nation, and the Russian imperial state.