This article examines the religious and political worldview of the Scottish minister John Dury during the English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century. It argues that Dury's activities as an irenicist and philo-semite must be understood as interrelated aspects of an expansionist Protestant cause that included Britain, Ireland, continental Europe, and the Atlantic world. Dury sought to imitate and counter what he perceived to be the principal strengths of early modern Catholicism: confessional unity, imperial expansion, and the coordination of global missionary efforts. The 1640s and 1650s saw the scope of Dury's long-standing vision grow to encompass colonial expansion in Ireland and America, where English and continental Protestants might work together to fortify their position against Spain and its growing Catholic empire. Both Portuguese Jews and American Indians appear in this vision as victims of Spanish Catholicism in desperate need of Protestant help. This article thus offers new perspectives on several aspects of Dury's career, including his relationship with displaced Anglo-Irish Protestants in London, his proposal to establish a college for the study of Jewish learning and “Oriental” languages, his speculation regarding the Lost Tribes of Israel in America, and his cautious advocacy for the toleration of Jews in England.

This article challenges the dominant historical paradigms used to analyze imperial plant and animal transfers by examining the role of fodder crops in early colonial development in New South Wales and the Cape of Good Hope. In Alfred Crosby's enduring formulation of ecological imperialism—that is, the ecological transformation of temperate colonies of settlement by European plants, animals, and pathogens—was a largely independent process. To Crosby's critics, his grand narrative fails to acknowledge the technocratic management of plant and animal transfers on the part of increasingly long-armed colonial states from the mid-nineteenth century. Yet neither approach can adequately explain the period between the decline of Britain's Atlantic empire in the 1780s and the rise of its global empire in the 1830s, a period dominated by an aggressive ethos of agrarian improvement but lacking the institutional teeth of a more evolved imperial state. Traveling fodder crops link these embryonic antipodean colonies to the luminaries of the Agricultural Revolution in Britain. The attempt to transfer fodder-centric mixed husbandry to these colonies points to an emerging coalition of imperial ambition and scientific expertise in the late eighteenth-century British Empire.

After World War II, Great Britain faced major economic problems, which the government sought to rectify by reviving export markets and achieving a favorable balance of trade. One overlooked component of reconstruction was a decision to recognize tourism as an “invisible export,” a way to draw currency, especially American dollars, into the country. However, in a period characterized by scarcity, rationing, and austerity measures, the endeavor presented enormous challenges. The situation was exacerbated by the advent of the Marshall Plan in 1948. It required British participation in a European-based tourism scheme that jeopardized the success of Britain's own initiative and, ironically, could potentially undermine the economic benefits that Marshall Plan participation was supposed to provide. In exploring the history of British tourism policy in this era, this article shows the extent to which the Marshall Plan compromised an important aspect of British reconstruction policy. It can thereby better inform our understanding of the complexities of postwar reconstruction and of Britain's guarded response to aspects of the Marshall Plan—particularly the American initiative to promote greater European economic integration in the immediate postwar era.

The standard interpretation of 1848 in Britain is that while Continental Europe reached a turning point and failed to turn, as the famous aphorism states, Britain reached its turning point in 1832, turned, and thus avoided revolution in that year of revolutions. The British middle classes, unlike their Continental counterparts, were loyal in 1848. They enjoyed a broader franchise, some reforming legislation already passed, and commitments to various welcome changes in the future made by diverse politicians. All of this gave the British middle classes great confidence in British institutions and their own future under them, as well as the belief that their country was fortunately different from all the other nations. Without the middle classes, the Chartists could have never succeeded with any kind of insurrection. So, while the capitals of Europe echoed with sounds of musketry and cannon, Britain was at peace because her Constitution was essentially better than anything that prevailed elsewhere.

Modern historiography has done little to change this interpretation of 1848 that was first proclaimed by self-congratulatory and relieved Victorians. All the accounts stress the fortunate uniqueness of Britain and the key role of middle class loyalty. Priscilla Robertson wrote, “During the days of 1848, England stood apart, unshaken, apparently unshakable. Her reformers were already in power. …” In a recent study of the 1848 revolutions, Peter Stearns focuses on the ways the middle class abetted Continental revolutions at the same time that they were instrumental in preventing revolution in Britain. These are really restatements of Elie Halévy's classic explanation. While John Saville's treatment of 1848 differs from traditional accounts in several ways, particularly in stressing the vigor of the Chartist left's resistance after April 10, his explanation for the failure of revolution does not. He concludes that the British government could count on “whole-hearted support” much further down the social scale than could Continental governments. Moreover, despite all the newer research on political violence, crowds, and revolution, the standard interpretation of Britain's fate in 1848 remains: middle-class support for the regime was too strong while Chartist support for an insurrection was too weak.

In 1556, Robert Recorde (1510?-1558) provided the English reading public with the first significant reference to the heliocentric theories of Nicholas Copernicus. In a brief passage in his elementary text on astronomy, The Castle of Knowledge, Recorde introduced the fact that Copernicus

hathe renewed the opinion of Aristarchus Samius, and
affirmeth that the earthe not only moueth circularlye
about his owne centre, but also may be, yea and is,
continually out of the precise cētre of the world 38
hundredth thousand miles:

This statement, preceded by a review of other ancient astronomers who held similar views, and followed by a promise to the reader that the subject would be examined later in greater detail, constituted the complete reference to Copernicus and his theories. It was neither an endorsement nor a repudiation of the revolutionary theories advanced by Copernicus. Given his reputation as a competent and thorough scholar, one may legitimately ask, first, why did Recorde limit himself to such a short statement? and, second, how can his attitude toward the heliocentric theories be established with greater certainty? Because Recorde elected not to commit himself further in The Castle of Knowledge, any discussion of his attitude toward the new theories must be based on indirect evidence. The point to be demonstrated is that Recorde was influenced by a particular philosophy that enabled him to view favorably the theories advanced in Copernicus's great work, De Revolutionibus Orbium Celestium. The first part of this study examines some probable causes for Recorde's reluctance to expand upon his reference to Copernicus, while the remainder examines his philosophical views.

The role of party in the first half of George III's reign has proved a topic of constant interest to historians. The subject has been examined from a variety of angles, not the least important of which is the relationship between party development and public opinion. Much of the explanation of party development has centered on the House of Commons, and a few attempts have been made to integrate the House of Lords into the story. Less effort has been made, however, to ascertain what, if any, role the upper house played in partisan attempts at influencing public opinion. This essay is an attempt to show how the opposition peers of this period took advantage of one of the privileges of their house, the right of written dissent, in a conscious effort to influence a wider audience, and to demonstrate how this contributed to the growth of party.

The English Historical Review for 1974 published an intriguing proposal by Braxton Ross concerning the early history of Bodleian MS Canon. Pat. Lat. 131, a twelfth-century copy of Lactantius' Divine Institutes. Ross noticed several marginalia that read “Audi Thoma” or “Henriciani Nota,” and he suggested that these might have been penned by an unknown French cleric who wished to criticize Henry II's chancellor, Thomas Becket. From fourteenth-century writings contained on the manuscript's fly-leaves, scholars have long recognized the Bodleian Lactantius as once having been the property of Landolfo Colonna, a canon at Chartres in the years 1298–1328. On paleographical grounds, Ross assigns the manuscript's provenance to central France in the twelfth century. Noting that the Istitutiones Divinae was a rare text at the time — apparently unknown in England from Alcuin's day until the fourteenth century — and that this “utilitarian” yet “handsome” manuscript was made using two exemplars, Ross concludes that the Bodleian Lactantius originated in “a centre of intellectual vigour and wide-ranging connections.” Three hands corrected the text, all at the site of production. One of these hands has left many remarks that (Ross felt) display the annotator's wide classical and patristic reading and, as the “Audi Thoma” notes seem to suggest, an interest in Thomas Becket and the “Henricians.”