This paper explores a variety of evidence for relations between Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt, and her Jewish subjects. In the first part of the paper, the focus is on the profoundly negative portrait of the queen in the works of Josephus, with particular attention to Cleopatra's alleged antipathy to Alexandrian Jews in Josephus's Against Apion. Analysis of Josephus's evidence confirms, I argue, that his case against the queen does not stand up. The second part of the paper offers a detailed consideration of other evidence, epigraphic and literary, which, I suggest, confirms a picture of the queen as continuing the policy of her predecessors with regard to the Jews of the Ptolemaic kingdom, by participating in the long-established practice of extending royal support and protection to Jewish proseuchai (places of prayer). While the evidence does not permit definitive conclusions, it suggests that Cleopatra looked to particular Jewish groups – as to others – within Egypt for support and in this, followed a path taken by Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III. Finally, a few details in Plutarch's Life of Antony may also suggest the queen's political and personal alliances with individual Jews, in Egypt and Judea.

Foreign labour was an essential resource for the Nazi war economy: by September 1944, around six million civilian labourers from across Europe were working in the Reich. Any initial readiness on the part of the peoples of Nazi-occupied Europe to volunteer for work in the Reich had quickly dissipated as the harsh and often vicious treatment of foreign workers became known. The abuse and exploitation of foreign forced labourers by the Nazi regime is well documented. Less well understood is why women formed such a substantial proportion of the labour recruited or forcibly deported from occupied eastern Europe: in September 1944, a third of Polish forced labourers and just over over half of Soviet civilian forced labourers were women. This article explores the factors influencing the demand for and the supply of female labour from the Nazi-occupied territories of the Soviet Union, particularly after the appointment of Fritz Sauckel as Plenipotentiary for Labour in March 1942. It explores the attitudes of labour officials towards these women workers and shows how Nazi gender politics and the Nazi hierarchy of race intersected in the way they were treated.

Inhis masterly account of the administrative activities of the Wardrobe, ProfessorTout has necessarily been led to say something of its system of accounting; but his treatment of it has been to a great extent incidental to the wider aspect of his subject. In a paper read before this Society in March 1923, Mr. Charles Johnson supplemented Professor Tout's work by a study of the system of account in the Wardrobe of Edward I. The system employed in the Wardrobe of Edward II during the first seventeen years of his reign was essentially the same as that of his father's time. For this earlier part of the reign, then, all that I propose todo is to supplement Mr. Johnson's account by a more detailed examination of certain points, a thorough understanding of which is of some importance to those who may have to interpret the evidence of these accounts on questions of constitutional and administrative history. In addition to this, it is hardly necessary to repeat that the reign of Edward II is of extreme importance in the history of the Wardrobe as a period of far-reaching reforms.

“La Diplomatie,” wrote a distinguished French author, “est vieille comme le monde et ne périra qu'avec lui.” There are no problems as to the origins of the ambassador as the word was originally understood; that is, the accredited envoy of one ruler or state to another. Ambassadors in this sense, by whatever term they might be designated, have existed since the earliest times, the inevitable product of the necessity for communication between authorities prevented by the requirements of their office from personal intercourse.

The English bishops of the fifteenth century seldom arouse the historian's enthusiasm. They seem, like their registers, too concerned with ecclesiastical routine, too governmental and orthodox for any that might still expect to find elements of heroism in the later medieval Church. John Stafford is a fair example. He has suffered from the dislike of Thomas Gascoigne and in later times from the coolness of Bishop Stubbs. Gascoigne, who suspected his origins, charged him with begetting offspring by a nun;1 Stubbs, more anxious to be fair, concluded that ‘if he had done little good, he had done no harm.’2 Sir James Ramsay, who admitted his administrative ability, wrote of him as ‘a Beaufort partisan’,3 while Mr Kingsford was cautious and noncommittal.4 Now Stafford was one of Chichele's best lawyers and a close associate: he was also the successor strongly recommended to the pope by the archbishop, and in 1443 the succession to Canterbury was no passing matter.

During the closing stages of the second world war in Europe, the British and the Americans, together with the governments they supported, were often faced with the problem of dealing with armed resistance movements which they themselves had actively fostered to help in the fight against the Germans. Despite significant national and even local variations, the root cause of the problem was the same everywhere: the resistance was a political as well as a military phenomenon. Many of its members did not regard their task as complete with the departure of the last German soldier. They saw defeat and occupation as the inevitable result of pre-war political, social and economic structures which they were determined to transform. While the allies and the governments they supported were themselves often in favour of change, they were rarely prepared to go either as far or as fast as some elements of the resistance desired. Confrontation was therefore almost inevitable.

THE rise of political parties in the reign of Charles II was an inevitable consequence of the increase in the power and prestige of Parliament during the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth. By 1660 Parliament had advanced far beyond the stage at which it could be content with merely criticizing the Government, or presenting its more substantial grievances for the royal consideration. It was now prepared to express decided opinions on all matters of national concern, and even, though rather hesitatingly, to assume the direction of policy both at home and abroad. Within a few years Charles in a memorable speech was to give the Commons the severest rebuke of which he was Capable for invading his most fundamental prerogative, that of making peace and war, and not merely desiring him ‘to enter into such leagues as might be for the safety of the kingdom’, but telling him ‘what sort of leagues they must be, and with whom’.

The United Provinces in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the refuge of the oppressed of Western Europe. From the days of the Marian persecutions, considerable numbers of English exiles were to be found jostling one another in the busy street of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, wandering penniless along the quiet avenues of The Hague or seeking freedom in the more desolate expanses of Zealand. Reasons for the popularity of Holland as an asylum are not far to seek. In an age when religious heterodoxy was a political crime, the freedom of worship permitted in Holland was eagerly taken advantage of. The refugees went to live among a people who encouraged such immigration as a means of increasing the material prosperity of their country. English pamphleteers attributed the flourishing condition of Holland to this policy. ‘Liberty of Conscience’, wrote Sir Charles Wolseley, ‘would be a more serious blow to Holland than all the victories yet gained.’ Another writer drew attention to the part played by the refugees from the tyranny of Mary and Laud, in building up the prosperity of Amsterdam.

I think it was Lord Halsbury, in the Scotch Church case, who stopped one of the advocates in his use of the word Church, saying that they as a Court had nothing to do with that, and that they could only consider the question as one concerning a trust. In other words, with a religious society as such they could not deal, but only with a trust or a registered company. This is only one instance of a fact exhibited in the whole of that case: namely, the refusal of the legal mind of our day to consider even the possibility of societies possessing an inherent, self-developing life apart from such definite powers as the State, or the individuals founding the body under State authority, have conferred upon them explicitly. In this view, apart from the State, the real society—and from individuals the living members of the State—there are no active social unities; all other apparent communal unities are directly or indirectly delegations, either of State powers or of individuals. To such a view the notion is abhorrent of a vast hierarchy of interrelated societies, each alive, each personal, owing to the State loyalty, and by it checked or assisted in their action no less than are private individuals, but no more deriving their existence from Government concession than does the individual or the family. In other words, these phrases of Lord Halsbury are but the natural expression of the concession theory of corporate life which sees it as a fictitious personality, the creation by the State for its own purposes, and consequently without any natural or inherent powers of its own. This theory is not so universally accepted as was once the case, but Professor Geldart's inaugural lecture on ‘Legal Personality’ shows how great are the obstacles still to be encountered by that theory of realism which is for most of us associated with the name of Gierke, and was popularised by Maitland. The latter, moreover, has shewn how this very English institution of the trust has preserved us from the worse perils of the rigid doctrinaire conception of the civilian. For under the name of a trust many of the qualities of true personality have been able to develop unmolested. But this has not been all to the good. It has probably delayed the victory of the true conception, by enabling us to ‘muddle through’ with the false one. Moreover, the trust is and assimilates itself always rather to the Anstalt or the Stiftung than to the living communal society, the true corporation, with its basis in the Genossenschaft; and consequently, as was proved in this Scotch case, the necessary independence of a self-developing personality is denied to it, and its acts are treated as invalid on this very ground—that it is only a trust tied rigidly to its establishing terms, and not a true society with a living will and power of change.

There are few statesmen in English history who have been so completely the victim of their circumstances as Thomas Osborne, Lord Danby. He was Lord High Treasurer of England 1673–1679, an office which combined those of the Modern Chancellor of the Exchequer and Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as that of the Chief Executive Officer of the Realm. In all these duties Lord Danby displayed conspicuous ability, and attained considerable success. He was certainly one of the most able financiers of those times. He entered office just after the responsible government of the day had repudiated its national obligation to its creditors, and declared a “Stop of the Exchequer.” Trade was almost stagnant; every channel of revenue was drained at its source by Royal gifts and pensions; the financial ability of the Government was thoroughly discredited in commercial circles; the ordinary revenue of the country was inadequate to meet its needs. Yet out of this chaotic and insolvent condition Danby produced order, solvency, credit and prestige in the commercial world. His work in the Treasury would bear comparison with the ablest of the Chancellors of the Exchequer of England.

The historian Mariana, writing at the end of the sixteenth century, summed up the achievements of Alfonso X in the epigrammatic phrase Dumque cœlum considerat, observatque astra, terram amisit, and this conception of the king as a scholar incompetent to govern is, on the whole, still very generally accepted. More than a century later, the Marquis of Mondéjar, in his Memorias Históricas del Rey Don Alonso el Sabio, posthumously published in 1777, attempted a vindication of the king. His work is a narrative of the political history of the reign, based on the Crónica de Alfonso Décimo, a late and unreliable source, but the only narrative account of the reign that is of any length. Mondéjar was at pains to point out the contradictions and errors of the Crónica, and, wherever possible, to clear the king's reputation from its imputations. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century interest in Alfonso X has steadily increased. The publication of the text of his legal codes, and of collections of documents containing materials for this period, and the gathering together of records in the Archivo Histórico Nacional at Madrid have much facilitated the task of investigation. Some good work has recently been done on certain aspects of the subject. German and Spanish scholars have studied Alfonso's relations with Germany and Italy, arising out of his candidature for the Imperial crown; his relations with France have been elucidated, and much critical work has been carried out on his literary achievements. The publication of historical material, the specialized research of recent years, above all the advance in historical method and criticism, and the change in the fashion of historical writing which have taken place since Mondéjar's time have combined to make his work antiquated.

I USE as my epigraph a famous remark by Joseph Chamberlain— fit to be included in that rich anthology of unlucky forecasts, of which classic examples are Pitt's fifteen years of peace in February 1792, and Neville Chamberlain's ‘I think it is peace for our time’, in 1938. To Charles Dilke, Joseph Chamberlain wrote, in 1871: ’The Republic must come, and at the rate at which we are moving, it will come in our generation.’1

The reign of Charles I opened with the celebration of the new king's marriage. Charles succeeded his father on March 27, 1625, and Henrietta Maria made her entry into London on June 16. A ballad entitled ‘Jack of Lent's Ballad’ celebrated the Queen's coming, and described by anticipation the pageants with which the citizens of London received her. In one place she was to be met by St. George with a welcome to St. Denis; in another Jonah was to appear out of the mouth of his whale and promise to supply her with fish on Fridays; elsewhere the Graces and the Fates were to hail her with appropriate remarks about her beauty and her good fortune. Besides these there was to be a figure symbolising the political significance of the marriage. At the Exchange, beside the three Fates,

‘Spain's Infanta shall stand by Wringing her hands, and thus shall cry, “I do repent too late.”’

War was more important to medieval knights than to many of their historians. They have been more concerned to debate shifts in the social status and numbers of knights, than to examine their military role. Varied scenarios of knights rising in social status, gaining a more powerful political voice as they became wealthier, and of declining knights, increasingly aggrieved at their failure to maintain their position in society, have vied one with another. Military obligation has, of course, proved to be a battlefield on paper for many historians, but debate on this has not always been informed by awareness of the muddy realities of war. It would be reasonable to suppose that major transformations in the social position of English knights were a response to, or at least a reflection of, changes in their military functions. Yet the only link that is commonly made is the assumption that changes in the social position of English knights were in some measure the result of the rising costs of the military equipment they needed to possess.

On 16 November 1700, Louis XIV publicly announced that his second grandson, Philip, duke of Anjou, was to succeed Charles II of Spain as the ruler of all the latter's dominions. On 15 May 1702, England, the Dutch re-public, and the emperor all declared war on France; England and the Dutch republic then also declared war on Spain, although they had recognized Philip as king; the emperor, however, who had not done so, declared war, not on Spain, but on the duke of Anjou and his adherents. If, then, Louis's action in November 1700 made war inevitable, it is curious that these declarations were so long in coming.

In the last quarter of the sixteenth century England embarked on a strategic rapprochement with the Ottoman Empire. Elizabeth I's excommunication by Pope Pius V in 1570 removed the papal levies for trading with the ‘infidel’, opening up commercial opportunities. England also explored the possibility of calling upon Ottoman military might to support her against the Catholic powers of mainland Europe. One product of this East–West engagement is a remarkable correspondence and exchange of gifts between Elizabeth and the sultana, Walide Safiye. Although the Anglo-Ottoman political accord failed, the exchanges between Elizabeth and the sultana set the tone for England's subsequent trading position in the East.

This collectively authored article argues for a regional turn in the historical study of transnational activism. By considering not only pan-regional movements but also examples of borderland contexts, transregional connections and diasporic understandings of ‘region’, our discussion identifies fresh possibilities for investigating the evolution and functioning of transnational activism. Based on a Royal Historical Society-funded workshop held at and supported by Northumbria University, the article brings together insights from diverse locations and arenas of contestation. The first part considers literatures on three macro-regional settings – South Asia, Western Europe and Latin America – to illustrate the importance of distinctive regional contexts and constructs in shaping transnational activism and its goals. The second part turns to case studies of transnational activism in and beyond Eastern Europe, West Africa, the Caribbean and East Asia. In doing so, it explores very different notions of the regional to identify how transnational activism has both shaped and been shaped by these ideas. Taken together, the two parts highlight the role of regional identities and projects in challenging inequalities and external domination. Our analysis and examples indicate the possibilities of a regionally rooted approach for writing histories of transnational activism.

Though the subject of this paper is over-large, its purpose was begotten of piety, not presumption. If, therefore, I lack the confidence which pertains to discovery, I am not for that reason without my apology; and I aspire to the hope that the Fellows of this Society may deem it a seemly relaxation to pause from their labours for the space of an hour in order to reflect gratefully upon some of their forerunners in learning. Between 1660 and 1730 English medieval scholarship advanced to a notable achievement, and the names of the chief men who contributed thereto are almost household words to all modern students of medieval England. But the history of that pregnant movement of research has still to be written and few of us would claim that we had made full use of the work of our predecessors. Consequently, since the distant converse of dwarfs with giants conduces to humility, it may be salutary to recall once more this great adventure of English erudition, and profitable, also, with an eye to the present, to speculate upon the cause and character of its astonishing success. The praise of famous men has earned an ancient commendation and even a cork may sustain a draught of fishes.

In the seventeenth century, visitors to both cities were struck by the obvious physical similarities between Venice and Amsterdam. The social similarities were no less great. In a Europe mainly composed of monarchies, each was the greatest city of a republic. In a Europe where the ruling class still tended to identify with warriors, the patricians of Amsterdam and Venice were predominantly civilian. In a Europe whose political leaders usually despised trade, Venice and Amsterdam stood out as places where trade and politics could be combined with success, at least early in the seventeenth century. In a Europe whose ruling classes tended to spend most of their time on their country estates, the patricians of Venice and Amsterdam lived mainly in town.