The world economy has experienced a cycle of globalisation, de-globalisation and re-globalisation since 1850. In each period, there has been a trade-off between various policies: fixed exchange rates, capital mobility, labour movement and free trade, and their international and domestic consequences. This essay establishes an analytical framework for understanding these trade-offs in the case of Britain, and proceeds to consider the choices made between 1850 and 1914. A case is made that the gold standard and fixed exchange rates secured widespread domestic support, and that they were not imposed by financial interests at the expense of domestic considerations.

In the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, barbarian warbands acquired property rights in the former provinces of the Roman west, in a process that established the broad structural characteristics of early medieval society in western Europe: that is the central contention of this essay. Focusing on the western Mediterranean heartlands of the Imperial government and senatorial aristocracy, it argues that these property transfers were fundamental to the emergence of ethnic identity as the crucial political marker in the post-Roman west. Latent conflict over the respective rights and obligations of barbarian ‘guests’ and their provincial ‘hosts’ structured the first attempts at post-Roman state-formation in the west, for the nature of the ‘hospitality’ offered to barbarian warbands accommodated within the Empire became a matter of contention as second and third generation ‘guests’ continued to enjoy the fruits of the property of their ‘hosts’. Interpreting these new social relationships in the light of established legal forms, barbarian kings identified agreed mechanisms for the legitimate transfer of Roman property to their followers: this process allowed Roman landowners to seek remedies for illegitimate or violent seizure, but at the price of acknowledging a significant redistribution of land to a new class of barbarian soldiers whose liberty was rooted in their military service. The result was the emergence, by the seventh century, of regionalised and militarised elites who appropriated the language of ethnicity to legitimate their position.

The hospital was brought to England by the Normans and rapidly absorbed into pre-Conquest frameworks of land-tenure, custom and alms. These charitable houses became a recognised and popular type of house, distinct in form and development from both monasteries and French hospitals. Although its constitution was not written, the early hospital had a consistent arrangement, physical in substance and purpose: it was a form of sited alms, with regular, visible, dependent provisioning. Its customary systems of support were public demonstrations (and thus repetitive commemorations) not only of the nature of its endowment and alms, but also of the founder's intent and generosity.

In the last twenty years or so, sociologists have shown that trust is an especially problematic but also especially important feature of modern societies, in which traditional and familiar social ties have been broken up and reconfigured in new patterns. On the whole, however, sociologists do not attempt a historical analysis, contenting themselves with the distinction between modern and pre-modern societies. With few exceptions, historians, who could give a more differentiated account, have not shown much interest in trust. Even those who deal with themes like religion, ethnicity, gender and the family tend to interpret them through power relationships rather than trust relationships. There are very good reasons, though, why historians should tackle the theme of trust. In this essay it is argued that the manner in which trust works in any given society is vital to the understanding of most social phenomena. An account is attempted of certain crucial junctures in European history when the radius of trust has broadened relatively rapidly. Finally the essay offers some suggestions as to why a perceived ‘crisis of trust’ has arisen, both in the contemporary western world and in the global economy, and what might be done about it.

This essay proposes a new view of demonology, arguing that it was not just a set of theological and legal writings but could also form part of a literature of entertainment. Demonologists frequently used literary techniques such as the dialogue form, hyperbolic set-piece descriptions of the dance or the Sabbath, told stories to pique the reader's interest, and employed humour, salaciousness and horror. Their work intersected with that of artists, influenced by classical images of witches, who began to produce elaborate panoramas of the Sabbath. The cultural legacy of demonology was immense. Through theFaustbuchof 1587, which borrowed from demonological treatises, demonology influenced drama and even figured in the development of the early novel.

The Commission for Africa, which reported in March 2005, drew attention to the enduring problem of poverty in Africa, but also reinforced the common perception that Africa has a troubled relationship with the ‘modern world’. This essay reviews the literature on Africa's long-term political and economic development, paying particular attention to the continent's insertion into the global system in the period described by C. A. Bayly as the ‘birth of the modern world’. It concludes that, though many of the continent's current problems arise out of recent policy failures, we should not ignore longer-term, structural elements of environmental, demographic and economic history, including the consequences (direct and indirect) of the slave trade.

The essay is concerned with the retreat from the British empire and specifically with the Scottish aspects of that process. It is now acknowledged that the Scottish role in the imperial project was central. Hence there is a special interest in tracing the response to the end of empire north of the border. Several historians and political scientists have argued that imperial decline was likely to destroy one of the key foundations of the Anglo-Scottish Union. This essay challenges these assumptions by demonstrating that imperial decline failed to produce much political concern in Scotland. The possible reasons for this are considered.