It was not until the very turn of the 18th and 19th centuries that the first faint signs of recuperation began to show themselves among the subject populations of the Balkan peninsula, and by that time a more than usually rigorous form of foreiga conquest seemed to have permanently imposed itself. And indeed, as we look back over the period of a century and a half in which the rebirth of the submerged nations has taken place, there is still little or nothing to explain the almost miraculous character of the change.

In the early eighteenth century, the arrangements by which the English aristocracy and gentry commonly provided for their families conformed to a standard pattern, the strict settlement, in which the essential questions were settled at the marriage of the eldest son. Not only was his immediate maintenance fixed and his wife's jointure, but the provision for the children of the marriage—how much they were to receive, in what form and when—was decided at the same time. In its essentials, the marriage settlement first secured that the family estate should in each generation descend to the eldest son. It did this by limiting the interest in the estate of the father of the husband and, after him, of the husband himself, to that of a life-tenant, and entailing the estate on the eldest son to be born of the marriage. Secondly, the marriage settlement empowered both the father and husband to raise jointures for their respective wives and portions, i.e. capital sums, for their daughters and younger sons when they married or came of age; sometimes rent charges were provided for younger sons.

Clarendon, in his History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, states that the disturbances in Scotland which preceded- the Bishops' Wars came as a shock to the English councillors of King Charles I. It seems probable that they came as a shock to King Charles himself. The unexampled authority that his father James VI had succeeded in establishing for the Crown in Scotland—an authority Which he continued to exercise at long range when he became king of England—was something which Charles I had learnt to take for granted.

In speaking this afternoon on the study of African history, I am very conscious that the choice of subject is ambitious. Many aspects of African history are more and more attracting the close attention of scholars, and I wish to apply to the history of the African continent as a whole the experience gained by the study of some aspects of the history of one of the regions, the West Coast. For I have learned that there are dangers no less than securities in the pursuit in isolation of selected regional or topical studies. Authoritative regional histories—histories of the individual colonies of the European states in Africa—are badly needed. But it seems to me that such tasks of local specialized investigation should not be allowed, as they proceed, to throw out of focus the whole picture of African history. So I would respectfully suggest that a case exists for a broader and more integrated approach to the study of African history and for an interpretation of African events from the point of view not merely of the European but also of the Arab, the Indian, and above all the Bantu and the Negro. My appeal is for the study of African history mainly through African eyes and for its own sake.

I was originally provoked into a consideration of this particular problem by reading Ostrogorsky's Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates. A long-needed and courageous attempt to reconstruct the history of the empire and characterized by acute and penetrating analysis, this book is nevertheless marked by a certain unevenness of treatment. Side by side with brilliant sections on the achievements of the tenth century and the complications of the fourteenth (this latter perhaps the finest part of the book) must be set the brief and inadequate account of the years 1025–1081. Ostrogorsky is not alone. Misstatements and omissions continue, and often in unexpected places. Recent much used general histories, as for instance the third volume of the medieval section of the Glotz Histoire générale, still repeat the old emphasis on 1081 as the dividingline between a time of painful disaster and the new era of Comnenian glory.

In 1855, Thakombau, chief of Bau in Western Fiji, was placed in a curious dilemma. He was recognized as the leading chief of Fiji by the United States Government, but at the same time he was held responsible for a sum of $45,000 in compensation for damage to the property of United States citizens. Thakombau had, indeed, aspired to the sovereignty of the entire island group, but he was quite unable to meet the claim. A few years later, on 8 October 1858, a promise was wrung from him to settle the account within a year. Harassed by his inability to do so, he turned to the British Government for assistance, and within a week, on 12 October 1858, he had signed a formal deed ceding the whole of Fiji to Great Britain. This document had been drawn up by the British Consul, W. T. Pritchard, who had only recently arrived in Fiji, but at once proceeded to London to urge the acceptance of the offer.

The origin of the Vyvyan family is lost in legend. In Cornish the word ‘vyvyan’ means ‘to flee’ or escape, and the Vyvyans, in common with the Trevelyans, cherished the legend that a Vyvyan was the last governor of the lost land of the Lyonesse, from which he escaped on horseback as it sank beneath the waves. Thomas Tonkin in his edition of Sir Richard Carew's Survey of Cornwall noted that ‘the Vyvyans anciently bore argent, a lion rampant, gules, standing on the waves of the sea, proper (which waves have of late been left out), and still give for their crest, an horse, argent, on which they tell you the governor saved himself’.

A constant source of discord within the States of the Church during medieval times was the absence of clearly-defined territorial boundaries between the control of the self-governing communes of the Patrimony and that of the papal authorities. Disputes arising from this cause embittered for several centuries the relations of the papacy with some of the principal towns of the Patrimony, among them Spoleto, Gubbio, and Orvieto. The subject of this paper is an episode in the papacy's quarrel with the last of these communes.

One of the more pleasant aspects of academic life is the informal chat between a professor and a young historian when they plan together a very necessary and illuminating book. It will be agreed that the subject is of high interest from several points of view, that the material is adequate—indeed, abundant, and that it might well prove to be a magnum opus upon which a respectable reputation could be built. Some of the main problems of the subject will be briefly indicated, some daring guesses will emerge (of course, suitably qualified with the remark that ‘there may be nothing in it, but it might be worth looking into’), and a wealth of references will be given to the more obscure foreign periodicals.