Notices of Periodicals and Occasional Publications mainly from 2016

The following list is based on actual inspection of the periodicals concerned, which in many cases are sent to the Review by the courtesy of their editors and publishers, and which are read by contributors to whom the Editors wish to express their thanks. It should be noted that contributors are not asked to include all articles, but only those to which in their judgement attention should be drawn. Most of the items listed appeared in 2016. The principal periodicals and occasional publications summarised below are as follows: 20th Century British History; Anglo-Norman Studies; Anglo-Saxon England; Archivio storico italiano; Austrian History Yearbook; Bibliotheque de l’École des Chartes; Bohemia; Cahiers de civilisation médiévale; Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies; Catholic Historical Review; Český časopis historický; Contemporary British History; Contemporary European History; Cuadernos de historia moderna; Deutsches Archiv; Economic History Review; European History Quarterly; Fourteenth-Century England; French History; Haskins Society Journal; Hispania; Historical Journal; Historical Research; Historische Zeitschrift; Historisches Jahrbuch; Historisk Tidskrift (Sweden); Historisk Tidsskrift (Denmark); History; History and Theory; Intellectual History Review; International History Review; Irish Historical Studies; Journal of Belgian History; Journal of British Studies; Journal of Contemporary History; Journal of Ecclesiastical History; Journal of the History of Collections; Journal of Medieval History; Journal of Medieval Military History; Journal of Modern History; Journal of Victorian Culture; Kwartalnik Historyczny; Medieval Clothing and Textiles; Northern History; Nuova rivista storica; Past and Present; Rethinking History; Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique; Slavonic and East European Review; Social History of Medicine; Southern History; Szazadok; Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis; Transactions of the Royal Historical Society; William and Mary Quarterly; Women’s History Review

The Editors of the English Historical Review are very grateful to all those who have collaborated in the compilation of these summaries: Christian Bailey, Julia Barrow, G.W. Bernard, Jeremy Black, Tom Buchanan, Martin Conway, Trevor Dean, Jean Dunbabin, John Edwards, Murray Frame, Karin Friedrich, Brian Golding, Tomasz Gromelski, Emma Hart, Cameron Hazlehurst, Mary Heimann, Ludmilla Jordanova, Jonathan Kwan, John Maddicott, David Meredith, Rosemary Mitchell, Thomas Munck, Graeme Murdock, Michael Prestwich, Euryn Rhys Roberts, Nigel Saul, Simon Skinner, David Stevenson, John Stevenson, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Robert Swanson, Wendy Toulson, Jennifer Wallis, Jessica Wardhaugh, John Watts, Ian Wood, A.D. Wright.

Historiography

F. Duval reconsiders the accepted rules for editing medieval French and Latin texts, to suggest a way of satisfying the demands of linguists without compromising the guidance which editors usually give to the more general reader. Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, clxx

A. Vinalo sketches a general history of the concept of violence, focusing particularly on the most significant turning-points in western political thought. He questions the position according to which, in western history, violence has been progressively declining in quantity and quality. Following Foucault, his working hypothesis is that overt violence was increasingly replaced by a disciplinary system of non-visible violence. It is this symbolic violence and its modifications, illustrated in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, to which historians should attend. History, ci

A special issue of Intellectual History Review, presented as a Festschrift for Constance Blackwell, contains a large number of short articles on intellectual historiography, ranging from histories of science, philosophy, religion and humanism across broad timeframes, to particular discussions of the work of key individuals including Nicholas of Cusa, abbé Pluche and Jules Michelet, but also touching on a great many less well known writers. Intellectual History Review, xxvi

French historiography of the Great War is valuably located by L. Smith in an essay that includes the cause of the fusillés. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

A.L. Macfie critiques Lewis Namier’s approach to Zionism from the perspective of postmodern approaches to history. At issue here is the relationship between Namier’s claims about how history should be done and his actual practice when it came to writing about the Zionist project to which he was personally attached. Rethinking History, xx

L. Goldman, the former editor of the ODNB, urges the need to integrate structural and biographical approaches to the writing of history, illustrating his argument with some telling case-studies from the history of American slavery and that of the origins of the welfare state as refracted through the lives of William Beveridge, William Temple and R.H. Tawney. Historical Research, lxxxix

A strong case is made by A.N. Hutton for considering H.L. Beales a ‘singularly important historian’ of nineteenth century Britain. Although ‘a failure as an academic historian’, he had immense influence as a populariser. Contemporary British History, xxx

A. Sohn pays tribute to the French mediaevalist Jacques Le Goff (1924–2014), first president of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, founded in 1975. One of the most widely read historians of the high Middle Ages, who was deeply influenced by anthropological approaches, Le Goff was a true European who—thanks not least to his Polish wife—also looked to East-Central Europe, where he cultivated close links with the Annales-influenced Polish scholarship of central figures such as Kula and Geremek. Historisches Jahrbuch, cxxxv (2015)

In a fascicle devoted to interdisciplinary approaches to the work of Jacques Le Goff, after a conventional eulogy by M. Aurell, four young historians sum up what Le Goff has taught the next generation. J. Aurell draws attention to the sheer range of other disciplines on which Le Goff drew to deepen our understanding of the past; C. Gerbea concentrates on his use of medieval literature to introduce colour and life into history; V. Kopp argues that his biographies of St Louis and St Francis of Assisi offer new, creative models of how an historian can, by deconstructing the available sources, arrive at a portrait of a medieval individual who personified major trends of his epoch; and A. Pélissié du Rausas tackles the same subject, comparing Le Goff’s biographies with those of various recent anglophone historians. Then older scholars get their turn. J.-C. Schmitt, Le Goff’s successor, in an interview with E. Bozoky, explains the steps by which Le Goff moved from studying popular culture to developing what he (and Schmitt) called historical anthropology. Finally, H. Samsonowicz describes both Le Goff’s international influence and his particular closeness to Polish scholars. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, lix

M. Borutta delves into Fernand Braudel’s biography to explain how the latter’s experience of studying and teaching in French Algeria account for the tensions in his modelling of the Mediterranean space. Braudel’s attention to geography and to history across the longue durée reflected his belief that environments tended to shape individuals and societies rather than vice versa. Such an approach may well allow Braudel to explain why imperial missions are liable to fail. Yet, as Borutta illustrates, Braudel could still offer support for French colonialism, situating it as the latest version of a long-standing European civilising mission in Northern Africa. The author finds that, while Braudel did not adequately resolve this tension in his historical schema, he may have been able to had he not separated out the geographical from the social and political, but rather illustrated how geographical spaces are also socially and politically constructed. Historische Zeitschrift, ccciii

G. Forster and S. Green, as editors of Northern History, offer a short appreciation of the contribution of Asa Briggs to the journal and to northern history in general. Northern History, liii

A thematic issue of Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, edited by J. Bos, H. Paul and K. Thijs, examines the philosophy of history from 1860 to 2000—a strand of scholarship that has been particularly significant in the Netherlands. Paul argues that in the period 1860 to 1940, philosophies of history—including the positivism of Buckle and Spencer, the Baden School of neo-Kantian philosophy of history, and the work of Spengler and Troeltsch—were valued in the Dutch context for their practical utility in moral-political-religious debates. Bos looks at four Dutch philosophers of history of the mid-twentieth century in terms of the development of Dutch academic philosophy more generally: Goedewaagen, Pos, Kuypers and Beerling. C. van den Akker discusses Dutch textbooks of the 1980s on the philosophy of history; C. Lorenz challenges the received story of the institutionalisation and success of Dutch philosophy of history in that decade. The cross-currents and differences between Dutch and German historians and philosophers of history are discussed by Thijs, and the issue concludes with an essay by B. Bevernage which gives a comparative perspective on the development of the discipline in Belgium. Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, cxxix

K. Shogimen explores of the role of ‘context’ in historical reasoning, using the example of Skinner’s approach to intellectual history. The article analyses the logical structure of such arguments, suggesting that this approach can be applied to other historical fields. History and Theory, lv

N. Partner provides a lucid account of the intricate ways in which Foucault is present in anthropological and historical work. Partner helps historians understand not only his impact, but also the manner in which people and ideas become canonical—being invoked, interpreted and contested. She is insightful on relations between history and its ‘cousin disciplines’. History and Theory, lv

A. Froeyman examines two recent historical controversies, the Historikerstreit and the Australian History Wars, probing their content and logical structure in order to shed light on how historians engage in arguments about highly charged topics and hence on their public usefulness. Rethinking History, xx

R. Svaříčková Slabáková introduces Czech historians to the concept of a history of the emotions. Český časopis historický, cxiv

E. Flaig’s explosive (and now somewhat notorious) article deals with the tense relationship between collective memory and history. The author focuses on a dispute that broke out in France in 2005 concerning how that nation’s role in the slave trade has been remembered. This particular dispute centred on arguments made by activists who demanded that a historian, Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, be stripped of his academic position because of his revisionist positions on slavery. Flaig uses this case-study to build a broader and more contentious case that historians should not have to trim their research agenda or arguments to suit the needs or sense of justice of any particular social or political group. Another important context for Flaig’s argument is how states have debated both domestically and on the international stage whether and to whom reparations should be paid. The author is broadly sceptical that any group in contemporary society can make a claim to reparations for actions taken by and against previous generations. Historische Zeitschrift, cccii

I. Ouages provides critical appraisal of a recent book on global history that sketches in some of the issues many historians grapple with concerning the relationships between world, comparative, diasporic, national and other types of history. Rethinking History, xx

In the introduction to a special issue of German History, J. Evans makes the case for queering German history. She outlines the trajectory of queer history in both European and North American contexts before offering reflections on the potential value of a queer perspective on German history. For Evans, queering German history goes beyond the history of sexuality: its agenda should be to critically reappraise all progressive narratives and presentist assumptions in German history. German History, xxxiv

General

M. Wintle considers discontinuities and changes in Europe’s attitude to Islam as Europe’s ‘Other’ over the past thirteen centuries, highlighting two examples: the Ottomans as the Islamic ‘Other’, and Islam as an iconic symbol for Asia. He discusses the differences between Europe as a religious idea in the Middle Ages and as a civilisational idea since the Renaissance. History, ci

A special issue of the Journal of Medieval History, edited by T. Martin, looks at the role of women as ‘makers of art’, blurring the distinction between artists, patrons, recipients and audiences, and insisting on the need to study women’s art-related activities alongside men’s, so that the place of women in history is ‘naturalised’. The limits to female autonomy are acknowledged, but the ‘margin to act’ possessed by women is the focus of the introduction and five case-studies, ranging across Christian, Muslim and Jewish examples in Europe between the seventh and the fourteenth centuries. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

Using miniatures from Carolingian, Anglo-Saxon and Ottonian different codices, G. Pac discusses and rejects the view that dress plays an important role in linking images of terrestrial queens with Mary, queen of heaven. He finds that the depiction of a queen wearing a veil does not link directly to Mary, as almost all women shown in the miniatures wear a veil, whether they are married or not. Furthermore, he suggests that Mary is depicted in Byzantine-style dress less as a reference to Empress Theophanu and more as a reference to images of the sixth century CE. Medieval Clothing and Textiles, xii

Recently, Sebastian Scholz argued—against the grain of traditional scholarship—that relations between the emperor Henry III and Pope Leo IX were poor: T. Bollen revisits the events of Leo’s pontificate and decides that his campaign against the Normans in southern Italy helped to drive a wedge between the two. Deutsches Archiv, lxxii

J. France looks at the modern concept of regular and irregular troops, and argues that this is not applicable to the Middle Ages. He shows that ‘non-elite’ troops had a significant role in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Their potential was demonstrated in incidents such as the Capuchin movement. Journal of Medieval Military History, xiv

J.G. Schenk discusses possible comparisons between today’s ‘new wars’, involving irregular forces, and medieval warfare. He examines the wide range of types of war in the Middle Ages, and argues that care should be taken in applying the terminology of twenty-first-century warfare to the medieval period. Journal of Medieval Military History, xiv

M. Lower looks at the employment of Christian mercenaries by rulers in North Africa and Muslim Spain. The great fourteenth-century scholar Ibn Khaldun explained this in terms of the ability of the mercenaries to fight in close formation. Lower demonstrates that they also had value as tax collectors and diplomats, and were capable of integrating into Muslim society while maintaining their Christian faith. Journal of Medieval Military History, xiv

P. Skinner considers the impact of facial disfigurement in the high Middle Ages. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., xxvi

T.M. Izbicki surveys the use and care of altar linens in Europe in the later Middle Ages. He charts the evolution of symbolism accorded the corporals, altar cloths, frontals and towels and traces the growth of regulations concerning their use and care as belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist became more literal. Medieval Clothing and Textiles, xii

M. Carr examines the role of the Catalan company in the Aegean and Asia Minor in the early fourteenth century, showing that none of those who employed it as a proxy were able to control it effectively. Journal of Medieval Military History, xiv

L. Crombie considers the power and ambitions of Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy and count of Flanders, in planning an unrealised invasion of England in 1385–6 with support from Scotland and Brittany. Seen as an attempt to consolidate his own power in the Low Countries and his nephew’s rule in France, it indicates the continuing centrality of Philip’s realms in fourteenth-century politics. History, ci

A. Brown discusses the utility of the term ‘civic religion’, concluding, from three fifteenth-century examples spread across Europe, that it effectively captures the merging of municipal interests and contemporary religious tastes against the backdrop of urban social problems. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

M. Arnoux, in asking whether the French offer to the English ambassadors at the Arras peace conference in 1435 that the Anglo-Norman realm be reconstituted was considered seriously or realistically by either side, opens up a wide-ranging discussion of the different, and sometimes conflicting, roles of the Channel as a political border, a route for long-distance trade, and a marketplace for legal and illegal exchange. In discussing Anglo-French relations from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, he sets out a range of possible perspectives and configurations and argues that the diverging trajectories of economic and commercial development between England and France prevented political integration, while mercantile often collided with political interests. Though it does not wholly convince, this is an interesting, thoughtful and thought-provoking contribution to the old question whether the Channel constituted a barrier or a bridge. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

In a well-illustrated article, J.B. Friedman outlines the provision of costly fashionable garments and adornments for pets in wealthy households during the early modern period. He suggests that the provision of such luxurious items shows not only the ostentatious tendencies of the pet owners but also their desire to assert personal or familial identity in the material culture of vivre noblement. Medieval Clothing and Textiles, xii

V. Reinhardt’s reflections on Martin Luther and Rome refocus the German reformer’s conflict with papal authorities onto the Roman perspective, exposing the deep-seated hostility between both sides before and during Luther’s appearance at the Diet of Worms. Reinhardt argues that the mutual insults traded in 1521 between Luther and the Roman nuncio destroyed all common ground and hope of mutual compromise. Considering how well it is established that Luther forcefully defended his position at the imperial diet, Reformation historians might not find great novelty in this argument. Yet the sources presented here, particularly the letters of the nuncio Girolamo Aleandro, equally demonstrate how little Rome was interested in purposeful dialogue, fuelling posturing from both sides. Historisches Jahrbuch, cxxxv (2015)

M. Strickland looks at writings of Calvin and (especially) Martin Chemnitz to find the first attempts by Protestant theologians to address the ‘Synoptic Problem’ in the gospel accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, lxvii

A. Ryrie asserts that Protestantism is not only a religion of the Bible but also one in which the Bible ‘appears to be self-authenticating’. It is a religion that turns on ‘the unmediated encounter with God’s grace’. That definition makes it hard, as he recognises, to call Anglo-Catholicism or Mormonism ‘Protestant’. And whether Lutheranism, Calvinism, Methodism, Unitarianism and many more should be seen as bearing ‘an unmistakable family resemblance’ despite ‘their huge diversity’ depends on which way one holds the telescope. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., xxvi

D. Jüte explores the evidence of attacks on the windows of Jewish properties in early modern urban locations (notably in Italy) to assess how far they did constitute a defined anti-Semitism, or conformed to less coherent forms of popular violence. His answer inclines towards the latter. European History Quarterly, xlvi

In a wide-ranging article, W. Reddy uses astronomy and philology to show that conceptions of time and space were widely shared in early modern Eurasia, and not dependent upon the emergence of the modern nation-state. History and Theory, lv

D. Hershenzon surveys the capturing and ransoming of people in the early modern Mediterranean. Complex negotiations could take place involving a wide range of institutions and authorities. Here a well-documented case-study, the capture in 1608 by Christian pirates of Fatima, a ten-year-old Algerian girl, and her sale into slavery in Livorno, offers an unusual twist. Her father paid a ransom but Fatima got no further than Corsica. She converted to Christianity, lived as a free person and by 1618 she was married. This case-study complicates more than it enlightens. Past & Present, no. 231

To understand the pan-Atlantic world we need to consider ‘the African element in constructing early global linkages’, T. Green insists. Past & Present, no. 230

G. Wiesenfeldt examines academic writings (especially disputation texts and academic orations) at early modern universities to show what such performative texts could and could not aspire to achieve. Intellectual History Review, xxvi

J. Zepeda reviews Descartes’ Rules for the Direction of the Mind, especially rules 12 and 14, probably dating in part from the late 1620s, and notes their significance in terms of later developments in his philosophy. Intellectual History Review, xxvi

The relationship between theology and intellectual history is focused by J. Sheehan in an interesting discussion of the presentation of Hobbes’s work. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

A. Sangiacomo explores the context of an argument found both in Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise (1670) and Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), that unassisted natural reason alone may not be sufficient to allow the common people to discover moral truth and live according to ethical principles. Intellectual History Review, xxvi

A. Stouraiti considers illustrations, especially maps, produced between 1684 and 1699 when Venice embarked on aggressive campaigns against the Ottoman Empire. Fashionably bold claims are endorsed about maps ‘as not neutral depositories of geographical information but politicized artefacts which are produced within a certain context of knowledge relations and offer highly selective visions of space through simplifications, contradictions, exclusions and silences’. Does that play down the practical indispensability of maps? And did not the effectiveness of maps—and of images of battles and portraits of naval commanders—in reinforcing ‘imperial patriotism’ depend crucially on the fortunes of war? Historical Journal, lix

The essays in this fascicule of Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes are devoted to the correspondence between intellectuals in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing on the ways in which the letters were brought together and edited for a wider public. The editors, E. Chapron and J. Boutier, introduce the subject by pointing out that the excellent modern editions of such correspondences, with their rich historical and philological annotations, give stability to the texts, thereby tending to obscure the elements of chance and change that have shaped the collections over the years, as they were assembled, arranged and edited. By asking their authors to highlight what can be discovered about the original letter-writing and the processes that then transformed it in a few specific cases, the editors aspire to raise awareness of the gap between modern texts of learned correspondence and their more fragile, tentative originals. M. Greengrass and L.T.I. Penman begin by studying the papers of Samuel Hartlib, initially collected by Hartlib himself in accordance with seventeenth-century editorial practices. He felt a tension between preserving his papers as private and opening some of them, first to his family and then to a wider public. One large unknown is the size of the original correspondence, given that the chances of destruction were high. But a collaborative project is making it more possible to assess Hartlib’s influence on his contemporaries. J. Boutier and A. Bruschi examine the letters in Baluze’s enormous archive, which Baluze, like Hartlib, did not categorise separately from other material. As with other letter-writers, Baluze only sometimes kept a copy of his own letters, sometimes preserving notes, and often nothing at all. Letters to him were much more likely to be kept and filed, although losses here were also common. Despite the rearrangements by later editors, it is still possible to trace Baluze’s own ways of sorting his material, whether by the names of his correspondents or by the themes of his research. His methods command respect even today. Boutier and Bruschi add some edited documents to illustrate their points. According to M. Stuber, an etiquette of correspondence had emerged by the time Albrecht von Haller set about producing his. Again, there is evidence of intentional destruction. Again, the line between private letters and those intended to be given further publicity was hazy. The correspondents convey a self-image which is sometimes at variance with present day expectations. The policies of later editors have marked the final outcome. The present owner of the letters, the Bibliothèque de la Bourgeoisie de Berne, has attempted to fill out the collection with purchases from other libraries. A. Saada describes how Christian Gottlob Heyne collected his letters, with most information on his habits coming from his son-in-law and biographer Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren. Heyne kept apart the letters relating to each of his various institutional responsibilities, and separated them from his private correspondence, most of which has disappeared. On the surviving letters Heyne made scholarly annotations, before ordering them and entering them on lists so that they could be found by future users of the corpus. Together they make a rich contribution to our understanding of intellectual life in the early years of the University of Göttingen. Finally, P. Bret explains the methods of collection, organisation and indexing used by Lavoisier in the eight volumes of his Correspondance recently produced by several teams of scholars. Since most of Lavoisier’s scientific collaborators lived in Paris, and could meet for discussion, notes rather than letters were usually all that was needed. These, however, were carefully archived for his own convenience, and can still be related to the gestation of his famous books. The letters that emerged from his office-holdings show traces of the work of his bureaucrats in transforming his drafts into official documents. All these essays justify the claim of the editors to have created a kind of anthropology of learned correspondence in this period. Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, clxxi

A critical reading of d’Avaux’s correspondence as French envoy in The Hague in the run-up to the Glorious Revolution enables C.-É. Levillain to make perceptive points about the nature of diplomatic sources. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

A special issue of European History Quarterly arising from an ERC project directed by Filippo de Vivo provides a useful vantage-point from which to explore the ‘archival turn’ in recent work on early modern Europe. The principal themes, as articulated in the Introduction, are ones that by now are familiar: historians no longer—if they ever did—consider archives to be neutral repositories but see them as sites of knowledge production, which in turn both reflected and encouraged wider changes in state governance and the transition to new and more dynamic forms of literate culture. The individual articles explore these themes in various ways. Contributions by A. Silvestri and A. Castillo Gómez respectively consider the diversity of archival cultures in the lands of Aragon and Castile. A brief piece by V. Harding describes the Henrician revolution in monastic record-keeping in England; articles by A. Guidi and F. de Vivo explore changes in record-keeping in the Italian peninsula. A particularly rich piece by R. Head reflects on the wider significance of archives as ‘rich cultural sites of action’ in the German-speaking lands. Finally, in the article of perhaps the widest general interest, M. Friedrich contributes a vivid portrait of the indefatigable French archivist of the eighteenth century, Pierre Camille Le Moine. European History Quarterly, xlvi

R. Quirós Rosado studies an aspect of Habsburg diplomatic activity during the War of the Spanish Succession, especially in Germany and Northern Italy. He emphasises the importance of the Catholic religion in the family’s political stance. Cuadernos de Historia Moderna, xli

B.J. García García offers a useful bibliographical essay on the treaties of Utrecht, Rasatt and Baden (1712–15). Cuadernos de Historia Moderna, xli

A special issue of Intellectual History Review is devoted to Calvinism in Enlightenment Scotland and Geneva in the eighteenth century. Guest-edited by R. Whatmore, the issue re-examines the Calvinist foundations of a relatively moderate conservative Enlightenment in Scotland and contrasts them with an allegedly more radical Genevan Enlightenment. Separate articles by Whatmore, M.C. Pitassi and J. Powell McNutt raise significant questions about the nature of Genevan Enlightenment, while C. Kidd, C. Maurer and S.J. Brown focus more on Scotland. Intellectual History Review, xxvi

R. Petri discusses the evolution of the Mediterranean metaphor in early geopolitical writings, including the role that Enlightenment philosophy of history had upon the shaping of classical geography. He argues that it was the idea of a ‘greater Mediterranean’ that after the fifteenth century was to gain worldwide importance thanks to transoceanic expansion. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, geographers, historians and philosophers transformed the Middle Sea into a metaphor for the universal mission of Europe and the West. History, ci

Herder’s views on ethnographic representation and art are examined by P. Hallberg, noting how Herder recognised the inadequacy of existing visual representations of non-European peoples and cultures, and what alternatives were required. Intellectual History Review, xxvi

The importance of formalised charity and social spending before the rise of the welfare state is examined by B. van Bavel and A. Rijpma. They look at Italy, England and the Netherlands between 1400 and 1850 to discover the magnitude of various forms of poor relief. Their findings show that formal relief accounted for up to 3 per cent of GDP and assisted 8–9 per cent of the population. A peak was reached around 1800 followed by a very steep decline in social spending. Causes of differences between European regions include urbanisation, wealth, religion and social-organisational structures. Economic History Review, lxix

Italy and England are compared over the period from 1560 to 1913 in terms of their use of energy by P. Malanima. Energy is measured as food, firewood, animal fodder, water and wind power (‘traditional energy’), plus coal. England was exceptional among European countries for the amount of energy it consumed—about six times as much per head as Italy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Economic History Review, lxix

J. Polasky focuses attention on Genevan, Dutch and Belgian revolutionaries in the 1780s who saw themselves as part of a universal movement and who were seen as holding ‘the promise of liberty’ for Europe. But in each case ‘a revolution in a small space lodged between empires proved precarious’. A model paper. Past & Present, no. 232

K. Deng and P. O’Brien present a survey and critique of the statistical foundations of the ‘great divergence’ between China and Western Europe over the eighteenth century. Statistical evidence for real wage levels in the Ming and Qing dynasties runs from ‘unfounded guesswork’ to ‘plausible conjectures’. They conclude that the data published and potentially available for China (and probably for India and the Ottoman Empire) are closer to the ‘unfounded guesswork’ end of the spectrum. Economic History Review, lxix

M.E. Hay examines the role of the House of Nassau in European politics, 1795–1815, as a case-study of the strategies pursed by smaller powers. International History Review, xxxviii

U. Kirchberger offers a reappraisal of the era that the German conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck famously called the Sattelzeit. While Koselleck was referring to the great transitions that occurred in Europe between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, numerous influential historians such as Jürgen Osterhammel and Christopher Bayly have applied his schema to a broader imperial and even global context. The author challenges this arguably Eurocentric narrative by focusing particularly on how ideas of time changed across the period. Whereas Koselleck found that new temporal regimes and new conceptualisations of time were a feature of the European modernity he saw emerging during the Sattelzeit, Kirchberger believes that varied understandings of time persisted and perhaps even multiplied across this era. Kirchberger concludes her argument with a study of William Apess’s Eulogy on King Philip. This interesting text, written in 1836 by a Native American Methodist minister, offers a radically different chronology of Native American experience from European accounts of the birth of the United States. Historische Zeitschrift, ccciii

C. Bow discusses the conduct of William Eaton, the United States Consul for Tunis, in defying Jeffersonian foreign policies and pursuing interventionism in response to Barbary piracy. He organised the first American attempt at deposing a foreign government in the first Barbary War. History, ci

A broadly conceived critique of the common celebration of Kant’s critical philosophy as a radical, far-sighted and irrevocable break with existing religious and metaphysical dogma is offered by M. Morris, who notes that, in his time, Kant was not seen as exceptionally revolutionary or modern. Intellectual History Review, xxvi

V.L. Lambert retraces the history of the International Peace Congresses in 1848–51, stressing the movement’s legacy for later activists. International History Review, xxxviii

National identities are constructed on and through contested borderlands. S. Nagle engages in a comparative study of this thesis with reference to the cases of Germany and Ireland in the nineteenth century. European History Quarterly, xlvi

D. Ritchie shows why the Irish evangelical Isaac Nelson judged it consistent, during the American Civil War, both to be a zealous abolitionist and to oppose the cause of the North. Historical Research, lxxxix

D. Martinez-Robles discusses the Sino-Spanish Treaty of 1864, emphasising its divergence from the standard pattern of nineteenth-century Western relations with China. International History Review, xxxviii

M. Hewitson introduces a special issue on ‘Combatants, Civilians and Cultures of Violence’ with a consideration of the increasing role of civilians in warfare from the latter part of the nineteenth century onwards. He considers the issues under three headings: histories of military violence; theories of violence; and dying, killing and culture. History, ci

The first issue of Journal of the History of Collections for 2016 includes several interesting articles exploring the role of the collector, showing how it related to other aspects of the art market in interesting, symbiotic ways. Among these are P.J. Martínez Plaza’s article on Manuel López Cepero (1778–1858), which demonstrates how this important early nineteenth-century clerical art collector was also an art dealer for himself, his friends, and foreign visitors, developing a particular expertise in negotiating the central Spanish art market of Madrid. Meanwhile, P. Humfrey’s article on the second marquess of Stafford and the Stafford Gallery showed how another important early nineteenth-century collector viewed his collection as a means of educating contemporary British artists, whom he generously patronised. Although the principles governing his acquisitions for the Gallery (which opened in 1806) were fairly conventional (no Spanish works, nor anything earlier than about 1500), the Gallery also showed signs that Stafford was innovative in terms of British exhibitionary practices, evidencing the first attempt to arrange a collection by national schools. Another article on the collector, by J. Priebe, explores the interdependency of François Boucher’s two careers: she suggests that Boucher’s acquisitions sometimes featured in his artworks and his role as a collector gained him an entrée into circles of potential patrons, while his studio pieces seemed to have increased in number in order to provide him with the funds for further purchases. This article also provides an interesting insight into the role of the ‘gift economy’ in the development of early modern collections. Also of interest is A.I. Lasc’s piece on Adophe Thiers, which considers this French politician’s collection of copies after Renaissance artworks, finding multiple meanings in his acquisitions. Lasc argues that these photographs and paintings were at once personal souvenirs of Thiers’ Italian travels, acts of artistic and historical reconstruction, and a restatement of traditional cultural values after his defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871. This article is a valuable reminder of the multiple functions of, and motivations for creating, art collections. Lasc’s article also speaks to another key theme of this issue: the artistic replica, copy or fake. A. Baker’s intriguing article on the Ithaca Jewel suggests that this nineteenth-century replica of a Hellenistic gold diadem should be seen, not as an attempt to deceive, but a personal token emblematic of Romantic Hellenism and of the friendships among excavators working in Greece in the period—one which reveals a very different attitude to our twenty-first-century concept of authenticity. So too does L.R. Clark’s article, which considers how copies of ancient gems were perceived in the Quattrocento as serving a valuable role in disseminating knowledge about these objects, and as possessing a genuine connection to the original. Meanwhile, C. Maxwell reviews the acquisitions made at the important Hamilton Palace sale of 1882 by the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Edinburgh and Dublin Museums of Science and Art, finding a number of fakes and reconstructed pieces among them, as well as a very limited budget for the applied arts, in comparison with the fine arts. Journal of the History of Collections, xxviii

K. Jones examines the practice of taxidermy and the ‘golden age’ of big-game hunting through the collecting exploits and career of Major Percy Powell-Cotton (1866–1940). She examines what she calls the ‘necrogeographies’ of the taxidermic project across various sites of capture, production and display, illuminating aspects of imperial natural history and attitudes towards the natural world. History, ci

M. Millan contributes to the comparative study of extreme-right political movements in pre-1914 Europe with an interesting analysis (based on primary archives) of groups in Italy, France and Catalonia. European History Quarterly, xlvi

F.R. Bridge re-examines Anglo-Austrian relations before 1914, stressing Foreign Secretary Grey’s indifference towards Austria–Hungary’s predicament. International History Review, xxxviii

J. Keiger analyses the relationship between Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey and the French ambassador Paul Cambon, and Cambon’s efforts to commit Britain to French security. International History Review, xxxviii

A. Mombauer reassesses Anglo-German relations in 1914, arguing that historians have overstated Britain’s influence on German decision-making. International History Review, xxxviii

K. Wilson stresses Russia’s ability to apply pressure to Britain in the July 1914 crisis because of Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey’s sensitivity to British vulnerability in India. International History Review, xxxviii

D. Saunders examines the role of icebreakers in maintaining Anglo-Russian contacts during and after the First World War. International History Review, xxxviii

P. La Porte assesses the lessons to be learnt from the failed intervention of the International Committee of the Red Cross during and after the Rif War in Morocco, 1921–6. Historical Research, lxxxix

G. Chamedes shows how the Vatican’s Secretariat on Atheism sought to place the Catholic Church at the centre of a global anti-Communist struggle in the 1930s. She argues that in the process it became ‘imbricated with the anti-Communism of Nazi, Fascist and proto-Fascist forces’. Journal of Contemporary History, li

The engagement of Jewish volunteers from Palestine in the Republican ranks during the Spanish Civil War is the subject of a fascinating article by R. Rein and I. Ofer. The article is based on a number of newly available letter collections which demonstrate the intermingling of Communist and Jewish identities, as well as the remarkable mobility of the volunteers’ lives. European History Quarterly, xlvi

K.K. Patel and S. Reichardt introduce a special section on the transnational dimensions of social engineering in the 1930s and 40s, with a focus on Nazi Germany; D. Kuchenbuch looks at the surprisingly intense exchanges of knowledge between German and Swedish housing experts, architects and town planners; M. Gutmann argues that the concept of Volksgemeinschaft helps to explain the transition of Dr Alfred Zander from a humanist educationalist in the 1920s to a founder of Swiss fascism in the 1930s, and eventually into the SS; P. Bernhard assesses the influence of Italian colonial settlement on Nazi planning for the colonisation of the East. Journal of Contemporary History, li

M. Sturma discusses the experiences of Japanese POWs on US submarines during the Second World War. He argues that, for both sides, the result of this interaction was to diminish racial animosities and enhance human understanding of the enemy. Journal of Contemporary History, li

Drawing on the case files of the International Refugee Organisation for more than five hundred Romani Displaced Persons, A. Joskowicz argues that for about five years after the Second World War the designation ‘Gypsy’ ‘came to function as a privileged rather than prejudicial category’. This brief period came to an end in the 1950s with the resumption of national refugee administrations in West Germany and elsewhere. Journal of Contemporary History, li

A. Arkusz shows that the US government’s efforts to repatriate freed American POWs in the years 1944–7 were hindered by a lack of co-operation verging on open hostility on the part of the Soviet military authorities. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxi (2014)

J. Matz provides new evidence about Soviet efforts to mislead the Swedish Government about the death of Raoul Wallenberg, drawing parallels with Soviet disinformation over the Katyn massacre. International History Review, xxxviii

In making his case for the European-wide triumph of post-Second World War consensual parliamentary democracy, M. Conway (European History Quarterly, xxxi [2002], 59–84) qualified his claims by noting the fall of the French Fourth Republic and the federalism of Germany as exceptions to his model. P. Corduwener seizes and builds on such exceptions to argue that politics was much less consensual but rather profoundly polarised. Yet Conway could readily accept these qualifications without damaging his overall claims. That the communist parties of France and Italy called themselves democratic was the tribute that vice pays to virtue: it did not mean that they were. Historical Journal, lix

M. Nilsson and M. Wyss argue that the armed neutrality of Sweden and Switzerland in the late 1940s led to a dependence on western armaments which, paradoxically, threatened the credibility of their neutrality. Journal of Contemporary History, li

A.D. Rietkerk analyses the expansion of multilateral economic development aid in the early 1960s by examining the history of the UN World Food Program. International History Review, xxxviii

N. Ashton examines the Anglo-American diplomacy leading to the passage in November 1967 of UN Resolution 242 on the Arab–Israeli Conflict, stressing the greater coherence and effectiveness of the British contribution. International History Review, xxxviii

The deployment of spectres of Fascism in the diatribes of 1968 form the subject of B. Mercer’s wide-ranging study. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

R. Burke comments on the ‘new history’ of human rights, emphasising the importance in the story of the 1960s as well as the 1970s. International History Review, xxxviii

S.-L. Hoffmann, S. Moyn and L. Hunt debate the history of the concept of ‘human rights’. Some nice thrusts but no goals. Past & Present, nos. 232, 233

S. Bruley and L. Foster introduce a special issue, ‘Historicising the Women’s Liberation Movement in the Western World’, although the focus is generally on Britain. S. Bruley’s contribution looks at the movement in a range of British provincial cities, to counteract the dominance of London socialist-feminist accounts. G. Stevenson considers the relationship between gender and class politics in the arena of employment disputes and strikes, using four case-studies including Dagenham and Grunwick. L. Forster argues for the centrality of print cultures to the women’s liberation movement, focusing on three feminist magazines (Shrew, Spare Rib and Women’s Voice). White anti-imperialist US feminists in the Boston area are the focus of S. Burgin’s essay, which argues that the ‘master historical narrative’ of women’s liberation as a white, middle-class preoccupation, distorts our understanding not only of the multiracial nature of the movement but also of the race politics of white US feminists. Canadian feminists active in welfare rights groups are discussed by L. Marks et al.; these lower-income women advocated a version of feminist motherhood that included their right to stay at home with their children rather than joining the paid workforce. Women’s History Review, xxv

Referring to Franco-German opponents of nuclear energy in the 1970s, A. Tompkins argues that ‘transnational connections made a difference by changing the way grassroots protest functioned’. Contemporary European History, xxv

B. Blumenau shows how the G7 states struggled to make the 1978 Bonn Declaration on International Terrorism (and specifically hijacking) more than a mere statement of aspiration. Journal of Contemporary History, li

In a thoughtful and engaging analysis, A.J. Hogan considers medical eponyms from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Focusing particularly on Down syndrome and Angelman syndrome, Hogan considers how patients and their parents have been an important influence in the renaming of such conditions (helping to replace the terms ‘mongolism’ and ‘happy puppet syndrome’ respectively). By emphasising the increasing role of families in medical naming choices since the 1980s, Hogan makes an important contribution to histories of the medical profession and its relationships with non-medical groups. Social History of Medicine, xxix

I. Lundestad uses new sources to examine American motives for trying to include Russia in Euro-Atlantic security fora after the Cold War. International History Review, xxxviii

S. Ward considers the use of the term ‘decolonisation’ from the early twentieth century. Past & Present, no. 230

In his contribution on the development of natural and international law from the later seventeenth to the twentieth century, H. Kleinschmidt counters the modern perception that these two legal traditions are opposites. He contradicts this juxtaposition by pointing at the common origin of both legal traditions in the early modern ius naturae et gentis and blames modern positivists for failing to define the real sources and origins of international law. In a tour de force which includes case-studies from US American law, the League of Nations, early twentieth-century German Völkerrecht and Soviet law, Kleinschmid denounces post-war definitions of the ‘family of nations’ as flawed, founded on colonial legal and political concepts. As a result, natural law (or rather ‘natural justice’) acquired the function of an instrument of resistance against a positivist version of international law which was felt to be unjustly imposed on the rest of the world by a small club of Western states. Historisches Jahrbuch, cxxxv

How can economic liberty be measured? In a stimulating article, L. Prados de la Escosura develops historical indices for the main dimension of economic freedom together with an aggregate index for developed countries today. Economic freedom, by his measure, increased in the second half of the nineteenth century but had an uphill battle during most of the twentieth. Economic expansion since the early 1980s has resulted in the highest levels of economic liberty seen over the last two centuries. Economic History Review, lxix

J. Reinisch introduces a special issue on ‘Agents of Internationalism’. K. Kreuder-Sonnen examines the international links of Polish scientists in the early twentieth century; A. Watson studies the identities of Habsburg officers during the First World War, and argues that the obedient passivity of junior commanders helps to explain why this ‘army of peoples’ combined resilience with ‘limited fighting power’; F. Piana studies George Montandon’s mission to Siberia for the International Committee of the Red Cross, 1919–21; C. von Oertzen looks at the role of the International Federation of University Women, 1919–32; D. Brydan uses the relationship of Spanish health experts with Nazi Germany during the Second World War to explore ‘Axis internationalism’; C. Donert examines the Women’s International Democratic Federation mission to North Korea in 1951, and challenges the ‘relative marginalisation of communist internationalism’ in recent scholarship; B. Taithe discusses the formative role of the Thai-border Cambodian refugee camps in shaping ‘modern humanitarianism’, 1979–93. Contemporary European History, xxv

Following the theme of ‘Migration and Religion’ from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, the 2015 Historisches Jahrbuch presents the proceedings of the 2014 general meeting of the conference of the Görres Society, introduced by C. Kampmann and T. Brechenmacher. The authors, who have extensive experience in this field, point out that mobility and migration were by no means exclusively modern phenomena, and were not necessarily caused by religious persecution or the threat of coercion. H.-D. Heimann reinforces this approach with his contribution to the history of Franciscan missions from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, which in Mongolia and in the New World attempted to preserve cultural plurality rather than impose one vision of Christendom. The history of pull and push-factors influencing European Jewish migration, such as assimilation, anti-Semitism, and the balance between religious and economic factors, is the topic of T. Brechenmacher′s survey of Jewish history as a series of migrations and re-settlements. A well-argued attempt at defining religiously motivated migration as a sub-category of migration in the early modern period, U. Niggemann’s article stands out by tracing Huguenot memorial culture constructed on the basis of narratives of persecution. The following article by M. Stickler presents the growing attraction of resettlement plans for whole ethno-religious groups as reflected in the so-called ‘Lausanne model’, which implemented the 1923 exchange of Turkish-Muslim and Greek-Orthodox population. This provides stimulating parallels for current discussions on Christian–Muslim conflicts in the Near and Middle East. The conference proceedings conclude with a contribution by C. Kösters on the failure of German Catholicism, organised in the Reich Association for German Catholics Abroad, to uphold Catholic universalism in the face of nationalism and the rise of Nazism after the First World War. Historisches Jahrbuch, cxxxv (2015)

The third issue of the Journal of the History of Collections for 2016 is a special issue focusing on the way in which Asia is represented through western collections. The overall impact is to stress quite how many different factors are at work in influencing the image of Asian countries presented in western museums, and how diverse, unsystematic and even unstable the representation of Asia therefore is. P.J. Anderson’s article on Langdon Warner’s vision for the Japanese collection at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art for instance, explores how the acquisitions of this ‘Monument Man’ in the 1930s were shaped by his own personal interests (for instance, in religious artefacts), but also by the constraints of the market and the space available. Conscious that outstanding masterworks of paintings and screens were difficult to purchase at that time, Warner acquired examples of mingei or folk art, including ceramics, textiles and armour. The originality of his vision was apparent by contrast with that of his successor, Laurence Sickman, who was interested primarily in Chinese fine art pieces, representative of the elites. J. Romaine’s article on Ananda Coomaraswamy and the formation of the Sri Lanka collection in the Los Angeles County Museum demonstrates a more lasting influence on American collections by a renowned scholar. Coomaraswamy’s early work on Sri Lankan art, Medieval Sinhalese Art, privileged the artwork of the central and isolated province of Kandy as the original and ‘pure’ manifestation of Sri Lankan culture, untouched by western colonial influences, and essentially derived from India. Romaine then shows how this interpretation of Sri Lanka culture influenced acquisitions and exhibition practices, not only at Coomaraswamy’s own Boston Museum of Fine Art, but at the LACM too. A. Green’s article on the Burma Collection at the British Museum further complicates the picture. Green argues that the haphazard collections at the BM suggest that we should question the success of an overarching colonial strategy for the systematic collection of Asian artefacts to create an encyclopaedic museum. Burma never had the status in the British colonial imagination which India did, and the Burmese artefacts, she suggests, reflect the personal agendas of individuals and institutions, as well as the shifting geopolitics of western relationships with Asian countries. Geopolitics also feature in N. Lin’s interesting article on the 1979 blockbuster travelling exhibition ‘5,000 Years of Korean Art’, a South Korean government-sponsored tour of the USA. Lin points out that it was designed to serve diplomatic objectives in a period of tense relations between America and South Korea, and could be viewed as successful from this perspective. She also compares it to the contemporaneous ‘King Tut’ exhibition in this respect and identifies the tensions at the heart of such exhibitions: torn between highlighting visually stunning masterpieces of art, likely to be perceived in isolation, and trying to emphasise a continuous tradition of cultural achievement over a chronological period. The majority of the articles in the issue focus on how Asia is represented through American and British collections, but one which does not is A. di Ruocco’s, on archaeological discoveries and collecting practices in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century. This identifies the difference between the ethnographic impulses of metropolitan Russian museums, which saw themselves as Western institutions showcasing the ‘oriental’, and provincial eastern museums, which often saw themselves as normalising the experience of their own diverse peoples (including, for instance, their Buddhist beliefs). Ruocco sees these differing perspectives as embodying Russia’s own dual identity as both European and Asian. She also points out the contrast between the competitive and nationalistic character of archaeological missions (part of the ‘Great Game’ of imperialistic policy), and the respect and co-operation on the ground of explorers and archaeologists of different nations. Journal of the History of Collections, xxviii

Part Three of Historisk Tidskrift for 2016 looks at the moral dilemmas facing the historian in a world whose attitude to the past is changing, as various groups within society, from victims of child abuse to those that have suffered from colonial regimes, seek redress or apology for crimes perpetrated in the past. J. Sköld and B. Sandin consider the role that historians can and might play in both judicial proceedings and reconciliation commissions dealing with matters from the abuse of children in Northern Irish childrens’ homes to Canadian attempts to promote reconciliation with Canada’s First Nations. They argue that historians have much to contribute to such processes, but face difficult moral and professional dilemmas once they become involved. While historians can provide context and historical depth, the nature of their role and the best way to provide assistance to judges, victims groups, and individuals, both dead and alive, remain unclear. One of the strengths of this article is the way in which it examines the problem without providing any easy answers. Historisk Tidskrift, cxxxvi

Africa

M. Tymowski investigates the role of women in the early Portuguese expeditions to South Africa, and points to the fact that, while very few European women accompanied Iberian sailors and settlers, both free and enslaved African women were important in establishing relations between Europeans and local population. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxi (2014)

The ways in which the Atlantic slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries affected West African political institutions are analysed by N. Obikili. It is shown that villages and towns of ethnic groups that had higher slave exports were more politically fragmented. Obiliki argues that the long-term effects of such political fragmentation continue to the present day and affect current economic development. Economic History Review, lxix

G.B. Magee, L. Greyling and G. Verhoef compare economic performance in the Cape Colony and Natal in South Africa with that in Victoria and New South Wales, Australia, between 1861 and 1909. Importantly, they distinguish between European South Africans and non-European, finding that the latter were unable to share in the advances in average incomes enjoyed by whites. Economic History Review, lxix

Concentrating on the activities of three Africans as Anglican missionaries in sub-Saharan Africa, with particular emphasis on their travels and translations, E. Wild-Wood suggests new approaches to the understanding of the spread of Christianity in the region. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, lxvii

B. Effros’ article on museum-building in nineteenth-century Algeria explores the impact of the French invasion on Roman ruins and artefacts, pointing out that, although these were the only historical remains valued by the French, they were still subjected to considerable destruction. What partially preserved them was the work of amateurs, who—with very little government support—began recording them and gathering them in local museums, designed for French colonial settlers (not the indigenous Arab and Berber peoples) and intended to justify the French civilising mission as the ‘natural’ successor to the Roman one. This, as Effros points out, is the historical context in which Islamic State is currently destroying North African Roman ruins, which are perceived as part of a Western colonial narrative. Journal of the History of Collections, xxviii

P. La Porte explores how concerns about the development of British and Spanish ambitions shaped the policies and priorities of Marshal Hubert Lyautey. Rival imperial visions, as much as previous experience in Africa, thus exercised a formative influence on his conquest and rule of Morocco. French History, xxx

A. Rosengarten examines the behaviour of the German military in South-West Africa (Namibia) towards African civilians of the Rehoboth Baster community in April–May 1915. She argues that historians of twentieth-century warfare and violence should pay greater attention to imperial theatres in which violence against constructed racial and national others transcended the ‘civilian’ and ‘combatant’ divides. History, ci

B. Nasson provides a series of interesting vignettes showing the effects of the First World War, almost always harmful, on Britain’s African colonies. Historical Research, lxxxix

Albert Schweitzer does not emerge well from R. Harris’s sensitive and richly nuanced paper. His achievements are seen as the village hospital he developed in Gabon, latterly treating at least 5,000 in-patients and as many out-patients annually, and as the ‘neo-christian ecologism’ he formulated in his later years. But he was ‘strangely indifferent’ to Africa’s culture, never learning native languages and relying on his understanding of European philosophy, notably Nietzsche. ‘Was bin ich doch für ein Dummkopf, dass ich der Doktor solcher Wilden geworden bin [What a blockhead I was to come out here to doctor savages like these]’, he wrote. Nor does he seem to have treated his wife Helene well. He was ‘a man who avoided intimate connection, and whose single-minded attention to his undertaking left bruised feelings and bitter rivalries’. Historical Journal, lix

The long-term effects of colonial rule on economic development in Africa are examined by J. Bolt and E. Hillbom. They take the case of colonial Botswana (formerly Bechuanaland) in southern Africa to argue that economic growth with rising inequality can be traced back to the cattle economy of the colonial era (1921–74) and that this older case has just as much relevance to current growth and inequality trends as post-colonial developments, particularly, in this example, diamond mining. Economic History Review, lxix

L. D’Angelo outlines the history of the colonial diamond industry in Sierra Leone from 1930 to 1961 and shows how it illuminates the relations between the colonial government and the mining company. Historical Research, lxxxix

M. Torrent assesses the influence of Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African aspirations and Indian connections on British ambitions for the post-war Commonwealth. International History Review, xxxviii

B. Crowcroft vigorously argues a revisionist case that not a few figures in the emerging Egyptian political opposition welcomed British intervention over Suez, confirming and reinforcing claims made by Michael Thornhill. ‘The Suez crisis “through Egyptian eyes” must … be a story of domestic political consolidation by a military regime, as well as one of a bold and ultimately victorious act of foreign policy against a former imperial power’. Historical Journal, lix

It is surprising to find in Past & Present a fascinating and largely positive account of a successful academically selective and rigorous school, Starehe, founded by Geoffrey Griffin (1935–2005), a disillusioned former British army officer and then civil servant, in Nairobi, Kenya, in the early 1960s. Over the decades Starehe has enjoyed long-term charitable funding from Oxfam, Save the Children Fund and Christian Aid, as well as support from UK governments and the Kenyan ruling elite. Griffin showed great political skill in securing resources attracting support and endorsements from royalty and celebrities. M. Hilton offers a fascinating study, though through clenched teeth at times: ‘A story of success has been presented here, but it could so easily have been one of failure’; ‘what is remarkable … are the relatively few criticisms that have been made of the school’; ‘Griffin has been described as a genius by many but perhaps his ultimate achievement was his ability to avoid sustained criticisms of any kind’. The concern seems to be that charities and non-governmental organisations have rather unquestioningly poured resources into a single school; yet the many boys who have been educated there, 70 per cent of whom come from ‘severely disadvantaged family backgrounds’ and pay no fees, might well disagree. Is it better to help some rather than none? Past & Present, no. 233

K. Law presents findings from interviews with white Zimbabwean women from the diaspora concerning their attitudes to that country’s independence in 1980. Many refused to relinquish their identities as Rhodesian, refused to engage with the new state, and maintained a highly nostalgic and selective understanding of the colonial past. Women’s History Review, xxv

Americas

S.R. Romney explores the gendered nature of the Dutch colonisation project as it unfolded in New Netherland. Colonisers at all levels stressed the importance of women to the settlement of the territory, producing an early and consistent emphasis on female migration and the creation of homes and villages along contested frontiers. The Dutch also viewed Native Americans through a gendered lens as they targeted female-cultivated farmland for their own households and villages. William and Mary Quarterly, lxxiii

J. Roberts highlights the critical experience of the English in Surinam for their subsequent colonisation of Jamaica. When Surinam was lost to the Dutch in 1667, English planters redirected their efforts towards the recently acquired island. Together with others who had stayed in Surinam under Dutch rule but left because of the labour shortages, these men were vital to the growth of what would become a lucrative sugar and slave economy. William and Mary Quarterly, lxxiii

‘Seventeenth-century England was a Protestant kingdom’, G. Glickman asserts, yet his careful study of the missionary efforts of the New England Company established in 1662 shows how they were hampered by religious divisions. ‘It hath often afflicted my spirit’, a Massachusetts clergyman wrote in 1673, ‘that the churches … of the Reformation are so estranged from one another’. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 defined the Church of England as exclusive and placed the missionaries in Massachusetts among the excluded, renewing the association of puritanism and sedition. The advocates of missionary enterprise thus ‘struggled to articulate the meaning of what it was to be an English protestant, and proved unable to translate their syncretistic vision of the church beyond the realm of language and communication into a collaborative colonial project’. Historical Journal, xli

K. Pluymers situates the economic enterprises of seventeenth-century English colonists in the context of early modern English discussions about natural abundance and scarcity. Rather than simply pursuing agricultural or industrial projects on the straightforward assumption of the value of colonial abundance, Virginian settlers viewed their enterprises through an Atlantic lens and understood that the case for their importance to the English economy must be made, not just discovered. William and Mary Quarterly, lxxiii

P.H. Lindert and J.G. Williamson bring new data to shine light on the prosperity of the Thirteen American Colonies in the period 1650–1774. After the boom of the mid-seventeenth century, income per head grew only slowly, held back by terms of trade, high dependency ratios and low productivity growth, among other factors. New England was the poorest region, the South the richest. Despite slow growth of average incomes, real income per head was, the authors argue, higher than in Britain, certainly by 1700 and possibly as early as 1650. Economic History Review, lxix

C.M. Parsons investigates the natural history of French North America through the European discovery of ginseng outside early eighteenth century Montreal. The Jesuit Joseph-François Lafitau used the knowledge of indigenous Mohawk women to support the credibility of his claims for the presence of this ‘Asian’ plan in North America. Yet, after their help was deployed to verify the plant, the French then traded the plant at the cost of the local environment. William and Mary Quarterly, lxxiii

Exploring the British and British American local trades in cows, E. Hart traces the differing marketing spaces, experiences and habits that developed on opposite sides of the English-speaking Atlantic. Abandoning customary marketing practices, Americans did not trade at markets or fairs but rather developed a commerce that catered to the needs of property-owners. By the Revolutionary era, such habits had prompted a redefinition of the relationship between private interest and the public good in the marketplace. William and Mary Quarterly, lxxiii

Proposing a new model for thinking about the socio-racial categories depicted in Spanish America’s ‘casta’ paintings, R. Earle seeks to clarify the underlying epistemologies that structured colonial society. Doing so links the paintings more explicitly to debates about human difference that captivated Enlightenment thinkers. What is more, by pondering the paintings as objects of taste that might stimulate the ‘pleasures of the imagination’ that were so integral to Enlightenment aesthetics, she argues for the combination of classification, colonialism and sexuality into appealing images. William and Mary Quarterly, lxxiii

Challenging American exceptionalism, S. Conway, in an important and wide-ranging piece, argues that American and European common soldiers conceived of a customary framework of rights and obligations and saw their service in contractual terms, while their officers recognised that their own power was far from absolute. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

Even before independence, argues D. Robinson, Americans were creating narratives of their particular role in the construction of the British Empire as a great power in the eighteenth-century European state system. During the conflicts that were played out in America between 1739 and 1763, Americans supported the idea of the Hanoverian monarchy as the ‘arbiter’ of Europe, yet they would also fashion distinctively colonial conceptions of intervention, allegiance and nationality. These ideas moved to the fore in the imperial crisis that unfolded after the Treaty of Paris in 1763. William and Mary Quarterly, lxxiii

Focusing on the role of native people in the British Empire during the years of the revolutionary crisis, S. Fisher explores the manner in which colonists reacted to the metropole’s policy of courting Indians as allies. In their objection to this decision, Americans drew on seventeenth-century precedents and highlighted how the American Revolution was but one outcome of a wider imperial struggle over managing diversity that fundamentally shaped the paths of Ireland, Scotland and America. William and Mary Quarterly, lxxiii

H. Hoock argues that the battlefield atrocities committed by the British during the American War of Independence ‘compensated for the revolutionaries’ legitimacy deficit as rebels’. Past & Present, no. 230

M.D. Breidenbach investigates the role of conciliarism and Catholicism in the era of America’s founding. America’s Catholics used this intellectual tradition to reconcile their faith, which in theory necessitated support of the pope’s power over all civil rulers, with the Republican nature of their new government. Thus, concludes the author, there are compelling reasons to include the conciliarist tradition within the ‘multiple traditions approach’ of American founding historiography. William and Mary Quarterly, lxxiii

By exploring early O’Connellism in Lower Canada (the present-day province of Quebec), S. Lynn shows the cross-ethnic and local circumstances which made it fertile ground for O’Connellite nationalism. Irish Historical Studies, xl

K.M. Tiro examines the precipitous and lasting decline in the salmon population in Lake Ontario in the nineteenth century: ‘the economic and social rewards of destroying both the salmon and their habitat proved irresistible’. Historical Journal, lix

Using a combination of provincial and national archives from Cuba, M. Zeuske undermines one of the central myths about cigar production in Cuba: that, unlike the manufacture of sugar, cigars were made without the use of slaves. Reintegrating Cuba’s cigar industry into a broader Atlantic market, Zeuske’s article demonstrates that not only did cigar producers use slaves to produce and smuggle cigars, but that this use of slaves peaked during the mid-nineteenth century. As a result, the cigar industry in Cuba should be understood as a significant part of the global ‘second’ era of slavery that took place during the nineteenth century. Historische Zeitschrift, ccciii

C. Bischof considers the recruitment of Chinese labourers as a response to the challenge posed by shortages of labour on plantations in the British West Indies after the emancipation of slaves in 1838. Past & Present, no. 231

P. Lacroix examines the British and American deployment of troops in the Canadian borderlands in order better to maintain peace after the 1837 Canadian rebellions. International History Review, xxxviii

J. Matsui adds a new twist to sectional conflict by stressing the religious dimension of millenarian belief in the conflict between Democrats and Republicans in Virginia in the Civil War era. History, ci

C. Herbst Lewis offers an important paper that takes a new look at the career of the controversial obstetrician Joseph Bolivar DeLee (1869–1942). By investigating DeLee’s ‘Gospel of Good Obstetrics’, Herbst Lewis provides a valuable insight into medical training and obstetrical practice in the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition, she addresses how both scholarly historical narratives and popular history (on the internet and in documentaries) may offer rather uncomplicated and misrepresentative accounts of episodes in medical history, according individual physicians disproportionate influence. Social History of Medicine, xxix

Using a combination of archival and oral history sources, J. Gibbings traces changing attitudes to inter-racial unions in a coffee-growing region of Guatemala during the mid-twentieth century. On one level, Gibbings’s prize-winning article is an analysis of competing models of eugenic thinking. German immigrants initially shared the perspective of numerous Guatemalan intellectuals and politicians who encouraged racial mixing between Germans and the various local populations as a way of developing the Guatemalan nation. However, under the influence of Nazism, some German settlers retreated from their advocacy of eugenic racial mixing. Another important aspect of Gibbings’s argument is the changing political context in Guatemala. As the Guatemalan political leadership turned against Nazism, this allowed victims of racial discrimination to exact a degree of revenge on German settlers who had taken Guatemalan women as concubines, and established racial hierarchies between their German and mixed-race children. German History, xxxiv

D. Mayers compares the roles in US foreign policy of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the Acheson–Lilienthal project for controlling atomic energy. International History Review, xxxviii

Z. Colley discusses the role of the prison author and activist, George Jackson, and his work with the Black Panther Party, focusing on the under-represented aspect of his work on behalf of African American prisoners and his development within the wider social and political milieu of California’s penal system. History, ci

O. Sanders demonstrates Britain’s relative post-war success in maintaining its position in the global tin industry on the basis of Bolivian supplies, despite rivalry with the US. International History Review, xxxviii

V. Pettinà examines Mexico’s relations with the non-aligned movement at the time of the 1961 Belgrade Conference, emphasising Mexico’s desire for greater independence from the US. International History Review, xxxviii

The emergence of Ivan Illich as a leading radical Catholic thinker and missioner during the 1960s is examined by R. Bruno-Jofré and J.I. Zaldívar through the prism of his experiences at Cuernavaca (Mexico). Journal of Ecclesiastical History, lxvii

The contrast between conspiracy theorists and advocates of the accidental theory of history is highlighted by R. Schmidt in a discussion of the changing explanations of the Kennedy assassination. The article notes that American opinion may now be more willing to accept the role of error and accident. Historisk Tidsskrift, cxvi

K. Van De Mieroop takes controversies about the value of Black History Month to examine critically attitudes to racism in the present-day United States of America. The author argues that by presenting black oppression as in the past, BHM can sanction claims that the present is a post-racial era. As a result history is not truly ‘serving life’, in Nietzsche’s words. History and Theory, lv

C. Kidd subtly and elegantly considers ‘originalism’, the attempt by some American politicians and judges to identify the original principles underlying the eighteenth-century Constitution and the original intentions of those who framed it. Such aspirations have proved something of a will-o’-the-wisp, not offering firm ground. Even conservatives have differed sharply. How should historians intervene in the debate? ‘To what extent is the historical critique of originalist conclusions inflected by ideological as much as by methodological concerns, and as such to betray the ethos of the academy?’ A tour de force. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, xxvi

Asia, Australasia and the Pacific

J. Fujitani offers an intriguing discussion of the syncretic evolution of Christianity in the early stages of the sixteenth-century Jesuit mission to Japan, here interpreted more as the outcome of creative dialogue than misunderstood reception. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, lxvii

J.N. Crossley and S.E. Owens trace the foundation of the first Franciscan nunnery in the Spanish-ruled Philippines. Catholic Historical Review, cii

S.J. Mawson paints a horrific picture of the circumstances of the soldiers in the Philippines who asserted Spanish power in the seventeenth century. Far from conforming to the stereotype of the conquistador, they were more likely to be Mexican mestizos recruited in annual levies in New Spain, not least from criminals. Soldiers were often half-starved, underclothed and unpaid; the mutiny of 1634 was but the most damaging. Increasingly, Spanish commanders relied on indigenous Filipinos. Yet somehow two thousand soldiers conquered, pacified and controlled more than a million Filipinos, as well as defeating European rivals. Past & Present, no. 232

In a paper set rather grandly within recent historiographical trends, and perhaps promising more than it delivers, T. Roy examines the Indian Mutiny of 1857 from the perspective of the greater urban merchants. Some secretly assisted the East India Company’s military effort, not least out of fear of attacks on private property by rebel soldiers and the rebel government. But such attacks arose not from class conflict but were opportunistic; the rebel government did not invoke exploitation of the poor by the rich. Historical Journal, lix

T. Yanamoto re-examines the diplomacy surrounding the disputed possession of Sakhalin Island, 1867–73, and argues that Russia’s attempts to secure exclusive control of Sakhalin were aimed primarily at keeping out the Americans and the British, not the Japanese. Historical Research, lxxxix

E. Tomizawa-Kay examines the career of the late nineteenth-century innovative nihonga artist, Hishida Shunso, whose work drew on western Impressionism and traditional Japanese realist art. The article identifies some interesting parallels with the development of the contemporaneous Western art market—in particular the emergence of the middle-class collector—but also some interesting differences: many Japanese artists’ works were sold in department stores, where they were displayed with ceramics and furniture, demonstrating the much higher value placed on decorative art in Japanese society than in Western civilisations. Journal of the History of Collections, xxviii

S. Goyle finds meaning in the inclusion, in the imperial durbars held in Delhi in 1877, 1903 and 1911 for the coronations of British monarchs as rulers of India, of commemorative exhibitions and processions involving veterans that offered a triumphant memory of what had happened in 1857. How effective were they? Historical Journal, lix

S. Donati considers the Italian concession in the Chinese treaty port of Tianjin, granted by lease by the Qing dynasty in 1902, as a case-study in ‘informal’ empire. Historical Journal, lix

T. Akomi analyses the work of the League of Nations Health Organization in Asia between 1910 and 1925, emphasising the role of Japanese experts and the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine. International History Review, xxxviii

P.W. Bohringer uses the intelligence reports from US railway experts in Siberia and Manchuria to provide new evidence on Japan’s Siberian expedition, especially the role of Foreign Minister Uchida. International History Review, xxxviii

K.A. Wagner offers a chilling reassessment of the use of force by the British in India. The Amritsar massacre in 1919 repeated what had been done in 1857 and 1872 and reflected weakness rather than strength. ‘The perceived need to maintain British prestige and save face at all costs … imbued colonial violence with a crucially performative function’. Brilliantly argued; but how far was it clear at the time that ‘colonial violence’ was ‘self-defeating’, and how long would it take for it to be defeated? Past & Present, no. 233

Women workers who were transferred from their jobs in British confectionary factories to a joint enterprise in Tasmania are the focus of E. Robertson’s study, which analyses their role as agents in the creation of a multinational business. Women’s History Review, xxv

S. Loy-Wilson shows how the training of salespeople in Australian department stores in the 1920s and 30s was underpinned by Christian and imperial values. Journal of Contemporary History, li

A. Datta examines narratives of immorality and domestic violence in the ‘coolie’ community in British Malaya. She finds that official narratives emphasised the passivity of the female victims of offences such as wife abduction, which served the purposes of both the colonial state and nationalist leaders; she concludes that, although limited, women in fact could use choice of partners as a means of exercising limited agency. Women’s History Review, xxv

J. Yellen argues that Japan’s decision to sign the Tripartite Pact in September 1940 was motivated in part by Japan’s fears that Germany would seek to control the French and Dutch colonies in East Asia. Journal of Contemporary History, li

A. Davis and V. Thakur analyse the role of Indian diplomats in combating racial discrimination in post-war South Africa, Canada, and Australia. International History Review, xxxviii

Some one million Japanese settlers were repatriated from Korea at the end of the Second World War. H. Kahm reinterprets this episode, and emphasises the degree to which the Japanese were still able to make choices and rebuild economic links with Korea. Journal of Contemporary History, li

E. Leake offers a somewhat forced comparison between autonomy movements in Nagaland (1947–63) and Baluchistan (1973–7). It is the contrasts and ‘the different governing exigencies’ that emerge from the detail of a paper that complicates more than it nuances. Historical Journal, lix

J. Colman discusses the role of the veteran diplomat Averell Harriman in attempts to end the Vietnam War by negotiation, providing new evidence on North Vietnamese intransigence. International History Review, xxxviii

H. Pho highlights the involvement of US personnel in currency manipulation in South Vietnam, exacerbating the problem of corruption. International History Review, xxxviii

M. Craig analyses British and American policy-makers’ response to media discussion of an ‘Islamic bomb’ being acquired by Pakistan, contending that they viewed it as a propaganda problem rather than an imminent nuclear proliferation concern. International History Review, xxxviii

East-Central Europe

In a concise article, T. Jurek shows that, contrary to the established view, Mieszko I of Poland (c.925–992) paid tribute to Emperor Otto II for all his lands and not just a small principality west of the River Warta. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxiii

R.A. Sucharski studies the etymology and uses of the name Mieszko and suggests that in the early Piast kingdom it could have denoted an heir apparent to the throne. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxii (2015)

In a meticulously researched article, S. Wieczorek shows that the author of the oldest biography of St Adalbert of Prague (956–997) relied heavily on oxymorons not merely to achieve a rhetorical effect but also to demonstrate his critical attitude towards the principles of scholastic logic. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxii (2015)

Before the later medieval period aristocratic women in Eastern and Central Europe rarely issued official documents, but a close analysis of two forged seals of Richeza of Lotharingia (c.995–1063), wife of Mieszko II of Poland, suggests that she may have been an exception, writes G. Pac. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxii (2015)

M. Pauk analyses a number of papal charters to uncover the true identity of two prominent clergymen mentioned in an undated document issued by Duke Władysław Herman (1079–1102). He argues convincingly that Eberhard and Henry were Polish bishops, possibly of Poznań and Płock respectively, rather than canons of Bamberg cathedral as previously believed. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxiii

A. Buko compares archaeological evidence from the site of the mid-thirteenth-century residence of Daniel Romanovych, King of Ruthenia (1201–1264) on Cathedral Hill in Chełm with the castle’s description in the so-called Galician-Volhynian Chronicle, to find that, while the text provides a lot of detail, it fails to mention some of the major features of this atypical structure. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxiii

M. Mantla discusses the origins of Bogurodzica, or Mother of God, the oldest Polish hymn, and argues convincingly that it was composed at the instigation of Archbishop Jakub Świnka (d. 1314), a strong supporter of the idea of unification of fragmented Poland and promoter of the Polish language. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxii (2015)

W. Zawitkowska shows that the alleged marital infidelity of Sophia of Halshany, the fourth wife of King Władysław Jagiełło, was in all likelihood a rumour started by the baronial opposition and agents of the Teutonic Order. Similar and equally unfounded accusations were made against Jadwiga Anjou and Anne of Cilli—Jagiełło’s first and second wives. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxiii

The list of sixteenth-century envoys to the sejm remains incomplete but, thanks to the efforts of M. Lubczyński, a number of posłowie from the period between 1507 and 1512 have now been identified. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxii (2015)

G. Nemes offers an assessment of the role in diplomacy and church life played by Papal legates at the Hungarian court in the years prior to the battle of Mohács. Századok, cl

During the first interregnum (1572–4) the nobility of Podlasie held a number of assemblies, which ultimately led to the establishment of a confederation, writes E. Kalinowski. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxiii

K. Bem analyses fifty-three royal appointments to the lucrative post of starosta grodowy during the reign of Stephen Bathory to show that, contrary to the widely held view, the king favoured Catholics over Protestant candidates and that his stance serves as proof of his Counter-Reformation sympathies. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxii (2015)

Four months after their defeat at the Battle of Guzów in July 1607, supporters of the Zebrzydowski Rebellion assembled in Kamień near Warsaw and resolved to enter into negotiations with the king and to accept mediation proposals offered by a group of bishops holding a synod in Piotrków, writes E. Opaliński. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxi (2014)

M. Cieśla discusses the size and main characteristics of the Jewish population in seventeenth-century Lithuania and calculates the total number of Jews in the Grand Duchy in 1650 at just under 20,000. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxii (2015)

M. Kamler analyses indictments filed in provincial courts of law in Łęczyca, Wieluń, Ostrzeszów, Poznań, Brześć Kujawski, Cracow and Lublin in 1610, 1650–60 and 1690 to study interpersonal violence between members of the lesser nobility. He finds that the chief cause of murders and felonious injuries were assaults resulting from long-running feuds between neighbours and between kin. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxi (2014)

A. Klein and S. Ogilvie present data on almost 7,000 villages in Bohemia in 1654 to examine the occupational structure of their inhabitants during the second serfdom. They find that landlords encouraged serf activities from which they could extract rents, while restricting those which threatened manorial interests. Economic History Review, lxix

J. Hrbek sees genuine Catholic devotion in the way Habsburg imperial ceremonial sought to make its rulers imitators of Christ. Český časopis historický, cxiv

J.M. Barta analyses a 1674 text of István Csáky (Politica philosophiai okoskodás), and examines the purposes of this work in the context of divisions during the 1670s between the Habsburg court and noble estates. Századok, cl

U. Kosińska uses the correspondence of Jean Le Forte, the Saxon ambassador in Moscow and St Petersburg, from the years 1730–33 to shed light on Augustus II’s efforts to strike an alliance with Russia. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxi (2014)

T. Szwaciński looks at Russo-British diplomatic relations in the context of the Seven Years’ War, and in particular at the little-studied negotiations between the ambassadors David Murray and Heinrich Ivanovich Gross in the summer of 1756. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxii (2015)

P. Zając studies the relationship between King Stanisław August Poniatowski and papal nuncio Giovanni Andrea Archetti to show that the king was determined to maintain good relations with the papacy and worked towards smoothing over potential conflicts between church and state in Poland–Lithuania. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxiii

The authorities in the Prussian Partition sought to prevent outbreaks of diseases through investments in healthcare and improvements to sanitary conditions in the newly acquired province, writes D. Łukasiewicz. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxii (2015)

M. Getka-Kenig describes efforts of Polish authorities in the Russian satellite Kingdom of Poland established in 1815 to honour and commemorate Emperor Alexander I of Russia. A series of monuments designed and erected between 1815 and 1830 aimed to present him as a benevolent ruler and ‘resurrector’ of Poland. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxiii

M. Janowski offers an insightful analysis of the Catholic Church’s strategy to counter liberalism and secularism in nineteenth-century Europe. He argues that the Church reluctantly chose to support emerging nationalisms and embrace political conservatism. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxii (2015)

M. Wodzinski has undertaken substantial archival research into the taxation lists of the Jewish communities in central Poland between 1815 and 1867 in order to investigate the socio-economic status of the Hasidic communities of the time. His conclusion is that the Hasidim were predominantly composed of a relatively prosperous stratum of merchants and financiers. European History Quarterly, xlvi

In an interesting debate, four eminent historians of modern Poland—J. Borejsza, A. Nowak, J. Zdrada and M. Janowski—discuss the circumstances that led to the outbreak of the January Uprising of 1863 in an attempt to determine whether military action against Russia was strategically justified. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxi (2014)

In Austro-Hungarian Galicia in the 1880s, a group of Jewish intellectuals mostly from Lviv and Cracow set out to integrate the Jewish community into Polish society while preserving its religious and cultural uniqueness. P. Jasnowski explains that their movement failed because of the strength of anti-Semitic sentiment in Central and Eastern Europe on the one hand and the rise of Zionism on the other. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxiii

Ł. Sroka discusses activities of the ‘Leopolis’ Humanitarian Society established in Lviv in October 1899 as a branch of the Independent Order B’nei B’rith, a Jewish service organisation founded in 1843. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxiii

A. Łupienko looks at spaces and practices of middle-class sociability, and especially social visits, in Warsaw in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxi (2014)

M. Kopczyński and Ł. Sobechowicz use height measurements and BMI of 8,000 conscripts from Warsaw drafted in 1913 to assess the overall health of urban and rural population in central Poland at the beginning of the twentieth century. Their findings suggest that city-dwellers were generally healthier than young men from the country and that as much as 20 per cent of Jewish male youth may have suffered from malnutrition. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxiii

M.B.B. Biskupski discusses the role of William Shuman as an American economic adviser to post-war Poland, 1919–20. Slavonic and East European Review, xciv

A. Nowak attempts a reassessment of British and American policies towards Russia during the First World War and the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921, but his interpretation does not seem to stray too far from the conventional view. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxi (2014)

V. Šmidrkal argues that amnesties and pardons were used to negotiate the justice system during the rough transitional period from the end of the Habsburg Empire to the establishment of the First Czechoslovak Republic. Český časopis historický, cxiv

A. Talabér compares a handful of controversial commemorative or ‘national’ days in inter-war Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Bohemia, lvi

J. Kęsik describes the role of the army in the process of forced cultural and linguistic assimilation of ethnic and religious minorities in the Lublin voivodeship in the inter-war period, arguing that, far from achieving its objectives, the policy of Polonisation antagonised and radicalised the Orthodox Ukrainians settled in the region. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxi (2014)

Wartime biographies of leaders of the Polish Communist Party are notoriously difficult to study because official records were subject to strict censorship, manipulation and outright falsification—but J. Pałka succeeds in tracing the activities of M. Rola-Żymierski, future Marshal of Poland, during the Nazi occupation. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxi (2014)

In 1939–41 there was a remarkable flood of Hungarian films into the Yugoslav market. D.S. Frey argues that this was a form of ‘cultural imperialism’, and that the success of the Hungarian film industry in turn bolstered Hungary’s pretensions to regional power and independent action within the emerging Nazi ‘New Order’. Journal of Contemporary History, li

G. Ujváry examines the work between 1942 and 1944 of a joint committee of representatives from Hungary and Germany to examine information in schoolbooks about the history and culture of the two countries. Századok, cl

During the Paris Peace Conference of 1946 the Polish delegation initially supported Italy’s claim to Trieste but in the course of diplomatic jostling, and mostly as a result of pressure from the Soviet representatives, it was forced to back Yugoslavia, reveals M. Pasztor. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxi (2014)

J.R. Kudelski describes the process of tracking down and recovering artworks looted by the Nazis in occupied Poland and hidden away in various locations across Upper Silesia. Immediately after the war the Bureau of Restitution and Reparations located and secured thousands of stolen items. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxiii

In an interesting study, M. Szumiło paints a collective portrait of leaders of the Polish Workers’ Party in the years 1944–8, and shows that, despite different backgrounds and ideological outlooks, members of the party elite collaborated to ensure consolidation of the communist regime in Poland. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxi (2014)

In a lengthy essay J. Eisler discusses the changing relationship between state and church in communist Poland, and argues that, in an attempt to solidify Catholicism, the church hierarchy rejected any reform—including that put forward by the Second Vatican Council. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxii (2015)

F. Henschel looks at theories of how children’s homes in Socialist Czechoslovakia were supposed to bring up ‘social orphans’ away from their unsuitable parents. Bohemia, lvi

Sugar rationing introduced in August 1976 was part of the Polish communist government’s effort to counter the country’s economic problems—but it proved extremely unpopular with the public and could not avert a major crisis, writes A. Zawistowski. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxiii

The consequences of following Ilan Pappé’s vision of historical scholarship become clear in a good, but depressing, article by A.E.B. Blomqvist on the nationalist interpretations of history in Hungary and Romania that dominate relations between the two neighbouring EU states and keep alive two shrill and competing visions of the past. Where historians view the past through the eyes of the present, and enlist it in support of present ends, with no attempt to understand or explain the opposing point of view, reconciliation will remain impossible, and the implications for democracy, as well as for the study of history, are bleak. Rejecting the possibility of even attempting an objective reconstruction has serious consequences. Historisk Tidskrift, cxxxvi

France

A. Lunven edits one version of the charter of donation to the monastery of Glanfeuil of the church at Anast by Anouuareth, and a noticia of the same donation. She argues that the donation charter was forged, probably towards the end of the tenth century, and that the noticia was fabricated around 1096. Consequently, the deductions that have been drawn from these documents about the functioning of the Breton plebs in the ninth century are open to question. Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, clxx

E. van Houts examines the significance of the planctus (the text of which is given as an appendix) on the death of William Longsword in the context of the cultural history of Normandy and Aquitaine. In a wide-ranging and thoughtful study she demonstrates how this lament for the murdered Norman ruler, written very shortly after his death, and probably by Anno, abbot of Jumièges, reflects the theological and political concerns of author and patron, plausibly identified as Gerloc-Adela, William’s sister and the wife of William III of Aquitaine. They are concerned to project the Christian faith of the count and in particular stress his learning of, and adherence to, Trinitarian belief from the learned Poitevin abbot Martin, a close associate of Gerloc. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

Using the evidence of Flodoard’s Historia Remensis ecclesiae, E. Roberts considers the role that institutions—particularly the church of Rheims—may have played in the advancement of Ottonian power in West Francia in the 940s and 50s. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

L. Abrams confronts a question which has long troubled historians on both sides of the Channel: how Scandinavian was Scandinavian Normandy? On the one hand, place- and personal-name evidence suggests a substantial Scandinavian settlement in Frankish Normandy, while, on the other, there is very little evidence of a Scandinavian material culture in Normandy (though more may be discovered), little hint of a Viking trading economy in town or country, and little indication that the Viking settlers long identified themselves as part of a Scandinavian cultural or political diaspora. Abrams elegantly and convincingly suggests a resolution of this paradoxical conundrum. She argues that the very success of the Norman dukes, influenced by a Frankish ecclesiastical culture keen to eliminate all traces of a pagan past, contributed to the erasing of a ‘Viking’ memory which was superseded by the new foundation myth of the gens Normannorum, promoted by writers such as Dudo of St Quentin. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

P. Bauduin makes a compelling case for the transformation of ducal rule in Normandy during the time of Duke Richard II. This was achieved both through his own agency, in his promotion of, and generosity to, the Church, and in projecting a Christian model of marriage and conjugality, as well as through the influence of Carolingian didactic literature, particularly that directed at the edification of princes, which presented a new model of kingship. This completed the ‘moral conversion’ of the duchy, irrevocably changing the way in which the Normans and their ruler were perceived by themselves and others. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

R. Allen’s sensitive analysis of the episcopal acta of the dioceses of Avranches, Coutances and Sées in the duchy of Normandy serves as a valuable introduction to the forthcoming, much-awaited edition of the corpus of Norman episcopal acta. A careful and thoughtful analysis of their palaeography and diplomatic focuses on the identity and origin of the scribes and the existence or otherwise of an ‘episcopal chancery’. It places them in the context of developments in episcopal administration and household (with particular reference to rural deans and the bishops’ clerks) in the Anglo-Norman world. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

In a suggestive case-study, K. Vanheule shows how an early eleventh-century struggle for territory between the bishops of Verdun and the counts of Bar lay behind the appointment of a prominent reformer to the headship of the border priory of Beaulieu. The vita he wrote of the local St Roding had a similar purpose of territorial assertion. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

B. Pohl, in a closely argued analysis of early manuscripts of Dudo of Saint Quentin’s Historia Normannorum, makes an elegant and convincing case that the (lost) archetype was a ‘chronicon pictum’, and may even have been Dudo’s autograph presented to the ducal court. If so, it represents the earliest known illuminated history in the medieval West. Pohl reconstructs the pictorial cycle as well as the accompanying Leonine hexameter tituli which served to draw attention to, and elucidate, the set-piece events depicted. This lavish artefact demonstrated to its audience (the duke and his household) and to visitors from other courts, the duchy’s power, prestige and self-confidence. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

E.J. Ward shows that Anne of Kiev (c.1024–75), widow of King Henry I of France, played a larger role as mother and guardian of her young son Philip I during his minority than has usually been supposed. Historical Research, lxxxix

L. Mancia examines the reforming programme of John, abbot of Fécamp, through the lens of the affective confessional literature produced in the abbey’s scriptorium and available in its library. She argues that patristic anti-heretical texts, with appropriate iconographic illumination, could be re-imagined in the context of contemporary monastic reform and employed by John both against the sin of monastic disobedience within the community and beyond, and for the promotion of the internal discipline of the soul. While this is a generally convincing interpretation which works for Fécamp, it needs to be considered whether it represented a more extensive use by Benedictine reformed communities of such texts for disciplinary purposes or was specific to John and his monastery. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

B. Bachrach considers the poem describing the Norman Conquest commissioned by William the Conqueror’s youngest daughter, Adela, from Baudri of Bourgeuil. However, almost half of his paper is concerned with a discussion of the number of combatants at Hastings, and recapitulates his own extensive, and other modern, scholarship, arguing for a substantial force on both sides, and stressing the importance of the rather neglected Chronicle of Saint-Maxent associated with the court of Aimeri of Thouars, a prominent figure at Hastings. It is a pity that more space was not devoted to Baudri’s work and to Adela’s famous (and perhaps fictional) velum depicting the Conquest. This would have allowed the development and further discussion of interesting and important themes raised in the conclusion, notably the use of poetry for pseudo-historical texts in the manner of chansons de geste, and the function of Adela’s velum, allegedly Baudri’s source. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

S. Biddlecombe examines how Baudri of Bourgeuil refashioned the Gesta Francorum, the anonymous narrative of the First Crusade. The Gesta was criticised by contemporaries for its lack of polish and ‘rusticity’, and for understating both the crusaders’ nobility and the crusade’s theological implications. As well as amplifying the text to address these shortcomings, Baudri recast it as a modern epic with Bohemund of Taranto as hero. Bohemund is both the active military leader and the mouthpiece articulating crusading ideals and motives. In the classical epic tradition Bohemund is ‘flawed’, but his apparent character defects—his guile and deceit—were not inevitably perceived by contemporaries as such. Baudri presented a believable hero as an example to be emulated by a knightly audience. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

M. Otter examines how three twelfth-century writers and poets, Baudri of Bourgeuil, Hildebert of Lavardin and Henry of Huntingdon, responded to the Horatian topos of sufficientia in their three autobiographical poems, ‘De sufficientia votorum suorum’, ‘De casu huius mundi’ (the best known and most imitated and copied of the three texts) and ‘De statu suo’, respectively. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

G. Garnett examines the career of Duke Robert ‘Curthose’ of Normandy as portrayed by Orderic Vitalis, especially in his Historia Ecclesiastica, but also in his earlier interpolations of William of Jumièges’ Gesta Normannorum Ducum. In a very detailed analysis, Garnett suggests that Orderic was influenced in his later account of ducal shortcomings by Henry I’s propaganda underpinning Henry’s claim to the English throne and Robert’s lack of claim to the Norman duchy. Though it is perhaps going too far to suggest, as Garnett does, that Orderic was ‘star-struck’ by Henry’s visit to his monastery of St-Evroul shortly after the king’s decisive victory at Tinchebrai, there was certainly a symbiotic relationship between the abbey, its historian and the king. And the consolidation of royal authority in the 1120s probably acted as an incentive to Orderic to promote Henry’s claims. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

J.-H. Foulon challenges the current orthodoxy that abbatial investitures in eleventh-century Normandy reflected a new ideology of spiritual and temporal power, promoted by Fulbert of Chartres and Lanfranc, which served as a precursor to similar developments elsewhere. In a detailed study which ranges widely over liturgical and ritual reform, abbatial elections and abbatial functions, he focuses on Le Bec and an anonymous text written in the late 1130s, the De Libertate Beccensis monasterii. Rather than mirroring eleventh-century theory and practice, Foulon makes a strong case that it should be interpreted in the specific context of contemporary Norman ecclesiastical politics and in the shadow of the 1107 London concordat. Rather than providing a template for reform, abbots at Le Bec were invested and fulfilled roles (increasingly priestly) that were very similar to their abbatial contemporaries. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

Hiding behind a slightly misleading title, R. Allen provides a valuable survey of relations between the twelfth-century bishops of Sées and their cathedral chapter in the aftermath of the chapter’s transformation into an Augustinian community in 1131. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, lxvii

C. Andrault-Schmitt disentangles information about the patrons of the Order of Grandmont from the very confused written sources that remain. He highlights the importance of those on the one hand who worked for the English kings Henry II, Richard and John in the initial period, and on the other of about a hundred families of the minor aristocracy who gave generously throughout. Many of the gifts commemorated at Grandmont were actually given to various daughter houses. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, lix

C. Voyer argues that the decoration of various chapels in France belonging to the Orders of the Templars and the Hospitallers suggests a particular emphasis on the themes of self-sacrifice and victory over death in the spiritual life of their inhabitants. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, lix

S. Isaacs gives more precise definition to the meaning of the term ‘mercenary’ by examining the metaphor regularly used of such men, that they were wolves. This image was not used of knights who were paid or of members of local militias. Isaacs co-ordinates the medieval perception of mercenaries as (usually foreign) rapacious and bloodthirsty invaders with the rather eccentric picture of wolves provided in most medieval bestiaries. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, lix

V. Gazeau considers the nature and extent of the authority exercised by the abbesses of Norman nunneries between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. This was derived in part from their secular rank—most were of high aristocratic family, though this status declined a little towards the end of the period. She argues that although in theory their power within the communities they ruled was extensive, in practice it was constrained by several factors. The same ducal or aristocratic families which contributed to their authority also circumscribed it by interference in the houses’ affairs. Many nunneries were metaphorically, and sometimes almost literally, in the shadow of neighbouring male foundations; diocesan bishops made frequent interventions in conventual business; while the papacy increasingly interfered to impose its own reform agenda, culminating in the bull Periculoso. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

C. Letouzey-Réty makes a convincing case for the administrative efficiency and expertise of the nuns of La Trinité, Caen, and especially its abbesses, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Highly literate, they possessed and used the skills essential to manage extensive cross-Channel estates. They were assisted by the fact that they were closely connected with, and often related to, the rulers of the Anglo-Norman realm, and thus had access to advanced managerial, administrative and legal practice. But the making of cartularies and surveys was not only driven by economic realities but the preservation of charters also contributed to preserve the house’s collective memory of its ducal founders and their patronage. As the Anglo-Norman state split apart in the first half of the thirteenth century, Abbess Juliana (1237–c.1264) promoted the writing of histories, the copying of charters and the production of surveys, to maintain the integrity of her possessions on both sides of the Channel. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

G. Federenko provides a substantial reassessment of the much under-studied vernacular prose Chronique de Normandie (it is one of the very earliest such prose histories), and makes a strong case for a modern edition of its many surviving manuscripts. He suggests that its relative neglect is (paradoxically) due to its popularity during the thirteenth century, which makes it a ‘difficult’ text to interpret. A continuation of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum, it took the story of ducal Normandy beyond earlier verse continuations by Wace and Benoît into a world where, he argues, although there was still a Norman identity (or range of identities), it was challenged by the rising power of the French kingdom. The many surviving different versions of the Chronique produced in northern France and Flanders reflect the differing political perspectives of their authors. A majority of the surviving manuscripts are combined with the Geste de France and these histories run, in parallel, as it were, or were perhaps intended to merge at some point, reflecting the reintegration of the duchy into the kingdom. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

P. Gautier Dalché lists and describes over 130 plans or maps of French localities, drawn either by using little pictures or by providing an overview of the land to assist the viewer. They were produced to help define political borders, to demonstrate defensive positions, to show local development, or (most commonly) to resolve land disputes. They grew increasingly common in the fifteenth century, and were made all over modern France, with the exception of a large gap in the west, north of the Garonne and south of Normandy. Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, clxx

V. Beaulande-Barraud edits documents relating to a murder in 1459 of a one-year-old child by her grandmother. These shed light both on the co-operation of seigneurial and royal courts and on the violent emotions generated within a dysfunctional family. Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, clxx

T.D. Vann Sprecher looks at the collaboration between outraged parishioners and the archdeacon’s court of Paris in the policing of clerical concubinage in the later fifteenth century, noting that the system offered some protection to priests, but not to the women who lived with them. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

M. Cassan traces the events that marked the careers of Étienne and Antoine Lestang, fervent Catholics caught up in the struggles in the Limousin in the period of the League and the recognition of Henri IV as king of France. Cassan argues that the predicaments in which Étienne and Antoine found themselves limited their freedom of association, and threatened both to undermine their political influence and seriously reduce their wealth. That Étienne lost much while Antoine succeeded in holding on to his inheritance and enlarging it was not a matter simply of each man’s choices, but of the different events that shaped their lives. Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, clxxi

In a lavishly illustrated piece, T. Hamilton’s detailed detective work reveals the subject and evolving political significance of a series of images depicting the sixteenth-century ‘Procession of the [Catholic] League’. Cumulatively, these images also suggest a more dynamic role for collective memory in early modern culture than has previously been acknowledged. French History, xxx

M. Bannister wisely cautions against applying the concept of a proto-revolutionary écrivain engagé to the literary and political engagement of the early seventeenth century. Instead, he vividly evokes the playful, jousting character of literary interventions and ripostes, and emphasises their distance from any coherent—let alone radical—ideological framework. French History, xxx

D. Roussel examines judicial archives to reveal popular urban reactions to the assassination of Henri IV in 1610, seeking to reconstitute the climate of suspicion and uncertainty but also the growing importance of a ‘plebeian public sphere’ within which political events were often heatedly discussed. French History, xxx

Deftly interweaving archival and literary material, C. Chappell Lougee muses on the motivations and contexts surrounding clandestine and ‘surprise’ marriages in the late seventeenth century. Exploring Paris as a place of subterfuge and shifting identities, she also suggests that the inconsistent pursuit and punishment of imposters reveals some of the limits of ecclesiastical and civil law in practice. French History, xxx

Leibniz’s Egypt Plan of 1671–2 is shown by L. Strickland to throw light on contemporary assumptions of Christian kingship, holy war and ecumenism in the context of the early part of Louis XIV’s reign. Intellectual History Review, xxvi

The impact of the financial revolution and commerce on geopolitics offers J. Shovlin an important perspective on the thought of John Law. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

Eighteenth-century Parisian clergy threatened to exclude actors and actresses from Christian burial but ‘reabsorbed them into the liturgical community’ if they publicly renounced their profession and repented. The case of Adrienne Lecouvreur, who died in 1730—according to legend, in Voltaire’s arms—is seen as exceptional. J. Palacios ‘uses methods familiar to historical anthropology and the materiality of religion to interpret the way in which priests and actors used resources like gesture, ritual objects and city streets to negotiate the theatre’s rightful place in public life’. Clerical attitudes are somewhat densely and implausibly related to the progress, or lack of progress, of the rebuilding of the church of Saint-Sulpice from 1641 to 1734. Past & Present, no. 232

An excellent guide to the networks of the French Enlightenment is offered by M. Comsa and others. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

N. Ritchie makes a persuasive case for the importance of Jean-Paul Marat’s English sojourn and encounters in shaping the form and content of his revolutionary journalism. This adds new and thought-provoking detail to the identification of the English Commonwealth tradition in French revolutionary thought. French History, xxx

In an interesting and subtle article, J.N. Heuer contributes to the histories of the military and of masculinity in pre-Revolutionary France by exploring how contemporaries viewed those army officers who chose to marry. Concepts of martial valour and of domestic virtue intersected in complex ways. European History Quarterly, xlvi

I. Deflers focuses on an interesting travel report written by a French nobleman who visited Prussian military headquarters a few years before the outbreak of the French Revolution. The travel report’s author, the Marquis de Toulongeon, went on to join the Third Estate as early as June 1789, and generally proved himself to be a voice for reforming the military and especially the aristocracy’s privileged role within it. By focusing on this individual and his report from a neighbouring country, Deflers is able to highlight that reformist sentiment was present among French aristocrats in the pre-revolutionary era. As the author shows, the function of this report was as much to promote reform of the class structure in France as to improve French military know-how compared to that of its neighbour to the East. Indeed, the Prussian army served as an ambiguous model for the French, according to Toulongeon; rather than advocating that the French emulate the very top-down Frederickian military, he suggested that the French improve their soldiery by encouraging more fervent patriotism in common soldiers. Historische Zeitschrift, cccii

F. El Hage contrasts the treatment of French generals in private and public writings of the eighteenth century, highlighting the dangerous consequences when anonymity was overturned and satirical generalisations were found to apply to individual leaders. Although such criticisms did not prefigure revolutionary sentiment, their publication after 1789 furthered desacralised those in authority. French History, xxx

A. Calzani uses the reports of foreign diplomats in Paris to illuminate the worsening relations between the French revolutionary government and the conservative European powers. International History Review, xxxviii

Notions of sacrifice and community provide J. Zizek with the basis for a perceptive analysis of patriotic generosity during the Revolution. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

In a powerfully argued piece, H. Williams draws on the material culture of devotional practice to reinterpret the importance of Sainte Geneviève in the eighteenth century. Joining the wider reassessment of teleological narratives of secularisation, she finds in the complex ritual of the saint’s symbolic ‘trial’ and ‘execution’ in 1793 evidence of the ongoing strength and relevance of her cult—which would, moreover, far outlive the Revolution’s attempts at de-Christianisation. French History, xxx

In an engaging article, D.P. Harsanyi examines how French authorities in the Napoleonic era criminalised rebellions as acts of ‘brigandage’, thus forging co-operative relationships with local communities. In her analysis of discourse, and in the detailed tracing of networks of insurgency and pacification, Harsanyi creates a convincing picture of the dynamics and rhetoric of power in occupied territories. French History, xxx

J. Greenfield explores how France effectively won the peace following the Napoleonic wars through the successful payment of reparations. This in turn contributed significantly to securing the new international order, vividly contrasting with the problem of German reparations after the First World War. French History, xxx

The memories of Allied occupations in the 1810s are shown as long-lasting in C. Haynes’s account, which focuses on the dialectics of defeat/liberation and decadence/regeneration in French history. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

O. Davis movingly revisits Mettray, a penitentiary established in 1840 for young offenders, by examining its archives alongside the unpublished writings of one of its former inmates, Jean Genet. While painstakingly prising apart some of the interwoven narratives of power and discipline, disorder and oppression, Davis reveals the extent to which Mettray’s absent perimeter walls were realised in the minds of its inhabitants, who sought both to pierce and perpetuate them. French History, xxx

L. O’Brien spotlights satirical depictions of Émile de Girardin, editor of La Presse, as a means of investigating the journalistic battles of the Second Republic. Less fully explored, though rich in promise, is the contrast between de Girardin’s opportunistic pursuit of mass journalism and the more narrowly focused political preoccupations of his opponents. French History, xxx

C. Bêchet studies (in French) the arrival of French civilian and military refugees on (neutral) Belgian soil in the aftermath of the French defeat at the battle of Sedan in September 1870. Journal of Belgian History, xlvi

In a well-focused contribution to debates on international networks and aspirations, F.J. Martinez sheds light on the national rivalries that beset the organisation of the International Sanitary Conferences in the second half of the nineteenth century. In this context, French-led internationalism offered a particularly strong vector for the development of both national and imperial ambitions. French History, xxx

J. Greenfield reassesses the achievements of Gabriel Hanotaux as French Foreign Minister in 1894–8, emphasising the Chinese as well as African dimension of his work and the constraints imposed by domestic politics. International History Review, xxxviii

C. Hirschi offers a fascinating and novel perspective on the role played by experts and intellectuals in the Dreyfus Affair. As Hirschi reminds the reader, the Affair is usually remembered as a triumph of intelligence and of science over the army and the justice system. However, by focusing on the very prominent role of graphologists (experts on handwriting) the author is able to develop a more nuanced argument about the contribution made by France’s intelligentsia. In the early stages of the trial, graphologists seemed to prove their growing authority as they argued for the authenticity of the ‘bordereau’—a document supposedly sent by Dreyfus to the German Embassy. But Emile Zola then mobilised a collection of more conventional academics to contradict or undermine the scientistic claims of the handwriting experts. That Zola’s Dreyfusards were ultimately the more successful suggests that the trial established the figure of the intellectual—a critical but often non-expert voice—as a more influential figure in French cultural life than the more specialised expert. Historische Zeitschrift, ccciii

M. Beyen uses a file of letters sent to a French parliamentary deputy in the years preceding the First World War by deserters from the French army who were living in Belgium to draw rather large conclusions (in English) about the relationship between subaltern and political identities in Europe during the transition to mass politics. Journal of Belgian History, xlvi

D. Petrucelli shows how a case of counterfeiting in France in 1926 provoked an internationalisation of policing and criminal law. He argues that this was a neglected strand of the internationalism of the 1920s—not utopian, but a ‘pragmatic response to a concrete security problem’. Journal of Contemporary History, li

Through a painstaking analysis of new archival material, R. Ducoulombier traces the evolving agency of the French writer Henri Barbusse within decision-making at the Comintern. This account of the influence of a dissident writer, however, does not diminish but rather reinforces the arbitrary character of Stalin’s personal rule. French History, xxx

F. Harbers and M. Broersma challenge the contention that self-consciously objective journalism was an Anglo-American innovation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Foregrounding the travel writing of the French journalist Andrée Viollis, they posit a ‘French model’ in which empirical journalism was celebrated alongside the literary style—although not necessarily the political opinions—of the individual author. French History, xxx

M. Flandreau and F. Zumer shed new light on the ways in which the French investment bank Paribas purchased media influence in France, and especially the role of Horace Finaly, Executive Director 1919–37. Contemporary European History, xxv

With a narrow but detailed case-study of a post-war trial in the Basses Pyrénées, S. Ott sheds light on some of the complex motivations and elaborate double games at play between French Basques, Spanish, and Germans during the Second World War. French History, xxx

A concern for the need to establish the facts was central to the work of the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, established in Grenoble in 1943 to preserve evidence of the Holocaust in France. J. Neumann’s well-researched piece is rather depressing: it shows that a concern with evidence and the facts was not enough to attract much interest in French society after 1945 in the fate of Jewish citizens of France under Vichy and Nazi rule. Nevertheless, if its work was not appreciated at the time, at least the committee preserved the evidence for future generations that have a greater interest in the fate of Jews during the Second World War. Historisk Tidskrift, cxxxvi

L. Humbert examines France’s policy towards Displaced Persons in its zone of occupation in Germany, and discusses France’s complex relations with UNRRA during 1945–7. Journal of Contemporary History, li

Antagonism between state and society and the concept of social transparency are key themes in S. Geroulanos’ somewhat modish account of France after the Second World War. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

I. Long creates a sympathetic and sensitive portrait of Françoise Giroud, editor of L’Express and minister under Giscard d’Estaing. Charting Giroud’s evolving ambitions—and more anxious introspection—as she moved from women’s magazines to political journalism and office, Long underscores her originality in seeking journalistic contributors from a range of political backgrounds. French History, xxx

G. Heimann describes the ‘symbiotic’ three-way relationship between France, Israel and the former French colonies of sub-Saharan Africa, 1958–62. Journal of Contemporary History, li

S. Lemagnen in a brief paper provides an illuminating and personal perspective on the role of the present-day curator of the Bayeux Tapestry. She shows how this document/artifact (it is classified both as a holding within the Bibliothèque Municipale de Bayeux, and as a ‘monument historique’) is displayed, conserved and researched, and also how it is the centre of a constellation of other artefacts that constitute an expanding research collection. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

Germany, Austria and Switzerland

M. Wagendorfer supplies a new edition of the Transitus Sancti Epiphanii, a short account of the death of Epiphanius, bishop of Pavia (467–97), and notes that the earliest manuscripts were written in southern Germany in the eleventh century. Deutsches Archiv, lxxii

L. Wangerin describes the ways in which relics, particularly those of the Holy Lance, were used both to establish the legitimacy of the ruling line in Ottonian Germany and to create an imperial ideology. Contemporary Anglo-Saxon kings, by contrast, though equally enthusiastic relic collectors, were less aware of the political potential of these treasures. Haskins Society Journal, xxvii

The Annals of Quedlinburg give an account of the dedication of the church of Quedlinburg in 1021 with full details of the relics: C. Popp reconsiders this to reflect on the religious networks that the canonesses of Quedlinburg were able to establish, thanks to their connections with the Ottonian dynasty. Deutsches Archiv, lxxii

Examining a hitherto unstudied group of texts in a twelfth-century manuscript in the library of the Erzabtei St Peter in Salzburg allows K. Nass to spot an early twelfth-century Bamberg ars dictandi compilation: he edits this, together with related materials in a twelfth-century manuscript now in Leiden. Deutsches Archiv, lxxii

By considering accounts of the royal and imperial inaugurations of Frederick Barbarossa and more general liturgical texts used in such ceremonies, J. Dale seeks to revise readers’ understandings of the shifting relationship between papal and monarchical power in the Hohenstaufen Empire. While popes proved able to downgrade the status of German emperors via the ceremonies at which the former officiated—as the historical literature has emphasised—German kings remained adept at using political liturgy to shore up their sacred authority. In this regard, German kings resembled their French and English counterparts, as Dale’s broader project reveals. German History, xxxiv

The subject of M. Görmar’s article is the much-neglected history of the Teutonic Order’s bailiwick in Thuringia, which was part of Albertine Saxony. In contrast to the princes of Saxony’s Ernestine line, who were among Luther’s most ardent supporters and who secularised the Order’s houses early on, the Albertine rulers of Saxony and Thuringia remained Catholic until 1539. Conducting a conciliatory policy towards the Catholic Church even after joining the Reformation, they also remained on the Emperor’s side during the Schmalkaldic War in 1547. Görmar shows that the weakening of the Teutonic Order in Saxony pre-dated the Reformation—many brothers there were priests (not knights as in Prussia) who, due to their proximity to the ‘common man’ in the villages, joined the Reformation and the Peasants’ War in 1525. It was only in the early seventeenth century that the remaining members of the Teutonic Order found a new task in the battle against the Ottomans. Historisches Jahrbuch, cxxxv (2015)

R. Meier’s proposal to alter fundamentally the reputation of the infamous witch-hunter Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn (1573–1617), bishop of Würzburg, has the potential to cause fierce debate. Based on a narrow portfolio of newly discovered sources of the ‘Zent’ court in the town of Wertheim (sources mostly destroyed in other towns), Meier suggests that pressure to torture and execute suspected witches came mainly from the village population and lower local officials. The bishop—at least before his last two years of life, when executions spiralled—frequently refused to prosecute. Some of the case-studies sound intriguing, but the nature and scarcity of the sources poses a problem. Historisches Jahrbuch, cxxxv (2015)

F. Quaasdorf’s examination of German pamphlet literature and broadsheets during the Thirty Years War queries the role of public opinion during the forging of the Peace of Prague in 1635 and its immediate aftermath. The conclusions are hardly surprising: there was little censorship, mainly due to imperfect control by authorities during the war; most pamphlets focused on the desire for peace and imperial patriotism; legal issues were mainly discussed in texts directed at an educated audience, while moral issues dominated publications aimed at the ‘common man’. Historisches Jahrbuch, cxxxv (2015)

The sad tale of an epileptic eleven-year-old boy from Rothenburg ob der Tauber who claimed in 1689 that his mother had taken him to a witches’ sabbath is told in detail by A. Rowlands, drawing on abundant evidence from what was a ‘witch family trial’ rather than the pursuit of a solitary witch. Past & Present, no. 232

The example of eighteenth-century Electoral Saxony’s politics of reform, promoted by its ruler, Elector Clemens Wenceslaus (1739–1812), archbishop of Trier, are the subject of K. Wolf’s interesting contribution to the debate on the nature of absolute government in the smaller territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Wolf turns against a historiography which has painted the archbishop as a rational reformer. Instead, the elector prioritised the building of a lavish palace, to stress—despite the relatively strong position of the Saxon estates—the dynastic and representational element of his rulership, paying least attention to his ecclesiastical tasks. His interest in trade and foreign policy dominated, drawing on cultural transfer with France, whose anti-revolutionary émigrés the archbishop received rather generously. Historisches Jahrbuch, cxxxv (2015)

H.W. Smith makes the compelling case that same-sex male love played a vital role in Prussia during the Seven Years War. He suggests that love between fighting men could be channelled into a wider love of country that could even justify men giving up their lives. Smith’s contribution is significant for a number of historiographical reasons. The author suggests that many of the patriotic feelings that were supposedly first awakened during the wars against Napoleon were already in evidence a half century earlier. He also suggests that a present-day tendency rigidly to separate erotic love from Platonic love has made historians rather deaf to expressions of same-sex longing and affection that could be important in narratives of new kinds of warfare and of the modern nation. Finally, Smith makes his case by focusing on unduly neglected poetic sources—primarily those written by Kleist and the poet Johann Wilhelm Gleim—rather than by relying on prose accounts. German History, xxxiv

J. Bond insists that the migration in 1816–17 of some 35,000 Germans from Baden and Württemberg, mostly to the United States, can be properly understood only in the context of over a century of migration, with special reference to the way in which would-be migrants in effect paid for their voyage on credit, making use of well-developed networks. Historical Journal, lix

M. Sedivy argues that, during the Rhine Crisis of 1840, there was no significant rise in German nationalism among German-speaking Austrians. Using brochures and reports in several languages, Sedivy notes that, despite censorship, the Austrian public had access to a considerable amount of information about the crisis; but because of the diffuse, federalist nature of German patriotism and loyalty to the Austrian Monarch, there was little pan-German sentiment. Austrian History Yearbook, xlvii

O.F.R. Haardt’s article offers a fresh perspective on how and why the German Kaiser became a more powerful figure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Haardt reminds the reader, historians have usually been most interested in explaining how a capricious Wilhelm II developed a form of ‘personal rule’ whose dysfunctional nature was revealed in the build-up to the First World War. This article directs attention away from the Kaiser’s personality and focuses more on a legal history of how federal institutions gained new powers in the decades after 1871. As Haardt persuasively argues, many of the constitutional changes pre-dated Wilhelm II’s rise to power and were responses to changed circumstances such as the accession of colonies, rather than being the initiative of a power-hungry individual. German History, xxxiv

J. Osterkamp identifies the Habsburg Monarchy in the early twentieth century as exhibiting aspects of a ‘co-operative empire’. The financial crisis concerning the expanding state, coupled with the rise in provincial power, led to a series of inter-regional conferences plus considerable loosening of centralist institutions and control. Austrian History Yearbook, xlvii.

Focusing primarily on Sigmund Freud’s theories of sexuality and those of his disciple, Isidor Sadger, B. Lang and K. Sutton evaluate the political and intellectual consequences of psychoanalytical explanations of homosexuality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Freudian accounts of same-sex desire certainly aspired to have a normative function; patients’ narratives were carefully edited to match pre-existing analytical theories. Nevertheless, psychoanalytic models offered a striking alternative to other sexological models that postulated the hereditary nature of homosexuality. By claiming that individuals transitioned from an early state of bisexuality to, in the majority of cases, heterosexuality and in a minority of instances, homosexuality, Freud and his followers encouraged more fluid understandings of sexuality. German History, xxxiv

M. Hewitson assesses the differences and similarities between the responses of German soldiers in 1870 and 1914, testing contrasts between increasing inhibitions on aggression in civilian life and the demands for it in national wars. History, ci

The changing attitude of Zionists in Germany during the First World War is the topic of N. Riemer’s article, which explores Jewish-German positions on assimilation, loyalty and German and Jewish identity through the lens of the Zionist German paper Jüdische Rundschau. Affirmations of German patriotism—especially among the older generation of Zionists, who perceived German culture as an inherent part of their identity—increasingly made place for a critical attitude in the face of German anti-Semitism and the infamous government decree that demanded statistical quantification of Jewish participation in the German war effort in 1916. This is an interesting contribution to correcting an older assumption that Jews, and particularly Zionists, were hostile to participation in the war on the German side from the outset. Historisches Jahrbuch, cxxxv (2015)

B. Ziemann seeks German Schwejkiade, shirkers after the pattern of the Good Soldier Švejk, in records of the First World War. Český časopis historický, cxiv

M. Burri and M. Rampley have written articles on cultural politics in the transition period from the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy through to inter-war Austria. Burri describes the Vienna Music Festival of 1919 as being more socialism-inclined than its famous counterpart, the Salzburg Festival. Rampley traces the strand of the baroque in architecture, art and the writings of the period. This is juxtaposed with the more well-known modernist movement. Austrian History Yearbook, xlvii

In a fascinating article, A. Ramsbrock discusses the social significance of changing attitudes to beauty during the Weimar Republic. As the author illustrates with a wealth of examples drawn from magazines and medical literature, the improvement of individuals’ looks with cosmetics became linked to a broader concern with the visible well-being of the German nation. Not least because of the disfigurement (both literal and metaphorical) caused to Germans who had fought in the First World War, medical practitioners were encouraged to make cosmetic treatments more widely available. Another important context was rising unemployment: at a time when jobs were scarce, individuals’ appearances became valuable commodities that repaid investment and work. As Ramsbrock points out, there was a sharp divide between the Weimar era’s celebration of artificiality in the realm of aesthetics and the Nazis’ racialised notions of hereditary beauty. Yet politicians’ and intellectuals’ linking of the individually beautiful to the socially attractive was also a bridge between these two apparently very different eras. German History, xxxiv

E. Piller shows how Weimar Germany developed a ‘diplomacy of pity’ (emphasising the suffering of German children) to build support in the USA for revision of the Versailles settlement, 1918–24. Journal of Contemporary History, li

J. Stöckman examines the early years of International Relations scholarship in Germany. International History Review, xxxviii

Fritz Reinhardt established the NSDAP speakers’ school, and claimed to have taught some 6,000 speakers in 1928–32. T.O. Broin argues that a detailed analysis of the Rednerschule is crucial to understanding both the nature and the successful propagation of the Nazis’ political message. Journal of Contemporary History, li

The rejection of bourgeois comforts, materialism and well-being emerges as significant to the anti-bourgeois character of National Socialism in H. Beck’s adroit study. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

J. Stephenson reassesses the concept of Volksgemeinschaft in the light of recent historical studies. The trend among historians of National Socialist Germany has been to attribute responsibility for anti-Semitic violence to ever wider swathes of the German population. By contrast, Stephenson argues that many Germans living in the south-western region of Württemberg were relatively unmoved by National Socialist anti-Semitism. Using local and regional state archives, the author suggests that more traditional—not necessarily philo-Semitic—attitudes persisted and that the Nazis were less able than is often assumed either to spread their message through modern media, or to ensure that local leaders were party men. German History, xxxiv

As part of the history of German-Jewish scholarship during the Nazi era, N. Becker provides a subtle narrative of the fate of three lesser-known Jewish medievalists working on the edition of Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1919–42. While some historians of Jewish background continued to work secretly on the edition until 1945, others were pushed out, died early (one probably of suicide), or perished in Auschwitz (as in the case of Erika Sinauer, one of the most talented scholars of her age). The interest of the article lies in the comparison of the behaviour of those in authority who could have influenced, did, or did not influence the chances for Jewish academics to continue their work. Historisches Jahrbuch, cxxxv

E. Harvey reviews the forced recruitment of foreign labourers, especially women from the Ukraine, by the Nazi regime from 1942. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., xxvi

In a fascinating article, C. Torp examines the context around, and the impact of, the significant pensions reform passed by the Adenauer government in 1957. The most immediate effect of the reform was significantly to increase pensions provision for West Germans. But equally important were the principles behind the reform. The size of individuals’ pensions was linked to their earnings more closely than in any other European country. This model of pensions provision was striking for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, it accentuated inequality among pensioners, linking elderly people’s wealth to their social status while in work. But, on the other, it created a ‘social justice’ between the generations. The elderly, who had seen their earnings and wider fortunes suffer as a result of Germany’s wartime losses, were now to share in the prosperity of the post-war West German state. German History, xxxiv

C. von Hodenberg draws on newly available ethnographic surveys to examine the impact of television on rural communities in Westphalia in the 1950s and 60s. Journal of Contemporary History, li

N. Papadogiannis looks at how the youth hostel movement in post-war West Germany interacted with wider patterns of social change between the 1950s and 1980s. Journal of Contemporary History, li

The Sino-Soviet split and the Chinese Cultural Revolution had significant repercussions inside East Germany, where some communists were attracted to Maoism in the mid-1960s. Q. Slobodian looks at how the East German regime responded to an ideological challenge from the left which was in many ways as potent as that from the West. Journal of Contemporary History, li

Using a combination of sources from church and government archives, H.-S. Na offers an atypical example of the ‘guest worker’ experience in West Germany: that of South Korean female nurses from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. The author suggests that previous interpretations of post-Second World War Korean migration have misread this phenomenon as being a by-product of German diplomacy and development initiatives. While the first generation of Korean migrants were primarily brought in by Catholic charities as low-status medical carers, highly trained Korean nurses rapidly established their value within a medical market economy that had experienced a scarcity of homegrown medical expertise. Historische Zeitschrift, cccii

A. Keil re-examines the ‘Prussian renaissance’ that emerged in the last decade of the German Democratic Republic. Many pre-existing studies of this phenomenon have seen the celebration of a German past primarily as a way for an ideologically moribund Marxist-Leninist regime to re-legitimise itself. The author focuses more on the German-German dimension, convincingly showing that an earlier Prussian renaissance had emerged in the West. The Federal Republic’s rediscovery of Prussia’s virtues was a response to the generational upheavals and terrorist attacks that had engulfed West Germany in the 1970s. The German Democratic Republic in this way, like so many others, was playing catch-up. Keil’s more contentious claim is that the celebration of Prussian history was primarily the work of intellectuals who were born around 1929. These individuals were socialised in National Socialist Germany and so may have been more influenced by the Nazis’ glorification of the Prussian past than by the contemporary crises experienced by the GDR’s leadership. German History, xxxiv

Great Britain and Ireland

A. Breeze relates the timing of Arthur’s battles to the problems of harvest failure and famine caused by a mega-eruption of a volcano in the Americas and a volcanic winter in 536–7. He also suggests that it corroborates a date of 536 for the writing of Gildas’s De Excidio which also provides a date for the battle of ‘Mount Badon’, via Gildas, of 493. Northern History, liii

M. Millett argues that the elite domestic building tradition which evolved in seventh-century England, though it drew on Roman and continental models, was essentially sui generis, and a product of local ideas and development. Haskins Society Journal, xxvii

P. Dunshea re-evaluates the relations between Penda of Mercia and Oswiu of Bernicia, and calls into question Bede’s interpretation of events of the period from 642 to 655. Anglo-Saxon England, xliv

Drawing on the Irish law texts, J. Bemmer examines the ways in which cross-border violence in early Ireland was limited by political alliances and by the enforcement of legal duties beyond the frontiers. Historical Research, lxxxix

F.M. Biggs connects the retirement of John of Beverley from the diocese of York with Ceolfrith’s departure from Wearmouth–Jarrow in 716, on the grounds of the dedication of Bede’s revised metrical Vita of Cuthbert, which suggests that it was John who was expected to travel to Rome. Anglo-Saxon England, xliv

Bede’s references to hides, argues R. Shaw, derive from two sorts of source: from charters, in the case of his references to monastic foundations, and from a ‘national’ tribute list, in the case of those to the size and fiscal liabilities of kingdoms. An important article, throwing much new light on the archival sources available to Bede. Historical Research, lxxxix

C. O’Brien notes the importance of ideas about the Temple in Jerusalem for an understanding of Northumbrian attitudes towards the sacred space of church buildings. Anglo-Saxon England, xliv

G. Waite uses lexical and stylistic features in the Preface to the Alfredian translation of Bede, together with recent consideration of an early eighteenth-century collation of Cotton Otho B. ix, to argue that the preface is later than the translation, and that it was added at a moment when the translation itself was being more widely disseminated. Anglo-Saxon England, xliv

R. Hillier considers the use of Arator by the author of the Miracula Nynie Episcopi to demonstrate the importance of Arator for the Anglo-Saxon poet, writing in either Whithorn or in York. Anglo-Saxon England, xliv

M. Cavell discusses the treatment of the veil of the Herodian temple and the movable tabernacle in Old English Christ III and Exodus. She compares their accounts with those in Bede’s De Tabernaculo and the Hêliand and suggests that the Old English texts are linked not only by their approach but also by their use of nautical vocabulary and imagery, in particular the key word segl. Medieval Clothing and Textiles, xii

J. Hill suggests that Ælfric made only indirect use of Bede’s homilies in his own Catholic homilies and that he drew substantially on citations from Bede’s work by Paul the Deacon and others. Haskins Society Journal, xxvii

P. De Bernardo Stempel attempts to prove the underlying influence of classical literature on the Medieval Irish text Fingal Rónáin. Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, lxxii

R. Naismith analyses the development of the land market in Anglo-Saxon England, the group identities of its main participants, the reasons for their acquisition of land, the forms taken by land purchases, and the media used for such purposes. An important and wide-ranging article. Historical Research, lxxxix

K. Weikert presents a ‘site biography’ of the landscape, buildings and occupants of Faccombe Netherton (Hampshire) from the mid-tenth century, when it was held by the wealthy Anglo-Saxon woman, Wynflaed, until its abandonment by the ambitious de Solers family who departed England for Normandy after 1204. This micro-study of a small Hampshire manor demonstrates how changing and complex ownership brought ongoing transformation to the buildings and the estate. Following Wynflaed’s development of this thegnly estate (with its associated church) it was further enhanced with earthworks designed for show rather than defence, but following the Conquest when it passed to Roger le Poitevin it became marginal to his interests, as it was to his successors, the Boterels, though they invested in it and added to the manorial landscape. Only during the brief tenure of the de Solers were the buildings upgraded in stone, including a hall, private chambers and a symbolic gatehouse. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

C.N. Peters examines the Irish chronicles for evidence of famines and food shortages in the pre-Norman period. The importance of exploring the vocabulary used by the scribes and compilers is emphasised. Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, lxxi

J. Baker and S. Brooks examine the evidence for the mobilisation of armies in the late Anglo-Saxon period, and suggest that it depended on a network of meeting places such as one can see in the hundredal meeting-places of Domesday Book. Anglo-Saxon England, xliv

K. Cross analyses the use made of Asser’s Life of Alfred by Byrhtferth of Ramsey in his Historia Regum, and the extent to which he adapted the earlier text to meet the embattled circumstances of Æthelred’s reign. Haskins Society Journal, xxvii

A. Wareham re-examines two of the earliest important, and most-studied, cartularies of medieval England: indeed, one, the Liber Wigorniensis, is the earliest surviving cartulary from western Europe. Both the Liber and Hemming’s Cartulary (which is found with it in Cotton Tiberius A. xiii) preserve and present charters and diplomas in favour of the monks of Worcester cathedral. In a careful discussion of the manuscript’s contents, in particular the scribal arrangement of the material, accompanied by a meticulous codicological analysis, Wareham argues that the cartularies were a response to periods of severe political and economic disruption in the west Midlands, the first between c.996 and c.1016, the second during the reign of William Rufus. The Liber’s redaction of charters into a topographical format could serve an administrative purpose, but more importantly this arrangement of property acquisitions could be read historically, the cartulary serving as a defensive pièce justificative for the monks and their bishop against the threats of king, lords and ecclesiastical rivals. This merging of history and administration is developed further in Hemming’s cartulary. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

G. Williams provides a preliminary report of a hoard of 5,249 pennies from the reign of Cnut, discovered at Lenborough in Buckinghamshire. Included in the hoard is a mule of the Agnus Dei/Last Small Cross coinages, which is examined separately by S. Keynes and R. Naismith. Anglo-Saxon England, xliv

A.F.J. van Kempen combines ingenuity with complicated speculation to suggest that William of Malmesbury’s account of Harold Godwineson’s journey to France should be taken seriously as a guide to Harold’s carefully plotted progress towards the English throne. Historical Research, lxxxix

T. Licence argues that the Vita Ædwardi Regis was written in 1065–6, before the Norman Conquest, and attributes the composition to Folcard of Saint-Bertin, suggesting that it was composed for Edith, at the same time as the Life of John of Beverley, and that it was known almost immediately by Herman of Bury. Anglo-Saxon England, xliv

H.B. Clarke makes an interesting, but not wholly convincing, hypothesis that the ‘designer’ of the Bayeux Tapestry was Abbot Scolland of St Augustine’s, Canterbury. He interprets a small marginal figure shown in the Tapestry above Mont Saint-Michel as Scolland, who was a senior monk of the abbey in the 1060s, and who, Clarke argues, had himself placed there as an authorial self-portrait. On this possible identification he constructs a speculative analysis of the Tapestry’s production, function, and date. It is certainly true that the Tapestry does show in some detail warfare on the Norman–Breton frontier which Scolland was well placed to observe. Mont Saint-Michel was a centre of manuscript production and illumination and St Augustine’s has long been recognised, not only as a major foyer of artistic activity, but also the probable place where the Tapestry was designed and/or produced. As abbot, Scolland must have been aware of this, and could indeed have had a role in this production, but to state that its ‘volunté créative was almost certainly that of Abbot Scolland’ cannot be substantiated solely on the basis of the evidence deployed here. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

R. Browett explores the debate over the status and treatment of Anglo-Saxon saints after 1066 through the discussion of the cult of St Aethelwold of Winchester. She argues that there is clear evidence of the suppression of his cult and discusses the means and motivation of the Norman bishops and abbots concerned. History, ci

H. Foxhall Forbes examines an address contained in Bodleian Library, MS Junius 121, as evidence for pastoral and penitential practice in late eleventh-century Worcester. Anglo-Saxon England, xliv

T. Webber, in a stimulating and important paper, situates monastic books and their use not only in their ritual context but within the physical framework of the abbey building, their monastic space. Books were deployed in the programmatic performance of the liturgy according to specific blueprints set out in the Benedictine rule and customaries, and functioned in specific sites of community, in worship, in chapter and in the refectory. These texts made up the essential core of the great Benedictine abbey’s library and at the same time were a lively stimulus to private reading and production of works for private devotion. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

R. Sharpe examines the earliest Norman sheriffs and the terms used to describe an official who emerged from a little-known figure in Anglo-Saxon times, the shire reeve, to become a powerful agent of the Crown under the Normans. The article argues that the words used to refer to sheriffs in a few documents of 1068 and 1069 show how Norman ideas about sheriffs changed during their early years in England. History, ci

In sorting out the complicated and much contested genealogy of the Mortimer family of Wigmore, c.1075–1185, I. Mortimer makes an important contribution to the history of the Welsh marches and the consolidation of Anglo-Norman control there. Historical Research, lxxxix

E. Poppe looks at the theme of ‘counsel’ in the Middle Welsh narrative Ystoria Gereint uab Erbin. Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, lxxii

E. Winkler reveals the precise and calculating way in which William of Poitiers used his knowledge of classical literature to legitimise William I’s conquest of England. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

E. Winkler provides a reassessment of the year 1074 in Anglo-Norman historiography of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. The year’s pivotal point was the submission to William I of the enigmatic last legitimate native claimant to the English throne, Edgar aetheling. Winkler argues that writers, particular those of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in the first post-Conquest generation did not see any resolution of competing claims to legitimacy, and that 1074 was a year of no special significance to them. However, twelfth-century historians—particularly those of mixed parentage, William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon (though not Orderic Vitalis)—presented events differently. For them, 1074 and Edgar’s surrender marked true closure and a new beginning when Edgar acknowledged William’s sole legitimacy and authority. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

In an interesting article, P. Wadden gives a careful account of the uses of the genealogical tract known as the ‘Frankish Table of Nations’ by the authors and redactors of the Historia Brittonum, and critically examines its transmission and popularity in eleventh- and twelfth-century Ireland. Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, lxxii

C.M. Eska reinterprets a section of legal commentary from the Corpus Iuris Hibernici, and argues that the term reilic does not refer to the swearing of oaths in cemeteries, but rather that it points to the making of oaths on corporeal relics more generally. Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, lxxi

N. Karn proposes a radical new approach to two of the most significant legal texts produced in the pre-dawn of the common law, the Quadripartitus and the Leges Henrici Primi. These have traditionally been discussed from the perspective of Anglo-Saxon legal documents, whose content they incorporate, on the one hand, and within the context of twelfth-century administrative developments, on the other. Here Karn argues persuasively that they should be seen within the social framework of a ‘textual community’ which they influenced directly and indirectly, a milieu in which new legal ideas and practices could circulate. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

S. Harris provides a close and convincing analysis of the anonymous twelfth-century text Constitutiones de foresta, which was presented by its author as legislation of Cnut, and which was certainly informed by the Instituta Cnuti. In deploying a legal vocabulary which includes both Old Norse and English terms the author was able to stress continuity, deflect criticism from contemporary forest litigation, and emphasise that Cnut’s bilingual realm was a parallel for the equally bilingual twelfth-century realm. This paper both illustrates the role of language in the construction of an ideal of good government and how this invention of legal tradition set up resonances between two successful (and generally harmonious) multilingual kingdoms. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

P. Fergusson revisits the famous plan of Canterbury Cathedral priory in the Eadwine Psalter. He concentrates on two lesser-known structures depicted in this much-studied drawing, the bath-house (of extraordinary size and technological innovation) and the fishpond. The balneatorium was intended not for the monks’ use, but for high-ranking guests who required high-status hospitality in an increasingly status-conscious age. This facility both looked back to Imperial Roman models and also to contemporary buildings in papal Rome which may have provided its immediate inspiration. The fishpond, like the bath, depended on the priory’s sophisticated hydraulics, but rather than being utilitarian in function, it served primarily as an element in a monastic architectural interpretation of Ezekiel’s vision of the Temple that prefigured the New Jerusalem. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

R. Berkhofer provides a re-examination of the activities of the notorious monastic forger, Guerno, long credited as the author of the fabricated charters of St Augustine’s, Canterbury. He argues that the extent of Guerno’s role at Canterbury is difficult to assess (none of his own forgeries may even survive) and that his famous ‘confession’ made before the pope in 1131, though not itself fabricated, was certainly written up at least a generation after that oral testimony as a scribal ‘authentic’ record. This redaction should be seen in the context of a tightening of evidentiary procedures at the papal curia which increasingly demanded privilegia authentica. The archbishops of Rouen and Canterbury, looking to reinforce their episcopal authority against the claims of exempt monasteries such as St Augustine’s, now needed to produce written proof—to demonstrate the falsity of monastic claims through the presentation of letters revealing Guerno’s forgeries. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

I. Afanasyev, in a wide-ranging and stimulating paper, examines the function of biblical vocabulary in national discourse and in the construction of national identity in twelfth-century England. As he acknowledges, this is a very large topic which has barely been examined, and hence the discussion here is largely confined (though with pointers towards a more extensive study) to considering the representation of the English gens as God’s chosen people, particularly as the recipients of divine justice rather than favour. Biblical idiom was a significant mechanism in aiding historians and others to make sense of a people’s past, and future. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

S. Sønnesyn examines the concept of unity, both communal and human, in the historiography of twelfth-century monastic writers, especially Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury, and the much-less familiar Ailnoth of Canterbury. Ultimately deriving from classical and patristic authors, notably Cicero and Augustine, and early monastic commentators, particularly Cassian, the image of a past unity was employed by the twelfth-century writers to promote the reality of a present spiritual community. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

J. Farrell proves that it is still possible to make an important contribution to our understanding of that most-studied and contentious historian, or pseudo-historian, or romancer of the twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth. Her analysis of the ‘Historia Regum Brittanniae’ centres on Geoffrey’s intended audience, and his motivations in writing. In a carefully nuanced argument she suggests that, though Geoffrey reflects Breton (rather than Welsh) sensibilities, he was writing primarily for an Anglo-Norman society, fractured and potentially torn by civil war. The ‘Historia’, though situated in a remote past, is a commentary on the present, and, through the mouthpiece of Merlin and his prophecies, Geoffrey articulates a critique of contemporary politics and warns of the dangers of dynastic strife. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

S. Johns considers the complex portrayal of aristocratic women (particularly in the Norman ducal family) in Wace’s Roman de Rou. Wace is writing about a recent Norman past but in the cultural and political context of the later twelfth century. Much of his work is derived from Dudo of St Quentin, though he was also influenced by other writers—notably Geoffrey of Monmouth. He is producing a vernacular and fictional romance, not a Latin history, and his viewpoint is, at least in part, shaped by that genre. Johns makes a convincing argument for a fundamental ambivalence in Wace’s interpretation of the role of women in Normandy. They were important in shaping ducal history through marriage and family, but also, as contemporary Norman charters (of which Wace must have been aware) demonstrate, in the exercise of lordship. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

J.P. Slevin provides a thorough analysis of the twelfth-century Historia of Alfred of Beverley—locating the work within the context of Alfred’s community, surveying the manuscripts, re-dating the work’s terminus to 1154, and relating the text to the many sources on which it drew. It remains true that the Historia is largely historiographical rather than directly historical. Haskins Society Journal, xxvii

M.E. Blincoe uses the charters issued by Geoffrey of Anjou, husband of Matilda, to argue that Geoffrey sought to assert his rights to govern the Anglo-Norman realm and to downgrade any independent claims to legitimate rule possessed by his son Henry. Haskins Society Journal, xxvii

M. Hammond makes an important contribution to the study of twelfth-century Scottish royal charters, in particular, for lay beneficiaries. Though the number of lost royal charters is unknowable, Hammond presents a strong case that David I issued few charters and, pace Geoffrey Barrow, his reign did not really see the emergence of ‘administrative literacy’ in the kingdom of the Scots. Rather we should look to the reign of his successor, Malcolm IV (1153–65). Not only do his charters survive in much greater number, but their diplomatic is increasingly standardised, their issue becoming a routine governmental activity. This acceleration was driven by a growing demand for charters from lay beneficiaries, itself a reflection of the importance they attached to them, together with a recognition that written records were increasingly valuable in disputes and litigation, especially with religious houses. Political instability following David’s death may also have inspired Malcolm’s loyal supporters to seek confirmation charters of lands and privileges. Such confirmations (perhaps proclaimed orally) were also used by the young king to display his own power and authority. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

E. King, in an avowedly episodic study, examines the career and policies of Henry of Blois through the lens of Henry’s role as bishop of Winchester, and his relations with the city and its religious communities. Such a focus offers a new perspective on Stephen’s reign and the transition to Henry II’s rule with its emphasis on continuity and legitimacy. Henry is presented as the dominant impresario and stage-manager of ceremonial enacted against the backdrop of Winchester and with its citizens as a participatory audience. A full-length English study of Bishop Henry is still awaited: this is a valuable contribution towards it. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

G. Oppitz-Trotman challenges the traditional reading of Thomas Becket as a paradigm of holy opposition to royal tyranny. She argues that Henry II appropriated aspects of the cult in the interests of a Plantagenet imperial ideology which drew heavily on German models. Relics were central to the legitimisation of such authority, and earlier in his reign Henry was enabled to demonstrate continuity with the Carolingian imperium. He could project himself as heir of David and Solomon through his retention and promotion of the relic of the hand of St James. Following Becket’s murder, Henry’s penance could be represented as echoing David’s penitential kingship and the king could be repositioned as a ruler of peace and reconciliation. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

A. Plassmann compares the succession strategies of Henry II and Frederick Barbarossa in providing for their many adult sons and asks why, when these policies differed little, rebellion and unrest characterised the Plantagenet monarchy before and following Henry’s death, while the German empire witnessed a relatively peaceful transition of power. She suggests that, while Barbarossa entrusted his sons with governmental responsibilities from a very early age, Henry was far more reluctant to devolve power. This inspired the rebellion in 1173 which further inhibited Henry from ceding authority to his already designated and crowned heir. Whereas Barbarossa’s sons considered their best interests served by loyalty, Henry’s thought rebellion the better way to advance their ambitions. The Plantagenet rebels could claim divine sanction for rising against their archbishop-murdering father: Barbarossa had not sufficiently alienated the Church or his princes to provide a legitimate reason for revolt, and moreover, as emperor, his status gave him an authority Henry lacked. Unlike Henry, he was also free from interference from the king of France. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

M.L. Hodges-Kluck examines the ways in which the Angevin kings, Henry II in particular, drew on the legendary histories of the Emperor Constantine and Helena his mother in order to legitimise their claims to rule in England and to create a crusading ideology centred on the capture of Jerusalem. Haskins Society Journal, xxvii

M.S. Fulton looks at the terminology used for siege engines in Anglo-Norman warfare from the Conquest to 1226. Much of it was imprecise, making it impossible to know how machines operated, but with the appearance of counter-weight trebuchets, almost certainly used by Richard I at the siege of Acre in 1191, the vocabulary became more consistent. Journal of Medieval Military History, xiv

J. Dale presents a stimulating, though not completely convincing, argument for the conscious alignment of major royal ceremonies, particularly inaugurations, in England, France and the Empire, with the liturgical calendar. Certainly many such events were scheduled around the three great feasts of the Christian year, as the crown-wearings in eleventh-century England testify: but this may have been as much for pragmatic as liturgical reasons. Moreover the sanctoral was so crowded that it is hard to find a day which was not to a greater or lesser extent significant. This is not to deny that there were not potent resonances in the liturgy, ideologically orchestrated, which would have been heard and understood by at least some in the ceremonial audience. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

P. Hyams, in a characteristically nuanced argument, presents analogies between the theology of atonement and the dynamics of villein manumission in late twelfth and thirteenth-century England. Both were ‘three-cornered’ transactions which Hyams suggests were more than coincidental. Tripartite manumission, seemingly a post-Conquest development, allowed the villein to gain freedom from a lord by a purchase price that could only formally be paid by a third party who was free, since the unfree held no legal property. This ‘benefactor’ thereby became the freed person’s lord and patron, establishing a new relationship based on benevolence, not servitude. The parallels with incarnation and redemption theology as developed by the twelfth century, especially by Anselm, are striking, but explanation remains unclear: Hyams suggests in a challenging conclusion that a clue may lie in the ideology of protective lordship, whether, for example, offered by Christ to His commended men, the crusaders, or by a monastery to a freed villein. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

E. Oksanen focuses on the Thames valley, the eastern home counties and the south-eastern littoral in his discussion of the interplay between trade and travel in twelfth-century England. He argues that eastern England was better served by navigable waterways (though these were contracting) than the west and thus had greater access to long-distance trade routes, while the road network was more generally spread across the country. Not surprisingly, the density of local markets and fairs increased dramatically during the twelfth century; but that distribution was uneven, centred between the Thames and the Wash, and concentrated at intersections of major inter-regional and international networks. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvii (2015)

C. Watkins presents a thoughtful interpretation of the inter-relationships between belief and landscape, primarily in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Britain, which focuses on monastic representation of the wilderness. Though frequently portrayed, particularly in Cistercian foundation histories, as a valueless waste to be cleared to create an earthly paradise that was spiritually and temporally rich, wild places were increasingly seen by monasticism’s critics, such as Giraldus Cambrensis and Walter Map, as possessing their own spiritual value and earthly beauty—thus adding to the challenges to Cistercian enterprise and ‘greed’. Moreover, as the wilderness was gradually ‘tamed’ and integrated into a growing agricultural economy, it lost its numinous quality and ceased to be a locus of enchantment, danger and the supernatural. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

D. Power, in a detailed study of the surviving and very extensive acta of the du Hommet constables of Normandy between c.1150 and c.1250, casts new light on the fortunes and activities of these cross-Channel magnates. The du Hommets were curialists with extensive landed interests—particularly, though not exclusively in the east Midlands and western Normandy—and their archive illuminates the dynasty’s family and political dynamics, the roots and deployment of power. As importantly, their acta provide a different (and sometimes contradictory) perspective to that of royal records, revealing negotiation and compromise in disputes rather than royal compulsion. In this important analysis Power makes a strong argument for much greater study and publication of Anglo-Norman aristocratic acta than they have received to date. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

C.J. Neville traces the origins of royal pardon in late twelfth- and thirteenth-century Scotland, seeing this as an index of the developing legal and theoretical sophistication of the Scottish Crown and the growth of its authority. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

A. Taylor reconsiders the development of royal justice and law in Scotland during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. She focuses in particular on the category of crime and argues that there was no royal monopoly over punishment by the reign of Alexander II (1214–49), though there was one over crime. Control over the latter could be decoupled from control over enforcement. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

C. Tilley analyses the role played by the tenants of the honour of Wallingford in the events leading to Magna Carta, and underlines the significance of the honour’s contribution to the making of the gentry as a politicised social group. Historical Research, lxxxix

S. Reynolds places Magna Carta in its European context, arguing that its ideas were commonly found across Europe where other charters of liberties were being secured. She suggests that what distinguished Magna Carta was not the liberties it granted, but its length and detail. The latter reflected not a difference in aspiration, but rather the centralising and demanding character of English royal government. History, ci

In a characteristically acute study, D. Stephenson throws further light on the construction of the so-called B-text of the Annales Cambriae, paying particular attention to the intrusive matter in the entries for the period 1204–30. Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, lxxii

L. Cleaver’s careful study of two illustrated rolls of universal histories, both of English or Welsh provenance (now BL Cotton Roll XIV. 12 and Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery MS 12017) examines how the roll format was employed to display history: a reader could literally see history’s unrolling as the visual and textual record was revealed. Like most histories and genealogies in roll form, they owed much to the framework used in the genealogy of Christ associated with Peter of Poitiers. Its schema could be adapted to suit the specific intentions of maker and patron. Cleaver makes a convincing argument that the Cotton roll, which uses a number of historiographical texts (notably Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and William of Malmesbury) was produced for, and perhaps at, Brecon priory, and should perhaps be seen in the context of the de Braose disputed inheritance in the 1230s. The Liverpool roll is more difficult to place: it is concerned with the history of popes and emperors and only tangentially refers to British history. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxvi (2014)

S. Lipton reinterprets the earliest-known anti-Jewish caricature, which sits atop an Exchequer Receipt Roll from 1233. The hooded figure on the far left was not a Jew but an official of the Lower Exchequer making a rude gesture. The sketch is not an outraged indictment of ethnic difference, but political satire that can be placed squarely within the heated political circumstances of 1233 following the rise of Peter des Roches, Henry III’s detested favourite. The cartoonist clerk was protesting that the Exchequer had been brought into disrepute by des Roches. Three Jews are ridiculed because ‘they … have been embraced by the powers that be and insinuated into the very heart of Westminster’. But if the clerk’s attack was directed against over-mighty courtiers, he nonetheless sketched ‘a darkly comic critique of royal policy under cover of caricatured Jewish faces’. ‘A new kind of virulent, socio-cultural, satirical anti-Judaism, which draws on clerical moralism but attaches it to mundane, recognisable circumstances … seems to have grown out of the organising and categorising tendencies of thirteenth-century institutional culture’. An important paper. Past & Present, no. 232

F.G. Hill argues that, since those infringing Magna Carta in the thirteenth century incurred the penalty of excommunication, it was the duty of all churchmen to see that their flocks knew the Charter’s terms. This was a pastoral obligation. She does not discuss the practical difficulties of ensuring that (as she says) ‘every English Christian know[s] [the Charter’s] contents in every detail’. Historical Research, lxxxix

At the opening of the De Montfort University Heritage Centre, J.R. Maddicott surveyed the political career and personal life of Simon de Montfort (treated at full length in his biography published in 1994, rev. ante, cx [1995], 940–42). Adventurer, idealist, devout and austere, principled political reformer, Montfort is presented as the victim of ‘the infinite ability which we all possess to some extent to delude ourselves about our real motives and by this kind of self-deception to confuse what we are doing for ourselves with a more selfless and abstract good’. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., xxvi

D. Bachrach and O. Stoutner investigate the social standing of the troop commanders described as centenarii and solidarii in the payrolls of Edward I’s armies for Scotland: a sub-gentry group serving on horseback who cannot have been as impoverished as their apparent absence from taxation records leads the authors tentatively to suppose. Haskins Society Journal, xxvii

In an ingenious but highly speculative and ultimately unconvincing article, J. Knowles associates the reuse of Roman stone in a York city church during the early fourteenth century with the social marginalisation of the city tanners who patronised the church. Fourteenth-Century England, ix

P. Dryburgh provides a biography of John of Eltham (1316–36), younger brother of Edward III, describing his upbringing, career, lands and following, and showing him, in his short life, to have been a bastion of his brother’s early regime. Fourteenth-Century England, ix

A. King adds to the mountain of evidence and argument concerning Edward II’s death, supporting the orthodox view, contra Ian Mortimer, that the king was murdered in Berkeley Castle in 1327 and that he neither escaped nor survived. Fourteenth-Century England, ix

D. Robinson surveys the careers of the lesser parochial clergy before the Black Death, looking closely at their occupations (as chaplains, vicars, etc.) and at their tenure and exchange of benefices. Fourteenth-Century England, ix

A. Foley shows that noble executions in fourteenth-century Ireland were less frequent than those which took place in contemporary England, but that some unusual methods, such as starvation, were employed. Fourteenth-Century England, ix

B. Lambert and W.M. Ormrod survey the royal regulations governing French residents in England during periods of conflict, 1294–1377, showing that in general French-born men and women were protected and treated with tolerance. Only with the emergence of denization after 1377 was the line drawn more sharply between alien and native. Historical Research, lxxxix

Reconstructing events around the murder of about forty Flemings in London during the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, B. Lambert and M. Pajic show how the alienation of London’s native weavers had much in common with the frustrations over the royal government’s policy felt by other groups in society. Journal of British Studies, lv

The authorship of a letter supposedly written by the duke of Albemarle to Richard II in 1398 is convincingly reassigned to John of Gaunt and re-dated to 1381 by D.A.L. Morgan. It concerns the affairs of the northern marches and negotiations with the Scots. Fourteenth-Century England, ix

In a thoughtful and wide-ranging paper, D. Green looks at the way in which English-held dominions in France, Britain and Ireland were ruled during the Hundred Years War. He suggests that although the creation of an empire seemed at times attainable for the later Plantagenet kings, this proved impossible, despite English military successes. There were substantial regional differences, and concentrating resources on France meant that control was slackened elsewhere. Journal of Medieval Military History, xiv

In surveying historical writing in Chester and the north-west Midlands during the fourteenth century, P. Morgan brings to light some hitherto unrecognised narrative sources and adds considerably to our knowledge of the period. His discussion of annals from Dieulacres and Chester is particularly valuable. Fourteenth-Century England, ix

C. Guyol analyses the attitude of Thomas of Walsingham to chivalric culture and knightly prowess, arguing that the chronicler saw parallels between chivalric deeds and the different sort of warfare waged by monks. Fourteenth-Century England, ix

E.A. McVitty shows how, in Henry IV’s early years, the concept of treason was expanded to cover implicit threats to the national community as well as to the person of the king. It thus served to buttress further the position of a usurper monarch. Fourteenth-Century England, ix

H. Killick publishes, and comments on, a petition in the hand of Richard Osbarn, clerk of the chamber of the Guildhall, using the document to throw new light on the making of petitions and on the subject-matter of this particular example: judicial process, imprisonment and Lollardy. Historical Research, lxxxix

Using diocesan records from Hereford and Lincoln, J. Werner recovers the incidence of ordinary priests employing and living with female servants in late medieval England, thereby challenging common assumptions of the homosociality of most clerical households. Journal of British Studies, lv

Summarising the end results of a recent massive investigation of the E 179 material in The National Archives, M. Jurkowski presents an invaluable introduction to the sources and evolution of clerical taxation in England from the twelfth century to the seventeenth. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, lxvii

A. Brayson analyses the taxes imposed on English parishes and knights’ fees in 1428, showing that although these ingenious levies were efficiently administered they failed to meet the fiscal needs arising from the government’s foreign commitments. Historical Research, lxxxix

D. Yorath examines the hitherto neglected career of Sir Christopher Moresby, MP for Westmorland, and a significant royal servant and political figure in late fifteenth-century border politics. Northern History, liii

T. Thornton challenges the idea that the Lancastrian regime of the later 1450s was closely associated with the lands of the prince of Wales in Cheshire and North Wales. This was mainly the stuff of sixteenth-century historical myth: in reality, Queen Margaret struggled to elicit much military or financial support from the region, and that helps to explain the rapidity of the Yorkist takeover there in 1460–61. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

In an enjoyable article, F. Pritchard connects a set of late fifteenth-century English-embroidered orphreys with Ludovico Buonvisi, Lucchese supplier of luxury textiles to the Great Wardrobe during the 1470s and 80s. The saints depicted on the orphreys show links with Italy and especially with Lucca. Although heavily restored in the nineteenth century, the orphreys clearly demonstrate that high quality English embroidery could still be had in London in the late fifteenth century, even if the high point of opus anglicanum had passed. Medieval Clothing and Textiles, xii

J.C. Cooper outlines the use of academical dress by graduates and officials of St Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen universities from the fifteenth to the late sixteenth century. As there are very few known pictorial sources, the article gleans what details there are from contemporary statutes, inventories and university annals. Medieval Clothing and Textiles, xii

J. Colson analyses the spatial distribution of occupations in the city of London between the 1370s and the 1550s, using 14,700 probate records to compile a prosopographical index. He concludes that occupations were clustered or dispersed according to the particular needs of the trade, but that the continuance of the London guild system obscured this rationalisation. Economic History Review, lxix

M.C. Erler shows how access to the London administrative library facilitated the writing of London’s history, mainly in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and especially in the work of Robert Bale. Historical Research, lxxxix

M. Hayward discusses the clothing choices made by members of the Tudor and Stuart elite at their executions. She argues that, while dying speeches have been analysed, clothing could also make a statement—whether of defiance or dignity. History, ci

In an important article, G. Bernard examines the religious persuasion of Henry VIII and its characterisation as ‘catholicism without the Pope’. He argues that his attitudes towards many aspects of Catholic doctrine and liturgy, such as purgatory, the intercession of saints, pilgrimage and the monasteries were departures from orthodox Catholicism. Henry created an idiosyncratic hybrid, influenced by the teachings of Erasmus and by his difficulties with the papacy over his divorce. Its influence would be felt in Elizabeth’s reign and beyond. History, ci

E. Bramhall traces the changes in the Church’s teaching on penance, 1533–47, arguing, contra George Bernard, that Henry VIII’s policy was strongly influenced by Cranmer and that it was contradictory and inconsistent. Historical Research, lxxxix

D. Heffernan questions the extent to which a conciliatory approach to Gaelic Ireland was favoured in the period c.1534–46, and argues that the majority of senior officials in late Henrician Ireland sought to convince Henry VIII of the desirability of pursuing a more belligerent policy of regional conquest. Irish Historical Studies, xl

In an over-ambitious paper, N. Murphy claims that what happened in Ireland in the later sixteenth century was far from unique in its forms and procedures, which he thinks are best described as ‘colonisation’, as well as in the ruthlessness with which force was applied. These were all present in the military occupation of the port, town and region of Boulogne, captured by Henry VIII in 1544. Yet the assertion that ‘historians of early modern Ireland overemphasise the role that ethnic hatred played in outbreaks of mass violence’ cannot be proved by noting that no such visceral hatred is to be found among the English soldiers fighting in France in the 1540s. And the difficulty of maintaining that the Treaty of Camp (7 June 1546) ‘paved the way for the development of an English colony’ is that the treaty provided for the return of Boulogne and all lands occupied by the English to be returned in good condition once the French had paid 2 million crowns and a further sum to redeem their debt to the English. The rhetoric of ‘colonisation’ is not the most appropriate way to characterise the ways in which the English temporarily administered the Boulonnais until its return to the French. There remains much chilling detail about the horrors and costs of war, especially for the civilian population, as military commanders launched scorched-earth raids. Past & Present, no. 233

A. Blakeway argues, contra Jenny Wormald in particular, that the Scottish privy or secret council was not a sudden development reflecting the pressures brought on government by the death of James V in 1542 and the subsequent minority of his daughter Mary. There is much evidence, sensitively discussed here, to show that the council was active in the 1530s and that it assumed especial significance in Anglo-Scottish diplomacy from 1540 to 1542, when James was frequently absent from Edinburgh. Historical Journal, lix

D. Cressy offers a fascinating overview of responses in sixteenth and early seventeenth century England to ‘Egyptians’, more commonly called ‘gypsies’, a largely neglected subject. They arrived in England as entertainers or fortune-tellers, the tail end of a Romani diaspora, in the reign of Henry VII; but by the 1530s, as legislation in 1531 suggests, they had outstayed their welcome, deceiving people by practising palmistry and often robbing. Enforcing expulsion, however, was difficult, and gypsies were able to travel around England without much intervention. Further legislation in 1554 and 1563 was enforced half-heartedly and haphazardly. They were not always unpopular and fortune-telling could elicit gifts: they were not associated with begging. Historical Journal, lix

R. Hoyle re-examines the idea of ‘Wrightsonian incorporation’, following the work of Keith Wrightson, who found that during the early modern period the yeoman class was ‘incorporated’ into gentry culture, withdrawing from the popular culture of village society. This process, linked to the idea of a ‘Reformation of Manners’, has been seen as bringing an end to a late medieval culture of rebelliousness and leading to the decline of insurrection after 1549. Hoyle highlights changes in public and governmental rhetoric and in the law which defined discontent as rebellion and extended the law of treason. History, ci

In prose which sometimes verges on the obscure, C. Chou uses some of the succession treatises from Elizabeth I’s early years to show how contemporaries conceived of parliament and its role in determining the succession. Historical Research, lxxxix

Technically detailed (and possibly mind-numbing) bibliographical forensic work by C.S. Clegg on Grafton’s 1559 Book of Common Prayer portends potentially significant rethinking of the formation and character of the Elizabethan Settlement. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, lxvii

In a splendid paper that offers a model of historical analysis, P. Marshall and J. Morgan question Henry Gee’s influential and much-repeated estimate that under 300 and probably not more than 200 clergy (that is to say not very many) were deprived for refusing to accept the imposition of the Elizabethan religious settlement. The most likely number was close to a thousand. Moreover, what looked like ‘conformity’ should not be seen as a permanent endorsement of the new regime, but rather as a reflection of the ‘relative unwillingness on the part of the authorities to mount anything resembling a thorough, nationwide purge of malcontents’. Clearly Mary and Cardinal Pole ‘had managed to do a very great deal to strengthen both the institutional and ideological fibres of English Catholicism’. Historical Journal, lix

V. Spence discusses the reception of the Elizabethan religious settlement in a strongly conservative area of north Yorkshire. Until the 1569 rebellion of the Northern Earls and Elizabeth’s excommunication, a broadly accommodating and pragmatic attitude towards religious practice was evident, but it was followed by a more stringent enforcement of conformity. As a result she argues that increasingly confessional identities diverged, although eventually the majority of the Craven laity adapted and conformed. Northern History, liii

L. Underwood examines the rite of reconciliation by which Protestants usually converted to Catholicism in Elizabethan England, and assesses the rite’s significance both for the formation of a confessional identity and for the government’s attempts to define treason. Historical Research, lxxxix

A study of late sixteenth-century English discussion of ambiguity, equivocation and polemic enables M. Vince to analyse norms of language-use and educational focus during a period of intellectual and religious instability. Intellectual History Review, xxvi

In a mixture of the obvious and the obscure, R.A. Houston asserts that ‘the English attached far clearer legal meaning to territory than did peoples elsewhere in the British Isles’ in the late medieval and early modern period; the Scots, Welsh and Irish had ‘more person-focussed laws and practices that emphasised the social over the spatial’. Past & Present, no. 230

Scotland as a seedbed for participatory politics emerges in K. Brown’s account of early modern elections there. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

J. Redmond describes the violence which characterised the Irish rebellion of 1598 against the English settlers in Munster, and argues that these events strongly influenced the ways in which the later Irish rebellion of 1641 was reported. Historical Research, lxxxix

The Merchant Adventurers of England is the subject of an article by T. Leng. The Adventurers was a ‘regulated’ company trading in cloth exports to Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Light is shone on its practices through the correspondence of one of its members, John Quarles, at the end of the sixteenth century. The Company had to heal with both outsiders, whom it termed ‘interlopers’, and members who were prepared to break the Company’s rules—‘disorderly brethren’. Economic History Review, lxix

J.E. Morgan assesses the effects of major fires in English towns, 1580–1640, and the ways in which townspeople reacted to these common disasters. Historical Research, lxxxix

J. Evans considers male infertility in early modern England—a topic that has, she convincingly argues, been relatively ignored due to the drive to uncover histories specific to women. In early modern discussions of fertility, sexual pleasure and sexual ability were often linked, and Evans shows how male sexual ‘failure’ could be both the object of medical intervention and mockery within the community. Considering fertility tests, patent medicines, and surgical interventions, Evans demonstrates that it was not only women in the early modern period who were held responsible for a couple’s failure to procreate. Social History of Medicine, xxix

Living standards and the plague in London, 1560–1665, are analysed by N. Cummins, M. Kelly and C. Ó Grada using 930,000 burial records and 630,000 baptism records. The death rate in the major plague years was five to six times the usual rate. They find no evidence that the plague emerged first in the docks area, the more common source being London’s northern suburbs. Economic History Review, lxix

Clement Coke (d. 1630), son of the eminent jurist Sir Edward Coke, reportedly spoke on the lines that ‘it is better to suffer by a foreign hand than at home’ in a debate in the House of Commons on Charles I’s request for taxation in support of an unsuccessful war in 1626. The king despatched Sir Richard Weston, chancellor of the exchequer, asking the Commons to take action against what he saw as a seditious speech. This would not be the last time that Charles would seek to stop seditious speech in the Commons. He had several members arrested in 1629 and tried to arrest five parliamentary leaders in 1642. Charles refused to shelter unscathed behind criticisms of his ministers. Conceding would have been to compromise the monarchy itself. What upset him was that many, in the ‘volatile and dangerous forum’ which parliament had become, ‘no longer displayed the visceral, unquestioning reverence for the monarchy that was necessary to sustain it’. In a brilliant article, M.B. Young argues powerfully that in reacting vigorously against seditious speech, Charles was prescient rather than paranoid in seeing sedition as leading to treason: ‘it is odd that a man should be deemed paranoid when in the end he was killed by quite real enemies’. A paper worthy of the late Mark Kishlansky at his polemical best. Historical Journal, lix

In his inaugural lecture, delivered in the University of Southampton in 2014, M. Stoyle offers a vivid and brilliant retelling of the turbulent life of Sir Thomas Lunsford (c.1604–52), outlawed would-be murderer of a neighbouring gentleman, soldier of fortune on the continent, royalist officer in Charles’s war against the Scots in 1640, briefly lieutenant of the Tower of London in December 1641, and alleged cannibal. If the events of 1641 are often presented as revolutionary and as a prelude to parliamentary sovereignty, civil war can occur only if societies, and in particular political elites, are divided. Much light is thrown here on the formation of a royalist party—the coming together of men who were prepared to plot and to fight to maintain Charles I’s authority against his increasingly assertive parliamentary critics. Such royalists came to be called ‘cavaliers’—by proto-parliamentarian polemicists protesting against Sir John Suckling, courtier, poet and one of a number of royalist officers who plotted an abortive military coup in May 1641, and then by Suckling and his fellow conspirators to characterise themselves. In reports of the events of late 1641, Lunsford and his companions were labelled ‘cavaliers’ and shown as assaulting Londoners. And so spread what proved to be an enduring image. It was fundamental at the time to the deepening of political divisions and later to the formation of enduring stereotypes. Historical Journal, lix

W.K. George dissects the historiography surrounding the growth of factional parties in the early 1640s, paying particular to the views of J.H. Hexter and to the representative nature of the contemporary opinions voiced by William Prynne. Historical Research, lxxxix

The recently digitised archive known as the 1641 depositions is the subject of an interesting analysis by J. Cunningham. He demonstrates the immense value of the depositions for exploring the Irish rebellion of 1641 and its aftermath. Irish Historical Studies, xl

I. Peck discusses the little-explored area of the ways in which women in the northern counties of England coped with the prospect and actuality of the deaths of their husbands during the upheavals of the English Civil Wars. Drawing on the relief petitions of war widows and court depositions, she explores the difficulties faced in proving widowhood, and, more broadly, attitudes to death and civil war. Northern History, liii

A. Tubb argues that the Engagement of 1649, the oath of loyalty imposed to enforce support for the Commonwealth, was not the failure it has often been judged to have been, but rather a success in the widespread submissions it produced and in its acknowledgement, even by the exiled Charles II, as the only way to preserve life and property. Historical Research, lxxxix

J.F. Merritt reconstructs the role of Westminster Abbey as the Parliamentarian and later ‘National church’ in the 1640s and Interregnum. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, lxvii

Focusing on the ‘kingship debates’ of 1657, J. Fitzgibbons emphasises the difficulties of reconstructing Cromwell’s speeches and the partisan nature of much of their confused reporting. Historical Research, lxxxix

C. Cornish-Dale publishes, and offers a commentary on, a history of the Reformation and Civil War in Wimborne Minster (Dorset) written in 1657, highlighting its value in providing a ‘bottom up’ view of events in the town. Southern History, xxxviii

K. Peters asserts that, in their dialogue with the army in 1659, Quakers showed a ‘shrewd familiarity’ with political cultures, and that their capacity for political engagement ‘was a consequence of, and not despite, their profound commitment to religious liberty’. The Quakers’ ‘self-presentation as aloof from worldly politics’ was ‘a rhetorical stance and a tactic of negotiation’. It is a pity the paper does not go on to consider why such ‘skilled political players’ fared so ill after the Restoration. Past & Present, no. 231

In a model paper, M. Pelling not only draws attention to the hugely influential discovery by John Graunt, presented in his study published in 1662 of the London Bills of Mortality, that the numbers of men and women were evenly balanced, but focuses on Graunt’s remark that most men persisted in believing that there were three women for one man, puzzling over how they could have believed that. Her explorations take in King David as well as the Edwardian reformer Bernardino Ochino’s dialogue on polygamy, translated and republished in 1659. Historical Journal, lix

In an important paper, D. Garrioch argues that the Great Fire of London in 1666 was not the worst in a long series of large fires—London was not ‘always burning’; there had been no large fires between 1212 and 1663—but one of the first fires provoked by rapid population growth, disregard of regulations, shoddy building, the continued use of timber for housing, and the concentration of new types of highly flammable products (such as tobacco) in riverine warehouses. From the mid-seventeenth century the problem of urban fire changed, and it would take nearly two hundred years to respond appropriately. Regulation was tightened, housing and industry were separated, advances were made in fire-fighting. Historical Journal, lix

C. Marsh argues that 95 per cent of the woodcut pictures to be found in broadsheet ballads in seventeenth-century England were not specially designed for the texts they illustrated but that those in the best-selling ballads very often were: purchasers did prefer specific pictures. There is much speculation about reactions to generic and unspecific illustrations: ‘consumers were creative beings, capable both of seeking out text-image correspondences for themselves and of working with a distinctive species of intertexuality, mediated through the repetition of images’. But perhaps the shortage of skilled artists and the lower cost for printers using woodcuts they already had are sufficient explanations. Past & Present, no. 233

W.J. Bulman writes interestingly about the Restoration London stationers William and Andrew Crooke, publishers of Thomas Hobbes. Their bookshop included manuscript copies of his illicit works. William Crooke also published Lancelot Addison, sometime dean of Lichfield. From that Bulmer builds a complex, often paradoxical, interpretation of what in his recent monograph he called The Anglican Enlightenment (2015). Yet that printers printed, and booksellers stocked, illicit or polemical writings may tell us more about businessmen’s pursuit of profit than about intellectual movements. Historical Journal, lix

L.G. Castellin reappraises the international political thought of George Savile, first marquis of Halifax, emphasising its doctrine of moderation. International History Review, xxxviii

G. Glickman shows how, throughout the reign of Charles II, growing numbers of Roman Catholics entered into the civil and military infrastructure of the overseas colonies, as a means of circumventing the penal restrictions of the three kingdoms and constructing an alternative relationship with the Stuart Crown. Journal of British Studies, lv

C. Murray analyses the public discontents, amid general rejoicings, which greeted the marriage of William of Orange and Mary of York in 1677, and shows how these discontents were countered by an assiduous campaign of verbal and visual propaganda which helped to pave the way for the couple’s accession to the English throne in 1688. Historical Research, lxxxix

P. Loft exploits the under-used archive of the House of Lords to recover the mechanics of petitioning and the language of ‘interest’ from the beginnings of the ‘rage of party’ to the establishment of the whig oligarchy. Journal of British Studies, lv

Using the local port books for 1626–1760, D.R. Cousins traces the rising level of Dorset ball-clay exports to other parts of the country, a growth driven by two factors: rising demand from the London tobacco-pipe makers and the growth of the Staffordshire ceramics industry. The trade contributed significantly to Poole’s growth in the nineteenth century. Southern History, xxxviii

M. Weir-Wilson traces the landscape history of St Leonard’s Forest in Sussex, an area of Wealden heathland which was a centre of the iron industry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but which by the 1820s was viewed as a picturesque landscape which could be improved with the right plants and garden designs. Southern History, xxxviii

In a fascinating paper, R. Hoyle looks at Daniel Defoe’s scheme, drafted in 1709, for an entirely new town of German Protestant refugees in the New Forest, showing how it was rooted in utopian ideas of improvement and doomed to failure because of its disregard for local common rights. Southern History, xxxviii

M. Hunter edits and masterfully introduces Pitcairneana (Houghton Library, Harvard, MS Eng 1114), most likely by Archibald Pitcairn (1652–1713), Scottish physician and satirist—a manuscript remarkable for ‘how overtly atheistic it is’. Historical Journal, lix

John Toland’s Pantheisticon (1720) is examined by K.A. East, to understand more fully whether its reading of Ciceronian scepticism is instructive, and whether Cicero could be made to serve as a basis for a broader public acceptance of moderate pantheism in early eighteenth-century England. Intellectual History Review, xxvi

E. Vallance thoroughly surveys the public swearing of oaths of allegiance, supremacy and abjuration following the Jacobite Atterbury Plot of 1722. Women as well as men swore. Historical Journal, lix

In an original and imaginative assessment of the royal images and symbols on hanging signs in eighteenth-century London, S. Koscak argues that the regal images circulating in urban spaces comprised a meaningful political-visual language which challenges arguments about the aesthetic inadequacy and cultural unimportance of early eighteenth-century monarchy. Journal of British Studies, lv

R.J.W. Mills analyses the views of Lord Kames, in his Principles of Moral and Natural Religion (1751), on the origins of religious belief, showing how Kames came to conclude that the emergence of monotheistic religion only came about through the emergence of civil society. Historical Research, lxxxix

Using customs records to recover the contraband trade in silks in eighteenth-century Britain, W. Farrell shows how smuggling supplied the demand for imported consumer goods, the challenges this posed to enforcement, and the relative importance of Asia and Europe in their production and consumption. Journal of British Studies, lv

M. Eppihimer’s interesting article examines the copies of Near Eastern seals from the workshop of James Tassie (1735–99), finding in them ‘a paradox of eighteenth-century antiquarianism’, as they are perceived as authentic copies, despite often differing from the originals for reasons of technical difficulties, antiquarian habits, or aesthetic or commercial considerations. This reveals a very different concept of authenticity to our own. Journal of the History of Collections, xxviii

In an article primarily of interest to urban historians and historians of London, F. Calvert Boorman focuses on Chancery Lane between 1760 and 1815, a thoroughfare lying between the two great centres of the City and Westminster. He assesses the dangers and inconveniences associated with the use of the street, the arguments put forward for its redevelopment, and the obstacles faced by would-be developers. Historical Research, lxxxix

P.T. Dobrowolski uses the well-known Chelsea murder case of 1771, when a Jewish gang committed a murderous robbery in the house of a wealthy widow, to study anti-Semitism in eighteenth-century Britain. Kwartalnik Historyczny, cxxii (2015)

D. Fletcher looks at the work of the parliamentary Commission on the Royal Forests between 1787 and 1793, showing how its maps and reports constituted the first comprehensive survey of the Crown’s estate since the Interregnum. Southern History, xxxviii

Drawing on more than a dozen conduct books for women, novels, and the correspondence and autobiographical writings of Fanny Burney and Horace Walpole, S. Ylivuori claims that what mattered in eighteenth-century England was not whether a woman was a virgin but whether she managed to look and to behave like a virgin, for example by blushing. Chastity was thus ‘a performative identity’. Historical Journal, lix

S. Holloway appraises love-letters written in the course of adulterous affairs, c.1740–1830, emphasising especially the various devices (such as the use of invisible ink) used by the two parties to avoid detection. Historical Research, lxxxix

M. McCormack complains that the history of height has been largely ignored and suggests that ‘the experience of living in a tall body is qualitatively distinct from a shorter one’. John Montagu, fourth earl of Sandwich (1718–92), offers a vivid case-study. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., xxvi

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, manly bodies, so J. Begiato claims, ‘were reified as symbols, progenitors and defenders of gender, society and nation’; ‘an embodied approach therefore opens up male corporeality to be read as a site for cultural meaning and social practice’. In other words, men were to look poised and powerful. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., xxvi

R. Hogarth offers an enthralling account of the case of Hannah West, a white English woman with patches of black skin on her body who attracted the attentions of the physician William Charles Wells in the late eighteenth century. Hogarth demonstrates how Wells drew upon contemporary medical assumptions about black skin in his examinations of West at a time when many doctors viewed skin colour as a distinct physiological feature, and how enquiries into skin colour informed theories of natural selection in the nineteenth century. Social History of Medicine, xxix

The youthful diaries of Louisa Gurney (1784–1836), daughter of a prosperous Norwich Quaker wool-stapler, offer K. Gleadle great scope to explore what she terms ‘the juvenile enlightenment’. Children as young as eleven attended lectures, wrote and disseminated letters and texts; ‘they could voice independent opinions in the progressive forums of sociability as well as home or school’. Where J.H. Plumb saw children as ‘superior pets’, Gleadle presents ‘enlightened children and youth’ as ‘active agents in the complex constitution of political culture’. A rich paper. Past & Present, no. 233

A study of the final period of the Old Poor Law in England, 1790–1834, by S. Williams focuses attention on the maintenance of illegitimate children in Lambeth and Southwark, London, and offers a reassessment of how the Poor Law operated. The laws of affiliation gave the parochial authorities the power to make parents of illegitimate children pay for their upkeep. This article examines the ways in which this power was exercised in practice in these two boroughs. It finds that the amounts actually paid by putative fathers were greater than previously thought and the duration for which they were paid was in many cases surprisingly long. Economic History Review, lxix

In a significant reappraisal, P. Tinks examines Patrick Colquhoun’s experience of the Scottish enlightenment in his promotion of the education of the poor in industrialising Britain and his advocacy of it to tackle the problems that Britain faced in the era of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. History, ci

Smallpox was arguably the single most lethal disease in eighteenth-century Britain. The success of vaccination after 1798 is well known, but a question-mark hangs over the effectiveness of inoculation, the precursor to vaccination. R.J. Davenport, J. Boulton and L. Schwarz argue that it was not effective in large towns in the second half of the eighteenth century, contrary to a recent finding by Peter Razell. Economic History Review, lxix

T. Goldsmith reassesses British foreign policy in 1801–4, in the context of the debate over Paul Schroeder’s The Transformation of European Politics. International History Review, xxxviii

By attention to institutional archives, published accounts, diaries and estate correspondence, D. Fitz-Gibbon considers the cultural work of commoditisation through the example of the London Auction Mart and the market for real estate in early nineteenth-century England. Journal of British Studies, lv

R. Hanley highlights the emergence in the 1810s and 1820s, under the influence of John Cartwright, William Cobbett and Richard Carlile, of racist attitudes within the English working class. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., xxvi

K. Navickas discusses the impact of imprisonment in 1817 of radical activists in post-war England, arguing that the experience demonstrated the importance of letter-writing in sustaining the radical cause. She also offers new evidence about the gender politics of radicalism in the period, arguing that separation influenced the emergence of female radicalism in public for the first time in 1819. History, ci

N. Arielli, G.A. Frei, and I. Van Hulle retrace the history of Britain’s Foreign Enlistment Act from its nineteenth-century origins to the current debate about combatants in the Syrian Civil War. International History Review, xxxviii

Charles Grant, a liberal Tory chief secretary, introduced a scheme of government inspectors of prisons in Ireland in the 1820s that prefigured their introduction in England in 1835. But R.J. Butler argues against Stanley Palmer’s claim that Ireland was a laboratory for British social reform. Influences were complex and multiple as ‘the nations of the British Isles naturally became models for mutual experiment and advance’. Historical Journal, lix

G. De Bock examines the 1830 Ellenborough divorce case, stressing the publicity given by the press to Lady Ellenborough’s adultery with the Austrian diplomat Prince Schwarzenberg, and the middle-class backlash against the aristocracy that was provoked by the affair—by contrast with the largely successful attempts by the Austrian government to hush it up. Historical Research, lxxxix

Middle-class and official depictions of poverty (such as those of Henry Mayhew) emphasised the individuality and character of poor people, and used their conclusions to make moral judgements about them. R. Bretton argues that radical journalists (Owenites and Chartists) rejected this approach, preferring ‘strangely impersonal’, impressionistic accounts of poverty, which helped them redefine the problem of poverty as a political question about enfranchisement. Journal of Victorian Culture, xxi

Using the papers of political leaders and contemporary financial information, C. Read argues against the view that the decision to end financial assistance to Ireland during the Famine in 1847 was the result of an ideology of laissez-faire on the part of the British government. Rather, he suggests, the Whig government suffered a credit crisis which left it unable to borrow without panicking the markets. This weakness was, in turn, the result of Tory financial reforms introduced by Robert Peel earlier in the decade. Economic History Review, lxix

In a rich but discursive paper, P. Harling considers aspects of emigration from the British Isles—involving as many as 24 million people between 1815 and 1924. The Irish Famine forced over 2 million to emigrate between 1845 and 1855. But three case-studies show that migration was not exactly ‘spontaneous’. The British state took advantage of the Famine to turn the Irish countryside into an economy dominated by graziers who looked to export. The British State was committed to transforming New South Wales into a colony of free settlers and it tried to shore up Caribbean plantation society against the threats posed by the emancipation of slaves and free trade in sugar. Much to ponder in the details. Historical Journal, lix

E. Farrell presents an interesting study of the emigration of Irish convict women to North America after the abolition of transportation in 1857. Emigration was regarded as beneficial by the former convicts, who applied for assistance with funding their journeys. North American authorities were unenthusiastic about receiving large numbers of ex-convicts, and Irish authorities vetted the women they assisted for suitability (so as not to close the doors to all)—and encouraged them not to mention their criminal pasts when arriving at US ports. Women’s History Review, xxv

J.M. Moore describes and analyses the regime imposed by Alexander Maconochie as governor of Birmingham prison, 1849–51, showing that his use of corporal punishment and the general harshness of his rule were far from the reformative ideals which he took care to profess. Historical Research, lxxxix

P. Roberts shows how an Act of Parliament passed in 1851 for the removal of deer from the New Forest to create more land for timber growing was successfully resisted by the local commoners. Southern History, xxxviii

R.C. Richardson examines the role of Richard Chenevix Trench, Dean of Westminster 1856–64, in the launch of the Oxford English Dictionary, showing how Trench’s early years as a Hampshire incumbent heightened his attentiveness to regional variations in dialect and vocabulary. Southern History, xxxviii

During the 1859 evangelical revival a significant minority of Ulster Presbyterians dissented on doctrinal, ecclesiastical and moral grounds, as D. Ritchie shows. These findings are used to throw valuable light on Ulster Presbyterian theology and identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century more generally. Irish Historical Studies xl

D. Kanter shows that the subsidy offered to the Galway Packet-Boat company between 1859 and 1864 stimulated debates over the appropriate scope of state support for economic development. Historical Journal, lix

In their article on William Boxall, the second director of the National Gallery, S. Avery-Quash and S. Davoli demonstrate that the decision taken by Boxall to purchase several works by Cremonese Renaissance artists was owing to the influence of his knowledgeable Italian ‘private secretary’, Federico Sacchi: it illuminates the important role of agents and experts in the acquisition policy of nineteenth-century art galleries, as it echoes the relationship of the first director, Eastlake, and Otto Mündler. Journal of the History of Collections, xxviii

S. Mayer draws on the field of ‘Celebrity Studies’ rather than the ‘no doubt captivating’ Disraeli archives for her study of Disraeli’s ‘double consciousness’, as a literary celebrity and celebrity politician. Journal of Victorian Culture, xxi

The railways, although a symbol of progress, were a focus for anxieties about modernity, masculinity and madness in the mid-Victorian period. In the 1860s and 1870s, newspapers fomented a moral panic, A. Milne-Smith demonstrates, around both the presence and dangers of escaped ‘lunatics’ using the railways and the way in which rail travel itself was thought to endanger the mental health of (particularly) men. Journal of Victorian Culture, xxi

S. Taylor examines the concept of the insane child and how it related to ideas of childhood in the Victorian era and beyond. He explores the fluid nature of the diagnosis of mental illness in this period, the motives of family and medical professionals in different diagnoses, and the place of the child within the medical institution. History, ci

M. Quirk examines the professionalisation and commercialisation of embroidery in her study of philanthropic and commercial needlework societies. These organisations—notably the Royal School of Art Needlework—sought to raise the status of embroidery as an art and to use it to provide paid work for women (especially middle-class women). Journal of Victorian Culture, xxi

In an entertaining assessment, T. Turner looks at the mass production and consumption of lawn-tennis shoes in late Victorian Britain, and casts light on the wider contexts of sport, commerce, fashion, and class and gender relations. Journal of British Studies, lv

In his O’Donnell Lecture in Celtic Studies, H. Pryce investigates how the history of medieval Wales was viewed in the Victorian Age, and reflects more widely on the demand for histories of Wales and the treatment of medieval Welsh sources in the period. Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, lxxi

I.B. Stewart makes good use of the contemporary Celtic Magazine to dissect the cultural nationalist movement in the Scottish Highlands, 1875–88, showing the close connections between a cultural revival and a ‘land war’ for crofters’ rights in the period leading up to the Crofters’ Holdings (Scotland) Act of 1886, and pointing to the movement’s links with the parallel land reform movement in Ireland. Historical Research, lxxxix

Attention is drawn to three linked incidents of ritualised political ‘ridicule’ in the town of Sevenoaks, Kent in the early 1880s, orchestrated by one William Bath, a tenant farmer. I. Taylor argues that these events—which challenged, respectively, the Extraordinary Tithe, a Conservative party meeting, and the right of a local aristocratic landowner to prevent public access to his estate—represented an effective development and use of pressure-group tactics in local politics. Taylor additionally uses the events as a contribution to the ‘spatial turn’: control or domination of ‘land–space’, supported by a conviction that his actions were in accordance with a moral imperative, was crucial to Bath’s success. Journal of Victorian Culture, xxi

Statistical analysis underpins the intervention of L. Blaxill and T. Saleh in the debate stimulated by J.P. Cornford over the link between low turnouts and Conservative and Unionist electoral hegemony between 1886 and 1900. Cornford’s correlations are corroborated but the claims by some scholars that the Conservatives deliberately tried to reduce the number of people voting are dismissed. Historical Journal, lix

C. Glover examines a complaint made in 1888 that Sir William Harcourt, a former Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, obtained the lease of a Crown estate in the New Forest on excessively favourable terms, showing that he was not altogether averse to using insider influence. Southern History, xxxviii

L. Kelly analyses British responses to the Russian famine of 1891–2 and examines the humanitarian motives of those organisations, particularly the Quakers, who provided relief. Historical Research, lxxxix

D. Small considers the implications of the medicinal use of cocaine for the public image of the physician, arguing that the anaesthetic properties of the drug were viewed as the apogee of scientific progress—surgeons and general practitioners’ reputations were enhanced by association. The argument is illustrated with an analysis of a short story by L.T. Meade. Journal of Victorian Culture, xxi

Examining an often-overlooked element of general practice, J. Jenkinson demonstrates the importance of keeping a dispensary shop for Scottish doctors between c.1850 and 1911. In a lively analysis Jenkinson considers the risks of such shopkeeping, as assistants unqualified in pharmacy dispensed controlled drugs and poisons, sometimes with serious consequences. Yet, far from being a damaging enterprise in relation to their professional standing, Jenkinson shows that shopkeeping offered many doctors a lucrative and generally acceptable way of supplementing their earnings in the medical marketplace. Social History of Medicine, xxix

S.T. Casper and R. Welsh make an important contribution to histories of specialisation and professionalisation in medicine by looking at neurology in Britain from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century. Neurology, they argue, provides evidence for the persistence of generalism in medicine even when specialisation was developing—such as the placement of specialist neurology departments in institutions where medical training took place. Further, they argue that it was the shortage of specialist workers that led to the practice of hiring general physicians with an interest in neurology in order to fill this gap. Social History of Medicine, xxix

V. Bates uses a sample from 2,213 pre-trial statements in cases of non-consensual sex between 1850 and 1914 to examine the courtroom language and ‘scripts’ relating to loss of consciousness. Victims spoke of ‘insensibility’ to explain failure to resist, said they ‘did not know’ what had happened as a strategy to preserve their honour, and described ‘fainting’ in the aftermath of an assault as an indicator of appropriate feminine delicacy; witness statements on fainting display fewer patterns—the unconscious female body represented a place for witnesses to express their concerns about appropriate female behaviour and emotionality. Journal of Victorian Culture, xxi

Using business records and parliamentary sources, C.L. Jones provides a crucial addition to histories of birth control in Britain. By addressing the sale, display and purchase of contraceptives, Jones uncovers a rich commodity culture—from rubber sheaths disguised within cigarette packets, to vending machines attached to pharmacists’ shops that dispensed condoms alongside aspirins and cough sweets. In this way Jones demonstrates the existence of a wide variety of consumption patterns from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, with the purchase of contraceptives something that touched upon many more social groups and geographical areas than has hitherto been supposed. Social History of Medicine, xxix

Constance Maynard (1849–1935), the pioneer of education for women, left a significant body of autobiographical writings in the collections of Queen Mary University of London (the successor institution to Maynard’s Westfield College). These writings are analysed in six articles in a special issue, edited by A. Eyre, J. Mackelworth and E. Richardson, with the emphasis placed on reading the sources through the perspective of the history of emotions, especially the languages of sexual and religious love used by Maynard. Women’s History Review, xxv

R.E. Bailey, T.J. Hatton and K. Inwood use First World War recruitment in England and Wales to relate male heights to childhood circumstances, as recorded in the 1901 Census. They find that height was positively related to socio-economic class and negatively to the size and earning capacity of the household. There were also important regional variations, especially industrialisation. Economic History Review, lxix

Focusing on British strategy from 1900 to 1909, S. Grimes argues that naval war planning entailed amphibious projects in support of a North Sea/Baltic blockade, rather than the army’s proposals for landings in Germany and Denmark. Historical Research, lxxxix

B. Holman recovers the ‘phantom airship’ panic in Britain in 1912–13, drawing analogies with the better-known 1909 Dreadnought panic, and exposing the misconceptions in both public and press over the likely nature of future aerial warfare. Journal of British Studies, lv

M. Seligmann defends the reputation of the American historian of the Royal Navy Arthur J. Marder against revisionist critiques. International History Review, xxxviii

R. Smith examines the private life of Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, including its influence on his political career. International History Review, xxxviii

T.G. Otte reappraises Sir Edward Grey’s career as British Foreign Secretary, setting his conduct during the July 1914 crisis in the context of his pre-war policies. International History Review, xxxviii

C. Clark reappraises Sir Edward Grey’s role in the July 1914 crisis, arguing that Grey’s attitudes towards Germany and towards Russia both pointed towards intervention. International History Review, xxxviii

According to P. Davenport, the British army’s use of ‘Command Depots’ from late 1915 onwards to provide wounded men with therapeutic care under military discipline restored military usefulness along with ‘an appropriately martial masculine identity’. Contemporary British History, xxx

P. Dehne examines the creation (in 1916) and the wartime activities of the Ministry of Blockade: it worked with British and overseas firms and states to blockade Germany, curtail the economic activities of the Central Powers, and expand markets for British trade; it also planned, with France, to continue concerted economic action against Germany after the end of the war, and to continue aiding British firms, leading to the creation of the Department of Overseas Trade to pursue these goals after the war. Its successes were a key reason why the First World War helped bring about the end of the belief in Free Trade in Britain. 20th Century British History, xxvii

N. Mackay, C. Price, and A. Wood re-analyse the battle of Jutland in the light of the intellectual climate of current naval thinking and the influence of F.W. Lanchester’s ‘square law’ of gunnery which prioritised concentration as the key component of success in battle. Jutland can therefore be seen as ‘a race for concentration’ which Jellicoe ultimately won. History, ci

E. Spiers examines the impact of the losses on the first day of the Somme, using the experience of the heavy Yorkshire casualties incurred in the battle. He demonstrated that news filtered through slowly and what later became a legendary burden of bereavement was presented as an overwhelmingly positive narrative in the press at the time. This view was reinforced in the subsequent documentary film account of the Somme battle released at the end of August 1916, assisting in community cohesion and acceptance of the war by many. Northern History, liii

The Women’s Party, founded by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst in 1917 to absorb the energies of the suffragette movement once votes for women had been attained, has been caricatured as simply a proto-fascist, anti-Bolshevik organisation. J. Purvis discusses the feminist credentials of the party, which had a platform including equal pay, equal marriage and divorce laws, equal employment opportunities, co-operative housekeeping, maternal and infant welfare, and education for all, to be attained through class co-operation rather than class conflict. Women’s History Review, xxv

T. Irish surveys the last twenty years, 1899–1919, in the life of J.P. Mahaffy, an Irish scholar much involved in the cultural politics of Anglo-Irish relations, and one whose belief in a cosmopolitan and pan-European republic of letters—rather than a narrow nationalism or an equally narrow unionism—was undermined by the First World War. Historical Research, lxxxix

E. O’Connor re-examines the Democratic Programme, the last of four constitutional documents adopted by the first Dáil in January 1919. Irish Historical Studies xl

Tracing the decline of the Liberal party in Leicestershire between 1914 and 1924, G.J. Freeman argues that the divisions within the party, largely the consequences of the First World War, do most to explain the successes of Conservative and Labour at the Liberals’ expense. Historical Research, lxxxix

B. Taylor discusses the medical inspection of immigrants to Britain that was enshrined in the 1920 Aliens Order. Aiming to prevent the entry to Britain of those either dangerous to health or likely to become a charge on public funds, the Order—in theory—introduced an objective judgement of individual health for all immigrants. As Taylor shows, however, the practical difficulties of inspection meant that it was highly reliant on Medical Officers’ ‘discretion’. Taylor shows how the powers of the state may be curtailed by practicalities, then, but also how medical examination could perpetuate commonly held assumptions about class, race and health. Social History of Medicine, xxix

T. Sasson investigates the imperial origins of international humanitarianism in the British and international relief mission to Russia during the famine of 1921–2, arguing that Britain assumed a new global role by accommodating humanitarian ethics in its project of global governance. Journal of British Studies, lv

A. Buchanan, in examining the scholarly career of the self-taught architectural historian (and architect) John Bilson, opens a wider discussion of the study of Anglo-Norman Romanesque architecture at the beginning of the twentieth century. She shows how his detailed study of twelfth-century architectural developments, particularly at Durham, changed perceptions of the stylistic innovations that led to the emergence of Gothic. In demonstrating that the rib vaults of Durham cathedral were the earliest (securely dated) of their type (and perhaps the earliest anywhere), Bilson challenged contemporary French interpretations of these changes, which were seen (not least for political reasons) as primarily a French phenomenon. Though consequently criticised, Bilson later came to be recognised by French and British architectural historians alike as remodelling the terms of debate. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

In an overdue assessment, given its neglect relative to Great War poetry, E.C. Walters looks at the marketing, reception and afterlife of R.C. Sherriff’s play Journey’s End (1928). Journal of British Studies, lv

In an assessment of the projection of advertising into the skies from the late nineteenth century onwards, J. Taylor explores the ways in which opposition to aerial advertising reflected anxiety over the connection to nature in an urbanising society and over the commercialisation of public space. Journal of British Studies, lv

C. Renwick argues that the inter-war British eugenics movement significantly influenced post-war sociologists’ understanding of the concept of social mobility. The work of David Glass is given special attention; the recent writings of Mike Savage are seen as offering valuable investigative models for reconnecting the study of history and sociology. Historical Journal, lix

In a fascinating study, D.R. Singerman recovers John Maynard Keynes’s early engagement with arguments around genetics and heredity, and shows how his lifelong commitment to eugenics was reflected in his political, economic and philosophical work. Journal of British Studies, lv

L. Hall revisits the debates over sexological discourse concerning female same-sex relationships in the inter-war period, demonstrating that the ‘pathological’ interpretation of lesbianism (which, it has been asserted, caused women in this period to be more emotionally restrained in their relationships with other women) is difficult to locate in actual experience. Tensions in women’s relationships arose not so much from fear of identification as lesbian as from fears of ‘morbid’ emotionalism, hyper-femininity and concerns about all-female institutions. Women’s History Review, xxv

R. Bivins and H. Marland consider the management of weight in the modern household, using advertisments for diet products, household medical guides and catalogues to trace how the self-surveillance of weight came to be ‘at home’ in Britain with the increasingly common bathroom scale. In doing so, Bivins and Marland offer an interesting new perspective on both the medicalisation of the domestic sphere and the commercialisation of medical and health devices in the twentieth century. Social History of Medicine, xxix

In an entertaining study of the proselytism for fascism and yoga by Francis Yeats-Brown and J.F.C. Fuller, K. Imy shows how imperial hierarchies of gender and racial difference informed a British nationalist model of martial masculinity between the world wars. Journal of British Studies, lv

A. Taylor traces the twentieth-century history of the Whiteway anarchist community in the Cotswolds. A survivor of many nineteenth-century alternative communities in nineteenth-century Britain, he locates it within British popular politics and memory and assesses the changing moral and political attitudes displayed by reformers and anti-reformers. History, ci

C. Beckerman-Boys argues that the pressure of maintaining unity within a minority Labour government, not Zionist lobbying, was responsible for the reversal of the Passfield White Paper on Palestine, February 1931. Journal of Contemporary History, li

An Irish Catholic congregation, the Medical Missionaries of Mary, founded in the wake of the papal removal of the embargo on involvement in midwifery and surgery in 1936, combined Irish medical thought and Catholic moral doctrine, modified by the demands of local women at their mission hospital in Anua, Nigeria, finds A. Veale. Women’s History Review, xxv

I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska compares the funerals of George V and George VI, both massive national occasions in which millions felt deeply involved, and both resulting in the funding of new philanthropic enterprises as a form of commemoration. Historical Research, lxxxix

K.E. Attar traces the history of the University of London Library in Senate House during the Second World War, and the relations between the Library and the Ministry of Information, which shared the building. Historical Research, lxxxix

H. Irving surveys the campaign to recycle paper during the Second World War, showing that the process, though broadly successful, was far from straightforward. Historical Research, lxxxix

The interior and emotional lives of ‘ordinary’ people are notoriously difficult to access. A. Twells reads the ‘ordinary’ pocket diaries of a working-class girl during the Second World War for what they reveal on this score. Women’s History Review, xxv

M. Fleming examines information about German atrocities against Hungarian Jews in sources produced by the British Foreign Office and associate offices during the war, and particularly in spring/summer 1944, arguing that the marginalisation and omission of the subject meant that high-ranking British officials were less likely to act on evidence from elsewhere about atrocities, and civil society actors were less able to press for British action. It was not a lack of evidence or straightforward disbelief of evidence which presented Britain from acting earlier; rather, particular government sources were key in muddying the waters. 20th Century British History, xxvii

M. Nilsson closely analyses Hugh Trevor-Roper’s role in the authentication and publication of Hitler’s Table Talk and his Testament. He argues that Trevor-Roper had private doubts about their reliability which he never made public. Journal of Contemporary History, li

B. Maartens fills gaps in previous accounts of the post-1945 evolution of British government communication practice, drawing attention to the new language of ‘publicity’ and ‘information’ designed to avoid the stigma of wartime ‘propaganda’ and American ‘public relations’. Contemporary British History, xxx

J. Tomlinson suggests that, though ‘declinism’ was an important cultural and political discourse, growth and decline are not the most useful categories through which to understand the post-1945 British economy. Deindustrialisation (defined by reference to employment) provides a far more powerful key. The proportion of the workforce in industrial employment peaked in 1955; its fall thereafter tended to increase wage inequality and job insecurity, thus reshaping the welfare system as in-work benefits were needed to tackle growing in-work poverty. Deindustrialisation also impacted significantly on the growth of the public sector and, in complex ways, on gender and employment patterns. 20th Century British History, xxvii

L. King shows that the common conceptualisation of children as ‘the future’ in public debate c.1935–55—a conceptualisation which intensified during the war—allowed cross-party support for investment in children via spending on the new welfare state. But the common language masked different ways of seeing children as ‘the future’—free-market individualism (seeing children as economic investments), social democracy (which aimed for the flourishing of all), and conservative views of children as carriers of British values and ‘greatness’. 20th Century British History, xxvii

The emigration of British women to the empire continued through the post-war period, supported by the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women. J.P. Smith argues that, although the language changed when the empire became the Commonwealth, there were many continuities of remit, personnel and activities which dated back to the Victorian ladies’ immigration societies. Women’s History Review, xxv

C. Jeppesen offers an interesting assessment of the recruitment of administrators by the Colonial Service after 1945. The Colonial Office could have done more to appeal to potential applicants who saw themselves as preparing those whom they administered for self-government. But some applicants were still attracted by the values of imperial rule embodied in the romantic image of Sanders of the River, the hero of a series of novels by Edgar Wallace published between 1911 and 1928. Historical Journal, lix

S. Mawby discusses the ambiguities thrown up for the British Labour Party’s anti-colonial stance in the post-war period by the case of the suspension of the Guianese constitution in 1953. It was an issue in which the Labour party and TUC leaders prioritised Cold War allegiance over colonial liberation. History, ci

In a rather diffuse essay, C. Laucht considers the part played by the Atomic Scientists’ Association in debates over nuclear testing. Several members were also involved as employees in government nuclear programmes, limiting the role the association could play. But a report on the hazards of strontium did have an impact. Historical Journal, lix

T. Buchanan examines the actions taken against the small number of British subjects who visited China or North Korea during the Korean War. Though not brought to trial, all suffered some form of punitive action. These actions are placed in the context of the Cold War and concerns over disloyalty by the Left, while those subject to them usually acted in accordance with alternative loyalties, such as to the ‘new’ China or to a particular view of the United Nations. History, ci

Giving attention to the influx of around 21,000 Hungarian refugees to Britain in 1956 and their subsequent reception and resettlement, B. Taylor argues for the endurance of conceptions of a ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor in relation to the welfare state. Journal of British Studies, lv

A. Chapman draws on his study of the impact of immigration on Derby after the Second World War to question the nature and timing of secularisation: religion continued to play ‘a constructive role in English society at the end of the twentieth century’. ‘If by then Derby had become a multi-cultural society, one religion [that of the church of England] retained a historically and numerically rooted precedence.’ If the Christian civil religion of the inter-war years—marked by religious observance, loyalty and service to country, neighbourliness, steadfastness, adherence to traditional teachings on sexuality—dissipated even before non-Christian immigrants started to arrive in the 1950s, and if by the 1980s Derby had become multi-religious, many of the churches were keen to build relationships with each other, with faith leaders evolving a civic religion based not just on tolerance but on respect, and on shared beliefs in education, hard work and sobriety. Derby people ‘developed the ability to hold convictions about the truthfulness of what they believed while remaining civil to those with whom they disagreed’. Creative engagement, muddling through or wishful thinking? Historical Journal lix

A. Hutton argues that literature was central to the intellectual project of the first British New Left between 1956 and 1962. There was not a single literary approach or ideal, but the humane properties of literature were seen as important to creating a socialism outside of and opposed to the totalitarian USSR and social democratic Labour party. The first New Left therefore opposed political censorship of literature and championed engaged criticism. 20th Century British History, xxvii

In his third Presidential Address, P. Mandler draws on the work of sociologists and economists to claim that there was indeed ‘a golden age of social mobility’ from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, but that it was, however, ‘almost certainly a one-off’. And education—in grammar schools, in universities—contributed much less then or since than is commonly thought. That leads to the conclusion ‘that the purpose of education is not so much to foster equality of opportunity as to educate’. But how reliably do sociologists’ complex generalisations capture the experiences of individuals who believe that their education did transform their lives? Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., xxvi

In an exceptionally powerful essay, J. Lawrence shows that the text of Michael Young and Peter Willmott’s classic sociological study of life in Bethnal Green and Debden, Family and Kinship in East London (1957), distorted the oral interviews on which it was based. It ‘drew a rather idealised picture of communal relations, ignoring strong evidence that many Londoners had always lived by the maxim that it was best “to keep themselves” to themselves’. It failed to reflect the hostility to family voiced in many of the interviews: ‘large numbers of Young’s Bethnal Green respondents happily confided that they had little to do with some, or even all, of their relatives’. The close-knit and loving family was a widespread ideal but the reality was very different. Respondents were ‘more positive about Debden and negative about Bethnal Green’ than Family and Kinship portrays. ‘It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Young and Willmott quarried their subjects’ testimony selectively to boost pre-existing ideas about working-class “community” and its undoing in the supposedly atomized world of the new suburban estates’. It is a devastating critique. Their model rested on their gut feeling, not on the evidence of their interviews. Yet how representative were what were a small number of interviews? And when later those who lived in places such as Bethnal Green were moved not to leafy suburbs but to tower blocks, were their experiences—as characterised by Nicholas Taylor, The Village in the City (1973)—not so far removed from Young and Willmott’s gut feeling? Historical Journal, lix

T. Chettiar examines the role of Britain’s marriage counsellors in the creation of a new emotional purpose for marriage in the decades following the Second World War, recovering both governmental agendas of classlessness and changing public conceptions of marriage and the family. Journal of British Studies, lv

H. Cocks examines the market for what was seen as ‘obscene’ literature in mid-twentieth century Britain. Dealers in and consumers of works containing female nudes and racy stories justified this by arguing that in fact, what they consumed was little different to the racier elements of culture which were entirely legal (and which Peter Bailey has defined as ‘parasexual’). These justifications slowly normalised the consumption of such risqué material, showing the bottom-up, democratic development of ‘permissive’ attitudes even before the 1960s. 20th Century British History, xxvii

C.R. Hill examines the Welsh and Scottish Councils for Nuclear Disarmament in the late 1950s and early 1960s; though constituents of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, these bodies played an important role in generating left-of-centre nationalist movements in Scotland and Wales, by arguing that Scotland and Wales were under a particular threat from nuclear weapons, and that the national identity of each could be built around a self-image as a ‘sovereign nation of peace’. These bodies drew on local traditions and cultures (Christian, folk and socialist) to spread their message and in the process contributed to the creation of homogeneous national and nationalist cultures. 20th Century British History, xxvii

M. O’Driscoll examines agitation in Ireland against land purchases by Germans, in connection with land hunger and the Irish application to join the EEC. International History Review, xxxviii

The impact of the introduction of masses in Irish following the decision of the Second Vatican Council in 1963 to extend the vernacular into Roman Catholic worship is explored by J.P. Bruce. It draws attention to the attempts by John Charles McQuaid, archbishop of Dublin, to retain the Latin rite on the same terms as the provision of Irish masses. Irish Historical Studies, xl

J. Fellows uses the case of Anthony Grey, a British Reuters journalist held captive in China from 1967 to 1969, to show what the episode reveals about the limits of Hong Kong’s autonomy when that autonomy ran counter to the objectives of British foreign policy. Historical Research, lxxxix

O. Saumarez Smith examines government and planners’ approaches to the built environment, especially the increasingly troubled inner cities, in the 1970s, showing that modernism appeared, even to many former advocates, a failed and untenable approach. However, this did not represent the end of meliorist approaches to urban planning; in fact, there were intellectually vibrant progressive projects developed during these years, casting doubt on the inevitability of the Thatcherite approach stressing individual effort and markets. 20th Century British History, xxvii

P. Sloman examines the development of tax and welfare policy under Ted Heath, in particular the development of a system of reversible tax credits to take most of the population out of the Pay As You Earn tax system. This scheme fitted with the technocratic ethos of the time, but financial and practical obstacles eventually meant it was not introduced. This ushered in a period where reforms to the tax/benefit system have been largely piecemeal and tended to erode entitlements. 20th Century British History, xxvii

J. Reveley and J. Singleton argue that Labour in the 1970s was well aware of the increasing financialisation of the British economy, in particular the increasing funds that ‘ordinary’ people had invested in via pensions and life insurance. Though fearful of the deregulation of finance, some on the Labour left, particularly between 1973 and 1976, also saw an opportunity to use these funds, via nationalisation or control of parts of the banking and insurance industries, for industrial investment, in order to slow or reverse deindustrialisation. This was shown to be unpopular with banks, trade unions, and the public after 1976, however. 20th Century British History, xxvii

E. Smith and D. Leeworthy show how the Young Communist League, which expanded in the late 1960s due to a youth recruitment drive, was instrumental in promoting post-materialist political issues, and in particular in placing gay liberation on the Communist Party of Great Britain’s official agenda in 1976. The CPGB thus became the first organisation on the British left to put gay issues prominently onto its platform, and became a carrier for a ‘liberationist’ rather than rights-based politics of sexuality. This context explains the fact that YCL members were central to the formation of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners in 1984. 20th Century British History, xxvii

M. Moore applies a post-colonial analysis to the study of post-war chronic disease epidemiology in the UK in an instructive paper, showing that colonialism continued to shape the study of disease in the second part of the twentieth century. In comparing the occurrence of heart disease in Caribbean and Welsh communities, for example, people in ex-colonies continued to stand as ‘others’ to be compared with domestic populations. Moore argues that, in using colonial and ex-colonial populations for disease research, epidemiologists continued to work within and perpetuate colonial administrative structures. Social History of Medicine, xxix

In the winning essay for the Duncan Tanner Prize (2015), S. Wetherell shows that the idea of the ‘enterprise zone’, closely associated with Thatcherism and neoliberalism more generally, in fact has roots in the idea of ‘non-plan areas’, developed by anti-state left-wing artists, urban planners and sociologists in the late 1960s. This disrupts simple readings of 1979 as a turning-point in British history engineered by a cohort of right-wing neoliberals. 20th Century British History, xxvii

E. Mercau pays attention to an intriguing episode, the status and role of the Anglo-Argentine community during the Falklands War of 1982, arguing that its very marginality demonstrates the contingency and frailty of the idea of ‘Greater Britain’ by the later twentieth century. Journal of British Studies, lv

A. Edwards examines the Wider Share Ownership Council during the Thatcher years. This pressure group had championed wider share-ownership since 1958, particularly in the form of employee share-ownership, arguing it would enhance economic growth and support for free markets. But the Council became disappointed with Thatcher by the end of the 1980s as, despite the rhetoric of empowering individuals, Thatcherite institutional reforms in fact favoured interests in the City of London over individual share-owners, who were disadvantaged by the dominance of a small number of large and powerful financial institutions. 20th Century British History, xxvii

G. Schaffer looks at the history of British alternative comedy as a case-study of political challenge and opposition to Thatcherism in the 1980s, arguing that while alternative comedians influenced both British comedy and political discussion, they mostly failed to capture the imaginations of working-class Britons, who continued to prefer more traditional and differently rebellious comedic voices. Journal of British Studies, lv

L. Blaxill and K. Beelen examine women’s contributions in parliamentary debate since 1945 to show that women’s contributions have differed from men’s, not only in their greater focus on women and gender issues, but also in their prioritising of a broader ‘social perspective’. There was little difference in Labour and Conservative women in this regard, though Conservative women generally represented ‘women’s issues’ from a conservative, rather than feminist, standpoint. However, the differences between men’s and women’s contributions decreased as numbers of women in parliament increased, notably after 1997. 20th Century British History, xxvii

In an article based on the 2015 Ben Pimlott lecture, R. McKibbin argues that the brief two-party supremacy of the mid-twentieth century, when Labour and the Conservatives took the vast majority of votes cast in General Elections, was something of an anomaly. It broke down from the 1960s onwards due to changes in the social structure, in large part due to deindustrialisation and the passing of industrial working-class communities, as well as due to high inflation in the 1970s and 1980s, plus the unstable, financialised economy created in the 1980s. Britain thus became a largely ‘middle-class’ society, but it was a fragmented class with little corporate identity. The rise of small and nationalist parties was the result. 20th Century British History, xxvii

F. Geary and T. Stark trace changes in regional inequality in Britain since 1860. They argue that there was a long-term trend from 1860 to 1970 for a decline in regional inequality and for catch-up by the poorer regions with the richer south-east. This underlying trend was interrupted by the First World War and 1920s and only resumed in the 1930s. Since 1971 inequality has worsened and catch-up has stopped with the south-east pulling away strongly from the rest of the country since 1991. Economic History Review, lxix

Italy

F. Carminati and A. Mariani overturn centuries of scholarly consensus identifying the early medieval ‘isola Comacina’ with the single island on Lake Como; instead they re-examine all the late antique and early medieval references and conclude that this place-name referred to land at the confluence of rivers near Lecco. Nuova rivista storica, c

Against the usual tendency of the historiography, E. Tounta argues that the saints’ lives of tenth- and eleventh-century Southern Italy disclose the fragmented power relations of this frontier region (in which saints—characteristically—were mobilised as mediators), rather than indicating Latin or Greek ethnic identities. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

Looking at the records of five confraternities across twelfth-century Italy, N. Şenocak demonstrates that they included mixed memberships of clergy and laity, who were equally involved in the care of souls, commensality, confession, prayer and the provision of charity. These institutions thus represented a stepping-stone between monastic communities and the fraternities of the later Middle Ages. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

Focusing on the agrarian policies of Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen in Sicily, V. Stamm rejects the over-used concept of ‘modernity’ as a relevant category of historical analysis. Countering older historiography which characterised Frederick’s policies in the kingdom of Sicily as efficient, ‘modern’ and ‘rational’, Stamm shows that the sources merely demonstrate the emperor’s intention to maximise profit and tax revenue. The means to do so followed tradition and did not distinguish between leaseholds or directly managed royal estates. What remains less clear, however, is the definition of what ‘modernity’ or ‘tradition’ might have meant now and then. Historisches Jahrbuch, cxxxv (2015)

E. d’Angelo proposes new identities for the writer(s) of the Liber de regno Sicilie and Epistola ad Petrum Panormitone Ecclesie thesaurarium, the authorship of which is conventionally ascribed to ‘Hugh Falcandus’. In a careful forensic examination of this controversial question he proposes William of Blois as author, first of the Liber and then, some twenty years later, of the letter to the bishop of Palermo. Though, as d’Angelo admits, any identification is conjectural unless new documents are discovered, the case for William is strong. William, a scholar and prolific composer of both secular and religious works, came as a Benedictine monk to serve in the Sicilian court in 1166 but after three or four years was obliged to return to France as a consequence of the political intrigues during the reign of William II in which he and his better-known brother, Peter, played a central role. William certainly wrote a (now lost) contemporary history of Henry II’s England, De Praestagiis, whose known themes match those of the Liber: both had a didactic and moral purpose to promote virtue. Anglo-Norman Studies, xxxv (2013)

Claiming to correct a recent historiographical omission, V. Mazzoni turns once again to the story of factions in Tuscany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, insisting on Florence’s important co-ordinating role at regional and wider levels, and examining the cases of Florentine intervention among the factions of Volterra, Pisa, Pistoia, Prato and San Miniato. Archivio storico italiano, clxxiv

Filippo Brunelleschi had his friend, the sculptor Donatello, imprisoned for debt in 1412. L. Böninger, who has discovered the relevant document, discusses the origin of the debt, and places this story in relation to the tale of the Grasso legnaiuolo, which features an imprisoning trick orchestrated by the same Filippo Brunelleschi. Archivio storico italiano, clxxiv

Focusing on the Conservatoria regii patrimonii, an office established by the Aragonese in Sicily in 1414, A. Silvestri shows how new forms of record-keeping could be part and parcel of the means of control adopted by fifteenth-century states. While offices on the royal estates in Sicily were given to local notables, their tenure and conditions were centrally supervised: by the viceroys, and—more remotely—by the authorities in Barcelona. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

In the context of King Alfonso I d’Aragona’s relations with Ethiopia (continuous) and with Egypt and Tunisia (mutable according to the Turkish threat), B. Figliuolo examines the king’s concerns for Christians and Christian sites in the Holy Land, especially as represented in the activities of his loyal servant, the Sicilian nobleman Giovanni Filangieri. Nuova rivista storica, c

‘Unoriginal, inaccurate’, ‘possibly imaginary’: so F. Cardini evaluates Marco Rustici’s account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1441, interpreting it more as a symbolic journey, presenting Florence as a spiritual Jerusalem. Nuova rivista storica, c

Among the devotional texts by a Camaldolese monk, Mauro Lapi (1390–1478), is a life of blessed Pietro da Sardegna (d. 1453), whose pilgrimage to the Holy Land is compared to Lapi’s own; the latter account covers justifications for pilgrimage, spiritual and practical preparation, travel advice, and a note on costs. Nuova rivista storica, c

S. Cavallo offers an important addition to histories of health and the environment that have focused disproportionately on ‘bad air’, instead examining efforts to harness the effects of ‘good air’ in early modern Italy. In a period increasingly concerned with climate and the weather, anxieties about the health risks of bad air prompted preventive measures within the domestic environment. Pomanders, perfume burners and small flasks of perfume were used to alter the air around the individual, demonstrating, Cavallo argues, an increased confidence in the ability to take control of one’s immediate environment. Social History of Medicine, xxix

1497–8: two Florentine clerics travelled to the Eastern Mediterranean/Asia Minor; L. Rebaudo re-interprets their journey as a book-hunt in purpose, but evolving into an archaeological tour in practice. Nuova rivista storica, c

C. Iannella places the reconstruction of Christian Holy Places at Varallo (‘Sacro Monte’) and Montaione (‘Gerusalemme’) within the context of the changing image and significance of Jersusalem c.1500 and the opposition of traditional preaching to pilgrimage. Nuova rivista storica, c

P. Hass offers us a fresh reading of Machiavelli’s use of Livy’s Ab urbe condita, which provides much material for Machiavelli’s idea of republican virtue, a civic militia, and fortuna as the (historic) law of unintended consequences. The article shows links between Machiavelli’s Discorsi and his Prince which have often been overlooked. Unsurprisingly, the author characterises Machiavelli as a normative writer with a moral programme of politics. The article succeeds in showcasing the Italian writer’s thorough understanding of his Roman source. Historisches Jahrbuch, cxxxv (2015)

A. Guidi describes the documentary practices associated with the raising of Florentine armies between 1506 and 1530, paying particular attention to the records generated by the militia force created by Machiavelli in 1506. Historical Research, lxxix

Machiavelli’s less-well-known Summary of the Affairs of the City of Lucca is examined by M. Suchowlansky, who suggests that Machiavelli’s interest in republican government had not waned in the 1520s, and that Venice was a positive model in his eyes. Intellectual History Review, xxvi

In early modern Venice, the labouring classes, the popolani, made up almost 90 per cent of the city’s population. In a reinterpretation of the role of the popolani, I. Iordanou contends that, through the philanthropy of the Venetian workforce, their contribution to the Venetian economic and society far exceeded their well-documented professional and civic function which has been the focus of earlier histories. Iordanou challenges the existing scholarly view that charity was the sole responsibility of the government and the nobility in early modern Venice and shows that marriage was not merely a financial union for the popolani but a sanctuary for lasting companionship. Economic History Review, lxix

C. McNamara examines evidence for impressive levels of lay commitment to active piety by the later seventeenth century in the diocese of Padua. Catholic Historical Review, cii

L. Beaven’s and K.J. Lloyd’s important article on the collection of Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi degli Albertoni Altieri is the first part of a study of what a 1698 inventory reveals about this Roman cardinal’s collections and how he displayed them. They argue that his paintings show a conservative, predominantly religious taste in art which was designed to reinforce and justify his position as papal nephew and to boost the prestige of the Altieri family. It is a study which illuminates the purposes of an early modern collection. Journal of the History of Collections, xxviii

L. Lo Basso conducts a qualitative survey of maritime credit in Liguria in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: identity of investors, size of loans, interest rates, purposes. Archivio storico italiano, clxxiv

A. Cont examines the relations between Guillaume Tillot (1711–74), first minister in the Bourbon duchy of Parma, and the local nobility, looking specifically at his use of offices and titles at court, in the army and in diplomacy, and at his promotion of cultural projects; nevertheless, noble and clerical opposition to his absolutist policies led to his downfall. Nuova rivista storica, c

The reception of French Enlightenment ideas at the court of Grand-Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo is examined by N. Knieling through the development and use of his library (over 17,000 volumes in 1771), especially as regards mode of acquisition and pedagogical use. Archivio storico italiano, clxxiv

N. Scott Baker analyses the evidence for the gambling and card-playing engaged in by Eleonora de Toledo and Cosimo I de’ Medici in the mid-sixteenth century at their newly established court in Florence. He reaches the rather unsurprising conclusion that such card-playing, predominantly with courtiers, was much more than a game; it served as a demonstration of their qualities of self-control and discernment. European History Quarterly, xlvi

E. Gin examines the work of the pro-Bourbon historian Giacinto De Sivo (1814–67) in the context of ‘legitimist’ propaganda after Italian unification in 1860, focusing on his distinctive interpretation of late Bourbon history as one of personal weaknesses and failures of leadership, aligning him more with the liberal opposition than with his fellow-propagandists. Nuova rivista storica, c

A fascinating and innovative article by B. Kehoe explores the ballad collections relating to Sicily in the later nineteenth century to assess how far nationalist tropes and symbols had penetrated popular mentalities. The answer, perhaps predictably, is that nationalism became intermingled with more long-standing themes of liberty, justice and resistance to outsiders. European History Quarterly xlvi

How were librarians appointed in later nineteenth-century Italy? A. Niccolò and D. Pace show how, against a background of voluntary apprenticeships and informal procedures, legislative moves were made towards training, career-formation and professionalisation, focusing on the case of the Biblioteca nazionale, Florence. Archivio storico italiano, clxxiv

J. Dickie exploits trial records to argue that in the 1920s the Calabrian mafia turned away from the pimping of prostitutes ‘because daily contact with prostitutes was incompatible with maintaining women’s value within an emerging criminal marriage market’. The relative wealth of Sicilian mafiosi from the mid-nineteenth century is seen as explaining why they have never been pimps. Past & Present, no. 232

R. Bosworth examines the areas of Italian life in which rival ideas to fascist beliefs survived and flourished. The regime could also signal Catholic, Vatican, class, family and national allegiances. The message put out by inter-war Rome was that of an Italian dictatorship as much as a Fascist one. History, ci

An article by J. Dunnage explores the police archives of the Fascist period to demonstrate the way in which the regime struggled to impose a professional discipline on those police officers who became involved in casual or extra-marital relationships with women. The article also has a wider value as an exploration of more long-term evolutions in codes of masculinity in twentieth-century Italy. European History Quarterly, xlvi

Relations between Stefano Jacini, Catholic anti-fascist and author of La crisi religiosa del Risorgimento (1938), and Arturo Carlo Jemolo, liberal Catholic, sometime pro-Fascist and historian of Church–state relations, are examined by F. Mazzei: common points in their intellectual journeys, their first meeting (1935) and their correspondence and academic dialogue. Archivio storico italiano, clxxiv

The deportation of hundreds of politically ‘dangerous’ Ethiopians to Italy under the Fascist regime is briefly studied by G. Ferraro, noting their places of confinement, their differentiated treatment, their experiences (climate, debts, monotony, surveillance), and their role as economic resource to Italian service-providers. Nuova rivista storica, c

P Ballinger investigates the ‘long colonial twilight’ of the Italian colonisation of Libya (1943–61), focusing in particular on appeals by Italian settlers for repatriation during the uncertainties of the post-war years. Journal of Contemporary History, li

N. Cullen uses the case of Franca Viola—a Sicilian woman who, in 1965–6, was abducted and raped, but refused to participate in a ‘reparatory marriage’—to examine the concept of ‘honour’, gender violence and perceptions of Sicilian society within a rapidly modernising Italy. Contemporary European History, xxv

Near and Middle East

N.L. Overtoom uses historical and theoretical approaches to examine the rise of the Parthian State. International History Review, xxxviii

M. Legendre draws on papyri to show how the Islamic conquerors of Egypt made use of Byzantine administrative methods to consolidate their rule in the seventh and eighth centuries: a state of affairs unrevealed by the narrative sources. Historical Research, lxxxix

J.W. Izzo surveys the complicated history of the county of Tripoli from the late 1250s until the loss of the Holy Land in 1291, and lays stress on the internal revolts against the comital family which weakened this Frankish Syrian statelet. Haskins Society Journal, xxvii

In a lengthy, engaging and important article, B. Saletti draws on a hundred accounts of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, 1320–1512, to survey the modes and times of travel (from Venice), the costs and arrangements for food and accommodation, the itineraries, guides and escorts, and the dangers of disease and death. Nuova rivista storica, c

L. Rivali excavates the origins and development of the Franciscan library at Jerusalem, and especially its function as resource for the production of pilgrim texts and its holdings of rare printed pilgrim diaries. Nuova rivista storica, c

In a prize essay from 2015, R. Gould discusses the writings of the Azeri nineteenth-century intellectual Akhundzada in the context of Persian dissident and critical religious traditions which, though banned in some countries, still exert considerable influence on the Iranian diaspora today. Intellectual History Review, xxvi

F. Meiton explores Palestinian objections to the Zionist engineer Pinhas Rutenberg’s plans to electrify the country in the early 1920s and why their united front crumbled. The exploration draws heavily on the claims of scholars in science and technology studies that technology is ‘a site of political contestation’ and on notions of ‘boundary-work’ (that is, ‘an attempt to draw the borders round an activity so as to define it in a way favourable to one’s own interests’). Such theorising adds little to the eloquent narrative of Rutenberg’s enterprise. Past & Present, no. 231

P. Zanini offers a valuable assessment of the changing attitudes of the papacy and the Italian Catholic hierarchy in Palestine towards British rule there in the inter-war years, set against the background of the growing Jewish presence and Arab resistance there, and the changing policies of Mussolini’s government. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, lxvii

I. Radai discusses the growth of the Palestinian-Arab middle class under the British mandate, and notes the tensions that arose between this stratum of society and the national movement during the Arab Revolt of 1936–9. Journal of Contemporary History, li

M. Hughes examines the role of the Palestinian collaborators (the ‘peace bands’) who worked with the British authorities during the Arab revolt in Palestine, 1936–9. Journal of Contemporary History, li

E. Ravndal examines Trygve Lie’s approach to the Palestine question in 1947–9, emphasising the importance of the question in developing the office of UN Secretary-General. International History Review, xxxviii

There are no easy answers to the problem discussed by N. Elgabsi: the dispute between Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé over the history of Israel and Zionism. In an interesting piece, Elgabsi critically analyses the arguments of Morris, who claims in traditional fashion that the responsibility of the historian is to attempt as objectively as possible to reconstruct the facts, and Pappé, who believes that the responsibility of the historian is to view the past through the eyes of the present; therefore he or she must be politically engaged. Elgabsi spends much time on analysing the debate, which means he has little space to justify his conclusion that both are wrong, or to propose a wholly convincing alternative. Historisk Tidskrift, cxxxvi

H. Henriks Waage and H. Kjung Mørk examine the reasons for the failure of the UN representative Gunnar Jarring to negotiate a settlement in the Arab–Israeli conflict. International History Review, xxxviii

G. Goodman uses Reuters archives to analyse the news agency’s efforts to provide objective coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict. International History Review, xxxviii

G. Goodman examines the difficulties faced by the Reuters news agency in operating in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel during the Arab–Israeli conflicts of 1967–73. Journal of Contemporary History, li

A. Mallett provides a comparison between the Crusades and modern Iraq, looking at the role of ‘Violent non-state actors’ (VNSAs), of which al-Qaeda and ISIS are modern examples. He argues that today’s Muslim VNSAs reflect some of the methods used to resist the crusaders in the Middle Ages. Journal of Medieval Military History, xiv

Netherlands and Belgium

E. de Paermentier and S. Vanderputten explore the strategic aims underlying the countess of Flanders’ foundation and patronage of the nunnery at Bourbourg between 1103 and 1121: the piece is a case-study of the role of monasteries in building local networks, and of the part played by Cluniac reform in extending these networks and advancing the authority of founders. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

Within the broader picture of punitive or penitential pilgrimage imposed as ‘amendment’ of crime in the Low Countries in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, L. Vantaggiato examines the small number to the Holy Land, noting the crimes involved; the stipulations regarding departure, length of stay and certification; and the possibility of redemption. Nuova rivista storica, c

B. Lambert shows how some Flemish, Dutch and foreign merchants evaded the expensive staple at Bruges to trade informally (and illegally) at the city’s outport of Sluys; even though the volume of exchange and range of commodities was far lower at Sluys, it made economic sense for smaller traders to operate there, despite the risks of detection and punishment. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

V. Soen and E. Masschelein examine the months following the Treaty of Marche-en-Famenne of 1577 (the ‘Eternal Edict’) between Don Juan of Austria and the States General, and show how the signing of the treaty was merely the start of a long, and ultimately unsuccessful, process of pacification. The way in which the treaty was represented, through ceremonial and printed material, was not matched by its implementation. Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, cxxix

E. Swart writes stimulatingly about the role that the concept of honour played in Dutch reactions to the defeat at Breda in 1625. He encourages greater attention to the role that honour played in inter-state relations in the era. European History Quarterly, xlvi

A jointly authored article (in French) by T. Eggerickx, S. Brée and M. Bourguignon assembles statistical evidence which demonstrates the truth of the common-sense proposition that economic crises have had a negative impact on the fertility of the population of Wallonia from the eighteenth century to the present day. Journal of Belgian History, xlvi

J. Gabriëls decries the depiction of the supposedly cowardly behaviour of Dutch troops at the battle of Waterloo which, he writes, has been perpetuated by generations of British historians. He argues that this depiction has been based on eyewitness accounts, but does not take account of the chaotic battle conditions which affected those witnesses, or of the particular circumstances of the lead-up to the battle which prevented troops of different nationalities from becoming acquainted with each other’s practice. Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, cxxix

F. Giot studies (in French) the development of legislation regarding the quality of foodstuffs in Belgium during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Journal of Belgian History, xlvi

The army manoeuvres carried out by the Belgian army between 1830 and 1914 are studied in an interesting article (in English) by B. Dierckx and J. Hoegaerts. They emphasise how these manoeuvres were less important as military training than as a form of display, and a means of reinforcing the territorial bonds between the army and the civilian population. Journal of Belgian History, xlvi

M. Auwers studies (in English) the attitudes adopted by a number of Belgian diplomats towards the possible expansion of the army in the decades prior to the First World War. An expanded army, which would serve also as a tool of national education, was seen as a necessary response to social tensions. Journal of Belgian History, xlvi

The divergent histories of compulsory voting in the Netherlands and Belgium (as well as the justifications that underpinned them) are explored in an article (in Dutch) by W. de Jong. Journal of Belgian History, xlvi

W. Dolderer contributes (in German) a useful article which explores the long-standing polemic that developed between the Belgian and German authorities after 1918 regarding the truth or otherwise of the German accusation that Belgian franc tireurs had fired on advancing German forces in 1914 (thereby providing a justification for the violence perpetrated by the German troops on Belgian citizens). This dispute continued unabated through the inter-war years, and only reached a conclusion in 1958, when a joint Belgian–German commission of historians, operating in the changed circumstances of the Nazi defeat and the Cold War, could agree that there was no substantive evidence of the actions of Belgian franc tireurs. Journal of Belgian History, xlvi

W. Linmans investigates how children were brought up within families that belonged to the Communist Party of the Netherlands after the First World War. Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, cxxix

B. van der Steen examines Henk Sneevliet’s leadership of the Revolutionary Socialist Party during the 1930s. Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, cxxix

R. Van Lerberge provides a different and very interesting perspective on the origins of the social security system in Belgium, by exploring (in Dutch) the emergence of what was termed at the time ‘mechanography’. Initially developed during the 1930s, this rather basic mechanised technology rendered much easier the large-scale processing of social security data after 1944. Journal of Belgian History, xlvi

In the 1930s and 50s, Mary Pos and Rosey Pool, two white Dutch writers, reported back from the New York neighbourhood of Harlem. B. Boter and L. Geerlings show how they acted as cultural mediators between the Netherlands and the African American community, and investigate their responses to the racial and gender structures they encountered. Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, cxxix

J.J. Zurné sheds light (in Dutch) on the sharing of judicial information by the Belgian authorities with the German police during the Occupation of 1940–44. It was only in 1942 that the Belgian judicial authorities changed their policy because of the way that this sharing of information was used by the German authorities to assist in their repression of Belgian resistance groups. After the war, this led to accusations of active collusion between the Belgian authorities and the German occupier. Journal of Belgian History, xlvi

A. van Mourik shows how the Netherlands was able to continue to have a prominent role in Indonesia after the end of the colonial era. Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, cxxix

J. Verwey’s article about acts of sexual violence committed by members of the Dutch armed forces in Indonesia, 1945–50, concludes that, although such violence was not officially sanctioned as a tool of war, inaction by authorities nevertheless permitted it to take place. Sexual violence thus formed an integral part of Dutch military presence during the decolonisation conflict. Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, cxxix

J. Verhoef investigates how Dutch people dealt with modernisation by looking at their reactions to the spread of portable radios in the 1950s and ’60s. The noise generated by such radios was seen to be a nuisance and, more broadly, to be altering the Dutch soundscape in a negative way; radios thus came to be emblematic of the impact of modernity on older values and manners. Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, cxxix

V. Massin writes (in English) about the ways in which delinquent girls were observed and analysed within the Belgian welfare system between 1920 and 1970. Journal of Belgian History, xlvi

Russia, South-East Europe and Byzantium

K. Piepenbrink assesses the meaning and value attached to the concept of security in classical Athens. Using the speeches and writings of prominent Athenian intellectuals such as Aristotle, Demosthenes and Thucydides, the author illustrates that security had a positive but ambivalent meaning in this classical democracy. While security was prized it was not prized unconditionally: indeed, Athenians deemed it dishonourable to prioritise individual or private security over the common good. For Athenian intellectuals and statesmen, security was something that should be protected by the political community as a whole rather than being delegated to any specific group. Piepenbrink’s findings are significant because they can disrupt modern assumptions about the relationship between security and the state. A modern conceptual history of security might assume that pre-modern political communities developed different understandings of security because of the absence of a state that could claim an effective monopoly of violence. The example of classical Athens, however, shows how different ideas of security could be developed within the context of a sophisticated city-state. Historische Zeitschrift, ccciii

C. Schabel and N.I. Tsougarakis provide a useful re-examination of Innocent III’s plans for the church in Frankish Greece and Cyprus, arguing that the impact of his policies was greater than has usually been recognised. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, lxvii

M. Perrie examines the phenomenon of ‘non-praying’ for the tsar by Old Believers in seventeenth-century Russia as a protest against reforms in the Orthodox Church introduced by Patriarch Nikon in the 1650s. Slavonic and East European Review, xciv

The veracity of the tale—told to a UNESCO meeting in 1982 by Melina Mercouri, minister of culture—of how the Greek besiegers of the Acropolis in 1821–2 offered cannonballs to the Ottomans defending it if they would agree to stop demolishing the stonework of the Parthenon in order to extract lead (which could be melted down and cast into ammunition) is questioned by J.M. Beresford. The tale is implausible: would the Ottomans have admitted to lacking ammunition? And did not the Greek army itself bombard the Acropolis? No foreign observers and writers, very strong supporters of the Greeks, refer to the tale. The first known version occurs in a letter by Aristotelis Valaoritis (1824–79), writer and politician, in 1859: ‘the Greeks paid with their blood … giving the enemy bullets to kill them, so that the precious marbles would remain intact’. In 1863 Alexandros Rizos Rangavis (1809–92), professor of archaeology and later foreign minister, repeated the story in a funeral eulogy for Kyriakos Pittakis (1798–1863), keeper of Greek antiquities. But nowhere did Pittakis ever mention this incident. And Rangavis was also a writer of dramatic and romantic fiction. Was this then a splendid invented morality tale, showing how determined the Greeks were to preserve their ancient cultural heritage, and emphasising the bonds between modern and ancient Greeks? And have modern campaigners for the restoration of the Elgin Marbles to Athens, such as Christopher Hitchens, been wise to cite the tale in support? A splendid polemic. Historical Journal, lix

S. Nafziger reinterprets the institutional basis of the rural economy in Russia in the nineteenth century by examining the impact of communal property rights and the way in which land was reallocated between households. He argues that a more nuanced and positive view of communal practices in Russian agriculture should replace the traditional interpretation of Alexander Gerschenkron. Economic History Review, lxix

S. Dixon investigates the history of British residents and naturalised subjects in Russia during the Crimean War, and how their experiences related to the issue of treason. Slavonic and East European Review, xciv

A. Ignjatovic explores Serbian national historiography from 1882 to 1941, focusing on how it addressed the relationship between medieval Serbia and the Byzantine Empire, and how this related to debates about modern Serbian national identity. Slavonic and East European Review, xciv

P. Waldron explores the role of public organisations in the mobilisation of care for wounded soldiers in Russia in 1914. Slavonic and East European Review, xciv

S. Pelizza reassesses the role of the geopolitical thinker Sir Halford Mackinder in attempting to reconstruct Eastern Europe after the First World War, including through an unsuccessful mission to South Russia. International History Review, xxxviii

J. Peroviá provides a detailed account of the resistance to Stalinist collectivisation in the North Caucasus, 1929–30. The violent unrest resulted in a suspension of collectivisation in the mountain regions until the mid-1930s. Journal of Contemporary History, li

E. Efremkin studies the case of some 7,000 North American Finns who settled in Soviet Karelia in the early 1930s. He shows how they were initially favoured by the Soviet authorities as agents of economic modernisation, bringing new tools, skills and work practices. Journal of Contemporary History, li

J.D. Enstad explores the religious revival led by the Pskov Orthodox Mission in German-occupied north-west Russia during the Second World War. The author argues that, while the clergy’s work helped to bolster the occupation regime, they were not simply instruments of the German authorities and were often motivated by an anti-Soviet Russian patriotism. Slavonic and East European Review, xciv

The differing policies of the Red Army with regard to the treatment of German prisoners are linked to dynamics from below and policy from above in a well-grounded treatment by M. Edele. Journal of Modern History, lxxxviii

R. Yeomans explores the ambivalent attitude of the Utasha-led Independent State of Croatia (1941–5) towards cinema. Its plan to use film to promote the interests of the regime by creating an autarkic nationalist cinema was largely unrealised. Slavonic and East European Review, xciv

In the autumn of 1943 the Yugoslav Partisans evacuated some 2,500 Jews from a camp on the island of Rab to safety. E. Kerenji argues that the Partisans were not responding to ‘ethical imperatives’, but were motivated by an inclusive ideology aimed at building a united Yugoslavia. Contemporary European History, xxv

K. Králová reconstructs in depressing detail the efforts of the survivors of Salonika’s Jewish community to obtain restitution for their wartime losses and sufferings from the Greek and West German governments. Though they eventually had some success, the Realpolitik of inter-state relations triumphed over justice. European History Quarterly, xlvi

In an innovative article in economic history, M. Harrison and I. Zaksauskiene consider the role of the secret police (the KGB) in a Soviet-style command economy, that of Soviet Lithuania. They argue that the role of the KGB was to act as a market regulator, including of labour markets, on behalf of the state, in marked contrast to the role of market regulatory institutions in capitalist economies. Economic History Review, lxix

R. Hornsby gives an account of the thousands of young people from the West who were invited to visit the Soviet Union from the mid-1950s. An obvious exception to the characterisation of the Soviet Union as a closed country, such visitors provoked concerns about their potentially corrupting influences on Soviet youth. More could be said of the potential for turning such western visitors into fellow travellers and even spies. Past & Present, no. 232

B. Martin looks at the complex impact of the tours by US musicians on the Soviet population in the 1960s and 70s. Journal of Contemporary History, li

E. Pedaliu proves a very thoroughly researched analysis of western governments’ attitudes towards human rights abuses by the Colonels’ regime in Greece. International History Review, xxxviii

T. Rupprecht examines the Russian ‘cult of Pinochet’ in the latter years of the USSR and, above all, in the 1990s. The Formula Pinochet was presented by some Russian elites as an attractive combination of economic liberalism and political authoritarianism. Journal of Contemporary History, li

Scandinavia

P. Bauduin poses pertinent questions about the use or abuse of the term ‘colonisation’ in describing the spread of Scandinavian peoples across northern Europe in the Viking Age. He conducts an extensive historiographical enquiry into its employment, arguing that as historians’ interest moved from the arrival of new settlers to the mixed culture that ensued, so colonial vocabulary became less relevant. The preferred term nowadays, ‘Viking diaspora’, perhaps suggests greater unity among the settlers than was the case. Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, lxix

N. Lindow examines the Annales Lundenses, and notes a manuscript source that has not been recognised in existing printed editions of this chronicle, which covers the very early history of Denmark up to the thirteenth century. Historisk Tidsskrift, cxvi

H. Gustafsson advocates the adoption of a transnational, transhistorical approach to Swedish history that recognises that, since 1309, the Swedish state has always been part of a larger entity, in union with several other states at different periods, and ruling over provinces that did not form part of the kingdom proper. Thus ‘Sweden’ was a transterritorial entity. The article is stimulating and is based on good knowledge of the recent literature on transnational history, although it would have benefited from a closer acquaintance with literature on political unions other than those entered into by Sweden. Historisk Tidskrift, cxxxvi

In a piece as useful for its methodology as its findings, C. Callow and C. Evans take into account the complexities of farm vacancy rates and the potential of modern comparisons for re-evaluating the levels and patterns of plague mortality in fifteenth-century Iceland. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

C.L. Dahl presents a useful overview of townswomen’s clothing in Malmö and Elsinore as evidenced in probate accounts from 1545 to 1610. Descriptions and valuations of garments are discussed, changes in fashions are noted and possibilities for further analysis of this rich seam of material are suggested. Medieval Clothing and Textiles, xii

R. Schofield builds on his earlier study of the parish of Colyton, Devon, during the plague of 1645–6, by examining the incidence of plague deaths in the Swedish parish of Bräkne-Hoby in 1710–11. It was discovered in the Swedish case that the disease spread in two ways, initially the classic bubonic one through the rat flea, and secondly the pneumonic one where infection spread between friends and neighbours. This latter source of transmission was a surprising finding. Economic History Review, lxix

The consolidation of Pietism in Denmark in the early eighteenth century, especially after 1730, is explored by J. Engelhardt. Despite Crown support for Pietist reforms, traditional Lutherans resisted, objecting in particular to Pietist pastors withholding routine absolution. Conventicles and the promotion of personal expressions of faith led to threats of disturbances, but Pietism continued to have a durable impact on the Danish–Norwegian church. Historisk Tidsskrift, cxvi

Debates over whether the common good is best served by state action or private enterprise reach far back in Swedish history. In a fascinating article, M. Hallenberg and M. Linnarsson use four controversies from the period 1720 to 1860 to chart shifting perceptions on the matter. A 1749 plan promoted by the government and Stockholm’s council to provide street lighting through a municipal body funded by taxation was rejected by Stockholm burghers, as was the idea of using private enterprise; instead street lighting became the responsibility of individual householders. Opinion was sharply divided, but government control was associated with the danger of corruption; private enterprise with the creaming off of profit. Study of the other three controversies—tax-farming in the 1720s, the emptying of Stockholm’s latrines in the 1750s, and the building of railways in the 1850s—enables the authors to show a gradual shift towards the idea of tax-funded state and municipal services. The strength of the article rests on the teasing out of the complexities of the debate. The best way of achieving the common good was no clearer in the 1720s than it is today. Historisk Tidskrift, cxxxvi

Suggesting that ‘peace has a long tail’, J. Scherp argues that the remarkable two centuries of peace Sweden has enjoyed since 1814 did not emerge suddenly, but had deep roots in changing attitudes to the military state formed from the mid-sixteenth century. Charting the growing opposition to war among the four Swedish estates, he shows rising levels of opposition from the mid-seventeenth century. He sees the role of the Riksdag as crucial for this development; the argument is well crafted, but more attention might have been paid to those who made up the military state, in particular the army officers, and their economic interests. For a century, Swedish aggression proved lucrative for officers; from the mid-seventeenth century the tide began to turn, as the establishment of the Indelningsverk in the 1680s and a series of less successful campaigns meant that Sweden’s large military establishment increasingly saw peace as the best way of safeguarding their interests. The fact that the Indelningsverk survived until 1905 suggests that it may have been as significant as the Riksdag in promoting peaceful attitudes. Historisk Tidskrift, cxxxvi

The precise status of Greenland within the Danish composite (but shrinking) monarchy has fluctuated. J.L. Wendel-Hansen explores how the political debate of 1855–6 questioned whether Greenland was a colony under the new constitution of 1849, or something more akin to a dependency. Historisk Tidsskrift, cxvi

L. Yttergren and H. Bolling examine the problems facing women endeavouring to build a career in early nineteenth-century Sweden through an analysis of a cohort of women who graduated from the Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics in Stockholm in 1893. From the elite of Swedish society, these women sought careers in physical education and physiotherapy. The study is based on five hundred letters from these graduates, and demonstrates that, despite their high social status and good career prospects both in Sweden and abroad, the half of the cohort who married struggled and mostly failed to combine family life with a career. Historisk Tidskrift, cxxxvi

The western fertility decline of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is examined by J. Molitoris and M. Dribe using data from the city of Stockholm between 1878 and 1926. They discover that the city’s elite families were at the forefront of controlling their fertility, followed by the working classes. Over time these class differences disappeared, suggesting the wide acceptance of new contraceptive methods and attitudes to fertility. This study advances knowledge of this transition by looking at an urban centre rather than rural areas. Economic History Review, lxix

A major research project on the cultural and nutritional changes in substitute milk products given to infants in Denmark between 1867 (when the first commercial product became available) and 1980 (when the WHO sought to ban the advertising of formula milk), is outlined by C. Nyvang and A.K. Kleberg Hansen. This research not only contextualises infant nutrition within the growing discipline of paediatric medicine, but also raises wider issues of historical evidence regarding nutritional awareness. Historisk Tidsskrift, cxvi

The preparation of the ground for the introduction of a Keynesian economic policy by the Swedish government is analysed by S. Hellroth, who examines attempts to introduce mechanisms to mitigate the effects of the economic cycle on Swedish employment after 1910. If the Riksdag was initially suspicious, the downturn in the world economy after 1925 changed attitudes; the long campaign of the interventionists was realised with the establishment of a Riksdag Commission of Unemployment in 1927 and, a decade later, the National Institute of Economic Research to provide the statistical modelling that would underpin the new economic approach. Historisk Tidskrift, cxxxvi

In a brief article without an English summary, B. Karlsson considers Sweden’s trade with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union after 1933. She looks deliberately through a presentist lens to consider the moral issues surrounding trade between democracies and dictatorial systems. The article is more about attitudes to the trade at the time and since, and says little about the actual trade itself. Historisk Tidskrift, cxxxvi

A long-running debate concerning fraternisation and collaboration in Denmark during the Second World War is examined by S.L. Bak from the particularly sensitive perspective of the sexual behaviour of young women, reported violence against women and children, illegal abortions, prostitution, and other incidents of indecency or criminal behaviour. Predictably, the statistics are distorted by changing legal definitions and changing attitudes to policing and reporting before, during and after the war. Historisk Tidsskrift, cxvi

The negotiations leading to a Danish rejection of a customs and currency union with Germany in 1940–41, after the start of the occupation of Denmark, is discussed by F. Østrup, who notes that there were major political and other considerations behind the reluctance of Danish business groups to enter such a union, the plans for which were abandoned after 1941. Historisk Tidsskrift, cxvi

‘Hitler’s secret weapon’, referring to the German initiative to confiscate bicycles in occupied Denmark (and other areas), culminating in October 1944, is discussed by J.T. Lauridsen. He notes some degree of miscommunication among the German authorities, subsequent attempts by key Germans to refashion their account, and the reactions (both angry and bemused) by Danish critics of the policy. Historisk Tidsskrift, cxvi

N. Götz charts Sweden’s path to its admission into the United Nations in November 1946. Contemporary European History, xxv

A timely article by R. Fleischer discusses Sweden’s liberal credit policy in the post-war period. At a time when other states had a more restrictive approach, credit was not an issue that divided right and left. One consequence of liberalism was the rapid expansion of Swedish television after 1960: soon the overwhelming majority of Swedish households owned a set, many of them bought on credit. In 1985, even the Swedish Consumer’s Co-operative, one of the sole voices calling for more restrictions, gave up, and introduced its own credit card. Historisk Tidskrift, cxxxvi

Spain and Portugal

Drawing on the evidence of contemporary charters, chronicles and liturgies, and challenging a secular emphasis in the literature, S. Ottewill-Soulsby shows that Charlemagne’s campaigns in Iberia were understood by eighth- and ninth-century contemporaries as holy wars. Journal of Medieval History, xlii

S.I. Decker explains why Jewish women lenders played a limited role in the credit system of thirteenth-century Catalonia and why Christian women debtors were similarly marginalised. Haskins Society Journal, xxvii

The thirteenth-century trade in cloth between Flanders and northern France and Spain is analysed by L. To Figueras, who examines a sample of over 1,000 wedding trousseaus in the town of Vic, north of Barcelona. Descriptions of the cloth reveal that residents were quite familiar with a range of fabrics from Northern Europe. Northern cloth was purchased by all social groups, not just the wealthy—even peasant households used such fabrics for their daughters’ dresses. This trade indicates how commercialised this region of Spain had become by the end of the thirteenth century. Economic History Review, lxix

D.J. Kagay provides an account of the difficult negotiations undertaken by Pere III of Catalonia (Pedro IV of Aragon) with his representative assemblies so as to obtain grants of taxation to finance his war with Pedro I of Castile. Both the collecting and spending of tax revenue were supervised by parliamentary deputies. They controlled the payment of wages to Pere’s troops, and even the replacement of horses lost in war. Journal of Medieval Military History, xiv

L.J. Andrew Villalon explains the difficulties faced by the citizens of Burgos in 1366, in the conflict between Pedro I of Castile and Enrique of Trastamara. He provides a translation of the two relevant chapters from Ayala’s chronicle. Journal of Medieval Military History, xiv

D. Biggs examines the earl of Cambridge’s unsuccessful expedition to Portugal of 1381–2, and suggests that it was not as disastrous as often argued. Rather, Cambridge navigated his way through a difficult political situation with some skill, and did not face mutiny on the scale some historians have suggested. His major difficulty was that his brother John of Gaunt did not come to assist him. Journal of Medieval Military History, xiv

The complex religious development of Spain, from the multi-faith Middle Ages to modern Catholicism, continues to attract due attention, involving new evidence and new thinking. Of particular interest is the ‘monographic’ issue of Hispania, lxxvi, no. 253, which contains seven articles covering aspects of the lives of Spanish converts from Judaism (judeoconversos) and their descendants, who were classified in the same way. Covering the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the main focus of these well-researched studies is economic, though J.A. Ollero Pina offers a fascinating study of a converso canon of Seville, Micer García de Gibraleón (d. 1534). The son of one of the first ‘Judaisers’ to be burned by the Inquisition there, García nevertheless had a successful career as a papal official in Rome, effectively trading in ecclesiastical benefices, including those in his native city. Hispania, lxxvi

E. García Prieto discusses the important and all too often neglected question of the role of monarchs, in this case Philip II and Philip III, in the creation of correspondence with their relatives, identifying the political and personal aspects of the letters. Hispania, lxxvi

C. Berco is concerned with ‘a neurohistory: the interstice between cognition and culture, the point where racial difference was visualised and voiced, where discourse was lived’. He examines ‘the interaction between the brain, notarial and inquisitorial practices, and broader early modern cultural categories’. The aim is to uncover the factors contributing to the labelling of racial difference, in particular the characterisation of a woman suspected of witchcraft in Madrid in 1625 as ‘mulatta’. Past & Present, no. 231

Using contemporary primary and secondary sources, G. Valliare surveys the surviving correspondence with Spain of its spies in the Middle East. Thus he opens up a new perspective on the development of European ‘Orientalism’. Hispania, lxxvi

In an article which could serve as an exemplar of the necessary complexity of early modern political economy, J.A. Mateos Royo identifies the diverse pressures exerted on the budget of Aragon from 1626 to the end of the seventeenth century by the fiscal demands of the Spanish Crown. The influence of a number of different social elites, collapsing municipal budgets and the increasing orientation of the local economy towards the French market all combined to create a complex interplay of pressures. European History Quarterly, xlvi

J. Millán offers a corrective to the Sonderweg thesis that suggests that a viable Spanish state never emerged out of the wreckage of the pre-modern Spanish Empire. The author discusses the ways in which the Spanish state managed to create a ‘composite monarchy’ that preserved regional autonomy but also delivered liberal modernisations such as a de-clericalisation of education. The article concludes with a call for more comparative perspectives on the Spanish state’s evolution, citing the potential for comparisons between the Spanish Empire and other classic models of Imperial decline such as the Austrian and Ottoman Empires. Historische Zeitschrift, cccii

J. Martinez-Galarraga and M. Prat examine the most industrialised region of the Mediterranean in the early nineteenth century, Catalonia. They investigate the expansion of the cotton industry and to what extent key British technology was adopted. They conclude that the spinning jenny was widely adopted as a labour-saving device in the face of rising labour costs, as it had been in Britain in the late eighteenth century. Economic History Review, lxix

New research and analysis continue to appear on the Spanish Civil War, as archives are opened up and explored. In the process, more is revealed about Spain’s history in the years leading up to Franco’s 1936 rebellion. A. Bru Sánchez-Fortún re-examines the military Juntas of 1917, concluding that they consisted of disparate professional groupings of soldiers, and were not a united threat to Alfonso XIII’s government. Hispania, lxxvi

J. Chaves Palacios surveys republican opposition to the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, under the monarchy. Using the newly discovered archive of a noted republican, José Giral Pereira, he offers new insights into the lead-up to the abdication of Alfonso XIII, in 1931, and the arrival of the Second Republic. Hispania, lxxvi

Á. Herrera uses trade-union, Falange and Civil Guard archives to explain the non-participation of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo in the 1934 uprising against the Republican government. Hispania, lxxvi

G. Blaney, R. Villa García, M. Álvarez Tardio, F. del Rey and C. Carmichael contribute to a forum on the recent historiography of the Spanish Civil War, especially Paul Preston’s The Spanish Holocaust. Journal of Contemporary History, li

Dealing with the period after 1939, J. Ponce Alberca investigates the crucially important provincial civil governors in the early years of the Franco regime. Hispania, lxxvi

E. Moradiellos García examines the thinking behind Franco’s self-bestowed title of ‘Caudillo’ (‘Leader’), which was commonly used throughout his period of rule. Hispania, lxxvi

C. Burgos examines combatant and civilian attitudes during the Spanish Civil War. The first part explores soldiers’ conditions on the front line and their connection with the rearguard. The second section analyses the role played by cultural elements among combatants and civilians. Finally, attention is paid to the influence of violence on both soldiers and civilians. History, ci

The response of rural populations (notably in the province of Granada) to the Francoist regime in the fifteen years following the Civil War is the subject of an interesting article by C. Hernandez Burgos. The author uses oral history interviews and a variety of other sources to emphasise the quest for normality by the populations, and the gradual demobilisation of republican affinities. European History Quarterly, xlvi

R. Almeida de Carvalho compares the Concordat signed between the Portuguese New State and the Vatican in 1940 with the Italian (1929) and Spanish (1953) concordats. She seeks to explain why the Catholic Salazar offered only ‘relatively modest support for the Church’ in the Portuguese treaty. Contemporary European History, xxv

J. de la Torre and M. del Mar Rubio-Varas examine the reasons for the success of Spain’s ambitious programme of nuclear power generation, 1950–85. Journal of Contemporary History, li

Relations between France and Spain, though close, were frequently difficult in the Franco period, because of political differences and the effective sanctuary given by France to Basque rebels. A. Cañellas Mas documents the monitoring of Spanish affairs, between 1950 and 1964, by the French section of the European Centre for Documentation and Information (CEDI). By this route, tabs could be kept on the semi-isolated Franco regime. Hispania, lxxvi

E.M. Sánchez Sánchez offers a fascinating survey of the transformation of French political attitudes to Spain from suspicion and ambiguity to warmer friendship, which took place between 1970 and 1986, when Spain entered the European Economic Community. Hispania, lxxvi

R. Lopes uses extensive archival research to examine the debate within NATO about policy towards the Caetano dictatorship in Portugal. International History Review, xxxviii

V. Gavin examines US policy towards Spain during the final years of the Franco dictatorship, arguing that its primary concern was post-Franco stability. International History Review, xxxviii

A. Muñoz Sánchez shows how the political, financial and technical support of the West German Friedrich Ebert Foundation transformed the fortunes of the Spanish Socialists (and the UGT trade union) after the death of Franco in 1975. Contemporary European History, xxv