A Study of the historiography of the Revolution of 1688—the Revolution considered not only as an event in space and time but also in the minds of men—is long overdue. Although such a study would far transgress the decent limits of this paper, it is possible to isolate here a single phenomenon in the historiography of 1688; to examine the posthumous reputation of one of the central figures in that Revolution, to uncover the sources from which it rose, and assess the validity of the evidence upon which it is based.

By reconstructing the multiple contexts that prompted the production, in 1601, of a single tract, this article evokes and analyses the febrile political atmosphere of the Elizabethan fin de siècle, produced by the spectre of regime change consequent upon the death of the queen, and by the visible connections between central elements in the regime and certain Catholic loyalists involved in the notorious Archpriest Controversy. Certain men, most notably Sir Francis Hastings, who were used to regarding themselves as insiders and believed that they were some of the Protestant state's most trusted agents in the struggle against popery, now found themselves typed as ‘puritans’ and thus, at least potentially, on the outs with a regime engaged in a (to them) extraordinarily dangerous flirtation with allegedly ‘loyal’ papists. Adopting the politique hermeneutic mode of the Jesuit Robert Parsons, Hastings all but outed the guilty men and did so via a thoroughly self-conscious exercise in public politics. Throughout, the full range of contemporary media was in play, with printed polemic framing parliamentary debate, that debate in turn feeding into the pamphlet press, which prompted yet more rumours, in London and on the continent, before provoking the state's recourse to those ultimate forms of official publicity, a royal proclamation, treason trials, and the gruesome performativity of the scaffold.

During the eighteen months which immediately preceded the general election of 1906 many workers in Britain were adversely affected by the generally stagnant state of the economy and there was a considerable amount of agitation on behalf of the unemployed, particularly in 1905. Nevertheless, the economy began to improve in November of that year and unemployment as such did not play a very important part in the election, although the Labour candidates frequently gave it a leading place in their manifestos, putting forward a great variety of remedies. These ranged from demands for the recognition of the ‘right to work’ and the eight-hour day to pleas for the creation of a labour department with ministerial status. When Unionist candidates mentioned unemployment it was usually in the wider context of tariff reform, while Liberals who bothered to refer to the subject at all generally contented themselves with a passing reference to the need to approach the problem by reforming the land laws.

This article is a case study of labour strife in the Alabama coal fields from 1917 to 1921. It speaks to the broader issue of labour repression in the American South by examining the patterns of repression in one industry and in one state. Several revisionist works have been written recently refuting the alleged distinctiveness of the South on the labour issue. This article supplies evidence for a surprising degree of labour militancy; the type of militancy that has been used to buttress revisionist interpretations of the similarity of southern labour to that of other American regions. In this study, however, labour militancy is understood more as a function of the desperation of southern workers confronted with distinctive issues and degrees of racial acrimony, communal antipathy toward labour, and the advantageous position of southern coal operators vis-a-vis their northern counterparts. In the face of overwhelming odds of governmental, business, press, religious, communal, and legal opposition, Alabama coal miners mounted a militant, prolonged, and biracial protest against what have been described as the worst conditions in the United States at that time.

In most accounts of the rural uprisings of 1857 the moneylender, whether described as ‘sleek mahajan’ or ‘impassive bania’, is cast as the villain of the piece. It is he who is seen as the principal beneficiary of the landed revolution that occurred in the first half-century of British rule in the North-Western Provinces and gave the non-agricultural classes of the towns a mounting share in the control of land. And his ascendancy is attributed directly to the institutional changes effected by British rule, among the most important of which were the transformation of the immediate revenuecollecting right {malguzari) into a transferable private property; the heavy, inelastic cash assessments; and above all, the forced sale of land rights for arrears of revenue or in satisfaction of debt. ‘The public sale of land’, says Professor Chaudhuri, ‘not merely uprooted the ordinary people from their smallholdings but also destroyed the gentry of the country, and both the orders being victims of British civil law were united in the revolutionary epoch of 1857–8 in a common effort to recover what they had lost.’.

Madeleine Rebérioux was right to wonder whether France was truly a ‘Radical republic’ in the years between the Dreyfus affair and the Great War. Archives only opened or explored since Rebérioux published in 1975, and the re-interpretation of older newspaper sources, show that control of the Third Republic was still hotly contested in those years. The Radicals tried to build a republic in their own image, but in a situation where left and right were closely balanced, they were almost always foiled. Crucial to this process was a politically republican but socially conservative centre – best typified by the A.R.D. The A.R.D. wanted a Third Republic frankly favourable to the interests of big business. Since it held the parliamentary balance of power between the left and a right only partly republican, it generally got its way. Statistical sources also support this interpretation.

‘It is not easy to describe the mental life of a man who is neither expansive nor introspective’. Thus wrote T. P. O'Connor, one of Parnell's earliest biographers. Historians have never ceased to echo his lament, and however much they may have differed in their interpretation of Parnell, they have generally agreed that, while no Irish leader of the nineteenth century has been so intensively studied, none remains so enigmatic and inaccessible.

Apart from Italian fascism and German National-Socialism – the most famous fascisms of the interwar era – considerable research has been conducted during the past two decades about generic fascism: fascist groups, movements, and parties in other countries. In Israel, while the Revisionist Zionist movement has been continually accused by its political rivals of being fascist, these accusations have not yet been examined according to any comparative model of fascism. Relying on Robert Paxton's model of generic fascism, this article examines how one of its components – the drive for closer integration of the national community – was manifested in the writings of seven Revisionist activists in mandatory Palestine: Itamar Ben Avi, Abba Aḥime'ir, U. Z. Grünberg, Joshua Yevin, Wolfgang von Weisl, Zvi Kolitz, and Abraham Stern. Their writings between the years 1922 and 1942 reveal a strong drive for social integration, similar to that manifest in other fascist movements of the interwar era.

Flesh and stone. The body and the city in western civilization. By Richard Sennett. London: Faber & Faber, 1994. Pp. 431. ISBN 0-571-17390-X. £25.00

Renaissance warrior and patron. The reign of Francis I. By R. J. Knecht. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xxv+612. ISBN 0-521-41796-1. £45.00.

The early modern city 1450–1750. By Christopher R. Friedrichs. London: Longman, 1995. Pp. ix+381. ISBN 0-582-01321-6. £14.99.

The court artist. On the ancestry of the modern artist. By Martin Warnke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xx+299. ISBN 0-521-36375-6. £35.00.

Renaissance and revolution. Humanists, scholars, craftsmen & natural philosophers in early modern Europe. Edited by J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xv+291. ISBN 0-521-43427-0. £37.50.

Both the Entente and the Central Powers interpreted the ascension of Benedict XV to the papal throne in the fall of 1914 as signalling a reinvigoration of Vatican foreign policy. Indeed there was little reason to expect that Giacomo Delia Chiesa, elected successor to Pius X on the morning of 3 September, would be passive in a diplomatic sense. As Rennell Rodd, the British ambassador to the Italian court remarked a few days after Benedict's election, the new Pontiff's first acts gave promise of prefacing a ‘vigorous and interesting reign.’.

Histories of Chartism have tended to emphasize the hegemony of respectability within the movement, and with histories of the popular press have seen the 1830s as a decisive break with older radical traditions of sexual libertarianism, bawdy political culture, and a satirical, sometimes obscene print culture. However, the basis of this position is a partial reading of the evidence. Work on London Chartists has emphasized their moralistic politics and publications at the expense of their rich populist and satirical press and the clear survival of piracy and romantic literature well into the Chartist period. The neglect of an important early leader, Henry Vincent, has meant the bawdy, sensual, and sometimes scatological letters he sent to his cousin in London have been overlooked as a source on the moral life of the Chartist generation. This article will address this by studying Vincent's letters in the context of London's populist press, particularly the work of his friends John Cleave and Henry Hetherington. Vincent's humour and attitude towards sexuality clearly reflect a broader tendency in London radicalism, while his own efforts as a newspaper editor in Bath indicate that acerbic humour was an important aspect not just of Chartism's political critique, but of its appeal to the provincial working class.

On 26 April 1915 the governments of Great Britain, France, and Russia signed a treaty with the Italian Government settling the terms for Italy's entrance into the war on the allied side. The Treaty of London was the result of hard bargaining, particularly because of extensive Italian claims in the Adriatic which were resisted by the Russian government, and which would leave a difficult legacy for the postwar period. Nevertheless, the evolution of Italy from membership in a rival alliance system and potential foe to an active ally was completed after less than a year of neutrality. Italy's defection from the Triple Alliance was hardly a surprise to anyone with the slightest idea of Austro-Italian relations, and for over a decade before the outbreak of the war the strength of her commitment to Austria and Germany had been diluted by secret agreements with France.In Austria-Hungary leading naval and military officials took little trouble to conceal their mistrust; while unpopular measures by Habsburg officials could be counted upon to produce hostile demonstrations before the Austro-Hungarian embassy or consulates in Italy. Nevertheless, the French, although well aware of Austro-Italian friction, were never really sure of their southern neighbour and at times exhibited a suspicion of Italy which rivalled that of the Austrians. France and Italy were in a sense Mediterranean rivals and the development of the Italian fleet was followed closely by the French naval staff.

In 1964, the editor of Sydney University Press, Michael Turnbull, approached G. R. Elton to write the book that became The practice of history (1967). Remarkably, a famous University of Cambridge historian was persuaded to embark on what Turnbull correctly sensed would be an influential and profitable text, and this for an obscure and recently established publishing house located at the other end of the earth. Were it not for Turnbull, The practice of history would probably never have been written. But for Turnbull's editorial advice, a somewhat different book would have resulted. This article traces the close and fruitful working relationship between publisher and author, as well as the adversarial relationship between The practice of history and E. H. Carr's What is history? (1961). It also suggests that Turnbull intended The practice of history as part of a wider publishing purpose where big ideas could be expressed, given a mass audience, and thus contribute to debate and social change. Elton would have found such a socially engaged agenda abhorrent, had he known about it.