The Conference of Paris, which met early in 1869 to settle the dispute between Turkey and Greece over the Cretan question, appears in retrospect as one of many abortive attempts to resolve an insoluble situation. The Cretan rebellion, stemming from religious and ethnic conflicts endemic in those parts of the Turkish empire which embraced Christian communities, invites modern parallels; while the attitudes of the spectators were governed not only by the immediate needs of their external policies, but by principles often based on ideological considerations. Panhellenism and panslavism came into conflict with the traditional desire to support Turkey. Liberal sympathy with the insurgents precipitated legal problems identical with those created by the American Civil War. Yet, apart from the intrinsic interest of any aspect of the Eastern question, and the importance of any issue which influenced the development of international law, the conference has a significance of its own as an attempt to apply the process of mediation. This requires explanation, since at first sight there is little to distinguish the conference from previous workings of the concert of Europe. During the peace conference at the close of the Crimean War the plenipotentiaries made an informal recommendation that ‘states between which any serious misunderstanding may arise should, before appealing to arms, have recourse as far as circumstances might allow to the good offices of a friendly power’. The conference of 1869 put into practice1 for the first time this Protocol no. 23 of the Treaty of Paris of 1856.

This article considers how lecturing in Victoria Park in the East End of London allowed three early heads of the university settlement Oxford House to engage local communities in a discussion about the place of religion in the modern world. It demonstrates how park lecturing enabled James Adderley, Hebert Hensley Henson, and Arthur Winnington-Ingram, all of whom also held positions in the Church of England, to perform and test out their religious identities. Open-air lecturing was a performance of religious faith for these settlement leaders. It allowed them to move beyond the institutional spaces of the church and the settlement house in order to mediate their faith in the context of open discussion and debate about religion and modern life. The narratives they constructed in and about their park sermons reveal a good deal about how these early settlement leaders imagined themselves as well as their relationship with the working-class men they hoped to reach through settlement work. A vivid picture of Victorian religious and philanthropic life emerges in their accounts of lecturing in Victoria Park.

The best chances of a negotiated peace during the First World War lay with the President of the United States. Woodrow Wilson's efforts were abortive, but he made some very interesting moves. The most sensational was his note to the belligerents in December 1916, requesting them to state their peace terms—a move which seemed all the more provocative in Allied countries because it followed upon the heels of the German Chancellor's proposal to negotiate. The main purpose of this article is to examine the British Government's reactions to the President's note. A secondary purpose is to criticize some important points of interpretation made by Professors A. S. Link and Ernest May.

This article examines the character of John Hynde Cotton, a leading tory opponent of Sir Robert Walpole, who played a particularly puzzling role in the conspiracies behind the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, and the parliaments of George II. Entering a coalition ministry in 1744, he was immersed at the same time in intrigue with the exiled Stuart court, and at one stage pledged to use resignation from government as the signal for rebellion. The article explores the background to his career, tracing the intellectual, professional and kinship networks into which he was pressed, and their impact on his political commitments. Cotton's views on government and society were the product of a man caught up in a conflict between image and reality, torn between a set of different identities: robust doyen of rural squiredom, political and commercial ‘insider’, scholar, and ideologue shaped profoundly by the politico-religious crises of the previous century. The article aims to stimulate a new analysis of the facts of a tory-Jacobite career, and so enhance a debate that is in danger of appearing stale. It aspires to reach a deeper understanding of the meaning and principles of eighteenth-century toryism, beyond the mere counting of ‘Jacobite’ or ‘Hanoverian’ heads.

This article examines Poland's political and economic involvement in Liberia in the 1930s in an attempt to address the question of how countries that were not classical colonial powers were engaging in colonialism. Interwar Poland was a newly established country struggling to achieve political stability and economic growth. Looking for a solution to the economic difficulties, Poland started to show an interest in obtaining colonies in Africa. This interest developed into the colonial movement. Poland attempted to establish a long-lasting economic and political presence in Liberia in the 1930s. This attempt failed; however, Polish involvement in Liberia demonstrates the effect that the idea of colonialism had on Polish society and the Polish government.

Like other advanced countries in the twentieth century, Britain has witnessed a remarkable expansion in the size and functions of government. Increasing public intervention has necessarily been accompanied by a vigorous expansion in the number of specialists and professionals employed in the public service. In recent times there has been increasing academic interest in the role of one particular category of specialist, the economist. We have the definitive account by Howson and Winch of the economic advisory council and its committee on economic information, the purely advisory bodies of academic economists and representatives of producer interest groups which encouraged officials and ministers to take a longer, broader look at trends in the national and international economies in the thirties. From the post-1945 period we have a number of studies of specific departments and a growing collection of memoirs written by disenchanted or self-justifying economists on leaving government service. For the crucial period of the second world war, however, when administrators and politicians seemed to accept the need for professional economic advice from within the bureaucracy, comparatively little systematic research has been undertaken. There are memoirs, but many have been written long after the event and tend to be discursive and occasionally unreliable as to detail. Fortunately the state papers relating to the war are available and should be a reliable source from which to make judgements about the work and effectiveness of economic advisers in this crucial period.

The last decade of the nineteenth century brought to a climax Anglo-French tensions on many colonial issues. Generally overlooked in the roll-call of disputes which centred upon Egypt but extended to Newfoundland fisheries, Siam, and West Africa as well, is the position of Madagascar between the two powers at the commencement of the difficult decade. Madagascar warrants greater attention than it has received, for, with Egypt and Newfoundland, it became in 1891 and 1892 the central problem in colonial discussions between the two governments. On the side of France the issue left feelings of bad faith and broken promises which contributed to the strained tone of relations with Great Britain during the decade. This was all the more unfortunate since Madagascar was an issue apparently settled by the colonial arrangement of 5 August 1890 between the two powers. But the instrument which might have been expected to improve relations became instead another source of discord. Madagascar, at the heart of the agreement for France, presents therefore a striking and significant example of lost opportunity in colonial diplomacy. For the diplomatic failure led inevitably to a military solution to the problems confronting France on the Grand Isle.

In July 1971, one of the most non-conformist and Western-oriented leaders in the Soviet bloc, made what appeared to many as a radical turn of his domestic policy: liberalization of arts, culture, and social life were drastically limited and the communist party engaged on a course which was strongly inspired by Stalinism. Since then, questions had been raised as to the reasons and the timing of the change. This article explores various hypotheses in light of newly available archival documents in order to assess the role of the external factors in precipitating or determining the change. Soviet pressures are considered as well as the Chinese source of inspiration, as the change had been initiated shortly after Nicolae Ceauşescu's visit to China, demonstrating that the change was the product of interfering factors. What appeared at the time to be a sudden and unexpected change had in fact been prepared years before, under various forms. Romania was at the time dealing with growing social expectations due to liberalization measures, just as most other East European societies, but Ceauşescu chose to react differently, in the Chinese-style of mass mobilization, aiming to consolidate his party's grip on society and avert risks of Soviet intervention.

Both empirically and interpretively, extant histories of psychiatry reveal a vastly greater degree of difference among themselves than historical accounts of any other field. Scholarship focuses on the period after 1800 and the same is true of historiographical reviews; those of early modern British psychiatry are often brief literature studies. This article sets out in depth the development of this rich and varied branch of history since the 1950s, exploring the many different approaches that have contributed to understanding the mad and how they were treated. Social, cultural, philosophical, religious, and intellectual historians have contributed as much as historians of science and medicine to understanding an enduring topic of fascination: ‘disorders of consciousness and conduct’ and their context. Appreciating the sometimes unacknowledged lineages of the subject and the personal histories of scholars (roots and routes) makes it easier to understand the past, present, and future of the history of psychiatry. The article explores European and North American influences as well as British traditions, looking at both the main currents of historiographical change and developments particular to the history of psychiatry.

The National Family Planning Programme (NFPP) was launched in Ghana in May 1970. It was a tool to implement the 1969 Population Policy Paper, which the military government, the National Liberation Council (NLC), had written with the aid of Ford Foundation advisers. The policy paper reiterated international ‘overpopulation’ discourses that pushed for national planning to stem population growth, especially in ‘developing’ countries. Indeed, it constituted an example of development planning. It discursively linked Ghana's prosperity, and modernity, to stemming rapid population growth through fertility limitation. When the NFPP was launched by the Progress Party (PP) government in 1970, its focus was to implement the population policy by limiting population growth through curbing fertility. International discourses of development and population, as well as the specific interventions of organizations such as the Ford Foundation, the Population Council, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, shaped Ghana's family planning story. However, choices over the implementation of family planning were ultimately linked to governments’ modernization and development projects and ideologies. Different approaches to family planning by the Nkrumah, NLC, and PP governments highlight the fact that family planning was ultimately political, but legitimized by development discourses of global and local origin.

This article attempts to uncover the political significance of the Old Testament verse Judges 5:23, ‘the curse of Meroz’, during the English Civil War. Historians who have commented on the printed text of Meroz have done so primarily in reference to a single edition of the parliamentarian fast-day preacher Stephen Marshall's 1642 Meroz cursed sermon. Usage of the curse, however, as shown in more than seventy unique sermons, tracts, histories, libels, and songs considered here, demonstrates that the verse was far more widespread and politically significant than has been previously assumed. Analysing Meroz in its political and polemical roles, from the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion in 1641 and through the Restoration of Charles II in the 1660s, sheds new light on the ways in which providentialism functioned during the Civil Wars, and serves, more specifically, to illustrate some of the important means by which ministers and polemicists sought to mobilize citizens and construct party identities.

It is commonly asserted that people were hanged at Salem on charges of spectral appearance; and the way to avoid hanging was to confess. Non-spectral acts of witchcraft are regarded as inconsequential to the outcome of the trials. Yet it was the non-spectral acts which provided the one magnet that attracted attention from the court. No one charged only with spectral appearance was even tried. The reprieves granted to confessors were the last decisions the court was allowed to make. This profile provides evidence that the standard claims about the court of oyer and terminer's use of evidence are the reverse of what actually happened, and highlights a number of patterns that have gone unremarked, requiring fresh interpretations.

This article examines the place of class and religion in discourses of voluntary action in mid-twentieth-century England, focusing on an overlooked Mass-Observation survey of the district of Aston in Birmingham. It situates Lord Beveridge's Voluntary Action report in its intellectual and social context, through utilizing the qualitative findings of the Mass-Observation district survey of Aston, elements of which were repurposed for the Voluntary Social Services Enquiry from which Voluntary Action emerged. The article takes a thematic approach, investigating how class and religion was seen and reported by Mass-Observers in the context of Aston. Two key arguments are made: that contrary to overarching narratives of post-war secularization, Christian churches actually remained in a relatively dominant position in terms of voluntary action; and that conceptions of voluntary action fundamentally misread working-class understandings of voluntarism, as well as the wider priorities of the post-war working classes. Drawing attention to the importance of class and religion to patterns of voluntary action evident in the Aston survey, yet less considered in historiographical terms, the construction of elite narratives of voluntary action and civil society are more discernible.

No form of English popular protest has been subject to such close scholarly analysis as the eighteenth-century food riot, a response not just to the understanding that food riots comprised two out of every three crowd actions but also to the influence of E. P. Thompson's seminal paper ‘The moral economy of the English crowd’. If the food riot is now understood as an event of considerable complexity, one assertion remains unchallenged: that riots remained a tradition of the towns, with agrarian society all but unaffected by food rioting. This article offers a new interpretation in which the rural is not just the backdrop to food protests but instead a locus and focus of collective actions over the marketing of provisions, with agricultural workers taking centre stage. It is shown that agricultural workers often took the lead in market town riots as well as well as in instigating riots in the countryside. Further, such episodes of collective protest were neither rare nor unusual but instead formed an integral part of the food rioting repertoire. It is also shown that rural industrial workers – notoriously active in market town riots – were often joined or even led by agricultural workers in their protests.

Around 1520, at the court of Henry VIII of England, a new meal type emerged. Called the ‘banquet’, this took place after the main meal, in a distinct space, and consisted of sweet foods, spiced wine, and sculptural sugarwork. Originally developing at court, the sweet banquet was quickly embraced by the nobility and gentry. This article investigates the adoption of this dining practice in the wealthy country houses of early modern England and the reasons for its popularity in this specific context. It draws on state papers, published works, and household accounts to establish the ways in which the banquet was utilized and understood by early modern elites. This evidence makes it clear that a high-status person would have expected to be entertained with a sweet banquet at any important social occasion involving their peers. An examination of the visual and material cultures associated with the banquet establishes that it was a highly effective means by which to express class status at a time of anxiety regarding social mobility. As an appropriation of the ancient symposium, it provided opportunities to engage with the intellectual and visual cultures of the classical world and the Renaissance.

This article re-examines the concept of the fiscal-military state in the context of the British armed forces during the Seven Years War (1756–63). This war, characteristic of British warfare during the eighteenth century, demonstrates that British victory depended on the state caring about the wellbeing of its troops, as well as being perceived to care. At the practical level, disease among troops led to manpower shortages and hence likely defeat, especially during sieges and colonial campaigns. During the 1762–3 Portuguese campaign, disease was regarded as a sign of ill-discipline, and jeopardized military and political alliances. At Havana in 1762, the fear, reports, and actual outbreaks of disease threatened American colonial support and recruitment for British campaigns. Throughout the controversial campaigns in the German states, disease was interpreted as a symptom of bad governance, and used in partisan criticisms concerning the conduct of the war. Military victory was not only about strategy, command, and technology, but nor was it solely a question of money. Manpower could not simply be bought, but needed to be nurtured in the long term through a demonstration that the British state cared about the welfare of its armies.

I have been asked to speak about the history of the experimental method in medicine, with particular reference to the nineteenth century. This indication, though I do not propose to regard it as setting a limit, seems to have a special fitness, since it is to the nineteenth century, and especially to its latter half, that we must look for the effective beginning and astonishingly rapid development, the veritable outburst, indeed, of activity in the application of the experimental method to medicine, which opened the new era of medical progress in which we are living today. It is curious, perhaps, that this should have come so late in the history of science. For medicine had figured early in man's attempts to understand nature and his relation to it, and many departments of science which have long ago achieved recognition as independent bodies of knowledge originated as aspects of the physician's equipment—botany, for example, zoology and chemistry, as well as human anatomy and physiology, which still retain their attachment to the medical group of the scientific disciplines. From this point of view, then, it is not surprising to find two physicians, William Gilbert and William Harvey, as the leaders in this country of the scientific revolution which had begun in Europe in 1543 with the publication, within a few weeks of one another, of two books—one by Copernicus of Cracow, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, and the other by Vesalius of Padua, De Humani Corporis Fabrica. Both Gilbert and Harvey, we may be proud to remember, studied and first graduated in Medicine here, in Cambridge.