This article explores continuities and discontinuities in Polish Catholic discourses on family planning across a time span that tends to be divided in the historiography on Poland and political history in general. The period we analyse begins in 1930, with the pivotal encyclical Casti connubii defining church doctrine on contraception, and ends with the legalization of abortion in 1956, and a state-sponsored family planning campaign the following year. In order to reconstruct Catholic teachings on marriage and family planning we examine advice publications that received official church approval, paying particular attention to their gendered dimensions, the emphasis placed on marriage, and the ‘calendar’ method. Although our research includes three politically and socially distinct periods, we argue that the content of Catholic teachings on family planning in Poland was consistent throughout. We also show that, although there were some distinct national characteristics, the Polish Catholic discourse on family planning resembled to a great extent the developments in other countries, particularly in regard to visions of marriage and sexuality. As we delineate, by engaging in the discussion on family planning, Catholic authors acted as active constructors of modernity, construed in both periods in relation to science and nationalism.

Although retrenchment, with its overtones of efficiency and its implied attack on corruption, is a familiar watchword of modern politics, it is difficult today to appreciate the deep ethical and constitutional significance of the issue of economy during the early nineteenth century, or the strong hold which the concept exerted over the attitudes and actions of British politicians and administrators in the decades following the Napoleonic Wars. Twenty-three years of costly war with France had increased Britain's national debt from £228 million in 1793 to £876 million in 1815, and the laborious process of eliminating this deficit at the rate of a few millions a year by means of a sinking fund was aptly described as ‘the attempt of a wooden-legged man to catch a hare’. The propertied classes in the post-war period considered themselves excessively burdened with taxation, and until the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 had been effectively put into operation, they were also called upon to meet the costs of an expensive and inefficient system of poor relief.

Research on the relationship between England and Protestant Germany during the sixteenth century has recently experienced a revival. A significant area of concentration for confessional interests among Lutherans a century ago, Anglo-German relations took a backseat in Reformation historiography during the twentieth century, but during the last decade or so a host of scholars in the UK, Germany, and USA have once again turned their attention to the topic. This review article surveys trends in scholarship on Reformation studies in both England and Germany before turning specifically to works considering instances of interaction, co-operation, and adaptation across the confessional and geographic divides. Gathering a considerable array of secondary materials, the article offers an overview of the merits and criticisms of previous analyses and concludes by pointing out a few areas for future inquiry.

Historians of Britain and the First World War have debated the extent to which there was a rush to colours in August 1914, as well as the consequences of bringing the war effort to the communities and homes of the civilian population. While the historiography has gradually shifted away from accepting that the wave of volunteerism in 1914 was ultimately an expression of patriotism and support for the war effort, there is still little understanding of the impact of the recruitment and propaganda campaigns at the local level. Focusing on newspaper reports and recruitment records, this article offers an examination of how Devonians responded to recruiting agents and their attempts to get men to enlist, and the effect on communities, families, and individuals who were targeted by both civilian and military authorities. This study reveals that Devon's recruitment profile differed from national trends due to occupational and geographical factors, as well as the refusal of small county newspapers to practise self-censorship.

Joseph Chamberlain's speech at Birmingham on 15 May 1903, which began the tariff reform campaign, produced divisions within the Unionist party on a scale unknown since the repeal of trie Corn Laws. Announced to a party tired and jaded after its difficulties in the conduct of the Boer War, imperial preference offered an outlet for frustrated imperialist idealism, a cause to which the enthusiasts of the party could devote themselves, ‘… in a few hours England, indeed the whole Empire, was in a ferment of indescribable excitement’ Enthusiasm for the new cause rapidly developed into intolerance towards any other opinion. In the summer of 1903 supporters and opponents of the new policy organized themselves into rival leagues: ‘For a decade the Unionist party, the great exemplar of political pragmatism, was consumed by ideological passion’. The epitome of this intolerance and ideological passion was the Confederacy, ‘this extraordinary phenomenon in English politics — a secret society with all the trappings of oaths, threats and codes’,s ‘a secret society of extremist wholehoggers … [which] … saw itself as the inquisitorial arm of the tariff reform movement…’ and whose avowed object was ‘to drive the enemies of tariff reform out of the Conservative party’.

The late Habsburg Monarchy produced two of the most renowned peace activists of their day: Bertha von Suttner and Alfred Fried. In comparison to these two Nobel Peace laureates, the main association of Austro-pacifism – the Österreichische Friedensgesellschaft (ÖFG) – is less well known. The article concentrates on this organization, which had been founded in 1891, and it draws attention to the political and intellectual environment in which it operated. The ÖFG originated in the milieu of Austro-German liberalism, but had an ambivalent rapport with liberal politics. The Austro-pacifists’ focus on supranational principles and dynastic loyalty sat uneasily with the national dimensions of Cisleithanian politics. The obstacles encountered by the ÖFG illustrate wider aspects of the political culture of fin-de-siècle Austria, ranging from the question of militarism in Austrian society to the challenges created by socialist and nationalist movements. As a whole, the article highlights the inherent limitations of Austro-pacifism, as reflected in its quest for respectability and its acceptance of the social and political order.

The ordinance 1353, later confirmed in Parliament, introduced an entirely new conception of the office of the Mayor of the Staple. The compulsory marts in which the chief export wares had to be sold were then fixed in English ports, at each of which a Mayor of the Staple was appointed. Until then the Staples had only been fixed in English ports for two very brief periods, from the Kenilworth Ordinance of May 1326 to August 1328, and from September 1332 to February 1334, subject to interruptions owing to the needs of Royal finance: otherwise, from 1313 to 1326 and from 1340 to 1353, the Staple had been fixed in a Netherlands town.

The struggle between Frederick II and the papacy is the most dramatic of all the medieval contests between Regnum and Sacerdotium and has naturally attracted many historians. Frederick's relations to the church of his Sicilian kingdom is a less obviously dramatic theme and has never been treated except incidentally as one of the contributory causes of friction between pope and emperor. It is, however, worthy of independent study, providing as it does a corrective to the idea of Frederick engaged in almost ceaseless warfare against the church, which one derives from excessive concentration on papal and imperial manifestoes. A study of Frederick's Sicilian constitutions, of his charters to churches and his letters to officials and ecclesiastics, reveals a ruler who is far from being the inveterate enemy of churchmen and of church privileges.

This article is based on documents in the archives of the Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, many of which have not been previously published. This extra material allows one to see the development of Soviet policy at closer hand though there is still much that remains obscure. The correspondence between Litvinov, the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and Stalin, despite the absence of the latter's answers, is particularly valuable as it further illuminates their working relationship and reveals some of the differences between them. The exchanges between Litvinov in Moscow and the Soviet polpred, Alexandrovsky, in Prague show clearly that the latter was repeatedly cautioned against encouraging the Czech leaders to think that they could rely on the unilateral assistance of the USSR. They reveal, too, the degree to which Litvinov and Potemkin, a deputy commissar, felt that Fierlinger, the Czech minister in Moscow, was misrepresenting the Soviet position in this respect. Additional evidence cited here confirms earlier views that the Soviet leadership was not prepared to act independently of France or outside the League of Nations even when the opportunities for assisting Czechoslovakia were available. The article ends on a cautionary note, pointing out the limitations of the foreign ministry archives as a guide to the inner dynamics of Soviet diplomacy.

Joseph Priestley’s statement in his letter to the editor of the Morning Chronicle, 7 March 1793, that: ‘I am not, nor ever was, a member of any political society whatever, nor did I ever sign any paper originating with any of them...‘ seems to be about as unequivocal as it could have been made. It is true that these words were written in reply to Burke’s charge that Priestley had given ‘his name to the sentiments in the Correspondence of the Revolution Society in England with the Jacobin Societies in France’, but the charge was not new, and the danger to Priestley less critical than it had been at the time of the Priestley Riots in July 1791. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, Priestley’s denial has been taken at its face-value, and even those who have had no sympathy with his point of view have been able to regard him as honest if misguided. Two letters recently discovered, however, shed new light on Priestley’s statement and suggest that he was less frank. The first, dated 27 June 1791, just over a fortnight before the riots, is from Priestley to James Watt, inviting him ‘as a friend of liberty civil and ecclesiastical’ to join the Warwickshire Constitutional Society.1 The second is a joint reply from Matthew Boulton and James Watt to Priestley’s invitation. This suggests that Boulton must have received a similar letter from Priestley to that sent to Watt.

Observing the increasing, yet still partial exploration of pluralism, complexity and multiplicity in recent Labour party historiography, this article pursues a pluralist approach to Labour on two central, related themes of its middle-century evolution. First, it probes the plurality of Labour's different conceptions of time, specifically how it lived with the ambiguity of simultaneously viewing social progress as both immediate and rapidly achievable, yet also long term and strewn with constraints. This co-existence of multiple time-frames highlights the party's uncertainty and ideological multi-dimensionality, especially in its focus both on relatively rapid economic or structural transformation, and on much more slow-moving cultural, ethical, and educational change. It also complicates neat characterizations of particular phases in the party's history, challenging straightforwardly declinist views of the post-1945–51 period. Secondly, time connects to Labour's view of the people. Whilst historians have debated between positive and negative perceptions of the people, here the plural, split mind of Labour about the progressive potential of the citizenry is stressed, one closely intertwined with its multiple outlook on how long socialism would take. Contrasts are also suggested between the time-frames and expectations under which Labour and the Conservatives operated.

For a half-century, historians, accepting an interpretation put forward by Francis Relf in the introduction to the Camden Society's publication of several of the scribbled books of Henry Elsing, clerk of the parliament in the 1620s, have viewed the revival of judicature in parliament in 1621 from the distorted framework of the struggle for supremacy between the two great systems of law in England. An explanation more consistent with all of the evidence surrounding this event - which brought with it the most significant constitutional develop ment in the house of lords since the middle ages - lies in the connection between slow process and due process in English justice. Professor William Jones singled out slow justice in the courts as the central judicial problem of the age and observed that it defeated both the great equity jurist, Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, and his equally famous counterpart, Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, since ‘neither man could think of a remedy which would restrain litigants and yet leave their legally justified rights untarnished’. The revival of judicature in the house of lords in 1621, most especially in its appellate civil aspects, was part of the most ambitious attempt to solve this dilemma in the early seventeenth century. While it failed in its immediate goal and slow justice remained the nemesis of due process in the English legal system, the experiment begun in 1621 permanently altered the constitutional framework of England by establishing the house of lords once again as the high court of parliament.

Among all the paper ephemera surviving from eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, the humble Methodist ticket has attracted little attention from scholars and collectors. Issued quarterly to members as a testimonial to religious conduct, many still exist, reflecting the sheer quantity produced by 1850, and the significance of keeping practices, where Methodist habits were distinctive. This article explores first the origin and spread of tickets primarily within British Methodism, but also noting its trans-oceanic contexts. Apparently inconsequential objects, they shaped experience and knowledge, illuminating eighteenth-century religious life, female participation, and plebeian agency. Discussion then turns to patterns of saving and memorialization that from the 1740s preserved Methodists’ tickets. Such practices extended the lifecycle of the individual ticket and created the accidents of its survival, giving it new uses as an institutional resource. In recovering the dead, it acquired nostalgic value, but other capacities were lost and forgotten. The ticket's origins, uses, and preservation intersect with major historical and historiographical currents to complicate established narratives of print, urban association, and commerce, and to present alternative understandings of collecting.

This article examines the isomorphic connections between the scientific and political ideas of William Lovett and the National Association for the Political and Social Improvement of the People. It demonstrates that, far from being a mere coincidental device, distinct from his politics, Lovett's scientific ideas helped shape the internal structure of his political radicalism. The same was also true of the National Association more generally. Concepts and assumptions derived from phrenology and physiology served the heuristic function of stimulating the construction of analogous systems which directed and conditioned the version of political radicalism which Lovett and the National Association propagated. This suggests that in the mid-nineteenth century the importance of the organic sciences was more politically subtle than previously thought and that a reconciliation of the ideas of George Combe with political radicalism was possible. This insight is compatible with recent historiographical trends, and opens up new vistas for the study of science in radicalism.