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.

The question of the publicity of State Papers obviously has two aspects. Certain transactions of diplomacy can never be made known immediately. Personal comments and attacks creep occasionally into dispatches and have to be cut out on publication. But these omissions, though interesting, are unimportant except to the historian. Certain other and more important transactions have to be concealed altogether, because a confidence would be betrayed, or too much be made of a tentative or false step in diplomatic transactions. Even in such cases, however, there is usually no objection to revealing the reasons that led to the conclusion finally adopted. So much can be done in a completed negotiation or decision. But most diplomats would agree that it is sometimes dangerous to publish details as to abortive negotiations. It is very often necessary to do so, but the announcement of the failure of a negotiation, if accompanied by clouds of papers, is not likely to produce a good impression and may sometimes prevent a remedy from being found.

Although the field of peasant and rural studies has done much to redeem the reputation of peasants in general, historians generally continue to consider the Italian rural population in the early nineteenth century largely extraneous to the story of national unification. However, police reports, court records, and chroniclers from Bologna provide descriptions of collective action that suggest a complex pattern of interaction with both local authorities and the shifting political context. While it remains true that with few exceptions rural communities had little to do with the Risorgimento directly, already during the Revolutionary and Restoration eras they engaged in collective action that reflected independent initiative in engaging with various types of authority rather than political ignorance or blind adherence to religion.

In December 1930 Sir Victor Wellesley, the deputy under secretary at the Foreign Office, and its expert on Far Eastern finance, circulated a 29-page ‘Proposal for the establishment of a Politico-Economic Intelligence Department in the Foreign Office.’ This memorandum was prompted by the growing importance of tariffs, and various forms of investment, as instruments of foreign policy, and concern at his colleagues' failure to understand the political consequences. With economic nationalism in the ascendant, Wellesley recognized that Britain soon would have to consider whether she would ‘take part in the scramble for economic hegemony’. He hoped Cabinet would decide against tariffs and imperial preference, but was worried that the Foreign Office would be ill-equipped to defend this viewpoint. It was not that the Office lacked adequate sources of economic information, but rather that the division of duties between the Department of Overseas Trade and the Foreign Office precluded their assimilation with political appreciations. Although seventy five per cent of the work of the average mission was economic or commercial, this was generally left to the commercial counsellor, who reported directly to the Department of Overseas Trade. Political dispatches were forwarded to the appropriate Foreign Office department and there examined in virtual isolation. Moreover, the dominant attitude of mind among senior diplomats was, if not actually predisposed against economic work, at least so lacking in understanding that their efforts were often misdirected.

The sixteenth-century theologians of the School of Salamanca are well known for their sophisticated reflections on the Spanish conquest of the New World. But the nature of their responses seems far from clear and is subject to historiographical debate. Recent studies from the discipline of intellectual history suggest that the Salmantine theologians challenged the legitimacy of Spanish claims to the Americas. Scholars associated with the field of post-colonial studies, on the other hand, forcefully stress their entanglement in Spain's imperial venture overseas. This article, however, argues that these seemingly irreconcilable approaches are not in fact mutually exclusive. It shifts our attention to the sorely neglected ius praedicandi, the right to preach the gospel, which served to translate the Spanish theologians’ deeply rooted belief in the hegemonic truth of the Christian faith into a discourse of otherwise ‘secular’ natural rights. In adopting this novel lens, the article makes a case for assessing the language of the university theologians in its own terms while simultaneously exposing the support of Salamanca for Spain's imperial venture.

Zeroing in on private garden plots, the article discusses the manner in which Germans portrayed themselves in relation to displaced persons (DPs) – former foreign workers, Allied prisoners-of-war (POWs), and concentration camp inmates – in immediate post-Second World War Hanover. Challenging the notion that a coherent narrative of German victimization truly emerged only in the 1950s, the article reveals how German gardeners already articulated loudly a discourse through which they sought to depict themselves as decent, hard-working sufferers, while portraying displaced persons as immoral and dangerous perpetrators. The plots of garden owners, as foci of German yearnings for Heimat, came particularly under threat. Germans cherished such sites, not only because they provided the opportunity for procuring additional sustenance amidst a post-war world of scarcity, but because they symbolized longings to inhabit a peaceful, productive, and beautiful space into which the most turbulent history could not enter, and upon which a stable future could be constructed. Only with the removal of DPs could Germans claim for themselves the status of victims, while branding DPs perpetrators, and reaffirm past patterns of superiority and inferiority in both ethical and racial terms. In so doing, Germans could realize the innocence integral for achieving Heimat and establish democratic stability after 1945.

Scholarly works dealing with the Long Parliament's military finances have often necessarily relied on sampled data and exemplary evidence. This communication demonstrates that full, systematic analyses of the relevant materials in the Commonwealth Exchequer Papers have the potential to alter our understanding of these finances when certain questions are asked. Lacking a detailed calendar, this vast collection of documents is extraordinarily complex and opaque, and because of this it is very hard to deal with holistically. Nevertheless, this communication demonstrates that achieving a broad yet precise view of this vital quantitative material is sometimes possible. It will be suggested here that the army of the earl of Essex enjoyed full payment from the moment of its creation in August 1642 until the end of that October. This will be demonstrated by comparing the total payments received by the foot soldiers to a newly calculated model of their monetary needs during the period in question. Ultimately, there are many possible reasons for the army's failure to secure a decisive victory at Edgehill, but a financial crisis at the political centre was not one of them.

In September 1579, at the height of an intense political debate over her prospective marriage to the duke of Anjou, Elizabeth I visited New Hall, the country seat of the match's greatest supporter within England, Thomas Radcliffe, third earl of Sussex. Her entertainment on that occasion, hitherto completely unknown, was described in a letter, printed here, from one Norfolk gentleman, Sir Edward Clere, to another, Bassingbourne Gawdy. The letter describes the dramatic performances and other entertainments provided for the queen, which included coded but unmistakeable encouragements for her to proceed with the marriage. This article discusses the ways in which this was done and their consequences for our knowledge of the Anjou marriage debate as a political episode, suggesting that Sussex sought to use the entertainment to boost the participation of more conservative members of the nobility in government. It also explores how this evidence affects our picture of Elizabethan courtly entertainments, and particularly their non-dramatic elements. Finally, it discusses Clere's letter itself as an insight into the nature of gentry news culture, particularly with regard to matters of high politics.

Royal counsel in Tudor England has been a central historiographical theme for over twenty years. This review offers a critical assessment of the state of the field. It appraises historical and literary scholarship on both the theory and practice of royal counsel. Among other themes, it discusses the concepts of evil counsel and arcana imperii. The review concludes by suggesting priorities for future enquiry, including the need to think more carefully about which areas of English government still required royal decision-making, and therefore counsel, in this period. The article also charts the rise of conciliar ‘government under the king but not by the king’ and shows that Tudor counsel often happened the wrong way around: the monarch advised the privy council on the direction of state policy. It calls for a new administrative history in early modern studies, with a renewed focus on institutions and their procedures, to complement existing strengths in the fields of political culture and political thought.

Recent works on France's informal projection of power have begun remapping French imperialism during the nineteenth century. More studies in this vein could broaden our understanding of informal empire as an analytical category by decentring it from its roots in British imperial studies. This article argues that between 1815 and 1830, French diplomats remoulded the Regency of Tunisia into an informal imperial periphery. Although they lacked the military and economic leverage of their British counterparts, French consuls coerced the Tunisian rulers into submission by wielding threats and treaties. This strategy unfolded in three stages. First, the consuls used rumours of a possible invasion in order to impose a new vision of international law and dismantle the corsair system in the Regency. Second, they claimed French territorial sovereignty over a part of the Tunisian coast by appealing to the international legal norms enshrined in the existing treaties. And, third, the Tunisian ruler accepted most consular demands following the French invasion of Algeria in 1830. Tunisia's entrance into the French imperial orbit in turn led French diplomats to seek the establishment of French economic ascendency in Tunisia during the early 1830s.

In a major new history of British industrial relations, Alan Fox noted in 1985 that, ‘The Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act 1919 has so far received only the briefest of passing references in the texts, apparently on the supposition that its passage can be taken for granted. This understates its significance’. The Act, to which Fox himself devoted only two pages of his lengthy book, was passed after the cessation of the First World War. It declared as its aim the fulfilment of a wartime pledge made by the government to trade unions to reinstate in British factories those pre-war working practices which had been abandoned by Labour for the duration of the war, in order to expedite the output of munitions. These practices covered such matters as manning arrangements, closed shop agreements, restriction of overtime and apprenticeship rules.

In 1883 and early 1884 the controversial commemoration of the four-hundredth birthday of Martin Luther, celebrated in Germany and worldwide, captured much British public attention. The examination of this celebration offered here will improve current understanding of late Victorian religious controversies and indicate their continuing centrality to a range of cultural and historical debates in the period. The commemoration invigorated historic antagonisms in the British religious landscape, yet it also did far more than this. The commemoration provided a platform for those who wanted to foster Protestant unity in the face of what was widely perceived to be a revived threat from ‘popery’ and religious indifference at home and abroad. Whereas some religious and not-very-religious commentators, often belonging to a younger generation, wanted closely to associate Luther's world-historical role with liberalizing intellectual and social progress, others – sceptics, Catholics, high Anglicans, older Protestants – resisted this. Arguments about Luther's life and teaching often became more broadly Victorian discussions of the family, Anglo-German affinities or antagonisms, and the nature of modernity. By relating themes in the study of modern religious history to current concerns in the history of historical writing, this article will point to wider lacunae in scholarly approaches to nineteenth-century culture.

At the end of the Second World War, British society's hostility and resentment towards France's military defeat and the French state's collaboration with Germany were strong. In order to deflate this enmity and thus prepare the ground to forge western European co-operation, the French and British governments co-operated and developed gendered public and media strategies within which citizens, and, in particular, former female resistance fighters, were central to the dissemination of positive images of France. This article takes seriously these strategies and adds nuance to understandings of modern foreign policy in terms of methods and actors. The article elaborates on neglected agents of diplomacy, such as female members of civil society, and the significance of rhetoric, gendered performance, and appearances that contributed to the restoration of the image of France in Britain. By doing so, the article also sheds light on the efforts of French and British authorities to construct a narrative of binational unity that disrupted the tenacious idea that Britain had fought alone during the war.