The reunification of Germany has given a new dimension and intensity to the debate about the historical identity of German political culture. In particular, it has revived the issue of whether the Lutheran heritage was inherently conservative, if not authoritarian, in tendency. This article re-examines the issues in relation to Lutheran political and social thought in the first half of the seventeenth century. The life and writings of the Lutheran pastor and influential popular author Johann Balthasar Schupp (1610–61) are examined in detail. What emerges is something more complex than a simple injunction to obey authority at all costs. While he implicitly rejected the idea of a right to rebel, Schupp placed his faith in the willingness of rulers to assist in a ‘reformation of society’. Rebellion would thus be unnecessary. The article argues that this hope was not unrealistic in the context of the small German territorial state in the early modern period. The traditional view of a politically conservative Lutheranism in this period must therefore be revised.

This article attempts to place the Canadian contribution to the collapse of the sanctions front against Italy in 1935 in perspective. It argues that Canadian policy on the question was powerfully conditioned by, and conditioned in turn, imperial policy taken as a whole. There is no attempt to assess blame, but rather, an effort at a modest redistribution of responsibility from the shoulders of British statesmen, over-burdened, onto those of Canadian leaders, the contribution of whom to the formation of general imperial policy has largely escaped notice. The Canadian contribution is instructive in an examination of the Ethiopian crisis, in particular, because Canada alone amongst the dominions invariably opposed a ‘forward’ policy against Italy and alone amongst its fellow dominions consistently failed to support a common front against fascism. It is not without significance that this policy – or lack of policy, perhaps more properly – also became Britain's own.

‘The rapid growth of wealth, especially among the classes of the greatest activity and enterprise, has led, for a number of years past, to a diminished watchfulness, outside the walls of Parliament, respecting the great and cardinal subject of economy in the public charges, and the relation between the income of the State and its expenditure. I earnesdy desire that the paramount interest of the lately enfranchised classes in thrifty administration may operate powerfully to bring about a change.’ So Gladstone trumpeted the leitmotif of his administration, at the outset of the general election campaign in October 1868. The fundamental importance of fiscal strategy in Gladstone's politics has recently been emphasized. Faced with an ineluctable increase in civil expenditure and rising expectations of governmental contributions to the public weal – what he termed ‘scattering grants at the solicitation of individuals and classes’, the system of ‘making things pleasant all round’ and stimulating ‘local cupidity to feed upon the public purse’ – Gladstone was determined that his ministry, backed as he believed by the votes of the thrifty working classes, should reduce such expectations. ‘I t is the special duty of public men’, he told his constituents soon after taking office, ‘to watch the very beginnings of evil’ in regard to any relaxing of the general principles of economy and thrift; and he promised to reduce expenditure in the coming year.

Like many of his contemporaries, John Locke was concerned with the problems inherent in both the communication and the recovery of an author's meaning. Language and its proper use was of the utmost significance for him. He was in no doubt that God had granted language to man to act as ‘the great Instrument, and common Tye of Society’, but though God-given, language as man had used it had not proved an unmitigated blessing:

he that shall well consider the Errors and Obscurity, the Mistakes and Confusion, that is spread in the World by an ill use of Words, will find some reason to doubt, whether Language, as it has been employ'd, has contributed more to the improvement or hindrance of Knowledge amongst Mankind.

This article addresses the development of the British government's policy towards the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France, which arose from the British occupation of Toulon from 28 August to 19 December 1793. The discussions conducted by prime minister William Pitt and foreign secretary Lord Grenville on the shape of Toulon's civil government under occupation clarify official British perceptions of an ‘ideal’ Bourbon monarchy in France. British thoughts on this subject were determined, not only by traditional English whig beliefs about the institutional foundations of political, constitutional and civil liberty, but also by consideration for the upheavals that the French Revolution had witnessed. Alhough Pitt and Grenville were interested in establishing a model government capable of healing the French social and political conflicts that had emerged since 1789, their deliberations on the fate of Toulon reveal that the French ancien régime was still a negative entity in British minds despite the advent of the French Revolution and Revolutionary Wars.

Scholars whose speciality is Scottish church history have long been aware that in 1657 members of two factions of the Scottish Presbyterian church came to London to debate before the Lord Protector the method of selecting ministers for Scottish parishes, but these historians have overlooked some of the Scots' other activities. A close look at parliamentary happenings reveals that these men, Resolutioners and Remonstrants, were also deeply involved in secular politics. Their disagreements were not confined to church matters, for during their stay these groups lobbied vigorously both in parliament and in the council of state, taking opposing positions as to what should be the qualifications for voting in Scotland. In this country, most Scots had been disenfranchised since the conclusion of the Civil War and their defeat at the hands of Cromwell's soldiers. The problem to be resolved was which and how many past adherents of the Stuart cause in Scotland should now be allowed to vote and hold office.

During the first half of the Second World War, a network of secretive ultra-right movements emerged in Ireland for the purpose of assisting the Axis cause. These groups had little contact with fascist organizations overseas, but rather were indigenous expressions of discontent with the perceived failure of Irish liberal democracy to address the country’s political and economic problems. Numerically weak, poorly led, and ideologically unsophisticated, the pro-Axis underground made little progress in its subversive activities and was kept in check by the security services. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that a considerable number of Irishmen and women on both sides of the Border shared its underlying objective of aligning Ireland with what they regarded as an emerging post-democratic world order.

The Scot Adam Blackwood (1539–1613), often cited though seemingly no longer much read, studied in Paris under two of the leading humanist scholars of his time, their influence upon his thinking being profound. A staunch supporter and protégé of Mary, queen of Scots, he published in 1575 the first of his political tracts, the De coniunctione religionis et imperii, in which he argued for stability in religion as the necessary underpinning of political order, and against resistance to the monarch, seen as divinely authorized and the sole law-giver. Six years later he produced his Pro regibus apologia, a rebuttal of George Buchanan's De jure regni apud Scotos. Polemical in tone, this work of Blackwood's nevertheless developed further his view of the monarch as the principle of unity and cohesion necessary to the existence of any body politic. In both of these works he deployed a sophisticated array of legal and philosophical arguments whilst pursuing ultimately irenic purposes. But Mary Stewart's execution in 1587 drew from him a diatribe against Elizabeth I where such purposes succumbed to his outraged sensibilities and his combative rhetorical style.

In October 1775 two hoaxes, perpetrated for separate reasons by John Wilkes and his friend, the Chevalier d’Eon, briefly collided. Wilkes’s hoax, the ‘Sayre plot’, was probably intended to provoke a test of the constitutionality of the recent ‘King’s Proclamation’, which encroached upon the statutory definition of treason. The hoax involved creating the impression that a conspiracy existed to resolve the deepening American crisis by overthrowing George III. D’Eon’s hoax involved spreading the rumour that he himself was a woman in order to embarrass the French king into recalling him from exile on d’Eon’s terms, including a generous financial package. For Wilkes, although neither George III’s overthrow nor the modification of his colonial policy were likely expectations, either result would have been a bonus. And although d’Eon was unquestionably a man, he did actually (if inexplicably) desire to be perceived as a woman living the life of an heroic man. When d’Eon’s hoax suddenly progressed too far – trapping him into agreeing to dress as a woman, which, at first, he seemed unwilling to do – he delayed signing the deal for a month, until he saw that the ‘Sayre plot’ (whose success could have strengthened d’Eon’s negotiating position) had utterly failed.

The strides made by the Russians into Central Asia between 1864 and 1869 were greater than any they took thereafter in that area. In 1865 they captured Tashkend. In 1866 they occupied Khojend and broke the power of the Khanate of Khokand. In 1867 they invaded the Khanate of Bokhara, and established fortified posts far to the south of the Jaxartes River; they also established the new Province of Turkestan, erecting it into a separate Viceroyalty with its capital at Tashkend. In 1868 they captured the city of Samarkand, capital of Bokhara, and made it clear that the Amir of Bokhara lived henceforth as a subservient client.

It is clear that a strand of anti-Stalinism had firmly entered the political discourse of British Labour and the Left by the late 1940s. This was largely a response to mounting Cold War tension and is rightly seen to contrast with their earlier broad support for the Soviet experiment. This article adds to this picture by arguing that anti-Stalinism was first adumbrated in the late 1930s in reaction to the Stalinist purges. Whereas previous accounts have given the impression that the Labour party and the wider Left were largely uninterested in the purges, this article shows instead that they provoked sharp criticisms of Stalin from across the range of Labour and Left opinion. Moreover, it also demonstrates that while certain figures and groupings did choose not to discuss the purges publicly, this was not necessarily because of a lack of interest or knowledge. For the Left the domestic political necessities of supporting the united front meant that, at least temporarily, their real views had to be concealed. More generally, the international pressure of endorsing the Soviet Union as an ally against international fascism inhibited an even more forthright condemnation of Stalin.

The severity of many of the fines imposed in the Court of Star Chamber in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries has impressed historians as much as it impressed the members of the Long Parliament. For example, it has been calculated that out of the 240 cases brought in Star Chamber in the years 1625–41 where the sentence is known, fines of over £500 were imposed in eighty–five instances. Hudson, in his famous contemporary treatise on the Court, contended that this severity had markedly increased in the reign of Charles; ‘fines’, he wrote, ‘are new of late imposed secundum qualitatem delicti and not fitted to the estate of the person; so that they are rather in terrorempopuli than for the true end for the which they were intended, when fine and ransom was appointed£10,000 or more, under both Elizabeth and the early Stuarts.