Writers on Leibniz have frequently stressed the marked contrast in character between his metaphysics and his political theory. As a metaphysician Leibniz appears as a thinker of daring originality whose views have sometimes seemed to set up certain tensions with orthodox Christian teaching. In the field of political theory, however, we encounter a much more traditional and conservative figure. Writing in a post-Hobbesian period Leibniz is a determined opponent of any trend towards a secular analysis of political questions; yet, within a framework of conventional theological assumptions, he is quite as insistent as Hobbes that obligation is co-extensive with the ruler's ability to provide protection. In a large measure the conservatism of Leibniz's political views can be explained by reference to die external facts of his position. Occupying a semi-official post at the court of Hanover, Leibniz was dependent on the favour of his electoral patrons; his political writings tended to be occasional pieces composed with a view to promoting specific Hanoverian interests. Leibniz's experience of politics was thus confined to the world of a minor German court, and die narrowness of diis background placed him at a severe disadvantage for understanding the political debates of a country like England with quite different traditions.

The repeal of the corn laws in 1846 has generally been regarded as the result of a clash between the old agricultural order and the rising industrial and commercial classes of the era. Whether or not this view is altogether correct, it is certain that there was another side to the story that deserves a closer scrutiny than it has hitherto received—namely that of the difficulties which took place within the ranks of the agriculturists of the Conservative party. The outcome involved an event that was just as interesting and perhaps more important than the fate of the corn laws. In bringing about the downfall of Sir Robert Peel, it radically altered the fortunes of Benjamin Disraeli, who could never have found any considerable place in Peel's Conservative party. On the disruption of that party, he was able to make himself indispensable in the building of a new one and thus ensure for himself a destiny that it had seemed might well elude him. How closely he concerned himself with the early stages of the agricultural intrigue that ended in the downfall of Peel it is not intended here to inquire. Suffice it to remember that he had been involved in agricultural conspiracies long before 1846 and had doubtless been for some time aware of the possibilities of the kind of rupture which eventually occurred. At all events he always seems to have kept a very calculating eye on the differences that sprang up between Peel and his agricultural following.

This review considers, first, current work on the Napoleonic Empire dealing with Switzerland, the three parts of ‘Germany’ (the Rhineland, the ‘Third Germany’, Prussia), Spain, and the so-called ‘national’ question(s) in these countries and regions. It next focuses on recent work on the three parts of ‘Italy’ (the Kingdom of Italy, the départements réunis, and the Kingdom of Naples). But the main body of the review concentrates on the work of Michael Broers: not only his new and remarkable conceptualization of the Empire as containing ‘inner’, ‘outer’, and ‘intermediate’ zones, but also his creative if controversial application of post-modern colonial theory to an analysis of the French in Italy. The review suggests that Broers, for all his brilliance and mastery, has perhaps pressed his arguments and conclusion beyond his evidence base. The latter, while extensive, is too limited to just French perceptions of Italians before 1815, and does not extensively consider Italian reactions to the French presence; nor does it provide significant evidence to buttress Broers's far-reaching conclusions about nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italy.

Systematic military policy-making towards internal security in Great Britain dates from the period immediately following the First World War. It was stimulated above all by widespread fears of possible revolution, sharpened by a belief in the collective incapacity of police forces to deal with civil disorder. Many, although by no means all, politicians and senior officials felt that the labour militancy of the 1920s was simply the harbinger of ‘red’ revolt, and preparations were made accordingly. Following the trade unions’ defeat in the general strike of 1926 fears of revolution subsided, although the War Office continued to revise the plans it had made in the early 1920s. Throughout the entire inter-war period, nevertheless, the general staff displayed an extreme reluctance to commit the army to internal security duties. Almost without exception, it seems, military men shared Lord Ironside’s opinion that ‘for a soldier there is no more distasteful duty than that of aiding the Civil Power’.

French foreign policy during the Orleans Monarchy was dominated by the search for an agreement with another power. In the first two years of the new monarchy's existence the fear of isolation exercised a profound influence over the conduct of French diplomacy and almost every French politician and diplomat regarded an entente with another great power as the only remedy. Thus the immediate aim of foreign policy was to divide the enemies of France. Throughout the negotiations in London in 1831 and 1832 on the Belgian question, Talleyrand, the French ambassador in London, regarded the prevention of an anti-French coalition as his major objective. The pursuit of French interests in the Low Countries, however important, had to be subordinated to this overriding aim. It was to England that Talleyrand looked for support; he rightly believed that the Whigs were ideologically opposed to a conservative coalition against France and that it was the English government which had the most to gain from co-operation with France on the Belgian question. Once it became clear - as it certainly had by mid-1832 - that there was little likelihood of the emergence of an anti-French coalition, the search for an agreement with another power could be associated with the pursuit of more positive ends.

Before I start I would like to express my gratitude to the Faculty Board of History who have entrusted me with the very interesting task of delivering this lecture and to Mrs Lindsay for handing me a copy of her article on the ‘Origin and Early Development of the Cambridge Historical Tripos’, which appeared in volume IX of the Cambridge Historical Journal. This article surely must remain the authoritative account of the early development of the Tripos. I owe much to it, as also to an anonymous set of notes on the changes in the Tripos up to 1932, which was discovered in the offices of the History Faculty. This I suspect to have been compiled by Ronald Balfour, a Fellow of King's and close friend of mine, who was killed in the last war. I need not say that neither Mrs Lindsay, nor the author of these notes is responsible for what follows.

Although one of the most influential figures of his time, Bishop Gilbert Burnet has become one of the most neglected. This article outlines Burnet's worldview, arguing that it can only be partly understood by labelling him a ‘latitudinarian’ as scholars have hitherto tended to. Alongside Burnet's conventionally latitudinarian descriptions of Christianity as a set of rational and simple beliefs that could command very wide assent, the bishop also had a strong sense of history as a providential and apocalyptic unfolding of a battle between ‘true’ and ‘false’ churches, which was characterized by a powerful European dimension and by an identification of Antichrist with religious persecution. The article concludes with suggestions about how such lines of thought might have cohered with the more traditionally ‘latitudinarian’ elements of Burnet's philosophy, and about how they might allow historians to re-think the latitudinarian movement more generally.

Successive governments in Britain took great steps towards a more democratic form of government between 1911 and 1928. Universal suffrage, first proposed tentatively by a government in the former year, was completed in the latter. In the same period, the house of lords - the rejuvenation of which was treated at least nominally as vital by both the Liberal government and the Conservative opposition in 1911 - was effectively relegated even by Conservatives to an unimportant role. The attitudes and policies of Conservative politicians towards these changes deserve study for diverse reasons. They were part of a national debate about the wisdom of progress towards democracy; and so they form an important chapter in the development of political attitudes. They also do much to explain both how the process of democratization occurred, and how post-war governments viewed the electorate, as Conservatives participated in or dominated governments for most of the years from 1915 to 1945. Finally, the importance of Conservative views has been overlooked by historians, because they have persistently pre-dated the trend to democracy in Britain and so underestimated the scale of controversy about it. These historiographical tendencies are illustrated by the still lingering myth that the franchise before 1914 was close to manhood suffrage, or by the hitherto general assumption that the reform bill of 1917–18 was uncontroversial.

Etienne Dumont became famous in the early nineteenth century for taking Jeremy Bentham's incoherent manuscripts and editing them into readable books which he translated into French. This article focuses on Dumont's earlier life, and specifically his Genevan background, to explain his work for Mirabeau in the first years of the French Revolution and his ultimate sense of the importance of Bentham's system of legislation. The article explains why Dumont's Genevan origins caused him to promote reforms in France intended to establish domestic stability and international peace. Dumont believed that states across Europe needed to combine free government with moral reform, in order to stifle the growth of democracy. The extent of the danger posed by popular government to modern societies was, in Dumont's view, the major lesson of the French Revolution. An alternative reform project to democracy was necessary, but one that did not entail a return to monarchical or aristocratic despotism. The characteristics of Dumont's planned reform became clear by adopting a comparative perspective on events in France. In developing a comparative perspective, Dumont argued that the history of Britain since 1688 needed to be in the foreground. He was perplexed by the French rejection of Britain's political and constitutional model, and explained many major developments at Paris in 1789 by reference to what he considered to be this peculiar fact. After the Terror, Dumont lost his faith in experiments in constitution building as a means of securing the independence of free states like Geneva. Bentham's great achievement was to have provided an alternative system of legislation that would transform national character gradually, making reform politics compatible with domestic and international peace. For Dumont, Bentham established a bulwark against the enthusiasm and democratic excess, and this was the key to utilitarianism as a moral reform project.

This article analyses more than thirty demonstrations by suffragettes of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) connected with the Budget crisis of 1909, and challenges many of the established orthodoxies about suffragette militancy. Demonstrations did not represent spontaneous activity by the rank and file, but were carried out or at least led by WSPU employees or ‘professional’ militants, with several visible changes in tactics which indicate an organized campaign directed by the leadership. Damage to property, and the political violence which culminated in the terrorist tactics of 1912–14, did not begin as a response to wrongs done to the suffragettes, but because the leaders decided it was necessary. But these tactics were a counter-productive mistake which caused an adverse public reaction and justified the government in the introduction of forcible feeding. The WSPU was obliged to retreat in a humiliating reversal.

This article argues that theatre in colonial India – both in the form of touring companies and amateur dramatics – offered much more than mere entertainment: first, it was an important social space where the British diaspora constituted itself as a community. Secondly, it served as a lifeline to the home country. By watching theatrical performances either brought to them straight from London or which they performed themselves, colonial Britons felt in touch with their homeland. Finally, theatre not only allowed colonial audiences to participate in the metropolitan culture; it inadvertently helped to unify the British empire. Whether living in London, the provinces, or a colonial city, all British subjects consumed the same popular culture, forming in effect one big taste community. Theatre, therefore, lends itself to a discussion of central issues of imperial history, as, for example, the relationship between the metropolitan centre and the imperial periphery, the colonial public sphere, social and racial hierarchies, the perception of the ‘Other’, and processes of cross-cultural exchange and appropriation.

The Benthamites or Utilitarians are often held to have been at least partly responsible for the Reform Act of 1832. To historians who make this attribution, Bentham's own writings have not been a help. They are generally too abstract and difficult to have been popular; and where (as in the Parliamentary Reform Catechism) they have an avowed practical purpose, they are at once too detailed and too extreme to be easily related to practical legislation. James Mill, on the other hand, claimed to be disciple of Bentham, held administrative office, and wrote short tracts which are known to have circulated among a whole generation of young liberals in the 1820s.2

Even though the argument runs counter to much of the detailed scholarship on the subject, Britain's decision in 1921 to terminate its alliance with Japan is sometimes held in general historical surveys to be a major blunder that helped to pave the way to the Pacific War. The lingering sympathy for the combination with Japan is largely due to an historical myth which has presented the alliance as a particularly close partnership. The roots of the myth lie in the inter-war period when, in order to attack the trend towards internationalism, the political right in Britain manipulated memory of the alliance so that it became an exemplar of ‘old diplomacy’. It was then reinforced after 1945 by post-war memoirs and the ‘declinist’ literature of the 1960s and 1970s. By analysing the origins of this benevolent interpretation of the alliance, this article reveals how quickly and pervasively political discourse can turn history into myth and how the development of myths tells us much about the time in which they were created.

A national militia has been the cry of every patriot since the Revolution, and this measure, both in Parliament and in the field, was supported by the country gentlemen or Tories, who insensibly transferred their loyalty to the House of Hanover. In the language of Mr. Burke, they have changed the idol, but they have preserved the idolatry.

Recent works by Kevin Sharpe and Julian Davies have revised thinking about the religious policies of the Caroline church. Davies's distinction between ‘Laudianism’ and ‘Carolinism’ sums up one of the major conclusions he shares with Sharpe; that Charles I was the initiator of many of the religious policies previously attributed to William Laud. The following article tests this conclusion by viewing the religious policies emanating from England through the eyes of James Ussher, the Irish archbishop of Armagh. It finds that, from the Irish perspective at least, it was impossible for a contemporary to make the same distinction between ‘Laudianism’ and ‘Carolinism’, about policies that were deeply unpopular across the Irish Sea. What follows is an examination of Ussher's reception of a range of policies he considered detrimental to Calvinist unity in the face of catholic threat, including a detailed examination of his attempts to save the Calvinist Irish Articles. Through consideration of his own patronage concerns and directions in publishing it is demonstrated here that, through the 1630s, the Irish protestant primate continued to believe (rightly or wrongly) that behind the religious tensions of Britain lay the dual spectre of ‘Arminianism’ and popery.