Liverpool and Manchester have come to typify twentieth-century urban decay and their demise is strongly associated with the perceived decline of local government after 1918. By the 1930s, contemporaries had stereotyped northern cities as places of poverty and deprivation, in comparison to the prosperous south. The divide was reinforced by economic historians who focused on regional variations in unemployment and economic depression. This article challenges stereotypical images of interwar Liverpool and Manchester by illustrating the ambitious programmes of urban redevelopment implemented by their Corporations in response to political and economic instability. Grandiose projects such as the Wythenshawe Estate, Mersey Tunnel and Manchester Central Library aimed to stimulate employment and to boost local economies and morale. Redevelopment was promoted heavily to present new images of Liverpool and Manchester. Crucially, urban transformation was marketed as a way to communicate with the newly enfranchised, classless citizen and suggests similarities with broader strategies employed by the Conservative party to engage with the mass electorate. The level of ambition and innovation demonstrates that local municipal culture thrived and Liverpool (with close American links) is shown to have been at the forefront of innovations in civic design and urban planning.

In the familiar triptych of British political history between the first and third Reform Acts, whose panels are neatly divided by the years 1846 and 1867, the confused and uninspiring iconography of the large central canvas contrasts sharply and puzzlingly with that of its flanking pieces. In 1855 Gladstone lamented that

The Session of 1845 was the last of those that witnessed party connection in its normal state. Throughout the decade which preceded that year it was in full and brilliant blossom. Since then we have had properly speaking…none in the best sense of the term: none compact and organized after the ancient manner.

Weak states can control strong states, provided the weak can persuade the strong to admit, that they are vitally interested in their integrity and independence. In the late nineteentli century everybody understood the influence of the Ottoman Empire upon British policy, and the influence of Austria-Hungary upon Imperial German policy in the near east. In the heyday of the Great Powers of Europe it was not expected tliat orientals should aspire to similar influence: their futures would be decided by Europeans. Until the work of Robinson and Gallagher revealed the extent to which the khedive of Egypt controlled Lord Cromer, the history of late nineteenth century imperialism was written from this assumption.

At an International Historical Congress of some years ago, one speaker explained that, so long as Europe had possessed one Church and one learned language (the Latin), nationalism was suppressed. This dictum received both contradiction and support; but the occasion was unsuited for any but the most superficial discussion. Ever since, however, I have noted passages which seemed to bear upon this important question; and I print them here, with the minimum of comment, by way of assistance to other students who may find time and inclination to pursue the matter further. Professor Marcel Handelsman of Warsaw has surveyed the subject, in brief, with a refinement of philosophical analysis to which I make no pretence. I try to use the term nationalism consistently within my own rough limits, but without attempt at scientific definition. My main object is to present evidence for the reader's judgment, without disguising the direction in which I lean myself: evidence varying a good deal in cogency from case to case, but with variations which any careful reader can estimate. Only thus can one start any really fruitful discussion. The multiplicity of indications collected in this comparatively short time convinces me that these are no more than the merest fraction of that which might be revealed by a concentrated search; but even this fraction may be enough to give a general idea of the whole.

Throughout its history the United Kingdom Liberal party has been a conglomerate. On the other hand, it was very rarely just an anti-Conservative Front, feeding off the grasslands of negation. Whatever the manifold stresses and strains of a given moment, the liberty-loving and reforming mentality almost invariably held together the disparate elements for purposes of positive action. And with the Conservative party essentially standstill and inherently strong at most times, this was scarcely surprising in the context of the battle for political power. That context was shaped by the break-up of the vast Liverpool-style coalition and the emergence under Lord Grey of a left-centre administration. The bundle of ideologies and interests behind Grey stuck together until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, although economic and social changes, along with alterations in the constitutional structure both springing from and causing them, did much to shift the influence they exercised. While it is true that the first and second Reform Acts were of crucial importance, the forces behind their passing should not be ignored. The hens did come before the eggs, even though the eventual arrivals were uncommonly large chickens, and hatching out was far from automatic

On 23 November 1801 Henry Addington addressed the House of Commons on the financial affairs of the nation. The prime minister, in the course of his remarks, alluded briefly to the government's intention of selling certain Crown properties in the West Indies. The measure was planned, he explained, as a means of reducing arrears charged upon the Civil List.1 Although Addington hoped to effect the sales without parliamentary opposition, the question soon became entangled in the meshes of political intrigue. With remarkable cunning the young Pittite, George Canning, sought to use the issue as a means of driving William Pitt into opposition to Addington's government and of creating a new opposition party with Pitt as its leader.

This article reveals the existence of a hitherto unknown Black Chamber in the Dutch Republic and the identity of its principal codebreaker, Abel Tasien d'Alonne (1646–1723), acting also as private secretary to Grand Pensionary Heinsius. On the basis of an analysis of a number of previously unidentified worksheets, three cases are put together that merited d'Alonne's attention, one related to a French diplomat at the court of the Bavarian Elector during the years 1707–9, one related to an undercover agent of the Bavarian Elector in the Dutch Republic during the years 1711–12 and one related to a French emissary to the state council in Brussels during the period 1714–15. The emergence of a Black Chamber in The Hague is remarkable because the Dutch could always call upon the Black Chamber of Hanover for the solution of any intercepted, coded documents. This indicates that the development of inter-allied relations during the war played a more important role in the rise of the Dutch Black Chamber than one would expect.

After the disavowal of Marxian socialism, the major obstacle to historical studies in the West increasingly appears to be the U.S.A.'s intellectual exceptionalism. That nation's unprecedentedly powerful and self-referential historical profession is largely committed to echo this exceptionalism by its engagement with the demands of the U.S.A.'s ‘civil religion’. For U.S. historiography, the main index of self-absorption or international engagement is nevertheless still its relationship to British historiography. This article argues that the alleged death of British history in the U.S.A. is not a consequence of any loss of intellectual vitality in the subject; it is, rather, a result partly of growing intellectual introversion in the host culture, partly of the inadequate versions of British history often exported to the American market.

The strange circumstances of the hasty clandestine wedding of Thomas Thynne and Maria Audley in 1594 raise questions about possible motives for it. He was the teenage heir to a rich Wiltshire gentleman, and she was a young attendant of Queen Elizabeth, but their families were divided by political faction. Private correspondence afterwards and contentious court of Arches proceedings lasting to 1601 reveal the tactics adopted on the one hand by her family to try to prove consent of both bride and groom to marriage, on the other the countering tactics of the Thynnes to disprove it. The parents exploited ecclesiastical court procedure, and attempted to influence witnesses and judge. This case shows attitudes to marriage making, beliefs about rituals and tokens, and conceptions of the law of marriage in Elizabethan England.

This article explores the role of women investors in the Virginia Company during the early seventeenth century, arguing that women determined the success of English overseas expansion by ‘adventuring’ not just their person, but their purse. Trading companies relied on the capital of women, and yet in seminal work on Virginia Company investors women have received no attention at all. This is a significant oversight, as studying the women who invested in trading companies illuminates broader issues regarding the role of women in the early English empire. This article explores why and how two women from merchant backgrounds, Rebecca Romney (d. 1644) and Katherine Hueriblock (d. 1639), managed diverse, global investment portfolios in the period before the Financial Revolution. Through company records, wills, letters, court depositions, and a surviving church memorial tablet, it reconstructs Romney's and Hueriblock's interconnected interests in ‘New World’ ventures, including in Newfoundland, the North-West Passage Company, Virginia colony, and sugar trade. Studying women investors reveals how trade and colonization shaped economic activity and investment practices in the domestic sphere and also elucidates how women, in their role as investors, helped give birth to an English empire.

This paper provides a caveat to Ben Jackson's article ‘At the origins of neo-liberalism’. Though agreeing with Jackson that many early market liberals did not particularly object to Keynesian policy and the nascent welfare state, we make use of archival and published material to help shed light on F. A. Hayek's assessment of Keynesian policy. In particular, we argue that Hayek had adopted a negative view of Keynesian policy and the welfare state as early as the mid- to late 1940s.

Crown policy towards the nobles and the rule of the provinces under the early Tudors reflected the values and social structures of ‘civil society’ in lowland England. Using as a case-study the Dacres, a minor peerage family who were wardens of the Anglo-Scottish marches, this paper explores the strains and tensions which were created by the application of these norms to the ‘peripheral’ parts of the Tudor state. The paper outlines the political ambitions, resources, and estate-management policies of a border baron, and argues that Henry VIII's policies for the rule of the borders and his expectations of his officials there were unrealistic. It also suggests that the traditional approach of historians to the problems of Tudor politics and government reflects too much a view of events as seen from ‘the centre’ and needs to be balanced by a more sensitive treatment of the problems of the ‘periphery’.

In 1934 two commissioners (for England and Wales and for Scotland) were appoineted to tackle the problems caused by high and Persistent unemploed in areas dependent on a narrow and depressed range of industriues. These Statutory Special Areas were only some of the most depressed parts of the country, in scotland largely west-central Scotaland but excluding Glasgow. defects in the policies adopted, and in their implementation by the commissioners, are well known, especially their alleged failure to encourage adequatelythe newindustrial development the special Areas needed. Certainly the powers and the financial provision given tio the commissioners in 1934 were slight, but they were increased in new legislation in 1937 and had little time to become effective before the outbreak of war. In addition, lack of success, especially in the end towards which the policies were directed as much as because of their own inadequacy or insufficiency. the end, justifiable in the conditions of the 1930s, was to releive unemployement, not to encourage a distinctive policy of regional industrial diversification. The Report of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population Suggested a new direction in 1940, but its views were applied as part of an overall strategy only in the 1960s. A comment of 1952 may be applied from the pre-war years throughout the 1950s. Only the name of the special Areas had been changed.

At some point in or shortly after 1607, the opening passage of Francis Bacon's earliest surviving philosophical work, Valerius Terminus of the interpretation of nature – the first version of what ultimately became Bacon's Instauratio magna – was copied into the natural philosophical notebook of Edmund Leigh (c. 1585–1658), a Bachelor of Arts at Brasenose College, Oxford. Whereas contemporary scribal copies of Bacon's political, religious, and legal writings are common, copies of his unpublished philosophical writings are rare, and tend only to be found in unique exemplars with a direct Baconian association. As such, the Valerius Terminus has hitherto only been known from a single manuscript, with corrections in Bacon's hand, that was first printed in 1734. The discovery of a ‘user’ copy in a student notebook is therefore significant for what it suggests about the circulation of Bacon's earliest philosophical ideas. This significance is enhanced by the fact that the new copy appears to record an early draft of Bacon's work.

The peculiar problems and difficulties in the way of achieving a national system of elementary education in nineteenth-century England have long been so obvious and notorious that a new attempt at an objective and comprehensive view must seem surprising and rash. My excuse for nevertheless making that attempt is not the discovery of any new material, which, even if it were to become available, could hardly alter the well-known outlines of the harrowing tale as told in the standard histories: nor could much be added to the careful sketch made of the Church's contribution by F. Warre Cornish, or the excellent summary of the educational principles in conflict given by W. F. Connell. To the details of these, and of the distillation of them which appears in the best text-books, I can suggest only one positive amendment. But looking at the matter from the sheltered advantage of one who has not to write a detailed thorough book about it, it seems to me that none of the existing books can do the subject justice, for none of them tells the whole story. If such substantial books as have already been written fail to tell the whole story, it is obvious that a brief article will not succeed in doing so, and I can only aim to suggest something which the ideal complete history must not omit. For more than half a century we have been learning that the issues of Church and State in the Middle Ages can never be understood if Church and State are regarded as susceptible of separate histories. To see them thus is to see two things where men at the time saw but one. Similarly, the problems of Victorian public education cannot properly be understood in their multi-dimensional reality if they are split into categories normal, perhaps, for our own time, but strange to theirs.

To what extent has the recent war in Northern Ireland influenced Irish historiography? Examining the nomenclature, periodization, and the use of democracy and state legitimization as interpretative tools in the historicization of the Irish Civil War (1922–3), the influence of a southern nationalist ideology is apparent. A dominating southern nationalist interest represented the revolutionary political elite's realpolitik after 1920, though its pan-nationalist rhetoric obscured this. Ignoring southern nationalism as a cogent influence has led to the misrepresentation of nationalism as ethnically homogeneous in twentieth-century Ireland. Once this is identified, historiographical and methodological problems are illuminated, which may be demonstrated in historians' work on the revolutionary period (c. 1912–23). Following the northern crisis's emergence in the late 1960s, the Republic's Irish governments required a revised public history that could reconcile the state's violent and revolutionary origins with its counterinsurgency against militarist-republicanism. At the same time many historians adopted constitutional, later democratic, state formation narratives for the south at the expense of historical precision. This facilitated a broader state-centred and statist historiography, mirroring the Republic's desire to re-orientate its nationalism away from irredentism, toward the conscious accommodation of partition. Reconciliation of southern nationalist identities with its state represents a singular political achievement, as well as a concomitant historiographical problem.

This article subjects a variety of works on nineteenth-century politics to critical analysis, focusing on recent work in biography, popular politics, and on those works that have shown an interest in post-structuralist approaches. Mostly it examines texts produced between 1993 and about 1997 with a view to sensing an historiographical mood. Although the argument urges an open-minded reception to the linguistic turn in historical work, it brings the work of some of its adherents – perhaps especially James Vernon – under critical scrutiny and concludes that a price has been paid for the attempt at constructing a ‘cultural politics’. In particular the article expresses alarm at the apparent incoherence and sub-literacy of some post-structural statements.