Twenty years ago, the study of modern China in the west was heavily focused on rural China. It used the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party as its overarching narrative, and treated the communist victory of 1949 as a watershed. This review surveys several recent trends in the writing of Chinese history in the west which have challenged these models. Among the changes of emphasis in the field that are noted are: a new interest in China's place in global history, urban history, and the history of consumption; a rethinking of the significance of nationalism and imperialism; warfare as a vehicle of sociocultural change; and a reinterpretation of Chinese modernity that stresses the similarities, as well as the differences, between the Chinese Communist Party and its predecessors, the Nationalists, and also stresses continuities as well as changes across the ‘barrier’ date of 1949. The review highlights areas of interest to non-specialists in Chinese history, and concentrates on studies of the Republican period (1912–49) published since the 1990s, although it also covers work covering topics in the late imperial and early People's Republic periods.

This article re-examines the resistance to literary modernism in interwar Britain from the angle of popular literary theory and practice. Drawing on the papers of some of the notable working-class writers of this period, it disputes Jonathan Rose's claim that a rejection of modernist ‘obscurantism’ was a response distinctive to working-class autodidacts. Moreover, many middle-class readers responded to modernism in the same terms that Rose takes to be peculiar to a working-class intelligentsia. Negative reactions to modernism are better explained as a response conditioned by a literary discourse in which plebeian autodidacts as well as middle-class readers participated. The article approaches this discourse via the aspiring authors who joined writing clubs in the interwar period. Because these people were at once fairly typical readers and writers, their ideas and practices disclose more about popular understandings of literature than debates in the national press or literary reviews do. Their ideas about what constituted good writing and their hostility to modernism were underpinned by a popular conception of literature that derived from English romanticism.

After the execution of Charles I in 1649 a series of daring and desperate attempts were made on the lives of agents and ambassadors dispatched to continental Europe by the fledgling republic. This essay explores the evidence relating to these plots, and to the murders of Isaac Dorislaus and Anthony Ascham, in an attempt to show that the royalists responsible were not merely desperadoes seeking revenge for the murder of their king, but the employees and emissaries of prominent exiled courtiers. The complicity of Montrose, Cottington and Hyde in such conspiracy can be both documented and explained, in the context of the struggle for diplomatic recognition and financial assistance in the months of shock, outrage and uncertainty after the regicide. The concerns of diplomacy and high politics which lay behind these plots also helped to determine the reaction of European leaders, as it gradually became clear on whose side fortune smiled in Britain.

There is one major gap in the historiography of British strategic policy during the interwar years. Historians have not examined that policy of the 1920s as if it was a coherent topic in its own right. Although writers like Brian Bond, James Neidpath, Stephen Roskill and Malcolm Smith have elucidated aspects of that matter, such as the development of the Singapore base or of the policies of the fighting services, they have still treated each such issue and department in isolation from the rest. Even those scholars like Correlli Barnett and N. H. Gibbs who have sought to examine strategic policy in the interwar years as a whole, have primarily seen the strategic decisions of the 1920s not as an autonomous historical subject but rather as a prelude to Britain's position in the 1930s. Consequently, historians have made these decisions seem inexplicable and unconnected, by removing them from the context of their time and of strategic policy. This approach has led writers to misconstrue the evolution of strategic policy during the 1920s. They have done so because of their assumptions about that issue. They have not recognized these assumptions as being such, but have treated them instead as a bedrock of self-evident fact. Yet when these assumptions are examined, they can be demonstrated to be false.

Historians have examined in great detail the dramatic debate in American politics over the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles which culminated in the physical collapse of President Wilson and the defeat of his peace programme. The failure of Wilson to carry his programme through the United States senate represented also a distinct setback for the peacemaking strategies of the British government whose policies at the peace conference had been based in large measure on the hope that an enduring trans-Atlantic partnership could be established. The British government followed closely the American treaty debate, sending Viscount Grey, the former Liberal foreign secretary, as a special ambassador, and played a significant if unsuccessful role in the outcome of the drama. It is the intention of this article to examine the attitudes and role of the Lloyd George government through the latter part of 1919 and into 1920 with regard to the fate of the Treaty of Versailles in America, and in particular to reassess the part played by Viscount Grey. It is hoped to shed some new light on the dilemmas of foreign policy and defence strategy encountered at this time by Britain and the empire, as well as to elucidate certain aspects of the American struggle. Since the Covenant of the League of Nations lay at the heart of the American fight over the treaty, it is hoped also that new insight will be provided on the uncertain inauguration of the League.

John Graunt's analysis of the London Bills of Mortality of 1662 is famous as a pioneering contribution to the study of human populations. But comparatively little attention has been given to his highly influential discovery that the numbers of men and women were evenly balanced. Why did Graunt think that what we now call the sex ratio was important, and why did he see it as essential to contradict received opinion? What can we deduce about Graunt's own attitudes to women? Why was he concerned to discredit polygamy? Further investigation suggests, not that Graunt shared the misogyny of many of his contemporaries, but that he was motivated by the dangers inherent in his own shifting religious views, which included Socinianism and anti-Trinitarianism. The religious controversialist Bernardino Ochino can be detected as a dark influence behind Graunt's thinking. An exploration of Graunt's cultural hinterland confirms that men did indeed believe that they were outnumbered by women, a conviction accentuated by the unnerving upheavals of religious conflict, plague, and civil war, and apparently confirmed by prophecy. Seventeenth-century misogyny seems to present itself to us as qualitative, but it included a numerical dimension which was in effect culturally determined.

The work of the martyrologist John Foxe ensures that the burnings dominate modern accounts of the campaign waged again Protestantism in the reign of Mary I (1553–8). Drawing on other sources, this article examines forfeiture of property, a less noticed but more common penalty imposed upon Protestants. It describes the types of forfeiture that occurred and analyses their legal basis; it considers the impact of the penalty and highlights means of evasion. By examining forfeiture, the article extends and enhances the debate about the effectiveness of Marian religious policy and about the degree of support that the regime could command. Forfeiture, it is shown, could be a powerful form of coercion, but depended upon popular politics to be effective. Subsequent efforts in Elizabeth I's reign to obtain restitution substantiate the article's thesis that a deep-rooted belief in the rule of law constrained the penal religious policies of early modern England.

The most recent survey of the early years of the long parliament has restated the traditional view that the parliament was united against the king from the first, under the leadership of John Pym. This opinion is so deeply ingrained in the historical consciousness that one reviewer has expressed surprise at the evidence adduced by Mr Fletcher of divisions of opinion in the Commons as early as 1641. Some of these disagreements were noticed four years ago by Professor Ashton, yet he calculated that there was a majority of 400 to 80 against the king, and titled his chapter ‘From Consensus to Confrontation’; according to Dr Manning, the king was ‘almost powerless’. It is surprising that this view has held the field so long, when the most cursory reading of the Commons Journal shows it to be a myth. In a period for which we have so little hard evidence of the course of events, the evidence of the journals should not be ignored; none the less, it will be suggested that the role of peers, in and out of parliament, was at least as important as anything that happened in the lower house in the first few months. Not all the issues involved can be discussed here: this paper will consider, in outline, some of the evidence concerning finance, the reforming legislation, and the impeachment of Strafford.

Recent writing on the Tudor century emphasizes the importance to the history of politics of the study of political processes. Tudor historians are, for the most part, less willing than hitherto to describe bureaucracies or institutions of government, and more concerned to present politics as something dynamic rather than static. Although their work remains rooted in the archives, Tudor specialists are increasingly receptive to the significance of (for example) political language, iconography, and literature. This article examines a number of recent contributions, in the context of post-war Tudor historiography. It accepts that the insights of other disciplines can enhance the study of sixteenth-century politics, and welcomes the intellectual and cultural turn in recent writing, but maintains that Tudor culture is not always being reconstructed with the sensitivity it needs.

DESPITE the vast influence and patronage at his disposal, Sir Robert Walpole was compelled, on occasion, to pursue a course of action which he heartily disliked. At the time of the excise crisis in 1733, the First Minister was forced to revise his policies by pressure, not only from the opposition, but also from the radicals within the ministerial camp. The radical group, usually known as the ‘Old Whigs’, suddenly found themselves in a position to play a decisive role in parliamentary politics for the first time in more than a decade.

The so-called Bye plot of 1603 is one of the best documented in that procession of treasons which confronted late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean governments. For more than a century, it has also been almost entirely neglected by historians. Through an examination of the cases made against seven suspects – William Clark, George Brooke, Sir Griffin Markham, Anthony Copley, Bartholomew Brookesby, Sir Edward Parham, and John Scudamore – the methods by which the state acquired and deployed evidence in advancing the prosecution are here detailed and analysed. Comparison of each man's fate also reveals how, although the crime of high treason carried but one penalty, the punishments handed down, ranging as they did from execution to discharge before trial, reflected both the prisoners' own conduct and the current political imperatives in a year of dynastic change.

From the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the middle of the eighteenth century a protracted controversy took place over whether foreigners ought to be encouraged to come to settle in England. The debate was usually couched in terms of whether aliens should be offered naturalization in England. The word naturalize was sometimes used not in a technical legal sense, but in the first sense given in Johnson's Dictionary: ‘to adopt into a community’. In its stricter sense, the question was whether a cheap and convenient way should be offered to immigrants to acquire the rights of native-born English subjects. It was thought by both its advocates and its enemies that such an offer, by means of an act of general naturalization, would encourage a large influx of foreign protestants. The issue was debated repeatedly in parliament. Over a dozen attempts were made to pass an act for a general naturalization between the Restoration and the final passage of such an act in 1709. The act of 1709 was repealed only three years after its passage, but several more bills for a similar statute were introduced towards the middle of the century. The naturalization controversy is more easily followed, however, in the pages of the tracts, pamphlets, treatises, and broadsides, both in favour of and in opposition to a general naturalization, that tumbled from the presses throughout the period, and most profusely in the 1680s, 1690s, and 1700s. The debate aroused the interest especially of the growing ranks of those who, after the Restoration, interested themselves in trade matters.

For well over a century the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, the so-called New Poor Law, has been die centre of controversy. Just as contemporaries were drawn into bitter conflict over die measure, modern scholars have continued to debate die degree of ‘cruelty’ engendered in this novel poor relief scheme. The records of die individual poor law unions, however, reveal so many variations in administrative practices as to render invalid nearly all generalizations regarding me operation of die Act. The most obvious difficulty arises over the disparity between Poor Law Commission policy, ostensibly founded upon the recommendations of the famous Royal Commission report of 1834,3 and its actual implementation by the commissioners at Somerset House and their assistants in the field. It is by now a commonplace of poor law history that the commissioners, despite opposition from their secretary, Edwin Chadwick, pursued different policies in various parts of England.4 As we shall see, moreover, the commissioners often held certain provisions of their directives in abeyance, leaving their implementation to the discretion of provincial administrators.

The paper argues that the De ortu et auctoritate imperii Romani of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1446) has been unjustifiably ignored by historians of quattrocento humanist political thought simply because of its adherence to the ideal of universal imperial government. At present, when De ortu is addressed at all, it is considered merely as an anachronistic product of a ‘medieval’ mentality. It is shown, however, that Aeneas, by working within a demonstrably Ciceronian framework, actually articulates a philosophically coherent defence of a single universal empire by exploiting a conceptual ambiguity in Cicero's own presentation of the foundations of social and political association. Aeneas suggests that Cicero's account of the communal nature of human beings, so far from sanctioning republican civic institutions, actually justifies the imposition of universal empire. A study of Piccolomini's political thought thus points to a greater diversity within the political viewpoints associated with humanism than current scholarship on the subject acknowledges. Moreover, it reveals the level of philosophical sophistication to which renaissance defences of empire could aspire.

If anyone could be claimed the father of the school for the scientific study of Indian defence policy it would undoubtedly be Sir Charles Metcalfe MacGregor. With the re-opening of the Central Asian Question in the early 1860s, it became MacGregor's mission in life completely to recast the Indian defence structure and it counter-insurrectionary role to enable it to undertake large-scale offensive operations against a major European military power. Almost single-handedly, he began to create the machinery within the Indian Army establishment—the special departments, professional institutes, journals and literature—to stimulate a greater awareness of the special and peculiar nature of Indian defence problems that this new role involved, and to encourage an iconoclastic re-examination of prevailing defence assumptions. From MacGregor's groundwork there was logically bound to arise a sense of Indian Army professionalism separate and distinct from that of Great Britain, and the beginnings of the belief that obligations of national defence are inseparable from nationhood. It was MacGregor who first appreciated on the basis of systematic and scientific study that India constituted a vast manpower reservoir, greater than that of Ireland and Egypt together, upon which Britain relied for the prosecution of her imperial, military and foreign policies in the East; that the North-West Frontier presented the only strategic boundary that Britain had to defend; and that the geo-strategic and demographic facts of her existence had made India potentially a great military power bound to adopt a ‵Continental′ military policy and defence structure in many respects parallel to those of the major European military powers.

In the 1850s, the Piedmontese ‘moderate’ liberals created a peculiar political culture, suited to the twofold task of strengthening representative institutions at home and justifying Piedmont's Italian mission. Inspired by both the whig tradition and the French Doctrinaires, the moderates elaborated arguments advocating elite government and countering democracy. Gioberti, Balbo, Carutti, Mamiani, and Boncompagni shared five theses: (1) natural (and/or divine) laws are both the ultimate source of right and wrong in politics and the guarantee of gradual progress; (2) only the citizens who understand the natural order should rule; (3) ‘democracy’, that is popular sovereignty and universal suffrage, is inherently wrong; (4) granted that citizens' attitudes play an important role in politics, certain virtues are required by representative government; and (5) moderatism was imbued with Burkeanism, meaning that it endorsed a realistic, prudent approach to politics, that much was made of Italian and especially Piedmontese history and traditions, and that mere constitutional machinery was to be disdained. This political culture led the moderates to portray everybody who was either on the right or the left of their camp, both in Piedmont and Italy, as a ‘sectarian’ and hence a dangerous revolutionary.

This article examines the changes and continuities in the depiction of the violent relationship between the popular glove-puppets, Punch and Judy, over the course of the nineteenth century. While the puppet show emerged as a low-brow street entertainment during the first decades of the nineteenth century, by 1850 it had been hijacked by the middle and upper classes, and began to appear with increasing frequency in fashionable drawing rooms. At the same time, the relationship between the two central characters, Punch and Judy, was substantially modified. On the streets, during the first half of the century, the Punches’ marriage had both reflected the continuing popularity of the early modern theme of the ‘struggle for the breeches’ and encapsulated familial tensions that resulted from the pressures of industrialization and urbanization. However, from 1850 the middle classes attempted to reshape the relationship into a moral tale in order to teach their children valuable lessons about marital behaviour. Yet, at the same time, the maintenance of violence in the portrayal of the Punches’ conjugal life exposed crucial patterns of continuity in attitudes towards marriage, masculinity, and femininity in Victorian England.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 provided monetary independence to the newly established Irish Free State. The existing historiography views Irish monetary and banking policy post-independence as following British precedent in terms of the structure and design of state monetary institutions. However, this article considers how Professor Henry Parker-Willis's experience of establishing the United States (US) Federal Reserve system in 1913 had a direct impact on his work as chair of the Irish banking commission in 1926. This research highlights that Parker-Willis played a significantly more important role in formulating the Irish Currency Act 1927 than is currently recognized. It further identifies that Parker-Willis's design for a wholly independent, non-political Irish currency commission was primarily based on his disillusionment with the political interference then evident in the management of the Federal Reserve system. This article, therefore, challenges the dominant view that Irish monetary institution building in the 1920s automatically followed British precedent, but rather identifies the direct influence of US monetary structures on the development of Irish institutions. This is an internationalist dimension not recognized in the existing historiography.