This was how the Public Advertiser greeted the passage of the Quebec Act through parliament in June 1774. It was a remarkable transformation from the ecstasy evident in newspaper reports that greeted the fall of New France in 1760. As early as November 1759 the city of Nottingham singled out the North American campaign as the glorious core of British strategy. Its loyal address congratulated the king ‘particularly upon the defeat of the French army in Canada, and the taking of Quebec; an acquisition not less honourable to your majesty's forces, than destructive of the trade and commerce and power of France in North America’. What occurred in those fourteen years to produce such a stark revision of views on the conquest of New France? The answer can be found partly by surveying the English press for this period. During these years, treatment of Canadian issues in the press displayed quite distinct characteristics that revealed a whole range of attitudes and opinions on the place Canada held in the future of the North American empire. No consensus on this issue ever existed. Debate on Canada mirrored a wider discussion on the future of the polyglot empire acquired at the end of the Seven Years War in 1763. In ranged from the enthusiasm of officials at Westminster to spokesmen of a strain in English thinking that challenged the whole thrust of imperial policy to date.

It was often difficult in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to distinguish the interests of European financiers and concession holders operating overseas from the political policies of their respective governments. Concessions from a weak regime, in regions where political disorder and economic hardship were apparent, gave the power which held them a basis for the development of political influence in the country; and a basis too for an exclusive sphere of economic enterprise or, in the event of a total disintegration of the native administration, for a sphere of political influence which might follow a general partition among the European powers. In this context, railway enterprise was especially important. Railways promoted trade, and they could bring prosperity and progress to the areas through which they passed. They allowed military mobility too; and could be thus offensive or defensive instruments to be manipulated in accordance with economic and strategic interests.

This review suggests that recent historiography on nationalism can help us to see that the English Civil War was, in part, a conflict about national identity and ethnic difference. It argues that, even before the war began, the supporters of the parliament were associated with a narrowly intolerant strain of Englishness, and that this helps to explain why the Celtic peoples of Wales and Cornwall rallied to the king. During 1642–4, parliament's close links with the Scots – together with the presence of many foreign mercenaries in the roundhead armies – prevented the identification of parliament's cause with that of England itself from becoming absolute. Following the creation of the New Model Army, however – an army from which ‘strangers’ of all sorts were deliberately excluded – relations between the Scots and parliament rapidly deteriorated, and it became possible for the parliamentarians to make an unequivocal appeal to English patriotic sentiment. The defeat of the king – and of the Welsh and Cornish troops who had done much to sustain his cause – was the result.

It is widely assumed that after 1918 the British general staff ignored the experience it had gained from fighting a first-class European enemy and that it was not until the establishment of the Kirke committee in 1932 that it began to garner the lessons of the Great War and incorporate them into its doctrine. This article demonstrates that in fact British military doctrine underwent a continuous process of development in the 1920s. Far from turning its back on new military technologies, the general staff rejected the manpower-intensive doctrine that had sustained the army in 1914 in favour of one that placed modernity and machinery at the very core of its thinking. Between 1919 and 1931 the general staff did assimilate the lessons of the First World War into the army's written doctrine. But what it failed to do was to impose a common understanding of the meaning of that doctrine throughout the army.

This is an analysis of the extensive forgeries of Reformation history by Robert Ware of Dublin in the late seventeenth century, one of which, Archbishop Cranmer's speech at Edward VI's coronation, is still widely quoted and used as historical evidence. Ware's activity is explained in the context of Popish Plot agitation in Ireland and England, and John Strype's part in preserving some of the forgeries in the historical record is delineated. The survival of Ware's forgeries in English and Irish historiography over three centuries to the present day is exposed.

The influence of British Indian example on the Irish Land Act of 1870 has received some notice in recent years. Dr E. E. Stokes, for one, has commented that it was men with an Indian background like J. S. Mill and George Campbell who educated the Liberal party to think ‘that the State might justly lay hands on the sacred institution of private landed property’. It is argued here that the general influence was very much less than has been suggested. Nor did Indian example point to a single course of action by the state on the Irish problem. Mill and Campbell, the two leading advocates of Irish land reform to draw on India, put forward solutions which, if intended to secure practically the same end, differed significantly in their approach.

This article traces the British relationship with Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in the decade and a half after independence. The first part of this article shows how, within the context of the arrangements made at independence, the events of the years 1956–9 under the premiership of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike marked an important turning point in Britain's political and strategic relationship with the island. Then in the second part, British diplomatic records relating to Ceylonese politics are used to analyse the British response to Ceylon's ethno-political crisis during the early 1960s. Britain's reluctance to respond to this crisis was an outcome of the changed relations with Ceylon brought on during the Bandaranaike era.

Historiography of the years immediately preceding the English civil war has tended to conceive of two disparate entities in politics, Westminster and the localities. There are in practice two distinct kinds of history, reflecting diis division, which connect only on rare occasions. The latest major work on the period can, despite its title, limit itself almost entirely to the confines of Westminster and the court, while the student is faintly aware of volumes of local works which contain scarcely a hint of what passes outside the town wall or beyond the county boundary. Parliament was indeed an aggressively self-conscious and independent body, and the county or borough was frequently particularist and introverted, but this did not preclude all contact between the two. Dr Pearl has demonstrated how vulnerable parliament was to the influence of London, and vice versa, and there have recently been several local studies which illustrate the close relationship between the county and the centre. But by and large, Clarendon's assessment of the importance of the Buckinghamshire petition against the attempt on the Five Members, and the obvious prominence accorded by Commons leaders of both sides to petitioning, has not been sufficiently appreciated. Parliament was deeply concerned about what might be termed ‘public opinion’: events in the localities, and the reactions to parliament's policies.

‘A whipper whipped’ is a thoroughly new account of the 1634 Star Chamber case against William Prynne for publishing the seditious work Histrio-mastix. It is based upon a hitherto unused manuscript account that provides previously undisclosed information about the proceedings and especially about the intentions of the prosecution. This case is one of the most celebrated events of the 1630s, often viewed as the watershed event in the history of Caroline censorship. It has also become a prime example of Archbishop William Laud's attack against puritan conformists. This article argues that Laud played little role in the case; that the issue before Star Chamber was primarily the charge of sedition; and that Prynne received every possible legal advantage during his hearing. Through a careful reconstruction of the legal proceedings, the case is seen in an entirely new light. Though historians and literary critics have accepted Prynne's self-serving accounts of his prosecution, this fuller record demonstrates their inadequacy.

This article investigates the nature and prevalence of aristocratic liberalism in post-revolutionary France. Defenders of the aristocracy, it argues, departed from a specific conception of liberty, which can be distinguished both from a purely negative definition of liberty as the ability to do what one wanted to do, and from a republican conception of liberty as something that could be guaranteed through self-government alone. To legitimate the role of the aristocracy in post-revolutionary France, publicists and politicians developed a conception of liberty as a condition that could be guaranteed only through the existence of ‘intermediary powers’ between the central government and the people. Although this conception of liberty was severely criticized by Restoration liberals such as Benjamin Constant, it had a considerable impact on the debate about the best way to safeguard liberty in nineteenth-century France, as appears from texts by important political thinkers such as Tocqueville and Dupont-White.

On the eve of the Henrician Reformation, the law of treason was markedly less well developed than one might suppose. Over a century of dynastic war, party violence, and the vigorous extermination of opponents had left strikingly little deposit in the law which was still essentially defined by the famous act of 1352, the first, and to this day the basic, treason statute. Minor attempts to vary the law may here be ignored, and the only serious alteration—the act of 1397 which omitted the demand for an ‘overt deed’—was repealed in 1399. The reasons for what might at first sight seem a surprising reluctance to extend the grasp of the treason law are not obscure. For one thing, most of the so-called traitors of the later fifteenth century were men who had had the misfortune to fight on the losing side in a civil war. Their treason grew out of the see-saw of politics and was committed in open war. They were therefore commonly amenable (if not already killed in battle) to the summary procedure of treason trials under the law of arms and did not come within the purview of the law of England at all. This method of dealing with the vanquished had one disadvantage: conviction by a constable's or marshal's court did not involve forfeiture of lands. The Crown therefore had recourse to the authority of the high court of parliament, and acts of attainder followed each turn of the wheel in the civil wars.

The Berlin ecclesiastical historian, August Neander (1789–1850), developed a religiously driven conception of history which excited contemporaries across the Protestant world. This article reconstructs the impetus which Neander gave to the creation of a religiously cosmopolitan historical imagination in Germany, Britain, and the United States. At a time when Hegelian and ‘scientific’ models of historical progress foretold a post-Christian future for civilization, Neander's alternative idea of world history, centred on the leavening spread of the invisible church through contrasting forms of Christianity and culture, exercised a powerful sway over Protestant historians everywhere. His universalizing historical philosophy offered an appealing mode of self-understanding to the networks which translated his ideas into new settings. Appearing to afford a mode of securing Protestantism from the twin dangers of sectarianism and unbelief, Neander's ‘unpartisan’ philosophy simultaneously became an important instrument of Protestant nation-building in the hands of the historians drawn towards it. By considering the interaction between universal and national aspirations in the development and dissemination of Neander's historical philosophy, the article examines the practical implications of historical thought, and connections between national and transnational scales of analysis, in modern religious and intellectual history.

The thirteenth edition of The campaign guide: A handbook for unionist speakers was published on the eve of the Great War. This massive 900 page Guide, like its predecessors, was ‘prepared with a view to giving to Unionist Candidates and Speakers…a handy reference work covering the whole field of contemporary political controversy.’ The fourth largest chapter in the book (74 pages) dealt with Ireland and was reflective of the ‘present position’of ‘THE IRISH QUESTION’ being ‘in the front rank of political controversy’ Four years later Election notes, an 87 page pamphlet assembled prior to the 1918 election as a hasty substitute for what would have been an entirely inappropriate Campaign guide, had no chapter on Ireland, no reference to the Irish question in the index and, in fact, conveyed not a single word on the subject.

In 1750 Frederick II of Prussia created a new trade company in Emden. Diplomats, merchants, and other observers in Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Hamburg reacted with great concern to this Prussian bid to join the world of overseas commerce. These concerns were not unfounded. Frederick pursued his goal with great determination. The article explains why Prussia embarked on this ultimately unsuccessful venture and why established commercial powers such as Britain or the Netherlands felt threatened by the new competitor. In this context the article explores an international debate about political economy that was associated with the creation of the Prussian trade company. This debate took place in Britain, the Netherlands, Hamburg, and Prussia. The case of the Prussian Asiatic trade company suggests that the concepts of Oceanic and Atlantic history need to be extended beyond the narrow stretch of coastal regions. In the Prussian case the drive to join the world of overseas commerce originated from the inland and from a country that had traditionally been oriented towards overland commerce and European expansion. The study of the events and debates associated with the creation of the trade company also suggests a partially new perspective on Prussia's economic policies in the period.

During the nineteenth century the British consular service was often dismissed as an organization with purely commercial responsibilities. A succession of governments and diplomats insisted upon this notion, despite the fact that at certain times both relied very much on consular officials for information on foreign affairs. This dependence was especially evident in Italy during the decade after 1860, when British leaders had lent their moral and diplomatic support to the creation of the modern Italian state against considerable international opposition. During this period their desire not to see the achievement undone led them to maintain a close watch on Italian affairs. The contribution made in this area by the consular service, and the manner in which it was reorganized in response to Italian unification, show how such a role could take priority over its other functions. Although this state of affairs was no doubt exceptional on account of the remarkable level of British interest in the Unification of Italy, it nonetheless provides a clear demonstration of how the organization could be used under certain circumstances. The extent to which British consuls were used to monitor affairs in post-unification Italy also encourages reflection upon the widespread view that British foreign policy rejected interventionism in favour of isolation from European affairs during the 1860s.

Beer was a staple of early modern diets across northern Europe and the Atlantic World. While its profound social, economic, and cultural significance is well established, little is known about the nature and quality of the drink itself, particularly its nutritional characteristics. Until now, attempts to estimate calorie and alcohol content have been monodisciplinary in approach, involving either theoretical calculations based on grain content, or a rough approximation with modern equivalents. Using sixteenth-century Ireland as a case-study, this article describes an interdisciplinary approach to the problem of early modern beer. Exploiting a rich seam of unpublished archival material, the project recreates an early modern beer, using the most appropriate ingredients, equipment, and processes possible. Scientific analysis of the finished drink offers new perspectives on beer as a dietary staple. The project is a model for integrating practical or experimental approaches into mainstream historical study, and the practice of radical interdisciplinarity. It represents the most comprehensive effort to recreate an historic beer in any context to date, bringing together historians, experimental archaeologists, agronomists, microbiologists, brewing scientists, craftworkers, farmers, and maltsters to tackle problematic questions about the past.

Historians have misunderstood the fundamental nature of the English Jesuit mission of 1580–1. Beginning with A.O. Meyer in 1916 and continuing through John Bossy and Christopher Haigh in the 1970s and 1980s, historians have mistakenly characterized this mission as essentially pastoral. They have admired the Jesuit priests for their personal courage in the face of persecution but have simultaneously criticized them for their inability to sustain English catholicism among the laity. But in fact the mission was fundamentally political in nature, and Robert Parsons in particular hoped to use the mission to return England to the catholic fold, by force if necessary. Parsons's designs on Scotland and on James VI in the early 1580s are especially illuminating in this regard. The English mission failed in this its principal goal, and the exact nature of the missioners' failure must be understood for what it was.

This article argues that the failed campaign of one former clerk against corruption in the Royal Navy's sick and wounded service during the Nine Years War sheds light on some roots of modern whistle blowing. During the 1690s, England's parliament took important steps towards becoming an organ of inquiry into the workings of all government departments. Parliament's desire for information that could assist it to check Leviathan's actions, coupled with the end of pre-publication censorship in 1695, encouraged the advent of pamphleteering aimed at showing how to improve or correct abuses within the administrative structure and practices of the expanding fiscal-military state. It was from this stream of informative petitioning directed at the Commons and the Lords that informants such as Samuel Baston, as well as George Everett, William Hodges, and Robert Crosfeild, tried to call time on either systematic injustices or particular irregularities within the naval service for what they claimed was the public interest. What they and others called ‘discovering’ governmental malfeasance should be seen as early examples of blowing the whistle on wrongdoing.