Georges Clemenceau has traditionally been portrayed as a narrow-minded French nationalist. In spite of this reputation, he had many personal friends in England and was widely considered during his lifetime to be France's most eminent anglophile. Although his biographers briefly mention these ties, no one has systematically explored their political and diplomatic implications. Making use of new archival and journalistic evidence, this article will examine Clemenceau's relationships with several English upper-class mavericks: the positivist Frederic Harrison, the head-strong and opinionated Maxse family, and the idiosyncratic social democratic leader Henry M. Hyndman. Their influence encouraged in him an attitude toward England which blended sincere anglophilia with a deep-rooted distrust of its governing classes. Only by exploring this paradox can we understand the roots of Clemenceau's ultimate disillusionment with England.

Spain at the close of the fifteenth century had just completed a long process of unification, accomplished by a series of crusades, partly national and partly religious in character, within Iberian territory. Pride of race, skill in arms and a truculent missionary Catholicism characterized the ruling elements in the new Spanish state, especially in Castille, the dominant partner of the union. A stern royal discipline controlled the ambitions of the aristocracy. The monarchy was strong, at that time truly national, supreme in both Church and State. Its authority, however, though autocratic, was by no means lawless. Canon and Civil Law, adapted to national needs, existed side by side with jealously guarded local fueros and the interpretation and reconciliation of masses of conflicting law lay in the hands of a numerous and very powerful legal profession. Spain, indeed, carried over from the age of feudalism into the age of sovereignty the supposedly mediaeval notion of jurisdiction as the essential function of authority. The monarch was still a judge, the chief of judges. His authority was most directly and characteristically represented by the high courts of justice and in the government of his dominions the school-trained lawyer was his most useful servant.

Over the so-called ‘Jew Bill’; of 1753, the Opposition press was to wage one of the most extraordinary propaganda campaigns in English history. The Bill itself was a comparatively minor measure introduced by the Pelham ministry t o relieve at least some of the disabilities under which the Jews then laboured. Although there was probably no country in Europe in which the Jews received better treatment, and Jewish merchants and financiers had attained positions of very considerable wealth and influence in England, a number of irksome restrictions remained. This was particularly the case in the matter of naturalization, which gave to aliens the rights of natural-born Englishmen, such as the right to own land and ships, and to trade with the colonies. The Jewish Naturalization Bill–to give it its proper title—was designed to remove this disability, by providing that individual Jews who had been resident i n Great Britain or Ireland for three years might be naturalized by Act of Parliament without taking the Sacrament. It was a very modest measure. It certainly did not confer on all Jews in the country the rights of British citizens, and would, in fact, have applied only to a very small number of extremely wealthy Jews, for a private Act of Parliament was a very expensive proceeding indeed. Nor did it relieve Jews of religious disabilities. Yet this Bill was to produce a quite remarkable clamour on the part of the Opposition press, in which it was to be denounced as a blasphemous attack upon Christianity, and the unfortunate Jews were to be accused of every imaginable vice and enormity. There were few political issues in the early eighteenth century to arouse the emotions of Englishmen: but the ‘Jew Bill’; was certainly one of them.

This article explores the fierce resistance and controversy that have marked the reception of post-colonial studies in France. In contrast to the anglophone academy, where post-colonialism emerged and was gradually institutionalized throughout the 1980s and 1990s, in France these approaches did not make a mark until much later. The context of social and political crisis over France's post-colonial populations, in which the debate surrounding post-colonial studies emerged, is fundamental to understanding the high stakes and thus the vehemence and polemical nature of their reception. Institutional factors and the particularities of the French intellectual climate, France's strong Republican ideology, and its problematic relationship with its own colonial history, are all explored as reasons for this troubled relationship. The anglocentrism of post-colonial studies is also considered, as are the mutually beneficial outcomes of a dialogue between post-colonial studies and the French debates and context. I outline a specifically ‘French’ post-colonialism that has emerged from these debates, and suggest that whilst positive moves have been made towards a truly inclusive post-colonial studies that would take account of numerous languages, former empires, and former colonies, there remains work to be done in this direction.

The career of the MP and poet Christopher Brooke, in particular his The ghost of Richard the third (1614) and his activity in the 1614 ‘addled’ parliament, forms the basis of this study of Jacobean political culture. Brooke's career foregrounds the close interaction of political and literary cultures in the period; he was a leading member of the political circle, the ‘Sireniacs’, which had strong parliamentary ties, and was one of the Inns of Court-based ‘oppositional’ Spenserian poets. Together with his fellow ‘Sireniac’ MPs, Brooke vehemently opposed the definition of impositions as the domain of absolute rather than ordinary powers of the crown because of the threat this posed to the rights of parliament and the subject. The ghost of Richard the third provides an example of parliamentary debates entering a wider print culture, where impositions merged with broader civic issues. Political language in this period was not confined to the realms of high theory and Brooke's poem illustrates the complex mediation of political discourses through literary forms. A humanist discourse of tyranny provided Brooke with a coded language, enabling him to articulate his concern for the health of the commonwealth and to address areas of ideological conflict in early Stuart political culture.

Letters are a literary resource often under-estimated by scholars. Sackville's letters from France, to Thomas Heneage and Elizabeth I, demonstrate how the application of literary means, guided by a partial viewpoint, creates the circumstances in which the political management of actuality can occur. These letters are generally known only from extracts and digests in calendars, which give no hint of their literary forms and styles. No one has yet commented on the significance of their rhetorical tactics. The full context of the correspondence shows Sackville exploiting existing relationships with Heneage and the queen to build up good will and credibility for himself as a lively and judicious personality. In particular, the previously unpublished representation of his secret interview with Catherine de Medici exploits the actuality of dramatic dialogue far beyond the normal use of so-called verbatim report in diplomatic correspondence. This representation raises questions of how far Sackville interpreted what he heard and why. The opportunity to compare Catherine's account of their meeting with Sackville's shows him selecting and emphasizing certain details, while suppressing others, in anticipation of his reader's response.

One of the perquisites of having been a high ranking Conservative politician is the near-certain admiration of future biographers, even when, as in the case of Sire James Graham, the biographers have no political axe to grind and do not rise to hero worship. Professor Erickson and Professor Ward, Graham's most recent biographers, do not ignore the fierce contemporary condemnation that Graham evoked: Ward, indeed, takes Graham's unpopularity as the starting point for a re-evalution of his career. But both have distinguished between his skills in political management, his political acumen and personality, on the one hand, and his vision, ability, enterprise and industry on the other, and by concentrating on the latter have produced a picture of which Graham would have approved. What results is, in many respects, a typical Peelite self-portrait – of a bold, resourceful, tireless and courageous reformer, valiantly struggling against vested interest, ignorance and apathy, saddened but not surprised by the hostility which he experienced.

For well over a decade studies in local history have occupied a significant position in the historiography of early modern England. In particular, the study of the ‘county community’ as the most significant English political and governmental unit and as the primary sphere of social and affectional loyalties for the greater number of those Englishmen constituting the political nation has become securely established. Within this wide and fruitful field for continuing research the theme of the ‘points of contact’ or reciprocal communication between the court and the county, Westminster and the provinces, which Sir Geoffrey Elton raised not so long ago and which Kevin Sharpe more recently attempted to apply to the problems of government in early Stuart England, suggests that investigations of the gentry of a particular county might illustrate how this interchange between the centre and the localities functioned. For such a study to prove fruitful, however, one prerequisite would appear to be necessary: a member of a prominent county family, perhaps its head, who also holds a major office of state or position at court. Such a man was Sir James Croft whose eminent position in Herefordshire was founded on the contacts he made and the patronage he attracted in the last years of Henry VIII's reign. Although this position was threatened in the years of his disgrace during Queen Mary's reign, it gathered strength again in the 1560s, and reached its apogee during the following two decades. Between 1570 and his death in 1590, he served at court as comptroller of the household.

The Munich agreement of 1938 continues to be a source of controversy, and differences concerning the reasons for British policy are unlikely to be resolved for some time to come.1 There is, however, one minor but important aspect of that policy which has been little discussed—the activities of Konrad Henlein. His supposed aims played an important part in British calculations in the years before Munich. It is the purpose of this article to take a fresh look at his visits to London. While contemporary impressions can now be compared with evidence drawn from a variety of sources, the full truth about Henlein remains elusive. Since certain crucial documents or records of conversations cannot now be traced, a certain amount of conjecture is inevitable and dogmatism about his rather enigmatic conduct would be unwise.

Before 1914, a more intimate relationship started to develop between overseas commercial activity and foreign policy. This occurred as a consequence of the politicization of international business relations that came about when other great powers began increasingly to challenge Britain's global commercial, political, and imperial supremacy. Britain had traditionally followed a laissez-faire line when it came to supporting or protecting British overseas business enterprise. In the mid-1880s, Britain was compelled to review its policy. After this, the British government was prepared to offer limited assistance to British firms, but this often took place only in regions which were significant in terms of overall policy interest, including Turkey, Iran, and China. This article examines British commercial diplomacy in the Balkans, a region which has not received much attention from historians in this framework. British commercial diplomacy there followed the general line of limited intervention and support was offered mostly on legal grounds. Local political troubles and great power politics also played a role in diplomatic decision-making as did negative cultural perceptions, but to a considerably lesser degree. In most cases, the British government refrained from supporting British business enterprise in the Balkans on account of fears about financial speculation.

This article presents the full text of a hitherto unpublished letter to Hobbes, and provides details of three other items from his correspondence which have not survived. The unpublished letter is from the Oxford academic Thomas Barlow, thanking Hobbes for a copy of Hobbes's De homine; that copy also survives, and details are given of Barlow's critical annotations on it. Where the three non-extant letters are concerned, some information about them has been gleaned from entries in nineteenth-century dealers' and auctioneers' catalogues; in one case, a letter concerning telescopes from the marquess of Newcastle, those details are supplemented by other evidence, from Newcastle's household papers. Finally, some alleged items of Hobbes's correspondence are described and discounted, and two new manuscripts of known letters are listed.

The triumph of Pitt's ministry in 1784 over the Fox-North Coalition is a familiar event in British political history. But the consolidation of the ministry after 1784 has yet to be analyzed in detail. Though the general election of 1784, accompanied by spectacular demonstrations of public opinion in support of the government, clinched Pitt's victory, there was no immediate return to tranquillity. Within two years, Pitt was defeated on four major issues: the Westminster scrutiny, the Irish Resolutions, parliamentary reform, and the duke of Richmond's scheme for the fortification of the dockyards.

Hugh Balsham, bishop of Ely from 1257 to 1286, is chiefly remembered for his services to the university of Cambridge and for his foundation of Peterhouse. His election to the see of Ely, and the subsequent dispute arising out of it, has hitherto received but scanty attention, and the treatment that this incident was afforded has usually been based on the account given by Matthew Paris. But Matthew Paris's highly romantic and colourful account is not at all accurate, nor, from a canonist's point of view, does his report make intelligible reading; it is the somewhat sensational presentation of one who relied on the necessarily somewhat distorted tales of more or less well-informed reporters. Being apparently the only contemporary source, it has served so far as the sole record of this dispute. But newly discovered material enables us to reconstruct the dispute following the election and, above all, to show the real reasons which provoked it. Although by no means aspiring to the striking publicity of the Canterbury election some fifty years earlier, this incident, in several respects, is more important than its renowned predecessor. Before we attempt to reconstruct the arguments, it will be advisable to summarize briefly the report of Matthew Paris.

Like other areas central to the royalist cause, Wales experienced a social and political revolution between about 1648 and 1660. In every county except Pembrokeshire, only a small minority of the traditional ruling families had supported the parliamentary side before 1645, and even fewer accepted the radical solutions proposed after 1648, or during the extremist revival of 1659. As a result, governments during the ‘radical’ periods had to turn to new social groups to administer these recalcitrant areas, and to supervise their conversion to puritanism and republican loyalty. The radicals in county society can normally be identified from their participation in local government in such periods (1649–53, 1659) although this is not an infallible guide, and appointment to a committee did not necessarily mean active service. If we compare the lists of justices, sequestration commissioners and committee men for, say, Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Radnorshire, then in each case we find that about thirty or forty names consistently appear during radical periods. In Pembrokeshire these were mainly drawn from the traditional rulers who had supported parliament in 1642, while the ‘radicals’ of Carmarthenshire were broadly the socially conservative followers of the powerful earl of Carbery, the old royalist leader who won and retained the favour of Cromwell. In Radnorshire by contrast, the committees for these years contained a very strong radical element, from families often not hitherto represented in county government. Of about thirty-three men whose radicalism is suggested by their periods in office, at least seven were not only strong republicans, but also followers of the millenarian Vavasor Powell, who loyally supported the Rump and the Barebones experiment, and plotted against Cromwell. Moreover, it was Radnorshire which was representative of Welsh counties in the 1650s, while the two south-western shires were exceptional in their preservation of gentry continuity in government.

It is well known that Gladstone's progress to the leadership of the Liberal party between 1859 and 1868 included the building of an alliance with Nonconformity which lasted, wim some interruptions, to the end of his life. This coalition was remarkable in view of the previous diversity of viewpoint between its participants. In the 1830s Nonconformists had already adopted a policy of disestablishment when Gladstone was airing a diametrically opposite opinion in The State in its relations with the Church; and Gladstone's High Churchmanship was disliked by the evangelical Nonconformists, one of whom wrote a pamphlet entitled The Ritualistic Movement in the Church of England, a reason for disestablishment. In view of these differences, how did there develop a firm and continually reviving political alliance, as intimate as that between Gladstone and Irish Home Rulers in the 1880s?