This review furthers our understanding of the history of neo-liberalism in Britain, and more particularly of the economics and politics of the 1970s and 1980s, through an examination of the writings of the economic journalist, Samuel Brittan, widely regarded as a central figure in undermining the intellectual basis for the Keynesian consensus about big government. This review provides a close study of Brittan's ‘The economic contradictions of democracy’ (1975, hereafter ECD) – one of the most cited contributions to the declinist literature of the decade – in which Brittan warned that, without remedial action, liberal democracy ‘is likely to pass away within the lifetime of people now adult’. In this reappraisal of Brittan's ECD, it is argued that this paper is much more than just eloquent, scholarly declinism, and in the process, the generic problem facing all contemporary historians of thought and policy is confronted: what is the influence of any one individual and/or work? The reappraisal relates directly to central themes of the 1970s ‘crisis’, especially ‘overload’ and ‘ungovernability’; it examines the competitive nature of the market for declinist prognostications (notably the Jay–Brittan nexus), with one objective being to provide a counterbalance to much recent scholarship which has over-focused on think-tanks at the expense of elite journalists who were very far from being academics manqués; and, finally, it reviews Brittan's role in the so-called Thatcher revolution, where much has been claimed but little documented.

The partial opening up of the formerly closed Soviet archives has had an enormous impact on the amount of new historical material available for research. Recent developments in research on Stalin and the Soviet Union are remarkable. The present article examines these developments with respect to three particular topics: ‘Stalin and Terror’, ‘Stalin and ideology’, and ‘Stalin and society’. It argues that whereas in certain areas new information has led to a greater consensus among historians, in others, such as Stalin's Great Terror, it has led to heated controversy. The article asks why, and suggests that the problem lies both in conceptualization and in the use of historical sources. More generally, the article discusses the present state of knowledge in the field. Because the study of Stalinism is often assessed in the light of the study of Nazism, it includes brief comparisons of Stalin and Hitler and Stalinism and Nazism where appropriate.

William Pitt the Younger died in 1806 but had a long afterlife in political argument. Historians have argued that a reactionary cult of Pitt in early nineteenth-century toryism died with Catholic emancipation, but this article suggests that invocation of Pitt's character was more widespread and durable, because linked to the assertion and defence of party identities. Whig hostility to Pitt remained strong even in the middle of the nineteenth century. Lord John Russell attacked his character flaws to celebrate the continued vigour and distinctness of Foxite political culture within the Liberal party. Conversely, use of Pitt in argument about what the tory party should be like did not end with reform. In the 1830s, traditional celebration of Pitt as a stern opponent of revolutionary agitation survived within a supposedly moderate conservatism. In Peel's second administration, arguments about whether Pitt had been firm or flexible, liberal or intransigent, reflected and added to disputes about how much religious and economic liberalism Peel should endorse. It was schism between Peelites and protectionists, the article suggests, which broke the clear link between celebration of Pitt's character and one party, allowing a more wide-ranging, because less politically charged, appreciation of Pitt to develop.

This article explores the activities of Nicolas Chesneau, a Parisian printer active between the beginning of the French Wars of Religion and the League. While printing in the Protestant sphere has received a great deal of historiographical attention, the influence of Catholic printing on opinion forming during the French Wars of Religion remains comparatively misunderstood. Nicolas Chesneau was a militant Catholic printer whose activity responded to commercial and political pressures but also reflects a personal commitment to Catholicism. Evidence drawn from Chesneau's epistles and bibliography reveals personal relationships with authors, other printers, and patrons. Chesneau's production answered growing demand for news and religious instruction for the laity, a phenomenon that is only beginning to be understood. Analysis of his output reveals the influence of the cardinal de Lorraine who was determined to use the vernacular book to pursue his agenda of reform, often in the face of institutional opposition from the crown, the parlement, and the University of Paris. The end of Nicolas Chesneau's career is marked by a shift towards expensive in-folio books that proved to be less profitable than the short in-octavo works that distinguishes his production during the first decade of the French Wars of Religion.

In the 1890s the concept of laissez-faire still dominated the attitude of the Foreign Office to the question of overseas loans and investment. Unlike its European counterparts, the British Government had no tradition of interference in the world of high finance, nor were there any formal channels of communication between die City and the Foreign Office whereby a community of interests might be established or policies correlated. In the mid-nineteenth century there had been little need for closer contact. The power of British finance had ensured ample opportunities for British investment in fields where foreign competition was virtually non-existent. Such communication as had been considered necessary could be effected through hints in speeches, social contacts, or personal relationships - strictly informal procedures which, apart from Disraeli&s bid for the Suez canal shares, had produced minor and unspectacular results.

This article is a byproduct of a large-scale research project on the politics of Salford since 1830. In a sense, it shows what can happen to an historian when working amongst political scientists, for the article attempts to apply a few of the latter's concerns, and ways of looking at the world, to a specific historical situation. Though the raw material for the article is almostentirely historical, I hope that its themes will be of interest to people in both disciplines.

Between 1907 and 1984 unearned income in Britain was taxed at higher rates than wages and salaries, a bias that was supported intermittently by limiting shareholders’ dividends and attempting to tax capital wealth. Although apparently accepted as part of the fiscal order until 1979, Margaret Thatcher's government was able to complete the dismantling of the bias in favour of earned income by 1984. This article examines the events and politics of the 1970s to explain the volte-face. The article initially charts the role of political prejudice against rentiers in maintaining higher taxes on unearned income in the context of 1970s economic turmoil and inflation. The article then considers the 1970s fiscal shift from the perspective of equity shareholdings, juxtaposing the use of tax and dividend restraint as a mechanism for control of investment capital with pressure for wider share ownership, particularly for employees. Finally, Avner Offer's theories on prudent financial behaviour are imported as a backdrop for the trend away from tax relief for long-term, illiquid savings towards market-driven incentives. Ultimately, the article detects a change of approach in both main political parties which in turn creates a more stable environment for future policy formation.

American local history has been much studied, but rarely integrated into the general history of the country. Although greater attention is now being paid to the connexions between local political, social and economic developments and national trends, there is still a very real disparity in historiographical emphasis between national issues and the problems of community life experienced by Americans in the past. For no period, perhaps, is this disparity so graphic as for the mid-nineteenth century; the years from about 1840 to the 1870s or the 1880s were convulsed by sectional rivalries, civil war and reconstruction, to which matters historians have devoted their attention. Steadily, however, the local communities themselves have come under scrutiny. But the major interpretation currently accepted reinforces, rather than qualifies, the general picture we have of that period, since the North, at least, is regarded as buoyant and expansive in the mid-century, pursuing with relentless self-confidence such aims as help to explain the coming, and the winning, of the Civil War; reform, moral and educational improvement, and the opening of economic opportunities to yeomen farmers, artisans and small merchants.

The official biographers of H. H. Asquith believed that his sole difference of any importance with Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman in the period when Asquith served as his principal lieutenant rose in connexion with the Trade Disputes Act of 1906. In fact, another important difference divided them in the following spring, this one rising out of their respective views on the proper mode of limiting the veto of the house of lords. That of Campbell-Bannerman is well known. He sponsored a plan of suspensory veto that could conceivably limit the period in which the lords' veto operated to little more than six months. Under its terms a bill sent up to the house of lords would go to a small conference representing each house equally when the two houses were in disagreement. Should the conference fail, the bill or another like it could be reintroduced in the house of commons after an interval of at least six months, passed under drastic closure, and sent once more to the house of lords. The impasse continuing, a second conference might be held; and a second failure at this juncture could entail a repetition of the whole process. But if a third conference proved unsuccessful, the bill could become law without the consent of the house of lords. Known subsequently as the C-B veto plan, it was made public by the Prime Minister in a speech in the house of commons, on 24 June 1007, when he also introduced and carried by a large majority a resolution asserting that the power of the house of lords to alter or reject bills should be so restricted by law as to secure that the decision of the house of commons should prevail within the limits of a single parliament.

Germany's position among the great powers of Europe had endured numerous setbacks since 1890. No longer could the Germans look at a Europe in which most of the powers were closely associated with her while her rival, France, stood alone and isolated. In 1894 Russia had become an ally of France, in 1904 Great Britain had signed an agreement with the French, and in 1907 Russia and Great Britain had come to terms. After 1904 the probability of an Anglo-German rapprochement decreased. One of the principal items settled in the Anglo-French entente had been the future of Morocco. Great Britain had agreed that France might establish a protectorate in that area when the time seemed propitious. Furthermore, the French had also signed treaties with Italy and Spain concerning Morocco's future. But Germany, who had been a signatory of the Madrid Convention of 1880, the original agreement dealing with Morocco, had not even been officially notified, let alone consulted. Thus, Morocco had become a symbol of Germany's declining prestige.

The negotiations leading up to the Treaty of London of 27 April 1915 afford a classic illustration of Grey's complaints concerning the difficulties of conducting diplomacy in wartime. Though manifold they may be reduced to two headings. In the first place diplomacy was dependent, hopelessly so, upon victory in the field. ‘A diplomacy which was suitable when the Allied armies were having success’, Grey wrote, ‘was hopelessly unsuitable when the Germans seemed to be winning.’ Whereas before the war the Foreign Office had exercised some influence upon the development of British naval and military strategy, now the boot was upon the other foot. Words could not compensate for military defeats: ‘in war words count only so far as they are backed by force and victories. Up to the end of 1916…Allied diplomacy had little enough of this backing’.

The thirteenth century, like the eighteenth century, was a siècle français. Even Frederick II had failed to eradicate the impression German decline which had found expression after Philip Augustus's victory at Bouvines in 1214. After Frederick II's death in 1250, the Capetian monarchy had used its power, its prestige and its traditions to obtain political predominance in Europe and, indeed, throughout the Mediterranean world. The French monarchy was not, indeed, so firmly established as contemporaries supposed: after 1314 a period of “feudal reaction” set in, which revealed the weaknesses in the political structure the Capetians had built up. But the sudden concentration of French power in the closing years of the thirteenth century, the unity of the country around the throne, and the unanimous support which all classes, nobility, clergy and bourgeoisie, gave to royal policy, not only contrasted markedly with the divergences of interest within England and within Germany, but also gave the Capetian monarchs decisive advantages in their dealings with other governments. French policy, based on Carolingian tradition and directed to the “reintegration” of Gaul, was, by comparison with the mere conservatism of Edward I, positive, clearly defined, and systematically pursued. Unlike English or German policy i t was invigorated by a conscious “ideology”, which found expression not only in the unofficial writings of Pierre Dubois, but also in the official memoranda of Nogaret, Flote and Plaisians, and which had deep roots in French history.3 Because of these advantages, France at this period was the focal point at which all the complex problems of European politics converged: all the wires which statesmen were pulling, passed through Paris. European policy responded or reacted to the policy of France.

In the past decade scholars such as Stanford Lehmberg. G. R. Elton, and J. G. Bellamy have increased our understanding of the use of parliamentary attainder in the reign of Henry VIII. Traditionally attainder had been used to punish fugitives in flight, a form of parliamentary outlawry, or to affirm and supplement prior convictions achieved through the common law or the law of arms in order to extend the crown's rights to forfeited estates. At common law a traitor's forfeiture was limited to lands in fee simple, and by the law of arms his lands were totally immune to forfeiture. Passage of an act of attainder, however, enabled the king to seize any or all of a traitor's land, whether held in fee simple, fee tail, or to the use of the traitor. In the crucial decade of the 1530s attainder assumed a new role, condemning and ordering the execution of offenders solely by authority of parliament, without any prior judicial proceedings and despite an absence of obstacles which might have made a trial impossible. Lehmberg emphasizes the significance of this transformation in his detailed study of attainder in the reign of Henry VIII and suggests that the ‘pivotal act’ was the attainder of Elizabeth Barton and her followers in 1534. Certainly Barton's attainder was the first of many utilized by Henry's government to enforce the Reformation, and it did so without recourse to the common law. Lehmberg is mistaken, however, in his belief that this was the first attainder of the reign to attaint an individual without prior common law proceedings, for that distinction belongs to the attainder of Richard Roose in 1531.

It is well known that trading companies played an important role in the formation of British colonies during the Partition of Africa. Eventual developments in areas such as Nigeria, Rhodesia and East Africa, however, have tended to give a false impression of the relations between commercial undertakings and the British Government. It has been suggested that the authorities deliberately used chartered companies for imperialist purposes.1 Contemporary observers, too, suspected the existence of a comprehensive plan whereby it was ‘to private initiative that the British Government at first leaves the task of paving the way for its political designs’.2 But in actual fact official circles were usually extremely reluctant to extend their obligations, and at a time when interest in expansion is generally assumed to have been great and growing were still by no means always willing even to grant a Royal Charter to any newly-formed Company that applied for one. One such undertaking that became painfully aware of this was the North-West African Company, a now-forgotten concern that has left no mark on the modern map. Nevertheless, an account of its history, of the means which it used to try to enrol official support and of the attitude of the British Government is not without interest as a qualification of the usual view of the years 1875–95, which have too often been treated as dominated by a ‘scramble’ for overseas territory and a ruthless struggle for new markets and sources of raw material.

Hitler's foreign policy is still an area of widespread interest - particularly the question of its inner coherence. The present consensus goes back to the early 1950s and 1960s, when the German attack upon Russia was viewed as one stage in Hitler's quest for European hegemony or even world domination. While Alan Bullock viewed Hitler as an opportunist, Hugh Trevor-Roper in his essay on Hitler's war aims interpreted Hitler's invasion of Russia as a systematic step in Hitler's programme. Since then this model has been highly refined and systematized, notably by Andreas Hillgruber, who argues that Hitler's foreign policy programme had already been formulated long before he came to power, particularly in Mein Kampf and Hitler's Second book. On this model National Socialist foreign policy was programmatically fixed and Hillgruber goes as far to say that Hitler's programme ‘alone determined the great line of German policy in general’ and that he devoted all the energies available to him to realizing it. Yet even before Hillgruber had formulated his model, case studies were available which appeared to contradict its inner coherence and logic. Serious objections have also been raised by Martin Broszat, who describes Hitler's idea of an eastern empire as a ‘metaphor and Utopian figure of speech’.

This article examines the role of the House of Lords as the high court from the Restoration of 1660 to the passage of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act in 1876. Throughout this period, lay peers and bishops judged appeals on civil law from the central courts of England and Wales, Ireland (aside from between 1783 and 1800), and Scotland after the Union of 1707. It has long been known that the revolution of 1688–9 transformed the ability of parliament to pass legislation, but the increased length and predictability of parliamentary sessions was of equal significance to the judicial functions performed by peers. Unlike the English-dominated profile of eighteenth-century legislation, Scots constituted the largest proportion of appellants between 1740 and 1875. The lack of interaction between Westminster and Scotland is often seen as essential to ensuring the longevity of the Union, but through comparing the subject matter of appeals and mapping the distribution of cases within Scotland, this article demonstrates the extent of Scottish engagement. Echoing the tendency of Scottish interests to pursue local, private, and specific legislation in order to insulate Scottish institutions from English intervention, Scottish litigants primarily sought to maintain and challenge local privileges, legal particularisms, and the power of dominant landowners.