The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was the major representative of Second International socialism on British soil. As a socialist organization it is usually viewed through the distorting prism of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. This article sets out to analyse the organization's strategy in its proper context – that of the struggle to transform Victorian and Edwardian Britain into the co-operative commonwealth. SDF views on the nature of revolution and what members called ‘palliative’ reforms are considered, as are their views on the character of the British state, the nature of democracy, the role of parliament, and the potential for violence at times of change. For them, the transition to socialism would be effected by well-fed, organized workers with a degree of education and culture, and their social reforms were designed to bring this revolutionary class into being. Campaigns against unemployment, work on school boards, boards of guardians, and local councils are found to have been conducted both as ends in themselves, and as a part of a grander strategy for the attainment of socialism. The SDF was a ‘parliamentary revolutionary party’ which sought to use reforms constructively in order to bring about the transformation of British society.

The events of 1857 etched themselves deeply into the consciousness of the British in India. Throughout the remaining years of British rule the lessons of the Mutiny were never forgotten; indeed they provided the constant backdrop against which British policy was enacted. To a large extent this experience played a decisive role in recasting the whole direction of British policy. Its impact on policy toward the native Indian states was sharp, and lasting in its effects. Canning realized that the native states were ‘break-waters to the storm which would otherwise have swept over us in one great wave’, and he henceforward, by his grant of the right of adoption, committed Britain to their maintenance.1 This post-Mutiny solicitude for the native states stands in obvious contrast with the deprecatory, if not avowedly annexationist, policy of Canning's predecessors.

This article questions the assumption that the earl of Cork was at the forefront of the attack on the earl of Strafford in England. It is argued that, before the opening of the Long Parliament, Cork had much to gain by securing Strafford's favour because of his continuing need to secure his Irish estates and his increasing social ambitions within the English court. The earl's decision to stand as witness against the lord lieutenant in 1641 was made with great reluctance, and the trial itself was fraught with unexpected dangers for Cork as well as Strafford. Throughout the crisis of 1638–41, the earl of Cork was motivated by political and financial concerns, not by a single-minded hatred of the earl of Strafford.

One of the most serious problems facing Archbishop Laud was the rapid growth of the Lecturer Movement during the 1620s and 1630s. The increasing numbers of graduates available, and the increasing amount of money donated to support them meant that the weekly lectures had become one of the chief “religious … organizations of the opposition”, and were beginning to “undermine the hierarchical principle”. The gravity of the situation was marked by the increasingly stringent regulation of the lecturers. They had originally been allowed to preach with very little control, but from the Canons of 1604 onwards they were made the subject of several new regulations. These culminated in the Directions of March 16296 which, although issued by Archbishop Abbot, were based upon suggestions made by Laud to the king. Soon afterwards the lecturers in London Diocese were curtailed as a prelude to Laud's future work as archbishop. The Directions were reissued in January 1634, and a policy of deliberately reducing certain kinds of lecturer was initiated in several dioceses, pursued in the Metropolitical Visitation, and completed by Laud's supporters amongst the bishops.

This article looks at the membership and organization of the opposition that emerged in the house of lords between 1720 and 1723 under the leadership of William, 1st Earl Cowper. The origin of this new opposition lay in the political reaction to the extensive corruption exposed by the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, which brought together a coalition of dissident whigs and tones (both Hanoverian tories and Jacobites) who proceeded to attack the ministries of the earl of Sunderland and of Viscount Townshend and Robert Walpole for their supposed corrupt administration. The hallmark of the new opposition was the extensive campaign of protests against the opposition's defeat in votes, protests which were entered (with reasons) into the Journals of the House, and which were then published in the form of broadsheets, pamphlets, and newsletters as propaganda in an appeal to public opinion. This was the first time an opposition had indulged in an extensive and sustained campaign of influencing the public outside Westminster. This campaign required a high level of organization. This Cowper provided in imitation of some of the new management techniques being developed by the ministry to control the house of lords, plus a new feature – the daily pre-sitting meetings of the leadership to concert tactics. The legacy of the new opposition was the preservation of the concept of a loyal opposition as an acceptable part of British political life.

Barclays: the business of banking, 1690–1996. By Margaret Ackrill and Leslie Hannah. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xxi+481. ISBN 0-521-79035-2. £45.00.

The worlds of the East India Company. Edited by H. V. Bowen, Margarette Lincoln, and Nigel Rigby. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002. Pp. xvii+246. ISBN 0-85115-877-3. £45.00.

Kingship and crown finance under James VI and I, 1603–1625. By John Cramsie. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002. Pp. xi+242. ISBN 0-86193-259-5. £50.00.

Mammon's music: literature and economics in the age of Milton. By Blair Hoxby. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Pp. xii+320. ISBN 0-300-09378-0. $45.00.

Usury, interest, and the Reformation. By Eric Kerridge. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Pp. 206. ISBN 0-7546-0688-0. £55.00.

The rise of commercial empires: England and the Netherlands in the age of mercantilism, 1650–1770. By David Ormrod. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii+400. ISBN 0-521-81926-1. £55.00.

The rhetoric of credit: merchants in early modern writing. By Ceri Sullivan. London: Associated University Presses, 2002. Pp. 217. ISBN 0-8386-3926-7. £38.00.

The unshackling of the European economy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries was achieved, ironically, by the forging of new and stronger chains of trade and credit within nations, across regions, and around the globe. The seven books under review explore that process from different disciplinary standpoints, but chiefly as it affected England, the country that would become emblematic of commercial advancement and under whose sway the modern capitalist system emerged. How England managed this feat financially and commercially, politically and culturally, amidst the shifting opportunities and perils of these centuries is answered with an often impressive sophistication and imagination that take us well beyond hackneyed analyses prompted by the Weber–Tawney thesis.

The law of 21 March 1884, which legalized the formation of syndicats for the defence of ‘economic, industrial, commercial and agricultural interests’, was not intended to apply to civil servants. They were not thought to have such interests. There was, it is true, some dispute as to which categories of public employees were covered by this legal prohibition, and the Chamber of Deputies maintained in 1894 that the law applied to workers in industrial enterprises run by the state. But governments steadfastly refused to allow postal officials or schoolteachers, for instance, the right to form syndicats. They did not, however, contest their right to form associations under the law of 1 July 1901, and conflict became acute in the period after 1905 as these associations began to transform themselves into syndicats or to claim rights associated with the syndicat The postal strikes in Paris in 1909 and the rail strike of 1910 were particular causes célèbres

The career of John Capodistrias (1776–1831) is briefly described, and his personality is discussed, in every work which deals with the diplomatic history of Europe and of Russia during the second half of the reign of the Tsar Alexander I. Entering the Russian foreign service in 1809, he rose five years later to a leading position in it and retired, disappointed, to Switzerland in 1822. As President of Greece from March 1827 until his death in October 1831 he became a more central, and a still more controversial, figure in the history of that country; this period still has a special fascination for Greek writers, and much has been added in recent years to the number of published works, including more than one biography, several studies of one period or one aspect of his career and a host of books which, directly or indirectly, throw some light upon it. But the modern Greek language is a barrier to many readers outside Greece, and there has been no biographical study in a more ‘accessible’ language since K. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's book, Graf Kapodistrias (1864) which was intended to be sympathetic but reflected strongly the outlook of a German liberal constitutionalist of that age. Much of the early writing about Capodistrias was also coloured by the fear and suspicion of Russia which prevailed in Western Europe in the half century after his death. No English writer seems to have been attracted to him except in relation to British foreign policy; the most detailed modern study in French, perhaps, is to be found in E. Driault and M. L'Héritier, Histoire diplomatique de la Grèce de 1821 à nos jours (in vols. 1–11, 1925–6); but this is confined, as the title shows, to the diplomatic side and, though valuable, is not free from some rash judgments.

The general election of 1885 has been described as ‘the nearest point ever attained to the accomplishment of disestablishment in England’; and it is a curious fact that the very considerable part played by the Church question in this election has largely escaped notice. For this the suddenness with which the issue of Irish Home Rule came to dominate the political scene after the election is primarily responsible. Yet for all its brevity - it was effectively only during the last few weeks of an extended election campaign that the controversy over disestablishment became dominant — the agitation over the question was both fierce and ferocious; and was closely bound up with the name of Joseph Chamberlain.

On 26 April 1920 the Polish army launched a major offensive against Soviet Russia. The question of the French government's role in the unleashing of this attack has long been a matter of historical debate. P. S. Wandycz, whose work is the most recent detailed account of French eastern policy during the early twenties, attributes no major responsibility to the French for the outbreak of all-out war on Poland's eastern frontier. He states that the Quai d'Orsay was unenthusiastic about a Polish campaign and that the Poles had acted on their own initiative. N. Davies asserts that ‘Allied policy sought to discourage Poland from attacking Russia.’ ‘Without formally forbidding a Polish offensive,’ he writes, the Allies ‘emphasized that it “the offensive’ could not enjoy their support. On the other hand, Soviet and European Left-wing opinion has long condemned the Polish attack as a direct result of French influence. Vladimir Potemkin noted that Poland was incapable of waging a full-scale war with its own resources and that consequently Allied influence had to be decisive in determining Warsaw's attitude toward a continuation of the war.

Thomas Carlyle's promotion of Sir Robert Peel as a heroic statesman capable of presiding over a strongly interventionist state is paradoxical in light of the latter's rejection of paternalistic government. This paradox is heightened by Carlyle's hostility to the whigs: some members of this party identified an active role for the state and struggled against tendencies in whiggism which were connected to the ‘liberal toryism’ of Peel and his followers. An examination of Carlyle's knowledge of, and attitude towards, Peel shows that he was aware of his attraction to liberal economic ideas. However, Carlyle believed that Peel's sense of moral purpose and his cool view of conventional parliamentarianism were indicative of heroic potentials that were not possessed by whig politicians. The popularity which Peel enjoyed in the late 1840s was attributed by Carlyle to a widespread appreciation of his distinctive qualities; this provided the grounds for a generalized heroism which could be focused in an active state that was freed from the trammels of both economic liberalism and parliamentarianism.

In 1591 Julius Caesar, then judge of the High Court of Admiralty, initiated ‘ an important experiment…in the Admiralty court's continuing quest for greater respect and authority’. Despite high expectations on the part of Caesar, however, the experiment, a circuit of the west and southwest of England undertaken ‘in hopes of forcing the local authorities in those regions to submit to the supremacy’ of the Admiralty, was abortive. Caesar, beset by corrupt local officials and profiteering inhabitants, abandoned his circuit when only half completed and after obtaining results far less than he had anticipated. Caesar's failure, according to Lamar Hill, the historian of the ill-fated experiment, was not merely that of one Westminster bureaucrat unable to impose his authority in the provinces.