In British historiography, economic and social history were first thrown together when both were young and backward offshoots of the study of institutions. Economic history, by exploring records in which no one else was interested and making some use of the elements of economic theory, rapidly outgrew that status. But social history lags and its future is uncertain. It has no special records to call its own, for its materials, though rich, are embedded in all classes of documentation. It has no generally recognized set of questions to call its own, for although historians have always drawn on political science for questions relating to the state and to constitutions, and are respectful of economics, they have been distrustful of sociology because this has not yet done much with long run problems of change. Is social history then to become another specialty, working out its questions as it goes along? This course would not rule out the need of defining better its relation to other specialties. Is social history to remain a mere footnote to politics and law, literature and art, science and technology, describing the ways in which these impinge on social custom? If these points are numerous and puzzling, can it fulfil the promise of the school of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, becoming the nucleus of a new kind of historical synthesis? Or has it only some peculiar affiliation with economic history?

These questions can be answered only through new work and discussion of it. They give point to commentary on some recent English work on the medieval period.

That mighty prince, Henry VIII, died on Friday, the 28th of January, 1547, at two of the morning. The final years of the reign had been moving ponderously and inexorably to this moment when the King must die. The instant, however, that Henry slipped from life into death, a fundamental change took place. Not only was an irascible old man gone but so also was the dread and anxiety that had surrounded the concluding months of the King's life. For half a decade Tudor England had lived with the terrible certainty that Henry's reign was drawing to a close and the equally terrible uncertainty of not knowing when death would claim its sovereign. Thrice within the final year, in March, October, and December, Henry had approached death and had drawn away. No prediction could be secure, no plan assured so long as the moment of death remained unrecorded.

If Henry's death cleared the air and dispersed the atmosphere of fear and insecurity enveloping those who attended upon his passing, it also introduced a new and befuddling note for those who must record and narrate his departure. The ultimate irony of the historical profession is that the historian is a victim of his own knowledge; the breadth of his vision backward through the glass of time distorts his image of the past. He knows when, where and how the old King died; he can even date the event to the hour. In contrast, those who so impatiently awaited or dreaded the sovereign's demise could only speculate and form their plans upon the slender thread of surmise.

The late Sir Lewis Namier seems to have the highest, or nearly the highest authority of historians, chiefly for his work on English politics in the 1760's. This article attempts to make a judgment of his authority by examining the truth of his findings about English politics in the 1760's. Namier's authority is in great part based upon his seeming care in his researches, since people suppose that those who are occupied with details are careful with details. The results of his researches must therefore be considered in their presentation. But these researches need not be redone, at least for the purpose of understanding Namier's findings; for his findings rest upon an argument — an argument constructed not only from the results of researches but from general statements that are not results of his researches. Indeed, it happens that Namier's general statements fall within political science, as that subject has been understood since Aristotle. The present writer is a political scientist, and proposes to concentrate on Namier's argument.

Namier's principal conclusion is that there was no danger of tyranny in Britain in the 1760's. His argument has two parts, or he has two arguments: the apparent danger of tyranny is explained and deflated, first by the heir-apparent cycle, and second by the superiority of modern party government. He reaches his conclusion by denying effect to the source of danger usually identified by historians and thoughtful contemporaries, the influence of Bolingbroke — so that he seems, to one critic, to ignore the importance of “ideas.”

The climax in the long story of Britain's blunders during the War of Independence is the campaign of 1777, the planning of which, in Whitehall and New York, was the worst that the British perpetrated in the seven years of hostilities. Their strategy in 1781 was even more disastrous in its outcome, but far more defensible in its design; the strategy of 1777 can scarcely be defended at all. It rested upon premises that many observers at the time recognized to be wildly fallacious, and it brought its due reward — the surrender that led directly to French intervention.

The campaign had no unifying concept. An army from Canada advanced by way of Lake Champlain and the Hudson toward Albany, where it was supposed to be joined by a small detachment marching down the Mohawk; far to the south a substantial garrison was immobilized on Manhattan, while the main field army attacked Philadelphia by the most roundabout route it could have chosen. The British thus had three armies (ignoring, as they tended to do, their small garrison on Rhode Island), each isolated from the other two; and the Americans were free to concentrate against whichever one they chose. This was dispersion of force carried to the point of absurdity. Why was the absurdity not apparent to the Commander in Chief? to General Burgoyne? to the King's ministers in London? The question has been endlessly debated, and no final answer is possible. But an examination of the men who were principally responsible for the outcome suggests that two major factors were at work.

In his essay on “The Reputation of Edmund Burke” Thomas W. Copeland offers a timely analysis of the context and climate of contemporary Burke studies. His remarks suggest also the acceleration in pace of those studies. Current publication relevant to Burke has been noticed for the past four years in the Burke Newsletter. Reporting and reviewing new publication on or near Burke, retailing schemes and dreams and work in progress, and purveying personal news and opinion of students of Burke, the Burke Newsletter resembles in scope the Johnsonian Newsletter, edited by James L. Clifford and John H. Middendorf at Columbia University, which, of course, has for some time kept its readers up to date on the bibliography of the age of Burke and Johnson.

Copeland's essay, furthermore, is sufficient counterweight to another recent critical appraisal professedly directed to something of the same purpose – W. T. Laprade's impatient, hostile excursion through a century or more of writing on Burke. Without attempting the detail of the Newsletter, therefore, and without retreading Copeland's ground, the present survey undertakes to provide an account of significant trends and characteristic contributions in Burke studies for roughly the period since World War II. That span of years covers the time, or a little more, that the main body of Burke's papers has been generally open for study. It also includes the time when ideological and socio-political patterns have stimulated resort to the familiar past for spokesmen and scapegoats with whom to undergird and extenuate contemporary controversy.

T. S. Ashton has described the Industrial Revolution in England as a time when the “chimney stacks rose to dwarf the ancient spires.” He has also described it as a time when the voluntary association replaced state initiative in governmental affairs. These two phenomena of modern society – the urban industrial complex and the growth of public opinion – are usually paired. Perhaps it is natural to think of the growth of public opinion as something made possible by the growth of cities.

Yet it is known that the Industrial Revolution profoundly affected not only the cities but the countryside as well; that the new technology prompted (among other things) an enthusiasm for agricultural improvement. This is evident in the formation of numerous societies in the last quarter of the eighteenth century which were devoted to purely agricultural pursuits. With the decline of rural prosperity after 1815, however, there arose societies of a different sort which had as their object not the improvement of farming through better techniques but the improvement of agriculture through political action. Both kinds of society revealed the stirrings of public opinion in the countryside.

This essay is concerned with the second type of society, which rose and spread among what are loosely termed the tenant farmers of England. These societies were numerous enough and sufficiently of one mind to take on the character of a movement. The movement was to fail, as agrarian movements are notorious for doing.

The return of James Ramsay MacDonald from the depths of defeat in 1918 to the leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1922 is a dramatic episode in twentieth-century British politics. It has added piquancy because the drama was played in reverse nine years later; indeed, MacDonald's behavior between 1918 and 1922 has usually been seen as a prelude to the “betrayal” of 1931.

He owed his election as leader to the support of the Left. Consequently he has been charged with hypocrisy; in the words of Philip Snowden:

Some standard modern accounts repeat Snowden's charge, or make it independently. Even those that do not accuse MacDonald of deliberate deception nevertheless portray the Left as having acted under a misapprehension. The Clyde Members, says Francis Williams, “mistakenly judged him to be much more to the Left than he was and assumed, because of his opposition to the war, that he shared their views of the nature of the class struggle.” G. D. H. Cole agreed: had the I.L.P. understood MacDonald's moderation, “they would not have played the part they did in reinstating him and holding him firm in the leadership of the Labour Party.”