ALL the world's a stage, as we know, and the concept of a theatrum mundi is a venerable one. So too is the specific idea of politics as theatre. As an idea it may not seem very remarkable. Politics lives off metaphor, after all, and theatrical metaphor might seem especially appropriate to describe political activity. Do we not refer naturally to the political stage, to politicians assuming roles, to dramatic political scenes? This very naturalness, derived from repeated usage, presents a challenge. For one of the tasks of the historian is to show how what has come to seem natural came to seem so: to restore the novelty of artefacts and institutions we take for granted, to recover the impact of ideas and metaphors worn smooth by repetition. I want to argue below that metaphors of politics as theatre can be more than just a figure of speech: that they had specific and revealing meanings in the period of German history from the revolutions of 1848 to the advent of National Socialism.

Over forty years ago with great elegance and scholarship Professor Notestein gave his famous Raleigh lecture on ‘The Winning of the Initiative by the House of Commons’: in this he developed the thesis that amongst the reasons for the great yet inconspicuous change ‘between the time of Elizabeth and that of the Long Parliament in the relation of the Council to the Commons’ was that

Almost without observation, Privy Councillors ceased to guide the Commons. And, quite as much unobserved, with no document or charter to serve as a milestone, there came into power in the Commons a group of leaders, who had no official connexion with the Government, who had no common tie, except those of the opinions and feelings that bound English country gentlemen together. These men without purpose or intent but to do the next thing that came to hand, created a new leadership. With the establishment of that leadership the Commons gained the real initiative in legislation.

In The processes by which a political cause is defeated, there are significant, sometimes unexpected achievements. This proposition is as true of protectionism before and after the repeal of the corn laws as it is for example of Jacobitism or Gladstonian Home Rule. But while the supporters and fellow-travellers of free trade have had abundant attention, the protectionists have suffered from historical neglect redeemed in recent years only by the distinguished contributions of Robert Stewart and Travis Crosby. A certain absence both of historical sympathy and of interest in the arguments of the enemies of free trade has produced a widely-held view of the protectionists as mere revanchistes and political untouchables, ‘wild men of the right’ who had to be ‘dragged kicking and screaming from their last ditches’ while others made proper preparations for ‘a generation of bourgeois prosperity’. Norman Gash, the doyen of ‘the age of Peel’, while keenly aware of the mixed motives—intellectual, political and economic—which influenced men's conduct in 1845–6 and beyond, writes of the protectionists as ‘the dead weight’ of the conservative party: their cause was too monolithic, too representative of ‘a latent hostility to the other great interests of the country’, to form the basis of a national party; and their leader Lord George Bentinck was principally and destructively inspired by revenge.

The century between Reformation and Civil War saw a slow but steady expansion of the cultivated area of England—by bringing new lands under the plough in outlying regions like Devon and Cornwall, Cumberland and Westmorland; by extension of cultivation to forests, wastes and common lands; and by drainage. The same century also saw an expansion of the area of London's trade, and of London influence. Corn and dairy products were being shipped to the capital from Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland. London merchants began to purchase wool direct from North Wales, Wiltshire and the West Riding. Welsh cottons and cattle depended on the London market: early in the Civil War the gentry of North Wales petitioned the King for safe conduct across the fighting lines for their herds. Merchants in Shrewsbury and Hereford kept up trading connexions with the capital throughout the Civil War: Worcester merchants tried to do the same.

During the long crisis of the Spanish empire between 1810 and 1825, the Creole leaders of Spanish American independence asserted a new identity for the citizens of the states which they sought to establish, calling them ‘Americanos’. This general title was paralleled and often supplanted by other political neologisms, as movements for independence and new polities took shape in the various territories of Spanish America. In New Spain, the insurgents who fought against royalist government during the decade after 1810 tried to rally fellow ‘Mexicans’ to a common cause; at independence in 1821, die Creole political leadership created a ‘Mexican empire’, the title of which, with its reference to the Aztec empire which had preceded Spain's conquest, was designed to evoke a ‘national’ history shared by all members of Mexican society. In South America, die leaders of the new republics also sought to promote patriotic feelings for territories which had been converted from administrative units of Spanish government into independent states. Thus, San Martín and O'Higgins convoked ‘Chileans’ to the cause of independence in the old Captaincy-General of Chile; shortly afterwards and with notably less success, San Martín called upon ‘Peruvians’ to throw off Spanish rule. Bolívar was, likewise, to call ‘Colombians’ to his banner in die erstwhile Viceroyalty of New Granada, before advancing south to liberate Peru in the name of ‘Peruvians’, and Upper Peru in the name of ‘Bolivians’, where the Republic which his military feats and political vision made possible was named after him.

THE Dutch Revolt lasted longer than any other uprising in modern European history—from the iconoclastic fury in August 1566 to the Peace of Munster in January 1648; and it involved more continuous fighting than any other war of modern times—from April 1572 to April 1607 (with only six months' cease-fire in 1577) and from April 1621 to June 1647. Its economic, social, and political costs were enormous. The longevity of the revolt becomes even more remarkable when one remembers that the two combatants were far from equal. The areas in revolt against Spain were small in size, in natural resources, and in population—especially in the first few years. In 1574 only about twenty towns, with a combined population of 75,000, remained faithful to William of Orange; Amsterdam, the largest town in Holland, stayed loyal to the king until 1578. Against the ‘rebels’ Philip II could draw on the resources of Spain, Spanish America, Spanish Italy and, of course, the Spanish Netherlands. Although by the seventeenth century the odds had narrowed somewhat—by then there were seven ‘rebel’ provinces with a combined population of over one million—Spain could still call on vastly superior resources of men and money. There were a number of occasions in the course of the war when Spain seemed to stand on the threshold of success. In 1575, for example, the con-quest of the islands of Duiveland and Schouwen in South Holland divided the rebel heartland in two and appeared to presage the collapse of the revolt. A decade later, in 1585, Antwerp was re-captured against all predictions, leaving Holland and Zealand dispirited and prepared to discuss surrender. As late as 1625, with the reconquest of Breda in Brabant and Bahia in Brazil, Spain's final victory seemed near. But total success never came. Spain never regained the seven northern provinces of the Netherlands and by 1648 Philip IV counted himself lucky to have retained the ten southern ones.

This essay reviews the historiography of the Vikings, especially in England, from the nineteenth century onwards. Successive constructions of Vikings as ‘ancestors’or ‘Others’ are shown to reveal more about quests for identity on thepart of those who devised them than about ninth-century Scandinavians. In the rest of the essay, the interactions of Danish groups and individuals with Franks and Anglo-Saxons are examined in particular places and times. It is argued that these display contacts of multiple kinds, including much collaboration and some integration, often promoted by lordly and royal interests. It is suggested that these findings are explicable in terms of reshapings of individual and group identities in a broad context of cultural likeness and adaptability.

The story of the English farmers of the customs has hitherto concerned historians mainly because of its bearing on the history of the House of Commons. By their control over the customs and through the influence they exerted over the other English merchants, these financiers obstructed the efforts of the commons to establish parliamentary control over indirect taxation. The nature of this challenge has been clearly explained by George Unwin and Eileen Power. Edward III wished to finance the war with France by levying a heavy subsidy on exported wool (ultimately 40s. per sack) over and above the traditional light duty of 6s. 8d. per sack. The subsidy was disliked by the producers of wool, because they were convinced that it pushed down the price of wool in England. The commons who voiced this opposition were, however, powerless to prevent the collection of the subsidy as long as the wool merchants were willing to sanction its continuance and as long as the king could find English business men who would make satisfactory advances on the security of this revenue. Unwin has discussed in detail one set of developments that gradually ended this challenge to parliamentary control over indirect taxation. He was able to show how the leading financiers, by their selfish behaviour, destroyed the unity of the English wool merchants, made impossible further concerted action by merchant assemblies and forced the majority of the merchants to act in future ‘with and through the commons’.

The bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807 prompted a remarkable wave of public commemorations across Britain. In contrast to the low-key events of 1907, 2007 saw a sustained and nation-wide urge to commemorate, publicise and discuss the Atlantic slave trade and its abolition. Government interest proved an important influence, and was reflected in a lively educational debate (resulting in changes to the National Curriculum.) This political interest may have stemmed from the parallel debate about modern human trafficking, and contemporary slave systems. Equally, the availability of funding (from the Heritage Lottery Fund) may have persuaded a host of institutions to devise exhibitions, displays and debates about events of 1807. Perhaps the most striking forms of commemoration were in broadcasting and publishing: the BBC was especially active. There were few regions or localities which remained unaffected by the year's commemorations.

But why was there such interest? Was 1807, with the outlawing of an unquestioned evil, seen as a moment of national virtue? But if so, how are we to recall the role played by the British in the perfection of Atlantic slavery and the slave trade? The lively debates in 2007, from major national institutions to small local gatherings, revealed the problematic nature of abolition itself. After all, slavery survived, and even the slave trade continued after 1807. So what was important about 1807? The commemorations of 2007 raised public awareness about an important transformation in the British past; it also exposed those intellectual and political complexities about the ending of the Atlantic slave trade which have proved so fascinating to academic historians.

My concern in this paper is essentially the complementary commercial links of the two countries against the background of political friendship.

Eighty years ago Miss Shillington put forward a very positive picture of the strength of Anglo-Portuguese trade, and apart from some work by Professor Carus-Wilson and Dr Livermore, not much has been done on this trade since, although almost all other aspects of Portuguese activity in northern and Mediterranean markets and in exploration have been considered, and the relationship of northern trade in Portugal's seemingly dramatic expansion into colonial adventure has not infrequently been raised. Writers may passingly refer to Anglo-Portuguese trade as vigorous, regular, modest, increasing or decreasing: but on what scale? Is vigorous trade two, five, or ten ships a year in the context of Anglo-Portuguese trade? I first became interested in Portuguese trade years ago as I wrote on Castilian trade, when it seemed to me that, despite good political relations Anglo-Portuguese trade was modest, while the Basque and Castilian trade flourished in much less welcoming political circumstances. The approach of 1992 with its promised closer commercial links in the European community (now including Portugal) seems a good time to review England's medieval links with what is commonly called her oldest continuous ally and trading partner. What I intend to do in this paper is at once limited (to examine England's trade with Portugal and the Portuguese role in it) and very broad (to sweep a whole century to provide a context for this activity).

The “Mutiny” was the summary of the rise of the British in India, and, as the cry of the Sepoys at Meerut was “Delhi, Delhi,” it is in Delhi that the key to a political theory must be sought. The scope of this paper is limited, therefore, to the light thrown upon the subject by “the proceedings of the trial of the King of Delhi.” Its object is to examine afresh this document as a test for a theory of the relations between the East India Company and the Mughal Empire, and consequently of the nature of the rise of the British in India.

The theme which I have been asked to consider refers to the whole of Europe, but the terms on which it has been defined made it clear that the focus of interest was still to lie in Britain. I shall bear that focus in mind.

After a brief review of the debate relating to entrepreneurship and culture in Britain in the late Victorian and Edwardian period, the period with which I shall be more specifically concerned, and a similarly cursory examination of the role of entrepreneurship in economic theory and in the writings of economic historians in recent decades, I shall turn to the main theme, entrepreneurship and its cultural setting in the decades before World War I in the rest of Europe. A return to the British problem will complete the paper.

What is pain? This article argues that it is useful to think of pain as a ‘kind of event’ or a way of being-in-the-world. Pain-events are unstable; they are historically constituted and reconstituted in relation to language systems, social and environmental interactions and bodily comportment. The historical question becomes: how has pain been done and what ideological work do acts of being-in-pain seek to achieve? By what mechanisms do these types of events change? Who decides the content of any particular, historically specific and geographically situated ontology?

In 1576 William Cecil, Lord Burghley, was engaged in one of the most painful disputes of his distinguished career: a bitter conflict with the earl of Oxford who had married, and then repudiated, his beloved daughter Anne. Cecil's distress erupted in a series of memoranda enumerating die injuries inflicted by die earl. At the end of the most comprehensive of these documents he briefly resumed his other role, as mentor and Polonius to the young de Vere. Remember, he begged him, who he was and what the world expected of him: above all remember that ‘the gretest possession that any man can have is honor, good name, good will of many and of the best sort’. This appeal to honour as good reputation among the wisest and best was unlikely to move his renegade son-in-law, whose understanding of the honour code, if we may judge by his actions, is that it provided justification for the wilful individualism of the nobleman. But Cecil's choice of language has resonance in the broader context of thinking about reputation in the late sixteenth century. It eschews excessive personal pride in favour of a balanced appeal to the judgment of one's peers, yet it is scarcely an elevated perception of virtuous Protestant honour of the kind associated with another of Cecil's protègès, Philip Sidney.

Thus the Venetian envoy wrote in his ‘Relation’ a few years after Henry Tudor's accession. The history of Tudor policy in Wales has often been interpreted by way of commentary on this assumption, that Henry Tudor, born at Pembroke Castle and descended from the family of Penmynydd, Anglesey, was considered a Welshman and was himself conscious of this heritage. The Welsh origins of the dynasty have been invoked by historians in the past to explain the relative success of its rule in Wales. Both the so-called ‘union’ with England and the reception of the Reformation were achievements in state and church which have been attributed to the general popularity of the dynasty in Wales and to the favour in which the Tudors (particularly the two Henrys and Elizabeth) regarded their Welsh subjects.

In the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, barbarian warbands acquired property rights in the former provinces of the Roman west, in a process that established the broad structural characteristics of early medieval society in western Europe: that is the central contention of this essay. Focusing on the western Mediterranean heartlands of the Imperial government and senatorial aristocracy, it argues that these property transfers were fundamental to the emergence of ethnic identity as the crucial political marker in the post-Roman west. Latent conflict over the respective rights and obligations of barbarian ‘guests’ and their provincial ‘hosts’ structured the first attempts at post-Roman state-formation in the west, for the nature of the ‘hospitality’ offered to barbarian warbands accommodated within the Empire became a matter of contention as second and third generation ‘guests’ continued to enjoy the fruits of the property of their ‘hosts’. Interpreting these new social relationships in the light of established legal forms, barbarian kings identified agreed mechanisms for the legitimate transfer of Roman property to their followers: this process allowed Roman landowners to seek remedies for illegitimate or violent seizure, but at the price of acknowledging a significant redistribution of land to a new class of barbarian soldiers whose liberty was rooted in their military service. The result was the emergence, by the seventh century, of regionalised and militarised elites who appropriated the language of ethnicity to legitimate their position.

So many books and articles have been devoted to the life and career of He´rnan Cortés that it may well seem presumptuous to add to their number. But there is still no satisfactory biography, and it is only quite recently that his writings—his ‘letters of relation’ to Charles V, his general correspondence, and his military and administrative directives—have been subjected to the close critical scrutiny which they deserve. In particular, Dr. Richard Konetzke has drawn attention to the constructive aspects of Cortés's career as the founder of a colonial society, while an Austrian historian, Dr. Viktor Frankl, has analysed with extraordinary ingenuity Cortés's idea of empire and his indebtedness to Spanish medieval traditions and ways of thought. Other important contributions have been made by Mexicans:Dr Manuel Alcalá, who has drawn an extended parallel between

THE period spent in opposition between 1945 and 1951 has generally been thought of as a key to the understanding of the activities of the post-war British Conservative Party. Autobiographies of the Party leaders of the time began to appear at the end of the Fifties, already looking back to a period in which the Conservatives had decisively changed their approach. So for example, Lord Woolton's Memoirs reviewed not only a term as Party Chairman which had been a highlight of his own crowded career, but also his sharing in a major act of transformation, a transformation that had led on to Conservative success since 1951: ‘the change was revolutionary’. Other key figures in the organisation reached similar conclusions as their own accounts appeared: David Maxwell-Fyfe argued that the new Party rules which he had drawn up had not only decisively widened the political base of British Conservatism, but that events since had confirmed the importance of the change. R. A. Butler's account of The Art of the Possible argued in 1971 that ‘the overwhelming electoral defeat of 1945 shook the Conservative Party out of its lethargy and impelled it to re-think its philosophy and re-form its ranks with a thoroughness unmatched for a century’. The effect was to bring both the policies of the Party and ‘their characteristic mode of expression’, as he puts it, ‘up to date’. As recently as 1978, Reginald Maudling—a key figure behind the scenes in 1945–51 as a speechwriter from Eden and Churchill and as the organising secretary of the committee which produced the Industrial Charter of 1947—reached much the same view: ‘We were at that time developing a new economic policy for the Conservative Party … It marked a substantially different approach for post-war Conservative philosophy.

The Royal Historical Society will not be startled to learn that one of the best-informed essays on William Camden was written by its quondam president, Sir Maurice Powicke:

A great book might be written about Camden, his life and his works, his wide circle of friends and correspondents and his humanity. It would be a very difficult book to write, for its author would have to be steeped in the social history of the time and to be familiar with the personal life, the friendships and all the correlated activities of scholars all over the western world in Camden's day. To recapture that society with learning and imaginative amplitude might well engage a fine and patient and sympathetic scholar in the work of a lifetime.

In every generation since the pace of economic and social change began to accelerate in the late-eighteenth century the wildest hopes, aspirations and fears of the previous generation have been realized. The revolutionary prospect of heeding the will of the people in the 1790's became the conservative measure of 1832. The terrifying demands of the Chartists were well on the way to enactment by 1885, and with the payment of M.P.s in 1911 were substantially achieved, apart from the silliest of all the demands, that for annual parliaments.