Showing papers in "The Historical Journal in 1970"

I. From Revenue to Civil List, 1689–1702: The Revolution Settlement and the ‘Mixed and Balanced’ Constitution*

Abstract: In a theoretical sense it may be said that the Revolution of 1688–9 established the supremacy of Parliament in the English constitution, but from a practical point of view the result of the Revolution was a –mixed and balanced’ constitution, in which power was shared between Crown and Parliament, and exercised within a framework of law. Although the doctrine of a ‘mixed and balanced’ constitution was an old one, the Revolution made clear the need for Crown and Parliament to work together, and in the reign of William III a new definition of their relationship was achieved. In this process the question of finance was crucial, for Parliament saw in control of finance the most effective instrument to limit the power of the Crown, while the Crown insisted that monarchy could not maintain its proper place in the constitution without some degree of fiscal independence. The outcome was, like most aspects of the Revolution Settlement, a compromise, in which the Crown received an independent income for the Civil List, while Parliament assumed responsibility for the military forces and the debt. The Civil List compromise of the reign of William III resolved the conflict between the Stuarts and their Parliaments for control of finance, and was an important step in the achievement of political stability within the ‘mixed and balanced’ constitution.

III. ‘Humanity Sold for Sugar!’ The British Abolitionist Response to Free Trade in Slave-grown Sugar

Abstract: Prior to 1944, the interpretation of the British anti-slavery movement was dominated by the ‘humanitarian’ ideas of the school of imperial historians centred round the great Sir Reginald Coupland. The turning point in slave trade and slavery studies came with the publication of Eric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery, significantly enough published at Chapel Hill—it would be interesting to find out whether the manuscript had previously been submitted to any English firms. In his bibliography, Williams remarked of Coupland that he ‘represents the sentimental conception of history; his works help us to understand what the anti-slavery movement was not’. But the attack went much further than personalities. Capitalism and Slavery included evidence which stood the more traditional interpretation on its head, while its conclusions rejected the simple moral motivation which had previously been picked out as the main factor behind the abolition of the slave trade and slavery. The whole thesis of Williams' book was that while the moral awakening of which Coupland and his followers had written may have genuinely affected the behaviour of individual supporters of abolition, the root cause of the abandonment of the slave trade and later of West Indian slavery was a change in the balance of economic pressure groups. Building on the work of Lowell Joseph Ragatz, Williams suggested that the anti-slavery movement was a group response of the middle class, to a decline in the relative power of the West India interest on the one hand, and a change in the needs of the increasingly industrialized society in which they lived on the other.

V. Mesopotamia in British War Aims, 1914–1918

Abstract: An expeditionary force of the Indian Army landed in Turkish territory at the head of the Persian Gulf almost immediately upon the declaration of war by Britain against Turkey on 5 November 1914. After winning some minor engagements against Turkish forces, it marched into Basra, the chief town of southern Mesopotamia, on the 23rd. The subsequent course of the campaign in Mesopotamia included a number of setbacks for the British. The principal city, Baghdad, was not captured until after nearly two and a half years of fighting, and the chief northern city, Mosul, not indeed until after an armistice had been signed with Turkey. Even so, by the time hostilities ceased, large areas in the south had been under continuous British occupation for four years and the possibility of further advance was throughout the war present in the minds of British leaders, whether in London, Simla or Mesopotamia itself. Against this background of military conquest and a pre-war diplomacy among the European powers, excluding Russia, in which Mesopotamia had been marked out as the British sphere if Turkey was partitioned, it is unsurprising that the political future of the country should have been much discussed within British official circles. War aims went through several phases whose study contributes to understanding of British aims in the war as a whole.

II. J.S. Mill and the Irish Question: The Principles of Political Economy, 1848–1865

Abstract: A hundred years ago there appeared Mill's England and Ireland, long since among the least known of his writings. At the time of publication it caused a furore, and gave its author a kind of notoriety that he had not previously experienced. In his pamphlet of some forty pages Mill issued a condemnation of Britain's conduct, past and present, towards Ireland, which surprised by its violence, in contrast to the judicious if superior tone that people had come to expect from him. This was startling; but the pamphlet's arresting novelty lay in its uncompromising demand for an immediate agrarian revolution in Ireland, as a long overdue act of justice, an inescapable moral obligation, and as the price of Irish loyalty in the future. Mill could not, of course, expect to convince his readers that he was justified in calling for such a sweeping measure without challenging assumptions which seemed built into the social foundations of nineteenth-century Britain. His impatient dismissal of these received notions was another aspect of the pamphlet eliciting a very unfavourable reaction. It is this aspect which is usually mentioned. England and Ireland is seen, when noticed at all, as the compact and forceful expression of ideas which Mill had been trying to inculcate for the best part of a generation.

V. The British Radicals and the Balance of Power, 1902–1914

Abstract: On 3 August 1914 a short-lived Radical body of intellectuals, the‘Neutrality Committee’, issued a statement to the press calling upon Britain not to depart from a policy of strict neutrality. A similar organization, which went under the title of the British Neutrality League, and supported by an imposing array of Liberals—Lord Welby, the Lord Provost of Glasgow, the Lord Mayor of Manchester, the Bishop of Hereford and C. P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian—did much the same. It implored the nation not to take part in a Continental war, since no British interest was involved: ‘the violation of Belgian neutrality was insufficient to bring us into war’. Other spokesmen of moderate and left-wing Liberal opinion followed suit, among them a fairsized number of Cambridge scholars. Meetings and demonstrations were held throughout the country to protest against possible British intervention. Organized by the socialists in Trafalgar Square, these were of impressive proportions. In Parliament, too, a small group of dissenting M.P.s withstood the gathering war hysteria and urged the Government to accept the German guarantee of Belgian ‘integrity’, though this might mean a temporary invasion of her frontiers. All in all this last-minute spectacle of opposition to British involvement in the 1914 War has sometimes led to the historical assessment that the Radicals, together with their socialist allies, were men of an insular mind and isolationist in their approach toward European politics.

VII. The Liberal Party Divided 1916–1918

Abstract: A great deal of published historical work has been devoted to establishing the causes and chronology of the demise of the Liberal party in British politics. The downfall of the Liberals has been ascribed to the inevitable outflanking development of the Labour party; to the mutilation of Liberal principles involved in waging the first ‘total’ war; to the personal rifts and feuds between the rival followers of Asquith and Lloyd George—and to various combinations of these factors. Yet there has been no detailed analysis of the division within the Parliamentary Liberal party during the First World War. Although at the end of 1916 obviously certain Liberals supported Asquith and others Lloyd George, no attempt has been made to examine the way in which the rifts in the party were reflected in political action in the House of Commons during the time of the second coalition government, nor to determine accurately the lines of division in the party. An answer to the question of ‘How did the Liberal party divide during the First World War?’ has proved elusive, although some historians of the period have been more successful than others.

I. Robert Dudley and the Inner Temple Revels

Abstract: In the winter of 1561/2 Henry Machyn, citizen of London, noted two special events in his diary: the extraordinary Christmas revels at the Inner Temple and the performance on 18 January, before Queen Elizabeth, of a play and a masque by these same gentlemen. These events are inextricably connected and in terms of political propaganda must be viewed in conjunction. The play was Gorboduc, written by two Inner Templars, the Queen's cousin Thomas Sackville and the Protestant Parliamentarian Thomas Norton. The revels at the Inner Temple celebrated the accession and reign of Robert Dudley as the lawyers' Christmas Prince. He had been chosen by the governors and Parliament of the Inner Temple in gratitude for his intervention in a dispute with the Middle Temple over Lyons Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery historically under the jurisdiction of the Inner Temple. Dudley had intervened with the Queen, opposing his influence against that of Sir Robert Catlin, Lord Chief Justice of England, and Sir James Dyer, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, who had championed the cause of their old Inn, the Middle Temple. Elizabeth was moved by her favourite to speak to Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, asking him to confirm the right of the Inner Temple. The grateful Parliament and governors of the Inner Temple pledged themselves and their successors to Dudley, offering their legal skills in his service and promising never to give counsel in a cause against Lord Robert. The value of this pledge to Elizabeth's chief suitor from men as eminent as Richard Onslow, Anthony Stapleton, Robert Kelway, William Pole, Roger Manwood and Richard Sackville is clear. The elevation of the favourite to the dignity of Prince Pallaphilos was in terms of propaganda a very splendid return for Dudley's intervention on the Templars' behalf. Nor was this pledge of loyalty ephemeral; the bond was mutually advantageous and it was one the Templars continued to honour. In 1576 the Parliament of the Inner Temple still referred to Leicester as ‘chief governor of this House’.

VII. Lloyd George's Premiership: A Study in ‘Prime Ministerial Government’ *

Abstract: ‘The Power of the Man in the Saddle’: this was the burden of the Liberal chief whip's advice to David Lloyd George in April 1918. But the Prime Minister hardly needed any instruction in this theme: the uses and the limitations of power formed his absorbing passion. Even at the time many felt that his period as prime minister had marked a totally new departure in British politics. Some later commentators (most recently Mr Humphry Berkeley) have even claimed to detect the dawn of a new political era between 1916 and 1922, one in which ‘prime ministerial government’ gradually took the place of conventional cabinet government. But, despite their certainty, the precise character of Lloyd's George premiership, like the man himself, is still shrouded in mystery. Was it rule by a dictator or by a democrat? Did any consistent principle animate the ‘man in the saddle’ or was it all opportunism gone berserk ? Was Wales's Great Commoner really ‘rooted in nothing’, as Keynes was to allege? Not even Lloyd George's closest associates, Kerr and Riddell, felt able to say with any assurance. They were as baffled as the rest. Lloyd George was suddenly thrust from office in October 1922 with the issue still inconclusive. Ever since then the debate about his premiership has been passionate and unremitting. Each observer seems to have seen a different prime minister, one created in his own image. Fifty biographies on, the essential Lloyd George remains as elusive as ever. He remains the most controversial and contradictory of political animals, ‘the Big Beast’, the rogue elephant of twentieth-century prime ministers.

II. Schools and Politics in the Netherlands, 1796–1814 *

Abstract: By 1811, just a year after the annexation of their national territory to the French Empire, the Dutch had organized the most effective and comprehensive system of elementary education in Europe. How had this been accomplished? Not, at any rate, in emulation of their former neighbours. At the zenith of its power, Imperial France had nothing to show for years of speculation and derelict legislation except the return of responsibility for the ‘ecoles primaires’ to the Church. The respective condition of the two states made this contrast still more emphatic. France commanded financial and administrative resources which the most absolute of her monarchs would have coveted; the Dutch were exhausted by fiscal penury and torn by bitter political division.

V. African Interests and the South Africa Act, 1908–1910

Abstract: It has often been argued that British ministers in the years leading up to the Union of South Africa in 1910 were so obsessed with the principle of white self-government that they forgot their obligations to the African majority.1 The result, it is alleged, was that African interests in general were sacrificed on the altar of Anglo-Afrikaner reconciliation, and in particular betrayed in the South Africa Act of 1909. If there is a partial exception allowed—the withholding of Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland from the Union—then, it is assumed, the credit for this could not possibly be given to the imperial government. The recent article in the Journal of African History by Alan R. Booth argues that, in the apparent absence of any actual imperial policy or concern, local African tribal and missionary pressures on the high commissioner were decisive in bringing this about.

VI. Britain and Italy's Acquisition of the Dodecanese, 1912–1915

Abstract: Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Diplomacy confirms the fact. As an illustration no incident is better than the Italian retention of the Southern Sporades or Dodecanese group of Aegean Islands in the years immediately preceding the First World War. Italy, last and weakest of the Great Powers, was able to defy the expressed wishes of Britain, the dominant naval power on whose patronage Italy traditionally relied. Defiance of Britain was not accompanied by a corresponding surrender to Italy's Central Power allies. It triumphed through Italian skill at exploiting the above dictum: possession is nine-tenths of the law.

II. Executive Monarchy and the Challenge of Parties, 1689–1832: Two Concepts of Government and Two Historiographical Interpretations*

Abstract: Anyone who studies eighteenth-century British politics soon becomes aware of a lack of definite form in the major institutions of government. Contemporaries, although equally aware of this imprecision, did not consider that it detracted from the utility of the constitution. On the contrary the vagaries of the system were often cited as its chief asset, permitting such apparently irreconcilable elements as parliamentary supremacy and a royal executive to exist together in balanced harmony. Burke, the constitution's most eloquent defender, called this quality of comprehensiveness a ‘unity in so great a diversity of its parts’, and believed that such unity was capable of sheltering both prescriptive rights and necessary adaptations in society. But the quality which men of the eighteenth century were agreed to admire has been viewed less sympathetically by later writers, intent on clarifying points which contemporaries preferred to leave open. The whig historians of the nineteenth century attempted to cut through difficulties by treating as unworthy of consideration in the eighteenth-century scene those features which did not survive in the era of reform. The misinterpretations which thereby arose brought about a necessary reaction in the present century, especially from the late Sir Lewis Namier whose research revealed the Georgian scene as having a more traditional structure of politics and society than was previously supposed. But Namier's own work too paid disproportionate attention to parts of the scene at the expense of others, though he undoubtedly did so because the difficulty of dislodging a well-established whig orthodoxy led him to overstate his case.

VI. The Anglo-French-Italian Naval Convention of 1915

Abstract: On 26 April 1915 the governments of Great Britain, France, and Russia signed a treaty with the Italian Government settling the terms for Italy's entrance into the war on the allied side. The Treaty of London was the result of hard bargaining, particularly because of extensive Italian claims in the Adriatic which were resisted by the Russian government, and which would leave a difficult legacy for the postwar period. Nevertheless, the evolution of Italy from membership in a rival alliance system and potential foe to an active ally was completed after less than a year of neutrality. Italy's defection from the Triple Alliance was hardly a surprise to anyone with the slightest idea of Austro-Italian relations, and for over a decade before the outbreak of the war the strength of her commitment to Austria and Germany had been diluted by secret agreements with France.In Austria-Hungary leading naval and military officials took little trouble to conceal their mistrust; while unpopular measures by Habsburg officials could be counted upon to produce hostile demonstrations before the Austro-Hungarian embassy or consulates in Italy. Nevertheless, the French, although well aware of Austro-Italian friction, were never really sure of their southern neighbour and at times exhibited a suspicion of Italy which rivalled that of the Austrians. France and Italy were in a sense Mediterranean rivals and the development of the Italian fleet was followed closely by the French naval staff.

Guelph Plans for the Franco-Prussian War

Abstract: IN I866, as one of the consequences of the Austro-Prussian War, Prussia annexed Hanover, the largest independent kingdom of north Germany, thus bringing to a close the rule of the Guelph family in that principality. George V, the last Guelph ruler of the kingdom, refused to admit his deposition and began to organize agitation against the Prussian government. Of the various methods used by King George perhaps the one which was initially of major concern to Bismarck was his military plans to regain his kingdom. After the Hanoverian defeat in June I866 at the battle of Langensalza, several army officers went to Austria with King George. Later that year when Prussian officials and agents began to report to Berlin that more and more soldiers of the former Hanoverian army were congregating in various centres outside Prussia, the authorities became apprehensive that a serious military plot was afoot. In May I867, the semi-official Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung reported that a conspiracy had been uncovered in Hanover. The newspaper stated that some Hanoverians loyal to King George had acted as agents in recruiting people for a military legion.' The Prussian diplomats at various European missions continued during i 867-8 to mention the existence of military activities among the exiled Hanoverians and referred to those participating in these activities as members of the Guelph Legion.2 By February i868 the Prussian foreign office had learned that already 460 soldiers under the leadership of Hanoverian officers were living in Alsace, and more were expected to arrive.3 A military unit such as this Guelph Legion was a potential threat for the Prussian administration, for it could be a disruptive influence within the new province by encouraging hope of a Guelph restoration among the populace and by serving as a symbol of resistance to Prussian rule. Bismarck, aware of the danger, kept close watch on the Hanoverians and throughout i868 frequently had the Prussian envoy in Paris, Count Eberhard zu Solms-Sonnenwalde, speak to the French government about the activities of this group. On 5 February Bismarck instructed Solms to remind the French that the toleration of such a military unit on French soil was not consistent with the tradition of national rights nor with the good relations which existed between the two countries.4 The French, in turn, assured Bismarck that they

I. The Royal Dockyards: The Earliest Visitations and Reform 1749–1778

Abstract: Naval historians traditionally have been preoccupied with operations at sea. Yet sea power hinges on the dockyards without which there would be no navies and no battles to write about. If Britain's greatness in the eighteenth century depended on a navy greater than any other in Europe, it depended no less on land-based facilities sufficient to create and maintain that navy. Two-thirds of the fleet on the eve of the American Revolution had been built in the navy's own dockyards, and virtually all the ships of the fleet were fitted and repaired in them, although in wartime especially upkeep to some extent devolved on the limited facilities of overseas bases. Moreover, decommissioned ships—the ships in Ordinary—which in peacetime were several times more numerous than those in service, were maintained at the royal dockyards. The requirements of an ever-growing fleet—170 ships of twenty guns and upwards in 1739, 271 in 1775, 360 in 1787—made the yards much the largest employer in eighteenth-century Britain. Slightly more than 5,000 workmen of all kinds were employed in 1754; by 1775 the number had risen to more than 7,500 and exceeded 9,500 in 1782 when, due to the demands of war, the number of sixth-rate ships and above was approaching 500.

VIII. The British Government's Reactions to President Wilson's ‘Peace’ Note of December 1916

Abstract: The best chances of a negotiated peace during the First World War lay with the President of the United States. Woodrow Wilson's efforts were abortive, but he made some very interesting moves. The most sensational was his note to the belligerents in December 1916, requesting them to state their peace terms—a move which seemed all the more provocative in Allied countries because it followed upon the heels of the German Chancellor's proposal to negotiate. The main purpose of this article is to examine the British Government's reactions to the President's note. A secondary purpose is to criticize some important points of interpretation made by Professors A. S. Link and Ernest May.

V. The Baltic in British Diplomacy Before the First World War

Abstract: The separation of Norway and Sweden in 1905 and the subsequent developments in Scandinavian politics evoked in British diplomacy a concern and an activity which are remarkable in view of the neglect into which Baltic questions had fallen during the preceding half-century. This new concern (like the previous neglect) can be explained satisfactorily only by reference to changing strategic circumstances. The diplomatic events are of interest not only because of the light which they shed upon the evolution of wider European politics at the time, but also because of their relation to strategic calculations; and they provide one of the rare instances before 1914 in which the direct influence of the Committee of Imperial Defence on foreign policy can actually be demonstrated.

II. Class and Political Radicalism in London, 1831–2

Abstract: Class has long been used as an analytical tool in the study of history and much has been written with regard to the formation of class-consciousness, which has to a considerable extent been related to the first half of the nineteenth century and especially to the events surrounding the passing of the first Reform Bill. Professor Briggs has noted the growing use of the term ‘class’ in the early nineteenth century and has postulated a middle-class consciousness created by the media of the Reform Bill and Anti-Corn Law agitations. ‘Sandwiched between an entrenched landed Parliament on the one hand and a bitter but still imperfectly integrated labour movement on the other, the middle classes were compelled to lay down their own postulates and programmes.’ More recently E. P. Thompson, in a brilliant and wide-ranging study of the working classes, has seen the formation of a working-class consciousness which involved ‘consciousness of identity of interests between working men of the most diverse occupations and levels of attainment’ and also ‘ consciousness of the identity of interest of the working class, or “productive classes”, as against those of other classes; and within this there was maturing the claim for an alternative system’.

IV. Dollar Diplomacy in Default: The Economics of Russian-American Relations, 1910–1917

Abstract: The history of modern or transoceanic American imperialism began midway through the nineteenth century with the achievement of definitive continental boundaries for the United States. At that juncture, the focus of the country's expansionist impulses shifted to Latin America and the Pacific Ocean area, and the quest for territorial possessions and spheres of influence in both regions began. By the turn of the century, thanks to a liberal use of armed force, it had been successfully terminated, completing the first and most robust phase of American empire building abroad.

IX. Projects for an Italian-led Balkan Bloc of Neutrals, September–December 1939

Abstract: The countries of south-eastern Europe at the beginning of the last war were caught, as they themselves put it with as much self-deprecation as fear, between the Axis hammer and the Russian anvil. There was almost a touch of defiance in their description, as if the extraordinarily high odds against their survival confirmed in their eyes their claim to national independence and to world attention. In fact over the 20 years of their existence they had made a virtue of the politics of Kleinstaaterei, of the fact that their destiny was determined not by themselves but by the Great Powers surrounding them. The Balkan states were creatures of Great Power politics and, with an unerring appreciation of their dependence on powerful neighbours, they looked to London or Paris or Rome or Berlin or Moscow for sustenance and direction. And yet—and this is the crucial paradox—they continued to harbour, side by side with their acknowledged dependence on the Great Powers, a deeply felt longing for collective independence and for political self-sufficiency. This paper is concerned with the desperate attempts of the Balkan countries in the autumn of 1939 to harmonize these conflicting requirements by promoting collective independence in the form of a bloc of neutrals under the leadership of a Great Power.

IV. The Irish Board of Works in the Famine Years

Abstract: The field of Anglo-Irish administrative history, comprehensively surveyed by Dr R. B. McDowell, has been subjected to little detailed analysis. This article attempts to fill the gap in one important respect. It sets out to examine the role of the Irish Board of Works during the famine years. In 1846–7, at a time of grave national crisis, the Board of Works tackled the near-impossible task of providing public works for the relief of almost every family in Ireland. Despite the Treasury's efforts to control abuses, the Board of Works proved unequal to the task, and had to be replaced as the main tool of government policy.

IV. The British Government and Imperial Economic Unity, 1890–1895

Abstract: When Joseph Chamberlain launched his striking tariff reform campaign in 1903 he was contributing to a very old debate. At the centre of the discussion had usually been the triangular relationship between free trade, protection and imperial unity. Were preferential tariffs compatible with British free trade? Was imperial preference necessary to maintain imperial unity? Could an empire divided against itself on tariff questions stand? Questions of that type became increasingly pertinent in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Entry for British exports into continental markets had become more difficult in the 'eighties, not only because of the tariff barriers which were more prominent but also because Britain found herself with few bargaining counters in the European tariff negotiations. The Anglo-French commercial treaty of 1860 had provided that neither party would, in its own country, subject the produce of the other party to higher duties than similar produce from other countries. This Most-Favoured-Nation clause had been the basis of a series of commercial treaties linking the European nations. The new network which arose in the ’eighties, covering Europe and the Americas, was negotiated largely without British intervention and the classification and rates were not designed to favour Britain. Britain sometimes even had difficulty in securing renewal of her M.F.N. agreements.

VI. The Baltic Germans and German Policy towards Latvia after 1918

Abstract: During the First World War Germany had aimed at the eventual annexation of the Baltic provinces of Russia, later to become the independent Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia. After Germany had been defeated in November 1918, the young German Republic faced the task of building up relations with these small states. A new and difficult situation existed in Eastern Europe. Especially aggravating was the setting up of a large Polish state possessing areas of land which had formerly belonged to Germany. Beyond, Soviet Russia presented a great attraction to Germans who were anxious to exploit the potentially unlimited new markets and at the same time to offset some of the disadvantages created by the Treaty of Versailles. Under such circumstances the German government was anxious to obtain good relations with the Baltic states since, apart from a hostile Poland, they provided a means of indirect access to Russia. In the attempt to obtain the friendly co-operation of the Baltic states the German government was compelled to change its attitude towards the so-called ‘Baltic Germans’ who had been especially important in Latvia. This article attempts to show why such changes were considered necessary and what were the general aims behind the new German policy towards the Baltic Germans.

VI. The Entente and the Vatican during the Period of Italian Neutrality, August 1914–May 1915

Abstract: Both the Entente and the Central Powers interpreted the ascension of Benedict XV to the papal throne in the fall of 1914 as signalling a reinvigoration of Vatican foreign policy. Indeed there was little reason to expect that Giacomo Delia Chiesa, elected successor to Pius X on the morning of 3 September, would be passive in a diplomatic sense. As Rennell Rodd, the British ambassador to the Italian court remarked a few days after Benedict's election, the new Pontiff's first acts gave promise of prefacing a ‘vigorous and interesting reign.’.