British Masculinities on Trial in the Queen Caroline Affair of 1820

This article uses the deluge of pamphlets, public addresses, newspaper articles and sermons addressing the Queen Caroline Affair to construct a case study of the opposing constructions of British masculinity vying for dominance in 1820. The literature surrounding the attempted royal divorce reveals a contest between the libertine example of manhood characterised by George IV and the more sober, chivalrous and respectable image of masculinity increasingly espoused as the British ideal. This episode, therefore, offers an unusually rich insight into contemporary constructions of masculinity and the way in which they were utilised within the public sphere. Moreover, this article argues that such gendered concerns were not only as crucial to motivating opposition to the king's actions as political issues, but that gender concerns and political issues were indivisible, as appropriate manly behaviour in both public and private increasingly came to be seen as a core component of a man's overall reputation and fitness to exercise authority.     

St Anselm of Canterbury: the philosopher-saint as politician

From the beginning of Anselm's career as abbot of Bec he was a shrewd and skilful politician. Eadmer describes him as using a certain ‘holy guile’, having great psychological insight, and using methods of kindly persuasion supplemented by logical argument to gain his ends.This pattern is reflected in the church-state controversies in England. Anselm outlined this method to his successor at Bec, showing him an effective way of advancing and enriching his monastery.Anselm had a definite program of reform for the English church. From the beginning he had a vision of the archbishop of Canterbury as primate of Britain, a co-ruler of the kingdom. Anselm also claimed certain specific rights: to recognize and contact the papacy; to hold councils for the reform of the church; to receive the archbishopric free from simony; to hold the lands of Canterbury free from the king's control or from extraordinary taxes; and to ban lay investitute.During his rule Anselm accomplished all these goals, one by one, by taking advantage of times when the kings were faced with political crises and pressing his claims just then. He acted shrewdly, at times with ‘holy guile’, at times with skilful negotiation, but always aware of the potent effect of public opinion. Thus Anselm reflected the growing concept of raison d'état in the Anglo Norman state, and thereby used his raison d'église more effectively.     

Sovereign Bodies: Ancestor Cult and State Legitimacy among the Incas

The worship of dead Inca kings, because it aimed at preserving the deceased's bodily integrity, reveals constituent aspects of royal personhood. Underpinning these practices was the conception that the dead's agency was conveyed through corporeal substances, which therefore required constant acts of sustenance. This paper examines the bodily practices and material substances that shaped the king's physical person during his lifetime, as well as after his death. These data show that the royal body was made conspicuous through a series of ritual and symbolic actions devised to display the king's faculty to infuse vital force to all living creatures under his rule he thus stood as the source of prosperity for his subjects with which he was engaged in reciprocal obligations of life sustenance. I argue that these “embodied technologies of power” shaped a system of representations that legitimated the king's appropriation of state resources.     

The Boundaries of Women's Power: Gender and the Discourse of Political Friendship in Twelfth‐Century England

The discourse of friendship was an integral part of political language and interaction in twelfth‐century England. Because the qualities that made a good political friendship – loyalty, wise counsel and generosity, among others – corresponded so closely to the criteria for successful lordship, historians often used the quality of a king's friendship as a signifier for the quality of his rule. Yet their treatment of women's political friendship was markedly different. The discourse of friendship therefore provides a window into the larger struggle over the representation of gender and rulership in twelfth‐century historical writing in England, reflecting chroniclers’ anxiety about female sovereignty. Twelfth‐century historians depicted women's participation in political friendship as acceptable only within certain circumscribed boundaries that corresponded to the sanctioned political roles for women in general. Otherwise, chroniclers attempted to efface the existence of women's political friendship, sometimes describing the same situations in different language depending on whether the main participant was male or female. Chroniclers also represented women as arbiters of friendship, showing men how better to conduct their relationships either through direct instruction or counter‐example. In both cases women reinforced male friendship, either by being excluded from it, or by demonstrating the correct way to carry it out.     

Simon de Montfort,Earl of Leicester,and the utility of sanctity in thirteenth-century England

Almost immediately after his death, Simon de Montfort, the leader of the Barons' Revolt against Henry III, was revered as a saint. Despite the received historical opinion that his cult was local, furtive, and brief, it actually received support throughout England, from the noble and clerical ranks as well as from the peasantry, and lasted into the reign of Edward I. The manifestations of Earl Simon's cult reveal that his revolt was popular as well as noble, that even illegal cults could be profitable for their home shrines, in this case the abbey of Evesham, and that sanctifying a rebel leader was an effective way of justifying both the continuation of a revolt and sympathy for the defeated rebels, in this case the Disinherited. On the hagiographical level, Montfort's cult shows the incredibly rich diversity of expression of devotion in medieval cults, and the more practical concerns with advertisement and profit. On the political level, the cult proves once again that the king did not control all means of political discourse. The merger of political and religious authority, the importance of which has been often demonstrated in studies of the king's touch and the laudes ceremonials, affected rebel leaders as well as kings.     

Education and asssociation: the bureaucrat in the reign of Henry VI

This study concentrates on the personnel of the chancery and the office of the privy seal during the reign of Henry VI of England (1422–1461). The educational achievements and involvements of these civil servants are examined to reveal how the qualities they bring to the job affect the level of bureaucratic service offered. Educational involvement afforded the king's clerks the opportunity both to make the contacts necessary to enter the king's service and to prepare for the king's service. At the various levels of the official hierarchy examples are found of bureaucrats who were involved in education as students, patrons, benefactors, collectors, men who made original contributions to learning and men who used their learning to contribute to the efficient functioning of the bureaucracy. Further, their associations with a multitude of educational enterprises and with their fellow clerks assisted in the development of a group mentality and loyalty which contributed to a well-run bureaucracy.     

Duke Richard of York's intentions in I450 and the origins of the wars of the roses

The return of Richard, duke of York, from Ireland in 1450 represents his first overt attempt to remedy certain grievances. His criticism of the Lancastrian régime eventually brought him leadership in the Wars of the Roses. The grivances of 1450 are contained in two bills addressed to Henry VI. At first, the duke harboured personal grievances — fear of attainder and having his claim to the throne bypassed, resentment at his counsel being ignored and his debts unpaid — which were exaguerated by unsertainty and the king's readiness to believe the worst. Richards apreciation of the widespread hostility towards the government and the disarray of the king's Household after Suffolk's murder enabled him to convert grievances into public criticisms in his second bill. He encouraged investigations into official oppression in southeastern England, and his supporters may have stimulated risings there to demonstrate support for him. Compared with Henry's nervous reaction to York's first bill, he firmly checkmated the pretensions of the second, and Yorks achievement in 1450 was limited. But he had taken a first step towards appealing for support by converting personal grievances into a general bid for sympathy. Whether he aid so for personal or public motives — or both — remains an open question.     

Education and asssociation: the bureaucrat in the reign of Henry VI

This study concentrates on the personnel of the chancery and the office of the privy seal during the reign of Henry VI of England (1422–1461). The educational achievements and involvements of these civil servants are examined to reveal how the qualities they bring to the job affect the level of bureaucratic service offered. Educational involvement afforded the king's clerks the opportunity both to make the contacts necessary to enter the king's service and to prepare for the king's service. At the various levels of the official hierarchy examples are found of bureaucrats who were involved in education as students, patrons, benefactors, collectors, men who made original contributions to learning and men who used their learning to contribute to the efficient functioning of the bureaucracy. Further, their associations with a multitude of educational enterprises and with their fellow clerks assisted in the development of a group mentality and loyalty which contributed to a well-run bureaucracy.     

Texts,topoi and the self: a reading of Alfredian spirituality*

Challenging the allegation that Alfred's spirituality as Asser presents it is no more than a string of textual fictions, this article outlines a context for understanding Alfred's spirituality as a functional process of living texts, or of ‘textualizing’ the self. The discussion first draws support for this view from the history of early medieval spirituality and then demonstrates the theme's relevance both to Asser's representation of Alfred and to the king's own writings. Attention is given especially to the congruence between Alfred's depiction in the Life and Gregory the Great's teachings on the ideal rector as propounded in the Pastoral Care, a text carefully read and famously translated by Alfred himself. The comparison suggests that the main spiritual models for Alfred's kingly piety may be understood to reside in, and to involve assimilation of, this work of Gregory, making it possible to conceptualize the king's self‐presentation in terms of a conscious project to ‘live’ Gregory's text by bringing the ideals of the Gregorian rector to life in his own person. Such an argument helps to explain Alfred's interest in Gregory, to account for his concern to translate the Pastoral Care, and to legitimize the predominant images associated with the king's spirituality as indicative of a kind of functional piety grounded in the reading of texts, rather than simply reflected, perhaps falsely, in Asser’s Life.     

The archaeology of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: a review of work 1947-97

The mid- to late tenth century has been seen as a period in which the kings of León saw their ability to project their power throughout their regnum challenged by the emergence of a magnate class increasingly disinclined to co-operate with public authority. This article aims to re-examine this premise via the following approach: first, a discussion of common problems and misconceptions related to notions of public power and government as these terms are used in an early medieval Spanish historiographical context; second, a case study which examines the roles of political actors in one relatively well-documented region of the kingdom. It argues that structures designed to deliver justice and maintain order in the region depended much more on the participation of local actors than they did on the king's official agents; the wider implications for our understanding of public authority are then considered anew.     

Turkey's isolated stance: an ally no more,or just the usual turbulence?

This article explores the policy choices and political stances that lie behind Turkey's growing isolation both from its western allies and its regional neighbours. It details Ankara's approach to a range of current issues in its region—particularly relating to Syria but also Iraq, Libya, Iran, Russia and Israel—and seeks to trace these approaches back to the world‐view of the country's ruling party and its leading figures, most notably President Erdogan and Prime Minister Davutoglu. It also assesses Turkey's reactions to the complex regional circumstances that have confronted Turkey in recent years. It considers the content and impact of some of the rhetoric emanating from Ankara, especially where it is directed towards the West. The article asks whether and why Turkish foreign policy has acquired an anti‐western tone, and also looks at the extent to which its dealings with its neighbours can be explained by sectarian considerations or by pro‐Muslim Brotherhood leanings. It then goes on to speculate about Turkey's future relationship with NATO and to a lesser degree the EU. It considers the prospects for an improvement in Ankara's relationship with its western allies, or whether Turkey–US relations in particular are now likely to be characterized by ‘strategic drift’ and a more transactional and contingent approach to alliance relationships.     

At the Horizons of the Subject: Neo-liberalism,neo-conservatism and the rights of the child Part One: From ‘knowing’ fetus to ‘confused’ child

The inability of the child to represent his or her own interests as a legal subject (by definition), and the continued interest of the state in the child as a futurity or resource locks the child in an eternal pas de deux: the child continually approaches the possibility of ‘personhood’ but never achieves it. In the past 40 years, in western nations the child's legal personhood has been simultaneously invoked and constrained: through a growing array of persons and organizations that, as an exteriority, purport to ‘best represent the child’; and through an ever more finely gradated mapping of the child's interiority—which filters the child's voice through a range of interpretive theories, and mechanisms. In this myopic and hyperopic reading of the child, the child's voice disappears. This paper is the first of two examining the relationship of the child to the liberal notion of the subject. In the case law explored around fetal rights and custody issues in the United States and elsewhere we find a paradoxical situation where the ‘fetus’ is granted a more authoritative voice in terms of what it ‘wants’ than is the child, whose wishes are perpetually called into question. Together these papers raise questions about the nature of the subject qua individual. They highlight the potential for a ventriloquist discourse around the child whereby neo-liberal and neo-conservative groups that purport to speak for the child mobilize their own political interests.     

Becoming Inca: Juan Bustamente Carlos Inca and the Roots of the Great Rebellion

Inca nobles were prominent colonial petitioners for royal mercedes. Their high visibility and persistent claims to a special place in the colonial order, based on their descent from sovereign Inca emperors and past service to the Crown, ensured that the question of political alternatives to normative colonial arrangements would remain alive in the public domain. This article explores the career of one Inca pretendiente, Juan de Bustamante Carlos Inca, the Crown's response to his petitioning, and the significance of his own quest for a better understanding of the ambitions and motives of José Gabriel Túpac Amaru on the eve of the 1780 rebellion. Politically, Bustamante's attempt to win succession to the Marquesado de Oropesa and its entail brought into public view a 1555 cédula of Charles V empowering the then leading Inca noble, Alonso Tito Atauchi—and all his successors—to raise an army on the king's behalf during any crisis within the Viceroyalty of Peru. Bustamante's quest thereby compelled the Crown to confront the potential for political destabilization of Inca succession at the precise moment that the Bourbon dynasty embarked upon an unpopular root-and-branch reform of its empire. The 1555 cédula was the prime source of Túpac Amaru's claim to be rightful heir to the Marquesado—in effect, the version of an Inkarrí that he adopted stemmed in the first instance from the Crown.     

Pauline Hanson,the Mainstream,and Political Elites: The Place of Race in Australian Political Ideology

Pauline Hanson is well known for claiming that Australia's major political parties are out of touch with 'mainstream' Australia on issues related to race. Parallel surveys of the electorate and candidates in the 1996 federal election allow this claim to be tested, with items tapping general ideological dispositions, but including questions about Aboriginal Australians, immigration, and links with Asia. I make three critical findings: the electorate holds quite conservative opinions on these issues relative to the candidates, and is quite distant from ALP candidates in particular; attitudes on racial issues are a powerful component of the electorate's political ideology, so much so that any categorisation of Australian political ideology ignoring race must be considered incomplete; racial attitudes cut across other components of the electorate's ideology, placing all the parties under internal ideological strains, but the ALP appears particularly vulnerable on this score. The data show the coalition parties to be the net beneficiaries of the ideological tensions posed by race. Racial issues thus resemble a realigning ideological dimension, with possibly far-reaching consequences for the conduct of Australian electoral politics. Racism is as Australian as lamingtons and sausage rolls but the real political leader is the man or woman who can appeal to what Abraham Lincoln called 'the better angels of our nature'. Robert Hughes (Lamont 1996)     

Iran's Reform Movement: The Enduring Relevance of an Alternative Discourse

Given the surprise electoral victory in May 2013 of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, which was attained on a recurrent platform of reform and change, this article seeks to investigate Iran's reform discourse by looking at how it systematically developed under President Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005). Its chief purpose is to delineate the discourse in a retrospective analytical attempt to show why it has proven so resilient and persuasive in theory while briefly explicating the causes of its failure in practice under reformists, which set the stage for the rise to power of populist neo‐conservatives marshaled by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–2013). Divided in two main parts, it thus seeks to tease out the domestic ideology of reform as theorized by Khatami and his men on the one hand, and the foreign policy of détente and dialogue as performed by the reformist administration on the other. In so doing, the article draws primarily on the original Persian sources produced during the respective period and afterward, including Khatami's own writings as well as theoretical formulations and articulations propounded by his political strategists. Finally, it anticipates that Rouhani's “moderation” project can face the same fate as Khatami's “reform” project if the former does not heed the hard‐earned historical lessons of the latter, even though it is operating in a different sociopolitical context.     

The Peerage and the Revolution of 1688

Four points support the thesis that the English nobility played a critical role in the revolution. First, the later 17th‐century aristocracy was energetic, wealthy, and connected in ways facilitating political action within, and subsequently outside, the parliamentary arena. Second, it was a class conscious of status and privilege which many policies of James II bumped up against inadvertently, but often with negative consequence. Third, most peers were observant protestants in an age when religious belief, or at least the externals of practice, still mattered greatly. Fourth, habits of deference and traditional spheres of influence at the local level remained surprisingly intact despite intensive royal effort to reshape the lieutenancies, commissions of the peace, and municipal and other corporate bodies. Resistance to repeal of the Test Acts was the issue around which a leadership group emerged in the aristocracy. Initially it focused on a parliamentary solution in which an absolute majority in the house of lords could be counted on to stand firm no matter how the Commons might vote. In the absence of that opportunity and in the face of other events regarded as inimical to class, nation and the protestant interest, many peers turned away from natural alliance with the crown and – in the case of a forward group – conspired with the prince of Orange. Ultimately, more than a third of the nobility aligned itself with those peers intent on constraining the king's freedom of political action, an important factor contributing to his decision to flee.     

Globalization and its discontents

The events of 11 September 2001 and their aftermath have prompted several obituaries of the so-called 'Anti-globalization movement'. Even before that date, the movement was struggling to cope with the problem of violence at its set piece summit protests in Genoa and elsewhere. This article explores the origins of the movement and its likely response to these events.
Three broad trends can be identified in a movement made up of different currents and thinking, but concerned with the present direction of economic globalization: statists who wish to rebuild the developmental role of the states; alternatives seeking grassroots 'small is beautiful' models of development; and reformists who wish to improve the workings of the current institutions and rules governing globalization to address concerns such as rising inequality, the need to tailor economic policies to national conditions, and the lack of accountability of transnational corporations. There has been some change with regard to these issues in recent years, but the introduction of reforms have posed a challenge to the unity of the movement, threatening to drive a wedge between its reformists and its rejectionists.
The impact of the events of 11 September on the movement will depend mainly on how it affects the shape of political and economic governance. If the West responds with a national security crackdown and a return of Cold War mindsets, then the political space and appetite for protest is likely to diminish. However, there are encouraging early signs that the West is pursuing a broader goal, seeking to achieve long-term stability by addressing the sources of political, social and economic exclusion and injustice. If this turns out to be the case, then the movement may even come to be seen in hindsight as the true defender of globalization.     

Magnate Counsel and Parliament,c.1340–76: The Place of the Lords in the Era of the Commons

The mid 14th century has long been identified as a crucial period in the emergence of the Commons. Its rise fundamentally reconfigured the traditional landscape of representation, in which the magnates embodied the ‘community of the realm’. It is the place of the Commons that has drawn the bulk of scholarly attention. Through a close examination of the surviving Parliament Rolls for the period 1340–76, this article argues that magnate counsel, especially on the interrelated themes of warfare, diplomacy, and supply, remained integral to meetings of parliament in the ‘era of the Commons’. Parliament formed a crucial ‘point of contact’ between the king and a broad political society that actively pushed the practice and performance of noble advice‐giving, in line with common assumptions about the ideal social composition of the king's counsellors.     

George III and Parliament*

Circumstances were auspicious when George III came to the throne in 1760, but soon his political actions were much criticized and he was accused from early in his reign until well into the 20th century of weakening the independence of parliament and undermining the constitution. Some contemporaries did defend him and these views received powerful support from Sir Lewis Namier and his followers in the 20th century. Both interpretations have their flaws, however, because of the failure to recognize the profound changes in the context in which George acted over his long reign and the subtle changes that occurred in Britain's unwritten constitution over that half century. By examining how the king appointed and dismissed ministers, sought to influence the composition of both houses of parliament, and endeavoured to shape government policy, this article seeks to revise our understanding of the king's relations with parliament and the constitution and to relocate our overall assessment of him between those offered by his many critics and defenders both during his reign and long afterwards.