The Garrison Revisited: Gibraltar in the Eighteenth Century

In the 1940s, scholars across a variety of disciplines started using phrases such as ‘garrison state’ and ‘garrison mentality’ to describe societies where military imperatives predominated. They frequently argued that a perpetual sense of threat and a profound feeling of isolation shaped the outlook of residents in these communities. Such terms continue to surface in contemporary scholarship and popular media, where ‘the garrison’ often remains a stock image. Evidence from eighteenth-century Gibraltar, however, suggests that traditional readings of the garrison as an insulated fortress should be reconsidered. The survival of this strategic outpost actually required that colonial administrators rely on an array of foreigners to keep it supplied during times of both war and peace. At Gibraltar, the garrison was neither isolated from its surrounding environment nor perpetually threatened by its cosmopolitan residents—instead, inescapable dependence on a motley local population often rendered administrators willing to accommodate the alien in their midst and to acknowledge the interconnections between military and civilian.     

Yorkshiremen Go to the Polls: County Contests in the Early Eighteenth Century

Abstract

'William Mabane and Huddersfield Politics, 1931–1947: "By Any Other Name a Liberal"'. This article seeks to explore the impact of the split in the Liberal party's ranks in 1931–32 through a detailed case study of the constituency of Huddersfield. It suggests that Liberals and Liberal Nationals offered viable alternative versions of the Liberal creed, even though there were few examples before 1945 of the two groups confronting one another. In Huddersfield the sitting M.P., William Mabane, despite defecting to the Liberal Nationals, was largely successful in blurring the distinction between the groups and in sustaining at least a thread of unity between them. In the post-war era this would assist the process of Liberal reunion in Huddersfield, in contrast to the experience of most of the rest of the country. This, in turn, enabled Huddersfield to survive as an outpost of Liberal strength at a time when the party faced the very real prospect of extinction as a national political force.     

Lost and Found: the Woman Writer in the Eighteenth Century

Jennifer Summit, Lost Property: the Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380–1589 Jane Spencer, Aphra Behn's Afterlife Harriet Guest, Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750’1810 Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Cliona O Gallchoir and Penny Warburton (eds), Women, Writing and the Public Sphere, 1700’1830