Revolution,Reaction, Restoration: The Meanings and Uses of Seventeenth-Century English History in the Political Thinking of Benjamin Constant,c.1797–1830

Comparisons, juxtapositions or analogies between France's recent Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary history and England's experiences of Revolution, Civil War and Restoration between the 1640s and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 were a common but controversial feature of political discourse dealing with France's contemporary situation in the decades following the Revolution of 1789. The present article probes this dimension of post-Revolutionary political debate, by tracking the shifting meanings and uses of seventeenth-century English history in the published and unpublished political writings of the leading liberal thinker and politician Benjamin Constant, from the 1790s through to his death in 1830. Such an analysis reveals the sometimes striking reversals and inconsistencies to which Constant was driven in his effort to adjust his historical readings to France's rapidly changing political conditions, but it also reveals underlying continuities in his historical and political thinking. The exemplarity of England's case lay, for Constant, less in the provision of a constitutional model that France might hope to appropriate than in the historical spectacle of a nation's struggle for liberty, and the value of this spectacle lay as much in its cautionary messages—focused on the sterile brutality of the Stuart Restoration—as in its eventually progressive outcomes.     

The Dressing and Trimming of the Parliament Chamber, 1509–58

During the mid-Tudor period the royal wardrobe, situated in the parish of St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe in the City of London, provided items on the eve of the assembly of parliament to make ready for use the Parliament Chamber, that is the house of lords. This process was called the ‘dressyng and trymmyng’ of the Parliament Chamber.     

Evangelicalism and the early vegetarian movement in Britain c.1847–1860

This article explores the complex inter-relationship between evangelicalism and the formation of an organised vegetarian movement in Britain in the period 1847–1860. As well as adding insight into existing historical research into the diet, I will comment on the potential of evangelicalism's influence to reach into various areas of society, a claim that has often been contested in the existing historiography. I will explore the manner by which religious belief interacted with medico-scientific views pertaining to diet; and how it penetrated views on the role of diet to family life.     

The Safavid-Qizilbash Ecumene and the Formation of the Qizilbash-Alevi Community in the Ottoman Empire,c. 1500–c. 1700

Alevis, the largest religious minority of Turkey, also living in Europe and the Balkans, are distinguished from both Sunnis and Shi?ites by their latitudinarian attitude toward Islamic Law. Conceptualizing this feature as “heterodoxy,” earlier Turkish scholarship sought the roots of Alevi religiosity in Turkish traditions which traced back to Central Asia, on the one hand, and in medieval Anatolian Sufi orders such as the Yasawi, Bektashi, Qalandari, and Wafa?i, on the other. A new line of scholarship has critiqued the earlier conceptualization of Alevis as “heterodox” as well as the assumption of Central Asian connections. In the meantime, the new scholarship too has focused on medieval Anatolian Sufi orders, especially the Bektashi and Wafa?i, as the fountainhead of Alevi tradition. Critically engaging with both scholarships, this paper argues that it was the Safavid-Qizilbash movement in Anatolia, Azerbaijan, and Iran rather than medieval Sufi orders, that gave birth to Alevi religiosity.     

Selling the Empire?: Marketing and the Demise of the British World,c.1920–1960

ABSTRACT

This article uses a study of the politics of marketing and advertising to consider the role that British World collaboration played in consumer politics in the UK and the Dominions between the 1920s and 1950s. We will assess how politicians and businesspeople in the Dominions responded to the Empire Marketing Board’s efforts to encourage the habit of ‘Buying British’ in the inter-war years, as well as exploring the activities of the leading American marketing agency, J. Walter Thompson. The article concludes with a discussion of how the politics of patriotic trade was recast in the 1950s. While this was a cause which had taken on different forms in Australia, Canada and South Africa during the 1930s, in each country its advocates shared a wider concern with imperial development. And yet, changes in the advertising and marketing industries, and the growth of market research, cut across efforts to promote the consumer habit of buying imperially. By the early 1960s patriotic trade campaigns in the ‘old’ Dominions were nationally focused and shorn of their earlier ‘Britannic’ identity.     

The Costs of Parliamentary Enclosure in an Upland Setting: South and East Cumbria c. 1760–1860

Abstract

'The Costs of Parliamentary Enclosure in an Upland Setting: South and East Cumbria c. 1760–1860'. Although the costs of parliamentary enclosure have been shown to be high, attention has focused on lowland areas of England. This article examines the public and private costs of parliamentary enclosure in the old county of Westmorland, and adjoining areas of Cumberland and Lancashire, where most of the land enclosed was rough pasture, rather than open-field arable. The General Enclosure Act of 1845 greatly reduced public costs. These were in any case frequently financed by the sale of some of the land. On the other hand, private costs, including fencing and especially land improvement, were relatively high, pushing the overall cost of enclosure to substantial levels. The impact of such costs on Cumbrian society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is then explored.     

The Uses and Abuses of Amity in Mid-Tudor Diplomacy, 1542–1560

Abstract

Amity, an affective as well as pragmatic political relationship, was the primary mechanism of mid-Tudor foreign policy. It was often the first step toward a formal alliance, but it did not constitute a binding agreement in itself. In fact, political friendship’s inherent legal ambiguity allowed the Tudors to work around the strictures of existing international treaties when diplomatic circumstances changed and it became necessary to reevaluate relationships abroad. Amity’s flexibility could also limit its effectiveness as a collaborative partnership. This was especially the case if two parties challenged a consensus in the international community. In negotiating amity diplomats appealed to moral, affective, and contractual obligations simultaneously. They did not acknowledge any categorical difference between emotive personal friendship and utilitarian public amity. Rather, they asserted that loving friends at once promoted each other’s strategic advantage and growth in virtue. Friendship was ultimately grounded in mutual trust, which was established by personal encounters and reinforced through law and ritual. This essay considers the application of amity in Anglo-Imperial, Anglo-Schmalkalden, and Anglo-Scottish contexts in 1542–1560 as a basis for comparative analysis.     

The economic structure of port cities in the mid-nineteenth century: Boston and Liverpool, 1840–1860

This paper compares the economic structures of Boston, Massachusetts, and Liverpool, Lancashire, in the mid-nineteenth century. The two cities were selected for comparative analysis because of similarities in the commodity flows through their ports, the functional status of each city in the urban hierarchies of the US and Britain and the industrial mix of each hinterland. An examination of the distribution of the labour force in each city (1850–1851) supported the assumption of functional similarity. However, in standardising the data for relative differences in the level of regional and national economic development, Boston evidenced a greater dominance over regional and national markets than did Liverpool. This was particularly true in the case of industries not directly associated with the city's port functions. The primary factor contributing to these differences was the proximity of alternative location sites in the hinterland.