Orme Sargent,Ernest Bevin and British Policy Towards Europe, 1946–1949

Upon his appointment as Foreign Secretary in July 1945, it was widely expected that Ernest Bevin would make a clean sweep of the permanent officials in the Foreign Office. However, Bevin decided against staffing changes and eventually came to trust and even like these officials. This paper explores the relationship between Bevin and his Permanent Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office between 1946 and 1949, Sir Orme Sargent. Despite their initial concerns about one another in 1945, this relationship turned into one of mutual friendship by the time of Sargent's retirement in 1949. Both were driven by similar motivations in their conception of British foreign policy. They both believed that Britain was a Great Power and had a place in Europe. The congruence of views between them is clear in the examination of Anglo-French relations (culminating in the Anglo-French Treaty of 1947) and in the signature of the Brussels Treaty. This paper will show that while Bevin had a policy, so did his most senior advisor, and that the Foreign Secretary was not adverse to taking advice either. Beyond high policy, a close working and personal relationship developed between the two men.     

Herbert Heaton and Five Principles of The Yorkshire Coal-miners

Abstract

'Herbert Heaton and Five Principles of the Yorkshire Coal-Miners'. Herbert Heaton, born in 1890, was the son of a Yorkshire coal-miner. He obtained his schooling with scholarships from the age of twelve, including an undergraduate career at the University of Leeds. He went on to become a leading economic historian. He taught on three Continents, spending the last thirty years of his career at the University of Minnesota in the United States. His father was not only a coal-miner, but also a lay preacher in the Primitive Methodist Church and active in the governance of his local co-operative. Heaton wrote and lectured about five principles he had learned and adopted as his own, growing up in the Yorkshire coalfields. The five principles reflect how many coal-miners before 1914 believed economic and social justice could be achieved. While the miners changed their beliefs after 1918, Heaton, who never lived in Britain after 1914, retained the Yorkshire principles of his youth.     

‘Postponing the Evil Day’: Sir Edward Grey and British Foreign Policy

ABSTRACT

Sir Edward Grey is remembered largely as Britain's Foreign Secretary when ‘the lights went out all over Europe’ in the summer of 1914. His record remains contested. From David Lloyd George's crafty deception in his wartime memoirs to more recent revisionist historians, writers have sought to blame Grey for the outbreak of the First World War. Drawing on substantial research in private and official, British, and foreign archives, this paper will reconstruct Grey's career as Foreign Secretary with an emphasis on his objectives and the means which he employed to obtain them. Crucially, it places Grey's stewardship of British foreign policy within the broader international context, defined by the steep decline and subsequent renaissance of Russian power in the years between 1905 and 1912/13, with the aim of establishing the limitations of British power. More especially the shift in the international balance around 1913/14 shaped towards Russia, and away from Germany, shaped Grey's calculations during Europe's last summer. The July Crisis showed both the strengths and the limitations of Grey's diplomacy, this persistent and subtle pressing for mediation, but also his misreading of Austro-Hungarian policy.     

Balancing and Limiting Episcopal Power: Bishop Thomas Barlow’s Use of Common Law in Disputes with Arminian Anglican Clerics

Thomas Barlow was a Reformed theologian simultaneously fighting on three fronts against Catholic, Dissenting Protestant and Arminian Anglican opponents. The first two of these groups threatened the Church of England from the outside, while the last group was transforming Anglican doctrine through its domination of the most important posts in the episcopal hierarchy. Barlow could not argue directly against the power of bishops without assisting the external opponents, yet he had to find a way to prevent other bishops from interfering in his continued support for Reformed theology. In order to reduce their power within the Church of England, Barlow had to look outside the institution for ways to limit his superior’s power. This essay examines two arguments in which Barlow ventured into polemics about the secular law of England in an effort to maintain limits on his Anglican opponents’ exercise of power.     

National identity and primitive methodism in the United States: A transatlantic perspective

The Primitive Methodist Church in the United States of America was, throughout the nineteenth century, a denomination that was transatlantic in character. It attempted to act both as a home away from home for newly arriving English industrial immigrants and as a tool of their Americanization. In the former role, the denomination enjoyed considerable success, benefiting from continuous English immigration throughout the period. However, Primitive Methodist attempts at Americanization presented much greater challenges. The constant contact both with newly arriving English immigrants and the Primitive Methodist Conference in England frustrated attempts to take the denomination in new directions and undermined its claim as an American and Americanizing church. Whilst the process of becoming American was very difficult and painful for many individual immigrants, it proved almost impossible for the institution of Primitive Methodism. Ninety years after its establishment in the United States, the denomination was still homesick.     

Simon of Tournai's Stroke: The Image of an Irate Unbeliever

For centuries after his death in the late twelfth century, Simon of Tournai, a master of theology in the Parisian schools, had a reputation for being an unbeliever punished by God with a stroke. This article gathers the eight known medieval sources for his stroke and examines them from a mythogenetic perspective to demonstrate how different authors writing with different purposes, genres, and biases recast the image of Simon as an unbeliever for their own moral or polemical programs. I argue that since Simon's stroke was interpreted as divine action, presenting him as sinful was required to preserve divine goodness. The article also discusses the representation of Simon as irate as an element of didactic intent against unbelief, blasphemy, pride, anger, and luxuria. The article revises the date of Simon's stroke from c. 1201 to the 1180s or very early 1190s.     

Rise and Fall of the Brotherhood of St Andrew in the Anglican Diocese of Dunedin: Charting the American Influence in New Zealand's Religious History

In recent years, scholars have begun to highlight American influences upon New Zealand's religious history. They have demonstrated that even at the height of the British Empire, many non-episcopal churches maintained close ties to their coreligionists in the United States. This article contributes to this field of research by analysing American influences within the Anglican Church of New Zealand, usually portrayed as a thoroughly English institution before the Second World War. It takes as a case study the activities of the American Brotherhood of St Andrew in the Diocese of Dunedin from 1906 to 1915. The article demonstrates that Bishop Samuel Tarratt Nevill invited the Brotherhood because he had great admiration for the Episcopal Church, and that many of his flock accepted the Brotherhood for the same reason. Eventually, the Brotherhood was eclipsed by an English rival, the Church of England Men's Society. But this transition took place not because local Anglicans lost interest in America, but because the Edwardian Era witnessed a surge in imperial loyalty and because the local leader of the CEMS, Canon William Curzon-Siggers, deliberately sought to undermine the influence of the Brotherhood.     

Attlee,Bevin, and Political Warfare: Labour's Secret Anti-Communist Campaign in Europe, 1948–51

Clement Attlee's Labour Government oversaw the emergence of a vigorous anti-Communist discourse and the establishment of an anti-Soviet Western alliance in the early Cold War. In January 1948, the Prime Minister authorised the Information Research Department to launch a political warfare offensive designed to combat the spread of Communism in Europe. Two years later, against the wishes of his Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, Attlee set up a high-level interdepartmental committee to oversee the subversion of the Soviet Union's position in Eastern Europe. These developments forced Whitehall to re-fight the bureaucratic battles of the Second World War over who actually controlled covert warfare. Bevin, like his predecessor Anthony Eden, fought unsuccessfully to maintain exclusive ownership of national security strategy in this area. Attlee ended his monopoly by making a rare but significant intervention in his Foreign Secretary's domain in the search for a new central machine to fight the Cold War.     

Missionary,Reformer, and Old Believer in Revolutionary Russia: Bishop Andrei (Ukhtomskii) (1872–1937)

This article examines the life and thought of Andrei (Ukhtomskii), a prominent Orthodox churchman in late imperial and early Soviet Russia. A proponent of ecclesiastical reform, Andrei believed that the Church was unable to instil piety because of an overly close relationship with the state. Basing his opinions on Slavophile philosophy, Andrei campaigned for the restoration of the Russian patriarchate and parish reform that would grant the laity increased autonomy. As a missionary among non‐Russian populations, he rejected linguistic Russification. After 1905, these beliefs led him to clash with the right and Rasputin. After the February Revolution of 1917, the Provisional Government appointed Andrei to a leading position in the Holy Synod. However, during the collapse of the Church's hierarchy in the 1920s, he grew weary of the prevalent inertia and in 1925 attempted to single‐handedly resolve the centuries‐old Old Believer schism. This was rejected by the Moscow Patriarchate, leading Andrei to create his own catacomb church. This article concludes that Andrei should be seen as a church politician undone by the contradictions inherent both in his own position and that of the Church.     

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Prioritization of Church Unity (Oekumene)

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, following Karl Barth, broke with the "liberal school" of German Protestant theology, led by the famous Adolf von Harnack, he discovered that the Ecumenical Movement could be an agency for bringing about world peace, and he argued energetically for this in the various forums of the then ecumenical movement. However, to only partial avail. With the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, the urgency for the ecumenical movement to declare solidarity with the Confessing Church in Germany became acute. This was because the Nazi-supported Reich Church and the so-called German Christians were trying to align Christianity with Nazi ideology. Bonhoeffer proclaimed forcefully that the latter group were acting in the service of the Antichrist, driven by entirely worldly ambitions. He argued that this situation made it doubly incumbent on the churches associated in the ecumenical movement to support the Confessing Church. Indeed, he made such a declaration of solidarity the touchstone of the credibility of the ecumenical movement.
This paper seeks to trace the course of Bonhoeffer's campaign, for which he only had the limited support of men such as Bishop Bell of Chichester. But he failed not only to persuade the Ecumenical Movement; he was also unable to convince the majority of the Confessing Church to declare unequivocally for peace against the Nazi leadership. The article concludes with the observation that the present-day ecumenical movement has remembered Bonhoeffer's original plea for an Ecumenical Peace Council, and that it now recognizes that Bonhoeffer confronted the Churches with a challenge that will remain on its agenda for the foreseeable future.     

Grey and the Russian Threat to India, 1892–1915

ABSTRACT

As Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the Liberal Government from August 1892 to June 1895, Sir Edward Grey was exposed to the damage that an anti-British, Franco-Russian Alliance could do to the interests of the British Empire. The experience of those years left an enduring impression upon him. Between June 1895 and December 1905 Grey espoused the cause of agreement with the Russian Empire wherever possible. As Foreign Secretary, he advanced this cause through the Anglo-Russian Conventions of August 1907, whose objectives were to achieve what he described as ‘repose’ on the North West Frontier of India, and the reduction of Russian pressure on Persia in particular. So far as the outbreak of war in 1914 is concerned, Grey's known propensity to maintain good terms with Russia gave the latter a degree of leverage which they exploited to the full in insisting on British support in standing up to Germany and Austria-Hungary following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Grey's position within the Liberal Government, and his clear determination to resign unless Russian demands were met, swung the British government from a neutralist stance to one of full participation in the Great War.     

Durán of Huesca (c. 1160–1230): A Waldensian Seeking a Remedy to Heresy

Despite the debates about the nature of medieval heresy, especially the Cathars and the Waldensians, in recent scholarship, very little attention has been given to Durán of Huesca, a Spanish Waldensian who wrote two anti‐heretical treatises before and after he was reconciled with the Roman Church in 1207. This article examines how Durán's decisions to join the Waldensians and later to return to the Catholic Church were motivated by his commitment to defending the sacraments and the Incarnation against what he saw as dualist heresy. That his major decisions were in response to this heresy suggests that while old scholarship might overemphasise the cohesiveness of heresy in the south of France, it is important not to dismiss the existence of explicit heretical belief altogether. Moreover, the centrality of the Incarnation and the sacraments in Durán's shifts in association reveals that the Waldensians were active, rather than passive, participants in shaping how the Church hierarchy and other dissident groups perceived and categorised them.     

“The stone in the sling”: Frederick Douglass and Belfast abolitionism

Frederick Douglass’s sojourns in Belfast during 1845–1846 coincided with the “Send Back the Money” controversy in the Free Church of Scotland over the receipt of money from and fellowship with slaveholders, the South Carolina minister Thomas Smyth’s exclusion from the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1846, and the aftermath of the debate at the inaugural meeting of the Evangelical Alliance over fellowship with slaveholders. Since Douglass regarded Belfast as the central location of Presbyterian sympathy for the Free Church outside of Scotland, he believed that the town was crucial in the crusade against the Free Church. The attacks on the Free Church, however, cost the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society considerable support in the long term. Belfast also played a role in the personal development of Douglass. His dispute with his Dublin publisher, Richard Davis Webb, over the ministers’ recommendations to his Narrative constituted evidence of growing maturity. Although William Lloyd Garrison united with Douglass in Belfast to denounce the Evangelical Alliance, this essay argues that Douglass displayed evidence of independence from strict Garrisonianism.     

John Wesley's Conflict with James Hervey and Its Effects in Scotland

The assumption among historians is that Wesley's ministry in Scotland had largely failed because of his conflicting theological views. But upon a more thorough investigation, his problems stemmed from an earlier debate with the Anglican clergyman James Hervey, which was continued by the Scottish minister John Erskine. In his published response to Hervey, Wesley inadvertently included offensive comments about certain Reformed doctrines which Erskine exploited in order to highlight the discrepancies between Wesleyan Methodism and Scottish Presbyterianism. Erskine's insinuation in 1765 that Wesley intentionally concealed his beliefs in order to gain ascendancy in Scotland resulted in the immediate suppression of Methodist growth.     

Accounts of early Christian history in the thought of François Guizot,Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël 1800–c.1833

This article compares different historical accounts of early Christianity written by François Guizot, Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël and shows that they played a significant role in the construction of their ideas about religious tolerance and political liberty in ancient and modern states. In his 1812 translation of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Guizot used his editorial footnotes to oppose Gibbon’s sceptical representation of the early Church and to assert that the development of Christianity had been crucial in condemning slavery, establishing religious toleration and fostering individual liberty. Benjamin Constant also opposed Gibbon’s representation of early Church history but he argued in his posthumously published Du polythéisme romain (1833) that the key achievement of the early Christians had been to revive the idea of individual religious sentiment against the anti-individualist Roman state. As Guizot developed his historical research in the 1820s he rejected this view and came to see the early Christians as demonstrating the inherently social nature of all religious practice. Some of these ideas were anticipated by Madame de Staël in De la littérature (1800), but all three thinkers sought to reintegrate religion into their ideas of modern liberty in ways that merit greater attention.     

Henry IV and Charles VI: the confirmation of the twenty-eight-year truce

The deposition of Richard II in 1399 caused serious problems for the new English king, Henry IV, in foreign affairs. Contemporaries believed that his seizure of the crown would provoke an outbreak of new hostilities with the French since the wife of the deposed monarch was none other than Isabel, a daughter of Charles VI, king of France. Indeed Charles took certain belligerent measures against henry, whom he stubbornly refused to recognize as the legitimate ruler of England, but stopped short of war because Isabel still remained in English custody. Henry IV, on the other hand, desired to improve relations with France because of his own tenuous hold on the English throne. Once Charles VI became convinced early in 1400 that Richard II had died in captivity, he abruptly changed his policy towards England and announced his intention of observing the terms set forth in the Twenty-Eight-Year Truce which he had originally concluded with his son-in-law in 1396. Later in May, Henry IV similarly proclaimed his willingness to honor that agreement. How both sides avoided an open clash and eventually confirmed the Twenty-Eight-Year Truce forms the central theme of this paper.     

Henry IV and Charles VI: the confirmation of the twenty-eight-year truce

The deposition of Richard II in 1399 caused serious problems for the new English king, Henry IV, in foreign affairs. Contemporaries believed that his seizure of the crown would provoke an outbreak of new hostilities with the French since the wife of the deposed monarch was none other than Isabel, a daughter of Charles VI, king of France. Indeed Charles took certain belligerent measures against henry, whom he stubbornly refused to recognize as the legitimate ruler of England, but stopped short of war because Isabel still remained in English custody. Henry IV, on the other hand, desired to improve relations with France because of his own tenuous hold on the English throne. Once Charles VI became convinced early in 1400 that Richard II had died in captivity, he abruptly changed his policy towards England and announced his intention of observing the terms set forth in the Twenty-Eight-Year Truce which he had originally concluded with his son-in-law in 1396. Later in May, Henry IV similarly proclaimed his willingness to honor that agreement. How both sides avoided an open clash and eventually confirmed the Twenty-Eight-Year Truce forms the central theme of this paper.     

The Reverend Dr Louis Giustiniani and Anglican Conflict in the Swan River Colony,Western Australia 1836–1838*

In 1835, the Western Australian Missionary Society appointed the Reverend Dr Louis Giustiniani to establish a Moravian‐style mission in the Swan River Colony. The land grant essential for such a mission was not forthcoming from the government but Giustiniani established a small mission farm employing Aborigines at Guildford and started ministry among the settlers. This change of mission focus set the stage for conflict within the Anglican establishment of the colony, conflict which destroyed Dr Giustiniani's ministry. Giustiniani was well qualified and exerted himself to achieve the mission's objectives and many accusations made against him were essentially false; they reveal much about the prevailing culture and prejudices of the colony. He was defeated, however, because his ideas of church and mission differed from those of the colonial Church and society and because he did not conform to their expectations of the behaviour of a clergyman.     

Murphy's Moral Economy of Labor

Abstract

Throughout its history, the institution of the Catholic Church has been at odds with the social and political changes of modernity. However, many scholars claim that after Vatican II, the Church began to accept modernity's political regnancy, and subsequently embraced doctrines such as separation of Church and State and religious freedom. In fact, some scholars go so far as to claim that in recent decades, the Catholic Church has led political crusades that resulted in the political, economic, and social liberation of many, such as its spearhead movement against Communist countries and the liberation theology movements in Latin America. The purpose of this article is not only to examine such claims but to look more closely at the political implications of the thought of Pope Benedict XVI. I propose that Benedict XVI does not simply embrace modernity, but he challenges it from within and presents political society with an alternative foundation for political liberalism. To this effect, I examine the main tenets of his social thought, including his political anthropology and concept of personhood, his idea of secularity, and his understanding of the role of political institutions. I assess whether his ideas can be universally accepted by liberal, secular societies or whether the character of these ideas will appeal only to those who embrace Christianity.     

POSTMODERNISM,SOCIAL SCIENCE,AND HISTORY: RETURNING TO AN UNFINISHED AGENDA

Recognizing that the vogue of postmodernism has passed, Simon Susen seeks to assess whatever enduring impact it may have had on the social sciences, including historiography. Indeed, the postmodern turn, as he sees it, seems to have had particular implications for our understanding of the human relationship with history. After five exegetical chapters, in which he seems mostly sympathetic to postmodernism, Susen turns to often biting criticism in a subsequent chapter. He charges, most basically, that postmodernists miss the self‐critical side of modernity and tend to overreact against aspects of modernism. That overreaction is evident especially in the postmodern preoccupation with textuality and discourse, which transforms sociology into cultural studies and historiography into a form of literature. But as Susen sees it, a comparable overreaction has been at work in the postmodern emphasis on new, “little” politics, concerned with identity and difference, at the expense of more traditional large‐scale politics and attendant forms of radicalism. His assessment reflects the “emancipatory” political agenda he assigns to the social sciences. Partly because that agenda inevitably affects what he finds to embrace and what to criticize, aspects of his discussion prove one‐sided. And he does not follow through on his suggestions that postmodernist insights entail a sort of inflation of history or historicity. Partly as a result, his treatment of “reason,” universal rights, and reality (including historiographical realism) betrays an inadequate grasp of the postmodern challenge—and opportunity. In the last analysis, Susen's understanding of the historical sources of postmodernism is simply too limited, but he usefully makes it clear that we have not put the postmodernist challenge behind us.