Commerce before crusade? France, the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary pirates (1661-1669)

French and Islamic forces clashed with an unprecedented frequencyduring the first decade of Louis XIV's personal rule. This articleexamines France's troubled relations with the Ottoman Empireand the Barbary States in the 1660s, with the aim of sheddinglight on the real motives of Louis XIV in sending his forcesagainst those of the ‘Infidel’. It finds that farfrom having a single policy towards their Muslim neighboursin the Mediterranean, the French government's behaviour wasin fact characterized by chronic inconsistency. In essence,French strategy was driven by the Bourbon government's long-termobjective of developing commerce in the eastern and southernMediterranean, but this programme of commercial expansion wasfrustrated—and repeatedly jeopardized—by issuesof power politics, in particular the king's avid pursuit ofprestige and personal gloire.     

Law, Patronage and Municipal Authority in Seventeenth-Century France: The Aftermath of the Lanturelu Revolt in Dijon

Popular uprisings have attracted the interest of early modernhistorians but the efforts of local elites to manage their consequencesremain largely unexplored. This article examines how Dijon’smunicipality negotiated the aftermath of the 1630 Lanturelurevolt. Following the uprising, Louis XIII curtailed Dijon’sprivileges, reorganized its municipality, and ordered it toindemnify the revolt’s victims. Over time, however, theavocats of Dijon’s municipal government successfully manipulatedthe Ancien Régime’s power networks—law, localinstitutions and clientage networks—to win a restorationof Dijon’s traditional city government, the reductionof damage claims, acknowledgement of the municipality’sinnocence and reaffirmation of its contested authority. Lanturelu’saftermath, often interpreted as an example of the early Bourbons’growing control over French cities, thus reveals that the lattercould remain dynamic political centres in the early seventeenthcentury and that the state’s expanding apparatus couldbe used to contest royal authority, as well as extend it.     

What Did You Do in the War, Mutti? Courageous Women, Compassionate Commanders, and Stories of the Second World War

In the mid–1950s, West Germans were ready to fight theSecond World War again, this time at the cinema. This paperanalyses Kinder, Mütter und ein General, a war film inwhich a band of courageous women pushed to the eastern frontin March 1945 to bring home their sons who had only just puton Wehrmacht uniforms. The paper concludes that the film indicateshow West Germans had come to understand the past of the wara decade after the shooting stopped, and how memories of thewar also shaped contemporary discussions of rearmement, therehabilitation of the Wehrmacht, and the redefinition of ‘awomen's place’ after the defeat of Fascism.     

Strategy as practice: interactive governance spaces and the corporate strategies of retail transnationals

There is growing interest in the role of corporate governancesystems within the strategy-making process of firms. Using a‘strategy as practice’ perspective, we conceptualizethe governance system as a contested space in which managementand security analysts mutually adapt/transform and enact corporatestrategies vis-à-vis argumentation. Synthesizing thismicropractice perspective within corporate governance research,the supple role of securities analysts’ arguments in shapingcorporate strategies assumes a new significance. It also providesa basis for observing and understanding the contested natureof the retail internationalization process. The implicationsand opportunities for management studies and economic geographyare considered.     

The Six Fevrier 1934 and the 'Survival' of the French Republic

The Paris riots of the six février 1934 are rememberedchiefly as the event that provided the initial spark and theeventual rationale for the anti-fascist Popular Front. However,most French historians have tended to downplay the importanceof the riots themselves, arguing that the Republic was not underserious threat, and that the Left at the time greatly exaggeratedthe danger. Indeed, the fact that the regime ‘survived’these events has often been cited as proof of its resilience,of France’s deep-rooted ‘democratic political culture’,and its inbuilt ‘immunity’ to fascism. This historiographicalreview argues that the standard interpretation of the six févrieris deeply flawed, especially in its tendency to deduce the intentionsof the actors from the outcome of the events. The six févrierconstituted a serious challenge to the regime, and created adangerously fluid situation in which a variety of ‘outcomes’became possible. It should be analysed not as a discrete andtemporally circumscribed event but as a key moment in an ongoingprocess of political radicalization on the French Right.     

'Stop the Flapper Vote Folly': Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail, and the Equalization of the Franchise 1927-28

This essay re-examines the Daily Mail's campaign in 1927–8against the Baldwin government's decision to equalize the franchiseby lowering the female voting age to 21. It argues that theMail's hostility to the ‘flapper vote’ was largelya product of the passionate anti-socialism of its proprietor,Lord Rothermere, and not, as has been suggested, the culminationof a decade of anti-feminism. Rothermere was convinced thatyoung women would vote overwhelmingly for the Labour Party andentrench it in government for a generation. But attacks on the‘flapper’ in 1927–8 were generally confinedto the paper's editorial and political columns, and contrastedwith the much more positive portrayal of young women that hadbeen typical of the Mail's output since 1918. The example ofthe Daily Express, which supported franchise equalization, isused to demonstrate that it was Rothermere's idiosyncratic politicalpinions, rather than the ‘typical’ anti-feminismof the Conservative press, that explained the Mail's stance.The article concludes that the gender discourse of interwarnewspapers has been unfairly stereotyped by historians, andthat media hostility to young, unmarried women in these yearshas been exaggerated.     

'For a Genuine and Noble Nakedness'? German Naturism in the Third Reich

This essay, based on primary sources from the privately-runInternationale FKK-Bibliothek and a growing body of secondaryliterature, examines some of the myths and misconceptions regardingthe fate of naturism in the Third Reich. It shows that despiteGoering's decree of 3 March 1933, which described the ‘nakedculture movement’ as ‘one of the greatest dangersfor German culture and morality’, naturism did not cometo an abrupt halt after the Machtergreifung. While officialhistories of German naturism talk proudly of the movement's‘persecution’ and ‘non-violent resistance’,there was little concerted effort to close down naturist associationsor to arrest individual activists. In fact, without a definitiveorder from the Führer, Germany's naturists existed in asemi-legal limbo for much of the 1930s. Many National Socialistsregarded the clothes-free lifestyle with contempt, but therewere elements within the Nazi state—and particularly theSS—which could see significant benefits from celebrating‘the instinct for bodily nobility and its beauty in ourVolk’. A mutual desire to de-eroticize nudity helped cementthe bond between Heydrich, Himmler and naturist leaders. Asa result, German Freikörperkultur passed some of its mostimportant landmarks in the years of Nazi rule, including itsvery first book with photographs in full colour, a full-lengthfeature film, and a new, more permissive Bathing Law. Thus whileGeorge Mosse's Nationalism and Sexuality claims the Nazis ‘forbadenudism after their accession to power’, a closer examinationof the fate of naturism after 1933 reveals a more complex picture,which serves to highlight not only the limits of the régime'stotalitarian aspirations, but also the naturist movement's owndisparate and problematic heritage.     

Oscar Heidenstam, The Mr Universe Contest, and the Amateur Ideal in British Bodybuilding

During Britain's so-called ‘golden age of bodybuilding’during the 1950s and 1960s, Oscar Heidenstam, through his NationalAmateur Bodybuilders Association (NABBA) and Health and Strengthmagazine, elevated the annual Mr Universe Contest in Londoninto the world's most prestigious physique competition. Whatmade this achievement so remarkable was Heidenstam's commitmentto the Victorian ideal of the gentleman amateur. Eventually,however, this outmoded approach prevented him from staying abreastwith the times and resisting countervailing societal forcesthat were commercial, American and modern. Tradition and parochialismprevailed as NABBA, the Mr Universe Contest, and British bodybuildingwent into ‘relative decline’ in the 1970s. And California,home of the rival Weider organization and Arnold Schwarzenegger,displaced London as center of the bodybuilders’ universe.     

Of Sceptres and Censors: Biblical Interpretation and Censorship in Seventeenth-Century France

In 1676 Pierre-Daniel Huet, scholar and tutor to the Dauphin,encountered difficulties with state censorship. Bishop Bossuetwas blocking the publication of his Demonstratio evangelica,a recasting of an ancient Christian apologetic. The Sorbonnetheologian and censor, Edme Pirot, was caught in the middle.An analysis of the interaction between these three men revealsAncien Régime censorship as a series of negotiationsshaped by the different stakes, personalities, ambitions andstatus of the participants. Huet and Bossuet’s quarrelalso echoed the confessional debates of the sixteenth centuryand reflected disagreements within the Catholic Church thereafter.It raised such important questions as whether the Bible shouldbe subjected to the same types of analysis as secular textsand anticipated concerns about the relationship between biblicalcriticism and the rise of irreligion. Throughout, Bossuet skilfullymanipulated the mechanisms of state censorship to defend hisvision of Church Tradition by delaying the publication of Huet’sDemonstratio and suppressing Richard Simon’s L’histoirecritique du Vieux Testament.     

MacDonald's Parties: The Labour Party and the 'Aristocratic Embrace', 1922-31

The article tests the claim that certain Labour MPs and ministersin the 1920s succumbed to an ‘aristocratic embrace’.It begins with a short account of debates in the early LabourParty over social mixing, which culminated in the 1924 disputeover the wearing of Court Dress by some Labour ministers. Theextent of ‘embrace’ is assessed through the examinationof who wore Court Dress (and why), who was offered and acceptedhonours, and of patterns of residence, income and wealth, andparticipation in London Society, measured by club membershipsand appearances in the Court & Social columns of The Times.The article concludes by examining the usefulness of the ideaof ‘aristocratic embrace’ in explaining the defectionof J.R. MacDonald and others from the Labour Party in 1931.     

The Art of Hunger: Self-Starvation in the Red Army Faction

The founding generation of the Red Army Faction (RAF), a WestGerman terrorist group, spent two frenzied years in the undergroundfollowed by five years in prison, culminating with the suicidesof the group's leaders in 1976 and 1977. This paper examinesthe prison hunger strikes of the RAF as structured acts of communicationthat together with accompanying texts were central to a sustainedmedia campaign run from within prison. It examines the internaland external prison communication networks established to enablethe coordination of the strikes as well as the discursive functionsof the self-starvation of the RAF members. Within the prisonsystem hunger was constructed as ‘holy’ and ascribeda pseudo-religious function used to support a group identityand maintain an internal group discipline. In the texts producedfor publication beyond the prison walls, however, hunger becamea central element in the RAF strategy to counter what it sawas a mainstream medicalization of terrorism. This, in turn,was the tool employed to repackage the group's established rhetoric,as self-starvation allowed RAF prisoners to literally embodytheir long-standing ‘anti-fascism’ and ‘anti-imperialism’.     

Pictures of Atrocity: Public Discussion of Der gelbe Stern in Early 1960s West Germany

This article discusses Der gelbe Stern by Gerhard Schoenberner,a book of Holocaust photodocumentation appearing in West Germanyin 1960, and analyses its reception in the contemporary WestGerman press. Both the work and its public discussion are placedin context of Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit (‘comingto terms with the past’) and of what historian Habbo Knochhas termed ‘the return of the pictures’, in otherwords, atrocity pictures of the kind that the Allies forcedGermans to see right after the war, that Germans tended to shunthereafter, but that came back into public view in the late1950s. The reception of Schoenberner's book included reviewsfrom a wide range of West German newspapers and magazines. Thesereviews were overwhelmingly favourable and in considerable agreementon the book's importance. There was consensus that its pictureswould stir viewers emotionally and lead them to ‘the truth’about the Third Reich and its crime against the Jews. In addition,there were moral, historical and political reflections, includinga discussion of German ‘guilt’ concerned not onlywith specific crimes but with the general acquiescence of Germansociety in persecution of Jews in the 1930s. There was alsoappreciation of the role of pictures in conveying historicalunderstanding and, it was hoped, in educating West German youth.In addition, some reviewers considered Der gelbe Stern to bea prod to greater public discussion and thus to an enlargementof democratic culture. There was a marked reticence in the reviewsto indicate that awareness generated by this book would contributeto public outcry against the employment of men with a Nazi pastas high officials of the Federal Republic, or to defend Schoenberneragainst the charge that was sure to come from the Right: sincesome of his photos were from Communist Eastern Europe they wereof dubious origin and no doubt part of a plot to distract theWest from the fight against Communism. It is suggested thatsilence on either issue would have had the effect of keepingreaders focused on the pictures and their moral, historicaland democratic implications.     

The Tax Threshold: Policy, Principles, and Poverty

In the absence of an independent poverty standard, postwar Britishgovernments have tended to use current, politically determinedsocial security scales (from Unemployment Assistance in the1930s to Income Support today) as their definition of minimallyadequate income levels, commonly known as an ‘officialpoverty line’. A basic principle of taxation since thedays of Adam Smith, however, has been that incomes below theminimum income required for socially defined necessities shouldbe free of tax. The personal tax allowance which determinesthe income tax-paying threshold thus also provides a practicaldefinition of such an official poverty line. Royal Commissionsand official committees since the nineteenth century have endorsedSmith's principle, but it only acquired major political significanceafter the Second World War when income tax began to affect lowearners, particularly after the 1960s when poverty was ‘rediscovered’in the UK. In spite of this potential coincidence of purpose,a review of evidence and interviews with officials shows thatthere has been no co-ordination of policy between the Treasuryand Inland Revenue responsible for determining the level ofthe tax allowances, and the Social Security ministries responsiblefor the minimum benefit scales. The tax threshold has consequentlycontinued to be determined by considerations of political economyand administration and not by the alleviation of poverty. ^* This paper is part of a larger project on concepts of povertyand need in British income maintenance systems, chiefly the‘Assistance’ schemes which ran from 1934 to 1966.I am grateful to the many people who have helped with the project,regrettably too numerous to name here. I am particularly indebtedto Sir Norman Price and Sir Kenneth Stowe, James Meade, DellaNevitt, and). Leonard Nicholson for information on the tax issues,and want to record my thanks to them and to Fran Bennett, JohnHills, Chris Pond, and Adrian Sinfield, and especially RodneyLowe, as well as participants in seminars at the Universitiesof Edinburgh and Essex, and in Budapest, for their advice onthis paper.     

Growth Cultures: the global bioeconomy and its bioregions * Philip Cooke

As a consequence of reviewing books for journals, I now readacknowledgements and prefaces with a degree of interest thatis perhaps unwarranted by normal standards, but which I havefound increasingly important when seeking to understand whathas inspired scholars in their work and how they develop theirideas. This is especially evident in Phil Cooke's new book GrowthCultures that brings together several years worth of researchon the bioeconomy—as the commercial exploitation of thelife sciences is now commonly defined. It is well worth readingthe preface to this volume to ground the rest of the book inthe evolving thinking about this important ‘industry’. Growth Cultures collects together in one volume much of Cooke'sprolific output from the late 1990s onwards     

From Algerie Francaise to France Musulmane: Jacques Soustelle and the Myths and Realities of 'Integration', 1955-1962

This article explores the rise and fall of the notion of intégrationas a means of resisting pressure for decolonization in Algeria,focusing on the work of Jacques Soustelle, the eminent ethnologistand Gaullist politician who was Governor-General in Algeriafrom 1955 to 1956. Soustelle’s integration plan was avision developed in Algeria, and its diffusion in France andadoption by a number of diverse groups in the metropole canbe seen as an important case of Algerian influence on Frenchpolitical and intellectual life. The network of Algériefrançaise sympathizers and movements which adopted integrationas their watchword is examined, demonstrating how integrationtook on almost mythical qualities and appealed to figures fromacross the political spectrum. The article also suggests thatintegration can be seen as a contribution to our understandingof the role that a vision of a multiracial and multiculturalgreater France played in the policy and rhetoric of some advocatesof Algérie française.     

Charismatic Legitimation and Bureaucratic Rule: The NSDAP in the Third Reich, 1933-1945

This article deals with the history of the Nazi Party's officeof the Deputy Führer, Rudolf Heß, which after Heß'sflight on 10 May 1941 was renamed the Party Chancellery andled by Martin Bormann. It evaluates the structures and functionsof this important party office which had the exclusive rightto control government legislation. The Deputy Führer'sstaff was established before 1935/36. It consisted of severaloffices which influenced nearly all processes of legislationand tried to introduce Nazi ideology into all sectors of Germansociety. This was done by corresponding intensively with ministerialbureaucracy. Although the staff of the Deputy Führer andof the Party Chancellery acted in a very bureaucratic manner,the article argues that Max Weber's concept of ‘bureaucraticrule’ is not appropriate for analysing the radicalizationof the Nazi régime throughout the Second World War becausethis Weberian ideal type tends to neglect social practices.The same is true for Weber's concept of ‘charismatic rule’which only offers fruitful insights into the social relationsbetween Hitler and his followers.     

Deutsch als Weltsprache? Franz Thierfelder, the Deutsche Akademie in Munich and the Promotion of the German Language Abroad, 1923-1945

The Deutsche Akademie (DA) in Munich was founded in the contextof a general upsurge in cultural diplomacy in Germany afterthe First World War and it was the precursor of today's GoetheInstitute. After a difficult start, by the early 1930s the DAhad become the leading institution in the promotion of the Germanlanguage abroad. The emergence of the DA's language policy wasclosely intertwined with the general development of German culturaldiplomacy, which was largely financed by the AuswärtigesAmt but executed by private associations. It was also influencedby the discussions in the 1920s about the role of language inshaping German national identity, by contemporary developmentsin German linguistics and language teaching, and by the discourseof the socalled ‘conservative revolution’. FranzThierfelder, secretary-general of the DA, managed to forge thesedevelopments into a coherent argument as to why Germany shouldintensify its language policy, centre it around the DA, anddirect it mainly towards the Balkan countries. The languagepolicy of the DA remained largely undisturbed by the Nazi seizureof power until the outbreak of war, even though the emphasiswas now on race rather than language as the determining factorin German national identity. The reason for this was, firstly,that the cultural diplomacy of the Auswärtiges Amt andits private institutions such as the DA continued to be dominatedfor some time by non-Nazis and, secondly, that Germany's culturaldiplomacy was dictated more by the constraints and dynamicsof international politics and by economic necessities than byideology. It was only after the outbreak of war that the expansionof the DA's language programme became closely linked to theracially motivated ‘new order’ for a Europe underNazi rule.     

Nobles, Modernism, and the Culture of fin-de-siecle Munich

Historians of central Europe agree that the fin de sièclewas a time of artistic ferment and change that was criticalin the formation of the ‘modern’, but ignore theinfluence and role of the nobility, assuming that nobles wereinsignificant actors in the cultural realm. This article conteststhat notion by investigating the janus-faced artistic nobilityin Munich. The author argues that nobles played an importantrole in the artistic markers of Munich's fin de siècle(Secession, art nouveau, cabaret); more importantly, many nobleswere instrumental in the reception and propagation of ideasthat informed the European avant-garde, and acted as a modelfor a European variant of alternative modernism.     

The Oral History Project: Connecting Students to Their Community, Grades 4-8

The Oral History Project describes a middle school project thatbegan with a statewide effort to improve students’ languagearts achievement scores. Pennsylvania educators proposed anintegrative instructional model that would involve adolescentsin intergenerational interviews. Teachers implemented the modelin a variety of settings. This book represents Pennsylvaniaeducators’ attempt to share the integrative intergenerationalinterview model with others. Donald Graves, a nationally known expert in language arts educationand author of the Foreword, asserts the instructional modelrepresented in The     

'Christ's Kingdom in Scotland': Scottish Presbyterianism, Social Reform, and the Edwardian Crisis

This article examines the response of Scottish Presbyterianreformers to the socioeconomic and political dimensions of the‘Edwardian Crisis’. For such individuals the circumstancesof the early twentieth century, despite the undoubted difficultiesthey posed, offered the opportunity to bring about a modernversion of the ‘godly commonwealth’, with the principalmeans of realizing this being Christianized social reform. Thearticle focuses on how the ‘social problem’ wasanalysed; the challenge of socialism; the solutions offered;and the ultimate fate of the ‘social gospel’ ¹I am grateful to the British Academy for a Research and TravelExpenses Grant which enabled me to visit Scottish archives andlibraries; and to my colleagues David Nash and Paul O'Flinnand this journal's editors and anonymous referees for theirconstructive comments on earlier drafts. The quote is from JohnW. Gulland MP, Christ's Kingdom in Scotland or the Social Missionof the United Free Church (Edinburgh, 1906).