Political Friendship in Churchill's Marlborough

This article examines Winston Churchill's biography of his ancestor, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, as a character study and as a statement of Churchill's own fundamental political wisdom. It argues that Marlborough's capacity for friendship is key not only as a tool for statecraft, but as its very purpose. It examines Marlborough's friendship with Eugene of Savoy as the backbone of the alliance against Louis XIV. It also considers Churchill's purpose of writing the biography as an expression of friendship as the fundamental purpose of politics.     

Strength without Mercy: Winston Churchill on Technology and the Fate of Civilization

Abstract

Churchill's lifelong meditation on scientific progress led him to search for ways in which its transformative power could be moderated and guided for the preservation of civilization. The increasing role of scientific discovery and technological innovation in maximizing the destructive potential of warfare, Churchill believed, had brought a moment of decision for humanity: Whether to foster and maintain the moral and political principles that formed the foundation of civilized life or to trust wholly in an amoral science. He found guidance in the study of the humanities, Anglo-American constitutionalism, and Christian ethics.     

Churchill's ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech in Context: The Attempt to Achieve a ‘Good Understanding on All Points’ with Stalin's Soviet Union

More than 70 years ago, on 5 March 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his ‘iron curtain’ speech at Westminster College in Fulton. The speech immediately attracted worldwide attention and proved to be highly controversial. Most contemporaries in East and West and the vast majority of subsequent historians interpreted the speech as Churchill's call for western resistance to Stalin's expansionist policies and the continuation of the wartime ‘special relationship’ between Washington and London. This article argues, however, that Churchill's speech has been misunderstood. When set in the context of Churchill's other pronouncements on world affairs during his time as leader of the opposition between 1945 and 1951 and in view of his vigorously pursued ‘Big Three’ ‘summit diplomacy’ with Moscow and Washington after he returned as Prime Minister in 1951, the ‘iron curtain’ speech must be seen in a different light. It becomes clear that this famous speech was not Churchill's sabre-rattling call for commencing or energizing the East--West conflict with the Soviet Union. Quite to the contrary, his speech was meant to prevent the escalation of this conflict and avoid the dangerous clash between the world's greatest powers that soon became known as the Cold War.     

The reader as writer,the author as con artist: Nuala O'Faolain and the criminal narratives of Chicago May

Nuala O'Faolain seeks to revise the life story of May Churchill Sharp, an international con woman born in Ireland, in hopes of establishing a feminist identification with her. But O'Faolain's claim for her writing of a kind of authorial authenticity ultimately precludes an identification with Sharp, as Sharp's narrative – like all narratives – is a criminal narrative which renders feminist ‘authenticity’ impossible to achieve, something O'Faolain herself refuses to acknowledge.     

Sentiment vs Strategy: British Naval Policy,Imperial Defence,and the Development of Dominion Navies, 1911–14

This article examines British naval policy towards imperial defence and the development of autonomous Dominion navies in 1911–14. It shows that the Admiralty's main goal under the leadership of Winston Churchill was to concentrate British and Dominion warships in European waters, and ideally in the North Sea, to meet the German threat. Churchill's approach to naval developments in the Dominions was also shaped by his desire to fulfil the Cabinet's policy of remaining strong in the Mediterranean Sea. He made some concessions to sentiment in the Dominions, but his attempts to create a coherent imperial policy for the naval defence of Britain and its empire were ultimately unsuccessful. By 1914 it was clear that the Dominions would not provide the additional warships Britain required for the Mediterranean, and on the eve of war the Admiralty was beginning to prepare an imperial naval strategy that more accurately reflected the Empire's capabilities.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Gay New York Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940. Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages. Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge. Review Essay: Churchill in the 1990s Roger Adelson and Jonathan Sikorsky Churchill: A Life. In Search of Churchill: A Historian's Journey. Churchill, The End of Glory A Political Biography Churchill's Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American Special Relationship 1940–57. Africa and the Middle East The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization. Living with Africa. The Americas Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Resistance: Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico. Mission Culture on the Upper Amazon: Native Tradition, Jesuit Enterprise, and Secular Policy in Moxos, 1660–1680. In an Age of Experts: The Changing Role of Professionals in Politics and Public Life. The Pursuit of Public Power: Political Culture in Ohio, 1787–1861. The Atlantic Region to Confederation: A History. The Roosevelts: An American Sap. The Other Brahmins: Boston's Black Up Class, 1750–1950. Dancing to a Black Man's Tune: A Life of Scott Joplin. “A Government of Our Own”: The Making of the Confederacy. Bureaucrats, Planters, and Workers: The Making of the Tobacco Monopoly in Bourbon Mexico. U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina. Back from the Future: Cuba under Castro. The Lost Promise of Progressivism. Negotiated Authorities: On Turner's Trail: 100 Years of Writing Western History. Congressional Dynamics: Structure, Coordination, and Choice in the First American Congress, 1774–1789. NATO and the United States: The Enduring Alliance. Independence in Spanish America: Civil Wars, Revolutions, and Underdevelopment. The Price of Nationhood: The American Revolution in Charles County. john F Kennedy and New Frontier Diplomacy, 1961–1963. One South or Many? Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil War-Era Tennessee. Chiefs, Agents, and Soldiers: Conflict on the Navajo Frontier, 1868–1882. Southern Agriculture During the Civil War Era, 1860–1880. Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution. President Kennedy: Profile of Power. The Battle of the Wilderness, May 5–6, 1864. Colony and Empire: The Capitalist Transformation of the American West. Latin America in the 1940s. War and Postwar Transitions. The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945–1993. The Spanish Frontier in North America. Asia and the Pacific The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto. The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period. Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-up. The Bomb in Bengal: The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism in India, 1900–1910. The Ruhela Chteftaincies: The Rise and Fall of the Ruhela Power in India in the Eighteenth Century Cambodia: A Shattered Society. Bamboo Stone: The Evolution of a Chinese Medical Elite. Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, 1945–1992: Uncertain Friendships. Mountain of Fame: Portraits in Chinese History. Europe British Foreign Policy in an Age of Revolutions, 1783–1793. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe. Clanship to Crofters' War: The Social Transformation of the Scottish Highlands. Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England, 1790–1850. The Remaking of France: The National Assembly and the Constitution of 1791. Financing the Athenian Fleet: Public Taxation and Social Relations. A Management Odyssey: The Royal Dockyards, 2724–1924. Flavius Josephus: Eyewitness to Rome's First-Century Conquest of Judea. Piety and Charity in late Medieval Florence. Rumania, 1866–1947. The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850. Churchill's Deception: The Dark Secret That Destroyed Nazi Germany. Goebbels and Der Angriff. Music in the Third Reich. The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power. Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution. Simon de Montfort. Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics. The Learned King: The Reign of Alfonso X of Castile. War and Economy in the Third Reich. Athens on Trial: The Antidemocratic Tradition in Western Thought. The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity. Trumpets from the Tar: English Puritan Printing in the Netherlands, 1600–1640. Balkan Worlds: The First and Last Europe. In Defense of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology and British Naval Policy, 1889–1914. Literacy and Its Uses: Studies on Late Medieval Italy. The Return of the Armadas: The Last Years of the Elizabethan War against Spain General, Comparative, Historiographical Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb. Ike b Monty: Generals at War. European Expansion and Law: The Encounter of European and Indigenous Law in 19th-and 20th-Century Africa and Asia. Centuries of Economic Endeavar: Parallel Paths in Japan and Europe and Their Contrast with the Third World. Joseph Alois Schumpeter: The Public Life of a Private Man. Shamanism, History, and the State. Fatal Victories.     

Review Article:Three Second World War Studies

STEVEN MERRITT MINER. Between Churchill and Stalin: The Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the Origins of the Grand Alliance. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Pp. 319. $36.00 (US);

CHARLES MESSENGER. Hitler's Gladiator: The Life and Times of Oberstgruppenfiihrer and Panzergeneral-Oberst der Waffen-SS Sepp Dietrich. London and New York: Brassey's Defence Publishers (Pergamon), 1988. Pp.xvi,245.$26.95 (US);

TONY LE TISSIER. The Battle of Berlin 1945. London: Jonathan Cape, 1988. Pp. xiii, ago. £15.     

Much Ado About Dugald: The Chequered Career of Dugald Stewart's Letter to Sir William Forbes on James Beattie's Essay on Truth

Summary

Although Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo's An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie has long served as an invaluable resource for those interested in Beattie's life and thought, there has been little scholarship on the genesis of Forbes's book. This article considers the role played by Dugald Stewart—as well as that of his friend, Archibald Alison—in the making of Forbes's Life of Beattie. It also examines the reasons for Forbes's decision not to print Stewart's letter in its entirety in the Life of Beattie and explores the letter's significance for understanding Stewart's philosophical development.     

Calvin's Legacy for Public Theology

Abstract

Many thinkers, of whom Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a prominent example, have expressed ambivalence regarding John Calvin's contribution to our understanding of a healthy civic order: while Calvin's political genius is undeniable, he and his followers are also known for intolerant attitudes and practices. Thus the image of "two Calvins" by a recent biographer of the Reformer. In this essay I lay out some relevant tensions in Calvin's political thought, while also identifying underlying themes that were later developed by his followers. Special attention is given to the ways in which the "neo-Calvinist" movement, initiated in the nineteenth century by Abraham Kuyper, both corrected and expanded upon Calvin's theology of public life. It is noted that while Kuyper's thought also influenced the Afrikaners' apartheid ideology, Reformed opponents of apartheid also appealed to elements in Kuyper's theology of public life. Although the results have been mixed, Kuyper and others did demonstrate the ways in which some basic elements of Calvin's thought can be used to address issues that are being given sustained attention today in broad-ranging explorations of what makes for a flourishing civil society characterized by a variety of "mediating structures."     

Margherita of Cortona: Women,Preaching, and the Writing of Hagiography

Abstract

This article examines Margherita of Cortona (1247–97), who took a penitent habit in the late 1270s. In 1290 Margherita was granted permission to rebuild the church of San Basilio near her cell and a secular priest became her confessor. After her death in 1297, her former confessor, the Franciscan Giunta Bevegnati, composed Margherita's Legenda, which provides an account of her life, conversion and penitence, her conversations with Christ, and her charitable works. In addition to the Legenda, there is also an altarpiece, portraying Margherita and scenes from her life, and the seventeenth-century watercolour paintings that reproduce the frescos which once decorated the church of Santa Margherita, the former San Basilio. Following a short introduction to Margherita's life, and a brief examination of preaching for women in the Middle Ages and its prohibitions, the article examines how the biographer, Giunta Bevegnati, represents the relationship of Margherita to preaching and sermons, in particular focusing on passages in Margherita's Legenda, where her efficacious speech or performance has a clear impact on an audience and her biographer does not use the term 'preach' for her utterances. Finally, the extent to which Margherita's biographer uses hagiography for homiletic purposes is discussed.     

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS): challenges of implementation in Churchill,Manitoba

Public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) increasingly are utilized in geographic research, yet researchers rarely are provided with guidance on how to implement PPGIS in an appropriate and effective manner. This article reports on the process of research that explores responses to current and future local tourism development offered by a sample of residents using a modified PPGIS approach called ‘community action geographic information system’ (CAGIS). The conceptual development of CAGIS is reported and the challenges encountered during its implementation in Churchill, Manitoba during 2005–2007 are reviewed. It is suggested that researchers wishing to conduct similar research should undertake thorough preliminary fieldwork to assess the likelihood of finding agreement on a common problem; acquiring adequate resources; establishing collective responsibility for the project's outcome; attaining stakeholder support; developing trust and meaningful relationships; and incorporating indigenous knowledge appropriately. Feedback of results to community members also should be an integral part of the research process. A number of feedback mechanisms are reported, including an interactive weblog, which helped facilitate communication between heterogeneous groups in Churchill. Although ambitions for a truly participatory GIS approach to this project have been set aside, it is held that PPGIS can yield positive outcomes for communities and academia. Sharing this research experience will be useful to others who venture into PPGIS research, especially in northern communities.     

FRIDRIK THORDARSON (7.3.1928–2.10.2005) IN MEMORIAM

This article looks at Horace's two Books of Satires, Books I-III of the Odes and the First Book of Epistles in the perspective of the following thesis. One of the most important themes of Horace's poetry is happiness, and measure and moderation are the means to bring about and secure a happy life. In the various poetry books this ethics of measure and moderation undergoes certain variations. The message of the Satires is that you are happy if you are content on the basis of moderation. The Odes of the first edition convey the idea that we are happy if we live in peace and friendliness, founded on the principle of moderation. The First Book of Letters is focussed on the central notion that I am happy if I am free and independent, and again, the precondition for that is moderation. The point of the article is thus, first, that it underscores an aspect of the unity of Horace's poetry: the search for happiness, and, second, that it offers an account of the diversifications of that unifying theme in the different genres of poetry and different phases of the poet's life.     

Restoration Leeds and the Aldermen of the Corporation, 1661–1700

Abstract

In the 1945 General Election, the Conservative Party under the leadership of Winston Churchill was defeated in a largely unexpected Labour landslide. The former Prime Minister's son, Randolph Churchill, MP for Preston since 1940, also lost his seat, but by a swing much lower than the national average. This was hardly due to his performance as a constituency MP. He was largely absent on military service. His ability to antagonise his own constituency workers was no help to his cause. He did have the advantage of name recognition and a heroic war record, but these were hardly decisive factors. It is argued here that his comparatively strong electoral performance was due to his adoption of the cause of social reform combined with his ability to campaign in a flamboyant manner that appealed to electors, which suggests that a very different result might have been possible if his approach had been taken up nationally by the Conservative Party.     

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.     

Strauss on Maimonides’ Secretive Political Science

Abstract

In this article, the authors review Joseph Cropsey's last collection of essays, Humanity's Intensive Introspection. They argue that Cropsey's essays draw on resources in the Western tradition, both from within liberal thought and from ancient sources, to elevate human life and to fortify modern society, especially against contemporary critiques of liberalism. Philosophy's discovery of the inscrutability of the whole opens it to revelation and also provides a basis for philosophy's active contribution to an open or liberal society.     

ANALYZING THE COST OF DEBT FOR SMALL BUSINESS

The available empirical evidence provides mixed views of small businesses' relative bankruptcy risk. The difference between Churchill and Lewis' findings and SBA's and Kirchhoffs' may well lie in the difference in definition of firm “size” used. Risk is not evenly spread; the smallest businesses seem to be less risky than the intermediate size businesses. Yet, Churchill and Lewis' actual loss evidence suggests that small business risk is only marginally greater than for large businesses, the loss rate is still equivalent to less than one half of one percent. The assumptions that lenders will adjust the amount of debt they allow small business clients rather than the interest rate is not rejected by this evidence. In fact, the much higher profitability of the small business department reported by Churchill and Lewis suggests that the bank's loan interest rates are more than high enough to cover loss risk and fixed costs, and borrowers provide profitable deposits. Thus, the logic of my utility theory hypothesis provides a reasonable explanation for the relatively higher debt levels of small firms compared to large firms. But, then the Kirchhoffs' findings cast some doubt on whether small firms actually have higher debt levels. None of these findings justify the 2.75 percent interest rate spread allowed by SBA.     

Reconfiguring the Soviets

DAVID CARLTON. Churchill and the Soviet Union. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000; dist. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Pp. 234. $79.95 (us), cloth; $19.95 (us), paper; MARTIN H. FOLLY. Churchill, Whitehall, and the Soviet Union, 1940–45. New York: Palgrave, 2000. Pp. xi, 237. $65.00 (us).     

Norman Gash and the Making of Mr Secretary Peel

In May 1961, the firm of Longmans published the first volume of Norman Gash's monumental life of Sir Robert Peel. Mr Secretary Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel before 1830 was hailed at the time as a landmark and has proved surprisingly durable as an interpretation of Peel's early life and formation. This essay is concerned with locating Gash's work within its political, biographical, and historiographical context. It begins by considering the reaction of Peel family members to Gash's biography, before tracing the antecedents of his historical preoccupations and intellectual development in the years leading up to the publication of Mr Secretary Peel. It presents a wide range of new evidence relating to Gash's life and emergence as a political and parliamentary historian, drawing upon sources which have come to light in the decade since his death in May 2009.     

Days of those made like me: retrospective pleasure,sexual knowledge,and C. P. Cavafy's homobiographics

Abstract

This article begins with a comparison between the anonymous Roman d'un inverti (1894/5) and Cavafy's poem ‘Να με?νει’, and then proceeds to read Cavafy's private notes and key erotic poems in the context of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century discourses about non-normative sexuality. During that period, and in a discursive domain dominated by sexological case studies, the deviant sexual life story was published in order to titillate, check, control and medicalize. In Cavafy's texts we see, instead, a network of homosexual life stories proposed as a platform for the conceptualization of novel sexual, aesthetic and social technologies, as well as a new ethics of contact.     

Pierre Manent's Montaigne

Pierre Manent's Montaigne: la vie sans loi is at once a profound reading of Michel de Montaigne's notoriously elusive Essays and an ambitious effort to reshape our understanding of the meaning of modernity. Manent argues that Montaigne brings a distinctively modern conception of life itself into being in his writing, a conception now so pervasive that its novelty is difficult for us to discern. He makes a compelling case for according Montaigne a central place in any modern attempt at self-understanding, but also shows that the modern self-conception Montaigne helped bring into being is highly questionable.