Defending ‘the Principle of Representation’: Andrew Bisset,The English Civil War,and The History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England

Abstract

Victorian attitudes to the past were varied and in some cases irreconcilable. Newer standards of expertise and objectivity coexisted with older approaches, and the idea that history should be used for present purposes remained intact. Throughout the Victorian age there were circumstances in which history was a polemical tool, designed to give one set of interpretations or values or policies an advantage over its rivals. This article explores the work of a relatively neglected figure in Victorian historiography – the reform-minded historian and lawyer Andrew Bisset (1803–1891) – whose primary goal was to illustrate and advance what he called ‘the principle of representation’. He discussed people and events of the past to this end, offending reviewers along the way because of his obvious political agenda, but also developing a rigorous source-based style, usefully evaluating for his readers the work of Macaulay, Carlyle, and others, and helping to shape Victorian opinion about, in particular, the political and religious crises of seventeenth-century Britain. Like others, Bisset believed that the disputes of that period had relevance to the public controversies of his own day. This article is designed to contribute to ongoing debates about the Victorians’ relationship with the past.     

A Leading Arsenal of Democracy: American Rearmament and the Continental Integration of the Canadian Aircraft Industry, 1948–1953

This article shows how the Royal Navy under the leadership of John Fisher exploited the British Consular system in Germany and Denmark to obtain both open-source and covert intelligence between 1906 and 1914. This structure was initially constructed with the tacit support of the Foreign Office, replacing an earlier intelligence network in France and Russia. The intelligence collected by the consuls reflected the Royal Navy's strategic priorities at the time. The most important subject concerned German coastal defences, a detailed knowledge of which was essential for the Admiralty's offensive littoral strategy. From 1908 Charles Hardinge attempted to restrict the Admiralty's use of its Consular Officers for intelligence purposes, with limited success. The consuls continued to provide essential intelligence for the Royal Navy up until the outbreak of war.     

Sacred,but not surveyed: Nineteenth‐century surveys of Palestine

Abstract

Nineteenth‐century Palestine mapping projects based on systematic land surveying reached a peak with the Ordnance Survey of Western Palestine between 1871 and 1877, conducted on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund by officers of the British Royal Engineering Corps. Various other nineteenth‐century proposals for an organized survey of the country—some of which bore partial results while others were never implemented—are also presented. The surveying of one region, Mesopotamia, during the 1830s and 1840s, forms the basis for the discussion of the reasons for the relative lateness of the topographical survey. The sacredness of the region seems not to have been a sufficiently convincing motive for entrepreneurs to organize and finance such a survey. The main reason for the delay in mapping the country as a whole was that it was not especially important, either strategically or geo‐politically, for the European nations engaged in the international struggles in the Middle East until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.     

Severe lead contamination among children of samurai families in Edo period Japan

This paper presents evidence for severe lead contamination among children of samurai families living in a castle town in Edo period Japan (1603–1867). Excavated rib bones were analyzed by atomic absorption, and soft X-ray roentgenograms of long bones were taken. The median values of lead concentration in the bones of children 3 years of age and under(1241.0 μg Pb/g dry bone) and 4–6 years of age (462.5 μg Pb/g dry bone) were significantly higher than those of adult males (14.3 μg Pb/g dry bone) and females (23.6 μg Pb/g dry bone) (p < 0.001). In addition, that of children over 6 years of age (313.0 μg Pb/g dry bone) was significantly higher than those of adult males (p < 0.01) and adult females (p < 0.05). The median value of lead in the bones of children 3 years of age and under was over fifty times higher than that of their mothers (adult females). Hypertrophy was seen in the long bones of five samurai children. In this area, lead lines or lead bands were distinguished by soft X-ray roentgenogram. Samurai children suffered from severe lead contamination in Edo period Japan. When the mothers were nursing their children, the children might have ingested their mother’s white lead non-selectively.     

Captain Everill’s Error: Mapping the Upper Strickland River in Papua and New Guinea, 1885–1979

An error dating from 1885 in mapping the upper Strickland River, Papua New Guinea, was reinforced and extended by government officer Charles Karius in 1929 when reporting results from a lengthy exploratory patrol. Detailed maps produced by the US Army and the Royal Australian Survey Corps in, respectively, 1942 and 1966 perpetuated these errors. It was not until 1979, with release of a series of 1:100,000 topographic maps, that long-standing errors were finally put to rest. Throughout these years, the contributions of well-informed people tended to be ignored in favour of the opinions of those whose status implied authority.     

FROM BREXIT TO HEGEL

British idealism has led an ambiguous existence in any overview of British historical and political thought in the twentieth century. Seen partly as an alien Continental intrusion into presumably typical British priorities of empiricism, positivism, and utilitarianism, it was badly damaged by its putative associations with the military enemy of two world wars. Admir Skodo's meticulous study of British “idealist revisionists” during the postwar period 1945–1980 repairs this damage by showing the extended influence of that idealism as funneled through the “new idealism” of the interwar period represented mainly by the philosophers R. G. Collingwood and Michael Oakeshott. Skodo demonstrates how these idealist revisionists deeply influenced postwar British historiography by underscoring qualities of humanism, pluralism, and variety not characteristically associated with idealism, reinterpreted a range of important topics in British history from the Tudors through the English civil wars to the Victorian period, and came up with political theorizing that celebrated the postwar welfare state while indicating its vulnerabilities to an increasingly technologized society. Just as Skodo's protagonists negotiated the 1970s transition in Britain's turn to Europe, so his account proves stimulating for contemporary concerns regarding a post‐Brexit Britain. The final part of the essay therefore looks at some suggested models, such as the “Anglosphere” or a “Singapore in the Atlantic” for Britain, before concluding with reflections on the importance according to a Hegelian reading of the modern “rational state” of the continued influence of Oxbridge intellectuals on the evolution of British directions and goals since the Victorian age.     

Scottish Shire Elections: Preliminary Findings in Sheriff Court Books

Historians of the Scottish parliament have paid little attention to shire elections because of an apparent lack of local source material. This article explores some of the reasons for this perception and argues that sheriff court records contain considerably more evidence than has been appreciated hitherto. It demonstrates that these records provide details of the electoral process, the regularity of elections, the numbers of electors, external interference in elections and internal divisions within the electorate, local responses to national political events, and attitudes to representation through such things as levying taxes locally to reimburse representatives’ expenses. It challenges the once widely‐held view that the lesser nobility, who comprised the electorate, were uninterested in parliamentary participation, suggesting instead that the statute of 1587, by which shire representation was established, was reasonably successful. Finally, it considers the potential for further research in these and other records which, it is argued, will provide a much deeper understanding of 17th‐century Scotland's parliamentary history in particular and political history in general.