The Speaker in the Age of Party, 1672–1715

The discussion by King Charles II and his senior advisors in 1672 of the choice of a new Speaker for the forthcoming parliamentary session reveals both the way in which the appointment was prepared and the government's considerations in the appointment. Prominent among them was the Speaker's personal influence, and his personal views on the great issue to be debated, the Declaration of Indulgence. The choice of Sir Job Charlton, and the behaviour of his successor, Sir Edward Seymour, in the chair, mark a new phase in the history of the speakership, in which Speakers are less likely to be lawyers, for whom the office was a step on the road to high legal office, and more likely to be significant political leaders with their own influence and following. After the 1688 revolution, the tendency for Speakers to be party political leaders became still more marked. Nevertheless, the country ideology espoused by several of them, including Paul Foley, Robert Harley and the tory, Sir Thomas Hanmer, provides a pedigree for the model of the impartial speakership whose invention is often attributed to Arthur Onslow.     

Jean-Baptiste Say's First Visit to England (1785/6)

The French classical economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) gained fame as a political economist in the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1785, aged eighteen, he visited Britain for the first time to prepare himself for a commercial career and to learn English. Other visits followed; but, in contrast to his visits in subsequent years, during 1814/15 and 1825, little is known about his first visit and those writing about Say tend to ignore it or consider it irrelevant. By drawing on his draft autobiography and on his street plan of Croydon, the article adds more information to supplement the meagre published accounts of this visit: where and with whom he lived, for whom he worked, whom he met and what his itinerary was during the time he was in England. The key places Say mentions are London, Croydon and Fulham. While not a definitive account of the visit, it does correct factual errors, clear up confusion and clarify ambiguities. The article questions speculations about Say witnessing the Industrial Revolution and proposes that, during his visit, his interests may have lain elsewhere than only in matters of commerce and taxation.     

The rise of the new model army

In this paper the contribution of Robert R. Palmer to the now booming Atlantic history is put into perspective. It describes the main features of the political and historiographical context that inspired the writing of his book, The Age of the Democratic Revolution in the early 1950s (first volume published in 1959, second volume in 1964). It also argues that the war experience Palmer had in the historical section of the Army Ground Forces has been important in reviving the interest for the transatlantic dimension in modern history that was central in his PhD dissertation. This paper shows how the liberal-tocquevillian approach that Palmer adopted to explain the multiple revolutions that shook North America and Europe in the last quarter of the 18th century earned him the attacks of the Marxist historians. In its last part this paper makes use of private letters to claim that in the 1970s and 1980s the Italian historian Franco Venturi revived the scholarly interest in Palmer's perspective despite methodological differences between his Settecento riformatore and Palmer's analysis. Settecento riformatore and The Age of the Democratic Revolution have contributed to the interest in a transatlantic approach to 18th-century history that is now pursued under the heading of “entangled histories”.     

Structures of feeling in seventeenth-century cultural expression

ABSTRACT

As the English church splintered during the mid-seventeenth century, the resultant religious diversity overwhelmed contemporary observers, who struggled to make sense of rapidly advancing theological, political, and cultural changes. This religious chaos has, in turn, produced a similar sense of disorientation among scholars attempting to understand it, and questions of how to best categorise radical religion have generated intense controversy. One of the most important, but perhaps most misunderstood, of these emerging religious expressions were the so-called General Baptists. This article reassesses the utility and coherence of “General Baptist” as an overarching conceptual category to describe historical actors between 1609 and 1660. Historians have traditionally applied this label to any religious dissenters who both rejected paedobaptism and embraced Arminian soteriology. This standard interpretation, however, is misleading and cannot account for the historical record. As the present article demonstrates, the label “General Baptist” had no coherent, stable historical referent during the first half of the seventeenth century.     

The theory and implementation of the People's Republic of China's revolutionary diplomacy

The foreign relations of modern China, starting from the birth of the People's Republic in 1949 until the Cultural Revolution, can be said to have had continuous ups and downs and twists and turns. Its underlying abstruse principles, while stemming from nationalism, contained for the most part the Chinese Communist Party's own revolutionary principles and individual revolutionary experiences. The Chinese Communist revolution was based on class analysis and class conflict, on struggle and ideology. This ideology determined how China viewed itself and the world; no views could be separated from the ideology of class struggle and class analysis. The leadership's adherence to this type of ideology led to the long-term instability of China's diplomacy. Though those who, like Mao Zedong, employed class revolution in order to seize political power while viewing class analysis, class struggle, and in particular the success of using class ideology in a united front policy as the magic wand of the revolution's success, were singularly able to adapt such views to China's foreign policy and diplomacy. This became the fundamental red line for China's foreign policy.     

The “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”: China's modern trauma

This paper examines and analyses the causes and consequences of the Cultural Revolution in China. This great twentieth century Chinese trauma cannot be detached from Mao as a person. He was its initiator and – as a charismatic leader – stood above the people and the party, and in the consciousness of the majority of the people was perceived as a great, compelling leader. This paper traces the historical setting, the causes, the process and the consequences of this tremendous political and social movement. In addition, the role of Mao and the concepts of his followers are scrutinized. Finally, the issue of whether or not the Cultural Revolution should be classified as a “revolution” is discussed.     

Apocalypse and the Spirit of Revolution

Abstract

The article identifies some typical traits of apocalyptical thinking by analysing the approach of Martin Luther and Thomas Müntzer to apocalyptical texts. They both applied apocalyptical perspectives on historical events but they had conflicting views concerning its social and political consequences. The author asks whether the Reformation may be called an apocalypti-cal movement and why the Reformers are split on the question of political revolt. After studying the conflict between Müntzer and Luther in some detail, he proceeds to Engels’ analysis of Müntzer in the aftermath of the revolution in 1848, seeking an answer to the following question: How and to what extent have the biblical apocalypse and apocalyptical movements contributed to the formation of Marxist theory of revolutions?     

意识形态与美国革命的历史叙事

世界近现代史上的革命往往也是一种意识形态事件,而革命史写作与意识形态之间有着复杂的关联。美国史学界关于美国革命的历史叙事,经历了从辉格主义范式向新美国革命史学的转变,这场革命也从建国之父领导的政治革命,被改写成了一场由普通民众和边缘群体扮演主角的全面变革。在这一转变中,平民主义、多元文化主义和女性主义等思潮与革命史写作之间发生了微妙的互动。这种经过重构的美国革命史带有浓厚的意识形态色彩,已经从学术的边缘走向了中心,并为当前美国社会各种激进的意识形态提供了新的能量。但它仍只是美国革命史的众多相互竞争的版本中的一个。     

From revolutionary heroism to cultural heritage: museums,memory and representation in Laos

ABSTRACT. Museum exhibitions in Laos represent two main strands of Lao national identity discourse. First, they glorify the ‘liberation struggle’ of the so‐called ‘Lao multiethnic people’ under the leadership of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, and therefore serve as important ideological tools for the current regime's self‐legitimisation. Second, they display the history and cultural heritage of the Lao nation, providing the postcolonial state with a narrative of historical continuity and civilisation that is focused mostly on the dominant ethnic Lao culture. This article explores the contradictions within official images of the Lao nation‐state and how these opposing strands of national identity compete or interact. Museums as key arenas of ideological tensions constitute illuminating fields of research on discourses of national identity in Laos.     

Nationalism,economic crisis and ‘realistic revolution’ in 1980s Mexico*

ABSTRACT. This article examines how the Mexican state drew upon nationalist discourse for legitimacy following the 1982 debt crisis. The analytical framework situates Mexico within the context of Latin American nationalism and explores the structural and conjunctural factors that contributed to the endurance and effectiveness of Mexican revolutionary nationalism as a hegemonic nationalist discourse. Historical commemorations during the Miguel de la Madrid administration (1982–88) are then examined to show how the state evoked nationalist motifs as it dealt with economic crisis, pressure from the USA, domestic political opposition and the implementation of neoliberal reforms. The relative effectiveness of sometimes counterintuitive appeals to nationalist legitimacy is found to be neither wholly ‘rational’ nor ‘irrational’, in this case having its basis in a history of elite and popular negotiation through the revolutionary nationalist framework, the continuity of the post‐revolutionary Partido de la Revolución Institutional (PRI) state model and the lack of a viable competing paradigm.