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In 1787, Frederick William II of Prussia made substantial changes to the urban excise. These changes were largely the result of public pressure. Urban tax-payers had resisted the tax in different ways since Frederick II had reformed it in 1766 in order to extract more revenue from Prussia's towns. The article explores the motives that led to tax-payer criticism and resistance and the ways in which urban tax-payers opposed the state's growing fiscal appetite. The success of urban tax-payers in this political conflict with the Prussian state suggests that Prussia's burghers were important actors within the Hohenzollern polity and that they wielded considerable political power. The events described here resembled not only other contemporary conflicts over fiscal matters in the Atlantic world, but were also interconnected with debates and events outside Prussia through exchanges of individuals, arguments, and publications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This review assesses scholarly attempts to synthesize various forms of Scottish philosophy in the context of eighteenth-century America. It suggests potential new directions for the study of Scottish Enlightenment ethical theories on the western side of the Atlantic, and then examines scholarship on a separate and neglected Scottish influence in American thought: an evangelical notion of religious authority that was not opposed to wider incorporation in multi-denominational political unions. The ideological basis for American independence owed much to a tense counterpoise between Scottish moral sense reasoning and Presbyterian evangelicalism, rather than to their singular and starkly binary contributions to colonial American ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines leisure in eighteenth-century London and argues that historians have exaggerated the importance of public, commercial leisure at the expense of leisure in the home. The domestic sphere was the primary scene of leisure for men and women of propertied society. In tandem with this examination of leisure I argue that our frameworks for understanding the use of domestic space fail to capture both the significance of particular rooms and the variety of uses for individual rooms. The failings of the public/private framework are well known, but scholars have thus far failed to develop successful alternatives. From diaries, letters, and inventories conclusions may be drawn about the habitual uses of space, but letters and diaries also provide evidence of how room use varied depending on time of day, activities pursued or people undertaking those activities. I present several variables that residents used to determine where and with whom different activities were taken. Meanings of spaces were contingent upon a mix of qualities constantly re-assessed by residents and guests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines evidence that has been used to claim that British foreign secretary Lord William Grenville supported a French royalist plot to assassinate the Directory in the 18th century. Collapse of the British secret service's counter-revolutionary plans in France; Communications difficulties associated with undercover secret service activities in the era.

Explores the relationship between Enlightenment, anti-Enlightenment and national sentiments in Tyrol, Austria during the 1790s. Characterizations of the period; Consequences on the formation of identities; Articulation of consciousness; Fight against French armies; Meanings of regional consciousness, German identity and dynastic loyalty.

Investigates the circle of writers working for pro-government newspapers during the age of Whig supremacy under Sir Robert Walpole from the 1720s to the 1740s. Misinterpretations of Walpolean political thought; Three philosophical questions addressed in defense; Objectives of pro-government response to Walpole's corruption of political system and betrayal of Whig values.

Examines the strong resistance to the introduction of the Brandenburg-Prussia's Lutheran hymnal of 1781 throughout Lutheran Germany. Hymnals as a means of propagating the Aufklarung; Hymnals as reflections of the Aufklarung; Rejection of hymnals as limitations to Aufklarung; Frederick II's policy of religious toleration; Common mass as strength of resistance; Recognition of the volkgeist.

Assesses Joseph II's efforts to nationalize the Catholic and the Uniat churches in Austria during his reign between 1780-1790. Discovered manuscripts of an investigation on the numbers of clergy in town and country and of returns of all clerical property; Statistics on clerical numbers by type and organization; Statistics on ecclesiastical revenues.

Looks at the political role of the royal prerogative to create and promote British peers in the period 1760-1784. Argues that during the first two decades of his reign, George III maintained his original intention that peerage creations should be few in number and isolated from short-term political influences, but during the prolonged political crisis at the end of the American War of Independence, the king's power to create peers became deeply embroiled in politics.