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The humble ballot paper is a defining technology of elections throughout the world. This article interrogates its contested past by demonstrating - over a long period and in the context of three contrasting countries - how and why it emerged in the early modern period and how it was then used, abused and regulated in the context of the expanded, and eventually mass, electoral arenas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ironically, by the time that the ballot paper was firmly established, its monopoly was already being challenged by mechanical and then electronic media, which may eventually condemn it to extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds upon recent scholarship on the recycling - or 'salvage' - schemes organized by the British government during the Second World War. Viewing the act of recycling as part of an interactive 'communications circuit', it uses records produced by the Ministry of Information to analyse the development of publicity produced for the national salvage campaign. Particular attention is paid to the public's role in shaping the course of the campaign. By demonstrating that a disjuncture between publicity and perceptions of inaction led to a sense of frustration, the article suggests that this example complicates the notion of a 'people's war'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note draws attention to the recent discovery of the papers of the Chartist and newspaper editor W. E. Adams (1832–1906), summarizes their contents and explains why they are to be found in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History in Moscow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The archives of global history I The inaccessibility of many traditional, paper archives during the pandemic is a prompt for us to think about archives in the most expansive sense. Non-paper archives were a recurring theme: built environment as archive, landscape as archive (in Tereza Valny's work), inaccessibility as archive. Reading the acknowledgements section of any book that might be categorized as global history, one comes across a long and impressive list of archives, frequently spanning multiple continents. Despite the growing number of publications and seminars seeking to define the field, the "archive of global history" has not been conceptualized or theorized to the same extent as, say, the archive of intellectual history, or the archive of African history. [Extracted from the article]

Presents a bibliographical index to references in the conference papers to the work of A. G. Dickens. Books, pamphlets, and collections of essays and articles; Articles and chapters in books; Reviews.

Using the example of the Saturday Review under the ownership of Lady Houston, this article explores how anti-Bolshevism was constituted in interwar Britain, and how the paper embodied the immoderate views of the radical Right, acting as a de facto promotional hub for a multifarious network of disaffected Conservatives. It shows how the Review integrated conspiratorial anti-Bolshevism into editorial argument and ostensible news provision, and how this found an attentive readership for a short-lived period. The article further demonstrates the utility of the periodical press for broadening historians' engagement with overarching trends in politics and society during the interwar period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late Elizabethan period Ireland became a critical focus of the Tudor regime as the Nine Years War (c.1593-1603) threatened English rule in the second Tudor kingdom and the country became a theatre of the Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604). As a result of this military emergency officials in Ireland began composing a deluge of policy papers from the mid-1590s onwards. Over two hundred of these treatises are extant. This paper provides the first systematic overview of this war-time discourse on Ireland. In doing so it sheds light on these writings and their significance for the history of late Elizabethan Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late Elizabethan period Ireland became a critical focus of the Tudor regime as the Nine Years War (c.1593-1603) threatened English rule in the second Tudor kingdom and the country became a theatre of the Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604). As a result of this military emergency officials in Ireland began composing a deluge of policy papers from the mid-1590s onwards. Over two hundred of these treatises are extant. This paper provides the first systematic overview of this war-time discourse on Ireland. In doing so it sheds light on these writings and their significance for the history of late Elizabethan Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major issue for campaigners for radical political programmes is the question of publicity. A vibrant literature has emerged examining the ways in which the Labour party developed a media strategy and cultivated their own newspapers and links with established media organizations in mid twentieth-century Britain. However, the role of the quality press in helping make the radical respectable in the interwar and Second World War period merits more attention. This article provides a detailed analysis of internal developments at The Times and the Manchester Guardian to explain how both papers came to promote radical policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A previously unpublished memorandum on the life of Dr. Joseph Priestley written by Priestley's former student, Benjamin Vaughan. Vaughan, who participated in the negotiations of the Treaty of Paris and served as a member of parliament, recounts the academic accomplishments, research interests and character of one of England's most famous eighteenth-century polymaths. Vaughan's reflections provide a first-hand account of the personal nature of Priestley, who helped fuel the scientific discoveries of the Enlightenment, including experiments that led to the discovery of oxygen. The original manuscript is available in the Benjamin Vaughan papers at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article constitutes the first large-scale examination of the Cork anti-Methodist riots of 1749–50. Methodist hagiographers have described the rioters as disengaged foot soldiers for Cork's corporation and Anglican clergy. By exploring these disturbances in their religious, political and social context, this paper suggests that the predominantly Catholic rioters were fuelled by their own politico-theological grievances, thereby illuminating the persistence of religious violence in eighteenth-century Ireland. Furthermore, by exploring tensions between Cork Methodists and Baptists, it highlights both the ways in which Methodists sometimes fuelled opposition and the fact that they were not always the sole victims of anti-Methodist violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hitler needed the support of the Hohenzollern family on a national and an international level. While the national level has been researched in some detail, we do not have much information about the international aspect. This article shows what foreign connections the Hohenzollerns had and why they made them available to Hitler. Private correspondence in the papers of three Americans offers new insights. Resumption of the throne was a driving force for the Hohenzollerns who hoped to copy Mussolini's arrangement with the Italian monarchy. But the family were not just opportunists. They shared many beliefs with the National Socialists: anti-Semitism, anti-parliamentarism and anti-communism. They also greatly admired Hitler's wars of conquest. For the National Socialists, the Hohenzollerns' eagerness to support them was welcome propaganda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of the Scottish Conservative party in shaping the underlying culture of Scottish politics in the 1830s and 1840s, utilizing numerous collections of private papers, newspapers, memoirs and legal texts. It focuses on the party's experiences of electioneering rituals, and its innovative electoral registration activities. It then examines the effects of its creation of illegitimate 'fictitious' votes, and of its diverse methods for influencing electors. In doing so, it puts 'party' at the heart of a notably distinctive and fast-evolving Scottish political culture, and challenges assumptions that this culture was overwhelmingly whiggish in character and inspiration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the publishing history of the letters and documents assembled by successive heads of the Stonor family. It starts by re-examining the texts given by C. L. Kingsford in his Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290-1483 (1919), and its supplement of 1923. Kingsford's work remains in print in the still more unsatisfactory form published by Cambridge University Press in 1996 as Kingsford's Stonor Letters and Papers, with introduction and notes by Christine Carpenter. That volume makes no mention of the handful of letters found after Kingsford's time, which are here offered and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the roots of the characterization of John Stuart Mill as a 'Neo‐Malthusian'. Making extensive use of the Norman E. Himes Papers, held at the Countway Library of Medicine, it shows that Himes, a U.S. sociologist and committed birth control campaigner in the inter‐war period, framed a characterization of Mill that endures to this day. The article demonstrates how and why Himes repeatedly took his arguments 'beyond the facts', partly in response to a dispute with the British birth control campaigner Marie Stopes, and established the practice of referring to Mill as a 'Neo‐Malthusian'. The article concludes by arguing that the term impedes more than it aids our understanding and Mill scholars would benefit from stripping away decades of accreted interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Notwithstanding recent interest in the politics of housing, squatting in the formative contexts of post‐Restoration rural England remains little understood and studied. Drawing upon a diverse archive of central government papers and those of the local officers of the New Forest – the largest Crown forest in England and Wales – this article argues that the resort to squatting was a function of the uneven contours of forest governance. Moreover, while squatting led to the formation of new communities, it was neither exclusively a plebeian act nor, against official discourses, necessarily an abuse of the assets of the forest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reasserts the‘revisionist’ view of responses to fascist violence at Olympia in 1934. It suggests that, as more collections of private papers become available, the close relations between Conservative politicians and fascist organizations have become increasingly clear. It argues that the relaxed attitude towards fascist methods is understandable in the context of long-term reliance on fascist stewarding by Tory politicians, and that there was as much continuity as change in British views on violence in politics after 1918. The article further suggests that any claim that Mosley changed his methods at indoor meetings after Olympia flies in the face of the evidence. Finally, it refers to the home office papers to show why the politicians failed to intervene against the fascists for a long period after Olympia, and underlines the electoral dangers for the National Government posed by any precipitate intervention after Olympia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The State Papers and the Journal of Prior More of Worcester are the main sources for a detailed, though incomplete, record of the itinerary of Princess Mary in the Marches of Wales, 1525-7. Revised dates are proposed for several documents calendared in Letters and Papers ... of Henry VIII which the princess's biographers have misinterpreted, including some relating to the appointment of her council and household. References to the itinerary of the princess's council are also noted. After returning to court early in 1527, the princess did not return to the Marches, probably because her prominent role there was no longer compatible with the king's intentions concerning the succession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to examine a frequently overlooked aspect of William Laud's career: his role in the house of lords. Attempting to move away from simplistic views of Laud as a fusty cleric, it uses official parliamentary records and relevant state papers, as well as Laud's own diary and sermons, in order to show that he was an assiduous and effective parliamentarian, relied upon by both the king and the duke of Buckingham for political advice and as a writer of speeches and political memoranda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the circulation of news that daily arrived in the ports of late Elizabethan Devon concerning the Spanish fleet. It utilizes the state and Cecil papers, as well as other centrally and locally held manuscript collections, to probe the nature of provincial news networks through the prism of a county-based case study. Previous scholarly research has tended to focus on the single 'hub' of London. However, as this article reveals, there existed much more complex sets of news networks that operated in the first instance at a local level, but which also had connections with the capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the Spanish marriages episode of 1846 as a prism through which to examine the relationship between the leading foreign affairs writers for the increasingly powerful Times newspaper and the authors and servants of British diplomacy in the early Victorian period. The focus of this study is Lord William Hervey, the first secretary of the British embassy in Paris, a diplomat who well understood the power of the press over ministers, parliament and the people. Hervey's under-utilized private papers shed light on the divisions in British political and literary (press) society over the nation's policies towards France and Spain. They also paint a picture of an increasingly isolated foreign secretary, Viscount Palmerston, a Whig statesman who failed to carry his policy through the Whig cabinet and who failed to convince the Conservative Times of its supposed merits, despite the support of some overactive members of the British diplomatic community. This is a story of diplomatic failure; a rare study of how not to win friends and influence people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Robinson was a treasury secretary of obscure origin, extraordinarily diligent, efficient and persistent. Viscerally conservative, he had no place in whig history until analysis of his correspondence and parliamentary papers rediscovered his importance, particularly in electoral management. The Namierite approach to Hanoverian high politics embraced Robinson; as it went out of fashion so did he. But recent work on hitherto barely touched private letters reaffirms Robinson's crucial role in the prolongation of the North ministry, the failure of the whigs and the rise of the Younger Pitt, and casts renewed doubt on the neo-whig heroic narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These two documents from the state papers of Henry VIII, one previously misdated, provide evidence of Thomas Cranmer's and Thomas Cromwell's investigation between 1536 and 1538 of ecclesiastical corruption involving Sir Richard Mabot, master of St. Thomas's Hospital in Southwark. This is an example of Cranmer and Cromwell genuinely attempting reform – the abuses at St. Thomas's were extensive – but Cromwell may also have tried to exploit the case to his advantage in his ongoing struggle with Bishop Stephen Gardiner for political influence with the king and to determine the future direction of the English church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illuminates the little-known high-command experiences of Henry Horne. Drawing predominantly upon his (largely unused) papers, it identifies three major preoccupations – ambition, optimism and religiously-based moral outrage – behind his mentality, and contends that these concerns contributed significantly to his daily exercise of command. While addressing current debates about command, the article also discusses Horne's reactions to perceived German atrocities – an issue generally overlooked in other studies – and suggests that, rather than pursuing a ‘depersonalised’ approach to the investigation of First World War generalship, more attention must be given both to this subject and to the complex mentalities behind command decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a series of contacts between the marquis of Ormond and the Ulster Protestant forces in 1645–6, using sources that include the Carte manuscripts, parliamentary papers, pamphlet material, and other political correspondence, both manuscript and printed. It is argued that Ormond's Ulster contacts were as least as important as the concurrent negotiations with the Catholic confederates, which up to now have been prioritized by historians, and that his Ulster strategy was designed to avoid further negotiations with the Catholic Irish by regaining Protestant Ireland's support for the royalist cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many assumptions about the frequency and scale of electoral violence in mid Victorian England and Wales have previously been made but there has been no attempt at a comprehensive quantitative analysis. This article, which draws upon home office papers, election petition reports and contemporary newspapers, identifies and differentiates between riots, disturbances and incidents at general elections from 1857 to 1880. It concludes that electoral violence was more widespread and serious than generally believed, that it usually occurred in cities rather than small towns, and that it was directly related to the number of contested constituencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the reliability of probate valuations as a source for studying nineteenth-century wealth-holding by examining the extent to which estates were encumbered by debt. Drawing upon the analysis of a sample of Legacy Duty Office residuary account papers, it discusses the types and sizes of debts and compares the net values of personal estates with the gross estimates made for the purposes of probate. While indebtedness was widespread, few estates were totally consumed by debt. In nearly two-thirds of cases the probate valuation was between fifty and 100 per cent of the net value of an estate. These findings suggest that historians can place more faith in the accuracy of probate valuations as a true measure of worth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Winston Churchill published The Second World War between 1948 and 1954. Much more than memoirs, his six volumes included a large amount of Churchill's wartime documents and drew extensively on material in the Whitehall archives. This was only possible because of a unique partnership between Churchill and two cabinet secretaries, Edward Bridges and Norman Brook. The assistance that they provided, and their reasons for doing so, are explored in this article, which is based on research in the Churchill papers and the files of the cabinet office. This story also throws light on the general procedures for official vetting of political memoirs as they have evolved during the first half of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the propaganda produced against the Leveller John Lilburne by his enemies in Whitehall and Westminster. Based upon a wide range of civil war pamphlets and newspapers, as well as official sources and private papers, it contextualizes anti-Lilburne literature in terms of the complex political developments of the period, demonstrates the extent to which parliamentarians and Rumpers learnt to marshal‘civil service’ resources, and assesses the conceptual appreciation of the ways in which print could be employed. As such, it contributes to an enhanced understanding of the political appropriation of popular polemic during the early modern‘print revolution’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, using engineers' diaries and Admiralty papers, discusses the status and integration of engineers into the Navy from 1847-60. With the birth of the steam fleet, they were recruited in large numbers as officers, to operate and maintain the engines. Their position as officers and engineers, nascent executive and technical, proved controversial. Literature on the introduction of steam has neglected the social dimension and coverage of naval engineers has not emphasized their challenge to the established ethos of the officer corps. This article seeks to remedy this by examining engineers' work and relationships with both officers and the Admiralty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses A. G. Dickens's contribution to the study of the continental Reformation, and of German Lutheranism in particular. Dickens's main theses, as formulated in a group of five thematically linked major works that were published between 1964 and 1974, concerned the cultural and historical significance of European Protestantism as an emancipatory national movement whose urban, ‘bourgeois’ variant was subject to constraints of far-reaching historical consequence in Germany. Dickens's further writings, war diaries and private papers are adduced to illustrate the conceptual assumptions underlying this interpretation, which are shown to have been influenced by his Protestant religious convictions and an apparent fascination with Oswald Spengler's theory of civilizations. The article questions Dickens's account of the link between humanism, Lutheran thought and incipient German nationalism, but stresses the relevance of his critique of contemporary German scholarship for adopting a too narrowly national perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article uses press reports, pamphlet literature, politicians’ diaries, parliamentary debates and Home Office/police papers at the Public Record Office to sustain two main arguments. Firstly, that contrary to recent revisionist accounts, revulsion at fascist violence played an important part in the failure of Mosley and British fascism. It is shown that the furore over blackshirt violence at Olympia in 1934 served to alienate Conservative opinion from fascist ‘extremism’ both in parliament and in the press, and also convinced both British Union of Fascists and communist leaders that they must dissociate themselves from responsibility for the organization of violence. Secondly, the article suggests that debates about Olympia highlighted profound disagreements over the legitimacy of dissent and protest in public politics, and over the proper role for the police and the law at indoor political meetings. Ultimately the reaction against fascist violence led to a significant increase in the state's role in this traditionally private sphere of political life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates Henry VIII’s ecclesiastical foundations in order to assess their significance and to see what they can tell us about the king’s personal religious convictions—a relatively under–explored area. After sketching the medieval background, the article catalogues Henry’s foundations, and then explores their perceived and stated purposes, and their implications for the general course of the Reformation under Henry VIII. The main original sources are the patent rolls (here referred to mainly via the calendar of Letters and Papers of Henry VIII). Henry’s choices about the dedications of his foundations are found to cast interesting new light on his devotional tastes and development. More broadly, the history of his foundations illustrates his hesitancy in breaking with traditional religion, and leads the authors to take issue with interpretations of Henry VIII’s religious development advanced by G. W. Bernard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based primarily on an extensive survey of death duty papers in the Public Record Office, this article shows how works of art were taxed—or not—over the course of the long nineteenth century. It sheds light on the theory and practice of capital taxation, and the special treatment accorded works of art, especially when attached to landed estates. It also shows how towards the end of the period government negotiated the countervailing pressures both to professionalize the valuation and assessment of works of art and to protect the ‘national heritage’ in art from sale and export. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lord Kitchener was once a great legendary figure but the imagery and iconography used to create the legend is less well known. By using his papers and contemporary literature this article attempts to shed light on how Kitchener was regarded by his peers and the public. Instead of the wholesome English traits attributed to his predecessors, Kitchener's admirers and enemies described him as ‘oriental’, ‘teutonic’, devious, cruel, machine-like and efficient, which made him the ideal champion for a country undergoing a collective crisis of confidence before 1914. Thus Kitchener was, in many ways, a new kind of hero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]