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Historians have traditionally framed debates over Irish policy in the early 1840s between London and Dublin Castle in sectarian terms. Robert Peel's 'liberal-minded' attitudes towards Catholics have been portrayed as conflicting with his lord lieutenant's, which were supposedly anti- Catholic, sectarian and 'Orange'. Using the Earl de Grey's political papers in addition to Peel's for the first time in historical analysis, this article shows this is a misinterpretation which has concealed the actual nature of the policy debates between Peel and De Grey during the 'Repeal Year' period. Conflict arose, not along sectarian or ideological lines, but over the cause of the sudden rise in popular support for the Repeal Association and the nature of public policy which would best counteract this. De Grey thought the 'Repeal Year' crisis was the result of economic grievances, while Peel considered it a religious issue. In the resulting disagreement over the most effective policy, De Grey favoured policies based upon economic conciliation, and Peel prioritized religious concessions towards Irish Catholics. This anticipated debates in Irish policy much later in the nineteenth century between constructive unionists, who advocated economic conciliation to combat the rise of Irish nationalism, and those who supported religious and constitutional reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how concepts of mergers and acquisitions shaped potential horizontal mergers, namely stock swaps, and vertical mergers shaped oil and ranching on the Southern Great Plains in the late 1920s and early 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information resources related to history publications. Publication of a Calendar of the Papers of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1786-1845; Acquisition of a collection of the papers of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone by Churchill College Archives Center in Cambridge, England; Availability of the Report of the Committee to Review Local History.

This paper explores the continued debate concerning the status and treatment of Anglo-Saxon saints after 1066 through the discussion of the fate of St Æthelwold of Winchester's cult. Current historiography favours Susan Ridyard's 1986 thesis that the new Norman bishops and abbots used the Anglo-Saxon saints to establish their authority, integrate themselves into their new religious houses, and guard their communities' land and possessions. She challenged the notion that the churchmen were sceptical of and mistreated Anglo-Saxon saints' cults. However, historians such as Paul Hayward, and more recently Tom License, have disputed Ridyard's thesis. This article examines the status of St Æthelwold's cult at Winchester and Abingdon after 1066, where there is clear evidence that the cult was suppressed. This paper will explore the means by which, and the potential motivations why, the abbots of Abingdon and bishop of Winchester expressed disrespectful attitudes towards St Æthelwold's cult, discussing the implications this has on current historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on archive resources of Zionism and Israel. History of Zionism; Most important collection of printed material about Jews and Israel; Collection of the oral history of Zionism at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew University.

Edward Snowden is not the first - nor will he be the last - disgruntled US intelligence officer to spill the beans. Using newly declassified materials, private papers and interviews, this article explores how the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA) dealt with whistleblowers and disillusioned staff in the 1970s, a period often described as the Agency's 'Time of Troubles'. It will be argued that ugly revelations by former employees caused more distress to the CIA than disclosures that emerged in the press and on Capitol Hill. At Langley, there was genuine shock that supposedly trusted insiders would write tell-it-all books and betray the Agency's code of 'never celebrate successes, never explain failures'. Focusing on the CIA's attempts to manage three intelligence apostates - Victor Marchetti, Phillip Agee and Frank Snepp - it will be shown that the Agency invariably made a rod for its own back. As well as ham-fisted efforts to spy on them and steal manuscripts, the CIA constitutionally frogmarched certain whistleblowers off to court, provoking widespread criticism that it was an enemy of free speech. By looking at how the CIA responded to the challenge of leaks in the 1970s, this article places into long-term perspective the contemporary struggle between intelligence agencies and rebellious insiders who use electronic media to promote transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deals with the establishment and early history of the 'Westminster Review,' a radical periodical of early nineteenth-century Great Britain. Spotlight on the role of Thomas Perronet Thompson; Examination of editorial processes; Defense of Bethamite utilitarianism; Demands for political reform; Championship of liberal economics; Conflict with 'Edinburgh Review.'

This article looks at the small number of British subjects who visited China and North Korea during the Korean War with a view to influencing British opinion. Although none were brought to trial, all experienced some form of punitive action, whether the loss of employment, loss of passports, or damage to their reputations. The subject is placed in the context of the Cold War, and the wider concerns about disloyalty on the Left at the time, as well as the controversies surrounding the Korean War in Britain. It concludes that the actions of these individuals have to be understood in terms of their alternative loyalties (such as to the 'new' China, or to an alternative vision of the United Nations), which ultimately outweighed allegations of disloyalty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, historians have contended that the Scottish revolution of 1688-90 was at least as radical as the simultaneous revolution in England. This article makes a complementary claim: that James VII and II's policy of tolerating almost all Christian worship, which was introduced first in Scotland, had a greater impact in the northern kingdom than has previously been recognized. Using hitherto unexamined local church court papers, the article argues that James's indulgences of 1687 initiated a 'multiconfessional experiment', a period of largely unfettered competition between religious groups that lasted until the overthrow of the king in the revolution. Not only Scotland's small Catholic and Quaker communities, but also a large body of presbyterian dissenters, benefited from this multiconfessionalism. The revival of presbyterianism ultimately allowed for the re-establishment of presbyterian government in 1690. Though there was peaceful coexistence between rival religious groups in 1687-8, the outbreak of religious violence at the revolution suggests that most Scots remained intolerant of cultural difference. The wider importance of James's experiment was to reveal how difficult it was for an established Church accustomed to uniformity to perform vital social functions - including poor relief and moral discipline - in conditions of religious pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will discuss the defence arguments that were used to oppose the channel tunnel, the relationship between these arguments and Britain's island status, the perceptions of British insularity, together with how and possibly why these changed in the period 1882-1975. The opposition to the Channel Tunnel project, especially in the period 1880 to 1945, can provide historians with a valuable insight into the British relationship with the sea. In particular, the opposition to a channel tunnel provides a way of analysing concepts of island status within Britain and what being an island meant to the British sense of self and identity, as they were expressed in the media as well as in official papers. At the same time, the changing attitudes to a channel tunnel, notably in the inter-war period and the post-1945 era, also show how the British understanding of what being an island state gave them in terms of security and identity changed. Such a change was as a result of new or improving technologies, particularly the aircraft, and the resulting impact it had on conceptions of security that being an island provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the private papers of Lord Killearn in conjunction with official government documents from the British national archives and the French colonial archives, this article builds upon previous historical scholarship to highlight the importance of Killearn's South-East Asian diplomacy to the resolution of the international food crisis following the Second World War. As Britain's senior diplomat in South-East Asia Killearn had little choice but to become entangled in various international disputes often centred upon French Indo-China - Killearn's failure to do otherwise would not have preserved adequate international rice supplies. Therefore this article not only demonstrates the magnitude of Killearn's concern for South-East Asian rice production during the immediate post-war food crisis but it also reveals the depth of Killearn's frustration towards the chaotic priorities emanating from French Indo-China, and thus it substantiates a more significant and complex understanding of Killearn's diplomatic mission to South-East Asia than has been formerly stated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the background of revival of interest in the ‘two cultures’ controversy of the 1960s, this article examines an earlier episode in the struggle between literary intellectuals and scientists for cultural leadership – the choice of a British candidate for the leadership of UNESCO. Why was Sir Alfred Zimmern, the obvious choice for the post of founding Director-General, not selected? This article argues that Zimmern was ousted as front-runner because he had failed to gather the support of the burgeoning British scientific establishment, which had mounted its own successful agitation to have science included explicitly in the new organization's remit. It examines the actions and motivations of Ellen Wilkinson and John Maud, whose joint decision it was to replace the classicist Zimmern with the biologist Julian Huxley. It concludes that the main factor behind the replacement of Zimmern was his failure to bridge the two cultures of arts and science. Nevertheless, these events should not be viewed merely as a prologue to the two cultures debate as Huxley and Zimmern's attitudes to science and culture cannot easily be separated from their respective approaches to broader international political questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks again at the ‘Peterloo massacre’ of 16 August 1819 in Manchester, and offers new evidence from the Home Office Disturbances Papers about how it came about and who was responsible. In Section I the revisionist case that Peterloo was a conflict rather than a massacre is examined and found wanting. Section II argues that in the months before Peterloo, the Home Office had consistently urged the Lancashire magistrates to combat radical agitation ‘either by the law or the sword’; its well-known advice for restraint on 16 August was a piece of qualified back-pedalling which came too late. It also argues that the authorities misinterpreted the peaceful mass platform agitation of 1819 in the light of their experience of the attempted insurrections of 1817. Section III shows that the prosecution at the Peterloo trial privately conceded that its own version of events had been discredited. Section IV suggests that both conservative and progressive versions of what happened at Peterloo are constricted by whiggish assumptions, proposes some questions for further study, and offers a brief summary explanation of the Peterloo massacre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between secret services and the press is an enduring one. Although the CIA did not seek the kind of salient media profile enjoyed by the FBI, it nevertheless maintained an informal press office from its foundation in 1947. Directors of the CIA and their senior staff devoted significant time to the public profile of the Agency. Their efforts to engage with the world of newspapers divided journalists. Some saw it as their patriotic duty to assist the Agency, even reporting for it overseas, while other saw it as their constitutional role to oppose the Agency. This was especially true during the Vietnam War and Watergate. Thereafter, a more nuanced relationship developed in which the press saw themselves as an informal wing of new accountability processes that provided the intelligence community with oversight. This was ambiguous terrain and its complexities are explored here by focusing on the example of the prominent New York Times journalist Tad Szulc, whose complex relationship with the CIA spanned several decades and connected closely with the vexed issue of Kennedy and Cuba. Szulc played a number of roles including outrider, renegade and overseer, but there was confusion about who was servant and who was master. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marchamont Nedham was one of the most significant English journalists of the seventeenth century. During the Interregnum, his newspaper Mercurius Politicus routinely printed stories of exiled royalists and their leader Charles Stuart. Although the topic of royalists was consistent throughout the 1650s, the royal image in Politicus was not. In the early 1650s, Nedham described Charles Stuart as a tyrant and enemy of freedom, while after 1651, the exiled king appeared as a failed monarch. Nedham's reporting of royalists was independent of government influence, and he himself elected to change his representation of royalists. It was the shifting political situation that convinced him to alter his descriptions of Charles Stuart and his followers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the representation of the nation through a group of real people, exploring how the romantic figure of the Beefeater became entwined with ideas of national identity. It begins with the reforms introduced by the duke of Wellington, whose appointment as Constable of the Tower of London in 1826 led to sweeping reforms of the Body of Yeoman Warders (popularly known as Beefeaters), who had fallen into disarray after years of neglect and mismanagement. It looks beyond the late 1820s to consider how the Beefeaters' appeal was consolidated during the later nineteenth century, in particular, how increased tourism and the growing depiction of Yeoman Warders in fiction, art and music impacted upon popular perceptions of the Beefeater. So much so that by the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the reinvention of the Beefeater as a patriotic icon was complete. The article is concerned not only with representation of the warder but also how the Beefeater himself helped to construct his own identity. As a living embodiment of the past the Beefeater, via his verbal commentary and participation in the Tower's rich ceremonial life, actively shaped his own image. This research contributes to the debates surrounding the 'invention of tradition' and 'democratic royalism' and popular narratives of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nuremberg as event and as process: what does ' Nuremberg' mean? At the simplest, literal level it refers to the prosecution, in the German city of that name, of twenty-two senior German figures and six organizations before the International Military Tribunal ( IMT) in 1945-6. It can also represent the tens of thousands of trials of greater and lesser war criminals and collaborators conducted in Europe and Southeast Asia in the post-war period by the Allies, the liberated nations, and even erstwhile perpetrator states themselves. Figuratively, ' Nuremberg' can evoke any trial of transgressors of international humanitarian law anywhere since 1945. Pejoratively, and less often non-pejoratively, it stands for 'the political trial' or 'victor's justice'. To the lawyers, judges and defendants involved, and to the German public of the post-war years, ' Nuremberg' might connote not just the IMT trial but also the twelve subsequent trials before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals ( NMTs) conducted in 1946-9 by the American occupation authorities against 'major war criminals of the second rank'. Finally, to those interested not just in the purely legal successes and controversies of the trials, ' Nuremberg' may embrace the political aftermaths, as many convicted war criminals were prematurely released in the changed international circumstances of the 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British surrender at Yorktown proved one of the most decisive engagements in the history of the Atlantic world. While the American conduct of the campaign has been endlessly studied, the British side has been studiously neglected. This article seeks to show how the British army came to be stationed at Yorktown and why its occupation ended in disaster. Many accusations were made at the time as to who was responsible for the debacle. However, the most public recriminations were those exchanged by the two leading generals, Sir Henry Clinton and Earl Cornwallis. Clinton charged Cornwallis with responsibility for Yorktown on three counts. Firstly, he had entered Virginia without authorization, thereby dangerously extending Britain's military commitments. Secondly, it was Cornwallis who had chosen Yorktown as the site for an operational base in Virginia. Finally Cornwallis had failed to exercise proper judgement when faced by imminent danger of entrapment. However, analysis of the evidence reveals that Yorktown was a disaster principally of Clinton's making. It was Clinton who did most to extend the British effort in Virginia, and Clinton who changed the nature of the war there by insisting on the establishment of an enlarged naval facility. Finally it was Clinton who failed to see the impending danger or the need for revised orders to Cornwallis once that danger was clear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of empire has loomed large in recent writings on eighteenth-century Britain. This article attempts to encourage greater appreciation of Britain's multifarious connections with continental Europe in this period. It also seeks to establish that empire and Europe were seen by many Britons as complementary rather than competing areas of interest and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the role of economic history on the growth of social history in Great Britain. Discussion of both the rewards and the costs of treating social history; Confirmation that British social history is anchored in labor history; Relation of the theory and history of the proletariat.

Lists books about history published in 1989. Inclusion of 'Time, Space and Society: Geographical Perspectives,' by S. Kellerman; 'Time in History: Views of Time From Prehistory to the Present Day,' by G.J. Whitrow; 'The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia,' edited by C. Shaw and M. Chase; 'Human History and Social Process,' by J. Goudsblom, E.L. Jones and S. Mennell.

Features several books about history. "Bristol and the Wine Trade," by Anne Crawford; "The Winchester Diver: The Saving of a Great Cathedral," by Ian T. Henderson and John Crook; "The History of Clementhorpe Nunnery," by R.B. Dobson and Sara Donaghey; "Bibliography of European Economic and Social History," compiled by Derek H. Aldcroft and Richard Rodger; "The World the Romans Knew," by N.H.H. Sitwell; Others.

Lists several books on history. "Trade Unions in Bristol," by Brian Atkinson; "Law, Crime and Punishment," from the Historical Sources for Central Scotland; "Poverty and the Poor Law in the North Riding of Yorkshire," by B.P. Hastings; "Pastoral Discipline and the Church Courts: The Hexham Court 1680-1730," by M.G. Smith; "The Rural Constabulary Act 1839," by David Foster; "The Industrial Archaeology of North-West England," by Owen Ashmore.

Features books about the political history of England. "England in the Fifteenth Century: Collected Essays," by K.B. McFarlane, introduction by G.L. Harriss; "The Reign of King Henry VI," by Ralph A. Griffiths; "Patronage, Pedigree and Power in Later Medieval England," edited by Charles Ross; "Patronage. The Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England," edited by Ralph A. Griffiths.

Explores the influence of copyright on historians of modern records. Acknowledgment of copyright within fifty years of the death of the author or the date of the publication of the book; Scholarly discomfort on private collections relating to the modern period; Provisions of the 1956 Copyright Act.

Presents some editorial notes on a number of books on history. "Education and Apprenticeship in Sixteenth-Century Bristol," by Jean Vanes; "Isaac Rosenberg of Bristol," by Charles Tomlinson; "Croatia and the Croatians," by George J. Prpic; "British Archives: A Guide to Archive Resources in the United Kingdom," edited by Janet Forster and Juliet Sheppard; "The Robert Tressal Papers"; "First for Boys: The Story of the Boys' Brigade, 1883-1983," by Donald M. McFarlan.

Editorial. Presents news items in the field of history as of 1984. Submission of manuscripts to the periodical "History"; Launching of the History Workshop Center for Social History in Oxford, England; Establishment of the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalog project under the chairmanship of John Joliffe; Lists of recently-published history book.

Announces developments related to the journal "History." Disappearance of History Books for Schools in the journal; Design of a computer language by C. F. Reynolds for historians; Appreciation on the works published in the journal.

Abstract: In the early nineteenth century, there was a concerted effort by the judiciary, media and the Home Department to close down official discussion and deny official recognition of same‐sex relationships and sex amongst men. The crime that dare not speak its name became a literal description. The offence of buggery or sodomy was replaced with — in official records and media reports. When the crime was discussed, as in the Vere Street case, it was condemned with increasing vigour as heinous and unnatural. The case Salisbury v. Morton 1827, reconstructed from the petitions and pardons archive, offers a rare insight into the lived experiences of men engaging in same sex relationships in London during this time. It also shows how the criminal justice system responded to these men, and how, in turn, they reacted to, used and manipulated the criminal justice system. Finally, this microhistory speaks to the intersection of class and sexuality as the context for legal decision‐making to reveal complexities and dynamics often missing from more generalized or structural histories of same‐sex intimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In a number of articles and essays, I have questioned whether regicide was the intended outcome of the trial of Charles I. Although initially well received, my scholarship has since come in for criticism from Clive Holmes. This article is one part of my response. It shows that Holmes has misunderstood my arguments about what the trial of Charles I was intended to achieve and has focused on a handful of sources which are peripheral to my case. Meanwhile, the thesis Holmes offers in place of mine appears evidentially, rhetorically and even logically flawed. It is largely reliant on unexamined articles of faith, dependent in part on literary legerdemain, and oddly reluctant to address what actually happened during the king's trial. Not only has Holmes failed to reinstate the orthodoxy that regicide was the trial's inevitable conclusion: he has underlined that orthodoxy's redundancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Cromwellian regime has long endured a one‐dimensional reputation for anti‐popery. Historians are beginning to challenge this view, pointing to the relative absence of religious persecution during Oliver Cromwell's tenure as Lord Protector. Cromwell massacred Catholic rebels at Wexford and Drogheda in Ireland, but he did not compel Catholics to attend Protestant churches, and does not seem to have hunted priests as vigorously as his predecessors. This article explores the impact of Cromwellian rule on the Catholic community in Scotland, where the military governor George Monck granted Catholics a significant degree of effective toleration. Monck prohibited the Presbyterian church from subjecting Catholics to ecclesiastical discipline, and actively intervened to protect Catholics if kirk sessions and other church courts summoned them anyway. In return, many Catholics ostentatiously professed their loyalty to the commonwealth. Although Monck did not repeal Scotland's penal laws, his intervention demonstrates that the commonwealth's liberty for ‘tender consciences’ trickled down to those formally excluded from it. Cromwellian officials in Scotland would not allow any institution to coerce one's inward beliefs, even if it meant defending known Catholics from a Protestant kirk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The article contributes to the ongoing discussion about the Dialogue of the Exchequer. For quite a long time researchers have been puzzled by the treatise written by the royal treasurer Richard of Ely around the year 1180. It has been regarded as a manual for Exchequer clerks, describing in great detail the workings of Henry II's financial administration. Several of these details, however, have been proven to be wrong or not relevant for the clerks’ work. By comparing the Dialogue with the actual records written during the accounting procedures of the twelfth century – the pipe rolls – and by analysing the Dialogue, I come to the conclusion that the Dialogue did not serve as a guidebook on how to write a pipe roll, but as a guidebook on how to be, and how to think, as an Exchequer clerk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Bill Clinton's willingness to engage with popular culture, such as appearing on MTV, reinforced the claim he made that as a New Democrat he represented something new ideologically. With his 1963 meeting with John Kennedy, his admiration for Martin Luther King, and his association with (and controversial opposition to) the Vietnam War, he became a symbol of the 1960s. He was described as the first black president in terms of what he represented culturally and was strongly identified with the feminist agenda. His regional identification with the South was another ingredient in his image. Overall his image created a sense of Clinton as something new in American politics and this was a crucial ingredient in his political success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article focuses on the repression of erotic and pornographic imagery (artworks, statues and figurines) by the Inquisition in Madrid during the last six years of its existence between 1814 and 1820. This period in the Inquisition's history has tended to be overlooked and dismissed as insignificant. After tracing the history of the Spanish Inquisition's desultory attempts in earlier years to suppress sexual imagery deemed to offend public piety, this article examines an unusual cluster of cases involving erotic or pornographic images during those six years. The article examines these cases and argues that we need to eschew simplistic narratives in which historians have presented the Inquisition as a moribund institution pathetically pursuing insignificant cases. The documentary evidence suggests that the inquisitors in Madrid were, if anything, fiercely determined to restore the fortunes of the Inquisition and its position within the absolutist monarchy of King Fernando VII. The inquisitors’ campaign against erotic and pornographic imagery was, alongside a focus on freemasonry, part of a quest for political and social legitimacy in a changing and increasingly hostile environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Pan‐Latinism, like pan‐Germanism and pan‐Slavism, was a macro‐nationalist movement which emerged in the nineteenth century. Supporters of pan‐Latinism deplored the decline of the ‘Latin’ civilization vis‐à‐vis Anglo‐Saxon or Germanic powers, and dreamed of creating a new Roman Empire. This movement took root in countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, Romania and the Latin American republics, but most of all in France, the biggest ‘Latin’ power at the time. After the Second World War, a French initiative led to the foundation of a ‘Latin Union’ – an international organization which became the main organ of pan‐Latinism. French partisans of pan‐Latinism conveyed this ideology as a form of resistance to the increasing Anglo‐Saxon linguistic and cultural hegemony. But rather than reflecting a pluralistic vision, French initiatives to promote pan‐Latinism generally strove to increase their country's influence in Europe and beyond. This was particularly evident from 1983 to 1997, when the Latin Union was led by the Frenchman Philippe Rossillon, an enthusiastic defender of Francophonie, which replaced the idea of a ‘Latin’ civilization with a community of French‐speaking regions. This coincided with the goals of pan‐Latinism, which generally strove to augment France's international importance and influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article lifts the veil on the women who dressed as men during the English Civil War –and on contemporary reactions towards them. The piece begins by noting that – although it is often claimed that the armies of king and parliament were accompanied by many females who had ‘counterfeited their sex’ in order to march into the field – those claims rest on a surprisingly slim evidential base. Next, the article considers the ways in which both cross‐dressed women and women in quasi‐masculine attire were viewed during the half century before the war began – and suggests that attitudes towards such women may sometimes have reflected broader politico‐religious attitudes. Finally, the article explores the handful of cases in which the presence of cross‐dressed women in the rival armies is genuinely attested to – and asks what these cases reveal about reactions to such women during the conflict itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a distinct generation, the first authors of the British black Atlantic - writers of African descent writing in English in the last half of the eighteenth century - bridged differing worlds. The authors shared common experiences, with most having suffered in the slave trade and having celebrated evangelical religious conversions. While scholars have tended to focus on the transoceanic connections of these authors, the political schism between Britain and the United States in the 1780s divided those authors who lived in what became the United States and those who remained within the British Empire. This article explores that division, first by separating the authors into two groups, those labelled American for remaining in the United States, and those called British for residing in the British Isles or imperial possessions at their lives' end. Second, the article explores the different experiences of each group, and the themes or approaches both groups took in their works. Black American writers generally de-emphasised political issues, forged local patronage connections, and offered a personal piety that minimised the issue of slavery. Black British writers, by contrast, would stress their African or international identity, embraced a piety that was more socially active, and focused more on issues of political rights and antislavery. The contrasts reflect different life experiences of the two groups, in part because they adapted to being governed under different polities. The larger global context of the American Revolution helps account for differences in narrative and experience among this literary generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having been promoted to royal status in 1130, Roger II of Sicily sought to bind a set of disparate territories into one kingdom covering mainland southern Italy and Sicily. Scholarship has devoted much space to identifying Roger's royal strategy in its embryonic and contested state of the 1130s - with views ranging from tyrannical authoritarianism to control via negotiation and consensus - and also to pinpointing some of the major turning points which led to the creation of the Sicilian monarchy. This article aims to contribute to this body of scholarship by examining an undervalued passage in the Ystoria Rogerii Regis Sicilie Calabrie atque Apulie of Abbot Alexander of Telese, a contemporary work of indispensable value for any understanding of the formation of a monarchy that changed the shape of South Italian history thereafter. The passage in question, an encomium of Capua, points towards Roger's capture of that city in the summer of 1134 as a controversial and pivotal event in the political and ideological formation of the new kingdom. In Alexander of Telese's important construction it was at Capua that Roger truly began acting as a king. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the neglected topic of gentry news culture in early modern Wales. It argues that the Welsh gentry accessed and consumed news in much the same way as their English counterparts, but with subtle and important differences. Examining the circulation of news as part of the culture of gentry sociability, the article examines the ways in which news followed networks of family and friendship, highlighting in particular the role of the London Welsh diaspora in communicating news back to the principality. It is suggested that this served to inflect the news with a particular cultural sensibility - by highlighting matters of relevance to the principality or local area, for example. The article also examines the role of Welsh news flowing back into London to inform correspondents at the centre of provincial developments. The piece further argues that the prevailing religious and political cultures of the principality influenced what news was welcomed there, privileging the status of news which supported the position of king and Church, particularly after the civil wars of the 1640s and 1650s. As such, the article makes a claim for thinking about Welsh news as part of a particularist political culture within the British state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the practice of taxidermy and its relationship to the 'golden age' of big game hunting, the science of natural history and the dramaturgical codes of empire by looking at the collecting exploits of one man, Major Percy Powell-Cotton (1866-1940), and his attempts to preserve the spoils of the hunt in the 'great indoors'. As various scholars have pointed out, taxidermy offers up a vivid and striking 'afterlife' of the animal with a unique (and some might say unsavoury) ability to elucidate our environmental and cultural relations with other species. As such, the reanimated animals of empire, posed on the walls of the country estate or arrested in museum cases, represent valuable historical artefacts ripe for unstitching. Drawing on the work of Garry Marvin, Sam Alberti and Merle Patchett, this article stalks Powell-Cotton's taxidermic project across various sites of capture, production and display (what I call necrogeographies) to illuminate the sinuous contours of imperial natural history and the stories of pursuit, production and performance lurking beneath the skin of the reanimated animal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]