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The Journal of Medieval Military History's twenty-first volume focuses on various topics related to medieval military history. The first three papers examine the defences of Jerusalem during the First Crusade, the public image of the Military Orders, and the military resources and strategy of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The following papers discuss King Philip II of France's role in the Battle of Bouvines, King James I's ban on illegal artillery and castle use in Aragon, and the Hundred Years War. The volume concludes with a mapping of the location of the Battle of Agincourt. Overall, the articles provide valuable insights into different aspects of medieval warfare. [Extracted from the article]

This article builds upon the recent historiography of the First World War to illuminate three aspects of the war. As a case study, it uses the papers of Major Reggie Chenevix Trench, a young territorial officer who first trained men for leadership on the western front and then served there himself from February 1917 until he was killed the following March. It contends that the springs of patriotism lay in a Victorian notion of manhood, which was developed in the writings notably of Rudyard Kipling and others. Young men were able to see the war as a Great Adventure. The relationship between paternalism and deference, it is argued, is the key to understanding how the British war effort was managed. Comradeship, achieved through shared suffering, defined men as heroes through their willingness to endure. The article ends with an exploration of how a surviving collection of condolence letters, written on the death of Major Reggie Chenevix Trench, indicates the universal use of a language of heroism and sacrifice, which enabled loved ones, in their grief, to cling to a set of patriotic certainties that were rooted in the Victorian past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re‐examines the causes of the May 1917 engineering strike, the biggest strike in Britain during the First World War. Besides official files, it uses private papers and the records of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. The stoppage began in sympathy with sacked employees at Tweedale & Smalley in Rochdale, who were resisting the spread of 'dilution' (replacing skilled by unskilled workers) from military contracts to private and commercial work. A second major issue was the government's replacement of the 'trade card' scheme protecting skilled engineers from military service. These issues would have been easier to resolve had it not been for underlying war weariness and falling real earnings, as well as uncertainty over whether skilled men could regain their pre‐1914 employment privileges. The strike was unofficial, and would not have spread so far and fast without local leadership from shop stewards, though this later proved a source of weakness. None the less, although the strike initially seemed a failure, it frightened the government and elicited major concessions. In part this was because Prime Minister David Lloyd George accepted that he must combine repression with the alleviation of legitimate grievances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In 1952, during the Korean War, it was claimed that United States forces were using bacteriological warfare against China and North Korea. The allegation was dismissed by western governments, but a six-strong international scientific commission (ISC) visited China and concluded that bacteriological warfare had taken place. On their return, the scientists, of whom the best known was the British biochemist Joseph Needham, were depicted as dupes or fellow-travellers. Interest in this subject was revived in 1998 with revelations from Moscow archives which seemed to prove that the commission was hoaxed, although a monograph published in the same year was more sympathetic to the ISC's conclusions. To date, however, Needham's own papers have not been consulted, and full use has not been made of the foreign office papers. On the basis of these archival sources, this article shows how Needham was drawn reluctantly into the limited and flawed work of the ISC. It also shows how the British government, concerned at the possible impact of the ISC report, sought to mobilize politicians, journalists and academics to refute it. The article concludes that Needham's personal courage is not in doubt, but that his role in the ISC — and the defence of its conclusions — exacted a high personal cost. [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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

John T. McNaughton is one of the least understood of the major American officials involved in formulating US policy towards the Vietnam War. This article uses a newly discovered journal by McNaughton as well as his private papers to examine the reasons for his opposition to the Vietnam War and to suggest that his perceived image as a ‘hawk’ is inaccurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the late seventeenth century there was a ‘Financial Revolution’ in England. Prompted by the exigencies of the Nine Years War (1689–97), the state marked the beginnings of a permanently funded National Debt by introducing a series of measures, the most important of which was the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694. The state's financial innovations were enthusiastically supported by London's business community and also attracted the capital and the trust of investors of more limited means and financial knowledge. Through the surviving papers of Samuel Jeake, a merchant from the East Sussex town of Rye, this article considers the strategies used by those less prominent investors, and examines the methods they used to obtain financial information and the costs they faced. Jeake's experiences reveal much about the factors that led ordinary investors to commit their capital to the newly established public funds but show that, during the formative period of the Financial Revolution, the costs of placing faith in the state's financial promises often outweighed the benefits. [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]

While historians have made use of early modern English diaries as a source for information on a variety of subjects there has been little corresponding research beyond a few select biographies into those people who actually wrote the diaries of this period. From the first English diaries of the fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth a picture can be pieced together of the growing number of diarists, their status, economic backgrounds, and where they wrote these highly personal documents. In terms of gender it is clear that although female diarists were in a minority, their ability to write analytical and intimate accounts of their lives and close environment differed little from that of their male counterparts. In terms of occupation it is evident that great events and dangerous times inspired men to re-create their lives on paper. Consequently, military and naval diaries collectively make up the largest occupation for diarists. However, diarists also earned their livings from trade, the law, as astrologers, farmers and also, in one case, as a theatre-owner. Moreover, the spread of diaries across England during the period shows that this personalized form of writing was not confined to the capital or to England's universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Peet was the most important interlocutor between Britain and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Through his journal, Democratic German Report ( DGR), which he edited between 1952 and 1975, Peet had considerable influence among left-of-centre public opinion in Britain. His positive portrayal of the GDR was among the GDR's most believable and powerful propaganda in Britain. This articles reassesses Peet's decision to live and work in the GDR and his subsequent disillusionment with ‘really existing socialism’ in eastern Europe. Making use of Peet's personal papers and the archival holdings about Peet located in various German archives, the article presents Peet as a ‘liberal communist’ who was deeply influenced in his political choices by his experiences in inter-war Britain and by his fight against fascism in Spain. Although he came to dislike many things about the GDR, his loyalty to the ideals of communism always remained stronger than his desire to criticize the eastern European dictatorships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early nineteenth century witnessed gladiatorial contests in print between the contributors to the conservative Quarterly Review and the radical Edinburgh Review. Among the chief protagonists of the two papers were Robert Southey, leading contributor to the Quarterly from its launch in 1809 until 1839, and Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose first contribution to the Edinburgh, on ‘Milton’, appeared in August 1825, after which he became a mainstay of the periodical. Their ‘reviews’ were long essays of 10,000 or more words, in which the works purportedly being reviewed were mere pegs on which to hang their own observations. They were generally scathing about publications which took an ideological stance opposite to their own, and sympathetic to those which adopted a similar position to that which they held. Though they frequently made barbed references to each other in their reviews, Southey never reviewed a work by Macaulay, who only once criticized one by his rival. Nevertheless, that particular occasion, in January 1830, was a classic clash of Titans. It demonstrated their fundamental disagreement over the prospects facing society from the initial impact of the industrial revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]