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A Catholic visitor to a Protestant worship service in sixteenth-century Europe would immediately have been struck by stark contrasts to the familiar tradition of his own upbringing. The scale of the physical alterations would obviously vary, depending on whether he had stumbled upon a church cleansed of all images for Calvinist worship, or a Lutheran church, in which the internal fabric might be largely untouched. But it is unlikely, one might surmise, that if the service were in progress, his mind would linger much on architecture and internal decoration: more arresting by far was the essential unfamiliarity of the worship service. For a start, there would only have been one service in progress; in this Protestant church he would not have observed one priest celebrating Mass at the High Altar, while others were engaged in duties in the side chapels. No priests would have been hearing confession; the familiar bustle and variety would have been missing. Rather the attention of the congregation gathered in the nave would have been focused on the pulpit, from which the minister would be conducting the service. If his arrival was unplanned, our Catholic visitor would in all likelihood have first heard the voice of the minister, leading the congregation in prayer, reading from Scripture or preaching. Preaching would obviously have occupied the longest time: probably an inordinate length for someone not inured by long practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 1580 Europe's confessional boundaries were essentially fixed. The British kingdoms of England and Scotland were secure under the control of Protestant monarchs; in France a Calvinist minority was entrenched, but it was clear the nation would never be converted. In the Netherlands the Protestant north would never be recovered by Spain; the southern provinces would gradually assume a distinct Catholic identity. In Germany the oldest Lutheran states were now entering their third generation since the adoption of a Protestant church order. The Scandinavian kingdoms had also settled to life with a Lutheran state church. Only in eastern Europe would the tides shift in a significant manner, as the Habsburg victories of the 1620s allowed the suppression of the previously dominant Protestant estates of Hungary and Bohemia. That was for the future. For the moment the reality of a confessionally divided Europe was a generally accepted fact of European life and politics. It would be wrong, however, to believe that this relative stability, so clear in retrospect, had calmed the passions raised by the first Reformation conflicts. On the contrary, relations between the faiths remained fractious and unstable, coloured above all by fear. On the Protestant side, this was understandable enough. In 1580 memories of the terrible massacres of Paris (1572) and Antwerp (1576) were still fresh, a reminder of Catholic perfidy, and the imminent danger that hard-won freedoms could still be dashed away. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of the foregoing discussion we can now be reasonably satisfied that the production of books in the sixteenth century was deeply shaped by the organization of the market – both the structure of the printing industry, in a series of discrete and quite distinct national markets, and a sophisticated transnational system of distribution and marketing. These industry issues conditioned the book world at all levels: the market in scholarly books, as much as the production and sale of pamphlets. Our purpose now must be to try and locate the book in the culture of persuasion. There can be little doubt that books had a vast and important role to play in shaping the new religious cultures of the sixteenth century. Books were bought in vast quantities, and religious books dominated the market at all levels: at both ends of the spectrum and almost all points in between. From the learned Latin biblical commentaries of Calvin, Brenz and Oecolampadius, to the ‘godly ballad’, with a whole host of Bibles, catechisms, works of devotion and Flugschriften in the middle ranges, the market in religious books dominated the sixteenth-century book world. None doubted their impact in forming opinion – certainly not Luther and his colleagues, who wrote so indefatigably and lavished praise upon the ‘new’ invention; certainly not the Catholic authorities who tried to limit their circulation by censorship and proscription. But in some senses the book has suffered precisely because its influence seems so obvious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Allies received rather exact information in real time about the final stages of the Holocaust, which had not always been the case earlier. The destination was now known, the routes known, the railroads marked, and bridges pinpointed by the Allied intelligence agencies for the purposes of the 15th U.S. Air Force, based in Italy and capable of bombing the railroads leading to Auschwitz and the gas chambers. Several overtures were made by Jewish organizations, including the Yishuv's leadership, to the Allies to bomb the railroads and the gas chambers and stop the factory of death, but they allegedly were not made rigorously enough. Sometimes, as Dina Porat tells us, the Jewish Agency's officials were in doubt among themselves whether such approaches would have any effect on the Allies or even be of any help to the inmates. In other words, the Zionists allegedly succumbed to the catastrophe rather than rising to meet it. I have asked Albert Speer what would have been the result of an effective bombing run that would have destroyed the gas chambers in Auschwitz. He replied: Hitler would have hit the roof. … He would have ordered the return to mass shooting. And immediately, as a matter of top priority – which it wasn't beforehand – in terms of military personnel, of allocating equipment, and the like. Instead of shipping those people to Auschwitz within months, they should have been shot on the spot within two weeks. […] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 4 July 1887 in the Albert Hall the RSPCA held its annual general meeting. Seven thousand supporters attended, among them Queen Victoria, the society's patron since 1835. The society, on behalf of its office-bearers and ninety-two English and Welsh branches, offered the monarch its respectful congratulations on her Jubilee, noting the unprecedented way in which ‘the moral and material elevation of our countrymen’ had extended during the fifty years of her reign. The Queen, in gracious reply, let it be known that she believed that at least some of the credit for ‘the spread of enlightenment’ among her subjects was to be attributed to ‘the labours of your society’. She was then invited to present the prizes to the winners of a society-sponsored essay competition for schoolchildren contested among 26,000 entrants. In spite of society secretary John Colam's best organisational efforts, proceedings ended in some confusion and the Queen appears to have arrived at her next destination (Paddington station) rather earlier than planned. Press reporting of the event, however, was forgiving, affectionate, even flattering, with at least one editorialist claiming that the ‘enormous service’ of the society towards achieving a ‘transformation’ of ‘the national character’ allowed the English to ‘fairly claim to be at the head of all civilised peoples’. By 1887, in short, the RSPCA had become a national institution. RSPCA advice was received with respect by public authorities. More remarkably still, as veteran members could readily recall, RSPCA values had been appropriated as national values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At Cologne they speak simply a coarse vulgar German, which degenerates in approaching the flats of Holland: but at A[a]chen, bad German, bad French, some Dutch and Flemish (bad or good I know not) and a mixture of the Walloon dialect, of which you hear more at Liège, conspire to form a Babel of harmonious diversity. An objection [against the reunion of the Rhenish departments with France] … is that a mixture of many peoples of differing language and character can destroy harmony, public opinion, internal peace. Few sights more disconcerting could have confronted a rationally minded Napoleonic bureaucrat than the heterogeneous Rhineland. He viewed cultural diversity ‘not [as] the characteristic of the rational individual, but [as] evidence of the historical survival among groups and communities of beliefs and superstitions that belonged to earlier ages’. It was not only that a Rhenish department like the Roër encompassed under the Old Regime thirty-two territorial entities. Territorial fragmentation was matched by confessional diversity and a plethora of local patois, or ‘local dialects and ways of speech’, as Braudel more accurately refers to them. Contemporaries experienced difficulty placing Rhinelanders within any single, culturally defined category. Dorsch, the former radical who became sub-prefect of Cleves, distinguished between Rhinelanders of Dutch origin, who spoke ‘German gibberish’, and ‘Prussians’. Many Germans from the right bank believed Rhinelanders closer to the Dutch in character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The territory that lies between Paris and Saint Petersburg as well as Moscow will soon be made French, municipal and Jacobin. It took two decades before Napoleon briefly justified Chaumette's prediction, minus the Jacobin ingredient. Initially, the Rhineland enjoyed strategic and ideological front-line status following the French declaration of war on Austria in April 1792. The Austrians and Prussians first held the initiative, advancing and capturing Verdun on 2 September. Then the French, under Dumouriez, managed to redeploy and block the Prussians at Valmy (20 September), a battle that condemned Europe to a generation of war. The French, exploiting their numerical superiority, followed up Valmy by invading the Reich: one army, under Custine, entered the Palatinate, whose cities fell quickly, whilst a second, under Dumouriez, advanced into the Netherlands, pushed aside the Austrians at Jemappes (6 November), captured Brussels and invaded the Lower Rhine. As the situation deteriorated, Austria attempted to mobilise the military potential of the Holy Roman Empire. This proved difficult. Officially, France was not at war with the Reich, as she had declared war on the Habsburgs as kings of Hungary. The Reich as a whole lacked the internal consensus to resort to force, and this French diplomats exploited. Opposition to the war was led by France's old allies, the Wittelsbachs, but was a sentiment that extended widely. In electoral Cologne domestic opposition to war from the estates prevented mobilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three routes led from the Single European Act (SEA) to the Maastricht treaty. The functionalist approach went by Air. The theory holds that – once put into currency and institutionalized – the integration idea has reverberating, reciprocal, and dynamic spillovers that drive the process onward. This approach, the way of Monnet, Hallstein, and Delors, went through both the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Commission and would (if Delors had his druthers) debouch into a “European social and economic space.” Another approach, liberal intergovernmentalism, was by Land and passed milestones at the European Economic Community, the European Council, and the European Monetary System, each of them a Grand Bargain sealed by heads of state that advanced the integration process from one stage to the next. Finally, one might travel by SEA, promoting competition and eliminating barriers to the movement of goods and factors of production. The Common Market and the Single European Market marked this course, a hard one to chart, even though the route it followed – liberalization – was widely agreed to be the proudest achievement of the integration process prior to the great changes that swept Europe in the 1980s. The economics of integration are not well understood. The static models of neoclassical economics cannot account for change over time. Nor do the conditions they posit exist in a Europe of welfare states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Re-launching of Europe” is the phrase coined to capture the spirit of the lengthy round of diplomacy that began at Messina, Sicily, on 1 June 1955. It opened less than a year after the EDC fiasco and concluded, after the initialing of the Treaty of Rome on 25 March 1957, with the establishment of the machinery for a future customs union – the European Economic Community, or Common Market – on 1 January 1958. The term “re-launching,” or “re-launch” as it is sometimes translated from the French rélance, is no misnomer: The first ship to embark, with Schuman Plan on its prow, had gone aground and so a second one of improved design, the Messina, set out five years later, heading off in another direction – toward market liberalization. No one knew how to find the destination, whether the vessel in question would be sturdy enough to get there, or whether a still stouter tub, following a somewhat better tack, might arrive first. The fog of uncertainty would not soon lift. Europe was becoming liberal, more or less, but the course was not set. Doubt would remain the rule even after 1960, when a competitive yet cooperative European Free Trade Association (EFTA) came into being as a potential rival, co-partner, or merger candidate of the EEC. Outcomes would be determined by economic trends, the continuation of the boom under way; by high politics, the European states' relationships with each other and with the United States; and by the personalities and policies of officeholders in Washington, Paris, London, Bonn, and Brussels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jean Monnet has a strong claim to be called the Father of Europe. Monnet deserves almost single-handed credit for creating in 1951 the first of Europe's epochal institutions for integration, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). He was also the power behind the grandiose but ill-fated European Defense Community (EDC), a scheme for an integrated armed force composed of multinational units and tied into the NATO command structure that was rejected by France in the summer of 1954. Jean Monnet was, in addition, the moving force behind EURATOM (European Atomic Energy Commission) – a proposal for a continental nuclear power industry – which he put forth in conjunction with the “re-launching” of Europe in 1955. Unlike EDC, EURATOM would not be dead on arrival; instead, along with the ECSC, it would develop into an organ (though only an appendage) of the European Economic Community (EEC). As president from 1954 to 1975 of the Action Committee for the United States of Europe, a lobby for the integration cause, Monnet would be an inexhaustible font of unification and federation initiatives. Yet after the mid-1950s he was reduced to the status of an outsider and could influence the integration process only indirectly through allies in Washington, Bonn, Brussels, and other capitals. Thereafter, many initiatives associated with Monnet stemmed from self-anointed disciples – “monnetists” – acting (sometimes without specific authorization) on his behalf in a manner thought to be consistent with his “spirit.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the later seventeenth century diplomacy was often merely seen as warfare by other means. In such a world the cutting edge of diplomacy lay in its intelligence gathering and espionage activities. These ‘secret services’ were an essential part of the diplomatic arsenal of any state. They could, of course, cover a multitude of actions from subterfuge and chicanery, to bribery, corruption, simple news gathering and running spies, or even more complex operations such as kidnapping and murder. For the Stuart regime, as for others, the men who ran this seamy side of diplomatic life were located in two areas of government. The first of these, as we have seen, lay in the office of the Secretary of State in London. The secretaries divided European affairs between themselves, although not always equitably, and ran the second group of officials involved in foreign affairs, those ambassadors, agents, residents and consuls who made up the diplomatic corps. The diplomat stood in the front line of such activities. While the diplomat then, as now, was seen as the representative of his country abroad, more often than not he was also seen as a mere spy by another name; an ‘honourable spy’ as Abraham de Wicquefort put it, but still a spy. The concern here is less with the diplomat's role as a purveyor of his country's fluctuating foreign policy and more with his role in that area known as secret services. In general this can be divided into two main areas: intelligence gathering and espionage activities, or information and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The century which elapsed between the battle of Waterloo and the outbreak of World War I saw changes more profound than in any comparable period in human history. It was one of unprecedented growth: population more than doubled; there was a commensurate growth in agricultural output; industrial production increased tenfold; and Europe's gross product multiplied six times. This growth in economic activity was accompanied by a radical shift in its location, as an older, protoindustrial pattern decayed and was replaced by another which responded to new factors of production and to changing demand. The geography of Europe, when the Napoleonic Wars ended, differed fundamentally from that which saw the lights go out in August 1914. The intervening century was, in the main, one of peace. Most conflicts were short-lived and far from destructive. Many were related to peoples' democratic aspirations or to their demands for independence from the empires which had between them shared much of Europe. But economic growth was, nevertheless, a highly localized phenomenon. Much of the continent remained untouched by progress – industrial, agricultural, or commercial – until late in the century. At the same time, there were areas where growth was rapid and from which the new technology was diffused to other parts of the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The statesmen who gathered at Vienna to bring back peace to a war torn continent set themselves to restore the conditions which had prevailed before the wars began. This proved impossible; too many of the changes of the previous decades were irreversible. This was especially the case in Germany, where the number of separate and autonomous political units was reduced from more than three hundred to thirty-nine. The German empire was snuffed out in 1806, without as much as a whimper. In 1815 it was restored, no longer under the auspices of the Austrian Habsburgs, but as the German Confederation, or Bund, dominated by Brandenburg-Prussia (Fig. 10.1). In western Europe, political boundaries were smoothed out, and much of its feudal debris of enclaves and exclaves was tidied up. France lost marginally and, in retrospect, significantly. Much of the Saar coalfield and of the ironworking Sambre Valley were lost respectively to Prussia and the United Netherlands. Savoy and Nice were restored to the Sardinian kingdom, only to be regained in 1860. Fear of renewed French aggression led to the incorporation of the southern Low Countries, previously Austrian, in the United Netherlands, the purpose being to create a powerful buffer to French expansion. This settlement proved to be unacceptable in the southern Low Countries, which in 1831 broke away to form the kingdom of Belgium, its independence and inviolability guaranteed by the powers. Changes were more fundamental in eastern Europe. Napoleon's Grand Duchy of Warsaw, a kind of revived Polish state created from the Prussian and Austrian shares of the Partitions, was given to the Russian tsars in their personal capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The three centuries from the early sixteenth to the end of the Napoleonic Wars saw changes of fundamental importance in the ways in which European peoples viewed themselves, their continent, and the world. When this period began the emperor Charles V had just triumphed over the French at Pavia (1525) and, in the minds of many, was about to restore an empire, both holy and Roman, and to unify Europe. When it ended, the bid for continental dominance by Napoleon had been shattered at Leipzig (1813) and Waterloo (1815), and Europe was set for a century of nationalism and economic growth. A NEW WORLD The changes which were achieved during this period can, for our purposes, be listed and discussed under five heads. First was the concept of nationalism, which was slowly and unevenly taking shape at this time. A nation is a body of people held together by a sense of belonging together. A common language and culture were important bonds. So also were a common historical tradition, the occupation of a well-defined territory, and, often enough, a common enemy. Many a nation has been forged in conflict with another and perhaps more powerful state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe in the early sixteenth century was still in many respects medieval. Its population was rural and agricultural to the extent of about 80 percent. Cities remained small; craft industries were small-scale and most were carried on domestically. Technology had made little advance during the previous thousand years, and there were few industrial and agricultural processes that would not have been understood by the year 1000. Over much of Europe the rural population was still unfree, bound to the soil and subject to heavy and arbitrary labor demands. One of the complaints made in the German Peasants' War of 1524–5 was of “labor services which … daily increase and daily grow.” Yet there was change; people were becoming more critical and enquiring. It is too early to speak of a scientific attitude, but institutions and beliefs were being questioned; new forms of organization were being adopted, and, in a slow and halting way, a spirit of innovation and experimentation was beginning to develop and spread. NATIONALISM AND THE POLITICAL MAP One of the most important intellectual developments of the age of the Renaissance was the emergence of a new attitude to the state and to public administration. The impact of central government during the Middle Ages had been slight. Its authority was mediated through the ranks of a feudal hierarchy. But now governments – in Britain, France, Spain, and Scandinavia – were beginning to reach down through this feudal structure and to control affairs at the local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By the early fourteenth century the period of medieval economic growth was over; the population of Europe reached its peak at about this time, and the spatial pattern of cities was to develop no farther before the nineteenth century. POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY The political map of Europe had assumed a form which, with minor changes, it was to retain into modern times. Only in the Balkan peninsula, where the Byzantine empire was clinging desperately to its last foothold, were major changes still to come. In most of Europe political control was becoming more centralized, and kingship more absolute. Feudalism, as a mode of government, was weakening, though its outward symbols were as conspicuous as ever. Only in eastern Europe and Russia were feudal relationships tending to strengthen. In the Spanish peninsula the southward advance of the Christian states had reduced the Moorish kingdom of Granada to the Sierra Nevada and neighboring coastlands. To the north, Castile, having absorbed Léon and other petty states, reached from the Biscay coast in the north to the Strait of Gibraltar (Fig. 6.1). It dominated the Meseta, while around its periphery lay Navarre and Gascony, Aragon and Portugal. Only Castile still had a boundary with the Moors and still continued its centuries-old crusade against them. Portugal and Aragon were casting their eyes beyond the seas and were beginning that commercial expansion which was to take them to Asia and the New World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was widely recognized that the Peace of Breda was an extraordinary achievement and that it was De Witt's. Few observers realized, however, that it had not solved but only increased the number and complexity of the problems he faced. What he had really won was the chance to work for their solution, for if the war had been lost and ended in capitulation, as in 1654, then he certainly would have been toppled from power by his own masters in the States of Holland or, worse, by riot and rebellion. What he had not gained, however, was the initiative. This remained in the hands of Louis XIV and Charles II; De Witt could only wait and respond to what they did. In warfare there may be an advantage to an active defense, as military analysts have argued; in political life, and especially in the relations between states, he who acts first sets the shape for events and enhances his opportunities to gain his way. The single largest event on the stage of Europe after Breda was the War of Devolution. The French generals methodically moved their armies forward, forcing the Spaniards before them and taking their towns one by one in a succession of easy sieges. But the Spaniards did not turn tail and run, so that by the end of summer it was evident that the French were certain of victory but that it would not be theirs during 1667. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The peace signed at Breda required for its accomplishment all the feats of naval warfare recounted in the pages just past. Yet all the prowess of sailors, admirals and the superb navy minister that De Witt had shown himself to be during these years would have gone for nothing if he had not also been a master of diplomacy and domestic politics. We must therefore now retrace our steps to the year 1665 and tell the story of the other side of the war. During the second English war the aims of both sides remained little changed during the two and a half years of fighting. The central purpose of Charles II and his nation was to establish sovereignty over the adjacent seas in order to garner for themselves the profit of fishing, shipping and trade, at the expense chiefly of the Dutch. For these intended victims the aim of the war was simple in the extreme – to thwart the purposes of the foe, to restore the status quo ante bellum. De Witt put the situation plainly and forcefully to D'Estrades some months after the war began. If the English are envious of Dutch trade and the opulence it produces, he said, let them compete with us as traders. If they try to deprive us of our livelihood by means of war, we will fight to the very end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the two years that followed the conclusion of the Treaty of Dover, history seemed to play cruelly with De Witt, like a cat toying with a mouse before it suddenly kills it. He could dart this way and that, but he could never break out of the fatal circle of his dilemma. His intelligence, his strength of will, his courage yielded no solution to the problem of how to win the war against Europe's mightiest monarch that was surely coming. The picture would have been even bleaker if he had realized that Charles II intended not merely to practice a profitable neutrality while Louis XIV invaded the United Provinces but would join in the attack. But the knowledge would not have changed what he had to do: to seek such allies as Dutch money or fear for their own security could recruit; to build up the Republic's army and navy; and to hold on to power within the country against the rising fortunes of the Prince of Orange, whom he still saw as doing the bidding of the king of England. Rational calculation could offer no hope in such a situation; only belief in a God of Hosts who decided the course of battle even against the odds of human expectations could give solace. The first task remained to achieve whatever was possible in restoring good relations with France and England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If difficult times are the anvil on which the hammer of personal merit forges historical greatness, the circumstances in which John de Witt took his first office were not favorable. Things were going extraordinarily well, in fact, for the Republic of the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands. One of the smallest states in Europe, it had built itself into a great power. Spain's century-old predominance had been smashed, and the Dutch even more than the French had been the artisans of its defeat. France itself was in the grip of civil war, which for all that men knew in 1650 might augur for it the same fate that had befallen Spain. England too had come through a decade of civil war, although the firm hand of General Cromwell had already taken control. Germany had ceased to exist as an effective political entity; the settlement at Westphalia consecrated its conversion into a congeries of middling, small and miniature states over which the Habsburg emperor reigned but did not rule. The Dutch Republic, however, had soared while contemporaries had floundered and fallen. Its navy and army were among the most powerful in Europe, and its strength rested upon the solid foundation of unexampled riches, drawn from Dutch domination over the trade and shipping of Europe from the Baltic to the Levant. The Dutch population numbered only about one and a half million, but what it lacked in numbers it made up in economic prowess. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What were the political consequences of the defeat at Chatham and the subsequent concessions made at Breda? How did the English react to their government's failure to defend them against the wrath of the Dutch navy? How did they account for their defeat? Certainly the end of the war was initially greeted as “good news” throughout the country. In London the peace was announced “with trumpets and kettle drums, and the people shouting for joy,” and villages throughout the country the rumor, and eventually the proclamation, of peace prompted huge celebrations: bells were rung, guns went off, fireworks were exploded. “The bells have hardly lain still in all the country about ever since the news of peace,” reported one of Williamson's corespondents from Lyme. In Weymouth the peace “raised the dead to life” This display of popular emotion largely reflected relief at the conclusion of a war which had proved devastating. The end of the war meant the possibility of economic revival. Throughout the country people expected the peace to reinvigorate sagging commerce. From Truro Hugh Acland reported that “many people” were convinced that “if the treaty take effect” they would “be in better condition for the future.” In Bridgewater “trade advances in hope of a successful treaty.” “If a peace follow,” predicted Sir Andrew Riccard the Presbyterian governor of the East India Company, “the East India Company purpose to renew their trade, to attend it with as much or more vigor than ever.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The critics of the government “in whose hands we are yet entirely as to his Majesty's supply” were creating so much mischief in Parliament that “you will not wonder we make no more despatch in our preparations for the next year,” complained Arlington to Sandwich who was now ambassador in Spain. At the moment that the Dutch fleet was systematically burning his navy and terrifying the residents of his capital, Charles II fumed to Sir Thomas Osborne, one of the Duke of Buckingham's closest associates, that “we might thank those men” – those Parliamentary allies of Buckingham – for the Dutch fleet lying now upon our coast, for had the money been given in time “we had had a fleet in readiness” So powerful was this analysis, so seemingly prophetic was Arlington after the devastating Dutch raid on the Medway in June 1667, that it has become the accepted explanation for the English failure to set out a fleet in the spring of 1667. Members of the House of Commons, whether out of a lust for personal power or because they knew the country was simply unable to finance another year's campaign, are said to have successfully obstructed the war effort. The enthusiasm with which members of the House of Commons had resolved to support their king with a generous supply for the war at the outset of the Parliamentary session, and the consistently anti-absolutist tone of much of the criticism of the conduct of the war, demand a reconsideration of the government's case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The event which released the latent conflicts of Dutch political life was the rebellion of Britain's American colonies in 1775, which at once divided Dutch sympathies and interests. William V unhesitatingly found the English government in the right and the colonists in the wrong; it was obvious, he thought, that a sovereign had the right to put down rebels. He had a copy of the American Declaration of Independence in his hands by 20 August 1776, and he read it with boiling indignation. It was a parody of the Dutch Act of Abjuration of 1581: how could the tyranny of Philip II be compared to the rule of George III? It was the mere fact of rebellion that he loathed. In a conversation with Hardenbroek, who raised the parallel with the overthrow of James II by William III, he said, “In that event, I am a Jacobite.” For all their hostility to the American rebels, William and Brunswick were anything but happy with English threats against the Republic if it did not halt the smuggling between the Dutch island of St Eustatius in the Caribbean and the Americans. The English were particularly indignant because a Dutch warship off St Eustatius had returned the salute of an American warship, in effect recognizing the independence of the new United States of America. Brunswick found the demand of the English ambassador for immediate punishment of the governor of St Eustatius “unparalleled,” indeed impossible for a state that wished to keep its sovereignty and independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statement of acute infectious diseases in the State of Hamburg, Germany measles. In comparison with the figures of the preceding year the number of cases in 1895 was extraordinarily small. The same is true of the years 1888 and 1889, an epidemic season being followed by a favourable season. It is a striking instance of the tendency of measles to recur in force every sixth year. Introduction In this chapter, we explore patterns of mortality attributable to each of our marker diseases and all causes over the period 1888–1912 at the meso-scale of ten world regions. The analyses described in chapter 4 which were based upon the time series for the 100 individual cities (as opposed to the global series built from the separate city records) showed that spatial differences in mortality were to be found – as between cities in developed and developing regions and across cultural and environmental variables, for example. One problem is to decide how we may best capture such geographical variations in more detail. As we shall see in chapter 6, given seven diseases and 100 cities, any study of the behaviour of disease in the separate cities can only realistically sample from the minimum of 700 time series that might be considered. Confronted with this wealth of data, examination of patterns at the intermediate level of world regions achieves several ends: it eliminates the need to sample; ten regions is manageable and yet presents us with sufficient spatial detail to identify regional contrasts; and it forms a regional context for the examination of selected individual city series in the next chapter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

London. – One thousand five hundred deaths were registered during the week, including measles, 20; scarlet fever, 9; diphtheria, 40; whooping cough, 50; enteric fever 7, and diarrhea and dysentery, 15. The deaths from all causes correspond to an annual rate of 17.5 a thousand. Introduction It is in this chapter that the original mortality data published in the Weekly Abstract come into their own. There is a substantial epidemiological and public health literature on many of the 100 cities in our sample. Accordingly, in an appendix to this chapter, we have listed the principal sources on a country-by-country basis for each of the cities. We hope that the listing will give a flavour of the scope of the literature that is available. Given our 100-city sample, there are at least 2,100 potential time series – 100 cities×7 diseases×3 formats of mortality (crude deaths, death rates, and deaths as a proportion of mortality from all causes) – that we could analyse. A blanket examination of all series is not practicable and would anyway almost certainly lead to an inability to see the wood for the trees. Instead, we outflank the problem by selecting cities and a theme. We begin by choosing the ten largest cities in our world sample and look at their time series for all diseases, simply to illustrate the richness of the database that lies behind the global and regional generalisations made in chapters 4 and 5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US Marine Hospital Service, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, — —, 1896. Enteric fever. – There were 272 fatal cases of this disease during the year … Tuberculosis still continues to make its usual ravages … Measles, scarlatina, diphtheria, influenza, and whooping cough. These diseases only appear sporadically, and, with the exception of the last two, are very fatal. Introduction In the previous chapter, we discussed the origins and subsequent development of the Weekly Abstract of Sanitary Reports, and we outlined the scope of the information that the serial contains for both diseases and cities. Numerical information on eleven diseases and deaths from all causes was reported at one time or another during the published life of the Weekly Abstract, and some 350 cities (150 in the United States, 200 elsewhere) appeared for varying spans of time. From this collection, we ultimately selected six diseases and 100 cities for analysis. In this chapter, we examine the rationale for our selections. In the first half of the chapter, we focus upon our six target diseases of diphtheria, enteric fever, measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and whooping cough. We discuss the reasons for our choice, and then outline the causes and aetiology of each. Our consideration of the six diseases is concluded with a brief history of their epidemiologies from their presumed origins up to the start of our study period at the end of the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US Consulate, Alexandria, Egypt, — —, 1896 Sir: The present epidemic of cholera in Egypt emphasizes the importance which attaches to international sanitation and the geography of disease. Introduction Throughout history, the fear of disease has been well founded. The Book of Revelation relates the story of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The picture revealed by the opening of the seals is grim indeed, but it was old even then. The first and second riders on their white and red horses represent wars of conquest and civil war. The third horseman with his black horse represents famine. The fourth horse, ridden by Death, is ‘sickly pale’. Death has an additional right – to kill by pestilence. But, as the twentieth century has progressed, so the pace of the pale horse has slackened in many parts of the world under the onslaught of medical science and the global vaccination programmes of the World Health Organization, while war and famine have continued to surge ahead. Over the last 100 years, the spectacular falls in mortality from the classic infectious diseases, coupled with the apparent successes of global campaigns against smallpox and malaria, have brought a sense of security. Plagues and epidemics could be viewed as essentially historical phenomena, scourges which had devastated past human populations, but which had largely been eliminated by the advent of vaccines and antibiotics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health of Rio de Janeiro. – This appears to me a very serious matter, and foreign nations are so deeply interested in it, and their interests and lives so seriously implicated, that it, perhaps, arises to the importance of an international question. Introduction Chapter 1 outlined the rationale for our selection of the US Weekly Abstract of Sanitary Reports as a data source for a global study of epidemic history between 1887 and 1912. This chapter sets the scene for the remainder of the book by describing the development, structure, and scope of that archive. We begin, in section 2.2, by placing the Weekly Abstract within the broad context of the nineteenth-century US public health movement and, more especially, the operation of the US Marine Hospital Service. The multifarious duties of the Marine Hospital Service included the preparation of the Weekly Abstract and the nature and extent of this publication is considered in sections 2.3 and 2.4. Finally, sections 2.5 and 2.6 address the crucial issue of the reliability of the numerical information included in the Weekly Abstract. Origins of the Weekly Abstract The Weekly Abstract was the brainchild of the US Marine Hospital Service, the forerunner of the US Public Health Service. In this section we briefly describe the history of the Marine Hospital Service and the factors that prompted US concerns with international sanitary conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denmark, Norway and Sweden were more fortunate than most European countries in that they were not directly involved in hostilities between 1914 and 1918. Both the Entente and the Central Powers were persuaded that they had more to gain from Scandinavian neutrality than from drawing the Scandinavian states into the war. Scandinavia proved marginal to the military and naval strategies of the belligerents to an extent unforeseen by pre-war planners. This was partly because the war lasted longer than most people had anticipated: much pre-war planning had been predicated on the assumption of a war of early engagements and rapid movement both on land and at sea – particularly in Scandinavian waters. It was also because attempts to break the deadlock on the western front by a flanking strategy were directed elsewhere: towards the eastern Mediterranean, not the Baltic. And because the war was prolonged, economic pressure became increasingly important to both sides. This heightened the significance of neutral Scandinavia as a transit route to Germany and Russia and as a source of supply to the Entente and the Central Powers. In some respects their economic indispensability was advantageous to the Scandinavian states, or at least to the many individuals and firms who made large profits out of trading with the belligerents. However, most of the problems that confronted Scandinavian governments during the war resulted directly or indirectly from the attempts of the belligerents to conscript the Scandinavian economies into their respective war efforts. All three countries had to accept a drastic diminution of traditional neutral rights while establishing an unprecedented degree of government control and supervision over their domestic economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Towards the end of the nineteenth century the European great powers began to take a more active interest in Scandinavian affairs. Changes in military technology and in the balance of power in Europe as a whole, as well as within Scandinavia itself, heightened the strategic importance of northern Europe and raised questions about both the capacity and the willingness of the Scandinavian states to preserve their neutrality in the event of war. For much of the century Scandinavia and the Baltic had been of strategic interest only in the context of a war between Great Britain and Russia. The Crimean war showed that the Baltic was one of the few regions where British naval power could be brought to bear effectively against Russia, and its lessons were not entirely forgotten in the second half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, ‘the epoch in which an Anglo-Russian conflict seemed the most likely outcome of international relations’ did not come to an end until the peaceful resolution of the Dogger Bank affair in 1904. Already, however, Scandinavia and the Baltic had been profoundly affected by the revolution in the European balance of power brought about by the creation of the German empire in 1871. The destabilising effects of this creation, limited until 1890 by Bismarck's conservatism and diplomatic skill, began to be revealed under his successors. Following the lapse of the Reinsurance treaty, the Scandinavian states began to feel the repercussions of the increasing polarisation of international relations between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy on the one hand, and France and Russia on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was the often caustic Voltaire who penned the famous line, “This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire is neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.” Voltaire's aphorism has become a tired but popular cliché to the great annoyance of scholars who study this area of central Europe. Many who have cast a hurried glance at the complex bundle of imperial territories have wondered what inner logic kept this decentralized polity functioning for so long in a viable fashion. Thought by many a living anachronism, the Empire confounded its critics as it creaked forward through time displaying a remarkable ability to redefine itself for each new generation. It weathered a whole series of crises that often brought civil war or dynastic struggle to other European states. Our discussion of irenicism begins in one such period of crisis – years of political uncertainty when the Habsburg princes once more sought a new source of unity for the Empire and its estates. The decade 1545 to 1555 was particularly crucial for the emperor. This period began with the Habsburg triumph of the Schmalkaldic War when there seemed to be one last opportunity to reimpose a uniform religious and political settlement on the imperial lands. The Augsburg Interim of 1548 was Charles's final attempt to unite Catholic and Protestant. At the same time he also sought to establish a new confederation of German estates that would serve the Habsburgs as the Swabian League had done in the past. Both projects failed. The 1555 Peace of Augsburg at least temporarily acknowledged the strength of German particularism and the reality of a divided confessional polity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the prevailing belief, the Reformation did not entirely bypass Spain, although its progress there was uncertain, its demise swift and so thoroughly effected that it left little abiding monument. The claim is often made that the reforms of the Spanish Church instituted by Cardinal Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros around the turn of the century made unnecessary, even impossible, any movement of Protestant reform in the country. It is therefore worth emphasising that, while these measures did to some extent sharpen morals, deepen piety and strengthen ecclesiastical discipline, they left untouched the structure of the church and its doctrines, which were two main preoccupations of the reformers. Indeed, to some extent, Cisneros' provision of devotional literature may well have contributed to producing a climate favourable to Protestant ideas. And, however successful his reforms, they still left room in the country for a ready response to Erasmian satire against hypocrisy and low standards amongst secular and regular clergy, particularly the mendicant orders. Although in retrospect the ecclesiastical situation in Spain at the beginning of the Reformation may seem to have been untroubled and static, it needs to be borne in mind that the country was not cut off from the cross-currents of religious ideas in Europe during the first half of the sixteenth century, and the assertion that there was no demand at all for a reform of the Protestant kind is made without reference to the ruthless operation of the Inquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A revolution in modern Jewish politics took place in Russia during the years 1881–2. The inner turmoil engendered by the pogroms starting in April 1881 reached a climax in the months from January to May 1882, when the Jewish people appeared to be living in expectation of an imminent and massive emigration. The image of a new exodus, a going-out from the land of bondage to a promised land, came to dominate, however momentarily, every aspect of Jewish public life in Russia. The far-ranging enthusiasm for an exodus represented a profound reversal of deeply held attitudes. For the literary intelligentsia–those perhaps two-score writers whose articles now filled the Jewish press in Russia–it meant that what had been considered mythic was now seen as practical, even necessary. That eastern Europe would sooner or later follow the West in granting the Jews equality, although not necessarily fraternity, had long been accepted by them as an unquestioned axiom. In the first months of 1882 this belief remained only as the article of faith of a die-hard minority. The startling new question was whether in its policy to the Jews Russia did not represent the historical norm and the liberal policies of Europe and North America a temporary aberration. For the student youth, the upsurge in favor of exodus from Russia necessitated an even more traumatic upheaval. Profoundly influenced by the norms of Russian revolutionary populism, they felt compelled to translate the ideological metamorphosis of 1881–2 from thought into action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last five years of the nineteenth century, both city and shopkeeper politics in Milan passed through their most turbulent phase since the flight of the Austrians in 1859. The municipality's search for a way to raise the revenue necessary to provide amenities for the city's burgeoning population, at a time when rapid inflation masked the beginnings of an economic recovery, lay at the root of the problem, and the system of the interno and esterno again came under threat. Milan's situation contributed to the ‘end-of-century’ crisis in which the legitimacy of Italy's existing political system was challenged by a combination of public disorder, economic distress and the development of viable political alternatives on the left. Disagreements over the best strategies to adopt in these circumstances led to the emergence of several divisions in the esercenti camp, reflected by the growth in shopkeeper splinter groups and news-sheets shown in Tables 9.1 and 9.2. ESERCENTI POLITICS, 1895–6 The first of these disputes was that between the Federation and L'Esercente, which, it will be recalled, developed during the lead-up to the elections of 1895. At the heart of the issue lay the question of the movement's political autonomy. The newspaper attacked the Federation as a nest of Republicans, asserting that it would never succeed in eliminating cooperative privileges whilst it remained so closely allied to the Democratic bloc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]