This article contrasts the early careers of Thomas Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner, two Cambridge dons of approximately the same generation who diversified into politics in the late 1520s. It attempts to assess their developing attitudes to the religious changes of the period, and considers the nature of humanism in Cambridge University; it suggests, with the aid of new evidence, that in the 1520s, Cranmer was more conventional in his religion than Gardiner, but already showed an especial interest in the authority of a general council. Attention is drawn to their similar patterns of church preferment up to 1531. The crucial change in both men's careers is here seen as occurring in 1532; this change projected them in opposite theological directions for the rest of their intertwined careers. Gardiner took a leading part in the church authorities' unsuccessful attempt at taking a firm stand against Henry VIII's plans, while Cranmer made a clear breach with the medieval rules on clerical celibacy by marrying the niece of a Lutheran theologian.

This article is a study of Archbishop Abbot's attitude to puritan nonconformity. It contends that the accusations of laxness levelled against him by Laudian apologists such as Heylin and Clarendon can be discounted as the inevitable consequence of the very different standpoint from which they judged him. It was not laziness that led the primate to turn a blind eye to certain types of nonconformity, but rather a detached attitude – not shared by his anti-Calvinist opponents – which allowed him to differentiate between mild cases of conscience-induced ceremonial nonconformity which posed no danger to the status quo, and the factious high-profile stance of those who undermined the authority of the established church. By taking a very hard line against separatists and their ilk, Abbot felt he could justify the degree of tolerance he granted to those peaceable and orthodox preaching pastors with scruples over certain adiaphora, whose role was so crucial in the unremitting battle against popery to which he dedicated his life.

The origins of the Scottish National Covenant of 1638 in the traditional practice of banding have been explored in the past, as have the links between the Covenant and a millenarian perception of the Scots as an elect or covenanted nation. By locating the Covenant in the context of the sort of debate that went on about the legitimacy of the Five Articles of Perth after 1618, and in particular by considering the use in that debate of arguments relying on the Negative Confession of 1581, this paper suggests that the Covenant may have had less to do with asserting the particular heritage and destiny of the Scottish people than with re-tying the bonds of the universal law of God.

Between the sixteenth and eighteengh centuries, the nobility of the Polish–Lithuanian commonwealth had developed an ideology of extreme individualism and libertarianism, within a correspondingly weak and decentralized state structure. The first partition of 1772 starkly revealed the weaknesses of the Polish polity, but any hopes of major political overhaul were frustrated by the dead hand of Russian ambassadorial policing. The war of 1787–92 with Turkey proved a temporary distraction for Russia, which the Polish parliament of 1788–92 showed itself only partly capable of exploiting. Factional conflicts and a wary conservatism hampered reforms: the ideas of Montesquieu and Rousseau, which closely complemented so many aspects of traditional Polish noble ideology, seemed to offer the most acceptable way forward, culminating in the constitution of 3 May 1791, a compromise between enlightened idealism and political pragmatism.

This article is concerned with political divisions within the Dublin Society of United Irishmen in a period, 1792–1794, which historians, accepting the contemporary argument of its leaders, have generally agreed demonstrated the society's unity of purpose. It is argued that ideological tensions existed between the middle-class leadership and the middling-class rank and file which reflected the existence of two different conceptions of radicalism, one ‘Jacobin’ and one ‘sans-culotte’. These tensions are brought to light through an examination of the dispute between William Paulet Carey and William Drennan, which culminated in the latter's trial in 1794, and the career of the former until he exiled himself from Ireland after the ijg8 rebellion. It is further argued that, because these ideological differences have been ignored, historians have wrongly assumed that Carey was a political turncoat. In reality, he remained true to the sans-culotte principles of direct democracy and rotation of office, even after his ostracism. Carey's deep suspicion of the motivation of the United Irish leaders came to be accepted by Drennan in retrospect.

Leon Trotsky's contributions to the journal Bor'ba, published in St Petersburg between February and July 1914, have been overlooked in scholarly accounts of his biography. This paper has two aims. First, to provide an exposition of Trotsky's contributions to this journal; and, second, to explain why they have been forgotten. Three explanations are offered. First, Trotsky biographers look to Deutscher's trilogy for the main events in Trotsky's life, and he does not mention Bor'ba. Second, Trotsky himself did not refer to his work for the journal in his autobiography My Life. Finally, Stalin did not use Lenin's critique of Trotsky's participation in Bor'ba as further ammunition against Trotsky in the power struggle after Lenin's death.

The ex-officer problem in Britain following the Great War derived its special meaning from the difficulties associated with finding a satisfactory relationship between wartime rank and postwar status. Images of social decline competed for public attention with those of social elevation. Behind these images lay a series of dilemmas about how to reconcile the social and economic effects of military promotion with the claims of democracy. The shifting usage of the term ‘temporary gentleman’ during the war reflected the changing background of those being granted commissions, and the possibilities of upward mobility produced tensions which were to persist and grow after demobilization. Government policies for ex-officers, in seeking to assist talent without perpetuating the distinctions of rank, were directly affected by such tensions. Ultimately, expectations of higher social status faded in the light of experiences which conveyed a sense of loss and decline, and ex-officers became a symbol for those who saw their pre-war social position being threatened in a less secure world. However, the ex-officer problem existed in its own right as the result of the uniquely awkward adjustments associated with being ‘de-officered’ at the same time as being demobilized.

It is almost forty years since the Geneva conference of April–July 1954 ended the French war in Indo-China. The ‘success’ of the conference was seen as a triumph for the efforts of British diplomacy, and for Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in particular, a judgement which has altered little with the passage of time. The following article questions this view on the grounds that, ironically, British support for Geneva had little or nothing to do with the situation in Indo-China. On the contrary, it arose in the wider context of policy towards the European Defence Community. It was also a product of Eden's unhappiness at Britain's junior status in the so-called Anglo-American ‘special relationship’. The British attitude to Geneva only became more positive in March-April 1954 when French fortunes reached their nadir and the alternative to a negotiated solution in Viet-Nam seemed to be American, or American-led, military intervention. Faced with this potentially catastrophic prospect, the previously ‘unwanted’ conference assumed a new relevance for Eden and British diplomacy.

The general election of 1945 is described as ‘the Waterloo of the Conservative party’. Yet, in 1951 the Conservatives returned to power and were to remain in office for thirteen years. The purpose of this article is to examine this transformation in electoral fortunes. Labour's defeat in 1951 is usually explained in terms of government fatigue, redistribution, and Liberal disintegration. It is argued here that the Conservative party was not just a passive beneficiary of these developments. Rather, the 1951 result was the outcome of a sustained effort since 1946 to regain the initiative and political power. The Conservatives were actively engaged in forging an anti-socialist coalition focused on disaffection with austerity, rationing and controls on which the party's recovery after 1945 is based.

The discussion is divided into four sections. The first outlines the extent of shortages, establishes the significance of this issue in political debate, and identifies the social groups most affected. Part two traces the swing to the right from 1947 onwards and the third section explores Conservative propaganda in opposition to rationing, austerity and controls. The final part examines the party's assessment of the electoral task, its monitoring of public opinion, and the range of techniques employed to rally support.

One of the most challenging historical debates in early modern German history of recent years has been the ‘communalism thesis’ propounded by Peter Blickle, a German historian now teaching in Bern. The term ‘communalism’ was coined to designate attempts to achieve autonomous self-government in town and country during the Reformation period, and draws on an older historiographical tradition which stressed an inherent dualism at all levels of constitutional development between a corporate principle and one based on domination (Herrschaft). The former was founded on the equality of all members sharing common rights and obligations in a form of collective association. In late-medieval Germany the basic form of association in both town and country was the commune (Gemeinde), which possessed, or sought to possess, autochthonous rights to regulate its own affairs. This included the administration of justice, maintenance of peace within the community, economic functions such as distribution of common land or grazing, administration of church finances and church fabric, and in some places communal appointment of pastors. All these communal functions were justified by an appeal to the ideal of the ‘common good’ (gemein nutz), to which all individual self-interest (eigen nutz) was to be strictly subordinate. Thus, the commune appeared to be a fundamental building block of premodern German society.

I would like to discuss George Mosse's excellent and stimulating book, Fallen soldiers, mainly from a French point of view, and to comment upon some issues about the political and moral consequences of the First World War upon French and German societies.

The core of the question is Mosse's assumption of a strong relationship between the war experience and the emergence of nazism in Germany. Hence, I shall examine first the reasons why, in Mosse's argument, Hitlerism appears as a consequence of the war. Then I ask why such an evolution did not happen in France, although the war experience was quite similar in the two countries.