THE development of any major industry has, either more or less directly, important political repercussions. Its history therefore has a political aspect. The brewing industry's changing relationships with Parliament provide an apposite, even if an atypical, story to illustrate how one segment of the business world of the eighteenth century, with its appropriate set of political alignments, gave way to very different orientations in the nineteenth century. This article seeks to plot developments over a long period of time in a field which has received less detailed attention from political and economic historians than others which are more obviously the preserve of each. Width of survey of necessity limits the depth of evidence: the consequences of the changes which took place between 1830 and 1870 have here been explored in much less detail and in less personal terms than the parliamentary representation of the industry in the previous century.

Carlyle entered the field of Revolutionary studies when the Revolution was transforming itself from politics to history, and he himself played an important part in this transition. His older contemporaries belonged to the Revolutionary generation and his younger friends, like John Mill, were products of it. William Smyth was at that time lecturing on the French Revolution in Cambridge and looking out upon it ‘as from a College window’. Smyth was extricating himself from the spirit of the pamphleteers through wide reading and a conscious training in academic impartiality. John Wilson Croker, from the midst of the political scene, was fighting the phantom of the Revolution, and at the same time delving deep into the Revolutionary sources. For him the Revolution had become a subject of historical inquiry only in the sense that he was able to investigate it from records. Alison's book came out after Carlyle had begun his studies. It stole Croker's thunder but left Carlyle unmoved. Alison knew the sources but not how to use them. His bibliographical prefaces are now the best part of his book, which Carlyle had not read when Mill asked whether it was worth reviewing.1 Carlyle glanced at it, saw that the ‘margin bears marks of great enquiry’, knew that Alison had been to France, and advised Mill to review it but to tell his own story, without fear or favour.2 ‘It is a thing utterly unknown to the English and ought to be known.’ When Mill read the book himself, he found that Alison was ‘inconceivably stupid and twaddling...has no research’,3 and that the references were to compilations. Alison's book, pervaded by political principle, tried to throw ‘ true light’ on the Revolution, was tremendously successful and is now forgotten. His sort of history is soon superseded. As he modestly realized, his success was due to his being first in the field.

It is well known that trading companies played an important role in the formation of British colonies during the Partition of Africa. Eventual developments in areas such as Nigeria, Rhodesia and East Africa, however, have tended to give a false impression of the relations between commercial undertakings and the British Government. It has been suggested that the authorities deliberately used chartered companies for imperialist purposes.1 Contemporary observers, too, suspected the existence of a comprehensive plan whereby it was ‘to private initiative that the British Government at first leaves the task of paving the way for its political designs’.2 But in actual fact official circles were usually extremely reluctant to extend their obligations, and at a time when interest in expansion is generally assumed to have been great and growing were still by no means always willing even to grant a Royal Charter to any newly-formed Company that applied for one. One such undertaking that became painfully aware of this was the North-West African Company, a now-forgotten concern that has left no mark on the modern map. Nevertheless, an account of its history, of the means which it used to try to enrol official support and of the attitude of the British Government is not without interest as a qualification of the usual view of the years 1875–95, which have too often been treated as dominated by a ‘scramble’ for overseas territory and a ruthless struggle for new markets and sources of raw material.

When, in the last years of the nineteenth century, the United States shared the general expansive urge, the major Power with which she came most vigorously and immediately into conflict was Great Britain, which alone had a substantial footing in the western hemisphere. On at least three important occasions the two countries clashed–over Venezuela, over the building of an isthmian canal, and over the Alaskan boundary–and on each the United States won a complete diplomatic victory, as a natural result of power and strategic advantage. These victories roused little resentment in Britain and their significance was minimized. One important reason for the readiness with which Britain gave way to the United States was that the two countries were supposed to have some mystic community of interest which over-rode any conflicts and made them of no importance. Often the argument, if so it may be called, rested there, and it was merely asserted that ‘in the last resort’ the Anglo-Saxon nations would be found on the same side–not a prospect of much concern to the practising diplomatist. Sometimes, however, it was implied that the United States was on the brink of a great burst of international energy, which would, as a result of the similarity of race, ideology and tradition, be exerted in directions which the British would find good. The same American aggressiveness whose first victim was Britain would later check the rivals of Britain.

In accounts of the medieval constitution of the University of Cambridge insufficient attention is paid to the gradual decrease of the Chancellor's authority and the concomitant increase of powers of the regent masters. This development very clearly reflects the growing awareness of the University of itself as an autonomous institution, that is, a body with its own inherent rights and within which the supreme jurisdictional power resided. Although the premisses and presuppositions are different, this development might well show some kinship with contemporary developments elsewhere, namely in the institutional growth of Parliament and in the conciliarist form of church government. This rather important evolution of the University constitution has not yet been properly appreciated, mainly because the individual statutory enactments by which the gradual transfer of authority from the (ecclesiastical) Chancellor to the whole University took place had not been known. What was known was one Statute, through which alone the stages of the development could not, of course, be recognized. Moreover, when touching upon this point, G. Peacock and C. H. Cooper relied on a Statute which substantially differs in its wording and in its subject-matter from that printed by the Commissioners in 1852, on which J. B. Mullinger, Sir Stanley Leathes and Dean Rashdall drew. Fortunately, the Statute in its original form has been preserved as an original document in the Archives of the University of Cambridge, and it enables us to trace, at least in rough outline, this process of displacement of authority which ended in the control by the regent masters (through their proctors) over the chancellor and vice-chancellor. As far as can be established, there was no corresponding development at the University of Oxford.