England's decision to opt for the reformed religion had major repercussions in her foreign relations. Continental and Scottish protestants now looked to their royal co-religionist for protection. An intervention in Scotland on behalf of the reformers was triumphantly successful. When the French protestants took arms in 1562 they turned to Elizabeth for aid. Cecil was hesitant; Robert Dudley, however, backed by Throckmorton, urged armed intervention. The queen agreed but drove a hard bargain. The Huguenots were to hand over Newhaven (Le Havre) to be held by the English until Calais was returned. She in turn loaned money to hire mercenaries. From the beginning the alliance faltered. Elizabeth refused succour to the Huguenots besieged in Rouen. Condé and Coligny opened negotiations with Catherine de Medici, in which English interests were disregarded. In due course the assassination of the duke of Guise, the catholic champion, opened the way for a settlement. The reunited French parties joined in an assault on Newhaven; a humiliating surrender followed. The ill success of this venture was decisive in shaping the future course of English relations with their continental co-religionists. At home it marked the emergence of Robert Dudley as a major player in high politics.

This essay challenges the established interpretation of the political allegiances of the miners of north-west Derbyshire. It shows that, far from being dominated by parliamentarian and puritan ideas in 1642, the miners were deeply divided in their response to the war. Both the king and the parliament were able to recruit troops from amongst the miners throughout the first civil war. From this, a broader critique of recent historical work on popular politics and popular allegiances before and during the English Revolution is mounted. It is argued that ‘post-revisionist’ and Marxian historians have deployed overly schematic and deterministic models of allegiance which frequently fail to reflect the complexity of popular responses to war and revolution in England in the 1640s.

This article looks at the relationship between professional and political aspiration in Georgian England by examining the office of attorney general during the period 1714–1810. It argues that while the office offered a unique opportunity for a lawyer to combine a legal and political career, this was a formidable task and one rarely achieved. The generally hostile attitude toward lawyers in the house of commons was a significant obstacle. More important, however, were the complex and potentially conflicting expectations associated with the office of attorney. The relationship with the government was an awkward balance of loyalty and remoteness, whereby the attorney was encouraged to regard fellow ministers both as colleagues and as clients. Moreover, he owed a duty to parliament that was independent of, but inevitably linked to, his obligations to the crown. As a consequence of these various pressures attorneys tended to remain aloof from politics and interested primarily in their own professional advancement. The office of attorney general was less the stepping-stone to ministerial office than the reliable path to the bench.

British colonial policy initiatives of the 1760s and the American revolutionary war led to a period of sustained lobbying by the West India interest in Britain; lobbying which developed from an informal body into a more professionally organized lobby, along the lines of modern economic interest groups. The composition of the lobby and its activities during the revolutionary period are examined here. Its considerable influence is also assessed and explained. The article finds that the lobby won major concessions from the British government and vitally affected British policy towards North America. It nevertheless concludes that the lobby enjoyed its greatest influence in the early century when ironically its organization was weaker but its goals coincided more harmoniously with those of British colonial policy. Its later reorganization was a response to the increasing conflicts of interest between the white elites of the British Caribbean and the mother country which intensified during the period of the American revolution and its aftermath.

Thomas Carlyle's promotion of Sir Robert Peel as a heroic statesman capable of presiding over a strongly interventionist state is paradoxical in light of the latter's rejection of paternalistic government. This paradox is heightened by Carlyle's hostility to the whigs: some members of this party identified an active role for the state and struggled against tendencies in whiggism which were connected to the ‘liberal toryism’ of Peel and his followers. An examination of Carlyle's knowledge of, and attitude towards, Peel shows that he was aware of his attraction to liberal economic ideas. However, Carlyle believed that Peel's sense of moral purpose and his cool view of conventional parliamentarianism were indicative of heroic potentials that were not possessed by whig politicians. The popularity which Peel enjoyed in the late 1840s was attributed by Carlyle to a widespread appreciation of his distinctive qualities; this provided the grounds for a generalized heroism which could be focused in an active state that was freed from the trammels of both economic liberalism and parliamentarianism.

In the first year of Victoria's reign, the English reading public's expectations of ‘A new and complete edition’ of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments began to receive fulfilment, as the initial three volumes were issued by Seeley and Burnside. Not all were prepared to give the work a magnanimous reception. Chief among the detractors of that age was Samuel Roffey Maitland, destined in the near future to become librarian at Lambeth Palace under Howley's tenure as archbishop of Canterbury. This essay explores the nature of Maitland's fervent objections to Foxe and his martyrology, and also examines Maitland's relationship to the major religious movements of his day (including Tractarianism). It argues that Maitland was offended by what he perceived as Foxe's extreme partisan bias (as a member of the puritan wing of the English church) and equally, by the poor editorial job which he believed to have been performed in the Cattley/Seeley project. Furthermore, it maintains that Maitland had a sympathetic though rather complex relationship with the divines of the Oxford Movement, including John Henry Newman. Maitland's scholarly credentials as a Foxe critic are also examined.

This article attempts to place the Canadian contribution to the collapse of the sanctions front against Italy in 1935 in perspective. It argues that Canadian policy on the question was powerfully conditioned by, and conditioned in turn, imperial policy taken as a whole. There is no attempt to assess blame, but rather, an effort at a modest redistribution of responsibility from the shoulders of British statesmen, over-burdened, onto those of Canadian leaders, the contribution of whom to the formation of general imperial policy has largely escaped notice. The Canadian contribution is instructive in an examination of the Ethiopian crisis, in particular, because Canada alone amongst the dominions invariably opposed a ‘forward’ policy against Italy and alone amongst its fellow dominions consistently failed to support a common front against fascism. It is not without significance that this policy – or lack of policy, perhaps more properly – also became Britain's own.

The history of fascism in Italy has been extensively covered while fascist Italy's role in colonies before the war, and occupied areas during it, have only been touched upon. There has been little or no coming to terms with fascist crimes comparable to the French concern with Vichy or even the Japanese recognition of its wartime and pre-war responsibilities. This article uses Italy's internment policy in Africa before the war and in the Balkans and Italy during the war to illustrate the repression of historical memory. On the one hand, foreign Jews were interned to protect them from deportation by German, Croatian or Vichy French forces. The reasons were political and humanitarian. On the other, Balkan civilians were interned in conditions that led to the death of thousands. Similar and worse policies had been carried out in Africa before the war. There is some excellent specialist work on Africa which is not part of general knowledge; the Balkans have not even been covered by specialists. This article puts forward some explanations for the repression of the recent past.

On 2 July 1681 the earl of Shaftesbury was arrested and sent to the Tower, charged with high treason. As a peer he was entitled to be tried by his fellow peers, but before this could happen he would have to be indicted by a grand jury of commoners. Since an indictment could only be presented by a jury from the county in which the alleged offence had been committed, this meant that unless evidence from elsewhere were forthcoming the bill would have to be preferred in London. This created severe problems for the prosecution, because the London sheriffs were intransigent whigs who had flagrantly been packing the jury panels with like-minded supporters. Shaftesbury's fate would depend on whether the judges were entitled to remove such persons and replace them with others of a different persuasion.

Hitler's willing executioners. Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. By Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. London: Little Brown and Company, 1996. Pp. x+622. £20.

Questions about the motives of the perpetrators and, by implication, the causes of the Holocaust, have long been in the forefront of academic or non-academic discussions of the Nazi period – from the time of contemporary observers to the present day. A wide range of possible responses to these questions has been put forward, drawing on concepts from a variety of disciplines, such as history, psychology, sociology or theology. Daniel Goldhagen's book on the motivation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust claims to be a ‘radical revision of what has until now been written’ (p. 9). This claim is made on the book-jacket and by the author himself. His thesis can be summarized as follows: Germany was permeated by a particularly radical and vicious brand of anti-Semitism whose aim was the elimination of Jews. The author defines this as ‘eliminationist anti-Semitism’. This viral strain of anti-semitism, he states, ‘resided ultimately in the heart of German political culture, in German society itself’ (p. 428). Medieval anti-Semitism, based as it was on the teachings of the Christian religion, was so ‘integral to German culture’ (p. 55) that with the emergence of the modern era it did not disappear but rather took on new forms of expression, in particular, racial aspects. By the end of the nineteenth century ‘eliminationist anti-Semitism’ dominated the German political scene. In the Weimar Republic, it grew more virulent even before Hitler came to power. The Nazi machine merely turned this ideology into a reality. The course of its actualization was not deterred by anything save bare necessity: ‘the road to Auschwitz was not twisted’ (p. 425). When the ‘genocidal program’ was implemented along with the German attack on the Soviet Union, it was supported by the general German population, by the ‘ordinary Germans’ – the key phrase of the book – who became ‘willing executioners’. They had no need of special orders, coercion or pressure because their ‘cognitive model’ showed them that Jews were ‘ultimately fit only to suffer and to die’ (p. 316).

Thomas Müntzer: apocalyptic mystic and revolutionary. By Hans-Jürgen Goertz. Translated by Jocelyn Jacquiery and edited by Peter Matheson. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993. Pp. xxii+230. £22.50.

The Reformation: roots and ramifications. By Heiko A. Oberman. Translated by Andrew C. Gow. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994. Pp. xvi+232. £14.95.

Calvin's Old Testament commentaries. By T. H. L. Parker. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1986 (reprinted 1993). Pp. viii+240. £13.95.

Calvin's New Testament commentaries. By T. H. L. Parker. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993. Pp. x+258. £13.95.

Counter-revolution: the second Civil War and its origins, 1646–48. By Robert Ashton. London: Yale University Press, 1994. Pp. xxi+521. £35.

Sir Matthew Hale 1609–76. By Alan Cromartie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. x+264. £40.

The old service: royalist regimental colonels and the English Civil War, 1642–46. By P. R. Newman. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. Pp. ix+324. £40.

Constitutional royalism and the search for settlement, c. 1640–1649. By David L. Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xvi+371. £35.

Loyalty and locality: popular allegiance in Devon during the English Civil War. By Mark Stoyle. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1994. Pp. xvi+330. £30.

Revolution and political conflict in the French navy, 1789–1794. By William S. Cormack. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. 343. £40.00.

The family romance of the French revolution. By Lynn Hunt. London: Routledge, 1992. Pp. 213. £19.99.

The French idea of freedom: the old regime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789. Edited by Dale Van Kley. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995. Pp. 436. £35.00.

A rhetoric of bourgeois revolution: the Abbé Sieyes and What is the third estate ? By William H. Sewell, Jr. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994. Pp. 221. £10.95.

The genesis of the French revolution: a global-historical interpretation. By Bailey Stone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. 268. £12.95.

The new regime: transformations of the French civic order, 1789–1820s. By Isser Woloch. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1994. Pp. 536. £27.50.

Lincoln and his party in the secession crisis. By David M. Potter. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press [reissue], 1996. Pp. vii+408. £15.95.

Slavery, capitalism, and politics in the antebellum republic. Volume I: Commerce and compromise, 1820–1850. By John Ashworth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. vii+520. £40.00.

In the master's eye. Representations of women, blacks, and poor whites in antebellum southern literature. By Susan J. Tracy. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996. Pp. vii+307. £40.00.

April '65. Confederate covert action in the American Civil War. By William A. Tidwell. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1995. Pp. vii+264. $30.00.

The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic rim. By R. E. May, ed. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1995. Pp. ix+169. £11.95.

The Little Entente and Europe (1920–1929). By Magda Ádám. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1993. Pp. 330. $40.00.

The economy and polity in early twentieth century Hungary. The role of the National Association of Industrialists. By George Deák. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Pp. ix + 209. $32.00.

Stefan Stambolov and the emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 1870–1895. By Duncan M. Perry. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1993. Pp. xi + 308. £37.95.

Hungarians and their neighbors in modern times, 1867–1950. Ed. Ferenc Glatz. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Pp. 347. $42.00.

The Czech fascist movement, 1922–1942. By David D. Kelly. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Pp. xii + 243.

Italy in the Cold War. Politics, culture & society, 1948–1958. Edited by Christopher Duggan and Christopher Wagstaff. Oxford/Washington DC: Berg. 1995. Pp. xi+228, index. £34.95

War in Italy 1943–1945. A brutal story. By Richard Lamb. London: Penguin Books. 1995 (1993). Pp. viii+335, maps and index. £7.99

Italy and the wider world, 1860–1960. By R. J. B. Bosworth. London and New York: Routledge. 1996. Pp. x+252, index. £40.00

‘America is the strongest and most prosperous nation on earth,’ Nately informed him with lofty fervor and dignity. ‘And the American fighting man is second to none.’ ‘Exactly,’ agreed the old man pleasantly, with a hint of taunting amusement. ‘Italy, on the other hand, is one of the least prosperous nations on earth. And the Italian fighting man is probably second to all. And that's exactly why my country is doing so well in this war while your country is doing so poorly [[ctdot ]] You see, Italy is really a very poor and weak country, and that's what makes us so strong’.