The English Historical Review articles from June 1998

The English Historical Review archives from June 1998

The Cambridgeshire Ragman rolls.
June 1, 1998... The growth of royal government in western Europe during the thirteenth century affected relations between rulers and ruled in ways that were complex as well as far-reaching. Complexity was embodied, indeed, in the very instruments by which this...

Edward III's entail and the succession to the crown, 1376-1471.
June 1, 1998... In October 1460, in rather dramatic circumstances, the rules governing succession to the throne were made a matter of public debate. After a decade of opposition to the Lancastrian regime, in which he had resisted overtly challenging the title of...

The Stanhope/Sunderland ministry and the repudiation of Irish parliamentary independence.
June 1, 1998... The Declaratory Act passed by the British Parliament in April 1720 (6 Geo. I, c. 5) was the keystone of the eighteenth-century Irish constitution, and its repeal in 1782 the essential step towards the achievement of legislative `independence'. It...

Comintern 'control' of the Communist Party of Great Britain, 1920-43.
June 1, 1998... The Communist International, or Comintern, was formed in Moscow in March 1919. Its aim was simply stated, if not so simply achieved: to promote proletarian revolution on a world-wide scale. It was conceived as a world Communist party, of which...

William Beeth, the Dominican provincial who never was.
June 1, 1998... The last time that the pre-Reformation English Dominican provincials were presented to historians was in 1918, when Walter Gumbley OP included them in his `Provincial Priors and Vicars of the English Dominicans, 1221-1916' (ante, xxxiii [1918],...

Seasonable treatises: a godly project of the 1630s.
June 1, 1998... The papers of the renowned seventeenth-century reformer, Samuel Hartlib, held in Sheffield University Library, contain a wealth of information concerning the scientific, literary, cultural, religious and political world of the seventeenth...

The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 2: c. 700-c. 900
June 1, 1998... The New Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. IL c.700-c.900, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: U.P., 1995; pp. xxxi + 1082 65 [pounds sterling]). The original Cambridge Medieval History was published in eight volumes between 1911 and 1936. The...

Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship.
June 1, 1998... Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship. By John Watts (Cambridge: U.P., 1996; PP xvii + 399. 40 [pounds sterling]). The reign of Henry VI holds a peculiar interest for the historian of English kingship. Between 1422 and 1461, the office of king...

John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland: 1504-1553.
June 1, 1998... John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, 1504-1553. By David Loades (Oxford: Clarendon P., 1996; pp. xi + 333. 45 [pounds sterling]). David Loades is a prolific historian, producing books faster than reviewers can read them. Here he offers a...

Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution.
June 1, 1998... Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France. The Culture of Retribution. By William Beik (Cambridge: U.P., 1997; pp. xiii + 283. 40 [pounds sterling]; pb. 14-95 [pounds sterling]). Twelve years after he published his magnificent monograph on...

Companion to Historiography.
June 1, 1998... Companion to HistoriograpHy. Ed. Michael Bentley (London: Routledge, 1997; pp. xvii + 997. 100 [pounds sterling]). Three distinct tasks are tackled in the Companion to Historiography. Distributed through the volume there is a history of...

Women and Law in Late Antiquity.
June 1, 1998... Jane F. Gardner's Women in Roman Law and Society (rev. ante, civ.416), now a decade old, dealt with the legal position of women over 500 years, C. 200 BC to 300 AD. In recent years there has been a surge of publication on the family in the...

The Goths.
June 1, 1998... Peter Heather's The Goths (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996; pp. xv + 358.20 [pounds sterling]) is a fascinating and important volume, which is not to say that it is without its faults. It is conceived on a grand scale, and centres on the crucial...

English Church Dedications, with a Survey of Cornwall and Devon.
June 1, 1998... Nicholas Orme's English Church Dedications. With a Survey of Cornwall and Devon (Exeter: U.P., 1996; pp. xv + 248. Pb. 9.95 [pounds sterling]) takes an old subject, usually left to antiquarians, and shows what may be made of it through...

Early English Art and Architecture: Archaeology and Society.
June 1, 1998... The publication of yet another survey of Anglo-Saxon culture is a tribute to the interest which so many people feel in the origins of the English nation in a rapidly changing Europe. Lloyd and Jennifer Laing's Early English Art and...

Kloster Fulda in der Welt der Karolinger und Ottonen.
June 1, 1998... There is abundant material for all who are concerned with the monastic and cultural history of the Carolingian and Ottonian periods in the twenty-three papers which were presented in 1994 to a symposium in commemoration of the 1250th...

La Atribucion social del espacio en la Castilla altomedieval: una nueva aproximacion al feudalismo peninsular.
June 1, 1998... Despite the strictures of Susan Reynolds in Fiefs and Vassals, of the making of books on `feudalism' there appears to be no end, in the Iberian peninsula as elsewhere. In La Atribucion social del espacio en la Castilla altomedieval, Una nueva...

The Formation of English Common Law: Law and Society in England from the Norman Conquest to Magna Carta.
June 1, 1998... Lawyers and legal historians who were brought up on Maitland, Holdsworth and their followers and commentators tend to assume that the common law -- by which they mean the intricate and sophisticated body of learning, relating especially to...

Das Papsttum und die Armenier im fruhen und hohen Mittelalter: von den ersten Kontakten bis zur Fixierung der Kirchenunion im Jahre 1198.
June 1, 1998... In 1196 Pope Celestine III appointed as his legate to the Levant Conrad of Wittelsbach, archbishop of Mainz and cardinal-bishop of Sabina. He did so at a critical juncture in relations between the papacy and the Armenian church. As the prince...

Lid, leding og landevaern: hoer og Samfund i Danmark i oeldre middelalder.
June 1, 1998... The nature and antiquity of the Danish levy system or leding have been hotly debated in the North over the past century, and used to impinge on English history when it was believed that the conquests of Sweyn and Canute were the result of a...

Histoire de croisades.
June 1, 1998... It is no easy task to produce a one-volume history of a two-hundred-year-long historical phenomenon of considerable singularity and complexity, especially when the subject is peculiarly productive historiographically. Jean Richard has achieved...

The History of English Law: Centenary Essays on 'Pollock and Maitland.'
June 1, 1998... The first edition of The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, by Sir Frederick Pollock and F. W. Maitland (by far the greater portion being the work of Maitland) was published in 1895. The centenary of this milestone in the...

The Making of the Neville Family in England, 1166-1400.
June 1, 1998... In The Making of the Neville Family in England, 1166-1400 (Woodbridge: Boydell P., 1996; pp. xiii + 172. 32.50 [pounds sterling]), Charles R. Young traces the paths by which a knightly lineage of no special prominence clambered, in the course...

The Pipe Roll of the Bishopric of Winchester, 1301-2.
June 1, 1998... The see of Winchester was the wealthiest bishopric in pre-Reformation England, something which made the bishops powerful political figures on many occasions. The prime record of their wealth is provided by the series of Winchester pipe rolls,...

Mappa Mundi: The Hereford World Map.
June 1, 1998... Most of the literature on the late thirteenth-century Hereford Mappa Mundi is old, highly specialized and difficult of access. All the more to be welcomed, therefore, is P. D. A. Harvey's Mappa Mundi. The Hereford World Map (London: The...

Jews in the Notarial Culture: Latinate Wills in Mediterranean Spain, 1250-1350.
June 1, 1998... Over many years, Robert I. Burns has illuminated, in a huge quantity of scholarly works, the social, cultural and religious complexities of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Kingdom of Valencia and its neighbouring territories. In Jews in...

Genoa and the Genoese: 958-1528.
June 1, 1998... A single-volume history of one of the world's major cities over a period of more than 500 years is a formidable undertaking, but it is accomplished with triumphant success by Steven A. Epstein in Genoa and the Genoese, 958-1528 (Chapel...

La France du XIe siecle: Population, societe, economie.
June 1, 1998... The strange death of economic history is remarked upon by its authors on the first page of the preface to Elisabeth Carpentier's and Michel Le Mene's La France du [XI.sup.e] au [XV.sup.e] siecle. Population, societe, economie (Paris: Presses...

Boniface VIII en proces: articles d'accusation et depositions de temoins, 1303-1311.
June 1, 1998... Every now and then a major critical edition appears which transforms the possibilities of historical scholarship. Such a work is Jean Coste's edition of Boniface VIII en proces. Articles d'accusation et depositions des temoins, 1303-1311...

Scotichronicon, vol. 7: Books 8 and 9.
June 1, 1998... It is encouraging to be able report that, with the appearance of Walter Bower's Scotichronicon. Vol. VII: Books XIII and XIV, ed. A. B. Scott and D. E. R. Watt (Edinburgh: Mercat P., 1996; pp. xxx + 557. 35 [pounds sterling]), this massive...

County of Conflict: Northumberland from Conquest to Civil War.
June 1, 1998... Richard Lomas's account of Northumberland from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, County of Conflict. Northumberland from Conquest to Civil War (East Lothian: Tuckwell P., 1996; pp. xi + 211. Pb. 14.99 [pounds sterling]), offers a general...

The Salt of Common Life, Individuality and Choice in the Medieval Town, Countryside, and Church: Essays Presented to J. Ambrose Raftis.
June 1, 1998... Ambrose Raftis is doyen of a school (whose alumni reject the term) which can be credited with much of the most important work on medieval social history written in North America since the war, much of it based on the records of Ramsey Abbey....

Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late Medieval England.
June 1, 1998... Rosalynn Voaden was right in reopening the debate on the `Englishness' of insular medieval piety and the possible influences from the Continent. With Prophets Abroad. The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late Medieval England (Cambridge:...

Medieval Society and the Manor Court.
June 1, 1998... The introduction to Medieval Society and the Manor Court, ed. Zvi Razi and Richard Smith (Oxford: Clarendon P., 1996; pp. xvi + 709. 70 [pounds sterling]), traces the historiography of an extraordinarily rich source for social history from the...

Olivier de Clisson and Political Society in France under Charles V and Charles VI.
June 1, 1998... Olivier de Clisson and Political Society in France under Charles V and Charles VI (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P., 1996; pp. 341. 52.50 [pounds sterling]) is the product of twenty years' research by John Bell Henneman into military and...

National Redeemer: Owain Glyndwr in Welsh Tradition.
June 1, 1998... Owain Glyndwr has unquestionably been a source of inspiration for Welsh historians, and his reputation as a military leader responsible for starting and maintaining one of the longest national revolts in history has also caught the imagination...

St. Bartholomew's Priory, Sudbury.
June 1, 1998... As Richard Mortimer explains in the introduction to his edition of Charters of St Bartholomew's Priory Sudbury (Woodbridge: Boydell P./Suffolk Records Soc., 1996; pp. xx + 105. 19.50 [pounds sterling]. St Bartholomew's was one of the poorer...

Five Hundred Years of Printing, 2d ed.
June 1, 1998... For anyone seeking a reliable overview of the development of printing and the book trade in Europe, S. H. Steinberg's Five Hundred Years of Printing remains hard to beat. Whereas, for instance, Colin Clair's A History of European Printing...

The Dissolution of the Lancastrian Kingship: Sir John Fortescue and the Crisis of Monarchy in Fifteenth-Century England.
June 1, 1998... Anthony Gross's The Dissolution of the Lancastrian Kingship. Sir John Fortescue and the Crisis of Monarchy in Fifteenth-Century England (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1996; pp. xvii + 146. 29 [pounds sterling]) may be seen as a further contribution...

The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century, vol. 2, Fastolf's Will.
June 1, 1998... The second of a three-volume series on the history of the Paston family, based on the famous letter collection, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century. Fastolf's Will, by Colin Richmond (Cambridge: U.P., 1996; pp. xvi + 276. 40 [pounds...

The Great Pox: The French Disease in Renaissance Europe.
June 1, 1998... The Great Pox. The French Disease in Renaissance Europe (New Haven/ London: Yale U.P., 1997; pp. xv + 352. 25 [pounds sterling]), by Jon Arrizabalaga, John Henderson and Roger French, is a work of austere and uncompromising scholarship. It...

Los conflictos populares en Castilla, siglos XVI-XVII.
June 1, 1998... Very few analytic studies have been done on the phenomenon of popular revolt in early modern Spain. Apart from a couple of books devoted to the Comuneros, and a slim essay containing accounts of risings in mid-seventeenth-century Andalusia,...

The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism.
June 1, 1998... Introducing The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (Cambridge: U.P., 1996; pp. xviii + 326. 35 [pounds sterling]; pb. 12.95 [pounds sterling]), Jill Kraye explains that the collection of fourteen original essays it contains is aimed...

Antifraternalism and Anticlericalism in the German Reformation: Johann Eberlin von Gunzburg and the Campaign Against the Friars.
June 1, 1998... The Reformation unleashed a prodigious pamphlet literature in Germany, whether of works by Luther, his friends or opponents. What Geoffrey Dipple has done is to look at a small section of this vast mountain of material in his Antifraternalism...

Scotland and the Low Countries: 1124-1994.
June 1, 1998... Scotland and the Low Countries, 1124-1994, ed. Grant G. Simpson (East Linton: Tuckwell P., 1996; pp. 232. 25 [pounds sterling]), is the third of the Mackie symposia, which are intended to explore Scotlands links with the wider world. The focus...

Towns in Tudor and Stuart Britain.
June 1, 1998... First the good points about Sybil M. Jack's Towns in Tudor and Stuart Britain (London: Macmillan, 1996; pp. xixx + 236. 37.50 [pounds sterling]; pb. 11.99 [pounds sterling]). For undergraduates it provides a clear introduction to the main...

Surveillance, Militarism and Drama in the Elizabethan Era.
June 1, 1998... In a brief but telling prefatory note to Surveillance, Militarism and Drama in the Elizabethan Era (London: Macmillan P., 1996; pp. xii + 348. 42.50 [pounds sterling]), Curtis C. Breight warns that his approach to the careers of William Lord...

Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation.
June 1, 1998... Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge: U.P., 1996; pp. ix + 294. 35 [pounds sterling]), ed. Ole Peter Grell and the late Bob Scribner, is a stimulating volume that the editors see as a new step forward in the study...

The Making of the French Episcopate: 1589-1661.
June 1, 1998... The Catholic Church ranks high among those institutions which were instrumental in the development of state and society in early modern France, yet our understanding of the nature and functioning of the Church in many of its aspects is far...

Spanish Naval Power, 1589-1665: Reconstruction and Defeat.
June 1, 1998... `Honour without ships,' a Spanish admiral once said, `is better than ships without hansom.' For a while, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Spanish monarchy appeared able to have both, until the cost and effort proved too much and...

The Culture of English Puritanism: 1560-1700.
June 1, 1998... Christopher Durston's and Jacqueline Eales's edition of The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560-1700 (London: Macmillan, 1996; pp. 332. Pb. 13.99 [pounds sterling]) is a splendid collection of essays which will undoubtedly prove popular with...

The Anabaptists.
June 1, 1998... The Anabaptists (London: Routledge, 1996; pp. xviii + 215. 45 [pounds sterling]) is an English translation of Hans-Jurgen Goertz's Die Taufer. Geschichte und Deutung, first published in 1980 and revised in 1988. For this translation the author...

London and the Civil War.
June 1, 1998... Stephen Porter, whose admirable book on Destruction in the English Civil Wars (Alan Sutton, 1994) did not receive the attention that it deserved, has now edited a solid and useful collection of articles on London and the Civil War (London:...

A History of the University in Europe, vol. 2, Universities in Early Modern Europe: 1500-1800.
June 1, 1998... As research on the history of universities becomes more and more intense, a synthesis becomes at once necessary and possible. For the early modern period we now have a good one. A History of the University in Europe. Vol. II: Universities in...

A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England.
June 1, 1998... In A Freeborn People. Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon P., 1996; pp. xi + 174. 25 [pounds sterling]), David Underdown publishes his Ford Lectures of 1992, and continues the explorations which he has...

The Task of Healing: Medicine, Religion and Gender in England and the Netherlands, 1450-1800.
June 1, 1998... The Task of Healing. Medicine, Religion and Gender in England and the Netherlands, 1450-1800, ed. Hilary Marland and Margaret Pelling (Rotterdam: Erasmus Publishing, 1996; pp. 317. N.p.), is an admirable product of historians who study the...

English Medicine in the Seventeenth Century.
June 1, 1998... A. W. Sloan's English Medicine in the Seventeenth Century (Bishop Auckland: Durham Academic P., 1996; pp. x + 215. Pb. 12 [pounds sterling]) is an entirely different kind of book. This informative and concise survey of medicine in the England...

The House of Lords in the Reign of Charles II.
June 1, 1998... The Restoration House of Lords has been studied far less than its Commons contemporaries, so that the information and analyses about its composition, workings and influence, very clearly and comprehensively presented in Andrew Swatland's The...

Restoration Theatre and Crisis.
June 1, 1998... Restoration drama so perplexes historians that they have in the main abandoned the field to the scholars of literature. So historians should perhaps be grateful that some literature specialists have recently begun to recast themselves as...

Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart: 1603-1788.
June 1, 1998... The early modern period saw drastic adjustment of the relationship in and economies and politics between Highland and Lowland Scotland. Allan I. Macinnes in his Clanship, Commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603-1788 (East Linton: Tuckwell P.,...

The Ancien Regime: A History of France, 1610-1774.
June 1, 1998... The world of French history was amazed and incredulous when it became known, in the early 1980s, that Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie was writing a ,straight' history of France from the late Middle Ages down to the eve of the Revolution. Had the...

Neoclassical History and English Culture: From Clarendon to Hume.
June 1, 1998... In Neoclassical History and English Culture. From Clarendon to Hume (London: Macmillan, 1996; pp. 290. 42.50 [pounds sterling]), Philip Hicks examines the reasons for the failure of neoclassical historiography in eighteenth-century England. It...

The Admissions Registers of Barnard's Inn: 1620-1869.
June 1, 1998... Around 1470, when Sir John Fortescue wrote his famous account of London's legal academy, the ten inns of chancery were already `hospicia minora', taking second place to the four greater inns of court. These latter institutions would soon...

Lay People and Religion in the Early Eighteenth Century.
June 1, 1998... An air of ambiguity surrounds the state of the Church of England in the early eighteenth century, an ambiguity which is due to a historical myth which persists to this day. According to this myth, the Church of England was weakened by the...

Power and Politics in Old Regime France: 1720-1745.
June 1, 1998... Power and Politics in Old Regime France, 1720-1745, by Peter R. Campbell (London: Routledge, 1996; pp. xii + 420. 50 [pounds sterling]), seems to be the shipwreck of two books. Between pages 39 and 192 it is a thinly researched biography of...

Empress Elizabeth: Her Reign and Her Russia, 1741-1761.
June 1, 1998... Two very welcome translations of Russian works on the reign of Empress Elizabeth (ruled 1741-61) have recently appeared. John T. Alexander has edited and translated Evgeny V Anisimov's Empress Elizabeth. Her Reign and Her Russia, 1741-1761...

History of Russia: Empress Elizabeth's Reign, 1741-1744.
June 1, 1998... Patrick J. O'Meara has edited and translated Volume XXXVII of Sergei M. Soloviev's History of Russia. Empress Elizabeth's Reign, 1741-1744 (as before, 1996; pp. xxiii + 250. N.p.). Soloviev (1820-79) commenced writing his great History of...

By the Banks of the Neva: Chapters from the Lives and Careers of the British in Eighteenth-Century Russia.
June 1, 1998... For more than a quarter of a century, Anthony Cross has been studying the British who settled and worked, for longer or shorter periods, in Russia during the eighteenth century, and the contribution they made to the emergence of a new great...

A History of the Fleet Prison, London: The Anatomy of the Fleet.
June 1, 1998... Histories of prisons and punishment have focused almost exclusively on criminal prisons, ignoring the history of debtor imprisonment. Roger Lee Brown has sought to remedy this omission with A History of the Fleet Prison, London. The Anatomy of...

Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race and Power in Colonial Virginia.
June 1, 1998... The most important book on colonial Virginia to be published since Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom (1975), Kathleen M. Brown's Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs. Gender, Race and Power in Colonial Virginia...

Venality: The Sale of Offices in Eighteenth-Century France.
June 1, 1998... Venality. The Sale of Offices in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon P., 1996; pp. ix + 343. 45 [pounds sterling]), the product of a quarter of a century of research, is a vindication of William Doyle's approach to the writing of...

The Rise of Robert Dodsley: Creating the New Age of Print.
June 1, 1998... Harry M. Solomon's The Rise of Robert Dodsley. Creating the New Age of Print (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois U.P., 1996; pp. ix + 339. N.p.) charts the life of one of the most influential booksellers in eighteenth-century Britain....

Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh.
June 1, 1998... Pamela Sharpe's Adapting to Capitalism. Working Women in the English Economy, 1700-1850 (London: Macmillan, 1996; pp. x + 226. 40 [pounds sterling]) and Elizabeth C. Sanderson's Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh (as above, pp. xii...

The Devious Dr. Franklin, Colonial Agent: Benjamin Franklin's Years in london.
June 1, 1998... David T. Morgan has done a thorough piece of research in writing his The Devious Dr. Franklin, Colonial Agent. Benjamin Franklin's Years in London (Macon, Ga.: Mercer U.P., 1996; Pp. xi + 273. $34.95). Like other Franklin students, his work...

Adapting to Capitalism: Working Women in the English Economy, 1700-1850.
June 1, 1998... Pamela Sharpe's Adapting to Capitalism. Working Women in the English Economy, 1700-1850 (London: Macmillan, 1996; pp. x + 226. 40 [pounds sterling]) and Elizabeth C. Sanderson's Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh (as above, pp. xii...

Questioning Slavery.
June 1, 1998... For three decades James Walvin has been producing work on the operations and interactions of European, American and African slave systems. Questioning Slavery (London: Routledge, 1996; pp. xi + 202. 45 [pounds sterling]; pb. 14.99 [pounds...

The Writing and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 3, Party, Parliament and the American War, 1774-1780.
June 1, 1998... The period covered by The Writing and Speeches of Edmund Burke. Vol. III: Party, Parliament and the American War, 1774-1780, ed. W. M. Elofson and John A. Woods (Oxford: Clarendon P., 1996; pp. xx + 713. 75 [pounds sterling]), corresponds to...

The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 30, July 1 through October 31, 1779.
June 1, 1998... The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. Vol. XXX: July 1 through October 31, 1779. Vol. XXXI: November 1, 1779 through February 29, 1780, ed. Barbara B. Oberg et al. (New Haven/London: Yale U.P., 1993, 1995; pp. lxvii + 701, lxv + 626. 55 [pounds...

The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 31, November 1, 1779 through February 29, 1780.
June 1, 1998... The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. Vol. XXX: July 1 through October 31, 1779. Vol. XXXI: November 1, 1779 through February 29, 1780, ed. Barbara B. Oberg et al. (New Haven/London: Yale U.P., 1993, 1995; pp. lxvii + 701, lxv + 626. 55 [pounds...

Edmund Burke: A Life in Caricature.
June 1, 1998... Nicholas K. Robinson's Edmund Burke. A Life in Caricature (London/New Haven: Yale U.P., 1996; pp. x + 214. 30 [pounds sterling]) is lively, interesting and accessible. It tells the story of Burke's career as it appeared to contemporaries...

Philippe Egalite.
June 1, 1998... If the old French office of Historiographer Royal still existed, there can be little doubt who its current occupant would be. Since the mid-1980s Evelyne Lever has made herself the unrivalled chronicler in France of the last generation of the...

Europe: A History.
June 1, 1998... Norman Davies's massive and ambitious Europe. A History (Oxford: U.P., 1996; pp. xvii + 1365. 25 [pounds sterling]) covers the entire history of this continent in twelve essentially narrative chapters following a fairly conventional...

The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdaglis.
June 1, 1998... Important books do not always make exciting reading. Jane Hathaway's The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt. The Rise of the Qazdaglis (Cambridge: U.P., 1997; pp. xvii + 198. 30 [pounds sterling]) is difficult to follow and often...

Early Modern Conceptions of Property.
June 1, 1998... The preoccupation of modern society with property is nothing new, as is made admirably clear in Early Modern Conceptions of Property, ed. John Brewer and Susan Staves (London: Routledge, 1996; pp. xiv + 632. Pb. 30 [pounds sterling]). This...