The English Historical Review articles from November 1996

The English Historical Review archives from November 1996

Charlemagne, the Saxons, and the imperial coronation of 800.
November 1, 1996... To state at the beginning in one sentence the argument of this paper: it is that Charlemagne needed the imperial coronation of 800 because emperorship was the only conceptual framework within which he could validate and make acceptable his rule...

Treason and plot in Elizabethan diplomacy: the 'fame of Sir Edward Stafford' reconsidered.
November 1, 1996... The political career of Sir Edward Stafford lacked both beginning and end, being composed entirely of middle: serving little apprenticeship, receiving after his service abroad no major office of state, his professional life was dominated by an...

Leigh Hunt's 'Examiner' and the language of patriotism.
November 1, 1996... Recent studies of British society and politics during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic War era have placed a strong emphasis on stability and consensus. In sharp reaction to the perceived excesses of E. P. Thomson and other historians of...

Colonel Blimp and the British Army: British divisional commanders in the war against Germany, 1939-1945.
November 1, 1996... The British generals of World War Two have not been made to carry the same obloquy borne by their predecessors of the First World War. Contemporaries and historians have generally accorded them higher marks than their predecessors, both for their...

Peter of Blois and the later career of Reginald fitzJocelin.
November 1, 1996... Dreams and visions played an important part in the medieval universe. They could give religious and moral guidance, but could also provide information on future political events. When the monks at Canterbury were anxiously expecting the arrival...

Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian.
November 1, 1996... This book follows a seminal article of 1954, in which Bischoff made known his exciting discovery at Milan of the texts, here edited and translated admirably and with luminous commentary, together with a full-scale study by Lapidge, of wonderful...

La Nuit de la Saint-Barthelemy: Un reve perdu de le Renaissance.
November 1, 1996... It is impossible to do full justice to Denis Crouzet's book in a short review. It is a beautiful book about a terrifying subject. In many respects it has to be read as a complementary volume to the author's earlier thesis on religious violence in...

The First Industrial Woman.
November 1, 1996... These two titles both make a significant contribution to the growing literature on British women in the period of the classic Industrial Revolution. Their qualities are, however, rather different. According to one of those irritating previews...

Labour and Society in Britain and the USA, 2 vols.
November 1, 1996... Communism is dead, socialism in crisis. In the politically conservative climate of the 1980s and 1990s Marxist historiography finds itself on the defensive. And yet, as Neville Kirk reminds us in this fascinating comparative study, Western...

Emergency Law in Ireland: 1918-1925.
November 1, 1996... One of the lasting undercurrents of tension in the Irish Free State stemmed from the failure of either the British or the new Irish governments to bring the revolution to a complete end. Between the outbreak of the Irish War of Independence in...

Merchant Capital and Economic Decolonization: The United Africa Company, 1929-1987.
November 1, 1996... The historiography of British commercial enterprise in West Africa is longstanding and distinguished. D. K. Fieldhouse is not new to this canon, but his new study adds to this lustre through the light it sheds both on important aspects of the end...

The Culture of the English People: Iron Age to the Industrial Revolution.
November 1, 1996... N.J. G. Pounds has written a wide-ranging survey of The Culture of the English People. Iron Age to the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: U.P., 1994; pp. xvii + 477. [pounds]50). There is rather more about material culture (housing, food and...

Parrains, Marraines: La Parente Spirituelle en Europe.
November 1, 1996... Agnes Fine's anthropological study of godparenting, Parrains, Marraines, La parente spirituelle en Europe (Paris: Fayard, 1994; pp. 389. Pb. F135), covers both the mutual relationship of godparents and their godchildren, and the spiritual kinship...

Justinian.
November 1, 1996... The east Roman empire was a major player in the affairs of western Eurasia in the final phase of ancient history. Although it was confronted by two powerful rivals, Turkic nomads in the north and Sasanian Iran in the east, historians' eyes are...

Gregor von Tours, 538-594: 'Zehn Bucher Geschichte'. Historiographie und Gesellschaftskonzept im 6. Jahrhundert.
November 1, 1996... Martin Heinzelmann's Gregor von Tours, 538-594. 'Zehn Bucher Geschichte'. Historiographie und Gesellschaftskonzept im 6. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994; pp. x + 275. DM69), appearing on the 1400th anniversary of...

Roman Defeat, Christian Response, and the Literary Construction of the Jew.
November 1, 1996... David M. Olster in Roman Defeat, Christian Response, and the Literary Construction of the Jew (Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P., 1994; pp. xii + 203. [pounds]29.95) describes seventh-century documents that come to terms with Roman humiliation...

The Road to Judgment: From Custom to Court in Medieval Ireland and Wales.
November 1, 1996... Personal suretyship, whereby one or more individuals guarantee the fulfillment of an obligation entered into by another, is, as Robin Chapman Stacey observes in The Road to Judgment. From Custom to Court in Medieval Ireland and Wales...

Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire.
November 1, 1996... The fact that Oxfordshire is an artificial county, as John Blair points out early on in his account of Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (Stroud/Oxford: Alan Sutton/Oxfordshire Books, 1994; Pp. xxv + 230. [pounds]25) makes a history of the county in...

The Work of Work: Servitude, Slavery, and Labor in Medieval England.
November 1, 1996... British medieval historians, especially Anglo-Saxonists, have had a predilection for writing about kings, the secular and ecclesiastical nobility, or property, rather than the grinding realities of labour. Eleven mostly North American scholars...

The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway.
November 1, 1996... After a period of relative neglect, there has been a resurgence of interest in the reign of Cnut recently, with the appearance of several articles, M. K. Lawson's biography and now The Reign of Cnut. King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed....

The English Nobility under Edward
November 1, 1996... Peter A. Clarke's The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor (Oxford: Clarendon P., 1994; pp. xi + 386. [pounds]40) serves two useful purposes. There has been much discussion, some of it first-class, of the state of land-holding in England...

Die Errichtung des Bistums Arras: 1093/1094.
November 1, 1996... Until the 1090s, Arras was within the diocese of Cambrai which, although ecclesiastically subject to the metropolis of Rheims, was politically divided: Arras and the western part were in the county of Flanders and therefore the kingdom of France,...

Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade.
November 1, 1996... John France's Victory in the East. A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge: U.P., 1994; pp. xv + 425. [pounds]35) and Hugh Kennedy's Crusader Castles (Cambridge: U.P., 1994; pp. xvi + 221. [pounds]27.95) both address familiar subjects,...

Crusader Castles.
November 1, 1996... John France's Victory in the East. A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge: U.P., 1994; pp. xv + 425. [pounds]35) and Hugh Kennedy's Crusader Castles (Cambridge: U.P., 1994; pp. xvi + 221. [pounds]27.95) both address familiar subjects,...

The Cloisters Cross: Its Art and Meaning.
November 1, 1996... Although it has been known to scholars for only about forty years, the Cloisters Cross is fast catching up on the Ruthwell Cross in the quantity and complexity of the critical literature it has generated. The Cloisters Cross. Its Art and Meaning,...

Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England: A Study of the Mensa Episcopalis.
November 1, 1996... How and when did the endowments of the English cathedral churches come to be divided between bishop and chapter? Commentators have tended to look for the earliest point when separation may be observed, in the decades before and after the year...

Kaiser Friedrich Barbossa: Landesausbau - Aspekte seiner Politik - Wirkung.
November 1, 1996... Political interpretation of the German twelfth century tends to turn upon one reign in the five stretching from 1106 to 1197. Not only was that of Frederick I Barbarossa the longest (1152-1190), but unlike the other rulers, he also attracted...

Military Institutions on the Welsh Marches: Shropshire, AD 1066-1300.
November 1, 1996... If the fragmentation of the medieval Welsh polity ensured the rarity of serious incursions into western England by large forces under a powerful prince or tywysog, the Normans' failure to overrun the highland zones of Wales condemned the border...

North-South Divide: The Origins of Northern Consciousness in England.
November 1, 1996... The north-south divide, Helen M. Jewell reminds us, was recently dismissed by Margaret Thatcher as a myth and by Kenneth Clarke as 'a ridiculous simplification'. In the North-South Divide. The Origins of Northern Consciousness in England...

Les Cartulaires.
November 1, 1996... The appearance of Les Cartulaires, ed. Olivier Guyotjeannin et al. (Paris: Ecole des Chartes, 2993; pp. 516. Pb. n.p.) can be understood best in the light of current French historiography. Interest in regional and local studies in France,...

L'Ambiguite du livre: Prince, pouvoir et peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au moyen age.
November 1, 1996... Historians have long recognized the importance of biblical exegesis as an intellectual activity in the Middle Ages, yet few of the many surviving commentaries have been studied except by specialists in the Bible or Christian doctrine. It is not...

Frid och fredloshet: Sociala band och utanforskap pa Island under aldre medeltid.
November 1, 1996... The suggestion that Nordic countries underwent a process of 'feudalization' in the Middle Ages was long resisted by Northern historians on various grounds, none quite firm. Now that the concept of feudalism has been so severely modified, if not...

King John.
November 1, 1996... King John neither held up beagles by the ears, nor attempted to cover up a medieval equivalent of Watergate, yet it is with Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon that Ralph V. Turner compares the Angevin monarch in his King John (London:...

Eye Priory Cartulary and Charters.
November 1, 1996... The debt owed to the late Allen Brown and his family for the Suffolk Charters series of the Suffolk Records Society, which is building such a rich picture of the medieval county, is underlined by Eye Priory Cartulary and Charters, ed. Vivien...

La citta custodita: Politica e finanza a Vicenza dalla caduta di Ezzelino al vicariato imperiale, 1259-1312.
November 1, 1996... Natascia Carlotto's handsomely produced La citta custodita. Politica e finanza a Vicenza dalla caduta di Ezzelino al vicariato imperiale, 1259-1312 (Milan: Editrice La Storia, 1993; pp. 290. L48,000) appears as the third contribution to a...

A New World in a Small Place: Church and Religion in the Diocese of Reiti, 1188-1378.
November 1, 1996... Robert Brentano's A New World in a Small Place. Church and Religion in the Diocese of Rieti, 1188-1378 (Berkeley/Los Angeles: U. of California P., 1994; pp. xxiii + 452. $40) comes with a wry apology for 'this long, long-awaited, and eccentric...

Piers Gaveston: Edward II's Adoptive Brother.
November 1, 1996... Pierre Chaplais's Piers Gaveston. Edward II's Adoptive Brother (Oxford: Clarendon P., 1994; pp.xiv + 150. 19.50[pounds]) is an unusual book. As its distinguished author makes clear at the start, it is not intended as another biography of...

The Wealth of Shrewsbury in the Early Fourteenth Century: Six Local Subsidy Rolls, 1297-1322.
November 1, 1996... Shrewsbury is unique among English towns in possessing local subsidy rolls for no fewer than six of the lay subsidies levied between 1297 and 1322. Listing as they do the names, goods and assessments of the taxpayers, they are an invaluable guide...

Charters of the Vicars Choral of York Minster: City of New York and its Suburbs to 1546.
November 1, 1996... Two contrasting ecclesiastical communities from medieval Yorkshire are usefully brought into the light by a pair of new local publications. In the first, Charters of the Vicars Choral of York Minster. City of York and its Suburbs to 1546 (York:...

Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe.
November 1, 1996... The rise of Lithuania is the last big problem of later medieval Europe. How did a smallish confederation of heathen clansmen, without salt or sea or any technological advantage, and continuously hammered by Teutonic Knights, Russians, Mongols and...

Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History.
November 1, 1996... The history of childhood remains largely unwritten; and what has been published has not always advanced understanding. The strange notions, endorsed by certain scholars, that the very conception of childhood as a distinct phase of human life, and...

Medieval London Widows: 1300-1500.
November 1, 1996... 'Medieval women no longer suffer from historical neglect. Widely researched and widely taught, this subject boasts a distinguished canon of published works, to which Medieval London Widows, 1300-1500, ed. Caroline M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton...

The Bedford Inventories: The Worldly Goods of John, Duke Bedford, Regent of France, 1389-1435.
November 1, 1996... Jenny Stratford brings to her study of The Bedford Inventories. The Worldly Goods of John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France, 1389-1435 (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1993; pp. xxi + 486. 89[pounds]) an expertise in medieval metalwork,...

Germania Sacra: Das Bistum Konstanz. vol. 4, Das (freiweltliche) Damenstift Buchau am Federsee.
November 1, 1996... Germania Sacra. Das Bistum Konstanz. Vol. IV: Das (freiweltliche) Damenstift Buchau am Federsee, comp. Bernhard Theil (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1994; pp. xii + 422. DM200), provides a meticulous and exhaustive record, according to the...

La Circulatiodes nouvelles au moyen age.
November 1, 1996... Knowledge itself is power. Bacon's maxim was as true of the European Middle Ages as of today. But knowledge is slippery and malleable, comprising rumour, opinions, statistics, propaganda and so-called facts, events which exist only in the eyes of...

Die Kolner Handelsbeziehungen im Spatmittelalter.
November 1, 1996... Cologne has been very fortunate in its economic history. A series of eminent German historians, not the least of them Franz Irsigler, have devoted substantial amounts of their time to uncovering its later medieval development. Gunther...

Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence.
November 1, 1996... In an age when so many books seem to be produced for research exercises, it is a delight and a privilege to review a scholarly monograph which is clearly a labour of love. This is certainly the quality which animates the monumental study by John...

Lope Garcia de Salazar: El primer historiador de Bizkaia, 1399-1476.
November 1, 1996... Sabino Aguirre Gandarias adds notably to our knowledge of the disturbed state of Basque society in the central years of the fifteenth century in his Lope Garcia de Salazar. El primer historiador de Bizkaia, 1399-1476 (Bizkaia: Dipuctacion Foral...

Firenze e il concilio del 1439.
November 1, 1996... Firenze e il concilio del 1439, ed. Paolo Viti (2 vols. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1994; pp. xvi + 1,009. Pb. L180,000), is the belated fruit of a conference to celebrate the five-hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of the Council of Florence. In...

Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo.
November 1, 1996... One of a bevy of volumes whose origins lay in the desire to commemorate the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of the great Florentine statesman and patron Lorenzo de' Medici, Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini...

Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany.
November 1, 1996... During the sixteenth century close to thirty German dukes, landgraves, margraves, counts, and perhaps also one Emperor, were known as mad. In his long-awaited study on Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany (Charlottesville/London: U. of Virginia P.,...

Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy.
November 1, 1996... Some years ago, Moses Shulvass argued fervently that the Italian Renaissance 'offered hitherto unimaginable opportunities to the Jew', that 'Affection for the Jew displaced hatred', that 'the period of the Renaissance was an era of harmony and...

Foundations of Political Economy: Some Early Tudor Views on State and Society.
November 1, 1996... It would appear that after retiring from a Canadian chair of political philosophy Neal Wood decided to find out how and when his own chief concerns - the duty of the state to improve the economy and protect the poor - became a major preoccupation...

The Catholic Priesthood and the English Reformation.
November 1, 1996... A spate of recent books and articles has stressed the essential satisfaction of English people with the Church in the early sixteenth century and the unpreparedness of the laity for radical religious change, yet none has explained altogether...

Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I.
November 1, 1996... In rather too many cases, differences between the first and the second edition of a successful book amount to little more than revision of the bibliography and correction of incidental errors in the text. No such dismissal is warranted in the...

Two Tudor Subsidy Assessment Rolls for the City of London: 1541 and 1582.
November 1, 1996... The emergence of the directly assessed subsidy in the 1510s represented a major leap forward in English public finance, assessments of individual wealth at potentially varying rates now supplementing the increasingly antiquated quota taxes such...

Industry in the Countryside: Wealden Society in the Sixteenth Century.
November 1, 1996... Michael Zell's Industry in the Countryside. Wealden Society in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: U. P., 1994; pp. xiv + 257. 35[pounds]) is a classic monograph, relying on analysis of a wealth of varied primary sources. It should be read by all...

The European Outthrust and Encounter: The First Phase, c. 1400-1700. Essays in Tribute to David Beers Quinn on his 85th Birthday.
November 1, 1996... Thanks to a happy combination of distinction and longevity, David Quinn has now received three collections of tributary essays from pupils and colleagues. The latest, The European Outthrust and Encounter. The First Phase, c. 1400 - c. 1700....

The Economics of Power: The Private Finances of the House of Foix-Navarre-Albret during the Religious Wars.
November 1, 1996... In The Economics of Power. The Private Finances of the House of Foix - Navarre - Albret during the Religious Wars (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal, 1994; pp. xviii + 245. $35), S. Amanda Eurich studies the economic fortunes of the house...

Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson.
November 1, 1996... Patrick Collinson is, as Geoffrey Nuttall says, 'a big man in every way'. Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain. Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson (Cambridge: U.P., 1994; pp. xx + 372. 37.50[pounds]) ed. A. Fletcher and P....

Prince, People, and Confession: The Second Reformation in Brandenburg.
November 1, 1996... The peculiar case of Brandenburg has for long interested the historian: a Calvinist ruling house in a sea of Lutheran states, a haven for many thousands of French refugees after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the origin of the massive...

Discourse of Western Planting: 1584.
November 1, 1996... Hakluyt was a most significant figure in the Elizabethan world, not only as geographer, scholar, collector, translator and editor of the English Voyages, but as the intellectual promoter of our colonization in North America. His famous Discourse...

Early Modern Wales, 1525-1640.
November 1, 1996... Thirty years ago David Williams's masterly study of modern Wales, first published in 1950, was still the only authoritative textbook available for sixth-form students, college students and the lay reader with an intelligent interest in the...

The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400-1700.
November 1, 1996... The study of churchwardens' accounts is now a thriving cottage industry. Accounts have been used to chart the development of devotions; the history of fraternities; conformity to official instructions; the putting up, taking down, putting up,...

Les Fermiers de l'Ile-de-France. L'ascension d'un patronat agricole, XV-XVIII siecle.
November 1, 1996... Jean-Marc Moriceau's Les Fermiers de l'Ile-de-France. L'ascension d'un patronat agricole, XVe-XVIIIe siecle (Paris: Fayard, 1994; PP. 1069. Pb. F250) ranges widely through a variety of themes in early modern provincial history. Its geographical...

Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe.
November 1, 1996... The collection of fifteen essays edited by J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James on Renaissance and Revolution. Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: U.P., 1993; pp. xvi + 291. [pounds]37.50)...

Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, vol. 1.
November 1, 1996... Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, volume i, ed. Kenneth Fincham (Woodbridge: Boydell P., 1994; Pp-xxviii + 227. [pounds]35), is the inaugural publication of the recently founded Church of England Record Society. It...

John Clavell, 1601-43: Highwayman, Author, Lawyer, Doctor.
November 1, 1996... The romantic image of the highwayman was already familiar in 1628 when John Clavell wrote his 'Recantation of an Ill Led Life'. Son of a minor Dorset gentleman, Clavell stole the college plate as a Brasenose undergraduate, fell into the clutches...

Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England, 1550-1700.
November 1, 1996... One of the most notable developments in English studies over the past few years has been the emergence of a greater awareness among scholars working in that field of the need to locate their texts within a deeper historical context than has...

Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629-1640.
November 1, 1996... In spite of the remarkable London University PhD by N. Tyack, completed in 1951, it is only in the last ten or twenty years that studies of early emigration to the American colonies, and in particular New England, have revived and attained a new...

Der Hof Karls I. von England: Politik, Provinz und Patronage, 1625-1640.
November 1, 1996... In the composite monarchies of early modern Europe, the court was one of the few institutions which provided a semblance of unity for kingdoms gathered under a single monarch. Influenced as much by Elton as Elias, Ronald G. Asch's institutional...

The Americas in the Spanish World Order: The Justification for Conquest in the Seventeenth Century.
November 1, 1996... James Muldoon's previous book was about the responses of canon lawyers to the problems of sovereignty and right of conquest raised by encounters with non-Christian peoples in medieval Latin Christendom. It proved of great value to students of the...

Uppkomlingarna: Kanslitjanstemannen i 1600-talets. Sverige och Europa.
November 1, 1996... The phenomenon of 'new men' rising from the ranks of the commoners and threatening the hegemony of aristocratic elites over government was a recurrent feature of the old regime in Europe. Svante Norrhem's Uppkomlingarna. Kanslitjanstemannen i...

The Outbreak of Irish Rebellion of 1641.
November 1, 1996... Several papers published by Michael Perceval Maxwell over the past decade have identified him as a prime contributer to the 'high politics' explanation of the collapse, in the 1640s, of the multiple kingdom of King Charles I. This reputation will...

Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c. 1640-9.
November 1, 1996... In 1986 Gerald Aylmer suggested five ways of classifying the Civil War royalists - not into rigid entities but as different ways of thinking about them. 'Some historians have been tempted', he said, 'to divide them into constitutionalists and...

Literature and Revolution in England: 1640-1660.
November 1, 1996... Nigel Smith's hugely well-read and wide-ranging Literature and Revolution in England, 1640-1660 (New Haven/London: Yale U.P., 1994; pp. xiv + 425. [pounds]30) centres on several arguments with which historians will readily sympathize. Ranking...

La Fronde.
November 1, 1996... Michel Pernot states that his purpose in writing La Fronde (Paris: Fallois, 1994; pp. 475. Pb. F150) is not to offer an 'explication definitive' but to assemble all the known facts and interpretations of this turbulent movement. His account of...

The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire.
November 1, 1996... Johann Joachim Becher (1635-82) made a reputation as one of the last of the great practising alchemists: compulsive experimenter and publicist for a profession whose intellectual respectability was gradually being undermined. At the same time he...

The English Gentleman in Trade: The Life and Works of Sir Dudley North, 1641-1691.
November 1, 1996... The importance of small family firms in the pre-industrial economy makes knowledge of the lives of individual businessmen essential to an understanding of how such an economy worked. So Richard Grassby contends in offering his The English...

Protestant Dissent and Controversy in Ireland: 1660-1714.
November 1, 1996... The history of dissent in Ireland has not been a particularly active field of enquiry, either in this or earlier centuries. While English historians can build upon a rich and lengthy tradition of dissenting historiography from the eighteenth...

Late Seventeenth-Century Edinburgh: A Demographic Study.
November 1, 1996... Late Seventeenth-Century Edinburgh. A Demographic Study (Aldershot: Scolar P., 1994; pp. xi + 324. [pounds]49.50) is a slightly revised version of Helen M. Dingwall's 1989 Edinburgh university doctoral thesis. It deals with a short period in the...

To Keep and Bears Arms. The Origins of an Anglo-American Right.
November 1, 1996... At first sight, Joyce Lee Malcolm's To Keep and Bear Arms. The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P., 1994; pp. xiv + 232. [pounds]23.95) might seem of limited interest to British readers. After all, as Malcolm notes,...

The Birth of Britain: A New Nation, 1700-1710.
November 1, 1996... At first sight W. A. Speck's The Birth of Britain. A New Nation, 1700-1710 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994; pp. xiv + 235. [pounds]25) might appear to be intended (like Linda Colley's Britons. Forging the Nation, 1707-1837) to explore the origin of the...

Jean-Roland Malet: Premier historian des finances de la monarchie francaise.
November 1, 1996... Near the end of the War of Spanish Succession, Jean-Roland Malet wrote a financial report that was published much later, in 1789, as Comptes rendus de l'administration des finances du royaume de France. It is valuable today for at least four...