The English Historical Review articles from November 2003

The English Historical Review archives from November 2003

J.M. Roberts (1928-2003).(Obituary)
November 1, 2003... John Roberts's name first appeared in the Review as Joint Editor with Michael Wallace-Hadrill in 1967 and he remained a Joint Editor until 1974. During that period he also composed his History of the World (1976). He was therefore unusual in...

Self-justification in Augustine's Confessions.
November 1, 2003... THE title of the work Confessions suggests to modern readers that Augustine set out to admit before both God and his readers a catalogue of his shortcomings and youthful faults with the corollary that because at baptism the grace of God had...

Liberal speech, Palmerstonian delay, and the passage of the Second Reform Act.
November 1, 2003... THE passage of the Second Reform Act has been perceived by historians as a remarkable example of the influence both of high political manoeuvre, as Disraeli guided through Parliament a reform bill far more radical than most MPs wanted and in so...

Will the real Sidney Bunting please stand up? Constructing and contesting the identity of a South African communist *.
November 1, 2003... EXPELLED in 1931 by the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) that he had helped to found ten years earlier, in 1989 Sidney Bunting was posthumously reinstated as a 'hero of the South African Revolution'. His later life might be seen as yet...

'The brightnes of the noble leiutenants action': an intellectual ponders Buckingham's assassination *.
November 1, 2003... ON the morning of Saturday, 23 August 1628, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, beloved favourite of two English kings, was stabbed and mortally wounded as he prepared to leave his lodgings at the Greyhound inn in Portsmouth. In the confusion...

"The chiefest strength and glory of this kingdom': arming and training the "perfect militia" in the 1630s.
November 1, 2003... ENGLAND'S involvement in the Thirty Years' War from 1625 to 1630, with disastrous campaigns against Cadiz and the Isle of Rhe, had highlighted the weakness of expeditionary forces that were based on conscripted vagrants and petty criminals,...

Early Medieval Settlements: The Archaeology of Rural Communities in North-West Europe, 400-900.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By HELENA HAMEROW (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2002; pp. xiii + 225. 45 [pounds sterling]). ALL too often the archaeology of early Anglo-Saxon archaeology can be critiqued for its insularity. One person with no right to be included in such...

Studien zum St Galler Klosterplan II.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Studien zum St Galler Klosterplan II. Edited by PETER OCHSENBZlN and KARL SCHMUKI (St Gallen: Historischer Verein des Kantons St Gallen, 2002; pp. 367. SwFr 69). Eremus und Insula: St Gallen und die Reichenau im Mittelalter: Katalog durch...

The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation and Identity, 1066-c.1220.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By HUGH M. THOMAS (Oxford: Oxford U.P, 2003; pp. 462. 65 [pounds sterling]). HUGH Thomas has written a challenging and rewarding book on a fascinating subject--the process whereby the Norman rulers, lay and ecclesiastical, of post-Conquest...

King Stephen.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By DONALD MATTHEW (London: Hambledon, 2002; pp. 320. 25 [pounds sterling]). THIS is a passionate book. Donald Matthew argues that Stephen and his reign have been misunderstood by historians, that the so-called 'anarchy' of the 1140s is a...

L'Empire des Plantagenet, 1154-1224.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By MATIN AURELL (Paris: Perrin, 2003; pp. 406. Eur 23). THIS is not a predictable synthesis packaged for French undergraduates. Martin Aurell brings to his task a strikingly fresh vision. This is because, despite his extensive reading of...

Gervase of Tilbury.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Otia Imperialia: Recreation for an Emperor. Edited by S. E. BANKS and J. W. BINNS (Oxford: Clarendon P., 2002; pp. xcv + 1013. 120 [pounds sterling]). THE publication of a volume in Oxford Medieval Texts, one of the most distinguished...

The Measure of Multitude: Population in Medieval Thought.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By PETER BILLER (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2000; pp. xxi + 476. 35 [pounds sterling]). THE dust-jacket of Peter Biller's The Measure of Multitude frames its subject matter--the analysis and discussion of various aspects of 'demography' which...

Mexico: From the Beginning to the Spanish Conquest.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Mexico: From the Beginning to the Spanish Conquest by ALAN KNIGHT (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2002; pp. xix + 254. 45 [pounds sterling]; pb. 16.95 [pounds sterling]). Mexico: The Colonial Era, by ALAN KNIGHT (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.,...

War at Sea in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Edited by JOHN B. HATTENDORF and RICHARD W. UNGER (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003; pp. xiii + 276. 50 [pounds sterling]). THIS collection of essays, sixteen in all including the introduction and conclusion, derives originally from a session of...

The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Edited by D. J. B. TRIM (Leiden: Brill, 2003; pp. 359. Eur 99). THE title posits, even as it implicitly questions, a dichotomy between 'chivalry' and 'professionalism'. Some of the contributors to the volume barely touch on the theme,...

La Torture judiciaire: Approches historiques et juridiques (Vols. I and II).(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Edited by BERNARD DURAND, with LEAH OTIS-COUR (Lille: Centre d'Histoire Judiciaire, 2002; pp. 1-470, 477-977. Eur 40). THESE two volumes summarize the results of an ambitious project to provide a cool and objective look at the functioning...

Richard Hooker and Reformed Theology: A Study of Reason, Will and Grace.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By NIGEL VOAK (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2003; pp. xviii + 348. 50 [pounds sterling]). NIGEL Voak's book has evolved from an MPhil thesis completed in 1994 to a larger study for which he received his DPhil in 1999. As he mentions, that period...

Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonisation.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... 1500-1625. By ANDREW FITZMAURICE (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2003; pp. 216. 40 [pounds sterling]). ENGLAND'S largely abortive initial efforts to establish colonies in the New World were accompanied by a barrage of promotional literature...

Reading History in Early Modern England.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By D. R. WOOLF (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2001; pp. xvi + 360. 45 [pounds sterling]). THIS magisterial study, covering the period from c. 1450 to 1730, is an important contribution to the growing literature on the history of reading. Like...

A Companion to Stuart Britain.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Edited by BARRY COWARD (Oxford: Blackwell P., for the Historical Association, 2003; pp. xxiv + 564. 85 [pounds sterling]). THIS volume is part of a general series, Blackwell Companions to British History, linked to the Historical...

The Rise of Commercial Empires: England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... 1650-1770. By DAVID ORMROD (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2003; pp. xvii + 400. 55 [pounds sterling]). THIS book addresses the age-old concern of the relationship between the very different fortunes of the Dutch and English economies in the...

The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1690-1715.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Edited by EVELINE CRUICKSHANKS, STUART HANDLEY and D. W. HAYTON (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2002; 5 vols.: vol. I, Introductory Survey (by David Hayton), pp. xxix + 958, with the Commons Journals Database on CD-ROM; vol. 2, Constituencies, pp....

The Mighty Experiment: Free Labor versus Slavery in British Emancipation.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By SEYMOUR DRESCHER (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2002; pp. 307. 38 [pounds sterling]). IN a series of books, beginning with Econocide: British Slavery in the Age of Revolution (1977), Seymour Drescher has probably done as much as anyone to shape...

Liberalismus: Zur historischen Semantik eines europaischen Deutungsmusters.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By JORN LEONHARD (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2001; pp. 799. Eur 79.80). JORN Leonhard's study of European liberalism is monumental in scale, scope, and ambition. Its five hundred and eighty pages of text, one hundred pages of bibliography, and...

Rural Women Workers in 19th-Century England; Gender, Work and Wages.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By NICOLA VERDON (Woodbridge: The Boydell P., 2002; pp. 232. 45 [pounds sterling]). THIS volume makes a considerable contribution to our knowledge of its subject, though perhaps Dr Verdon exaggerates the deficiency of existing information...

The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters. Vol. III: The Heir Apparent, 1928-1933.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Edited by ROBERT SELF (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002; pp. 446. 77.50 [pounds sterling]). NEVILLE Chamberlain might have been forced into resignation by Churchill in 1928; during 1929 it was agreed that he would become Colonial Secretary, for...

Oakeshott on History.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by LUKE O'SULLIVAN (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2003; pp. 296. 25 [pounds sterling]). A series of volumes of 'British Idealist Studies', supervised by a distinguished board of experts in Britain and America and published by Imprint Academic,...

The Pilgrim City: Social and Political Ideas in the Writings of St Augustine of Hippo.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by R. W. Dyson (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2001; pp. xii + 217. 35 [pounds sterling]). Providing students with a good introduction to Augustine's 'political thought' is a notoriously difficult task, combining, as it does, the need to...

Origins of the English.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Catherine Hills (London: Duckworth, 2003; pp. 128. 10.99 [pounds sterling]). It is a popularly held belief that the English were immigrants from Frisia, north-west Germany and southern Scandinavia, who drove out the native populations...

On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. Andrew Gillett (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002; pp. xxiv + 265. Eur 60). This gloriously bad-tempered volume examines recent work on the topic of ethnogenesis, the process of the formation of peoples after the end of the Roman Empire, and...

St Augustine and the Conversion of England.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. Richard Gameson (Stroud: Sutton, 1999; pp. 436. 30 [pounds sterling]). Both the publishers and the editor are to be congratulated on this well-balanced, beautifully illustrated and very reasonably priced volume, which includes some...

The Beginnings of English Law.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Lisi Oliver (Toronto: Toronto U.P., 2002; pp. xiv + 297. 40 [pounds sterling]). The core of this book consists of a new edition, with translation, of the Laws of AEthelbert of Kent (c.600), those of Hlophere and Eadric (c.685), and...

Dangereux rituel: De l'histoire medievale aux sciences sociales.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Philippe Buc (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003; pp. xiv + 372. Eur 35). The present volume is Buc's translation, into his native French, of his The Dangers of Ritual (Princeton, 2001). The translation contains numerous...

The Cross and the Crescent: Christianity and Islam from Muhammad to the Reformation.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Richard Fletcher (London: Allen Lane, 2003; pp. 183. 14.99 [pounds sterling]). The relationship of Christianity and Islam has a claim to represent the world's most insistent problem. A theological problem by definition, it is also...

Narratives of a New Order: Cistercian Historical Writing in England, 1150-1220.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Elizabeth Freeman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002; pp. 245. Eur 50). Dr Freeman's argument in this book is that whereas the Cistercian order is well known for its spiritual writings, historical writing by the White Monks has been largely...

The Ordinal of the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, Fecamp (Parts II, III and V).(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. David Chadd (London: Henry Bradshaw Soc., 2002; pp. 379-885. 35 [pounds sterling]). This volume completes the edition of which the first volume, published in 1999, was reviewed in the English Historical Review (ante, cxvi (2001), 457)....

Historia Ecclesie Abbedonensis: the History of the Church of Abingdon (Volume II).(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Ed. and tr. John Hudson (Oxford: Clarendon P., 2002; pp. cvii + 425. 75 [pounds sterling]). The latest contribution to Oxford Medieval Texts is the second volume of the History of the Church of Abingdon; it contains the text of the History...

Lieux sacres, lieux de culte, sanctuaires.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. Andre Vauchez (Rome: Ecole Francaise, 2000; pp. 436. Eur 51, 83). Andre Vauchez in his introduction defines one of the purposes of religion as being 'to conceive, organize and control space'. Creating a topography expressive of belief...

The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... tr. J. F. O'Callaghan (Tempe: Arizona Centre for Medieval Studies, 2002; pp. xlii + 150. 21 [pounds sterling]). An anonymous work, the so-called 'Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile' survives in a single late fifteenth-century...

Medieval English Jews and Royal Officials: Entries of Jewish Interest in the English Memoranda Rolls 1266-1293.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed., tr. and annot. Zefira Entin Rokeah (Jerusalem: The Hebrew U./Magnes P., 2000; pp. xxxvii + 514. $45). Students of thirteenth-century English government and administration have for long been aware that a wealth of information on a host...

Marco Polo, Le Devisement du Monde. Tome I: Depart des voyageurs et traversee de la Perse.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. Philippe Menard (Geneva: Droz, 2001; pp. 285. N.p.). This useful edition of a French manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France reverses the centuries-old pattern of Marco Polo publishing. Particularly since the...

Medieval English Wardship in Romance and Law.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Noel James Menuge (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001; pp. 149. 40 [pounds sterling]). Hitherto the study of wardship in medieval England has focused predominantly on the legal and political complexities of royal prerogative wardship,...

The Theory and Practice of Revolt in Medieval England.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Claire Valente (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003; pp. 284. 45 [pounds sterling]). The study of conflict between kings and nobles has been out of fashion for many years, and in its place emphasis has been placed on a community of interest...

Peregrinatio Academica: Wanderungen und Karrieren von Gelehrten der Universitaten Rostock, Greifswald, Trier und Mainz im 15. Jahrhundert.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Stephanie Irrgang (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000; pp. 310. Eur 40). It is no coincidence that German medievalists have in recent years had such a large part in writing the social history of medieval universities. The boom in...

The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century: a Revolution in English Writing.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... (With an annotated edition of Bradford, West Yorkshire Archives MS 32D86/42), by Mary-Rose McLaren (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002: pp. xiv + 294. 60 [pounds sterling]). Forty-four extant chronicles are identified, analysed, and compared...

Richard III: a Royal Enigma.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Sean Cunningham (London: The National Archives, 2003; pp. 118. 14.95 [pounds sterling]). Historians will welcome this attractive paperback for its reproductions of documents and accompanying transcripts. Original Stonor and Cely letters...

Debts, Dowries, Donkeys: the Diary of Niccolo Machiavelli's Father, Messer Bernardo, in Quattrocento Florence.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Catherine Atkinson (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002; pp. 190. 24 [pounds sterling]). The place in history occupied by Bernardo Machiavelli (c. 1426/29-1500) rests, above all else, on the fame of his son, Niccolo, but there are two...

El miedo al mediterraneo: La caridad popular Valenciana y la redencion de cautivos bajo poder musulman, 1323-1539.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... El miedo al mediterraneo: La caridad popular Valenciana y la redencion de cautivos bajo poder musulman, 1323-1539, by Andres Diaz Borras (Barcelona: CSIC, 2001; pp. 366. N.p.). Esclaus i Proprietaris d' esclaus a la Catalunya del segle XV:...

De l'Esclavitud a la llibertat: Esclaus i lliberts a l'edat mitjana.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. M. T. Ferrer i Mallol and J. Mutge i Vives (Barcelona: CSIC, 2000; pp. 751. N.p.). Since Verlinden persuaded us to take it seriously and literally, medieval Mediterranean slavery has occupied an uneasy and ambiguous position in...

Europe in the Sixteenth Century.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Andrew Pettegree (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002; pp. 380. 60 [pounds sterling]; pb. 16.99 [pounds sterling]). This is a book of its time and for its time. On the one hand, it is severely functional, and on the other, it is very personal. It...

Radical Reformation Studies: Essays Presented to James M. Stayer.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. Werner O. Packull and Geoffrey L. Dipple (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999; pp. 204. 45 [pounds sterling]). Inspired by the pioneering work of James M. Stayer, this collection continues his project of placing Anabaptists and other sectarians in...

Roman Invasions: the British History, Protestant Anti-Romanism, and the Historical Imagination in England, 1530-1660.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by John E. Curran, Jr (Newark: U. of Delaware P., 2002; pp. 325. 44 [pounds sterling]). The central argument of Roman Invasions is that Galfridian British history lived on in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, well after...

Reformation, Politics and Polemics: the Growth of Protestantism in East Anglian Market Towns, 1500-1610.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by John Craig (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002; pp. 267. 49.50 [pounds sterling]). John Craig seeks to explore 'the development and place of Protestantism in early modern society', from Suffolk sources. He does so in four tightly-focused and...

Under the Molehill: an Elizabethan Spy Story.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by John Bossy (New Haven/London: Yale U.P., 2001; pp. 189. 18.95 [pounds sterling]). Professor Bossy's Under the Molehill is, in many respects, a companion piece to his Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair. Both deal with events in the...

Thomas Harriot: an Elizabethan Man of Science.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. Robert Fox (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000; pp. 317. 47.50 [pounds sterling]). In his own time, Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) was both admired as an extraordinary mathematician and reviled as an atheist and 'conjuror'. It has been difficult for...

Elizabethan Rhetoric: Theory and Practice.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Peter Mack (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2002; pp. 326. 45 [pounds sterling]). For some time historians of Renaissance England, or anyway those of them alert to the capacity of ideas or literature to influence or reflect the society to...

Eating Right in the Renaissance.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Ken Albala (Berkeley/London: U. of California P., 2002; pp. 315. $39.95). Among the many aspects of food history that call for study, this book concentrates firmly on one theme. It examines theories about food in the period between 1470...

King James.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Pauline Croft (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; pp. 214. Pb. 14-99 [pounds sterling]). In this compact but impressively thorough survey of King James VI and I, Pauline Croft manages to summarize an enormous amount of recent...

Literary Culture in Jacobean England: Reading, 1621.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Paul Salzman (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002; pp. xix + 268. 45 [pounds sterling]). This book is an interesting, though ultimately unsatisfying, experiment in writing literary history. Instead of focusing on a theme, a genre, an author, or...

Court Festivals of the European Renaissance: Art, Politics and Performance.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. J.R. Mulryne and Elizabeth Goldring (Aldershot: Ashgate, zooz; pp. xxiv + 401. 57.50 [pounds sterling]). In recent decades an international group of historians, art historians, and literary historians has produced a spate of research...

Bodily Extremities: Preoccupations with the Human Body in Early Modern European Culture.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. Florike Egmond and Robert Zwijnenberg (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003; pp. 235. 45 [pounds sterling]). Despite the overly defensive tone of the editors' introduction, this is an enormously stimulating response to what has been termed...

Morandi's Last Prophecy and the End of Renaissance Politics.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Brendan Dooley (Woodstock/Princeton: Princeton U.P., 2002; pp. 238. 25.95 [pounds sterling]). Orazio Morandi (ca. 1570-1630), abbot of the monastery of Santa Prassede in Rome, liked dabbling in the occult. He built up a library of some...

L'uso del denaro: Patrimoni e amministrazione nei luoghi pii e negli enti ecclesiastici in Italia (secoli XV-XVIII).(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. Alessandro Pastore and Marina Garbellotti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001; pp. 402. Eur 24.79). Did hospitals exist for the benefit of their patients and inmates, or for that of their administrators and their clients and friends? How large a...

Seven Households: Life in Cheshire and Lancashire, 1582-1714.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Charles F. Foster (Northwich: Arley Hall P., 2002; pp. 2.48. 19-95 [pounds sterling]; pb. 11.95 [pounds sterling]). This lavishly illustrated study is based on the household accounts of members of three Lancashire families, the Fells of...

The Witches of Fife: Witch-hunting in a Scottish Shire, 1560-1710.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Stuart Macdonald (East Linton: Tuckwell P., 2002; pp. 240. Pb. 16.99 [pounds sterling]). This is the first book on Scottish witch-hunting that focuses on a single region or county. Like Alan Macfarlane's work on Essex, Eva Labouvie's on...

The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Strange and Inventive Life of Robert Hooke, 1635-1703.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Stephen Inwood (London: Macmillan, 2002; pp. xxiii + 485. 18.99 [pounds sterling]). With few exceptions (notably W. W. Rouse Ball in the nineteenth century) Robert Hooke, the Royal Society's first Curator of Experiments, Gresham...

William Penn.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Mary K. Geiter (London/New York: Longman, for Pearson Education, 2000; pp. 186. 45 [pounds sterling]). William Penn was a man of contradictions. Born into the ruling class, he embraced egalitarianism. He lived in style and in debt while...

James II.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by W. A. Speck (Harlow: Longman/Pearson Education, 2002; pp. 173. Pb. 24-99 [pounds sterling]). Professor Speck has written a highly serviceable account of the life and career of one of England's least successful monarchs. Appearing in...

The Pirate Wars.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Peter Earle (London: Methuen, 2003; pp. 304.20 [pounds sterling]). There can be few subjects which have generated more bad history than piracy. In spite of its reputation, however, there are, mercifully, a handful of reputable scholars...

The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity: England 1550-1850.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by David Kuchta (Berkeley: U. of California P., 2002; pp. 304. 29.95 [pounds sterling]). According to David Kuchta, the three-piece suit is the badge of modern masculinity. Since its introduction in the later seventeenth century, it has...

The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots' Invention of the Modern World.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Arthur Herman (London: Fourth Estate, 2001; paperback edition under review, 2003; pp. 454. 8.99 [pounds sterling]). The Scottish Enlightenment: The Historical Age of the Historical Nation, by Alexander Broadie (Edinburgh: Berlin, 2001;...

Le peage en France au XVIIIe siecle: Les privileges a l'e'preuve de la reforme.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Anne Conchon (Paris: Comite pour l'Histoire Economique et Financiere de la France, 2002; pp. 583. Eur 35). Not so long ago the magnificent French doctoral tradition seemed in mortal danger. Appalled by the elephantine scale to which some...

Prince of Europe: The Life of Charles Joseph de Ligne.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... (1735-1814), by Philip Mansel (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003; pp. xiv + 338. 25 [pounds sterling]). Philip Mansel is here concerned with the seventh prince of Ligne and of the Holy Roman Empire, the best-known of the line (to adapt...

The Iron Bridge: Symbol of the Industrial Revolution.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Neil Cossons and Barrie Trinder, with a foreword by Eric DeLony (Chichester: Phillimore, 2002; pp. xiv + 154. 25 [pounds sterling]). The Shropshire Iron Bridge is famous the world over. Spanning the Severn Gorge and its flaring furnaces,...

Rethinking Early Modern India.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. Richard B. Barnett (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002; pp. 326. Rs. 650). The Long eighteenth century, as the period in India when the Mughal Empire fragmented into its constituent regions and the English East India Company began its expansion,...

The Enlightenment and the Origins of European Australia.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by John Gascoigne (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2002; pp. 233. 45 [pounds sterling]). The usual question arises: why 'the' Enlightenment? Which Enlightenment, or aspect of Enlightenment, is intended here? John Gascoigne, author of Cambridge...

The Merry Duchess.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Joan Perkin (London: Athena P., 2003; pp. 235. Pb. 11.99 [pounds sterling]. A certain caution might be in order about any book carrying the title The Merry Duchess. Even more caution might be applied to a history book which refers to...

Die Revolution von.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... 1848/49, by Frank Lorenz Muller (Darmstadt: Wissensschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002; pp. 154. Eur 14.90). Since the 1980s historians have been developing new understandings of the German revolution of 1848, as became increasingly clear in...

Friends of the People: Uneasy Radicals in the Age of the Chartists.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Owen R. Ashton and Paul A. Pickering (London: Merlin P., 2002; pp. 169. Pb. 14.95 [pounds sterling]. Friends of the People is the latest product from the cottage industry of Chartist studies associated with Staffordshire University....

Palmerston.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Paul R. Ziegler (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; pp. 156. 15.50 [pounds sterling]). It is undoubtedly true that the third Viscount Palmerston's life merits a re-evaluation in the light of recent work on this important pillar of...

Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Chandak Sengoopta (London: Macmillan, 2003; pp. 234. 15.99 [pounds sterling]). This is a lively and informative account of the manner in which fingerprinting as a modern technology of personal identification was developed in India under...

Paris, Capital of the World.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... by Patrice Higonnet (tr. Arthur Goldhammer), (Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard U.P., 2002; pp. 493. 23.50 [pounds sterling]) Author of studies of the 1789-91 National Assembly and of Jacobinism, Patrice Higonnet has written one of the few...

The Jacobin Legacy in Modern France: Essays in honour of Vincent Wright.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... ed. Sudhir Hazareesingh (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 2002; pp. 244. 35 [pounds sterling]). This welcome collection of essays in honour of Vincent Wright, the leading scholar of modern French history and politics who died in 1999, takes as its...