The natural condition of history is the paradox. The half century of upheavals which saw the devolution of colonial empires and the humbling of the West's hybris, also witnessed the culminating impact of Western culture upon non-European nations. Toynbee even suggests that this development points to the eventual evolution of a universal civilization, geared to the Westernized rhythm of an industrial society.

In his account of the revolt of Thomas the Slavonian (820) against the Emperor Michael II (820–829) the Byzantine historian Genesius lists a variety of peoples from whom the armies of the rebel had been drawn: Saracens, Indians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Medes, Abasgians, Zichs, Vandals, Getae, Alans, Chaldoi, Armenians, adherents of the heretical sects of the Paulicians and the Athenganoi. Some of these peoples are well known; the identity of others, despite efforts made to determine it, is by no means certain. But in any case, their listing by the Byzantine historian illustrates vividly the multi-racial character of the Byzantine Empire. This was in the ninth century, but the situation was no different for the period before, and it would not be different for the period after. The Byzantine Empire was never in its long history a true national state with an ethnically homogeneous population. If by virtue of its civilization it may be called Greek, it was never, except perhaps during the very last years of its existence, an empire of Greeks.

When the Habsburg dynasty had finally driven back the Turks, repopulation of the Alföld (the Great Hungarian Plain) began. The policies that were adopted reshaped the whole ethnic structure of the region. Under Turkish rule the Hungarians had become not only impoverished but greatly depleted in numbers. In Slavonia there were no Hungarians left at all and very few were left in the southern hahf of de Bácska, between the Franz Joseph Canal and the Danube, or in the Bánát, or in the counties of Tolna and Baranya in Transdanubia, or in the north.

Les Chinois de Madagascar ont une vie sociale particulière et très caractéristique. Ils ont adapté et transformé leurs coutumes, adopté des habitudes qui leur étaient étrangères en les modifiant à leur gré, ce qui en fait une communauté spéciale, curieuse et intéressante. Pour citer quelques exemples, les Chinois continuent à manger de la cuisine chinoise exclusivement, mais ils ont presque totalement abandonné l'usage des chop-sticks; ils utilisent la cuiller et la fourchette, mais pas de couteau, la cuisine chinoise étant présentée découpée dans les plats. Hommes et femmes s'habillent à l'européenne, et ce n'est que très rarement, lors de certaines fêtes, que quelques jeunes filles portent la robe chinoise fendue sur les cotés (ch'i-p'ao).

In this paper an attempt is made to study the marriage customs and family relationships of the titular peerage and the 500 or so leading county families who together formed the dominant political and social grouping of Tudor and Stuart England. Generalisations here made apply only to this restricted class and not necessarily to those below it. When it comes to be investigated, the behaviour of the lesser gentry, the yeomanry, the peasantry and the merchants may well show significant differences from the model set by their betters.

The sociologist's apparent bias against historical data is founded in the main on the restricted definition of a “fact” which he has come to accept during the past generation. Having found by tedious and pedestrian work that many popular impressions about social relations in our own time are incorrect, he has become sceptical of the possibility of ascertaining the facts about historical populations whose members can no longer be interviewed or observed. But I sense among my fellow sociologists a diminishing parochialism and for this reason I welcome Lawrence Stone's work on marriage patterns among the English nobility in the 16th and 17th centuries. I should like to weigh his conclusions by reference both to general social science principles and to cross-cultural data.

P. 207. Surely I make it clear (pp. 182–3) that although romantic tales were widely read, there was no admiration of love as an ideal. I should have thought that my setting out of this point was fairly explicit. Goode is right to underline it, but I think he is at present misrepresenting what I say in the process.

At the beginning of the period 1870–1913 the United Kingdom was the acknowledged leader in the iron and steel industry; at its end she was in some sense or other a third-rate iron and steel producer, surpassed by the United States and Germany. The first section of this paper will formulate definitions of “loss of leadership” which are statistically verifiable and economically significant, and will determine whether or not, for a given sense of the term, it is true that the United Kingdom fell behind the other countries. The second section considers some of the factors which led to the U. K.'s “loss of leadership”.

The study of economic growth would seem to offer unusual opportunities for the application of the comparative method. The number of cases is large, from the Egypt of the Pharoahs to the Egypt of Nasser, from the civilizations of the Indus, of Babylon, and the Mayas to the latest development programs of Pakistan, Iraq, and Guatamala. The practical significance of increased understanding of the process of growth could be great indeed. And economic growth theorists, after plunging ahead in the eary postwar years with unlimited confidence in the tools of their trade, have more recently issued open invitations to historians, anthropologists, and other scholars who deal with whole societies to assist in the formulation of hypotheses explanatory of economic growth. Recent textbooks and surveys of the field now include as a matter of course a section devoted to “the lessons of history”. More specialized works frequently include a chapter on the historical background of their subjects or numerous historical or comparative analogies. As yet, however, the actual contributions of comparative history to an understanding of the process of economic development have been limited, not to say negligible. Historical events and episodes have been used to illustrate this or that theory of development, but historical experience en grand has not yet been used satisfactorily to generate a theory of its own; nor have economic historians, the scholars indicated by training and professional orientation to bridge the gap between economic theory and historical experience, shown any great enthusiasm for the task. A prize competition recently opened by the Council (formerly Committee) on Research in Economic History for studies in comparative economic history failed to attract a single suitable entry.