The merchant mariner could appeal to the law in the seventeenth century for remedies against arbitrary treatment. But historians have argued that even when the sailor was able to afford legal process he faced judges who served the interests of master and shipowner. This essay estimates the fees of a suit for wages in the seventeenth century, the mariner's propensity to initiate action, and his chances of winning. Evidence for such an appraisal, and for describing the attitudes of judges toward mariner complaints, comes from all wage cases decided by the High Court of Admiralty in sixteen years chosen from across the century. The results add to recent discoveries about the nature of justice in a litigious age and test claims that the sailor was commonly a victim both at sea and at law.

Although sometimes seen as a bastion of royalism, the northern counties supplied some of the most militant members of the Long Parliament. Northern MPs and peers figured prominently in the war party, played a key role in negotiating the Solemn League and Covenant, and comprised an important element within the anti-Scots, pro-New Model Army faction at Westminster. Anglo- Scottish relations in the Civil War period were intimately linked with the parliamentary history of the northern counties during the 1640s. This article examines the development and structure of the northern interest in the Long Parliament, and in particular its collaboration with the parliamentary Independents. Analysis of the drafting of the Newcastle peace propositions and of the Commons' efforts to reduce the size of the Covenanting forces indicates that the Independents relied heavily on evidence of abuses committed by the Scottish army in the northern counties to advance their own programme for settlement and to frustrate that of the Scots and their English allies. It is also argued that the Independents' exploitation of the northern reaction against the Scots had a profound impact upon the relations between all three Stuart monarchies.

Despite the growing conflict between Britain and her colonies, a metropolitan education remained a popular choice for the sons of elite colonial Americans in the late colonial period. This article explores the attitudes of the youths themselves, and of their parents, towards their London education during a period when political conflict was engendering a growing sense of separateness. American youths typically underwent a status crisis upon reaching the metropolis. Their insecurities related to the usual pitfalls of genteel London life: the prospect of social isolation and vulgarity, and the opportunities for debauchery. The parents of these colonial youths, however, shared the view of elite British parents of the period that a public education was a necessary social apprenticeship for their children. They regarded personal experience of the metropolis, and familiarity with its social and political systems, as important attributes for elite colonists. Parental views on the advantages of a metropolitan education for their sons were unaffected by the imminent breach with Britain. The status crisis experienced by colonial youths in London was age-related; their visiting parents were acculturated to the metropolitan environment. The article concludes by suggesting that the polarized provincial mentality so long attributed by historians to the colonial presence in London should be replaced by a more integrationist model which reflects the real complexity of the relationship between colonial American elites and their mother country.

This article examines the series of legislative measures, beginning in 1776, which culminated in the passage of the Penitentiary Act of 1779. It argues that, although the Penitentiary Act is of considerable long-term significance in the history of English criminal justice and penal practices, the act passed in 1779 was in fact a somewhat modest affair by comparison with the scheme originally envisioned by its principal architects. The act embodied a decisive retreat from an original ambition to replace transportation with imprisonment at hard labour as the principal punishment next to death in late eighteenth-century England. This modification arose from a pragmatic appreciation of the limitations imposed, first, by a persistent preference amongst most legislators for transportation of the worst classes of offenders not actually put to death and, secondly, by the reluctance of local authorities to have such a preference imposed upon them to the detriment of local control of punishment and of the finances which paid for it. Attention is also drawn to how the course of events was shaped by the interaction of the act's main architects, William Eden and Sir William Blackstone, with both government and non-ministerial MPs such as Sir Charles Bunbury.

This article re-examines a crucial aspect of French history between 1789 and 1793, and one which remains controversial : the attitude of Louis XVI towards the Revolution. It does this by exploiting an important and unpublished source, the letters of the king's secret plenipotentiary to the European powers, the baron de Breteuil, to the foreign monarch most trusted by the French royal family, Gustavus III of Sweden. Since Louis XVI's precarious position in Paris from the October Days until his death prevented him from expressing his true feelings except very rarely, historians since have found it difficult to reach firm conclusions on his political views and motivation during the Revolution, and the result has often been partisan judgements from left and right. The issue has been further clouded by persistent claims for over a century that several of Louis's most important letters of this period are forgeries. While they do not resolve all these problems, the letters of Breteuil to Gustavus III, which are incontestably genuine, reveal Louis XVI's views on critical events between 1791 and 1792 as represented by the politician closest to his real policy, to the fellow-ruler in whom he had the most faith. The most important subjects covered are Breteuil's interpretation of Louis XVI's true attitude to the constitution of September 1791, his distrust of his brothers, the comtes de Provence and d'Artois, and the plan for an armed congress of the European powers to put pressure on revolutionary France. These letters, and Gustavus III's replies to them, are published at the end of the article in an appendix.

Since the 1960s, the politics of the period 1860 to 1906 have received much attention, particularly by historians of the Conservative party. On the whole, it has been argued that Conservative electoral success during this period was a ‘negative’ achievement. Through an examination of the election of 1895 this article questions this argument. It suggests that both the nature of the Unionists' appeal and the factors behind their performance in general elections in this period have to an extent been oversimplified since the pioneering quantitative work of James Cornford. A content analysis of Liberal and Unionist candidates' election addresses is presented in order to make sense of the issues of the campaign, full details of which can be found in the appendix to this article. The Liberal message is shown to be more coherent, and that of the Unionists more positive, than is usually assumed. Cornford's methodology is also challenged, and an alternative (and simpler) approach is suggested. It is argued that in 1895 there was in general no inverse correlation between Conservative vote and turnout, or between Conservative vote and changes to the electoral registers. And although party organization was very important to the Unionists' success there seems little evidence of any over-arching plan to keep both turnout and the number of registered electors down.

This article examines the early evolution of British policy, prior to the Second World War. The British government adopted an ‘open’ policy towards foreign direct investment (FDI), despite periodic fears that some foreign acquisitions of UK firms in key sectors might be detrimental to the national interest, and a few ad hoc attempts to deal with particular instances of this kind. During the 1930s, when the inflow of foreign firms accelerated following Britain's adoption of general tariff protection, the government developed a sophisticated admissions policy, based on an assessment of the likely net benefit of each applicant to the British economy. Its limited regulatory powers were used to maximize the potential of immigrant firms for technology transfer, enhanced competition, industrial diversification, and employment creation (particularly in the depressed regions), while protecting British industries suffering from excess capacity.

The aim of those drafting the Southern Manifesto of 1956 was to coerce wavering Southern politicians into supporting a united regional campaign of defiance of the Supreme Court's school desegregation ruling. The Manifesto largely succeeded. Most Southern congressmen, including leading moderates, felt they had no alternative but to succumb to what they perceived to be mass popular segregationist sentiment and sign the Manifesto. This paper examines the cases of those who refused to sign: what were the sources of their racial moderation, did they face electoral retribution, or did their careers suggest there was a political alternative to massive resistance? The evidence from Texas, Tennessee, Florida, and North Carolina highlights the diversity of political opinion among the non-signers – from New Deal liberal to right-wing Republican ideologue – and the disparate sources for their racial moderation – national political ambitions, party loyalty, experience in the Second World War, Cold War fears, religious belief, and an urban political base. Their fate suggests, at the very least, that outside the Deep South there was room for political manoeuvre, especially if state political leaders took a united moderate stance. Nevertheless, the cautious and gradualist stance of the moderates did not offer a convincing alternative to the massive resistance strategy so passionately advocated by the conservatives.

Recent writing on the Tudor century emphasizes the importance to the history of politics of the study of political processes. Tudor historians are, for the most part, less willing than hitherto to describe bureaucracies or institutions of government, and more concerned to present politics as something dynamic rather than static. Although their work remains rooted in the archives, Tudor specialists are increasingly receptive to the significance of (for example) political language, iconography, and literature. This article examines a number of recent contributions, in the context of post-war Tudor historiography. It accepts that the insights of other disciplines can enhance the study of sixteenth-century politics, and welcomes the intellectual and cultural turn in recent writing, but maintains that Tudor culture is not always being reconstructed with the sensitivity it needs.

Consumption studies have arguably transformed the study of early modern cultural history in the past three decades, with the championing of previously neglected sources, application of interdisciplinary approaches, and exploration of the mentalities of acquisition, ownership, and use. But does the accumulation of writing about consuming and consumption in this period amount to much more than the historical equivalent of window-shopping? It is argued here that greater attention to the consumers as much as the consumed, to the motivations for consuming rather than the act of consumption alone, offers a way out of the explanatory cul-de-sac reached by over-indulgence in the early modern ‘world of goods’.

L'argent du roi: les finances sous François Ier. By Philippe Hamon. Paris: Comité pour l'histoire économique et financière, Ministère de l'Economie, 1994. Pp. xliii+609. ISBN 2-11-087648-4. 249F.

The king's army: warfare, soldiers, and society during the wars of religion in France, 1562–1576. By James B. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xvi+349. ISBN 0-521-55003-3. £45.00.

One king, one faith: the parlement of Paris and the religious reformations of the sixteenth century. By Nancy Lyman Roelker. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996. Pp. xiii+543. ISBN 0-520-08626-0. £50.00.

A city in conflict: Troyes during the French wars of religion. By Penny Roberts. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. Pp. xi+228. ISBN 0-7190-4694-7. £40.00.

The birth of absolutism: a history of France, 1598–1661. By Yves-Marie Bercé, translated by Richard Rex. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press, 1996. Pp. viii+262. ISBN 0-333-62757-1. £15.50.

The French sixteenth century has always posed serious difficulties for historians. It was a time of rapid change and, in its later decades, of massive disorder, so that there are many large and complex issues to unravel. The need for close analysis as an antidote to over-hasty generalizations is obvious, yet on many issues the archives are frustratingly scanty or even non-existent. A group of recent books tackles these problems with considerable ingenuity and a fair degree of success, even if some of the gaps in the evidence inevitably defy the authors' best efforts.

Parish boundaries: the Catholic encounter with race in the twentieth-century urban north. By John T. McGreevy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Pp. vi+362. ISBN 0-226-55873-8. $27.50.

What parish are you from? A Chicago Irish community and race relations. By Eileen M. McMahon. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995. Pp. xii+226. ISBN 0-8131-1877-8. $32.95.

The Boston Irish: a political history. By Thomas H. O'Connor. London: Northeastern University Press, 1995. Pp. xixx+363. ISBN 1-55553-220-9. £23.50.

The New York Irish. Edited by Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Pp. xxii+743. ISBN 0-8018-5199-8. $45.00.

The public city: the political construction of urban life in San Francisco, 1850–1900. By Philip J. Ethington. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. xvi+464. ISBN 0-8018-5199-8. £40.00.

Civic wars: democracy and public life in the American city during the nineteenth century. By Mary P. Ryan. London: University of California Press, 1997. Pp. xii+376. ISBN 0-520-20441-7. £16.15.

Few events have had a greater impact on urban America than the Irish Catholic exodus, which eventually brought one third of the Irish to the United States. Irish Catholics were the first ethnic group to immigrate in large numbers to America's cities and to experience overt discrimination. Overcoming that discrimination, they emerged as the consummate political force in urban America. In the late nineteenth century, Irish politicians and their political machines controlled a majority of America's large cities, long before the election of John F. Kennedy as president brought the Irish political presence to the national stage. At once integrated into American culture and proud of their ethnic culture and identity, the Irish in America continue to have a clear cultural presence in both positive and negative ways, in many American cities. The Irish hold the best parades, but sometimes refuse to allow Irish homosexuals the right to parade in them. The Irish are proud of their neighbourhoods, sometimes to the point of physical violence.

For the first time in over two centuries, however, Irish immigration patterns have reversed. Over the last two years, 13,000 more Irish moved back to Ireland from America than went the other way. This watershed change provides a good opportunity to reconsider the history of the Irish in America's cities, as the authors of some recent publications demonstrate. This review will examine six current studies that illuminate the Irish urban experience in America. The authors of these histories document the role of the Irish and the Catholic church in urban racial disturbances in the twentieth century; they reconsider the importance of the Irish to urban political culture; and they explore the contested meanings of being Irish in urban America.