In spite of the current renaissance of interest and research in the history of Habsburg Spain, very little of significance has yet appeared in English on the post-Olivares period of Spanish government and policy – the period in which the Spanish monarchy declined from a position of European hegemony to that of a second-rate power, the virtually helpless prey of her continental and maritime adversaries. The nineteenth-century histories of Dunlop and Hume, which interspersed sections of court diaries with superficial, descriptive chronicles of foreign and military affairs, were not substantially improved upon by R. Trevor Davies' (admittedly posthumous) study of Spain in Decline. The more recent I studies by Professors Elliott, Lynch and Domínguez Ortiz tend to be somewhat exiguous on the years following the great crisis of 1640 (albeit to differing extents) whilst displaying a common freshness of approach and presentation. This is quite understandable, since the situation in Spanish historiography itself is not much better. The uniformly dismal, perhaps still humiliating, features of this period are a natural deterrent to study in contemporary Spain. Domínguez Ortiz and Valiente apart, researched monographs are non-existent, and it has been left to the Anglo-Saxons to venture, on a modest scale, into the uncharted territories of administrative and monetary history.

The emergence of a coherent narrative history of England, based upon the critical use of authorities, and written in a connected fashion rather than assembled from reproduced earlier materials, is a much slower process than such a simple statement or its requirements might suggest. The process begins in earnest in the late seventeenth century, after the historian ceases being a principal protagonist in the political pamphlet warfare of the time. The narrator must take account of advances in source criticism, and he must also cope, on the level of interpretation, with national myths that his forbears among the Tudor chroniclers and the seventeenth-century contenders had created. Miss Thompson has remarked that the main purpose of Tudor chroniclers, notably Hall and Holinshed, was to praise ‘the king's illustrious ancestors, reign by reign’.

The central place occupied by Russia in the calculations of British statesmen after the Seven Years War has long been realized. For ministers in search of a ‘system’ on the continent to set against Choiseul's threatening Système du Midi, alliance with Catherine II seemed to offer an obvious means of providing for Britain's future security. The quest for alliance with St Petersburg, indeed, formed the leitmotif of British foreign policy in the age of the American Revolution. Negotiations with Russia went on infinitely longer, and were pursued with considerably more vigour on the British side, than any comparable discussions for a continental alliance. Even before the treaties of peace were signed in 1763, Britain had made the first move in the direction of St Petersburg, and the negotiations thus initiated continued intermittently for a whole decade. Only in the late spring of 1773 did the British government finally and reluctantly concede that, without a subsidy (which London had long refused to countenance), no firm commitment could be hoped for from Russia.

There can be no doubt that those who joined the officers corps in the eighteenth century became members of an exclusive club with its own distinctive values. These values were imposed on all members of the corps and, as is the case with most exclusive organizations, only a very few individuals were confident or perverse enough to challenge the group standards. The officers corps had an honour code; a set of principles which was informally enforced to ensure that each member soon learned proper from improper behaviour. When there were violations of the code the subaltern officers would bring peer group sanctions to bear in the form of social and professional ostracism until the offender cleared his name by removing the blot on his honour.

The majority of men who held the post of first lord of the Admiralty in the middle nineteenth century were usually of mediocre standard, and in the 1840s, significantly or not, were generally ex-governor generals of India. Sir James Graham was an exception; he had a first class mind and only narrowly missed being prime minister. He was also never governor general, although he must have been offered the post more frequently than any other man of his time! Given the dangerous international situation at the beginning of Lord Aberdeen's ministry, and the importance of naval preparedness and planning, it was plain that an experienced man was needed to head the Admiralty. Sir James was the natural choice. He had, after all, been first lord before, from 1830 to 1834, and while there he had been responsible for radical changes in naval administration. It so happened that his reforms were not subjected to the stresses of a large-scale European war until after their originator had returned to the post of his youth, and it will be the main aim of this paper to study how the reformed Admiralty tackled some of the problems of major warfare, and the way in which Sir James interpreted his powers and duties.

The Armenian crisis of the middle 1890s is sometimes regarded as a matter which is far removed from the main current of history. No doubt many Armenians were killed; no doubt it was the occasion (though hardly the cause) of Lord Rosebery's resignation from the Liberal leadership; but was it really a matter of great importance to anyone except the Armenians and possibly the British Liberals? It will be argued here that the manner in which that crisis was handled throws some useful light on the diplomatic and political processes of the period. It provides a baleful precedent for the much greater sufferings of the Armenians in later years; for the Jews in Hitler's Europe; and for many 'minorities' down to our own time. A powerful argument could be advanced for the view that the failure of the Powers to intervene on behalf of the Armenians was an essential link in the chain of events which led to the First World War.

There seems to have existed in France, at least after 1830, a general belief in the enormous social and political potenntial of education. Socialists, even after the penetration of vulgar Marxism, regarded ignorance as the great obstacle to working-class emancipation; democrats of all shades believed that the authentic Republic would emerge when a secular state primary education system became established; while, for conservatives, to entrust popular education to the Church was the only hope of preventing radical social change or collapse. Education became, therefore, one of the central political issues of the Third Republic. Recent work on the history and civics textbooks used in schools has given some indication of the picture of their society and its history which French schoolchildren were presented with, and of the way in which this may have guided their future attitudes and reactions. It is always difficult to assess the influence and importance of such material in the formation of mentalités, but, in order to do so, it must be remembered that the school textbooks were not the only formers of popular attitudes in this sphere. Not only did state school and Catholic textbooks present rival views, albeit mainly to two distinct audiences, but the period from 1900 to 1940 saw a flourishing of popular history books addressed to adults. These were mainly of Right-wing inspiration and were directed against the academic orthodoxy of the Republican University. A central role was played in this enterprise of historiographical vulgarization by the nationalist and royalist Action Francaise movement, whose ideology was often explicitly or implicitly present in it. The aim of this paper is to analyse the view of the past presented by the Action Franchise historians, and to suggest that the function of their historiography was to project a particular conception of what society was and ought to be like.

On 26 April 1920 the Polish army launched a major offensive against Soviet Russia. The question of the French government's role in the unleashing of this attack has long been a matter of historical debate. P. S. Wandycz, whose work is the most recent detailed account of French eastern policy during the early twenties, attributes no major responsibility to the French for the outbreak of all-out war on Poland's eastern frontier. He states that the Quai d'Orsay was unenthusiastic about a Polish campaign and that the Poles had acted on their own initiative. N. Davies asserts that ‘Allied policy sought to discourage Poland from attacking Russia.’ ‘Without formally forbidding a Polish offensive,’ he writes, the Allies ‘emphasized that it “the offensive’ could not enjoy their support. On the other hand, Soviet and European Left-wing opinion has long condemned the Polish attack as a direct result of French influence. Vladimir Potemkin noted that Poland was incapable of waging a full-scale war with its own resources and that consequently Allied influence had to be decisive in determining Warsaw's attitude toward a continuation of the war.

The year 1934 was notable not only for the intense diplomatic activity throughout Europe that followed Hitler's coming to power but also for a spate of political assassinations. Among the victims were Austrian chancellor Dollfuss and the Rumanian politician Ion Duca, not to speak of Kirov and those purged in Russia in December. Perhaps the most notable of these acts of terror occurred in Marseille on 9 October when King Alexander of Yugoslavia and the French foreign minister, Louis Barthou, succumbed to the bullets of an assassin nicknamed Vlada the Chauffeur. The ensuing international crisis threw into sharp focus the evolving national interests and diplomatic styles of the European powers and serves as an illuminating case-study of a particular technique of conflict resolution.

Despite more than thirty-five years of scrutiny, the British policy of appeasement in the 1930s continues to be the subject of discussion and controversy. The search for explanations of Munich has even been intensified in recent years by the opening of the Cabinet papers. This essay does not pretend to make any contribution to the study of the ‘causes’ of Munich - the motives and determinants of British policy - or to decide the issue between the ‘guilty men’ and the ‘terrible times’ schools of explanation. The ensuing international crisis threw into sharp focus the evolving national interests and diplomatic styles of the European powers and serves as an illuminating case-study of a particular technique of conflict resolution.