Two of the most basic functions of any government are the maintenance of order and defence against rebellion or invasion. In the England of Charles II these functions, one police, the other military, were performed by the small standing army and the militia. James II enlarged the army and so was able to use it to maintain order to a greater extent than Charles had done. At the same time he deliberately neglected the militia (except in London) and made sweeping and highly unpopular changes among the lords lieutenant and deputy lieutenants who commanded it. As a result, when William of Orange invaded late in 1688 and James tried to raise the militia, he found it both disorganized and disaffected. Many lieutenancies failed to perform the auxiliary military functions which James expected, and some sections of the militia joined, or were raised by, insurgents against the king. However, the police function of the militia, unlike the military function, did not fail; both properly-appointed lieutenants and insurgents used the forces at their disposal to maintain order, having no desire to encourage or condone violence and looting.

During the generation before the French Revolution, die Atlantic colonial powers - Britain, France, Spain - endeavoured in various ways to assert metropolitan control of trade and expansion in the colonies. The revolt of Britain's American colonies was the most spectacular failure of such policies, but it did not deter eidier London or Versailles after the peace of 1783 from continuing to seek a more active supervision of their colonial outposts. Among symptoms of this activity were the energetic policies of die French ministry of marine under Castries, and the creation of the Board of Control for India and the renovated Board of Trade under Pitt

Violence is the means of expression of men who lack any other, and is especially useful to the historian of an otherwise inarticulate working class, starving on die scraps which middle-class sources leave him. Everyman is anonymous, but becomes memorable in rebellion; and in die many memorable rebellions of nineteenth-century Europe, that self-proclaimed ‘age of revolution’, historians have rejoiced that trie poor had found voice in violence.

In an article published in this journal several years ago Professor Vincent advanced the view that the Tories' triumph in Lancashire in 1868, when they won 22 out of 33 seats as against 12 out of 27 in 1865, was attributable less to the new franchise than to other changes in electoral arrangements, namely, boundary alterations and the creation of new seats.

‘It is not easy to describe the mental life of a man who is neither expansive nor introspective’. Thus wrote T. P. O'Connor, one of Parnell's earliest biographers. Historians have never ceased to echo his lament, and however much they may have differed in their interpretation of Parnell, they have generally agreed that, while no Irish leader of the nineteenth century has been so intensively studied, none remains so enigmatic and inaccessible.

Though both Russia and France appreciated the value of an alliance between the two countries, their predominant motives for concluding the Alliance were quite dissimilar. France seems to have been motivated mainly by fear of Germany. Her need for a strong military and political counterweight to Germany led her naturally to contemplate allying herself with Russia. Russia was primarily interested in obtaining investment capital to finance industrial development. Owing to a change of German policy in the late 1880s she was obliged to seek financial aid outside Berlin, hitherto her chief source of funds. France was apparently willing to lend Russia money in exchange for military and political support, which the Russians were not averse to providing. Hence the Alliance of 1891 was intended to be of benefit to both parties.

Historians are only just beginning to take the study of what Georges Sorel called ‘la révolution dreyfusienne’ beyond the courtroom and the newspaper, and thus, despite the volume of literature devoted to ‘the Affair’, many of its main features as a socio-historical phenomenon have remained shrouded in the clouds of metaphysical drama. A prime example of diis conspiracy of silence is provided by die antisemitic riots of 1898. The historian Jules Isaac, himself the son of a Jewish army officer like Dreyfus, had reason to remember that year when, he recollected in old age,’ …la France semblait revenue au temps des guerres de religion; la possibilité d'une nouvelle Saint-Barthélémy - contre les Juifs et Protestants, bon gré mal gre associés dans la tourmente - n'était pas exclue’. However, if one turns to general histories of die period and of ‘ die Affair’, one finds litde or no mention of what was the main popular movement of the time in diis direction, indeed die high-point of active popular involvement, in the whole Dreyfus Affair: die riots of January and February 1898. From die administrative and police reports it is possible to redress die balance, and to establish how serious and how widespread diese riots really were, and to place diem in die wider perspective, not only of French antisemitism, but also of popular emeutes in general in nineteendi-century France. First it will be necessary to analyse die riots diemselves in some detail

There has been no full study of the Mond-Turner talks and the subsequent conferences between the Trades Union Congress, die National Confederation of Employers’ Organizations (NCEO) and die Federation of British Industries (FBI). This is largely because until recendy die relevant archives and paper collections have not been open for research. From the official government papers, the archives of the Confederation of British Industries and some TUC material, it is now possible for die first time to present a detailed study of diis series of talks, important as a major attempt at industrial co-operation at national level.

Readers in die Foreign Office archive for the 1930s will not find many documents longer dian C14471/42/18 of 1938, which fills the major part of die volume into which it has been bound. In line widi British official practice this ‘document’ actually consists of a collection of papers, in this case nine, having a common occasion and a common subject. Bearing die title ‘Possible future course of British policy’, it is at least as interesting as it is long.