Manchester has long been a model for the class divisions characteristic of British Victorian cities, and this segregation has largely been attributed as a spatial phenomenon as informed by qualitative sources from the period. The digitization of historical source material, however, allows for quantitative assessments of residential differentiation. By analysing patterns of residential distribution using nineteenth-century, individual-level census data, it is revealed that early Victorian Manchester was characterized more by residential heterogeneity than segregation. In light of this finding, this article revisits the source base for early Victorian Manchester in order to reconcile the differences in the physical and social dimensions of segregation for a more accurate and holistic understanding of urban dynamics and the mechanisms of class formation. It explains this dissonance by exploring the city’s architectural, occupational, and cultural structures: while rich and poor lived cheek-by-jowl in the industrial city, temporal rhythms of employment, institutionalized cultures of class, and emerging modes of urban maintenance and discipline all produced practices which differentiated and isolated one class from another.

This article – arising from an ERC-funded project on the lived experiences of dictatorship – explores the development of and approaches to the history of everyday life under repressive political systems, presenting the historiographical, conceptual, and contextual points of contact, synergy, and divergence between historians working in and on Europe, Southern Africa, and Latin America. As a historiographical review article, this piece provides both a critical assessment of and novel intervention in these respective literatures, making the case for ‘decentring’ European histories and historiographies, to encourage greater engagement and collaboration between those working on different historical and geographical contexts.

George III was a family man, a modest eater, and a thoughtful ruler who wrote about the big questions of the day, from royal sovereignty to the best methods of agriculture to feed a modern nation. His writings provide a glimpse of his version of monarchy, which placed him at the head of a national family, where he embodied the habits of self-regulation and temperance in keeping with the sensibilities of late eighteenth-century manhood. This article brings together George’s meals and his essays, considering the histories of food, masculinity, and self-fashioning, to argue that George was a monarch who embodied a new form of masculinity, as marked by his agricultural interests and insistence on a modest diet. His eating habits, along with his intellectual interests and public persona, bring us to the intersection between the private man and the public monarch. Drawing on newly digitized data, alongside contemporary caricatures and descriptions, and George’s own writing, we argue that moderation was central to George’s creation of an image that appealed to the emerging British nation of the late eighteenth century; food was central to this image, highlighting both his masculine self-control and his ability to be useful to the nation.

Herbert Butterfield’s The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) is universally received as sceptical of ‘whig’ teleology in historical accounts and, therefore, of politically charged narratives of history. This view stands in need of a basic correction. Butterfield’s work targets teleological accounts which involve a determinate conception of progress such as would arm a partisan politics. He calls this the politics of the ‘general proposition’. Nevertheless, he does defend a conception of progress involving an indeterminate concept. The historian finds, intimated in the detail of the past, that progress is the fruit of interactions between opposing parties. The imperative for the statesman in the present, then, is to facilitate such interactions. In short, The Whig Interpretation of History is a positive work of political thought. Looked at this way, Butterfield’s later, controversial work, The Englishman & His History, does not appear to be in contradiction with the earlier book so much as a polemical expression of it. The two books together present what may be called Butterfield’s politics of historiography. Histories which present progress as a straight line, to be co-opted by one party, encourage precisely the political action which impedes progress. Butterfield, in short, is still a kind of ‘whig’.

Reflections on the legacy of ‘Jacobin egalitarianism’ in post-Thermidorian France can be seen as following one of three strands: conservative, communist, or democratic. By shedding light on the democratic trajectory, this article addresses the historiographical imbalance that has disproportionately focused on conservative and communist perspectives. This study thereby pursues a renewed understanding of the relationship between the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the evolution of political economy. Through an analysis of Étienne-Géry Lenglet’s treatise, De la propriété (1798), the contexts and content of democratic political economy during the revolutionary decade are identified. Lenglet’s politics formed an intervention in the debates during the Directory on the dynamics of property, morality, the franchise, and the principles of modern polities. His thought exemplifies a Condorcetian egalitarianism that grappled with the dilemmas posed by the rise of commerce and standing armies. This analysis of Lenglet’s work challenges the notion that the radicals of the French Revolution operated outside of Enlightenment political economy: De la propriété was deeply rooted in Enlightenment and revolutionary rhetoric. Lenglet’s politics emerges as a crucial component of diverse reform projects that contradicts reified depictions of Enlightenment political thought.

The debate between Hythlodaeus and an English lawyer before Cardinal Morton in Book One of Utopia (1516) contains many proposals for socio-economic reforms. These have typically been interpreted as innovative proposals to counteract the corruption of Christendom which surrounds them. However, when placed into their legislative context, it is apparent not only that these reforms echo closely many socio-economic reforms passed in England in the decades preceding Utopia, but that corollaries for almost all of them were passed when Morton, in whose presence the debate took place, was lord chancellor. Recognizing this forces a reassessment of this debate, showing Hythlodaeus’s flaws, and reframing the contribution of the English lawyer. This very reassessment, however, realigns the entire dialogue before Cardinal Morton, which it is possible to identify as a mirror to the wider text. It is a Utopia within Utopia, or, a mise en abyme. By closing examining the reflection, it appears that this provides a structural indication of how Utopia should be read.

In February 1744 in Paris, the Swedish physician Abraham Bäck (1713–95), better known as Carl Linnaeus’s best friend, dissected the cadaver of an unidentified sub-Saharan man. In contrast to the widespread exploitation of the enslaved dead in North America, cadavers of dark-skinned Africans remained rare in the anatomical theatres of eighteenth-century Europe. Scarcity not only increased their market value in medical circles interested in skin colour: in Europe, empirical anatomists often used these rare remains for building their medical authority. This article explores the rise of an empiricist social culture of racial anatomy in the European Enlightenment by following the case of Bäck, whose research on ‘black’ skin also provides a little-known counterpart to Linnaeus’s racial anthropology. Bäck’s case illustrates not only how European anatomists often wrote accounts of skin colour which best showcased their medical skills but also how the production of racial pseudoscience became increasingly driven by the authoritative rise of empiricism, the expansion of the slave trade, and the Enlightenment’s fascination with human differences.

In the 1950s and 1960s, changes in the international situation, such as decolonization in Asia, led some Australians to question the usefulness of keeping the ‘White Australia Policy’, the basis for the country’s immigration system since Federation in 1901. Some argued that Australia’s international reputation, especially with newly independent countries in Asia and Africa, could be harmed by the maintenance of this policy. Events such as the Sharpeville Massacre in apartheid South Africa in 1960 caused further introspection into Australia’s racialized system. However, as pushes to reform the policy grew, others used international events to resist reforms. Using speeches by politicians and documents produced by policymakers, this article will show how events, such as the Notting Hill riots in Britain, the Little Rock controversy in the United States, and the Sharpeville massacre, were used as warnings about Australia potentially introducing similar ‘racial problems’ if it allowed more non-white migration. This article argues that these concerns tapped into a transnational whiteness that shared anxieties about decolonization, civil rights and non-white immigration in the post-war period, bringing a racialized solidarity forged at the turn of the twentieth century into the Cold War era.

The following communication sets a previously unrecorded manuscript by John Locke in context. The manuscript comprises his remarks on a bill to create a ‘Flax and Hemp Company of Ireland’, laid before the Irish House of Commons in November 1695, which circulated in London in late 1697. Locke likely made his remarks for the lord chancellor, Sir John Somers, among whose papers they survive. The manuscript sheds new light on Locke’s practical involvement in post-revolutionary political economy, on his engagement with Ireland, and on his thought regarding corporations and corporate corruption.

Richard Simon has long presented an enigma for historians, as his status as a pathbreaking textual critic and the opposition his work engendered from contemporary ecclesiastical authorities has sat uncomfortably alongside his consistent advocacy of his Catholic credentials. This article approaches this problem via an analysis of two hitherto understudied parts of his scholarly corpus. It first elucidates Simon’s distinctive plan for a new polyglot Bible in the mid-1680s before shifting attention some fifteen years to consider his work in French vernacular biblical translation, bringing out how the confessionally inflected content of his work in that field contrasted with his earlier critical scholarship. By revealing how Simon negotiated the relationship between scholarship and religion during his working life, the article foregrounds the continued import of confessionalized erudition at the turn of the eighteenth century while also interrogating the limits of its explanatory power as a historical category.

This article makes two important contributions. Firstly, it provides valuable insights into the motivations of working-class migrants in the second half of the nineteenth century, adding a new dimension to a scholarship focused on studies of forced migration or middle-class empire building. Its analysis of a rich body of published and unpublished letters from former institutionalized children reveals the primacy of financial gain in the migration decision and shows that working-class Britons saw the world beyond the British Isles as a space of opportunity, where they could leverage their mobility in pursuit of profit. Secondly, by arguing that juvenile emigrants need to be viewed as a heterogeneous body where age and gender made a difference in terms of experience, the article provides an important new perspective on institutional migration that has implications for wider literatures on childhood and youth. The average age of the boys studied for this article was sixteen and the research shows that they were active participants in the emigration process, shaping their own futures through their diverse decisions. Recognizing this significantly undermines the modern discourses of blame and victimhood that dominate the historiography and encourages us to re-evaluate our approach to nineteenth-century juvenile migration.

Leviathan’s famous pronouncement that England had been ‘reduced to the Independency of the Primitive Christians’ has often been understood to signal support for the newly ascendant Cromwellian Independents in England. This article ventures an alternative reading of the passage by investigating the notion of ‘Independency’ with an eye to wider European political discourses. Scholars such as Francisco Suárez contended for the natural independence of temporal sovereigns while specifying the juridical rights and reach of imperial power. The fact that Christ and the Apostles had eschewed involvement in temporal affairs clarified this initial independency. This original state was especially important in French narratives aimed at securing autonomy against both empire and church. In light of this, Hobbes’s statement may be interpreted as endorsing a time-delimited notion of free conscience given England’s ruinous political state, but one looking forward to the unified rule of a sovereign with civil and ecclesiastical power.

In 1764, while discussing female authors one critic suggested that the views of ‘the liberal’ were normative. But what did it mean to be a ‘liberal’ at this time? This article examines the ‘liberal and enlightened’ patterns of thought popularized by reviewers who belonged to the network of friends and acquaintances of the founders of the Monthly Review, the dissenters Ralph Griffiths and William Rose. Opposing different forms of ‘tyranny’, or authoritarianism, critics promoted ‘liberal and rational’ political principles and a social morality comprising the values of open-mindedness, reason, toleration, and ‘equity’ or justice as fairness. Focusing in particular on issues relating to gender, this article shows how conceptions of the ‘liberal spirit’ informed accounts of women’s capabilities, of their ‘genius’ and rationality. By the 1780s, the language of ‘liberal sentiments’ had spread within print culture, appearing in the New Annual Register, founded by Andrew Kippis, a leading critic at the Monthly, and in the work of political and social theorists such as Major John Cartwright or James Mackintosh. Yet, defeating stereotypical notions of gender could be complicated even for men who aspired to a place within the elite of the ‘enlightened’ or ‘liberal and philosophical’.

A new, ground-up narrative of the Buddhist Mobilization of Huế in central Vietnam in the summer of 1963 highlights the voices of its participants – the ‘People of the Pagoda’. Drawing on local records and personal narratives, the article explores the process of how the ‘People of the Pagoda’ forged a collective identity from daily activism and protests for religious equality. Months of various nonviolent collective actions – in the form of demonstrations, hunger strikes, and self-immolations – developed a strong, broad community within the distinctive spaces of Buddhist temples. The article emphasizes the relevance of culture, morals, emotions and identity in the Buddhist Mobilization’s enduring impacts on personal awareness and community networks. In contrast to much top-down, politically-oriented, and Sài Gòn-centric scholarship on this event in Vietnam War historiography, this essay examines the mobilization as a social movement in its own right and seeks to restore Huế’s significant historical role as the birthplace of this movement.

This article provides a comparative discussion of the theories of imperialism developed by three prominent scholars – Paul Samuel Reinsch, Ukita Kazutami, and Liang Qichao – in the 1900s. Such a discussion offers a fresh understanding of imperialism in the East Asian context from three perspectives. First, by revealing inter-textual connections between the three figures’ writings, it sheds light on Japan’s mediating role in the formation of Chinese knowledge of imperialism in a transpacific exchange of ideas. Second, it examines how the theories of imperialism travelled in the unequal international spaces created by practices of imperialism. Last, it draws attention to the consequences of embracing the Western ideal of national empire in East Asia, highlighting the fact that some Japanese and Chinese elites resisted Western imperialism on the one hand, but, on the other, drew inspiration from the ideal of imperialism to formulate their own expansionist agendas.

Proposing ‘the littoral’ as a subject of historical enquiry, this article centres on British rule over the waters, isles, and shores in nineteenth-century colonial Hong Kong. It argues that similar and connected to its rule over urban space, the British government endeavoured to regulate the colony’s watery fringes out of racial and other concerns. Commensurate with the growth of shipping, colonial rulers demarcated particular littoral spaces as mirrors or even extensions of land spaces. In the late nineteenth century, an emerging hierarchy of delineated navigational, anchorage, and quarantine spaces was discernible in Hong Kong’s littorals. Despite their efforts to structure littoral space, British colonial authorities failed to direct its actual usage. Not only did stakeholders compete and negotiate over using Victoria Harbour, but also, many Chinese watercraft countered official control by venturing across administrative boundaries. More broadly, the case of Hong Kong suggests perspectives for addressing the complexity of the littoral history of colonial port cities in Asia. First is the examination of connections between different areas within littoral space. Second is the inseparability between littoral space and urban space in terms of government policies. Third is the contrast between colonial designs and actual negotiations regarding the use of littoral space.

This article explores the politics of pageantry in colonial Uganda. As activists looked toward independence, they engineered competing visions of national material culture. Creating political emblems raised complex questions about the moral and theological significance of party colours. Throughout Uganda’s colonial history, debates about flags reflected sectarian struggles between Protestant and Catholic communities that dated to the late nineteenth century. In imperial and Ugandan history writings, flags are often associated with the pageantry of conquest or eventual post-colonial state building. But we know very little about the internal debates that accompanied the invention of the state’s material culture. This article pushes us past a superficial association of flags with either colonial conquest or Cold War liberation and into the conceptual and religious worlds that undergirded the hoisting of flags. Arguments about flags propelled Ugandan politics throughout the twentieth century. By looking at the varied ways that activists imagined the materiality of post-colonial Uganda, we can develop new approaches to intellectual history writing, moving into highly contested visual terrains where patterns, theologies of colour, and struggles to standardize party and national flags animated political mobilization and dissent.

The artificial language of Esperanto would achieve remarkable success in early twentieth-century Europe. Its popularity there is not surprising: though designed as a universal language, Esperanto was essentially European in its grammar and lexicon. But this Europeanness – or, more precisely, this near-Europeanness – also spoke to communities living further afield. In India before the First World War, groups regarded as Europeanized by most Indians but as Indian by most Europeans found Esperanto a literal language with which to articulate their social location. As an ‘Esperantist’, there was no contradiction between being Indian and participating in European society, and to claim the label offered a shorthand that others (whatever their relationship to the movement) could readily grasp. This article considers these dynamics against the backdrop of a visit to India by the Irish Esperantist John Pollen, an event that sheds light on both the inner workings of the Indian movement and the importance that non-Indian Esperantists assigned to it. The popularity of Esperanto would eventually decline in India with the First World War, but until it did, the movement – indexical of Europe yet resonant in India – would promise a transnational community to which many in India felt they could aspire and belong.

The Elizabethan reign has lately emerged as a formative period for English ideas about the liberties of the subject and the ‘ancient constitution’ of the realm. Recent work has described the development of such ideas as having been driven by an organized campaign against the English ecclesiastical courts: a legal and intellectual effort that had emerged from the misgivings of certain ‘puritan’ lawyers about the powers claimed by new prerogative jurisdictions. The primary grievance of the campaign has been identified as having been the church courts’ use of the oath ex officio, and the campaign’s primary defensive tool has been identified as having been the twenty-ninth chapter of Magna Carta. But overlooked manuscripts reveal a more complex story. This article shows that the law of excommunication was as important to the campaign in question as Magna Carta. In addition, a re-examination of the life and work of James Morice, one of the principal lawyers responsible for the campaign, demonstrates that the law of excommunication deeply structured his understanding of the royal supremacy, and of the legal relationship between England’s secular and ecclesiastical polities – particularly as they had existed in the distant medieval past.

Studies of women religious during the early modern period have often focused on questions surrounding lack of choice, usually about whether they had been coerced to join a convent. This article argues that, in the case of the English convents formed in continental Europe after the Tridentine reforms, not only did most women opt to enter convents of their own free will, but that there was a further level of choice involved. Namely, women chose which convent they wished to enter, a decision process largely neglected by the existing historiography. It opens by considering the regulations the convents operated under as part of the Catholic Reformation, and argues that both the communities and individual women were involved in the decision process surrounding entry to convent life. The second section explores how women navigated any external influences, while the third section argues that spirituality was a key motivating factor for a woman choosing a community. In short, women were not just choosing to become nuns, but were exercising their own agency in deciding which convent to join. Committed candidates meant a strong community and, in the case of the English convents, it meant they could navigate the extra challenges of exile.