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.

The ability to control international flows of information constitutes one of the core elements of the soft power of any modern state aspiring to exercise some level of regional or global hegemony. This phenomenon has been previously examined by those who study long-distance communications mainly in the context of the nineteenth-century telegraph or the twentieth-century broadcast. However, inquiries focusing on the analogous historical role performed by the postal service during the early modern era are much more scarce. Building upon this premise, this study examines the strategic advantages gained by the Republic of Venice through its control of the mail exchange between Europe and the Middle East – a de facto postal monopoly established during the sixteenth century. Venice deliberately subsidized this service in order to prevent the rise of potential competition. Despite the substantial cost, this was seen as an effective investment through which the republic gained a set of tangible strategic advantages. In particular, it helped to extend Venice’s relevance on the European political scene long past the point when its traditional political, economic, and naval–military power was already fading away.

The merchant and art agent Philipp Hainhofer (1578–1647) is best known for his extraordinary art cabinets. Collaborating closely with neighbouring Augsburg artisans, Hainhofer worked to compile, collate, and market these visually and materially astounding collections to a range of elite patrons. His first commission, the Pomeranian Cabinet, was for Duke Philipp of Pomerania-Stettin in 1610, and took around seven years to complete. This article adopts a body-centred approach, arguing that in doing so, new light is shed on the ways period actors enacted their relationships with materials, objects, and other bodies. It uncovers the process through which the body of the art-lover was constructed, convening with those engaged in a shared material community through the lens of health and bodily entanglements. Hainhofer, as a merchant, diplomat, and secret agent, occupied a dubious position. Through the staging of the shared, art-loving body, he was able to create and sustain friendships, while simultaneously raising the status of the merchant through his material identification with these practices.

Anthony Kitchin, the bishop of Llandaff between 1545 and 1563, is traditionally seen as a self-serving careerist, an unprincipled hypocrite, and a pastoral failure. He was one of only two Marian Catholic bishops to serve under Elizabeth I, and Eamon Duffy memorably jests that he ‘would doubtless have become a Hindu if required, providing he was allowed to hold on to the see of Llandaff’. But re-evaluating Kitchin’s career uncovers a man with a consistent stance that was not unusual amongst his peers, and reveals that the Elizabethan government retained serious hopes of bringing numerous Marian bishops, not just Kitchin, into conformity. Still more striking, while Kitchin has been reviled as a hypocrite for swearing the 1559 oath of supremacy, there is persuasive evidence that he did not in fact swear that oath, keeping his see only through a contingent and awkward compromise with the Elizabethan state, and that the details of this compromise were conveniently forgotten, perhaps even deliberately suppressed. Re-evaluating Kitchin significantly advances our understanding of the period by contributing to the extensive and developing historiography on Catholic conscience and loyalty to the crown, helping problematize binary distinctions between zealous Catholic resistance and craven conformity.

The three decades spanning the 1930s, '40s, and '50s witnessed the birth of the modern global state system, characterized by a protracted and tortuous transition from a world of empires to a world of nation-states. The demise of Nazi, British, and Japanese empires emancipated millions of people across the world. However, as old empires dissolved, new post-imperial states continued older colonial-origin forms of ethno-religious discrimination and ruling-class dominance, or invented novel hierarchies. Hence, this epoch was marked by catastrophic outbursts of racial violence, sectarian war, and genocide. If majoritarian nation-states were the privileged offspring of this transformation, then refugees were the unwanted issue. The national citizen and the refugee were co-created. Against their forced displacement and subalternization, refugees re-politicized their selves. We define this as ‘the refugee political’: refugees constructing themselves as political beings and building wide-ranging alliances – with churches, politicians, and entrepreneurs; with peasants, industrial workers, and feminists. They became ‘subaltern internationalists’, linking the Dachen Islands to the United States, and maritime Southeast Asia to India; connecting central European Jews to Australian women, or impoverished Indians to Soviet and Chinese communists. They created new forms of ‘refugee polis’ – political communities which were simultaneously local and daringly transnational.

This article aims to further Noel Malcolm’s discussion on Thomas Hobbes’s involvement in the affairs of the Virginia Company and to add new perspectives on the subject. For instance, at the time Hobbes joined, William Cavendish was a prominent director and the head of the Bermuda subsidiary; numerous clues suggest that Hobbes attended more courts than the number proposed by Malcolm; moreover, Hobbes was commissioned to solve significant problems within both companies. Examining Hobbes’s views on monopolies suggests that his political work bears the traces of the experience he accumulated during the 1620s, and that ignoring what he observed leads to misreading what he wrote.

Forced displacement brings with it the loss of property, belonging, and identity. Objects encode the nexus between citizenship, property, and sense of belonging/emotional attachment. The article explores the connection between citizenship and property and thereby highlights the agency of victims and their refugee’s polis. This case-study focuses on Jewish Austrian citizens who fled from Austria to Shanghai during the Nazi occupation era, expelled by the Nuremberg racial laws. During this racial persecution, they lost their citizenship and subsequently all their assets, with most of their belongings stored at the port of Trieste. Surprisingly, even after the end of the Second World War and Nazi occupation, it proved very difficult for Jews to regain their citizenship and property, for reasons highlighted in this article. The post-war nation-state could not deliver justice to actors whose economic, social, and cultural lives had been shaped through forced migration. Following scandals like the ‘Woman in Gold’ dispute concerning the return of a painting by Klimt in 2006, legal transformation in the fields of monetary compensation and citizenship laws was only brought about by resolutely transnational political-legal activism.

This article explores how Protestants defended the co-existence of multiple translations of the Bible into English in Elizabethan England. The matter of biblical plurality is considered through the prism of the debates surrounding bible translation which occurred throughout the 1580s between the Catholic translator of the Bible into English, Gregory Martin (c. 1542–1582), and the English Protestant polemicist William Fulke (1537/8–1589). It is contended that this debate, which has tended to be cast as a storm in a teacup, reveals how Protestants responded, innovatively, to the publication of the Catholic English New Testament. Attention is paid to how Martin attacked the existence of the many different Protestant English bible translations in circulation and, reciprocally, how Fulke defended them. This study of the Martin and Fulke debate thereby unsettles some long-standing assumptions about the combative relationship between different versions of the English Bible and it points, instead, to ways in which contemporaries might have seen the plurality of translations as spiritually and polemically advantageous. Fulke's arguments help us to comprehend how, prior to early seventeenth-century attempts to restrict the existence of multiple English bibles, some Elizabethans responded to, and even defended, the plurality of English bible translations which had come to exist.

In eighteenth-century south-western Europe, actors involved in local conflicts reshaped both their views of corrupt behaviours and their political practices. While these historical phenomena occurred simultaneously, their relationship is far more complex than a straightforward cause-and-effect dynamic. Through four local case-studies, this article examines the multiple connections between changing perceptions of corrupt practices and political reform. New evaluations of abuses and frauds spurred reforms in some cases; in others, corruption was redefined once the reforms had been implemented, to justify those reforms (or their failure, if they did not succeed). Some case-studies show that there was no link between the two processes, while others reveal that the logics of the political changes prevented tackling practices which had started to be seen as corrupt. The article demonstrates that there was a transformation in the evaluation of certain practices that began to be classified as corrupt, and establishes links between these changes and the reforms implemented from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. Additionally, by placing south-western European regions within a broader framework, it challenges deeply rooted assumptions about the backwardness of these polities and their former colonies as a consequence of failed transitions to modern notions of corruption.

Throughout the early modern period, the Dutch States General, as if it were a natural person, frequently stood godfather over foreign children. Based on innovative archival research, this article investigates this unknown phenomenon as ‘corporate godparenthood’ and argues that it was an important tool of republican diplomacy in the Protestant society of princes, particularly in the Holy Roman Empire. Corporate godfatherhood allowed the Dutch Republic to partake, and assert its presence, in familial princely spheres to which it did not otherwise have access. The cultural practices of baptism, including the right of the godparents to name a child and baptismal gift-giving, allowed the States to form lasting kinship relations of mutual obligation in an economy of affection. Corporate godfatherhood had important and long-lasting effects: many of the dynasties with whom the States entered into a kinship relation remained allies for several generations, and supplied the States’ army with troops and officers, while the States assumed the role of benefactor, protector, educator, executor, or legal guardian of various of its princely godchildren.

Even as emperor, Napoleon was concerned with the émigrés. Although his general amnesty for the émigrés, which was promulgated on 26 April 1802, permitted most of the émigrés still inscribed on the ‘general list’ to return to France, it also excluded those belonging to six compromised categories. The number of these exceptions was not to exceed 1,000, the decree stipulating that the first 500 should be named within four months. As it turns out, it actually took the Ministry of Police more than two years to prepare a draft list of exceptions, which ran to more than 800 names. But it was not until 1807 that the first official list of émigrés (la première liste de maintenue) was finally decreed. Surprisingly, that list contained only 171 names. A second list released in 1810 added only 29 more. Examining these much-reduced lists, which have been almost entirely ignored, throws useful light on Napoleon’s continuing worries about the émigrés after 1804. For even then, he saw the Bourbons and the last émigrés as his personal enemies, threats to the security of the Empire, and possibly even reminders of what he saw as his fragile political legitimacy.

This article offers the first comprehensive history of Anglo-American married couples who co-published together, c. 1870–1939. It departs from the tendency to solely focus on the detrimental impact of marriage on women’s professional lives and the framing of middle-class women as simply either marrying or working as ‘spinsters’ before the Great War. It instead centres couples who together carved out enviable new positions, arguing these endeavours should be recognized as a growing socio-cultural phenomenon of this era. Moreover, it unpacks the significance of the prominent public discourse circulated to readers across the English-speaking world about such relationships. The most ‘popular’ partnerships were celebrated as simultaneously ‘exceptional’ collaborators and ‘ordinary’ married couples. Their dual-working lifestyles and intellectual compatibility was held up as holding the key to unlocking greater marital happiness. However, invested in carving out their roles in a deeply hierarchical, capitalist world, ‘popular’ couples often remade and propagated regressive ideas about gender, class, and racialized difference. Still, the article contends that the paradoxes in this discourse facilitated the creation of an imaginative space where readers could explore and self-actualize new perspectives about the ways they, and those around them, might partake in work cultures and intimate relationships in twentieth-century society.

This article contributes to a recent shift in the study of early modern political thought, moving away from a state-centric view of the period towards an interest in the political significance of a range of other communities. More specifically, I argue that debates about the scope of one key concept, that of societas, resulted in different visions of the relationships between a variety of human associations. To demonstrate this, I reconstruct Johannes Althusius’s theory of societas and compare it to those of several contemporaries, ranging from Renaissance Ciceronianism to Jean Bodin and Hugo Grotius. I show that Althusius provided an innovative juridical interpretation of societas, which he used to ground a conception of politics according to which all human associations, from the family to the corporation to the state, are political. This complements traditional theological interpretations of his thought, which alone cannot fully account for its distinctiveness. Althusius’s conception of politics enabled him to chart an original middle way between two options available at the time: on the one hand, the isolation of politics from social and religious life; on the other, its subordination to or full identification with other kinds of community.

This article addresses the process of decolonization carried out by wartime Japanese occupation authorities, exemplifying how it played out on the ground in 1940s China with a focus on the ‘uprooted elite’ – that is, the former Western colonists of the treaty ports. After the outbreak of hostilities in December 1941, these civilians were haphazardly categorized as ‘enemy nationals’ and subjected to enemy alien regulations. This culminated in a far-reaching general internment policy from early 1943 until mid- to late 1945, when a bittersweet Allied liberation shut Japan’s ‘Civil Assembly Centres’ down. Despite Western imperialists’ desires to resurrect racial privilege and recapture a modicum of their colonial possessions, the process of ethno-political and socio-economic relegation and replacement initiated loosely under the political schema of Imperial Japan’s ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ proved to be largely irreversible as post-imperial domestic regimes advanced nationalization agendas. The uprooted elite were not merely passive objects enduring racial upheaval, removal, and ‘repatriation’. They navigated a complex and changing reality, exercising what rights they could in order to try to improve their lot. They benefited from humanitarian aid, administered by neutral Swedish and Swiss consular networks and the International Committee of the Red Cross operating on a global scale.

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.

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’.

Historians have increasingly stressed the impact of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars on Britain and Ireland. Less attention, however, has been paid to the legacies of martial mobilization after 1815. Drawing on hitherto unused press and archival sources, this article assesses the implications of wartime military expansion for the music profession, and musical culture more generally, in the decades after Waterloo. It demonstrates that men and boys who honed their instrumental skills in uniform embarked on a variety of civilian musical careers, becoming instructors, wind performers, composers, and even opera singers. The article traces the post-war circulation of regimental instruments and reveals that a multitude of militia and volunteer bands remained active long after demobilization. The wartime proliferation of military bands, moreover, encouraged the subsequent spread of quasi-martial wind ensembles in wider society. Finally, the article proves that brass bands were first introduced to Britain and Ireland in a regimental guise. The influence of the military on musical culture after 1815, in short, was palpable and often profound, and manifested itself in numerous ways and settings.

Are refugee ‘return’ and ‘repatriation’ the same thing? This article investigates the mid-century emergence of these two key concepts in the context of the entangled histories of post-1945 displacement and resettlement in Palestine/Israel, which has long had the dubious distinction of serving as a central site of international experimentation vis-à-vis modern questions surrounding mass expulsion and the possibilities of return. Despite the deeply interwoven nature of Palestinian and Jewish displacement, scholars have generally accepted these histories as distinct and segregated national memories. Such accounts actively ignore a crucial set of actors in the making of these forced migrations and their aftermaths: the ‘international community’, made up mainly of the victorious Allied powers, who constructed the framework within which such nationally bounded interpretations could be perpetuated and sustained. This article therefore aims to bring the international dimension to the forefront and to combine it with the history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) to examine how the concepts of ‘return’ and ‘repatriation’ evolved – and diverged – in the aftermath of the Second World War, in the context of an emerging modern international refugee regime designed primarily to serve superpower interests.

After Woodrow Wilson’s speech to Congress in February 1918, ‘self-determination’ was expected to be a guiding concept for a post-imperial order once the Great War had ended. Yet when the Covenant of the League of Nations was negotiated at the Paris Peace Conference, the phrase was removed. Why and by whom? The existing literature offers little answer. This article argues that Wilson fought for inclusion of both the phrase ‘self-determination’ and the substance of it but was convinced to remove both by his own advisers and members of the British delegation. These men had an agenda at variance with Wilson’s, one focused on solidifying wartime transatlantic co-operation into a post-war governance model that would strengthen the British imperial position and bring the US into support of it. That agenda could not accommodate Wilsonian self-determination. Its resulting disappearance effectively reversed the post-imperial sense of wartime statements on self-determination made by Wilson and David Lloyd George. Anti-colonial movements, as the Paris negotiators knew, had taken inspiration from those promises. Their hopes for an organized dismantling of the imperial order were disappointed. Only after four decades of political violence would the pre-war order be replaced by one that better resembled Wilson’s abandoned vision.

This article assesses the changes in humanitarianism by locally stationed British government officials after the Balkan Wars and after the First World War. Studies have examined British humanitarian goals in the Ottoman Empire in relation to the First World War, but lacking is an assessment of efforts from locally stationed British officials, with a particular absence of research regarding the Balkan Wars. We find that while British humanitarianism was expanded after the First World War, the framework for those changes was established during the Balkan Wars. Comparing evolving humanitarianism during these time periods is best seen via changes in the range of intervention strategies to create ‘good government’, to prevent and stop atrocities, and to care for refugees. Unlike the British relationship with the Ottoman government during the Balkan Wars, Britain’s humanitarian stance in 1918 and 1919 was matched by a stronger grasp on power in Constantinople and over the Ottoman Porte. However, as the political, social, financial, and military demands of the post-war landscape undermined Constantinople’s power, so too was British humanitarianism undermined.