Spying on Ireland: British Intelligence and Irish Neutrality during the Second World War – By Eunan O'Halpin

Reviews and Short Notices

Generalhist_476 89..141

Historical Judgement. By Jonathan Gorman. Acumen. 2007. xi + 258pp. £16.99.Jonathan Gorman attempts ‘to provide an understanding of historiography

for those who are puzzled by it’ (p. 3); and he aims to do that, not by describingor prescribing from some external philosophical standpoint, but rather by recov-ering historians’ self-understanding of their own discipline – that is, their under-standing of the rules by which they actually operate in accordance with aprofessional consensus. He hopes thereby to keep historians themselves onside:well aware of their frequent reluctance to attend to ‘theory’, he actually enliststhem in his enterprise, making them his primary sources in what becomes anhistorical as well as philosophical enquiry. For in a discipline ‘shot through withchoices’ (pp. 7, 65, 135), it is, he believes, only by looking back with hindsightthat we can see any possible alternatives by which earlier historians might havebeen confronted, and examine the presuppositions by which they were at thetime (however unconsciously) constrained.

One problem with this approach is, of course, immediately apparent: histo-rians are not renowned for their self-conscious theoretical appraisals of theirown practices; so despite appeals to examples from Herodotus to RichardEvans, there is much resort to brief pronouncements and ‘secondary’ (oftendated) interpretations. The citation of Chairman Mao and his Little Red Book of1966 as a theorizing historian in relation to ethics exemplifies this problem.Another is that, as we approach nearer to our own time, there seems a decreasingchance of finding a homogeneous, consensual profession. ‘History is what his-torians count it to be’, we read (p. 181); but that takes no account of theproliferation of histories and even methodologies that have lately been emerging,so giving greater choice in regard to history’s potential.

Gorman’s own position is pragmatic: we need to share a ‘reality’ in order totalk meaningfully about the past and provide truthful accounts of that past; weneed to be agreed about these things and abide by the ‘consensus’, for it is onlythus that we can continue to make use of such terms as ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ –terms that have become so problematic under postmodernist scrutiny. But weseem by implication to be stuck in a present that not only in these respectsresembles the past but also is destined to be retained or replicated in the future.Gorman repeatedly emphasizes the centrality of choice in historiography, but

© 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing.Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,Malden, MA 02148, USA.

consistently closes down opportunities for exercising such choice. In a seeminglystatic situation, he sees ‘human nature’ as essentially unchanging, which is whyhistoriographical questions have not changed since Herodotus. His conclusionssupport rather than challenge mainstream historical practice, and his book,however meticulously argued (which it is) and humane in its intentions, isultimately lacking in the inspiration for change that currently seems so needfulfor the sake of the future.

BEVERLEY SOUTHGATEUniversity of Hertfordshire

What is Medieval History? By John H. Arnold. Polity. 2008. xiv + 155pp. £13.99.When we speak of ‘medieval history’, what are we talking about? John

Arnold’s slim volume sets out to consider the question. Medieval history is, ofcourse, more than the history (however we understand that word) of the millen-nium beginning in 500 or so. As an academic subject, it was born in the nine-teenth century, when it encouraged admiration of Germany’s imperial past andinterest in the growth of constitutionalism in Britain, both seen as having theirroots in the middle ages. The great series of chronicles and documents containedin volumes of the ‘Monumenta Germaniae Historica’ and the ‘Rolls Series’ wereproducts of that development. Since then (Arnold is rightly more interested inwhat medieval history has become) the subject has benefited from many devel-opments, both social and intellectual, in the wider world. With the chronologicalbases of the history of different countries now established, the subject has turnedto themes, political, certainly, but cultural as well. The old-fashioned frontiershave to a large extent been broken down, mainly because the new disciplines,such as anthropology, statistics and archaeology, have influenced broader devel-opments, not least in the way their methods and findings have encouraged thoseholding the purse strings to fund large-scale projects incorporating their tech-niques and methodologies. The result of these developments has been to inspiremedieval historians to look more widely, both physically and intellectually, andto follow the lead of anthropologists in talking to those tilling other fields, thusencouraging themselves to look at generalities rather than at specificities, areflection of the maturity which the subject has now shown itself capable ofachieving.

It is from this that the author’s most important conclusion is developed. Moreso than in most branches of historical study, ‘medieval history is an internationalconversation’. What does this colourful phrase mean? By the early twenty-firstcentury the subject thrives because it has become increasingly international andinterdisciplinary, a branch of study which thrives more than most on activecooperation between students of a wide variety of sources and the expert users ofthe latest research techniques. Together, they are capable of producing a pictureof the medieval past which only a few generations ago would have appearedimpossible to visualize, let alone to create. For the medievalist of whateverdiscipline, contact and cooperation between practitioners of its diverse branchesis crucial to the future of the subject; hence the importance to him/her of themulti-disciplinary conference, such as those held annually at Leeds and Kalama-zoo. As Arnold argues in this very readable little book, the subject/period is one ofvitality and movement. Like many of us, he appears optimistic about its future.

CHRISTOPHER ALLMANDUniversity of Liverpool

90 REVIEWS AND SHORT NOTICES

© 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2010 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing.

What is Global History? By Pamela Kyle Crossley. Polity. 2008. vi + 139pp.£12.99.

This is a short book on a big subject. The bibliography in itself gives anindication of the reading which has to be undertaken in order to get to grips withthe question posed. It is evident that the author cannot review in depth all of theissues which the listed titles pose. She admits that her introduction must omitninety-nine items out of a hundred. Further, for want of space, comparativehistorians, cultural historians and international historians have all beenneglected, though their work is conceded to be related to global history. Apolo-gies for other omissions proliferate. Very many interesting and important schol-ars have necessarily been left out. ‘Global history’ is still ‘an emerging enterprise’and as such embraces very different sets of assumptions and questions. Practi-tioners frequently have to spend a great deal of time talking about method,concept and technique. What the author has done is lump theories and methodsunder very general categories and to deal with them concisely in separate chap-ters. ‘Divergence’ consists of a narrative of things diversifying over time andspace from a single origin. ‘Contagion’ identifies things crossing boundaries andchanging their dynamics in the process. ‘Systems’ deals with interacting struc-tures which change each other at the same time. Authors and theories – amongstthem well-known names like McNeill and Wallerstein – are considered withinthis framework. It is admitted that compressing works in this way is contentious.Indeed, the author admits that if she had started on her task of compartmental-ization a year later she might well have come up with a different structure.Inevitably, too, the summary of the views of ‘global historians’ must be veryconcise. How many ‘worlds’ within ‘the world’ are there? How do we balancetime and space? How do we identify, if we can, a civilization? When did the globebecome truly globalized? The final chapter does try to tell us ‘what globalhistory’ is but cannot do so in a conclusive way. Global historians, however, doseek to study beyond the ‘distortions’ of the last few centuries and concernthemselves with the deep forces shaping human fortunes over the entire past, andinto the future. It is evident, from what has already been said, however, that this‘introduction’ cannot get to grips with answers to such questions in any com-prehensive way. A short review of an introduction cannot even begin to do so. Itis, nevertheless, a useful volume with which to introduce students to theories andparticular authors as they come to make their own assessment of ‘deep forces’.

KEITH ROBBINSUniversity of Wales, Lampeter

The Curse of History. By Jeremy Black. Social Affairs Unit. 2008. xvi + 234pp.£10.00.

This is a book about the political uses to which history has been put in therecent past. Jeremy Black concentrates on the use of ‘history as grievance’ andsets out to demonstrate that using the past in this way is deeply damaging. Thebook ranges across the globe, discussing events as distant as the ways in whichthe post-communist states of eastern Europe have tried to deal with their fortyyears as Soviet satellites and the place of aboriginal peoples in contemporaryAustralian society. Black shows how the experience of the past has been usedconsistently to assign guilt for phenomena such as slavery and the dictatorshipsof the twentieth century, arguing that the projection of past grievances into the

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present serves only to fracture societies and to turn history into a curse. As Blackmakes plain, he argues from a conservative philosophical stance and the shadowof Edmund Burke, with his emphasis on the need for past and present to bebound together by trust, hangs over his attack on the way in which history isused – implicitly by the left – in ways that destroy ideas of community andfreedom. In some ways, Black’s book is a useful corrective to much of thesuperficial discussion of the relationship between past and present that helps toaccount for the way in which ancient grievances are resurrected and injected intocontemporary political and social discourse. But, for all its emphasis on the needfor the present to be built on a clear understanding of the past, Black sometimesfails to recognize the real historical experience of people who have endured greatprivation and who cannot simply forget their pasts and look forward to thefuture uncritically. He suggests that, since slavery became illegal in Britain 200years ago, it is now time to ‘get over the grievance’, but this lacks a sense of thereal historical impact of slavery on black people and does not make the connec-tion between the long history of discrimination on the grounds of race andslavery itself. Slavery had become a symbol for wider issues that still possess animmense social resonance. Reliance on the past and the appreciation of thesignificance of the history of human experience is something that all professionalhistorians should welcome. As Black points out, Nietzsche preached the virtue of‘forgetting’, but such erasure of the past can lead us to a one-dimensional viewof the present. Black argues that the complexity and ambiguity of the pastshould be reflected in the way in which history is used in the present, but wecannot dictate how history is represented. Using past grievances to buttresscontemporary political or social demands is simply one of the diverse ways inwhich history can be utilized: it can both add to our perception of the past and,as Black’s trenchantly argued book shows, provoke deep controversy.

PETER WALDRONUniversity of East Anglia

Writing Contemporary History. Edited by Robert Gildea and Anne Simonin.Hodder Education. 2008. xxix + 254pp. £16.99.

The title of this book may mislead potential readers, inasmuch as ‘contem-porary’ is to be understood here as starting with the French Revolution, and‘history’ implies a variety of approaches to the past, so that we have chapters onsocial, economic, cultural, gender, and colonial histories, as well as discussionsof literature, political change and violence, and the ‘tyranny of the present’. Thevolume, which is an addition to a series devoted to linking theory with practice,derives from a conference in 2006; and contributors are young scholars, half ofthem French, half British and American.

After a succinct editorial Introduction, each chapter consists of contributionsfrom two authors who address a specific question. The first four chapters areconcerned with the ‘sub-disciplines’ of social, economic, cultural, and genderhistory; and each starts with a helpful historiographical survey. So Chris Waterspresents a clear outline of developments in social history during the last half ofthe twentieth century, noting its heyday in the 1970s and its response to subse-quent challenges. From these has emerged a rethought subject seemingly moreakin to cultural history; and such erosion of traditional boundaries, the authorargues, may be expected to continue in the future. Economic history similarly,



after its heyday from 1945 to 1975 and subsequent alienation through its obses-sion with cliometrics, is seen by Patricia Clavin as ready for re-convergence withthe mainstream: combined with social and cultural approaches, it is, she believes,well-placed to assist in understanding such relevant issues as globalism, migra-tion, poverty, equality, discrimination, and human rights. Cultural history itselfis receptive to these approaches, being defined by Dominique Kalifa andMichael Kelly as effectively being about ‘just about anything!’ As ‘the socialhistory of representations’, or of ‘material forms of expression’, cultural historyincludes ideas, science, art, literature, music, etc. – with an indefinitely extend-able ‘archive’, and the whole contributing to an understanding of what is opti-mistically (if problematically) termed ‘the whole of social reality’ (pp. 49–50).There is room there, then, to incorporate gender history, for which Laura LeeDowns provides what is both a helpful introduction to the category as a whole,and an illuminating example of national differences in historiography. Sheshows how women’s and gender studies in France have lagged well behinddevelopments in Britain and the USA, and explains that this is partly owing toinstitutional structures, but more particularly results from history being per-ceived as an essential underpinning for a unified republican politics, and so beingresistant to any external intrusions from specific interest groups.

The two themes, of national historiographical differences and disciplinaryautonomy, recur in subsequent chapters that focus on the other issues notedabove. Thus, Robert Gildea, after a concise account of historiography in rela-tion to literature, insists on the continuing distinction between history and(other) literature; David Andress, in an elegant essay which focuses on theFrench Revolution, shows how attitudes to revolutionary violence have changedin the light of changing ideologies, to which historians are not of course immune;Martin Evans and Raphaëlle Branche, in a model of collaboration that mightusefully have been followed elsewhere (with general survey followed by specificexample), note that colonial history, too, is usually written in a highly politicizedcontext, and reveal that France again lags far behind Britain in relation topost-colonial studies; and Alya Aglan and Robert Gildea are concerned withthe way that historians may be constrained by others – whether governmentsor individual interest/pressure groups – to write history from a particularviewpoint.

In any collection such as this, performances are bound to be uneven; and anumber of the introductory historiographical summaries are yoked with lesssatisfactory contributions that fail to provide complementary back-up. Studentsmight have profited, too, from additional analysis of key points, and greaterattention to ongoing theoretical debates. How, for example, can one discrimi-nate between ‘legitimate’ and ‘less legitimate’ sources (p. 109)? Or reconcile theclaim that history is a ‘science’ that should retain a proper ‘distance’ from boththe emotions and political activity (p. 19) with alternative approaches fromhistorians who see subjective experience, feelings, and emotions as ‘a privilegedkey to understanding’ (p. 51), or (as with e.g. economic and gender histories)emphasize the necessity (and desirability) of political involvement?

The book’s overall lack of coherence is nicely revealed in Anne Simonin’sConclusion: instead of an attempted synthesis, the editor unaccountablylaunches into yet another question concerning whether or not history has ‘aFrench accent’; and she finally reveals the ambition all along to have been the

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elimination of national stereotypes and the recognition of discrepancies derivedfrom national traditions. What probably made an enjoyable conference hasresulted in a book which would have benefited from tighter editorial control.

BEVERLEY SOUTHGATEUniversity of Hertfordshire

Peace: A World History. By Antony Adolf. Polity. 2009. ix + 285pp. £18.99.One of the purposes of this book, the author writes, is to challenge the notion

that peace is simply the absence of war and that writing history is an exclusiveprivilege of the mightiest militarily. Indeed, he suggests that without the victoriesof peacemakers and the resourcefulness of the peaceful there might not be aworld for anyone to write about. He further argues that, as attested in themorphological development of our primordial ancestors, peace predates warfarein humanity’s evolution. It is perhaps already evident that this is an ambitiousbook which spans a wide range of time and place, from prehistory to the present.That being the case, its chapters, while clearly drawing on a great deal ofpublished material, as evidenced in the reference notes and full bibliography,must necessarily sketch and summarize. Peace in the ancient west (Egypt, Greeceand Rome) and ancient east (India, China and Japan) is dealt with in each casein under twenty pages, as it is in the chapter on Judaism, Christianity and Islam.Then, at similar speed, we move through the medieval world, the Renaissanceand the Reformation before considering the ascent of nation-states and thepatterns of colonial and imperial peacemaking. The twentieth century – dividedat 1945 – has two chapters devoted to it before we move on to ‘the presents ofpeace’, which takes in the ambiguities of globalization and the ‘threats’ or‘opportunities for peace’ presented by terrorism, technology and new media. Theconclusion attempts to draw past, present and future together by placing ‘worldpeace’ at the top of a pyramid beneath which are the layers of peace – identifiedas ‘inner’, ‘socio-economic’, ‘sanctuarial’ and ‘corporeal’ – that must beaddressed if it is to be achieved. In more concrete terms – though still verygeneral – this entails such things as ‘the elimination of discrimination’, ‘minimalharm against nature’, and satisfactory education and healthcare. All these iden-tified elements are then galloped through in a sequence of final paragraphs. Allof this may seem pitched at such a level of aspirational generalization as to berather an odd ‘conclusion’ even to the kind of history that this is. Yet, at the veryend, the author almost pulls the rug from under himself. He undertook thislabour, he says, believing that trying to come to terms with how or why theworld’s peaces came or ceased to be was the first and necessary step in what hecalls ‘renewed directions towards world peace’ only to discover that, of necessity,there was no last step. The elements of ‘peace’, we learn, but it must be said to nogreat surprise, are always changing and need constant reconfiguration.


A Political History of Journalism. By Géraldine Muhlmann. Polity. 2008. viii +296pp. £17.99.

The title of this book is both enticing and misleading. It is not a straightfor-ward ‘history of journalism’ tracing the emergence of a ‘profession’ in countryafter country and, in the process, producing a comprehensive identification of



particular journalists and their work. An introduction sketches, but only in acouple of pages, the creation of a mass circulation cheap and popular press bythe middle of the nineteenth century and instances a few American, British andFrench examples. ‘Reporters’ sought out and fed in ‘news’ and, as the authorputs it, journalism embarked on the path which led to its professionalization.That said, however, there is nothing here that constitutes, either on a singlecountry or comparative basis, a history of that process. The author, who haselsewhere examined the philosophical issues for journalists posed by interpretingconflict, instead presents a portrait gallery. She examines the careers and writingsof particular individuals and, in doing so, has a focus, a heavy focus, on thetension between what she calls the ‘unifying’ and the ‘decentring’ tendencies inmodern journalism. Putting it simply – though little is in fact put simply – thetension is between those journalists who have tried to give their readers a truththat is generally acceptable and those who have consciously sought to present analternative and contesting viewpoint. The author does this by carefully examin-ing the texts which embody one or other of these approaches. She also considerswhat journalists, in autobiography or other places, have written about what theythought they were doing. The author is French – the book is translated fromFrench – and she has spent time in the Department of Journalism, New YorkUniversity. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, with the exception of a chapteron George Orwell, categorized as the archetypical ‘decenterer’, that the focus ison some French or American journalists. Séverine, reporter at the 1899 trial ofCaptain Dréyfus, is characterized as an archetype of the witness-ambassador,while a subsequent chapter on the ‘muckraker’, Lincoln Steffens, draws out thelimitations of such a conception. Three reporters, two Americans, Nellie Bly andEdward R. Murrow, and one Frenchman, Albert Landres, are followed to seehow, in specific situations, they as ‘witness-ambassadors’ put the public ‘we’ tothe test. The chapter on the American ‘New Journalism’, taken together with afocus on the early years of the French journal Libération, brings out just howdifficult it is to write, as it were, from everywhere and nowhere. The final chapter,returning to the author’s interest in the journalistic encounter with conflict, looksat how Seymour M. Hersh and Michael Herr, two ‘decenterers’, presented eventsin the Vietnam War. The tension between the two tendencies, the leitmotivof the book, is perhaps pursued rather relentlessly, but this case of samples doeshelp us to see that journalism does indeed have an inescapable ‘politicalhistory’.


European Cities and Towns, 400–2000. By Peter Clark. Oxford University Press.2009. xiii + 412pp. £50.00.

Over-priced in hardback, but nevertheless first-rate, this wide-ranging study isnotably valuable because it adopts a common pattern for its three parts, whichcover 400–1500, 1500–1800 and 1800–2000. In each part, there are chapters onurban trends, economy, social life, culture and landscape, and governance. Thebook also includes an introduction, a conclusion, a select bibliography, mapsand tables. As Clark points out, Europe since the middle ages has been one of themost urbanized continents, while its cities have stamped their imprint on theEuropean economy, as well as on European social, political and cultural life. He

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notes that most of the foundations of the European urban order were laid in themedieval period, but that the process was difficult and uneven, characterized bysurges of growth (as between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries) and contrac-tion (as in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), by variations betweendifferent European regions, and by the instability of individual cities and towns.In turn, specialization occurred, so that, by the late eighteenth century, therewere new kinds of city, including the first leisure resorts. Yet, as Clark shows,city expansion was frequently accompanied by sharp deteriorations in the livingstandards, environmental conditions, and health of a large part of the popula-tion. This is a first-rate study that is clearly written and well aware of thestrengths and problems of the urban experience. It argues that, although Euro-pean cities are proportionately less striking today, the achievements of theEuropean urban order remain impressive, not least with a multi-layered densityand strength.

JEREMY BLACKUniversity of Exeter

Anglo-Jewry since 1066: Place, Locality and Memory. By Tony Kushner.Manchester University Press. 2009. ix + 274pp. £60.00.Studies and Profiles in Anglo-Jewish History: From Picciotto to Bermant. ByIsrael Finestein. Vallentine Mitchell. 2008. xiv + 290pp. £40.00.Jewish Parliamentarians. By Greville Janner and Derek Taylor. Vallentine Mitch-ell. 2008. 228pp. £35.00.

These books represent different approaches in current Anglo-Jewish histori-ography. Kushner’s work is an exploration of the construction of identities,including memory, focused on the relation with place, in this case mainly Ports-mouth. However, Kushner does not entirely ignore other places, so that hiswider title is warranted. Using a range of sources and an interdisciplinarymethod, combining history with cultural, literary, geographical and ethnicstudies, the author shines his light on the medieval period, prior to the expulsionof Jews from England, and the years of readmission, emancipation, modernimmigration and settlement. This produces a rich spectre of Jewish identities andthe role Jews play in local identities, which will inspire students of Jewish andEnglish history. Kushner avoids the apologetic tone that characterized pioneer-ing Anglo-Jewish history writers such as Cecil Roth. He succeeds in this bypresenting a history from below, highlighting the importance of ordinary people.

Although he does not adopt the apologetic tone, Finestein is more traditionaland interested in the establishment of Anglo-Jewry. His book contains a collec-tion of fourteen scholarly essays, some of which are extensions of lectures orpreviously published articles. What links them is the description of how leadinghistorical figures from the 1760s onwards responded to changes, coming oftenfrom within Jewry but also from outside the Jewish population. Thus, JamesPicciotto, the Van Oven family, Lionel Cohen, John Simon, Albert Jessel,Schneider Levenberg, Salmond Levin, Victor Lucas, Frederic Landau, ChaimBermant and Harold Fisch pass the revue, while attention is also given toeducation, the role of Victorian women, and the relation between London andthe regions. Finestein, a former president of the Board of Deputies, is well placedto provide these profiles, but unfortunately he does not reach an overarchingconclusion. However, each essay contains valuable insights; perhaps it is impos-



sible to draw extensive conclusions, bearing in mind the spectre of identitieswithin Anglo-Jewry presented by Kushner.

Janner and Taylor present almost 200 sketches of Jewish parliamentary poli-ticians, starting with Lionel de Rothschild in 1858 and ending with GrantShapps in 2007. They are presented chronologically in ten chapters with shortgeneral introductions to the period. This is followed by an epilogue, whichstrikes the traditional apologetic tone in an attempt to emphasize the achieve-ments of individuals and their contribution to general society rather than whatunited or separated them (according to the authors, only three out of the 195Jewish MPs were crooks). This book is a relatively brief reference work, aimedat the general public, and academic historians will regret the lack of sourcereferences. There are also some discrepancies with Finestein’s work, for exampleJanner and Taylor give 1838 as the year of birth for Lionel Cohen, whileFinestein puts it at 1832. Nevertheless, it is a handy addition to Geoffrey Alder-man’s wider work on Jews in British politics or Bernard Wasserstein’s detailedstudy of the political life of Herbert Samuel.

BEN BRABERUniversity of Glasgow

Estate Landscapes: Design, Improvement and Power in the Post-MedievalLandscape. Edited by Jonathan Finch and Kate Giles. Boydell and Brewer for theSociety for Post-Medieval Archaeology. 2007. x + 234pp. £50.00/$95.00.

This is a volume of essays originally given as papers at the Society forPost-Medieval Archaeology’s conference on Estate Landscapes in 2003,supplemented by additional commissioned contributions to reflect ‘the globalaspect’ of the topic. The theme of the conference revolved around the currentinterest of archaeologists in post-medieval landscapes, particularly the estatelandscape. After a typically robust opening chapter from Tom Williamsoncontrasting the modern form of the estate, with its central core of house,gardens and park set within a wider landscape, with medieval and earlymodern forms, the specialist contributions are divided into landscapes andimprovement, landscapes and material culture, and colonial landscapes (inpractice Ireland and the West Indies). The common theme is the question ofhow the various estates considered in the book came into being and how theyrelated to earlier landscapes. Some, it seems, were created piecemeal,while in the colonies the anglicized idea of the estate was often adopted as atemplate.

The key difficulty posed by the book is to distinguish between archaeologicaland more straightforward, or at least more traditional, landscape interpretation.It is well known that landscaping of sorts has taken place in every generation,but that much of what we see today overlays what has gone before. However, theoverlays themselves cannot always be recreated much further back in time thanthe eighteenth century. Peeling back the landscape to find what was there inearlier generations began with W. G. Hoskins and has been driven with greatenthusiasm by Tom Williamson. In this volume Jonathan Finch writes of CastleHoward where he shows that behind a well-known fashionable landscape liesancient woodland and fish ponds which survived the various overlays because ofwhat he sees as the intermeshing of the ornamental with the productive land-

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scape. Sam Turner’s emphasis is on the field systems of south-west England, andhe makes some interesting observations on the link between enclosure andpower. Neither contribution seems to be particularly ‘archaeological’ inapproach. Yet there is something distinctive to be said, and this is clear fromCharles Orser’s contribution on Tanzyfort House in County Sligo, where exca-vation and archaeological recording has revealed that an older, vernacular,house was rebuilt to form dog kennels. By using the existing structure, the ownerembraced the idea of stability within what is essentially a later landscape, andOrser emphasizes the importance of symbolic interpretation as an aid to exca-vation analysis.

David Dawson and Oliver Kent set the eighteenth-century kiln at the PotteryHouse at Dunster, Somerset, in the context of landscape design by showing thatthe placing of the kiln had less to do with convenience in terms of raw materialsand finished products than with introducing an industrial element into thelandscape to emphasize the owner’s modern outlook. The argument is interesting,although the decision to write this chapter in a form suspiciously akin to anarchaeological report makes it less interesting to read than most of the contribu-tions. Harold Mytum looks at the use of monuments in estate landscapes which,he rightly argues, represented the continuity of landownership through time.

Since the contributions are not limited to the British Isles there is scope forcontrast and comparison. Colin Breen discusses how the landscapes of south-west Ireland were often created by mercantile families with little interest in thecontinuity issues which influenced traditional landowners. By contrast, RogerLeech on Nevis and St Kitts, and Dan Hicks on the Leeward Islands, emphasizehow landscaping owed a great deal to the owners and designers of the greatlandscaped parks in England, although with a distinctive colonial context. Simi-larly Barbara Heath suggests that Thomas Jefferson modelled his rural retreaton English models. These are interesting points, and the book has much to saythat is revealing about past landscapes, in the discussion of boundary transfor-mations, roads and field systems, and the manipulation and incorporation ofearlier features including woodland, fishpools and warrens. But overall, the feelof the book, which has no conclusion, is that the conference tried hard todistinguish archaeological issues relating to the great estate from more straight-forward landscape matters without entirely succeeding, in part because thecontributors kept fairly rigidly to their own places of interest. There are someinteresting ideas for those of us who study estate landscapes to absorb and addto the range of issues traditionally covered, particularly, as the editors rightlynote, the need for future researchers to ‘break through their own conceptualboundaries and address issues raised in agricultural economics, literature, phi-losophy and politics’ (p. ix). If the book has this impact, the relative narrownessof some of the contributions in the context of the overall theme will have beenwell worthwhile.

J. V. BECKETTUniversity of Nottingham

The Bourbons: The History of a Dynasty. By J. H. Shennan. Hambledon Con-tinuum. 2007. x + 222pp. £17.99.

Professor Shennan has written an important book, accessible to sixth formersand undergraduates. He conveys much of value in such a short space, focusing



on a key, formative period in the development of the French monarchical state.The sheer longevity of the Bourbon dynasty is emphasized, though, as the authorsays, only three dynasties covered the period 987–1792. Initially, antecedents aresurveyed: personal, familial, sacral; the mystique of monarchy beginning withthe Capetians, furthered by the Valois. Successes, failures, the importance ofregions and of institutions (e.g. the parlement), the role of religion (prior to andafter 1516), taxes, the relationship of crown, court and emergent nation, all areembraced. The importance of the French religious wars, their impact, the inti-mate ties of politics and religion, the emergence of challenging revolutionaryideas after 1572, the proximity of the French state to collapse, all provide thecontext to the reign and successes of Henri IV. Professor Shennan has much ofnote to say of Henri: his religious switches, the 1593 abjuration, the nature of theEdict of Nantes (p. 46), the role of Sully, the scale of buildings, the developmentof a strong sense of royal majesty, ‘the street level operation of the monarchy’ (p.53), at once mingling sexual appetite, conquests, problems faced or created andsurvival. Henri’s achievements were solid (pp. 57–8) and created the basis for theconsolidation of royal power and of the state. The complex personality of LouisXIII is put into context; early internal religious and military operations, not leastin 1620–2, are assessed (the importance of events in Béarn is noticed); the placeof the nobility, their hold on provincial governorships, the conspiracies and theemergence of the intendants are seen as part of the ‘ponderous reorganization ofgovernment’ (p. 85), with Richelieu’s skills and survival accorded some promi-nence. The growing thrust of foreign policy after 1629–31 and 1635 is consid-ered; the outcomes were mixed, but some important military changes emerged.There is a lucid summary of Louis XIII’s achievements (pp. 92–4), prior to the‘Apotheosis – the Sun King’ (chapter 5). Mazarin’s relations with the young kingand the importance of the Frondes are considered (pp. 98–103), not least as aprelude to the work of Colbert and the ‘marketing of the King’ (p. 108). Muchof value is said about the art and culture, and the place in politics, of Versailles,seen as something of a ‘club’ (p. 111). Marriages and mistresses were almostchoreographed and had an importance in an environment that was ‘self-absorbed, hedonistic’ (p. 118). The growing dominance of foreign policy and thegoals of Louis XIV are addressed, with a suitable balance sheet of gains andlosses provided; 1709–14 are seen as years of some success. That said, thechanges that overtook government in the late 1680s, in part a consequence of theRevocation of the Edict of Nantes, are featured. Versailles exerted a powerfulhold on government and authority (p. 121) and was both complex and expensive;there was a ‘growth of professionalism’ in government (p. 130), one that carriedwell into the next century. While some accounts present Louis XV and LouisXVI as poor, pale successors to Louis XIV, Professor Shennan is rather morepositive. He sees both as having virtues, but Louis XV had important inadequa-cies (p. 159) while Louis XVI had a touch of the heroic (pp. 181ff). Louis XV’sreign is analysed through assessment of an uneven temperament, a mixture ofthe public and private, the political and legal battles with the parlements, thevagaries of foreign policy, the mistresses and the attempts at reforms by Orléans,Law and Fleury. By 1774 France faced a political, financial and moral crisis –yet that was rather low key (p. 161) compared to what followed. Developmentsin public opinion, in intellectual and social thinking, are accorded prominence;these created challenges to the ruling order; the financial crisis after the

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AmericanWar led to a series of crises and the beginnings of the French Revolution(pp. 174ff.). Louis XVI tried to be positive but the events of 1792 sealed his fate.Some valuable assessment of the place of Marie Antoinette is offered (pp. 170–4).

Much is compressed into this short but stimulating survey, offering fruitfulavenues of further reading and exploration of themes set out here. The fertilityor otherwise of ruling families, the development of the dynastic principle, thepattern of succession by very young children (1610, 1643, 1715) or an inexperi-enced youth (1774) are but some of those themes. Importantly, the developmentsof the crown as both patrimonial and administrative and of a recognizablyBourbon ‘style of government’ are twin themes, set in their wider social, intel-lectual and political contexts. Monarchy became more than an inherited ‘familyconcern’; it became administrative in a broadly functioning sense. Yet the per-sonalities of the kings remained central and so much turned on their ability orotherwise to adapt to changing circumstances, seen with Louis XV and LouisXVI as much as with Henri IV. This book will stimulate further enquiry.

ERIC BOSTONCATS College, Cambridge

Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World. By StephanieJ. Snow. Oxford University Press. 2008. xiv + 226pp. £16.99.

In Operations without Pain: The Practice and Science of Anaesthesia in Vic-torian Britain (2005), Stephanie Snow provided a carefully researched andbroadly conceived account of early experimentation with the relief of pain; thetechnical challenges, the medical debates and the cultural anxieties associatedwith the adoption and routinization of anaesthesia; and the implications of theanaesthesia revolution for surgical practice at the end of the nineteenth century.Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World is very muchaimed at the general reader. Its scholarly apparatus is largely restricted toendnotes identifying quotations and a guide to further reading. It certainly hasthe value of providing a shorter and more accessible account of key findings ofthe earlier monograph and outlining some of the broader interest of the topic. Inchapters 4 and 5 entitled ‘Women, Sex and Suffering’ and ‘On Battlefields’, forexample, she shows how the pains of childbirth and the horrors of war increasedinterest in anaesthesia and helped to drive experimentation and attitudinalchange. Queen Victoria’s use of chloroform in childbirth in 1853 and the well-publicized trauma of the Crimean War of 1853–6 were key events in the rise ofanaesthesia. In chapter 6, ‘The Dark Side of Chloroform’, she explores some ofthe cultural anxieties about the practice, not least in the implications of anaes-thesia for women patients and its use in criminal assaults. By its nature, however,this lively book teases by allusion and anecdote rather than satisfies. Thoughthere is some acknowledgement of developments elsewhere in the world, espe-cially the USA, the book, its title notwithstanding, is very much about Britain.

MICHAEL J. BENNETTUniversity of Tasmania

Health and the Modern Home. Edited by Mark Jackson. Routledge. 2007. viii +339pp. £60.00.

This volume is based on a collection of fifteen essays presented to a conferenceon health and the home at Exeter University in 2005. As is frequently the case



with such books the subject matters of the chapters are very diverse, with threeof the chapters only tangentially connected to health and the home. Jackson inhis introduction makes the point that the home went from safe haven in earliercenturies to a place of potential danger and medical intervention in the twentiethcentury and then ably summarizes each chapter. Six of the fifteen chapters standout for particular mention.

Ali Haggett presents a treat for social historians by showing that the idea ofthe trapped depressed housebound housewife is more a canard of twentieth-century iconic feminist works (think Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique) thanof reality. Haggett presents oral testimony that demonstrates that many womenwould have seen their roles as wife and mother as worthwhile and meaningful.After all, they were bringing up the next generation, and via their self-madesocial networks did not see themselves as isolated or locked into an endlessroutine of domestic drudgery. Stewart’s chapter on child guidance shows howthis movement to improve both the external and internal ‘mental’ world of thechild was both a clinic and a home phenomenon. The home was to become acentral place in inter-war Britain for the intersection of the psychiatric socialworker and the child. The home was a place where crucial information could begained about the child’s living environment and the child’s mother.

If an Englishman’s home is his castle then the chapters by Mosley and Millsunderscore the idea that the open hearth and a roaring coal fire were a crucialingredient in that notion. As Mosley shows, the only problem was that, whilstvarious government acts during the inter-war years might have started to dealwith atmospheric pollution caused by industrial emissions, no such progress hadbeen made with residential emissions. Indeed, many a British household thoughtthat a coal fire in the open hearth created a healthy home environment with agood circulation of air. Some commentators even considered the open earth coalfire to be just as nourishing to the human body as vitamins are. Mosley outlinesthe strong cultural, economic and technological reasons why the shift from coalfires to gas and electrical heating systems took so long. Mills in chapter 11 alsoexplores the decline of the open home hearth with the aid of two micro-studies– Sheffield and Coventry. Mills shows how it was an incremental ‘low intensity’approach by local authorities with smoke control orders and smoke controlzones which brought about the change from an open hearth to smokeless fuels,electric heating and gas central heating.

Welshman’s chapter on the idea of transmitted deprivation is an interestingexploration of the late Keith Joseph’s ideas about cycles of deprivation and howthis was implemented in a research programme by the Social Science ResearchCouncil and its working party on transmitted deprivation. Welshman shows thefrictions between academics over ideas of deprivation and the role housing wasthought to play in poverty, deprivation and delinquency among families.However, partly because of academic scepticism about the Conservative govern-ment’s commitment to tackling deprivation, and the entrenched idea that struc-tural factors deep in the fabric of industrial societies were the primarydeterminant of poverty, in the end the research programme yielded little.

Mittman’s chapter on cockroaches, housing and asthma clearly identifiesthat asthma was the result of an ecology of urban and industrial injusticestratified in urban space that caused rising asthma and not the emissions ofcockroaches. Cockroaches were, if not a medical smokescreen, then certainly a

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distraction from the real cause of asthma in urban America. Ethnic minorities hadthe worst housing located in the most polluted urban areas, whether from vehicleemissions or from the noxious fumes rising from landfill sites. Only collectiveaction by those minorities solved some of the structural problems they faced byforcing property owners to improve the apartments they let.

What is a little disappointing about the volume is that, while Jackson high-lights in his introduction the modernist trend for clean lines and de-clutteredhomes in contrast to the highly decorated and ornamental homes of the Victo-rian era, this is not explored in any chapters of the book. The twentieth centurywitnessed strongly increased emphasis upon function and performance in designwith less attention to the ornate and picturesque. But it would be fascinating toknow how changes in home design have affected our health. Health and theModern Home is a highly eclectic mix of essays – some fascinating and substan-tial whilst a few others are flimflam.

MARK W. BUFTONLondon

British Railway Enthusiasm. By Ian Carter. Manchester University Press. 2008.xii + 316pp. £60.00.

Ian Carter’s Railways and Culture in Britain (2001), also in Manchester Uni-versity Press’s ‘Studies in Popular Culture’ series, established him as a majorcultural analyst of railways and this book adds triumphantly to his reputation.Rich in content and wittily incisive in style, it offers an historical sociology andanthropology of a little-considered aspect of what Robert Giddens termed‘serious leisure’. Following an introduction to railway-based leisure activity inmodern Britain via Carter’s ‘Rough Guide to Anoraksia’, the book considers thechanging nature and ever-expanding interests of the first generation of the(largely male) ‘railway fancy’ that first coalesced in childhood and adolescencearound the new 1940s hobby of train spotting. He explores book publishing,societies, preserved lines (some of the strongest sections of the book), toy trainsand modelling. A thoughtful, somewhat elegiac conclusion surveys the dimin-ishing strength and uncertain future of these various strands.

Carter is an extremely resourceful researcher, painstakingly gathering largebodies of data from the widest range of sources. His personal railway enthusiasmis unashamed and frequently paraded but also skilfully managed, an entry pointfor, and illumination of, the serious academic imagination driving the book. Thebook to an extent can be seen as depicting, through a highly specific lens, the riseand fall of the post-war social democratic ‘moment’. The birth of the railwayhobbyist is seen as predicated upon job security, rising real wages, a reasonablyclear differentiation between work and leisure, and, not least, a certain pride inthe newly nationalized network: ‘Britain’s railway system stopped being theirsand became ours . . . in this political climate, train spotting turned from privatepleasure to patriotic duty’ (p. 99). Many of the technical aspects are depicted asa mechanism through which workers could use workplace skills in a highlycreative manner, free from the constraints of labour discipline. The process ofdecline is posited as reflecting the fundamental changes of the later twentiethcentury and onward, notably the fracturing of leisure patterns, the emphasiswithin younger generations upon individual consumer choice and a decline intechnical expertise ‘in a social world where The Old Iron Woman’s madness



rendered those skills scandalously scarce’ (p. 282). That politically engaged tonemight resonate with some and irritate others but it adds another dimension tothe book’s readability.

While spending ‘twelve thousand hours building his exquisite 0 gaugeMidland Railway locomotive’ (p. 203) might have given Jim Whittaker andthose like him little time for much else, it would have been interestingto see how some of the ‘fancy’ connected up (or not) with other aspects ofcontemporary social life; some biographical case studies would haveilluminated the thematic chapters. I hope for further instalments. While the bookmay not have cured my pejorative use of ‘train spotter’ it has actedas a powerful reminder of the enormous contribution to be made to ourunderstanding of society by studies of the leisure arena. It deserves the widestreadership.

DAVE RUSSELLLeeds Metropolitan University

University Politics: F. M. Cornford’s Cambridge and his Advice to the YoungAcademic Politician. By Gordon Johnson. Cambridge University Press. 2008. x +112pp. £14.99.

This edition of F. M. Cornford’s celebrated Microcosmographia Academicafirst appeared in 1994, and is reissued without change to mark the pamphlet’scentenary. Cornford’s text itself occupies only some twenty pages, but GordonJohnson provides an introduction which gives a enjoyable portrait of late Vic-torian and Edwardian Cambridge. As well as background information on Corn-ford himself and university politics, topics covered include the debate over thestatus of women, including the vote refusing them degrees in 1897, the founda-tion of the Anglican Selwyn College, the debate over compulsory Greek, theintroduction of new subjects into the tripos, and the extensive building of scien-tific laboratories and museums. Cornford’s Microcosmographia recorded theploys by which conservatives were able to resist or delay pressures for change. Itis useful to have back in print such classic concepts as the young man in a hurry,the Principle of the Dangerous Precedent, the Principle of Unripe Time, and thePrinciple of Sound Learning – which was never to publish a book, or if doing so‘be sure that it is unreadable; otherwise you will be called “brilliant” and forfeitall respect’. Times have changed, and today it is the conservatives who are on thedefensive and the innovators who manipulate language to gain their ends,though now in the form of managerial jargon rather than elegant periphrasis. Ahundred years on, the ambitious young academic politician will learn rathermore from Laurie Taylor’s Poppleton than Cornford’s Cambridge.

R. D. ANDERSONUniversity of Edinburgh

Medieval

The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c.500–1492. Edited by JonathanShepard. Cambridge University Press. 2008. xx + 1207pp. £120.00.

A lengthy four-part introduction by the editor (pp. 1–95) looks at (i) notionsof Byzantine identity; (ii) surveys the three main parts of the volume and explains

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the reasons for adopting the chronological range; (iii) outlines alternative inves-tigative approaches to those rather narrow ones often employed in the book; and(iv) addresses some of the problems of and offers some short-cuts to studyingand teaching the history of the Byzantine Empire. The introduction is followedby a collection of twenty-seven chapters by well-known historians which are splitbetween early (c.500–c.700), middle (c.700–1204), and late (1204–1492) periodsof Byzantine history.

Nineteen of the twenty-seven chapters have appeared in previous Cambridgehistories. Chapters 1, 3 and 4 were published in substantially similar form in TheNew Cambridge Medieval History (NCMH), i (2005); chapters 10 and 11 inNCMH, ii (1995); chapters 13, 14 and 15 in NCMH, iii (1999); chapters 16 and17 in NCMH, iv (2004); chapters 20a, 20b and 21 in NCMH, v (1999); chapters22 and 23 in NCMH, vi (2000); chapters 24 in NCMH, vii (1998); and chapters2a, 2b, and 2c in The Cambridge Ancient History, xiv (2000). Most of therepublished chapters address the empire’s changing politico-military fortunes,occasionally placing unfashionable weight on the achievements and charactersof individual emperors. This, of course, is the stuff of narrative, and indeed manychapters assume a narrative approach when tracing the course of internal andexternal occurrences and relations with foreign powers and societies salient tothe empire’s geopolitical history.

Unlike the volume’s predecessor, The Cambridge Medieval History, iv (1966–7), the collection does not profess to offer a comprehensive treatment of Byzan-tine culture over a similar chronological period nor does it proffer a broad rangeof methodological and thematic approaches. New chapters by Sergey A. Ivanovand Mark Whittow addressing the state-sponsored, localized and personal mis-sions to Christianize barbarian neighbours, and the revitalized debates concern-ing the middle Byzantine economy (600–1204) respectively, are two exceptions.Two further exceptions are Tim Greenwood’s and Paul Stephenson’s new con-tributions. Both scholars employ interdisciplinary approaches to reveal respec-tively a complex picture of Armenian princely relations with their imperialneighbours between 600 and 1045, and to examine how and to what extent theByzantine emperors were able to maintain and expand their influence in theBalkans between 1018 and 1204. Marie-France Auzépy deals with the obscureyears of the Iconoclasm (c.700–c.850), a time when earthquake, plague andcontinuous warfare almost brought the empire to the point of extinction. ShaunTougher discusses the recovery and advance of the empire’s fortunes in the wakeof the Iconoclast era during the consecutive reigns of Michael III, the Amorion(842–67), and his successor, friend and probable executioner Basil I, the Mace-donian (867–86). Walter E. Kaegi broadens the narrative by tracing the militaryand political events in Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean between theyears 641 and c.850, and exploring why the caliphate was unable and sometimesreluctant to commit wholeheartedly to the invasion and subjugation of Byzan-tine Anatolia. In the last of the new contributions, D. A. Korobeinikov contin-ues the story of Byzantium’s conflict and peace with its Islamicized easternneighbours between 1040 and 1304. He gives an account of mutual tolerationand occasional cooperation in Anatolia for much of the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies, a tale bookended by sustained Muslim aggression.

Detailed analysis of the empire’s institutions and of how the army, provin-cial administrations and so on actually coped with abrupt overhauls and



longer-term geopolitical shifts is sacrificed at times in this collection. Perhapsthis approach is justifiable here given that Byzantium’s institutions are highlycontroversial and so hard to determine, although a dependence on narrativedoes run the risk of producing history so irksome to the likes of the boy Rudgein Alan Bennett’s The History Boys. Not all of the chapters in this book willprove attractive to everyone reading below postgraduate level, although trans-lations of primary texts cited in the footnotes and Shepard’s introduction, par-ticularly part IV, certainly cater for the non-specialist. Similarly, accurate andclear maps, an extensive glossary, comprehensive genealogical tables and listsof rulers, a lengthy register of alternative place-names, an excellent index, anda very broad and useful bibliography of primary and secondary sources offersomething to postgraduates, specialists and newcomers to Byzantium alike,whilst also contributing greatly to the book’s value as an introductory tool.This collection brings together a solid bank of knowledge derived from leadingscholars in their respective fields. Destined for the reference section of researchuniversities, it should and hopefully will one day sit alongside a modern andequally authoritative Cambridge history offering a wide range of thematicapproaches to Byzantium and a comprehensive treatment of Byzantine culture.

JASON T. ROCHENational University of Ireland, Galway

Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, c.1050–1134. By William M. Aird. Boydell.2008. xx + 328pp. £60.00.

This book is self-consciously a biography, and the author vigorously backsthe chronological biographical approach in his introduction: ‘Thematicapproaches to biography have many advantages but tend to give a misleadingimpression of the development of the individual’s life-course. It is not possible toneatly compartmentalise the many facets of life. . . . In order to understand thetrajectory of Robert’s career, it is necessary to try to forget what we know ofwhat happened to him. For him, as he lived, the future was unwritten and stillhad possibilities’ (p. 20). The approach takes considerable interest in Robert’smental state (see pp. 47 and 78, on self-esteem). However, as the author acknowl-edges, there are many problems in writing the biography of a medieval figure. InRobert’s life there are important events of which we know nothing, for examplewhen he was knighted and what form the ceremony took. The author’s approachis to seek analogous instances and give more general accounts of contemporarypractice (pp. 56–8). Gaps in information also lead to speculation, a characteristicof the book most marked when dealing with Robert’s mental state and with histime in captivity, about which we have hardly any information (see p. 249, on therelationship of the duke and his gaoler, Roger of Salisbury). The speculation issometimes very interesting, as regarding the mental effect of his crusading expe-rience upon Robert (pp. 198, 234), but speculation it remains, as is clear fromwavering statements concerning the physical effect of crusade on Robert: ‘Thefact that he reached such an impressive old age suggests that, despite the rigoursof the Crusade and the other campaigns in which he fought, Robert possessed agenerally robust constitution, although the expedition to the East may haveaffected his health’ (p. 278; also p. 246).

The biographer of Robert is necessarily heavily reliant on Orderic Vitalis,who is in general highly critical of Robert for a failure to maintain peace in

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Normandy. The author emphasizes Orderic’s bias, but does not investigateOrderic’s overall approach to history and historical writing, for which the readermay now turn to James Bickford Smith’s 2006 Oxford DPhil thesis, ‘OrdericVitalis and Norman Society, c. 1035–87’. In addition, the author treats points atwhich Orderic was less condemnatory of Robert as simple exceptions rather thanreasons to modify his view of overall bias. (see pp. 133, 198). Perhaps unex-pected, then, is the willingness to devote lengthy analyses to the speeches thatOrderic put in the mouths of leading characters, speeches that may tell us littleabout what was really said at the time. (pp. 84–5, 246–7, 265). Given theproblems of the narrative sources, it is surprising that further use is not made ofthe non-narrative sources, the subject of recent Paris theses by Thomas Roche.As Aird admits (p. 120), an explanation does need to be found for the paucity ofsurviving acta of Robert, but the acta play little role in this biography and nor doagreements made between members of the Norman aristocracy. A full analysisof both narrative and non-narrative sources is required to support the efforts toredeem the rulership of Robert. Such analysis might back up the argumentpersuasively proposed by the author that it was the very intervention of therulers of England that created the instability in Normandy which Henry I woulduse to justify his seizure of the Duchy in 1106.

JOHN HUDSONUniversity of St Andrews

Conquered England: Kingship, Succession and Tenure, 1066–1166. By GeorgeGarnett. Oxford University Press. 2007. xviii + 401pp. £65.00.

This most remarkable book will, I suspect, be more talked about than read.Its chief thesis is that the Norman Conquest of 1066, being an extra-legal actof expropriation, not only utterly annihilated the previous basis of landholdingbut required legitimization in the eyes of legally minded contemporaries. Suchlegitimization was supplied by Archbishop Lanfranc, adapting canon-law ideasof antecession to present Edward the Confessor as the ‘antecessor’ of Williamthe Conqueror. Meanwhile, William himself became recognized as effectiveoverlord of all the lands of the English. This greatly enhanced the standing ofthe king, but itself raised further problems. At subsequent interregna (thoseperiods after the death of one king and before the coronation of his successor)there arose a major difficulty over tenure: from whom, if the realm waswithout a king, did tenants-in-chief hold their estates? This problem was not‘solved’ until the accession of Henry II in 1154, when the preceding reign ofKing Stephen was dismissed from legal memory and, instead, 1135, the date atwhich Henry I, Henry II’s grandfather, had been alive and dead, was institutedas the baseline for legal memory. Anyone in seisin on the day of Henry I’sdeath was in theory in rightful possession of their lands. Thus the crude, post-Conquest idea of antecessorial right was replaced with a more durable resortto legal memory, firmly anchored in time. Such a summary hardly does justiceto the richness and detail of a book which includes forensic re-examination ofan extraordinary range of evidence.

Garnett’s broader argument is very clever. Whether it is true remains to bedebated. There are problems with its presentation. The thesis itself is neverclearly stated, and in assembling so great a chain of abstractions by means of sogreat a number of individual details, there is a risk that Garnett raises his



argument above the comprehension of mere mortals. Certainly, and quite unlikethe writings of Maitland, this is a book that could not be recommended toundergraduates save as a cruel and unnecessary punishment. Moreover,although there is a vast amount of detail here, much of it of remarkable acuityand good sense – there are, for example, absolutely sparkling discussions of theevidence for Henry I’s accession, or for the precise means by which Henry IIcame to establish the reign of Henry I as the basis of legal memory – there is arisk that, overall, the parts amount to a great deal more than their sum. Toooften, there seems to be an underlying and lawyerly assumption that any con-tradictory evidence is to be cited merely that it may be argued out of court. TheBattle chronicle may be based upon forgery, but those forgeries must not beallowed to detract from the chronicle’s reliability as a source for legal history.Various of the charters of Henry II may likewise be forged, but doubts in eachparticular case can be raised whether the proof of such forgery is sufficient. As aresult, each witness is cross-questioned not so much to establish the truth of histestimony but to accept or reject such testimony according to whether or not itaccords with Garnett’s brief.

As to the brief itself, by taking the earlier part of the reign of Henry II as theend of a ‘problem’, dissolved in the realization that tenure could henceforth bechronologically and legally anchored in the reign of Henry I, Garnett risksignoring the fact that the problems posed by interregna continued to plagueEnglish kings through to the fifteenth century and well beyond. Between 1066and 1272 no English king, not even Richard I, came to the throne with his titleclear or undisputed, and during such interregna, the question of with whom orwhere sovereignty resided was very far from ‘solved’. Ironically, just as RobertCurthose had forecast that his right to the throne would be clear ‘even were hein Alexandria’ at the time of his father’s death in 1087, it was not until 1272, twohundred years later (when Edward I was, if not in Alexandria then in Acre), thata succession passed off peacefully, despite the physical absence of the claimant tothe throne, and despite the lack of a coronation. Succession, of course, is notGarnett’s principal concern, so much as the ‘feudal revolution’ that underpinnedthe basis of tenure after 1066: a transformation, mightier than anything thatDuby could have imagined for eleventh-century France, by which, in this inter-pretation, an effectively allodial England yielded place to a ‘feudal’ kingdom.Even here, however, there are problems with an argument that, on occasion, canseem too clever by half. By taking 1066 as the beginning of his ‘problem’,Garnett ignores the fact that William’s conquest was not the first that Englandhad experienced. Bede had described one such conquest, that had occurred aslong ago as the fifth century, and Lanfranc, supposed author of Garnett’s greattheory, was nothing if not a keen reader of Bede. More recently, Swein and Cnutseem to have experienced none of the jurisprudential faintheartedness thatGarnett attributes to William of Normandy and his advisers. On the contrary,the Danish like the earlier Anglo-Saxon conquest seems to have been justified asan act of divine judgment: the operation, albeit not formulated in legal termi-nology, of a ‘right of conquest’, akin to Islamic ideas of such rights, or to theprocess by which the first crusaders, including William the Conqueror’s eldestson, seized control of the Holy Land thirty years after the Norman conquest ofEngland. The Normans, of course, also conquered Sicily, yet Sicily is signallyabsent from this book, as are virtually all contemporary continental instances.

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Thus, whilst there is a most illuminating discussion here of the rights of Eustaceor William of Blois set against those of Henry II, there is not a hint thatcontemporaries might have spotted similarities here with the situation of Fred-erick of Rothenberg in regard to Frederick Barbarossa. English law, it seems,and despite the canonical roots of the idea of antecession, was, very soon after1066, sealed against all save English influences. Glanville and the lawyers of thecourt of Henry II had more in common with Blackstone, or Dicey or Bryce, thanever they did with their contemporaries or indeed with themselves when servingin their alternative capacities as papal judges delegate or devising solutions tolegal issues as they arose in the King’s lands in Normandy or Anjou or Aquita-ine. Glanville’s father may have participated in the ‘conquest’ of Lisbon from theMoors, yet we are invited to suppose that this had little or no impact upon hisinterpretation of English law.

Most oddly, although he concludes his book by quoting Hobbes on justi-fication by conquest, Garnett claims (p. 355, and cf. p. xviii) that Hobbes ‘doesnot here explain how the justification of the Conquest might in turn make itpossible to justify rebellion against the king of England’. Have I missed some-thing here, or is it not the case that Hobbes is referring clearly and quiteexplicitly to a defence of conquest based upon divine judgment and the puttingdown of the mighty from their seats – a right of conquest which, as rulers fromSaul and David onwards were aware, and which Hobbes here explicitly pointsout, could work just as easily against as for the ruling authority? Kings mightacquire God’s favour, but in making wars against other kings, they could justas easily forfeit it, With it, they might forfeit the loyalty and obligation of theirsubjects. In the middle ages, as in the Old Testament, God had an annoyingtendency to intrude himself between the supposed sovereignty of kings and theobligations of their people, however much kings might attempt to leapfrog theequation, intruding themselves between God and those whom they ruled. ForGarnett to have written a 300-page book on the legitimization of conquestwithout once referring to God must be considered a brave though not neces-sarily a wise decision. Garnett runs the risk of imposing a highly anachronisticlawyer’s view of sovereignty upon a period which looked as much to divine asto legal aid. John of Salisbury was by no means the first commentator tonotice that tyrants tended to be deposed, nor was he the first to read and drawconclusions from the fate of Saul, Tarquinius or Julius Caesar. William ofPoitiers or William of Malmesbury, cited by Garnett as witnesses for thedefence, spent at least as much time poring over, and quoting from, Suetoniusor the Books of Kings as they ever did in familiarizing themselves with canon-law notions of antecession or interregnum. It seems that vital lessons taught byPhilip Buc’s Ambiguité du livre have even now not been learned by Englishhistorians, still wedded to an excessively anglophone and teleological concep-tion of the ‘origins’ of English law. Meanwhile, what Garnett has achievedhere may be not so much a solution to the problems of William the Conqueroror Henry II as an answer to the difficulties of S. F. C. Milsom, the first legalhistorian effectively to question the rooting of tenure in the reign of Henry I.Milsom should be duly flattered. Other readers may find themselves more thana little disappointed.

NICHOLAS VINCENTUniversity of East Anglia



The Proprietary Church in the Early Medieval West. By Susan Wood. OxfordUniversity Press. 2006. xiii + 1020pp. £110.00.

This book concerns the transfer to churches of rights over a substantialproportion of western Europe’s land, effected between the fourth century andthe twelfth: a shift in the control of material resource that undergirded theremarkable power of the Church in European affairs thereafter. Two essentialpoints about this transfer are uncontested: the broad fact of it, and its near-universal implications. Making churches landholders – a notion that firstemerged in late antiquity, but was far from automatic – changed western societyfundamentally. Beyond this basic fact, though, everything is open to debate, andthis is partly because historians have lacked the overarching perspective on thedevelopment that Susan Wood has now given them. In over a thousand pages,she surveys and analyses a high proportion of the evidence for the linkagebetween churches and monasteries and (mostly immovable, landed) property inwestern Europe, from late antiquity to the high middle ages.

Organization is crucial to the success of a book of this size and scope. It isdivided into four parts. The first examines how churches were founded, how theystarted to acquire property and how they themselves became objects of property,from the late Roman period, through the successor kingdoms of the sixth andseventh centuries, and into the eighth century, when charter evidence becomesmore plentiful. Already in this introductory section the anachronism of regard-ing property in this period simply as a legal object, as nineteenth- and earlytwentieth century historians tended to, becomes clear; in the early and highmiddle ages, control both by and of churches and their lands was bound up withthe complex phenomenon of lordship. The two parts that form the core of thebook therefore take lordship as their guiding theme, and apply it to two sets ofinstitutions, which Wood distinguishes as ‘higher’ churches and ‘lower’ or‘lesser’ churches. ‘Higher’ churches, considered in part II, comprise essentiallybishoprics and the great monasteries. The ‘lower’ churches covered in part IIIare chapels, parish churches and smaller monasteries. Part IV moves from theempirical to the conceptual, analysing the ideas behind lordship over churches,not only those concerning legal status, but also those bearing on lordship itselfand on the overused notion of ‘reform’.

The book’s central theme of control over churches and church propertytouches on a significant proportion of all the evidence from the period: the vastmajority of surviving legal documents, for a start. This is an impressive feat ofresearch, therefore, although inevitable developments in historiography over thelong period of its gestation have led Wood to shift her focus away from itsoriginal starting point, the paradigmatic proprietary church that was at the heartof an entire legal system (Eigenkirchenwesen) fabricated first by Ulrich Stutzaround the turn of the twentieth century. The social and cultural dimensions ofcontrol over property that more recent research has emphasized means that thebook has to tackle the whole complex and fundamental nexus of lay lordship,kingship and the institutional Church. It therefore has something to say to allmedievalists, and many others besides.

The book raises fundamental questions, not least about the early develop-ment of the church–property relationship. Christianity had, after all, becomeestablished in most of the west in the fourth and fifth centuries. Yet, as Woodshows, it was not until the seventh or eighth centuries that it was regularly

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co-opted in family property strategies. Why then, and not earlier? There iscertainly some connection with the proliferation of charters in the latter period,but we are only beginning to understand how the political and cultural changesgenerally, but not always accurately, associated with the Carolingians affectedour evidence on that level. Does lordship over churches become more prominentin the seventh and eighth centuries because our charter record changes, andexpands, at that time?

Part III is the largest section, a monograph in itself, because it concernschurches and monasteries that really could be ‘owned’, in a sense recognizable tous, as well as at the time. Wood exposes with new comprehensiveness whatmedievalists have often demonstrated in single instances: that endowment of achurch or monastery was also an investment on the patron’s part, a crucial andvery flexible instrument in the management of landed wealth. Whereas particularstudies have stressed the peculiarities of their cases, the sheer scope of theevidence covered here has the effect of emphasizing the similarity of languagethat might claim in one case complete disposability of a church’s lands but inanother simple guardianship. A basic shift in this situation did not come until thebureaucratic revolution of the twelfth century, when the institutional Churchdeveloped systematic rules that redefined lordship over churches as a kind ofpatronage recognized in canon law, and also, therefore, susceptible to closerregulation. How far this really changed the relationship between lay lords andchurches, rather than simply altering its terms, is another question that nowlooks helpfully better defined.

Readers will doubtless mine this book’s details for years to come; moresignificantly, its comprehensive vision constitutes a major contribution toongoing discussions about the role of the Church and of churches in the con-struction of power in the middle ages.

MARIOS COSTAMBEYSUniversity of Liverpool

Gender, Nation and Conquest in the Works of William of Malmesbury. By KirstenA. Fenton. Boydell & Brewer. 2008. xi + 163pp. £45.00.

William of Malmesbury, active c.1125–c.1143, encapsulates the revival ofhistorical writing in England in the decades c.1100. These were the years in whicha variety of authors offered comprehensive new histories of the English past,both distant and recent. William’s oeuvre – including histories of English kings,the English Church, and of several saints, as well as a list of Marian miracles anda commentary on Lamentations – exemplify the breadth and range of thishistoriographical nouvelle vague. Combined with some of the most exquisiteLatin prose this side of Suetonius, and an approach to historical research thatseems to foreshadow practices as they were thought to have emerged only in thenineteenth century, William has been the focus of several studies on construc-tions of the past and intellectual culture in Anglo-Norman England.

Kirsten Fenton’s precise and poignant – and immensely readable – study ofgender and nation in Malmesbury builds on these earlier approaches, but alsoasks new and important questions. The book revolves around the twin issues ofgender roles and the representation of gens (perhaps too freely equated withnation) in Malmesbury’s historical works. Concerning the former, Fenton offersa subtle and perceptive reading, pointing not only to examples of the gender



roles of men and women but also of members of the Church, who in many waysassumed the position of something like a third gender. This tripartite divisionreflects the fact that a key quality separating lay men from both lay womenand clergy was the kind of violence the first practised and which they werelegitimately expected to practise. These notions of forceful manliness, in turn,also influenced Malmesbury’s portrayal of regnal communities – such as, forinstance, his famous analysis of William the Conqueror’s victory at Hastings ashaving been the result of the Anglo-Saxons’ predilection for long hair, bare armsand colourful tattoos. Gender, in short, emerges as a category that permeates,and thus sheds new light on, several themes central to Malmesbury’s view ofEnglish history and society.

There is much more to Fenton’s study than this short summary can possiblyconvey: her book rewards its readers with numerous fascinating insights, andit raises questions relevant for our understanding not only of Malmesbury butalso of the wider context within which he wrote. The only misgiving thepresent reviewer has relates to the absence of too much of that context. Whilethere is a superb chapter on William and his time, the book’s central sectionspresent Malmesbury as somewhat in a vacuum: one would, for instance, like toknow how representative Malmesbury’s views were. How does his use ofgender compare to that in his models, or that of his contemporaries? What wasunusual about Malmesbury’s use of gender, and what reflected wider contem-porary vogues? How far was his take specifically English, and how far did itreflect wider European phenomena? How does he compare to other authorswriting for female patrons, in England and abroad? That not a single piece ofsecondary literature in a language other than English made it into the bibli-ography may explain some of these gaps (though it would be churlish to singleout Fenton for what, sadly, has become an all too familiar shortcoming amongBritish historians). At the same time, these questions are above all testimony tojust how insightful and thought provoking a study this is. My points are thusmere suggestions. Fenton’s work shows just how many insights can be derivedfrom exploring the role of gender in medieval historical writing. One hopesthat more studies on the subject will follow, and that they will match thesophistication, intelligence and lucidity of this fascinating and importantbook.

BJÖRN WEILERAberystwyth University

Richard II: Manhood, Youth, and Politics, 1377–99. By Christopher Fletcher.Oxford University Press. 2008. xix + 316pp. £55.00.

As readers will be aware, this book was highly commended by the judges ofthe 2008 History Today ‘Book of the Year’ Award. It is indeed a bold attempt toshift gender-oriented approaches to the past to the central ground of politicalhistory, to demonstrate how sensitivity to issues of manliness allows new read-ings of texts. Nevertheless, this reviewer finds it a problematic book.

Fletcher takes as his starting point Archbishop Arundel’s sermon of 30 Sep-tember 1399, in which he contrasted the ‘boy’ Richard II with the ‘man’ HenryIV – despite the two of them being the same age. In the subsequent three chaptershe explores the language of manhood in the late fourteenth century, drawing ona range of literary and medical texts to identify key themes before looking at

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Richard in a series of eight chapters, each dealing with a few consecutive years ofthe reign.

The main achievements of the book are to reveal fourteenth-century man-liness and to demonstrate how Richard was not simply a passive, ‘effeminate’king; he clearly tried to act against his enemies in ways which may be associ-ated with manliness. In so doing Fletcher presents us with well-wrought andchallenging new interpretations of evidence, e.g. Richard’s behaviour withregard to the dismissal of Scrope, or his attitude to war. But where he succeedsin showing how historians have obscured Richard’s manliness through evi-dence selection, his gender-oriented approach leads him to make his ownselective readings. He dismisses the possibility that Arundel’s sermon was con-structed as much to disinherit the young earl of March (then aged eight) as todisparage Richard, even though the sermon clearly constituted a warningabout boy kings. Similarly he devotes surprisingly little space to the likelihoodthat Richard was visibly unmanly throughout his reign. He concentrates onjust two images of the king – the Westminster Abbey portrait and the WiltonDiptych – and neglects the majority of contemporary manuscript images thatshow him as a beardless king among a bearded aristocracy, unable to bringforth facial hair, let alone a child.

Even if one accepts Fletcher’s arguments concerning Richard’s manliness,they are constructed against the backdrop of literature and medicine, notthe bitter personal rivalries of the court. Arundel’s sermon directly compared the‘boy’ Richard and the ‘man’ Henry, yet Fletcher examines manliness in thecontext of the ‘boy’ not the ‘man’. He never mentions Henry’s manliness; hehardly mentions him at all. One suspects that scholars are reluctant to describemanliness through Henry IV because to do so would require them to present alot of evidence at face value, and most who take a gender-oriented approach areinclined to look for hidden, subtle or obscure meanings rather than face-valueones. Either way, Fletcher completely neglects the rivalry between Richard IIand Henry IV, even though contemporaries saw the full-bearded jousting cham-pion, crusader and father-of-six Henry as a far more manly figure than thechildless, beardless, unmartial, mercurial Richard. Most of all, he ignores Rich-ard’s unwarranted persecution of his cousin – the very disagreement whichultimately led to Arundel’s comparison. In concentrating on gender issues andtheir interpretation he has neglected issues of personality. One cannot help butfeel that the emphasis should be the other way around.

IAN MORTIMERUniversity of Exeter

Fourteenth Century England V. Edited by Nigel Saul. Boydell. 2008. x + 190pp.£50.00.

As the editor of this new volume on fourteenth-century England notes in thepreface, the aim of this volume is to provide an overview of the trends of currentresearch, rather than to focus on one particular theme. The result is a mix ofarticles focusing on political and ecclesiastical history which offers some new andstimulating ideas.

One of the most interesting studies here is Jorgen Burgtorf’s re-examinationof the relationship between Edward II and Piers Gaveston. The subject has beenwidely studied, as Burgtorf acknowledges, but his article synthesizes the main



arguments well and makes a sound case for the argument that magnate dislike ofthe relationship was born of fear over exclusivity, rather than sexual iniquity.Two of the studies are devoted to the scrutiny of magnate retinues. AlisonMarshal, considering the retinue of Thomas Brotherton, earl of Norfolk, sug-gests that it is ‘notable’ that some of its members were also the earl’s tenants, andthat the inclusion of some of the countess’s kinsmen ‘should not necessarily beregarded as typical’. Elizabeth H. Will’s following analysis of John of Gaunt’shousehold gives an account of an exceptional retinue. She reconsiders the datingof the journal and check rolls of Gaunt’s household, which are then published intheir new order at the end of the article. Like Marshal, Will analyses the size andmake-up of Gaunt’s household, and suggests further avenues of investigation forthe duchy of Lancaster’s household and members.

David Robinson’s survey of clergy ordinations compares and contrastsvarious areas of England to determine the reasons behind ordination. Wherethere was either too little stability, or too many alterative forms of employ-ment, he suggests, the lure of clergy membership appears to have diminished.The role of the Despensers in the patronage of Tewkesbury abbey forms thefocus of Martyn Lawrence’s article. He attempts to highlight the role of HughIII in the patronage of the abbey, though his argument for the dynastic moti-vations behind the support for the abbey shown by the Despensers is mostconvincing. Anthony Musson’s article focuses on the locations of royal judicialsessions, and the problems of royal administration in the centre and on theperiphery. He observes that the choice of location of such meetings was some-times beyond the control of the crown and thus in the hands of local land-owners. In some ways this article complements those by Marshal and Will byfleshing out the picture of the web of baronial power in the provinces. Chris-topher Fletcher closes this collection with a study of writings on moralityused ‘as a form of self-control’, and offers comparison with medievalFrance.

Several of the articles consider the later rule of Richard II, and it is herethat this collection is strongest. Peter Crook opens the trilogy on Richard witha discussion of the dispute between two factions, the Geraldines and theButlers, in English Ireland. In reviewing the events of 1382–9, Crook demon-strates that the magnates and their factions were closely linked to the royalcolonial government, which they used either to promote their own interests orto undermine those of their opponents. George Stow analyses the Eulogium asa source for Richard’s tyranny. He suggests that the closing years of Richard’srule may have been defined by tyranny, but that the historical opinion of theking as tyrant is based on Lancastrian interpolations into certain texts. Hischapter is complemented by that of Terry Jones who, in a lively and stimu-lating piece, reassesses the view of Richard as a tyrant and suggests thatRichard II was not a tyrant by the terms of his own day. He highlights theways in which Richard was considerate towards the lesser members of society,and argues that Richard was trying to emulate the literature on the role of theprince that was popular in his own time, and which urged rulers to protecttheir ‘humbler subjects’. The end result is a valuable volume of new workwhich makes a contribution to fourteenth-century history and, in particular, torehabilitating the reputation of Richard II.

KATHRYN HURLOCKManchester Metropolitan University

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Early Modern

The Renaissance World. Edited by John Jeffries Martin. Routledge. 2007. xxi +702pp. £150.00.

John Jeffries Martin has assembled a very impressive array of scholars whohave penned the thirty-four essays collected in this impressive and ambitiousaddition to ‘The Routledge Worlds’ series. While the book is intended for anaudience of both students and scholars, it is also one of the editor’s stated goalsto redress a number of longstanding biases in Renaissance scholarship, strikinga balance between analyses of elite culture and popular culture, humanism andsociety, as well as the experiences of both men and women. The broad themes,then, around which the essays are organized are overseas expansion, economictransformations, courts and power; society and identity, religious change, thecirculation of knowledge; portraits and representation, science and technology.This is commendable: all too often the Renaissance is seen as a narrowly culturalphenomenon, circumscribed to the Italian peninsula, or even just the northernhalf of it. Broadening the field of investigation poses the thorny question,though, of just what the Renaissance was after all. In his lucid introduction,Martin characterizes it as ‘a movement – or, perhaps better, a cluster of inter-related movements . . . – the cultural expression both of an expanding andincreasingly commercially dynamic continent and of new patterns of consump-tion and competition for prestige in the courts’. Chronologically this is made tofall ‘between the Black Death and Galileo’s trial for heresy.’

Opening with three ‘preludes’ regarding the enduring legacy of Rome, theintersection of humanist scholarship, scientific investigation and artistic repre-sentation in the construct of perspective, and the impact of the Black Death onEuropean society (by Ingrid Rowland, Lyle Massey and Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.,respectively), the volume proceeds in roughly thematic order. The essays are ofuniformly high quality and, refreshingly, tend not only to present the latestscholarship and debates in the various fields of investigation, but also to bring tothe fore those questions that remain open.

Naturally, even given the broad range of scholarship and the depth of thesingle contributions, a volume such as this one can never be fully exhaustive.This is especially true when employing the very broad definition used here inorder to pin down an idea as elusive as ‘the Renaissance’. Thus, it is with somehesitation that I call attention to the book’s shortcomings. A scant fourteenpages are dedicated to the economy of the period and only twenty-one toEuropean expansion per se, while only one essay, albeit a very good one (byPaula Findlen), is dedicated to the impact of the works of Copernicus andGalileo and the heliocentric view of the universe. Although somewhat moreattention than usual is given to popular culture, the role of women in Renais-sance society and culture, and to the world beyond Italy and even Europe, aponderous majority of the works here presented still cling to an elite court andhumanist culture dominated by males.

In short, this is a very welcome addition to the literature on the Renaissanceas it showcases much of the best work in the field, providing students with a solidoverview of the major questions in Renaissance history, while at the same timemapping out the areas that beckon further investigation.

THOMAS KIRKNew York University in Florence



Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice. By Elizabeth Horodowich.Cambridge University Press. 2008. ii + 245pp. £50.00.

This book contributes to our understanding of politics, culture and everydaylife in early modern Venice by considering a fascinating, if difficult, subject:orality and the concerns which it raised. Horodowich rightly describes languageas both a tool of statecraft and a means of resistance. Her first chapter looksbeyond Venice to consider polite conversation in three well-known printedtreatises (Castiglione’s Cortegiano, Della Casa’s Galateo, and Guazzo’s Civilconversatione). She then moves from literature to legislation and to the authori-ties regulating public speech, especially in three domains: blasphemy (whichsince 1537 attracted the attentions of a specially created magistrature of Esecu-tori sopra la bestemmia); insults (the legislation against which assimilated verbaland physical injury, meting out equivalent punishments for one or the other);and gossip (whose recognized value as a source of information meant that it wasoften carefully recorded by patrician diarists). The final chapter considers thelanguage of courtesans through some of their own writings (especially those ofwell-known cortigiana honesta Veronica Franco) and through the opinions ofother, mostly male, writers. Courtesans sold much more than their bodies –indeed they distinguished themselves from both common prostitutes andrespectable women for their education, language and skilful conversation (inti-macy with courtesans was described as ‘conversazione’). In every case, Horo-dowich finds that public speech raised ambivalent preoccupations, to doessentially with class and gender. Language defined social status and had thegreatest importance for self-presentation; but it also permitted the underminingof social boundaries (as in the case of insults directed against social superiors). Interms of gender, silence, not speech, was the ideal for women. When they wereallowed to speak at all, their language was supposed to be controlled, chaste,private. In practice, however, women spoke, swore and hurled insults as much asmen (in turn, men gossiped as much as women). Women’s speech elicitedambivalent reactions. Gossip was described as meaningless chatter, but alsoaccepted as legal evidence in court. A similar paradox can be seen in the case ofcourtesans, whose eloquence was regarded as either dangerously seductive, orutterly pleasing, or both.

According to Horodowich, the attempt to discipline public speech grew in thesixteenth century in both quantity and quality. The reasons are to be found in:the increasing aristocratization of the oligarchy, more and more concerned withsocial boundaries; the influx of immigrants threatening to dilute original ‘Vene-tianness’; a general rise of order, reflected in the city’s well-known architecturaland ritual reforms of the early century; and the enhancing of the state’s author-ity. On this basis Horodowich assesses the theories of Norbert Elias and MichelFoucault. Yet this argument raises problems. The evidence for increase in dis-cipline is thin, and Guido Ruggiero has shown that the fourteenth centuryalready saw strict regulations of foul language, insults and blasphemy. Theemphasis on theories of modernity and state formation is also misleading. TheVenetian republic was founded on an aristocratic social structure sincethe thirteenth century, and it was precisely as an oligarchy – a pre-modern ratherthan a modern form of state – that it worried about the possibility of criticism inthe majority of the excluded. Arguably, more than with any major sixteenth-century change to the Venetian constitution, the prosecution of blasphemy had

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to do with the Reformation. There is a final question, which this book does notaddress, and which shows just how opaque written documents are as sources ofspoken words. Almost all texts consulted by Horodowich are in Italian. But ifthe written vernacular was codified on the basis of Florentine texts, what lan-guage was actually spoken in the streets of Venice? Horodowich discusses thestate’s drive towards Venetianness, but never considers that Venetians spoke alocal vernacular of which they were very proud. Finally, despite her importantremarks on immigration, she does not discuss what must have been Venice’ssingle greatest linguistic peculiarity, namely the mixity of languages originatingfrom various areas of Italy, Europe and the Mediterranean.

FILIPPO DE VIVOBirkbeck College, University of London

Cità Excelentissima: Selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo.Edited by Patricia H. Labalme and Laura Sanguineti White. Translated by LindaL. Carroll. Johns Hopkins University Press. 2008. xlii + 598pp. £33.50.

It would be practically impossible to exaggerate the importance of the diariesof Marin Sanudo (1466–1536) as a source for the history of Venice during theRenaissance. A patrician and scholar, Sanudo also held various political officesthrough three of the most tumultuous decades of Venice’s history, recordingpractically all he heard in the fifty-eight manuscript volumes of his diary, cov-ering a period of nearly forty years. While Sanudo always considered his diariesa potentially public work, and while he was in a position to glean an unusuallyrich and variegated array of information regarding the political workings of therepublic, his diaries are definitely not limited to the life of the government. Theyspan all aspects of Venetian life. When he began keeping the diaries, in January1496, he had already written a history of the French invasion of Italy in 1494,Charles VIII’s attempt to secure the Kingdom of Naples. It soon became clear,though, that the initial invasion was but the beginning of a series of wars thatwould transform Italy, and Sanudo began the diaries as a record of events to bereduced to a polished version once peace had returned to the peninsula. It isposterity’s great fortune that Sanudo was not allowed to become RenaissanceItaly’s Thucydides, for much of the wealth of information regarding the eco-nomic and social life of the city, not to mention its religious beliefs, practices andsuperstitions, or its intellectual and cultural vitality would inevitably have beenlost. For it is both the immediacy of the daily account and Sanudo’s unboundedfascination with life that make the diaries the precious source they are.

This extensive collection of excerpts is eminently successful in achieving theeditors’ stated goal of making Sanudo’s diaries more accessible to a broaderaudience. The diary entries are organized thematically rather than chronologi-cally, grouped into sections, the first concerning Sanudo himself, followed bythree sections related to the political life of the state: the Venetian government,crime and the judiciary, war and diplomacy. These are followed by sectionspertaining to the economic life of Venice and the early modern world, Venetiansociety and social life, religion and superstition. The final two sections deal withcultural life: humanism, education and the arts; and the loosely organized‘Theater in Venice, Venice as Theater’ regarding the theatricality of life as well astheatrical representations themselves. Each entry is preceded by a brief intro-ductory paragraph contextualizing the excerpt and the entire volume is com-



pleted by appendices dedicated to money and wages, and to the technicalvocabulary and terms employed by Sanudo himself.

Reducing fifty-eight volumes of manuscript diaries to a single volume is anundertaking fraught with perils. Given the breadth of topics canvassed by theauthor, striking a balance between range and depth is a difficult task indeed, butone at which the editors succeed handily. Some scholars would perhaps havepreferred a chronological organization in order to facilitate research, but wemust remember that in spite of this volume’s 600 pages, it presents only asampling of the original manuscripts. As such it provides a tantalizing windowonto the world of Marin Sanudo, the world of one of early modern Europe’smost brilliant cities.

THOMAS KIRKNew York University in Florence

Medieval Lucca and the Evolution of the Renaissance State. By M. E. Bratchel.Oxford University Press. 2008. xxi + 247pp. £65.00.

Lucca was one of the few Italian city-states to retain its communal govern-ment until the Napoleonic era, despite interludes of signorial rule and externaloverlordship. Standing in the centre of a plain encircled by hills, it owed itsimportance to its position on the main trade route running from Rome toFrance, the via Francı̄gena, which replaced the old Roman coastal road toFrance, the Via Aurelia, during the middle ages, when Lucca became the centreof the Lombard duchy and Carolingian county. Thanks to its trade and pros-perous silk industry, it established a communal regime that subjected its noblesto the control of the popolo in the early thirteenth century before suffering thesame economic and political crises (including the growing princely control ofa single family) that afflicted neighbouring states like Florence, Siena andBologna. But, whereas Florence became a ‘Renaissance state’, and Siena andBologna lost their independence, Lucca remained a city-republic, like Genoaand Venice – albeit a mere ‘government of lice’, according to the disparagingGuicciardini. The volume under review sets out not to answer the wider questionof why it survived but rather to describe one aspect of its survival, the growthand organization of its territory or state (in the city-state compound). Its perhapssurprising conclusion is that Lucca offers ‘a precocious example of state-formation’ that nevertheless was in no sense a ‘harbinger of the modern state’but instead ‘an anachronistic survival from the communal period’. Luccaremained a medieval city with a closely controlled contado (the Six Miles of plainsurrounding the city) and a heterogeneous territory that included the March ofTuscany, which had few lordships, and the mountainous area to the north,where they were more common. What was distinctive about Lucca’s control ofthe territory was its early use of vicariates (when Florence first used them, theywere in territories won from Lucca) and the absence by the fifteenth century ofaccomandigie or treaties with nobility in the countryside, making centralizedcontrol easier than in states like Florence and the duchy of Milan which retainedthem. Hence the paradox of Lucca’s position as a ‘precocious’ yet ‘anachronistic’state-maker, for surely it was Florence and Milan which were the ‘modern’territorial states, not Lucca – or is this now a question mal posé?

The book, we are warned, was not easy to write and it is not easy to read. Asa hybrid (the earlier period is based on printed material, we are told, the later

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period – on which Bratchel has already written – on unpublished primarysources as well), it is both extremely well-researched and over-meticulous inintroducing the twists and turns of all the latest historiographical debates andorthodoxies. As a result, we are confronted with so many qualifications andcautious reassessments that its overall argument is not easy to grasp, especiallysince we are offered no clear definition of ‘the Renaissance state’ referred to in itssomewhat misleading title. So, it is not a book for the uninitiated or the faint-hearted, who will need succour from the earlier monographs of Louis Green,Christine Meek and Bratchel himself. It does cover new ground, however, andthanks to its scrupulous scholarship, it will make Lucca an essential point ofreference in the ongoing debate about modernity and the territorial state.

ALISON BROWNRoyal Holloway, University of London

Contested Island: Ireland 1460–1630. By S. J. Connolly. Oxford University Press.2007. xii + 426pp. £37.00/$75.00.Divided Kingdom: Ireland 1630–1800. By S. J. Connolly. Oxford UniversityPress. 2008. xiii + 519pp. £35.00/$70.00.

Irish historians, with some exceptions, are not much given to reflections onthe epistemological nature of their enterprise. In the introduction to the firstvolume of this impressive addition to the ‘Oxford History of Early ModernEurope’, Sean Connolly allows himself some brief but revealing musings on theact of writing, alluding to Hayden White’s theories on narrative and the post-modern challenge to traditional modes of narrative history. Have claims, hewonders, that historical writing is essentially a fictive process called into questionthe type of books Connolly has written: ‘a single, structured account’ of over 900pages, covering three and a half centuries? Connolly believes that there is somelife left yet in the magisterial survey, noting that while these books are an exercisein the ‘general narrative survey’ they are ‘at least a self-conscious one’ (ContestedIsland, p. 3). It might be asked, in this self-conscious mode, what story isConnolly trying to tell? How does he contend with the established narratives ofthe period? And what is the ultimate value of this behemoth (which Connollylikens more to a bellowing dinosaur)?

Connolly gained some notoriety in the 1990s for his argument thateighteenth-century Ireland was a typical ancien régime society and he sees littleneed to alter that model in Divided Kingdom. For rejecting the colonial label thathe believed had been unthinkingly applied to eighteenth-century Irish society hewas widely criticized as a ‘revisionist’ intent on mitigating the English repressionin Ireland. Certainly, for those intent on reviving that somewhat tired debatethere is ammunition enough in these volumes. The Reformation is described asa ‘relative success’ (Contested Island, p. 192). Of Cromwell’s bloody conquest heasks (somewhat mischievously perhaps): might not the indigenous poor havebenefited from its consequences in their liberation from their traditional lords(Divided Kingdom, p. 165)?

Connolly courts controversy in a broader sense in Contested Island, where helargely rejects the traditional conquest narrative of Irish history in the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries. He is at pains to avoid ‘simplistic models based on anopposition between a victimized ‘native Ireland’ and a ‘colonizing England’.Instead, Connolly’s language to describe allegiances and identities is character-



ized by notions of fluidity, adaptation, hybridity and contingency. This is par-ticularly true in his discussion of the native Irish, who were hardly a doomed,atavistic people clinging fearfully to outmoded ideologies. Connolly (much likerecent historians of the indigenous peoples in the Americas) represents the nativeelite as the ultimate pragmatists, accommodating to new realities on the ground.Connolly’s narrative, beginning with the defeat of Ulick Burke of Clanricard byGerald Fitzgerald, earl of Kildare and governor of Ireland, at the battle ofKnockdoe in 1054 and ending with the violent civil war of 1798 and the union of1801, is unable to avoid aspects of the traditional narrative of conquest andcoercion. He tells a story of colonial state-building and resistance, the attemptsand failures of a composite monarchy to exert authority over the margins ofempire. Clearly, religion and ethnicity are central to this story; yet they did notdetermine it. But Connolly is not content to reassert neat traditional binariesbased on ethnicity and religion and deftly unweaves the complex local relationsthat underlay conflict and compromise in early modern Ireland. Hence, thebattle at Knockdoe, on the face of it a conflict between the traditional authorityof Gaelic lords and the authority of the crown, is shown to be shot through witha range of other interests, loyalties and allegiances. Indeed, the ideologicalmotivations of both native and newcomer are mostly downplayed throughout,with more practical goals predominating, though from time to time (such as inthe ritualized violence of 1641) Connolly must allow religious and ethnic hatredssome explanatory role (Divided Kingdom, p. 52).

Connolly does not flinch from the grizzlier aspects of the English conquest ofIreland and provides accounts of the many atrocities during these centuries: thebloody violence of Elizabethan armies in the second half of the sixteenth centuryis described in some detail, though these he believes need to be placed in thecontext of the violent norms of the time. Despite such norms, Cromwell’s mas-sacres at Drogheda and Wexford are (rather coolly) adjudged to have gone‘beyond what the circumstances warranted’ (Divided Kingdom, p. 95). Connollyclearly identifies turning points and missed chances throughout the narrative.For example, in Contested Island, the 1560s and 1570s see the emergence of a newtone of pessimism among English statesmen in Ireland and a focus on thedegeneracy of both Gaelic Irish and Old English that ultimately led to a shiftfrom a policy of reform to one of coercion, with the more violent conflicts andnew plans for wholesale colonization that marked the preceding decades.

Both volumes maintain a crisp, lively pace, enlivened by telling (often ironic)anecdotes and brief but tantalizing accounts of a range of aspects of popularculture such as wife sales and the Ulster Scots vernacular. Connolly is adroit atemphasizing the international context of English policy and offers instructivecontrasts between Ireland and other European societies, along with some scep-tical comments on comparisons between Ireland and English settlements inAmerica. He shows an admirable command of much of the secondary literature,with Contested Island understandably relying much more on the work of otherhistorians (particularly Ciaran Brady and Steven Ellis for Tudor Ireland andRaymond Gillespie for the seventeenth century). Divided Kingdom, covering theperiod on which Connolly’s own research has focused, offers a more sure-footeduse of the primary sources. Other, more novel, types of evidence are also used togood effect: new types of house designs, for example, are shown to have reflecteda greater sense of security among the settler community in the early decades of

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the seventeenth century. He also weighs in to good effect on current debates overthe importance of Jacobitism before and after 1745. At the same time, there islittle discussion of topics that have exercised historians of late. Gender andconsumerism receive only passing comment and in general Connolly is moreeffective in depicting the ideologies and actions of elites than those from morehumble backgrounds.

Returning to the question of narrative, it is obvious that Connolly has notchosen to adopt the mode of romance in which to tell his story, nor has heembraced the genre of tragedy. Rather, these volumes read more like a comedy,in White’s sense of a drama of reconciliation in which the characters are ulti-mately brought into some form of reconciliation with each other. This is not thesymbolic reconciliation of the 1790s in which Catholic, Protestant and Dissenterunited in the ‘common name of Irishman’; nor is it the of shotgun wedding of theunion of 1801 (though Connolly notes that this was a flexible and long-lastingsettlement); rather the accommodations Connolly emphasizes are the ‘fluid andcontingent nature of allegiances and aspirations’, and the ability of native andsettler sometimes to overcome and transform seemingly intractable ethnic andreligious divisions, for adaptations and understandings to be reached in thepractical realities of the everyday (Divided Kingdom, p. 497). It is in his masterfulattention to the complexity and ambiguity inherent in the traditional principalthemes of early modern Irish history – identity formation, dispossession andcolonialism, state-building, elite and popular politics – where Connolly provesthat there is indeed life in the narrative survey yet.

PADHRAIG HIGGINSMercer County College

The Reformation in Rhyme: Sternhold, Hopkins and the English Metrical Psalter,1547–1603. By Beth Quitslund. Ashgate. 2008. x + 322pp. £60.00.

‘This is a book about a book’, but not just any book, for the ‘Sternhold andHopkins’ Whole Booke of Psalmes ‘became the most printed book in Englandduring the early modern period’ (pp. 1, 239). Given that extraordinary fact, weknow very little about this remarkable text, and even less about the circum-stances of its inception and development. In recent years, practitioners from arange of disciplines have enhanced our broad understanding of the developmentof metrical psalmody. But Beth Quitslund’s study is the first to focus exclusivelyon this extraordinary work, which did so much to shape the religious belief andpractice of English Protestants for a full century and more. It is a considerableachievement, and in many ways one which is long overdue.

The Whole Booke of Psalmes was a palimpsest, and Quitslund explores itsgradual evolution across five chapters. She begins by examining Thomas Stern-hold’s initial psalm paraphrases, before moving on to John Hopkins’s lateEdwardian additions, developments in Wesel during the reign of Mary, theproduction of the Anglo-Genevan metrical psalter, and the first Elizabethanincarnation of the completed volume, published by John Day in 1562. Thisdetailed analysis reveals the fascinating process by which the texts of the psalmswere selected, paraphrased, expanded upon, edited and reinscribed withmeaning to suit the particular religious and political imperatives of the time.Sternhold’s psalms, Quitslund suggests, were very much part of ‘the evangelicalpush to shape a distinctively godly Edwardian regime by carefully educating,



counselling, and representing the young king’ (p. 20). Hopkins’s efforts aimed ‘toprovide prayers for the community of the godly’ (p. 95), while during the Marianexile metrical psalmody came to represent ‘an important expression of commu-nal Protestant identity’ (p. 113). Quitslund’s close textual reading of the psalmparaphrases provides some fascinating insights into how their authors concep-tualized the godly community and the nature of its relationship with the divine.

A sixth and final chapter, ‘The Whole Booke of Psalmes in the Life of theElizabethan Church 1562–1603’, comes across as something of an afterthought,and fails to find convincing answers to the questions of: ‘what was everyonedoing with all those books? And, as importantly, what did people think aboutthem?’ (p. 239). It contains some interesting theories about the only othercomplete English metrical psalter to be published during the reign of Elizabeth,that of Archbishop Matthew Parker, but lacks the hard archival evidence to shedmuch new light on the ways in which the psalms were actually used. Quitslundalso (deliberately) excludes any discussion of music, which hinders her chancesof managing to illuminate the practical and spiritual roles the psalms played inworship and devotion. But her discussion of the development of the metricalpsalter between 1547 and 1562 will be of tremendous interest to anyone curiousabout the course of the English reformation, and in particular the character anddevelopment of English Protestantism.

JONATHAN WILLISUniversity of Warwick

The Northern Rebellion of 1559. Faith, Politics and Protest in ElizabethanEngland. By K. J. Kesselring. Palgrave Macmillan. 2007. ix + 232pp. £45.00.

The Northern Rebellion of 1559 was the only major domestic insurrectionsuffered by Elizabeth I. Remarkably, K. J. Kesselring’s work is the first book-length study of this event. From conspiracy to suppression, Kesselring providesa concise yet substantive account of the rebellion, including how contemporariesendeavoured to shape and construct memories of the revolt. The book begins byquestioning traditional interpretations surrounding the motives of the northernearls (Northumberland and Westmoreland) and their followers, accounts thatgenerally tie the impetus to rebel to a defence of a flagging feudal order ratherthan any fervent devotion to the Catholic religion. Kesselring insists, however,that while ‘elite political action triggered the rising . . . the rebellion’s popularand religious elements were integral to its causes, course, and consequences’(p. 8).

Given that the author’s first book focused on mercy and authority in theTudor State, it should come as no surprise that this theme receives much atten-tion here. Kesselring offers a detailed analysis of the reaction by the crown to therebellion. Although it is widely accepted that the queen exacted a harsh retribu-tion, the argument made by Kesselring is that this repression differed from pastTudor uprisings in that the state’s response had ‘both material and ideologicaldimensions’. Unlike her predecessors, Elizabeth used mercy sparingly as sheexploited the rebellion for both financial and political gain – factors that helpexplain why the latter years of Elizabethan rule were void of similar revolts.

The most compelling chapter of the book addresses meaning and memories ofthe rebellion. Here, the author examines how a politically insecure Elizabethanstate effectively marshalled press and pulpit to combat news and rumour of

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events in the north, measures that clearly indicate that the intended audiencewent well beyond the literate elite. Initial efforts were geared to stem support forthe rebellion by assailing the integrity of the earls themselves; post-rebellionefforts saw this stratagem change as state-sponsored as well as unofficial polemicoften employed potent anti-Catholic rhetoric in condemning the insurgents asthe foot soldiers of Rome called to action on behalf of the pope and a foreignqueen. These labours served to fuel the growing sense of an apocalyptic strugglethat became all too familiar in the remaining decades of Elizabethan England asthe nation forged its new-found Protestant identity.

In stressing links between pro- and anti-rebel elements on both sides of theborder with Scotland, Kesselring also endeavours to assign a ‘British’ identity tothe rebellion. In this context, perhaps more attention could have been awardedto Irish influences. No doubt, for example, the earl of Sussex’s experiences intrying to enforce crown authority beyond the Pale in Ireland earlier in the decadeplayed no small role in his efforts as lord president of the north in attempting tore-establish order in northern England. Perhaps, too, the editors could havedone a better job ensuring that the endnotes to the conclusion were not com-pletely omitted from the book. These minor observations aside, Kesselring’sbook represents a major contribution to our understanding of this pivotal eventin Elizabethan history and will become the standard work.

DAVID O’HARAUniversity of Central Arkansas

The English Country House Chapel: Building a Protestant Tradition. By AnnabelRicketts. Spire Books. 2007. 348pp. £45.00.

This posthumously published version of Annabel Ricketts’s doctoral thesis(edited by her husband) is a detailed exploration of an important, but largelyunderstudied, subject. What happened to country house chapels in the twocenturies after 1500, what effect did the new Protestant liturgy have on chapeldesign, and how, and when, did they become purveyors of a distinctively Prot-estant religious aesthetic? Moreover, how far were they constructed for worshipor were they just displays of power? Ricketts offers stimulating answers to thesequestions through a comprehensive exploration of a large range of countryhouse chapels (some 320 are noted in the useful gazetteer), and much of the bookconsists of close readings of buildings and plans. A number of significant con-clusions are highlighted. First is the overlooked innovation of the Elizabethanperiod in which peripheral chapel spaces (such as landings and stairs) wereenlisted to form a new type of chapel designed for Protestant worship which waslocated on main circulation routes (what Ricketts calls the ‘assembly chapel’).Second is the surge in private chapel building in the early seventeenth century,witnessing the range of religious opinions on offer reflected in a mix of styles anddesigns, from the beauty of holiness tradition (with two of the most lavish datingfrom the 1650s at Staunton Harold and Cholmondeley) to Puritan chapels, suchas Littlecote House, Wiltshire, with its dominating central pulpit and absence ofimagery. But Ricketts warns against making too easy or necessary connectionsbetween architectural styles and religious views, noting that the ‘medieval’chapel at Steane was built for a ‘puritan’ owner, and that there was a minglingof gothic and classical styles more generally. In this period ‘double cell chapels’were particularly numerous, with separate ‘cells’ for pulpit and altar, but Rick-



etts wonders how far the altar was actually used for communion, whether thesechapels were consecrated, and what was the relation between them and theparish church. Thirdly, at the Restoration, there is no evidence of an immediateboom in private chapel building, and across the range of styles what is notewor-thy is the lack of architectural emphasis on the east end (at a time when therevival of high church views of the eucharist might have suggested otherwise).Fourthly, the post-Restoration period saw a move to the single-cell chapel, andgreater dignity was given to communion tables, with communion rails becomingincreasingly popular (and here her findings chime with those of KennethFincham and Nicholas Tyacke, whose work this originally pre-dates). Thisperiod also saw the emergence of what Ricketts calls the ‘Pembroke, Cambridgeoption’ (after Wren’s designs for the chapel there), and the long, box-like room,decorated with taste and restraint remains the most popular image of a countryhouse chapel today. During the 1680s, a ‘counter Counter Reformationbaroque’ developed in chapels such as Chatsworth, where baroque art formswere harnessed to convey a Protestant message. The book is underpinned by alarge number of impressive plans and illustrations, and is likely to remain theauthoritative word on the subject for many years to come.

JEREMY GREGORYUniversity of Manchester

Poetry and the Cromwellian Protectorate: Culture, Politics, and Institutions. ByEdward Holberton. Oxford University Press. 2008. xi + 249pp. £50.00.

One of the commonplaces this book challenges is that there was, between1653 and 1658, a drift back to monarchical literary forms. Instead, Holbertontraces the complexity of political and rhetorical positions articulated in Protec-torate poetry, showing how they frequently resist polarized schemata. Poets’expressions of allegiance are usually bound up with circumstances, conditionsand local perspectives. The argument is sustained through a series of closereadings of poems that explore the various institutional contexts and shiftingstructures of the Protectorate.

The range of institutional contexts Holberton considers is useful. Chapter 1discusses Bulstrode Whitelocke’s embassy to Sweden, his diary, and the poemscomposed around and exchanged during that embassy, including AndrewMarvell’s ‘A Letter to Doctor Ingelo’. Chapter 2 reflects on the City of Lon-don’s reinvention of the pageant and entry in the absence of monarchy, par-ticularly as a means of negotiating with the Protectorate government. Chapter3 looks at the representation of Oxford in a 1654 collection of poems producedwithin the university. The collection projects a sense of the university as aninstitution within the protectorate that is capable of promoting and critiquingthe values of godliness and civility. Marvell’s First Anniversary and EdmundWaller’s Panegyrick, both written in the context of the first Protectorate Par-liament, are the subject of chapter 4: the institution to which they relate isallegedly the 1653 constitution, The Instrument of Government. Holbertonresists the tendency to polarize Marvell and Waller (and he identifies a usefulcontrast between The First Anniversary and Marchamont Nedham’s TrueState), though his account of the tensions evident in Marvell’s poemand the Augustan tendencies of Waller’s looks like an antithesis in practicalterms.

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Chapter 5, on the Western Design, looks at non-epic poems about colonialambitions and efforts, and transatlantic affairs more generally. Chapter 6 dis-cusses the entertainments at the weddings of Cromwell’s daughters, also byWaller and Marvell. The focus on institutions fades from view here (implicitlythe institution is Cromwell’s court with its ambivalent literary culture) infavour of a close reading of the texts. Chapter 7 looks at poems on Oliver’sdeath and the succession. The constitutional issue here was anterior to thefamilial one: what was left of the constitution after the death? Chapters 4–7dwell at length on writing by Waller and Marvell, and in a way this bookmight equally have been presented as a study of these two contrasting – butnot as contrasting as you might think, Holberton suggests – poets. The epi-logue, perhaps the most engaging section, reflects on the enduring and end-lessly transforming reputation of Cromwell, and the influence seventeenth-century poetry about him has had on perceptions of the Protectorate insubsequent centuries.

While there was some reversion to monarchical imagery on Oliver’s death, themain drift of Holberton’s book is to challenge the critical commonplace of theinevitability of monarchical imagery in the representation of authority, and ofthe increasing ceremonialism of the institutions of authority (as opposed to thecourt) through the 1650s. He reminds us of the disjuncture between these insti-tutions and the Protector(s). Protectorate poetry is not just about the Protector.Holberton has a more disparate view of what might constitute republicanismand its penumbra than Blair Worden or even David Norbrook, and a moreinclusive view of the republican imagination. This appears through densedescription of the kinds of inventiveness of (very broadly) pro-governmentwriters, and the closely textual analysis does not always lend itself to generali-zation. What emerges more loosely through these readings, however, is theimportance of international politics, trade, pragmatism and patronage to thepoetry of the 1650s.

It is perhaps not obvious that Protectorate poetry is not always preoccupiedwith Oliver Cromwell, and even those poems that seem to place him in the centreof things are in fact primarily concerned with other matters. It is certainlyobvious that poetry characterizing Oliver Cromwell needs to be read as a rhe-torical exercise. This is not to say that it is insincere: rather that its ideals,commitment and praise are expressed and negotiated through the devices of agrammar-school education. It is odd, then, that so many readers have seen it assimple flattery, written in expectation of promotion and/or entirely false. Muchmore can be done by apprehending the materials with which the poet works,the languages spoken, the institutions affiliated or redescribed. Holberton’sapproach is not that of Pocock and Skinner, however: his move to specificitymeans that the political languages that express association and contextual align-ment disappear in favour of individual particularities. The danger of Holber-ton’s restless particularization, fully realized at times, is that the significance ofthese poetic engagements disappears into microscopic textures without clearcontours. The book nonetheless makes a significant contribution to the re-evaluation of writing in the 1650s, enriching our sense of its engagement with thediverse institutions of government, and the values and cultures associated withthose institutions.

JOAD RAYMONDUniversity of East Anglia



The Magnificent Monarch: Charles II and the Ceremonies of Power. By AnnaKeay. Continuum. 2008. xvi + 319pp. £25.00.

Anna Keay, of English Heritage, has produced the very first full-length studyof court ceremony during the reign of an early modern English monarch, framedas a chronological survey of its development from his birth to his death: in herapt words, ‘a ritual biography’. Her choice of ruler, Charles II, is especiallyimportant in that it enables her to trace the use of the rituals of royal officethrough her subject’s time in impoverished exile, as well as during his effectivereign, thereby revealing what was regarded as the indispensable core of kinglypomp. The ground has been prepared for her in various ways over the past fortyyears, by various cultural historians following Sir Keith Thomas, in studying theimportance of the royal healing rites; by myself, in observing that Charles,though famed in memory for his affability and informality, was actually astickler for form and protocol; and most of all by Brian Weiser, in describing themanner in which physical access to the king and his private apartments becameprogressively restricted during his last two decades of rule. Dr Keay, however,goes far beyond any of us, and indeed breaks new ground for the period inproducing a full-length ‘biography’ of this sort.

She brings out vividly the importance of form and protocol in maintaining asense of legitimacy for Charles as a monarch during the years of exile, not leastbecause every time he moved to a new state, the manner of his reception andaccommodation had to be negotiated all over again. In this context, the fact thata tenth of his household expenditure went upon ensuring him magnificent per-sonal clothing makes perfect political sense: if the man looked threadbare, thenso did his cause. The experience of exile made its mark on his household arrange-ments at the Restoration in two ways. One was that he tactfully shared out thegreat offices among a spectrum of politicians, but reserved the middle-rankingpositions overwhelmingly to men who had shared his life abroad. The other wasthat, having become accustomed to receiving visitors in private lodgings,however formally, he continued to do so in his private apartments, as well as thestate rooms, when living in palaces again. The ease and informality of access tothem enjoyed at least by members of the ruling class indeed reached an unprec-edented level in the 1660s, even though Charles still carried himself with formal-ity and regality during public appearances. This access was increasingly curtailedfrom 1673 onward, as greater political insecurity and polarization induced theking to adopt a style of cumulative withdrawal and seclusion, coupled with anever greater magnificence of setting and ceremony when he appeared before hissubjects. This is an excellent book, which deserves to be the definitive study of itstheme.

RONALD HUTTONUniversity of Bristol

The Bright–Meyler Papers: A Bristol–West India Connection, 1732–1837. Editedby Kenneth Morgan. The British Academy/Oxford University Press. 2007.£75.00.

The extensive nature of eighteenth-century mercantile networks and thearduous task of researching them at the micro-level are nowhere as well reflectedas in this work, edited by Kenneth Morgan. With his large experience of sourcesin early modern British colonial history, he took on the monumental task of

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selecting and editing commercial and personal letters from an exceptionally richcollection of family papers kept in Australia, and has combined them withvarious sources that remained in Britain.

The Bright and Meyler families were amongst the largest West Indian mer-chants in Bristol, but they have not yet received as much scholarly attention astheir contemporary John Pinney, who traded on a much smaller scale in 1780sBristol. John Pinney’s fame amongst historians certainly benefited from hispersonal and commercial papers surviving in England, and therefore being ofeasy access to students and scholars alike. Pares’s monograph on the Pinneys (AWest-India Fortune (1950)) remains to this day a seminal work and the historio-graphical benchmark for historians interested in Atlantic trade and earlymodern British colonial history. However, there is much need for a wider com-parison of the business strategies used by the Pinneys with that of other firmsoperating in the West Indian trade in the same period. Morgan has now put anend to the neglect shown to the Bright and Meyler families, by presentingscholars with extensive material on these two key commercial dynasties. Thiswork provides historians with a great opportunity, not only to find out moreabout this important firm, but also to enlarge the existing corpus of individualcase studies available for research and, through comparative analysis, to allowfor a more refined understanding of the early modern Atlantic economy andsociety.

The volume covers over a century of trade and commercial interests betweenBristol and the West Indies and offers a large selection of letters, mostly con-centrated in the years 1740–80 and 1815–35, alongside other items such as willsand letters of instructions to captains. The book is structured in three parts, a150-page introduction followed by 500 pages of the correspondence itself, twoappendices containing a report on the trade of Bristol in 1788, written byRichard Bright, and additional reference material on merchants and planters.Morgan’s introduction and background material are thorough and include adetailed description of the original sources, a summary of the Bright and Meylerbusiness over time, and an overview of the main themes found in the correspon-dence, which are very usefully cross-referenced with the letters which containthem. The letters themselves are contextualized by Morgan’s biographical notesfor every person mentioned in them and by the extensive bibliographical refer-ences that accompany them.

Morgan, in his introduction, explicitly identifies six research perspectives,that may be of interest to scholars: (1) making a fortune; (2) manners, mar-riage and trust; (3) the risk environment; (4) the problem of debt; (5) the slavetrade; and (6) Jamaican plantations on the eve of the abolition of slavery,when absentee ownership was rife and plantation management was an episto-lary favourite. These themes have been at the forefront of recent scholarship inbusiness and economic history, and the publishing of this correspondence willenable historians to explore them further, in conjunction with other primarysources. These letters also lead us to reconsider how we grasp plantation soci-eties, which are often simplified as planters vs. slaves. A few of the Bright andMeyler men acted as agents in the West Indies, and both families ended upwith significant landed interests. Yet, they did not fit the orthodox image ofthe plantocracy. The letters thus provide a much needed window for a betterunderstanding of this social group, in its economic and socio-cultural dimen-



sion as well as over time, and its interaction with other segments of colonialand metropolitan societies. Lastly, given the correspondence’s exceptionallylong span, these papers offer useful material for business historians interestedin the notion of entrepreneurship and the formation of social capital overseveral generations.

In short, this is a meticulously edited volume containing captivating materialthat I would recommend not only to historians of the British Atlantic, but alsoto those with a wider interest in trade, maritime and colonial history.

ALBANE FORESTIERLondon School of Economics and Political Science

Visualising the Revolution: Politics and the Arts in Late Eighteenth-CenturyFrance. By Rolf Reichardt and Hubertus Kohle. Reaktion Books. 2008. 294pp.£25.00.

In this book, part of a series entitled ‘Picturing History’, which is devotedto the visual image both as historical evidence and as a factor in historicalexperience and development, two eminent German scholars survey and analysethe rich range of pictorial representation generated during the French Revo-lution. The book is beautifully produced on fine paper, and is illustrated byfull-colour reproductions of 187 images, many but not all familiar, put out byboth adherents and critics of the Revolution, within the country and abroad.There is also a useful chronology setting the main landmarks in culturalhistory alongside political developments. The authors begin from the nowfashionable premise that ‘the cultural and intellectual upheavals of the Revo-lution were more seismic than the economic ones’ (p. 131), although there areoccasional hints of nostalgia for the days when confident statements could bemade about the aims and destiny of the revolutionary bourgeoisie. Acceptingthe scarcely challengeable view that the revolutionary period produced little inthe way of enduring or memorable art, they nevertheless argue that it gave riseto a vigorous new ‘hybrid’ pictorial culture in which classically trained artists(such as Gillray or Cruikshank) and even great ones (like David) were pre-pared to seek popular attention in order to influence the direction of events.The images they produced were intended to serve political and didactic pur-poses, and the favoured medium was the cheap print whose message could bereceived at a number of cultural levels. Nor were many of these prints asephemeral as might at first appear. The authors show very effectively howcertain images were repeatedly adapted or pirated throughout the revolution-ary decade to offer changed perspectives according to the turn of the politicalwheel. In order to set them in context, they touch on a wide range of aestheticactivity, from town planning, museums and statues to academies, salons andcompetitions. There are also a fascinating few pages on revolutionary boardgames. Most of the text consists of commentary on the images, and here thetouch of the authors is generally sure. But perhaps they should be less sur-prised that Robespierre was depicted as a leading figure as early as the salon ofSeptember 1791 (p. 138). By then he was already a figure of authority. On theother hand, he was not a member of the Legislative Assembly, so cannot be,as they think (pp. 147–9), the central figure depicted in Gérard’s Tenth ofAugust 1792.

WILLIAM DOYLEUniversity of Bristol

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Late Modern

Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World. ByCarl Gardina Pestana. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2009. viii + 302pp.£26.00.Art and the British Empire. Edited by Tim Barringer, Geoff Quilley and DouglasFordham. Manchester University Press. 2007. xxi + 442pp. £25.00.

These are attractive works that throw considerable light on their subjects.Pestana’s book indicates the diverse religious world of the British Atlantic andthe interplay between Protestantism and the expansion of the empire. She notesthat the circulation of peoples brought together many different religious tradi-tions. Key strands included the meeting of western European Christianity, WestAfrican traditional beliefs and Native American spirituality, but there were alsoothers, including Sephardic Jews and Atlantic African Muslims. Christianitywas the dominant theme, especially Protestantism, although the latter was frag-mented. Anti-Catholicism proved a unifying theme for the Protestants and thishelped engender and focus opposition to Catholicism. In some respects, thisbook relates Linda Colley’s Britons to the wider Atlantic scene, although thereligious accent is stronger than in Britons.

Barringer, Quilley and Fordham argue that empire was felt at the heart ofBritish culture and their collection certainly dominates its salience. Theirthoughtful introduction suggests a historiographical neglect, with British artgenerally seen as overwhelmingly representing subjects in the British Islesand as constructing a Britishness. More problematically, they claim that themajor collections of British paintings until very recently chose largely to keepthe issue of empire away from public view. They also claim that empirehas played only a limited role in many recent works on the history of Britishart.

The essays in the volume are grouped into four categories. The first, ‘Settlersand Travellers’, tackles the inhabited landscape of empire, linking the represen-tation of imperial territory with that of the human actors who visited or livedthere. The category ‘Metropolitan Views’ is a useful counterpart, addressingLondon’s significant role as a cultural centre for empire. This role took manyforms, not least with London artists crafting an imperial identity consistent withrecent territorial conquest. One chapter offers an instructive account of the roleof imperial statuary in Westminster Abbey, a theme that looks toward recentcontroversies over the statues in Trafalgar Square.

The third category, ‘Roles and Reversals’, argues that artists were notinvolved simply in promoting cultural and gender stereotypes, but were alsocapable of undermining expectations and overturning cultural assumptions. Artas language, and not as message, emerges clearly. This section extendsto consider the 1936 film Rhodes of Africa. The fourth category is on ‘SubjectFormation’, a wide-ranging category that includes the relationship betweenartist and subject, as well as photography as an artistic medium and a portraitgenre.

Some of the contributions might seem overly theoretical, although that is ofthe nature of the subject. What is impressive is the range of the collection,chronological, geographical, thematic and conceptual. This collection will play amajor role in the subject literature and greatly deserves to be read both by



historians of art and by those concerned with imperial themes. The publishersare to be congratulated on its attractive pricing.

JEREMY BLACKUniversity of Exeter

Nineteenth-Century Europe: A Cultural History. By Hannu Salmi. Polity. 2008.vii + 192pp. £14.99.

Any attempt to survey European culture across the ‘long’ nineteenth centuryin such a slender volume (and particularly one in which nearly a quarter of thespace is given over to notes, bibliography and index) constitutes a quite dauntingchallenge. Not surprisingly, Professor Salmi’s effort emerges as highly selective,forming a book which is perhaps best viewed as a series of brief and looselyinterconnected essays on some salient themes that deal especially with ‘ways oflife as mental, material and social practices’ as well as with mentalities andemotions. His topics include the hopes and fears aroused by the process ofindustrialization, and its ‘Faustian’ encouragement of material prosperity; thealtered perceptions of time and space attendant upon dramatic changes in trans-portation; the romanticist cult of creative ‘genius’; the cultural history of aspi-rations towards nationhood; attitudes towards ‘family and home’; patterns ofurban living and consumption; and the ‘breakthrough of mechanical reproduc-tion’ that allegedly demonstrates the increasing applicability of duplication to allareas of life. Even if Salmi’s two final chapters (on colonial culture and Europeanidentity, and on the fin de siècle) are less tightly argued than the preceding ones,his overall survey manages to compress a good range of concisely expressedinsights into its limited compass. Among the most notable features are its astuteuse of literary quotation and its consistent concern with differences betweenmale and female perceptions of the social and intellectual developments at issue.Moreover, as befits a work springing partly from the author’s teaching experi-ence in the pioneering department of cultural history at the University of Turku,it is also enlivened by what most anglophone readers will encounter as somerefreshingly unfamiliar citations of Finnish evidence.

MICHAEL BIDDISSUniversity of Reading

Ireland’s New Worlds: Immigrants, Politics, and Society in the United States andAustralia, 1815–1922. By Malcolm Campbell. University of Wisconsin Press.2008. xiii + 249pp. £58.50 (hb)/£26.95 (pb).

This volume is a brave and fascinating exercise in comparative history pub-lished as part of the ‘History of Ireland and the Irish Diaspora’ series. It strikesa brave blow against the rampant exceptionalism endemic in Irish Studies,although the comparison pursued is not between the Irish and other ethnicgroups in either the USA or Australia, but between the experiences of Irishimmigrants in these two very different societies. Drawing on his earlier workpublished as Kingdom of the Ryans: The Irish in Southwest New South Wales,1816–90 (1997), Campbell compares the experience of Irish immigrants in NewSouth Wales with those in the USA from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to theoutbreak of the Irish Civil War in 1922. The core chapters are those comparingIrish immigrants in the rural environment of Minnesota in the USA and NewSouth Wales in Australia (Chapter 3) and those in California and Eastern

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Australia (Chapter 4). The conclusion is that there was no innate predilection forurban settlement by immigrants who had been driven off the land in Ireland.Rather, it was the environment encountered by Irish immigrants that had somuch importance in determining the choices they made upon reaching theirdestinations. The overwhelming majority of Irish emigrants went to the USA,but the contrasting fortunes of Irish emigrants to the British empire tell us muchabout the dangers of generalizing about the Irish overseas solely from the studyof their experience in the USA. Even in relation to the experience of the Irish inthe USA, Campbell makes the point that given the emphasis in recent scholar-ship on the experience of Irish immigrants in rural environments elsewhere(particularly in Canada and Australia), the neglect of this aspect of their expe-rience in the USA is ‘surprising’ (p. 65). The implication is that the ‘IrishDiaspora’ cannot be understood solely in relation to the history of Irish emigra-tion to the United States, and that the impact of high rates of emigration onIreland itself cannot be adequately understood by exclusive reference to thehistory of the United States. It is only recently, for example, that the experienceof Irish emigrants to Britain has received serious attention.

An important point is that when the Irish were represented significantly ininitial European settlement (which was, of course, not a factor in Irish immigra-tion into Britain), an Irish presence benefited from the imprimatur of ‘firstfoundations’ in the culture of significant elements of the second British empire.Likewise in California, Irish immigrants drawn there from other parts of the USAor Canada after the discovery of gold could present themselves as ‘American’ asmuch as Irish, given that few Irish-born immigrants there emigrated directly fromIreland. In Australia, after the discovery of gold in what is now Victoria led to anexponential increase of population recruitment, the Irish were viewed as desirableimmigrants in comparison with other potential recruits, despite the substantialnumber of Roman Catholics amongst them. The implication is that in the secondBritish empire (and the west coast of North America) race mattered more thanreligion in determining the nature of the reception immigrants received. This is anissue the historians of the Irish Diaspora have yet to engage with adequately. Thehistory of the Irish Diaspora does not map neatly on to the history of IrishRepublicanism, and it is clear from the quality of Campbell’s book that the futureof the subject will be guided by that fundamental insight.

ALEXANDER MURDOCHUniversity of Edinburgh

The Letters of Richard Cobden. Volume I: 1815–1847. Edited by Anthony Howe.Oxford University Press. 2007. lx + 529pp. £95.00.

This volume, the first of four projected for the series, reproduces 378 ofCobden’s extant letters for the period 1815–47. Chronologically speaking, thebook covers over half of Cobden’s life (1804–65) but reproduces only a smallproportion of his correspondence as a whole. Some 1,600 letters survive for theperiod under review, representing about one-fifth of Cobden’s entire output as aletter writer. In one sense, the volume constitutes poor value for money, consid-ering that the whole of Cobden’s letters are to be made available, via the internet,when the printed edition is complete. To that extent, it provides a sweetener anda substitute for that (far distant?) nirvana. A comparison naturally presents itselfwith the great and as yet unfinished Disraeli Project at Toronto, which is endeav-



ouring to provide a complete printed edition of Disraeli’s letters. Consideringthat Disraeli and Cobden were direct contemporaries but political opposites (atleast on the central issue at contention in this volume, the Repeal of the CornLaws), one might reflect that the triumph of Cobdenite principles continuesunabated. When Howe’s project is complete, Cobden will be better served withmodern scholarly editions than some British prime ministers, a volume of bicen-tenary essays having appeared in 2006 and Cobden’s American (1952) andEuropean (1994) diaries having long been in print.

Of course, over the long term, Cobden achieved more than many Britishprime ministers and this must be its own justification for this enterprise. Nor isthere any doubting the thoroughness which Howe and his assiduous researchofficers (Simon Morgan and Gordon Bannerman) have brought to the task.Cobden emerges from this volume as a man of integrity, fortitude and initiative,whose single-minded devotion to the issue of Repeal threatened to destabilize hisharmonious family life and adversely affected his financial prospects. Nor wasCobden the provincial-minded lobbyist or unsympathetic industrial lackey thatmany protectionist and paternalistic Tory propagandists were keen to portray.Cobden was an avid traveller (both metaphorically and geographically speak-ing), keen to expand his intellectual and cultural horizons beyond the spheres inwhich his personality and outlook had matured: agrarian Sussex (the county ofhis birth), industrial Lancashire (where he made his commercial mark in calicoprinting) and impoverished Stockport (a fulcrum of socio-economic discontentand Cobden’s constituency throughout the 1841–7 parliament). Through them,we see the making of the middle-class, mid-Victorian Liberal politician of the1850s. Howe’s introduction deftly weaves these aspects together in an effectiveprologue to the correspondence itself. However, he might reasonably have emu-lated the Disraeli Project in numbering individual letters (a boon to searching,cross-referencing and indexing, as well as a means by which newly discoveredletters can be inserted in subsequent editions). Whether or not we needed theletters in this form to substantiate our views of Cobden, rather than a newscholarly biography (a task for which Howe is admirably qualified), is a mootpoint; Cobden has not lacked biographers, even recent ones. When complete,this edition will give Cobden the modern equivalent of a Life and Letters, thoughone with undoubtedly more scholarly purchase.

RICHARD A. GAUNTUniversity of Nottingham

France from 1851 to the Present: Universalism in Crisis. By Roger Celestin andEliane DalMolin. Palgrave Macmillan. 2007. xiii + 416pp. £40.00.

This book aims to track how the concept of universalism, the French ‘excep-tion’, fared between 1851 and about 2005. The French have tended to argue thatthe principles of 1789, liberty and equality, have provided others with a uniquedemocratic ‘universal’ template and that France’s colonial activities fulfilled a‘civilizing mission’. Within a chronological framework these authors examinehow universalism impacted on French politics and culture. The year 1851 is acurious starting date. On 2 December the president, Louis-Napoleon, elected bya democratic vote three years earlier, seized power in a coup d’état. Although asemperor he reinstated universal male suffrage, he also terminated the SecondRepublic, and, for French republicans, eliminated universalist democratic prin-

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ciples. Given the objectives of these authors, it would have been more convincingto start with the re-emergence of a republican regime after the emperor’s defeatby the Prussians in 1870. This book’s coverage of politics is not always satisfac-tory, particularly for the earlier years. The objectives of the various politicalgroups and parties are rarely effectively analysed, yet in the attempt to weavetogether political and cultural aspects, salient political points tend to be repeatedfrom one chapter to another. Elites tend to dominate; the poor are shadowy.Religion, education and ethnicity would benefit from more attention. The role ofwomen is dealt with effectively.

The strength of this book, where it will be of real service to an undergraduateaudience, is its approach to culture, particularly the years after 1900. Substantialapt quotations, always neatly contextualized, bring this volume to life andshould encourage students to hunt out the original texts. There are well-chosenpages from novels, from play scripts, including the work of Azouf Begag, anovelist of Algerian descent. The content and impact of radio and especiallytelevision are explored. Postmodernism, as a linguistic and textual theme, isrendered comprehensible, although the label postmodernism is applied toobroadly subsequently. It is a pity that more extracts from politicians and socialand economic commentators do not appear. France’s ‘civilizing mission’ isdismissed in a convincing and admirably succinct analysis of colonial and post-colonial affairs. On the other hand, while the intervention of the USA in Frencheconomic and cultural life is obviously apposite to the undermining of culturaluniversalism, the stress placed on things American before 1939 is overdone. Theauthors rely heavily on American historians, neglecting some British experts. Atimeline and a couple of maps of Paris districts and French regions would havebeen useful. The thoughtful illustrations will provoke student debate, especiallythe photograph of women ‘voting’ in municipal elections in Montmartre in 1922,twenty-two years before they got the vote. Overall, this book will help studentsunderstand the French and want to know more about their culture. It deservesto be issued as a paperback, but with closer attention to typo slips, especiallyMitterrand, who loses an ‘r’ throughout.

PAMELA PILBEAMRoyal Holloway, University of London

Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian Britain: Essays on Cultural Affinity. Editedby Dominik Geppert and Robert Gerwarth. Oxford University Press. 2008. xiii +450pp. £65.00.

In November 1911, during a Commons debate on the Liberal government’sforeign policy, Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law dismissed as unfoundedthe ‘prevalent’ idea that there was in Britain ‘a feeling of hostility to Germany’.Claiming to speak for the mass of his countrymen, he went on to say that he hadnever had any such feeling himself: ‘I have many German friends, I love someGerman books almost as much as our favourites in our own tongue, and I canimagine few, if any, calamities which would seem so great as a war, whatever theresult, between us and the great German people.’ In retrospect, the words havea hollow ring. As David Blackbourn notes in his contribution to this excellentvolume, Law ‘played an ignominious role’ in driving R. B. Haldane out of theAsquith government in 1915, on account of the latter’s alleged pro-Germansympathies (p. 35). Law’s 1911 speech, however, provides further support for



this book’s contention ‘that there were residual feelings of British–Germancultural affinity and mutual regard that blur the picture of clear-cut political andmilitary confrontation culminating in the Great War’ (p. 1). This is an importantargument, and the contributors marshal impressive evidence to back it up. Theseventeen substantive chapters range from high politics to popular culture;music, architecture, the law, academia and colonial issues are amongst thethemes represented.

The book’s nuanced approach is its great strength: the authors are alive to theexistence of cultural affinities but are careful not to overstate their significance.Dominik Geppert shows that the standard picture of the Northcliffe press asconsistently Germanophobic needs to be revised. At one stage Northcliffeplanned to create a Berlin edition of the Daily Mail and told the paper’s existingcorrespondent there to produce a sympathetic pamphlet about the Germans andto avoid ‘baiting the Kaiser’ (p. 382). Geppert argues that the popular press’smore usual xenophobic tone sat alongside an awareness by proprietors that warwould be bad for business. Christiane Eisenberg shows the importance of sportas a British cultural export to Germany, but also notes how the Germans becameincreasingly anxious to conduct such sports ‘in a specifically German manner’.Thus, the British ‘were increasingly confronted with alien offshoots of theirsuccessful cultural transfer’ (p. 394). Sabine Freitag demonstrates that a schoolof German jurists and lawyers admired the model of preventive detention rep-resented by the British Prevention of Crime Act of 1908. However, they used theBritish example to support conclusions that they had already reached indepen-dently. And the contributors do not deny the existence of certain kinds ofdeveloping rivalry. In his chapter on music Sven Oliver Müller shows that aBritish inferiority complex vis-à-vis the Germans in this sphere was transformedafter 1900 into a musical nationalism that deprecated foreign influence. Theambivalence of the Anglo-German relationship was nicely captured in an articlein a German student newspaper, quoted in Thomas Weber’s chapter. It referred,in the context of a sporting competition, to ‘our friend “the enemy” ’ (p. 269).This was in July 1914.

There can be no complaint, as there is so often with edited collections, that thechapters lack thematic coherence. Those involved are to be congratulated on afascinating and significant book that adds much to our understanding of theperiod.

RICHARD TOYEUniversity of Exeter

The British Naval Staff in the First World War. By Nicholas Black. Boydell. 2009.xiv + 333pp. £60.00.

This elegantly written and well-researched volume examines the origins anddevelopment of the Naval Staff from its creation in 1912 to 1918. The thesisadvanced is that the commonly held negative assessments, which originated inthe writings of such luminaries as Herbert Richmond and were popularized byhistorians such as Arthur Marder, are wrong and that the Staff deserves to beviewed favourably. The arguments marshalled in support of this thesis areconvincing and important. Hence, for example, Black demonstrates conclu-sively, through a thorough examination of the service records of those whoserved in it, that far from being a dumping ground for the retired, wounded or

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simply incompetent – as Joseph Kenworthy has maintained to general accep-tance – the Staff was actually a powerhouse of talented high-flyers, chosenbecause they were specialists in their field. While such administrative mattersmight be of interest only to dedicated naval historians, many of Black’s otherconclusions have a much wider application to our understanding of the GreatWar. For instance, by illustrating the magnitude of the Staff’s early moves toestablish a wireless telegraphy interception network, Black challenges the sug-gestion of William Clarke that Admiralty signals intelligence efforts were ini-tially half-hearted and ineffectual as well as late to get going (p. 93), a conclusionthat buttresses the recent study of communication warfare by Jonathan Winkler.Similarly, Black provides considerable grounds for overturning the view,advanced by among others Andrew Gordon, that the direction of the naval warunder Arthur Balfour and Henry Jackson was ‘stagnant’. On the contrary, heargues that it was under their leadership that creative measures were taken toseek battle. Thus, the division of the Grand Fleet in 1916, through the stationingof the Queen Elizabeth class battleships in Rosyth, was not a defensive measurebut a deliberate and daring strategy to lure out the German fleet by seeminglyoffering them the chance to defeat an isolated section of the Royal Navy (pp.156–7). As Jutland shows, they took the bait, even if the battle itself was not thehoped-for success. Jackson’s successor, Jellicoe, is also reassessed. Contrary tothe usual depictions of him as an arch-centralizer, Black characterizes Jellicoeas a successful administrator who presided over a period of innovation andprogress caused specifically by his ability to delegate and decentralize (p. 189).This produced tangible benefits. For example, it was under Jellicoe that themechanisms were created for tackling the U-boat threat. This included not onlythe formation of a dedicated anti-submarine section of the War Staff, but thetaking, albeit tardily, of the first steps towards convoy, a policy which Blackshows originated inside the Admiralty and was not the product of pressure fromLloyd George (pp. 181–2). As these examples show, this is an illuminating studythat will have a major impact on histories of the First World War.

MATTHEW S. SELIGMANNUniversity of Northampton

Mental Maps in the Era of the Two World Wars. Edited by Steven Casey andJonathan Wright. Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. xix + 258pp. £50.00.

Mental maps and the study of the prosopography of diplomats and statesmenhave come to play an increasingly prominent part in the historiography ofinternational history in the last decade. Indeed some historians, such as ZaraSteiner, have been writing about the processes and influences that shaped theattitudes and prejudices of diplomatic decision-makers and how they impactedon the conduct of foreign policy for a much longer time frame than that. Yet, asthe editors of this excellent collection of essays are at pains to point out, thestudy of these important dimensions nevertheless has remained stubbornly at thefringes of the thinking of most international historians. This collection triesto address this neglect by placing the mental maps of a dozen or so of theprincipal architects of the inter-war period within their cultural as well as theirpolitical and diplomatic context. The individuals scrutinized are: Poincaré,Lloyd George, Briand, Stresemann, Atatürk, Chiang Kai Shek, Mao Zedong,Hamaguchi Osachi, Beneš, Mussolini, Hitler, Churchill, and Franklin



Roosevelt, with one chapter offering a general analysis of ‘the view from theKremlin’. The chapters have been written predominantly by some of the leadingauthorities on the international history of the inter-war period, notably SallyMarks, Alan Cassels, John Keiger and Jonathan Wright. In the cast list ofhistorical figures, Stalin is the most striking absentee, but the editors are to becommended for not adopting a Europe-centric approach to the volume, with theelegant chapters on the role of China and the United States providing somerefreshing wider dimensions.

This is a well-conceived book that will be of wide use to students of interna-tional history as well as to professional scholars. The quality of the research andwriting in each chapter is of the highest order, although it is debatable whetherthey all offer an actual mental map of their subjects in the way that the editorsdefine the term in their useful introduction. A number of essays, such as those onLloyd George and Hamaguchi Osachi, although very readable, actually providelittle more than a succinct thumbnail biography of their subjects. That said,presenting an analysis of Lloyd George’s mental map would provide a dauntingchallenge to any historian because the essence of the man was that one was neverreally in evidence. Nevertheless, those charged with the even more difficult taskof mapping the influences that shaped the thoughts and actions of Hitler, Mus-solini and Winston Churchill have accomplished the task with great aplomb,with these chapters being some of the most useful in the volume. This bookdemonstrates that international historians should place greater emphasis on themental maps of the individuals they study, and that it can be done in a sensible,meaningful way that has nothing to do with the dubious art of ‘pop psychology’.

GAYNOR JOHNSONUniversity of Salford

Haunted City: Nuremberg and the Nazi Past. By Neil Gregor. Yale UniversityPress. 2008. xvi + 390pp. £30.00.

By 1945–6 the city of Albrecht Dürer and Hans Sachs had also becomeindelibly associated with Adolf Hitler and Julius Streicher, with the principalrallies and anti-Semitic decrees of the Nazi movement, and with the first greatinternational trial of war criminality. Such were the historical tensions that thecivic authorities and people of Nuremberg needed to face following the fall of theThird Reich. Professor Gregor’s monograph skilfully presents the tangled tale oftheir responses over the next twenty years or so, doing this with principalreference to the evolution of an urban ‘memory culture’ aimed less at confront-ing the Nazi past than at avoiding much of its reality. He launches his subtleanalysis, based largely on the resources of the city’s own archives, with twosections of essential contextualization. The first is a bravura review of the meth-odological challenges related to any study of the constant remoulding of collec-tive memory, while the second surveys the ruinous physical condition ofNuremberg and its inhabitants at the end of Hitler’s war. The author thenconsiders the various groupings that competed for prominence in the dominantdiscourse of recent ‘victimhood’. Among them we encounter the ethnic Germanrefugees and expellees who had been propelled into Bavaria as the Red Armyconsolidated its eastern zone of occupation; the former evacuees from Nurem-berg who sought to re-establish themselves in the city; ‘the homecomers’ return-ing after war service; the relatives of the missing; and the many who claimed to

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have been unjustly treated by the victors’ programmes of ‘denazification’. Thesegroups contributed to the creation of a hegemonic memory culture whoseevolution is examined here by reference to the activities of their lobbyingassociations, as well as to the design of war memorials, the development ofcommemorative rituals, and the displays mounted by the German NationalMuseum. Gregor contends that, with the SPD restored to local dominance afterthe Nazi interregnum, all this served chiefly to manufacture a brand of civicconsensus aimed at transcending the deep divisions that had characterized theNuremberg political scene in the early 1930s. In effect, ‘the Social Democraticcadres who had actively opposed Nazism knew that in a society in which thebulk of the population had supported Nazism in one way or another, a confron-tational memory politics was impossible.’ What emerged instead were exculpa-tory narratives in which a supposedly innocent and passive urban community‘figured as a “victim” not only of the war – because of the impact of alliedbombing – but also, because of its use as a backdrop for the party rallies, as avictim of Nazism itself’. This was a version of history that depended, crucially,on the marginalization of the real victims, including not only the Russian andother foreigners who had been compelled as war prisoners or civilian deporteesto provide slave labour in and around Nuremberg but also the local citizens whohad been sent to concentration camps because of their political dissidence.Above all, the narratives were both narcissistic and myopic not simply in theirregular disregard for the fate of the local Jewish community but in their failureto recognize the broader scope and significance of anti-Semitic genocide as well.The later parts of the book do suggest that – following the Eichmann hearings of1961 and the Auschwitz trial of 1963–5 at Frankfurt, as well as HermannGlaser’s ‘Nuremburg Conversations’ of 1965–8 – some improvements of attitudebegan to be discernible. In so far as such shifts still remained quite limited eventowards the end of the 1960s, readers might be forgiven for wishing that Gre-gor’s analysis had been pursued over an even longer time span. However, this isnot a criticism so much as a recognition that one can never have too much of thekind of scholarly accomplishment here displayed. Within its chosen bounds, thebook is weakened only by the uneven quality of its photographic illustrationsand by the absence of an organized bibliographical listing of the rich range ofsecondary sources presented in its footnotes. In all other respects, however, thisis a volume in which author and publisher have done each other proud.

MICHAEL BIDDISSUniversity of Reading

Guns and Rubles: The Defense Industry in the Stalinist State. Edited by MarkHarrison. Yale University Press. 2008. xxvi + 272pp. £27.50.

This book of essays, written by a distinguished group of British, Russian andAmerican historians, examines a key aspect of the Stalinist economic and politi-cal system – the defence industry. It arises out of several years’ collaborationbetween the scholars concerned, supported by the Hoover Institution on War,Revolution and Peace at Stanford University which also facilitated access to theHoover Archive. Needless to say, the Soviet defence industry, together withissues of its interrelationships with the Soviet armed forces, was a strictlyenforced state secret during the Soviet era and only with the opening up of Sovietstate and military archives at the end of that period have historians begun to



plumb the depths of such secrecy. The book greatly benefits from this enhancedaccess to sources. However, for scholars seeking an overview of how the Sovietdefence industry developed during the Stalinist dictatorship, the title is slightlymisleading, for the emphasis is very much on the 1930s, with a fair amount ofmaterial on the 1920s and some on the early years after 1917. By contrast, thereis relatively little on the Second World War and almost nothing on the post-waryears, by which time, of course, the international context had changed entirely.

The essays cover a range of topics. After a suggestive foreword by PaulGregory, there is an interesting overview by the editor of the significance of thedefence sector for the Stalinist dictatorship, and an account of its developmentduring the crucial NEP (1920s) period. Other essays deal with the complexstructure of the sector, weapons supply planning, mobilization planning, themarket for weapons, the labour market, the market for inventions, and the issueof secrecy. The editor has written, or co-authored, no less than five of the ninechapters, plus a conclusion. This has the merit of ensuring a degree of coherence.

On the face of it, the defence sector might appear a somewhat specializedtopic by comparison, say, with the workings of the Stalinist dictatorship, thecommand economy or the Great Terror. But in fact, as this book shows all tooclearly, it interlinks with many of the most fundamental issues concerning thenature of the Stalinist system. Some intriguing questions are posed. For example,how far was the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazism the result of the way Stalinreconstructed the Soviet economy and asserted his personal domination over theSoviet political system from the late 1920s? Why did Stalin want, and did he infact need, a big defence sector? How well did the command economy performwhen it came to that sector – for example, in comparison to other economicsectors or to the defence sectors of capitalist countries? How far is it possible totalk of a ‘military-industrial complex’ under Stalin? Does Stalin deserve creditfor the way he managed Soviet defence issues and the defence industry?

The answers are equally intriguing, though many are necessarily tentative.The authors are at pains to show that the defence sector is a problem in allsocieties, whatever the economic system, if only because the state is generally theonly significant customer dealing with a favoured and limited circle of producers.In the Soviet sector, despite its highly centralized character and tight surveillanceand secrecy, issues of waste, excessive costs, delays, poor quality, subsidies andbribes, so familiar to students of the command economy, were pervasive. In fact,the defence sector turns out to have been less centralized than might have beenexpected with a ‘quasi-market’ for armaments operating at various levels, and inconsequence there were many possibilities for participants to engage in oppor-tunistic behaviour, manipulation of information, the pursuit of private goals andother familiar activities. Stalin, it seems, wanted a big defence sector (and wasbeing encouraged by the military to achieve this through forced industrializationfrom the mid-1920s) to use against both external and internal enemies – indeed,according to Harrison, the sector was a central prop of the dictatorship, with aclose synergy between external threats and internal repression. At the same timeStalin was determined to retain control, distancing the military from industry,enforcing secrecy (even when it was self-defeating) and using terror to achieve hisends.

In the end, it is argued, the Soviet defence industry proved ‘an outstandingsuccess’ (p. xiii), permitting the defeat of Hitler’s juggernaut and arguably saving

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Europe from Nazi domination. In this regard Stalin’s achievement was huge.But the fact that this achievement cost the lives of perhaps a million peopledeliberately done to death, plus 10 million or more who died as an indirect resultof Stalin’s policies, makes us rightly shy away from giving the credit to him. Ifcredit is due, it is surely due to Stalin’s many innocent victims, and especially tothe multitudes who fought and worked so bravely to save the Soviet Union andEurope from barbarism.

DENIS J. B. SHAWUniversity of Birmingham

Spain: From Dictatorship to Democracy, 1939 to the Present. By Javier Tusell.Translated by Rosemary Clark. Blackwell. 2007. viii + 494pp. £55.00.

Javier Tusell was Professor of Contemporary History at the UniversidadNacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain’s Open University) from 1981 untilhis untimely death in 2005. The range of Tusell’s expertise was phenomenal andhe published prolifically on most of the key areas of Spanish twentieth-centuryhistory. He was also a highly respected public intellectual and his interventionsin often highly polemical debates pertaining to the recent past in his countrywere always measured and made above all from a pluralist standpoint. In spiteof conservative leanings he did not join up with dubious fashions and was highlycritical of so-called ‘revisionists’ in Spain who in recent years have attempted torehabilitate General Franco. This rather illustrates how Tusell was part of animportant Christian Democratic tradition in Spain which has long struggled tomake its voice heard, but which does so, implicitly, in this current book, his last,deftly translated by Rosemary Clark from the 2004 Spanish original.

In essence, Tusell was concerned in his research with two of the questionswhich have formed the landmarks of historical consciousness for successivegenerations in Spain since the civil war of 1936–9: why did democracy fail in the1930s, and how did the consequence of that failure – Franco’s dictatorship –shape Spanish life and the re-establishment of democracy after 1975? Here he isable to relate these questions to the period after 1975, taking the story up to2004. Some 180 valuable pages are dedicated to the democratic period afterFranco’s demise. Born six years after the end of Spain’s horrendous war, Tusellreached maturity at a time when several currents of opposition to Franco’sregime were coalescing around a pluralistic vision of the future which would notarrive until after the dictator’s death in 1975. The author thus speaks with greatauthority about the middle and late years of the Franco era, from 1951 to 1975,his own formative period. The story of post-war Spain is partly one of socialchange – probably the greatest degree of change (economic, cultural, social, andeventually political) ever experienced in that country; and yet, Tusell makes the‘undeniable examples of continuity’ very clear, at least throughout the Francoyears, represented primarily by the longevity of the general and the unchangingnature of his world-view and the constancy of the dark forces which he saw asthreatening Spain. As Tusell says, the regime ‘always used a dialectic of victorsand vanquished’ (p. 18). Though primarily concerned with the exercise of politi-cal power, the book offers insights into the slow evolution and alignment withthe European mainstream in economics, intellectual and cultural life and theuneven and halting process of increased social mobility. Alongside Franco,therefore, the relationship between a state held back by the forces of tradition-



alism and an increasingly dynamic society is at the heart of the book. The graspof both the big picture and the detail throughout the entire period covered here,and the ways in which the myriad details related to broad trends, is hugelyimpressive, so much so that this book will doubtless become a point of departurefor anglophone readers wanting to understand the essential strands of continuityin Spanish history since the civil war.

MICHAEL RICHARDSUniversity of the West of England

Spying on Ireland: British Intelligence and Irish Neutrality during the SecondWorld War. By Eunan O’Halpin. Oxford University Press. 2008. xxi + 335pp.£30.00.

Eunan O’Halpin, the acknowledged authority on British intelligence andIreland, has written, using previously top-secret intelligence material includingdiaries, internal histories and decrypts, what will surely be the definitive accountof British intelligence and neutral Ireland. O’Halpin, perhaps less successfully,also makes direct comparisons between Anglo-Irish relations and British policy(intelligence and diplomatic) towards other neutrals such as Afghanistan andother unwilling members of the British world system such as Egypt, Iraq andPersia whose sovereignty was entirely subordinated to British wartime needs.

The British intelligence effort had inauspicious beginnings. Contrary to Irishnationalist myth, to British intelligence services, independent Ireland had by1939 become ‘Hibernia incognita’ (p. 2). As a result, ‘Ireland was to provideBritain with extraordinary security headaches once war came, problems accen-tuated by the almost complete absence of pre-war consideration of Irish affairs’(pp. 44–5). An entirely new system of managing Anglo-Irish cooperation had tobe built from scratch in 1939. This ranged from the appointment of Sir JohnMaffey as British representative to the establishment of lower-level liaison onintelligence matters. It worked for both sides. The Irish cracked down on theIRA, German spies were, with one exception, quickly rounded up, and sufficientinformation regarding naval matters was passed on to keep the Admiraltyrelatively sanguine about neutrality.

There were three main phases to Irish neutrality. The first was from Septem-ber 1939 to April 1940, which was taken up with establishing efficient andeffective Anglo-Irish intelligence liaison despite Irish refusal to enter the war.The second, from May 1940 to 22 June 1941, covered the period when a Germaninvasion was believed possible. There was still IRA activity and contacts with theGermans and the British feared a German assault on the defenceless Irelandespecially in the summer of 1940. The evidence, according to O’Halpin, suggeststhat the dramatic offer of Irish unity by the British ‘arose directly from very poorintelligence circulating in Whitehall’ in May and June 1940, which believed deValera would be toppled by a German invasion or the IRA (p. 87). Both notionswere completely wrong. The third phase after June 1941 saw Ireland’s impor-tance diminish as the threat of invasion fell away. Indeed, the ‘main problemarising from Irish neutrality by the end of 1942 was no longer a strategic one –Irish defencelessness, and the denial of port and air facilities – but a securityissue: how could the leakage of war information through Ireland be minimized?’(p. 213). As the danger of invasion passes, the book’s second half becomes lessinteresting, often focusing on the fate of the German legation and its radio,

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which was a source of great irritation to the British. An Anglo-American note inFebruary 1944 demanding the closure of the Axis legations not only caused, inO’Halpin’s opinion, an unnecessary crisis in Irish–Allied relations, but was aclassic example of cutting one’s nose off to spite one’s face as the informationgleaned from the decrypts was far more useful to the Allies than the dangerposed by the presence of Axis diplomats (pp. 247–56). The book pulls nopunches on Winston Churchill, concluding that: ‘Intelligence operations had agenerally positive and moderating influence on British policy . . . Churchill’streatment of wartime intelligence concerning Ireland does not add much lustre tohis reputation as a politician with a particular understanding of the secret worldand its secret sources . . . his occasional interventions were petulant rather thanconsidered’ (p. 304).

ROBERT MCNAMARAUniversity of Ulster

Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in AnAuthoritarian Society 1941–1991. By Mark Edele. Oxford University Press.2008. x + 334pp. £55.00.

It is understandable why the Soviet authorities would be nervous about thedemobilization of their victorious armed forces at the conclusion of the GreatPatriotic War. There were vast numbers involved, as many as 25 million. Howwould the system cope with the various travel arrangements, resettling policies,and compensation for the maimed and disabled? Secondly, there were prece-dents in Russian history (the Decembrist revolt of the early nineteenth century,the role of the armed forces in 1917) of returning officers organizing revolts andrevolutions. Disgruntled and armed soldiers could pose all sorts of threats to thestability of Soviet society. There would be plenty of evidence of the relativematerial abundance of the outside world given the quantities of the spoils of wartransported back into the Soviet Union and sold at numerous markets. Therewere also expectations of a better life after the sacrifices of 1941–5. Of courseconcerns about the consequences of war for regime change were not exclusive tothe Soviet Union. The late Brian Pearce recounted in conversation at my dinnertable how he kept his service weapon just in case the working class arose tooverthrow British capitalism.

This authoritative and engaging study recounts a largely sorry story of unful-filled government regulations and decrees. Edele is sensitive to the various waysin which veterans were divided in their experience of reintegrating in civilian life.Outcomes would differ according to contacts (family and friends), age, gender,level of disability, former POWs, and location. There are some good luck stories.One former POW, Nikolai Fedorovich D′ikov, had a relatively benign experi-ence of filtration – a good relationship with his military counter-intelligenceofficer led to clearance and release. There is also the fact that the Soviet govern-ment, for all its supposed power over society, could not legislate the veteransaway as a social group. Once official privileges were dropped in the late 1940s, bywhich time it was clear that the veterans were not a threat to the social andpolitical order, veterans continued to seek special treatment for their sacrifices inwar. A system that could not admit the need for social organizations outside theCommunist Party nevertheless in 1956 under Khrushchev founded a SovietCommittee of War Veterans (SKVV). This may have had an ulterior interna-



tional propaganda motive, but Edele skilfully charts how local activists trans-formed the SKVV into a pressure group for the defence and promotion ofveterans’ rights. Indeed, there is a hint that ‘between 1965 and 1975 the SKVVthreatened to become a parallel power structure’ (p. 178). This could not betolerated and there was some organizational restructuring under Brezhnev.However, given the cult of the Great Patriotic War under Brezhnev the veteranswere awarded further concessions and the categories of veteran were expanded.The fact that seats were reserved for veterans in the perestroika-era Congress ofPeople’s Deputies was thus ‘the logical result of a long institutional developmentrather than a radical break with Brezhnevism’ (p. 181). Edele’s findings thereforechallenge conceptualizations of the Soviet Union as totalitarian and point tocontinuity between Brezhnev and Gorbachev rather than the usual starkcontrast.

By the time of the demise of the Soviet Union the veterans had establishedthemselves as a pillar of the Soviet order. They were not necessarily respected. Ina period of shortages there was resentment of the veterans’ right to go to thefront of a queue. Frustrated teenagers attacked one veteran in a park, teasinghim with ‘If you hadn’t won, we would now be drinking Bavarian beer’ (p. 211).Edele is no doubt right to assert that war was the central experience of the firsthalf of the twentieth century. Its effects are still felt now. Numerous resources arestill dedicated by governments of all descriptions to maintaining military might.Reading this monograph on what happens to veterans, one cannot help feelingthat the best advice for any soldier is to shoot one’s generals and to go home.

IAN D. THATCHERBrunel University

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