The Wiles Lectures – serie

The Construction of Nationhood, first published in 1997, is a thorough re-analysis of both nationalism and nations. In particular it challenges the current 'modernist' orthodoxies of such writers as Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, and it offers a systematic critique of Hobsbawm's best-selling Nations and Nationalism since 1780. In opposition to a historiography which limits nations and nationalism to the eighteenth century and after, as an aspect of 'modernisation', Professor Hastings argues for a medieval origin to both, dependent upon biblical religion and the development of vernacular literatures. While theorists of nationhood have paid mostly scant attention to England, the development of the nation-state is seen here as central to the subject, but the analysis is carried forward to embrace many other examples, including Ireland, the South Slavs and modern Africa, before concluding with an overview of the impact of religion, contrasting Islam with Christianity, while evaluating the ability of each to support supra-national political communities.

The history of Ireland has been conceived in two ways: as the history of the English in Ireland or as the history of Gaelic Ireland, but both kinds have been concerned with personalities and institutions rather than with society as a whole. None of the many histories of Ireland tells us much about the land whose story they purport to record. In this book, Professor Estyn Evans takes a new look at Ireland. For the human geographer, if environment without man is an abstraction, so is society without environment, and history operates and takes its visual form in particular cultural environments. He contends that studies of heritage can assist the documentary historian in reaching a fuller understanding of the distinctive and continuing character of Irish history. Drawing on the findings of geography, he finds evidence for remarkable cultural continuities in this pastoral insular end of the Old World. His illustrations are taken from various historical and archaeological horizons, in particular the megalithic, the early Celtic and early Christian, and from agrarian history, folkways and field observations.

This book, a revised and extended version of Professor Davies's 1988 Wiles Lectures, explores the ways in which the kings and aristocracy of England sought to extend their domination over Ireland, Scotland and Wales in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It analyses the mentalities of domination and subjection - how the English explained and justified their pretensions and how native rulers and societies in Ireland and Wales responded to the challenge. It also explains how the English monarchy came to claim and exercise a measure of 'imperial' control over the whole of the British Isles by the end of the thirteenth century, converting a loose domination into sustained political and governmental control. This is a study of the story of the Anglo-Norman and English domination of the British Isles in the round. Hitherto historians have tended to concentrate on the story in each country - Ireland, Scotland and Wales - individually. This book looks at the issue comparatively, in order to highlight the comparisons and contrasts in the strategies of domination and in the responses of native societies.

Professor G. S. Graham sets broadly and clearly in perspective the limiting factors which permitted British predominance at sea in the nineteenth century. He introduces the British fleet in its European, Atlantic and Indian Ocean contexts and examines the local as well as the general conditions for its superiority. Naval supremacy is seen as one expression of Britain's industrial and commercial lead, enabling trading routes to be secured, competitors and enemies confined, far-flung geographical entities manipulated. Sea power could not meet the sudden diplomatic crisis on a land-based frontier which might rapidly alter the litoral conditions under which a fleet operated, but, Dr Graham points out, this could scarcely happen around the Indian Ocean or the Pacific. Until the emergence of Japan, followed by the United States in this arena, these oceans offered ideal conditions for the exercise of sea power.

The main theme of Professor Plucknett's Wiles Lectures is the transition from the local legislation of Anglo-Saxon times to the beginnings of the English common law under feudalism, and especially under Edward I's direction. Professor Plucknett examines the early laws, which were mainly the attempts of perplexed men in a harsh age to fix a value on human life and property, and to enforce the exaction of these monetary penalties: wer and bot and wite. He then shows how the common law under Edward I became more technical, more concerned with principles, and of course more universal and better enforced. In the course of his argument Professor Plucknett touches on other important problems, notably the place of the Crown and its supremacy over other institutions, the influence of Christian thought, as expressed in the Penitentials and by the moral theologians (especially as to the place of intention), the substitution of trial by jury for trial by ordeal, the organization of local government, the triumph of Parliament and the rise of the legal profession.

To understand the growth of Western constitutional thought, we need to consider both ecclesiology and political theory, ideas about the Church as well as ideas about the state. In this book Professor Tierney traces the interplay between ecclesiastical and secular theories of government from the twelfth century to the seventeenth. He shows how ideas revived from the ancient past - Roman law, Aristotelian political philosophy, teachings of Church fathers - interacted with the realities of medieval society to produce distinctively new doctrines of constitutional government in Church and state. The study moves from the Roman and canon lawyers of the twelfth century to various thirteenth-century theories of consent; later sections consider fifteenth-century conciliarism and aspects of seventeenth-century constitutional thought. Fresh approaches are suggested to the work of several figures of central importance in the history of Western political theory. Among the authors considered are Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, Jean Gerson, Nicholas of Cues and Althusius, along with many lesser-known authors who contributed significantly to the growth of the Western constitutional tradition.

Sir Keith Hancock makes a four-pronged reconnaissance of international relations and, consequently, the prospects of human survival. He begins by discussing total war and 'small wars' and considers the relevance of this discussion, particularly in its economic aspects, to 'the cold war' and its costs. Sir Keith then turns to treaty-making, and in particular to Smuts's experience at Vereeniging in 1902 and Paris in 1919; he concludes that it is impossible to make a satisfactory peace settlement in the aftermath of total war, but that there are better prospects for negotiations during the 'cold war'. He goes on to examine Gandhian non-violence, particularly its origins in the Gandhi-Smuts conflict. He outlines the limitations of Gandhi's techniques and suggests that although they were successful against Smuts and Halifax, they would not necessarily have succeeded against Hitler and Stalin: for non-violence is not a substitute for military readiness. In his final section, Sir Keith surveys the developing international community and considers the present-day world in the perspective of history.

This book is based on the Wiles lectures for 1981 delivered at the Queen's University of Belfast in October 1981. It is not a history of Anglo-American relations in the century; its theme deals with how the United States of America came to replace Britain as the primary world and oceanic power confronting a grouping of land-based continental powers, the position Britain occupied throughout the nineteenth century. This theme is examined in the light of how the process of replacement was conceived and perceived by those groups which had the primary responsibility for the formulation and conduct of foreign relations in each of the two powers, Britain and America. The author, whose earlier study of 1965 of the British foreign-policy-making elites pioneered this approach in Britain, argues the existence and continuity over much of this century of similar groups in the United States.

This book is an extended version of the Wiles lectures given at the Queen's University, Belfast, in 1954. It illustrates the rise, scope, methods and objectives of the history of historiography. The topics selected for discussion give a general outline of the modern historical movement from the mid-eighteenth century to the contribution of Lord Acton in the late nineteenth century. Significant landmarks in the history of historical scholarship are examined to illustrate the various kinds of treatment that can be given to the subject.

Scholarship has established the prevalence of a reformist ideal of 'the Commonwealth' in early Tudor England, but concentration on scholars and writings has led to a neglect of affairs and politics. This study attempts to discover the fate of reforming programmes when efforts were made to translate them into reality, and it uses the administration of Thomas Cromwell as a test-case. Cromwell, it is well known, favoured advanced thinkers and promoted much parliamentary legislation; how far can we see him as a proponent of 'commonwealth' politics and what success did we have? A close look establishes him as a man who without formal training practised the techniques of the learned and behaved as an intellectual. He also emerges as an evangelical in religion, a believer in the via media between extremes on which the Church of England was to erect its particular form of religion. As the only experienced parliamentarian in the group, he also knew how to handle the instrument of reform. The study discusses this work in two main respects: reforms in the economy and reform of the law.

Sir George Clark discusses war as a factor for good and ill in European society in the seventeenth century. In particular, he shows how war helped to determine the emergence of modern Europe from a society geographically, politically and doctrinally confused: what Sir George calls the mêlée of the early part of the century. His first chapter stresses that war was accepted as part of the order of society. It was considered a legitimate instrument of policy, provided that it was just. The next chapter examines 'War as a Collision of Societies' and analyses the effect on war of religious issues, questions of manpower, supply and the relationship between trade and national policy (including some important remarks on the alleged nature of mercantilism). 'War in the European Community' examines the possibility of more civilised reactions to war - especially to atrocities. The final chapters deal with particular aspects: the depredations of the Barbary Corsairs on the trade of civilised Europe and the views held in the seventeenth century on the cycle of war and peace.

The study of ecclesiastical history presents unique problems: the events it deals with are not ordinary events and fundamental questions of faith may be involved in their interpretation. The Church historian is often required to be a student of dogma as much as of history. It is the complex relationships between history, Church history and theology that Dr Sykes examines, using as illustrations some of the vital issues arising from the revival of interest in Church history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The disputes during the Reformation about the claims of the papacy centred on the historical question of Peter's supremacy over the other apostles. Another problem involving historical evidence was the relative authority of scripture and tradition. Finally, Dr Sykes reviews the changing pattern of relations between Church and states and particularly the way in which events in nineteenth-century Europe foreshadowed the problems of the Church under the modern totalitarian regime. This historical study displays how the secular and the theological are intertwined in many of the issues which confront the historian of the Church.

Four hundred years ago the pattern of human life and thought was strikingly different from our own. What main features led to the change in that pattern? Professor Nef, a distinguished historian, suggests that economic history cannot alone give the answer: it must be in terms of changing attitudes and interests as much as in terms of a developing economy and a growing technology. The origins of industrialism have to be sought in history as a whole. Man's concern for truth, goodness and beauty has done as much to produce the modern world as economic institutions and natural resources. Professor Nef has it in mind that, for a historian, the importance of human nature cannot be made subservient to that of productivity statistics; in this book he portrays the birth and development of our industrial civilisation in a clearer light. The book is developed from the second series of Wiles lectures given at Queen's University, Belfast and is a successor to Man on his Past by Herbert Butterfield.

This book challenges historians to come to terms with the distortions that they systematically introduce into their work by their reliance on what has been written on paper without looking at what was and was not written on the body. This book is concerned with the ways in which texts relating to classical Greece, and in particular to classical Athens, classified people and with the extent to which those classifications could be seen by the eye. It compares the qualities distinguished in texts to those distinguished in sculpture and painted pottery, and emphasises the frequent invisibility of the categories upon which historians have laid most stress - the citizen, the free person, the foreigner, even the god. The frequent impossibility of seeing who belonged to which category has major political, social and theological implications which are explored here, as well as potentially revolutionary implications for all future historical writing.

This volume presents Professor Cohen's original interpretation of the revolution that marked the beginnings of modern science and set Newtonian science as the model for the highest level of achievement in other branches of science. It shows that Newton developed a special kind of relation between abstract mathematical constructs and the physical systems that we observe in the world around us by means of experiment and critical observation. The heart of the radical Newtonian style is the construction on the mind of a mathematical system that has some features in common with the physical world; this system s then modified when the deductions and conclusions drawn from it are tested against the physical universe. Using this system Newton was able to make his revolutionary innovations in celestial mechanics and, ultimately, create a new physics of central forces and the law of universal gravitation. Building on his analysis of Newton's methodology, Professor Cohen explores the fine structure of revolutionary change and scientific creativity in general. This is done by developing the concept of scientific change as a series of transformations of ecxisting ideas. It is shown that such transformation is characteristic of many aspects of the sciences and that the concept of scientific change by transformation suggests a new way of examining the very nature of scientific creativity.

The business of politics - the vital process of conducting government through the dynamics of argument, conflict and decision-making - offers us one of the most revealing areas of insight into any society. Sir Moses Finley's exploration of politics in the city states of Greece and republican Rome yields insights into the arenas of political debate which have made a major impact on our understanding of the ancient world. The early political involvement of the free lower classes, the effect of war and conquest on political stability, and the ideological pressures which influenced the course of internal conflicts are salient themes in this stimulating investigation of the nature of government in Greece and Rome.

In his Wiles Lectures for 1977 Professor Roberts examines some of the problems raised by Sweden's brief career as a great power, and seeks to answer some of the questions that flow from them. Were the underlying considerations which prompted the unexpected development geopolitical, or social, or economic? How was it possible to produce the financial resources and the manpower which the enterprise demanded? How far was seventeenth-century Sweden a militarized society? What importance had official propaganda and national myths? Did the consititutional situation help to make an expansionist foreign policy easier? The structure of the empire is next examined: its administration, the ties that held it together, the differing interests of the provinces, the varying responses of the metropolitan power was there, in fact, anything deserving the name of an imperial policy? How did the provinces view the Swedish connexion? In a final chapter the author tries to answer the question why, if Sweden could acquire an empire without undue strain, she could not retain it; why the collapse was so rapid and so total; and whether her career as a great power had real relevance to the country's subsequent history. On almost all these topics little information is available in English, and no comparable treatment of them on this scale exists in any language.

Professor Hay provides a clear picture of what the Renaissance was, what it meant and how it spread. He shows the Renaissance as a growing and changing series of attitudes and ideas, rooted firmly in the general history of the period, and not as a static and isolated phenomenon. Most current ideas of the Italian Renaissance are derived from Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, published in 1860. Professor Hay provides a completely fresh appraisal which goes back to the basic texts, to the great monuments of art and architecture, to the men - Boccaccio, Petrarch and the others - and their achievements: the essence of which historical movements are made. He has taken note of recent Italian scholarship and provides a fresh and readable account of one of the great epochs in European history. There is no other book in English, except the translation of Burckhardt, which embraces the political history of the Renaissance period as well as the history of art and ideas. The book will appeal to the general reader as well as to students of history and art. In this second edition, which has been revised and brought up to date by the author, a more ample treatment of the 'reception' of the Renaissance in England is given in the concluding chapter.

Intellectual eminence apart, what did Kant, Clausewitz, Marx and Engels, and Tolstoy have in common? Professor Gallic argues that they made contributions to 'international theory' - to the understanding of the character and causes of war and of the possibility of peace between nations - which were of unrivalled originality in their own times and remain of undiminished importance in ours. But these contributions have been either ignored or much misunderstood ; chiefly because, as with all intellectual efforts in unexplored fields, they were often imperfectly expressed, and were also overshadowed by their author's more striking achievements. Professor Gallic has sorted out, compared and contrasted, criticised and re-phrased the teachings of his chosen authors on peace and war.

Since the work of Butterfield and Namier in the 1930s, it has commonly been said that eighteenth-century England appears atomised, left with no overall interpretation. Subsequent work on religious differences and on party strife served to reinforce the image of a divided society, and in the last ten years historians of the poor and unprivileged have suggested that beneath the surface lurked substantial popular discontent. Professor Cannon uses his 1982 Wiles Lecture to offer a different interpretation - that the widespread acceptance of aristocratic values and aristocratic leadership gave a remarkable intellectual, political and social coherence to the century. He traces the recovery made by the aristocracy from its decade in 1649 when the House of Lords was abolished as useless and dangerous. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the peerage re-established its hold on government and society. Professor Cannon is forced to challenge some of the most cherished beliefs of English historiography - that Hanoverian society, at its top level, was an open elite, continually replenished by vigorous recruits from other groups and classes. He suggests that, on the contrary, in some respects the English peerage was more exclusive than many of its continental counterparts and that the openness was a myth which itself served a potent political purpose. Of the prospering burgeoisie, he argues that the remarkable thing was not their assertiveness but their long acquiescence in patrician rule, and he poses the paradox of a country increasingly dominated by a landed aristocracy giving birth to the first industrial revolution. His final chapter discusses the ideological under-pinning which made aristocratic supremacy acceptable for so long, and the emergence of those forces and ideals which were ultimately to replace it.

This book, a revised and extended version of Professor Davies's 1988 Wiles Lectures, explores the ways in which the kings and aristocracy of England sought to extend their domination over Ireland, Scotland and Wales in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It analyses the mentalities of domination and subjection - how the English explained and justified their pretensions and how native rulers and societies in Ireland and Wales responded to the challenge. It also explains how the English monarchy came to claim and exercise a measure of 'imperial' control over the whole of the British Isles by the end of the thirteenth century, converting a loose domination into sustained political and governmental control. This is a study of the story of the Anglo-Norman and English domination of the British Isles in the round. Hitherto historians have tended to concentrate on the story in each country - Ireland, Scotland and Wales - individually. This book looks at the issue comparatively, in order to highlight the comparisons and contrasts in the strategies of domination and in the responses of native societies.

Interest in the world of Late Antiquity is currently undergoing a significant revival, and in this provocative book, now reissued in paperback, E. R. Dodds anticipated some of the themes now engaging scholars. There is abundant material for the study of religious experience in late antiquity, and through it Professor Dodds examines, from a sociological and psychological standpoint, the personal religious attitudes and experiences common to pagans and Christians in the period between Marcus Aurelius and Constantine. He looks first at general attitudes to the world and the human condition before turning to specific types of human experience. World-hatred and asceticism, dreams and states of possession, and pagan and Christian mysticism are all discussed. Finally Dodds considers both pagan views of Christianity and Christian views of paganism as they emerge in the literature of the time. Although primarily written for social and religious historians, this study will also appeal to all those interested in the ancient world and its thought.

This book investigates the problems that committed Catholics allegedly faced if they sought careers in state employment under the Third French Republic. Using ministerial and Masonic archives, the book explores the broad divergence of practice between individual ministries and between particular governments. It also examines the factors that underlay these discriminatory attitudes - notably the claims of Catholic involvement in the right-wing subversive activities of the late 1890s at the time of the Dreyfus affair. It investigates the increased difficulties that French Catholics faced after the change of pope in 1903. Later chapters explore the degree to which wariness towards committed Catholics in the public services evaporated under later regimes - despite the traumas of the Vichy years.

This book examines the historical context of the earliest Christian martyrs, and anchors their grisly and often wilful self-sacrifice to the everyday life and outlook of the cities of the Roman empire. Professor Bowersock begins by investigating both the time and the region in which martyrdom, as we know it, came into being. He also offers comparisons of the Graeco-Roman background with the martyrology of Jews and Muslims. A study of official protocols illuminates the bureaucratic institutions of the Roman state as they applied to the first martyrs; and the martyrdoms themselves are seen within the context of urban life (and public spectacle) in the great imperial cities. By considering martyrdom in relation to suicide, the author is also able to demonstrate the peculiarly Roman character of Christian self-sacrifice in relation to other forms of deadly resistance to authority.

General histories of the twentieth century will have much to say about the establishment, spread, maintenance and sudden collapse of Soviet Communism. This book outlines a major feature of twentieth-century world history that arguably affected more people than the rise and fall of Soviet Communism. It was the first to discuss as related developments the many attempts in Asia and Africa in the third quarter of the twentieth century to create egalitarian rural societies (landlord abolition in Egypt, India and Iran; ujamaa in Tanzania; land reform in Indonesia; collectivization in China, Vietnam and Ethiopia), their failure, and the differentiated rural regimes which, despite landlord abolition, remain there to this day. The case studies include Egypt, India, the three East African countries, Papua New Guinea, Iran, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, China and Vietnam. The book highlights a major and hitherto disaggregated aspect of twentieth-century world history.

This book investigates the problems that committed Catholics allegedly faced if they sought careers in state employment under the Third French Republic. Using ministerial and Masonic archives, the book explores the broad divergence of practice between individual ministries and between particular governments. It also examines the factors that underlay these discriminatory attitudes - notably the claims of Catholic involvement in the right-wing subversive activities of the late 1890s at the time of the Dreyfus affair. It investigates the increased difficulties that French Catholics faced after the change of pope in 1903. Later chapters explore the degree to which wariness towards committed Catholics in the public services evaporated under later regimes - despite the traumas of the Vichy years.

This book examines the historical context of the earliest Christian martyrs, and anchors their grisly and often wilful self-sacrifice to the everyday life and outlook of the cities of the Roman empire. Professor Bowersock begins by investigating both the time and the region in which martyrdom, as we know it, came into being. He also offers comparisons of the Graeco-Roman background with the martyrology of Jews and Muslims. A study of official protocols illuminates the bureaucratic institutions of the Roman state as they applied to the first martyrs; and the martyrdoms themselves are seen within the context of urban life (and public spectacle) in the great imperial cities. By considering martyrdom in relation to suicide, the author is also able to demonstrate the peculiarly Roman character of Christian self-sacrifice in relation to other forms of deadly resistance to authority.

In this magisterial study, Peter Burke explores the social and cultural history of the languages spoken or written in Europe between the invention of printing and the French Revolution, arguing that, from a linguistic point of view, 1450 to 1789 should be regarded as a distinct period. One major theme of the book is the relation between languages and communities (regions, churches, occupations and genders as well as nations) and the place of language as a way of identifying others as well as a symbol of one's own identity. A second, linked theme is that of competition: between Latin and the vernaculars, between different vernaculars, dominant and subordinate, and finally between different varieties of the same vernacular, such as standard languages and dialects. Written by one of Europe's leading cultural historians, this book restores the history of the many languages of Europe in a large variety of contexts.

General histories of the twentieth century will have much to say about the establishment, spread, maintenance and sudden collapse of Soviet Communism. This book outlines a major feature of twentieth-century world history that arguably affected more people than the rise and fall of Soviet Communism. It was the first to discuss as related developments the many attempts in Asia and Africa in the third quarter of the twentieth century to create egalitarian rural societies (landlord abolition in Egypt, India and Iran; ujamaa in Tanzania; land reform in Indonesia; collectivization in China, Vietnam and Ethiopia), their failure, and the differentiated rural regimes which, despite landlord abolition, remain there to this day. The case studies include Egypt, India, the three East African countries, Papua New Guinea, Iran, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, China and Vietnam. The book highlights a major and hitherto disaggregated aspect of twentieth-century world history.