The arrest of Thomas Cromwell in June 1540 and his inescapable execution on 28 July offered a chance for the Catholic powers of Christendom to hope and work for the end of the English schism. In 1540, Charles V proposed colloquies between the different confessions in his empire and in the same spirit conceived an alliance with Henry VIII. Both Charles and Henry practised to deceive, but two mysterious Imperial missions to England in July 1540, which the removal of Cromwell made possible, and the manner of Henry’s welcome of them, provide proof of the seriousness of their intent. The brief period between Cromwell’s arrest and his death was exploited by both Henry VIII and European powers to attempt reconciliation, or, at least, to temporize. This article analyses complex diplomatic reports to show how Cromwell’s fall assumed significance far beyond England, as new evidence of an abrupt realignment at a climacteric of European dynastic politics and Reformation diplomacy reveals.

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

The English protectorate began in 1653 with a conspiracy of politicians, army officers, and religious leaders against a theocratic strain of puritanism. Among the plotters was John Owen (1616–83), the leading religious authority of the Interregnum, vice-chancellor of Oxford University, and the ‘Cajoler of Cromwell’. When amid a military and republican coup parliament was dissolved and Richard Cromwell removed in 1659, Owen was again at the heart of events. But the narrative became that this time he had used his influence to oppose the Cromwells. As minister of a congregation at the centre of the nation’s halls of power composed of the military and political elite, Owen became seen as Richard Cromwell’s ‘instrument of ruine’. This article challenges that narrative and its appearance in histories of early 1659 and of Owen’s biography by utilizing new sources and re-evaluating known evidence within the broader context of religious and political divisions at the end of the protectorate. Owen supported whatever political form could best preserve the long-term safety of the English commonwealth and godly rule against the Stuarts. Yet Owen’s legacy became contested among the godly after the Restoration, as the agent of the protectorate’s fall and the failure of puritan politics.

The arrival of an English translation of The structural transformation of the public sphere in 1989 set anglophone historians about revising Habermas’s original explanation of the development of the public sphere in the eighteenth century. In particular, his ‘model case of British development’ came under fire. Notably absent from these many critical appraisals is consideration of the wider British empire. Herein lies the problem that this article addresses: the rise of a ‘British public sphere’ has been described in national terms, and as a result those communities that were living beyond the realm have been left out of the discussion. In essence, the dominance of the nation-state in historical studies has obscured another transitional phase through which a British public sphere began, and in the end failed, to integrate political communities in Ireland and the American colonies in the evolving political structures of the imperial state. By recovering the features of this ‘imperial public sphere’, and the colonial presses that brought it into existence, we can begin to transcend national frames of analysis and reassess where the national stories we have inherited fitted into the larger story of what was really still an age of empires.

By investigating 321 smuggling vessels that travelled between the Faroe Isles and the British Isles between 1775 and 1785, this article explores the regionality and seasonality of illegal trade in the north Atlantic. The article centres on a neglected oceanic region, thereby inverting historical geographies, shifting the focus from port centres like London and Copenhagen to the Scottish Northern and Western Isles, as well as the Faroe Islands. Epitomizing the ‘dichotomy of insularity’, in the eighteenth century these areas were located along maritime highways of global trade, and illegal trade flourished there, despite their challenging location. The article demonstrates that this illegal trade had different seasonal cycles from those of legal trade. While legal trade halted in the winter season, illegal trade continued throughout. Linking illegal maritime activities to more lawful ones, like fishing, the article suggests that the recurring nature of the contraband trade ought to be understood in relation to the broader coastal culture, in which maritime knowledge was circulated and the local relationship to the sea defined. The study suggests that illegal trade should be viewed not merely as an extension of globalization but as a rooted phenomenon, which developed in unison with the local environment.

In the context of increasing historiographical attention to the emotional content of French revolutionary politics, the essentially unprecedented nationwide consultation that produced the cahiers de doléances of 1789, now available as a searchable digitised corpus, offers a route into exploring the hopes, fears, and concerns of thousands of French people who participated directly in the cahiers’ composition. Mapping their uses of the concept of ‘trust’, and its manifold implications, offers new evidence on the nature and contours of the political relationships they believed they inhabited, and on the extent to which they were enacting agency over the prospect of change. It also provides material to contemplate the implications of the highly centralized, top-down reform processes actually initiated from the summer of 1789 onwards, and the violent complexity of their reception.

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

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

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

The original and most commonly worn British Gay Liberation Front (GLF) badge often features in archives holding material on GLF, yet there is limited scholarship on why and with what effect this badge was worn. By combining archival research and oral histories, this article uses this badge to explore the experience and identity of GLF members both during GLF’s formal existence and in its afterlife. During GLF’s initial existence, between 1970 and 1973, the badge was a means of coming out to oneself and others. In turn, wearing the badge helped to construct and reinforce a new and distinct gay community. After the breakup of GLF, the badge continued to be worn and its imagery evoked to demonstrate allegiance to GLF and its ethos, whilst a tradition of gay badge-wearing emerged as a legacy of GLF. Overall, this badge was a major tool to signify identity and build community, not just during GLF’s initial existence, but up to the present day. Through its combination of extensive oral histories and archival research, this article provides new insights into how material culture can be used to understand social movements and their long-term impacts.

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