Few politicians can have been as maligned, insulted and manhandled as John Stuart, third earl of Bute. Before 1760, cosseted within the confines of the Prince of Wales's court at Leicester House, this former Scottish representative peer was of little public note although he had acted as the lifeline between Pitt and the reversionary interest between 1755 and 1758. In London society he was known for his intellectual pretensions (he was a very competent botanist), his haughty airs, and a shapely figure which was displayed to such good effect in the theatrical productions held under the auspices of the Princess Dowager. It was only after 1760, when it became abundantly clear that the youthful George — if not his mother - was infatuated with Bute, that the royal favourite was exposed to the bleak winds of political hostility,. Admittedly there were rumours before George's accession about the subsequently notorious liaison between Bute and the Princess Dowager, rumours that Sir John Pringle told Boswell emanated from the intrigues of Bute's rivals at Leicester House. But these were a mere foretaste of what was to come: after 1760, whether Bute was serving the king (1761–3) or out of office, he was attacked by the mob, threatened with assassination, vilified in pamphlets, prints, newspapers, songs, plays, and handbills, and effectively rejected as a potential ally by all the leading politicians of the day except for the none too politically respectable Henry Fox. The bulk of this criticism was levelled in the 1760s, but even after 1770 the so-called ‘Northern Machiavel’ was under withering if increasingly sporadic fire, and as late as the 1780s vestigial elements of the old hostility remained.

There can be few nineteenth-century figures whose papers and writings are so frequently consulted and quoted by historians as those of Francis Place, yet who have been so sadly neglected as historical figures. The only full-length study of Place's life and work, by Graham Wallas, is seventy-odd years old.2 It suffers from numerous defects, the two major of which are a tendency to show Place in an unduly favourable light and to make enormously lengthy quotations from Place's manuscripts, with very little criticism or analysis of their content or of the part which Place played in any given situation. The failure to look at Place's career and influence in the light of the views of his contemporaries inevitably means that Wallas's study is one-sided and incomplete as a biography and is only really useful as a selection from Place's writing, illustrating a number of the campaigns in which he played a part.

The movement for imperial federation has traditionally been regarded as a late nineteenth century phenomenon, which grew out of a supposed reaction against earlier ‘anti-imperialism’. J. E. Tyler set out to trace its growth ‘from its first beginnings… in and around 1868’. Historians were aware of the suggestions made before the American War of Independence that the colonies should send M.P.s to Westminster, but tended to dismiss them as of antiquarian rather than historical interest. A few also noted apparently isolated discussions of some Empire federal connexion in the first half of the nineteenth century, but no attempt was made to establish the existence of a continuous sentiment before 1870. C. A. Bodelsen did no more than list a series of examples he had discovered in the supposed age of anti-imperialism. In fact between 1820 and 1870 a debate about the federal nature of the Empire can be traced. Like the movement for imperial federation after 1870, there was only the vaguest unity of aim about the mid-century projects, and before 1870, as after, the idea was never consistently to the fore, but enjoyed short bursts of popularity. It is, however, fair to think of one single movement for a federal Empire throughout the nineteenth century. There is a clear continuity in ideas, in arguments, and in the people involved. Ideas of Empire federalism were influential, not so much for themselves as for their relationship to overall imperial thinking: to ignore the undercurrent of feeling for a united Empire is to distort the attitudes of many leading men. In the mid-nineteenth century general principles of imperial parliamentary union were argued chiefly from the particular case of British North America, the closest colonies to Britain and the most constitutionally advanced. This Canadian emphasis strengthened the analogies with the United States which occurred in any case.

In 1837 leading reformers in a number of England's rapidly growing but still archaically governed industrial cities began to agitate for the incorporation of their boroughs in accordance with the provisions of the Municipal Corporations Act passed two years before. Up until then little interest had been shown in the subject in the provinces, an attitude which is rather easier to understand than the sudden belated burst of enthusiasm. For, even after it had become clear in 1835 that the great reform bill had made some sort of municipal reform inevitable, Tory opponents of the measure had not given way without a struggle. By strictly limiting the powers of the reformed borough councils, by creating a property qualification for councillors, and by requiring the inhabitants of unincorporated cities to petition the Privy Council for a charter rather than, say, providing for automatic incorporation of parliamentary boroughs, they hoped to emasculate what they dared not destroy. In this they were remarkably successful. The borough councils remained hobbled for years because the powers of the variety of trusts which existed in most cities to take care of such things as paving, water supply, cleaning and general improvements were not handed over to the municipal authorities. And largely because of this even many reformers in the proud industrial cities of the north and midlands were often less than enthusiastic about getting a charter for their city. The prospect of replacing narrowly selected Court Leets and Boroughreeves with semi-democratically elected borough councils and mayors was appealing, but it had to be balanced against the fact that these councils would not supersede but merely take their place alongside already existing boards and commissions, with the result that the cost of local government was likely to go up. Looked at in this way there did not seem to be much in it, or at least not enough to make incorporation worth the fighting that would probably be necessary to secure it.

For liberals, especially those who kept to the pure doctrine of Cobden, Egypt became a test case in the 1870s. Disraeli's purchase of the Khedive Ismail's Suez Canal shares in 1875 made its annexation appear a possibility. Two years later Gladstone penned his eloquent warnings as to diis step in his ‘Aggression on Egypt’ article in the Nineteenth Century. The annexation or occupation of Egypt would be, he said, ‘die almost certain egg of a great African Empire that will grow and grow’ until Britain would have territory and commitments throughout die whole of die African continent, and consequent embroilments with France and die odier Powers. There would be no limit to die responsibilities Britain would have to undertake, dealing with ‘all oppression’, and undertaking die ‘entire taxation’. It would end forever die realization of diat lofty aim, die founding not of a terrestrial but a ‘moral empire’ - ‘the enthronement of diis idea of Public Right, as die governing idea of European policy’.

The reoccupation of the Rhineland, on 7 March 1936, conventionally referred to as its remilitarization, was one of the few real turning points in modern history. It marked the end of the last vestiges of the ‘Versailles System’ and it has been considered a missed opportunity for calling a halt to Hitler's aggressive designs. It was also a problem which affected the very foundations of the Franco-Polish alliance, a relationship which had a chequered history in the interwar period. For France and Poland, Germany's neighbours, most of all, the reoccupation of the Rhineland would on the surface appear to have been the last occasion on which they might have collaborated to contain Hitler's Germany. This article will attempt to show how much more complex the question was in reality. It examines the degree of mutual consultation and encouragement between France and Poland prior to the reoccupation, and their reactions to it. This episode provides an excellent case-study of how the alliance worked in practice and also throws some interesting sidelights on the European diplomatic scene in this period.

The Vatican in the twentieth century has played a far less considerable role on the world's stage than in previous centuries. Stripped of its temporal possessions, the Vatican no longer exercises that military and political power which Napoleon estimated to be worth an army corps of 20,000 men, but which his latter day successor, Stalin, could sardonically dismiss with the (apocryphal) question: ‘How many divisions has the Pope?’ Nevertheless, the papacy remains an influential factor in world affairs; and there is still strong appeal in die ideal of the papacy pursuing aims which, in contrast to those of other powers, are solely peace and reconciliation.