The soldier, publisher, and pamphleteer John Streater is a comparatively neglected political writer of the 1650s, who represents the turning of the dispersed Levellers to classical republicanism. In the 1650s he is seen as a brave and uncompromising voice of opposition. In the autumn of 1653 he was prosecuted by Cromwell for publishing a work entitled The grand politick informer. This article rediscovers this publication, identifies it as Streater's first newsbook, and explores its implications for Streater's career and canon. In 1654 Streater wrote two series of newsbooks which criticized the Protectorate in an oblique fashion. The grand politick informer, a work of unbridled ferocity, shows that Streater learned to tame his voice after his 1653 prosecution and imprisonment, and to couch his antagonism to the government in the language of classical allusion.

The existence of an Independent church at Stepney presided over by William Greenhill is already well known as too is the association of the eastern suburbs generally with religious and political radicalism in the 1640s. What is less familiar, however, is the fact that Stepney's neighbouring parish, St Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel, also came to possess an Independent church gathered under the divine Thomas Walley (or Whalley), and that prominent members of that church and their sectarian allies had for some time assumed key roles in local politics and were eventually to engineer an Independent take-over of the parish after a protracted struggle. This article will focus upon the composition of the Whitechapel Independents, the form taken by the parochial factionalism, the identities and reactions of their local opponents and the way in which events and personalities in Whitechapel related to broader religious and political themes in the capital.

This article concludes that Australia was determined to possess nuclear weapons from the end of the Second World War. The best prospects for this lay in working with Britain through the so-called ‘joint project’. British defence planners knew that their small island would not survive a future atomic blitz and, therefore, needed ‘active’ deterrent weapons. The problem was that the US after 1946 moved to protect its atomic monopoly and denied Britain research, raw materials, and test facilities. Australia was, therefore, an invaluable partner in the British deterrent weapons programme, in all its aspects from research to testing, as long as the US refused co-operation. The quest for atomic weapons lies at the heart of many of Canberra's initiatives after 1945 – the decision to build an Australian National University; the construction of the vast Snowy Mountains scheme; and ultimately the decision to deploy Australian forces into South-East Asia in the mid-fifties. The height of Anglo-Australian co-operation coincided with the atomic tests after 1952, London's decision to help build atomic reactors in Australia, and the Suez crisis. Britain's acquisition of deterrent weapons in 1957, however, saw the end of imperial co-operation on atomic weapons and delivery systems.

Gender relations in German history: power, agency, and experience from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Edited by Lynn Abrams and Elizabeth Harvey. London: UCL, 1996. Pp. x+262. ISBN 1-85728-485-2. £12.95.

Adultery and divorce in Calvin's Geneva. By Robert M. Kingdon. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard UP, 1995. Pp. ix+214. ISBN 0-674-00520-1 (hb). £18.50.

Housecraft and statecraft: domestic service in Renaissance Venice, 1400–1600. By Dennis Romano. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Pp. xxvi+333. ISBN 0-8018-5288-9. £37.00.

The European nobility, 1400–1800. By Jonathan Dewald. New approaches to European history, ix. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xvii+209. ISBN 0-521-42528-x (pb). £12.95.

Garden and grove: the Italian Renaissance garden in the English imagination, 1600–1750. By John Dixon Hunt. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1996. Pp. xix+268. ISBN 0-8122-1604-0 (pb). £23.50.

Like an ancient woodsman or a guide through the Amazonian jungle, the ideal historian possesses at least two kinds of expertise: enough familiarity with the general terrain to plan successful expeditions and enough experience in the field to make inevitable adjustments to ‘the big picture’ when underway. Of course in the real world (of both geography and history) the tasks of exploration and cartography are often bifurcated, without necessarily disastrous results. The historian who is equally skilled at both close-up description and large-scale theorizing is consequently celebrated as a rare and valued anomaly. Meanwhile, for most of us stumbling scouts, the world beyond our familiar trails remains largely one of learned lore, with connections to our own limited forays often vague at best. Unless, of course, we are fortunate enough to come across something which provides an almost magical link between the narrow and the wide, the micro and the macro.

There is one interesting piece of testimony relating to the death of Bob Smillie that Tom Buchanan does not discuss in his article on this sad affair (‘The death of Bob Smillie, the Spanish Civil War, and the eclipse of the Independent Labour party’ Historical Journal, 40 (June 1997)). The Orwell Archive at University College, London, contains a statement dated 30 January 1930 that Georges Kopp sent to Fenner Brockway and John McNair of the ILP with a copy to his friend and comrade, George Orwell. In this document, Kopp makes clear his belief that Bob Smillie was kicked to death by his Communist interrogators in an effort to get him to sign statements prejudicial to the POUM and the ILP. As Buchanan points out, Kopp was Smillie's unit commander and was himself arrested during the repression of the POUM and only released in December 1938. His account of events deserves consideration.

Power and politics in old régime France, 1720–1745. By Peter R. Campbell. London: Routledge, 1996. Pp. xii+420. ISBN 0-415-06333-7. £50.

Antoine Lavoisier: science, administration, revolution. By A. Donovan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xvi+351. ISBN 0-521-56218-x. £40. 0-521-56672-x. £14.95 (pb).

Officers, nobles and revolutionaries: essays on eighteenth-century France. By W. Doyle. London: Hambledon Press, 1995. Pp. xii+238. ISBN 1-85285-121-x. £35.

Venality: the sale of offices in eighteenth-century France. By W. Doyle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xviii+343. ISBN 0-19-820536-8. £45.

The bakers of Paris and the bread question, 1700–1775. By S. L. Kaplan. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1996. Pp. xviii+261. ISBN 08223-1706-0. £47.50.

Montesquieu and the Parlement of Bordeaux. By R. Kingston. Geneva: Droz, 1996. Pp. 329. ISBN 2-600-00161-1. £30.

Class and state in ancien régime France: the road to modernity? By David Parker. London: Routledge, 1996. Pp. xvii+349. ISBN 0-415-13647-4. £40.

The books analysed in this review bear witness in different ways to a revival of historians' interest in the political history of ancien régime France which was highlighted by Peter Campbell in a recent review article in this journal. Campbell speculated that what Fernand Braudel all-so-dismissively called ‘event history’ (l'histoire événementielle) was making a comeback at the expense of Annaliste geo-historical analysis in the longue durée mode or mid-term conjunctural history rooted in social and economic change. A complementary way of looking at the phenomenon, which strikes the reader on engaging with the present crop of works, is to see current historiographical interests in political history as the revenge of Alfred Cobban, progenitor in the 1950s and 1960s of famous revisionist attacks on the socio-economic analyses of the Jacobino–Marxist school of French Revolutionary historiography adorned by Mathiez, Lefebvre, and Soboul. Cobban's broadsides were aimed not simply at some of the conceptual apparatus of the ‘Marxists’, but also sought to highlight empirical research as a corrosive solvent of what he viewed as the deterministic hyperbole of politically-influenced left-wing history.

The newly available documentation from the Russian archives sheds new light upon many aspects of Soviet-British relationship during World War II and the early Cold War. One such relatively unexplored facet of this relationship is propaganda interaction between the two countries. While the organization and technique of both Soviet and British propaganda machines have been studied rather extensively, there has been very little documented analysis of an actual impact of British propaganda on the Soviet regime and society in the mid-1940s (although some internal estimates within the British government must have been made at the time). Now, with the opening of Agitprop (department of agitation and propaganda of the central committee of the CPSU) records it becomes possible to measure this impact, including Soviet steps to manage it. A good case study in this regard can be made out of Soviet internal reaction to the main mouthpieces of the British printed propaganda targeted on the Soviet audience in 1942–8 – a journal, Britansky Soyuznik (The British Ally) and its digest companion Britanskaia Khronika (The British Chronicle).

Die katholische Konfessionalisierung. Edited by Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling. ‘Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte’, Vol. 198. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1995. Pp. xiii+472. ISBN 3-579-01666-0. DM 148.

The Salzburg transaction: expulsion and redemption in eighteenth-century Germany. By Mack Walker. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992. Pp. xvi+242. ISBN 0-8014-2777-0. $38.50.

War, state and society in Württemberg, 1677–1793. By Peter H. Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. xvii+294. ISBN 0-521-47302-0. £18.95.

Kaiser Maximilian II. Kultur und Politik im 16. Jahrhundert. Edited by Friedrich Edelmayer and Alfred Kohler. ‘Wiener Beiträge zur Geschichte der Neuzeit’, Vol. 19. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1992. Pp. 263. ISBN 3-486-0317-3. ÖS 396.

Post-Reformation development in Germany has few of the features that encourage historians to describe an age with a catchy noun or turn of phrase. As a land comprised of hundreds of principalities, dioceses, and free imperial cities, Germany does not easily lend itself to descriptions of the evolving state. Equally, as the German lands were divided by confessional alliance and subject to a wide range of intellectual currents and traditions, it has proven difficult to come up with a term comprehensive enough to include the full sweep of social, religious, and intellectual life. Most of the concepts we use to define European development in this age fall short when applied to Germany. In view of this, historians tend either to emphasize certain aspects of the nation's development, or to isolate events that seem to reveal something central. Both approaches have been taken in the books under review.

Is the development of a new British history of the early modern period a boon or a bane for those interested in the history of Scotland (or, for that matter, Ireland, Wales, even England)? Such a false antithesis we might normally confine to our examination papers; but it is difficult to avoid considering it after reading the five books under review here. Professor Burns has written a superb account of Scottish political thought in the long sixteenth century and Dr Coffey an equally successful exploration of the mind of the leading ideologist of the Covenanters. The collection edited by Dr Mason, which connects with the Burns study at several points, is explicitly a view of Scottish political thought focused on the Union of 1603, while that edited by Dr Robertson drops the particular emphasis on Scottish thought in its exploration of the intellectual context to the Union of 1707. Professor Speck presents us with a slightly different problem: a volume in a series on the history of early modern England that takes as the central theme of English politics in the decade 1700–10 the birth of Britain. Each of these books is rewarding, at the very least ; together their effect may be disquieting.

Devising liberty: preserving and creating freedom in the new American republic. Edited by David Thomas Konig. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995. Pp. xiv+383. £35.00. ISBN 0-804-72536-5

Benjamin Lincoln and the American revolution. By David B. Mattern. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. Pp. xii+307. $39.95. ISBN 1-570-03068-5

The devious Dr. Franklin, colonial agent. Benjamin Franklin's years in London. By David T. Morgan. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1996. Pp. xii+273. $34.95. ISBN 0-865-54525-1

General Richard Montgomery and the American revolution: from redcoat to rebel. By Hal T. Shelton. New York: New York University Press, 1994. Pp. xiv+245. $45.00. ISBN 0-814-77975-1

The role of instructive, heroic, and exemplary themes in accounts of great national events has a complex history of its own. American independence and its aftermath provide rich examples. Ever since the events themselves, conventional and popular accounts have either featured individuals as heroes or role models, or dwelt on the struggle for values such as liberty and democracy. These traditions became so deeply rooted in patterns of discourse that academic historians have never been able to avoid engaging with them. Countless studies have embodied or responded to some kind of patriotic or hagiographic purpose, and such concerns to different degrees underlie the works under discussion here. The ‘new’ cultural history, however, has sparked a fresh interest in the ‘exemplary’ as a cultural construction in itself, and an increasing number of scholars are engaged in tracing the creation of image and identity, reputation and memory. All the works here touch on this concern, too, though they fall short of embracing the new agenda fully. Taken together, they illustrate the instability of what might be called the ‘traditional exemplary’: certainty that a historical episode or figure can illustrate an ideal principle or characteristic.

The French Revolutionary wars, 1787–1802. By T. C. W. Blanning. London: Longman, 1996. Pp. xvii+286. ISBN 0-340-56911-5. £15.99.

The wars of Napoleon. By Charles J. Esdaile. London: Longman, 1995. Pp. xii+417. ISBN 0-582-05955-0. £14.99.

The Younger Pitt: the consuming struggle. By John Ehrman. London: Constable, 1996. Pp. xv+911. ISBN 0-09-475540-x. £35.

British victory in Egypt, 1801: the end of Napoleon's conquest. By Piers Mackesy. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Pp. xii+282. ISBN 0-415-04064-7. £45.

Britain and the defeat of Napoleon, 1807–1815. By Rory Muir. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv+466. ISBN 0-300-06443-8. £29.95.

Traditional historians of war and foreign policy in Britain have often been accused – sometimes justly – of all manner of sins, among them Anglo- and Eurocentricity. There is no trace, however, of insularity in the five new publications by John Ehrman, Rory Muir, Piers Mackesy, Charles Esdaile, and T. C. W. Blanning on the struggle with Napoleon. The global sweep of that conflict, to quote Rory Muir's Britain and the defeat of Napoleon, forces the historian to address an ‘interlocking mosaic of problems’ (p. xii), spanning the Baltic to the Cape of Good Hope, and the Indian subcontinent to the Caribbean.

The past in French history. By Robert Gildea. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. Pp. xiv+418. £30.00. ISBN 0-300-05799-7

Napoleon and his artists. By Timothy Wilson-Smith. London: Constable, 1996. Pp. xxx+306. £23.00. ISBN 0-094-76110-8

Revolution and the meanings of freedom in the nineteenth century. Edited by Isser Woloch. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Pp. viii+447. £40.00. ISBN 0-804-72748-1

Over the past twenty years, Keith Baker, François Furet, Lynn Hunt, Mona Ozouf et al. have argued that the French Revolution gave birth to a new political culture, and by implication that one should study politics through this culture rather than through l'histoire événementielle of ministries and elections. The three books reviewed here all relate to political culture in the wake of the French Revolution, explicitly in The past in French history and implicitly in the other two volumes: under Napoleon, artistic culture was politicized and regimented, and after his fall nineteenth-century Europe was left to nurse the awkward offspring of 1789, the ideologies of revolution and freedom. Yet whilst these books provide fine studies of political culture, they make only passing references to two less clearly defined concepts which may be necessary adjuncts to such an approach. The first is that of a ‘political class’, meaning those who occupy office, usually by election and regardless of party, which enables one to put l'histoire événementielle aside, since elections or changes of cabinet are merely reshuffles within the political class. The second concept concerns the communities that create political cultures. What, though, creates these communities?

On 16 October 1997 at a forum at the Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University in Houston, Mikhail Gorbachev received the Enron Prize for Public Service. Former secretary of state James Baker credited Gorbachev for ‘setting the USSR on the irreversible path to freedom’. Because of Gorbachev's ‘tremendous political courage’, Baker claimed, millions of people enjoyed freer, more prosperous lives. But millions of Russians do not approve of what Gorbachev did, would deny him the Enron and Nobel Prizes, and mark him a villain because he caused the unravelling of the USSR and Warsaw Pact and because their lives are less prosperous in today's Russia.

To understand why a policy (like Gorbachev's glasnost) succeeded or failed, one has to look at its social impact. Rarely are policies carried out exactly as the policymaker envisioned. Although the five titles reviewed in this article vary in their focus and geographical scope, most tend to emphasize Soviet and Russian policy implementation, as opposed to the initial decision-making process.

A history of the Jews in the English-speaking world: Great Britain. By W. D. Rubinstein, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. Pp. viii+539. ISBN 0-312-12542-9. £65.00.

Pogroms: anti-Jewish violence in modern Russian history. Edited by John D. Klier and Shlomo Lambroza. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xx+393. ISBN 0-521-40532-7. £55.00.

Western Jewry and the Zionist project, 1914–1933. By Michael Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi+305. ISBN 0-521-47087-0. £35.00.

Three books under review deal from different perspectives with the responses of Jews in Western and Eastern Europe to the increasing and more or less violent outbursts of anti-Semitism which they encountered in the years from 1880 to the Second World War. The first two titles consider how deep-rooted anti-Semitism was in Britain and Russia and in what sections of society it was most conspicuous, whereas the third asks how Western Jewry became motivated to support the Zionist project of settlement in Palestine; all three approach the question of how isolated or intergrated diaspora Jews were in their respective countries.

The conservative tradition in America. By Charles W. Dunn and J. David Woodard. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996. Pp. ix+199. ISBN 0-8476-8167-X. $14.95.

Hoods and shirts: the extreme right in Pennsylvania, 1925–1950. By Philip Jenkins. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Pp. 343. ISBN 0-8078-2316-3. $29.95.

From demagogue to Dixiecrat: Horace Wilkinson and the politics of race. By Glenn Feldman. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 1995. Pp. xviii+311. ISBN 0-8191-9783-1. $32.50.

From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: race in the conservative counterrevolution, 1963–1994. By Dan T. Carter. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. Pp. xv+134. ISBN 0-8071-2118-5. £21.95.

According to political scientists Charles W. Dunn and David Woodward in The conservative tradition in America, the dramatic Republican gains in the 1994 elections exemplified the eclilse of New Deal liberalism by a resurgent conservatism, a politcal shift that began in the late 1960s and which Ronald Reagan's victory in the 1980 fortified. In their short survey the authors investigate the intellectual roots of modern conservatism and attempt to define and explain the recent manifestation of this heritage. The three other recent works reviewed here provide a larger historical context, which Dunn and Woodward ignore, for understanding conservatism and right extremism in America.

For the interdisciplinarian, Anglo-Indian historiography can be frustrating. In working on Paul Scott's Raj quartet (four profoundly historical novels about Anglo-India, 1942–7, better known as TV's The jewel in the crown) I have faced such questions as: whether it is reasonable to believe that in 1947 a senior British police officer who owned Pathan clothes and brown make-up used them professionally, passing as an Indian to gather intelligence; what credence the officer's probable homosexuality gives an alternative explanation, that cultural transvestism and Indian guise served private sexual rather than public professional ends; and whether the resonances with Thuggee in the costumed and made-up officer's murder by strangulation (in a Muslim-ruled, Hindu-majority, not-yet-acceded princely state in late July 1947) are of any historical merit. But the archetypes in which writers of fiction can combine scope and particularity are unavailable to the historian, too often confined to the dense and satisfying footnotery of the local study claimed as typical, or happily wandering the open generalizations of the all-India history claimed as exemplary; and for the critic wishing to test the historical probity of a fiction the result is Hobson's choice between easily-found but tangential treatments, and trawling memoirs for the reticent implications of conventional Anglo-Indian understatement.