At the end of the First World War, the British government attempted to return to the pre-war policy trade-off of fixed exchanges rates on the gold standard, capital mobility and free trade, which entailed a sacrifice of domestic monetary policy. But the attempt proved difficult between 1919 and 1931 when the pursuit of international economic polices was constrained by a growing concern for their domestic economic and political repercussions. In the 1930s, a new policy trade-off emerged: managed exchange rates, capital controls and protectionism, with a greater concern for domestic monetary policy. The essay explains the reasons for the emergence of constraints and the subsequent abandonment of the pre-1914 policy trade-off in terms of five variables: changes in the performance of the economy and its impact on different actors; the politics of the national debt and the constraints on interest rates; the impact of capital exports on debt repayment and as an alternative to interest rates in influencing the exchanges; an adjustment in assumptions about flexibility of wages and costs; and a breakdown in the political culture of free trade and gold.

England north of the Humber and the Mersey in the early twelfth century has in the past tended to be discussed in the context of the development of the monarchy. The Normans moved into the northern counties later and in fewer numbers than the south, and in the wake of the Norman settlement the north came to be more fully integrated into the southern kingdom. A fresh perspective on the period is gained by comparing Henry I's rule over the north with that in other regions of England, Wales and Normandy. Its keys were old-style dynastic politics and patronage, and his achievement that of bringing peace to the region.

This article builds upon the work of the late Professor Sir Rees Davies and other scholars interested in the medieval March of Wales, and draws attention to the place, roles and experiences of the noblewomen in a region usually considered the preserve of the warrior lord. In focusing on the aristocratic widow, for whom records are relatively abundant, it examines the widows’ experience of dower assignment and of estate and castle management on a frontier district. It contends that, among other things, those who allocated dower to the widows of the region deliberately eschewed the frontier hotspots, and that the normative relationship between female lord and castle was at once improved and restricted by the warlike nature of the region. A final section examines the life and career of the often overlooked Isabel de Mortimer (daughter of Roger de Mortimer of Wigmore and sometime wife of John FitzAlan III), revealing her critical part in holding the Shropshire frontline on the eve of the final conquest of Wales (1282–3). The case is made that we cannot fully understand the aristocratic Marcher society without including women in our histories.

This study argues that the experience of government, though more clearly articulated after 1400, did not engender realpolitik and made princes and ministers, both the old nobility of service and the newer graduate careerists, more acutely aware of issues of conscience. It traces the anxieties provoked by political experience, their relation to the new spiritual literature addressed to persons with active responsibility, and their resolution after 1410 in a new, tough, realistic but morally sensitive approach to government, associated above all with Henry V of England.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a number of sub-Saharan envoys and ambassadors from Christian countries, predominantly Ethiopia and the Congo, were sent to Portugal and Italy. This essay shows how cultural assumptions on both sides complicated their task of ‘representing’ Africa. These African ambassadors and princes represented the interests of their rulers or their countries in a variety of ways, from forging personal relationships with the king or pope, to providing knowledge of the African continent and African societies, to acquiring knowledge of European languages and behaviours, to negotiating about war, to petitioning for religious or technological help, to carrying out fact-finding missions. But Renaissance preconceptions of Africa and Africans, reinforced by the slave trade, and Renaissance and papal assumptions about diplomatic interaction, ensured that the encounters remained unsatisfactory, as this cultural history of diplomacy makes clear. The focus of the essay is on religious and cultural exchange and the ceremonial culture of embassies.

The expansion of print and the rise of specialist disciplines from the early nineteenth century are usually associated with a decline in informed conversation about the sciences and other forms of learning among the aristocracy, gentry and professional classes. Yet an extensive body of evidence suggests that the sciences remained a vital part of conversational culture in England at least through the 1860s. Ultimately, however, discussing specialist knowledge at parties became condemned as ‘talking shop’. This was not so much the result of changes within science, as is usually assumed, but was instead a byproduct of the increasing differentiation of roles throughout society. By the early twentieth century, scientific practitioners had created new places for broad-ranging talk about their subjects, most characteristically in the tea rooms attached to university laboratories.

Théodore Vacquer (1824–99) was an archaeologist who excavated, directed excavations in and visited all archaeological sites in Paris between the 1840s and his death. In the latter part of his career, he served as assistant curator at what became the Musée Carnavalet, specialising in the Roman and early medieval history of the city. Taking advantage of the reconstruction of the city in the nineteenth century associated with the work of Paris prefect, Baron Haussmann, he was able to locate far more of Roman Paris than had been known before. His findings remained the basis of what was known about the Roman city until a new wave of archaeological excavations after 1950. Vacquer aimed to highlight his discoveries in a magnum opus on the history of Paris from earliest times to ad 1000, but he died with virtually nothing written. His extensive archive still exists, however, and provides the substance for this essay. The essay seeks to rescue Vacquer from the relative obscurity associated with his name. In addition, by setting his life and work in the context of the Haussmannian construction of Paris as the arch-city of modernity it aims to illuminate the history of archaeology, conservation and urban identity in nineteenth-century Paris.