This chapter presents various examples to show that diplomacy was learned on the job, and Castlereagh sought to formalize this by attaching young men to the principal embassies. In addition to meeting the patronage needs of a new generation, Castlereagh sought to restock the corps with persons ‘properly qualified to discharge the functions of Secretary of Embassy and Secretary of Legation’. This came from a pool of public funds designated to cover the incidental expenses of Britain's missions. The status of the attaches as diplomats-in-training was thus clearly defined, much more so than that of their eighteenth-century predecessors had been. The study demonstrates diplomacy as a branch of power politics increasingly defined in ‘modern’ term.

This introductory chapter sets out the focus of the book, namely the history of the persistence of female preaching in nineteenth-century British Methodism. It suggests that by far the majority of Methodist women preachers were not seeking power or even equality, but rather they were following their call to speak. It provides answers to the reasons why the New Connexion—the first Methodist secessionist sect—despite its connection with radical politics and egalitarian ethos, failed to make use of women evangelists, when a few years later the Primitive Methodists embraced them. Among the smaller sects, it examines the differences between Arminian and Tent Methodism that led the former to welcome female evangelists and the latter to maintain an all-male cohort of preachers. These differences add complexity to the larger patterns in nineteenth-century women's ministry and illustrate the importance of the particular contexts of decision-making within Methodism. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the concept of liberal modernity. It then sets out the purpose of the book, which is to trace the development of liberal regimes back to the origins of their emergence in the eighteenth century and the development of the techniques with which they first set out to posit a solution to the problem of war through the pacification of life and the imposition of liberal accounts of humanity within their own and other societies. In order to examine liberal regimes biopolitically, this book develops an overtly Foucauldian analysis. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

The two episodes of the Tinkler Ducket trial illustrate the contemporary and frequent modern perception of deism and deists in England. The deists seemed to be godless, enemies of Newtonian philosophy, and a disruptive force in society. This chapter explores the question of who they really were. Any study of deism must be sensitive to conceptions of eighteenth-century intellectual thought, known as Enlightenment. The monarchy, the Church of England, and Newtonian natural philosophy, endorsed the institutions that characterise the establishment of the five deists in England. The chapter also explores the changing meaning of ‘Enlightenment’ in England changing its meaning, and revisits what it meant to be deist in this environment. It explains that deists in England absolutely believed in a particular view of God and this led to a deist theology. This theology supported both their political and their natural philosophical writings. Furthermore, the chapter presents a portrait of deism in England by examining the writings of five specific deists: John Toland, Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Morgan and Thomas Chubb and aims to demonstrate the crucial importance of theology to their work.

Northern Irish nationalists were the outright losers in the Anglo-Irish settlement of 1920–21. Southern Irish nationalists attained an independent state, albeit truncated and lacking the full sovereignty of the coveted ‘republic’ for which many had fought. Discrimination in employment and the allocation of public housing was seen to have a useful side-effect in encouraging Catholic emigration from Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland was a divided but largely stable society in the decades immediately after partition. The ameliorative impact of the welfare state made post-war northern Catholics more willing British citizens. There are a number of factors which have to be considered in accounting for the climate of re-appraisal within the nationalist community in Northern Ireland from the late 1950s. It is in nationalist attitudes that the politics of John Hume must be examined.

Independent female evangelism thrived during the 1860s, a period of sustained evangelical activity promoting religious revival. This chapter traces the transatlantic roots of revivalism, the prominence of women within it, and the emergence of a group of female evangelists who developed professional careers outside the formal ministry. In particular, it describes the careers of the small number who achieved national prominence. Most were not Methodists but often spoke in Methodist chapels, and three of them—Catherine Booth, Isabella Armstrong, and Geraldine Hooper—published justifications for female preaching. While independent female evangelism waned by the end of the decade, the Salvation Army, co-founded by Catherine Booth, provided unprecedented opportunities for female religious leadership.

This chapter presents conclusions to Part I, covering Chapters 1–5. The development of modern economies is certainly accompanied by an increasing division of labour and an increasing use of machinery, but these do not necessarily lead to reductions in the levels of skill required from their workforces. Such a consequence should not simply be taken for granted, and indeed the preceding studies of occupations involved in the British shipbuilding industry have indicated that it would be a highly questionable conclusion to reach. For, not only do these observations of the content of jobs and the composition of the workforce indicate a marked stability in levels of skill, but they also indicate that this was not just an aberration, perhaps the result of the resistance of well-organised labour, the unusual customer-specificity of the products, or even a managerial preference for self-regulating workers.

This chapter explores the nature of Robert Knight's trade union leadership, pulling together the highly fragmented and rather formal coverage of his activities and ideas contained in the reports and minutes of the organisation to which he devoted most of his adult life. The overall impression given by such public material is that Knight's outstanding characteristics were honesty, hard work, and a systematic approach to administration; alongside clarity, thoroughness, and a logical style of argument: in debates on union issues he was always well prepared and persuasive, and he was clearly a skilful negotiator in industrial disputes. These qualities which made him such an effective union organiser possibly did not make him the most endearing of men: on their negative side they might appear as ruthless efficiency and relentless logic. However, to acknowledge that as a person Robert Knight might sometimes have had an authoritative, or even overbearing, manner would not amount to a demonstration that the union he led was an undemocratic organisation.