Atlantic Charter (original) (raw)
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Parliamentary History, 2009
Despite the weight of work on parliament's political history, its early institutional development still feels sketchily mapped. Since A.F. Pollard's generation, institutional history may have fallen out of fashion; yet 16th-and 17th-century constitutional controversies revolved around the nature of parliament as an institution, when its processes, procedures, and privileges became intensely political. Earlier on, in the 15th and early 16th centuries, contemporaries seemingly made do with that curious early-14th-century treatise, the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum, to understand how parliaments should work. In 1510 the new clerk of parliament, John Taylor, prefaced his record of the Lords' proceedings with a version; new guides were written under Elizabeth, but it was not until the early Stuart period that a new clerk of parliament, Henry Elsynge, would devise a successor to the Modus. In institutional terms, the 15th century could thus be characterised as a 'dark age' in the evolution of parliament. But, as Hannes Kleineke shows here, sources among the voluminous legal records held at the National Archives can help bridge that gap. Dr Kleineke's remarkable knowledge of the governmental archive is amply demonstrated in this valuable and important work. The volume transcribes and translates a selection of legal cases brought in the common law and equity courts by peers and MPs between 1377 and 1512, many of which are identified here for the first time. These sources are records from the courts of king's bench, common pleas, the exchequer, and chancery; they comprise principally plea rolls, writs, and bills. The sources are grouped under three main headings: privilege, elections, and wages. In the first section the gradual definition of freedom of arrest for parliamentarians and their servants is addressed. New evidence reveals some reluctance among justices to concede as broad a privilege as parliamentarians sometimes claimed. In the second section, suits, primarily brought under the Lancastrian legislation governing the conduct of elections, are presented.The growing attraction of a seat in the Commons seems evident. In the third section, attempts by MPs to claim from their constituencies the wages to which they were entitled are shown. In some cases, communities appear to have been unable to raise the money required; in other cases, exemption from assessment was at issue. A fourth section gathers miscellaneous documents that relate, among other things, to the creation of peers, attendance in the Lords, petitioning in parliament, and legislative expenses. Appendices supply a chronological calendar of wage disputes, biographical entries on those named in the sources, and the dates of sessions of parliament, while an index covers the names and places mentioned in the text. The combination of
New West Indian Guide, 2014
Although it would be difficult to argue that any decade in U.S. history suffers in an absolute sense from a dearth of scholarship, the 1780s are not a scholarly favorite in the way that, say, the 1850s, 1860s, 1920s, 1930s, and 1960s are. To be sure, economic historians used to fight about the nature of economic conditions in the "new nation," and political and constitutional scholars used to go round and round regarding the relative efficacy of the Articles of Confederation as a governing frame. On the whole, though, the decade-the records for which are not always rich-has not quite received its scholarly due. That said, over the last twenty years or so, some talented scholars-the names Peter S. Onuf and Eliga H. Gould come immediately to mind-have provoked fresh interest in the 1780s by embedding developments in the fledgling United States into broader international circuits of one type or another. In so doing, these scholars (often associated in some way with Jack P. Greene) have brought together older historiographical traditions-imperial history, constitutional history, and diplomatic history, most notably-with emerging historiographies in Atlantic and global history, the happy result being to see the world of the 1780s anew. P.J. Marshall's Remaking the British Atlantic nicely complements these studies. Marshall is hardly a new voice, but rather one of the most distinguished living historians of the British Empire, with a particular interest, especially earlier in his career, in the British East India Company's activities in eighteenthcentury India. In recent years he has taken both to writing about the empire more broadly and to looking more closely at Britain's imperial position in the Atlantic world. These shifts are made manifest in the book under review. The main themes of Remaking the British Atlantic are deceptively simple. Marshall's goal is twofold: to detail and analyze both the process of political alienation between Great Britain and the United States in the 1780s and the process promoting close economic and cultural integration between the two countries during the same period. Noting that "historians have long identified these apparently contradictory trends in the years before the Revolution," he aims to "explore their persistence after independence" (p. v). Marshall more than meets these goals, providing ample-truth be told, sometimes overly ample-evidence in support of his argument. The archetypical British empirical historian, he proceeds at a slow pace, documenting every-book reviews New West Indian Guide 88 (2014) 85-229
2012
This pioneering comparative study of British imperialism in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds draws on the perspectives of British newcomers overseas and their native hosts, metropolitan officials and corporate enterprises, migrants and settlers. Leading scholars examine the divergences and commonalities in the legal and economic regimes that allowed Britain to project imperium across the globe. They explore the nature of sovereignty and law, governance and regulation, diplomacy, military relations, and commerce, shedding new light on the processes of expansion that influenced the making of empire. While acknowledging the distinctions and divergences in imperial endeavours in Asia and the Americas-not least in terms of the size of indigenous populations, technical and cultural differences, and approaches to indigenous polities-this book argues that these differences must be seen in the context of what Britons overseas shared, including constitutional principles, claims of sovereignty, disciplinary regimes, and military attitudes.
From the founding of the colonies in North America and the West Indies in the seventeenth century to the reversion of Hong Kong to China at the end of the twentieth, British imperialism was a catalyst for far-reaching change. British domination of indigenous peoples in North America, Asia, and Africa can now be seen more clearly as part of the larger and dynamic interaction of European and non-western societies. Though the subject remains ideologically charged, the passions aroused by British imperialism have so lessened that we are now better placed than ever to see the course of the Empire steadily and to see it whole. At this distance in time the Empire's legacy from earlier centuries can be assessed, in ethics and economics as well as politics, with greater discrimination. At the close of the twentieth century, the interpretation of the dissolution of the Empire can benefit from evolving perspectives on, for example, the end of the cold war. In still larger sweep, the Oxford History of the British Empire as a comprehensive study helps us to understand the end of the Empire in relation to its beginning, the meaning of British imperialism for the ruled as well as the rulers, and the significance of the British Empire as a theme in world history.