Some thirty years ago A. H. Thompson, writing on war in the Middle Ages, concluded that “European warfare in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries shews [sic] a somewhat bewildering variety of practice behind which lies no constructive idea.” This was a mild verdict indeed, for at the time Thompson wrote it was commonplace to condemn the generals of the Middle Ages for every sin in the military lexicon, whether of commission or omission, from mere stupidity to utter incompetence. This contempt for medieval generalship can, as a matter of fact, be traced back to the sixteenth century and Machiavelli's denunciations of the condottieri captains. There were, of course, certain exceptions to be noted, but they were cited only to prove that occasionally a flash lit up the general gloom. Thus, William the Conqueror's masterly campaign of September-December 1066 had long been recognized; Edward IV was sometimes referred to as “the first modern general;” J. E. Morris established the reputation of Edward I as a tactical innovator; and Robert I, the Bruce, was admitted by even so contemptuous a critic as Sir Charles Oman to have laid down a proper strategy for the conduct of operations against the English. And, scattered here and there throughout the vast literature on the Middle Ages are indications of a vague awareness that perhaps the generalship of the period was not so lacking in purpose and professional competence as had generally been alleged. It is necessary only to recall B. H. Liddell Hart's scathing comments on the military high commands of World War I to be reminded that generals of all ages have been subject to searching post facto criticism.

The key to early Renaissance thought in England has often, and rightly, been sought in that twilight zone which is both medieval and modern in character, yet is, in a sense, neither. In that indistinct area the early Tudor view of society expressed in the concept of the “very and true commonweal” constitutes a prominent but equivocal landmark. Any student of the period knows that the idea was conservative, even reactionary in its implications, inspired in large part by a suspicious distaste for the changes that were taking place in early sixteenth-century England. Those, on the other hand, who have read at all carefully the comments made by these same Englishmen on the state of their own society know that they accepted in varying degrees the facts of change, subjected them to an often searching analysis, and in several important instances arrived at constructive policies on the basis of their analysis of social cause. What, then, is one to make of this paradox presented by constructive realism deployed in the cause of a reactionary social ideal, exploration of change conducted within an ostensibly static framework? Perhaps, as with so many aspects of early Renaissance thought, the difficulty is more apparent than real. Perhaps the commonwealth idea was not so nearly static as it appeared. Perhaps, indeed, the traditional formulas in which it ordinarily found expression simply mask a new sense of change, a dawning awareness of social process.

Failure to understand the true nature of the ambivalence that seems at times to be built into the thought of the period, failure in particular to allow for the divergence between traditional theory, part of the rich legacy of medieval thought, and fresh attitudes prompted by actual experience in a time of revolutionary change, has too often resulted in failure also to appreciate the significance of the early Tudor pamphleteers and commentators of various sorts who examined their society with an eye both critical and constructive.

The roots of franchise reform in the seventeenth century are of interest to historians both of Britain and of America. In the new world and in England important steps toward democratic suffrage were taken in the first half of the century. The Virginia charter of 1619 granted voting privileges to all adult male inhabitants regardless of property. Later governments qualified this liberality, but an important precedent was established. In England Leveller tracts and the classic Putney Debates aired arguments that bore no immediate practical fruits but that foreshadowed later reforms. Both developments are startling enough to raise urgent questions about origins. Where did such striking innovations come from? Were they altogether unprecedented, or were they, as seems more probable, modifications of already existing ideas about suffrage?

In both cases tentative explanations have been proposed. The generous provisions of the Virginia charter have been accounted for by the desire of the colony's sponsors to attract settlers. Unusual political privileges were a lure to draw Englishmen to the new world. The soldiers' insistence on a wider franchise has been attributed to three factors: the confidence they derived from their large role in Cromwell's victories, the logical development of the natural right and contract theory of government, and the democratic impulse implicit in Puritan Independency. Heady with military successes and religious zeal, the soldiers boldly carried the conception of contract to its conclusion and demanded that Parliament be elected by the people to whom it was theoretically responsible.

North Americans are today living through a period of historic commemorations: the centennial of the Civil War, the centennial in 1967 of the Dominion of Canada, and a striking series of bicentennials, few years which lack their events to remember or to celebrate. Two hundred years ago this year the Treaty of Paris was signed. It and the events of which it was the culmination and the outcome changed the course of history, for they determined that England, not France, was to give her language and culture to that large part of the lands beyond the seas over which the fighting had taken place. No period has been more closely examined. The examination has gone on for the two centuries intervening, and will go on. In 1959 there appeared several new books on Wolfe and the taking of Quebec: by 2059 no doubt there will be still others. Why not? In those years a world was changing hands.

Gipson's huge work is the latest full dress account of the period, and so wide is its scope that it has been in the making for over thirty years. The British Empire before the American Revolution has now reached its tenth volume. Two more are planned: one to cover the period 1770-75, one to include comments on other accounts and bibliographical material. Since Volume X actually reaches only to 1766, it may be that the author will, if spared, add three. The undertaking has built up into a massive historical structure.

This paper is concerned with two different sorts of problems. It is an attempt to explain and interpret the diplomatic and political concepts which guided Castlereagh and his fellow-negotiators at Vienna; it also raises questions about certain conventional interpretations of the nature of Castlereagh's own accomplishment. The credit generally accorded Castlereagh for his work at Vienna derives largely from the acceptance of conclusions reached by the late Sir Charles Webster. Since Webster's analysis reversed an earlier adverse judgment on Castlereagh, it must not be thought that the purpose of this study is to reassert the old view. Quite the contrary; the intention, very simply, is to ask whether Webster and those who have followed him have not neglected to ask certain sorts of questions about the Napoleonic era, most particularly about the climate of opinion which prevailed at that time. While twentieth-century historians have succeeded in rescuing Castlereagh from his critics, it is just possible that they have tended to think of his accomplishment in terms more appropriate to this century than to the early nineteenth. As a result, they may praise him for qualities which are less remarkable than they imagine, while failing to appreciate his unique capacities, which were not so much intellectual as diplomatic.

This should not be taken to imply that a fundamental revision of the main outlines of this period is in prospect. The debt owed Sir Charles Webster by those who have followed him in the study of early nineteenth-century European diplomacy is not likely soon to be redeemed. Had Webster's sole accomplishment been to create order in an area where something like chaos had previously existed, this would have been reason enough to perpetuate his memory. By his imaginative and meticulous methods, however, he achieved considerably more than this; he restored a reputation which had too long remained in question and showed conclusively that certain traditional judgments about the Vienna accords reflected a thinly veiled political bias. Webster succeeded in doing what Lord Robert Cecil, the later Lord Salisbury, attempted in 1862 in the Quarterly Review, where he expatiated on the unusual qualities of the man who served as British Foreign Secretary in the tumultuous decade 1812 to 1822.

Evangelicals and Evangelicalism seem unable to remain for long either in or out of favor. The line of periodic assessments which began by moving upward from the tart jibes of Sydney Smith to James Stephen's measured rehabilitation, took a plunge with the Hammond's indignant assault, and has continued to trace lesser fluctuations for the past thirty years. E. M. Howse, in Saints in Politics, attacked the Hammonds for lack of balance and attempted a rehabilitation. In the process, however, he lost his own balance and fell over backwards. Now Ford K. Brown's Fathers of the Victorians implies that one can again disparage the Evangelicals. Their legacy to the century, Brown suggests, was a negative and stifling one.

This matter of the legacy makes the question of interpretation and reinterpretation important. Historians of nineteenth-century England agree that Evangelicalism contributed much to the temper of the age. Yet there agreement ceases. Brown, for example, thinks that the legacy, never a rich one, was ill-spent by the likes of Charlotte Brönte's sour-souled Mr. Brocklehurst. Noel Annan, rather, finds it husbanded and flourishing in the sensitive conscience of Leslie Stephen. Both may be right. If so, merely further proof of the strength and complexity of the Evangelical inheritance; further indication, therefore, of the need for its careful examination.

The legacy cannot be examined apart from its source: the Evangelical faith itself. Without an understanding of that faith, one cannot know that while Zachary Macaulay was an Evangelical, Granville Sharp was not; without that understanding the true difference between the Evangelical morality of Henry Thornton and the humanitarian morality of Henry Brougham will go undetected.

By its beauty and grace the sailing ship invites that nostalgic sentimentality often bestowed upon relics of the past. Visitors who notice the inscription on the Cutty Sark at Greenwich are asked to share this veneration: “Here to commemorate an era the Cutty Sark has been preserved as a tribute to the ships and men of the merchant navy in the days of sail. They mark our passage as a race of men/ Earth will not see such ships as these again.” The image of the “glorious” last days of sail is largely the creation of retired seamen-writers. In an unfinished essay written just before his death in 1924, Joseph Conrad summarizes the era of the sailing ship with typical nostalgia:

“Doom” without “decadence” — like the death of a beautiful woman in her prime — is the seaman-writer's usual elegy for the sailing ship.

Most of the scholarly works on British policy in the years preceding World War II have neglected events in the Far East in favor of those in Europe. Any study of recent British diplomacy is, of course, seriously hampered by the lack of Foreign Office documents and by the generally uninformative nature of British memoirs. Nevertheless, the sources which do exist give a picture which, while still incomplete, is interesting for its own sake in showing how the Chamberlain Government met the problems of the Pacific, and also for the light which it sheds on Anglo-American relations in this period. Perhaps nowhere else was there as much consistent misunderstanding and disappointment between London and Washington as over the questions raised by the Sino-Japanese War. The Manchurian episode had left a legacy of distrust between the two countries; just enough was known about the approaches made by the Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, to the Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, so that many on both sides of the Atlantic believed that Britain had rejected American offers for joint action against Japan in 1932, and that as a result nothing had prevented the Japanese advance. When Stimson's The Far Eastern Crisis appeared in 1936, it was read by many with more enthusiasm than accuracy, and seemed to confirm these views. In Britain it provided ammunition for the critics of the Government, while in the United States it increased the suspicions of those unwilling to trust Britain, and strengthened the trend to isolation.