Lord Robert Cecil

Lord Robert Cecil
Author: Gaynor Johnson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2016-04-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317103424

Lawyer, politician, diplomat and leading architect of the League of Nations; Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, was one of Britain's most significant statesmen of the twentieth century. His views on international diplomacy cover the most important aspects of British, European and American foreign policy concerns of the century, including the origins and consequences of the two world wars, the disarmament movement, the origins and early course of the Cold War and the first steps towards European integration. His experience of the First World War and the huge loss of life it entailed provoked Cecil to spend his life championing the ethos behind and work of the League of Nations: a role for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1937. Yet despite his prominence in the international peace movement, Cecil has never been the focus of an academic biography. Cecil has perhaps been judged unfairly due to his association with the League of Nations, which has since been generally regarded as a failure. However, recent academic research has highlighted the contribution of the League to the creation of many of the institutions and precepts that have, since the Second World War, become accepted parts of the international system, not least the United Nations. In particular, Cecil and his work on arms control lay the basis for understanding this new area of international activity, which would bear fruit during the Cold War and after. Through an evaluation of Cecil's political career, the book also assesses his reputation as an idealist and the extent to which he had a coherent philosophy of international relations. This book suggests that in reality Cecil was a Realpolitiker pragmatist whose attitudes evolved during two key periods: the interwar period and the Cold War. It also proposes that where a coherent philosophy was in evidence, it owed as much to the moral and political code of the Cecil family as to his own experiences in politics. Cecil's social and familial world is therefore considered alongside his more public life.

Godly Learning

Godly Learning
Author: John Morgan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 1988-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521357005

Godly Learning attempts to establish the relationship which Puritans worked out between faith and reason in the eighty years before the Civil War. This was a period of rapid expansion of educational facilities, of a clash between humanist values of the Renaissance and the fideism of the Reformation, and of confrontations between traditionalist (primarily Aristotelian) approaches to knowledge and the more experimental path signalled by Bacon. Taking an existential approach to the question of meaning, Puritans sought their solution in the development of a covenant theology based on a life of active faith. They argued vehemently that natural reason was incapable of finding the path to salvation and only faith could regenerate reason to its proper capabilities. At the same time, Puritans emphasised the value of learning for comprehension of Scripture and preparation of sermons. Starting with a fresh approach to the question of defining Puritans, Godly Learning proceeds to delineate the infrequently studied puritan mentalité which informed the better-known public political and ecclesiological positions. Not since the work of Perry Miller has there been such a thorough attempt to comprehend the Puritan view of reason, and the implications of that view.

Sir Robert Peel

Sir Robert Peel
Author: Richard A. Gaunt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2010-07-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0857716840

Sir Robert Peel - paragon or pariah? Peel was the greatest statesman and political leader of mid-Victorian Britain, a titan of Conservative politics, whose legacy has inspired generations in his party and in British political life. In a career spanning forty years he held the greatest offices of state including Chief Secretary to Ireland, Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and was twice Prime Minister. He was the first acknowledged leader of the Conservative Party and the Founder of Modern Conservatism. Yet Peel's seemingly peerless reputation has never been secure. The Repeal of the Corn Laws split his party, his 'Peelite' supporters joined the Liberals and the Conservatives remained in opposition for thirty years. Richard Gaunt, drawing on a huge archive of state papers, contemporary writings including Peel's own Memoirs and the latest historiography, paints a convincing picture of Peel as an exponent of effective government in the modern industrial state and a calculating practitioner, supremely self-confident, who dominated both his Party and the House of Commons. Gaunt's revisionist life of Peel will be essential reading and the standard work for students and general readers interested in Conservative and mid-Victorian political history and historical biography.

Baltic Iron in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century

Baltic Iron in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century
Author: Chris Evans
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004161538

This book looks at the one of the key commercial links between the Baltic and Atlantic worlds in the eighteenth century - the export of Swedish and Russian iron to Britain - and its role in the making of the modern world.

Welfare's Forgotten Past

Welfare's Forgotten Past
Author: Lorie Charlesworth
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2009-12-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135179646

That ‘poor law was law’ is a fact that has slipped from the consciousness of historians of welfare in England and Wales, and in North America. Welfare's Forgotten Past remedies this situation by tracing the history of the legal right of the settled poor to relief when destitute. Poor law was not simply local custom, but consisted of legal rights, duties and obligations that went beyond social altruism. This legal ‘truth’ is, however, still ignored or rejected by some historians, and thus ‘lost’ to social welfare policy-makers. This forgetting or minimising of a legal, enforceable right to relief has not only led to a misunderstanding of welfare’s past; it has also contributed to the stigmatisation of poverty, and the emergence and persistence of the idea that its relief is a 'gift' from the state. Documenting the history and the effects of this forgetting, whilst also providing a ‘legal’ history of welfare, Lorie Charlesworth argues that it is timely for social policy-makers and reformists – in Britain, the United States and elsewhere – to reconsider an alternative welfare model, based on the more positive, legal aspects of welfare’s 400-year legal history.

New Directions in Local History Since Hoskins

New Directions in Local History Since Hoskins
Author: Christopher Dyer
Publisher: Univ of Hertfordshire Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781907396120

Local history in Britain can trace its origins back to the sixteenth century and before, but it was given inspiration and a new sense of direction in the 1950s and 60s by the work of W.G. Hoskins. This book marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his Local history in England which was designed to help people researching the history of their own villages and towns. It is the result of a collaboration between academic historians in the Centre for English Local History at the University of Leicester, which Hoskins founded, and the British Association for Local History, an organisation that brings together the thousands of people who are not professional academics but who practise local history. Taking the work of Hoskins as a starting point, the contributors show how local history is being researched and written today. Fifteen historians write about a variety of local history subjects which are significant in their own right but which also point to current trends in the subject. They show how local historians use their sources systematically, from the non-verbal evidence of buildings to various types of electronic resources. All periods between the middle ages and the early twenty-first century are explored, as are many different parts of the country from Skye to the Kent coast. There are examples of local historians working on ethnic minorities, gender and the working class. Those who study localities use a variety of approaches, including those of social, economic, religious, legal, intellectual and cultural history, all of which are employed here. They are aware of the roots of their subject and examine the history of local history itself. Together, the editors and authors raise the various dilemmas which stimulate debates among local historians about the nature of the subject, its present health and the directions it will take in the next half century.