Fragmented Cities in the Later Middle Ages: Italy and the Near East Compared
This article investigates cities and their political cultures in Italy and the Near East in the later Middle Ages. Cities in these two regions have traditionally been viewed in diverging ways. European cities have been understood as unitary entities which stood out on account of their urban governments and the political order of which foreshadowed the rise of modern states. The absence of comparable institutions has meant that Near Eastern cities have often been seen as very unlike their European counterparts. Focusing on the political cultures of Damascus and Bologna in the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries, this article suggests that a different understanding of cities is necessary. Partly as a result of demographic growth and the breakdown of larger political structures in earlier centuries, these cities can be understood as polycentric arenas in which public life took place around multiple units of political organisation which ranged from neighbourhoods to parties. Conflicts, including civil war and revolt, were an ordinary part of their political cultures: they were expressive of fragmentation, but equally of a shared public arena in which contending groups were stake-holders.As arenas, cities on either side of the Mediterranean world gave rise to a distinctive form of political order. They did not foreshadow forms of order associated with the modern state and, particularly in the Mediterranean regions under analysis here, often remained among its greatest obstacles.
Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/130/544/546?rss=1
Leading from the Front: The ‚Service Members‘ in Parliament, the Armed Forces, and British Politics during the Great War
The Great War was widely seen in Britain as a struggle for civilian and constitutional standards of government against the evils of ‘Prussian militarism’. Yet the British political class itself was by no means a purely ‘civilian’ caste. During the war 264 MPs—some 40 per cent of the membership of the House of Commons—volunteered to serve in the armed forces. These men occupied a unique and controversial position both within Parliament and in the forces. A shared experience of military service could provide a common identity, and even a basis for common action, for MPs from rival parties, and many of these men came to support an apparently ‘military’ agenda at Westminster. At the same time, fighting MPs could act as agents of parliamentary oversight and control over the military establishment. Yet the importance of these ‘Service Members’ was not only evident in the realm of civil–military relations, and this article explores the significance and consequences of attempts by Service Members to claim a special political authority as the ‘representatives’ of the armed forces in the House of Commons, to offer an important new perspective on wartime British debates about the workings of representative politics, the nature of political citizenship, and the authority of Parliament as an institution.
Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/130/544/613?rss=1
French Visions of Empire: Contesting British Power in India after the Seven Years War
Britain’s decisive victory in the Seven Years War destroyed much of the French empire in North America and seriously weakened the French position in India, resulting in the demise of the authority of the Compagnie des Indes in 1769. Despite the devastating results of defeat, the French royal government began laying plans to challenge Britain’s global power. The French position in India, however, was quite weak. Pondichéry, the principal French establishment, had been destroyed during the war, and France had only a small armed force on the subcontinent after 1763. However, the colonial officials in India assured the ministry that many important Indian princes chafed under the tyrannical authority of the British East India Company and would eagerly join—and, some argued, even pay for—a French invasion force in order to weaken or destroy that power. The prospect of a colonial uprising in North America added to the French hopes of success. The governor, Jean Law de Lauriston, insisted that France increase its military force and rebuild the fortifications at Pondichéry to demonstrate French power to the Indian rulers. The ministry, however, did not bolster its military presence in India, preferring to believe that the princes would bear the brunt of the expenses and fighting in India while France devoted its resources to the North American conflict. In the end this vision of a restored French presence in India failed to materialise because the Indian rulers saw little evidence that France would undertake a meaningful attack against British authority in India.
Quelle: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/130/544/583?rss=1