An Afterword to the Cameron Era

This last week has felt terribly strange. It was – at least in domestic terms – the first time in my politically aware life that things have seemed tremendously, dreadfully significant. I have lived through many wars and revolutions in foreign countries (and I have followed many of them with interest), but the current chaos overtaking Britain’s political system seems different again; it is both less severe and in a way worse, not least because it is entirely self-inflicted. Ministers have resigned; shadow ministers have been fired; and every political party (with a few exceptions) now faces real internal turmoil. This is not the stuff of stable government; it is not the ideal breeding ground for a generation of sensible, pragmatic leaders and statesmen.

Talking Turkey: Britain’s Toxic EU Referendum

Britain’s referendum campaign on whether to leave the European Union has become decidedly bitter. Indeed, the atmosphere is frequently considered ‘poisonous’, as those who advocate for Britain to remain within the EU are called ‘traitors’ by their opponents, and as many who support the Leave campaign are stereotyped as ignorant, malevolent or both. 

Martin Guerre and the End of the Individual

The story of Martin Guerre is one of the most fascinating in early modern history. Perhaps that is why it is so well documented, both in chronicles and legal writing at the time and more recently, where it has served as the subject of films in French, German and English, and books, including one by Natalie Zemon Davis, which I recently had the pleasure to read.

Mea Culpa

Over a year ago, I made a very optimistic prediction. During the 2015 election campaign, when the Conservatives proposed holding a referendum on our EU membership, the then Labour leadership and others united to say that it would be a bad idea. They said it would be divisive, that it would harm the very democracy it was intended to strengthen, and that virtually nothing good could come out of the exercise.

Kronstadt for Hillary Clinton

There we have it, then. AP reports, based on interviews with various super-delegates, that Hillary Clinton has the support of sufficient numbers of them (in addition to the delegates she has won during the primary process) to clinch the Democratic nomination. Excepting any major upset at the parties’ national conventions, the presidential campaign proper will be fought between Clinton and Donald Trump.

A Historical Scandal

Last month, Patrick Johnston, vice-chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast, was said to have uttered something outrageous. In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, he justified the university’s cancellation of a course in sociology and anthropology by stating that ‘[s]ociety doesn’t need a 21-year-old who is a sixth century historian’.

Lord William Bentinck and Utilitarianism

A common theme – or at least an oft-repeated one among some scholars – when discussing elements of British imperialism in India in the 19^th century is that of the philosophy of Utilitarianism and its supposed influence on government policy and the men who made it.

Lord William Bentinck: A Historical Argument

Recently I have devoted a rather large amount of time to the study of Lord William Bentinck, whose career in diplomatic and military service during the Napoleonic Wars and afterwards was both dramatic and in many ways emblematic. He was a man who in some ways personified British imperialism; yet he also managed to transcend it – and some of his personal views and policies differed dramatically from what was considered orthodox in British governing circles at the time.

Stalin the Terrible

The century just gone was, in Robert Conquest’s telling phrase, a ‘ravaged’ one. It bore witness, as did millions of people, to some of the most extreme political conditions, most devastating wars and most evil figures in the history of the world – and I believe that word is justified. But more evil, more extreme and more ravaged by war than any other state and nation was the Soviet Union, a creation of the early 20^th century which did not survive its close. If anything stands to symbolise those hundred years – more so than the Nazi regime which lasted for a mere twelve – that particular entity, Ronald Reagan’s ‘evil empire’, should do it.