The Empire Reformed

The Empire Reformed tells the story of a forgotten revolution in English America—a revolution that created not a new nation but a new kind of transatlantic empire. During the seventeenth century, England's American colonies were remote, disorganized outposts with reputations for political turmoil. Colonial subjects rebelled against authority with stunning regularity, culminating in uprisings that toppled colonial governments in the wake of England's "Glorious Revolution" in 1688-89. Nonetheless, after this crisis authorities in both England and the colonies successfully rebuilt the empire, providing the cornerstone of the great global power that would conquer much of the continent over the following century. In The Empire Reformed historian Owen Stanwood illustrates this transition in a narrative that moves from Boston to London to Barbados and Bermuda. He demonstrates not only how the colonies fit into the empire but how imperial politics reflected—and influenced—changing power dynamics in England and Europe during the late 1600s. In particular, Stanwood reveals how the language of Catholic conspiracies informed most colonists' understanding of politics, serving first as the catalyst of rebellions against authority, but later as an ideological glue that held the disparate empire together. In the wake of the Glorious Revolution imperial leaders and colonial subjects began to define the British empire as a potent Protestant union that would save America from the designs of French "papists" and their "savage" Indian allies. By the eighteenth century, British Americans had become proud imperialists, committed to the project of expanding British power in the Americas.

Focusing on the way bishops in the eleventh century used the ecclesiastical tithe - church taxes - to develop or re-order ties of loyalty and dependence within their dioceses, this book offers a new perspective on episcopacy in medieval Germany and Italy. Using three broad case studies from the dioceses of Mainz, Salzburg and Lucca in Tuscany, John Eldevik places the social dynamics of collecting the church tithe within current debates about religious reform, social change and the so-called 'feudal revolution' in the eleventh century, and analyses a key economic institution, the medieval tithe, as a social and political phenomenon. By examining episcopal churches and their possessions not in institutional terms, but as social networks which bishops were obliged to negotiate and construct over time using legal, historiographical and interpersonal means, this comparative study casts fresh light on the history of early medieval society.

The great British statesman Edmund Burke had a genius for political argument, and his impassioned speeches and writings shaped English public life in the second half of the eighteenth century. This anthology of Burke's speeches, letters, and pamphlets, selected, introduced, and annotated by David Bromwich, shows Burke to be concerned with not only preserving but also reforming the British empire. Bromwich includes eighteen works of Burke, all but one in its complete form. These writings, among them the "Speech on Conciliation with the American Colonies," A Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, the "Speech at Guildhall Previous to the Election" of 1780, the "Speech on Fox's India Bill," A Letter to a Noble Lord, and several private letters, demonstrate the depth of Burke's efforts to reform the empire in India, America, and Ireland. On these various fronts he defended the human rights of native peoples, the respect owed to partners in trade, and the civil liberties that the empire was losing at home while extending its power abroad.

Industry, Reform and Empire traces the evolution of politics from a repressive, reactionary and electorally restricted regime before 1832 to an era of wider franchise and sweeping institutional reform. Focusing on the impact of rapid industrialisation, the author shows how it transformed the economic and social identity of urban and rural Scotland. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, the book reveals the effects of these economic and political changes on the fabric of Scottish society, including the convulsions they caused in Presbyterianism that culminated in the Disruption of 1843.

In this classic volume, Ladner explores the origin and early history of the idea of reform. The book opens with a look at varieties of renewal ideology, then moves on to study the early Christian idea of reform. The conclusion is an insightful examination of how the idea of reform influenced the earliest manifestations of Christian monasticism.

This study begins with an examination of Girolamo Zanchi's De Tribus Elohim (1572), setting this important defense of the doctrine of the Trinity in the immediate context of the recent rise of antitrinitarianism within the Reformed Palatinate. De Tribus Elohim focused on the grammatical peculiarity of the Hebrew word Elohim (God) in order to refute the biblicism of its contemporary antitrinitarians. In doing so, Zanchi's argument followed an exegetical thread common within the late medieval case for the doctrine of the Trinity, but which ran contrary to the exegetical sensibilities of many of Zanchi's own Reformed colleagues. This disagreement over the correct interpretation of the word Elohim, then became a touchstone for distinguishing between two different approaches to the Hebrew text with the Reformed Church of the late sixteenth century, and becomes a significant piece in understanding the development of Reformed exegesis.

This book takes a look at the 'age of reform', from 1780 when reform became a common object of aspiration, to the 1830s - the era of the 'Reform Ministry' and of the Great Reform Act of 1832 - and beyond, when such aspirations were realized more frequently. It pays close attention to what contemporaries termed 'reform', identifying two strands, institutional and moral, which interacted in complex ways. Particular reforming initiatives singled out for attention include those targeting parliament, government, the law, the Church, medicine, slavery, regimens of self-care, opera, theatre, and art institutions, while later chapters situate British reform in its imperial and European contexts. An extended introduction provides a point of entry to the history and historiography of the period. The book will therefore stimulate fresh thinking about this formative period of British history.

Liberalism, Nationalism and Design Reform in the Habsburg Empire is a study of museums of design and applied arts in Austria-Hungary from 1864 to 1914. The Museum for Art and Industry (now the Museum of Applied Arts) as well as its design school occupies a prominent place in the study. The book also gives equal attention to museums of design and applied arts in cities elsewhere in the Empire, such as Budapest Prague, Cracow, Brno and Zagreb. The book is shaped by two broad concerns: the role of liberalism as a political, cultural and economic ideology motivating the museums’ foundation, and their engagement with the politics of imperial, national and regional identity of the late Habsburg Empire. This book will be of interest for scholars of art history, museum studies, design history, and European history.