Social

Marriage and Property in Jane Austen’s Novels

For the landed gentry at the end of the eighteenth century, writes J.F.G. Gornall, there were two main components in marriage. Jane Austen’s novels reveal how 'equal alliance' was at least as important as mutual affection.

Lamennais: A Liberal Catholic

Only in a free political society, declared Lamennais and his followers, could nineteenth-century Catholics hope to evangelize the new age. Complete religious liberty, with disestablishment of the Church, freedom of education and of the press, and the decentralization of governmental authority, writes J.B. Morrall, were among the aims they advocated. His views having been condemned by the Vatican and himself denounced by conservative critics as “Robespierre in a surpliceLamennais at length abandoned the faith to which he had devoted so much talent and energy.

The Lost Leader: William D. Haywood

Patrick Renshaw introduces an archetypal twentieth century figure: the American Trade Unionist who fled to Russia and who Comintern believed they could use to lead an American Bolshevik revolution.

The Russians in Central Asia

The economic and cultural transformation of Russia’s vast possessions in Central Asia is still rapidly going forward. Geoffrey Wheeler describes how she began to enter this field during the first half of the eighteenth century.

The British State Lotteries

Often denounced by moralists and economic experts, writes Robert Woodhall, public lotteries flourished in England from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I until their abolition in 1826.

Giuseppi Garibaldi, 1807-1882

The prototype of nationalist hero, yet a great internationalist, Garibaldi believed passionately in freedom but did not, writes Denis Mack Smith, disdain dictatorial methods.