Political

R.J. White describes the life and career of the great Foreign Secretary, Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, who considered unpopularity 'convenient and gentleman-like'.

The exile of the Loyalists, writes Wallace Brown, represented the removal of the crust of increasing aristocratic pretensions that was forming on Colonial society.

On April 19th, 1775, the fatal clash took place, on the Common of a small Massachusetts town, between British troops and local militia. From this village battle the American War of Independence took its start. John A. Barton queries whether the clash was deliberately organized by “Patriot” leaders in order to provoke an incident, after which there could be no retreat?

“What is the American, this new man?,” Franklin seemed to provide the answer to this question first asked in 1784.

Gifted, energetic, passionate, unruly, Hamilton was perhaps the most creative figure thrown up by the American Revolution, argues Esmond Wright.

Even by the standards of the eighteenth century — a period when it was still possible to be the master of more arts than one — Richard Price was conspicuous for the vast variety of his interests. Nicholas Lane describes how they embraced divinity, philosophy, mathematics, life assurance, the problems of population, the cause of the American Colonists and the revolutionary movement in France.

George Washington had warned the American people against “the insidious wiles of foreign influence.” President Monroe, writes Arnold Whitridge, further developed “the thesis of non-entanglement.”

Marcus Cunliffe re-estimates a big man in several respects, of a scale that the American presidency demands and does not always get.

Proud, wayward, immensely rich, with romantic good looks and an explosive temper, John Lambton was one of those natural rebels who turn their rebellious energies to constructive purposes. Both at home and abroad, writes George Woodcock, he became a powerful exponent of the early nineteenth-century liberal spirit.

For two hundred years, writes George Woodcock, French Canadians have been battling to preserve their national and cultural identity.