Michael Durey

The key to understanding eighteenth-century American political discourse since the publication of Caroline Robbins's The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman in 1959 and Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution in 1967 has been the recognition that political ideas from England and Scotland underpinned republican ideology. Historians have failed to appreciate the significant number of British and Irish radicals who fled to the United States in the 1790s. Utopian expectations are normally disappointed when confronted with reality, and the emigres' dreams were no exception. Many radicals were unpleasantly surprised by their initial reception in America. Far more important than the language of virtue for the emigres was the language of natural rights and the ethic of individualism. The emigres' emphasis on individual freedom and opportunity made their acceptance of commercial society inevitable. It was Thomas Paine who linked individualism and commerce most clearly.

This article examines the numerous adolescents, many from the South London boroughs of Lewisham and Deptford, who lied about their age when joining the 11th (Lewisham) Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment in 1915. It focuses on their motivations for enlisting underage, highlighting the ‘push’ effects of particular features of working-class family life and the local labour market and the ‘pull’ effects of army recruitment policies and the increasing militarization of society as the war proceeded. Despite a minority causing the army major problems during the period of training, most of them conformed to military discipline and became useful recruits. Parents’ objections to the enlistment of their sons were muted, at least until the battalion was sent overseas in May 1916, after which the army authorities tried, not always successfully, to keep the under-aged out of the firing line.

This article contributes to the studies of memory by demonstrating that newspaper In Memoriams are a useful source for understanding the changing character of remembrance of soldiers killed in the Great War. It focuses on Mrs Edith Ash's extraordinary devotion to the memory of her husband that was expressed annually in The Times for nearly forty years. Her In Memoriams may be seen as evidence of how she dealt emotionally with grief and the memory of loss; of how she reinterpreted the meaning of the Great War over time; of how she responded to some of the main national and international political events occurring during her widowhood; and of how she represented her husband allegorically as time elapsed. Mrs Ash saw her task as more than the regular commemoration of her man. She was fulfilling a greater obligation, to a world that had been lost but which she felt still had something of value to offer.

Trench raiding was an integral but controversial tactic in warfare on the Western Front during the Great War: This article examines the experiences of the 1/1st Battalion of the Cambridgeshire Regiment in 1916, focusing on two raids carried out simultaneously on one night just to the north of the River Ancre at a time when most British resources were concentrated further south on the Somme. Occurring between two major actions on this section of the front, they were part of a wider policy that sought British domination of no man's land. The raids, however; were calamitous and resulted in the deaths of four officers, ensuring that, as far as officers of the battalion were concerned, small actions were as potentially fatal as full-scale battles on the Western Front during 1916.

William Wickham (1761-1840) was Britain's master spy on the Continent for more than five years during the French Revolutionary wars. He was the creator and head of a small and highly organized secret service unit, and was sent on missions to Europe and Ireland. He is the only important political figure of the period not to have been the subject of a modern biography. Durey sees in Wickham a peculiarly eighteenth-century, whiggish patriotism: he served king and country, but he also bore loyalty to a political family that was based around his Christ Church connections.

This article represents a reassessment of Robert Craufurd, focusing on his role as a soldier-politician concerned with the position of Ireland in the wider empire during the era of the Act of Union. It explains the impact Irish conditions had on his political thought and explores how he used his new awareness while an MP not only to support his military defence policy, but also to promote a reform programme for Ireland, even though his military career was threatened as a consequence.