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James Bryce and the Future1: CENTENARY ESSAY

William Ranulf Brock

in Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 115 Biographical Memoirs of Fellows, I

James Bryce (Viscount Bryce), who was elected President of the British Academy in 1913 and delivered his last presidential address in July 1917, had a distinguished career in letters and public life. ... More

James Bryce (Viscount Bryce), who was elected President of the British Academy in 1913 and delivered his last presidential address in July 1917, had a distinguished career in letters and public life. His essay, ‘Holy Roman Empire’, established his reputation as a historian, and he also qualified as a barrister. In his address to the British Academy, ‘The Next Thirty Years’ (1917), Bryce outlined a strategy for higher education. Article by William Brock FBA.Less

: Comparative Politics1

Vernon Bogdanor

in The British Study of Politics in the Twentieth Century

This chapter examines seven characters in search of a comparative politics: Ostrogorski, the Whig; Bryce, the liberal; Herman Finer, the comparativist; S. E. Finer, the Paretian realist; Philip ... More

This chapter examines seven characters in search of a comparative politics: Ostrogorski, the Whig; Bryce, the liberal; Herman Finer, the comparativist; S. E. Finer, the Paretian realist; Philip Williams, the parliamentary democrat; Richard Rose, the social scientist; and Anthony King, the sceptic. While British political scientists may not have originated any grand theories, their contribution to the development of the discipline in the twentieth century can be seen to have been a powerful one. In Britain, the main threat to political science lies not in its being insufficiently ‘professional’, but in the bureaucratization of universities and of research, a process that is bound to prove detrimental to creative work. There has, in addition, been a certain loss of intellectual self-confidence in Britain, parallel perhaps to that loss of national self-confidence which remains the most striking feature of British post-war politics.Less

THE HOLY TERROR

Marion Elizabeth Rodgers

in Mencken: The American Iconoclast

As war broke out in Europe, Mencken became dismayed by the influence of deliberate propaganda on the nation's press. Not only were editorials, headlines, cartoons, and methods of display misleading, ... More

As war broke out in Europe, Mencken became dismayed by the influence of deliberate propaganda on the nation's press. Not only were editorials, headlines, cartoons, and methods of display misleading, so were the photographs. Mencken's pro-German column forced him to stop his column, “The Free Lance”. Looking back to this unhappy period, Mencken realized that there is little tolerance for free speech, especially during wartime.Less

Virgil and the British Empire, 1760–1880

Phiroze Vasunia

in Lineages of Empire: The Historical Roots of British Imperial Thought

This chapter reflects on the readings and uses of Virgil in British imperial contexts during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The British interest in Virgil heightened during the middle of ... More

This chapter reflects on the readings and uses of Virgil in British imperial contexts during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The British interest in Virgil heightened during the middle of the eighteenth century, when Britain was establishing its Second Empire. In the age of Elizabeth I and Shakespeare, Virgil was often deployed by writers in different imperial situations. Writers such as Edward Gibbon turned to Virgil not because of a desire to promote monarchical imperialism but with the aim of evaluating the mechanism of the empire, to explore its limits and contradictions, and to question its durability. In Victoria’s reign, when the empire in India seemed to several Britons to be long lasting, many prominent figures highlighted the providential and prophetic interpretations of Virgil, and speculated about an empire that was divinely ordained and infinite. Among these prominent personages were Tennyson, Auden, Bryce, and so on. These themes of British Empire within the context of Virgil’s writings are examined from the time of Gibbon to the Victorians, in order to describe the interweaving relationships and patterns that link Virgil and the history of the empire.Less

Origins and Destinations: The Social Mobility of Oxford Men and Women

M. C. Curthoys and Janet Howarth

in The History of the University of Oxford: Volume VII: Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part 2

‘Education cannot secure success in life, but it can go a long way to make life interesting’, Sir William Anson, Warden of All Souls and soon to be Parliamentary Secretary at the Board of Education, ... More

‘Education cannot secure success in life, but it can go a long way to make life interesting’, Sir William Anson, Warden of All Souls and soon to be Parliamentary Secretary at the Board of Education, observed in concluding his speech on the second reading of the 1902 Education Bill. In anticipation of universal manhood suffrage, the Education Bill introduced in 1917 by the Oxford historian H. A. L. Fisher offered education to workers who, he assured the House of Commons, ‘do not want it in order that they may rise out of their own class, always a vulgar ambition; they want it because they know that in the treasures of the mind they can find an aid to good citizenship’. Much the same was said of the secondary and higher education of women. James Bryce's report on Lancashire girls’ schools for the Schools Inquiry Commission in the 1860s suggested the importance of a general education for middle-class wives. This chapter discusses the social mobility of Oxford University graduates.Less

Many Worlds

Jeffrey Alan Barrett

in The Quantum Mechanics of Minds and Worlds

This chapter explains the many-worlds interpretations, particularly the DeWitt–Graham interpretation — the splitting-worlds interpretation. The splitting-worlds theory proposes that one must choose ... More

This chapter explains the many-worlds interpretations, particularly the DeWitt–Graham interpretation — the splitting-worlds interpretation. The splitting-worlds theory proposes that one must choose what physical quantities one wants to be determinate in a world, which amounts to choosing a physically preferred basis. It discusses several traditional and real problems encountered with the splitting-worlds theory. It also describes another theory, where one might stipulate that the global state always evolves in the usual linear way, selects a preferred basis that makes observers' records always determinate in each local state, and then chooses a connection rule that will link local states at different times into trajectories — the many threads theory.Less

Parliamentary Sovereignty in the Empire and Commonwealth: Dicey’s Dominions and Dogmas

PETER C. OLIVER

in The Constitution of Independence: The Development of Constitutional Theory in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand

This chapter sets out the orthodox view of parliamentary sovereignty associated principally with A. V. Dicey: that parliament – and therefore the Imperial Parliament – can make any law whatsoever, ... More

This chapter sets out the orthodox view of parliamentary sovereignty associated principally with A. V. Dicey: that parliament – and therefore the Imperial Parliament – can make any law whatsoever, and that no institution can challenge Parliament's ability to do so. So long as local courts and local populations were willing to accept this principle, the Westminster Parliament could act as a constituent assembly for the Empire.Less

Liberal internationalism and the uses of history

Casper Sylvest

in British Liberal Internationalism, 1880-1930: Making Progress?

This chapter investigates the historical language of internationalist ideology as it was displayed in the writings of three prominent liberal historians who informed and augmented liberal ... More

This chapter investigates the historical language of internationalist ideology as it was displayed in the writings of three prominent liberal historians who informed and augmented liberal internationalism: James Bryce, John Morley and Lord Acton. Their different approaches to the emerging discipline and the practice of history reflect the broad appeal of historical representations and its relationship to political debates. The Holy Roman Empire covered the ideas which bolstered that empire, and one of the most fascinating episodes of the story – what Bryce termed the ‘theory of the Medieval Empire’ – now appeared outrageously anachronistic. Morley's Cobden represented the pinnacle of an honest and simple liberalism. The Life of Gladstone is above all the story of the young conservative High Church disciple who became the grand old man of liberalism. Acton's spirit was truly the spirit of a combative internationalism that would have an army of historians on its side.Less

The finitude of personae: Bryce Lyon, François Louis Ganshof and the biography of Pirenne

Henning Trüper

in How to be a Historian: Scholarly Personae in Historical Studies, 1800-2000

The chapter discusses a case of the maintenance of scholarly persona among US-American and Belgian medievalists. The case emerged around Bryce Lyon’s 1974 biography of Henri Pirenne and the mentoring ... More

The chapter discusses a case of the maintenance of scholarly persona among US-American and Belgian medievalists. The case emerged around Bryce Lyon’s 1974 biography of Henri Pirenne and the mentoring he received in the writing of this work from Pirenne’s former student F. L. Ganshof, and it discusses relations between Lyon and Ganshof when Ganshof was a visiting professor in the USA in 1963–4. The chapter pursues the problem of the inbuilt finitude, the self-destructive tendencies of scholarly personae. It uses this pursuit to explore the question of whether the cultural form of the scholarly persona, as familiar from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, actually came to an end during the 1960s and 1970s. It tentatively argues in favour of this conclusion and adumbrates some of its possible consequences for the history of contemporary notions of selfhood.Less

‘A nation of Others’: the immigrant in contemporary Irish poetry

Pilar Villar-Argáiz

in Literary visions of multicultural Ireland: The immigrant in contemporary Irish literature

This chapter delves into the numerous, complex ways of representing multiculturalism in Ireland from the perspective of Irish poets. It starts by briefly assessing the work of an immigrant poet from ... More

This chapter delves into the numerous, complex ways of representing multiculturalism in Ireland from the perspective of Irish poets. It starts by briefly assessing the work of an immigrant poet from Poland, Kinga Olszewska, in order to consider it alongside recent poems by Colette Bryce, Mary O'Donnell, and Michael O'Loughlin. These writers are interested in deriding and/or debunking the ideal ‘liberal’ model of Irish multiculturalism, which often permeates literary and cultural texts in their uncritical celebration of a truly integrated and unconditionally hospitable Ireland. Bryce, for instance, discloses the patronising and xenophobic attitudes behind official discourses in Ireland, in a poem which suggestively recalls the 2004 Citizenship Referendum. Bryce's blatant critique of an ideal multicultural Ireland is also recorded by O'Donnell and O'Loughlin, who, in different ways, explore multiethnicity from the viewpoint of the centre and that of the periphery.Less

Ascending to the Ultimate Multiverse

Mary-Jane Rubenstein

in Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse

This chapter discusses the possible existence of a multiverse, which stemmed from Hugh Everett’s Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. According to the law of quantum mechanics, a ... More

This chapter discusses the possible existence of a multiverse, which stemmed from Hugh Everett’s Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. According to the law of quantum mechanics, a particle’s position and momentum cannot be determined at the same time. The state of a subatomic particle can only be expressed in terms of a “wave function” that details the varying probabilities of its possible states; when the particle is being observed, the wave function “collapses” and the particle takes on a definitive place. This account prompted Everett to wonder what would happen if the wave function never collapses, explaining that if there is no collapse, then every possible outcome will happen—each in a different universe. Everett’s theory gave rise to numerous other works including Bryce Dewitt’s reinvention of the MWI, Stephen Hawking’s model-dependent realism, Laura Mersini-Houghton’s multiverse bath, Lee Smolin’s cosmological scenario, and Max Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis.Less

After Empire

in Black Salt: Seafarers of African Descent on British Ships

This chapter evaluates the position of black seamen after the demise of the British Empire. Events on the African continent were on course to deprive Britain of a direct source of seafarers of ... More

This chapter evaluates the position of black seamen after the demise of the British Empire. Events on the African continent were on course to deprive Britain of a direct source of seafarers of African descent. The newly independent West African countries considered their own issues of naval defence. Following the Second World War, changes in attitudes towards black people were slowly developing. The attitudes towards black seafarers enhanced in the 1960s and 1970s. Merchant shipping declined in status throughout the twentieth century, striking British seafarers of all races hard. Finally, the chapter talks about how Neville Bryce was the Navy's first black ‘chief of boat’. He became Lieutenant Commander in the British Senior Service and a Member of the British Empire.Less

Institutionalizing Quantum Gravitational Research

Dean Rickles

in Covered with Deep Mist: The Development of Quantum Gravity (1916-1956)

This chapter describes the establishment of such a quantum gravity-friendly environment that enabled it to go out into the world on its own, somewhat less dependent on other areas of physics. It is ... More

This chapter describes the establishment of such a quantum gravity-friendly environment that enabled it to go out into the world on its own, somewhat less dependent on other areas of physics. It is more concerned with the development of basic infrastructure. The focus is on private philanthropy and the reasons behind a mid-century surge in funding for gravitational and quantum gravitational physics, which themselves are centered around the establishment of the Institute of Field Physics.Less

Conclusion

John M. Thompson

in Great Power Rising: Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of U.S. Foreign Policy

The conclusion considers the argument that, due in large part to the nature of the US political system, TR’s foreign policy was unsuccessful. It acknowledges the numerous challenges Roosevelt faced. ... More

The conclusion considers the argument that, due in large part to the nature of the US political system, TR’s foreign policy was unsuccessful. It acknowledges the numerous challenges Roosevelt faced. However it maintains that, rather than failing, he achieved most of his objectives and, in doing so, served as an example of how to conduct an effective foreign policy. The chapter highlights TR’s vision for the United States, his political skill, faith in the US system and its people, and the emphasis he placed on political leadership. The conclusion contends that a good way of encapsulating Roosevelt’s success is that he understood and took advantage of the ways in which the international and domestic aspects of foreign policy overlap in the US system.Less

The Transatlantic Study of Modern Political Systems: The New Political Science of James Bryce, A. Lawrence Lowell, and Frank Goodnow

Robert Adcock

in Liberalism and the Emergence of American Political Science: A Transatlantic Tale

This chapter examines the rise of a new approach to political science pursuing a present-oriented method of relating a broad array of contemporary institutions and phenomena as interacting parts of a ... More

This chapter examines the rise of a new approach to political science pursuing a present-oriented method of relating a broad array of contemporary institutions and phenomena as interacting parts of a “political system.” After singling out James Bryce’s The American Commonwealth as the founding work of this approach, the chapter then charts how Bryce’s methodological innovation influenced younger American political scientists on both sides of the late-century divergence in liberalism, as seen in A. Lawrence Lowell’s studies of political parties and the progressive liberal Frank Goodnow’s studies of local government and municipal reform. Taken together, Bryce, Goodnow, and Lowell showcase the space available within the methodological parameters of the new political science for substantive debate between political scientists with different liberal political visions.Less