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“... the role of ‘the American Cicero or Demosthenes’, found they ‘had more important things to do’ on the floor of the Continental Congress. Jefferson’s draft betrays an anxious, casuistical triangulation. Even as Congressmen prepared to cast off their allegiance to George III, they felt compelled to delete a passage which mixed together ‘an implicit ...”

“... Since the 1960s, social historians have made enormous efforts to expand the range of history beyond the familiar cast of monarchs, courtiers and parliamentarians to recover the lives of the lower orders. ‘History from below’ has complicated and enriched the national story: witches and wet nurses, Ranters and Muggletonians, autodidacts, knitters and servants have all emerged from the shadows of neglect and condescension ...”

“... was not just the doing of Sinn Féin, but was supported by the somewhat priggish middle-class do-gooders of Alliance, a political party which has traditionally floated consequence-free above the streetfighting of proletarian Ulster. On this occasion, however, loyalist protesters chose to single out Alliance for facilitating the outrage. The party offices ...”

“... coalitions. Only very occasionally, when the whips are thwarted by force of circumstance, do the voters – and indeed a frustrated cadre of pragmatic and independent-minded politicians – escape the iron cage of partisan constraint. In early 1974 Britain seemed divided and ungovernable, with Ted Heath’s Conservative government blown off course by ...”

“... Sir David Dalrymple predicted that ‘Mr Charles Townshend will make a very indifferent compagnon de voyage out of a very able professor of ethics.’ In particular, Smith, who was to take his young charge first of all to Paris, to smooth his manners, had ‘so bad an ear’, according to Dalrymple, that ‘he will never learn to express himself intelligibly ...”

“... of the non-Western world was not yet a fact of the global economy. Drawing on the work of Jan de Vries, Bayly emphasises the multiple centres of ‘industrious revolution’ across Eurasia based on indigenous artisanal industries in South and East Asia and specialised local dominance of lucrative trades in precious commodities such as tea and spices. Some ...”

“... with significant democratic breakthroughs ‘followed by complete democratic breakdowns or coups d’état’. Democratisation took a more sedate course in Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, where – despite some resistance and occasional hazards – there was steady incremental progress towards settled democracy. Old ...”

“... domesticate Bryan’s populism. Runciman warns us not to look for the familiar symbols of the coup d’état – tanks in the streets, generals seizing television and radio stations – as the heralds of the death of democracy. The transition is likely to be much less cartoonish, and consequently harder to detect or guard against. Indeed, the phenomenon he ...”

“... share of the vote than the 30.4 per cent it attained in the October 1974 general election. How do we explain the coexistence of apathy, unionism and genuine nationalist enthusiasm? During the referendum campaign Donald Dewar, the Secretary of State for Scotland, presented devolution as a plan to secure the Union; put another way, in the partisan words of ...”

“... the Bourbons get Frenchmen to fight for them against Frenchmen?’ The great powers could only do so much if the restored Bourbons could not rely on the loyalty of their subjects. The world was not endlessly malleable, and could not be remade to conform to the mould of reactionary fantasists. Castlereagh grumbled privately about the ‘sublime mysticism ...”

“... unlike the Liberals, as a competitive alternative to an emergent Labour movement, and then to do whatever was required to win elections and to flourish – against the expected run of play – for much of the 20th century as the dominant party of government. Yet after 1990 the Conservatives appeared to have a death wish, the compulsion to ...”

“... have guaranteed this tiny fringe grouping a modest amount of media exposure. The minority parties do not merely bring colour to the electoral process. In a close-run election, the seats they win might well determine which of the main parties leads the governing coalition. Solidarity and the Scottish Socialists both favour an independent Scottish republic, but ...”

“... of the democratic West. Yet Wolfowitz’s career does not quite fit the caricature of a Straussian Dr Strangelove. His doctoral thesis dealt with the apparently arcane topic of nuclear-powered desalination plants, arguing that they opened up a path to nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. Curiously, given his current stance, the young Wolfowitz was just as ...”

“... Despite​ Theresa May’s calls during the election campaign for national unity, Britons don’t really live in a nation-state but in a multinational composite state, whose lineaments were set in the period between the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which established the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, and the Hanoverian accession in 1714. With the defeat of Catholic supporters of the deposed James II in Ireland – then a subordinate kingdom belonging to England – in 1690, sectarian divisions, which foreshadow the differences between today’s Ulster unionists and Irish nationalists, became more deeply entrenched ...”

“... Captain Kidd, though by no means the most successful of the pirates, was certainly the best-known. His name means piracy to this day, and it is a little strange to see it used in the title of the present book as though he took part in this war on the virtuous side. Yet such is the case. Robert Kidd appeared on the recorded scene in 1689 at the age of about 44, as one of the crew of a buccaneering ship in the West Indies ...”