The Seven Years War began badly for England. The defeat of Braddock was followed by the loss of Minorca and Oswego. Then defeat dramatically turned to victory. The French navy was crushed at Lagos and Quiberon Bay, the French army was checked at Minden, and the French Empire in North America finally brought down. Historians have usually attributed this change of fortune to a change of leadership when the energetic William Pitt replaced the incompetent Duke of Newcastle. Under Pitt the objects of the war were enlarged and so was the British capacity for waging it. The departments most closely concerned in these events were the Admiralty, Navy and Victualling Boards, the War Office, Ordnance Board, and the two Secretaries of State. Between them they constituted an impressive collection of departmental agencies with formidable responsibilities which included the building, maintaining, manning and feeding of the fleet, the raising of transports, the recruiting and housing of the army, and the equipping of the two services with a wide variety of ordnance stores and other equipment. During the years 1754 to 1760 the departments by their own standards executed these tasks competently, but it was not a period of reform or dramatic change. Success was accomplished with the same administrative machinery as h'ad sufficed England in all her wars since the end of the seventeenth century. There was no noticeable improvement in the effective use of resources, and few new ideas regarding the prosecution of the war. Administration remained bound to precedent and tradition, and there is little evidence of that constructive leadership from Pitt which has usually been alleged. In the conduct of the war in North America, there was a lamentable lack of foresight, especially in the arrangements made for the hire of transports. But uncertainties of weather and the difficulties of communication put planning at a premium and leadership at a discount.

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Abstract. From Drill to Doctrine. Forging the British Army's Tactics 1897-1909 This thesis examines the development of the Army's tactics from the 1897-8 "l Frontier Campaigns until the publication of Field Service Regulations (FSRs) 1909.- It scrutinises how the 3 tactical factors of firepower, mobility and protection, together with experience from the NW Frontier, the South African War and Manchuria caused British tactics to develop. The thesis shows that the Army's attitude towards low-level initiative developed significantly. Increased firepower made tactical extension essential. This prevented commanders controlling and made subordinate initiative vital. Developing initiative among subordinates caused the Army's disciplinary, educational and training systems to alter. The thesis finally examines doctrine's development, a system of fundamental principles designed to guide commanders, who now had to use initiative, in increasingly complex combat. This was caused by greater firepower, longer ranges, smokeless ammunition and wider extensions. This thesis demonstrates that the Army developed doctrine in the modem sense. Consequently changes occurred in the staff system, professional education and general training. The thesis argues that the Army's firepower grew quantitatively and qualitatively with the introduction of independent and Indirect Fire. Weapons were now developed doctrinally. The Army attached great significance to mobility and manoeuvre, seeing these as the means whereby it could defeat superior numbers. Cavalry roles developed to stress operational level manoeuvre rather than battlefield shock. It examines protection, arguing that the need for tactical extension and fieldcraft, both impelled by greater firepower, enforced initiative. The thesis argues that contemporaries felt that the 3 wars all taught broadly 2 All other abbreviations are in the Glossary similar lessons and that the resulting doctrine matched the short war which armies expected.

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Cette étude historique a pour objet des interactions entre écriture, livres et société. L'enquête s'appuie sur plus de cent cinquante traités nobiliaires et leurs rééditions, écrits ou parus entre les années 1590 et le milieu de la décennie 1710. Les traités nobiliaires sont aussi bien des livres savants qui formulent des définitions de la noblesse fondées sur la religion ou le droit, que des manuels de savoir-vivre et des traités d'éducation qui théorisent la noblesse au travers de normes de comportement. Plutôt qu'un parallèle entre l'Angleterre, la France et l'Espagne, l'enquête mène une comparaison entre ces ouvrages et entre leurs auteurs. Les premiers chapitres proposent une histoire du livre: le rôle des imprimeurs et des libraires, les lieux et les moments de la publication, le contrôle de l'imprimé, la matérialité de l'écrit, l'identité sociale des auteurs, la circulation des traités nobiliaires, leurs traductions, ainsi que leur réception sont analysés. Trois chapitres sont ensuite consacrés à la permanence des débats écrits relatifs à la définition de la noblesse, à ses critères, ainsi qu'aux procédés rhétoriques déployés dans les traités et à la question de la performativité de ces écrits : ce sont les représentations, et parmi elles les controverses écrites contenues dans ces livres savants ou prescriptifs, qui ont construit la noblesse. Ces vues d'ensemble des livres et des controverses définitionnelles relatifs à la noblesse sont enfin complétées par une série d'études de cas d'actions d'écriture, autour de six auteurs : John Selden, Bernabé Moreno de Vargas, Richard Brathwait, Luisa María de Padilla, Claude-François Ménestrier et Henri de Boulainvilliers. / This historical work is about interactions between writing, books and society. The survey is based on more than 150 treatises of nobility and their republications, written or published between the 1590's decade and the middle of the 1710's. The nobiliary treatises mean just as clever books formulating definitions of nobility justified by religion or law, as conduct books or treatises of education theorizing nobility through norms of behavior. Rather than a parallel between England, France and Spain, the poll compares the books and their authors. The first chapters offer a history of books: the role of the printers and of the librarians, places and moments of publication, control of the books, materiality of texts, social identity of the authors, the circulation of the nobiliary treatises, their translations and their reception are analyzed. Then, three chapters are devoted to the written debates about the definitions of nobility, of its criteria, as well as to the rhetorical processes developed in the treatises and to the question of the performativity of these writings: nobility has been made by the representations, and by the controversies written in these learned or prescriptive books especially. These overviews of the books and of the definitional controversies about nobility are finally completed with a set of case studies based on six authors: John Selden, Bernabé Moreno de Vargas, Richard Brathwait, Luisa María de Padilla, Claude-François Ménestrier and Henri de Boulainvilliers.

Quels regards porte la presse espagnole sur la France et sur l’Europe pendant les treize dernières années du règne de Ferdinand VII (1820-1833), qui assiste à l’émergence d’une nouvelle force politique, l’opinion publique ? À partir d’un corpus-presse constitué pour qu’il soit le plus représentatif possible des différentes tendances politiques de l’époque, la présente thèse analyse les différentes formes de représentations de la France et de la diplomatie européenne, leurs dynamiques ainsi que les fonctions sociales et les facteurs socio-historiques qui ont pu influencer la presse espagnole sous le Triennat Libéral (1820-1823), puis sous la Décennie dite abominable (1823-1833).L’étude du corpus-presse offre ainsi dans un premier temps un éclairage sur les représentations du passé révolutionnaire français (1789-1799) et de la Guerre d’Indépendance (1808-1814). Dans un deuxième temps, l’analyse de la presse espagnole publiée en Espagne pendant et après l’expédition des Cent Mille Fils de Saint Louis, débutée en avril 1823, permet de mettre en lumière l’évolution des représentations des relations diplomatiques franco-espagnoles au sein de l’Europe de la Sainte-Alliance. Enfin, la troisième partie qui étudie la presse publiée à Londres à partir de l’année 1824 par les réfugiés politiques libéraux tente d’apporter des réponses quant au dualisme des représentations de la France et de l’Europe inhérent à la presse espagnole parue pendant la Décennie abominable, puis analyse les représentations renouvelées de la France et de l’Europe après la révolution de Juillet 1830 dans la Gaceta de Madrid et dans quelques articles écrits par Mariano José de Larra. / How does the Spanish press picture France and Europe during the last thirteen years of the reign of Ferdinand VII (1820-1833), which is witnessing the emergence of a new political force: the public opinion? From a set of articles that express as much as possible the different political trends of that time, this thesis analyzes the different forms of representations of France and European diplomacy, their dynamics as well as the social functions and socio-historical factors that may have influenced the Spanish press under the Trienio Liberal (1820-1823), then under the so-called Ominous Decade (1823-1833).The study of this set of XIXth century articles thus intends first to shed a light on the representations of the French revolutionary past and the Peninsular War (1808-1814). In a second phase, the analysis of the Spanish press published in Spain during and after the expedition of the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis, which begun in April 1823, highlights the evolution of representations of French-Spanish diplomatic relations within the Europe of the Holy Alliance. Finally, the third part of this thesis is devoted to the press articles published from 1824 in London by liberal political refugees. It tries to provide answers to the dual representations of France and Europe carried out by the Spanish press, which appeared during the Ominous Decade. It also analyses the renewed representations of France and Europe after the revolution of July 1830 in the Gaceta of Madrid and in some articles written by Mariano José de Larra.

The dissertation examines early modern perceptions of the twin notions of simulation and dissimulation - which I refer to jointly as 'dis/simulation' - in various literary, social and semantic contexts and from a pan-European perspective. I look at how this thorny and controversial moral issue was addressed and discussed in a wide range of genres and texts and how it was disseminated to a broader readership. The introduction explains my approach to the subject, provides an overview of previous scholarship and includes a short excursus on three literary genres not discussed in detail in the dissertation. In the first chapter, I analyse the varied treatment of dis/simulation in emblem books. In the following chapter I explore the link between the problem of dis/simulation and early modern reform plans for poor relief, focusing on debates in Spain. Chapter 3 looks at texts from other European countries and establishes he connection between, on the one hand, learned and scholarly discussions of the problem of mendicancy, and, on the other, popular literature in which the deceptions and disguises of beggars, rogues and tricksters were a recurrent theme. The next chapter deals with the contemporary perceptions of courtesans and analyses the nexus between love, passions and dis/simulation. The last two chapters show that the problem of feigning and disguise became increasingly important in medical and physiognomical literature. I investigate how both genres addressed a cluster of relevant intellectual contexts relevant, including the possibility of reading the human countenance, the limits of dis/simulation and the morality of employing deception in the interest of healing. I conclude by considering the main contexts, themes and implications of early modern debates on dis/simulation and their gradual decline in the seventeenth century.

This thesis is devoted to the astrological debates in Renaissance Italy in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. These debates are often considered to be important for the reconsideration of the status of astrology in the Renaissance. Yet, the texts that form the basis for these debates have not received the attention they deserve. I argue that in the Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem the Italian scholar Giovanni Pico della Mirandola questioned the compatibility of astrology with religion and philosophy, on the one hand, and astronomy as astrology’s theoretical basis, on the other. Without going into reforming astronomy or modifying obsolete mathematical calculations, Pico put forward radically new ideas about the problem of astrology within the context of the Renaissance revival of ancient culture. My thesis also provides for the first time a comprehensive study of the immediate reception of Pico’s Disputationes. Thus, I show that Girolamo Savonarola and Giovanni Pico’s nephew Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, both close to Giovanni Pico at the late stage of his career, drew upon Pico’s attack on astrology to develop their own interpretation of astrology. I also establish that Giovanni Pico’s ideas received support beyond Italy: Maximus the Greek, an Orthodox monk who in the late fifteenth century had become a novice of the Dominican order at San Marco in Florence and served as Gianfrancesco Pico’s secretary, appropriated Savonarola’s and Giovanni Pico’s arguments and criticised astrology in his Epistles against Astrology, which he composed upon his arrival in Muscovy. Finally, my thesis explores how, at the same time, several scholars such as Lucio Bellanti and Giovanni Pontano opposed Giovanni Pico’s Disputationes in order to defend the positive value of astrology.

James Shirley is a distinctly Caroline playwright: his first play was performed in the year of Charles I’s coronation, 1625, and his last the year of the outbreak of civil war in 1642. Yet his importance extends beyond the era in which he worked as a professional playwright. As one among a handful of dramatists whose work was staged regularly by the new playing companies after the theatres reopened in 1660, he is an important figure in the development of new modes of theatre. Despite having had more of his plays produced on the Restoration stage than Shakespeare did, scholarship on his significance to Restoration drama has been remarkably scant. This thesis investigates the significance of Shirley in the Carolean period, tracing the adaptations of Shirley throughout the reign of Charles II. It uses Shirley as a case study to investigate transitions in theatrical practice before 1642 and after 1660, paying attention also to the continuities. This thesis asks why Shirley’s plays were considered suitable by the managers of the Restoration theatre companies who staged them: the King’s Company under Sir Thomas Killigrew, the Duke’s Company under Sir William Davenant, George Jolly’s ‘Nursery’ group, performing at Hatton Garden, and the Red Bull Players, an illegal, pre-Restoration group. It also explores the ways in which Shirley’s plays were adapted in response to the changed social and political climate after 1660, including textual amendments made and the addition of new prologues. It concludes by asking why Shirley’s reputation declined so sharply in the long eighteenth century while Shakespeare’s came to pre-eminence, by comparing the Restoration treatment of his plays with those of Shakespeare.

Although there has been an increasing interest in the study of Renaissance translations and the early world of print, the history of navigation and exploration has not been the subject of any such in-depth bibliographical research. This thesis identifies and analyses a corpus of translated navigation manuals and related works that were printed in England between 1500 and 1640. The context is sketched by defining the different areas of maritime writing found in Renaissance England. Although English contributions were particularly strong in such topics as the mathematical side of navigation, the technical instruments and the debates about magnetism and compass variation, publications of manuals and sailing directions were scarce. This thesis reveals that such knowledge was imported from continental Europe through translation. Forty-three translations out of seven different source languages are discussed from a book-historical perspective to establish what their source text was, how they came to England and who was responsible for translating and publishing them. Such information was obtained, in part, from a study of the paratexts, in particular the translators’ and publishers’ dedications and addresses to the reader, which show the reason and purpose of the translations, the methods employed and particular problems encountered, as well certain linguistic and rhetorical characteristics. One work is selected as a case-study for in-depth research, namely Martin Cortés’s Breue compendio de la sphera y de la arte de nauegar (1551) and its translation by Richard Eden, The Arte of Navigation (1561), which went through ten editions and became the model for English navigation manuals. Finally, by turning to the agents involved in the production and dissemination of these translations, particularly the printers and booksellers, and establishing the connections between them, this thesis reveals intricate social networks and sheds new light on certain aspects of the fields of navigation, translation and print.