Since 2009, the European Union has faced the worst economic crisis of its history. Due to the devastating impact of the Eurozone crisis on their economies, European countries realized the need to deepen the integration. Without a fiscal union, the Monetary Union would always be prone to economic crises. However, the efforts to reinforce the Union’s economy have been hampered by the UK due to its obsession with national sovereignty and lack of European ideals. In opposing further integration, the UK officials have started to speak out about the probability of leaving the EU. The purpose of this paper is to present benefits and challenges of Britain’s EU membership and to assess the consequences of leaving the Union both for the UK and for the EU. This study utilizes Power Transition theory to analyze British impact on European integration. With the perspective of this theory, the UK is defined as a dissatisfied partner. By applying the conflict– cooperation model of Brian Efird, Jacek Kugler and Gaspare Genna, the effect of the UK’s dissatisfaction is empirically portrayed. The empirical findings of the conflict– integration model clearly show that Britain’s dissatisfaction has a negative impact on European integration and jeopardizes the future of the Union. Power Transitions analysis indicates that the UK would become an insignificant actor in the international system and lose the opportunity for the Union’s leadership if it leaves the EU. On the other hand, although Britain’s departure would be a significant loss in terms of capability, economic coherence is more important for the EU. Without enough commitment for the Union, increasing the level of integration with the UK would raise the probability of conflict with the integration process in the future.

The Scots MPs of the eighteenth century have traditionally been portrayed in a negative light. In a century once noted for electoral corruption and the abuses of patronage, they were seen by contemporaries and later writers as among the worst examples of their kind: greedy, self-seeking, unprincipled ‘tools of administration’ whose votes could be bought with the offer of places and pensions. Lewis Namier’s seminal work exposing the cynical approach to politics of MPs generally, sparked a backlash which has produced a more balanced evaluation of English politics. Strangely, although Namier exonerated the Scots MPs from the worst of the charges against them, his less judgmental verdicts are found only sporadically in more recent writing, while the older viewpoint is still repeated by some historians. There is no modern study of the eighteenth-century Scots MPs, a situation which this research proposes to remedy, by examining the group of MPs who represented Scotland at Westminster between 1754 and 1784. It re-assesses the extent to which the original criticisms are merited, but also widens the scope by examining the contribution made by Scotland’s MPs, to British and Scottish political life in the later part of the eighteenth century. A study of the social make-up and the careers of this particular cohort provides the backdrop for the two main themes: the participation of Scots MPs in the legislative process, and their effectiveness as representatives of Scottish interests at Westminster. Existing biographical information has been supplemented by an examination of Parliamentary Papers, debates, and personal correspondence to enable further analysis of attitudes, in particular with regard to politics and political mores. The research explores issues of motivation, asking questions about allegiance, identity, perceptions of government, and how conflicts of interest were resolved, before presenting a conclusion which aims to offer a revised, broader, but more nuanced, assessment of this much-criticised group, based on more recent approaches to interpretation of the period.

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In his evocative account of walking through Restoration London, the seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys conveys a vibrant city comprised of movement, exchange, and conflict. We follow Pepys, for example, into the coffee-house on his insatiable search for news and political argument. Within urban space he is equally persistent, noting the ritual demarcation of urban boundaries at moments of tension between London and the Crown, or describing how the city's spaces were alarmingly transformed by the presence of disease. This is hardly the London imagined by scholars of the Restoration, who have characterized this historical moment of the return of Charles II and restoration of monarchical government to England as a time of concord after the violent struggles resulting in civil war at mid-century. It is telling that one of the first strategies adopted by Charles IPs government to stabilize a volatile situation in London was to assert control over print. At this moment, though, print culture served to open up urban space in new ways, becoming a mode of opportunity for individuals like Pepys. My dissertation considers precisely the interrelation between these spaces and forms of print. Like Pepys, my thesis journeys through the city, stopping at the Restoration coffee-house. These spaces of congregation, where print was displayed and purchased, appeared in significant numbers around the Royal Exchange after 1660. The coffee-house has been given mythic proportions in the twentieth century as the foundation of a modern public sphere. However, as this thesis will show, instead of producing an abstract and universal realm of public opinion, the coffee-house was an actual space formed through contestation, and through a struggle taking place between an older form of subjectivity and a newer urban culture. Another site of urban contestation shaped through print was the street processions staged by Whigs during the Exclusion Crisis, a moment of increased City and Crown tensions. Within these political struggles, the unexpected also had its part to play. The crisis brought on by bubonic plague in 1665 generated prints mediating all kinds of conflicts, but especially the social practices of flight and quarantine. The sudden destruction of the city within the walls by fire in 1666 was met by mapping and picturing the ruins that struggled to account for the void in the urban centre. My dissertation concludes with a series of unique prints which represent an ephemeral city built on the in-between space of the frozen Thames. This unexpected suspension of the everyday rhythms of London led to its festive re-imagining. In conclusion, I address the significance of the location of both print and the coffeehouse at the very centre of this urban space.

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The outbreak and continued progress of the Irish rebellion of 1641 played a significant role in the birth and development of domestic newsbooks in England between 1641--49. This thesis examines the manner in which these periodicals reported the insurrection to their readers. As relations between king and parliament deteriorated during the winter of 1641--42, the attention awarded to this uprising by these publications helped to ensure that Ireland became a popular concern. Weekly chronicles of Irish affairs continued unabated after the onset of civil war in England. Amid fears that Ireland could be utilized by Charles I in his struggle with Westminster, pro-parliamentary, and subsequently pro-royalist editors employed the rebellion as part of a propaganda war that accompanied armed conflict in all three Stuart kingdoms. Accordingly, this study suggests that a principle stratagem of the newsbooks was not necessarily to communicate news of Irish matters, but more often than not, their motivation lay in manipulating accounts relating to the rebellion in order to wage political combat in England.

When the Great White Fleet visited Australia in 1908 it became the focal point of an on-going test of wills between Britain and Australia. Relations between the two countries had become increasingly strained since Britain’s decision in the mid-nineteenth century to establish a new kind of relationship with its colonies. For the Australian colonies this meant moving towards independence within the Empire framework and assuming more responsibility for their own defence. This change had serious repercussions for the Australian colonies and British-Australian relations. Politically and psychologically the Australian colonies had developed an image of themselves as the inferior daughters of the superior and protective Mother Country. By changing the nature of the British-Australian colonial relationship, Britain not only challenged this Australian colonial self-image, it also heightened existing divisions among the Australian colonists. Anglo- Australian loyalists, enamoured of things British, clung to the established colonial image and remained subservient to Imperial wishes. Australian nationalists, on the other hand, tried to establish a new relationship with Britain, one in which Australian colonial concerns would have a greater voice. (For complete abstract open document)

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