Protestant Challenges to the 'Protestant State': Ulster Unionism and Independent Unionism in Northern Ireland, 1921-1939

This article considers intra-unionist divisions in inter-war Northern Ireland, with an emphasis on the antagonistic relationship between the governing Ulster Unionist Party and a number of independent unionists. The article is divided into four sections. The first section briefly outlines the nature of independent unionism in pre-partition Ireland. The second section considers the politics of the inter-war Ulster Unionist Party, with an emphasis on its programme to create and maintain unionist unity. This provides the context for the third section, which examines the political contribution of a small band of independent unionists who stood outside this unity. The final section conducts an analysis of the electoral politics in inter-war Northern Ireland. This reveals that the most heated political cleavage in inter-war Northern Ireland was not the traditional unionist–nationalist battle line; it was instead the intra-unionist divide

Slaving in Australian courts: blackbirding cases, 1869-1871

This article examines major prosecutions in New South Wales and Queensland for blackbirding practices in Melanesian waters, and early regulation under the Imperial Kidnapping Act that was meant to correct problems those prosecutions raised. It considers how legal argument and adjudication appropriated the political debate on the question whether the trade in Melanesian labour to Queensland and Fiji amounted to slaving, and whether references to slaving in Australian courts only compounded the difficulties of deterring recruiting abuses in Melanesia. It is suggested that, even though the Imperial Government conceived of the Kidnapping Act as a measure to deal with slaving, its success in Australian courts depended on its avoiding any reference to the idea of slavery in the legislation itself. This is developed in three parts. Part 1 provides the social context, introducing the trade in Melanesian labour for work in Queensland. Part 2 explores the prosecutions brought under the slave trade legislation and at common law against labour recruiters, especially those arising from incidents involving the Daphne and the Jason. It attempts to uncover the way that lawyers in these cases used arguments from the broader political debate as to whether the trade amounted to slaving. Part 3 concludes with an account of the relatively more effective regulation brought by the Kidnapping Act, with tentative suggestions as to how the arguments about slaving in Australian courts influenced the form that regulation under the Act had to take

Aberdeen's 'Toun College': Marischal College, 1593-1623

While debate has arisen in the past two decades regarding the foundation of Edinburgh University, by contrast the foundation and early development of Marischal College, Aberdeen, has received little attention. This is particularly surprising when one considers it is perhaps the closest Scottish parallel to the Edinburgh foundation. Founded in April 1593 by George Keith, fifth Earl Marischal in the burgh of New Aberdeen ‘to do the utmost good to the Church, the Country and the Commonwealth’,1 like Edinburgh Marischal was a new type of institution that had more in common with the Protestant ‘arts colleges’ springing up across the continent than with the papally sanctioned Scottish universities of St Andrews, Glasgow and King's College in Old Aberdeen.2 James Kirk is the most recent in a long line of historians to argue that the impetus for founding ‘ane college of theologe’ in Edinburgh in 1579 was carried forward by the radical presbyterian James Lawson, which led to the eventual opening on 14 October 1583 of a liberal arts college in the burgh, as part of an educational reform programme devised and rolled out across the Scottish universities by the divine and educational reformer, Andrew Melville.