Bitten by the Russia bug: Britons and Russia, 1894–1939

Keith Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy and Russia, 1894–1917 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Pp.xv + 408, maps, biblio., index. ISBN 0–19820–47–0.

Michael Hughes, Inside the Enigma: British Officials in Russia, 1900–39 (London: The Hambledon Press, 1998). Pp.xi + 336, biblio., index. £35. ISBN 1–85285–160–0.

G. W. Morrell, Britain Confronts the Stalin Revolution: Anglo‐Soviet Relations and the Metro‐Vickers Crisis (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1995). Pp.ix + 204, appendices, biblio., index, edn $34.95. ISBN 0–88920–250–8.     

Home Thoughts from Abroad: Diasporas and Peace-Building in Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka

This article looks at the dynamics of Diaspora groups as a possible catalyst for peace-building within violent segmented societies. With the help of two case studies, Irish-America's role in Northern Ireland and Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora's role in Sri Lanka, it locates the variable impacts of Diaspora involvement in violent conflicts within their homelands. Despite their unique histories and individual complexity, both of these cases illustrate that Diasporas have a significant role to play in peace-building, are diverse rather than homogenous communities, and that they represent an important and often underutilized resource to bring negotiated settlement to violent conflicts.     

Reviews

Michael Mandelbaum (ed.), The Strategic Quadrangle. Russia, China, Japan and the United States in East Asia. New York: The Council on Foreign Relations, 1995, vii + 221 pp., $16.95.

Theodore H. Friedgut & Jeffrey W. Hahn (eds), Local Power and Post‐Soviet Politics, New York and London: M. E Sharpe, 1994, xv + 292 pp., £40.00 h/b, £19.95 p/b.

Paul G. Lewis, Central Europe since 1945. London: Longman, 1994, xv + 135 pp., £13.99.

Gareth Winrow, Turkey in Post‐Soviet Central Asia. London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995, 53 pp.

Henry S. Rowen, Charles Wolf, Jr & Jeanne Zlotnick (eds), Defence Conversion, Economic Reform, and the Outlook for the Russian and Ukrainian Economies. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1994, 262 pp., £34.00.

Thomas M. Nichols, The Sacred Cause: Civil‐Military Conflict over Soviet National Security, 1917–1992. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1993, xiii + 259 pp., $35.75.

Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis & Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993, xi + 393 pp., £30.00.

Andrew Horton (ed.), Inside Soviet Film Satire: Laughter with a Lash, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, xii + 171 pp., £27.95; Michael Brashinsky & Andrew Horton (eds), Russian Critics on the Cinema of Glasnost, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, viii+167 pp., £30.00.

Vida T. Johnson & Graham Petrie, The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky. A Visual Fugue. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995, xviii + 334 pp. Distributed in the UK and Ireland by Open University Press, £42.50 h/b, £18.99 p/b.

Andrea Peto & Mark Pittaway (eds), Women's History—Women in History: Central and East European Perspectives, Central European University, History Department, Working Paper Series 1, Budapest, 153 pp. (EU Press, 1994).     

Reshaping Contractual Unfairness in England 1670–1900

English contract law has offered protection for the vulnerable and exploited for centuries. The most wide-ranging doctrine of contractual unfairness could be found within the Court of Chancery. In Lord Nottingham's time relief extended to a range of situations, loosely held together, with no real unifying structure. Yet even here some common themes emerged. Transactions which fell outside the usury laws were looked at with particular concern. In the eighteenth century Lord Hardwicke attempted to rationalize relief under the rubric of fraud. This was largely a difference in presentation. Under the influence of the rise of legal literature and ideas derived from Will Theory, the nineteenth century might have seen the emergence of a truly coherent doctrine of contractual unfairness. That this did not happen can be attributed to a combination of factors. These include the durability of the notion of fraud, the complexity of contractual unfairness which could not be reduced to a doctrine based on will and the way in which contractual unfairness was bound up with public policy. The substance of relief may have changed less than has often been supposed. Certainly there was no shift from a world in which the courts offered protection to one in which freedom of contract always prevailed. The failure of nineteenth century judges and writers to be more radical has left a legacy of incoherence that is still felt today.