Liberalism and Nationalism in the Austro-Hungarian Empire

On the 25th of January 1894 the prominent Jewish liberal politician Heinrich Jaques walked into his lawyer’s office in Vienna and shot himself in the head. As a young lawyer and financier in the 1860s he had written works in support of the Austrian state and the assimilation of Jews. In 1879 he was elected …

The Chinese in Britain

In The Great Gatsby (1926), obscenely rich philistine Tom Buchanan obsesses over the latest racial theories, not least a book entitled The Rise of the Coloured Empires, by “this man Goddard.”  This was a thinly-disguised reference to a popular work of 1920, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy by the American writer …

The Cost of Marriage

How much money do you need to get married these days?  According to The Guardian (7/8/2010) the wedding day alone is said to cost the average British couple £21,000 (up from £12,000 in 2003) and tales circulate of newlyweds hawking their wedding presents on ebay in order to recoup marital expenses.  And that is without …