A national security strategy for England: Matthew Sutcliffe, the Earl of Essex, and the Cadiz Expedition of 1596

The English cleric Matthew Sutcliffe arguably produced the first comprehensive security concept in history. It had at its centre the war between England and Spain (1585-1604), and Sutcliffe advocated taking the war to the Iberian Peninsula to seize Philip II's main Atlantic ports, rather than remaining satisfied with the indirect combat of Spain in Flanders, defensive action against naval attacks on England and the guerre de course on Spanish shipping at sea. This approach seems to be at the heart of Essex's 1596 naval campaing against Spanish ports, which foundered on the bureaucratic politics of the Elizabethan government.

Aretusa: continuity, rupture, and space for intervention, 1944-1946

This article focuses on the cultural activity of Aretusa (1944-1946), a journal that was deeply connected to the inner circle of philosopher and politician Benedetto Croce (1866-1952). The article analyses the role played by periodical editors Francesco Flora (1891-1962) and Carlo Muscetta (1912-2004) in shaping the mission and direction of this journal. By drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, and the notion of hysteresis in particular, this study details the factors influencing the aesthetic dispositions, political positioning, and the wider impact of historical circumstances on the cultural practice of each editor while at the helm of the review.

The rise and fall of Benedetto Croce: intellectual positionings in the Italian cultural field 1944-1947

This article evaluates the discourse developed around Benedetto Croce in the Italian cultural periodical press between 1944 and 1947 and it discusses the forms of adversarial discourse and the agents involved in the anti-Croce polemics that unfolded in the Communist party’s official cultural journal Rinascita. Specifically, this article focuses on a selection of intellectuals who moved away from Crocean idealism to embrace Marxism in order to investigate how their conversion was presented in Rinascita.