The true subtitle of this lecture is a question: why was George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion first produced in German, in Vienna? And the lecture as a whole is about questions that I can't answer. It is less about gaps in the material record - that is to say, the physical existence of documentation (though it touches on this issue) - than it is about an absence in historical writing: an absence of history, of narrative, that crosses barriers of nationality and language. It is a simple fact that historical subjects cross these barriers, but historical research, publication and teaching very often do not. I am particularly concerned with the second of these barriers - because in our day it seems to be much the most formidable; and I would even go so far as to suggest that in much research which is undertaken within language frontiers, it is possible to sustain an illusion of internationalism which cloaks a reality of largely domestic incident and inward-looking discussion. It is immediately obvious that there are huge questions of definition here. There are many different interpretations of the term 'internationalism': some of them perpetuate our illusions, and its absence. The term 'international' carries a very wide range of meanings, many of which are, to use current academic terminology, unstable. I wish to begin by giving some of the dictionary and conventional definitions of 'international', both in order to demonstrate the variety of meanings available, and to justify formulating my own interpretation of the term for the purposes of this lecture. To begin with, a small illustration of an instability of meanings: Murray's 1901 Oxford Dictionary gives under 'internationalize', 'to bring (a country, territory, etc.) under the combined government or protection of two or more different nations'. In the postcolonial era, it is impossible to read these words without unease; and no-one could recall without a shudder an example of internationalism in this sense, with the foundation in Brussels in 1876, under the sponsorship of the infamous Leopold II, of the 'International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of Africa'. Nevertheless, if it were possible, at this early point in the twenty-first century, to devise a workable scheme for the 'internationalization' of Jerusalem, many people might feel that the term had taken on a new lease of life and hope. I cannot say whether they would be right or wrong to feel this. Let us stay with the Oxford Dictionary for a moment. I went to the 1901 edition, and then to the 1933, 1944 and 1973 'shorter' editions, to see if there