The Missionaries' Position: Polygamy and Divorce in the Anglican Communion, 1888–1988

This article explores the Church of England's engagement with polygamy through a survey of policy debates about plural marriage that took place from the 1880s to the 1980s. With few exceptions, nineteenth and early‐twentieth century missionaries refused to allow men in polygamous marriages to convert to Christianity. This decision was formalised at the 1888 Lambeth Conference, but reversed one hundred years later at the 1988 Conference. The article uncovers factors that led to the recognition of alternative forms of marriage, and begin to expose the dynamics of repression and toleration in Anglican marriage discourse. Following recent postcolonial feminist scholarship, it argues that the church's inability to resolve its parallel but conflicting oppositions to polygamy and divorce formed a paradox which implicitly provincialized British Anglican gender understandings, and that the 1988 Lambeth Conference decision represents a tacit acknowledgement of the fundamental epistemic divide represented by this paradox.     

Die Berechnung von Wasserfluten. Tideforschung in den Niederlanden, 1920–1960

In the first half of this century a computing problem became evident in the course of preparatory research for major hydraulic projects in the Netherlands. One of the most novel problems was to predict the changes in the tidal movements caused by hydraulic works in coastal waters. Between 1920 and 1960 several solutions were proposed and put into practice: numerical methods, contracting young men for the calculations, analogue electronical networks and large scale models. The amount of computing labour played a decisive part in the choice between these methods. After a storm surge in 1953 causing estensive inundations in the southern part of The Netherlands, the requirements of the Delta Works project gave an enormous impetus to all three types of methods.     

The economic history of the regional problem in Britain, 1920–1938

This paper is intended to draw the attention of historical geographers to the regional problem of interwar Britain. Although unemployment measured at the aggregate national level is usually seen as the dominant characteristic of the period, the disparity in the experience of unemployment across different regions is equally striking. Yet the issue has received little attention from economic historians and virtually none from historical geographers, despite its being sufficiently important to promote the first attempts at regional policy. To consider why economic historians have neglected this matter the economic historiography is outlined using a classification that distinguishes between optimistic and pessimistic views of the period. This indicates that either the regional problem plays no part in such studies or it is considered only where it might cast doubt on, or lend support to, the hypothesis being proposed at the national level. The fascination of economic historians with the national experience, the relative shortage of complete and consistent data series and the mysteries of regional analysis make the study of regional issues uninviting for the economic historian. The historical geographer must have a role to play in giving us a better understanding of this important issue.