House Societies in the Ancient Mediterranean (2000–500 BC)

House societies have become popular with archaeologists in recent years, due to (among other things) their conspicuous material basis (wealth, heirlooms and the houses themselves). As yet, however, most archaeological studies have focused only on individual societies. In this article, we offer a comparative and long-term approach to the phenomenon, using as case studies the Bronze Age and Iron Age communities of the Levant, the Aegean and the central Mediterranean. We describe the elements that define them as house societies and examine their evolution through time. We follow a strictly Lévi-Straussian definition of the house that prevents the concept from losing heuristic power. Using this definition, we consider that houses are to be found in ranked societies without centralization and in complex agropastoral systems, like those of the Mediterranean, where agricultural soil is scarce and liable to be monopolized. We argue that the house emerges in these competitive contexts as an institution to control land and retain patrimony undivided. Through a combination of archaeological and written sources, we try to demonstrate that it is possible to document several strategies used by house societies to acquire and retain power and wealth, including dowry, levirate, a bilateral system of marriage alliances, ancestor cults, specific architectures and house treasures. The case studies addressed here offer good comparative material for assessing similar processes elsewhere. At the same time, we argue that the Mediterranean area developed a particular ideology, that of the shepherd ruler, that was essential to legitimate the house.     

Foreign Jews in the western Alps (1938 – 43)

Abstract

This article examines the question of policy towards the Jews in the Italian occupied zone of southern France from 1940 to 1943. It develops the argument that in the World War II the Alps constituted a clearly demarcated geographical area that for Jewish refugees from all over Europe promised shelter and safety. A number of ‘exemplary cases’ (for example that of Angelo Donati) as well as an unpublished document relating to the case of ‘residence forcée’ in St Martin Vésubie, provided the opportunity for comparing different interpretations of Italian attitudes towards the Jews in those years.     

‘A Great People Struggling for Their Liberties’: Spain and the Mediterranean in the Eyes of the Benthamites

Summary

This article examines the relationship of Jeremy Bentham and some of his disciples within Romantic Liberalism in the Mediterranean in the early 1820s. By studying the content of Bentham's correspondence with his collaborators and some Spanish political leaders, the text sheds light on Bentham's ideas on constitutional rule, the independence of Latin America and religious tolerance.     

The Italian political system after the 9 – 10 April 2006 elections

Abstract

All recent Italian elections have produced important electoral consequences. In this brief introduction, the author highlights some of the problems, difficulties and perspectives for the Italian political system following the electoral victory of the centre-left. More precisely, he suggests that there are two complex issues in need of being analyzed and politically tackled: the revisions to be introduced into the Italian Constitution and the transformation of some Italian parties and the reorganization of the party system. In conclusion, at least in this phase, the Italian political system is bound to remain in a situation that can still be defined as an ongoing political and institutional transition.     

Patterns of the Future? British Mediterranean Strategy and the Choice Between Alexandria and Cyprus 1935–8

During the 1935–6 Abyssinian Crisis, the value of Malta as a British naval base came into question, as the island was vulnerable to Italian air attack. The British then examined the possibility of developing the Cypriot port of Famagusta as a naval base. However, by 1938 the project was rejected on the grounds of cost, while the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty gave London a more acceptable alternative, namely Alexandria, with its excellent port next to the Suez Canal. The examination of Cyprus’ possible role as a naval and air base and the evident strategic interrelation of the British positions in Egypt and in Cyprus in 1935–8 were indicative of future, post-war developments in British military thinking and strategic priorities.     

Allied escapers and the contadini in occupied Italy (1943 – 5) 1

Abstract

The little-known ‘great escape’ of Allied prisoners-of-war (some 50,000) held in Italian camps at the time of the armistice of 8 September 1943 provides the starting-point for a fresh interpretation of popular and peasant experience during the emergency of 1943 – 5. The article explores some of the main aspects of the ‘strange alliance’ between Allied fugitives and the Italian population, with particular attention to the mutual symbolic appropriation between former ‘enemies’ in the midst of a civil war and related collapse of the state.     

Common Sense in the Public Sphere: Dugald Stewart and the Edinburgh Review

Summary

Although George Davie has identified the debate between Dugald Stewart and Francis Jeffrey as a crucial chapter in the history of Scottish philosophy, their exchange remains a neglected episode. Jeffrey questioned the role of the philosophy of mind in nineteenth-century culture and suggested that it lacked a truly scientific method of investigation. Although Jeffrey was not articulating a common perception, his criticism stimulated both Stewart's further exploration of our intellectual powers and his search for a new role for the philosophy of mind. The result was a stronger emphasis on education in Stewart's thought and a shift away from Reid's formulation of common sense philosophy.     

Youth aspirations and employment in provincial Indonesia: a view from the lower middle classes

ABSTRACT

Demographically and geographically, lower middle class youth occupy an ambiguous position in Indonesian society, embodying elements of both privilege and marginality. Drawing on interviews and 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2008 and 2013, this article considers how an emerging provincial middle class seeks to make good on the promises of an expanding higher education system and proliferation of globalised youth cultures. I examine the capacity and limits of higher education in facilitating young people’s aspirations for youth lifestyles, jobs and the future in a regional labour market with high levels of youth underemployment and informality. Young people’s aspirations for employment and middle class standards of living are mitigated by their responsibilities towards their families and difficulties to establish the social connections needed to access jobs and opportunities. Faced with limited upward mobility, class as an aspirational category rather than everyday reality underpins young people’s claims about the good life.     

The Rise and Fall of ‘Mediterranean Atlanticism’ in Italian Foreign Policy: the Case of the Near East

The article aims at studying the reasons for the new way of looking at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by the Italian political world: the mutual recognition of Israel and the Vatican, the visit to Jerusalem by the leader of the formerly fascist party, Mr. Gianfranco Fini, and the beginnings of a movement of interest towards the Jewish State also within the political left. From a historical viewpoint, anti-Semitism in Italy found its origins in the Church's attitude toward the ‘deicide people’. Beginning with WWI, to this position was added the worry that the Holy Places might fall under Jewish control. From those times dates the Holy See's evermore manifest liking for the Arab populations of Palestine. Nowadays the line of conduct of the Church has as its basic objective the defense of Christian minorities in the Middle East, and for this reason it maintains dialogues with all actors in the region. The weight of the Church influenced also the attitude of the Italian State, even though from its inception the latter had to make adjustments because of other international requirements. This multiple subordination caused the different republican governments to always keep an official equidistant stance among the conflicting parties in the Near East. Behind this apparent neutrality, however, the feelings of benevolence for the Arab countries and the Palestinians have gradually intensified. Italian leaders have been trying to conduct a Mediterranean policy on the borders of the Western alliance, and their feelings have been oriented in consequence. During the 1970s, the governments went as far as to conclude a secret pact with Palestinian terrorists, to avoid terror acts on the Peninsula in exchange for some freedom of action. And in the mid-eighties the Craxi government did not hesitate to challenge the US in order to guarantee the continuity of that line of conduct. On that occasion Craxi, speaking in Parliament, compared Arafat to Mazzini. The end of the Yalta-established order has modified the traditional data of Italian foreign policy. However, the increased attention paid to Israel has also other causes: the changed attitude of the Church after the civil war and the Syrian occupation in Lebanon, events which both caused difficulties for the consistent Christian minorities; the hope that the Oslo process could reward the Italian ‘clear-sightedness’; last, but not least, the quarrelsome internal politics that make the Palestine conflict a mirror of the Roman conflicts. Lastly, the article connects the recent goodwill for Israel with the threats of Islamic terrorism in Italy. A political opinion trend would revisit the Middle Eastern conflict as the upturned perspective of a ‘clash of civilizations’ already existent nowadays. And a possible act of terrorism in Italy might give to this opinion a mass basis.     

War in the mental hospitals: sychiatry and clinical files (1940 – 52)

Abstract

Is there a connection between war and madness? How have psychiatrists responded to the problem of those ‘driven mad by war’? This article tries to answer these questions by drawing on clinical records for three Italian psychiatric hospitals in the period from 1940 to 1950. While these problems have been researched and debated for combatants during the World War I, in the case of the World War II, as this article shows, it is necessary to take into account the impact of war not only on soldiers but also on civilians who were equally involved in the trauma of war.     

The congresses of Italian scientists between Europe and the Risorgimento (1839 – 75)

Abstract

This article reconstructs the history of the Italian scientific congresses from 1839 until 1875. The congresses are analyzed in the context of the political Risorgimento, but also as a reflection of relations among social groups, and between society and institutions. We examine the troubled coexistence of a minority interested primarily in encouraging the professionalization of science in state institutions of learning, and a broader sector of eminent citizens that placed the value of ‘expertise’ alongside the values of birth and social ranking. This complicated coexistence was the chief reason that the Italian congresses failed, and after 1861, as well, in their effort to establish a national scientific association comparable to those existing in many other countries, both inside and outside Europe. This essay reconstructs the main points and phases of the debate and the changes in the relations among the social and professional groups and scientific work, up until the foundation of a Società Italiana per il Progresso delle Scienze (SIPS, Italian Association for the Advancement of Science), which explicitly rejected the heritage of the Risorgimento.     

Jewish Refugees in Cyprus and British Imperial Sovereignty in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1933–1949

This paper focuses on the use of the British Colony of Cyprus as a clearing ground for Jewish refugees on route to Palestine before, during, and after the Second World War. While acknowledging the historiographical consensus underscoring Cyprus’ renewed strategic importance in the context of British post-Second World War imperial retreat in the East, the article argues that Jewish transmigration revealed new potential uses for the island which in turn contributed to confirm British sovereignty in that possession. Drawing on British and Cypriot sources, the article further shows the transformative impact of Jewish transmigration for Cyprus politics as it induced British authorities, who had established an authoritarian regime in the island in the 1930s, to invoke Cypriot reactions in order to stem the flow of refugees to the island. This paved the way for future policies meant to redefine the relations between rulers and ruled. As the management of refugees coming to Cyprus during the period under scrutiny relied on ever more refined instruments of classification, the paper finally highlights the contribution of Empire to the crafting of official categories to designate people on the move—‘refugees’, ‘illegal immigrants’—which still inform European migration policies.     

A Global Journey – Ancel Keys,the FAO,and the Rise of Transnational Heart Disease Epidemiology, 1949–1958

Few people have influenced western eating patterns in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries as much as physiologist and epidemiologist Ancel Keys (1904–2004). Keys not only developed the K Ration for the United States military, but also advocated for diets that lowered blood cholesterol and famously discovered the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet in the 1950s and 1960s. Keys’ interest in the Mediterranean diet arose from his service on the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)-World Health Organization (WHO) Joint Expert Committee on Nutrition, which allowed him to explore nutritional status, dietary habits, and regional eating patterns across the globe. This paper examines how Keys’ service as chair of the UN FAO Committee on Caloric Requirements and the UN FAO Expert Committee on Nutrition led him to think globally about the relationship between diet and cardiovascular health, and to launch the first international comparative epidemiological study of diet and heart disease, the Seven Countries Study.     

Human Responses to Climatic Variation in the Namib Desert During the Last 1,000 Years

Radiocarbon dates for camelthorn trees in the Namib Desert reflect marked variation in rainfall during the last 1,000 years. These records and other proxy climate data indicate a loose teleconnection with the southern African climatic record, especially for regionwide episodes of dry conditions resulting from extreme El Niño events. However, archaeological evidence of hunter-gatherer and nomadic pastoralist occupation does not mirror the climate record by indicating that the desert was only inhabited during periods of favourable rainfall. It points instead to a specialized strategy which allowed continuous occupation of the Namib Desert despite extreme fluctuations in rainfall, by combining the use of primary resource areas with opportunistic use of secondary, ephemeral resources in an alternating density-dependent and density-independent dynamic.     

Crossing boundaries in the Mediterranean: papal trade licences from the Registra supplicationum of Pope Clement VI (1342–52)

This article examines a number of ‘trade licences’ issued during the pontificate of Clement VI, found predominantly in the unpublished Vatican Registra supplicationum. These licences were privileges granted to merchants exempting them from the papal ban on trade with the Muslim world. The article argues that the licences can demonstrate, amongst other things, that merchants were more concerned with their spiritual welfare and the ramifications of illegal trade than has often been presumed, and that the papacy was aware of the need for merchants to have contact with Muslims, in contradiction to the view of a fundamental opposition between the Church and Islam during the period. They provide a valuable insight into the changing Western attitudes towards contact with different Muslim groups in the Mediterranean, and also shed considerable light on the complex interaction between mercantile objectives and religion in the Middle Ages.