Slavic,European, or Asiatic? F. H. Duchinski on the Origins of the Russian People

The emergence of Russia as a dominant force in Europe from the early nineteenth century onward was characterized by growing tensions between Russians and Poles as seen in the recurring Russian suppression of Polish uprisings. F. H. Duchinski (1817–93) who, like other Polish intellectuals, tried to uncover the root causes of these political tensions, concluded that Russians were neither Slavic nor European, but Asians, and it was this fact alone, he believed, that accounted for the continuing Russian hostility toward the Poles.     

Aspects of the History of the Nerves: Bell’s Theory,the Bell-Magendie Law and Controversy,and Two Forgotten Works by P.W. Lund and D.F. Eschricht

The French physiologist François Magendie showed, in 1822, that the anterior roots of the spinal nerves are motor and the posterior sensory. The English anatomist Charles Bell claimed the discovery, but his claim was based on republications of papers in which the wording had been altered to be consistent with Magendie’s findings. Bell also appropriated Herbert Mayo’s discoveries of the functions of the fifth and seventh cranial nerves. Bell repeated his claims in a number of influential publications, supported by his brothers-in-law John and Alexander Shaw. And for a century and a half, Bell figured as the discoverer in most references to the subject. During this period, several reviewers did go back to Bell’s original papers, disclosing Bell’s falsifications in the republished texts. But Magendie was not definitely acknowledged as the discoverer of the function of the spinal nerve roots until Cranefield’s (1974) treatise. Cranefield, as did all other reviewers, overlooked accounts from 1825 by P.W. Lund and F.D. Eschricht. They critically reviewed Bell’s early publications and reached conclusions similar to those of Cranefield concerning the roles of Bell and Magendie in the discovery of the function of the spinal nerve roots.     

A history of transboundary storm water flows: flooding,tunnels, and the spatial incongruity of the U.S.–Mexico border

The benefits of transnational flows and the concern for national security have framed development in the U.S.–Mexico borderlands since the formative beginnings of both nations. As national discourses, trade and security work against each other in borderland spaces, the former requiring openings in the border, the later seeking to control it. This paper considers the material implications of these discourses on the border landscape with particular attention to historical boundary development, urbanization, and impacts of chronic flooding. It argues that material discursive dynamics not only constitute the contemporary landscape, but create spatial incongruities that influence the impacts of natural processes, such as storm water flow. Using the southern Arizona border as a case study, the paper uses archival research to explore the historical geography of chronic flooding in the twentieth century and the shift in dynamics of flooding due to border boundary build up.     

Microelectrode Investigations of the Visual System at the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology,Freiburg i.Br.: A Historical Account of the First 10 Years, 1951–1960

The history of the first ten years of neurophysiological science (1951–1960) at the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology in Freiburg i.Br. (Germany) is described by some of the participants. We describe the concepts of Richard Jung for the development of an experimental neurophysiology, the technical conditions which helped to realize these ideas, and the integration of the newly emerging German neurophysiological science into the international community, through the large number of foreign visitors. A short account is given of the young scientists working at the Freiburg laboratory during this period, their main lines of research, as well as the results of their studies.     

On the Text of Ovid,Met. 13.692–696

The structure and meaning of the passage are analysed, and its variants and textual proposals discussed. A way of understanding the text as transmitted is presented.     

On the Probable Identity of the Gloucestershire Chapelry of St. Briavel’s,Recognised as Lidneia Parva in the Twelfth Century,with the Ledenei of the Saxon Hundred of Ledenei,Named in the Domesday as the Property of William Fitz Baderon

The shrunken medieval hamlet of Wintringham lies in the parish of St Neots some 2 miles east of the town centre. The position of the settlement was clearly defined by the remains of the peasant crofts, moated enclosures and bj the ridge and furrow of the open fields, which surrounded much of the site.

An excavation was arranged by the Department of the Environment and the Deserted Medieval Village Research Group in 1971 and 1972 to examine the moated enclosure, lying in the southern part of the site, before it was levelled and ploughed. The finding of four superimposed houses and their associated buildings revealed much information about the construction and expansion of a substantial timber house between circa 1175 and 1340.

The excavation finds have been presented to the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge.     

The challenge of the spaceship: Arthur C. Clarke and the history of the future, 1930–1970

Arthur C. Clarke’s 1946 essay on ‘The Challenge of the Spaceship’ was one of the founding manifestoes of the Space Age, and helped to establish him as the West’s leading techno-prophet. Restating his ideas in subsequent factual and fictional works, Clarke successfully propagated the belief that man’s destiny lay in space and that the process was already underway. On the surface Clarke’s oeuvre offers a classic astrofuturist model of progress as technology-driven, but on closer examination it also incorporates a more pessimistic, historically based strand of philosophy, British rather than American. This essay traces the genesis of Clarke’s early work and the influence upon him of the historian Arnold J. Toynbee and the moral philosophers Olaf Stapledon and C.S. Lewis. Toynbee was essentially a Christian pessimist who believed that western civilization was on the way out; his long historical perspectives were an important source of inspiration for Clarke, leading him to a cyclical rather than a simply progressive model of history which contemplated both the beginning and the end of civilizations. The concerns of Stapledon and Lewis with grand narratives of decline and redemption were also influences on Clarke. All this needs to be understood in relation to both the European experience of World War I and to the coming of the atomic bomb, the latter a profound influence on Clarke’s generation. Such perspectives gave European astroculture a more modulated vision of the human future in space than the technologically based astrofuturism which dominated in the USA.     

For the Wealth of the Realm: the transformation of the public sphere in Swedish politics,c. 1434–1650

This article addresses the transformation of the representative public in late medieval and early modern Sweden. While recognizing the importance of Habermas' theory of the public sphere, the focus is on the progressive character of the royal administration and on how the interaction within the administrative setting eventually came to serve as a basis for political opinion. The interplay between local bargaining over taxes and political action at the national level is of critical importance. The state formation process served to empower new groups such as peasants and burghers, who eventually learned how to wield rational arguments in defence of their interests. This is demonstrated here by focusing on the interaction between local officeholders and the tax-paying peasantry.     

W. B. Yeats,the Abbey Theatre,and the Cinema, 1909–1939

ABSTRACT

Given the significance of new technologies to the literary and visual cultures of the early-twentieth century, it is surprising how little has been written about W. B. Yeats and cinema. Viewed by some scholars as emphatically resistant to what he termed “the leprosy of the modern,” Yeats has long been a difficult writer to situate in relation the progressive impulses of modernity. Building on Kevin Rockett’s identification of the parallels between the work of Abbey Theatre and a nascent Irish cinema culture, this article argues that Yeats played a prominent role in early attempts to develop an indigenous film industry, and to cultivate representations of Ireland on screen abroad. During the period I consider, the Abbey Theatre and the film industry were similarly affected by state censorship programmes and various forms of cultural nationalism. Exploring the Abbey Theatre Minute Books and archival materials discovered in Trinity College Dublin, I suggest that Yeats’s Abbey was a shaping force in Irish cinema history, despite the fact that most attempts to create a national cinema met with limited success.     

J.G.A. Pocock and the idea of the ‘Cambridge School’ in the history of political thought

This article offers a reinterpretation of the origins and character of the so-called ‘Cambridge School’ in the history of political thought by reconstructing the intellectual background to J.G.A. Pocock's 1962 essay ‘The History of Political Thought: A Methodological Enquiry’, typically regarded as the first statement of a ‘Cambridge’ approach. I argue that neither linguistic philosophy nor the celebrated work of Peter Laslett exerted a major influence on Pocock's work between 1948 and 1962. Instead, I emphasise the importance of Pocock's interest in the history of historiography and of his doctoral supervisor, Herbert Butterfield. By placing Pocock's intellectual development in these contexts, I suggest, the autonomy of diverse versions of the ‘Cambridge’ approach can more readily be perceived.     

The breakdown of the educational system of the G.D.R. in 1989—Problems of restructuring public education

The disappearance of an apparently well-established European state within one year—sudden, unexpected, and self-imposed—probably presents an event without parallels in European history. In educational history, too, there may be few examples of bringing together the structures of two very different educational systems after four decades of separate development.