The spatial anatomy of an epidemic: influenza in London and the county boroughs of England and Wales, 1918–1919

From uncertain origins in the spring of 1918, an apparently new variant of influenza A virus spread around the world as three distinct diffusion waves, infecting half a billion and probably killing around 40 million people. This paper examines the spatial structure of influenza transmission during the ten–month course of the epidemic in England and Wales, June 1918–April 1919, using the weekly counts of influenza deaths in London and the county boroughs as collated by the General Register Office, London. In addition, a particular case study of the borough of Cambridge is presented. From mid–1916, Cambridge contained, as well as its undergraduate population, a large naval contingent billeted in both the colleges and the town. It therefore affords the opportunity of studying the effect of the epidemic in contiguous groups with widely differing demographic characteristics. Through the application of a range of statistical methods (average lags, correlations and regressions), it is shown that the three waves that comprised the pandemic had fundamentally different spatial and temporal characteristics. The first, moving through a population that was a virgin soil to the new virus strain, was explosive in its north to south progress across the country. The second wave was somewhat slower in its rate of diffusion and displayed a south to north drift. Finally, the third wave reverted more closely to the form of the first. The spread of all three waves, however, was underpinned by a clearly defined process of spatial contagion. The Cambridge study showed the special characteristics of this pandemic in terms of the ages of those attacked: high rates were experienced across the age spectrum, a feature also seen internationally.     

Toronto's Health Department in action: influenza in 1918 and SARS in 2003

This article compares the Toronto Health Department's role in controlling the 1918 influenza epidemic with its activities during the SARS outbreak in 2003 and concludes that local health departments are the foundation for successful disease containment, provided that there is effective coordination, communication, and capacity. In 1918, Toronto's MOH Charles Hastings was the acknowledged leader of efforts to contain the disease, care for the sick, and develop an effective vaccine, because neither a federal health department nor an international body like WHO existed. During the SARS outbreak, Hastings's successor, Sheela Basrur, discovered that nearly a decade of underfunding and new policy foci such as health promotion had left the department vulnerable when faced with a potential epidemic. Lack of cooperation by provincial and federal authorities added further difficulties to the challenge of organizing contact tracing, quarantine, and isolation for suspected and probable cases and providing information and reassurance to the multi-ethnic population. With growing concern about a flu pandemic, the lessons of the past provide a foundation for future communicable disease control activities.     

评西方学者的"萨摩亚问题"研究

19世纪末以来,西方学学术界在萨摩亚问题研究方面取得了很大进展,新的理论和方法的逐步采用使得对问题的研究到20世纪60、70年代时达到高峰。丰富的研究成果不仅提供了对萨摩亚国际争端基本状况、与此相关的大国政策和大国关系的基本描述,而且还能让我们从中清晰地寻见20世纪以来国际史学研究领域包括国际关系研究领域理论的发展脉络。     

Rural Strategies for Coping with the Spatial Unevenness in the Knowledge Society

Knowledge has long been a motor for societal development. However, the way knowledge is produced, distributed and applied has changed considerably and is regionally differentiated. In this paper, it is argued that different types of spatial profiles are discernable at the broader, national level: (i) Prominent hubs emerge, influenced by the knowledge society. (ii) The knowledge society expands to rural areas, being located between metropolitan regions, forming corridors of development. (iii) Regions with a knowledge society deficit, which might be perceived as a sort of “novel periphery”, remain. Drawing on examples from Germany, this paper examines rural regions which can be seen to fit with these profiles, revealing how planning paradigms change in the knowledge society and how spatially sensitive stakeholders can and do use knowledge as a strategic resource.     

Investigating the production and distribution of plain ware pottery in the Samoan archipelago with laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS)

This paper presents a provenance study of 170 ceramic artifacts and 21 ceramic tiles from three islands in the Samoan archipelago using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). Our analyses confirm that LA-ICP-MS can be used to differentiate between clay formations on a single island. We identify different distribution patterns for pottery recovered from lowland and highland sites on Tutuila Island. We also examine evidence for movement of pottery between islands, and find only limited evidence for such movement. Our findings suggest dynamic patterns of prehistoric interaction and site use that need to be evaluated with further data from across the archipelago.     

Coping with deviance: Swiss nationhood in the long nineteenth century

ABSTRACT. This article highlights two processes that shaped Swiss nationhood in the long nineteenth century. The first concerns the competition between different nation‐states and the nationalist visions these contests engendered. In a Europe dominated by the norm of the culturally and ethnically homogenous nation, the Swiss authorities, public intellectuals and various political representatives were desperate to display an image of national authenticity to the outside world. The result was a nationalism that combined voluntaristic and organic elements. In the second and main part of this article, the focus turns on citizenship; it is conceived not only as a social and legal institution, but also as a cognitive prism through which people defined their membership in the national community. Remarkably, the authority in granting national citizenship to foreign nationals remained firmly in the hands of the cantons and, above all, the Swiss municipalities. In practical terms, this meant that the Gemeinde provided the institutional and cognitive frame through which nationhood was primarily experienced, imagined and defined. While Switzerland represents a particularly strong case of a communalist polity, it should not be treated as unique. Instead, it should alert us to a potentially fertile yet little‐explored area of research: what might be called the communal embededdness of the national(ist) imagination.     

Coping with inflation: a fourteenth- century example

In England, between 1305 and 1311, all prices rose significantly. Historians have generally assumed that these high prices led to high profits that enabled landlords to enjoy a period of unparalleled prosperity. A detailed study, however, of the manorial and central accounts of Canterbury Cathedral Priory suggets that this traditional view may not be altogether correct.Inflation did bring with it increased revenues and stimulated extensive investment in agriculture and building. But the priory's regular expenses increased as fast, and, at times, even faster than the extra revenues. Consequently the financial situation of the priory slowly deteriorated. Before the inflation set in, the priory had more than one year's revenue in hand. By 1318 this surplus had been wiped out. Financial equilibrium was finally restored only by the massive sale of relics and the high receipts from oblations. Yet, once prices began to fall after 1326 the priory found that, although its receipts dropped, so did its expenses and it was able to keep within its income.     

Coping with inflation: a fourteenth- century example

In England, between 1305 and 1311, all prices rose significantly. Historians have generally assumed that these high prices led to high profits that enabled landlords to enjoy a period of unparalleled prosperity. A detailed study, however, of the manorial and central accounts of Canterbury Cathedral Priory suggets that this traditional view may not be altogether correct.Inflation did bring with it increased revenues and stimulated extensive investment in agriculture and building. But the priory's regular expenses increased as fast, and, at times, even faster than the extra revenues. Consequently the financial situation of the priory slowly deteriorated. Before the inflation set in, the priory had more than one year's revenue in hand. By 1318 this surplus had been wiped out. Financial equilibrium was finally restored only by the massive sale of relics and the high receipts from oblations. Yet, once prices began to fall after 1326 the priory found that, although its receipts dropped, so did its expenses and it was able to keep within its income.     

The Forging of the Polish Army, 1918-1919

ABSTRACT

With the regaining of independence by Poland in November 1918 it was essential to create a unified homogenous army, the more so that Poland was faced by conflict from its neighbours at a time when the borders of Poland were by no means formed let alone finalised. There were at least four seperate Polish armies and a plethora of local formations springing up all over the country. From these four formations: the Polish Military Organisation, the Polnische Wermacht, the Greater Poland Army and the Polish “Blue” Army in France. Moreover, the officer and NCO corps came from four distinct traditions. Those of the wartime Legions (Polish tradition) and of the three partitioning powers. All had different military traditions and training. An important factor was also that many of the them had only a rudimentary knowledge of the Polish language having served in garrisons far from the Polish lands. Faced with wars with the Ukrainians for Lwów and the south eastern lands, with the Germans over the Province of Greater Poland, Pomerania and Silesia, with the Czechs over Teschen and above all with Bolshevik russia in the east it was essential that the Polish Army unified as quickly as possible. That this was done within the year and eventually resulted in Poland winning the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1919-1920 and securing its borders and independence was in no small measure a result of the rapid unification and creation of an homogenous Polish Army with a single command structure and organisation. The binding glue was the deep rooted sense of national pride and desire to live and work in a free Poland.