Missionaries and Cannibals in Nineteenth‐century Fiji

This article examines the controversies concerning both customary cannibalism and missionary ethnography. Focusing on Fiji, it supports the conclusions of Marshall Sahlins about both issues, demonstrating that the attempts of William Arens, Gananath Obeyesekere and others to debunk “cannibal talk” are flawed in several ways. The eyewitness testimony of numerous missionaries and non‐missionaries in Fiji from the 1830s to the 1870s provides an extensive evidentiary basis for examining both controversies. Some of the testimony comes from indigenous witnesses, moreover, including Thakombau, who became known—or notorious—to Europeans as “the King of the Cannibals”. The article briefly recounts Thakombau's role in the processes of conversion and colonization. Two key texts that are closely analyzed as examples of missionary ethnography are Reverend Joseph Waterhouse's The King and People of Fiji and Reverend Thomas Williams's Fiji and the Fijians.     

Work and social presence: French public engineers in Nineteenth‐century provincial communities∗

Abstract

This article discusses how the civil engineers of the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées relied on a complex network of social, familial and technical relations to mediate between the central government and various local interests as they sought to introduce modern infrastructure in provincial France. It argues that local social integration, which was defined, measured, and encouraged by the Corps, enabled engineers to tailor projects to local needs while also strengthening the national reputation and centralized power of the Ponts et Chaussées. It hypothesizes that the illusion of uniform, centralized national planning was in fact the result of how the Corps’ engineers independently designed and regulated thousands of small local projects. This emphasis on satisfying local concerns as a means of introducing standardization and reinforcing the Corps’ national prestige underscores the importance of regional dynamism and local diversity in the centralization and modernization of France.     

Intra‐European Racism in Nineteenth‐Century Anthropology

Nowadays the term “racism” is usually applied in the context of relationships between Europeans and non‐European “others”. During the nineteenth century scientific ideas about innate human differences were also applied extensively to various European populations. This was partly due to a category confusion whereby nations came to be regarded as biologically distinct. The origins of “scientific” racism were connected with the use of race as an explanation of history, and with the rise of physiognomy and phrenology. The development of “craniology” was paralleled and reinforced by ideological writings about “Nordic” racial superiority. In times of conflict such as the Franco‐Prussian war, absurd racial theories emerged and social Darwinist anthropologists connected race and class. Such ideas persisted well into the twentieth century and reached their apogee in Nazism.     

Sacred,but not surveyed: Nineteenth‐century surveys of Palestine

Abstract

Nineteenth‐century Palestine mapping projects based on systematic land surveying reached a peak with the Ordnance Survey of Western Palestine between 1871 and 1877, conducted on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund by officers of the British Royal Engineering Corps. Various other nineteenth‐century proposals for an organized survey of the country—some of which bore partial results while others were never implemented—are also presented. The surveying of one region, Mesopotamia, during the 1830s and 1840s, forms the basis for the discussion of the reasons for the relative lateness of the topographical survey. The sacredness of the region seems not to have been a sufficiently convincing motive for entrepreneurs to organize and finance such a survey. The main reason for the delay in mapping the country as a whole was that it was not especially important, either strategically or geo‐politically, for the European nations engaged in the international struggles in the Middle East until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.     

A shop is not a home: Nineteenth‐century American sweatshop discourse

The sweated labor, or sweating, system of clothing manufacturers, contractors, and subcontractors who exploited ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ workers was a lamentable fixture of antebellum America. A wide range of reformers called for abolition of the system. Yet it was not until the ‘discovery of poverty’ in the 1890s with its attendant campaigns for public hygiene and tenement house reform that the term ‘sweatshop’ arose to christen the oppressive labor site. This essay traces the ideological reasons for the shift in naming. It correlates the term's adoption with the East European and Italian ethnics who replaced earlier native‐born workers and in so doing analyzes the ideologies embedded in antebellum, Gilded Age, and Progressive‐era discursive practices.     

The Archaeological Survey of India and Communal Violence in Post‐independence India

This article argues that that the discipline of archaeology as practised by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) significantly contributed to communal violence in post‐Independence India. The essay investigates several legacies handed down from the colonial ASI to the post‐Independence ASI, with a goal of explaining the contribution of archaeology to the ongoing disturbances at Ayodhyā in Uttar Pradesh. The colonial ASI was marked by four characteristics: it was a monument‐based archaeology based on geographical surveys, literary traditions and Orientalist scholarship. These four characteristics combined to form a traditionalist, location‐driven excavation agenda that privileged specific holy sites in the post‐Partition era, sustaining the violent disagreements between Hindu and Islamic populations of India and Pakistan.     

Technology and ocean‐scape: Defining the deep sea in mid‐nineteenth century

The ocean's profound inaccessibility makes it impossible to comprehend except through the mediation of technology. The first investigators to explore the great depths were hydrographers whose work was animated by mid‐nineteenth century growth of political, economic, and cultural interest in the oceans. While submarine telegraphy certainly boosted ocean science, interest in this field derived first from commercial concerns related to whaling and shipping as well as the intellectual pursuits of physical geography and questions about the existence of life at great depths. Hydrographers’ developing conception of the oceanic environment never represented a clear translation from technology. Dramatic changes in the understanding of the shape of the deep‐sea floor testified to the complexity of interaction between sounding machines, methods, and interpretations of depth. The shifting image of the sea floor not only reflected increasingly accurate measurements, but also mirrored shifting human motivations for studying this unexplored territory.     

Maps and the assessment of parish rates in nineteenth‐century England and Wales

Abstract

This paper reviews the role of maps in the assessment of rates levied for the relief of poverty in nineteenth‐century England and Wales and examines the relationships between tithe maps and parochial assessment maps both in general terms and with specific reference to Poor Law unions in the county of Kent. An appendix lists 207 parochial assessment maps made in connection with the levy of poor rates which are extant in the public archives and libraries of England and Wales. Other ‘lost’ examples of this genre awaiting discovery in parish churches and vestries will undoubtedly add to this small but important constituent of the corpus of English and Welsh cadastral maps.     

Economic history and America's nineteenth‐century growth

The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, Vol.2: The Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman     

Carion's chronicle in sixteenth‐century Danish historiography

The brief world history called Carion's Chronicle, telling the history of the world from the Creation up to the sixteenth century, was widely read in the Protestant world. The first edition (1532 in German) was written, it seems, by Johann Carion in collaboration with Philipp Melanchthon. In 1558–60 Me‐lanchthon published a revised Latin version of the first part (up to AD 800). After a presentation of the contents, the article traces the influence of Carion's Chronicle in two works of Danish history from around 1570, one by Hans Svaning, the other by A.S. Vedel. It is argued that both authors project the universal perspective of the Chronicle onto national dimensions.     

Exercise and perfection: embodying the nation in nineteenth‐century Germany

In the nineteenth century the German Turner movement used bodily exercise as a programme for national improvement. This was not only directed at the self‐cultivation of the individual but was also considered a duty to the nation. Exercise thus incorporated and embodied national identity while enemies within and without demanded ever more exertion. Exercise was also considered the true test for national unity in the face of modern dangers such as immorality and materialism. Both goals were, however, under constant threat, since the ultimate vulnerability rested in the body itself and in the demand for its ultimate perfection.