Books received

This article examines the remarkable ‘changes and transpositions’ of form found in Jordan Fantosme's Chronicle, an important Anglo-Norman estoire recounting the rebellion against Henry II in 1173–74. By reading these literary changes as accommodations of circumstances and persons, they can be used to locate the Chronicle in very specific historical and social contexts. Jordan, clerk of the bishop of Winchester and master of the city's grammar schools, places himself, both socially and discursively, within a community of administrative barons, who are very carefully remembered in the Chronicle as a coherent social affinity, or foedus amicitiae, both alienated from and seeking solidarity with the king. These conditions explain the Chronicle's central rhetorical impulses: to chastise the king, sometimes bitterly, and to persuade him to ‘love, cherish … and reward’ these specific barons. To achieve these rhetorical desires, Jordan draws upon the resources of contemporary literary education to imagine and perform persuasion. The Chronicle is thus a powerful illustration of John Baldwin's account of the ‘interpenetration’ of studium et regnum, institutional learning and political administration, in twelfth-century England. Because the Chronicle has in the past been understood as a panegyric, or even propaganda, for a royalist cause, this baronial reading represents a major re-assessment of its sociabilities and purposes.     

Unpicking Sri Lankan ‘island-ness’ in Romesh Gunesekera's Reef

Through a close reading of the Anglo–Sri Lankan author Romesh Gunesekera's 1994 novel Reef, this paper interrogates the misplaced concrete-ness regarding Sri Lanka's status as archetypal ‘island-state’. I show how Reef maps an imaginative geography which both naturalizes and problematizes Sri Lankan ‘island-ness’. Through the memory of the novel's main protagonist the author's exploration of modernity fixes geographical knowledge of Sri Lanka. ‘Island-ness’ emerges as a rationalization of modernity, one with its roots in Sri Lanka's colonial experience which the author then unpicks as he proceeds to explore the limits of modernity. I suggest that Reef demonstrates how island-ness is an inescapable yet problematic dimension of contemporary Sri Lankan geography. This is an ambivalent contradiction that fuels a civil war in Sri Lanka which relentlessly and sanguinely contests the integrity of Sri Lankan island-ness. The paper emphasizes how Romesh Gunesekera's hybrid position, as an author born in Sri Lanka and now writing from England, constitutes a post-colonial intervention which allows us to ask new questions about Sri Lanka's ‘natural’ insularity. 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.     

Blaming the Medici: Footnotes, falsification, and the fate of the ‘English Model’ in eighteenth-century Italy

Franco Venturi famously emphasised the importance of the ‘English Model’ for Italian reformist culture in his Settecento riformatore. This essay contributes to the history of the development and evolution of the ‘English Model’ beginning with its influential appearance in Antonio Genovesi's 1757–1758 translation of John Cary's 1695 Essay on the State of England. The ‘English Model’ was not a stable concept and, in fact, one tradition inverted the model's meaning, rejecting the need for protectionism and instead embracing a providential faith in laissez-faire. This tradition began with an important, but falsified footnote in Carlo Denina's 1769–1770 Rivoluzioni d’Italia. In this note and the tradition that adopted it, Lorenzo de’ Medici's imagined English wool factories became the locus of this inversion, and, through a reading of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, blaming the Medici as agents of Italy's aberrant historical development became an alternative to blaming English economic imperialism in late eighteenth-century Italy. The narrative of Medici involvement in the decline of Italy was finally realigned with Genovesi's original intention under the auspice of Pope Pius VI in 1794.     

Archbishop Scrope's Manifesto of 1405: ‘naïve nonsense’ or reflections of political reality?

In 1405 Richard Scrope, archbishop of York, rebelled against Henry IV and was executed. He has been seen by historians as being easily led into rebelling against the king by other rebels and also as rather a fool. Although it survives in no contemporary copy, a Manifesto containing 10 charges against Henry's government was attributed to the archbishop by contemporaries. Contemporary chroniclers and historians alike have disparaged this document as having little to do with political reality and as such reflects the simple-mindedness of its author; Archbishop Scrope. This article discusses six of the charges (grouped in pairs) contained in various versions of the Manifesto that centre on Henry IV's alleged abuses of government, specifically: 1 and 2) that the king had oppressively taxed both his lay and clerical subjects; 3 and 4) that the king had replaced experienced government officials with new men who had lined their pockets and that the king had subverted the appointment to the office of sheriff; finally 5 and 6) that he subverted the selection process for knights of the shire and subverted their rights to ‘act freely’ in parliament. The article demonstrates that the archbishop's charges were not ‘naïve nonsense’ but reflected political reality and resonated with those who read them.     

The historicity of Jordan Fantosme's chronicle

A reassessment of the literary and aesthetic value of his Chronicle, undertaken in the course of preparing a new edition of that work, shows Jordan Fantosme to be vastly different from the feeble versifier, unable even to dispense accurately the twelve syllables of an Alexandrine line, he has sometimes been taken for. He is a highly competent and innovating prosodist and a talented story-teller quite capable of inventing or manipulating episodes for stylistic reasons, as is shown by reference to three of the vivid historical vignettes for which the Chronicle is frequently and somewhat misleadingly praised. It is suggested that historians should show caution before accepting as factually true incidents detailed by Jordan Fantosme which are not supported from other sources.     

King Pedro IV of Aragon, royal propaganda and the tradition of royal speechwriting

In the medieval Crown of Aragon it was customary for the corts to begin with a proposicio or opening speech made by the king. These Aragonese royal speeches were not merely confined to a brief summary of the political situation or a series of points to be considered but were elaborately constructed political sermons, in which affairs of state were portrayed in terms of Christian morality and nationalist pride, with the aid of exempla drawn from the Bible and other religious and classical works. An example is the speech made by Pedro IV ‘the Ceremonious’ of Aragon against the rebellion of the Judge of Arborea in Sardinia. A copy of this speech survives written in the king's own hand which raises the interesting question of whether the kings of Aragon were themselves responsible for the ideas expressed in these speeches and for composing them or whether their efforts were confined to reading out propaganda which was primarily the creation of royal officials.     

‘Elementary aesthetics’, hedonist ethics: The philosophical foundations of Feuerbach's late works

In contrast to the conventional view of Ludwig Feuerbach as a left-wing Young Hegelian, this article argues that his primary contribution to philosophy is to be found in his later ethics, the basis of which may be discerned in his earlier writings. Over and above recent work on Feuerbach's aesthetics, his relation to Herder, and the relationship between aesthetics and ‘theological politics’ in his thought, Feuerbach's philosophy can re-evaluated, in relation to Epicurus and the French libertin tradition, as articulating an ethics of hedonism. In The Essence of Christianity (1841), the Nachlass fragment ‘Elementary Aesthetics’ (1843), and his Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843) Feuerbach moves towards the vitalist materialist position that culminates in his (proto-Nietzschean) insight in ‘Against the Dualism of Body and Soul, Flesh and Spirit’ (1846) into the world as an ‘aesthetic phenomenon’, thus laying the foundations for his recognition of the centrality of sensuous pleasure to the ethical life.     

The voice of the dead king Chindasuinth: poetry,politics, and the discourse of penance in Visigothic Spain

Around ad 653, Eugenius II, bishop of Toledo, composed a first‐person poetic epitaph for the deceased Visigothic king Chindasuinth (r. 642–53) in which the monarch is made to speak with self‐deprecating candour. This paper offers a reassessment of the poem's language and rhetorical strategy by situating it within contemporary discourses surrounding royal admonition and penance. Rather than interpreting Eugenius's composition as an act of defamation, as the majority of critics have done, it reads the poem as a dignifying literary expression of atonement. This reading corresponds with other specimens of Eugenius's poetry and evidence from a developing literary culture at Chindasuinth's court.     

The moral high ground in Albany: rhetorics and practices of an ‘Olmstedian’ park, 1855–1875

The mid-nineteenth century park movement represented a reaction to the tensions of growing, industrializing urban spaces. Parks provided a concrete way of aligning moral agendas with the built urban form, and a vehicle for varied and sometimes contradictory elite and middle class concepts of the purposes of public space. This paper describes conflicting strands in the rhetorics and practices of the ‘Olmstedian’ Washington Park in Albany, NY, placing them in the broader context of park ideologies. Contradictory strands in its discourses and moral agendas were never resolved, but they accomplished their fundamental purpose of creating a rhetorical space for civic leadership, and exclusive residential and public spaces for the middle class. Park regulations clearly expressed the culture of ‘refinement’ which accompanied the emergence of middle class sensibilities in the era before the electric streetcar. The park realigned elite residential development and guided Albany's subsequent social geography.     

Breaking ground—marginality and resistance in (post) unification Germany

Drawing on postcolonial theory and recent geographical debates on subaltern speech and marginal positioning this paper asks what the relevance of ‘place’ is for attempts to ‘transgress’ and ‘resist’ the marginalisation of (former) East Germans in (post)unification Germany. My intention is not to equate the postcolonial situation with that of East Germany after unification, but rather to engage the theoretical and political insights of postcolonial critiques to highlight the conflicts and contradictions that emerge from attempts to move ‘beyond’ oppressive binary constructions. Questions of speaking and listening, as well as seeing and being seen are attended to with a strong focus on the paradoxical places and spaces within which they come to matter in contradictory ways. How do the practices of listening/speaking, seeing/being-seen function to place particular groups in the social margin or centre of ‘(re)united’ Germany? Does ‘power’ reside less with the speaker than with the listener, or is it still important to claim voice (rather than being ‘given’ voice) as an ‘other’?The paper tries to work through some of the tensions, conflicts and concerns that have emerged from my PhD research on the construction of East German marginality through media practices, but also in German social, cultural, political and academic discourse. Perhaps the most significant of these conflicts is that of having lost one’s politically bounded place (as a GDR citizen) and yet finding oneself reconstituted in the (symbolic as well as socio-economic and political) margin of a nation that, to this date, is described as ‘divided within itself’. The sense of placelessness becomes politically relevant when ‘resistant’ or ‘transgressive’ acts are (to be) performed that have no ‘proper’ place from which to embark or in which to be staged. Similar to the post-colonial situation, where no ‘original beyond’ exists, and despite being frequently posited as a symbolically separate entity, ‘East Germans’ have no place for return, only an impossible situation of being constantly ‘out-of-place’ even in the locales that used to be ‘home’.     

Social critique and aesthetics in Schopenhauer

Although Schopenhauer is usually described as a philosopher of pessimism, this article examines the extent to which The World as Will and Representation is concerned, not only with metaphysics, but also with social critique; and the positive, indeed ‘optimistic’, implications such a reading might have for an understanding of Schopenhauer's aesthetics. Schopenhauer's philosophy contains a moral or ethical element, which means that, even if he regarded life as ‘an unpleasant business’, it would be wrong to conclude that he had no appreciation of the world as a locus for practical activity. Thanks to the cultural impact of Weimar Classicism and its controversy with the Romanticism of Jena and elsewhere, as well as through his personal acquaintance with Goethe, Schopenhauer inevitably came into contact with Schiller's aesthetic theories, which provide an indispensable background to understanding what is at stake in Schopenhauer's own aesthetics. Schopenhauer's emphasis on the impermanency of pleasure can be seen to underscore the ethical imperative to pay attention to our own life, and to question, in the most concrete, down-to-earth terms, our representation of our life and what, in life, we will.     

‘Fighting from the fields’: developing the British ‘National Farm’ in the Second World War

The Second World War had a profound impact on British Agriculture, with state intervention at an unprecedented level cementing the idea of a ‘National Farm’ in both the popular and the governmental psyche. Critical attention has recently begun to refocus on this period, adding to the somewhat celebratory meta-narratives written in the official histories. Drawing from the practice of micro-historical research and recent work in geography that seeks to understand the production of the landscape ‘from within’, this paper explores how ‘small stories’ can afford an appreciation of the ‘complications of everyday existence’ and bring greater depth, nuance and understanding to these ‘larger’ historical events and their influence on the British countryside. Utilising oral histories from farms in Devon (UK), the paper explores the micro-geographies which shaped as well as destabilised the national farm message as it was translated into the local context.     

Illusions of revolution: François Furet's critique of Marx

In this article it will be argued that François Furet's attempt in Interpreting the French Revolution to provide a conceptual history of the French Revolution through a synthesis of Tocqueville and Cochin's historical and sociological accounts fails methodologically. It does so in two ways: Firstly, in its aim to distinguish between conceptual, explanatory history and empirical, narrative history, and secondly, in its distinction between revolution as process and revolution as act. Drawing on Claude Lefort and Paul Ricoeur's interventions in the historiographical debate, I demonstrate that these seemingly methodological concerns, conceal a deeper historical and political question concerning the nature of the ‘event’ of revolution. In response to Furet's oblique turn to Hegel in his later work, this article traces the nature of the ‘conceptual inversion’ Furet claims to find in Hegel and Marx's accounts of the French Revolution. In relation to Marx, it is argued that Furet's critique fails to capture the allegorical nature of the political in Marx's thought, and underplays the significance of revolution as the basis for both the separation of the social and the political and their attempted unity. The article ends with some remarks on the importance of language and culture in rethinking the relationship between Hegel and Marx.     

Hegel, war and the tragedy of imperialism

This article contextualises Hegel's writings on international order, especially those concerning war and imperialism. The recurring theme is the tragic nature of the struggles for recognition which are instantiated by these phenomena. Section one examines Hegel's analysis of the Holy Roman Empire in the context of French incursions into German territories, as that analysis was developed in his early essay on ‘The German Constitution’ (1798–1802). The significance of his distinction between the political and civil spheres is explored, with particular attention being paid to its implications for Hegel's theory of nationalism. The second section examines Hegel's development of the latter theory in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), stressing the tragic interpenetration of ‘culture’ and intersubjective recognition. A recurring theme here is the influence of this theory on Hegel's interpretation of Napoleon's World-Historic mission, as that was revealed in his contemporaneous letters. Section three traces the tragic dynamic underlying the discussion of war between civilised states in The Philosophy of Right (1821). Section four examines three other types of imperial action in Hegel's mature writings, particularly The Philosophy of History (1832). These are relations between civilised states and culturally developed yet politically immature societies; colonial expansion motivated by capitalist under-consumption; and conflict between civilised states and barbarous peoples. It is concluded that it is misleading to claim that Hegel glorified conflict and war, and that he did not see domination by ‘civilised states’ as the ‘final stage’ of World History.     

Drought is normal: the socio-technical evolution of drought and water demand in England and Wales, 1893–2006

Water stress is becoming a permanent feature of life in Britain and other developed societies, and attempts to change ‘consumer behaviour’ are at the forefront of strategies for sustainability. This paper combines historical, geographical and sociological perspectives on the evolution of drought and water demand in modern England and Wales. Droughts have natural properties but their course, size and distribution is also the result of an interplay between governance, social norms and everyday practices. Focusing on seven significant droughts between 1893 and 2006, this article traces changing understandings of ‘normal’ water consumption and ‘rational’ demand and relates them to the evolving socio-technical management of water and identities of ‘the consumer’. We challenge the idea of a watershed between private supply (associated with passive ‘customers’) and public ownership (associated with active ‘citizens’). While private systems facilitated self-organised civic action more easily than public supply, the ideal of a citizen-contract blinded systems of public provision to the problem of expanding water use. An interdisciplinary analysis of droughts in the past offers lessons for the debate about sustainable consumption today.     

The coronation charter of 1100: a postponement of decision. What did not happen in Henry I's reign

The charter issued by Henry I on his coronation in 1100 has been regarded since Stubb's time as a prefigurement of Magna Carta, since it restricted the rights of the monarch. It has also been seen as a cunning political manoeuvre designed to strengthen the shaky position of Henry I during the tense days and months following the death of William Rufus. The present article does not set out to undermine either of these two positions. The charter played a part in the discussions between the king, the Church and the barons in 1135, 1154 and 1213. There was no such discussion in 1100 when the charter was formulated. At that earlier date the role of the monarch was predominant, as it had been since 1066. As yet the Church and the barons had no active part to play.     

Free trade, feudal remnants and international equilibrium in Gaetano Filangieri's Science of Legislation

In his main work, The Science of Legislation (1780–1783), the Neapolitan Gaetano Filangieri proposed a set of extensive political and cultural reforms. These reforms were necessary to free eighteenth-century societies from the remnants of feudal institutions that obstructed international peace and economic growth. Filangieri's ideas were shaped by the international political climate between the seven Years’ War and the eve of the French Revolution. Reinterpreting Montesquieu and Genovesi through the influences of French radical and Enlightenment thought (Helvétius, Raynal, l’Encyclopédie), as well as the economics of Hume, Verri and the Physiocrats, he concluded that European modernity was inherently contradictory.From this perspective Filangieri set out to force a clean break between the technical horizons of mercantilism and enlightened absolutism and a society based on civil rights, a fair distribution of wealth and resources, and free trade. Proper ‘scientific’ knowledge of the rules and principles of legislation would allow governments to balance out the natural and cultural factors that characterise individual states, and to identify the appropriate model for social and economic development. If all states acted on their proper interest, international free trade and peaceful competition between states would emerge and the potential for general economic growth be materialised. Thus, the natural equilibrium and ‘universal consensus’ among nations could be restored.     

Reconceptualising local labour markets in the context of cross-border and transnational labour flows: The Irish example

The increased prevalence of border-crossing labour of various types makes an uneasy juxtaposition of the ‘local’ and the ‘transnational’ or the ‘global’ and raises two classes of questions. These concern, firstly, the definition of the local in local labour markets and, secondly, the role of state borders in regulating and shaping flows of border-crossing workers. The paper begins to explore these issues. It questions the conceptualisation and definition of local labour markets and outlines a case for transnational labour and state borders to be included in their theorisation. Following this, drawing on studies of recruitment and interviews with labour market actors on both sides of the Irish border it discusses how state borders impact on different types of labour in different circumstances and outlines the paradoxical and sometimes contradictory nature of state borders in labour regulation and employers' strategies. It concludes by arguing that state borders might be moved from the edge of local labour market studies to a place much nearer their centre.     

The religious politics of prophecy: Or, Richard Brothers's Revealed Knowledge confuted

The messianic messages delivered to Londoners by the self-styled prophet, Richard Brothers, were regarded by many sceptical observers and pamphleteers as eccentric or, worse still, the embarrassing utterances of someone wishing to reprise the political turmoil of a by-gone era marred by religious ‘fanaticism’. This article shows the extent to which Brothers's messages, as set down in his Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times (1794–1795), were absolutely central to the religious politics and culture of the 1790s—or what one contemporary critic mockingly referred to as the ‘age of prophecy’. Brothers's prophecies came to the attention of the British government, which culminated in his arrest for treasonable practices in March 1795 when he became a cause célèbre, before being confined to an asylum for eleven years. He was deemed a criminal lunatic but, as this article seeks to demonstrate, his ‘prophetic imagination’ arose out of the same rich theological, political and cultural context that spurred ‘radicals’ like Tom Paine, whilst inspiring poets and artists such as William Blake. If the content of his prophecies were regarded by contemporary sceptics for having no validity, it remains true to say that Richard Brothers, as an educated gentleman and naval officer, dramatically altered 18th-century expectations and perceptions of what prophets were and the nature of prophecy itself.