Liberal,Liminal and Lost: India’s First Diplomats and the Narrative of Foreign Policy

Indian historiography has largely overlooked the contribution of Indian Liberals in the pre-independence era. It is worse in Indian diplomatic history where studies on pre-independence are few and far between. Responding to this double excision, this article traces the emergence of a new Indian narrative of foreign policy around the issues of equality and justice in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Anchoring their argumentativeness in diplomatic finesse, Indian Liberals such as Satyendra Prasanno Sinha, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri and Tej Bahadur Sapru relentlessly campaigned for racial equality and predominance of the rights of people over the rights of states at the Imperial Conferences. In the articulation of these views, South Africa, a country where ideas about the status of Indians and Indian civilisation were most contested, emerged as the singular foreign policy ‘other’ around which India’s foreign policy narrative was constructed.     

Beyond Nussbaum’s Ethics of Reading: Camus,Arendt, and the Political Significance of Narrative Imagination

The article contributes to current theoretical debates about the political significance of narrative imagination by drawing on Camus’s and Arendt’s existential aesthetic judging sensibility. It seeks to displace the prevalent tendency to probe literature for its moral-philosophical insights, and instead delves into the experiential reality of our engagement with literary works. It starts from Martha Nussbaum’s recognition of the literary ability to account for the fragility of human affairs, yet finds her reduction of narrative imagination to the role of furthering moral lessons wanting politically. Against this background, the article reclaims Camus’s and Arendt’s dialogical-representative judging orientation and its insight into the narrative ability to respond to the intersubjective character of politics. As such, their aesthetic sensibility reveals the potential political significance of literary imagination in its capacity to open a public space where the contradictions of our situated existence can be confronted through politics between plural equals.     

Lamech’s Song and the Cain Genealogy: An Examination of Gen 4,23-24 within its Narrative Context

Gen 4,17-26 contains a curious poem, “Lamech’s Song,”, which interrupts the genealogy of Cain (Gen 4,23-24). Interpretations of Lamech’s perplexing song range from it being incoherent, to its playing a central role in the surrounding narrative and genealogy. This essay explores the meaning of Lamech’s song and demonstrates its significance within the larger context of the Cain narrative. The reading of the Lamech narrative and poem proposed in this essay points to Lamech as an egocentric man who objectified both men (who might wound him) and women (who are pleasing), thus portraying Lamech as an even more sinister and corrupted version of Cain. Understanding the message of Lamech’s song as an articulation of his world-view that “might makes right,”, leads to an appreciation for the poem’s placement in the center of the Cain-Lamech narrative.     

Reflections on the Relationship between Education and Archaeology: An Analysis of IPHAN’s Role as Collective Educator

This article analyses the role of the Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional—IPHAN (the Brazilian Government’s Bureau for Cultural Patrimony Preservation) as an educational institution, considering the relationship between archaeology and education. Consideration of education both as a social practice and as a profession provides a basis for discussing the educational approaches of archaeologists. The authors stress the fact that IPHAN barely takes advantage of the important teaching tool that the archaeological knowledge produced in Brazil can provide for education about Brazilian cultural patrimony.     

Evidence for Maya Household Subsistence and Domestic Activities: Use-Wear Analysis of the Chipped Chert Assemblage from Pook’s Hill,Belize

Abstract

From 1999–2005, the Belize Valley Archaeological Reconnaissance Project excavated Pook’s Hill (PKH-1), a single plazuela group located in the Roaring Creek Valley, Cayo District, Belize. Artifacts recovered at Pook’s Hill date predominantly to the Late and Terminal Classic (A.D. 700–950) and can be stratigraphically segregated into two distinct occupation phases, namely a Late Classic (A.D. 700–830) and a Terminal Classic-Early Postclassic (A.D. 830–9507+) phase. The chipped chert and chalcedony tools from the two phases were included in a combined program of low- and high-power use-wear analysis to reconstruct aspects of the socioeconomy. The results of the analyses reveal that the site’s inhabitants produced and used both formal and informal tools for a wide variety of subsistence and domestic tasks, and for the production of some utilitarian items. Stone tool use-wear evidence and the recovery of small quantities of other artifacts suggest that the Maya from Pook’s Hill produced more valuable objects of bone, stone, and shell, although it is difficult to accurately identify craft-production activities at the site from the context of recovery. Despite some variation in the specific activities undertaken with the chipped stone tools over time, the organization of lithic technology at Pook’s Hill did not change significantly from the Late Classic into the Early Postclassic period.     

The Governor and the Enslaved: An Archaeology of Colonial Modernity at Marshall’s Pen, Jamaica

The rise of modernity in Europe resulted in the redefinition of social relations between those in control of the apparatus of the state and economy on the one hand, and those who worked and lived within that apparatus on the other. This shift in the definition of the basic social unit from subject to individual citizen was fraught with tension, and resulted in vast changes in the lives of colonized people throughout the European sphere of control. The social and material manifestations of these historical processes were many; this article considers how phenomena associated with colonial modernity impacted the lives of people enslaved at Marshall’s Pen, a Jamaican coffee plantation, in the opening decades of the nineteenth century. To this end, this article examines the negotiation of the social and material realities of nineteenth-century colonialism through the spread of mass-produced goods mediated through the rise of consumerism visible through archaeologically recovered material culture, the imposition of age-grade, gendered, ethnic and racial categorizations as manifestations of a rationalized social order, the increased focus on the individual as a self-regulating member of a moralized social order, and shifting definitions of the relationships between space and social organization reflecting in changing settlement patterns of village life.     

Society and Violence in the Early Bronze Age: An Analysis of Human Skeletons from Nord-Trøndelag,Norway

In 1968, a large collection of human bones was excavated at a site located at Sund, Inderøy, Nord-Trøndelag. Radiocarbon dating showed the find to be from the Early Bronze Age. Between 20 and 30 individuals could be isolated -- half of them children -- and evidence of violent trauma indicated that the find was unusual. The only artefact in the find was a simple bone pin. Close to Sund is the large burial site of Toldnes, which has produced some of the richest Bronze Age finds from Norway. The skeletal materials from Sund and Toldnes have been compared and additional analyses from other Early Bronze Age burials used in order to understand what happened at Sund and its relationship to the Toldnes burials. The osteological analyses indicate a community in distress, ridden by long-term starvation, malnutrition and parasites as well as repeated violent encounters. The osteological evidence, in addition to archaeological analyses of weapons and society from England, Denmark and Sweden, suggests a society with a segment of specialized warriors. The constant possibility of violence and war may have acted like moral glue -- structuring the society and ensuring the power and status of the governing forces.     

Depicting ‘Terra Australis’: An Analysis of the Imagery on the Unknown Southern Continent on Renaissance World Maps, 1520s–1620s

Advanced doctoral students whose dissertations are substantially concerned with the history of cartography are invited to contact the editor of this section (Dr Elizabeth Baigent, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford OX2 6PW, UK; elizabeth.baigent@wycliffe.ox.ac.uk) to discuss the submission of a short article. For a list of doctoral theses in progress see http://www.maphistory.info/futurephd.html.     

Between cooperation and competitive bargaining: the Council of Europe,local and regional networking,and the shaping of the European Community’s regional policies, 1970s–90s

Abstract:

In many ways, the Council of Europe paved the way for European Community (EC) action in local and regional affairs. It was the first European organisation to establish a conference of local and regional authorities in 1957, in which local actors and associations were represented and tried to influence the shaping of European regional policies. This article analyses the links between the Council of Europe and the EC in the development of regional policies from the 1970s to the 1990s by focusing on three transmission vectors: through institutional cooperation between the two European organisations; through competitive bargaining among local and regional groups; and through intensive lobbying at EC level. It argues that the transfer of ideas was not so much achieved through cooperation between the organisations’ experts or political committees but rather by means of transregional networking promoting the idea that local and regional authorities had to be associated with the elaboration and implementation of European regional policy. From 1988, these networks shifted their attention away from the Council of Europe towards the EC because of the possibility to receive direct funding from the European Commission.     

‘Poor heathens’, ‘Cone-headed natives’ and ‘Good water’: the production of knowledge of the interior of Australia through German texts from around the 1860s

This essay critically reviews the textual archive related to the two German mission stations in the South Australian Lake Eyre basin: the Lutheran Hermannsburg mission at Killalpaninna and the Moravian mission at Kopperamanna. The multiple entanglements of these stations far beyond their missionary activity become evident through examining distinctly religious material, such as mission journals, and secular texts, in German-language newspapers and scientific journals. These include entanglement in German domestic affairs as well as German diasporic politics; and in debates over scientific advancement and British colonial expansion.     

Empire,Colonial Enterprise,and Speculation: Cape Breton’s Coal Boom of the 1860s

ABSTRACT

During the 1860s Cape Breton Island’s Sydney coalfield, at the northeastern tip of Nova Scotia, experienced dramatic economic expansion. Historical interpretation of this understudied coal boom has emphasised the transition towards a liberal era of competition and growing dependence upon American capital and markets. This article presents a revised interpretation, and reflects a renewed engagement with empire in the writing of the history of Canadian capitalism. Drawing upon the work of James Belich and John Darwin, it locates this coal boom in an evolving and expanding ‘Angloworld’ and ‘British world-system,’ and demonstrates how the Sydney coalfield was shaped by the social and economic configurations that developed in the region under the British Empire. During this period, established colonial elites captured coal property and sought to integrate Cape Breton coal into the Atlantic economy in which their region had historically operated. They treated coal as a new commodity to trade and profit from, but coal mining required the mobilisation of credit and infrastructure expenditures that exceeded what was typically required to participate in the region’s traditional staples trades. Large fixed investments engendered economic and political commitments that spurred growth even under highly volatile circumstances, as promotion and speculation drove growth from the supply side and attracted London capital. Overcapacity, ruinous competition, and social crisis eventually resulted, as the Atlantic economy that gave rise to the boom fell apart. This episode reveals the operation of colonial networks and an ‘empire effect’ that produced a distinctive pattern of development on the Sydney coalfield whose legacy would be lasting.     

Ideological Migration and War Resistance in British Columbia’s West Kootenays: An Analysis of Counterculture Politics and Community Networks among Doukhobor,Quaker, and American Migrants during the Vietnam War Era

This paper addresses migration, war resistance, and counterculture activity in the West Kootenays region of British Columbia during the 1960s and 1970s. Through a combination of perspectives including S.N. Eisenstadt’s discussion of “multiple modernities,” it reveals an ongoing pattern of alternative, values-based migration we refer to as “ideological migration.” Most immediately associated with the influx of thousands of young Americans who came to the West Kootenays during the Vietnam War, this pattern, in fact, began much earlier, first with the arrival of the Doukhobors beginning in 1908, and subsequently in the 1950s with the development of a community of American Quakers at the north end of Kootenay Lake. From there, we show how common experiences of marginalization along with with shared values of pacifism, war resistance, community-building, and self-sufficiency facilitated the arrival of this new group, and with them the entrenchment in the region of a vibrant counterculture identity.     

Through the Backdoor: An Overview of the English East India Company’s Rise and Fall in Safavid Iran, 1616–40

In 1616, the English East India Company expanded its trade into Safavid Iran. The chief merchants in India hoped to acquire a significant share of the Iranian silk trade. After several difficult years in India, the English traders in Surat felt pressure to establish a solid foundation in Iran where they could redirect Iranian silk through Iran’s southern ports and onto Company ships for Europe. Despite Robert Sherley’s promise of wealth and a prosperous market for English cloth, many in the English camp, predominantly Sir Thomas Roe, objected to the silk trade on grounds that it was generally a risky venture. But several leading merchants dismissed Roe’s concerns and pursued the trade without his approval. After early indications that the venture had potential for success, the English silk trade quickly began to falter and finally ceased to exist by 1640. Although its demise was once described as the Company’s failure to produce a substantial quantity of purchasing power—eastern goods, precious metals, and English commodities—this paper explores an alternative explanation that suggests the Company’s failure in Iran was not exclusively the consequence of poor economics.     

Temporal and Narrative (Dis)junctures: Guillermo Núñez’s Aesthetics of Memory and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights (Santiago,Chile)

Focusing primarily on Guillermo Núñez’s work, this essay juxtaposes two almost-identical exhibits of his ‘exculturas’ (sic: xculptures/ex-cultures) – one at the Chilean-French Cultural Institute in 1975, which resulted in his detention and exile, the other in 2010 for the official inauguration of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights (MM) – to explore their relationships to memory production in Chile four decades after the military coup. In the first, Núñez offered a pointed critique of the repressive post-coup context through a series of caged and netted objects; the second reconstructed the first as a memory gesture, framed within the ultra-modern, state-sponsored MM, in its designated art space, at once included and physically separated from the historical narrative of the Museum. How do the politics, aesthetics and design of the MM work to complement, complicate, or contradict Núñez’s – and, perhaps, any – artistic proposal? What challenges might the aesthetic of memory in Núñez’s work pose to the Museum’s narrative frame? Examining Núñez’s ‘exculturas’ (and, briefly, Gonzalo Díaz’s reconstructed Lonquén) reveals several tensions – around politics of inclusion and exclusion, the state’s role in memorysites, and the relationships between human rights concerns and museological and artistic strategies – marking the social production of memory in Chile today.     

Masculinities and diet: An analysis of skeletal material from the dominican priory in Medieval Västerås,Sweden

Diet and consumption patterns are closely associated with social constructions, and can be used to express identity. In medieval Northern Europe, the consumption of meat seems to have been linked to strength and virility, which are important to the creation of elite lay masculinity. At the same time, religious masculinity required fasting due to the Christian Church’s prescribed abstinence from the meat of four-footed animals during fasting periods. Medieval masculinities expressed by diet will be discussed here in the light of the results of an analysis of stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur in samples gathered from 16 males and six females buried by the Dominican priory in Västerås, Sweden. The results indicate that a diet rich in freshwater fish was generally followed, with no significant differences depending on age, gender, socioeconomic or religious status.     

‘Between my Brow and the Stars ...’: Linkages Between the Categories of Subject,Space, and Time in Jan Zahradníček’s Verse of the Second Half of the 1930s

The study enquires how the functional relationship between the broader framework of Czech poet Jan Zahradní?ek’s vision of the world and the narrower, governing principle shaped by his declared adoption of a fixed, ideologically unambiguous (confessional) model for viewing life and the world is realized. The present author’s deliberation is based on an analysis of the categories of lyrical subject, space and time as rendered artistically in two collections of verse by Jan Zahradní?ek: ?íznivé léto (Thirsty Summer, 1935) and Pozdravení slunci (A Salute to the Sun, 1937). It is found that, rather than speaking of the mutually contingent effect of these two planes of reality, it would be better to think in terms of a colliding of fragments, each of which represents a part of its own reality — poetic truth and truth sprung from an ideology. The literary text becomes a specific locus that makes this intersection possible, and it expresses an entirely new form of reality. Motivated on the one hand by the experience of creative freedom and on the other by having voluntarily accepted certain external ideological considerations which perforce refine poetic freedom, or poetic output, with regard to the appreciation of its meaning, thereby giving it added force and depth, the poet fashions — with various degrees of success — the sundry fragments of this and that layer of reality into a two-way correlation that is reinforced by the dominant effect of the aesthetic function. He thus creates a specific, imaginary whole that opens man up to the world and adumbrates for the reader the idea of unity in diversity. However, at the same time he does not veil the sense of disillusionment that lies at the root of all modern poetry, arising from the notion that neither life, nor the world can be integrated into some ideal, harmonious form.