Siegefields: An Archaeological Assessment of 'Small' sieges of the British Civil Wars

Abstract

Despite outnumbering the pitched battles of the British Civil Wars of the 1640s, sieges, particularly 'small' sieges against single structures such as castles and country mansions, have not been subjected to the intensive study that the battles have enjoyed. While sieges are described in the contemporary literature, we do not fully-understand the physical dynamics of 17th century siege warfare, nor have we identified the key archaeological signatures of such military events. Although castle interiors have been 'cleared' and some partially excavated, the areas immediately beyond the walls have not come in for systematic study. Yet these 'siegefields' may be 'conflict sensitive' and hold the greatest potential for information regarding siege activity. Using an array of data drawn from various survey methodologies, it may be possible to establish strategies for examining siege sites.     

国共内战大转折时刻的顾维钧

和平与民主、团结与统一是抗战后中国遭遇的首选主题。然而,局势的发展远远超出了人们期盼的轨道,国共两党在中国社会与政治重新整合问题上的谈判屡屡受阻,由分歧到磨擦、冲突,最终演绎为非武力不能解决的格局。国共两党所代表的两种截然不同的政治势力的角逐,使那些处于夹缝中的中间势力不得不面对这样的事实：如果说国共两种政治力量处于相持或胶着态势时,他们还能保持所谓的“超然”或“中性”立场;那么,当局势越来越明朗时,     

The Afghanistan-Pakistan Wars, 2008-2009: Micro-geographies,Conflict Diffusion,and Clusters of Violence

A team of political geographers analyzes over 5,000 violent events collected from media reports for the Afghanistan and Pakistan conflicts during 2008 and 2009. The violent events are geocoded to precise locations and the authors employ an exploratory spatial data analysis approach to examine the recent dynamics of the wars. By mapping the violence and examining its temporal dimensions, the authors explain its diffusion from traditional foci along the border between the two countries. While violence is still overwhelmingly concentrated in the Pashtun regions in both countries, recent policy shifts by the American and Pakistani governments in the conduct of the war are reflected in a sizeable increase in overall violence and its geographic spread to key cities. The authors identify and map the clusters (hotspots) of conflict where the violence is significantly higher than expected and examine their shifts over the two-year period. Special attention is paid to the targeting strategy of drone missile strikes and the increase in their number and geographic extent by the Obama administration.     

Marital violence in a martial town: husbands and wives in early modern Portsmouth, 1653-1781

Sessions papers from early modern Portsmouth survive from 1653 on and are nearly continuous for eighty-five years, that is, from 1696 to 1781. They include 356 cases of wife beating in addition to 7,658 other assaults; as such, the town's records allow for a comparison of the violent behavior of individual wife beaters both inside and outside of their marriages. These comparisons suggest that assaults on wives were more severe than assaults on strangers and acquaintances: not only were many wives assaulted on several occasions before lodging a complaint, the attacks themselves often resulted in greater injury, reflecting (1) a greater tendency to use potentially lethal weapons and (2) a differential in strength between most husbands and wives. The motives of individual wife beaters are less clear; what can be said with certainty is that wife beatings, like assaults in general, tended to rise whenever soldiers were demobilized and men were either unemployed or underemployed.     

Stalin's Sausage Machine. British Students at the International Lenin School, 1926-37

Between 1926 and 1937 at least 160 British communists attendedthe Communist International's International Lenin School (ILS)in Moscow. The aims of the school were to produce a new stratumof leading communist party cadres, young, proletarian, disciplined,and free of the taint of reformism. Using materials from theComintem archives in Moscow, this article assesses the degreeto which the school was successful in meeting these objectives.It shows that among the difficulties it encountered were thereluctance of the British Communist Party (CPGB) to lose theservices of large numbers of its best activists and the uncertainapplication of the lessons inculcated by the school when studentsreturned to Britain. In the short term, ILS alumni played acrucial role in the leadership of the CPGB at both nationaland district levels, and some were also drawn into work forthe Comintern or Soviet state organs. However, by the late 1930sattendance at the school played a reduced role in appointmentsto key party positions, and as early as 1943 there was onlyone former student on the CPGB's executive committee. Set ina comparative context, it is argued that the school's significancein Britain was largely confined to the ‘long’ ThirdPeriod of 1927–35 and rapidly diminished thereafter.     

The Foreign Enlistment Act and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

This article examines the official response to the policy problemsraised by the over two thousand Britons who went to fight forthe Republic during the Spanish Civil War, with particular referenceto the Foreign Enlistment Act (1870). Revived in January 1937as a means of reducing the flow of volunteers and curbing therecruiting efforts of the Communist Party of Great Britain,the act proved embarrassingly unenforceable. Ambiguity overits applicability to the situation in Spain, combined with problemsof evidence, meant that no charges were ever laid against volunteerscaught attempting to leave for Spain or members of the recruitingorganization of the CPGB. Though a complete failure as a legaltool, the Foreign Enlistment Act nevertheless symbolically underlinedthe British government's declared support for internationalnon-intervention in Spain, and was never rescinded.