Spiders,Horror, and Animal Others in Late Victorian Empire Fiction

By the 1850s, the representation of the spider in Victorian natural history was beginning to change. No longer associated solely with ingenuity and industry, the spider took on more disturbing connotations in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Unable to pin down the creature's precise rhetorical and metaphorical function, naturalists could not decide whether the spider ought to be loved or feared and at the same time the spider began to emerge as a ubiquitous, protean and unstable Gothic trope in popular fiction. While natural history books warned of the hazards of the foreign spider's bite, in adventure fiction the alien arachnid lurks in liminal spaces far from the safety of British shores. Much maligned as the unfamiliar Other, the spider caused – and mitigated – anxieties about the limits of the human. In the Gothic empire fiction of Bertram Mitford and H.G. Wells, the spider takes on the role of the harbinger of death on both sides of the colonial encounter.     

The persistence of partition: Boundary-making,imperialism, and international law

This article implores political geographers to engage with the sub-discipline's imperial roots in which international law was foundational. It does so by revisiting the practice of partition – defined here as an imposed boundary – which remains central to historical and current-day imperialism. This is the case, both regarding longstanding partitions, such as Northern Ireland, Kashmir, the Chagos Islands/British Indian Ocean Territory, Cyprus, Korea, and Western Sahara, and with regard to proposals to impose new partitions in Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Palestine, and in the South China Sea. By adopting an historical perspective on the geopolitics of bordering, partition can be understood as an imposed boundary, in which the negotiators, to the extent they were consulted, were not presented with a free choice. Partitions in colonial situations only became illegal during the height of decolonization and the Cold War confrontation with the West, when the Soviet Union and Third World succeeded in modifying international law in a way that required the colonial powers to obtain the consent of the representatives of the communities whose territories they proposed to partition. As the world enters a more uncertain period, with increasing geopolitical competition, partition could make a comeback, in various guises, in which it may become necessary to pass judgment on the legality of partition, and not just its efficacy.     

Between science and religion: The reaction to scientific naturalism in late Victorian England

From its ornamental and often bookish exterior to its use as an exegetical tool for understanding the Book of Nature, the 18th-century microscope was socialized as an instrument of letters as well as of science. This essay proposes a reading of the microscope as a literary artifact by examining its bindings, its texts and its illustrations. While the instrument promised to extend human sense perception and to give its user access to invisible worlds, it simultaneously threatened to alter received views concerning both aesthetics and social hierarchy. Nevertheless, the destabilizing effects of the microscopic message entered polite society cloaked in a veil of familiarity in the binding of a good book. The nostalgia-encrusted instrument absorbed the shock of the new.     

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.