A Family Affair: The Dundas Family of Arniston and the Military Survey of Scotland (1747–1755)

ABSTRACT

This paper is the result of extensive investigation of the archives of the Dundas family of Arniston, Midlothian. It uncovers significant roles played in the organization of David Watson and William Roy's Military Survey of Scotland (1747–1755) by successive generations of the Dundases and suggests that the introduction of Watson, an established military engineer, to the young civilian Roy, was facilitated by that family. The Dundases' patronage of the Military Survey encourages us to understand the project as a private-public partnership and supports contentions that Enlightenment mapping resulted from complex social networks straddling military and civilian life.     

A Review of “The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government,” and “Adam Smith as Theologian”

Abstract

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has asserted in several writings that present-day democratic governing institutions fail to incorporate beliefs about the common good and deliberation. However, objections can be raised against MacIntyre's characterization based on research from a new field in political science, Deliberative Democracy. Empirical research in that field shows that the common good and deliberation still do have a place in the United States Congress. It also shows that what James Madison argued at the founding of the country still holds, that representative deliberative bodies aid in transforming arguments for private goods into arguments for the common good; they refine and enlarge the public views.     

Does the Law and the Constitution of the Family Have to Change?

The law and constitution of the family has been targeted for transformation in recent years, leading most notably to the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, mandating same-sex marriage as a matter of constitutional law. In this essay I undertake a thought experiment, asking how advocates of traditional marriage ought to want the law of marriage to change in light of this development. I begin by reviewing the argument for legal change sketched by Aquinas and then applying it to developments concerning marriage in modern America. Next I sketch the natural-law argument on behalf of traditional marriage. Finally, I turn to the case of Michael H. v. Gerald D., in which the Supreme Court upheld a statutory reiteration of the common-law presumption that the husband of the mother is the father of her child, against a challenge from the biological father, suggesting that this case, long admired by conservatives, needs to be reconsidered—and that the dissent in the recent Indian Adoption Case recognizing a constitutional right of biological parents might prove useful to the restoration of marriage law.     

Family and influence to the south of Normandy in the eleventh century: the lordship of Bellême

The Bellême family were among the most important of the new families to emerge in the unsettled conditions of northern France in the tenth century. They illustrate well the manner in which those families extended their influence at the expense of declining central authorities. The nature of their relations with their overlords, the counts of Maine and the dukes of Normandy, is examined and a new chronology proposed for the complex divisions of estates among the family. It is suggested that family quarrels of the 1040s and 1050s seriously weakened their position and that the lordship was easily dominated by Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou, the most powerful figure in mid-eleventh century northern France. A reversal is traced in the pro-Angevin sympathies of Bishop No of Sées, the last surviving male member of the family, after the failure of the coalition of Angevins and Capetians against the duke of Normandy in 1054. However, it was not until the estates of the family were eventually reunited in 1071 on the succession of Ivo's niece, Mabel, and her Norman husband, that the lordship came completely under the influence of the ascendant Normandy.     

The evolution of the responsibility to protect: at a crossroads?

The Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P), now ten years old, has been widely accepted at the international level. As the books under review demonstrate, debates around its legitimacy are over. Instead, we see a developing second generation of literature focusing on how the R2P needs to be understood more concretely in both academic and policy terms, as well as how it affects the linked issues of humanitarian intervention and state‐building. Within this literature, we see new and important questions emerging. These include how and when we should intervene and whether we can be successful at it; how we can assist states to ensure they fulfill their own responsibilities towards their populations; and where international authority lies. Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are hard ones. Implementation, and how it reflects embedded culture at the international level, may be as hard—if not harder—as introducing the doctrine originally.     

‘… For it was founded upon a Rock’: Gibraltar and the Purposes of Empire in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

In 1853–54, cholera in Britain forced the leadership at the tiny British fortress colony of Gibraltar to make a choice. Should the colony quarantine ships from Britain or leave the maritime frontier open to ships from the metropolitan centre of empire? The first choice secured imperial communication between London and the Rock, but it also jeopardised Gibraltar's land access to Southern Spain, as the failure to quarantine British ships would surely force Spanish authorities to close their border to protect against pandemic disease. Contrapuntally, the decision to protect Gibraltarian trade with Spain undermined any substantive claim to British ‘control’ over its colonial possession. The choice here was highlighted by Gibraltar's colonial governor, General Sir Robert Gardiner, who insisted that Gibraltar be governed as a British colony and kept open to the colonial centre at all costs, and Gibraltar's merchant community, a group that feared the economic consequences of a frontier closure at Gibraltar enough to favour keeping the Rock's quarantine policies in line with Spanish regulations rather than those set by Britain. As a result of this medical dispute, Gibraltar became a pivotal location, a metonym for a much broader conversation about the uses and purposes of Britain's overseas empire in the middle years of the nineteenth century.     

‘Get into a Crack Force and earn £20 a Month and all found…’: The Influence of the Palestine Police upon Colonial Policing 1922–19481

The development of a ‘colonial’ police model has typically been linked to the Irish Constabularies. Little consideration has been given to the influences of the Palestine Police. The British section of the Palestine Gendarmerie was created in 1920 with the recruitment of former members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Black and Tans. Meanwhile training for colonial police officers continued in Northern Ireland until 1932. At this point it was the Palestine Police that provided the recruiting and training ground for senior colonial policemen until its disbandment in 1948. Thereafter, its ‘colonial’ policing practices and traditions were carried throughout the British Empire and Commonwealth by its former members.     

Defence,the Family and the Battler: The Democratic Labor Party and its Legacy∗

The split in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) of the mid-1950s had a lasting impact on both the political and industrial wings of the labour movement. In electoral terms the creation of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), and the DLP's second-preference strategy, in particular, had adverse consequences for the ALP. This article re-examines the DLP in terms as a political party, a promotional pressure group and as part of a social movement. The article argues that as a party, the DLP was a failure largely due to its narrow focus on anti-communist defence and foreign policies. But as part of a social movement, it was far more successful and its legacy was still evident in 2007, and was found in the non-labourist social conservatism of the Howard government.     

The Media and the Military: Australian War Correspondents and the Appointment of a Corps Commander 1918—A Case Study

Abstract

‘You are unfortunate in being prisoners of a country whose living standards are much lower than yours. You will often consider yourselves mistreated, while we will think of you as being treated well.’ Unidentified Japanese officer, 1942