Knowable geographies? The reporting of incendiarism in the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English provincial press

Extant copies of provincial newspapers are the most important source for understanding both the form and geographies of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century protest. Such sources have, however, received remarkably little in the way of critical reflection. In relation to long-running debates about the supposed transition from overt forms of protest to covert forms in the 1790s such uncritical attention has tended to produce oversimplified geographies and has obscured the complex nature of the resort to protest. This article seeks to shed light onto these issues through the specific case-study of arson, the most important of all forms of covert protest. Through an examination of fire pathology, the mechanics of reporting, geographies of newspaper publishing, and the spatialities of reporting, this article suggests that histories of arson are flawed not only because of the difficulty in determining the precise cause of fires but also because of the complex webs of newspaper publication and reporting which left large areas of countryside under-or un-reported.     

The Holocaust and the birth of Israel in British,Swedish and Finnish press discourse, 1947–1948

This article examines the way in which the Holocaust was linked to the process of the birth of Israel between 1947 and 1948 in the mainstream British, Swedish and Finnish press. By utilising a framework of comparative cultural history, this essay seeks to understand why different countries responded to the suffering of the Jews during the Second World War in such diverse ways. This essay also seeks to question the popular belief that the two events were intimately linked, and that the link was recognised in a straightforward manner. Hence, the study argues that although the press coverage sometimes managed to establish the connection between the two events, more typically the news was domesticated. In other words, the news had a transcendental and meta-historical character, working as an extension to each country's own self-understanding of Jews, Zionism and the Holocaust.     

Tribal diplomacy and frontier territoriality in modern China: Hunza and Nationalist China, 1947–1948

In the immediate post-World War II period, the Chinese Nationalist regime was eager to consolidate its position and formulate a proactive policy toward China's traditional Central Asian peripheries. Postwar Nationalist China's momentary confidence in extending central influence into the Pamir and Kashmir regions can be understood in such a geopolitical context. The withdrawal of British colonial rule in India further increased Nanjing's optimism about bringing Hunza, a Muslim tribal state in northwest Kashmir, under its territorial and administrative sway. To prevent possible infiltration of Soviet influence in Central Asia, the Nationalists at one point even considered resorting to the restoration of imperial “tributary ties” as a political expedient in their dealings with postwar China's frontier territorial issues. A careful examination of the Nationalists' previously unknown abortive attempt to reclaim Hunza enables us to fill an important scholarly lacuna in the history of modern China's external relations with its South and Central Asian neighbors. This reevaluation, moreover, may also lead us to further reconsider modern China's intriguing and complicated frontier diplomatic and territorial scenario, as well as how that scenario could have been manipulated by a certain group of ambitious distant Nationalist border officials during the course of postwar China's problematic frontier undertakings.     

The Anglican patient: Robert Boyle and the “Medicalised Self” in early modern England

In Occasional Reflections upon the Accidents of an Ague (1665), Robert Boyle investigates the symptoms, signs, and causes of a vexing quartan fever. Boyle’s sickness inspires an exploration of the promises and perils of medicine, in which he tests both regimen and remedy. As he writes through his suffering, Boyle recognises that the eclecticism, eloquence, and flexibility of medical thought provide ways of preserving and re-describing agency and interest, ways of shaping and organising the self. As an “Anglican patient,” Boyle probes counsel, temperance, repentance, and fears of relapse, seeking a via media between enlisting medical assistance and enjoining spiritual rectitude, between curing and caring. His meditations interiorise the world in order to discover the social dimensions, and shared vocabularies, of suffering and the self, the latter embedded in conversations devoted to cure.     

The English Interpreters in Dahomey, 1843–1852

ABSTRACT

Commercial and diplomatic relations between Africans and Europeans in West Africa in the pre-colonial period depended on the existence of persons who had sufficient knowledge of both European and African languages to be able to act as interpreters between the parties, and such persons were more usually Africans than Europeans. This article collates biographical information on four persons who served as interpreters to successive British visitors to the kingdom of Dahomey between 1843 and 1852, including official government missions seeking to persuade the Dahomian king to cooperate in the suppression of the Atlantic slave trade. The lives of such men may be thought of as involving the ‘transcending’ of ‘boundaries’, not only in acting as brokers in contacts between Africans and Europeans, but also in themselves occupying an ambiguous liminal position between the two. In their role as interpreters, they were subject to contradictory pressures, from the Dahomian state and the various European interests involved in the negotiations, and at the same time sought to advance their own personal interests. Beyond the intrinsic interest of these biographies, this article is conceived as a methodological exploration of the possibility of extracting an African voice and perspective from mainly European sources.     

Changes in Japanese strategy in 1939–1940 and the internationalization of the Sino–Japanese War

In the early stage of the Sino–Japanese War, Japan was trying hard to limit the conflict to within a scope where it could be resolved bilaterally between only the two nations involved. However, her actual behavior was in stark contrast to her wishful desire to be at peace with the United States, pushing the latter step by step instead in the direction of aiding China and thwarting Japan. Caught in a dilemma created as the United States abrogated the American–Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, and faced with the changes in the European situation, Japan’s policy makers were eventually pushed by their obsession with the “New East Asian Order” and by their yearning for the “Extended New East Asian Order” which was to include Southeast Asia, deciding to steer the Sino–Japanese War in the direction of “international resolution,” which was just an alternate route to the same goal sought by China. Subsequently, not only did Japan refuse to withdraw from China, she actually took one step further in an expansion southwards, trying to kill several birds with one stone. The war thus spilled over from China to encompass a much greater area. In this process, Japan’s diplomatic corps was often several steps ahead of the military, reflecting the carefully considered background in Japanese policymaking.