“De-Risking” East London: Olympic Regeneration Planning 2000–2012

The concept of legacy has emerged in the twenty-first century as a dominant narrative within mega-event projects. Accordingly, event hosts now engage in detailed legacy planning. This often means creating new agencies and new plans; something that has important implications for wider urban governance and planning. This paper focuses on initiatives attached to the 2012 Olympic Games in London. One of the main aims of staging the Games was regenerating East London; and the pre-event planning (2000–2012) associated with this legacy promise is the focus here. Using evidence collected from primary and secondary research, the paper records how the governance and planning arrangements evolved over 2000–2012. These were designed to achieve regeneration effects at different scales; in the Olympic Park, the fringes of the Park and in the wider sub-region. The paper acknowledges the pioneering work undertaken in London, but also identifies the key issues, challenges and dilemmas involved. The paper concludes that Olympic regeneration planning has rescaled regeneration governance in London, privileging city-wide and national stakeholders. It also suggests that, rather than a process driven by corporate interests and public–private partnerships, London 2012 regeneration planning is best understood as government intervention that de-risked East London for private-sector investors.     

Dr. C.E. Brown-Séquard, M.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.S., London: the casting of the die

In 1858 Dr. Brown-Séquard arrived in London. During his stay there, he was appointed physician at the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic (now the National Hospital), and was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physician's of London, as well as Fellow of the Royal society. During this time he also published his 'Course of Lectures on the Physiology and Pathology of the Central Nervous System' an early exposition of what is now know as 'his' syndrome. During his time in London, Dr. Brown-Séquard made many well-known acquaintances, amongst others Charles Darwin, T.H. Huxley, and Louis Pasteur. Three years after his appointment as physician at the National Hospital, he left London. Increasingly, he was to abondon fashionable practice to concentrate on his study of what are now known as the endocrinal glands. In this way, he became a pioneer of the study of endocrinology.     

Lessons in Seeing: Art,Religion and Class in the East End of London, 1881–1898

In 1881 the Reverend Samuel Barnett, Anglican incumbent of St Jude's Church, Whitechapel, established the Whitechapel Fine Art Exhibitions with his wife Henrietta. These quickly became an important part of the parochial programme ofSt Jude's. The Barnetts followed the art theories of John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold and argued that exhibiting famous and beautiful paintings would revive the spirituality of poor East Enders. In order to test this theory, they introduced the practice of ‘Voting for Your Favourite Picture’. The result, however, did not bear out straightforwardly the Barnetts' belief that paintings are ‘Windows into the other World’. The gap between the intended outcome and the actual reception of the Whitechapel Exhibitions reveals that, although they may not have adopted the Barnetts' religious aestheticism, working-class visitors were keen to engage with art on their own terms.     

Coffin furniture in London c. 1700–1850: the establishment of tradition in the material culture of the grave

SUMMARY: This article explores the development of coffin furniture in 18th- and early 19th-century London through analysis of the styles and motifs of items in contemporary trade catalogues and excavated assemblages. Developments in coffin furniture were compared with styles of headstones and monuments of the same period. This study confirmed and added detail to the disjunction between below- and above-ground funerary material culture, showing that coffin furniture was stylistically distinct from contemporary funerary monuments and developed at a slower rate. It is suggested that this was influenced by the development of undertaking and the mediated relationship between producers and consumers.     

T. A. Coghlan,London Opinion and the Politics of Anglo- Australian Finance, 1905–09

This article examines the interactions between the opinions of London financiers and politics in New South Wales and the Commonwealth of Australia at the onset of the twentieth century. It focuses in particular on the appointment and early activities of Timothy Augustine Coghlan, who, with several breaks, held the post of agent-general for New South Wales between 1905 and 1926, although he is better known as a pioneering statistician and economic historian. In particular the article examines the context surrounding his appointment, his attempts to improve his state's image and his reflections on the way debt curtailed Australian independence. Through this the article contributes to the ongoing debate surrounding Cain and Hopkins' writings on structural and relational power and the ‘rules of the game’, arguing that these are useful starting points for the analysis of a pervasive politics of finance within the British World.     

The Agency Houses: British Mercantile Enterprise in the Far East c. 1780–1920

Abstract

This article explores the use of flax for fibre in Croatia. It concentrates on traditional flax growing and processing techniques being revived through The Flax Project. Traditional flax varieties utilised in Croatia, together with ongoing research to find the most suitable flax cultivars for the Croatian climate today, are discussed. Locally produced flax was widely used to make folk costumes and household linens. The stages of turning the processed flax fibre into linen cloth are described, including spinning, weaving, decorative techniques, bleaching, dyeing, and pleating through to its aftercare including washing, ironing, storage and related issues of conservation.     

Has the Cold War returned to East Asia?

The rise of a non-democratic China as the world ‘s second largest economy, still officially subscribing to Communism or ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ as its ideology1^?1 In Xi Jinping's first speech as the new Chinese leader, after assuming his position as Party Secretary at the 18^th Party Congress in November 2012, he declared that, “we will ensure that our Party will remain at the core of leadership in advancing the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Xinhua report on 19 November 2012. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012cpc/2012-11/19/content_15939817.htm. By adopting the term “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” – zhongguo tese de shehui zhuyi, the Chinese Communist Party has argued that it has not abandoned socialism by introducing foreign capital and the opening up the Chinese economy to market forces. See for example a report on Deng Xiaoping's remarks to visiting Japanese delegation in 1984, “Build Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” People's Daily, 30 June 1984. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/dengxp/vol3/text/c1220.html., has raised the spectre of the return of the Cold War to Asia with the United States and China on opposing sides, with China backed by Russia, its former Cold War ally. But to what extent are there historical parallels between the Cold War and the current East Asian international relations system?     

Stature and frailty during the Black Death: the effect of stature on risks of epidemic mortality in London,A.D. 1348–1350

Recent research has shown that preexisting health condition affected an individual's risk of dying during the 14th-century Black Death. However, a previous study of the effect of adult stature on risk of mortality during the epidemic failed to find a relationship between the two; this result is perhaps surprising given the well-documented inverse association between stature and mortality in human populations. We suggest that the previous study used an analytical approach that was more complex than was necessary for an assessment of the effect of adult stature on risk of mortality. This study presents a reanalysis of data on adult stature and age-at-death during the Black Death in London, 1348–1350 AD. The results indicate that short stature increased risks of mortality during the medieval epidemic, consistent with previous work that revealed a negative effect of poor health on risk of mortality during the Black Death. However, the results from a normal, non-epidemic mortality comparison sample do not show an association between stature and risks of mortality among adults under conditions of normal mortality. Fisher's exact tests, used to determine whether individuals who were growing during the Great Famine of 1315–1322 were more likely to be of short stature than those who did not endure the famine, revealed no differences between the two groups, suggesting that the famine was not a source of variation in stature among those who died during the Black Death.     

East is East,and West is West? Currency iconography as nation-branding in the wider Europe

This article considers European banknote iconography as an indicator of national branding choices from the early twentieth century up to the present. Systematic quantitative content analysis demonstrates that the values and ontologies expressed on Central/East European banknotes have historically tracked closely with the trends visible on their West European counterparts. This pattern is evident not just since the end of the Cold War, but indeed right from the founding of the modern Central/East European states about a century ago. Even during the Cold War, it did not take long for the trends on Western banknotes to appear on Central/East European banknotes as well. Thus, contrary to the conventional assumption of a deep-rooted normative gulf separating the national identity discourses of so-called “New” and “Old” Europe, the article underscores the fact of intense, longstanding normative cross-pollination between them.     

The antiquity of the nation? Critical reflections from the ancient Near East

Debates over the antiquity/modernity of the nation have often made use of evidence from the ancient Near East. In doing so, these debates employ the distant past principally as a ‘mirror’ of the present, using contrast or similitude to argue for a particular understanding of nations and nationalism since the eighteenth century. In this manner, both ‘Modernist’ and ‘Perennialist’ approaches incorporate pre‐modern contexts into the categories and priorities of modernity. This article critically reviews several influential studies on nations and nationalism in light of ancient Near Eastern evidence in order to highlight the narrowing of possibilities that this practice involves. I argue that the cost of this narrowing is not so much a misunderstood past as a mystified present.     

Locating the “People Without History” in Histories of the Ancient Near East

Three books discussed here illustrate multidisciplinary approaches to studying ancient civilizations and a range of methodological and theoretical perspectives. They suggest that in addition to the traditional focus on elites and urban origins, we should analyze nonelites and smaller scale communities. I concur that focusing on elites gives an incomplete and inaccurate picture of life and culture in the ancient Near East. Instead, these books shed light on the “people without history” in the ancient Near East. This “social history” must be integrated into economic and political models of past cultures to fully understand ancient civilizations.