Women in Praise of Women: Female Poets and Female Patrons in Qajar Iran

This study examines the poetry of two women of nineteenth-century Iran—one royal, one non-royal—and the women patrons for whom they composed praise poetry. Through the reconstruction of female-centered patronage networks and associated female-only performance venues, and via an examination of the active roles played by female patrons both in affairs of state and in the management of the immense royal harem, this study highlights the various ways in which members of several generations of women in Qajar Iran were involved in the production, dissemination and appreciation of poetry. It is argued here that these patronage and poetry production networks should be read as evidence of a female-centered literary tradition, one that was in dialogue with (and often intersected) the dominant male tradition; one that empowered the women actors within it to create a sisterhood of poets through which their art could be passed on from mother to daughter, and from daughter to granddaughter (and occasionally from mother to son).     

Human Encumbrances: Political Violence and the Great Irish Famine

Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492–1797 by Peter Hulme. London: Methuen, 1986. Pp. xi + 399; maps and illus. £25.

The Aggressions of the French at Tahiti and other Islands in the Pacific, by George Pritchard, edited by Paul De Deckker. Auckland: Oxford University Press (New Zealand), 1985. Pp.253. £35.00.

A History of Christianity in India 1707–1858 by Stephen Neill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985. Pp. xiv + 578. £45.

Out of the House of Bondage: Runaways, Resistance and Marronage in Africa and the New World edited by Gad Heuman. London: Frank Cass &; Co., 1986. Pp. vii + 199; maps. £19.50.

Victorian Shipping, Business and Imperial Policy: Donald Currie, the Castle Line and Southern Africa by A.N. Porter. Royal Historical Society Studies in History 49. Woodbridge: Boydell &; Brewer, 1986. Pp. 332. £29.50.

Speculators and Patriots: Essays in Business Biography edited by R.P.T. Davenport‐Hines, London: Frank Cass &; Co.Ltd., 1986. Pp. viii + 139. £21.00.

Julius Vogel, Business Politician by Raewyn Dalziel. Auckland: Auckland University Press and Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp. 368, illus. NZ $45.00.

Kipling and ‘Orientalism’ by B.J. Moore‐Gilbert. London: Croom Helm, 1986. Pp. 228; £18.95.

The Imperial Imagination, Magic and Myth in Kipling's India by Lewis D. Wurgraft. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1986. Pp.xxi + 211; £7.95.

A Short History of Tasmania by L.L. Robson. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp.xii + 189. £7.95.

Horace Plunkett, Co‐operation and Politics: An Irish Biography by Trevor West. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1986. Pp. xviii + 288, illus. £12.95.

The Canadian Career of the Fourth Earl of Minto: The Education of a Viceroy by Carman Miller. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1980. Pp.225.

Lord Minto's Canadian Papers: A Selection of the Public and Private Papers of the Fourth Earl of Minto, 1898–1904 edited by Paul Stevens and John T. Saywell. Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1981. Vol. I. Pp. lxxix + 467.

Robert Thorne Coryndon: Proconsular Imperialism in Southern and Eastern Africa, 1897–1925 by Christopher P. Youe. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1986. Pp. xiv + 241; maps, tables, and illus. $29.95.

The Ambiguities of Dependence in South Africa: Class, Nationalism, and the State in Twentieth‐Century Natal by Shula Marks. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. Pp. ix + 171; illus. £13.75.

Oil Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century by Fiona Venn. London: Macmillan, 1986. Pp.xii + 228. £7.95 (paperback); £25.00 (hardback).

The Third Reich and the Palestine Question by F.R. Nicosia. London: I.B. Tauris, 1986. Pp.343. £24.50.

Old Sinister: A Memoir of Sir Arthur Richards, GCMG by Richard Peel. Privately printed, n.d. Pp. 196, £8.

Yanks Down Under 1941–45: The American Impact on Australia by E. Daniel Potts and Annette Potts. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985. Pp. xxiii + 455, illus. £29.50.

Anthony Eden: A Biography by David Carlton. London: Allen &; Unwin Paperbacks, 1986. Pp.528: illus. £8.95.

Anthony Eden by Robert Rhodes James. London: Weidenfeld &; Nicolson, 1986. Pp. xiv + 665; map and illus. £16.95.

The English‐Speaking Alliance‐ Britain, the United States, the Dominions and the Cold War 1945–1951 by Ritchie Ovendale. London: George Allen &; Unwin, 1985. Pp. 308; bibliography and index. £30.

Black Africa 1945–1980: Economic Decolonisation and Arrested Development by D.K. Fieldhouse. London: Allen &; Unwin Ltd., 1986. Pp.xix + 260. £22.50 (hardback), £9.95 (paperback).     

Oracular Ventriloquism: Political Theology in The Female American

ABSTRACT

This essay scrutinizes a scene of colonial religious conversion that appears in the pseudonymous 1767 novel, The Female American. The protagonist's use of ventriloquism and indigenous technology to create the illusion of divine intervention is considered in the light of Carl Schmitt's suggestion that secular political power inherits and translates forms of pre-modern theological authority. The novel's dual investments in proto-feminist literary representation and Anglican missionary proselytism are in tension with one another and help to explain the central character's ambivalence toward her inventive mode of conversion. Hence, the novel dramatizes the Euro-colonial disavowal of theological and decisionist force while, at the same time, hinting at the democratizing potential of forms of fictional address.     

Kuwait,Political Violence and the Syrian War

Kuwait’s support of civilians in war-torn Syria has been commended by the international community. In addition, the Gulf state has joined US-led coalitions against the ‘Islamic State’ and affirmed many international agreements designed to choke off international assistance to militias operating in Syria. In 2015, Kuwait paid a heavy price for its involvement, becoming a victim of IS-affiliated terrorism. Whilst this suggests that Kuwait’s position on radical Islamist movements involved in the Syrian conflict is clear cut, this article will argue that Kuwait’s government has had to balance this official position against domestic support for elements of the radical Islamist opposition in Syria. These cross-cutting tensions were underscored by the US designation of the state as the ‘epicentre’ of private fund raising for militias in Syria. To explore these contradictions, this article will analyse Kuwait’s engagement with the Syrian war, its new anti-terror legislation and the tensions between the official and unofficial views on support for foreign militias. This analysis will highlight the challenges the Kuwait government has faced in addressing unofficial Kuwaiti engagement with the radical Islamist opposition in Syria.     

Church, Space and Conflict: Religious Co-Existence and Political Communication in Seventeenth-Century Switzerland

This article sets out to explore how a local quarrel in theGrafschaft of Baden, a bi-confessional Swiss county, occasionedby efforts to install a separate font for Protestant parishioners,activated larger constitutional and confessional tensions betweenthe Catholic and Protestant cantons of the Swiss Confederation.The article reconstructs the lengthy political negotiationscaused by the rearrangement of church space since the Landfriedenof 1531: this treaty had enshrined bi-confessionalism in theSwiss Confederation and had established the duties and rightsof both confessions, although to the disadvantage of the ReformedProtestants. It had also transformed the consecrated space ofthe church into a stage for political action by the cantons.From 1531 onwards, changes in religious belief and observancewere subject to the will of the supreme governing authority.The article shows that local conflicts over the arrangementand furnishing of certain church spaces can give us fascinatinginsights into political practice, the establishment of socialorder and the handling of denominational differences withinthe Swiss Confederation. It attempts to contribute to our understandingof early modern political history by using concepts from culturalhistory and communication theory in which politics is closelylinked to social and confessional processes generating meaningand order.