The Reputation of the Slave Trader in Southern History and the Social Memory of the South

Proslavery propagandists developed a standard line on the domestic slave trade: the trade was of only marginal importance to the system of slavery, and the trader was an outcast. In recent decades, historians have recognised a strong propaganda element in this position but—even in recent specialist studies of the trade—the assumption has been that notions of paternalism must have caused owners to feel a measure of unease in dealing with the trader. The present study brings new evidence to dispute this assumption and suggests that traders found no difficulty in being accepted as respected citizens of the Old South. The essay points to two key elements in the proslavery position on the trade—first, the notion of the trader as outcast, and second the concept that black people were not capable of deep and lasting emotional suffering. The ‘trader as outcast’ operated at the level of propaganda and was not really believed: the concept of superficial black emotions operated at a deeper level and was internalised by owners. Notions about shallow black emotions allowed slaveholders to break up families and to deal comfortably with the trader while still maintaining a self‐image as benevolent paternalists.     

The Johnson Club and Late Victorian Literary Culture

In 1902 both the Order of Merit and the British Academy came into being. As David Cannadine has noted, Gladstonian liberals including Lord Rosebery, John Morley and Sir G.O. Trevelyan occupied a key segment of the newly formed elite with several others who were admitted to one or both of the new groups, belonged to the Club, the private society founded by Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds in 1764. In fact several members took a leading part in the negotiations leading to the establishment of the Academy. The article seeks to demonstrate the significance of the Club in promoting what Cannadine terms ‘liberal and literary culture’ in the later nineteenth century. A detailed examination of the membership shows a broad array of high achievers in the arts and sciences, as well as many individuals who held important public office. In particular, the Club elected a remarkable group of distinguished Victorian historians, including Macaulay, Grote, Froude, Lecky, Acton, Maine, Stubbs and Creighton. At the end of the century, several members had served in Gladstone's administrations, and as a solid phalanx of liberal politician/writers they provided the base from which the new recipients of the Order of Merit and Fellows of British Academy would be chosen. My conclusion is that the group held a central place in the intellectual and literary world of Britain around 1900, with its extensive connections to the political power base, and understandably provided a nucleus of members for both the Order of Merit and the British Academy     

Southern Farmers and Their Stories: Memory and Meaning in Oral History

Melissa Walker, an associate professor of history at ConverseCollege, author of All We Knew Was To Farm: Rural Women in theUpcountry South, 1919–1941 (Baltimore, MD: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 2000), winner of the Willie Lee Rose Prizefrom the Southern Association for Women Historians, presentsan intellectual tour de force in Southern Farmers and TheirStories: Memory and Meaning in Oral History, part of the NewDirections in Southern History Series from the University ofKentucky     

The Sky Came Down: Social Movements and Personhood in Mekeo Society1

This paper argues that the Mekeo cargo-cult centered on a young woman named Filo has to be understood in relation to local models of personhood and Mekeo social organization. It is argued that colonization brought a split between these two spheres of social life causing the movement, while the specific form taken by the movement has to be seen in relation to Mekeo models of personhood. Furthermore, the paper traces the social changes brought about by this movement to present day cargo activities that incorporate God, Jesus, The Virgin Mary and the Saints. Lastly it analyses how these beliefs compete for social hegemony with more traditionalist practices centered around the Mekeo sorcery complex.     

Abstracts The Culture Popularization and Social Progression

Zhang Guogang （ p. 1 ） The ethical system centering on Confucianism was only one school of philosophy among the many in the pre-Qin period. However, through the central government＇s recognition of Confucian theories as the orthodoxy in the Han Dynasty, classical Confucianism became the official ideology. In the later period of the Eastern Han Dynasty, aristocratic families, whose members studied secured officials for generations, became the the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasti Confucian classics and elite of society. During es, elite families formed their particular household disciplines and moral standards. In the Tang and Song Dynasties, when elite families were separated from official rankings, their ethical system became more accepted by the society. Elite families of power and influence no longer dominated the cultural circle. Actually, the decline of the elite family and the popularization of elite ethics were synchronized processes, during which, the localized Buddhism played an important role. The neo Confucianism, which rose later, was actually an ethical reconstruction of the popularized ethics and culture.     

Ordinary Writing and Scribal Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain: Memory Books

This article is a study of the survival of scribal culture in nineteenth-century Spain in the form of the so-called ‘memory books’ (libros de memorias). I analyse their relationship with the educational developments of the period, as well as the material characteristics and the content of these texts, in order to define their typical features. These texts were the products of hybrid writing practices, in the sense that several elements were frequently superimposed on one another: economic news, personal, family and social events and even historical details. Hence the similarity between the memory books and other genres such as account books (libros de cuentas) and family books (libros de familia). Lastly, I will examine some nineteenth-century examples as epigones of a writing genre which had its origins in the later Middle Ages and Early Modern period.

“One morning, while tidying up the bedroom, Rosa opened the drawer in the trunk where Cholo kept his papers. There she found the papers about the property and, in a corner, together with the Family Book and the social security booklet, the papers from the bank […]. And she was about to put it away when it occurred to her to take off the elastic band around the big folder which Cholo had kept from his time in Switzerland. There were things, names and so on that she didn’t understand, but in the middle there were also some of the cards she had sent from Aran.”1 1.?Manuel Rivas, En salvaje compañía (1994) (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1998), 100–101. View all notes