Britishness, asylum-seekers and the northern working class: 1851

The arrival of a small group of Polish-Hungarian refugees in Liverpool in 1851 reveals a lot about contemporary political views in the United Kingdom. The refugees were members of General Wysocki's Polish legion, which had fought Russia and Austria during the Hungarian revolution in 1848-49. While British liberals had hailed the nationalist cause from a distance, they were made uneasy by the presence of the refugee republicans with radical ideas. For that reason, British liberals worked with the government to try to send the Hungarian refugees to the United States. On the other hand, tradesmen and artisans in Liverpool - who were drawn to the social democratic ideas of liberty expressed by the revolutionaries of 1848 - organized a successful campaign to grant the refugees asylum.     

A Balancing Act: Domestic Pressures and International Systemic Constraints in the Foreign Policies of the Great Powers, 1848-1851

During the revolutions of 1848 and their aftermath, the governmentsof France, Austria and Prussia, respectively, were exposed toextraordinary pressure from a variety of nationalist movementswith fundamentally different agendas. They had difficult choicesto make as to whether they let their foreign policies be determinedby domestic concerns or heed the rules of the internationalsystem—it was hardly possible to do both. As a resultthey performed a ‘balancing act’ on a tight rope:a wrong step could cause their fall, either because they wouldbe overthrown by their own people, or they would risk war withother Great Powers. Those not affected by a revolution in 1848,i.e. conservative Russia and progressive Britain, had to opteither for backing countries with political tendencies similarto their own, or for simply upholding the balance of power andinternational rules. The author concludes that the ‘primacyof foreign policy’—within this context more preciselythe primacy of the international system's rules and the balanceof power—helps to understand the actual foreign policiesof four of the five Great Powers during the European crisisof 1848–51. Austria's government, the one country tryingto overthrow the balance of power and change the nature of thesystem, was effectively checked. The rules of the post-1815international system were still an efficacious tool for discipliningstates.     

Gender, representation, and power in San ethnography and rock art

Interpretation of San rock art has been heavily dependent on the various San ethnographies, particularly those of the /Xam, who inhabited the northern Cape Province, South Africa, until the early 20th century. A different reading of these ethnographies enables another avenue of interpretation: the interlinked themes of gender, sexuality, and rain appear to be as important in the art as shamanistic elements (reference to which has been a key development in understanding the art). While interpretation centering on the trance dance, recorded ethnographically from recent and contemporary San groups, has been most productive, many features of the art may be related to other aspects of San culture—to the female initiation ceremony, social organization, and the complex of notions and practices surrounding feminine gender and female sexuality.     

武则天为已逝父母写经发愿文及相关敦煌写卷综合研究

本文首先录文、整理了武则天为已逝父母抄写《妙法莲华经》三千部的发愿文、为已逝父母抄写《金刚般若波罗蜜经》三千部的发愿文、为太子李弘抄写《一切道经》三十六部的序文,将三篇保存于敦煌写本中的武则天佚文加以发现和复原,为学界提供新资料。其次是论证和确认这三篇文章的作者为武则天。第三是探讨了由整理这三篇文章引出的一些相关问题,提出了一些看法,特别是将敦煌藏经洞这一批成亨至仪凤中宫廷写经的来源交代得比较清晰,基本搞清了与此关联的一些细节。     

Bone weight,meat yield estimates and cod (Gadus morhua): A preliminary study of the weight method

Past approaches to the Weight Method (use of the weight of excavated bone assemblages to evaluate the relative potential meat yield of the animals from which they came) are critically reviewed. They do not account for both inter-taxon and intra-taxon variability in the relationship between bone weight and total body or soft tissue weight. Critics of the Weight Method have assumed that these problems are insurmountable. It is argued here that they can be overcome practically. Solutions lie in the integration of classic Weight Method approaches, which assume a consistent ratio of bone weight to body weight between different taxonomic and size groups, with the understanding of animal scaling provided by studies of skeletal mass allometry. Allometric equations derived from original data (regarding cod, Gadus morhua) and available from published sources (regarding mammals and birds) are used to illustrate this argument. Three practical approaches to the Weight Method are suggested and briefly explored, using bone weight data from Earls' Bu, a Norse site in Orkney, Scotland, as a case study.