In-migration and diphtheria mortality among children in the Sundsvall region during the epidemics of the 1880s

While many works have examined urban mortality rates in nineteenth-century Europe, much less attention has been placed on disease patterns in the peripheral areas surrounding these population centers. This study demonstrates that during the Swedish diphtheria epidemic of the early 1880s, mortality rates among children living in the industrial parishes on the outskirts of the town of Sundsvall exceeded those found in the town itself. The epidemic was fueled by the mass in-migration of laborers and their families from distant provinces who sought work in the region's sawmills. Thus, in contrast to the common pattern of disease entering through a port city and spreading into the interior, in this case diphtheria followed the paths of migrants through the rural parishes of the Sundsvall region to the sawmills and then finally into the town itself. This spatial pattern was reversed in the late fall when migrants returned home. Conflicts within the medical profession regarding how best to prevent or contain diphtheria, popular suspicion and distrust of local physicians, and the introduction of the disease into a population with no prior contact with it, all helped increase the number of young corpses.     

The geopolitics of the Irish-Catholic parish in nineteenth-century Montreal

Irish Catholics in nineteenth-century Montreal, as a minority within a larger French-Catholic population, encountered a cultural environment very different from that experienced by their compatriots in most cities of eastern North America. In contrast with the more typical situation in which the majority position of Irish Catholics enabled them to exercise leadership in local Catholic affairs, in Montreal they had to overcome numerous obstacles in order to obtain churches and parishes they could call their own. Diocesan and parish records demonstrate that these struggles, in particular the controversy created by the subdivision of the extensive parish of Notre Dame in the late 1860s were defining events in the formulation of Irish-Catholic ethnic consciousness in Montreal. Constructivist interpretations of ethnicity have drawn attention to the way in which conflictual (and less frequently accommodative) relations among groups contribute to the formation and preservation of ethnicities. Drawing on this approach, it is argued that religious institutions acted as catalysts for debates that encouraged Montreal's Irish Catholics to define themselves in relation to the French-Catholic majority. These debates had an important territorial dimension and ultimately led to the entrenchment of ethnic boundaries in the urban landscape through the creation of separate parishes for the two groups.     

Models of medieval and pre-medieval territorial organisation: with a select bibliography

The author synthesizes some Swedish investigations into area- and form-planning of administrative units, parishes and divisions of these, as well as of areas for clearing which were already divided up among the part-owners. The areas, which are described in a metrological notation system based on original length-measures and comparable area-measures, are combined with the corresponding cameralistic units of tax assessments. These have been reconstructed directly from medieval and sixteenth-century soures including evidence of much older relict units. The combined geometrical and cameralistic material gives the basis for models of (1) the spatial structure of rural landscape in different phases of evolution and (2) their evolution through centuries, the area of arable land or arable and meadow together being the key variable. Finally, it is shown that a regional planning system, which was probably introduced in parts of Middle Sweden in the eleventh century metrologically coincides with an organisation system probably also used in Northern Wales in the tenth century.     

The Excavation of a Brick Clamp at Shotesham St. Mary,Norfolk, 1969

Abstract

Rescue excavations in the small village of Llanmaes investigated an area of earthworks indicating the presence of several buildings. Medieval evidence was largely confined to finds. Three late 17th-century properties were examined; it is possible that they represent a planned development on the east side of the village green in response to population expansion in the Vale of Glamorgan. The buildings are of simple two-roomed plan, and would appear to be tenements of low status. One of the buildings produced evidence of smithying. A large group of metal finds of agricultural and domestic use was found, as was a closely-dated assemblage of wine bottles; a large midden deposit on the north edge of the site contained a very large group of post-medieval pottery. The buildings were abandoned by the end of the 18th century, presumably following rationalization of the local settlement morphology and farming. Thus the site represents a short-lived expansion in low-status rural housing at the time of the ‘Great Rebuilding’.     

Cryptozoology in the Medieval and Modern Worlds

Historians of rural societies should consider using folklore sources in order to understand rural families in nineteenth-century France. A source like the stories collected from seventy-year-old Nannette Lévesque by the judge Victor Smith offers a very different viewpoint to depictions of such families by historians. Nannette was extremely poor, and spent her life moving between the mountain village where she was born in the Massif Central and the town of Saint-Étienne. Her stories call into question the reality of family “strategies” and the control of women by patriarchal authority, posited by some scholars of rural French family life.     

‘Poor Gordon’: What the Australian Cult of Adam Lindsay Gordon Tells Us About Turn‐of‐the‐Twentieth‐Century Masculine Sentimentality

The popularity of the British‐born Australian poet and sportsman, Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833–1870), flowered after his death. Between 1870 and 1920, he was widely extolled as an exemplar of the Australian bushman and of British imperial masculinity alike. Fans lauded Gordon as a daredevil horseman who had lived in the bush in the Australian colonies’ roaring days. Fascinatingly, though, they expressed their enthusiasm for him in sentimental terms. This article shows that sentimental expressions of devotion to Gordon were part of a distinctive form of masculine sentimentality emerging in Western culture at the turn of the nineteenth century. The proponents of this sentimentality encouraged the members of Western imperial and settler‐colonial publics to sympathise with rugged bushmen such as Gordon – to collectively experience their sorrows, griefs and joys. In so doing, they helped to reinforce masculine and settler‐colonial power, since they elevated the sentiments of hardy masculine types at the expense of feminine ones. In Australia, sentimental representations of Gordon also helped divert attention from the violence committed by settlers against Aboriginal peoples. Based on the insight that masculinity and sentiment were profoundly intertwined in the day, this article calls for a new way of thinking about the relationship between these two phenomena in the turn‐of‐the‐century era.     

中国专业村研究的新近进展

专业村是近年来得到学术界普遍关注的领域,其对农区经济发展有着重要的促进作用。本文基于对国内专业村文献的梳理,论述了专业村的概念以及专业村形成的影响因素,总结了专业村研究中出现的一些新动向:基于社会网络联系的专业村研究、农户自主发展能力的研究、专业村和金融地理研究等。在以下领域尚需加强:专业村研究适当关注地域广阔的中西部地区;除加强专业村经济效益评估外,应注重专业村对农区经济、政治、文化建设的整体推进;加强多尺度综合研究,如微观的农户,中尺度的农区,宏观尺度的国家和国际层面等。     

The Wharram Research Project: Results to 1983

CONTINUING ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATION of the church, manor house, parsonage and peasant homes of a deserted medieval village has widened into a multidisciplinary enquiry into the evolution of the total landscape of the two parishes bearing the name of Wharram which once contained six villages, now reduced to two. The microtopography of the medieval site is related to its antecedents, and the post-desertion settlement pattern to renewed arable farming on the Wolds without the re-creation of villages.     

The Location of the Textile Industry in England and Wales, 1813–1820

This article utilises male occupational data recorded in the baptism registers of England and Wales, 1813–1820, to locate the geographical distribution of the textile manufacturing industry at that time. By comparison with female and male occupations abstracted from the 1851 census, it shows that the location was set at least as early as the second decade of the nineteenth century, and before the introduction of steam power or the mechanisation of weaving could have played significant roles. By 1813–1820, the once great regional textile centres of East Anglia and the West Country were no more. Approximately sixty-six per cent of fathers employed in the textile industry lived in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. Moreover, textile manufacturing was further concentrated into a small number of parishes. Two-thirds of fathers lived in thirty-six parishes, and fifty per cent resided in only nineteen parishes. An association between the location of the main textile parishes and the proximity of the coal measures is evident. The registers contain a large number of entries for male spinners, reflecting the extent of uptake of Samuel Crompton’s spinning mule. The data confirm that the mule was dominant in cotton spinning within at least thirty years or so of its introduction. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, cotton spinning by hand was a redundant occupation.     

The body mass index of blacks and whites in the United States during the nineteenth century

Body mass index (BMI) values reflect the net balance between nutrition, work effort, and calories consumed to fight disease. Nineteenth-century prison records in the United States demonstrate that the BMI values of blacks and whites were distributed symmetrically; neither underweight nor obese individuals were common among the working class. BMI values declined throughout the nineteenth century. By modern standards, however, nineteenth-century BMIs were in healthy weight ranges, though the biological living standards in rural areas exceeded those in urban areas. The increase in BMIs during the twentieth century did not have its origin in the nineteenth century.     

Changing patterns of landownership in nineteenth-century Palestine: The European influence

Long-term changes in landownership patterns and their implications for settlement have been neglected by geographers, both in theoretical and empirical studies. Studies in this field relating to the Middle East are of a very general nature, and are not based on detailed examination of regional trends, their components, and geographic variables. In Israel, most of the published literature on this issue has dealt with the process of land purchase by Jews and has focused mainly on the period of the British Mandate (1918–1948). Misleading statements abound and the roots of the processes which evolved in nineteenth-century Palestine are poorly understood.The middle of the nineteenth century in Palestine marked the end of a quarter of a millenium of neglect and decline. Around 1800 Palestine was a backward province of the Ottoman empire, largely rural and sparsely populated. Both rural and urban economies were traditional and poor. From about 1850, a process of change began which led to a resurgence and development of the country.An important determinant in this process was an increase of European influence within the Ottoman empire in general and Palestine in particular. This paper (part of a broader study on landownership), will discuss the background, characteristics and motivations of Europeans who purchased land in Palestine during the period, their financial sources, their locational preferences and opportunities. The diverse influences of these land transactions on urban and rural development are considered. These processes ar illustrated by two case studies.     

Mobilité de la population et pauvreté dans une vicomté normande de la fin du Moyen-Age

Important in number and spread very evenly throughout the fifteenth century, the Norman rolls of the monnéage are a very important source for statistical study of the population of Normandy. The information about names they provide allows one to grasp the importance of mobility of population in urban and rural areas. Information about the different categories of exempted persons permits a study of the problem of poverty. The region under scrutiny in this article is the vicomté or vice-county of Bayeux and the city of Caen. Documents concerning this region reveal a highly mobile population, a fact which war by itself cannot explain. The highest rates of mobility are to be found among the populations of the different parishes of Bayeux and Caen. As one might expect, the poor are amongst the most mobile of all. Moreover, the persistence of poverty throughout the fifteenth century, as seen in the rolls of the monnéage, raises the problem of the continued stagnation of this part Normandy.     

The custom of the English Church: parish church maintenance in England before 1300

A division of responsibility for parish church fabric and contents between rector and parishioners first appeared in English ecclesiastical legislation in the early thirteenth century and was to remain in place until the mid-nineteenth century. It is often suggested that this responsibility was forced onto parishioners by a clergy keen to limit their own financial liability and that this marks the point at which parishioners first become involved in their local churches. This article looks at the development of these statutes from their origins in the Anglo-Saxon period through to their full realisation in the later thirteenth century. It argues that there were many among the thirteenth-century ecclesiastical hierarchy who were opposed to this change, and that far from being forced on parishioners, allowing parishioners to take responsibility for part of the church was a pragmatic solution to problems brought about by changes to both parishes and parish churches.     

The residential propinquity of kin in a Cambridgeshire village, 1841

This study examines kinship networks in a Cambridgeshire village, Melbourn, in 1841, using evidence derived from the census of that year. It focuses on the measurement and exploration of the residential propinquity of kin as a contribution to research on the historical geography of mobility and segregation in nineteenth-century society.     

The custom of the English Church: parish church maintenance in England before 1300

A division of responsibility for parish church fabric and contents between rector and parishioners first appeared in English ecclesiastical legislation in the early thirteenth century and was to remain in place until the mid-nineteenth century. It is often suggested that this responsibility was forced onto parishioners by a clergy keen to limit their own financial liability and that this marks the point at which parishioners first become involved in their local churches. This article looks at the development of these statutes from their origins in the Anglo-Saxon period through to their full realisation in the later thirteenth century. It argues that there were many among the thirteenth-century ecclesiastical hierarchy who were opposed to this change, and that far from being forced on parishioners, allowing parishioners to take responsibility for part of the church was a pragmatic solution to problems brought about by changes to both parishes and parish churches.     

Terriers and the historical geographer

Terriers were surveys of the sources, chiefly land or `gleeb', owned by each ecclesiastical parish in England and Wales. Their purpose was to prevent theft. They were first ordered in 1604, though earlier examples survive. Thereafter bishops commonly called for the presentation of a terrier on the occasion of their visitation of the parishes of their dioceses. Most dioceses thus have ‘sets’ of terriers, each relating to a particular visitation.Sets survive from the early seventeenth century to the eighteenth. Thereafter their compilation was more random. Despite loss and damage, they present a very detailed picture of rural and tenurial conditions. They also contain data on crops and field systems, as well as of parsonages (vernacular architecture), place-names and the personal names of parishioners. There are some urban terriers, but in the absence of agricultural land, they are very much less informative.An Appendix presents a guide to the present location of surviving terriers.     

RESEARCH BRIEFING: A Regionalization Strategy to Promote Integrated Local Development: The Comarcal Development Plan of Galicia

This paper reports on the administrative innovation for promoting integrated sectoral and spatial planning, based on the designation of Comarcas, by the Galician regional government in Spain. The region has suffered from peripherality and a heavy bias towards low productivity agricultural, fishing and food processing industries. Traditional regional policies had led to urban expansion but rural desertification. The Galician government embarked in 1991 on a radical new approach to development planning based on building new administrative entities based on urban and village networks. The new planning delivery system now exists and is already active in promoting more balanced and integrated planned development.     

Mobilité de la population et pauvreté dans une vicomté normande de la fin du Moyen-Age

Important in number and spread very evenly throughout the fifteenth century, the Norman rolls of the monnéage are a very important source for statistical study of the population of Normandy. The information about names they provide allows one to grasp the importance of mobility of population in urban and rural areas. Information about the different categories of exempted persons permits a study of the problem of poverty. The region under scrutiny in this article is the vicomté or vice-county of Bayeux and the city of Caen. Documents concerning this region reveal a highly mobile population, a fact which war by itself cannot explain. The highest rates of mobility are to be found among the populations of the different parishes of Bayeux and Caen. As one might expect, the poor are amongst the most mobile of all. Moreover, the persistence of poverty throughout the fifteenth century, as seen in the rolls of the monnéage, raises the problem of the continued stagnation of this part Normandy.