The Garrison Revisited: Gibraltar in the Eighteenth Century

In the 1940s, scholars across a variety of disciplines started using phrases such as ‘garrison state’ and ‘garrison mentality’ to describe societies where military imperatives predominated. They frequently argued that a perpetual sense of threat and a profound feeling of isolation shaped the outlook of residents in these communities. Such terms continue to surface in contemporary scholarship and popular media, where ‘the garrison’ often remains a stock image. Evidence from eighteenth-century Gibraltar, however, suggests that traditional readings of the garrison as an insulated fortress should be reconsidered. The survival of this strategic outpost actually required that colonial administrators rely on an array of foreigners to keep it supplied during times of both war and peace. At Gibraltar, the garrison was neither isolated from its surrounding environment nor perpetually threatened by its cosmopolitan residents—instead, inescapable dependence on a motley local population often rendered administrators willing to accommodate the alien in their midst and to acknowledge the interconnections between military and civilian.     

The Atlantic Empires in the Eighteenth Century

Spanish America; John J. Tepaske     

The Military of Qajar Iran: The Features of an Irregular Army from the Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century

The article examines the parameters of the irregular army in Qajar Iran, including its assembly, numbers, and provisions, as well as the army's organizational structure: its administration and the divisions of the ad hoc forces (provincial militia and tribal cavalry) and of the standing forces (the shah's bodyguard and artillery corps). Until the creation of the so-called regular army units in Iran at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the irregular army was regarded as the only military force in the service of the Qajar dynasty. Despite the existence of a “regular army,” irregular forces, particularly tribal cavalry, continued to play a significant role in Iran's military system throughout the nineteenth century. By understanding the features of the irregular army—its role in Qajar society, its organizational and social structures, its ethnic composition, and other characteristics—we can better understand the character of the state itself.     

Lost and Found: the Woman Writer in the Eighteenth Century

Jennifer Summit, Lost Property: the Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380–1589 Jane Spencer, Aphra Behn's Afterlife Harriet Guest, Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750’1810 Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Cliona O Gallchoir and Penny Warburton (eds), Women, Writing and the Public Sphere, 1700’1830     

Experiencing Climate: Finding Weather in Eighteenth Century Cumbria

This article examines whether Tim Ingold's concept of the ‘weather-world’ can be applied within discussions of climate in archaeology. Using a case study of eighteenth century Cumbria, the article first looks at the issues arising when environmental models are used to investigate landscape change. It then assesses the insights on landscape, weather and farming that can be gained from two historical diaries. It is recognised that advances in complex ecosystem and agent-based modelling have improved ‘climate change archaeology’, but that there are aspects of people's relationships with the weather and climate that are ill-suited to quantification. The article concludes by arguing that people's qualitative engagements with the weather are integral to how past people viewed and used the landscape.     

Brush-Piling: Eighteenth Century Engineering in an American Wilderness

Abstract

Old Mill was one of a small group of early silk mills established in East Cheshire during the mid-18th century. It was notable for its size, and for the involvement of James Brindley in its construction. The mill was extended and a beam engine added c. 1830, but it was partially demolished in 1939. In 2003 the remaining structures were demolished, which provided the opportunity for a programme of building recording and excavation. James Brindley's role is examined in terms of the application of water power, and the context of the classical architecture and likely geological provenance of Old Mill is discussed.     

The Listers of Gisburn: The Fashioning of A Gentry Family In The Early Eighteenth Century

The Lister family of Gisburn, created Lords Ribblesdale in 1797, is an example of a family with yeoman or minor gentry status in the sixteenth century who, by the persistent purchase of land and a number of fortunate marriages, established themselves amongst the county gentry in the eighteenth century. They also acquired a share in the pocket borough of Clitheroe and served in the House of Commons continuously from 1718 to 1780. The paper describes the ways in which successive Listers fashioned the image of the family through their education, engagement in politics (where they were at the least Tories and possibly Jacobites), by their erection of a new house (Gisburne Park) in the decade after 1727 and the creation of a parkland landscape to surround it. This is explored through the surviving documentary materials (which are not exhaustive, but include reflections by Thomas Lister (d. 1745) on his political creed), by the house and landscape of the park and an abortive scheme for the park, but above all through the art they commissioned and the representations of landscape that it contains. Pictures attributed to Robert Griffier, Peter Tillemans and Arthur Devis, all formerly at Gisburne Park, and an engraving by François Vivares of Malham Cove, are discussed.