C. A. Macartney and Central Europe

C. A. Macartney (1895–1978) was a British historian with a life‐long interest in the history and politics of the peoples of East‐Central Europe and in particular, those of Hungary. He combined historical research with an advisory role in various policy‐making bodies. Macartney had little faith in the system of small nation states that resulted from the break‐up of the Austro‐Hungarian Monarchy. He called attention to the fact that the principle of self‐determination was applied unevenly by the peacemakers in Paris, and that the new states were unstable and thus consequently unable to resist pressures from Germany and Russia. While always forthright, Macartney was also often controversial. He became a proponent of various Hungarian interests and causes in Britain, a standpoint difficult to maintain during and immediately after World War II. Yet Macartney was not simply an appeaser. For him, the solution to the problems of the Danube Basin lay in the gradual eradication of overlapping nationalisms and the establishment of a supra‐national economic and political structure for the benefit of all the peoples concerned. His scholarly works conform to the highest standards of academic professionalism, and are to this day often the only source in English on the particular subject.     

Agnes C.P. Watt and Melanesian Personhood

Abstract

Analyses of Melanesian personhood recently have taken the person to be ‘dividual’, partible or fractal – different in significant ways from the Western monadic, coherent and unitary individual. Melanesian persons, however, have experienced global forces for more than two hundred years, and these encounters certainly modified personal practice. Published letters of Agnes C.P. Watt – who with husband William served as a Presbyterian missionary at Kwamera and Port Resolution, Tanna (New Hebrides, today Vanuatu), from 1869 to her death in 1894 – offer insight into Islander personhood during the first decades of foreign settlement of that island. Christian missionisation, spreading mobility, commodity exchange and increasing numbers of Western persons themselves were reworking Tannese partible, relational personhood. Agnes's dissenting and communitarian womanhood complicated her own Victorian personhood. In particular, her letters document personal innovations in naming practice, mobility, respect, character building and spirituality.     

C.G. Jung's Visions

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934. By C.G. Jung. Ed. Claire Douglas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) 2 vols., xl + 1,458 pp. $125.00 cloth.