Quaker Schoolmasters, Toleration and the Law, 1689–1714

The 1689 Toleration Act allowed Protestant dissenters freedom to worship in public, but it was only a limited toleration and dissenters continued to suffer discrimination. This article examines the experience of Quakers in one important area, the Anglican monopoly in teaching. Although the prosecution of unlicensed teachers was patchy, localised, and dependent upon the hostility and zeal of particular individuals, few dissenters escaped harassment. Moreover, Friends appear to have suffered more severely because of the particular dislike that they still provoked and their unwillingness to compromise which often led to imprisonment. The growth in High Church feeling during Anne's reign led to a more rigorous enforcement of the existing statutes and the passing of the Schism Act (1714). The consequences of an Anglican educational monopoly have not been properly considered by historians largely from the assumption that the Schism Act was fatally compromised by the death of Queen Anne, and because little attention has been paid to the continued harassment of dissenters after toleration who attempted to teach. The Schism Act was repealed in 1719, but freedom for Quakers and other dissenters to teach had already been achieved largely through the courts.     

Chiefs,Agitators and the Navy:

American Samoa was governed directly by the US navy from 1901 to 1951, using naval officers on short-term rotations, assisted by Samoan chiefs. Despite being benign and protectionist, the administration in 1920 was disturbed by a protest movement commonly known by the Samoan term mau. This coincided with criticisms from other quarters, including a mixed-race Samoan–Caucasian family, assisted by a California attorney, a mutinous naval officer, a Honolulu journalist and resident American traders. Previous assessments that foreigners agitated among the Samoans for their own ends were challenged by David Chappell, who transfers the initiative for the agitation to the Samoans and sees in the movement an expression of cultural rather than political nationalism. This revisionist interpretation fails to recognise the nature of the links between the foreign and indigenous elements and misreads the Samoan component. The latter was less concerned with grievances about naval rule than with the continuation of traditional rivalries between Samoan chiefs, which crystallised over access to navy patronage. Both Chappell's interpretation and the current one are post-colonialist in their endeavours to shift the focus onto Samoan cultural understandings but they differ in identifying the specific processes involved.     

Differences in cancer incidence between men and women in the province of Québec, Canada, 1984–1993

This research concerns variation in incidence rates of cancer for males and females aged 35 to 69 in Québec for the period 1984 to 1993. In analysing the data, the Island of Montréal (health region 06) was distinguished from the rest of the province of Québec (excluding Nunavik and the James Bay regions). Relative rate index and the ratio of standardised incidence rates of cancer for males and females showed similar tendencies in all regions studied, with the risk of non–sex‐specific cancer higher in men than in women (excess ranged from 5 or 20 to 240 percent according to the study region). However, this higher risk was not consistent across lifespan and cancer site in the Montréal area. We suggest some general points that could explain the differences in cancer incidence between males and females.