The Iron Bridge at Sunderland: A Revision

Abstract

The rapid expansion and subsequent collapse of the local brick and tile industry in the American Midwest between 1870 and 1910 is one of the most striking episodes in the industrial history of the United States. This study draws largely on local material to detail this expansion and collapse in a four county area of Central Illinois. Between 1870 and 1910 eighty commercial brick and tile works were established. Most remained in production for less than twenty years. Today only one, Diller Brothers in Chatsworth, continues in business. This paper describes the rise and fall of this industry, examining its origin, locational pattern, methods of operation, structures, decline, and impact on the present landscape.     

The Chevert: A History

The Chevert was built for Napoleon III's navy between 1850 and 1863. It served as a transport to supply French colonies in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its service was primarily in peacetime, never entering into battle. It entered the private merchant service in the early 1870s and in 1875 served William Macleay's scientific expedition to New Guinea, which became known as the Chevert Expedition. It subsequently re-entered the merchant service before being wrecked in a cyclone in 1880. Not yet lost to history, it served as an office and impromptu fortress in Vanuatu: firstly for the English and then for the French. Its final resting place was Port Sandwich, Malekula, Vanuatu. For a relatively small transport ship it attracted many more headlines than its weight might predict.     

The Weight of the Moment: J. G. A. Pocock's Politics of History

One of the great intellectual productions of the postwar period, J. G. A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment was also an intervention in the American polity of the 1970s. The book's content, its rhetorical style, its methodology, and even its physical printed form were all designed to effectuate a political gesture. The crises of 1968 to 1973 invalidated the optimistic liberalism of Pocock's academic circle. The history of political language offered a refuge and a programmatic foundation for Pocock's pragmatic conservatism. The Machiavellian Moment was designed to reinforce the weight of tradition in contemporary political debate.     

十年研修萃成宏篇--读《当代江西简史》

《当代江西简史》是江西省委组织众多学者用十年之功纂修的一部史著。十年磨一剑,这部史著当属镆铘式精品。 当代人修当代史固然有史料易得等有利条件,但也有“不识庐山真面目,只缘身在此山中”之类的困难。而该著扬长避短,以历史与逻辑相统一的方法,勾画出站立起来了的江西人民在党的领导下,艰苦奋斗,奋发图强,战胜各种困难,迎来“江花江草处处鲜”的历史画