Population,Households and Fisheries in the Parish of Hvalsnes,Southwestern Iceland, 1750–1850

Abstract

This is an in-depth study of the parish of Hvalsnes, a small fishing community situated on the Reykjanes peninsula in southwestern Iceland, during the period 1750–1850. The study is inspired by the nordic Coastal Region Project carried out in the 1990s, focussing on the relationship between economic factors and household size and structure. With reference to the concept of ecotype, Hvalsnes is compared to a few farming communities in southern and western Iceland as regards a number of economic and demographic factors. Among the features characterizing the Hvalsnes community was the large proportion of crofter and cottar households in relation to those of independent farmer-fishermen; the former constituted a valuable workforce for the commercial cod fisheries on the abundant Reykjanes banks. At the same time, the study reveals that during the winter season the operation of the fishing fleet was highly dependent on seasonal migration from farming areas. In this perspective Hvalsnes appears to be an Icelandic parallel to Lofoten in Norway. A closer view of the techniques and social organization of fishing in the parish discloses significant differences between its three individual sections. It is argued that these differences help to explain why some sections suffered more, in economic and demographic terms, than others from the natural catastrophes and political changes which took place towards the end of the eighteenth century. However, these changes did not alter the general condition of the landless population: cottars by the seaside and living-in servants in the countryside. Among these groups many individuals continued now as before their seasonal migration between the two ecotypes. Tentatively, it is argued that the seasonal exchange of workforce between fishing and farming communities contributed to an efficient use of the labour capacity of their members.     

‘Hereditary Guardians of the Nation’: The House of Lords and the East India Company in the Age of the American Revolution

The reform of the East India Company following its acquisition of vast territories in Bengal in the mid 1760s raised hopes that it could provide Britain with a fund to alleviate the burdens of the national debt in the wake of the failure of American taxation. Concomitantly, it elicited genuine fears that the acquisition of such revenues and patronage by the state would radically augment the already overgrown ‘influence of the crown’. Studies of the parliamentary debates surrounding East India reform have consistently emphasized the house of commons as the principal scene of action. Inspired by the work of Clyve Jones in reasserting the centrality of the house of lords as a ‘pillar’ of the 18th-century constitution, this essay seeks to redress the balance, arguing that the Lords was a key arena through which co-ordinated parliamentary and extra-parliamentary activities and press campaigns altered the trajectory of the regulation and reform of the East India Company. Through the use of its distinct privileges, such as the right of opposition lords to protest any vote of the House and the right of peers to an audience with the monarch, as well as its determination to uphold its status as a mediator between the powers of the crown and the Commons, the upper chamber played a crucial role in shaping debates in the 1770s and 1780s over the future of the East India Company and its place in a burgeoning British Empire.     

De Bow’s Revolution: The Memory of the American Revolution in the Politics of the Sectional Crisis, 1850–1861

In January 1861 editor James D.B. De Bow advocated the secession of southern states from the union as he proclaimed to his readers that white Southerners “are mainly the descendants of those who fought the battles of the Revolution, and who understand and appreciate the nature and inestimable value of the liberty which it brought.” While editors on both sides of the Sectional Crisis over slavery in the 1850s and 60s claimed to be “custodians of the legacy of 1776” as they used the American Revolution symbolically in their rhetoric. By focusing on De Bow’s Review, a widely read and influential journal during this fight, we can gain a better understanding of the specific terms by which Southerners were encouraged to think of themselves not as rebels but as guardians of “the true American character.”     

Imperial cooperation at the margins of Europe: the European Commission of the Danube, 1856–65

This article deals with the work of the European Commission of the Danube (ECD) during the first two decades of its activity in the aftermath of the Crimean War. It focuses on the early stage formation of international organizations in the mid-nineteenth century when river commissions were the first organizations that issued supranational regulations and had their own bureaucracies. In this context, I argue that the ECD became a testing ground for new types of inter-imperial cooperation. First, the ECD became a site where hydraulic expertise from all over Europe was gathered and analysed. As a consequence, this exchange among the representatives of different empires and of different sub-fields of expertise generated new technical knowledge and made the ECD a space for cross-imperial knowledge production. Second, in 1865, the ECD adopted a Public Act that codified navigation rules in the Danube Delta. These regulations were among the first upholding a supranational settlement. Furthermore, the document exemplifies how such a supranational agreement was implemented through a joint imperial intervention against the authority of the Ottoman Empire, the only territorial power.