Land reforms and territorial integration in post-Tsarist Estonia, 1918–1940

After the declaration of independence in 1918, the Estonian government initiated a number of land reforms within a relatively short period of time. Although the reforms varied in aim, they led to similar outcomes in terms of the status and structure of landed properties. This paper explores, first, how the land reforms transformed a diversity of tenure systems into a coherent property regime, and second, how the reforms related to the political discussion on the proper spatial organization of land rights in Estonia. I argue that an important aim of the reforms was to contribute to the spatial and cultural consolidation of the new nation. The paper places the land reforms in a geopolitical context, proposing that the land reforms served to fend off a number of real and perceived threats to territorial integration. The paper is based on statements by politicians and intellectuals of the time, and on land reform records stored in Estonian State Archive.     

The Maronite Leadership’s Approach toward Syria, 1970–2011: Between Integration,Separation, and Pragmatism

The Maronite–Syria relationship is troublesome, and one can say that the two sides are diametrical opposites. The Maronites, in general, represent the aspiration for an independent Lebanon, while Syria considers Lebanon a part of “Greater Syria” and aspires to annex the Lebanese territories. The Maronite community has consistently resisted these aspirations. However, the Maronite community is not a coherent one, which is reflected in its approach toward Syria. In fact, the Maronite leadership has adopted three different approaches toward Syria: an integrative one that aspires to full cooperation with Syria; a separatist one that strongly considers Lebanon and Syria to be separate states; and a pragmatist one that adheres to intimate or unfriendly ties according to local Lebanese interests. This article introduces the three Maronite approaches and claims that one cannot disassociate these approaches, especially the pragmatist one, from the Syrian policy toward Lebanon, which includes changing alliances according to Syria’s political interests. Moreover, the article suggests that these approaches will remain in place regardless of which Maronite leader supports each one and regardless of who will rule in Syria.     

Pastoralism and politics: reinterpreting contests for territory in Auckland Province, New Zealand, 1853–1864

As colonial frontiers expanded in the nineteenth century, contests over access to land suitable for farming between pastoralists, small farmers and indigenous populations were the inevitable result. In colonial Auckland, this contest was particularly vigorous, firstly because the young settlement's economic survival was at stake, since environmental constraints largely prevented its participation in the lucrative New Zealand wool industry, and secondly, because the economic and military prowess of indigenous Maori meant that settlers had little room to move in. Auckland's wealthy pastoralists pinned their hopes on the occupation of Maori land to the south of Auckland, since this was more suitable for sheep than the settlement's immediate environs, but this required dispossessing the Maori population by force. Initially, this obstacle gave small farmers a political advantage over the pastoralists, but as firstly arable markets, and then plans for small farmers and Maori to rear sheep themselves, all faltered, the pastoralist cause became increasingly difficult for colonial authorities to resist. When these authorities finally turned against the Maori communities south of Auckland, and launched an imperial war against them, the pastoralists successfully lobbied for the lands they most coveted to be confiscated from Maori, an event that radically altered New Zealand's future economic geography.     

The Campaign for a Free Parliament, 1659–60

The clamour for ‘a free parliament’ in the winter of 1659–60, the most widely articulated public demand since the outbreak of civil war, has not received attention proportionate to its significance. Here the contours and chronology of the movement are reconstructed. Its goal was the summoning of an assembly which, through the restoration of parliamentary representation and the emancipation of the electorate from voting restrictions and military interference, would possess the authority to speak for the nation and secure a national settlement. The outcome was that essential instrument in the peaceful return of the monarchy, the Convention. The term ‘a free parliament’ was a slogan, used for a variety of political ends. Yet it was a unifying phrase which allowed the two parties opposed to the republic, the royalists (who had been denied parliamentary representation in 1642) and the presbyterians (who had been forcibly removed from parliament in 1648) to suspend their differences. The movement also connected national politicians of both parties to intense grievances in the regions. Local sentiment was voiced in a cascade of manifestos, published in the names of counties and towns, which illustrate the hold of parliament on public feeling.     

Conservatives,the Constitution and the Quest for a ‘Representative’ House of Lords, 1911–35*

This article presents a new interpretation of Conservative attitudes towards house of lords' reform in the early 20th century. Coinciding, as it did, with the introduction of universal adult suffrage, the campaign to reform and strengthen the second chamber has traditionally been understood as a reaction against democracy. Conversely, this article, emphasizing the politics rather than policies of reform, argues that many Conservatives sought to establish a legitimate role for a second chamber within the new democratic settlement and that the campaign for reform is, consequently, better understood as a constitutional means of ‘making safe’, rather than resisting, mass democracy. The account sheds new light on how the impulse behind reform was frequently rooted in a commitment to democracy, how reform commanded the support of a wide cross section of the Conservative parliamentary party, and why the reform campaign had folded by the early 1930s. In doing so, it reframes an important episode that helped close the long‐19th‐century tradition of constitutional reform in British politics.     

Pyrite–sulfosalt reactions and semimetal fractionation in the Chinkuashih,Taiwan, copper–gold deposit: a 1 Ma paleo‐fumarole

The mineralized fracture system that underlay paleo‐fumarole field at Chinkuashih, Taiwan has been exposed by copper–gold mining to depths of about 550 m below the paleo‐surface. Its mineralogy and systematic variations in metal and semimetal (Fe, Cu, As, Sb, Bi, Hg, Cd, Sn, Zn, Pb, Se, Te, Au, Ag) concentrations provide insights into the chemical responses of a magmatic‐vapor phase as it expands through fracture arrays to the surface and discharges as fumaroles associated with more extensive solfatara. At Chinkuashih, following initial sealing of the fractures by silica‐alunite alteration, brittle failure reestablished discharge from an underlying reservoir of magmatic vapor. Crystalline pyrite was deposited first in the fractures and was succeeded and replaced by ‘enargite’ (Cu₃(As,Sb)S₄) as sulfosalt encrustations (‘sublimate’) on fracture surfaces and in extensional cracks. Subsequent recrystallization resulted in complex exsolution intergrowths with antimony fractionation to the evolving crystal–vapor interface. Heavy metal fractionation between sulfosalt and vapor enriched the vapor phase in heavy metals that subsequently precipitated as complex Bi–Hg–Sn sulfosalts in discrete areas (paleo‐fumaroles) close to the paleo‐surface in a manner analogous to modern‐day fumaroles on active volcanoes such as Vulcano, Italy. As in similar paleo‐fumaroles (e.g., El Indio, Chile and Lepanto, Philippines), the most characteristic reaction sequence is the partial replacement of the early pyrite by enargite and Fe‐tennantite. It is proposed that this reaction tracks the decrease in the pressure of the underlying magmatic‐vapor reservoir because of the sustained discharge of vapor to the surface.     

Gainers and Losers: A Note on Land and Occupational Mobility in a South Indian Village, 1977–85

ABSTRACT This paper examines evidence on changes in the pattern of land-ownership and in household occupations based on a longitudinal study of a village in the relatively advanced agricultural region of Tamil Nadu, India. The question motivating the paper is whether the occurrence of mobility moderates the high levels of inequality observed in the region. The matrix approach is used to examine mobility. Matrices of occupations and land-holdings are constructed for the eighty-three panel households, spanning a period of eight years, to indicate the degree and direction of mobility. The investigation suggests that agricultural modernization within the existing structural framework has provided restricted opportunities for occupational change and has not mitigated the extreme polarization in the distribution of land.     

Lessons in possession: colonial resource geographies in practice on Vancouver Island, 1859–1865

This paper considers the establishment of a major sawmill at the head of the Alberni Canal on the west coast of the colony of Vancouver Island in the 1860s and the legacy of that enterprise in producing geographies of colonial possession. I argue that the institution of industrial forestry in the colony relied upon a conception of property rights that turned on the identification of civilized and savage space, holding that only particular kinds of labour and land improvement warranted claims of ownership. This ideology found official state sanction within the regimes of Western liberal law, was mapped onto the region around Alberni by a uniquely placed individual, and was eventually made durable through the practices of everyday life at settlement sites. In these ways, I show, colonial possession relied upon precedents within British imperial culture. However, I also argue that another geography of possession was put in place along the way. By eventually adopting a scheme wherein timberlands could be brought into production without being alienated by land speculators, the state enabled the actual practice of possession in crown territory that was previously claimed through general appeals to the British imperative to overturn its wild nature. Showing that the lessons learned at Alberni were re-applied in other parts of the region, I conclude by arguing that the historical geographies of industrial forestry reinforced crown possession of much of the Pacific Northwest. Ultimately, I claim that this story demonstrates the centrality of practice to possession, thereby highlighting an analytical space that might yield fruitful insights into the intensely situated and local nature of colonial territorial control.     

Characterising the late prehistoric, ‘Romano-British’ and medieval landscape, and dating the emergence of a regionally distinct agricultural system in South West Britain

Palaeoenvironmental evidence for the character of lowland cultural landscapes during the last 2500 years in Britain is poorly understood, owing to a combination of an over-reliance on data from upland sequences, and because lowland mires are typically located in positions marginal to areas of settlement and agriculture. This paper presents an attempt to derive environmental evidence for this time period from a lowland context in order to characterise the key periods of change and continuity in the lowlands. The study focuses on mid-Devon, in South West Britain, and uses small pollen sites which are embedded within the historic landscape. The South West is a particularly poor region for lowland environmental data, and has until now been reliant on upland sequences. The results show that continuity, rather than abrupt change, has characterised the landscape from the later Iron Age to the early medieval period (around cal AD 800). There is no palynologically distinct Roman period in the data, contrary to evidence from the high uplands of Exmoor that suggests a decline of the agricultural system during the immediate post-Roman period. Around cal AD 800 there is a change in the agricultural system from predominantly pastoral activities to one that led to relatively high proportions of cereal pollen appearing in the sequences, which is interpreted here as marking the onset of convertible husbandry, a regionally distinct agricultural system which is recorded from AD 1350, but whose origins are not documented. This agricultural system remained in place until the post-medieval period, when the predominant agricultural regime returned to pastoralism around AD 1750. The data clearly show discrepancies between the high uplands and the lowlands, demonstrating the potential hazards of extrapolating upland sequences to lowlands environments.     

Scenic tourism on the northeastern borderland: Lake Memphremagog's steamboat excursions and resort hotels, 1850–1900

Lacking the salt-water beaches, accessible mineral springs, and rugged mountains that attracted the first tourists to the northeastern United States, the Vermont–Quebec borderland did boast a number of clear and picturesque bodies of water, the largest of which was Lake Memphremagog. Once this lake became accessible by rail, American and Canadian promotional literature and graphic illustrations emphasized the romantic nature of its paddle-wheel excursions, scenic landscape, and resort hotels. This type of tourism was depicted as essentially a passive, civilizing experience in which participants affirmed their aesthetic sensibility and social status by admiring the view of lake and mountains from boat decks and hotel verandahs. But the exclusive nature of this romantic sensibility was undermined to some extent by the fact that local newspapers and railway companies encouraged groups of people from the surrounding communities to join the sight seeing tours. Local entrepreneurs were also quick to take advantage of the market for scenery and, in contrast to other tourist zones, there was no apparent conflict with the industrial development that was taking place at both ends of the lake.     

‘Attaque and Break Through a Phalanx of Corruption . . . the Court Party!’ The Scottish Representative Peers' Election and the Opposition, 1733–5: Three New Division Lists of the House of Lords of 1735*

In the early 1730s, Archibald Campbell, the earl of Ilay, gained a dominant position in Scotland, and Sir Robert Walpole, the prime minister, entrusted him with the distribution of patronage there. Ilay took full advantage of this power, and controlled the votes of the financially weak Scottish peers in the election of 16 representative peers. The excise crisis of 1733–4, however, changed the political scene in Scotland. Although they had been chosen as supporters of the court party, some of the Squadrone Volante members (the duke of Montrose and the marquess of Tweeddale) and two courtiers (the earls of Marchmont and Stair) raised a standard of revolt against Walpole and Ilay. The Scottish opposition co‐operated with the English country party (‘the Patriots’) and such Scottish tories as the duke of Hamilton. In the 1734 peers' election they launched a challenge to the ministry, but the opposition was crushed by a bankrolled election campaign organised by the court party. Although the English and Scottish opposition petitioned in the house of lords to criticize the ‘undue practices’ of Walpole and Ilay at the election, the ministry was backed up by English and Scottish courtiers and bishops, and overwhelmed the opposition. Three new division lists related to the aftermath of the Scottish election shed much light upon the party alignment of the upper House in the middle of the 1730s.