Moulds,Graminhos and Ribbands: a pilot study of the construction of saveiros in Valença and the Baía de Todos os Santos area,Brazil

The survival of late medieval Mediterranean techniques to conceive and build ships and boats in Brazil was noted by John Patrick Sarsfield in the 1980s, but his study of the Valença shipwrights was interrupted by his untimely death in 1990. This paper summarizes Sarsfield's account of these shipbuilding techniques, examines that published by Lev Smarcevski (1996), and provides some preliminary results of the pilot stage of a project to further research traditional shipbuilding in Valença and the Baía de Todos os Santos region.     

A Detailed Study of the Effectiveness and Capabilities of 18th Century Musketry on the Battlefield

Abstract

During the mid 18th century, the standard British Army issue weapon was the Brown Bess Musket. There are various accounts of the performance of this early form of firearm and its tactical deployment (e.g. Hanger 1816). Using a technical replica of the Brown Bess, range trials and computer modelling have been used to asses the weapon's capabilities and likely performance. The research found the Brown Bess musket to be a lethal weapon at the ranges at which enemy was commonly engaged, so long as it was accurate enough to hit the target. A single shot fired at 150 yards could penetrate at least two soldiers, even if bone were hit. The armour of the day (shields of wood, leather and sometimes steel, and the layers of woollen clothing) was easily pierced by the shot. The shot was found to readily deform on impact with metal targets. The maximum range could extend to around 1200m, with 202m reached when fired horizontally.     

‘Signs of the still recent war’: Medbh McGuckian and conflict

In a review of Medbh McGuckian's poetry, Christopher Benfey maintained that ‘[t]o scan her poems for allusions to sectarian violence would be as fruitless and naïve as to sift Emily Dickinson's poems for references to the Civil War’. McGuckian's work is not often read for its commentary on or critique of violence in Northern Ireland. Indeed, in an interview with John Brown, the poet revealed that ‘I never thought of myself as a “Troubles” poet; it was not part of my oeuvre and I couldn't do it simply as an exercise, so I didn't take it on’. This article tests the validity of her self-assessment by examining poems which borrow from sources focused on conflict, particularly the two world wars. The intertexts allow the poet to explore moments of crisis (due to violence, imprisonment and enforced deprivation) without having to deal explicitly with the more immediate conflict in Northern Ireland.     

Prophetic Perfectionism: The Afterlives of Nat Turner and John Brown

ABSTRACT

Recent fiction, film, art, and scholarship on nineteenth-century American abolitionists Nat Turner and John Brown shed light on the politics of their prophetic religion. Both men led violent rebellions against slavery for which they were executed. Prophetic perfectionism drove Turner and Brown but tended to fade in works about them. Exceptions to this pattern of reception include Jacob Lawrence's John Brown series (1941), Nate Parker's film The Birth of a Nation (2016), and Ted Smith's book Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics (2014). This essay situates Turner's and Brown's prophetic perfectionism and their reception in the context of contemporary political theologies and aesthetics of religion and race.     

Securing the Sinews of Sea Power: British Intervention in the Baltic 1780–1815

This article argues that Britain's standing as a maritime nation must be considered if we are to fully understand the objectives behind British foreign policy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It focuses on one of the most important challenges successive British governments faced during this period; the need to secure shipbuilding resources. Both British economic prosperity and national security depended upon the continued supply of naval stores. These resources could only be procured from the Baltic region, which meant the region took on a crucial strategic importance for policy-makers. This article will focus on Britain's relationship with the Baltic between 1780 and 1815 tracing Britain's sensitivity to the changing political environment in Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, and particularly Russia, and outlining how this came to dictate foreign policy. Britain hoped to rely on diplomacy and economic interdependence to maintain the movement of naval stores from the Baltic; however intransigence from the Baltic powers forced Britain to resort to military measures on three occasions between 1800 and 1815, such was the importance of these shipbuilding resources.     

The UK and ‘genocide’ in Biafra

In late August 1968, following a British proposal, Nigeria announced that it would allow an international observer team into the country to show that it was not pursuing a campaign of genocide in Biafra. This article analyses why the United Kingdom pushed for the creation of the observer team, and shows how the team's work was incorporated into the British government's justifications for its support of the Nigerian government. The experience of the observer team illustrates the difficulties of providing an ‘objective’ view regarding whether or not genocide is taking place.     

Interest,Trade and ‘Character and Circumstances': John Campbell's (1708–1775) Earlier Work

John Campbell's (1708-1775) commercial theory in his early work demonstrates that he held more sophisticated views on British colonialism than previously thought. Campbell draws upon complex influences, which include Charles Davenant's notion of free trade and his ‘Old Whig’ arguments against corruption; Daniel Defoe's ‘new Whig’ arguments for progress and John Locke's arguments on industry and property; and Bolingbroke's Tory arguments for emphasizing common interest. By blending these ideas, Campbell offers a distinctive commercial theory that prioritizes the recognition of the interest and circumstances of all nations and peoples within an unconstrained and reciprocal exchange of commodities in order for the home nation simultaneously to resist corruption and flourish.     

San Juan,the Fragile City: Finance Capital,Class, and the Making of Puerto Rico's Economic Crisis

This paper narrates Puerto Rico's fiscal and financial crisis through a reading of San Juan's urban landscape. We underscore the role of capital in the city, primarily embodied by the local capitalist class (the Criollo bloc) and foreign capitalists. Historically excluded from the manufacturing sector (dominated by US capitalists), the Criollo bloc accumulates its wealth by concentrating financial assets in the city. In times of crisis, the Criollo bloc resorts to the acquisition of new assets and asset exchange with foreign capitalists to remain solvent and provide short‐term solutions to the state's fiscal and financial limits. The survival of the local capitalist class, we demonstrate, is dependent on asset stripping. Drawing on Clyde Woods, we document how asset stripping unevenly redistributes wealth and risks along class and racial lines within a colonial economy. The finance capital/asset stripping basis of San Juan's economy renders it an extremely fragile city, we contend.     

The Atomic Marshall Plan: Atoms for Peace,British diplomacy and civil nuclear power

British policy towards President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace speech was characterised by ambiguity. The world's third nuclear power, Britain sought to re-establish nuclear cooperation with the United States. Multilateral nuclear diplomacy was of secondary importance. This position is exemplified in Britain's conflicting attitude to the International Atomic Energy Agency which oscillated from warm enthusiasm to qualified rejection before settling on a policy of grudging acceptance. The paper focusses on British reactions to Eisenhower's proposal and shows that the fate of the agency was secondary to the ultimate aim of restoring the nuclear relationship with Washington which was realised in 1954 resulting in a British volte-face concerning the agency's future.     

Two roads to Belgrade: the United States,Great Britain,and the first nonaligned conference

In 1961, at the height of the Berlin crisis, the United States and Great Britain simultaneously struggled to adopt effective policies toward the first meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade. While the John F. Kennedy administration initially adopted a policy of standoffishness toward the conference, the government of Harold Macmillan engaged in a campaign of quietly encouraging moderate attendance. Moderate British expectations led to sound policy, whereas the Kennedy administration's inability to develop a coherent outlook and response cost it a priceless opportunity to understand the emerging phenomenon of nonalignment.     

John Francis Davis as governor and diplomat on the China Coast (1844–1848)

This paper explores the role of the nineteenth-century sinologist-cum-diplomat, John Francis Davis, in Sino-British relations after the ratification of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1843. It examines his time as governor of Hong Kong and as Britain's effective minister to China from 1844 until 1848, in which he attempted to have the city of Canton opened to foreign trade. Arguing that Davis's view of Sino-British relations was as cultural in character as it was political, this paper suggests that Davis fundamentally sought to establish strict equality between the two empires. He attempted to use his knowledge of Chinese civilization to build an equal international relationship between two sovereign nations rather than an imperial relationship between a conqueror and the conquered people. While this conviction laid the groundwork for Hong Kong to become a bilingual Anglo-Chinese colony, it fractured diplomacy with Qing officials. Davis's insistence on political equality would amount to an aggressive imposition of European diplomatic norms on his dealings with the Qing representative Qiying. More precisely, the paper explains how the policies of this archetypal British ‘China Hand’ bifurcated in the directions of both progressive cultural policy but also gunboat diplomacy.     

Gyptis: Sailing Replica of a 6th‐century‐BC Archaic Greek Sewn Boat

A sailing replica based on the archaeological remains and structural analysis of the 6th‐century archaic Greek sewn boat Jules‐Verne 9 was built in Marseille as part of the city's European Capital of Culture 2013 programme. Full‐scale reconstruction allowed investigation of specific aspects of the methods used to build a shell‐first, sewn‐plank, and lashed‐frame vessel, as well as learning the gestures and know‐how of the original shipbuilders. The first two seasons of sailing trials, including short journeys in the Bay of Marseille and longer, coast‐hopping expeditions, reflecting the uses of the original vessel have taken place and are reported here.     

Ludwig Knoop, ‘The Arkwright of Russia’

Abstract

Piece-rate arrangements in the British cotton weaving industry were anomalous in that they prescribed a weekly wage based on output. Although, to some extent, output reflected the work done by the weaver, it was also governed by technical and other factors which were beyond the weaver's control. A wage system which emphasized the repair of broken threads and the replenishment of empty shuttles would have been preferable since these were the principal elements of the weaver's work. The absence of a clear relationship between effort and reward confounded attempts to increase productivity in cotton weaving between the wars, and was a particular obstacle to the adoption of the 'more-looms' systems. This article explores the anomalies and the issues to which they gave rise, both at industry level and in a local context characterized by the manufacture of diverse fabric types. It concludes that there was an uncritical acceptance of traditional wage arrangements, reinforced by a fear that fundamental change would destabilize an already fragile system of industry level (that is, across the cotton weaving industry as a whole) bargaining.     

A Most Unmanly War: British Military Masculinity in Macedonia,Mesopotamia and Palestine, 1914–18

This article argues that the most severe crisis of masculinity among British and Dominion soldiers in the First World War did not take place on the Western Front. Instead, British and Dominion soldiers serving on the war's sideshows in Macedonia, Mesopotamia and Palestine believed most acutely that their manliness was in question. Unlike soldiers on the Western Front, they were not battling the main German Army, they were not fighting to liberate occupied France and Belgium, and their war was not to preserve the rights of small nations and the inviolability of international law. This article explores how military masculinity played out much differently on the war's peripheral fronts in two ways. First, it suggests that where a soldier fought mattered more to military masculinity than a soldier's method of enlistment or any other variable. British and Dominion soldiers were fully aware that the home front only considered France and Flanders as the real war, and they actively argued against this misconception to loved ones and in their memoirs. Second, this article demonstrates an additional crisis of masculinity on the war's peripheral fronts: the lack, or more often effacement, of non‐white colonial (Eastern Mediterranean and Arab) women. Not only was British and Dominion military masculinity under assault on the war's peripheral fronts, heteronormative sexual relations were also being transformed in a world where few, if any, racially acceptable women were available.     

An Early Eighteenth Century Scottish Saltwork: Arran,c.1710 – 1735

Abstract

Historians have paid little attention to Scotland's salt industry. The few physical traces of its existence have not been seriously examined and interpreted by industrial archaeologists. This article presents some new material about saltmaking on the west coast of Scotland but more importantly it argues that the site under review here, on Arran in the Firth of Clyde, represents the earliest known upstanding remains of the type of saltwork which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ranged along both shores of the river Forth, from where the bulk of Scotland's salt production came.     

Autobiographische Darstellung des Lebensganges und des wissenschaftlichen Lebenswerkes 1

ABSTRACT

Few maps mirror the history of the twentieth century as closely as the International Map of the World (IMW). A proposal for a map of the entire globe on a scale of 1:1 million, using standard conventional signs, was presented at the Fifth International Geographical Congress in Berne in 1891 by the German geographer Albrecht Penck. More than two decades later, the final specification was finally published shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, a crisis that brought a halt to the international collaboration on which the project depended. The IMW’s fortunes waxed and waned over the next three decades, necessitating a major review of its continuing value after the Second World War. A new IMW Executive Commission under the chairmanship of John Kirtland Wright, Director of the American Geographical Society, was established at the 1949 Lisbon conference of the International Geographical Union. Drawing on Wright’s correspondence in the AGS archives, this paper examines the debates between the national cartographic agencies and related societies involved in the future of the IMW, with particular reference to the transfer of the project’s Central Bureau from the British Ordnance Survey in Southampton to the United Nations in New York in the early 1950s. This discussion, which focused mainly on the need to combine the IMW with an internationalized version of the US-dominated 1:1 million World Aeronautical Chart, reveals the on-going tensions between the ideals of scientific internationalism embodied in the IMW’s original proposal and the harsh realities of national self-interest in the early years of the Cold War.     

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION, AND REGIONAL REPERCUSSIONS: THE CASE OF BRITISH SHIPBUILDING

A variant of the structural contingency model is applied to the post-war experience of the British shipbuilding industry to show how technological change has affected the market for ships and compelled shipbuilding firms to adopt a number of responses. These include changes in industrial organization and the promotion of government intervention. Some of the ensuing outcomes are explored in detail by focusing on the industrial impact of the introduction of large tankers and standard ship designs. The regions that have benefited from the interaction of technological change and market demand are also identified.     

Geotheorizing mountain–child relations within anthropogenic inheritances*

This paper focuses on children’s relations with what is now known as Burnaby Mountain in British Columbia, Canada. In particular, it grapples with encounters with the mountain, atop which several childcare centres are located. The mountain, on unceded Indigenous Coast Salish territories, has become a contested site of colonial capitalist extraction due to a proposal to build a tar sands oil pipeline that would tunnel through the mountain. Sustained protest action emerged at the site amidst initiation of test borehole drilling activity by the pipeline company. In this paper, I engage with the potential of geotheorizing children’s relations as a critical response that interrupts dominant understandings of what is seen as appropriate for young children’s curriculum. I consider the effects of refiguring children’s subjectivities through geologic and geontological relations for the normalization and resistance of settler colonialism’s human-centric and extractive structurings.     

Harvest Years? Reconfigurations of Empire in Jamaica, 1756–1807

At the end of the Seven Years' War, Jamaican planters were in an extremely strong position within the British Empire. Immensely wealthy, geopolitically important and constitutionally assertive, Jamaican planters used their strong position to win a series of political battles against colonial governors in the 1750s and 1760s. In doing so, they justified their self-asserted claims to being entitled to British rights and privileges. Nevertheless, contemporaneous developments in metropolitan thinking about empire and white people's place in empire undermined planters' fond estimation of their position within empire. British thinkers came to see British West Indians, especially during and after the American Revolution, not as fellow citizens but as imperial subjects. The result was a cultural and ideological crisis for Jamaican planters as abolitionism emerged as a powerful political force, in which their insistence that they were British and entitled to the rights and privileges of Britons was not accepted. Thus, white Jamaicans became the first in a long line of settler peoples of British descent to have their claims to Britishness denied by metropolitan opinion. This article thus contributes to a developing discussion about settler constitutional rights within the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British Empire.