Property and Propriety: Jewish Landlords in Early Twentieth-Century Toronto

Drawing on literatures on the social construction of place and identity, and on the changing nature of urban property ownership, this paper examines Jewish immigrants to Toronto as housing landlords, situating their activities in the context of wider changes in the city's housing market and of their needs to raise capital, achieve status and foster group identity. Using archival and newspaper evidence to reconstruct the behaviour of individual landlords, it is argued that ownership of inner-city property fulfilled numerous functions, especially related to other aspects of business proprietorship, but that it also accentuated the geographical concentration of poorer Jews, with critical implications for their relations with non-Jews.     

A Foot in Each Sphere: Christine Frederick and Early Twentieth-Century Advertising

The American advertiser has taught the American housewife to think constructively of her job.¹
Christine Frederick, 1929
As we enter the twenty-first century, Martha Stewart's web page proclaims her multi-million-dollar company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, to be a "leading creator of original'how to'content and related products for homemakers and other consumers."² Over the last 20 years, Stewart's enterprise, which targets primarily women consumers, has grown from a television show to an empire that includes books, magazines, radio broadcasts, a newspaper column, and Martha Stewart product lines sold in retail stores, through catalogs, and over the Internet.     

论清代前期的西部边疆开发

本文从地理环境、人口迁移、政府决策诸多方面对清代前期开发的得失进行综合研究,为当今中国正在进行的西部大开发提供历史借鉴。     

Challenge,Decline and Revival: The Fortunes of Pacifism in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Newcastle

In view of the economic and to some extent the military interests of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Newcastle, one would not expect to find a significant pacifist presence there. Between 1817 and 1869, however, the town had an active branch of the national Peace Society, and in Robert Spence Watson (1837–1911) it boasted one of England’s leading pacifists in the decades prior to the First World War. After dwelling on the last twenty years of the life of the Newcastle branch of the Peace Society (when it was subjected to greater challenges than it had been in the first part of its existence), the paper points out that, despite the branch’s closure, Newcastle pacifists won a rare local victory over their opponents in a public debate of 1870 and the Franco-Prussian War marked the starting-point of the many peace-related activities of Spence Watson. Whilst confirming scholars’ general impression that the impetus underlying nineteenth-century British pacifism came largely from Nonconformity (especially from Quakers), the paper claims that because the Newcastle brand of pacifism was radical, and because Spence Watson took the local variety of pacifism on to the national stage, tracing the fortunes of the doctrine in the principal city of north-east England is of general as well as provincial significance.     

Nativity Status and Voter Turnout in the Early Twentieth-Century Urban United States

Running counter to both theoretical expectations and the results of previous empirical studies, recent research has shown that European immigrants voted at higher rates than native-born Americans in urban areas of the United States during the beginning of the twentieth century. The explanation offered for this research finding, based on aggregate-level data, is that the numerical superiority of the immigrants in cities discouraged the native-born population from voting. However, a number of competing explanations could also be offered to account for this same finding. If this finding is valid, it could be attributable to the political machines spurring the immigrants to vote. Or this finding could be a spurious one caused by either the ecological fallacy or a census undercount of the foreign born. The authors, using both aggregate- and individual-level data, confirm that immigrants were more electorally active than the native born in one northeastern city. Their study reinforces the notion that the higher voter turnout of the immigrants was rooted more in demography than other factors.     

The Early Man Site at Warm Mineral Springs,Florida

Abstract

An excavation in stratified sediment more than 13 m. below the present surface of Warm Mineral Springs in Florida has yielded human remains 10,000 years old. Samples of wood from the same level of sediment in the spring in which a human vertebra was discovered provided a radiocarbon date of 10,260 ± 190 years: 8310 B.C. (Gak-3998). Wood samples from the next two superior 0.10 m levels of the test also yielded dates in excess of 10,000 radiocarbon years. A second human bone, a fragmentary ilium, was recovered a few centimeters outside the excavation in the sedimentary zone. These specimens may represent the earliest closely dated human skeletal remains so far discovered in North America.

Results of a geological study are in agreement with the archeological information. Radiocarbon dates on selected charcoal samples are only slightly younger than those reported above. The stratified deposit containing the human remains accumulated on a ledge between 10 m. and 12 m. below present sea level as a series of leaf deposits interbedded with calcitic muds containing fresh-water and land snail fauna. This lower leafy bed represents a stage of fluctuating water level in an open cenote. An overlying calcitic mud with only minor amounts of terrestrial plant debris represents a higher stand of the water table in the cenote. An upper algal sludge layer represents subsequent conditions of a flowing connate spring.

It is evident that the rising potentiometric water level in this large feature correlates with the post-Wisconsin eustatic rise in sea level. The fluctuations suggested by the lowest bed containing the human remains probably indicate variation in amount of precipitation. However, even the calcitic mud and tufa encrustations and formations that formed at the highest stand of water within this event are indicative of a climate considerably more arid than now existing.

Summary geological and archeological data acquired at two other similar solution features in Florida, Little Salt Spring (8 So 18) and Devil's Den (8 Lv 44), where unarticulated human skeletal material and artifacts dating from the late Paleo and A rchaic periods have been found, are included to extend and strengthen the interpretation of the geological sequence and the theory advanced that these sites were primarily utilized as water sources during periods when surface water on the peninsula was less available. There is no evidence that the sinkholes were utilized for habitation or sites of primary burials as has been suggested.

The recovery effort marks the first successful adaptation of standard archeological techniques to the excavation of a submerged prehistoric site.     

Early agriculture and sedentism in the American Southwest: Evidence and interpretations

Recent archaeological research in the American Southwest is rapidly altering long-held perspectives on early agricultural adaptations. The adoption of maize and squash is now reliably dated to ca. 1200 B.C., rather than 4000–2000 B.C. as previously thought, and new sites have been found in a variety of unexpected ecological settings. These emerging spatiotemporal patterns suggest that the development of sedentary communities after A.D. 500 may have been the result of changing systems of foraging, instead of simply a greater dependence on agricultural production.     

铁道知识在日本的传播与京滨铁路的诞生

1872年建成的京滨(东京一横滨)铁路是日本第一条铁路,被誉为日本铁路之祖。从此以后铁路便在这个岛国迅速延伸,到1906年铁路总长度突破5000英里,形成了以南北干线为核心的铁路运输体系。而中国的第一条铁路——吴淞铁路(1876年建成)却被清政府拆毁,直到1889年清政府才将修铁路定为国策。两对比鲜明,令人深思。笔认为京滨铁路之所以迅速建成和建成后未遭拆毁的厄运,与幕末时期铁道知识在日本的广泛传播是分不开的。幕末时期铁道知识在日本的传播为京滨铁路的诞生作了舆论上的准备。     

Ringforts or Fairy Homes: Oral Understandings and the Practice of Archaeology in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Ireland

Ringforts, the most numerous archaeological monument in the Irish landscape, have a dual character as places of early medieval habitation and as supernatural points of access to a fairy Otherworld. In my paper, I examine how these understandings interacted with, challenged and reinforced each other in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and how oral perceptions had a significant if generally unacknowledged role in determining supposedly scientific archaeological perceptions of these monuments.     

The Confessions of Dolgoruki: Fiction and Masternarrative in Twentieth-Century Iran

This paper is an in-depth study of The Confessions of Dolgoruki, the purported memoirs of a nineteenth-century Russian ambassador to Iran, long adduced as a document proving the claim that the Bahā'īs of Iran are spies of foreign powers. It unearths several early versions of the text, contextualizes the creation of The Confessions, exams the zeitgeist that produced it, and tracks the changes the text went through as the dominant socio-political discourse changed over time. In discussing the range of reactions The Confessions provoked, this paper traces the intriguing path through which this text created the masternarrative of Bahā'ī espionage. Finally, a hypothesis regarding the identity of the original creator of the text is advanced.