The Parliamentary Organisation of the Whig Junto in the Reign of Queen Anne: A Further Note

The parliamentary organisation of the whig Junto in the reign of Queen Anne was far superior to that of the tory party. At the centre were the meetings in which three or four of the five members of the Junto were present together with some of their followers. Evidence of such meetings is rare but here is presented a letter giving the details of a meeting of all five in April 1713 at the home of Lord Somers, together with their ally, the tory earl of Nottingham, probably to discuss the forthcoming peace proposals, to end the war of the Spanish Succession, and the protestant succession to the British throne.     

Iran's Reform Movement: The Enduring Relevance of an Alternative Discourse

Given the surprise electoral victory in May 2013 of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, which was attained on a recurrent platform of reform and change, this article seeks to investigate Iran's reform discourse by looking at how it systematically developed under President Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005). Its chief purpose is to delineate the discourse in a retrospective analytical attempt to show why it has proven so resilient and persuasive in theory while briefly explicating the causes of its failure in practice under reformists, which set the stage for the rise to power of populist neo‐conservatives marshaled by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–2013). Divided in two main parts, it thus seeks to tease out the domestic ideology of reform as theorized by Khatami and his men on the one hand, and the foreign policy of détente and dialogue as performed by the reformist administration on the other. In so doing, the article draws primarily on the original Persian sources produced during the respective period and afterward, including Khatami's own writings as well as theoretical formulations and articulations propounded by his political strategists. Finally, it anticipates that Rouhani's “moderation” project can face the same fate as Khatami's “reform” project if the former does not heed the hard‐earned historical lessons of the latter, even though it is operating in a different sociopolitical context.     

Prelude to the Popular Front: The Communist Party in California, 1931-35

The opening of some Russian archives to research by Western historians has permitted new understandings of local Communist parties during the 1920s and 1930s. At the same time, these new sources have intensified historiographical debates over the degree of autonomy within the Communist party of the United States (CPUSA). Historians have long pointed to California in the early 1930s as an example of local autonomy, but the new information permits a more detailed understanding both of the extent of that local autonomy and of relations among local CPUSA leaders, the national party office in New York City, and the Comintern in Moscow. This paper explores the CP's participation in events in California-primarily the coastwise maritime strike, the San Francisco general strike, and the state elections of 1934-along with the internal decision-making processes of the CP at various levels through the lens provided by the newly available Comintern archives as well as other collections.     

White Parliament,Black Politics: The Dilemmas of Indigenous Parliamentary Representation

Australia's parliaments remain fundamentally white institutions. Since Federation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been poorly represented – or not represented at all – in the nation's State, Territory and Commonwealth legislatures. Today there remains an ambivalent assessment of the capacity for parliamentary representation to actually deliver meaningful change for Indigenous peoples. This article examines the complexities involved in Indigenous parliamentary representation, drawing on original interviews with current and past parliamentarians to examine tensions between party identification and indigeneity; between electoral and group-based representation; and between notions of a politics of presence versus the effective representation of a diversity of Indigenous interests. The paper concludes that while parliamentary representation is important in a symbolic sense, without structural transformation it will never be an adequate vehicle for representing Indigenous needs and concerns in the postcolonial state.     

The Western River Steamboat Heroine, 1832–1838, Oklahoma,USA: construction

This paper describes the design and construction of the side‐wheel steamer Heroine, a representative of the ‘western river steamboat’ type and the earliest example of its kind to undergo archaeological study. Heroine was built at New Albany, Indiana, in 1832 and sunk on the Red River between Oklahoma and Texas in 1838. The extensive remains of the lower hull show assembly practices in use during the developmental era of Mississippi River steamboats. The wreck also reveals a heretofore‐unknown technique for longitudinally strengthening these long, narrow, and very lightly built hulls.