Enemies of liberty? Nationalism,immigration, and the framing of terrorism in the agenda of the Front National

This paper systematises the framing of the terrorism issue in the programmatic agenda of the Front national (FN) by focusing on nationalism. We argue that the FN's position on terrorism constitutes part of its strategy to justify its anti‐immigrant agenda by offering ideological rather than biological rationalisations for national belonging. To test our argument empirically, we operationalise four categories of nationalism, including ethno‐racial, cultural, political‐civic, and economic, and code official FN materials published in reaction to seven terrorist attacks on French soil during the period 1986–2015. We find that whilst older documents draw on all four categories, Marine Le Pen documents draw almost exclusively on the cultural and political‐civic categories, confirming our argument. Building on the “normalisation” or “de‐demonisation” approach, our nationalism framework presents a distinct theoretical advantage by allowing us to conceptualise the shift in the party's programmatic agenda.     

Geometry,Construction and Structural Analysis of the Crossed-Arch Vault of the Chapel of Villaviciosa,in the Mosque of Córdoba

The vault of Villaviciosa is one of the oldest existing examples of a true ribbed vault, and is the first of the crossed-arch type. Although its perfection suggests earlier trials, none has been found so far. It predates the oldest Romanesque ribbed vaults by more than a century. Notwithstanding its importance, no construction and structural study has ever been done; neither has an accurate survey been published. The purpose of this article is to fill this gap in the history of vault construction. A detailed survey has been made, providing the first accurate drawings of the vault. A close inspection of the extrados, completed with a visual inspection of interior damages, has allowed ascertaining the main construction features. With the geometry and the material data a structural analysis has been carried out. This analysis explains the fundamental structural behavior of the vault and throws new light into some historical issues; for example, it leads to discarding the widespread belief that the ribs are decorative: they are supporting the weight of the vault.     

Meridionalismo,the crisis of liberalism,and the advent of Marxism in post‐risorgimento Naples

For an ideology described by Marx himself as one that was suitable only for advanced societies, backward Naples ironically served as the point of entry for Marxism in Italy. As theorists and activists, the great Neapolitan Marxists—Antonio Labriola, Carlo Cafiero, Arturo Labriola, and Amadeo Bordiga—completely dominated the initial stages of the movement. For an understanding of the severe socio‐economic conditions that did much to make Naples the incubator of radicalism in post‐Risorgimento Italy, the literature of the meridionalisti (southern reformers) remains indispensable. Under attack on both sides of the Atlantic by a new generation of historians who admirably seek to produce a nuanced history of the South by rising above the stereotypes associated with a one‐dimensional image of the “Southern Problem,” the meridionalisti require supplementing today as historians. Nevertheless, the reaction against them has been too extreme. They remain invaluable eye‐witnesses to the conditions and events that formed the historical context of Marxism's momentous appearance in Italy.     

The role of the internet in removing the ‘shackles of the saleroom’: Anytime,anyplace, anything,anywhere

Abstract

The alliance of the internet with the antiquities industry has seen the market grow at an unprecedented rate. E-commerce has facilitated an increase in flexibility and access to the market, which has encouraged an influx of new people to the trade. Anyone can now buy and sell antiquities.

The expansion and extension of the market has created new threats to our cultural heritage. Indeed, my research suggests that this has had a significant impact on the organisation, extent and intensity of site destruction. Furthermore, the increased demand for artefacts has led to the proliferation of fakes, increasingly obvious with the widely circulated images on the world wide web. Consequently we are faced with a progressively more confused and fragmentary archaeological record, challenging efforts to piece together the past.

All assessments of the future must accept that the e-market is vast, that it remains largely unsupervised, and that it is impossible to police. Evidence suggests that the illicit trade is filtering into the cyber-sphere, which provides an ideal means of placing material onto the market quickly and quietly. The extent of this unwelcome development is unknown and remains difficult to assess. What is certain is that action needs to be taken if the ‘Age of Technology’ is not to consume the present as well as the past.     

Ecocriticism,Joyce, and the politics of trees in the ‘Cyclops’ episode of Ulysses

This article explores the ecological and ideological context of a passage in which two nationalists lament Ireland's treeless state. Although Joyce satirises these professed tree-lovers and the cause of reforestation, the passage alludes to a lively, serious topic in fin de siècle discourse. While Catholic nationalists blamed the loss of the island's once-vast, oak-dominated forests on British colonialism, a history elided by unionists, they shared a belief in the economic benefits of reforestation. Like Joyce, both sides knew little of Ireland's post-Ice Age natural history and did not appreciate the cultural importance of forest ecosystems to ancient Celtic peoples. Today, the Republic's profit-based plantations of conifers enact the materialist ideology of c.1904 reforestation advocates while overlooking the environmental and cultural benefits of restoring the biodiversity of native deciduous forests.     

On the Probable Identity of the Gloucestershire Chapelry of St. Briavel’s,Recognised as Lidneia Parva in the Twelfth Century,with the Ledenei of the Saxon Hundred of Ledenei,Named in the Domesday as the Property of William Fitz Baderon

The shrunken medieval hamlet of Wintringham lies in the parish of St Neots some 2 miles east of the town centre. The position of the settlement was clearly defined by the remains of the peasant crofts, moated enclosures and bj the ridge and furrow of the open fields, which surrounded much of the site.

An excavation was arranged by the Department of the Environment and the Deserted Medieval Village Research Group in 1971 and 1972 to examine the moated enclosure, lying in the southern part of the site, before it was levelled and ploughed. The finding of four superimposed houses and their associated buildings revealed much information about the construction and expansion of a substantial timber house between circa 1175 and 1340.

The excavation finds have been presented to the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge.     

Social Hierarchy of the Policemen in the French Concession of Shanghai, 1911–37

The policemen in the French Concession of Shanghai were mainly composed of French, Russian, Chinese, and Vietnamese. Through a comparative study of recruiting conditions, training courses, salaries, welfare, and job turnover, I establish that the police were a hierarchical institution based on a differentiated treatment according to race and nationality. The French policemen stood at the top of the pyramid, with the lowest number but the most influence. The Russians were cheap white labor forces and constituted the second highest class of the police. The Vietnamese and Chinese policemen were at the bottom of the pyramid and constituted the majority of the policemen in the Concession.     

Rosner,Erhard, Guide Signs of the Empire： Programmatic Place Names in the History of China （in German）

Successive dynasties used to emblazon their respective political agendas on the Chinese landscape by bestowing programmatic names on the towns and cities of their empire. Depending on the ruling elites＇ propagandistic aims, these messages could be allusive or blunt, bellicose or pacific, deprecating towards outsiders or culturally inclusive.     

Clarendon,Cavour, and the Intervention of Sardinia in the Crimean War, 1853–1855

The notorious arms trader Sir Basil Zaharoff is remembered as the archetypal ‘merchant of death’. During the First World War, he is alleged to have exercised a malign influence over statesmen in London and Paris. Recently released Foreign Office files now allow us to document Zaharoff's wartime activities on behalf of the British government as an agent of influence in the Levant. The new sources reveal that Sir Vincent H.P. Caillard, the financial director of the arms-maker Vickers, played a key role in making Zaharoff's services available to prime ministers Asquith and Lloyd George. While Zaharoff has often been portrayed as a sinister force, manipulating statesmen into pursuing his financial and political interests, the reality was the reverse. Zaharoff was a convenient tool of two prime ministers rather than a powerful political manipulator in his own right.     

Anglo/American Complicity in the Removal of the Inhabitants of the Chagos Islands, 1964–73

Following the majority verdict, on 22 October 2008, in the House of Lords, denying the Chagossians the right to return to their homeland, it is worth examining the origins of this issue. I touched on the extent to which the US was complicit in the expulsion of the Chagossians in an article in the March 2008 issue of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (‘Expulsion from Chagos: Regaining Paradise’). A common assumption is that the US pressured the UK to remove the population from the entire Chagos Archipelago of fifty-five islands, as a pre-condition for establishing a base on Diego Garcia. Although the US was looking for an uninhabited island to serve as a base, there is no available evidence that they insisted on the depopulation of all the islands. It was British officials who were the instigators of this policy, albeit with American concurrence.     

Czechoslovak–Liechtenstein relations in the shadow of the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia,February 1948

When in 1945 the Czechoslovak authorities confiscated the estate of the Princes von und zu Liechtenstein, the two countries became involved in a dispute which had not been resolved until recently, at least on a diplomatic level. For several decades, the 1948 Communist coup d'état in Czechoslovakia dashed the hopes of the Liechtenstein family for a restitution of their confiscated assets. However, officials responsible internally admitted that the property confiscation had been questionable in the case of the Liechtenstein family. The court had not confirmed the confiscation until after the Communist coup. However, the Liechtenstein family did not renounce their claims, and after the collapse of the Communist regime in 1989 they brought them up again.     

Regional patterns in the experiences and treatment of the sick poor, 1800–40: rights,obligations and duties in the rhetoric of paupers

Abstract

This article focuses on three individual paupers who wrote a series of letters about sickness to their home towns in Essex, Northamptonshire and Lancashire. While it would be wrong to claim that the rhetoric and strategies employed by the three writers are representative of all pauper writers, they are representative of those who wrote multiple letters to their parish of settlement and a detailed exposition of their writing can tell us much about sickness and its relief by communities in the last decades of the Old Poor Law. While sick paupers have largely escaped historiographical attention in a literature that has tended to focus on the elderly, widows, children and the unemployed able-bodied man, more detailed study of the life- and dependency-cycles of poor people is beginning to show that sickness was the pivotal experience of people on the margins and that sickness relief swallowed up a very sizeable chunk of poor law resources in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The strategies, thoughts and experiences of the sick poor are thus not just important in their own right, but also for what they tell us about the sentiment of communities towards the poor and the experiences of paupers in those communities.     

Russia,Turkey, and the Problem of the Black Sea Straits in 1898–1908

The article deals with the main geopolitical problem in Russian—Ottoman relations at the turn of the twentieth century. Using ample archive sources the author shows the course of Russia’s struggle for influence in the straits. He concludes that the Ottoman policy was more flexible and the Turks proved able to assert their interests in the region. At the same time the straits question did not become the cause of any serious escalation between the two powers.     

“Printed in the seventh year of the authors oppression”: debt,imprisonment, and the radicalization of Henry Adis

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the prison writings of Henry Adis. Writing from prison in the mid-seventeenth century, Adis rejects the status quo of the changing political regimes and develops a radicalized narrative persona that evolves throughout his prison writings, evolving from that of petitioning debtor to that of aggressive polemicist. This paper considers the effects of imprisonment on Adis’ polemic and then suggests that Adis’ radicalization is a response to a conflict with what he sees as a broken criminal justice system rather than a response to the emerging political and religious tensions that accompanied the Interregnum. Adis’ prison writings illustrate how the the seventeenth-century carceral experience could be formative to the counter-political movements of the period as much as a punitive measure against dissent.