Catharine Macaulay on the Will

Catharine Macaulay's discussion of freedom of the will in her Treatise on the Immutability of Moral Truth has received little attention, and what discussion there is attributes a number of different, incompatible views to her. In this paper the account of the nature of freedom of the will that she develops is related to her political aspirations, and the metaphysical position that she adopts is compared to those of John Locke, Samuel Clarke, Joseph Priestley, William Godwin, and others. It is argued that although Macaulay's position is ultimately ambiguous, she is most plausibly interpreted as following Locke's discussion of free will in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding and of inheriting, from him, the ambiguity that we find in her account.     

Essay and Reflection: On the Nature of International History

This essay focuses on a previously under-explored facet of Churchill's life by analysing the autobiographical novel he created while reading literary classics as a young soldier suffering bouts of depression in a remote corner of the British Empire. It employs a combination of research strategies that include Churchill's correspondence, extracts from Savrola and related works, the social-scientific insights of Anthony Storr and Daniel Levinson, and an unpublished document in the Churchill Archives that links Churchill's capacity for heroism to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. The author concludes that Savrola provided a means of self-diagnosis and treatment for Winston Churchill to extract some meaning in life and ultimately achieve political success.     

Searching for the Reluctant Hands: Obsession,Ambivalence and the Practice of Organising Involuntary Labour in Colonial Cuanza-Sul and Malange Districts,Angola, 1926–1945

In the 1930s, administrative control over the unruly hinterlands of Angola was established by the Portuguese colonisers, and officials at Lisbon's colonial ministry attempted to set up efficient mechanisms to force local populations to work. However, the experience and the attitudes of the administrators of the local posts—the chefes de posto—and of the small subdivisions were full of ambivalences and insecurities; their interaction with the African inhabitants of the respective areas and with the European settlers was characterised by improvisation. These attitudes of the local administrators, slowly changing up to and beyond the period of the Second World War, can be used as a window into administrative life in the field, and these attitudes had direct repercussions on the living conditions of rural Angolans. While this analysis is limited to subdivisions of the Angolan districts of Cuanza-Sul and Malange, it is intended to contribute to a broader picture of the effects the decisions of local administrators had, a picture applicable to other Portuguese colonies and to the lower parts of the hierarchy of other colonial empires.     

Peasant Settlers and the ‘Civilising Mission’ in Russian Turkestan, 1865–1917

This article provides an introduction to one of the lesser-known examples of European settler colonialism, the settlement of European (mainly Russian and Ukrainian) peasants in Southern Central Asia (Turkestan) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It establishes the legal background and demographic impact of peasant settlement, and the role played by the state in organising and encouraging it. It explores official attitudes towards the settlers (which were often very negative), and their relations with the local Kazakh and Kyrgyz population. The article adopts a comparative framework, looking at Turkestan alongside Algeria and Southern Africa, and seeking to establish whether paradigms developed in the study of other settler societies (such as the ‘poor white’) are of any relevance in understanding Slavic peasant settlement in Turkestan. It concludes that there are many close parallels with European settlement in other regions with large indigenous populations, but that racial ideology played a much less important role in the Russian case compared to religious divisions and fears of cultural backsliding. This did not prevent relations between settlers and the ‘native’ population deteriorating markedly in the years before the First World War, resulting in large-scale rebellion in 1916.     

Cultural traffic in Lübeck and Danzig in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

In this examination of patterns of cultural traffic in Lübeck and Danzig in the 16th and 17th centuries it is argued that while Danzig was strongly influenced by Dutch commercial contacts and exercised a very strong cultural influence on its Polish hinterland, Lübeck was open to a more diffuse range of external cultural influences, and competed as a centre of culture with its neighbours. Two assumptions are tested here: that a relationship existed between cultural innovation based on external stimuli and levels of commercial prosperity in cities, and that the more passive a city became in terms of international trade, the more it was influenced by external cultural trends. It is concluded that the cultural experiences of the two cities were shaped as much by their relationship with their hinterlands as they were by changing patterns of international trade during the 16th and 17th centuries.     

Constructing (Un)familiarity: Role of Tourism in Identity and Region Building at the Finnish–Russian Border

This paper investigates the role of tourism in the construction of (un)familiarity in Karelia at the Finnish–Russian borderland. From a historical perspective, it deals with a culturally homogenous space, which more recently became divided by the border into two nation states that differ politically, ethnically and linguistically. In the course of the Cold War, unfamiliarity was one of the tools used by the Soviet political elite in construction of national identity. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the border regime became liberalized and cross-border interaction began, familiarity became one of the key factors of the regional identity construction. The case of Sortavala, on which this study focuses, allows us to analyse how identity was constructed in official and media discourses. Although familiarity in the local context is more prominent, unfamiliarity is also at stake, not only in a negative sense, but also from a sense of curiosity about historical ties between the different parts of Karelia. This paper contributes to an understanding of EU external bordering politics. It also highlights the role of local actors in the (re-)construction and (re-)interpretation of borders. Tourism is seen as one of the facets of local identity formation. This study attempts to understand tourism-driven cross-border region-building processes.     

The Roman Shipwreck of Antirhodos Island in the Portus Magnus of Alexandria,Egypt

Between 1998 and 1999 three excavation campaigns were undertaken on a shipwreck at the now‐submerged site of the ancient Portus Magnus, off the coast of Alexandria. The site, close to the island of Antirhodos, was identified through geophysical and archaeological surveys carried out by the Institut Européen d’Archéologie Sous‐Marine (IEASM), directed by Franck Goddio. The remains of the ship lie c.5 m deep and are spread over c.350 sqm. No cargo has been found. Artefacts recovered, the details of the ship's architecture and radiocarbon dating all suggest it sunk between the end of the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE. Its dimensions correspond to those of commercial ships of the Roman era. Identification of the wood used contributes significantly to our knowledge of materials used in naval architecture of this period.