A Victorian Embarrassment: Consular Jurisdiction and the Evils of Extraterritoriality

In 1856, the Treaty of Paris nominally welcomed the Ottoman Empire into the Concert of Europe, but this exposed a deep fault line in international relations. Although the gesture implied full sovereign rights, it seemed incompatible with the extraterritorial privileges held by Europeans in Ottoman lands under the age-old capitulations. New commercial treaties complicated the issue by extending similar privileges to British subjects as far afield as China, Siam and Japan. Consular jurisdiction soon became the focus of controversy in Westminster as extraterritoriality featured prominently in local disputes following British commercial expansion across Asia, among them the Arrow incident that led to the Second Opium War. In Japan and other states, it would also become a key grievance in popular campaigns against ‘unequal treaties’ and the injustices of informal empire. This analysis shows how, even before such narratives of resistance emerged, there was already a seam of ambivalence in Victorian political discourse on the question of extraterritoriality. In the Foreign Office, it came as no surprise to be told of defects in these treaties, but it was the context of the existing debate, notably fresh initiatives to set up mixed courts, that framed the British response.     

The measurement of taxonomic evenness in zooarchaeology

Zooarchaeologists frequently measure taxonomic evenness to document subsistence change and to understand the response of faunal communities to paleoenvironmental change. Although the measurement of evenness is commonplace, there are numerous challenges involved. Evenness indices are sensitive to changing richness, and by extension sample size, and various indices respond differently to changing taxonomic abundances (i.e., changing evenness). To refine protocol for comparing assemblages of varied sampling effort and identify indices that may be more useful for zooarchaeological applications, we examine the quantitative behavior of the widely used Shannon evenness and Simpson indices and two others more commonly used by ecologists. These indices are examined in relation to varied richness, sample size, and taxonomic abundances. We show that although zooarchaeologists are concerned with identifying and correcting for the effects of sample size on evenness, it may be appropriate to instead focus on how richness modulates evenness. Based on our analyses, we recommend the Simpson index for most zooarchaeological applications, except when comparing evenness across assemblages that are very even.     

Smells like politics: planning and the inconvenient politics of intensive peri‐urban agriculture

Intensive farming is an increasing part of Australian agriculture, including in the multi‐functional landscapes at the edges of Australian cities. The example of intensive “broiler” poultry production reveals the tensions that arise when sites of hyper‐productivity conflict with social change in rural areas. Planning processes for intensive farming in the Australian state of Victoria are predicated on stability and consensus: on assumed static and uncontroversial ideas of agriculture, its place, and the primacy of agricultural productivity. Yet concerns about the industrialisation of agriculture are live political issues at the local level, especially in dynamic peri‐urban locations. This paper explores the emergence of a politics of place outside the bounds of planning consensus through an analysis of planning appeals and associated media relating to planning permits for intensive poultry developments in Victoria over 2011–2016. We highlight tensions that exist in relation to technical planning assessments and categorisations used to assert farming as the orthodox use of rural land, especially when new forms of farming look and feel demonstrably different. Using Mouffe's problematising of the negation of antagonism and Rancière's notion of the risks of a false consensus democracy, we argue that planning processes for intensive farming illustrate critical issues in participatory planning. While ostensibly post‐political decision‐making narrows the politics of place and food systems to decisions about policing the boundaries and buffer distances placed around intensive poultry developments, alternative representations of rural life persist. The certainty offered by code‐based planning does not negate the ongoing (if inconvenient) politics of intensive peri‐urban agriculture.     

Surface controls on the characteristics of natural CO2 seeps: implications for engineered CO2 stores

CO₂ injected into rock formations for deep geological storage must not leak to surface, since this would be economically and environmentally unfavourable, and could present a human health hazard. In Italy natural CO₂ degassing to the surface via seeps is widespread, providing an insight into the various styles of subsurface ‘plumbing’ as well as surface expression of CO₂ fluids. Here we investigate surface controls on the distribution of CO₂ seep characteristics (type, flux and temperature) using a large geographical and historical data set. When the locations of documented seeps are compared to a synthetic statistically random data set, we find that the nature of the CO₂ seeps is most strongly governed by the flow properties of the outcropping rocks, and local topography. Where low‐permeability rocks outcrop, numerous dry seeps occur and have a range of fluxes. Aqueous fluid flow will be limited in these low‐permeability rocks, and so relative permeability effects may enable preferential CO₂ flow. CO₂ vents typically occur along faults in rocks that are located above the water table or are low permeability. Diffuse seeps develop where CO₂ (laterally supplied by these faults) emerges from the vadose zone and where CO₂ degassing from groundwater follows a different flow path due to flow differences for water and CO₂ gas. Bubbling water seeps (characterized by water bubbling with CO₂) arise where CO₂ supply enters the phreatic zone or an aquifer. CO₂‐rich springs often emerge where valleys erode into CO₂ aquifers, and these are typically high flux seeps. Seep type is known to influence human health risk at CO₂ seeps in Italy, as well as the topography surrounding the seep which affects the rate of gas dispersion by wind. Identifying the physical controls on potential seep locations and seep type above engineered CO₂ storage operations is therefore crucial to targeted site monitoring strategy and risk assessment. The surface geology and topography above a CO₂ store must therefore be characterized in order to design the most effective monitoring strategy.