The Trans-Saharan Railway and the Politics of Imperial Expansion, 1890–1900

The trans-Saharan railway scheme was the dominant, if intermittent, theme of French African expansion in the last 20?years of the nineteenth century. Behind political and economic arguments for the scheme lay a hidden agenda—the promotion of Algerian railway interests. Its revival in 1890, after a ten-year interval, was driven by a need to safeguard returns on railway investments, threatened by the growing political influence of the Radicals. Success in a campaign on its behalf was dependent on reinvigorating empire-building in tropical Africa, a function performed by the Chad plan, which also provided the required territorial configuration for a trans-Saharan railway. Subsequently, interest shifted from West Africa to the Sahara where efforts to promote railway construction through exploitation of the Tuat question stood greater chances of success. Saharan expansion was delayed for almost a decade by the obstinacy of the Algerian generals and the timidity of governments in France, before finally being resolved by a fait accompli. However, political circumstances at home, and the emergence of new railway competition in the Sahara, prevented the railway companies from reaping the full reward for their efforts. On the map, if not in any practical sense, a territorially unified French African empire had been completed by 1900, whose origins can be traced directly to the activities of the railway lobby.     

Sexually dimorphic sea urchins: identifying the sexes in Pentechinus mirabilis

The sexes of most sea urchin species are externally indistinguishable from one another. Where gross sexual dimorphism does exist, it is invariably associated with nonplanktotrophy. In the most extreme examples, female morphology has become modified to create depressions on the test where offspring may be sheltered throughout development. Since a number of the features used for taxonomic classification are lost on fossilization, it can be difficult to recognize fossil individuals as the dimorphic males and females of the same species. In addition, diagnoses of dimorphic taxa commonly concentrate on the striking female traits, hindering identification of the simpler male form. Here, we present an approach based on morphology and crystallographic determination of developmental mode that allows the recognition of the males of marsupiate echinoid taxa. Males of the brooding temnopleurid Pentechinus mirabilis from the Oligocene of Victoria, Australia are described for the first time.     

Sister-in-Law Marriage in the Empire: Religious Politics and Legislative Reform in the Australian Colonies 1850–1900

In 1835, a statute was passed in the parliament of the United Kingdom making it illegal for a widowed man to marry his sister-in-law. 1 Lord Lyndhurst's Act (1835) 5 & 6 Will VI c. 54. Marriage to a sister-in-law after a wife's death was common practice in nineteenth-century England and colonial Australia and aunts often took on the responsibility of raising children after a sibling's death. In the 1840s, a protracted parliamentary and social debate began over whether a widowed man's marriage to his sister-in-law should be made legal and this debate lasted over seven decades. In the Australian colonies, where English law had been inherited, 2 Those Australian colonies settled prior to the passing of Lord Lyndhurst's Act inherited the English position regarding deceased wife's sister marriage at the time, that such unions were voidable in the ecclesiastical courts during the lifetime of the parties, and in those colonies established afterwards, the 1835 statute applied and deceased wife's sister unions were illegal. In both cases colonial parliaments attempted to pass legislation to clarify the law. a similar debate occurred in the 1870s. The marriage was legalised in most of Australia in the 1870s while it remained illegal in England until the turn of the century. The parallel debates in each country provide a window into the comparative effect of religious culture on the development of marriage law. One of the primary reasons for the protracted nature of the struggle for marriage reform in England was its significance for the relationship between church and state. This article explores the implications of the relationship between church and state in Britain and the colonies for marriage legislation.     

Late Carboniferous marine invertebrate zones of eastern Australia

Brachiopods of the Marginirugus barringtonensis and Levispustula levis Zones comprise the youngest of three major Carboniferous biostratigraphic units in eastern Australia. The remarkable change in the composition of marine invertebrates between the second and third of these units, a transition that only two brachiopod species are known to survive, has been attributed to the isolation of eastern Australia and to a drop in temperature. The Marginirugus barringtonensis and Levipustula levis Zones are redefined from reference sections in the Myall region, N.S.W.; the L. levis Zone now includes the Syringothyris bifida Zone of Campbell (1961). Faunal sequences show that these two zones are closely related and that there is no hiatus between them, as formerly proposed by McKellar (1965). Conodonts identified by Mr. D. Crane indicate a late Viséan to early Namurian age for the Marginirugus barringtonensis Zone, and an age of early Namurian for the base of the Levipustula levis Zone; brachiopod evidence indicates that the L. levis Zone extends into the Westphalian. The younger Auriculispina levis Zone from the Yarrol Basin may be coeval with the Trigonotreta campbelli Zone from N.S.W. Faunas from both the L. levis and A. levis Zones are present in Argentina and many species from the L. levis Zone have affinities with forms from the Baikal region, U.S.S.R. Correlations based on the zones have eliminated the need for a hiatus between the Branch Creek and Baywulla Formations in the Yarrol Basin.

Taxa described from the Marginirugus barringtonensis and Levipustula levis Zones in the Myall region include Yagonia gibberensis Roberts gen. et sp. nov., Bulahdelia myallensis Roberts gen. et sp. nov., Alispirifer yagonensis Thompson sp. nov., A. alatus Thompson sp. nov., Licharewia bootiensis Thompson sp. nov., Spirifer pristinus (Maxwell), Spiriferi sp., Neospirifer campbelli Maxwell and N. senilis Maxwell.     

Eocene palynology of the Mulga Rocks deposits,southern Gunbarrel Basin,Western Australia

Mack, C.L. & Milne, L.A., 19.2.2015. Eocene palynology of the Mulga Rocks deposits, southern Gunbarrel Basin, Western Australia. Alcheringa 39, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518

Late Eocene palynomorph assemblages have been recovered from carbonaceous sediments within a tenement centred on the Mulga Rocks uranium deposits, currently under exploration by Energy and Minerals Australia. The Mulga Rocks deposits occur in a palaeovalley incised into rocks of the Cretaceous southern Gunbarrel Basin, and the underlying Neoproterozoic to Late Devonian southern Officer Basin, Western Australia. The palynomorph assemblages recovered from the Mulga Rocks deposits most closely resemble the Middle Nothofagidites asperus Zone equivalent of the Murray Basin. Many of the species recovered, and the abundance and diversity at which they are present, are considerably different from most of the southeastern Australian palynoassemblages of similar age. Common in the assemblages are species belonging to Nothofagus, Casuarinaceae, Myrtaceae and Picrodendraceae. Proteaceous species are diverse, with Banksia affiliates being prominent. Of most significance are assemblages dominated by Myrtaceidites species, which also contain affiliates of Petrophile and Xylomelum that occur in modern heathland, woodland and dry sclerophyll forests. The prominence of these taxa, and their co-occurrence, suggests that sclerophylly, at present linked closely with xeromorphy and now ubiquitous in the vegetation of Western Australia, was present in the late Eocene of southern Australia and suggests that at that time this trait may have been more prevalent than previously interpreted.

Charlotte Mack [charlotte.mack@postgrad.curtin.edu.au] and Lynne Milne [l.milne@curtin.edu.au], Department of Applied Geology, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987, Perth, WA 6845, Australia. Received 4.7.2014; revised 11.2.2015; accepted 19.2.2015.     

Visions of visibility: LGBT communities in Turin

Recent anti-discrimination campaigns by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) activists in Italy have increased the visibility of these communities and individuals, but have not resulted in the desired improvements to legislation. In light of this situation, this article analyses modalities of ‘visibility’ as defined and desired by the active LGBT community in Turin, host city for National Pride 2006. The Pride committee scheduled an unprecedentedly ‘visible’ year-long programme of consciousness-raising and cultural events that went far beyond the more usual one-day march. Drawing on a series of interviews with members of the committee and of the lesbian community conducted in Turin in March and June 2006, the discussion explores social, cultural and political visibility in this LGBT community as it hosted National Pride.

I think people live in a state of non-visibility, lacking self-acceptance; there are gay men and lesbians in Italy who are in hiding. (Andrea Benedino)1 1.?Interview conducted by the author, 31 March 2006.      

Populations and Climatic Evolution in North Tropical Africa from the End of the Neolithic to the Dawn of the Modern Era

At the end of the Neolithic Era, during the third millennium BCE, there were fewer humid periods, and the sub-Saharan and Sahelian zones from the Atlantic to Lake Chad assumed their current geographical form. Since then, the climate has continued undergoing major variations. The succession of climatic episodes, humid or dry, is pointed out along with the episodes’ complex interactions. These variations are placed in parallel to cultural phases of evolution in archaeology and history. Climate-related events have always had heavy consequences on the peopling of this vast region, often subject to extreme natural conditions. The relative synchronism between the principal cultural trends from west to east across the Sahel seems to have often been subject to swings in the climate and the resulting environmental changes.