The Liberal Party,Free Trade and the 1841 Election

It is a paradox that the Liberal Party's electoral defeat in 1841 attested to its underlying strength and vitality. This article focuses on the impact on party unity of the free trade measures advocated by the ministry in the months preceding its fall. The Liberal Party's bold electoral platform antagonised its protectionist MPs, a group previously overlooked in the historiography, but fell short of the demands of its radical wing for political reform. While all the ingredients for fragmentation existed, unity prevailed. Protestations of loyalty to the leadership could be heard from the mouths of Liberal MPs of all shades, from stalwart protectionists who coalesced around the ministry on traditional foreign policy grounds through to the most fervent radicals who celebrated its ‘new’ direction. Such findings of cohesion contradict accounts which have hitherto viewed the 1841 electoral defeat as evidence of the party's inchoateness. Indeed, this article shifts the historiographical narrative away from addressing why the Liberals lost to the more pertinent issue of why the losses suffered were not greater. In answering that question, both the sensitivity with which the financial agenda was presented by ministers and the flexibility of different sections of the Liberal Party in interpreting and presenting the free trade measures to the electorate are underlined. Above all, Lord John Russell is rehabilitated as a ‘popular’ leader and his importance in the development of the nascent Liberal Party is unearthed.     

云南昆明石寨山出土汉代青铜器的初步分析

云南昆明的石寨山墓葬是汉代滇池区域的土著文化,为了了解该地汉代铜器的制作工艺水平,本研究通过金相显微镜观察、扫描电镜及能谱分析的现代分析手段来对M3、M5、M6、M7、M10、M12这6个墓葬群的31件青铜器展开探讨。结果显示在31件铜器样品中,有30件为铜锡合金,1件为红铜,所有器物均为铸造,其中有1件铜戈的刃部经历过热锻加工。这一分析结果丰富了石寨山文化的铜器研究,为器物的保护修复提供科学依据,同时也为云南汉代时期的铜器考古学以及金属技术史补充部分资料。     

Shifts Along a Spectrum: A Longitudinal Study of the Western Eurasian Realized Climate Niche

ABSTRACT

Climate niches that modern humans and earlier hominin ancestors occupied have changed dramatically over time, but the extent of those changes has gone largely undocumented. This study investigates the manner in which the realised hominin climate niche has expanded, contracted, or stayed stationary across four time periods (Last Interglacial, Last Glacial Maximum, Mid-Holocene, and 1950–2000) in Western Eurasia. Using spatially gridded general circulation model data and site locations this study examines climate variables from archaeological sites and current Western Eurasian cities to describe both the regional Western Eurasian fundamental and realised climate niches. Changes between the three prehistoric periods and modern-day time period are analysed by calculating each realised niche breadth, overlap, position, and variance. Results indicate that as global temperatures cooled from the Last Interglacial to Last Glacial Maximum, populations expanded their climate niche breadth beyond that of earlier Neanderthal groups, shifting toward regions with less seasonal variation. Conversely, Mid-Holocene humans, who saw the proliferation of both agriculture and population, contracted their realised climate niche space. The contraction and expansion of realised climate niche space illustrates how hominins have evolved the capacity to shift their niche through changes to their subsistence strategy and adaptations to overall climatic conditions.