Patronage and Professionalism: Manning a Transitional Empire, 1760–1870

While there is agreement that the Colonial Office continued to man an expanding empire in the nineteenth century by the technique of patronage, the reasons for the longevity of this practice, despite ‘reform’ of civil service recruitment in the early 1850s, have been little analysed. This article explores, from patronage records and private papers, the factors sustaining preferment in the gift of secretaries of state and their governors, rather than by resorting to examinations. Its conclusions are that the practice was associated with class status among senior civil servants, gradually mitigated by promotions from within colonial establishments. Patronage was burdensome to manage centrally and had to be devolved to governors, as colonial establishments expanded, creating a pool of talent among senior officials for secretaries of state to draw on. This trend is evident in establishment statistics from the late 1840s to1871. It supports the Colonial Office claim that the service was ‘professional’ according to its own criteria of learning through experience in political accommodation with local notables and dealing with emergencies. Thus, the department justified its opposition to competitive examinations for appointments overseas, while tolerating them for junior posts at home, and the practice survived till the end of the century and after.     

Book Reviews

Abstract

I begin with an attempt to discern the contours of the "debate" contained in the edited volume Theology and the Political: The New Debate. While the Radical Orthodox contributors are eager to critique those outside the fold, only two authors seem to talk back to them: Kenneth Surin and Mary-Jane Rubenstein. I agree with Surin's rejection of ontological hierarchy and Rubenstein's recommendation of Nancy's notion of "being-with," and I use their arguments to critique Radical Orthodoxy's ontology and their simplistic approach to "secular" authors, respectively. Insofar as one must discuss ontology in relation to theology and the political, I propose that we must actually develop a new ontology rather than simply reassert some version of the Thomistic synthesis. Finally, I fault the relative lack of reference to actual political practice, and above all the complete absence of Latin American liberation theology, in a volume ostensibly discussing "theology and the political."     

Tourism and Community: An Ecuadorian Village Builds on its Past

An archaeological project and a community museum in Agua Blanca, Ecuador, have helped catalyse a remarkable process of ecological and cultural awareness complemented by economic advances. Some twenty-five years after the museum’s inauguration, as well as visiting the archaeological site and museum, tourists can observe the Machalilla National Park’s distinctive flora and fauna, camp, hike, swim, stay in village homes, buy locally made handcrafts, and eat in the community restaurant. These initiatives have been set up by the village in collaboration with local, national, and overseas agencies, in ways which spread benefits as widely as possible. After the introduction of a new constitution in 2008, which recognizes the multi-ethnic character of Ecuador’s population, Agua Blanca and adjacent communities asked to be officially recognized as ‘Pueblo Manta’ — an identity derived from the area’s pre-Spanish archaeology. Agua Blanca’s experience shows that much can be achieved through confidence in cultural identity, and that locally managed community tourism brings tangible economic benefits to local people, while serving to protect vulnerable archaeological sites from destruction.     

Proceedings of the royal Scottish geographical society

EUROPE.

Scotland Picturesque and Traditional. By Geo. Eyre‐Todd. Stirling : Eneas Mackay, 1931. Price 5s.

In the Highlands. By Seton Gordon. London : Cassell and Co. Ltd., 1931. Price 7s. 6d.

A Last Voyage to St. Kilda. By Alasdair Alpin Macgregor. London: Cassell and Co. Ltd., 1931. Price 7s. 6d.

Rambles in Dorset. By J. H. Wade. London : Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1931. Price 7s. 6d.

Everyday Life in Old Scotland. By J. F. Geant. Part I.: To 1603. Part II.: 1603–1707. London : George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1931. Price 2s. 6d. each Part.

So You ‘re Going to Spain. By Clara E. Laughlin. London : Methuen and Co. Ltd., n.d. Price 10s. 6d.

Greek Cities in Italy and Sicily. By David Randall‐MacIver. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931. Price 12s. 6d.

Modern Germanies. By Cicely Hamilton. London and Toronto : J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1931. Price 7s. 6d.

The Austrian Tyrol. By Ian F. D. Morrow. London : Faber and Faber Ltd., 1931. Price 15s.

Austria. By J. D. Newth. London : A. and C. Black Ltd., 1931. Price 7s. 6d.

An Agricultural Atlas of Scotland. By H. J. Wood. London : George Gill and Sons Ltd., 1931. Price 3s. 6d.

Les Paysages Catalans. Par Marcel Chevalier. Paris : Albert Blanchard, 1929. Prix 30 francs.

Kalabrien. Von Helmuth Kanter. Hamburg : Friederichsen, de Gruyter und Co., 1930.

Peninsular Europe. By L. W. Lyde, M.A. London : Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1931. Price 10s. 6d. net.

The Baltic States : Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. By Hebe Spaull. London : A. and C. Black Ltd., 1931. Price 2s. 6d. net.

Skara Brae : A Pictish Village in Orkney. By V. Gordon Childe, B.Litt., Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology in Edinburgh University, author of The Most Ancient East, The Aryans, The Dawn of European Civilisation, etc. With chapters by Professor T. H. Bryce, F.R.S., and Professor D. M. S. Watson, F.R.S. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. Ltd., 1931. Price 31s. 6d.

A foot in Portugal. By John Gibbons. London : George Newnes Ltd., n.d. Price 7s. 6d.

Wanderings in Greece. By F. S. Burnell. London : Edward Arnold and Co., 1931. Price 7s. 6d.

Wanderings. By Arthur Symons. London : J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1931. Price 8s. 6d.

ASIA.

Life in the Chinese Church. By T. Ralph Morton. London : The Student Christian Movement Press. Price 1s. 6d. net.

Romantic Ceylon : Its History, Legend, and Story. By R. H. Bassett. London : Cecil Palmer, 1929. Price 7s. 6d.

The People of the Leaves. By Vivian Meik. London: Philip Allan and Co. Ltd., 1931. Price 12s. 6d.

AFRICA.

A Wayfarer in North Africa : Tunisia and Algiers. By Fletcher Allen. London : Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1931. Price 7s. 6d.

Early Days in East Africa. By the late Sir Frederick Jackson. London : Edward Arnold and Co., 1930. Price 21s.

A Vagabond in Barbary. By Harry L. Foster. Illustrated. London : John Lane (The Bodley Head Ltd.), 1930. Price 12s. 6d. net.

Through Unknown Africa, By William Jaspert. Translated by Agnes Platt. London : Jarrolds Ltd. Price 12s. 6d. net.

Jungle Ways. By William B. Seabrook. London : Harrap and Co. Ltd., 1931. Price 10s. 6d. net.

AMERICA.

Land of Wonder and Fear. By F. A. Mitchell‐Hedges. London : Duckworth and Co. Ltd., 1931. Price 18s.

A Yankee in Patagonia. Edward Chace: His Thirty Years There, 1898–1928. By Robert and Katharine Barrett. Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons Ltd., 1931. Price 12s. 6d.

POLAR.

South Georgia. By L. H. Matthews. Bristol: J. Wright and Sons. London: Simpkin Marshall Ltd., 1931. Price 15s. net.

GENERAL.

A Short History of British Expansion. By James A. Williamson. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd. Second Edition, 1930. Two vols. Price 15s. each.

Plant Life through the Ages : A Geological and Botanical Retrospect. By A. C. : Seward. Cambridge : University Press, 1931. Price 30s.

Memoirs of a Ceylon Planter's Travels. By Mountsteven Bremer. London : Rivington and Co., 1930. Price 10s. 6d.

The World Mapped : Being a Short History of Attempts to Map the World from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. By I. J. Curnow, B.A., Ph.D. (Lond.). London : Sifton Praed and Co., 1930. Price 5s.

Geographische Grundlagen der Geschichte. Von Hugo Hassinger. Freiburg im Breisgau : Herder und Co., 1931. Preis M. 10.50.

Climatology. By A. Austin Miller. London : Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1931. Price 12s. 6d. net.

Climate. By W. G. Kendkew. Oxford : The Clarendon Press, 1930. Price 15s.

Raw Materials of Commerce. By J. Henry Vanstone. Two vols. London : Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons Ltd., 1929. Price 40s. net.

Blood and Oil in the Orient. By Essad Bey. Translated from the German by Elsa Talmey. London : Nash and Grayson Ltd., 1930. Price 18s. net.

EDUCATIONAL.

South America. By Edward V. Lane. (Harrap's New Geographical Series.) London : George Harrap and Co. Ltd., 1931. Price 3s.

Social and Economic Geography. By L. Brettle, M.A., B.Litt., F.R.G.S. London : Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons Ltd., 1931. Price 10s. 6d. net.

Land Forms and Life. By C. C. Carter. London : Christophers, 1931. Price 6s.     

Scottish landform examples 45: Sgriob na Caillich: a landslide-sourced medial moraine on the Isle of Jura

ABSTRACT

Medial moraines deposited by former glaciers and ice sheets are rare in Scotland. The most prominent example is the Sgriob na Caillich moraine, which consists of two to four parallel belts of angular quartzite boulders that extend northwestwards for over 3.5?km from the SW flank of Beinn an Oir on the Isle of Jura. The boulder belts extend to within 300?m of the present coastline, where they are truncated by a low bluff and raised marine terrace. The source of the moraine coincides with bedrock gullies and cliffs that represent the scars of former rock-slope failure(s), indicating that the moraine debris was sourced by one or more rockfalls or rockslides onto the ice surface after Beinn an Oir had emerged from the thinning ice cover as a nunatak. Exposure dating of boulders on the moraine indicate that it formed at 16.6?±?0.8?ka, consistent with the timing of ice-sheet retreat in this sector. The alignment of the moraine indicates ice-margin retreat to the SE; as regional ice-sheet retreat across the adjacent offshore shelf was to the NE, this anomaly implies that a residual icefield became stranded on Jura during ice-sheet retreat.     

Probing dietary change of the Kwädąy Dän Ts'ìnchį individual,an ancient glacier body from British Columbia: II. Deconvoluting whole skin and bone collagen δC values via carbon isotope analysis of individual amino acids

The remains of the Kwäd?y Dän Ts'ìnch? individual, a frozen male human, were recovered from a retreating glacier within the Tatshenshini-Alsek Park in British Columbia in August 1999. In order to provide information on both the geographical origin of this individual and low long he spent in the remote interior region prior to his death, molecular analysis and compound-specific carbon isotope analyses were performed on individual amino acids purified from his skin and bone. Gas chromatographic quantification of constituent amino acids of both tissues revealed a molecular distribution characteristic of collagen, dominated by glycine and to a lesser extent proline, hydroxyproline and alanine. Chiral gas chromatography indicated that protein preservation in both tissues was exceptional. Carbon isotope analysis of a faunal assemblage from an earlier prehistoric site from southern British Columbia provided reference dietary amino acid δ¹³C values for terrestrial (deer and domestic dog) and marine species (salmon and sealion), showing clear separation in all amino acids, particularly glycine which was extremely ¹³C-enriched in the marine animals. The distinction between terrestrial and marine organisms was increased by exploring Δ¹³C_{Glycine-Phenylalanine} values (6.6 ± 0.6‰ and 15.0 ± 2.1‰, respectively), which were higher in the latter by approximately 8‰, mirroring the increased δ¹⁵N_{Bulk collagen} values observed for the marine animals (R² = 0.78; p < 0.001). The Kwäd?y Dän Ts'ìnch? individual's bone had a similarly elevated Δ¹³C_{Glycine-Phenylalanine} value of 15.6 ± 1.0‰, indicating his extreme reliance on marine dietary resources throughout early life. The skin amino acid δ¹³C values were consistently lower than those observed for bone, with a concurrently lower Δ¹³C_{Glycine-Phenylalanine} value of 12.7 ± 0.9‰. The shift between the carbon isotope composition of bone (long-term diet) and skin amino acids (short-term diet) confirmed a sudden divergence away from marine food sources in the last months of life, consistent with his discovery 80 km inland.     

The geography of venture capital investments in the UK

The role of venture capital in economic development increasingly is recognized as central to the development of an entrepreneurial economy. However, the supply of venture capital is not distributed evenly across the space economy. In the UK, evidence for the 1980s demonstrated that venture capital investments were highly concentrated in Greater London and the South East, reinforcing the existing patterns of regional concentration of economic activity. This paper reviews the regional distribution of venture capital investments in the UK in the 1990s, a period of massive growth in venture capital investment activity. It concludes that the regional concentration of venture capital investment has been considerably reduced since the 1980s. However, more detailed analysis of the data demonstrates that this shift towards a less unequal regional distribution has been driven by so–called 'merchant' venture capital – investments in large–scale management buy–outs and buy–ins which facilitate corporate restructuring through ownership change and often have adverse consequences for employment. 'Classic' venture capital – investments in young entrepreneurial companies with high growth potential – remains highly concentrated in London and the South East, and also in Scotland. This reflects both supply– and demand–side factors. The Government's new regional venture capital funds are unlikely to be effective in closing this regional finance gap. An alternative approach to intervention, in the context of the increasing globalization of venture capital investments, is to seek to attract venture capital money and expertise from elsewhere.