Book reviews

English Maps: A History. By Catherine Delano‐Smith and Roger J. P. Kain. London: The British library, 1999. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. ISBN 0 7123 4609 0 (cloth); 0 7123 4660 0 (paper). Pp. xiv, 320, illus., col. plates. STG£25.00 (cloth).

Abraham Ortelius and the First Atlas: Essays Commemorating the Quadricentennial of his Death, 1598–1998. Edited by Marcel van den Broecke, Peter van der Krogt and Peter Meurer. Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1998. ISBN 90 6194 388 4. Pp. 430, illus.,. 19 col. plates. DFL371.00(cloth).

A Biographical Index of East India Company Maritime Service Officers 1600–1834. By Anthony Farrington. London: The British Library, 1999. ISBN 0 7123 4647 3. Pp. 886. STG£85.00 (cloth).

Catalogue of East India Company Ships’ Journals and Logs 1600–1834. By Anthony Farrington. London: The British Library, 1999. ISBN 0 7123 4646 5. Pp. 789. STG£85.00 (doth).

Ordnance Survey Small‐Scale Maps: Indexes: 1801–1998. By Roger Hellyer. Kerry, Newtown, Montgomeryshire: David Archer, 1999. ISBN 0951757954. Pp. xxiv, 264, illus. STG£35.00 (cloth). [David Archer, Kerry, Wales SY16 . 4PD.]     

Royal authority versus corporate sovereignty: the Levant Company and the ambiguities of early Stuart statecraft

The ambassadorship of Thomas Bendish (1646–1660) to the Ottoman Porte was a period of turmoil that saw the arrest and imprisonment of his predecessor, Sackville Crowe, and the arrest and subsequent beheading of a usurper, Henry Hyde. This crisis in Turkey coincided with the domestic crisis of the English Civil War, which plunged the English state into chaos. This article uses the Bendish/Crowe/Hyde affair to analyse the relationship between state and trading company in order to gain a deeper understanding of how the early modern economic and state-building system of mercantilism was made. The article will show that mercantilism was, in the words of Phil Stern, an “awkward alliance” where merchant and state required one another while remaining suspicious of the other’s motives and authority.     

Damage Assessment of Unreinforced Stone Masonry Buildings After the 2010–2011 Canterbury Earthquakes

The sequence of earthquakes that has affected Christchurch and Canterbury since September 2010 has caused damage to a great number of buildings of all construction types. Following post-event damage surveys performed between April 2011 and June 2011, an inventory of the stone masonry buildings in Christchurch and surrounding areas was carried out in order to assemble a database containing the characteristic features of the building stock, as a basis for studying the vulnerability factors that might have influenced the seismic performance of the stone masonry building stock during the Canterbury earthquake sequence. The damage suffered by unreinforced stone masonry buildings is reported and different types of observed failures are described using a specific survey procedure currently in use in Italy. The observed performance of seismic retrofit interventions applied to stone masonry buildings is also described, as an understanding of the seismic response of these interventions is of fundamental importance for assessing the utility of such strengthening techniques when applied to unreinforced stone masonry structures.     

Logboats from Bohemia and Moravia,Czech Republic

More than 40 logboats are known from the Czech Republic, and at least 20 are preserved in repositories or regional museums (seven in Moravia, 13 in Bohemia). Two further vessels remain in situ. Many logboats are known from neighbouring countries, but until recently vessels from the Czech Republic have not attracted the same research interest. Only five Czech vessels (two from Bohemia and three from Moravia) have been dated by absolute methods. Several more have been assigned tentative dates on the basis of context or close similarity to other dated vessels. This article presents a summary of current evidence. © 2009 The Author     

Social Polarization and the Politics of Low Income Mortgage Lending in the United States

ABSTRACT The structured inequalities of capital investment and disinvestment are prominent themes in critical urban and regional research, but many accounts portray ‘capital’ as a global, faceless and placeless abstraction operating according to a hidden, unitary logic. Sweeping political‐economic shifts in the last generation demonstrate that capital may shape urban and regional processes in many different ways, and each of these manifestations creates distinct constraints and opportunities. In this paper, we analyze a new institutional configuration in the USA that is reshaping access to wealth among the poor – a policy ‘consensus’ to expand home‐ownership among long‐excluded populations. This shift has opened access to some low‐ and moderate‐income households, and racial and ethnic minorities, but the necessary corollary is a greater polarization between those who are able to own and those who are not. We provide a critical analysis of these changes, drawing on national housing finance statistics as well as a multivariate analysis of differences between owners and renters in the 1990s in New York City. As home‐ownership strengthens its role as a privatized form of stealth urban and housing policy in the USA, its continued expansion drives a corresponding reconstruction of its value for different groups, and inscribes a sharper axis of property‐rights inequalities among owners and renters in the working classes.     

No Idle Past: Uses of History in the 1830 Indian Removal Debates

I n April and May 1830, heated debates occurred in Congress over whether to remove the Cherokee Indians from certain sections of Georgia and resettle them further west, in what would become Oklahoma. Numerous accounts exist examining the events surrounding removal, which resulted in the notorious "Trail of Tears," and the various motivations of the debate participants. Historians have attributed desire for removal to land hunger, humanitarian concern for the Indians'welfare, a desire to shore up national security, and blatant racism. Some see it as part of a continuing struggle against the perceived Indian enemy, and even as a component of the new rhetorical struggle between the Democrats and Whigs as they sought to define political participation during the Second Party system.¹ No author yet, however, has undertaken an examination of the ways in which the debaters manipulated past events in constructing their arguments either in support of removal or against this policy. This article deals specifically with the uses to which history was put in the 1830 congressional debates on Indian removal.