The Bennachie Colony: A Nineteenth-Century Informal Community in Northeast Scotland

In this paper we explore the intertwined issues of improvement and community relations within the context of the Colony site, a nineteenth-century informal settlement in Scotland best known through caricatures of the poor and stereotypes of rural living. Drawing on a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research framework, a collaborative initiative involving academics and community researchers has begun rediscovering and rethinking the history of the Colony. Our investigations have established a rich and unexpected tapestry of life that played out at multiple scales of analysis according to a variety of issues. The settlement’s rise and fall was shaped by wider improvement processes impacting parts of Europe and beyond, but it is also an example of how outside influences were adopted locally, resisted and adapted; material conditions that played directly into the way community relations were themselves constituted. The lessons learned have implications for the archaeology of improvement and the study of informal communities on a global scale.     

The strath report: britain confronts the H‐Bomb, 1954–1955

Late in 1954, the British government convened a secret committee of civil servants to explore the implications of the hydrogen bomb for Britain in a nuclear war. Headed by William Strath, this small and secret cadre of experts thought through the destruction that would follow a thermonuclear attack on the UK. This paper examines the recently declassified “Strath Report” and its ramifications. Drawing on intelligence assessments, technical analysis and economic predictions, its conclusions were profoundly pessimistic. Its portrayal of widespread devastation and the likely collapse of civil society shocked politicians and government officials, and led not only to massive revisions in the UK's plans for war but to official attempts to suppress public discussion of thermonuclear weapons and civil defence.     

Introduction

Previous scholarly research has relied upon participant observation and indirect measures such as southern Democrats in positions of power to determine the presence and success of the Conservative Coalition in congressional committees. These measures are used in turn to ascertain the relationship between Conservative Coalition committee success and subsequent Conservative Coalition floor success. A more realistic measure of CC committee success, constructed from previously unavailable committee roll call votes, reveals the Conservative Coalition appears at approximately the same rate as it does on the floor and is slightly more successful in committee. A portion of the variation in the Conservative Coalition committee success rate is explained by a regression model utilizing a measure of CC committee strength and two measures of committee chair influence as independent variables. The analysis reveals the strongest predictor of CC committee success is the willingness of the chair to join the CC followed by the size of the coalition.     

Cities are Alive with the Sound of Music: Saengerfest and the Transformation of Urban Public Music in Nineteenth-century America

This article examines the development of outdoor public music in American cities during the nineteenth century and develops three primary arguments. Organized and recreational forms of public music – such as musical festivals and outdoor band concerts – became commonplace and integral to city life during the second half of the nineteenth century. Second, German-American singing festivals (Saengerfests) were major public events during the mid-nineteenth century and helped create this recreational public music culture by demonstrating how organized and recreational public music could enhance city life and suggesting to commentators and public officials that it could serve as a tool of reform. Third, public music – such as occurred during Saengerfests – helped bridge social divisions and made American cities more socially fluid, even at a time when some aspects of civic life were becoming more divided and contentious.