Religious Colonialism in Early Modern Malta: Inquisitorial Imprisonment and Inmate Graffiti

Early modern Malta was governed by three competing Roman Catholic institutions—Order of St. John, Bishopric, and Roman Inquisition—all of which ultimately answered to the Pope. By focusing on the inquisition, the institution most directly controlled by the Vatican, this paper explores the role of imprisonment in furthering the Vatican’s cultural and political control on the island. In doing so, this paper offers an archaeological perspective on an early modern prison context. Through analyses of the prison cells and the inmates’ graffiti, I argue that the inquisition’s ability to imprison was crucial to the Vatican’s colonial position in Malta.     

New perspectives on forced migration in the history of twentieth-century neuroscience

ABSTRACT

This special issue of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, comprised of six articles and one commentary, reflects on the multifold dimensions of intellectual migration in the neurosciences and illustrates them by relevant case studies, biographies, and surveys from twentieth-century history of science and medicine perspectives. The special issue as a whole strives to emphasize the impact of forced migration in the neurosciences and psychiatry from an interdisciplinary perspective by, first, describing the general research topic, second, by showing how new models can be applied to the historiography and social studies of twentieth-century neuroscience, and, third, by providing a deeper understanding of the impact of European émigré researchers on emerging allied fields, such as neurogenetics, biological psychiatry, psychosomatics, and public mental health, etc. as resulting from this process at large.     

The Servilia tomb: an architecturally and pictorially important Roman building

One hundred and eleven samples from the important Servilia Roman tomb have been analysed for the first time by Raman spectroscopy, resulting in a complete characterisation of the pigment palette used for its remarkable wall paintings: 73 different pigment mixtures have been identified for the composition of its 11 colours and their tonalities. Dyer’s weld, an ancient organic yellow pigment, which was described by Vitruvius, has been identified and characterised for the first time in Roman wall paintings. Distinctive Raman spectroscopic signals which differentiate between haematite and caput mortuum (a violet colour from haematite which has been subjected to thermal treatment) are also reported. The use of the very expensive lazurite for a balance relates the importance of this otherwise ordinary instrument with psychostasia (the human soul weighing process) and is not found elsewhere in the tomb. The distribution of white minerals alone or in admixture is not related to any particular colouring pigment or figure; this possibly indicates that there was no specific use for each white mineral and that several craftsmen worked on the paintings, perhaps in different periods, or that the frescoes have been subjected to unrecorded restoration. We conclude that Raman spectroscopy is a valuable analytical technique for the unambiguous identification of mixtures of both organic and inorganic compounds, to study the degree of mineral crystallinity and for identifying treatment. These data are relevant for the holistic interpretation of the artwork in its historical, economical and social context.     

Book reviews

Rachel Sharp (ed.), Apocalypse No: An Australian Guide to the Arms Race and the Peace Movement. Pluto Press, Sydney and London, 1984.

David Martin, Armed Neutrality for Australia. Dove Communications, Blackburn, Vic., 1984, pp. xii + 294. $14.95.

Jeffrey T. Richelson and Desmond Ball, The Ties That Bind. Allen and Unwin Australia, North Sydney, 1985, pp. xvi + 402. $29.95.

Deborah Welch Larson, Origins of Containment: A Psychological Explanation. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1985, pp. xvi + 380. $US40.50.

Michael Ghertman and Margaret Allen, An Introduction to the Multinationals. Macmillan Press for the Institute for Research and Information on Multinationals, London, 1984, pp. 143. $11.95.

Neil Renwick, Multinational Corporations and the Political Economy of Power. Canberra Studies in World Affairs No. 14, Department of International Relations, Australian National University, Canberra, 1983, pp. 207. $10.00.

David Hawdon (ed.), The Energy Crisis: ten years after. Croom Helm, London and Canberra, 1984, pp. iii + 137. $27.95.

Robert L. Downen and Bruce J. Dickson (eds), The Emerging Pacific Community: A Regional Perspective. Westview Press, Boulder (Suppliers Bowker Publishing Co. Epping UK), 1984, pp.245. $US23.00

Donald Denoon, Settler Capitalism: The Dynamics of Dependent Development in the Southern Hemisphere. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983, p. viii + 280. $56.00.

John Ravenhill, Collective Clientelism The Lomé Conventions and North‐South Relations. Columbia University Press, New York, 1985, pp. xxi + 389. $US49.00.

Miron Dolot, Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust. W.W. Norton, New York, 1985, pp. xvi + 231. $32.90.

W. Laquer and B. Rubin (eds), The Israel‐Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict. Fourth edition. Penguin Books, New York, 1984, pp. xi + 704. $7.95.

David Newman (ed.), The Impact of Gush Emunim. Croom Helm, London and Sydney, 1985, pp. 276. $35.95.

Alan Dowty, Middle East Crisis: US Decision‐Making in 1958, 1970 and 1973. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984, pp. xiv +416. $71.95.

Michael Smith, Jane McLoughlin, Peter Large and Rod Chapman, Asia's New Industrial World. Methuen, London and New York, 1985, pp. 136. $8.95.

Lim Joo‐Jock and Vani S. (eds), Armed Communist Movements in Southeast Asia. Gower, Aldershot, 1984, for the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, pp. xviii + 204. $28.50.

Lim Joo‐Jock and Vani S. (eds), Armed Separatism in Southeast Asia. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1984, pp. 270. $S44.00 (cloth), $S32.00 (paper).

Beverley Hooper, Youth in China. Penguin Books Australia, Ringwood, 1985, pp. x + 235 pages. $7.95.

Chang Pao‐Min, Kampuchea Between China and Vietnam. Singapore University Press, Singapore, 1985, pp. xi + 204. No price given.

Carmel Budiardjo and Liem Soei Liong, The War Against East Timor. Zed Press, London; Pluto Press, Sydney, 1984, pp. xviii + 253. $14.95.

Michael C. Williams, Sickle and Crescent: The Communist Revolt of 1926 in Banten. Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, Cornell University, 1982, pp. 81. $US6.00.

Patricia Herbert, The Hsaya San Rebellion (1930–1932) Reappraised. Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1982, pp. 17. $3.00.

Abd Chamid. The Poorest of the Poor: Three Case Studies from Indonesia. Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, 1982, pp. 42. $3.00.

Benjamin A. Batson, The End of the Absolute Monarchy in Siam. Oxford University Press (for the Asian Studies Association of Australia), Singapore, 1984, pp. xviii + 349. $13.95.

Kim Richard Nossal, The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy. Prentice‐Hall Canada, Scarborough, Ont., 1985, pp. 232. No price given.     

Aby Warburg's Hamburg Comedy: Wilhelmine Culture from the Perspective of a Pioneering Cultural Historian

This article examines an unpublished play written by Aby Warburg(1866–1929), entitled Hamburg Conversations on Art: HamburgComedy, 1896. The play offers a glimpse into Warburg's viewson modern art and into his thinking on the various processesof modernization. It demonstrates how his enthusiasm for innovativeart forms emerged, in part, as an expression of his rebellionagainst the religious, social and professional conventions ofthe German–Jewish economic élite into which hewas born. As with many of his generation, Warburg claimed socialand cultural progress under the banner of artistic innovation.The play also provides a focus for a discussion of the waysin which Warburg's interest in modern art was closely alliedwith pioneering research into the role of symbolism and artin European history. To this end, the article explores Warburg'sconcern about the prospect of a culture in which symbolic andmythical thinking was replaced by a technology that destroyedhumanity's contemplative bond with the world. It also demonstratesthat Warburg's perspective on social and cultural modernizationcombined seemingly different attitudes: it blended the future-orientatedoptimism of an urban, liberal and cosmopolitan outlook withthe nostalgic pessimism of an ardent patriot whose life wasshaped by traditional values and who was uneasy about the increasinglyrationalized and materialistic society in which he lived. Inconclusion, the article suggests that this attitude was notuncommon among the Bürgertum and points to the difficultiesof conceiving of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’in Imperial Germany in terms of mutual exclusivity.