Colonial and Provincial Separation Movements in Australia and New Zealand, 1856–1865

This article examines separation movements in Britain’s Australasian colonies during the first decade of responsible government, 1856–65. Separation movements sought to carve new colonies from the territory of existing ones or, in the case of a number of New Zealand movements, to create new provinces within that colony’s quasi-federal system. Their demands rested upon assertions that a colonial or provincial government neglected large and prosperous hinterlands from which considerable revenue was collected. Only one colonial separation movement achieved its goal, but four provinces succeeded. I argue that responsible government played a major role in the success or failure of these movements. Responsibility concentrated authority in a remote capital; colonial separatists desired to exercise this privilege within a smaller new colony that they controlled, but its operation within the larger existing colony provided London with justification to reject most appeals. Further, it allowed New Zealand’s parliament to frame a mechanism that enabled discontented regions to become provinces without referral to local or imperial legislatures. Thus, I provide new insights into the formation of colonial polities and the influence of responsible government on settler political campaigns.     

Mapping the Stone Age of Mozambique

Under the auspices of the Portuguese colonial government, Lereno Barradas and Santos Júnior (coordinator of the Anthropological Mission of Mozambique) carried out several archaeological field surveys from 1936 to 1956 that resulted in a data set that includes a total of close to 90 sites, mostly attributed to the Stone Age. This early research added to the previous work of Van Riet Lowe in the Limpopo Valley of southern Mozambique. With the new millennium, Mozambique has emerged as a crucial geographic area in which to understand the various hypotheses about recent human evolution. Specifically, its coastal location between southern and eastern Africa is ideal for testing ideas about the link between early coastal adaptations and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (AMH). Except for the recent work by Mercader’s team in northern Mozambique, the number of researchers and projects on this topic in Mozambique is still limited because of the general predominance of interest in later periods among archaeologists working in the country, mainly due to their focus on issues related to precolonial heritage and national identity. Based on the early maps from Santos Júnior and more recent data acquired through various projects, we present a series of maps for the Stone Age prehistory of Mozambique. The maps are also based on a critical evaluation of the sites and a review of some of the materials that are presently curated at the Instituto de Investigação Científica e Tropical (IICT) in Lisbon, Portugal, as well as the materials stored at the Department of Archaeology of Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo. The sites are also presented in an online database with the information on all sites used in this study. This database is open to all and will be updated continuously. A preliminary interpretation of the regional distribution of the sites is also attempted, linking aspects that include region, topography and altitude, geomorphology, and cultural phase. These results will be the first step for research and knowledge in Mozambique on Stone Age prehistory and the emergence and settlement pattern of AMH.     

New Chinese psocids from Eocene Fushun amber (Insecta: Psocodea)

Zhang, Q., Nel, A., Azar, D. & Wang, B. April 2016. New Chinese psocids from Eocene Fushun amber (Insecta: Psocodea). Alcheringa 40, xxx–xxx. ISSN 0311-5518

Two new Psocodea, Sinopsyllipsocus fushunensis gen. et sp. nov. and Eotriplocania sinica gen. et sp. nov., are described from Eocene amber of Fushun City, China. They are distinctly different from all known Psocodea from Fushun amber in their three-segmented tarsi. Sinopsyllipsocus fushunensis is the second unequivocal fossil of Psyllipsocidae. Eotriplocania sinica is the first Asiatic and oldest representative of the Neotropical family Ptiloneuridae, and reveals a formerly global distribution of the family. The discovery of these two families in Eocene Fushun amber suggests a rather warm palaeoclimate for the Fushun amber locality.

Qingqing Zhang [qqzhang@nigpas.ac.cn] and Bo Wang* [bowang@nigpas.ac.cn], State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, PR China^; Qingqing Zhang also affiliated with University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, PR China; André Nel [anel@mnhn.fr], Institut de Systématique, Évolution, Biodiversité, ISYEB—UMR 7205—CNRS, MNHN, UPMC, EPHE, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Sorbonne Universités, 57 rue Cuvier, CP 50, Entomologie, F-75005, Paris, France; Dany Azar [azar@mnhn.fr], Lebanese University, Faculty of Sciences II, Department of Natural Sciences, Fanar, Fanar—Matn—PO Box 26110217, Lebanon. *Also affiliated with: Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100101, PR China.     

Nature Humaine et Complexion du Corps Chez les Médecins Italiens de la Fin du Moyen Âge

Is it possible to apprehend man from a medical standpoint without offering a purely materialistic definition ? Such was the question raised by Italian physicians at the end of the Middle Ages when they developed a full scale theory of the idea of complexion, which they saw as a “substantial quality” specific to man, but one that also depended on hereditary traits, food, age, or even climate and mores. Practicing their art, some of these physicians could thus contemplate improving not simply the health, but also the well being of each individual.     

L'impasse des querelles sur la grace au dix-septieme siecle

Gershom Scholem wrote his famous article, “Redemption through sin”, in 1937, and J.L. Talmon gained the inspiration for his first book, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, in the years 1937–1938 at the time when the Moscow trials revealed to the world the bitter reality of what was happening in the Soviet Union. Scholem and Talmon were contemporaries and witnesses of the transformation of communism in the Soviet Union from a vision of egalitarian and universal redemption into a bureaucratic and nationalistic despotism. The major scholar of the history of religious Messianism and the major scholar of the history of secular Messianism both widened the scope of their investigations—the first extending them into the history of Sabbataianism and the second into the French Revolution—and both reached a similar conclusion: both recognized, as Scholem put it, “the profound truth relating to the dialectics of history … of the historical process whereby the fulfilment of one political process leads to the manifestation of its opposite. In the realization of one thing its opposite is revealed”. The two great Israeli historians of ideas plumbed the depths of one of the most fascinating and at the same time tragic manifestations of la condition humaine: the human challenge of bringing the heavenly city down to the vale of tears, and the price that men have to pay for their Messianic passion.     

Politics,Time and Judgment

In 1842, the Parisian editor Louis-Antoine Pagnerre published the Dictionnaire politique. This large volume was the manifesto of the French Republicans in opposition to the conservative governments of King Louis-Philippe under the July Monarchy. One of the most original aspects of the Dictionnaire resides in the attempt to link the doctrine of republicanism to political economy. It is the purpose of this paper to analyse the republican political economy presented in Pagnerre's dictionary. First, we detail the historical context in which it appeared, stressing on Pagnerre's biography and on the composition of the group of young republicans who wrote the main economic entries of the book. Second, we focus on the economic ideas about the political regulation of industrial phenomena and the solutions these Republicans imagined to solve the social question. Third, we conclude by attempting to summarize the main characteristics of this republican political economy and to appreciate its originality.