Characterization of a Historical Cannonball from the Fortress of San Juan De Ulúa Exposed to a Marine Environment

Metallurgical analyses and chemical characterizations were carried out on historical cannonballs from the Fortress of San Juan de Ulúa, Veracruz, México. Cannonballs dating from the 18th and 19th centuries share metallurgical characteristics similar to those of material coming from a shipment of ammunition found in the wreck of a sunken French ship from the battle of Trafalgar. The analyses show that the base material is grey cast iron with a carbon equivalent of 4.94 and a ferritic–perlitic matrix, in which the high phosphorus content has led to the formation of iron phosphide compounds in conjunction with a homogeneous distribution of carbon graphite flakes of Type C. In addition, corrosion products from samples revealed the presence of various crystalline iron compounds (X‐ray diffraction), mostly highly chlorinated iron compounds identified as akaganeite. X‐ray fluorescence identified various characteristics of the corrosion products as a function of the sampling depth. FT–IR spectroscopy revealed that the main difference between the corrosion products (internal and external) is determined by the number of organic species. Differential scanning calorimetry corroborated that these corrosion products are thermally stable compounds at elevated temperatures.     

A Box Containing Carpenter's Accessories from The Akko 1 Shipwreck,Israel: Archaeometallurgical Analysis of Surviving Ironwork

The Akko 1 shipwreck was an Egyptian armed vessel, built at the beginning of the 19th century. A wooden saw handle and a box containing iron nails and two split pins were discovered towards the stern. Given their function, location and context, these were part of the ship's carpenter's tools and accessories. A methodology was developed for conducting systematic metallurgical analysis in order to understand the manufacturing process of the surviving ironwork items, as well as to enlarge our knowledge regarding ironworking technologies during the early 19th century. Such methodology may assist in the future understanding of the technological evolution of similar wrought‐iron objects. The results demonstrated that the artefacts have a wrought‐iron heterogeneous microstructure and were manufactured by hot‐working prior to surface hardening by pack carburization.     

CONTEXTS OF COLONIALISM

The contributions to the collection under review offer a wide range of treatments of ways in which German colonialism intersected with aspects of domestic German culture and politics, with particular attention to the larger global setting in which the German colonial empire existed between 1884 and 1918—or was remembered up to 1945. The review situates and critiques the contributions in interpretive contexts based on general suggestions by one of the editors, Geoff Eley. These include a context in which “colonialism” and “imperialism” are recognized as specific discursive constructions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, another in which the causal focus in interpreting colonial phenomena is placed on exchanges that constituted an accelerating globality with which available conceptual modes (including colonialism and imperialism) could not keep pace, a third that complicates the categorical distinctions usually made between types of imperial program, and a fourth that aims at replicating on a much broader and more flexible basis something like the concept of “social imperialism” that forty years ago dominated interpretations of German imperialism. The essay ends with a view of how such an interpretive framework might be constructed.     

Isolation Through Humanitarianism: Subaltern Geopolitics of the Siege on Gaza

Scholars have argued that in attempts to achieve geopolitical goals, siege often results in covert assaults against civilian populations. In the Gazan context, siege subjects are rendered as surplus to the Israeli state, and are therefore isolated and deprived of basic human needs as well as human rights. In 2006, siege was enacted against Gaza, enforced by the Egyptian and Israeli militaries. As a consequence, the population of Gaza is isolated from the exchange of goods, services, people, and ideas. This article begins with an analysis of siege as a violent process and as a subset of occupation practices. Using ethnographic data collected in Gaza between 2009 and 2014, this article mobilizes the methods and approach of subaltern geopolitics to undermine the notion of siege as a humanitarian alternative to war. This study reveals the micro‐scale, graduated nature of siege and its impacts on the civilians living in Gaza.     

LOCALIZATION AND INDUSTRY CLUSTERING ECONOMETRICS: AN ASSESSMENT OF GIBBS MODELS FOR SPATIAL POINT PROCESSES

The objective of this paper is to assess an approach to statistical modeling of point referenced establishment data that permit inclusion of “environmental” or establishment‐specific covariates and specific forms of interestablishment interaction. Gibbs models are used to decompose the conditional intensity of the spatial point process into trend and interaction components. The trend is composed of access measures (primarily different classes of roads) and three different interaction processes are tested: Geyer, area interaction, and Strauss hard core. While the models used have proved to be useful in ecology, we are unaware of any applications to establishment or firm data. In empirical application, the models yield intuitively appealing results for the trend component, and the ability to specify the interaction component gives deeper insights into interestablishment spatial dynamics than any previously published methods.     

COMMUTING TIME AND HOUSEHOLD RESPONSIBILITIES: EVIDENCE USING PROPENSITY SCORE MATCHING

We examine the relationship between individual commuting behavior and household responsibilities, with a focus on gender differences in that relationship. Using the Dutch Time Use Survey for the years 2000 and 2005, we analyze the relationship between commuting time, home production, and childcare. To deal with reverse causality, we use Propenstity Score Matching techniques to obtain imputed data for individuals. We find that the effect of home production on commuting time for women is more than double that for men, while childcare time has an effect on women's commuting behavior only. Our results shedding light on the Household Responsibility Hypothesis.     

Monarchism,an Emerging Canadian Identity,and the 1866 British North American Trade Mission to the West Indies and Brazil

In 1865, the colonies of eastern British North America created a joint commission to investigate the possibility of reciprocal trade agreements with other parts of the Western hemisphere. In early 1866, the commissioners visited the West Indies and the Empire of Brazil, where they met officials and business leaders. No actual tariff agreements resulted from the commissioners’ travels, the main concrete result of the 1866 trade mission being the establishment of a direct steamship service between Canada and the West Indies. The study of contemporary discussions of the trade mission deepens our understanding of the history of relations between the British West Indies and British North America in the aftermath of emancipation and the end of the ‘Old Colonial System’. Moreover, these discussions reveal different elements of an emerging Canadian identity. Discourse of Britishness influenced the 1866 trade mission, but so did a sense of affinity linking Canada to the other monarchical territories in the Western hemisphere, such as the Empire of Brazil. For their part, some contemporaries in the West Indies welcomed the Canadian trade initiative because they wished for a counterweight to the growing influence of the United States in the region. The article also presents new information about British policy towards Latin America, particularly Mexico and Brazil, as well as British commercial diplomacy more generally. The article is based on materials in archives in the United Kingdom and Canada as well as a range of printed primary sources.