A short history of dapsone, or an alternative model of drug development

From 1936 until 1996, the drug dapsone treated a diverse array of diseases, including tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria, and AIDS-related pneumonia. This article explores how dapsone transformed from a cure for one disease into a treatment for a totally different malady. This process of reinvention in the clinic represents an alternative model of drug development that the historical literature, focused on success in the laboratory, has largely ignored. The core of the paper discusses the reinvention of dapsone as an antimalarial in the Vietnam War through trials led by Robert J. T. Joy, a physician and military officer. As a case study, it offers a fresh perspective on the clinic-as-laboratory approach that other scholars have addressed in a civilian context. Viewing the randomized clinical trial (RCT) through a military prism will demonstrate how a combat environment combined with the regimentation of the armed forces affected the standard methodology of the RCT.     

Two Late Roman Wrecks from Southern Cyprus

Two scattered Late Roman shipwrecks were discovered in the course of underwater survey at Cape Zevgari and Avdimou Bay off the southern coast of Cyprus. Each was transporting a primary cargo contained in amphoras, in one case either local or from nearby Syria or Cilicia, and the other certainly from the southern Levantine coast. The two wrecks offer insight into regional maritime exchange networks within the socio-economic context of late antique commerce around the island. Both sites also contribute to a greater understanding of the utility of systematic shallow-water survey to shipwreck archaeology.
© 2007 The Author     

Rights to protection and the state: the Australian Government's National Plan to reduce violence against women and children and victim's justice

Due to increased awareness and impact of domestic violence, women's safety in the domestic sphere has become a prominent problem in Australian politics. In an analysis of criminal injuries compensation (CIC) processes in WA, this paper highlights a specific aspect of national policy failure in relation to safety for women who have experienced domestic and family violence. It establishes policy impetus to acknowledge a right to protection by the state within the domestic sphere, then discusses the history and relevance of state responsibility/obligations for victims of crime compensation and demonstrates how the failure to comply with the nationally endorsed plan to address domestic violence places some women at risk of further harm. The example of WA's victims of crime compensation processes highlights the high level of female domestic violence victims using the scheme and important intersectional issues pertinent for Indigenous women. The paper points to how a specific failure of policy implementation may be addressed.     

A Turke turn’d Quaker: conversion from Islam to radical dissent in early modern England

The study of the relationship between the anglophone and Islamic worlds in the seventeenth century has been the subject of increasing interest in recent years, and much attention has been given to the cultural anxiety surrounding “Turning Turke”, conversion from Christianity to Islam, especially by English captives on the Barbary coast. Conversion in the other direction has attracted far less scrutiny, not least because it appears to have been far less common. Conversion from Islam to any form of radical dissent has attracted no scholarship whatsoever, probably because it has been assumed to be non-existent. However, the case of Bartholomew Cole provides evidence that such conversions did take place, and examining the life of this “Turke turn’d Quaker” provides an insight into the dynamics of cross-cultural conversion of an exceptional kind.     

The ‘Migrated Archives’ and a Forgotten Corner of Empire: The British Borneo Territories

The ‘migrated archives’, previously concealed files related to former colonies of the British Empire, were released over the period 2012–13. The first flurry of academic and journalistic interest, focused on possible revelations of the misuse of colonial power, soon subsided. Nevertheless, the archives have been valuable in enlarging knowledge of colonial policy-making. They have also aided exploration of the interstices between the official records of colonial administration and the often unrecorded life of peoples and communities. In this sense the ‘migrated archives’ are a rich resource in prompting a new look at established historical narratives of the British Borneo territories of Brunei, North Borneo and Sarawak. These territories have received scant attention in the historiography of British colonialism. This has been to the detriment of wider scholarship in studying issues such as the expansion of the wartime colonial state; the ‘second colonial occupation’ and the evolution of post-war British colonial governance; the development of anti-colonialism; the formation of Malaysia; counter-terrorism conflicts; and the nature of the colonial legacy. The colonial period may seem a fleeting phase in the age-old cultural and economic formation of the Borneo states, yet it continues to have contemporary relevance in a strategically sensitive part of the world. This article seeks to show that the Borneo territories merit greater attention from historians of British colonialism and that the ‘migrated archives’, used in conjunction with other sources, can make a significant contribution towards the history of colonialism in a previously neglected area.     

Southern (Over) Exposure? Quebec and the Evolution of Canada’s Grand Strategy, 2002–2012

ABSTRACT

One of the most persistent themes in the debate on Canadian foreign policy over the past few decades concerns the influence Quebec is thought to possess over the design and implementation of Canadian foreign and defense policy. Our purpose in this article is to situate this general debate within a more specific context, of Canada’s grand strategic choices as they principally involve the country’s security and defense relations with the US. To do this, we adopt somewhat of a “counterfactual” tack; to wit, we inquire whether, in the absence of Quebec from the Canadian confederation, we should expect to have seen a fundamentally different grand strategy fashioned by Ottawa, one with different significance for relations with the US. We focus on two specific cases, both of which have figured prominently in recent Canadian–American strategic relations: the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. We conclude that while there is something to the claim that Quebec can and does boast of a certain “specificity” in the matter of Canada’s grand-strategic preferences, it is hardly the same thing as arguing that the country without Quebec would have adopted policies on both Afghanistan and Iraq that were fundamentally different from the ones it chose to follow.     

The origins of New Zealand’s first government house

SUMMARY: In 1842 the former first government house located at Okiato, New Zealand, burnt to the ground and the site was abandoned. A well on the site was excavated in 1994–95, revealing a base layer of burnt timbers, a Maori digging stick and ceramic sherds with an estimated manufacture date range of 1823–41. We argue that this deposit is derived from the 1842 destruction of the Okiato government house building. An analysis of the wood identified kauri (Agathis australis) and kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides), confirming that the building was not a prefabricated imported structure, but rather was constructed on site from locally available timber.