Healed injuries in Early Cambrian trilobites from South Australia

Examples of an undescribed species of the trilobite Redlichia from the Emu Bay Shale (Early Cambrian), Kangaroo Island, South Australia, show damage to the exoskeleton attributed to the action of predators. Injury was probably not lethal. The identity of the predators is unresolved, notwithstanding soft-part preservation within the fossil assemblage. Possible culprits include either a rare and presumably large animal such as an arthropod or conceivably cannibalism by Redlichia itself. This report provides new data on the occurrence of Cambrian predators, and casts further doubt on earlier suggestions that macrophagous predation was insignificant at this time. Aspects of trilobite predation during the Palaeozoic are reviewed, with emphasis placed on their ability to withstand substantial injuries and the possible repair mechanisms that promoted wound healing and survival.     

Actualites

Nora, P., ed., Les Lieux de memoire (Gallimard, 1984–1993), 7 vols; last published, Les France, 3. De l'archive à l'emblème, 1034pp., ISBN 2 07 072304 6     

Nations and Nationalisms: Towards More Open Models

Abstract. Starting from the proposition that nationalism is bound up with ethnicity, Barth's view that ethnicity is defined by actors and that ethnicities are situationally variable is drawn upon to argue that narrow definitions of nationalism – as a specifically modem political ideology which is bound up with the nation-state – overstate their case. Instead of nationalism we should be talking about nationalisms, which can only be understood in their local and historical contexts. An open definition of nationalism is offered, which permits abstraction and generalisation while accommodating empirical heterogeneity. Material from Wales, Northern Ireland and Denmark is presented to illustrate some of the differences between local nationalisms.     

Iran in the Nazi New Order, 1933–1941

Despite a succession of scholarly studies over the years, the relationship between Reza Shah’s Iran and National Socialist Germany has not been fully explored. Rather than focusing on the supposed Aryan ideological sympathies that bound the two countries together, this article argues that the real driver of the German–Iranian relationship in the 1930s was economic and based in the mutual interaction of state economic initiatives. It states that Iran’s place in Nazism’s economic system was the outcome of two factors: the “New Plan” of Reich Economics Minister Hjalmar Schacht, and its focus on clearing agreements as a motor for depression-era trade, and the connections of Schacht’s system to Reza Shah’s strategy to modernize Iran. In exploring this issue the article focuses on relations between Germany and Iran during three distinct moments: first, the period from 1918 to 1928 and the working out of a new relationship after the First World War; secondly the period of Schacht’s New Plan in Iran in the mid-1930s; and finally the period from the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939 to the British–Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941. During this last period Iran both belonged to the Nazi–Soviet trade zone created by the Pact and attempted to defend its neutrality.     

Excavating Zarathustra: Ernst Herzfeld's Archaeological History of Iran

This article analyzes the work of the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld (1879–1948) and its influence on the writing of Iranian national history in the 1920s and 1930s. Herzfeld's life and work illuminates the relationship between Germany and Iran and between orientalist scholarship and nationalist history in the first half of the twentieth century. Through the method of what he called “archaeological history,” Herzfeld wrote an interdisciplinary history of Iran and its Aryan foundations that contested the assumptions of decades of European orientalist scholarship.     

Short notices

Bonnafous, A., Plassard, F., and Vulin, B., eds., Circuler Demain (DATAR/Éditions de l'Aube, 1993), 191pp., 95R, ISBN 2 87678 126 3

Dioudonnat, P.‐M., Les 700 rédacteurs de ‘Je suis partout’ 1930–1944 (Sedopolis, 1993), 107pp., 240F., ISBN 2 904177 16 7

Furet, F., Revolutionary France 1770–1880 (Blackwell, 1992), 630pp., £40.00, ISBN 0 631 17029 4

Hainsworth, P., ed., The Extreme Right in Europe and the USA (Pinter, 1992), 320pp., £45.00, ISBN 0 86187 790 X

Macchia, G., L'Ange de la nuit. Sur Proust, trans, from the Italian by Marie‐France Merger, Paul Bédarida and Mario Fusco (Gallimard, 1993), 269pp., 130F., ISBN 2 07 072885 4

McPhee, P., A Social History of France 1780–1880 (Routledge, 1993), 347pp., £12.99 pbk, ISBN 0 415 01616 9

Prost, A., ’Les Anciens Combattants’ and French Society 1914–1939 (Berg, 1992), 152pp., £29.95, ISBN 0 85496 672 2 (hbk), £9.95, ISBN 0 85496 337 5 (pbk)

Service d'Information et de Diffusion du Premier Ministre, La politique de la France, aoÛt 1991‐juillet 1992 (La Documentation française, 1993), 165pp., 70F., ISBN 2 11 002915 3

Teich, M., and Porter, R., eds., The National Question in Europe in Historical Context (CUP, 1993), 343pp., £40.00, ISBN 0 521 36441 8 (hbk), £13.95, ISBN 0 521 36713 1 (pbk)