Notes from County Correspondents.

In 1503, the canons of Ripon Minster initiated a building campaign to replace the church’s nave. Through a careful study of the documentary evidence, including sources that have not previously been considered, this article investigates how Ripon’s clergy organised and funded the project. It offers a more precise chronology of the works and an assessment of their impact on the use of the church by its parishioners. The article also considers the clergy’s motives for rebuilding, proving that the renovation was not a reaction to the old nave’s deterioration so much as an initiative to create a grander architectural setting for processions and more space for burial within the church.     

Doubts about How the Middle Horizon Collapsed (ca. A.D. 1000) and Other Insights from the Looted Cemeteries of the Lower Ica Valley,South Coast of Peru

This paper presents new information from funerary contexts in the lower Ica Valley, on the south coast of Peru, spanning two millennia from the end of the Early Horizon to the Late Intermediate Period. Although severely looted, these sites can still yield valuable information. We discuss their architecture and material culture in the context of radiocarbon dates. Among other findings, these cast new light on the poorly understood transition from the Middle Horizon to the Late Intermediate Period, for which a paucity of archaeological data from ca. a.d. 1000–1250 has long been taken as evidence of an environmentally- or socially-induced demographic collapse. Yet the data we present here suggest that the basins of the lower Ica Valley were likely occupied continuously over this period, and that the echoes of Wari influence here may have lasted longer than previously thought.     

Island Despotism: Trinidad,the British Imperial Constitution and Global Legal Order

Narratives of the history of international law in the early and middle decades of the nineteenth century have emphasised the role of global humanitarian movements in establishing international norms and institutions. The abolition of the slave trade and the amelioration of slavery feature prominently in this account as reform movements that supposedly laid the groundwork for human rights law. Using controversy about the constitution of the island of Trinidad and the excesses of its first governor, Thomas Picton, as a case study, we argue instead that attempts to reform slavery formed part of a wider British effort to construct a coherent imperial legal system, a project that corresponded to a different, and at the time more powerful vision of global order. As experiment and anti-model, Trinidad’s troubles provided critics with an advertisement for the necessity of robust imperial legal power in new and old colonies. Such a call for imperial oversight of colonial legal orders formed the basis of an empire-wide push to reorder the British world.     

(Re)assessing Parliamentary Policy Impact: The Case of the Australian Senate

A recent article in this Journal suggested that assumptions about the legislative influence of the Australian Senate may overstate its de facto power. Stanley Bach indicated that compromise with the Senate was relatively rare, and pointed out that most successful Senate amendments were government amendments. This paper provides an alternative view. We suggest that legislative influence is more subtle than Bach acknowledged, and that it is necessary to dig deeper in the data to fully understand the Senate's role. We therefore supplement his analysis in two ways: (1) through tracking the ultimate outcome of government defeats in the Senate; and (2) through analysis of two case study bills. We find that in confrontations with government the Senate ‘wins’ the great majority of the time. This shapes government behaviour in the chamber, such that many government amendments actually respond to non-government concerns. The most important element of Senate influence is therefore ‘soft power’– exercised through negotiation – backed up only in extremis by the ‘hard power’ of government defeat. This holds important lessons for the study of legislative influence more broadly, as well as demonstrating the true power of the Australian Senate.     

The ‘Evidence’ of sex,the ‘Truth’ of gender: Shaping children's bodies

This paper is about the body, specifically a child's body, as a site where identity becomes contested. It is also about a surface or space where we lay claim—a site of vested interest. In April 2004, the Australian Family Court ruled that a 13-year-old child (Alex) had gender identity dysphoria and decided to allow reversible hormonal treatment. The Court ruling produced considerable legal, medical and public reflection over whether these decisions were in Alex's best interests, whether Alex was able to make such a decision at his age, and to assess Alex's competency. These debates also aimed to fix sex and gender through the deployment of a nature and nurture framework. The purpose of this paper, using the example of Alex, is to illustrate the various ways that these claims over a child's body, undermine the possibility for rethinking sex and gender.