An early colonial landed gentry: land and wealth in the Cape Colony 1682–1731

In the early eighteenth century a slave-owning landed gentry emerged in the Cape Colony. Although wealth was unevenly distributed in 1682 and 1705 economic conditions, which included cheap land and labour, favoured small farmers, who earned higher returns on their capital than those with some-what larger investments in farming. These conditions changed between 1705 and 1731. While prices for crops and livestock remained steady or fell slightly, costs of production rose steeply. Slaves cost more and were more widely used. Land cost more and greater efforts were needed to maintain its fertility. Large estates swallowed up unsuccessful small farms and a few were enlarged by dynastic marriages. Large-scale production yielded low returns on capital, but small farms often ceased to make profits. Those with insufficient capital to compete with established gentry in the south-west Cape might take up stock farming in frontier regions, which had long been used by wealthy freehold farmers as additional pasture for their livestock.     

Animal DNA in PCR reagents plagues ancient DNA research

Molecular archaeology brings the tools of molecular biology to bear on fundamental questions in archaeology, anthropology, evolution, and ecology. Ancient DNA research is becoming widespread as evolutionary biologists and archaeologists discover the power of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify DNA from ancient plant and animal remains. However, the extraordinary susceptibility of PCR to contamination by extraneous DNA is not widely appreciated. We report the independent observation of DNA from domestic animals in PCR reagents and ancient samples in four separate laboratories. Since PCR conditions used in ancient DNA analyses are extremely sensitive, very low concentrations of contaminating DNA can cause false positives. Previously unidentified animal DNA in reagents can confound ancient DNA research on certain domestic animals, especially cows, pigs, and chickens.     

Gender, nature, empire: women naturalists in nineteenth century British travel literature

Among the many British women abroad in the late nineteenth century were a number of travellers who toured the American West with a naturalist's pen and sketchbook. California, with its giant sequoias and redwoods, scenic Yosemite Valley and Sierra Nevada, and the Mediterranean flora of the southern coasts, especially attracted travellers with a naturalist orientation. We examine the botanical and naturalist writings and art of two well-known (and well-heeled) world travellers – Constance Gordon Cumming and Marianne North – and another more obscure British aristocrat, Theodora Guest, sister of the Duke of Westminster, who travelled in California in the late nineteenth century. We examine relationships among these elite women's association with the Romantic aesthetic and naturalist traditions, natural sciences, class-based associations between women and flowers, and emergent environmentalism. The works of these women indicate the process by which natural history rhetorics and styles became embedded within gender, class, and imperial relations; and how the division of natural history into professional and amateur domains relegated women to discursive margins.     

Jean Norton Cru and combatants' literature of the First World War

Using the unpublished archives of Jean Norton Cru, held at the University of Aix-en-Provence, this article provides a new interpretation of Cru's famous book on First World War literature, Témoins, first published in 1929. This work severely criticised a large number of books of soldiers' experiences of combat. Here a new reading of Cru's motives is offered, looking in particular at the author's Protestant background as well as at the links between reading and writing strategies.     

Performing identities: music and dance in the Irishcommunities of Coventry and Liverpool

This article will examine how British-born second- and third-generation Irish people use Irish music and dance in the production of an Irish cultural identity. The article draws on research undertaken with members of the Irish communities in the English cities of Coventry and Liverpool. The research was conducted with music and dance practitioners in Liverpool who strongly identify as Irish and also with schoolchildren in Coventry whose parents or grandparents were born in Ireland. The paper first explores the comments of the Liverpool respondents and points to how music and dance can offer a space in which different generations can mark out their affiliation or embody their Irishness. Secondly, the paper considers interview work with schoolchildren in Coventry, concentrating on their responses as listeners to Irish traditional music. Their comments point to the capacity of this music to resonate with multiple, even conflicting, productions of Irishness. The comments of all the respondents raise key debates about authenticity and the construction of identity.