The Origin of Kinship in Oceania: Lewis Henry Morgan and Lorimer Fison

ABSTRACT This article investigates the importance of Oceania in the early study of kinship. It examines the tensions between evidence and analysis from the Pacific Islands in the development of Lewis Henry Morgan's theory of evolving kinship forms. While other sources from the Pacific islands are investigated it is focused particularly on the correspondence between Morgan and Lorimer Fison, Methodist missionary and key figure in the spread of kinship schedules and anthropological theories throughout Oceania in the 1870s. The empirical data gathered by Fison, challenged Morgan's schema and questioned the orthodox evolutionist hierarchy in Asia and the Pacific. Also investigated is the British response to this unruly evidence.     

Review

Bad Colonists: The South Seas Letters of Vernon Lee Walker & Louis Becke by Nicholas Thomas and Richard Eves Durham: Duke University Press, 1999 Pp. xxiii + 163 Price: US $16.95     

The Principle and Practice of 'Reconciliation' in German Foreign Policy: Relations with France, Israel, Poland and the Czech Republic

Germany has sought 'reconciliation' with former foes as an ideal in foreign policy since 1949. Reconciliation remains a priority of new the SPD-Green coalition, as for all previous German governments since the Second World War, for both moral and pragmatic motives. In four bilateral cases of reconciliation in German foreign policy–with Israel, France, Poland, and the Czech Republic–the mix of pragmatism and morality differs depending on history, institutions, leadership, and the international context. Reconciliation with France and Poland is more institutionalized, more open, more embedded in the European Union, and more pragmatic than in the other two cases. In relationswith Israel and the Czech Republic, history and moral claims are more prominent. Institutions are important in all four cases, but they are not as dominant in the latter two cases. Political leadership is central in all four cases, navigating the relationships through periods of domestic opposition to bilateral partnership in processes of reconciliation that strive for an unachievable idea.     

FORCES FOR CHANGE IN THE GOVERNANCE OF BRITISH AND AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES

Government control of colleges and universities has been increasing in recent years. The challenge for higher education is how to make institutions properly accountable but less controlled by government. The experience in this regard in the United Kingdom and the United States is compared. The danger in both nations is that left unchecked, control will leave universities resembling regulated public utilities. American and British academics can learn from each other on how to avoid such a fate.     

Spartan dependence on Laurion lead

This article presents contextual evidence for the interpretation of lead isotope analysis (LIA) of artefacts from the Archaic Greek Mediterranean. In particular, I make a response to Wood’s suggestion in Archaeometry (2022, first view, ‘Other ways to examine the finances behind the birth of Classical Greece’) that the end of the production of lead votive figurines in Sparta might have been caused by Athenian restrictions to Laurion lead exports, drawing on new LIA of the Spartan lead votives and wider considerations concerning the trade, cost and volume of lead in the 7th to 5th century bce Mediterranean.     

An Acutely Embarrassing Affair: Whitehall and the Indian-South African Dispute at the United Nations (1946)

ABSTRACT

Before the Second World War it was a cardinal Commonwealth principle that intra-imperial disputes must be kept away from international fora. Yet in 1946 the not-yet-independent India complained to the United Nations about South African legislation discriminating against people of Indian origin. It did so without seeking Britain's approval, and went on to level fierce criticism at Britain's opposition to the UN General Assembly's discussion of the matter.

This article explains the circumstances which led to these events; uncovers the divergent responses of the relevant British government departments – the India Office, the Dominions Office, and the Foreign Office – and shows how they were resolved; depicts the way in which Britain's delegation to the General Assembly handled the matter; and discusses the significance and consequences of the dispute for South Africa and for Anglo-Indian relations.