The Language of Imperialism in British Electoral Politics, 1880–1910

This article asks us to reconsider the impact of the issue of imperialism in electoral politics in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Using a corpus of around five million words of digitised campaign speeches from the years 1880–1910, it examines the language of the nine General Elections held in this period through computerised text-mining. This ‘big data’ analysis produces three conclusions, which in some cases nuance existing interpretations and in others directly challenge them. The first questions the prevailing consensus that elections in the high age of empire featured imperialism as a consistently central issue. The article argues that this interpretation relies too heavily on evidence from a minority of elections—especially the famous ‘khaki’ struggle of 1900—and that in the majority of campaigns in this period, imperialism was relatively unimportant as an election issue, including in the Unionist landslide of 1895. The second argument questions historians’ preoccupation with the ‘contested’ nature of discourses of imperialism and patriotism at elections, and contends that—insofar as the empire was an important campaign issue at all—the Conservatives were considerably more likely to champion it and connect it to politically charged and emotive appeals than were their Liberal opponents. Finally, the article maintains that the languages of imperialism and patriotism have often been unhelpfully conflated by historians, and argues that they could become politically synonymous only in the very specific circumstance of a ‘khaki’ election. In other contests, they could diverge, as is demonstrated by a case study of the campaign of 1906 when patriotism was reclaimed by the Liberals from a domestic, rather than imperial platform.     

Poaceae phytoliths from the Niassa Rift,Mozambique

The most common grass phytoliths from “Zambezian” miombos are described here for the first time. Their potential for long term preservation in sediments makes them a useful tool in the reconstruction of ancient plant communities and plant/human interactions. We processed 60 plant samples (26 identified genera and species), with an average of 300 phytoliths counted per sample to a total of 18,586. Forty-seven morphotypes were described as per the International Code for Phytolith Nomenclature, with exceptions, including forty-five discreet shapes and two articulated forms, which can be used as comparative reference materials. We conducted three forms of statistical analyses: Discriminant Analysis, Cluster Analysis, and Principal Component Analysis. The highest biomineral content was recorded among the Bambuseae and Paniceae, while the lowest silica production is detected in the Cynodonteae tribe. Typologically, the subfamily Panicoideae yielded 50% of the types reported here, 32% are from the Chloridoideae, 12% from the Bambusoideae, and 8% from the Arundinoideae sensu lato. Overall, the idealized Zambezian Poaceae phytolith spectrum is dominated by a small subset of Poaceae short cells, which include five morphotypes conventionally associated with Panicoid grasses (Bilobate concave outer margin long shaft, Bilobate concave outer margin short shaft, Bilobate convex outer margin long shaft, Bilobate convex outer margin short shaft, Cross), one morphotype commonly seen in Chloridoid taxa (saddle), and two types that appear across subfamily boundaries (tower, tower horned). The next logical step to take in regional phytolith research is the account of phytoliths deposited in soils underneath living plants, for they represent the interface between existing vegetation communities and the inevitably distorted fossil assemblages that the paleobotanist uses for environmental reconstruction.     

Kitchen Drama: Performances,patriarchy and power dynamics in a Dorset farmhouse kitchen

The paper explores the power relations that identified a farming family through a particular farmhouse kitchen in Dorset, England. Studying this kitchen space was important, because on one hand it embodied a systemic sense of power, symbolising patrilineal inheritance with its ownership passed through male hands. Memories and voices haunted its space and pieces of inherited family furniture dominated its configuration, resisted change and defined performances. On the other hand, kitchen space exposed the complexity of power relations as household members were simultaneously disciplined by it and affected its substance. An episode of kitchen life illustrates this paper based on participant observation of a farming family in Dorset.

Drama de Cocina: interpretación, patriarca y dinámicos de poder en una cocina granja de Dorset

Este papel explora las relaciones de poder en una familia granja a través de su cocina en Dorset, Inglaterra. Estudiando este espacio cocina era importante porque por una parte personificó un sentido sistemático del poder, simbolizando la herencia patrilineal con la propiedad que traspasa por las manos masculinas. Las memorias y las voces andan por el espacio de la cocina los pedazos de muebles heredados de familia dominaron su configuración, resistieron variación y definieron interpretaciones. Por otra parte, el espacio de la cocina expone la complejidad de relaciones de poder mientras los miembros de la familia fueron disciplinado simultáneamente por él y afectaron su sustancia. Basado en observación participante, este papel utiliza como ilustración un episodio de la vida de la cocina de una familia granja en Dorset, Inglaterra.     

Book reviews

Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy. By Pierre Manent. Foreword by Harvey C. Mansfield; translated by John Waggoner.(Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 1996) xviii + 148 pp. $15.50 paper.

The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250–1600. By Alfred W Crosby. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) xii + 245 pp. £19.95, $24.95 cloth.

Runaway Religions in Medieval England, c. 1240–1540. By F. Donald Logan, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996). Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought 32, 301 pp., £35.00 cloth.

Fairy Tales and Fables from Weimar Days. Edited, translated, and introduced by Jack Zipes (1989; Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997) ix + 211 pp. £13.50 paper.

Children, Childhood and English Society 1880–1990. By Harry Hendrick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) New Studies in Economic and Social History, vi + 114 pp. $44.95, £19.95 cloth/$12.95, £6.95 paper.

Political Parties and the European Union. Edited by John Gaffney (New York: Routledge, 1996) xvii + 340 pp. $18.95 paper.

Les Mots de Autres: Flaubert, Sarraute, Pinget. By Laurent Adert (Villeneuve d'Ascq, France: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1996) 301 pp. 130FF paper.

La Citation et l'art de citer dans les Essais de Montaigne. By Michael Metschies, translated by Jules Brody. (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1997) 163 pp. n.p.g.

Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformations of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity. By Jás Eisner (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995) xxvi + 375 pp. $69.95 cloth $24.95 paper.

Whom Gods Destroy: Elements of Greek and Tragic Madness. By Ruth Padel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995) xviii + 276 pp. $42.50, £30.50 cloth/$14.95, £9.95 paper.

Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth‐Century England. By Philip Ayres (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997) xix + 245 pp. £35.00, $54.95 cloth.

Revolutions in writing: Readings in nineteenth‐century French prose. Selected and translated by Rosemary Lloyd (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996) 448 pp. $49.95 cloth $18.95 paper.

Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature. By Froma I. Zeitlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) xx + 474 pp. $60.00, £47.95 cloth/$19.95, £15.95 paper.

The Racial Contract. By Charles W. Mills. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), xii + 171 pp. $19.95, £15.95 cloth.

Intimate Encounters: Love and Domesticity in Eighteenth‐Century France. By Richard Rand et al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997) xii + 220 pp., $65.00, £50.00 cloth/$35.00, £25.00 paper.

William of Ockham: A Letter to the Friars Minor and Other Writings. Edited by Arthur Stephen McGrade and John Kilcullen, translated by John Kilcullen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, xl + 390 pp. $64.95, £45.00 cloth/$24.95, £16.95 paper.

Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution: Revisited. By Christopher Hill (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997) xv + 422 pp. £25.00.

The Problem of Humanity: The Blacks in the European Enlightenment. By Kaija Tiainen‐Anttila (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1994) Studia Historica 50, xii + 367 pp. n.p.g. paper.

Sickness and the State: Health and Illness in Colonial Malaya, 1870–1940. By Lenore Manderson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) xix + 315 pp. $64.95, £40.00 cloth.

Charles Follen's Search for Nationality and Freedom. Germany and America, 1796–1840. By Edmund Spevack (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997) viii + 312 pp. $39.95 cloth.

American Space, Jewish Time: Essays in Modern Culture and Politics. By Stephen J. Whitfield (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 1996) xi + 226 pp. $16.50 paper.

Shingwauk's Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools. By J. R. Miller (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996) xii + 582 pp. $70.00, £52.00 cloth, $29.95, £22.00 paper.

Shakespeare and National Culture. Edited by John J. Joughin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997) ix + 351 £40.00 cloth £14.99 paper.

Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Edited by Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1997) xii + 470 pp. n.p.g.

Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire. By Katie Trumpener (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), xv + 426 pp. $55.00, £50.00 cloth, $ 19.95, £17.50 paper.

The Politics of Irish Education, 1920–1965. By Sean Farren. (Belfast: Queen's University of Belfast, Institute of Irish Studies, 1995), xii + 296 pp. £16.50 cloth.

British Idealism and Social Explanation: A Study in Late Victorian Thought. By Sandra M. den Otter, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). x + 250 pp. n.p.g.

Disruption. By David Appelbaum (New York: SUNY Press, 1996) xiv + 186 pp. $ 19.95 paper.

Carved in Stone: Holocaust Years—A Boy's Tale. By Manny Drukier (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996) 254 pp. $35.00 £26.00 cloth.

The Origins and Development of the European Union, 1945–95: A History of European Integration. By Martin J. Dedman (London: Routledge, 1996) xii + 145 pp. £6.99 paper.

Building European Union: A Documentary History and Analysis. Edited by Trevor Salmon and Sir William Nicoll (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1997) xiv + 297 pp. £45.00 cloth, £14.99 paper.

Narrative and Meaning in Early Modern England: Browne's Skull and Other Histories. By Howard Marchitello (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), xiv + 229 pp. £37.50, $59.95 cloth.

Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism. By J. C. D. Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) xiv + 270 pp. £30.00, $49.95 cloth/£12.95, $17.95 paper.

The Private Science of Louis Pasteur. By Gerald L. Geison (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, 1997) 378 pp. $16.95, £14.95 paper.

The Economics of Post‐Communist Transition. By Olivier Blanchard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) xiii + 149 pp. £18.99.

Latifundium: Moral Economy and Material Life in a European Periphery. By Marta Petrusewicz (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996) xvii + 289 pp. $52.50 cloth.

Russian Society and the Greek Revolution. By Theophilus C. Prousis (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994) xi + 259 pp. n.p.g.

Three Eras of Political Change in Eastern Europe. By Gale Stokes, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 240 pp. + xiii £13.99 paper.

Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology. By Eric Naiman (Princeton: Princteon University Press, 1997) 307 pp. £27.50, $39.50 cloth.

Stillborn Crusade: The Tragic Failure of Western Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1918–1920. By Ilya Somin (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1996) 244 pp. $32.95 cloth.     

The Italian industrial districts and the crisis of the cooperative form: Part I

The theory of the industrial districts—spatial clusters of mutually supporting, mostly small and medium‐sized, flexibly specialized enterprises, held together by virtue of their deep local embedding and relations of trust—is now a well‐developed part of regional planning doctrine and folklore. The canonical cases are those located in the so‐called Third Italy’. In Part I of this paper, I review the theory, and present the first of three case studies, each of which challenges one or another fundamental element of the district model. Here, I consider evidence of penetration into the Emilian food packaging machinery district by outside financial interests, which have proceeded to impose hierarchical order on what had previously been more collaborative relations among more or less symmetrically powerful firms. The remaining two cases—on the emergence of vertical production systems in the clothing sector of the Veneto, and on the contradictions of excessive fragmentation in the production of Pratese woolen textiles—will be presented in Part II. These cases do not point to economic failure, per se, but they do (I think) point to an underlying contingency and ultimate instability of the canonical district form.     

Rural Elected Officials, Environmental Policy, and Economic Composition

This research uses an alternative economic composition methodology that classifies 52 Idaho rural communities. This methodology classifies communities as dependent, diversified, or post-industrial. A survey was mailed to elected officials (mayors and city council) from the sample of 52 rural communities to examine whether there is a relationship between environmental policy support and economic type. One hundred and thirty-three respondents (48%) returned the surveys. The findings reveal that the economic composition of the community was related to views of environmental policy on 7 of 16 measures while controlling for gender, political ideology, and age.     

The power of precision air strikes and social media feeds in the 2012 Israel–Hamas conflict: ‘targeting transparency’

This article analyses the evolving uses of social media during wartime through the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) Spokesperson Facebook and Twitter accounts. The conflict between Israel and Hamas-affiliated groups in November 2012 has generated interesting data about social media use by a sovereign power in wartime and the resultant networked discourse. Facebook data is examined for effective patterns of dissemination through both content analysis and discourse analysis. Twitter data is explored through connected concept analysis to map the construction of meaning in social media texts shared by the IDF. The systematic examination of this social media data allows the authors’ analysis to comment on the evolving modes, methods and expectations for state public diplomacy, propaganda and transparency during wartime.