A Pocket Borough? Reformed Politics in Ripon, 1832–67

This article examines the political history of the parliamentary borough of Ripon between the Great Reform Act of 1832 and the Second Reform Act of 1867. It challenges the notion that Ripon remained a ‘pocket borough’ during this era; rather, the Reform Act rendered Ripon's politics much more open, vibrant and participatory than they had been during the ‘unreformed’ era. In demonstrating this, the article calls into question the alleged prevalence of ‘pocket boroughs’ in the reformed era.     

‘Meddling with Politics’: The Political Role of Foreign Missions in the Early Nineteenth Century

The proper character of the relationship between missionaries and politics shaped one of the most contentious debates within the first century of the modern missionary movement. While the leadership of the missionary societies repeatedly insisted upon the separation between the work of the gospel and politics, missionaries in the field frequently found it difficult to remove themselves from political controversies. John Philip and James Read served with the London Missionary Society in the Cape Colony for most of the first half of the 19th century. Their persistent defence of the interests of the colonial Khoi made them controversial figures in the debates over the social, political and economic structures of the Cape Colony. Missionaries like Read and Philip, rarely described their activities as ‘political’, and certainly did not conceive of their work as in any way related to the patronage‐ridden political system of the early 19th century. Nonetheless, in their promotion of the ideas of religious and civil equality, and in their effective use of public opinion to shape government and public perception of colonial policy, their actions reflected many of the important changes taking place in contemporary British politics. Dissenting political activity focused on the issues of the defence of religious liberty, the struggle to secure their own civil equality, and the debate over the proper relationship between church and state. These issues also played a crucial role in colonial politics throughout the period. This essay will illustrate the important role of the foreign missionary movement in this process. Examining the work of Philip and Read enables us to identify the ways that issues of domestic politics helped to shape the political debates emerging in Britain's expanding empire.     

GEOGRAPHICAL PATTERNS IN BIOLOGICALLY AVAILABLE STRONTIUM,CARBON AND OXYGEN ISOTOPE SIGNATURES IN PREHISTORIC SW GERMANY*

In order to interpret strontium and oxygen isotope values in Neolithic human skeletons analysed previously, we begin to map the biologically available strontium, carbon and oxygen isotopic signatures of prehistoric southern Germany by analysing tooth enamel of pigs from archaeological sites distributed around the region. The mapping shows a marked upland–lowland difference in biologically available ⁸⁷ Sr/ ⁸⁶ Sr values, ranging between 0.7086 and 0.7103 in the sedimentary lowlands, and from 0.710 to as high as 0.722 in the crystalline uplands of the Odenwald, the Black Forest and the Bavarian Forest. In addition, carbon isotopes in the carbonate fraction of pig enamel were generally about 1–2 more enriched in ¹³ C in the uplands. Despite the expected depletion of ¹⁸ O with altitude, oxygen isotopes in pig enamel showed little correlation with site altitude, although for pig samples not older than the Iron Age there was some geographical correlation withδ¹⁸O patterns in modern precipitation.     

'Are we there yet?' feminist political geographies

Our purpose in this paper is to chart the increasing and diffuse importance of feminist scholarship to political geography. We argue that feminist geographers have spatialized multiple forms of the political, rather than simply offering a singular feminist perspective to the literature. To canvas that breadth we suggest three distinct (albeit obviously related) takes on the political in feminist political geography: the distributive, the antagonistic, and the constitutive. This framework showcases the impressive breadth of feminist political geography and perhaps works against a sense of marginality that stems from such diffuseness. We illustrate our argument with particular reference to research that has appeared in Gender, Place and Culture over the past decade.     

The ethno‐religious ambitions of the Roman Catholic Church and the ascendancy of communism in post‐war Poland (1945–50)

ABSTRACT. This paper differentiates between centrifugal and centripetal aspects of ethno‐nationalism to help account for the ascendancy of communism in the immediate aftermath of World War II in Poland. It argues that the directing of social antipathy to defined out‐groups allowed the Polish Workers' Party (PPR) to manage social anger and that the Roman Catholic Church's ethno‐religious agenda was aligned with the PPR's ethno‐nationalist policy. Furthermore, it is contended that the Church's toleration of hostile actions directed at minority communities supported the PPR's management of social anger. The paper concludes that the Church, despite its manifest intentions and contrary to contemporary perceptions, played a role in the PPR's achievement of hegemony.     

Resistance to alien rule in Taiwan and Korea†

ABSTRACT. Although alien rule is widely assumed to be illegitimate, nationalist resistance to it varies across time and space. This article explores why there was greater nationalist resistance to Japanese colonial rule in Korea than Taiwan from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of World War II. Resistance to alien rulers requires both a supply of participants in nationalist collective action and a demand for national self‐determination. The article assesses two principal propositions: (1) that the supply of participants increases to the degree that native elites are stripped of their traditional authority and offered few incentives to collaborate; and (2) that the demand for national self‐determination decreases to the degree that alien rule is fair and effective. A comparative analysis of the effects of Japanese alien rule in Taiwan and Korea suggests that nationalist resistance is greater in the earliest phases of occupation, that the greater native elites' opportunities, the weaker the resistance to alien rule; and that the fairer the governance, the weaker the resistance to alien rule.