Pretia Victoriae or Just an Occasional Bonus? Analysis of Iron Age Lead Artefacts from the Somerset Lake Villages

This paper looks at the evidence for the extraction of silver from lead ores in Iron Age and Roman Britain. Analysis shows that many of the lead objects from the Somerset Lake Villages were made from Mendip lead, but their chemical composition suggests that they were not produced from lead that had been de‐silvered, but from smelted galena with variable silver content. Furthermore, analysis of a Roman lead pig, made from Charterhouse lead ores, shows that it was made of chemically identical lead. Does this mean that silver was not extracted from British lead in the Iron Age and Roman periods? The evidence discussed and the results of the analyses suggest that silver was not always extracted from lead even when it was economical to do so. This was a cultural choice and not a technological limitation, one also found in other times and places around the world.     

‘Genus barracker’: Masculinity,Race, and the Disruptive Pleasures of Rowdy Partisanship in 1880s Melbourne

This article uses the emergence of the cultural category of barrackers in 1880s colonial Melbourne to examine the way a spectator sport became a site of intersecting discourses around emotions, health, science, class, citizenship, masculinity, and partisanship. Drawing on suburban newspapers it traces those aspects of barracking that were disturbing and thrilling enough to occasion the popularisation of a new noun and verb. The article also explores how barracking became a middle-class behaviour, as well as a middle-class concern, and the way popular reactions to barrackers in the 1880s differed to responses to another much more studied cultural category: larrikins.     

The Newcastle Upon Tyne Peace Society (1817–50)

The 1816 foundation of the Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace in London was followed by the creation of a number of Auxiliary societies throughout the country. This paper analyses the history of the Newcastle Auxiliary, covering its establishment in 1817, its disaffiliation from the London Society in 1840, and its subsequent re-affiliation in 1850. After an initial period of quietism after their formation, the paper demonstrates how the radical pacifism of the society developed in the 1830s and 1840s, placing their activities in relation to the specificities of Newcastle’s political history, wider transformations in the British peace movement, and the influence of transatlantic networks of American peace advocacy and anti-slavery activism. The local Richardson family of Quakers personified these transformations, even as anarchists such as Joseph Barker represented a militant outer fringe of the society. Ultimately, however, the society struggled to garner wider support in Newcastle, clashing with local Chartists and with the town’s militarist merchants and businessmen in 1848. The paper therefore demonstrates how the Auxiliary societies need to be thought of active, agential organisations which negotiated the contradictions between their pacifist ideologies and the local and regional milieus within which they were enmeshed.     

British hospitality for an unfortunate prince: the Duc de Bordeaux's visit to Britain as an early test of the entente cordiale, 1843–4

In the summer of 1843, Anglo-French relations thawed in the wake of the British and French royal families' meeting at the Château d'Eu in Normandy. Members of both governments began to speak of the good understanding, or entente cordiale, between them, and much of the existing historiography points out that by 1844, what proved to be a fragile arrangement was under some pressure. However, mere months after the Eu visit, another royal visit threatened the entente, that of King Louis Philippe's exiled great-nephew, the Bourbon pretender Henri, Duc de Bordeaux (later known as the Comte de Chambord), to Britain. Owing to Britain's tradition of allowing entry to foreigners, Bordeaux was able to enter Britain freely, whilst the British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, argued that his visit would have little political consequence. Rather, Bordeaux and his suite intended to make political demonstrations. These activities and Aberdeen's willingness to believe professions to the contrary deeply offended the French government. Aberdeen was eventually forced to admonish Bordeaux and his suite. Although the dispute was amicably resolved, it almost fatally undermined the entente soon after its inception.     

Hegemonic at home and subaltern abroad: Kamaiya masculinities and changing mobility in Nepal

As former bonded labourers (or slaves), the Kamaiya of far-west Nepal have a history of marginalization, poverty and limited mobility due to the constraints inherent in the Kamaiya system of bonded labour (banned in 2000). Based on ethnographic research in the post-slavery era, this article examines how mobility is becoming an important part of Kamaiya masculinities. I consider in particular an account of migration acquired over a series of interviews with a Kamaiya man named Ram. Ram’s migrant trajectory from Nepal to India and back over variable lengths of time reflect a broader literature on circular migration in India. I argue that transnationally performed migrant masculinities are alternatively subordinated and hegemonic across geographically diverse contexts. By accepting and performing subordinated, often oppressive masculine roles in a broader South Asian context, men such as Ram are producing new, locally hegemonic or at least desirable masculine roles in Kamaiya villages in Nepal.