Arable in England and Wales: estimates from the 1801 Crop Return

This study is based on the 1801 Crop Return for England and Wales, an inquiry which took the form of an arable crops census. Over 75% of the county areas of 12 English and Welsh counties is represented in the surviving Return but under 25% for 13 others. For England and Wales together nearly 50% of the total area is represented. The national distribution of the main grain crops is investigated; and an aggregate analysis of arable England and Wales in 1801 is made. The main result is to produce two different estimates to suggest that arable England and Wales was something over 7 million acres and something under 8 million acres in 1801, the higher estimate comparing very favourably with contemporary ones. Finally, since the Return is extant at parish or township level, it is suggested that it can be subjected to further investigation and to sampling, to break free from the constraints imposed by the county approach by studying or identifying farming regions.     

A Tale of Two Yusifs: Recovering Arab Agency in Palestine Exploration Fund Excavations 1890–1924

The scholarly literature on the history of archaeology and archaeological organisations in late nineteenth/early twentieth century Palestine focuses almost exclusively on the Western excavators and scholars who headed this work. But Arab workers did the bulk of the actual digging, and on a daily basis they were often overseen by fellow Arabs as foremen and gang leaders. This paper applies lessons from relational history as it has been used in Levantine intellectual and labour contexts to understand the roles of two particular men, Yusif ‘abu Selim' Khazin and Yusif Khattar Kanaan, who worked for the Palestine Exploration Fund between 1890 and World War One, acting as foremen, researchers, site directors and many other roles for Frederick Bliss, R.A.S Macalister, and Duncan Mackenzie. Despite their often slim and ghostly presence in the records, in which both men are often referred to only by their shared first name, the writings of Bliss and Macalister reveal them to have been indispensable on-site and as offering insights and knowledge which influenced how both archaeological finds and indigenous life in Palestine was understood.     

‘Cloths with Names’: Luxury Textile Imports in Eastern Africa,c. 1800–1885

In the nineteenth century, a vast area of eastern Africa stretching the length of the coast and into the reaches of the Congo River was connected by long-distance trade mostly channelled through the Omani commercial empire based in Zanzibar. As studies have recently shown, a critical factor driving trade in this zone was local demand for foreign cloth; from the 1830s the majority of it was industrially made coarse cotton sheeting from Europe and America, which largely displaced the handwoven Indian originals. Employing archival, object, image and field research, this article demonstrates that until 1885 luxury textiles were as important to economic and social life in central eastern Africa, textiles known to the Swahili as ‘cloths with names’. It identifies the thirty or so varieties which élites — and, increasingly, the general population — selected for status dress and gifts, instrumental in building the commercial and socio-political networks that linked the great region. Finally, it shows that the production and procurement of most varieties remained in the hands of Asian textile artisans and merchants; most prestigious and costly were striped cotton and silk textiles handcrafted in western India, and in the southern Arabian nation of Oman. European industrial attempts to imitate them were hampered by several factors, including their inability to recreate the physical features that defined luxury fabrics in this region — costly materials, rich colours, complex designs and handwoven structures.     

A New Model of Executive Power: A Montesquieuan Explanation of the Obama Presidency

Abstract

The perennial concern over executive overreach continues well into Obama's presidency, leading many to wonder if the “unitary executive” is here to stay. Discussions of executive war powers focus on three models. The Hamiltonian perspective gives presidents the lead position in foreign affairs; the second model, following Madison, presents Congress as the leader when initiating hostilities. Finally, Jeffersonians present emergency powers as extra-legal, giving presidents a sphere of actions that cannot be contained within constitutional discussions. Problematically, current scholarship implicitly or explicitly grounds these explanations in Locke's political philosophy. This occurs despite a dearth of references to Locke during the Constitutional Convention and infrequent references to his thought during early debates over executive-congressional divisions of war powers. Comparatively, all of these seminal American figures frequently mention Montesquieu, often fighting over the specifics of his theory. While scholars widely acknowledge this influence, they rarely mention him during discussions of war powers or the nature of executive power in general. This article examines the Montesquieuan understanding of executive power and shows how this model represents a viable alternative to the Lockean one. Most importantly, examining the executive from a Montesquieuan perspective provides solutions to current problems that the Lockean perspective does not.