In search of the physical: George Adam Smith's journeys to palestine and their importance

By any standard, George Adam Smith's was a remarkable career. Having established a reputation for himself as the first minister of a new congregation of the Free Church of Scotland in the west of Aberdeen, where he consolidated his liberal evangelical pulpit between 1882 and 1892, Smith went on to become a foremost Old Testament scholar in the Free Church College in Glasgow (1892-1910) and Principal of Aberdeen University (1910-1935). More than one student of the period has linked his name with that of A.B. Davidson and W.R. Smith, succeeding them as one of Scotland's leading Old Testament scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.     

NATO's Triple Challenge

NATO's future is again the subject of speculation and debate despite its having fought a recent and apparently successful war in Kosovo. This article proposes that there are three aspects to this challenge. First, NATO is facing a series of dilemmas in its relations with non‐members: how should it manage relations with Russia, and with the applicants for membership? The authors argue that NATO should seek to develop a consolidationist posture. The second challenge is that of developing an EU–NATO partnership in the light of the Helsinki Headline Goals. This, it is proposed, can be developed through a division of labour. The third task, that of military restructuring, is overshadowed by the complexities of processing a working European military structure. In conclusion, the authors suggest that a strategy for the alliance, a key component of the Cold War, but subsequently lost, can be refashioned from the above elements.     

Chronicle for 2014

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Norfolk livestock farming 1250–1740: a comparative study of manorial accounts and probate inventories

This paper examines developments in Norfolk livestock husbandry over a period of five centuries. It breaks new ground by combining evidence from manorial accounts and probate inventories and the methodological difficulties of using the two sources are examined in some detail. Despite these difficulties the evidence of accounts and inventories reveals the continuity of developed and dynamic pastoral farming systems in Norfolk. From an early date the distinctive feature of livestock farming was its close integration with arable farming, producing mixed-farming systems of remarkable productivity. By substituting horses for oxen and cultivating fodder crops, Norfolk farmers succeeded in maximizing the ratio of non-working to working animals, thereby permitting the development of specialized sheep farming, cattle-based dairying, and later, fattening. Sheep farming was transformed from a peasant to a landlord activity and dairying shifted in its spatial focus, gradually giving way to fattening, rendering Norfolk farmers increasingly dependent upon the import of young stock from outside the county. The most difficult comparison between accounts and inventories yields the most remarkable finding: between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries stocking densities approximately doubled. This implies significant gains in pastoral output per unit area, reinforcing the view that developments in livestock husbandry may well have been of greater importance in increasing agricultural production than the more heavily studied arable sector.