Linking Scottish vital event records using family groups

Abstract

The reconstitution of populations through linkage of historical records is a powerful approach to generate longitudinal historical microdata resources of interest to researchers in various fields. Here we consider automated linking of the vital events recorded in the civil registers of birth, death and marriage compiled in Scotland, to bring together the various records associated with the demographic events in the life course of each individual in the population. From the histories, the genealogical structure of the population can then be built up. Rather than apply standard linkage techniques to link the individuals on the available certificates, we explore an alternative approach, inspired by the family reconstitution techniques adopted by historical demographers, in which the births of siblings are first linked to form family groups, after which intergenerational links between families can be established. We report a small-scale evaluation of this approach, using two district-level data sets from Scotland in the late nineteenth century, for which sibling links have already been created by demographers. We show that quality measures of up to 83% can be achieved on these data sets (using F-Measure, a combination of precision and recall). In the future, we intend to compare the results with a standard linkage approach and to investigate how these various methods may be used in a project which aims to link the entire Scottish population from 1856 to 1973.     

Beached swords from Marano Lagoon (northern Adriatic) reveal ancient land–sea connections and recent coastal evolution

Depositional and erosional processes, subsidence and sea-level changes have strongly modified the coastal landscape of northern Adriatic lagoons. Such rapid transformations have induced significant consequences on human settlements and, thus, on the archaeological visibility of the area, still largely unexplored. We present here six metal swords fortuitously retrieved by fishermen over the last decades in front of the barrier islands of Marano Lagoon (north-eastern Italy). Multi-analytical analyses carried out on the artefacts (X-ray radiography and computed micro-tomography, radiocarbon dating and typo-chronology) combined with the study of the coastal paleo-environment (mainly based on historical cartography and remote sensing) allowed the items’ main features to be defined, and highlighted both the historical importance of the area and the significant morphological changes that have occurred there over the last millennium. Data presented indicate that Marano Lagoon was a major hub in the northern Adriatic in the Late Middle Ages, during the crucial period of the Crusades, and in Early Modern times, connecting inland Europe with the Mediterranean Sea. Moreover, the research highlights the onset of coastal erosion that occurred in the last century after a phase of relatively geomorphic stability, possibly deriving from the intensification of human impact and climate change.     

清代学者利用金石资料研究唐代地理的成就及意义

清代是金石学研究的黄金时期,有关金石的著述层出不穷,研究成果亦蔚为可观。因唐代石刻在历代碑石中所占比重较大,故清代学者的金石研究成果中有关唐代历史的内容最为繁富,而墓志碑石的特殊性又决定了其中蕴含着大量地理方面的内容,因此清代金石研究中有关唐代地理的部分颇有价值。本文即从折冲府府名考逸、郡县之沿革隶属及地名讹误、佛教寺院、《长安志》考补等四个方面论述清代学者的研究成就,探讨这些成果的价值及其对今后唐史研究的借鉴意义。     

章学诚的史学变革思想

章学诚的史学变革思想,涉及史意、历史编纂学、历史文学三个方面。章学诚的"史意"不仅具有著述宗旨、别识心裁之意,还包含撰述者关于历史和史学的体会、情感和价值取向,比"史义"内容更加丰富。其"圆而神"的撰述思想既有辩证法的思想因素,又有美学的意境。在历史文学上,章氏一方面强调史文应忠实地反映历史实际,另一方面又主张语言表达的神明变化。     

贝琪及其《吴学甄微》考述

上海图书馆所藏贝琪稿本《吴学甄微》承袭章太炎、梁启超、刘师培诸家论说,以人为纲,以学为纬,注重学者的授受源流、学术特质以及与吴派的相关度,考察吴派经学的源流变迁与盛衰之迹,是吴学系谱的专论之作。书末有章太炎、金天羽、陈衍诸家跋语,具有重要的史学价值。     

Fannin’ Flies and Tellin’ Lies: Black Runaways and American Tales of Life in British Canada before the Civil War

Fannin’ Flies and Tellin’ Lies examines the many falsehoods told by slaveholders in the American South to prevent enslaved Blacks from running away to British Canada throughout the antebellum. Blacks were wrongly instructed on Canada including fabrications ranging from the Monarch would demand half of their earnings to rice was the only crop that could be grown in the British colony. At times the lies were totally inaccurate and humorous; on occasion they were half-truths or white lies, but indefinitely these falsehoods, instead of misinforming Blacks, suggested to them the benefits of Canada. Blacks deconstructed and reacted to lies by concealing their desire to defile the institution of slavery by flight to Canada and turned the art of lying into a tool of insurrection and a means of greater liberation.     

From Batticaloa via Basel to Berlin. Transimperial Science in Ceylon and Beyond around 1900

ABSTRACT

Recent historiographies of ‘Science and Empire’ have successfully critiqued older euro-centric narratives. They highlighted how science was ‘co-produced’ through interactions between knowledgeable European and non-European actors in colonial ‘contact zones’, and how this ‘pidginised knowledge’ circulated through networks across various sites within the British Empire. This article shares and expands this approach. By focussing on continental European scholars in Ceylon around 1900, it argues that scientific networks were never confined to a particular empire. Science among Europeans was, rather, multi-lingual, mostly cross-disciplinary and always transimperial. Applying such an approach to the history of science in late colonial Ceylon allows us to uncover entanglements between historical processes that have for too long remained subject matters of disconnected historiographies: the emergence of Buddhist revivalism, evolutionary theories about human origins, the transformation from ‘liberal race science’ to Nazi eugenics in Germany, and the surfacing of British cultural anthropology.