The history men. The historical profession in England since the Renaissance

This study of port cities, focusing on those on the Atlantic facade of France, argues that their economic significance cannot be understood within the canons of an insular French, or even European history. They were often case studies of the more general phenomenon of the early globalisation of Europe. In particular, navigation, fishing, trade, and colonisation, depended not only on the seas and the port but also on the agrarian hinterlands. They were often determinative of national imperial expansion. Thus, the success of exports and imports were not necessarily judged on Atlantic crossings but rather on the supply and demand of national or European economies. Commerce did not end on the seashore, in a port, or even in a contraband network, but often deep within a nation's hinterlands.     

The Figure of Yan Zhuoju 顏涿聚 in Ancient Chinese Literature

Contributing to the surging interest in rhetorical uses of anecdotal narratives in ancient China, the present article investigates sources about a purported follower of Confucius going by the name of Yan Zhuoju, or variants thereof. The main advantage of focusing on such an obscure figure is that extant sources can be exhaustively analysed – an approach intractable for more fully documented personalities – in order to gauge the mechanisms which created the textual record historians utilise to reconstruct events of the ancient past. The article demonstrates how the same figure can be appropriated across different discourses, to wit, in attacks on Confucius's alleged improprieties; in attempts to counter such attacks; and in arguments for the increasingly meritocratic social order of the Warring States period. Rarely adding up to a complete story, such appropriations are constituted by fragmentary narratives, summary statements, and intertextual references.     

The Oldest Culture-Circles in Asia

The following essay is divided into three parts. In the first part, evidences are presented to show that, as a result of modern etymological researches, the traditional interpretation of as “what a man becomes after his death” can no longer be accepted as representing the primitive meaning of this character. In the second part, further evidences, both documentary and palaeographic, are adduced to show that was very probably the name given to some simian or anthropoid animal; and that its current significations of ghost, sprite, devil, etc. are but later modifications of this primitive notion. In the last part, the author makes a tentative classification of characters and terms which are the graphic, semantic or phonetic cognates of in the light of the above conclusions.     

La persistance des relations pre-politiques entre agents de l'autorite et classes populaires pendant la revolution francaise (le discours public de l'autorite en situation d'emeute)

This article provides an intellectual history of the status of wage earners as conceptualized within the natural law paradigm by European writers both on the Continent and in Britain. Historians of political discourse have mostly investigated the consequences of such a status for the political rights of labourers. This article shows that the crucial moves were made by different authors analysing the relation of servant to master either in the domestic sphere or in private contracts. The article further contends that that resulting deeply ambiguous analyses implied a far from complete personal freedom for wage earners. This had a decisive impact on different visions of commercial society in early modern times, and left a significant legacy for moderns.     

Variety in cereal cultivation in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages in relation to environmental conditions

The objective of this paper is to assess the relationship between the cereals cultivated in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages (ca. 1250–400 BC) within the area of the present-day Czech Republic, and their environmental settings. The various charred caryopses of cereal species represented in the archaeobotanical assemblages from 35 archaeological sites differ, especially in the proportion of wheat and barley. The cereal assemblages were compared regarding site altitude, weather conditions, soils and soil productivity. The most important environmental variable influencing the choice of a particular crop seemed to be altitude which is correlated with other variables such as the length of growing season, mean annual temperature, soil quality etc. Although the ecological requirements of cereals cultivated in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages are not known, they presumably thrived under similar conditions to present-day species/varieties, and the strategy of past crop husbandry was based on similar principles as today, e.g. flexible adaptation to local environmental conditions, in an effort to achieve optimal yields and reduce the danger of crop failure.     

New books received for review

Abstract

Geological information was first printed in colour on a map in 1820 but serious efforts to print geological maps in multiple colours began in Europe only in the 1840s. Increased geological mapping activity created the need to print more maps by cheaper methods, while general advances in lithographic colour printing provided the means. Better colour registration, transparency, range, permanence and distinctiveness were attained in the 1840s and 1850s by technical innovations and also by new design strategies. Consequently, as printed colour replaced hand colour as the norm, it also influenced the look of the geological map.     

‘Between All Parts of the Universe’: Russian Cosmographies and Imperial Strategies in Early Modern Siberia and Ukraine

In the early seventeenth century, learned Muscovites, as they set themselves to the task of working out a Russian and Orthodox vision of their place in the world, began to read, translate and modify the atlases produced by their slightly earlier European counterparts: Ortelius, Mercator, Blaeu and others. The Russian solution to this geographical puzzle grew out of and reflected a sense of the tsardom's unique location and imperial ambitions. The position that Muscovite cosmographers and geographers generally assigned to their realm was a connective one: the tsardom lay proudly between points on the globe; it linked vastly different lands and peoples; and it contained within its purview a heterogeneous assortment of peoples, faiths, tongues and cultures. In this article, I examine the different manifestations of that thinking and of Muscovite ideological conceptions of empire in two widely separated parts of the tsardom—Siberia, at some length, and then, more briefly, Ukraine/Belarus—and explore how their ideological frameworks affected the subject populations of those two areas.     

Systematic position of two Early Devonian sinistral heterostrophic gastropods from the Garra Limestone,New South Wales

Two Early Devonian gastropod genera, Garraspira gen. nov. and Anoriostoma from the GarraLimestone, with sinistrally heterostrophic shells, share several shell features and are placed in the new tribe Anoriostomatini within the subfamily Agnesiinae. In contrast to the other members of the latter subfamily these genera represent a lineage in which the apertural slit was lost during evolution. This fact supports the opinion that the presence or absence of the apertural slit does not necessarily have significance for high-level taxonomy. Morphology of the gerontic whorl in Anoriostoma sinistra and Garraspira imtsitata suggests their limited mobility during the last ontogenetic stage.     

Acanthodian,onychodontid and osteolepidid fish from the middle-upper Taemas Limestone (Early Devonian), Lake Burrinjuck,New South Wales

A meagre ischnacanthid acanthodian fauna, known from fragmentary dentigerous jawbones from Lake Burrinjuck, Yass district, New South Wales, consists of three taxa: Taemasacanthus narrengullenensis, Taemasacanthus cooradigbeensis and an indeterminate ischnacanthid. The fossils are from three Early Devonian (Emsian) units at Taemas: the Bloomfield Limestone Member, the Currajong Limestone Member and the Warroo Limestone Member, which constitute the middle-upper parts of the Taemas Limestone (Murrumbidgee Group); and from Unit 6 of the ‘Upper Reef formation’ at Wee Jasper. Whereas ischnacanthid acanthodian remains are increasingly rarer in the higher levels of the Taemas Limestone, remains of onychodontid and osteolepidid fishes are relatively abundant; Onychodus yassensis sp. nov., Onychodus sp. and isolated osteolepidid teeth are locally common.     

Early Carboniferous age for Arynshand Formation,Mongolian South Gobi,based on conodonts

Conodonts from the lowermost part of the Arynshand Formation at the Bayan-Khoshuu Ruins section in the Mushgai area, south Gobi, including Siphonodella cooperi, S. cf. crenulata and S. cf. isosticha, clearly indicate that the Arynshand Formation is Early Carboniferous rather than Devonian-Carboniferous. The formation rests unconformably on the volcanogenic Minjin Member of the Botuulkhudag Formation from which we have not recovered conodonts. The Arynshand Formation contains some presumably reworked Devonian conodonts which cannot be used to provide a reliable age.