Social structure,psychoanalysis, and collective aggression

This article considers Kierkegaard's contribution to our understanding of the political. Building on previous scholarship exploring the social dimensions of Kierkegaard's thought, I argue that for Kierkegaard the modern understanding and practice of politics should be understood as ‘despair’. Thus, whilst Kierkegaard's criticisms of politics might have been produced in an ad hoc fashion, this article argues that there is an underlying principle which guides these criticisms: that politics is subordinate to, and must be grounded in, spiritual or religious selfhood. In this way the modern phenomena of democracy, liberalism, the press, and the crowd can all be seen as representative of a form of community which falls far short of the potential that human beings can and should achieve. Such a community would see individuals recognising themselves and each other as spiritual beings, and taking responsibility for themselves and others. That modern politics fails to understand the human being as an essentially spiritual entity related to others through God can only lead us to conclude that, from Kierkegaard's point of view, modern politics suffers from the sickness of despair. Whilst Kierkegaard might be criticised for failing to provide us with a more detailed picture of a polity shaped by the religious contours he promotes, he clearly offers an intriguing and suggestive contribution to our understanding not only of the limitations of politics, but also the relationship between a normative human and political ontology, with the former providing the basis for the latter.     

Slanted histories,Hesperian fables: material form and royalist prophecy in John Ogilby’s The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro

ABSTRACT

This article considers the status of John Ogilby’s Virgil translations as royalist texts. The paratextual material to the 1649 and 1654 editions provides a framework which invites a royalist reading; the translation promotes this by manipulating Virgil’s text and contemporary typographic conventions. These factors combine in passages that depict the death of kings. The volume follows the Virgilian precedent of foretelling events that had already occurred by presenting the passage on the death of Priam in such a manner to imply that it anticipated Charles I’s execution. This allowed Ogilby to grant a sense of inevitability to the prophecies his translation offers regarding events that he hoped lay in the near future. The 1654 edition subtly draws on Caroline-era royalist literary tropes to suggest a permanent revival of the monarchy under Charles II. Ogilby’s contributions to Charles II’s coronation celebrations draw on the Virgil translations in vindication of such prophecies.     

A Leading Arsenal of Democracy: American Rearmament and the Continental Integration of the Canadian Aircraft Industry, 1948–1953

This article shows how the Royal Navy under the leadership of John Fisher exploited the British Consular system in Germany and Denmark to obtain both open-source and covert intelligence between 1906 and 1914. This structure was initially constructed with the tacit support of the Foreign Office, replacing an earlier intelligence network in France and Russia. The intelligence collected by the consuls reflected the Royal Navy's strategic priorities at the time. The most important subject concerned German coastal defences, a detailed knowledge of which was essential for the Admiralty's offensive littoral strategy. From 1908 Charles Hardinge attempted to restrict the Admiralty's use of its Consular Officers for intelligence purposes, with limited success. The consuls continued to provide essential intelligence for the Royal Navy up until the outbreak of war.     

Technology and Global Politics: The Modern Experiences of Bertrand Russell and John H. Herz

As questions of technology and world government are returning to the agenda of International Relations (IR), there is a risk that technology is approached in a simple, instrumentalist manner. Beginning from an overview of the overwhelmingly instrumental approaches to technology lodged in the dominant traditions of IR, the article revisits the post-war decades when scholars thought profoundly about the impact of technology on global politics. Combining the history of (international) political thought, IR theory, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) the article examines the relationship between technology and politics, authority, and liberty in the thought of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and John H. Herz (1908–2005), which leads to the unearthing of a sophisticated and complex set of ideas. Particularly during the nuclear revolution, these figures developed global visions in which the interrelations among technology, security, democracy, sustainability, and freedom were critical. Russell and Herz's approaches to technology and (global) politics are insightful and relevant for IR's attempt to re-engage with technology: by anticipating contemporary critical and reflexive approaches to technology, they can help bridge the fields of IR and STS and open new avenues for research. The Large Technical Systems (LTS) approach within STS is used to exemplify this possibility.     

Carn Alw as a source of the rhyolitic component of the Stonehenge bluestones: a critical re-appraisal of the petrographical account of H.H. Thomas

The source of the Stonehenge bluestones was first determined in the early 1920s by H.H. Thomas who was an officer with the Geological Survey of England and Wales. He determined that the so-called ‘spotted dolerites’ could be petrographically matched to a small number of outcrops in the Mynydd Preseli district in south-west Wales. The bluestones, however, comprise a number of additional lithologies, including rhyolite and ‘calcareous ash’, as well as various sandstones. Thomas was convinced that the volcanic lithologies in the bluestone assemblage were all sourced from a small area at the eastern end of the Mynydd Preseli, with the rhyolites originating from the prominent outcrop known as Carn Alw. Recently, provenancing of these rhyolites to Carn Alw has been questioned on the evidence of whole-rock geochemistry. This raised concerns over the original petrographical attribution. Accordingly a re-investigation was undertaken of the rhyolite petrography by re-examining the original specimens used by Thomas. Three of the original four thin sections studied by Thomas were re-examined, along with a newly made thin section from the fourth of Thomas' rock samples as the original thin section could not be located. The new petrographical evidence demonstrates convincingly that the two pairs of thin sections from the Preseli and Stonehenge as examined by Thomas do not match despite his contention and argues strongly that Carn Alw is not the source of the Stonehenge rhyolites which Thomas described. This reinforces the geochemical evidence presented recently and supports the contention that Craig Rhos-y-felin, to the north of Mynydd Preseli, is an important source of rhyolitic debris in the Stonehenge Landscape. Nevertheless, there remain uncertainties over the provenance of other Stonehenge rhyolites (and dacites), including four of the orthostats themselves.     

Sacred,but not surveyed: Nineteenth‐century surveys of Palestine

Abstract

Nineteenth‐century Palestine mapping projects based on systematic land surveying reached a peak with the Ordnance Survey of Western Palestine between 1871 and 1877, conducted on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund by officers of the British Royal Engineering Corps. Various other nineteenth‐century proposals for an organized survey of the country—some of which bore partial results while others were never implemented—are also presented. The surveying of one region, Mesopotamia, during the 1830s and 1840s, forms the basis for the discussion of the reasons for the relative lateness of the topographical survey. The sacredness of the region seems not to have been a sufficiently convincing motive for entrepreneurs to organize and finance such a survey. The main reason for the delay in mapping the country as a whole was that it was not especially important, either strategically or geo‐politically, for the European nations engaged in the international struggles in the Middle East until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.