Latitudinarianism,secular theology and Sir Thomas Browne’s influence in George Mackenzie’s Religio Stoici (1663)

This article revisits George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh’s Religio Stoici (1663) which is often acclaimed as the first in a venerable series of imitations of Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici (1642) as well as a possible influence for John Dryden’s Religio Laici (1682). By contrast, this articles returns to the charged contemporary atmosphere that prevailed in Scotland in 1663, following the controversial re-establishment of Episcopalianism the previous year. Combining an instinctive epistemological scepticism with an audacious and polemical anticlericalism, Mackenzie’s tract attacked dogmatic intolerance and denominational exclusivity and instead advanced a courageous, solitary and very public plea for peaceful religious practice.     

Heroes and the renegotiation of national identity in American history textbooks: representations of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, 1982–2003

ABSTRACT. American history textbooks for the USA's public schools act as quasi‐official loci for the renegotiation of national identity and are, as such, subject to much controversy. The choice of heroes and the way in which textbooks depict them display the interplay between competing visions of popular ethno‐history and scholarly historiography. This article examines contemporary renegotiation of the national narrative through an analysis of the evolving representation of the USA's two most prominent traditional national heroes – George Washington and Abraham Lincoln – in history textbooks for elementary‐school students published from the early 1980s to 2003. This period marks the development of the multiculturalist movement and its subsequent conservative backlash, with debates intensifying in the wake of the events of 11 September 2001.     

《安逊环球航海记》与英国人的中国观

18世纪中期,英国的“中国热”达到了高潮。中国文化受到了英国社会各阶层的极力赞誉和追捧。然而,1748年,英国海军上将安逊出版了他的环球行纪——《安逊环球航海记》。该著详细记述了安逊航至中国东南沿海时的所见所闻,对中国社会生活和科技文化进行了严厉的批判和否定,在英国社会中产生了很大的反响,致使一些人开始质疑此前英国社会流行的乌托邦式中国观的真实性,并最终成为“中国热”退却的导火索。     

The politics of the Balfour Declaration: Nationalism,imperialism and the limits of Zionist-British cooperation

This article proposes a new perspective on the much debated question of why the British government published the Balfour Declaration? It argues that the Declaration was published as part of the struggle that took place in the course of the First World War between two rival factions in the British government on the question of the future of the Ottoman Empire: the “radical” faction that strove to partition the Ottoman Empire as a means to extend the British imperial hold on the Middle East, and the “reformist” faction that opposed this. By promising to turn Palestine into “a national home for the Jewish people” the Declaration advanced the radical agenda of dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and expansion of British imperialism in the Middle East.     

British School Atlases, 1880–1930: Questions of Relevance,Credibility and Authorship in the Production of Geographical Knowledge

Abstract

The focus in this article is on school atlases produced in Britain in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and on what is revealed, both in their pages and in the processes behind their compilation, about the people who were producing and using such map books. The Bartholomew Archive, in Edinburgh, has proved to be an exceptionally rich source of hitherto unexamined data on the business and personal activities of one of the leading producers of school atlases, the local firm of John Bartholomew and Son, which was active in map making and publishing between 1880 and 1987. The sociology and pattern of communication of publishing, explored by book historians and historians of science, geography and cartography in other contexts, are here considered in relation to the atlases that were produced in Britain for schools in the United Kingdom and in other parts of the Empire in the period 1880–1930. Particular attention is paid to the efforts of mapmakers, publishers, geographers and other professionals to ensure the relevance of the maps selected in school atlases for specific audiences, to guarantee the credibility of the information communicated through these atlases, and to negotiate questions of authorship.     

‘Discipline and Interference’: Ruskin's Political Economy,Natural Law,and the Moral Disorder of Victorian England

When Ruskin turned from art and architectural studies towards political economy in the late 1850s works such as Unto This Last, Munera Pulveris and Time and Tide met with negative critical reactions. In these works he attempted to restore to the language of Victorian political economy the moral content which, he argued, had been lost since the time of Adam Smith, under a cloak of misleading scientific terminology associated with utilitarian ‘orthodox political economy’. In doing so, he resorted to pre-Enlightenment sources of political and economic practice. His study of classical, Biblical, medieval and selected renaissance texts led him to gradually embrace older natural law arguments which contrasted sharply with the assumptions of post-Enlightenment positivist forms of natural law and science. These older and more organic natural law based understandings informed the principles by which he established his ideas on economics as well as his late social experiment, the Guild of St George. The charter and oath of the Guild illustrates how Ruskin's early upbringing in the Protestant Evangelical tradition was replaced by a more comprehensive natural law tradition of ethics.     

Phantom Penis: Historical Dimensions

Interest in sensations from removed body parts other than limbs has increased with modern surgical techniques. This applies particularly to operations (e.g., gender-changing surgeries) that have resulted in phantom genitalia. The impression given in modern accounts, especially those dealing with phantoms associated with penis amputation, is that this is a recently discovered phenomenon. Yet the historical record reveals several cases of phantom penises dating from the late-eighteenth century and the early-nineteenth century. These cases, recorded by some of the leading medical and surgical figures of the era, are of considerable historical and theoretical significance. This is partly because these phantoms were associated with pleasurable sensations, in contrast to the loss of a limb, which for centuries had been associated with painful phantoms. We here present several early reports on phantom penile sensations, with the intent of showing what had been described and why more than 200 years ago.     

The Authoritative Medium: George Eliot,Ruin, and the Rationalized Market

This essay analyses the competing dynamics that shaped the formation of market relations in mid-nineteenth-century Britain: abstraction and rationalization, on the one hand, and embeddedness and personalism, on the other. It takes as its central case the mid-century debates over bankruptcy reform, focusing in particular on two textual representations of ‘ruin’: the system of certificates classifying bankrupts according to their culpability of character, established in 1849 and abolished in 1861; and Eliot's 1860 novel The Mill on the Floss, with its account of financial and sexual ruin. I argue that the debates surrounding the character certificates' intervention in market relations, and Eliot's explorations of abstract and embedded or sympathetic modes of knowledge were part of a larger concern to negotiate the tensions produced by the contemporary impulse toward market rationalization. Eliot's mode of omniscient narration – her construction of a simultaneously interested and disinterested, authoritative and sympathetic narrative voice – represented, I suggest, a novelistic instance of a broader cultural fantasy that an approach to character representation could be found that would mediate the changing marketplace. At the same time, her narration of the story of debt through familial and sexualized representations highlights the way that the personal continued to pose a challenge to the establishment of market rationality. However, despite the generic distinctions that can be traced, I argue that their shared interest in character provides grounds for the project of reading across genres, and suggest that the cultural history of the Victorian credit economy requires attention to what different genres have in common, as much as how they have diverged.