The geography and natural resources of Bolivia

This paper tries to show the main thread of Scottish national identity in the nineteenth century and how Scotland's close connection with the empire did not asuage Scottish desires to retain a national identity. The paper tries to illustrate that the interpretation of the union connection by the Scottish political classes was central to the understanding of Scotland as a nation during the period. Examples are also provided of the way in which the union could be questioned in this century, but this was with the caveat that this would necessarily be limited; for such was the extent to which national identity was played out on an imperial stage. Although Scots never lost sight of their distinctiveness, any extension of the critique of union would have ultimately worked against their ability to confidently display their identity as they did quite successfully in the nineteenth century.     

The religious politics of prophecy: Or, Richard Brothers's Revealed Knowledge confuted

The messianic messages delivered to Londoners by the self-styled prophet, Richard Brothers, were regarded by many sceptical observers and pamphleteers as eccentric or, worse still, the embarrassing utterances of someone wishing to reprise the political turmoil of a by-gone era marred by religious ‘fanaticism’. This article shows the extent to which Brothers's messages, as set down in his Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times (1794–1795), were absolutely central to the religious politics and culture of the 1790s—or what one contemporary critic mockingly referred to as the ‘age of prophecy’. Brothers's prophecies came to the attention of the British government, which culminated in his arrest for treasonable practices in March 1795 when he became a cause célèbre, before being confined to an asylum for eleven years. He was deemed a criminal lunatic but, as this article seeks to demonstrate, his ‘prophetic imagination’ arose out of the same rich theological, political and cultural context that spurred ‘radicals’ like Tom Paine, whilst inspiring poets and artists such as William Blake. If the content of his prophecies were regarded by contemporary sceptics for having no validity, it remains true to say that Richard Brothers, as an educated gentleman and naval officer, dramatically altered 18th-century expectations and perceptions of what prophets were and the nature of prophecy itself.     

Indexing the great ledger of the community: urban house numbering, city directories, and the production of spatial legibility

Despite the recent focus on the spatial politics of calculation, few studies have explored the historical geography of house numbering, a spatial practice that has arguably been one of the principal strategies for rationalizing the geographic spaces of everyday life over the course of the last two centuries. This paper provides the beginnings of a critical spatial history of street and house numbering in the gridded cities of the United States since the eighteenth century. City directory publishers were among the leading proponents of numbering houses at a time when many local governments had yet to firmly commit to systematic house numbering as an essential responsibility of the local state. I therefore examine the connection between the publishing of city directories and the development of urban house numbering systems, both of which were integral to the production of spatial legibility and the individualization of the urban population. The notion of viewing the city as a ‘text’ is historicized through a critical analysis of the modernist comparison of urban space to a recordkeeping book. The paper concludes by tracing the institutionalization of house numbering as a practice of spatial governmentality.     

'Nothing Can Ever Be the Case of 'Us' and 'Them' Again': Exploring the politics of difference through border pedagogy and student journal writing

Linda McDowell (1994) has called for styles of teaching which put into practice arguments about the 'politics of difference', which has become an increasingly central part of human geographical research. This paper draws on a number of years' experience of teaching an undergraduate course on multicultural historical geography, in which this was attempted. Here students were encouraged to get more involved in these debates, to take them more personally, and to develop 'situated knowledges' about the UK as a multicultural society. The approach to teaching, learning and assessment which made this possible was based on the principles of 'border pedagogy' and on students writing journals throughout the course which charted the development of their understandings of the materials they encountered.     

Decolonizing geographies of travel: Reading James/Jan Morris

Travel writing can produce critical 'in-between' spaces, which contribute to broader cultural politics of postcolonialism, by transgressing and in a preliminary sense deconstructing imperial binaries. These imperial binaries structure subjectivities, on the one hand, and material geographies, on the other. This paper examines such a project, through a reading of travel writing by James/Jan Morris, which shows how processes of decolonizing subjectivities and material geographies may be recursively related. Morris is known for newspaper coverage of the 1953 Everest expedition, for a trilogy on the British Empire, for the autobiographical account of a sex change, and for many travel books and articles; all of which foreground themes of gender and imperialism. The paper argues that Morris's decolonizations have charted and created in-between spaces of subjectivity and material geography, ambivalent spaces with critical potential. The ambivalence of these spaces can constitute a critical limitation, but also an opportunity; in response, the conclusion redirects some critical attention away from writers and textual spaces to readers and interpretations, and thus points towards a postcolonial (and wider) politics of reading.     

A ‘Murderous Affair in Lincoln County’: Politics,Violence, and Memory in a Civil War Era Kentucky Community

The 1867 assassination of Unionist James H. Bridgewater typified politically motivated community violence in central Kentucky during the Civil War Era. His assassins, members of a band of ‘regulators,’ viewed Bridgewater as representative of ongoing federal interference in the Commonwealth and thus a hindrance to their local agenda. Regulators used terror tactics both to stymie political competition for the building blocks of state power, including the offices of sheriff and magistrate, and to impose a white supremacist social order after the formal abolition of slavery. Like‐minded partisan editors sought to legitimize both the actions of these night riders and of state and local elected officials by arguing that ‘outlaws’ such as Bridgewater had to die so that law and order might be restored, while assuring readers that such things did not happen to ‘good citizens.’ In so doing, these editors laid the foundation for a usable memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction in Kentucky.     

The Italian national elections of 13 May 2001

As expected and long predicted by all the surveys, Silvio Berlusconi's Casa delle LibertÀ won the Italian national elections of 13 May 2001. The four coalition partners had significantly different results. Forza Italia became the largest Italian party while both the National Alliance and the White Flower lost votes but kept almost the same number of seats as in 1996, and were anyway happy to return to the government. The Northern League shared this kind of success, but lost heavily in terms of votes – falling below the 4 per cent threshold – and seats. In spite of its five years of good government, the Olive Tree/Centre-Left coalition was defeated. This article argues that the defeat was due to three major factors. First, the Olive Tree had broken its promise of one government, one Prime Minister, one programme of reforms. Second, it forfeited the advantage of incumbency by choosing Francesco Rutelli as its prime ministerial candidate, using an opaque procedure. Third, because of the differences of opinion among the various partners, the Olive Tree/Centre-Left could not capitalize either on its systemic reforms, that is joining the Euro and the reconstruction of a viable economic system, or on its piecemeal reforms. The list led by Rutelli, the Daisy, did relatively well. The real losers were the Left Democrats who, because of their organizational decline and political confusion, plummeted to their lowest percentage ever. Now Berlusconi has the chance to prove that he can not only win the elections, but also, in spite of his immense conflict of interests, govern the country. Come atteso e da lungo tempo previsto da tutti i sondaggi, la Casa delle LibertÀ di Silvio Berlusconi ha vinto le elezioni italiane del 13 maggio 2001. I suoi quattro alleati hanno ottenuto risultati diversi. Forza Italia è diventata il più forte partito italiano, mentre sia Alleanza Nazionale che il Biancofiore hanno perduto voti, pur mantenendo all'incirca lo stesso numero di seggi rispetto al 1996, ma sono comunque felici di ritornare al governo. La Lega Nord è egualmente soddisfatta per questo, nonostante abbia perso pesantemente in termini di seggi e di voti, non raggiungendo la soglia del 4 per cento. Questo articolo indica come, nonostante i suoi cinque anni di buon governo, la coalizione Ulivo/centro-sinistra sia stata sconfitta per tre fondamentali fattori. Primo, l'Ulivo non ha saputo mantenere le promesse fatte in campagna elettorale: un governo unico e un Primo ministro per tutto il corso della legislatura, e un programma di riforme. Secondo, ha sciupato il vantaggio derivante dall'essere il governo in carica scegliendo in maniera opaca il suo candidato alla presidenza del Consiglio Francesco Rutelli. Terzo, a causa delle differenze di opinione fra i diversi alleati, l'Ulivo/centro-sinistra non ha saputo sfruttare nè le sue riforme sistemiche, come la partecipazione italiana nell'Euro e il risanamento economico, né le riforme specifiche. La Margherita, lista guidata da Rutelli, ha avuto un buon successo, mentre i Democratici di Sinistra sono i veri perdenti poichè, in preda a confusione politica e organizzativa, sono piombati al loro pi basso livello percentuale di sempre. Adesso, Berlusconi ha la possibilitÀ di provare che non è soltanto capace di vincere le elezioni, ma anche, nonostante l'immenso conflitto di interessi determinato dalla sua posizione imprenditoriale, di governare il paese.     

The politics of town planning in post-war Naples

The article examines town planning in the city of Naples since the war and, in ­particular, the ambiguous relations between politicians and policy. The focus of the analysis highlights the failure to give effect to the various master plans (PRG) ­discussed and sometimes adopted by the city authorities. This explains to a large extent the widespread building speculation that occurred in these years.     

THE GROWTH OF LITERACY IN FRANCE DURING THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES

ABSTRACT

The Ottoman Empire faced catastrophic events during its period of dissolution which started with the First World War. At the end of this war, the Ottoman lands were shared by the Allied forces. As a reaction to this occupation, the Turkish War of Independence started in 1919 and finished in 1923. The authors aim to examine how these events were reflected in the ?stanbul bourse, using Ottoman government bond prices data between 1918 and 1925. Econometric methodology of Carla Inclan and George Tiao (1994 Inclan, C., and G. Tiao. 1994. Use of the cumulative sums of squares for retrospective detection of changes of variance. Journal of the American Statistical Association 89:913–23.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) identifies several break points, which imply a lower risk for the repayment of the bonds during the end of the First World War and the Turkish War of Independence.     

Violence,Past and Present: “Mati” and “Non‐mati” People

The article explores violence as an entanglement of race, politics and belonging in Guyana. The author argues that where race as an object of violence has to be actively orchestrated against people who wish to live in peace, other factors can intersect to dangerously alter the balance of “co‐existence”. By co‐existence, the author refers to people’s management of complementary settings: a politically orchestrated race problem is seen as separate by people who have their own agendas to do with amicable relations and their living conditions. The race problem is located in the notion of a city‐space as divided from what people do. However, the article considers the shifting of this city‐space in ethnic composition and its extension into everyday relations. The shift in a post‐repression era further demonstrates violent citizenship through transformations in relation to an outside imaginary.