A little known atlas by Vesconte Maggiolo, 1518

ABSTRACT

The rediscovery of the Selden Map of China (MS Selden Supra 105) in the Bodleian Library in 2008 provides an opportunity to reassess the history of Chinese cartography and debates about maritime dimensions of the Ming Empire. The map depicts a network of Chinese shipping routes, reaching from Japan to Aceh, Sumatra, and suggests previously unknown map-making techniques. In this article I draw attention to the map's unique components, notably its portrayal of shipping routes and vegetation, consider its sources, and suggest a possible patron and location of composition.     

Political Tourism: Elizabeth Simcoe’s Maps and Views of Canada (1791–1796)

Abstract

Elizabeth Simcoe (1762–1850) travelled from England to Canada in 1791 and returned to her home, Wolford Lodge, in Honiton, Devon, in 1796. She was accompanying her husband, John Graves Simcoe (1752–1806), who had just been appointed Lieutenant Governor of the newly formed province of Upper Canada. Throughout their travels, Elizabeth recorded her Canadian experiences in her diaries and sketchbooks. She drew, corrected and copied maps for her husband. Upon their return to England they offered to the king an album of 32 works and a map, all drawn on birch bark. The map and the album acted as a report to the king of her husband’s political achievements in Canada and her engagement as a cartographer.     

Paul’s Euripides,Greek tragedy and Hebrew antiquity in Paradise Regain’d

ABSTRACT

The exchange between Satan and Jesus in Book IV of Paradise Regained is the first substantial account of tragedy in John Milton’s 1671 volume. In his response to Satan’s Athenian temptation, Jesus offers an alternative to the more familiar defence of tragedy in the preface to Samson Agonistes. Here, Jesus invokes the Hebrew prehistory of Attic tragedy, expanding Milton’s tragic archive beyond the antique Athenians themselves, drawing instead upon Clement of Alexandria and Socrates of Constantinople – both of whom support Milton’s idiosyncratic belief that Paul quoted Euripides at I Corinthians 15:33. And where Clement and Socrates support this tragic provenance, they also address the vexed relationship between Christian faith and heathen learning. Far from showing contempt for Athenian art or erudition, Milton invokes these Patristic sources to enable readers to locate Jesus’ critical response in a dynamic relationship to the relevant preface to Samson Agonistes.     

Euhemerus and the Chronicle of John Malalas

In spite of Warren Treadgold's recent contention to the contrary, no new insights on the Sacred History of Euhemerus of Messene are to be gleaned from John Malalas and the account of the gods found in his chronicle. They cannot be directly connected to Euhemerus, or even to a complete version of Diodorus Siculus’ lost sixth book, which related a version of the Sacred History. We would, nevertheless, like to know the source for what Malalas says about the gods. Previous efforts to identify the author of the euhemeristic narrative in the chronicle of Malalas prove unavailing and misleading. Taking into account the parallel version of this narrative found in the Excerpta Latina Barbari, it would seem that the most likely author is Bouttios, one of the authorities cited for a few other items by Malalas. Treadgold has included this Bouttios in the list of authors he considers to be nothing more than inventions of Malalas. But, unlike the others on Treadgold's list, the existence of Bouttios can be independently corroborated. We are, moreover, in a position to offer some speculations about Bouttios and his work.     

‘Postponing the Evil Day’: Sir Edward Grey and British Foreign Policy

ABSTRACT

Sir Edward Grey is remembered largely as Britain's Foreign Secretary when ‘the lights went out all over Europe’ in the summer of 1914. His record remains contested. From David Lloyd George's crafty deception in his wartime memoirs to more recent revisionist historians, writers have sought to blame Grey for the outbreak of the First World War. Drawing on substantial research in private and official, British, and foreign archives, this paper will reconstruct Grey's career as Foreign Secretary with an emphasis on his objectives and the means which he employed to obtain them. Crucially, it places Grey's stewardship of British foreign policy within the broader international context, defined by the steep decline and subsequent renaissance of Russian power in the years between 1905 and 1912/13, with the aim of establishing the limitations of British power. More especially the shift in the international balance around 1913/14 shaped towards Russia, and away from Germany, shaped Grey's calculations during Europe's last summer. The July Crisis showed both the strengths and the limitations of Grey's diplomacy, this persistent and subtle pressing for mediation, but also his misreading of Austro-Hungarian policy.     

The Catastrophic Repairs of Holyrood Abbey Church in 1760

The collapse of the significant church of Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh in December 1768 is discussed as the result of the ill-conceived repair of the roof in 1760, i.e., the substitution of the timber trusses with closelyspaced diaphragm masonry walls that aggravated the delicate equilibrium of the vaults and the poor state of a building being mutilated over 250 years. This study interprets these repairs by demonstrating the authorship and partnership of the architect John Douglas with the mason-developer James McPherson, who combined architectural ambition (the aesthetics of a flagstone roof) with the (cheaper) option of diaphragms, which would not involve a wright. The detailed examination of the procurement, the process of the intervention, the collapse, and the limited impact of its aftermath, are framed in a wider technical and historical context in Edinburgh and Scotland, during a period marked by several failures of medieval churches, and reveals a poor understanding of a critical element in Gothic construction. Analysis of all public archive material available sheds light on key events of the case, and critical study of the work of the two partners’ attempts to identify the intentions of their project, whose limitations were inevitable once the partnership was formed.     

A few words for Axel Vander: John Banville and the pursuit of deconstruction

The revelations about Paul de Man’s activities in Belgium during the Second World War placed him, and by extension deconstruction, on public trial. The affair gave rise to a series of novels, such as Gilbert Adair’s The Death of the Author (1992) or Bernhard Schlink’s Homecoming (2008), that dismiss critical theory as ethically bankrupt charlatanism. John Banville’s Shroud (2002) and Ancient Light (2012) place the enigmatic theorist Axel Vander, a figure resembling de Man, in the dock, but these novels form no decisive judgement about his guilt. The texts reflect on memory, mourning, forgetting and responsibility, and about what writing might consign to the future, questions persistently raised by de Man and Jacques Derrida. As such, they might be said to speak to, or “inhabit”, deconstruction, rather than condemning it. This essay traces how Banville reckons with Axel Vander, and pursues the thought of de Man and Derrida, by means of three words: shroud, ash and cleave. These words at once connote concealment, destruction and separation and also preservation, survival and connection. As the discussion suggests, such words testify to the memory work performed by deconstruction.     

From Hanover to Gibraltar: Cato’s Letters (1720–23) in International Context

Originally composed as a series of polemical essays to a weekly newspaper called The London Journal, appearing from November 1720 to July 1723, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon's Cato's Letters (1724 in book form) had a lasting influence on the development and evolution of Country ideology. It was, as is well known, one of the most widely read and influential books in Revolutionary America. Because of the enduring influence it had on the dissemination of the civic humanist tradition from Britain to North America, Cato's Letters has been more often than not taken out of historical context. This article revisits Cato's Letters by placing it against the background of the War of the Quadruple Alliance of 1718–20. What Trenchard and Gordon strove to do was to construct a distinctively Whig vision of Britain's maritime future that in a fundamental way rested on the Hanoverian Succession of 1714 and justified the conduct of foreign policy under George I and, more especially, the controversial alliance with France in 1716. The focal point of Cato's foreign-policy platform was Gibraltar. But were it not for the timely burst of the Mississippi Bubble in 1720, Trenchard and Gordon could not have retrained their civic humanist association of libertas and imperium with such assurance and confidence.     

Interest,Trade and ‘Character and Circumstances': John Campbell's (1708–1775) Earlier Work

John Campbell's (1708-1775) commercial theory in his early work demonstrates that he held more sophisticated views on British colonialism than previously thought. Campbell draws upon complex influences, which include Charles Davenant's notion of free trade and his ‘Old Whig’ arguments against corruption; Daniel Defoe's ‘new Whig’ arguments for progress and John Locke's arguments on industry and property; and Bolingbroke's Tory arguments for emphasizing common interest. By blending these ideas, Campbell offers a distinctive commercial theory that prioritizes the recognition of the interest and circumstances of all nations and peoples within an unconstrained and reciprocal exchange of commodities in order for the home nation simultaneously to resist corruption and flourish.