Population density and the accuracy of the land valuations in the 1798 federal direct tax

Abstract

The peculiar operation of the 1798 federal direct tax has led scholars to question whether tax officials reported the land valuations from their districts faithfully. Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson argue that southern tax assessors systemically under reported the value of southern real estate, and they adjust their income estimates to account for the likelihood of corruption. This paper affirms the reliability of the tax returns by demonstrating that population density, rather than corruption or lax enforcement, can explain nearly all of the variation between the assessment districts. Accepting the tax valuations as accurate would lower Lindert and Williamson’s income estimates, imply slower growth rate between 1774 and 1800, and suggest a higher growth rate between 1800 and 1850.     

Robert Weston,Medical consulting by letter in France, 1665-1789

This review investigates Robert Weston’'s Medical Consulting by Letter in France, 1665–1789. Weston uses correspondence between physicians and patients to explore perceptions of health and methods of treatments in early modern France. He also approaches the theme of how authority was expressed and perceived in epistolary communication. This book is important in its exploration of an underutilized source and its contribution to an understanding of how medical relationships were constructed in the past. With a rigorous structure and a high volume of information, Weston’'s work is an invaluable contribution to historical literature on early modern France.     

Credibility in the Court of Chancery: Salesbury v. Bagot, 1671-1677

ABSTRACT

Between 1671 and 1677, William Salesbury of Rhug fought a bitter legal battle in Chancery against his cousin, Dame Jane Bagot, and her family. William contested Jane’s inheritance of the Bachymbyd estate, Denbighshire, which once belonged to their shared paternal grandfather. According to the Chancery records, their grandfather wrongfully disinherited William’s father. The Lord Chancellor judged five out of six points in William’s favour. However, the estate archives demonstrate that William’s father had no lawful claim to Bachymbyd and William built his suit on forgeries and half-truths. In a case where a daughter inherited an estate from a younger son, William manipulated the contemporary social norms of gender and primogeniture. The suit provides a unique opportunity to understand how credibility was constructed in the seventeenth century. This article suggests that credibility depended on social norms and played a larger role in the law, and perhaps wider society, than evidence-based truth.     

现代饭店有效培训系统的设计与运用

饭店的发展需要培训高素质的人才，而要获得理想的培训效果，则要设计一套科学有效的培训方法，它包括评价培训需求，创造良好环境，选择培训方法，与实践相结合以及评价培训结果等。     

Diplomacy in a Global Early Modernity: The Ambiguity of Sovereignty

Abstract

This is a concluding comment on the chapters of this special issue. After a discussion of the articles, we will take a closer look at the new view of European diplomacy and foreign relations. The historiographical change regarding early modern foreign relations has fundamentally altered the way we interpret the roles, the agencies and the loyalties of early modern envoys. Taking the conclusions of this research into account, we ask if diplomatic actors of the ancient regime differed distinctly from their Asian counterparts at all. Then, as a final point, we examine how fundamental changes in the Sattelzeit–particularly in Europe, but also in the context of global power relations–affected intercultural diplomacy.     

The Roads of Andalusia and Valencia. A Spanish Transport Legacy of the 18th and 19th Centuries

Roads designed by civil or military engineers for animal-drawn vehicles before the arrival of the railways constituted an essential factor for the movement of goods and people and for the economy and trade in different countries. The improvement in road construction techniques over the 18th and 19th centuries, following the creation of the first civil engineering colleges and institutions, allowed greater transportation at diminishing cost. Despite its significance, this heritage has received comparatively little attention from industrial archaeologists. As such, the object of the present article is to provide an overview of the development in road planning and construction in Spain over the 18th and 19th centuries, in order to demonstrate the historical and technological value of these roads. The article also presents two sections of Spanish roads corresponding to the start and end of the study period, and identifies some of the main archaeological elements dating to their time of construction that prove the evolution in road technology. This process has made it possible to create an inventory which incorporates the main elements that characterise this type of infrastructure.     

From excess to encompassment: Repetition,recantation, and the trashing of time in Swedish Christianities

ABSTRACT

I explore the conversion of a Swedish Pentecostal Prosperity preacher to the Roman Catholic Church in order to examine questions of analytical perspective, temporal scale, and ethical discernment in the operation of religiously charged forms of repetition. The paper juxtaposes neo-Pentecostal with Roman Catholic understandings of temporality through tracing the ideological movements of Pastor Ulf Ekman over the past three decades, summarizing these understandings as based around tropes of ‘excess’ and ‘encompassment’ respectively. In exploring repetition as both theoretical category and ethnographic object of observation, I distinguish between actively marked repetition and the merely repetitious, while also drawing distinctions between continuity and the iterative, oscillatory character of repetitive actions.     

河南省体育场商代祭祀遗址发掘简报

2015年,郑州市文物考古研究院为配合河南省体育场网球馆项目建设,对该区域勘探所见的古代遗址进行了考古发掘。清理出环壕、夯土墙、建筑基址、祭祀场、祭祀坑、灰坑、墓葬等丰富的商代文化遗迹,出土了铜器、玉器、石器、陶器、骨器等重要遗物。河南省体育场商代遗址的祭祀遗存是近年来郑州商城最重要的新发现之一,这一祭祀遗址的发现为郑州商城的研究提供了非常重要的新资料。