Holocene archaeological evidence of extinct and very rare British Scarabaeoidea

Abstract

The analysis of British Holocene insect assemblages has discovered nine species of scarabaeoid dung beetles which are now extinct in Britain and two more that are extremely rare. Some of these species had been suspected as native by early 19th century entomologists but doubt had been cast on specimens in old collections of British Coleoptera. Eight are dung feeders which, although they would have initially been favoured by clearance for pasture and a possible warm climate episode in the middle Bronze Age, subsequently declined as a result of increasing cultivation and a slight cooling of the summer climate. The other three species probably became extinct due to human-induced habitat loss.     

Ecological Regression and the Analysis of Voter Behavior

Abstract

The project now underway to produce a new, multi-volume print and online edition of Brian Mitchell's British Historical Statistics is an opportunity to examine the history of the celebrated work. An account of its conception, reception, and evolution provides a window through which to examine a central aspect of economic history's disciplinary history and methodenstreit; certain fundamentals relating to the demand for, and supply of, historical statistics; and to introduce the British Historical Statistics Project, which is now underway but still in its infancy, during which it is closely examining its antecedents in order to learn the correct lessons from that history.     

A ‘Small Free Trade Oasis’?: agriculture,tariff policy,and the Danish example in Great Britain and Ireland,c. 1885–1911

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Denmark was an important overseas example in the United Kingdom's intertwined debates over free trade and agricultural modernization. Both countries remained open to foreign agricultural imports even as many other European states protected their farmers. But whilst British and Irish agriculture struggled, Denmark became a hugely successful exporter of dairy and pork. This achievement of rural prosperity under a liberal trade regime had obvious relevance to the future of agriculture in Britain, and particularly Ireland. Agricultural reformers in the two islands used the Danish example to show that technical education and co-operative production would allow farmers to profit even under free trade, whilst for British Liberals, ideologically committed to free trade, Denmark demonstrated that imported foodstuffs were actually a prerequisite for a flourishing rural economy. Several prominent Danish free traders personally intervened in the early 20th-century debate over tariff reform to affirm these very points. However, British and Irish protectionists contested the ‘free trade’ character of Denmark's fiscal policy. The article situates the Danish comparison within a broader Anglo-Scandinavian transnationalism, in which the themes of modernity and liberalism reside to the fore.     

What Was Parliamentary Reporting? A Study of Aims and Results in the London Daily Newspapers, 1780–96*

The nature of these newspaper reports – that is, the character of their principal content – has never been studied, despite its obvious importance and, as we shall see, its marked differences from our Hansard. This article relates their nature to a vital feature of parliamentary leadership, the ability to lead the argument in debate. The practical reasoning in parliamentary deliberation and justification, especially what speakers contributed towards the outcome or ‘the sense of the debate’, predominated in these reports. This implied a need for reporters to concentrate on the ‘substance’ of speeches and their bearing on the motion. One result was that speeches which were judged to define or develop arguments pro and con were treated at length, the defining speeches most extensively and others in proportion to what they added. Conversely, speeches which reiterated known positions or which were irrelevant to the arguments in hand were omitted or downplayed, even if they were important in some other way, while whole debates which added little to ongoing discussion could be treated quite briefly. But if being a front bencher did not guarantee coverage, being a back bencher was no bar: the criterion was the importance of a speaker's contribution, while the manner of coverage accented what was contributed. The reporters’ concerns emphasized debates that promised significant change in matters of national importance, but gave relatively little attention to recurrent or localised business as such. Their writing – they were known as debate writers or news-writers – was interpretation answering to evaluative and selective criteria rather than a record in a simple sense. Their work is not to be understood in the same terms as a modern Hansard, and in particular not as a defective Hansard, but rather is such that it requires further work on a wide range of new research questions if it is to be understood to best effect, a requirement which suggests a need to study it critically before using it as source material.     

‘Everything is made of atoms’: the reprogramming of space and time in post-war London

From the middle of the Second World War until the early 1950s, architects, planners and designers in Britain made an unprecedented investment in reforming the built environment as a means to ensure a stable and secure post-war society. This essay considers the importance of movement, trajectory and repetition within this reconstruction vision and how the organisation of these things provided a basis for imagining a new form of consensual urban community. The essay begins by exploring how the County of London Plan (Abercrombie and Forshaw, 1943) and the Greater London Plan (Abercrombie, 1945) articulated a set of spatio-temporal logics, based on the prescribed trajectory of the individual embedded within a programme of quotidian repetitions. These logics suggested that urban space could be built to foreclose the possibility of historical conflict. The essay then explores the material design of two post-war exhibitions, Britain Can Make It (1946) and the Festival of Britain's South Bank Exhibition (1951), which offered visitors an experiential taster of what these new urban choreographies would feel like. To end, the essay explores the recurrent figure of the atom within post-war public pedagogy. Within this briefly ubiquitous mechanistic image lay an unacknowledged assurance about how hierarchical structures of movement and repetition sustained the material world, just as these things were being invoked to secure London's position across a range of scales from the local urban neighbourhood to the post-war Commonwealth.     

英国制度创新及其世界意义--中国英国史研究会第八届年会学术综述

在“中国英国史研究会第八届会员代表大会暨学术研讨会”上,众多国内研究英国史的专家学者围绕“英国制度创新及其世界意义”主题展开了研讨,分别从英帝国与外交政策、英国政党与政治文化、社会与经济等方面提出了许多富有新意的观点,展示了中国英国史研究的最新水平。     

Coastal villas, maritime villas; a perspective from Southern Britain

The coastal siting of Romano-British villas is generally discussed and attention is particularly focused on the Channel seaboard of Britain. Here, comparison is made with the distribution of those natural harbours and offshore anchorages that have been traditionally favoured by sailing craft. These are clearly described in the first edition of Hobb’s British Channel Pilot of 1859. A relationship is proposed between the rare incidence of leeward anchorages and the siting of villas at Folkestone, Eastbourne, Sidlesham, Weymouth and Honeyditches. Other villas with significant maritime settings are identified at Southwick, Fishbourne, Emsworth, and Brading all of which adjoin harbours or ‘roads’ identified by Hobbs. In the Eastern Solent, anchorages at Spithead, Mother Bank and Cowes Roads are equated with the Magnus Portus described by Ptolemy. At this location some supportive evidence is offered by Roman ceramics recently recovered from the seabed. Attention is also drawn to maritime themes in the mosaics at Fishbourne, Brading and Low Ham where the chosen mythological scenes appear to be an overt expression of contemporary nautical preoccupations.     

British speleologies: geographies of science, personality and practice, 1935–1953

This paper examines historical geographies of speleology in Britain between 1935 and 1953. As the study of caves, speleology was constructed as a sporting-science. The paper traces the formation and activities of the British Speleological Association, the influence of the speleologist Eli Simpson, arguments relating to the practice of speleology, and the formation of the Cave Research Group in 1947, to examine the geographies of science that emerge through speleology. By tracing some of the spatial, social and practical issues within the histories of speleology, distinct social and regional geographies are uncovered. Debates about practising science, definitions of speleology as sporting-science and ‘the right kind of speleologist’ complicate the geographical histories of speleology within Britain. As well as emphasising the spatial outcomes of these issues, I suggest that personality can also impact upon geographies of science in profound ways.     

英国新社会史思潮的兴起及其整体社会史研究的国际反响

“新社会史研究”作为一种史学新思潮,与西方史学的整体化趋势,几乎同时出现于现代国际史学舞台。英国新社会史思潮具有广泛和深刻的国内外史学渊源。英国新社会史学派宣扬的核心问题是坚持“自下而上”史学观念,它彰显了由此观念指导下的整体社会史取向和研究实践。从较广泛的分析角度看,在国际史学发展格局重新调整的现时背景下,英国马克思主义新社会史学派引起国内外史学界的广泛注意和效仿。它对国际史学发展的推动性作用是不可忽视的,这集中体现了该学派及其整体史学研究的国际反响。     

同文馆与晚清留英教育

晚清留英教育在船政学生留英之前已经开始,同治五年(1866年),清政府就派遣了同文馆学生赴欧洲游学。之后,历届驻英公使都带有同文馆学生充任使馆随员或翻译学生,在处理外交及使馆事务之外,这些同文馆学生还负有学习的任务,可以入英国学校学习。19世纪90年代总理衙门还制订章程,派遣了两次同文馆留英生。20世纪初,京师同文馆归并京师大学堂改称译学馆后,再次派遣学生赴英留学。同文馆学生留英在整个晚清虽然不多,但也自成一系,是晚清留英教育中重要的一支。