The Nor’-Wester and the Saskatchewan Gold Rush

ABSTRACT

This article explores the phenomenon of how news about the discovery of gold on the North Saskatchewan River in British administrated Rupert's Land was propagated by the press in the early 1860s. It tracks the resonance of gold rush news first in the Nor’-Wester, a newspaper published in the Red River Settlement, and then reveals how this paper's coverage was re-published and transmitted across the Anglophone world. The article shows how news about the Saskatchewan gold rush was highly politicised. In the Red River Settlement, editors of the Nor’-Wester sought to spur on the British parliament to implement responsible government in the colony, issuing dire warnings about the potential repercussions of a mass migration to the region and the need to act precipitously. Likewise, in newspapers across North America, editors republished and endorsed news from the Nor’-Wester about the Saskatchewan gold fields to benefit their own communities. But while editors championed the Saskatchewan gold fields to lure potential gold rushers to the region, no large-scale migration to the Northwest occurred. While news about the Saskatchewan gold fields may have been popular across the Anglophone world, it was not actionable. While news reports conveyed the impression that a gold rush was ongoing on the North Saskatchewan River, the reality on the ground did not match the press coverage.     

The World under the Stars: Astrological Geography and the Bologna 1477 Edition of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia

ABSTRACT

This article is a re-examination of the first complete printed edition of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia (Bologna, de Lapis, 1477), hitherto considered flawed and defective. An investigation of the status and priorities of the team of court astrologers responsible for this edition, and an examination of the alterations they made to Ptolemy’s maps, suggests that their aim was a redaction intentionally different from existing versions of the Geography. It is suggested that the editors sought to adjust the arrangement of provinces from that recommended in Ptolemy’s Geography (book VIII) to the astrological arrangement detailed in his Tetrabiblos (book II) and that they modified the content of the key regional maps accordingly. In this light, the Bologna 1477 edition underlines the importance of assessing the reception of Ptolemy’s geographical work against a cultural background in which astrology prevailed as an integrated system of knowledge, practices and beliefs.     

The Figure of Yan Zhuoju 顏涿聚 in Ancient Chinese Literature

Contributing to the surging interest in rhetorical uses of anecdotal narratives in ancient China, the present article investigates sources about a purported follower of Confucius going by the name of Yan Zhuoju, or variants thereof. The main advantage of focusing on such an obscure figure is that extant sources can be exhaustively analysed – an approach intractable for more fully documented personalities – in order to gauge the mechanisms which created the textual record historians utilise to reconstruct events of the ancient past. The article demonstrates how the same figure can be appropriated across different discourses, to wit, in attacks on Confucius's alleged improprieties; in attempts to counter such attacks; and in arguments for the increasingly meritocratic social order of the Warring States period. Rarely adding up to a complete story, such appropriations are constituted by fragmentary narratives, summary statements, and intertextual references.     

A Compaignye of Sondry Folk: Mereology,Medieval Poetics and Contemporary Evolutionary Narrative in Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale

Abstract

Thus far, certainly in English, most engineering history has been based on the lives of engineers or the chronologies of particular enterprises, with the two often woven together. Much of this work, as conventional biography or narrative history, has been well done, in many cases is a good read, and frequently is valuable as a basis for further study. But its preoccupation with who, when and where too often leaves unaddressed questions of how and why. Attempting to understand the intellectual and creative components of engineering's history, especially its early history for which written records are rare or nonexistent, is exceptionally difficult. In this short survey the possibilities of retrospective analysis are discussed, and some of the potential pitfalls are identified by considering the particular case of cathedral building. Over the last twenty or thirty years cathedral studies have generated more publications in the field of retrospective analysis, in this case structural analysis, than possibly any other. Whether or not very much has been learned about the history of the engineering of cathedrals, however, is a good question, and is part of what follows.     

Funding the ‘nation’ in the national theatre of Scotland

The National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) is a an innovative and ground‐breaking, non‐building‐based, commissioning and producing cultural institution, established in the wake of the devolution of the Scottish Parliament. This article sketches the contours of this new model of a national theatre, exploring the complex dialectic between various economic, political, social and artistic choices, forces and factors that have influenced, and continue to influence, the formative years of the NTS. The article charts changes to the company during these early years and, most significantly, notes the potential effect that the change from arm’s length to direct government funding might have on the company’s long‐term development. It is argued that direct funding aligns the arts too closely to political agendas rather than supporting artistic freedom and expression.