Sir Edward Grey and Austria-Hungary

ABSTRACT

Although in terms of their bilateral relations the ‘traditional friendship’ between Great Britain and Austria-Hungary was no mere phrase, in general political terms British policy in the last decade before the War was characterised by Grey's determination to cultivate the ententes with France and Russia and to do nothing to upset that division of Europe into two balancing groups (with Austria-Hungary firmly in the German camp) which he saw as the best guarantee of peace. Even though the Austrians gradually recovered from the shock of the Bosnian Crisis, in which Grey had come forward against them as Russia's chief supporter, and though the British for their part came to see in Austria-Hungary a useful element of stability in the Near East, Grey's attempts to uphold the unity of the Concert in the Balkan Wars were in the end vitiated by his overriding concern to avoid offending his Entente partners. Indeed, as the crisis deepened in the last year of peace, he took refuge in an increasingly abstentionist attitude, the objective effect of which - and herein, it is here argued, lies Grey's responsibility - was to intensify Vienna's desperation and loss of faith in the Concert that soon proved fatal to peace.     

Bourdieu, rational action and the time-space strategy of gentrification

This paper proposes gentrification as an example of class habitus adjusting to a new field via a time-space strategy that involves conscious rational coordination of class agents on a new aesthetic 'focal point'. This approach suggests: (1) a much greater role for conscious rational processes in both the intentional and intuitive processes of class reproduction; (2) an understanding via gentrification of the symbolic significance of time-space in class processes; (3) the significance of individual class agents in the process of gentrification; (4) a view of gentrification that gives greater prominence to working-class taste and habitus.     

Resource Exploitation and Wood Mobility in Northern European Oak: dendroprovenancing of individual timbers from the Mary Rose (1510/11–1545)

Dendrochronology has proved useful in suggesting the provenance of timbers in northern Europe, particularly for ship‐timbers, which may have originated from a distant source. Historical chronologies are usually derived from timbers of uncertain origin. In trying to provenance a new chronology, therefore, trends in the geographical distribution of statistical matches should be viewed, rather than individual strong matches. While it is usual to test a site‐chronology created from several individual timbers, in a situation such as the Mary Rose, where individual timbers may have been sourced from several regions, the matches of individual timbers may shed light on their origins. © 2010 The Author     

Locating the origins of wood resources: a review of dendroprovenancing

Dendroprovenancing studies have been shown to have historically been initiated on the use of oak in art-historical contexts, but are now employed on a much wider range of species and artefact types, particularly in relation to ship remains. The commonest methodology is to compare individual site chronologies with a network of other chronologies, and to recognise trends in the geographical distribution of strong matches, suggesting the likely source area of the material. Other studies may look at the matching of individual timbers to draw similar conclusions. It is shown that ecological and genetic factors may strongly influence individual matching results and that ring-widths may therefore be considered a somewhat crude means of provenancing. Additional chemical and genetic markers are discussed, although these are unlikely to become routinely used in the near future.     

Book reviews

Reappraisals in British Imperial History by Ronald Hyam and Ged Martin. Cambridge Commonwealth Series, London: Macmillan, 1975. Pp. x + 234. £10.00.

The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870 by James W. St. G. Walker. Dalhousie African Studies Series. London: Longman and Dalhousie University Press, 1976. Pp. xvi+438. £8.75. Paper £3.50. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1976. $24.00. Paper $10.00.

The Loyal Blacks by Ellen Gibson Wilson. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1976. Pp. xi+463. $7.95.

Bibliography of British History 1789–1851 edited by Lucy M. Brown and Ian R. Christie. Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press. 1977. Pp.xxxi+759. £20.

New South Wales—Autocracy to Parliament 1824–1856. Published by the Legislative Council of the Parliament of New South Wales, Parliament House, Sydney, 1976. Pp. vii + 137. Loose‐leaf edition limited to 300 copies.

Office‐Holders in Modern Britain. Volume VI, Colonial Office Officials compiled by J. C. Sainty. London: University of London, Institute of Historical Research. 1976. x + 52 pp. £4.00.

Indian Society and the Beginnings of Modernisation c. 1830–1850 edited by C. H. Philips and Mary Doreen Wainwright. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1976. Pp. vi+243. £2.50.

Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India by Blair B. Kling. University of California Press, 1976. Pp. xii+276. £15.60.

Buddhism in Sinhalese Society 1750–1900: A Study of Religious Revival and Change by Kitsiri Malalgoda. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1976. Pp. xiii+300. £13.20

Facets of Modern Ceylon History through the Letters of Jeronis Pieris by Michael Roberts. Colombo: Hansa Publishers Limited, 1975. Pp. 108, map, photographs, appendices. (No price is listed ; Distributors, H. W. Cave and Co. Ltd., P. O. Box 25, Colombo, Sri Lanka).

Southeast Asia: A History by Lea E. Williams. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Pp. xii+299. £7.50.

A History of Malaysia and Singapore by N. J. Ryan. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1976. Pp. xiv+322. £16.00.

Comparative History of Civilizations in Asia by Edward L. Farmer et al. Reading (Mass.): Addison‐Wesley Publishing Co., 1977. 2 Vols. Pp. xxx+797. £11.20 each.

Dark Companions: The African Contribution to the European Exploration of East Africa by Donald Simpson. London: Paul Elek, 1976. Pp. xi+228. £7.50.

Europäische Kolonialherrschaft 1880–1940 by Rudolf von Albertini, in association with Albert Wirz. Zurich and Freiburg im Breisgau: Atlantis Verlag, 1976. Pp. 528, 20 maps. DM. 54 (hardback), DM. 45 (paperback).

Oil and Empire: British Policy and Mesopotamian Oil 1900–1920 by Marian Kent, London: Macmillan, 1976. Pp. xiii+273. £10.

On Revolt: Strategies of National Liberation by J. Bowyer Bell. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard U.P., 1976. Pp. xv+272. £11.25.

The Erosion of a Relationship: India and Britain since 1960 by Michael Lipton and John Firn. Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs: London, 1976. Pp. xvi+427. £13.00.     

Global production networks and the extractive sector: governing resource-based development

This article explores the opportunities a GPN approach providesfor understanding the network configurations and regional developmentimpacts associated with extractive industries. The article elaboratestwo core claims: (i) that the application of the GPN analyticalframework provides a way to make progress in a stalled policydebate regarding the linkages between resource extraction andsocio-economic development (popularly known as the ‘resourcecurse thesis’); and (ii) that the encounter between GPNand a natural resource-based sector introduces distinctive issues—associatedwith the materiality and territoriality of extractive commodities—that,to date, GPN has not considered fully. The article examinesthe global production network for oil as an empirical case ofhow extractive industries can provide (limited) opportunitiesfor socio-economic development.     

Sticks and Stones: Environmental Narratives and Discursive Regulation in the Forestry and Mining Sectors

As visibly extractive industries reliant on the material and semiotic commodification of nature, forestry and mining have come to be popularly viewed as "environmental pariahs." Yet forestry and mining continue to be successfully profitable enterprises despite a significant increase in environmental awareness and activism in the latter half of the twentieth century. To understand the relative stability and growth of these sectors in the face of overt contradictions arising from their use of the environment, this article revisits the work of regulation theorists who asked similar questions about the persistence and maintenance of capitalism in general.
Two case studies are presented–forestry in British Columbia and gold mining in California and Nevada–which demonstrate how the political economy of forestry and mining is subject to contradictions arising out of the technological and organizational mechanisms through which nature is appropriated during production. Analysis of the case studies shows that the regulation of these contradictions is increasingly achieved through the deployment and cooptation of sustainability narratives. The case studies therefore juxtapose the recent proliferation of sustainability narratives within the forestry and mining sectors with the sectors' persistent challenge to concepts of sustainable development.