The Real vs the Imaginary: Sir William Chambers on the Chinese Garden

Sir William Chambers was one of the most important English architects in the eighteenth-century, but both in his day and later his international recognition was closely connected with his admiration for and promotion of Chinese art, particularly Chinese landscaping. Between 1757 and 1773, Chambers published three treatises praising the ingenious mixture of nature and art in a Chinese pleasure ground, criticizing the then influential English gardener Lancelot (Capability) Brown, and trying to goad English garden design into the direction of China. He did not achieve his purposes mainly because he mixed what he knew as genuine about the Chinese gardening art with what he fantasized about it. While recent scholarship has focused on his fantasy, this article examines what Chambers knew or imagined about Chinese landscaping, what he and his detractors were for and against, and how the fiasco of his 1772 and 1773 treatises, which he brought upon himself, nevertheless helped to usher in a new phase in the English reception of Chinese landscaping ideas.     

Christianity in the Gulf during the first centuries of Islam

This article re-examines the ceramics of SBY-9, a church and monastery site on the island of Sir Bani Yas, Abu Dhabi emirate, U.A.E. It then explores other archaeological evidence for Christianity in the Arabian Gulf and compares it to the textual data, resulting in a reconsideration of the history and activities of the Church of the East. The pottery of SBY-9 indicates that the monastery complex was occupied some time between the second half of the seventh century and the mid-eighth century AD and not, as previously believed, the sixth–seventh centuries AD. Other excavated churches and monasteries in the Gulf region should also be redated to the eighth and ninth centuries AD (al-Qusur, Kharg). These findings cast a new light on the history of Christianity in the Arabian Gulf after the Muslim conquest.     

The Politics of Chivalry: Sir Robert Walpole,the Duke of Montagu and the Order of the Bath

This article explores the complex circumstances surrounding the foundation of the order of the Bath in 1725, and seeks to correct the commonly‐held view that it was initiated by Walpole simply to augment the patronage available to his supporters in parliament. The proposal for a new order of chivalry based on the medieval ‘knighthood of the bath’ in fact emanated from the court, having been prompted by one of its central figures, the duke of Montagu. Walpole and his colleagues were by no means oblivious to the practical political value of such a move, but having only lately consolidated their position at court, their main priority was to seize a unique opportunity to flatter the new royal dynasty and garner popularity for it through the medium of the order's rediscovered history. The ministers selected the order's 36 founder‐knights with considerable input from senior courtiers, but ensured that those nominated were mostly peers and MPs who could evince ministerially useful connections between court and parliament. Though the order was later derided as a symptom of Walpoleian corruption, its foundation can be regarded as something of a turning point in Walpole's rise to power.     

The Fall of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk and the Revival of Impeachment in the Parliament of 1621

The revival of impeachment in 1621 has tended to be viewed exclusively through the prism of parliament. However, this article, which builds on the work of Professor Allen Horstman, suggests that a key factor in impeachment's revival was the dismissal of Lord Treasurer Suffolk for corruption in 1618. Suffolk's removal caused widespread disquiet, since it was assumed that senior officials held office for life. In order to silence these criticisms it proved necessary for the king not only to put Suffolk on trial but also to justify by precedent the lord treasurer's removal. This latter task was performed by the former lord chief justice, Sir Edward Coke, himself not long disgraced, whose researches in the medieval parliamentary record revealed the following year that errant crown ministers had hitherto been held to account by means of impeachment. Coke subsequently put this discovery to good effect when parliament met in 1621. Against the backdrop of mounting criticism against his hated rival, the lord chancellor, Francis Bacon, Coke revealed the existence of impeachment to the house of commons, whose attention was then focused on finding a way to punish the monopolists, Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Michell. In so doing, Coke not only aided the lower House, which had been struggling since 1610 to find a way of punishing non‐members, but also sought to settle an old score.     

‘Childhood is measured out by sounds and sights and smells,before the dark of reason grows’: children’s geographies at 12

This Keynote essay argues for a supplement to existing studies in children’s geographies, one that explores the potential of a non-child-centric children’s geography alert to the work done by the figure of ‘the child’ in all manner of worldly situations. Taking a cue from the poetry of John Betjeman, notably his 1960 Betjeman, J. 1960. Summoned by Bells. London: John Murray. [Google Scholar] Summoned by Bells, the essay considers both the intimate spaces of childhood – ones gauged by the immediacies of ‘sounds and sights and smells’ – and the challenges posed by a wider world raddled by adult preoccupations and abuses, those characterised by Betjeman as stemming from ‘the dark of reason’. The essay builds from this foundation to address the ‘darkness’ in two sets of Nazi children’s wartime geographies, as well as engaging with the complexities of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s claims, in the horizon of WWII, about the ‘dialectic of enlightenment’. Within the latter – and also, notably, in Adorno’s later writing – the figure of ‘the child’ surfaces as one miniscule crumb of hope, of experiencing and knowing the world otherwise, set against the face of adult Enlightenment’s seemingly inevitable decay. At the close, Adorno’s own brief dalliance with imagining a small slice of children’s geographies allows the essay to arc back towards its original claims, and to a renewed sense of why childhood ‘sounds and sights and smells’ continue to matter far beyond just the domain of geographers researching children.     

A Leading Arsenal of Democracy: American Rearmament and the Continental Integration of the Canadian Aircraft Industry, 1948–1953

This article shows how the Royal Navy under the leadership of John Fisher exploited the British Consular system in Germany and Denmark to obtain both open-source and covert intelligence between 1906 and 1914. This structure was initially constructed with the tacit support of the Foreign Office, replacing an earlier intelligence network in France and Russia. The intelligence collected by the consuls reflected the Royal Navy's strategic priorities at the time. The most important subject concerned German coastal defences, a detailed knowledge of which was essential for the Admiralty's offensive littoral strategy. From 1908 Charles Hardinge attempted to restrict the Admiralty's use of its Consular Officers for intelligence purposes, with limited success. The consuls continued to provide essential intelligence for the Royal Navy up until the outbreak of war.     

Henry Pelham's Lost Grand Jury Map of Kerry (c.1800): A Newly Found Derivative

The ‘South Division of the County of Kerry’ (GSI FS 1.2.001) is a copy of the southern half of a lost late eighteenth / early nineteenth century map of County Kerry, in southwestern Ireland. Geological annotations on the map are traced to specific episodes (c.1820, 1838 and 1844) in the unofficial geological survey of Ireland conducted by Richard (later Sir Richard) Griffith between 1811 and 1855. The Griffith provenance of the map is part of the evidence used to identify the ‘South Division of the County of Kerry’ as a derivative of the now lost Grand Jury map of Kerry made by the American émigré artist and cartographer Henry Pelham.     

The Irish Parliamentary Diary (1776–89) of Sir Henry Cavendish

This article clarifies the history of the ‘parliamentary diary’ compiled by Sir Henry Cavendish while a member of the Irish parliament between 1776 and 1789, correcting misapprehensions in previous accounts, in particular the assertion by A.P.W. Malcomson and D.J. Jackson that Cavendish paid less attention to recording debates in the 1780s.     

The death of Sir Victor Horsley (1857–1916) and his burial in Amarah

Sir Victor Alexander Haden Horsley (1857–1916), the pioneering British neurological surgeon, passed away 100 years ago. He died young in his sixtieth year from the effects of heat stroke while serving as consulting military surgeon to the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in Amarah, modern-day Iraq, and was buried in the now largely abandoned “Amara War Cemetery.” By the time of his death in 1916, Victor Horsley had established himself as one of the most eminent innovators of modern neurological surgery. His pioneering researches in cerebral physiology earned him an early reputation in the field, and his experiences with vivisection allowed him to confidently operate on the brain and spinal cord at a time when surgical intervention of the nervous system was fraught with uncertainty. Outside the operating theatre, Horsley was a proud advocate for a number of sometimes controversial sociopolitical issues; national temperance, women’s suffrage, and medical unionism particularly interested him. He brought the same courageousness to the British army during the First World War, and labored tirelessly under considerable hardships to improve the conditions for soldiers. Otherwise robust and healthy, it was only through great self-denial and overwork that Horsley suddenly succumbed to the burning heat of Mesopotamia. He died as he lived—a fearless and painstaking fighter for the common man. His was a most beautiful life of unselfish devotion to others.