The Clash of Interests: Commerce and the Politics of Trade in the Age of Anne

This article celebrates the contribution which Professor Holmes made to the field of British politics and society by the study of an important collection of political tracts. The compiler of the collection is identified as Sir Charles Cooke, one of the most significant commercial politicians of his day. The organisation of the collection illuminates the ways in which City politicians used various channels of information, both printed and personal, to support their political platforms. It also demonstrates how Cooke contributed to the defeat of the tories over the French Commerce Bill of 1713, by supplying key sources to combat the ministry's position. On a wider plane, although it suggests that partisan politics tainted all information advanced in the public sphere, this did not relieve political rivals of the need to establish the superior authority of their sources, and political success only saw Cooke redouble his efforts to gain as wide a base of information as possible. Statistical precision remained elusive, but his archive stands testament to a growing need for authority of source in a political world of party and vested interests.     

‘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.     

From Greece to Babylon: The political thought of Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686–1743)

This paper explores the political thought of Andrew Michael Ramsay with particular reference to his highly acclaimed book called A New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus (1727). Dedicated to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, to whom he was tutor, this work has been hitherto viewed as a Jacobite imitation of the Telemachus, Son of Ulysses (1699) of his eminent teacher archbishop Fénelon of Cambrai. By tracing the dual legacy of the first Persian Emperor Cyrus in Western thought, I demonstrate that Ramsay was as much indebted to Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History (1681) as he was to Fénelon's political romance. Ramsay took advantage of Xenophon's silence about the eponymous hero's adolescent education in his Cyropaedia, or the Education of Cyrus (c. 380 B.C.), but he was equally inspired by the Book of Daniel, where the same Persian prince was eulogised as the liberator of the Jewish people from their captivity in Babylon. The main thrust of Ramsay's adaptation was not only to revamp the Humanist-cum-Christian theory and practice of virtuous kingship for a restored Jacobite regime, but on a more fundamental level, to tie in secular history with biblical history. In this respect, Ramsay's New Cyropaedia, or the Travels of Cyrus, was not just another Fénelonian political novel but more essentially a work of universal history. In addition to his Jacobite model of aristocratic constitutional monarchy, it was this Bossuetian motive for universal history, which was first propounded by the German reformer Philipp Melanchthon in his Chronicon Carionis (1532), that most decisively separated Ramsay from Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, author of another famous advice book for princes of the period, The Idea of a Patriot King (written in late 1738 for the education of Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, but officially published in 1749).     

Alan Wilson – contributions to research on population and migration

ABSTRACT

This article reviews Alan Wilson's research on population and migration in the 1970s and the 2010s, which supplements his principal contribution - mathematical modelling of urban and regional systems. In the 1970s, drawing on input-output models of economies and working with Philip Rees, Wilson established the accounting basis for Andrei Rogers' multi-regional projection model, adding international migration. Innovative methods were developed to complete demographic accounts, where there were data gaps. In the 2010s, working with Adam Dennett, Wilson systematized methods for estimating migration flows between regions in Europe, employing his family of spatial interaction models. The key aim of both research strands was to ensure that no information was ignored to ensure consistency in population and migration models. The influence of Wilson's contributions to research on population and migration is traced through a survey of subsequent research.     

The development and evolution of “cerebral thermometry”: The physiology underlying a nineteenth-century approach to cerebral localization and neurological diagnosis

ABSTRACT

Surface thermometers were developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century. From the 1850s through the 1880s, collaborations between physicians, research scientists, and instrument makers produced clear improvements in the technology to measure cranial surface temperatures, with development of self-registering mercury surface thermometers resistant to pressure and little influenced by ambient temperature, apparatus for recording cranial surface temperatures from multiple stations simultaneously, and development of thermoelectric apparatus. Physiologic studies of cranial surface thermometry were conducted over a quarter century from 1861 to 1886. Beginning in the 1860s Albers in Bonn, Germany, and Lombard at Harvard and later in England systematically investigated surface temperatures on the head using surface thermometers and thermoelectric apparatus; they demonstrated that head temperatures were variable over time and across individuals and were not clearly influenced by thinking or muscular contraction but were influenced by ambient air temperature. In 1880 Amidon in the United States claimed that cranial surface thermometry during exertion produced localized increases in surface temperature on the contralateral scalp in a specific pattern (“external motive areas”) indicating underlying brain areas responsible for each movement. Amidon’s results were not reproduced by experienced physiologists in England or France. Contemporaries recognized that significant technical and practical problems limited the accuracy and reliability of cranial surface thermometry. Physiological studies of cranial surface thermometry ended in the mid 1880s, although some clinicians who were early advocates promoted its use in clinical contexts into the early twentieth century.     

Edward Kelley’s Danish treasure hoax and Elizabethan antiquarianism

ABSTRACT

In 1583, Edward Kelley claimed to have made a number of archaeological discoveries on Northwick Hill in Worcestershire, including a forged document, the “Northwick scroll”, purportedly giving the location of treasure hidden by the Danes. The scroll was subsequently deciphered by Kelley’s employer, John Dee. Kelley’s hoax, which had to fool one of the country’s most learned men, was carefully constructed and drew on recent antiquarian work. However, Kelley also relied on older traditions of magical treasure hunting, thereby combining two apparently antithetical approaches to the past. The article uses the example of Kelley’s hoax to argue that hoaxes served a useful and illuminating function in the early development of archaeology by testing the boundaries of plausibility. Furthermore, Kelley’s synthesis of learned antiquarianism and treasure hunting challenges the view that Elizabethan antiquaries were unwilling to excavate. Kelley’s methodologies in constructing the hoax echoed those of William Camden and others by linking excavated objects with chronicles and landscape features to create an integrated account of an imagined past. However, the hoax’s success also rested on Dee’s willingness to become a treasure hunter, demonstrating that elite learned antiquarian endeavours were not always distant from the aims of traditional “hill diggers”.     

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.