Dictionary of Received Ideas

Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party

2005-09-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

Women of Protest

An online exhibit to mark the 85th anniversary of women's suffrage in the US.

America on the Move

2005-09-04T07:09:00.000-07:00

Introduction to the Smithsonian's Cycle Collection

An online exhibit, covering the early development of the bicycle to the 1960s.

Arts and Letters Daily

2005-07-21T05:50:00.000-07:00

Arts and Letter Daily is a great compilation of articles, essays and reviews.

Some highlights to tempt you:

A couple other interesting websites that compile news information:

10X10 - "Every hour, 10x10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time. Over the course of days, months, and years, 10x10 leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life."
Today's Front Pages - Front pages from 45 countries presented alphabetically

Another LII Miscellany!

2005-06-06T14:09:00.000-07:00

Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers
Photographing history: Fred J Maroon and the Nixon Years
Chasing Venus 1631-2004 (that's the planet, if you were wondering)
George Armstrong Custer resources
Political cartoons from the Crash to the Millennium
History and politics out loud
Malcolm X: a search for truth
Preposterous headdresses and featherd ladies: hair, wigs, barbers and hairdressers (18th century)
Women in architecture: Julia Morgan

As ever, from the LII weekly update

Coffee

2005-06-02T05:49:00.000-07:00

My new favorite online magazine, Invention and Technology, this edition featuring a former advisor (issue also contains articles on artificial turf and microwave ovens):

The Academic Grind: MIT once had a laboratory to test coffee

"Preserving food with radiation sounds very space-age, but in fact it was discovered before the first airplane flew. In 1898 Samuel Prescott, a professor of biology at MIT, subjected various foodstuffs to gamma rays and found that spoilage was greatly retarded. In another early triumph, he used bacteriology to extend the shelf life of canned goods. Prescott went on to become MIT’s dean of science, and in that role he continued his career-long goal of applying scientific methods to the improvement of everyday life.

As another article in the October 2004 Technology & Culture [Available through Project Muse and Proquest] explains, sometimes this quest took the form of scientifically determining how to make the perfect cup of coffee. Larry Owens, of the University of Massachusetts, writes that in 1920, with a $40,000 grant from an industry group, Prescott established MIT’s Coffee Research Laboratory to evaluate the product’s safety and find the most effective ways of brewing it. Lab workers fed rabbits enormous quantities of coffee and found their health unimpaired, though it must have made them even jumpier than usual. They also brewed coffee with a variety of techniques and had tasters evaluate the results. For the record, MIT’s researchers found that the drip method works best, preferably in a glass or ceramic pot; the water should be just below boiling; and the coffee should be freshly ground.

Under Prescott’s guidance, MIT continued its leading role in “sanitary science,” usually with a bit more microscope work involved, until his retirement in 1942. By then most of MIT’s biologists had come to consider the field an anachronism, and it was soon shunted off to a separate department.

The episode shows how much science changed between the turn of the century and World War II. In Prescott’s youth it had been entirely reasonable for an MIT professor of biology to spend his time perfecting candy and bananas and searching for “growth-producing rays” that would (as he predicted) “bring forth cows the size of brontosauri.” But by the end of his career the frontiers of biology had advanced far beyond the dinner table. Nowadays, developing the perfect cup of coffee is considered a job for a corporate laboratory, though MIT students do carry on Prescott’s tradition by researching coffee and other stimulants on an independent-study basis."

Links Miscellany

2005-05-24T14:45:00.000-07:00

From last week's LII weekly update

The Art of Motion Picture Costume Design
Some facts about Mediterranean food history
France in America
Endangered languages
The London look: fashion from street to catwalk
History of Memorial Day
The Right Chemistry: Colors in Fashion 1704-1918
The Roman Curia
Vietnam Veterans' Memorial
The Charles Fort files
Yalta 60 years on

LII Miscellany

2005-05-13T01:25:00.000-07:00

From the LII weekly update

Secrets of the Dead
Hindenburg (LZ-129)
Jesuits and the Sciences
Pop up and movable books - a tour through their history
History News Network
Old City Park: Living History Museum of Dallas
Vichy web page
Silent Witness: Lola Rein and her dress
Victory in Europe Day
The End of the War - 60 years

Links Miscellany

2005-04-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

From this week's LII update

Buddhist art and the trade routes
Life of the Buddha
Fairies and ghosts
Victorian fairy paintings
Medieval bestiaries
Publishers' bindings online 1815-1930: the art of books
Urban experience in Chicago: Hull-House and its neighbourhoods 1889-1963
The A & M Records Collection
Chevron oil corporation history
History of Unocal
First ladies: political role and public image

Links Miscellany

2005-03-27T08:12:00.000-08:00

from LII weekly update

British Library Images Online
London Transport Museum Photographic Collection
Chinese Ceramics
PotWeb: Ceramics at the Ashmolean Museum
Pottery in Colonial America

Life and times of Frida Kahlo

Local History: Liverpool
Tennessee Encyclopaedia of history and Culture
Mind and Body: Descartes to William James
Purim

LII Links Miscellany

2005-03-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

Fifty Years of Supporting Children’s Learning: A History of Public School Libraries and Federal Legislation from 1953–2000
March of Dimes: From Polio to Prematurity
Beyond the Fire: Teen Experiences of War

The Medieval Science Page

Pop Culture
Quilts and Quiltmaking in America 1978-1996

Robert C Williams American Museum of Papermaking
Thomas Gravell Watermark Archive
Chambers's Book of Days 1879

The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords

From the LII weekly update

IWD, Belated

2005-03-18T11:01:00.000-08:00

Sharon must have forgotten to mention her excellent collection of links for International Women's Day as well as the addresses that she highlighted at her blog.

Cleveland in Flames

2005-03-18T04:58:00.000-08:00

Pratie Place examines the causes of the 1969 fire on the Cuyahoga River and the response of the city.

... On June 23, 1969, Cleveland's oily, contaminated Cuyahoga River caught fire. Flames climbed as high as five stories until fireboats brought it under control. The fire was attributed to wastes dumped into the river by the waterfront industries. Cleveland at the time was not particularly impressed. The Chief of Police was not called; the regular crew, which was always dispersing oil slicks and watching for river fires, had it under control in under half an hour. The only picture (left), taken after the fire was pretty much out, ran in two local papers the next day, but the only story was brief and buried. ...

Check out the great quotes.

Cologne, Nullzeit

2005-03-18T04:46:00.000-08:00

I looked at the liberation of Cologne in 1945.

The image of the cathedral, surrounded by the rubble, was also a reminder that the past -- the mythic past of German nationalism -- was irretrievable. What was left behind was the city made by the empire; what remained was the medieval city and its faith.

I also found some links to the music of the Edelweiss Pirates, a youth group that opposed the Hitler Jugend, and posted Eric Johnson's description of youth and persecution in Nazi Germany.

Protestant Sermons

2005-03-18T04:33:00.001-08:00

Flos Carmeli takes a Catholic look at love in the works of Jonathan Edwards (via Siris).

It is my belief that Jonathan Edwards, along with William Law, George Whitefield, George Fox, William Penn, Jeremy Taylor, and a smattering of others, is one of a very elite group of protestant mystics whom God granted the grace to see far and see hard.
As a result Edwards did produce some remarkable works centered on love, affection, and compassion.

Canada and the American Civil War

2005-03-16T10:11:00.000-08:00

I've just posted an old essay of mine on the impact of the American Civil War on Canada at my blog. Should be of interest to some of you.

Links Miscellany

2005-03-06T08:02:00.000-08:00

From the LII Weekly Update

Photograph collections from American Memory:
African American photos for Paris Exposition 1900
Fenton Crimean War photographs
Bain collection
Matson negatives (Middle east)

Women's history links
Celebrate Women's History Month
History of women in sports timeline
Timeline of American women's rights movement

The Encyclopedia of Diderot and d'Alembert (English translations)
Gravely gorgeous: gargoyles, grotesques and the nineteenth-century imagination
History of St Patrick's day
The complete Andersen (Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales)
Kraus collection of Sir Francis Drake
Milestones in garbage (timeline of waste management)
NY Food museum
Sanborne fire insurance maps (maps of early 20th century American cities)
Who's who of Victorian cinema

A cultural miscellany

2005-03-01T05:33:00.000-08:00

A belated run through my emails...

* Columbia University's Expanding East Asian Studies (ExEAS) website "features innovative and easy-to-use materials for teaching about East Asia at the undergraduate level".

* Not for males of a delicate disposition ... Foreskin incision and circumcision in the Pacific Region. And for an account of modern practices Penis enhancements.

* New contents to the web site of the Irish Argentine Historical Society: "St. Patrick's Day in Peru, 1824" by Brian McGinn; "St. Patrick's Day, Buenos Aires, 1905" by Edward Walsh; Dictionary of Irish-Argentine Biography. William Brown, Edelmiro Farrell; Manuscripts and Rare Books Collection at Universidad de San Andrés's Max von Buch Library

* Sacrifice Lost and Found--Colonial India and Postcolonial Lanka: This article analyses how the colonial government and the post-independence state viewed and dealt with rituals involving violence that were rooted in the regional community ...

LII Miscellany 24/2/05

2005-02-27T08:11:00.000-08:00

From the LII weekly news

African American History timeline
Mary Ellen Pleasant
Misunderstanding Malcolm X
Slavery and the making of America

Alcohol, temperance and prohibition
Radical visions: graphic satire in the Yiddish press 1894-1939
Guide to historic architecture in Fresno
Prior and Norris troupe (vaudeville) photographs

Hunter S Thompson archive
Arthur Miller files

Iwo Jima retrospective
Korea: the unfinished war
WhiteHousetapes.org

LII Miscellany

2005-02-19T13:20:00.000-08:00

From the LII weekly update.

Arthur Miller Society
Arthur Miller remembrances

Auschwitz: inside the Nazi State
Yizkor (Holocaust memorial) books

Photographs of Japanese-American internment at Manzanar
The war relocation camps of World War II

Best dressed: 250 years of style
Reforming fashion 1850-1914: politics, health and art
Dress, fashion and modernity in Victorian women's magazines
Standardization of women's clothing sizes
Works of art: the Costume Institute
Costume museum of Canada
Designing Britain 1945-1975
Vintage couture

Guillotine Headquarters
History of US Income Tax
The British royal family
Scribbling women
Palaeography tutorial

Aca-polemics

2005-02-10T06:54:00.000-08:00

Le Figaro describes the debate among Lacan's old seminar students over the publication of his lectures. (Googl-English)

Women working at Harvard

2005-02-08T04:19:00.000-08:00

"WOMEN WORKING: 1870-1930"
* 2,400 books and pamphlets
* 1,075 photographs
* 5,000 pages of manuscripts
* 50 trade catalogs

"The 'Women Working' collection explores women's roles in the US economy between the Civil War and the Great Depression. Working conditions, conditions in the home, costs of living, recreation, health and hygiene, conduct of life, policies and regulations governing the workplace, education and social issues are all well documented."

Weekend book reviews

2005-02-06T08:28:00.000-08:00

Biographies
Marie Curie
Leigh Hunt (a friend of Byron, Shelley et al)
Mary Wollstonecraft
Nell McCafferty, Mary McAleese

Modern history of leprosy
The end of British empire in Africa
The betrayal of Eritrea
Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr, and the laws that changed America
A September morning

Graveyard of the Pacific

2005-02-05T15:17:00.000-08:00

Graveyard of the Pacific: the Shipwrecks of Vancouver Island is a well-put-together collection of tales that would be excellent for, say, early to mid-teens interested in history. (I say broadly, not being an expert on child development!)

Jewish Baghdad

2005-02-04T06:50:00.000-08:00

With today's seething tensions in the Middle East it is easy to forget that before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 there were large Jewish communities spread across the Muslim world. One particularly prominent example was Baghdad.

It has often been said that New York is a Jewish city. I think one can safely say the same about Baghdad of the first half of the twentieth century.

To have an idea of the city’s demography and the position of the Jews in those five decades, it is enough to glance at these few facts of statistics:

In 1904, the French vice-consul in Baghdad gave the number of Jews in the then Ottoman Baghdad vilayet as 40,000, out of a total population of 160,000.

In 1910, a British consular report estimated the number of Jews in Baghdad as ranging from 45,000 to 50,000.

In October 1921, a British publication quoted these population figures for the city as given in the last official yearbook of the Baghdad vilayet: total number of inhabitants, 202,200, of whom: 80,000 were Jews; 12,000 Christians; 8,000 Kurds, 800 Persians; and 101,400 Arabs, Turks and other Muslims.

A proclamation issued by the British military Governor in the early 1919’s fixed the number of sheep to be slaughtered daily in Baghdad East (al-Risafa, the more populous half of the city) at 220 for Jewish butchers and 160 for Muslim and other butchers.

In the Baghdad Chamber of Commerce most of the members were Jews and the administrative council consisted of 8 Jews and 8 Moslems.

It's worth having a look at the whole site, which bills itself as the "Journal of Babylonian Jewry". Two other articles I've read recently on the subject that I think are quite interesting are "Memories of Iraq" and "The Jewish Community of Baghdad".

In other news I've just posted an old essay of mine entitled 'Religious Practice and Change in 19th Century Catholic Europe", in case any of you are interested in that sort of thing.

Vinland map: a forgery?

2005-02-03T18:32:00.000-08:00

The Vinland Map -- Some "Finer Points" of the Debate, by J. Huston McCulloch, dated 2004, looks like a solid exploration of the question. There's also apparently to be a TV show in the US on the subject on February 8, for anyone for whom that's relevant.

LII Miscellany (3 February)

2005-02-03T13:56:00.000-08:00

From the Librarians' Index to the Internet weekly 'what's new' update

African American women writers of the 19th century
African American women online archives
African Americans in the sciences
The story of the Greensboro Four
Greensboro sit-ins: launch of a civil rights movement
In motion: the African American migration experience
Underground railroad
Black History month resources

Herbert Hoover presidential library-museum
History of St Valentines day
National Cowgirl museum
National Music museum
Early developments in the American dairy industry
History of AT&T

September 11 documentary project

A Web of English History

2005-02-01T03:36:00.000-08:00

A site that's been around for a while but recently moved to a new home, A Web of English History contains two resources for British history from around 1760-1850: The Age of George III and The Peel Web.

Archive of Exiles

2005-01-31T16:02:00.000-08:00

Here is an interesting effort to create a center for research around those who were forced to flee Nazism.

The aim of the Else Lasker-Schüler-Foundation is the establishment of a real Centre of Persecuted Arts. This is intended to be developed as a centre of documentation and information on topics such as censorship, the proscription and burning of books, the persecution and emigration of writers, artists and other intellecuals in the past as well as today.

The site has a number of biographies (in German) and links to other sites.

Smallpox outbreaks

2005-01-31T13:31:00.000-08:00

The Centers for Disease Control publishes (and makes available for free online) a monthly journal called Emerging Infectious Diseases. They almost always include one historical essay and this month's is a Historical Review of "Surveillance and Control Measures during Smallpox Outbreaks".

Abstract:
"We reviewed historical data from 2 smallpox outbreaks in Liverpool and Edinburgh during the early and middle years of the 20th century to assess their contribution to developing modern strategies for response to a deliberate release of smallpox virus. Reports contemporaneous to these outbreaks provide detail on the effectiveness of public health interventions. In both outbreaks, extensive contact tracing, quarantine, and staged vaccination campaigns were initiated, and the outbreaks were controlled within 15 months and 3 months, respectively. In Edinburgh, the number of fatalities associated with vaccination exceeded the number of deaths from the disease. In Liverpool, ambulatory, vaccine-modified cases and misdiagnosis as chickenpox resulted in problems with outbreak control. The relatively slow spread of smallpox, as exemplified by the report from Liverpool, allowed for effective implementation of targeted intervention methods. Targeted surveillance and containment interventions have been successful in the past and should be explored as alternatives to mass vaccination."

The Russia That Was

2005-01-31T01:57:00.000-08:00

It's been quite a while since I've posted here, and I do apologize.

Anyways, the Library of Congress has a wonderful online exhibition of photographs taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, "the photographer to the Tsar".

The photographs of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) offer a vivid portrait of a lost world--the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the coming revolution. His subjects ranged from the medieval churches and monasteries of old Russia, to the railroads and factories of an emerging industrial power, to the daily life and work of Russia's diverse population.

In the early 1900s Prokudin-Gorskii formulated an ambitious plan for a photographic survey of the Russian Empire that won the support of Tsar Nicholas II. Between 1909-1912, and again in 1915, he completed surveys of eleven regions, traveling in a specially equipped railroad car provided by the Ministry of Transportation.

There are some truly stunning pictures in this collection, wrapping a painterly sense of color and light with a hyper-realistic sheen. It is amazing to think that many of these photos are now around a century old, and to dwell on the enormous change that this world would soon be experiencing.

Some of my favorites:
Cathedral of St. Nicholas, Mozhaisk
The Emir of Bukhara
Jewish Children with their Teacher
Portrait of Pinkhus Karlinsky, 84 Years Old
View of the Nilova Monastery

Rome Reborn

2005-01-28T06:32:00.000-08:00

Last night Professor Florence Hsia (who specializes in Jesuit Science in China) turned us on to this exhibit, available online:
Vatican Exhibit: Rome Reborn
From the site:
"ROME REBORN: THE VATICAN LIBRARY AND RENAISSANCE CULTURE presents some 200 of the Vatican Library's most precious manuscripts, books, and maps--many of which played a key role in the humanist recovery of the classical heritage of Greece and Rome. The exhibition presents the untold story of the Vatican Library as the intellectual driving force behind the emergence of Rome as a political and scholarly superpower during the Renaissance. The exhibit will be on display in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress from January 8, 1993 through April 30, 1993. The online exhibit will be available by anonymous FTP and the World Wide Web indefinitely.

The exhibit is divided into nine (9) sections: The Vatican Library, Archaeology, Humanism, Mathematics, Music, Medicine & Biology, Nature Described, A Wider World I: How the Orient Came to Rome, and A Wider World II: How Rome Went to China. Each section contains exhibit text and separate image files for each object. This online exhibit includes not only objects from the Library of Congress exhibit, but also the alternate objects (brought from Rome to be used if there were a problem with one of the primary objects) and items omitted later in the planning process..."

Really beautiful images, check it out.

LII Miscellany (27 January)

2005-01-27T13:16:00.000-08:00

From the Librarians' Index to the Internet weekly update

Einstein and the world year of physics 2005
Albert Einstein archives
Lawrence and the cyclotron
George Orwell materials at Brown university library
George Orwell's first century 1903-2003
Johnny Carson
Origins of the swastika
A thin blue line: history of the pregnancy testing kit

The ONDB

2005-01-24T05:37:00.000-08:00

An excellent essay in the London Review of Books on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. A sample:

"Since this is still predominantly a compendium of men written by men, the right searches ought to yield some illumination about favoured male self-descriptions. Perhaps surprisingly, only 17 of our national heroes were ‘all-round sportsmen’, and only two had ‘dashing good looks’, but ‘attractive to women’ throws up a fascinating medley of attitudes among its 27 results.

Some concentrate on the physical, such as the entry for Edwin Booth (1833-93, ‘actor’) – ‘with dark eyes, long dark hair, romantic good looks, and a warm musical voice, Booth was attractive to women’ – and some not, such as that on Marcus Cunliffe (1922-90, ‘Americanist’), who is described as ‘generous, relaxed, charming, urbane, vivacious, witty, playful and attractive to women’.

Others excite more sympathy, such as Thomas Jones (1870-1955, ‘civil servant and benefactor’) whose agreeable qualities ‘made him particularly attractive to women, especially after his wife’s death’; one immediately senses a whole squadron of those female ‘forceful personalities’ steaming over the horizon."

LII Miscellany (20 January)

2005-01-20T14:32:00.000-08:00

Of interest to historians, from the Librarians' Index to the Internet weekly update.

"I do solemnly swear": presidential inaugurations
Inaugural addresses of the presidents of the United States and Presidents who were not inaugurated
American Sign Museum
Biography of Condoleeza Rice
Clarence Seward Darrow (1859-1938)
EPYC: Educational program on Yiddish culture
Florence Griswold Museum: home of American impressionism
Look back, ponder, and move on: glimpses of the African-American experience in Savannah, 1750-1900
Museum of Afro American history, Boston
National tribal justice resource center
Portsmouth Black heritage trail

It's not just Google

2005-01-20T06:22:00.000-08:00

... getting into digitising.

I got a pointer today to the Canadian libraries website where medieval and early modern-related texts are being put up.

My source was very excited the presence of all but one of the 24 volumes of the Records of Early English Drama (REED; 1979-)

I was also pleased to find: A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London; 1554-1640 A.D.

The interface is not entirely intuitive and it requires the download of yet more (free) software, but probably worth it!

Ornamentalism

2005-01-19T13:26:00.000-08:00

Dennis Hidalgo on David Cannadine's Ornamentalism.

The cricketer king

2005-01-19T06:56:00.000-08:00

I bet you that this is the strangest piece of history you'll read all day.

Martin Luther King

2005-01-19T03:07:00.000-08:00

This is a bit late (except for those of us in Britain who don't know when MLK day is) but I thought I'd link to Flea's post on Martin Luther King.

Recommended by an expert

2005-01-18T17:24:00.000-08:00

... as one of the best sites on the web for an up-to-date introduction on the latest understandings on human evolution, the Smithsonian Human origins programme.

Witchy

2005-01-18T09:40:00.000-08:00

Profgrrrrl brings us the origin of the saying 'colder than a witch's . . .

Shakespeare

2005-01-17T08:46:00.000-08:00

Is Shakespeare's signature proof that he was diseased? From Barista.

Read the palms

2005-01-16T04:25:00.000-08:00

Leaves of digital: "The Indian public will finally have a chance to freely access ancient records dating back to the 18th century. This is because the world's largest collection of palm-leaf manuscripts will soon be digitised.

The museum in South India - home to more than 10,000 ancient palm-leaf manuscripts - will be undergoing a digital revolution ..."

Hat-tip to Rare books.

History Carnival #1

2005-01-15T13:25:00.000-08:00

Come and visit the first History Carnival!

A miscellany

2005-01-15T10:45:00.000-08:00

One week for me equals c. 800 emails, I've discovered, by going away and leaving them to collect. But it is worth it, really, for all of the multifaceted gems of links ...

An online journal of very modern history, Genders - "gender and sexuality in relation to social, political, artistic and economic concerns". From "Race, Gender and Terror: The Primitive in 1950s Horror Films", to "Technologies of Race: Special Effects, Fetish, Film, and the Fifteenth Century".

Women's War Work, by Jennie Churchill, 1916, completely accessible on the web, with an introduction and brief biography of her. (And it doesn't just cover the obvious nursing etc ...)

Two articles from 1918 about the Chinese who contributed worked with the Allied forces in France in World War I.

Two sites that archive women's studies syllabi by discipline here and here. And a site that will find you a syllabus about anything. (Well anything that so exists.)

A lovely 15th-century poem about London and lawyers.

Les Spectacles de la foire d'Émile Campardon (1877) (The theatre shows of the fair) Théâtres, Acteurs, Sauteurs et Danseurs de corde Monstres, Géants, Nains, Animaux curieux ou savants, Marionnettes Automates, Figures de cire et Jeux mécaniques des Foires Saint-Germain et Saint-Laurent, des Boulevards et du Palais-Royal depuis 1595 jusqu'à 1791. (There's a great deal in it about the associated crime ...)

CELL 2004 Online Edition of the Workdiaries of Robert Boyle.

American prison conditions in the Eighties and Nineties (and possibly continuing - not sure on that).

Apologies for the lack of credits, but just reading and collecting them took long enough!

Classical Women

2005-01-14T08:25:00.000-08:00

I really enjoy this site on Roman Women, focusing on biographies of important figures.

Sumo wrestlers? Not role models

2005-01-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

Josh at Far Outliers has another interesting piece on the history of sports in Asia. This one deals with the problems of gaining acceptance for sumo, a sport that appeared to be nothing more that street-fighting. My favorite part:

Promoters promised to control the incipient sport better and to donate a share of the profits to public works. Accordingly, benefit sumo was permitted in Edo in 1684, in Osaka in 1691, and in Kyoto in 1699. The authorities granted permits to hold benefit sumo almost every year after that.

LII Miscellany (13 January)

2005-01-13T13:03:00.000-08:00

From the Librarians' Index to the Internet weekly roundup.

Doodles, drafts and designs: industrial drawings from the Smithsonian Museum

Google Groups: 20 year Usenet timeline

The official Groundhog Day site

Links to the news: Martin Luther King Jr Day

Mark Twain (site to accompany a documentary)

Pirate Soul, history of pirates (hmm)

Postcard and greeting card museum

SNCC 1960-66: Six years of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

Unforgivable Blackness: the Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (another documentary)

Treasures of the library: Writings of Maimonides

WWW

2005-01-12T03:35:00.000-08:00

Here's a little bit of World Wide Web history for you!

A Special Photo Archive

2005-01-07T13:34:00.000-08:00

At the BBC website: Your Photo Gallery.

A lovely collection of old (and not so old!) photos sent in by readers: mostly pictures of family members (going back to the 19th century) with short biographies or family histories as well.

Renaissance drama

2005-01-06T18:18:00.000-08:00

Two sources in my email today:

News on the Rialto: "Here's the latest news on the world's greatest writer." (Yes, you might have guessed that's Shakespeare. I've been interested to see that in the book list meme that's flooding around the web - mine's here - he's the one just about guaranteed to stay on. Either he is on everyone's bookshelf, or they're just not game to admit that he isn't.) This is the blog from Shakespeare Magazine.

Current and Forthcoming Renaissance Drama Productions from the University of Birmingham Skakespeare Institute. I think they mean in England, but that's not entirely clear.

LII Miscellany, part II

2005-01-06T13:41:00.000-08:00

Just noticed that there's a 'more' link!

Coal and Steel: Industries that created Pittsburgh
The Fight (Louis v Schmeling, 1938)
Hunger Strikes of 1981
Peter Schumann's Bread and Puppet Theatre

LII Miscellany (6 January)

2005-01-06T13:29:00.000-08:00

American reactions to the 1981 Hunger Strikes

Jazz musician Artie Shaw

Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed

Citizen King

The American Jewish Archives

Powerful Days: Civil rights photography of Charles Moore

Historic places of the civil rights movement

From the Librarians' Internet Index weekly update

Orientalists

2005-01-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

Rob has started writing about a cross-cultural friendshiphere.

Image of the scientist

2005-01-06T10:29:00.000-08:00

Why do we always picture scientists in the same pose: peering up into a flask of coloured liquid? PZ Myers has been finding out. It goes back at least to the 13th century.

Australian children's literature

2005-01-06T04:25:00.000-08:00

Rooster

2005-01-03T04:05:00.000-08:00

Kent writes about the film The Motorcycle Diaries.

Un site dramatique

2005-01-02T16:44:00.000-08:00

Théâtres de société: rayonnement du répertoire français entre 1700 et 1799 is a wonderful historical dictionary providing information on much more than simply the theatre. It is also illustrated, so worth a browse even if your French is shaky.

A sample entry: Montalembert, Hôtel de (La Bergère de qualité, du comte? de Montalembert, 24 janvier 1784)“L’hôtel de la rue de la Roquette [voir Clermont qui l’occupa jusqu’à sa mort en 1771] fut acheté par le marquis de Montalembert, maréchal de camp, qui continua la joyeuse vie de son prédécesseur; le théâtre reprit ses représentations privées sur lequel on vit M. de Saint-Georges qui cumulait l’art de l’escrime avec l’art dramatique.” (Capon, 1902, p. 14)

Now if I just had a swish handheld computer or mobile, when wandering around Paris, as I'm planning to do next week, I could look up the history of the places I saw .... mmm. Maybe I can see the point of the technology - you just need the applications to justify it (and of course the funds to support it).

The site is also home to a number of essays and other resources, mostly in French.

P.S. Having posted references to a couple of French-language sites I feel obliged to point out that my French is about as good as you'd expect for someone who scraped through the first year Open University course about this time last year. I can more or less read it with some recourse to a dictionary, speak a little if I have a few seconds to compose the sentence (although with a horrible Australian accent, so I'm told), and almost never understand it when it is spoken to me ... just so no one thinks I'm any sort of resource!

But one of these days I WILL get better at it.

(Via C18-L.)

Early Modern Carnival

2005-01-02T14:28:00.000-08:00

Carnivalesque #3 is up: part 1 and part 2.

Many thanks to Claire for playing host.

Soviet space missions

2005-01-01T11:00:00.000-08:00

A fascinating post from Barista.

In the excitement of Saturn and Titan, we tend to forget that the Russians - or rather the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - have been trundling their bolted objets-de-Stakhanovite around the Solar System for a long time.

The seven basic plots

2005-01-01T06:55:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone!!! I'm hosting the third Early Modernists' carnival on my blog on Sunday night (UK time) so let me know if there are any posts you want me to include.

In the meantime our story telling friend has posted a great review of Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots.

Christopher Booker’s magnum opus, about the seven basic plots which lie behind all storytelling, has taken 34 years to write, during a period of human history which amply illuminates his central thesis that all storytelling has the underlying purpose of showing humankind how to live.

Fathia Nkrumah

2004-12-30T19:00:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a good Christmas (if you celebrate it of course!), and has a good New Year's tomorrow. I've been away from the blogosphere for a bit, so as a return to DoRI here's this biographical article about the first First Lady of Ghana, Fathia Nkrumah, wife of Kwame Nkrumah, the legendary anti-imperialist and pan-Africanist.

It was not meant to be a marriage made in heaven. It was a political union between Mediterranean-oriented North Africa and the rest of the continent, often pejoratively termed sub-Saharan or Black Africa. Yet Fathia Nkrumah's life story is a modern fable representative of a certain era. For fleeting moments in the late '50s and early '60s, it captured the public imagination throughout Africa. The young Egyptian woman who left her country to marry the most illustrious African anti-colonial leader of his time was inevitably invested with iconic qualities.

Funding

2004-12-30T16:00:00.000-08:00

Doing any research that has a link to the US Army? Check out this fellowship (with applications due on Jan. 15) sponsored by the U.S. Army Center for Military History.

Queen of the Night

2004-12-29T10:13:00.000-08:00

Remind me that the next time I go to the British Museum I ought to check this out. There's something very special about any representation that is in such good nick despite being almost four thousand years old.

Japanese tales

2004-12-22T19:00:00.000-08:00

" Otogi Zoshi are tales for adults and children enjoy alike. In the Muromachi Period and the Edo Period, people would have great fun thumbing through the pages by themselves or have someone read to them - there were many ways to enjoy the stories. The greatest pleasure of all though, must surely have been the beautiful painted color illustrations. Many of these flamboyantly illustrated Otogi Zoshi tales are in the possession of the Kyoto University Library."

There are 11 tales here already, plus an exhibition catalogue, and more promised. (Hat tip to Barista.)

The lives of Frederick Douglass

2004-12-22T01:27:00.000-08:00

Just in time for Christmas, Caleb has part 2 for us.

See how you do ...

2004-12-21T18:28:00.000-08:00

Interactive Silk Road Map Exercise
"This set of maps has been developed to assist learners in mastering basic geography of the Silk Road. The maps here include a variety of geographical names selected because of their importance. Obviously many other choices might have been made. The list is based on one that has been used for several years in a Silk Road survey course taught at the University of Washington."

But of course you can also test yourself .... I did well on the ends - China and the Middle East - but less well in the middle.

2004-12-19T09:55:00.000-08:00

A blind Irish harp-player

2004-12-18T18:19:00.000-08:00

Turlough O'Carolan (Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin) was born in 1670 near Nobber, County Meath and died March 25, 1738 at the home of his patron Mrs. MacDermott Roe in Alderford, County Roscommon. He was one of the last Irish harpers who composed and a significant number of his works survive in single line melody. Carolan's fame was not due to his skill with the harp (having started at 18), but to his gift for composition and verse.
From C18-L.

Candles for Chanukah

2004-12-18T10:53:00.000-08:00

Nathanael has been keeping surprisingly quiet here about his lovely series of Jewish history and culture-related posts for Chanukah, so I'll list them for you (and for him).

First Candle (crypto-Judaism in New Mexico and elsewhere)
Second Candle
Third Candle (Jews in 17th-century Dutch art and society)
Fourth Candle
(no 5th candle)
Sixth Candle (more on crypto-Judaism)
Seventh Candle
Eighth Candle

Happy Holidays...

Spain in the Carolinas

2004-12-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

Geitner Simmons has this excellent post on the excavation of Spanish colonial sites in North Carolina (and his own efforts to bring the Spanish influence on the state to public attention). Highly recommended.

Resource Frenzy

2004-12-17T18:52:00.000-08:00

City Data - a wealth of information about American cities large and small.

Arts & Letters Daily - superb link source on an enormous range of topics.

US census, UK census, Canadian census - censuses are always useful.

Religious affiliation of US presidents - not that important, but interesting.

Wikisource - online selection of public domain source documents.

Recent goings-on at Early Modern Notes

2004-12-16T11:43:00.000-08:00

Aphra Behn links

'Glorious Revolution' links

Dream Anatomy

Funding postgrad study and research in history

Crime and Punishment assortment

LII Miscellany (16 December)

2004-12-16T11:36:00.000-08:00

From the Librarians' Index to the Internet weekly update:

The history of Silent Night and The Twelve Days of Christmas

Handel's Messiah (musical score)

Secrets of the Spies

History Now

2004-12-16T10:30:00.000-08:00

History Now is a quarterly online journal for American (school) history students. The new issue is on the theme of slavery, focusing on the primary sources that historians uses.

It's one of many fine online resources for American history from the Gilda Lehrman Institute, for example:

Battle Lines: Letters from America's Wars

'Modules' for teaching American history from the Revolutionary War to 9/11

A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln

USA, modern

Did Harappans write?

2004-12-15T05:07:00.000-08:00

Causing quite a stir in the relevant circles is this article on the Harappans. As you'd expect there are strong views against this, but read for yourself ....

ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF VEDIC STUDIES (EJVS)
Vol. 11 (2004) Issue 2 (December 13) : 19-57 ( C) ISSN 1084-7561
The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis:
The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization
By Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel

Abstract

Archaeologists have long claimed the Indus Valley as one of the four literate centers of the early ancient world, complete with long texts written on perishable materials. We demonstrate the impossibility of the lost-manuscript thesis and show that Indus symbols were not even evolving in linguistic directions after at least 600 years of use.

Suggestions of how Indus inscriptions were used are examined in nonlinguistic symbol systems in the Near East that served important religious, political, and social functions without encoding speech or serving as formal memory aids.

Evidence is reviewed that the Harappans'slack of a true script may have been tied to the role played by their symbols in controlling large multilinguistic populations; parallels are drawn to the later resistance of priestly elites to the literate encoding of Vedic sources and to similar phenomena in esoteric traditions outside South Asia.

Discussion is provided on some of the academic and political forces that helped sustain the Indus-script myth for over 130 years and on ways in which our findings transform current views of the Indus Valley and of the place of writing in ancient civilizations in general.

The lives of Frederick Douglass

2004-12-14T06:45:00.000-08:00

A beautiful essay on Douglass, his writings and his relations with abolitionists, at Mode for Caleb. A second essay is promised.

USA, slavery, abolitionism, 19th century

Collect Britain

2004-12-13T13:45:00.000-08:00

Check out the British Library's Collect Britain website.

Highlights include: the Durham: Echoes of Power virtual exhibit; the Lost Gardens 'themed tour'; and selections from the BL themed collections which include: Victorian popular music; Svadesh Videsh (a "fascinating survey of the landscape and architectural heritage of South Asia"); Caribbean Views, plantation life during the 18th and 19th centuries; and images from the Illuminated Manuscripts collections.

English in the Americas

2004-12-13T10:14:00.000-08:00

Urban planner David Sucher has some thoughts on David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed, a book that "traces four British migrations to the US and their enduring influence on American character: the Puritans to New England (later influencing areas well to the west), the Quakers to the Delaware Valley, the Cavaliers to Virginia, and the English-Scottish border inhabitants to the Appalachian backcountry." [Although Fischer is a professor at Brandeis, I have never met him because of a peculiarity in the structure of the university: all the Americanists have their own department, while the rest of us (mostly Europeanists) are in a separate department for comparative history.]

Roblog

2004-12-12T01:22:00.000-08:00

Thanks to (I think) both Cliopatria and coffee grounds, another splendid history blog to add to the roll. Rob MacDougall is "a historian of the 19th and 20th century United States, with a special interest in the history of technology and business in America and the world", and his blog contains some excellent meaty stuff.

Recent posts include:

The parallels between the history of technology at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Benjamin Franklin (and the question: "Who do you root for in the French Revolution?")

German medieval coins

2004-12-11T13:06:00.000-08:00

"Formed by a 19th century German aristocrat, Hugo, Freiherr von Saurma-Jeltsch, the Saurmasche Münzsammlung concentrates on the smaller-size, everyday coinage used in Germany and in nearby regions from around 1280 to 1620 AD."

I recall from elsewhere that this was a very complicated subject, for each of the many states (and local religious authorities) issued their own, on all sorts of different standards and in all sorts of denominations. The index lists several hundred coin names.

This site really starts to show what the web can do. You can search by mint, by ruler, using clickable maps, by patron saint, by denomination .... the list goes on.

Thomas Gray archive

2004-12-11T04:12:00.000-08:00

"The Thomas Gray Archive is an interactive hypermedia repository for the study of the life and works of British poet Thomas Gray (1716-1771). It consists of two major sections, the Primary Texts section and the Materials section. The former contains searchable electronic editions of Gray's English poetry with critical apparatus and extensive collaborative commentary, a browsable calendar to Gray's correspondence, a concordance to the poetry, and a digital library of 18th-century printed editions. The latter section comprises all secondary resources, such as criticism, a biographical sketch, an introductory chronological table of Gray's life and works, a glossary of names and terms, a select bibliography of printed materials, a picture gallery, and links to related online resources."

Can you tell I've been cleaning out my e-mail? Thankfully I've got to the bottom of the pile now.

Shakespeare online

2004-12-10T18:31:00.000-08:00

An announcement received: "A new version (20043) of the World Shakespeare Bibliography Online is now live. This version - which has 97,679 records in 118 languages - covers 1965-2004 and includes all of the entries that will appear in the 2003 print bibliography in Shakespeare Quarterly (April 2005)."

Via Shakepser, "the global electronic Shakespeare conference".

Very modern history

2004-12-10T18:14:00.000-08:00

"With this pamphlet, Historians Against the War makes available a series of articles that seek to broaden the discussion of the use of torture as an instrument of U.S. policy."

Contents

Introduction: Margaret Power

The American Prison and the Normalization of Torture: H. Bruce Franklin

Nicaragua: A Tortured Nation: Richard Grossman

The Tiger Cages of Con Son: Don Luce

Guantánamo Prison: Jane Franklin

Torture of Prisoners in U.S. Custody: Marjorie Cohn

The Abu Ghraib Scandal and the U.S. Occupation of Iraq: John Cox

Portraiture

2004-12-10T05:07:00.000-08:00

When you think about it it's really quite remarkable that many artefacts never get a mention in mainstream histories of popular opinion. Take embroidery for instance. How many historians do you know who take embroidery really seriously and cite it in the same way they might a letter? Look at this picture of Charles I. Continue reading here.

LII Miscellany (9 December)

2004-12-09T13:24:00.000-08:00

This week's gems for historians from the Librarians' Internet Archive.

American Garden Museum

Egypt's Golden Empire (website for a TV documentary)

Tutankhamum and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs (site for a LA exhibition being held next year)

Jewish Guide to the Internet (Happy Chanukah to Jewish readers, by the way!)

LII Judaism Collection

Libya Online

Monarchies of Europe (lots of genealogies)

Old Tijuana Virtual Tour

Panama Pacific International Exposition 3D

Almost a Democracy

2004-12-09T06:53:00.000-08:00

[I originally posted this at my blog, although it could have easily come here.]

I have shifted the focus of my writing, for the moment, on the Weimar Republic. (This is the good thing about comparative history: if I get bored with something, I can always "cross the border.") I have been exploring the links on the internet, some of which (especially those in Germany) give very detailed information.

Die zwanziger Jahre (in German) gives a comprehensive collection of links to sites in numerous fields. Here is a list of available biographies (mostly writers and artists).

In English, Planet Deutsch gives its own overview: "... neo-romanticism inspired fascist ideology on the right, opposite to the far other side of democratic individualism, but the champions of personal liberty were too self-absorbed and apolitical to compete against the proto-Nazi thinkers, and Weimar fell to National Socialism."

The German Historical Museum (in German) has several useful pages. This one has speeches, including audio links, given by major politicians (hmm, Wilhelm Marx was left out). Here is Clara Zetkin announcing Göring selection as president of the Reichstag. There is also an overview of political history which is thoroughly referenced.

Document Archiv has primary sources on German legislation (in German)--invaluable)!

Here is a chronology, in English, from a Wesleyan professor. Think History has some conceptual diagrams to answer typical questions about the republic and its strength.

The German education website Zentrale fuer Unterrichtsmedien (great for people whose native history is not Germany) has lots of stuff in English and German. In English: establishing the republic (1918-1919), turmoil (1920-1923), Golden Twenties (1924-1928), Great Depression (1929-1932).

Wahlen in der Weimar Republik (in German) is one of the best sites I have found. If gives a description offices throughout Germany (at the national, state (Land), and provincial levels) and the results of elections for the relevant posts. Look at this description of Prussia. Weimar Wahlen has English pages as well. It is an extension of a doctoral thesis, using graphics to describe voting trends. (Click at the bottom of the screen: the analysis will open in a new window.)

AAG (in German) has this interpretation of Weimar as struggle against fascism.

From a gymnasium (sort of a hyper-high school) in Munich, a collection of photographs and other images.

Flags of the World gives a run down on the changes in the German national flag (especially the removal of the eagle, a sore spot for nationalists).

Some blogs to note: Manman's Work, Arts and Concepts, FACS 1900 and Weimar Culture (there are a number of similarly named blogs that tend to parallel one another--I suspect they are for a class), Time of exploration.

Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon

2004-12-08T21:54:00.000-08:00

Farid el-Khazen 'Permanent Settlement of Palestinians in Lebanon: A Recipe for Conflict'

In pre-war Lebanon, the Palestinian presence in Lebanon provoked deep communal divisions, intense political debate, and ideological controversy, From the late 1960s, no issue did more to militarize the country, mobilize communities, political parties and leaders, and split public opinion than the PLO military presence. And when the war broke out in the mid-1970s, what prolonged it and turned it into a full-fledged regional conflict was the direct involvement of the PLO.

Since the end of the military confrontations in 1990, however, an issue on which there has been unprecedented consensus shared by all Lebanese communities and by leaders in government and in the opposition, both in Lebanon and abroad, has been the rejection of permanent settlement of the Palestinians in Lebanon (tawteen, in Lebanese political jargon). Indeed, one of the modifications in the amended Lebanese constitution of 21 September 1990 that provoked no opposition from any faction was the provision introduced in the preamble: 'there shall be ... no settlement of non-Lebanese in Lebanon' (Republic of Lebanon 1995: 12).

From the most divisive issue in post-independence Lebanese politics to one of the few issues to arouse national consensus in post-war Lebanon, the Palestinian presence has been a highly delicate and controversial matter at all political, social, and economic levels.

Elizabeth Elstob

2004-12-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Elstob's An English-Saxon Homily on the Birth-Day of St. Gregory, published in 1709, stands as a landmark in the history of Anglo-Saxon studies. Elstob is the first woman known to have developed an interest in Old English texts, and her two major publications in the field—the homily edition and The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue, which was published in 1715—were both intended to appeal to a female readership.

Continue here.

In memoriam: John Lennon

2004-12-08T06:22:00.000-08:00

On 8 December 1980, John Lennon was murdered by Mark Chapman.

BBC News Archive

The night Lennon died

Guardian Archive

Beatles Beatles Beatles

Blog profile: The Head Heeb

2004-12-08T05:59:00.000-08:00

If you don't already know The Head Heeb, it's a fine group blog commenting on international current affairs, politics and history. (And I do mean international.)

Currently, posts include an outstanding piece on settlers in international and comparative context; the military and politics in Fiji; population decline and mass emigration in Zimbabwe; and the current vogue for Greatest Persons TV shows.

It is a 'political' blog, perhaps, rather than a 'history' blog; but it's one that uses history in an intelligent and informed way to comment on the present (and the very recent past), without being a blatantly partisan political show.

The destruction of Hamburg

2004-12-08T05:55:00.000-08:00

(Via Arts and Letters Daily)

The End: Hamburg 1943 by Hans Erich Nossak

I experienced the destruction of Hamburg as a spectator. I was spared the fate of playing a role in it. I don’t know why. I can’t even decide whether that was a privilege. I have talked to many hundreds of those who were there, men and women; what they have to tell, if they talk about it at all, is so unimaginably terrible that it is difficult to understand how they survived it. But they were given their role and their cue and had to act accordingly; and what they are able to report, heartwrenching though it may be in itself, is always just the part they were prompted to play. After all, most of them, as they ran out of their burning houses, didn’t know that the whole city was burning. They thought it was just their street or, at most, their district, and perhaps that was what saved them. ...

Plagues ad Pandemics

2004-12-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

Zid at Blitztoire write about the Plague and the comparative effects of pandemics on Europe and Asia.

... Et depuis, le monde ronronne. Personne, en Occident, ne croit plus que la peste puisse à nouveau recouvrir les villes et les campagnes de son noir manteau. Paisible Occident si sur de lui. Mais en Asie, là où la fragilité physique et économique des sociétés reste palpable, tout comme en Afrique, les fantômes de la pandémie réapparaissent régulièrement ...

(Witty Title Withheld)

2004-12-07T10:03:00.000-08:00

The Dittrick Medical History Center has announced a new acquisition: Percy Skuy's personal history of contraceptives collection. Mr. Skuy is the former president of Ortho Pharmaceuticals and began collecting historical contraceptive devices in the 1960s. The news page has a few images of some of these historical contraptions.

At Georgia State University's History Blog.

Are we Sparta or Athens?

2004-12-07T09:54:00.000-08:00

Geitner Simmons at Regions of Mind looks at this post from Little Urbanity on the problems of using the Athens/Sparta conflict the Peloponnesian War to examine American politics.

Archaic Medicine and Experimentation

2004-12-07T09:47:00.000-08:00

Brdgt looks at brain surgery in colonial America:
... The surgeon tried to drill two holes in the skull using a device known as a trepan tool that would remove a plug of bone, Straube said. It looks like the surgeon made two attempts at one spot and then moved to a second spot, Straube said ...
She also looks at a passage from the memoirs of Hervé Guibert as a chronicle of AIDS treatment.

Up the river

2004-12-07T09:33:00.000-08:00

Here is some of the history posts I have written in the last week at The Rhine River:

Popular resistance in Larzac and its connections to decolonization and regionalism in France.
The meaning of Karl Freiherr vom Stein's reforms to German nationalism and to the Rhineland.
The history of congresses and congress cities as the manifestation of political centrality in Europe.
Ethnologist Bronislaw Malinowski's sexualization of his research subjects.
My response to Richard Posner's assertion that Hitler would have been overthrown if the remilitarization of the Rhineland had been opposed.

Thomas Gray Archive

2004-12-07T01:48:00.000-08:00

(Via scribbling woman, via C18-L)

The Thomas Gray Archive, "an interactive hypermedia repository for the study of the life and works of British poet Thomas Gray (1716-1771)", has just set up a UK based mirror site. (The original US site is here.)

(Scribbling woman also offers some nice creepy links today, including a post on Bram Stoker's Dracula as Irish Protestant Gothic.)

Tribalism within Iraq

2004-12-06T14:49:00.000-08:00

Four part series on "Iraq's tribal society: A state within a state" at the Healing Iraq blog. Part one, part two, part three, and part four.

Understanding the tribal aspect of Iraqi society is essential for any outsider seriously interested in Iraqi and ME affairs. Not much attention has been devoted to this subject in the Western media, and all the related articles published on the web are shallow and do not reflect the true picture nor the importance of the historical role of tribalism in Iraqi (and Arab in general) society.

First you have to take in consideration the unique geographic location of Iraq, in that it is surrounded and enclosed by mountains in the north and east, while from the west and south it lies on the northern edge of the largest source of Bedouinism, the Arabian Desert. The land that is today called Iraq has been exposed for millenia to waves of Bedouin migration from the south for purposes of either military conquest (such as the Arab Muslim invasion during the 7th century), searching for water and pasturage to graze their flocks, raiding and looting (such as the Wahhabi raids on Shi'ite holy cities during the 18th century), or settlement. Iraq was also known to be the cradle of civilisation, and the spread of tribal social values brought by the successive Bedouin waves contributed much to the decline and destruction of this civilisation at different times in history. Whenever the tribal influence diminishes over a few centuries and
civilisation slowly flourishes again, a new wave of fresh desert tribes moves to the area and disrupts the process all over again.

Shares of War

2004-12-05T08:56:00.000-08:00

Before Dawn has a look at the inertia created by arms manufacturers leading to World War One.

Historians were unable to disprove one claim the Nye commission made: arms firms increase tensions between nations. Though Krupp, Armstrong, and Vicker, all lead by perfectionist engineers who cared about quality above profit (marginally), believed their weapons would make wars shorter, and therefore won with less bloodshed, the weaponisation of Europe increased the tensions between the five Great Powers (Britian, Russia, Austria-Hungry, Germany, and France) and the one "should-be Great Power" (Italy). As they moved into defensive alliances and the Bismarckian alliance system of isolated France with neutrality treaties between Germany and all the other Great Powers (and Italy) the steel altillery, machine guns, repeating rifles, and dreadnoughts almost gauranteed a bloody war when it broke out. This was entirely against the wishes of Krupp, Armstrong, and Vicker whose profits were hurt, and then their reputations destroyed, by the war.

Blackgang Chine

2004-12-05T08:44:00.000-08:00

Blackgang Chine was first documented on maps in the early 1800s, a "steep gaunt ravine" with a waterfall above the beach and 500-foot cliffs on either side. It was a popular location for dramatic artworks, as in this 1816 print by Peter de Wint, the somewhat exaggerated 1837 Brannon print showing the wreck of the Clarendon, and these by W Westwood, 1834, and Charles Cousen, 1869. It even appeared in novels, such as Captain Marryat's 1837 Snarleyyow (see chapter 16) that helped foster the probably apocryphal smuggling theory for its name (Kelly's directory 1886 considered it more likely to mean "bleak way"). Read more on Apothecary's Drawer.