British North Research Articles

Autobiography in Fragments: The Elusive Life of Edith Simcox

rT ^he January 1870 issue of the North British Review carried a long, learned historical-theoretical essay entitled Autobiographies. Though its confident generalizations and Johnsonian syntax hardly seem the work of a literary novice, it marked the writer's first substantial appearance in print. The essay proposes a three-stage history of autobiography corresponding roughly Comte's three historic periods: first, the epic story of a heroic life written with primitive energy; then, the realistic narrative in which a man stands as a representative of his age; and finally, the more problematic category of post-Romantic autobiography. The modern autobiographer was, it seemed, trapped in an Arnoldian era of decaying originality in which the self and the world could come into no satisfactory relation. He was forced to chronicle thought instead of action, changes of opinion instead of succeeding experience, or else represent the influences of imaginary circumstances upon a real mind (Autobiographies 530). The irresolute subjectivity of the third phase is clearly rendered as a matter for dismay.' The writer of this apparently magisterial essay was a twenty-fiveyear-old woman called EdithJemima Simcox. Born in 1844, she was the youngest of three children and the only girl in an upper-middle-class London family. Her brothers were educated at Oxford; both became Fellows of Queen's College. The elder, Augustus, developed a reputation as a brilliant classical scholar as well as an eccentric; the younger, William, took orders and served as rector of a College living at Weyhill (McKenzie 1-3). Edith herself belonged a generation whose daughters, perhaps even younger sisters, could go women's colleges; she was writing her review of autobiographies just at the time Girton opened its doors. University would have been a natural step for this

Revision of the Weevil GeneraMagdalinopsDietz andChelonychusDietz (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Anthonomini)

Abstract Four species of Anthonomini from western North America are assigned to the genus Magdalinops Dietz: M. vittipennis Dietz from California, the type species; M. knowltoni, new species, from Utah; M. falli, new species, from California, Nevada, Oregon and Wyoming; and M. alutaceus (Hatch), new combination, transferred from Epimechus Dietz, from British Columbia, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The species of Magdalinops are distinguished by the shining, glabrous basal segment of the compact, ovoid antennal club and by narrowly separated mesocoxae. Adults of these species have been collected on plants in either Artemisia or Chrysothamnus (Asteraceae). Two species of Anthonomini, also from western North America, are assigned to Chelonychus Dietz: C. longipes Dietz, the type species, and C. stragulus (Fall), new combination, transferred from Epimechus. The species of Chelonychus are distinguished from other anthonomines by the long, slender, str...

FIFTEENTH-CENTURY DURHAM AND THE PROBLEM OF PROVINCIAL LIBERTIES IN ENGLAND AND THE WIDER TERRITORIES OF THE ENGLISH CROWN

IT is remarkable when an historical interpretation has stood almost unchallenged for one hundred years. Yet this is the case with the approach to the history of the county palatine of Durham outlined by G. T. Lapsley in 1900; it is a story of the steady decline of this once highly autonomous jurisdiction which has been retold by virtually all those who have written on the subject since. 1 It is even more remarkable when that interpretation has acted as a vital support for two much more far-reaching paradigms. In the case of Lapsley’s interpretation of Durham, these extend not just elsewhere in the British Isles but also to North America. On the one hand is the approach to the territories of the English crown as a precociously centralised polity, characterised by the effective authority of the crown’s institutions and the rapid decline of what little provincial particularism had once been present. 2 With Lapsley’s Durham a pale shadow of its former self by the fifteenth century, historians have been able to propose that even the strongest of the ancient palatinates was effectively defunct and the power of the centre unopposed. 3 On the other hand, there is the paradigm which sees English North America as the scene of a conflict between the direct authority of an ambitious crown and a burgeoning desire for local self[hyphen]government which was eventually successful

Revolution, Religion, and National Identity: Imperial Anglicanism in British North America, 1745-1795

This work seeks to put into religious and political context the British government's imperial religious policy for its North American colonies in the fifty years around the American Revolution. It is of special interest to students of North American and British constitutional, political, and religious history.

New Books across the Disciplines

“New Books across the Disciplines” is a bibliographic resource that facilitates a cross-disciplinary survey of recent publications. Its scope ranges from late antiquity to the seventeenth century. Coverage is comprehensive for the large majority of North American and British publishers. Other European titles are included whenever received. Books are classified under variable topical headings and listed alphabetically by author's name. Entries include complete bibliographical data and annotations. With few exceptions, books appearing here have been published within the previous two years. Many will be presented here before they are ordered and shelved by libraries. The topics for this issue include: Editions and translations Reference Historiography, historians, and critical theory Biographical studies Medicine, science, and technology The body Sexuality Gender and works of women Visual culture Authorship and textuality

MILLENNIAL VICTORIA

HAVING SURVIVED THE Y2K HYSTERIA, we may feel we have entered new corridors of one hundred and one thousand years. But it is only in 2001 that the punctilious and historical among us may at last observe a centennial, truly the final year of the past century and the hundredth anniversary of the death of Queen Victoria.1 The Jubilees in the last decades of Victoria’s life, and the ceremonies of international mourning that followed her death, might seem to have said goodbye to all that, but in many ways we are still under the sway of the great queen who lent her name to the age before “the American century.” Our own fin-de-siècle urges us to rediscover the many forms of Victoria that have “been hidden in plain view for a hundred years,” as Margaret Homans and Adrienne Munich put it in their co-edited collection of essays, Remaking Queen Victoria (1).2 While North American and British feminist studies have dwelt among Victorian ways since the 1970s — with implications that I will consider below — the queen herself has recently commanded critical attention that might seem, like so many features of Victoria’s public performance, out of proportion. Yet that excess, like our obeisance to the arbitrary power of the calendar, seems to be the very stuff of imagined community and ideological construction, and thus worth watching in action. In any case, when feminist literary critics such as Adrienne Munich, Margaret Homans, and Gail Turley Houston

Confidence measures for large vocabulary continuous speech recognition

In this paper, we present several confidence measures for large vocabulary continuous speech recognition. We propose to estimate the confidence of a hypothesized word directly as its posterior probability, given all acoustic observations of the utterance. These probabilities are computed on word graphs using a forward-backward algorithm. We also study the estimation of posterior probabilities on N-best lists instead of word graphs and compare both algorithms in detail. In addition, we compare the posterior probabilities with two alternative confidence measures, i.e., the acoustic stability and the hypothesis density. We present experimental results on five different corpora: the Dutch ARISE 1k evaluation corpus, the German Verbmobil '98 7k evaluation corpus, the English North American Business '94 20k and 64k development corpora, and the English Broadcast News '96 65k evaluation corpus. We show that the posterior probabilities computed on word graphs outperform all other confidence measures. The relative reduction in confidence error rate ranges between 19% and 35% compared to the baseline confidence error rate.

Terrestrial glacial sedimentation on the eastern margin of the Irish Sea basin: Thurstaston, Wirral

This paper provides the first comprehensive description and interpretation of Pleistocene glacigenic deposits exposed in a cliff section at Thurstaston on the Wirral Peninsula, NW England. The section occupies a strategic position where the Irish Sea ice sheet impinged on the English Midlands and North Wales coast. The section comprises six lithofacies: diamicton, gravel, sand, laminites, mud and cobble pavements. The diamicton lithofacies can be divided into an upper, clast-poor sandy diamicton and multiple units of a lower, clast-rich sandy diamicton. Both diamictons exhibit cobble pavements. The two diamicton lithofacies are distinguished on the basis of textural composition, clast lithology, clast shape, clast surface features and clast macrofabrics. Between the diamicton lithofacies are interbeds of sands and gravels of variable thickness. Minor mud and laminites also occur in close association with the sands and gravels. Both the diamictons are interpreted as basal, deformation tills with the interbeds of the sand, gravel and mud lithofacies as indicators of subglacial meltwater flow and ponding. The cobble pavements are interpreted as the result of clasts sinking within, or to the base of, the deforming layer. The sedimentary succession at Thurstaston is best explained by the advance and subsequent recession of a single terrestrially based ice sheet during the Late Devensian. There is no evidence at Thurstaston to suggest a glaciomarine origin for the Late Devensian deglaciation sediments on this margin of the Irish Sea basin. The evidence at Thurstaston points to constructional deformation with the net accretion of till and interbeds caused by the upward migration of the deforming layer base.

Fred Anderson’s Seven Years’ War in imperial perspective

Contributors to this forum have had their territory allocated to them, but it would be utterly churlish not to stray out of it and begin with few general comments on this splendid book. Credits must begin with the publisher. Alfred A. Knopf are making available at airport bookstalls at most reasonable price book with standards of production which the British university presses cannot now match even for specialised scholarly monographs or editions of texts at the astronomical prices that they currently charge. Its typeface and paper are of sumptuous quality; it has robust binding and is embellished by beautiful illustrations and excellent maps finely reproduced. Anderson's literary skills mean that the content matches his publisher's capacity to produce what is most attractive object, likely to appeal to wide audience who will want to read as well as to own the book. He has the laudable aim of trying to be accessible to general readers and to be understood by those specialized prior knowledge (p. xv). He writes with much panache but with exemplary clarity and vigour that carries the reader easily and agreeably through long book. Both specialists and non-specialists will enjoy the sharp delineation of personalities, such as an uncharacteristically acerbic one of Wolfe, who at Quebec stood fair chance of sacrificing twelve superb battalions to no larger purpose than gratifying his desire for heroic death (p. 359), and the narratives of the great setpieces of the war in North America, Washington at Fort Necessity, Braddock on the Monongahela, Amherst at Louisbourg, as well as Wolfe at Quebec. If the book is fine example of military history in its traditional form, the narrative of campaigns and of the fortunes of war, it is also military history with all its modern sophistication, which treats war as an expression of the capacities and values of whole societies, and it is much more than military history even at its most ambitious. As its subtitle proclaims, it is an account of the fate of empire in British North and of the emergence of the United States of America. To encompass this great theme, Anderson extends his coverage beyond the formal end of the war to the repeal of the Stamp Act and the passing of the Declaratory Act in 1766. He believes that events after the end of the Seven Years' War, which are conventionally seen as marking the first stages of the revolution, in fact saw the continuation of great debate about the colonies' role in the empire that had begun with the war. The theme of war and its role in the failure of empire is set out at the very beginning of the book and sustained throughout. Without the Seven Years' War, American independence would surely have been long delayed, and achieved (if at all) without war of national liberation (p. xvi). The essence of the argument is that the war gave rise to fundamentally different interpretations of the nature of the British empire on both sides of the Atlantic. On the American side the war was seen as a providential victory, secured by free men in glorious cause -- that shaped the understanding of the colonists, lifted their expectations of imperial partnership, and embittered their reactions to the seemingly high-handed, intrusive policies that Grenville, Halifax and their colleagues sought to impose after the war (p. 587). These policies were directly attributable to the British interpretation of the experience of the war. Its lessons for them were that there was no relying on (p. 585). Britain had been forced to depend during the war on the willingness of Americans to contribute men and money of their own volition. It was widely believed that they had done so inadequately. The empire must now be made to work through the capacity of sovereign British authority to command compliance rather than again risking the uncertainties of voluntary co-operation. Hence British troops were to be kept in America in peacetime and were to be paid for by colonial contributions levied by parliament. …

The Decline and Fall of the North British Locomotive Company, 1940–62: Technological and Financial Mismanagement or Institutional Failure?

This article examines the decline of the North British Locomotive Company from 1940 to 1962, When it collapsed. It reveals that major market factors over which it had little control had much to do with its failure, and that, viewed in context, its strategic decisions were not so flawed as were thought at the time of the collapse. The firm was hindered by institutional constraints on bank lending, as well as unfortunate technological partnerships. The implications of the study for the major schools of thought surrounding British economic decline are brought out. In general, none of the positions examined fully explain the firm's collapse.

Young sex offenders: Background, personality, and crime characteristics in a Swedish forensic psychiatric sample

This is a descriptive study based on a file review of all 56 young (15-20 years old) sex offenders (YSOs) referred for forensic psychiatric assessment in Sweden during 1988-1995. Reliably extractable data, including file-based psychopathy ratings with the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991), were obtained from the complete clinical files of all offenders. Historical and clinical offender characteristics and victim and crime-related features are described and discussed in light of earlier reports. Hyperactivity/inattention, language disorders, and neurologic/neuropsychiatric disorders were prevalent in the histories of the offenders, but only a few were diagnosed as having psychopathy. We conclude that the studied YSOs in most respects were similar to subjects in various North American and British samples in exhibiting an array of individual and psychosocial risk factors, academic failure, and juvenile delinquency. These similarities support the concept that experiences and models from foreign settings could be applied in the development of empirically based assessment and treatment procedures for YSOs in Sweden, and possibly in other Nordic countries.

Genetic distances among North American, British, and West African house fly populations (Musca domestica L.).

Allozyme and mitochondrial gene diversities were estimated in house flies, Musca domestica L. (Diptera: Muscidae), sampled in Iowa, USA; Berkshire, England; and Kudang, The Gambia. Comparison of genomic allele frequencies among the three populations indicated small differences between the English and American samples but very large distances between English or American and the African. The FST statistic was 0.65 +/- 0.09 for allozymes. Pairwise FST was 0.14 between the English and the American samples; FST was 0.65 between the African population and the English and American. Mitochondrial variation in the same flies was assessed by SSCP methods which revealed nine haplotypes, none of which were shared in common. FST was 0.637 for the mitochondrial haplotypes. The research indicates greatly restricted gene flow between Africa and the temperate regions.

Settlement Patterns in Early Modern Colonization, 16th-18th Centuries

New France: the extension of France into rural Canada, R. Cole Harris propriete seigneuriale et groupes sociaux dans la vallee du Saint-Laurent (1663-1840), Fernand Ouellet. English North America and the Caribbean: from organization to society - Virginia in the 17th century, Sigmund Diamond looking out for number one - conflicting cultural values in early 17th century Virginia, T.H. Breen persistent localism - English social change and the shaping of New England institutions, T.H. Breen errand to the Indies - puritan colonialization from Providence Island through the western design, Karen Ordahl Kupperman plantation production and white proto-slavery - white indentured servants and the colonization of the English West Indies, 1624-1645, Hilary McD. Beckles. Spanish America: encomienda and hacienda - the evolution of the great estate in the Spanish Indies, James Lockhart encomienda, hacienda and corregimiento in Spanish America - a structural analysis, Robert G. Keith. Portuguese Brazil: the donatory captaincy in perspective - Portuguese background to the settlement of Brazil, H.B. Johnson cities of empire - Mexico and Bahia in the 16th century, Stuart B. Schwartz Palmares -an African state in Brazil, R.K. Kent. Portuguese and Dutch Africa: Portuguese attempts at monopoly on the upper Guinea coast, 1580-1650, Walter Rodney the Portuguese on the Zambesi from the 17th to the 19th centuries, M.D.D. Newitt the first two centuries of colonial agriculture in the Cape colony - a historiographical review, robert Ross. Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish Asia: trade and the flag - the Portuguese at Nagapattinam, 1530-1658, Sanjay Subrahmanyam Batavia, 1619-1740 - the rise and fall of a Chinese colonial town, Leonard Blusse the development of Philippine cities before 1900, Daniel F. Doeppers.

Holocene sediment storage in the Humber Estuary

Abstract In order to determine the processes that have governed the accumulation and erosion of sediments in the Humber Estuary (English North Sea coast) through the Holocene, the character, volume and source of sediments were studied. Eight sediment suites were identified on the basis of chemostratigraphy, lithostratigraphy and mineralogy. The locally sourced, freshwater, Basal Suite is overlain by the Newland and Butterwick Suites, deposited between c. 8 and 7.4 cal. ka bp in brackish environments behind a morainic barrier at St Andrew’s Dock, Hull. These are overlain by the largely marine, saltmarsh sediments of the Garthorpe Suite, which in turn are overlain, with erosional contact, by the channel sandflat and mudflat deposits of the Saltend, Sunk Island and Skeffling Suites. Most of the Saltend Suite is likely to have been deposited since c. 4 ka ago, whilst the Sunk Island and Skeffling Suites are likely to have been deposited since Medieval times and from the late eighteenth century onwards, respectively, as indicated by their concentrations of anthropogenic metals. On the coast, the Spurn Suite consists of sediments, associated with a spit system, which are almost entirely marine in origin. The suites show a progressive increase in marine influence; sediments of the oldest suite being entirely from the terrestrial catchment, those of the younger suites from erosion of the North Sea floor and coast. The relationships between suites show that during the last 4 ka the geomorphological evolution of the estuary has been marked by widespread erosion episodes that have led to the partial removal or redistribution of earlier deposits. By modelling the volumes of the suites it can be shown that, of the total volume of the estuarine fill (9.6 km 3 ), over half is likely to have been deposited during this period.

Review Article: North Urban Political Economy, Urban Theory and British Research

In 1976, when European debates within urban theory were dominated by neo-Marxist and neo-Weberian approaches to cities as sites for the provision of social and welfare services, the very different notion of ‘the city as growth machine’ slipped into the US urban studies lexicon with the publication of Harvey Molotch's article of the same name. In 1983, the year in which Castells brought the radical phase of European urban studies to a halt with a famous warning against ‘the useless construction of abstract grand theory’, the concept of an urban regime had a similarly unobtrusive birth when the phrase was used by Fainstein and Fainstein to describe ‘the circle of powerful elected officials and top administrators’ in US city government. Had the story ended there it is unlikely that the world – especially outside North America – would have heard much more of urban regimes and growth machines. As it has turned out, though, from the late 1980s onwards urban scholars have hardly seemed able to hear enough about these two approaches within US urban political economy.

Sampling trips for measuring discards in commercial fishing based on multilevel modelling of measurements in the North Sea from NE England

This study estimates the effects of variables (fishing, spatial, temporal) on discarding and proposes a scheme for measuring discarding. Data are used from fishing in the English North Sea for cod, haddock and whiting. Analysis of variance of discarding rates (numbers discarded/numbers caught) has provided estimates of components of variance associated with variables. Significant estimates of components of variance have emerged from data spanning 3 years. There is a large component of variance associated with trips (the lowest level at which data are available) reflecting an inherent noisiness in discarding rates. For haddock and whiting, there are significant components of variance associated with years. An effect of years on cod was not found for the years for which data are available. The variables: gear type, port of landing, fishing grounds and quarter, are crossed at a common level. Of these gear contributes the greatest variation in discarding rates. Port and grounds are also important contributors. Quarter has a small but significant effect. Multivariate analysis of variance has produced evidence for strong multilevel correlations in discarding rates between haddock and whiting. Discarding rates vary significantly with size of catch (trip) for cod and for haddock. Variables are reduced to strata, and analyses of variance for models incorporating strata carried out. An approach to sampling based on stratification with proportional allocation is discussed. This provides efficient sampling and ensures representative sampling in a problem for which there are relatively few observations, and several variables affecting the response variable.

Safe practices for sampling commercial trawler catches at sea

Fisheries scientists need accurate data about total catch. If the data are to include fish discarded at sea the scientists must sail with commercial fishing vessels to sample catches as they arrive on the deck. Commercial fishing is dangerous. In 1996, 20 fishers were killed and 26 vessels were lost in the UK alone. Trawling is considered most dangerous because of the frequent handling of heavy equipment. Catch sampling officers (CSOs) permitted by fishers to sail opportunistically on routine fishing trips are not in a position to demand high standards of marine safety as they might if the vessel were chartered. UK health and safety laws require the employer to ensure that all possible risks to staff are minimised, as far as is reasonably practicable. Therefore, when the English North Sea catch sampling study commenced in 1996, attention was given to the safety equipment, training and organisation needed to protect CSOs at sea. The resulting safety procedures and equipment are detailed in this note. Although tailored for UK legislation and climate, they may be a helpful starting point in other countries also.

North British Mine and Mt Tarrengower

North British Mine and Mt Tarrengower

On the Populousness of Africa: An Eighteenth-Century Text

John Hippisleys text on the populousness of Africa published in 1764 is presented in full. The essay appears to be the earliest printed discussion of the subject in English. Hippisley notes how the expansion and high cultivation of sugar colonies in the West Indies fueled the enormous demand for Black slaves from Africa. For the preceding 80-100 years at least 40000 Black slaves per year were exported to the Americas by the English French Portuguese Dutch Danes and North Americans. However despite such a very large outflow of inhabitants the supply of slaves in Africa seemed to be as plentiful as it was 20-30 years earlier. Hippisley considers Africas population size the populations ability to maintain certain numbers and polygamy and desired family size on the continent. It is argued that Africa lacked none of the constraints to fertility and population growth found in Europe and as such there would continue to be plenty of Black Africans to procure and export as slaves.

Serviceability: Lively floors — North American and British design methods

Serviceability: Lively floors — North American and British design methods