Early Twentieth Century Research Articles

Going bananas! The scientific marketing of a ‘new’ fruit in early 20th-Century Sweden

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the introduction of the banana to Sweden in the early twentieth century and how “eating knowledge” of this new and exotic fruit was transferred to consumers through marketing that drew heavily upon scientific discourse. Using a case study of advertisements from Fyffes – the most dominant banana brand of the period – it employs multimodal social semiotics to identify a range of verbal and visual strategies that were adopted to turn the product into a core part of the Swedish diet. It argues that these strategies were critical in educating Swedish people about the link between food and health and shaped their (positive) attitudes toward bananas. The banana, thus, stands as a strong example of how marketing can transport, shape and transform knowledge about food, particularly at a critical time when it is first being introduced into a country.

A perennial controversy: The St. Peter Sandstone of the American Midwest

The St. Peter Sandstone of the American Midwest is presented today in textbooks as a simple and unproblematic example of “layer-cake geology.” The thesis of this paper is that the very simplicity of St. Peter Sandstone has made it challenging to characterize. In widely separated states, the sandstone appeared under different names. Several theories about how it formed began to circulate. The story of the St. Peter is not only the story of the assemblage of a stratigraphic unit over a vast area during three centuries, but also the role the study of the provenance of this unit played in the development of sedimentology in the early twentieth century, research that was made all the more challenging by its “simple” mineralogy. Indeed, the St. Peter has been controversial since it was first described.

How fruit moves: Crop systems, culture, and the making of the commercial blueberry, 1870–1930

Social Impact StatementThe history of blueberries highlights the agroecological systems, multispecies relationships, and socioeconomic factors that shape eating habits and commercial availability of food. In the United States, an elaborate and lucrative human‐managed crop system evolved around so‐called wild blueberries in the late nineteenth‐century. Blueberry domestication under the auspices of public‐private collaboration in the early twentieth century then established the foundation for today's global blueberry trade. Wild blueberries continued to occupy specific economic niches, however, and an uneasy dynamic developed between locally revered Vaccinium species and the commercial “blueberry.” In an urbanizing world of people increasingly alienated from their food sources, blueberries provide a reminder of the intricate relationships between people and plants that shape both basic prospects of survival and specific ways of life, whether for good or for ill.Summary This work examines blueberries' emergence as a commercial product and how it grew out of a history that involved multiple Vaccinium species and their convoluted interactions with human ecologies. It outlines the agroecology of the wild blueberry trade in nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century Maine, followed by blueberries' domestication and expanded commercialization in the 1910s and 1920s through a public‐private collaboration between USDA scientist Frederick V. Coville and New Jersey cranberry grower Elizabeth C. White. The complexity of blueberries' path to becoming a global commodity underscores the significance of cultural factors in determining how a singular “blueberry” came to be defined in the first place. The article uses a range of sources to document blueberries' history of commercialization from the late nineteenth century to the present. In particular, local newspapers from Maine made it possible to reconstruct the agroecology of the wild blueberry trade in the state in the period prior to 1920, while a variety of government documents and agricultural journals provided the key means for exploring blueberries' domestication and commercialization in the 1910s and 1920s. The article delineates the main features of the agroecology that defined Maine's wild blueberry crop system and the public‐private relationship surrounding the domestication and commercialization of blueberry culture in New Jersey. These histories ultimately underscore the interplay between regional cultures, processes of commodification, and a nationalizing economy that came to define the blueberry as a product in the fresh fruit market of the United States. Public‐private collaborations, cultural discourses, and the evolving market relations that came with the globalization of blueberry culture in the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries continue to reflect trends established earlier in the twentieth century. The article concludes that the emergence of “the blueberry” as a singular commercial product embodies a set of systems and relationships between plant species and human societies that blurs the boundaries between wild and domesticated, ranges in scale from the local to the global, and preserves niches for localism within a global commercial landscape that itself contains multiple species underneath a veneer of standardization. Today's globalized fresh blueberry thus contains within itself a long and convoluted history of cultivation, plant breeding, competing crop systems, market relations, and cultural constructs.

Hunting the hippo: a brief history of wildlife hunting and the reconfiguration of animal-human relations in Namibia’s Zambezi region

The Zambezi region in north-eastern Namibia is located at the centre of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA), an area that is endowed with a great variety of wildlife and managed not only to protect this asset but also to promote its proliferation and economic utilisation. In this contribution I consider the notion of hunting in Namibia and explore the realms of local hunting and trophy hunting from the turn of the twentieth century until today. Starting my journey with the depiction of hippo hunting in colonial times, I explore how a hunting narrative was created along the spectacle of hunting big game. Besides the glorification of hippopotami amongst white hunters and early European travellers, the modification of hunting practices that occurred alongside the reconnaissance of this region in the early twentieth century resulted in strong pressures on hippo populations — and wildlife more generally — and led to the strict regulation of all hunting practices in favour of trophy hunting and at the expense of local hunting. This colonial trajectory of hunting has played a major role in the planning and implementation of a conservation landscape that has strong effects on local livelihoods.

Material for studying the garden myths of King John III from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century

The image of King John III as a great lover of gardens is permanently enshrined in Polish tradition and is still alive in the consciousness of many Poles. The sources of this phenomenon are stories, legends and anecdotes published throughout the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, crediting him with planting a countless number of trees, bringing poplars from the Ottoman Empire or employing Turkish captives to build the gardens of the Wilanów palace. The belief in their veracity was so strong that even eminent historians, ethnographers, horticulturists and botanists included them in scientific publications and encyclopaedias published at the time. This is how a kind of garden mythology of King John III was created, which to this day has not been analysed or verified in a more detailed way. The aim of the present study was to collect and systematise the most important motifs in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature related to King John IIIs gardening activities. In addition, the sources of the myth of John III as the gardener king were identified and verified, and existing monumental solitaires, groups of trees and avenues in contemporary Poland commemorating the victory at the Battle of Vienna or the royal couple were identified.

Türkiye in the Kazakh socio-political thought of the early twentieth century

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to investigate Turkish issues in the Kazakh socio-political thought of the early twentieth century. To conduct this study, a set of scientific methods was used, such as general scientific methods of information analysis and synthesis, methods of system analysis and content analysis; specialised methods of historical science – source methods (classification of sources, analysis and comparison, synthesis of information received), historical-system method, comparative-historical method, problematic-chronological method. The main method of the study is the historical-system method, using which a structural and functional analysis of the problem was carried out. The results of this study disclose the specific features of the socio-political life of Kazakhs at the beginning of the twentieth century, provides data on their party movements and the publishing house of national mass media, substantiates the role of Türkiye in the context of Pan-Turkism aspirations of individual political movements and personalities. The materials of this study are of practical value for an in-depth study of the history of Kazakhstan in the twentieth century, history of Pan-Turkism movements, and further research of such scientific issues as the role of intellectuals, public associations, and national Kazakh printed publications in the acquisition of statehood of Kazakhstan.

Race, Place, and Religion: African American Missionaries in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

This paper attempts to provide a more complete analysis of the various conceptions of race and identity held by African American missionaries working in Africa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While some attention has been paid to African American missionaries working in Africa at this time, little has been written about how their different theological beliefs impacted their conceptions of race and identity as it relates to the local African populations they encountered. It can be determined that there were distinct links between the different theological beliefs held by African American missionaries working in Africa at this time and their conceptions of race. For example, evangelical African American missionaries more often associated themselves with a Pan-African identity than non-evangelical ones. Alongside this, their theological understandings of the Back-to-Africa Movement were quite different depending on where they worked in Africa and it impacted how they viewed themselves in association with the local African populations they encountered. Finally, different conceptions of race and identity manifested themselves along eschatological lines. Although these missionaries’ conceptions of race have already been analyzed, the connection to their theological beliefs and how it influenced their conceptions of race is relatively unexplored.

Introducing 'Brother-Love': If 'No-Homo' Were Invented in the Victorian Era

Working off of information surrounding nineteenth century intimate male friendships provided by E. Anthony Rotundo’s 1989 article “Romantic Friendship: Male Intimacy and Middle-Class Youth in the Norther United States, 1800-1900,” as well as ideas of female intimacy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Julian Carter’s 2005 article “On Mother-Love: History, Queer Theory, and Nonlesbian Identity,” the concept of “brother-love” encompasses important components of intimate male friendships during the Victorian period. Hidden physical and emotional intimacy were vital to these intimate friendships, in ways differing from Carter’s “mother-love” as explored in this project. Anna Clark’s concept of “Twilight Moments” (2005) will help explain “brotherlove” as it is compared to Carter’s “mother-love.” “Brother-love” is a response to contemporary terms and concepts queer scholars use when focusing on historical moments, and it provides an alternative frame of reference for intimate and romantic male friendships while extracting contemporary influence of same-sex relations.

Images of the Past: Introduction to Walter Benjamin and “Berlin Childhood Around 1900”

ABSTRACT In “Images of the Past” we introduce the times, life and philosophical formation of the early twentieth century German Jewish philosopher and pioneering cultural critic Walter Benjamin. We discuss his theories of experience and nonsensuous similarities and refer to his masterpiece “Berlin Childhood around 1900” to examine these and other key concepts in his work. Representing a peak in his exceptionally fecund and still immediately relevant contribution, the book is a profound meditation on childhood, memory, language and long experience (Erfahrung), and a vivid illustration of his concept of the “social unconscious.”

Black Bottom and Paradise Valley: The Intersection of Race, Class, and Memory in Twentieth Century Detroit

The Black Bottom community of Detroit, Michigan became an ethnic hub for African American’s due to the Great Migration of the early twentieth century. This was a vibrant community composed of a heterogeneous population from various backgrounds and social classes, though faced with ongoing issues regarding sanitary and housing conditions due to entrenched racial segregation within the city. By 1936, the neighbourhood was split by middle class entrepreneurs who wished to raise the cultural prominence of the community’s entertainment district. This research analyzes the intra-class relations that caused the fracturing of two communities: Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. Moreover, this work refutes historical debates, which wish to concretely bind these entities as separate. Through an overview of Detroit’s history, the memory of the community is assessed effectively creating an intersectional analysis encompassing African American intra-class relations, culture, the fluidity of space, and collective memory.

True Echoes

This article describes True Echoes, a three-year project initiated by the British Library to research its Oceanic wax cylinder collections and to reconnect digitised sound recordings with their originating communities. These collections, recorded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, comprise some of the earliest recordings of Pacific cultures and histories and represent the early use of sound recording for European anthropological research in the region. The recordings were made in Papua New Guinea,Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and the Torres Strait Islands of Australia. They, along with the British Library’s wider collection of ethnographic cylinders, were added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2011.This article concentrates on some of the earliest recordings, 102 wax cylinders of the Alfred Cort Haddon 1898 Expedition (Torres Strait and British New Guinea) Cylinder Collection (C80). The collection also contains 39 cylinders recorded in Papua New Guinea, which will not be discussed here. Research methods involved historical research in partnership with Oceanic cultural institutions and participatory research with community members, which provided local knowledge and new information. The “multi-perspectivist approach” employed by the project team was important for gathering a variety of perspectives on the collections and for revealing “the complex processes involved in their production, collection and interpretation”.

Shifts in receptors during submergence of an encephalitic arbovirus

Western equine encephalitis virus (WEEV) is an arthropod-borne virus (arbovirus) that frequently caused major outbreaks of encephalitis in humans and horses in the early twentieth century, but the frequency of outbreaks has since decreased markedly, and strains of this alphavirus isolated in the past two decades are less virulent in mammals than strains isolated in the 1930s and 1940s1–3. The basis for this phenotypic change in WEEV strains and coincident decrease in epizootic activity (known as viral submergence3) is unclear, as is the possibility of re-emergence of highly virulent strains. Here we identify protocadherin 10 (PCDH10) as a cellular receptor for WEEV. We show that multiple highly virulent ancestral WEEV strains isolated in the 1930s and 1940s, in addition to binding human PCDH10, could also bind very low-density lipoprotein receptor (VLDLR) and apolipoprotein E receptor 2 (ApoER2), which are recognized by another encephalitic alphavirus as receptors4. However, whereas most of the WEEV strains that we examined bind to PCDH10, a contemporary strain has lost the ability to recognize mammalian PCDH10 while retaining the ability to bind avian receptors, suggesting WEEV adaptation to a main reservoir host during enzootic circulation. PCDH10 supports WEEV E2–E1 glycoprotein-mediated infection of primary mouse cortical neurons, and administration of a soluble form of PCDH10 protects mice from lethal WEEV challenge. Our results have implications for the development of medical countermeasures and for risk assessment for re-emerging WEEV strains.

“Palamism” and “Barlaamism” in the Russian Name-Glorifiers Controversy of the 1910s: The Philosophical Background

AbstractI find two lines of interpretation of the philosophical status of “Palamism” and “Barlaamism” in the Russian thought of the late 19th to early twentieth centuries. One of these lines links Palamism with Aristotelianism and nominalism, and Barlaamism with Platonism and realism. The other line, conversely, connects Palamism with Platonism and Barlaamism with nominalism. I trace in detail the development and transformation of these lines in the course of the Name-Glorifiers controversy of the 1910s. I show the impact of the academic Byzantine studies of that time on the course of the theological debate.

A Terminological History of the Acadian Tragedy

ABSTRACT In his book A Great and Noble Scheme (2005), historian John Mack Faragher explains that the 1755–63 Acadian deportation can be termed “ethnic cleansing,” following contemporary United Nations and scholarly usage of the expression. In this paper, instead of addressing the terms of contemporary UN or scholarship, as Faragher does, to see which terms can be used for the Acadian tragedy, I provide a terminological history of the Acadian tragedy. This terminological history studies the terms used for the Acadian tragedy since the eighteenth century until the early twentieth century and shows how they recur in the mid-twentieth century discussions on genocide. First, I investigate Edmund Burke’s treatment of the Acadian tragedy seen as resulting from acts of destroying, rooting out, and extirpating, and the Abbot Raynal using terms for the tragedy such as embarking, transporting, driving away (later deporting), destroying, perishing, depopulating, and, indirectly, crime against humanity. I also focus on the nineteenth-century account of the Acadian tragedy by Catherine Reed Williams, who expanded Raynal with notions of barbarity, banishment, expulsion, extermination, and moral shock, and on others after her who brought terms for Acadians such as annihilation, atrocity, evacuation, and clearing. Second, I highlight Acadian memory in the 1950s genocide debate in Washington (DC) and how the terminological history of the Acadian tragedy appears in a document Raphael Lemkin had on Acadians. I also explain how Lemkin, unknowingly or not, rearticulated in publications and texts and found in his research the terms already used for Acadians as he addressed his genocide concept.

Impact of grain export on the Russian Empire’s industrial development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the influence of grain export on Russia’s industrial development during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Employing ARDL, NARDL, and VECM models, the authors explored how grain export affected industrial growth, ultimately concluding a long-term negative impact on Russia's industry. The study identifies four channels of influence: consumption, savings, distribution of labour, and investment. Specifically focusing on the investment-related channel, the authors observed a negative long-term impact of grain export on industrial capital. This deduction is rooted in the dominance of small-scale grain exporters during the period, resulting in widely dispersed export profits among intermediaries. Moreover, traders showed a preference for investing outside Russia, contributing to the limited investment within the country's industrial sector.

Cod otoliths document accelerating climate impacts in the Baltic Sea

Anthropogenic deoxygenation of the Baltic Sea caused major declines in demersal and benthic habitat quality with consequent impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Using Baltic cod otolith chemical proxies of hypoxia, salinity, and fish metabolic status and growth, we tracked changes from baseline conditions in the late Neolithic (4500 BP) and early twentieth century to the present, in order to understand how recent, accelerating climate change has affected this key species. Otolith hypoxia proxies (Mn:Mg) increased with expanding anoxic water volumes, but decreased with increasing salinity indexed by otolith Sr:Ca. Metabolic status proxied by otolith Mg:Ca and reconstructed growth were positively related to dissolved oxygen percent saturation, with particularly severe declines since 2010. This long-term record of otolith indicators provides further evidence of a profound state change in oxygen for the worse, in one of the world’s largest inland seas. Spreading hypoxia due to climate warming will likely impair fish populations globally and evidence can be tracked with otolith chemical biomarkers.

Revitalising Riboflavin: Unveiling Its Timeless Significance in Human Physiology and Health.

Since the early twentieth century, research on vitamins has revealed their therapeutic potential beyond their role as essential micronutrients. Riboflavin, known as vitamin B2, stands out for its unique characteristics. Despite numerous studies, riboflavin remains vital, with implications for human health. Abundantly present in various foods, riboflavin acts as a coenzyme in numerous enzymatic reactions crucial for human metabolism. Its role in energy production, erythrocyte synthesis, and vitamin metabolism underscores its importance in maintaining homeostasis. The impact of riboflavin extends to neurological function, skin health, and cardiovascular well-being, with adequate levels linked to reduced risks of various ailments. However, inadequate intake or physiological stress can lead to deficiency, a condition that poses serious health risks, including severe complications. This underscores the importance of maintaining sufficient levels of riboflavin for general wellness. The essential role of riboflavin in immune function further emphasises its significance for human health and vitality. This paper examines the diverse effects of riboflavin on health and stresses the importance of maintaining sufficient levels for overall well-being.

Minorities at War, Part 1: State Policies in Times of Conflict

This short introduction provides an overview for the first part of the special issue of ‘Minorities at War’. The issue’s overarching theme explores how periods of conflict influenced the relationship between minority groups in Central and Eastern Europe and their respective host states during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The articles featured are based on contributions originally presented at the BASEES Study Group for Minority History’s second official biennial symposium, ‘Minorities at War from Napoleon to Putin’, which was held at the New Europe College in Bucharest, Romania from 11-12 May 2023.

Closing the cell door: where are the Histories of Care-leavers at the old Melbourne Gaol?

ABSTRACT The Old Melbourne Gaol maintains a crucial place in social histories of the city. The Gaol ceased operation in 1924 and, as a heritage site, locates its history firmly in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. While the exhibition invites a moral consideration of modes of punishment implemented in the gaol, its critique suggests resolution: these are not practices that we engage in now. By presenting these kinds of closed or finished narratives, the site turns visitors firmly towards the past rather than creating a site which invites reflection on the harms that carceral institutions continue to inflict in the present day. This, we argue, has a particular significance for Care-leavers, who are a significant demographic to have passed through the Gaol’s walls. While recognising that a site like the Old Melbourne Gaol has innumerable memory communities invested in it, and that no presentation of the site might fully satisfy them all, this article argues for present-looking public histories that place the gaol’s history in conversation with weighty social justice issues of today, including acknowledging the gaol’s role as part of the foundations of the ‘care’-to-prison pipeline observed by many activists as a pressing social issue in the twenty-first century.

Charcot’s contribution to the problem of language in mental medicine

ABSTRACT Jean-Martin Charcot’s 1883 lectures on aphasia at the Salpêtrière Hospital were seen as the starting point for the development of a psychology in the work of the famous neurologist. In his lectures, Charcot set out a theory of language function at the cerebral level, distinguishing between the different centers involved in speech production and those necessary for reading. His lectures, which also postulated the independence of ideas from words, were to resonate beyond aphasia specialists, and particularly with alienists. To document this dimension of the reception of neurology in the field of psychiatry, this article refers to Jules Séglas’s synthesis on Les troubles du langage chez les aliénés, published in 1892, which summarized the knowledge acquired during the nineteenth century about modifications of expression in madness and whose original ideas were to mark the psychiatric semiology of the early-twentieth century. The analysis details how Séglas cited and adapted Charcot’s conceptions to explain the production of incomprehensible speech in idiocy and the formation of hallucinations, thus contributing to the spread of the neurologist’s model among his fellow alienists.