Eastern Frontier Research Articles

The Way(S) of Horus in the Saite Period: Tell El-Kedwa and its Key Location Guarding Egypt's Northeastern Frontier

The “Way(s) of Horus” represented an active route and part of Egypt’s eastern frontier; it is known during the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, and continued to be maintained and controlled by Saite kings (Dynasty 26: 664-525 B.C.). Tell el-Kedwa formed part of a series of Saite fortresses guarding Egypt’s East frontier, and lies on the eastern edge of an ancient lagoon, guarding a northern access point to Egypt. In 2007, investigations at Kedwa uncovered a succession of two massive Saite forts, and constitute an important factor in clarifying Tell el-Kedwa’s role as a key control point for access to Egypt during the Late Period. Excavations have continued in 2008 along the south wall of the successive fortresses, and these results will be published in due course. However, the initial excavation results from 2007 have confirmed the role of this fortress as a significant Egyptian garrison defending Egypt’s eastern gateway.

Romania's Railways under Transition: Reorganisation Rehabilitation and Regional Development

The paper attempts a review of the Romanian Railwaysduring transition. The first half of the paper considers the fall intraffic and the resulting financial problems which have made itdifficult to maintain the system and continue with any development.The organisation has been restructured so that separatefreight and passenger companies can now concentrate on specificbusiness and compete on the market while the infrastructurecompany is catching up on the maintenance backlog andis proceeding slowly with further electrification. The secondsection concentrates on the European project for high-speedtransport corridors and especially the interest of Romania'srailways in Corridors Four and Nine. Although there have beendelays over several years in starting the complex work of upgrading,contracts for the first phase of Corridor Four (Bucharest-Ctimpina) have now been signed, a new passenger coachrunning 200 km/his in service and locomotive upgrades are underway.The significance of all this for regional developmentlies in the fact that remarkably little of the 1989 network hasbeen closed and the system has remained basically intact tocope with the upswing in the economy that has taken placefrom 2000 onwards. The high-speed corridors, which include anumber of variants, comprise suffteient axes to afford directlinks with the economic macro regions while additional projectsare on hand to improve cohesion on the eastern frontier wherethe most serious development challenges exist.

Protecting the Public Interest: Land Agents vs. Loggers on the Eastern Frontier, 1820–1840

America's progression from a frontier society to a settled society took more than three hundred years. During that time, Americans had to give up their view of the resources of the public domain as “free goods” and accept the idea of public compensation for appropriation of those resources for private gain. This attitudinal change took place first on the public lands of Maine and laid the groundwork for the wood-products industry in the United States.

A European or a Slavic Choice? Foreign Policy and Public Attitudes in Post-Soviet Europe

THE END OF COLD WAR DIVISIONS has placed a range of new choices before Western publics and governments. Few will be more important than the future shape of the alliances that bind some parts of the European continent, but not others. Three countries-the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland-are already a part of NATO. These three and 10 others are moving-although more slowly than they would wish-towards full membership of the European Union. But there is no immediate prospect of membership for the states that lie beyond, many of them former republics of the USSR (the European Union, at its Copenhagen summit in 1993, itself made clear that membership was 'out of the question' in such cases).1 We call these states 'the outsiders', and for the foreseeable future they will constitute a borderland between full members of the European family and the rest of the Eurasian landmass. The relations that are established between them will in turn be crucial for a changing Europe, and for economic development and political stability in the countries that have become its newly constituted eastern frontier.2 In this article we explore the implications of European enlargement for the 'outsider' states, drawing our evidence from four of the republics that formerly constituted the USSR but which now find themselves outside the negotiation of a framework that will bring together the rest of the continent: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. Our evidence is drawn, in part, from a programme of interviews with more than 140 members of the foreign policy-making community in our four countries: in ministries and presidential administrations, in the offices of parliamentary committees and political parties, in newspapers and news agencies, in government and independent research institutes, and with the representatives of a small but growing private sector. We draw also upon the evidence of popular attitudes that was provided by 18 focus groups, and by nationally representative surveys carried out in each of our four countries in the first half of 2000 and, in Russia alone, in 2001. In this article we have based ourselves primarily upon our survey evidence.3 In the discussion that follows we focus upon this wider public dimension of the process of eastward enlargement, and upon the distribution of opinion within our four countries on the place they occupy within a changing international order. Do ordinary

Between a Rock and a Hard Place—multi-ethnic Regions on the EU's New Eastern Frontier

Between a Rock and a Hard Place—multi-ethnic Regions on the EU's New Eastern Frontier

Between a Rock and a Hard Place—Multi-ethnic Regions on the EU's New Eastern Frontier

Between a Rock and a Hard Place—Multi-ethnic Regions on the EU's New Eastern Frontier

Peasant Pioneering: Russian Peasant Settlers Describe Colonization and the Eastern Frontier, 1880s-1910s

Peasant colonization in the eastern and southern borderlands of the Russian empire was a mass phenomenon in the last decades of the tsarist period yet historians, for a variety of reasons, still know little of what peasant settlers knew or thought about it. This article focuses on this question, approaching it in two ways. Since resettlement represented a major intersection between the worlds of educated and peasant Russia in the late imperial period, the first part of the article examines how the mingling of peasant and non-peasant ways of knowing created a diverse culture of information about resettlement and the frontier in the countryside. The second part of the article then examines settler writings--in particular, letters and longer settlement narratives--in order to identify the principal ways in which colonists represented their migrations and their encounters with borderland peoples and geographies. As the article argues, these experiences were diverse and so too were settler representations, but there was a language of local, practical concerns that was broadly shared by all migrants. Because they tended to describe and interpret their experiences in these terms, the article suggests that peasant settlers are perhaps best described as un-imperial imperialists, colonists whose colonization helped to advance and consolidate Russian imperialism in Russia's eastern territories yet who themselves identified much more clearly with local concerns than with imperial ones.

Fronteras, colonización y mano de obra indígena en la Amazonía andina (siglos XIX–XX): La construcción del espacio socio-económico amazónico en Ecuador, Perú y Bolivia (1792–1948)

Fronteras, colonización y mano de obra indígena en la Amazonía andina (siglos XIX–XX): La construcción del espacio socio-económico amazónico en Ecuador, Perú y Bolivia (1792–1948)

Byzantium through Armenian Eyes: Cultural Appropriation and the Church of Zuart'noc'

The seventh-century church of Zuart'noc' in Armenia is the earliest and largest aisled tetraconch in the medieval Caucasus. While previous scholarship has described the monument as a product of Byzantine influence, here Zuart'noc' is examined from the point of view of the patron, Nersēs III (640-661). This article argues that the construction was intended to convey a specific political message: to demonstrate the patron's alliance with the Byzantine political and cultural world. Through choices made in the iconography of the sculptural program, in epigraphic language and devices, in architectural planning, and perhaps even in the selection of the dedication, the church presents a network of references to the Byzantine imperium. As such, it is revealing of Armenian perceptions of Byzantium, standing as a witness to seventh-century diplomatic ties in a time of acute military tension on the eastern frontier.

Administrative Practice Between Religious Law (Shari'a) and State Law (Kanun) On the Eastern Frontiers of the Ottoman Empire

Administrative Practice Between Religious Law (Shari'a) and State Law (Kanun) On the Eastern Frontiers of the Ottoman Empire

Thalatta, Thalatta: Xenophon's view of the Black Sea

The moment when the Ten Thousand sighted the Euxine is one of the most haunting scenes to come down to us from the ancient world. Retreating from Cunaxa near Babylon in 401 BC, Xenophon describes how the Greeks fought their way northwards across Kurdistan to scale the Pontic mountains, and reached the sea at the Greek city of Trapezus, already more than two centuries old. By linking Xenophon's famous account with Hadrian's inspection of his eastern frontier, their route across the mountains, and their triumphant viewpoint, can be determined with some certainty.About 120 miles before the Greeks reached the Black Sea, the ruler of a large and prosperous city called Gymnias, probably the modern Bayburt, sent a guide to Xenophon.

British Logwood Extraction from the Mosquitia: The Origin of a Myth

British Logwood Extraction from the Mosquitia: The Origin of a Myth

Masters and servants on the Cape eastern frontier, 1760-1803

Masters and servants on the Cape eastern frontier, 1760-1803

A Tower of Babel in Slavic Lands: a survey article

The Orient has always occupied the interest of French travellers. By the end of the nineteenth century, nonetheless, many Oriental destinations such as Egypt or Greece had lost their appeal to Westerners owing to continual contacts between West and East. These Occidental travellers still drawn to the Orient, however, came to slake their thirst for Eastern culture in the 'tcharsia'l of Sarajevo, which had come to be perceived as being more 'Oriental' than the one in Cairo. Many nineteenth-century travellers to the Balkan Peninsula were motivated by an attraction to the Orient, especially those who voyaged to Bosnia and Herzegovina, two regions opened to the West only in 1878, when the Austro-Hungarian administration put an end to four centuries of Ottoman rule. With the opening of that new Eastern Frontier, a town like Sarajevo, where one could still find 'the real, unaltered Orient'2 (Moser 1895: 1) was only a few hours away from Paris.3 This new area of exploration became one of the main reasons why the lands between the Adriatic and the Pannonian plains exercised such an attraction on French-speaking travellers during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. The opening to the West of Bosnia and Herzegovina also represented a new area of economic expansion. In reference to Jean Gaulmier's work, L'Ideologue Volney, 1757-1820, Loukia Droulia explains:

Rethinking Russia From Zardob: Hasan Melikov Zardabi and the “Native” Intelligentsia

Many non-Russians in the Russian Empire were active members of imperial educated society (obshchestvo), and they often conceived of the colonial advance of Russia as part of the march of the progressive West and “civilization” itself into the backward lands of the East. Reformist empire builders who criticized the brutal wars and population transfers that marked the conquest of the southern borderlands also emphasized the civilizing mission of the empire on its eastern frontier. This article explores the conception of Russia and its empire in the work of the Azerbaijani publicist Hasan Melikov Zardabi. Zardabi was genuinely enthusiastic about Russia and the prospect of an enlightened imperial future for the lands of the former khanates on the frontier of the Iranian and Ottoman empires. The unusual circumstances of his life, however, which included exile to his remote and native village of Zardob, a small fishing village on the Kura River to the west of Baku, compelled him to re-evaluate his estimation of Russia and the benefits of imperial rule. Zardabi learned from his experience in Zardob, and grew to rethink his earlier views about civilization and the Russian Empire.

Masters and Servants on the Cape Eastern Frontier

Masters and Servants on the Cape Eastern Frontier

Reformulating Identities: British Settlers in Early Nineteenth‐Century South Africa

This paper examines the formation of a colonial identity among settlers from the British Isles who were relocated to the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony in 1820. It suggests that material aspirations united certain of the settlers in a political programme, and thus began the erosion of imported class (and other) divisions. However, it argues that their establishment as a capitalist colonial class is an insufficient explanation for their construction of a shared and emotive British settler identity. The settlers modified their inherited discourses of class, race, gender and nationality in order to forge solidarity, and the imperative for solidarity derived not so much from their mutual desire for accumulation, but from a corresponding collective insecurity. Not only were settlers afraid of Khoikhoi labour rebellion and Xhosa reprisals for land loss; they also feared abandonment by a seemingly unsympathetic metropole. Their aggressive capitalist endeavour, and collective fear of its destabilizing consequences, were two sides of the same coin, informing the development of a unifying social identity. The paper goes on to consider the mechanisms through which that identity was sustained, including acts of landscape representation, the textual generation of collective memory and the practice of communally binding, quotidian, gendered routines.

La frontera colombo-panameña: Una frontera selvática, cerrada al progreso, pero abierta a las migraciones más disímiles

Este artículo se enfoca al estudio de la geografía y las poblaciones indígenas y latinas que habitan la frontera este de Panamá, misma que marca el límite político de América Central y Sudamérica. La región fronteriza Panamá-Colombia es una región marginada y olvidada por el desarrollo; por largo tiempo ha sido refugio de las poblaciones que huyen de los conflictos políticos centroamericanos. Esta zona además de su aislamiento físico, representa una frontera social, un área separada de la economia nacional.

Perceptions of eastern frontier policy in Ammianus, Libanius, and Julian (337–363)

It is the purpose of this paper to examine how Ammianus, Libanius, and Julian conceived of Roman policy on the eastern frontier from the death of Constantine to failure of Julian′s invasion of Persia. Any consideration of the actual facts is secondary. The predominant conclusion will be that all three saw Rome′s as essentially defensive, her objective as the containment of persistent aggression. This will be seen to hold good even for Julian′s invasion., when they are offered by the sources, are presented in terms of, whether national or that of individuals: Constantius, Julian, Jovian, and. It will become apparent, and is sometimes implied, that these attitudes derive the peace imposed by Rome in 299, with which Rome could well rest content, Persia clearly could not.

The Shift in Ben-Gurion's Attitude toward the Kingdom of Jordan

T HE YEAR 1958 WAS A period of turmoil and disruption in the Middle East. In Israel, events in the region stimulated expectations about rectifications on the eastern border. After careful consideration of the changing situation, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion decided to preserve the status quo along Israel's eastern frontier. This decision signaled the start of a shift in his attitude toward the Kingdom of Jordan. At the beginning of the decade, Ben-Gurion had defined the border with as ridiculous, He claimed that Jordan is an artificial state with no future.1 Toward the end of the decade, he had come to perceive Jordan's independent existence as an important factor for contributing to Israel's security, and worked to maintain the status quo along the borders of the two states. There were many indicators of significant change in the region. On 22 February, Egypt and Syria merged to become the United Arab Republic (U.A.R.). The rulers ofJordan and Iraq reacted to this move by proclaiming a union between their two kingdoms. An armed uprising, fueled by support from neighboring Syria, raged in Lebanon.3 A military coup erupted in Iraq, wiping out the monarchy and its leading figures. There was a distinct danger of the takeover of and Lebanon by the U.A.R., a threat which exemplified the sturm und drang of Arab nationalism. In these fluid conditions around her borders, Israel had to re-examine her policy in the light of possible changes in Jordan's status. In 1958, too, American Marines landed on the Lebanese coast to block Syria from taking control of the country. At the same time, Britain flew in thousands of soldiers to defend the Hashemite regime in Jordan. In response to an American request, Israel permitted British planes carrying troops and military equipment to fly to through Israeli air space. This consent elicited sharp criticism from the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who demanded an immediate cessation of the flights; and when