Eastern Frontier Research Articles

The Mobilong alluvial diamond field of southeast Cameroon: Revised economic potential and sedimentological attributes

Since they were first discovered in the 1930s, the diamond placers that are dispersed intermittently along Cameroon's eastern frontier with the Central African Republic have been the subject of numerous exploration campaigns. These small placers, mainly confined to Quaternary sediments, have never been mined on a large and commercial scale, but have instead been, and continue to be, exploited by the artisanal mining sector. From exploration in the 1980s, the Mobilong alluvial field was recognised to have economic potential based on a manually directed exploration campaign, but gravel sample volumes used for grade estimation are considered to be unrepresentatively small in this study. Recent mechanical mining and bulk trench sampling of this alluvial field, however, yielded greater gravel volumes, which allowed for a modern reassessment of the placer's sedimentology and diamond potential. It demonstrated that this alluvial field is overall a low-volume, small-diamond and uneconomic placer, with higher diamond concentrations in localised areas. The low potential is attributed to the limited availability of diamonds from secondary detrital sources, coupled with the inefficiency of fluvial mechanisms to promote diamond concentration. With unknown kimberlite occurrences in Cameroon and the neighbouring Central African Republic, Proterozoic and Cretaceous successions are considered to be detrital hosts of diamonds; a re-evaluation of these provide insight into their diamond contribution to the Mobilong alluvial field.

Insurgent law: Bengal Regulation III and the Chin-Lushai expeditions (1872–1898)

AbstractThis article studies the adjudicatory practices deployed by colonial military and police forces during a series of punitive British expeditions in the eastern frontiers of British India and the northern reaches of British Burma, specifically the Lushai and Chin Hills in the late nineteenth century. It magnifies the lives, deaths, and afterlives of two ‘tribal’ chiefs of Lushai Hills. Among others, these figures were held responsible for a series of raids carried out in the settled British territories of the northeastern frontiers in the 1890s. After a few inconclusive skirmishes with the British expeditionary force, they were apprehended and imprisoned in a jail in Hazaribagh under the preventive detention act of Bengal Regulation III of 1818, which was reserved and designed to arrest political dissidents of the empire. After a few months, two of them, Liengpunga and Khalkam, were found hanging from the windows of their prison latrine. The British administration labelled these deaths as suicides and closed the cases. The article opens them up. In doing so, it narrates an oblique history of the Scheduled District Act of 1874 which removed hill districts from the jurisdictions of regular courts. By focusing on the historical imbrication of Bengal Regulation III of 1818 in the Scheduled District Act, the article highlights the punitive techniques embedded in the seeming protectionist impulse of the colonial state, something that persists in India's administration of the Northeast region. Closer to the concerns of this issue, it reflects on a legal genealogy of tribal subjects in South Asia.

Ray and Pahlaw in the Context of Sasanian Iran

Abstract Ray—located near present-day Tehran—is among the most important historical areas in Iran and the plains to the south of Tehran have always been densely inhabited and intensely cultivated thanks to the waters coming from Mount Tochal and the Alborz Mountains. Historical records and archeological data for the early history of the city in the Median, Achæmenid, Seleucid, and even Parthian periods are not exhaustive. In the present study, an attempt is made to bring together primary and secondary sources to define better the role that the province of Ray played during the Sasanian period, during which it was host, among others, to a huge military camp crucial to manning the northern and eastern frontier. Combined archeological and historical evidence shows that Ray has played an important and pivotal role in the history of Iran from the first years of the formation of the Sasanian Empire to the very last years of the empire, leaving a lasting memory in the Islamic literary tradition.

Exploitation at the frontier of Europe: Workers’ Alienation and Emancipation in Amazon Poland

This paper investigates workers’ exploitation in contemporary global logistics. Relying on Marx’s concept of alienation, we examine the case of an Amazon warehouse in Poland, at the eastern frontier of the European Union. In line with existing studies, our analysis shows how algorithmic Taylorism and casualized employment alienate workers from the work process, social relations with other workers, the commodities they handle, and ultimately themselves as human beings. At the same time, we highlight how these modalities of work and employment integrate workers into the global circuit of capital, reconstituting them as universal, undifferentiated, global waged labour and as consumers. This integration at once emancipates workers located at the eastern frontier of the European market from more ‘locally embedded’ exploitative capital-labour relations prevalent in that context. Our study contributes to the growing literature on global logistics and Amazon by pointing to the key role of the ‘emancipating effects’ of alienation, which Marx theorized. This complements current explanations of labour’s exploitation which focus on workers’ structural vulnerability and coercion. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our findings for the possibilities of these workers’ mobilization.

The British German Legion and the Irish “Marriage Force”: Assisted Emigration Schemes and the Mid-Victorian British Empire

AbstractThis article examines the Lady Kennaway assisted emigration scheme, designed to send women from Ireland's workhouses to the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony in Southern Africa. First proposed by Colonial Secretary Henry Labouchere in 1857, the scheme's purpose was to provide wives for the British German Legion, which had been resettled to British Kaffraria the previous year. Initially, the plan appeared to be of benefit for both Ireland and the Cape Colony. According to colonial officials and emigration commissioners, Ireland would be rid of a superfluous population, the Irish women would attain social and economic advancement, and the Eastern Cape would gain much-needed female settlers. Emigration authorities quickly found their optimism tempered by realities, however, as many Irish Poor Law guardians and workhouse women refused to participate. The Lady Kennaway scheme—so named after the ship that carried the emigrants—demonstrates the ways in which local interests could, and often did, shape imperial practices. Moreover, in tracking the decisions of emigration commissioners in London, colonial officials in Southern Africa, Poor Law guardians in Ireland, and potential female emigrants, this analysis reveals the multitude of individuals who molded Britain's mid-nineteenth-century imperial project.

Building on Foreign Expertise. Military and Agricultural Experts and the Eastward Expansion of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Sweden

In the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century, the Kingdom of Sweden was almost constantly engaged in armed conflicts with neighbouring kingdoms. Both offensive and defensive wars were characteristic of the Swedish foreign policy from 1550s to 1650s. The same period witnessed the emergence of the Swedish Empire because, due to these conflicts, Sweden was able to acquire new domains in the Baltic region and to expand its territories in both east and south. These geopolitical realities pushed all Vasa kings into multiple projects aiming to rationalise Sweden’s army and its military strategy as well as to develop the acquired areas in various ways. Our article presents two development project examples of this emerging empire (1) Scottish officers (the Swedish Crown acknowledged the military expertise of Scottish troops as well as their officers and tried to harness this experience for Sweden), and (2) the planned modernisation of Ingria through German and Dutch colonisation and agricultural development. The article examines the needs and expertise expectations that the Swedish Crown directed towards these foreign groups. The emergence of Sweden as a European empire did not occur in a geopolitical vacuum. International contacts and the influx of European expertise into Sweden were important factors in the building of the Swedish dominion in the Baltic region. By focusing on these foreign expert groups, one operating in the military world and the other in the agricultural sphere, this article illustrates the functions and roles that the Swedish Crown expected foreign experts to have on the eastern frontier of early modern Sweden.

The Hebrew Exodus from and Jeremiah’s Eisodus into Egypt in the Light of Recent Archaeological and Geological Developments

Egyptian texts mention two bodies of water on Egypt’s eastern frontier with Sinai, _š-ḥr_ and _p3 t̲wfy_, the latter of which is mentioned in connection with the Exodus (as יַם־סוּף – _yam suf_), while the former occurs in Jeremiah 2:18. Recent palaeoenvironmental work conducted by the North Sinai Archaeological Project, which was in the field from 1998 to 2008 and directed by the author, has shed new light on these bodies of water and the roles they played in the biblical events involving entering and departing Egypt. The 2019 publication of the geological data now allows one to offer some insights into these ancient lakes. Supplemented by new archaeological discoveries, elements of the routes of both journeys can be elucidated.

Captives and Refugees. The Forced Migration of the Inhabitants of the Byzantine Eastern Frontier during the 5th–7th Centuries in Light of Byzantine-Slavic Hagiographical Texts

This article is devoted to the image of a social situation in the eastern parts of the Byzantine Empire during the 5th–7th century, which is to be found in the East Christian hagiographical texts. They cannot be treated as a completely reliable source of information, due to exaggerations and simplifications typical for the genre. On the other hand, they testify a long-lasting and vital literary tradition – they were circulating in the Byzantine Commonwealth during the Middle Ages, were translated to several languages (inter alia to the Church Slavic). They formed the basis for stereotypes – specific for the Medieval European imagination – that the eastern frontier of the Empire was rather dangerous territory, its neighbors (Persians, Arabs) were unpredictable pagans and the Christian inhabitants of the region ought to be called their innocent victims.

Vilne, Vilne undzer Meka: A City on the Border between Old and New, East and West

One of the key features of the image of Vilnius is its position on a symbolic spatial and chronological border. Depending on the ideological agenda of a particular imperial or national discourse, Vilnius can be located on the western or the eastern frontier of the imaginary imperial realm (Russian or German respectively), or as a historic national capital (for Poles, Lithuanians and Belarusians). Correspondingly, different national and imperial narratives evaluated particular historical periods differently, usually portraying the more remote past positively, as opposed to the most recent past. The Russian city guide by Flavian Dobrianskii and the German books by Paul Weber and Paul Monty, published respectively before and during the First World War, described the city from two opposite perspectives using the same conceptual opposition of East versus West. Unlike these dichotomous representations, Jewish Modernist poetry, exemplified by two poems entitled ‘Vilna’, by the Hebrew poet Zalman Shneour and the Yiddish poet Moyshe Kulbak, as well as the Yiddish city guide by Zalmen Szyk, sought to restore the imaginary unity of time and space, celebrating the complexity and diversity of the city.

Roman Campaigns and Negotiations in the East, 542–545

This article seeks to support the earlier dating of campaigns on the Roman eastern frontier in the 540s. It addresses points made in a recent contribution by Michael Whitby, who argued that the traditional chronology, which places a Roman invasion of Persarmenia in 543 and a Persian siege of Edessa in 544, should be retained. The article seeks to demonstrate that the grounds he offers are inadequate and concludes therefore that the earlier dating, according to which the Romans invaded Persarmenia in autumn 542 and the Persians besieged Edessa in 543, is to be preferred.

Keeping cultural codes: the customs and ceremonies of ethnic minorities under Russian rule

When establishing its rule over other nationalities, the Russian Empire relied on local elites, including their aristocracy, tribal chiefs, and sometimes the clergy. In addition to retaining some of their traditional privileges, they were also granted new benefits. The same paradigm applied to the ethnic policy of both the Muscovite state and the Russian Empire: a combination of nation-wide standards of citizenship and management with local traditional principles of organizing society. The cultural codes of Russian officials and settlers on the one hand and the expanding states non-Slavic population on its the eastern and southern frontiers overlapped and influenced each other. To lessen the opposition of its minorities, the empires administration often adapted new regulations to their cultural norms. For pragmatic reasons, officials acknowledged the importance of at least showing some respect to subjects who spoke different languages and professed different beliefs. As a result of this interaction, the cultures of the rulers and the non-Russian nationalities they ruled influenced each other.

The Politics of Great Britain Concerning the Establishment of the Eastern Frontier of Poland in 1944-1945

The policy of the government of Great Britain concerning the establishment of the eastern frontier of Poland during the final period of World War II has been investigated in an article. The policy priorities of Great Britain concerning the regulation of postwar political status of Poland have been determined. It has been researched that British politics were giving a try to restore diplomatic relations between the exile government of Poland and the government of the USSR that had been cut in April 1943 by Soviets. Unsuccessful attempts of W. Churchill to compel the USSR return the legal government of Poland into the arias that were occupied by the Soviet army are analyzed. After the pro-Soviet Lublin government proclamation British politics negotiated about a coalition cabinet forming. It has been proved that by the end of the World War II the major priority of Great Britain was to restore the prewar government in Poland and to avoid its transformation into the Soviet satellite like Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It has been established that British politics exchanged the problem of the eastern boundary with the following deportations of population on the return of Polish cabinet from London. Lviv and Vilnius had to belong to Soviets. Churchill considered that the mass migration of Ukrainians and Poles was inevitable and could help to avoid conflicts in future. Western Ukraine and Western Belarus loss was indemnified to Poland with territories on its western frontier and in Prussia. Negotiations of British cabinet with exile Polish government have been analyzed. Churchill and Iden gave a try to force the Prime minister of Poland Mykolaychyk to proclaim renunciation from the established eastern boundary of Poland. During those years Great Britain did not achive the aim. The government of the USSR and Stalin did not keep an agreement made on Tehran and Yalta conferences and in personal correspondence.

Images of the Hunghuz in the Literature of Manchuria in the 1920s–1940s (The Case of Xiao Jun’s Works)

The relevance of the study is due to the interest of Russian and Chinese science in artistic capture of the processes taking place on the territory of the Far Eastern frontier – Manchuria and the Far East in the first half of the 20th century. In a situation of political chaos, economic confusion and civil wars in these lands, the phenomenon of hunkhuznichestvo arises, which has become a real disaster for civilians. This problem is covered in great detail in the literature of the Far Eastern emigration and historical, literary works. The novelty of the research is determined by the appeal to Chinese sources (scientific and literary), which until now have not been systematically studied from the point of view of the ethnocultural, ethnosocial and literary paradigm. The problem lies in the comparative analysis of historical, socio-political materials (dictionaries, chronicles, scientific articles) and the results of the artistic reception of the phenomenon of hunkhuznichestvo in the works of northeastern writers of the 1920s–1940s. The aim of the work is to study the images of the Hunghuz from the point of view of the socio-political, ethno-cultural request of the emerging Chinese national consciousness of the 1920s–1940s and their artistic interpretation by Xiao Jun. The main methods are historical-genetic (reconstruction of the formation of ideas about Hunghuz in the Chinese mind), cultural-historical (study of images of Hunghuz in the context of the formation of the literature of the “Left Wing” and the influence of Soviet models), comparative-historical (comparison of images of Hunghuz in literature of the 1920–1940 and their subsequent reception in the Chinese public consciousness), biographical (the influence of the family’s upbringing and the author’s inner circle on his perception of hunkhuzism), translation methods (translation of Chinese scientific works, dictionary entries, historical documents, Xiao Jun’s novels) and the method of immanent analysis (in relation to the above-mentioned texts by the author studied). When writing his novels (Village in August, Third Generation) Xiao Jun drew not only on the ideologemes of the communist movement in China, literary examples of Soviet heroic-romantic prose about the civil war, but also on his personal experience of knowledge of hunkhuzism. The author comes to the conclusion that Xiao Jun recorded important historical and cultural ethnocultural, ethnopsychological, ethnoreligious details of Hunghuz life, customs, original ethos.

Wiejskie struktury osadnicze i ich przemiany w czasie. Przykład Nowosielca na dawnym pograniczu polsko-rusko-litewskim

The article discusses the results of archaeological-onomastic research carried out for the village of Nowosielec, Łosice dist., situated in the Toczna river basin on the northern edge of Poland’s Siedlce Upland. Archaeological analyses of the chronological and spatial development of this micro-regional settlement showed this oecumene to have been continuously viable from the younger phases of the early Middle Ages to modern times. A trace of the continuity of settlement is preserved as the very place-name Nowosielec = Nowe Sioło (‘New Village’), which records memory of the existence of an older village. Its onomastic base indicates that it derived from the Old East Slavic term seło, which formed the core of many toponyms along the eastern frontier of contemporary Poland. The rise of the oldest settlement was probably related to the socioeconomic facilities of the nearby Dzięcioły stronghold – identified as the pre-location centre of the region (medieval Łosice). The example of Nowosielec and two other local micro-regions where settlement processes show similar patterns, offer insight into the regional settlement regress dated to the 2nd half of the 13th century. Results of the research carried out in the upper Toczna river basin show that its cultural landscape radically changed not earlier than during the 14th-15th centuries and was not caused by a demographic decline. Regional cultural continuity between the early medieval, late medieval, and modern times can be identified thanks to archaeological investigations and linguistic analysis of regional toponyms – in the case of microregions continuously functioning from the early Middle Ages till the modern period –derived from Old Russian apellatives and personal names.

NATO po skončení studené války

The article analyses the process of the NATO enlargement after 1990. It starts by a detailed analysis of the secret negotiations which have been started just after the end of the Cold War. In the light of the institutional liberalism, the NATO enlargement is a positive process which satisfied especially new member states. But in the light of the American neorealism, this process resulted into profound changes in the balance of the security threats and into a large militarisation and tension at the new Eastern frontier of NATO in a direct neighbourhood with the Russia. New military units with the modern arms systems are deployed over there and we are witnessing a growing number of dangerous military incidents. As a result, the contemporary situation needs new political negotiations between two competitors and a shift from the contemporary negative Peace towards the positive Peace.

Codex Nicholsonianus

Frankness is not a quality one naturally associates with Themistius, that most sinuous of the fourth century's official spokesmen, but the opening of his first speech (‘On the Love of Mankind’) is disarmingly frank. Invited to address Constantius II at Ancyra in the spring of 342, the young orator had an unusually difficult brief: violent riots in Constantinople had recently seen Hermogenes (a senior general) killed by a mob, relations with Constans (emperor in the west) were tense and war with Persia was rumbling away on the eastern frontier. The situation surely called for cliché — the familiar refuge of the panegyrist in a tight spot — but Themistius responded with a rather daring candour. Not for him some faltering introduction of the various themes set out in the rhetorical handbooks. Instead, he opened by offering his listeners an expert's guide to the tropes of conventional panegyric: those familiar descriptions of magnificent armies, glittering imperial adornment and the emperor's physical vigour (Or. 1.2a–b) to which his courtly audience must have been almost numb. With these curtly dismissed as so much hackwork, he delivered a boldly original oration: a philosophical treatment of the emperor's inner virtue. It is quite a performance. One can see why so many and such different emperors found themselves in need of Themistius’ eloquence.

Was There a Military Revolution at the End of Antiquity?

AbstractIn a book on Justinian’s wars of conquest, Peter Heather has argued that Rome’s ability to wage war in the sixth century CE was helped, to a large degree, by the military revolution that took place in Late Antiquity, which consisted of two principal parts: an increased deployment of Roman soldiers to the eastern frontier, and a shift towards Hunnic tactics. In this essay, however, I argue that these claims are misguided, and using five criteria set out by Lee Brice in an article on military revolution during the reigns of Philip II and Alexander the Great of Macedon, I show that the changes which Heather argues in favour of had begun long before Late Antiquity. Instead, what we see is the continued gradual evolution of Rome’s military, with the Roman state shifting troops to the east from the beginning of the imperial era, and the first documented implementation of steppe-inspired changes dating to the second century.

Regional features of birth rate and mortality in the Lower Volga region in the famine of 1932-1933s

The paper is exploring the problem of the vital rate data in the Lower Volga region during the famine of 19321933. Despite the ample quantity of papers presenting this problem the estimations and indicators differ even in the papers of the same authors and valuation methods are not always reliable. The birth rate of the Lower Volga region was 76223 while the mortality was 184570 during the 1933 famine peak by our estimate. However, there are no vital rate data on the Kalmykia in the central statistical administration archives and the registration of 15,2 thousand deaths were not ascertained identically. The real losses from the famine of 19321933 in the Lower Volga region (excluding Kalmykia) are estimated at 175 thousand maximum and birth rate losses are 147 thousand in 19321934. The mortality of the Lower Volga region had clear geographical distribution and location. The high mortality regions were allocated on the Volga Upland and abutting the Oka-Don plain eastern frontier and on the Medium Syrt frontier in Saratov Krai. The allocation of high mortality regions to the Volga River is interpreted as associating with regions containing major cities and towns with high mortality neighborhoods to the Volga. Stalingrad Krai is defined as a region with lower mortality and gradual slow in its increase with a low peak displaced to July 1933. In 1933 the Lower Volga mortality dynamics was from north to south epidemic; whereas in the south there was time to assume the measures as opposed to northern regions. Some Lower Volga regions in 1933 were characterized by a catastrophic low birth rate and high mortality and at the same time by high birth rate and low mortality and positive vital rate data. The distribution of high mortality regions was determined by the character of local authorities activities and local conditions including geographical description (orthometric height), that requires background study.

Erosion control in Prehispanic agrarian landscapes from Northwestern Argentina: El Alto‐Ancasti Highlands case study (Catamarca, Argentina)

AbstractRecent research in the El Alto‐Ancasti Highlands (Northwestern Argentina) has identified an extensive agricultural system distributed in between residential sites. This agricultural system seems to have been vulnerable to a gullying system that caused erosion and soil surface loss. The existence of check dams along the inside of these gullies places the beginning of this erosion process at least during its Prehispanic occupation, between 600 and 1000 AD when the agricultural system was active. Here, we characterise the Prehispanic construction of the agricultural landscape, its impact on soil formation and the interaction established by Prehispanic farmers in the area with the local erosive dynamics along the eastern frontier of Northwestern Argentina. Our study indicates the need to pursue further research into runoff agriculture in these environments and its potential contribution for the mitigation of long‐term erosive processes and risks, as well as elucidating strategies towards sustainable soil management by modern‐day local communities.

Crossing borders: the making of France’s eastern frontier in Alsace, 1918–1939

Abstract This article traces the emergence of the border regime on France’s eastern frontier after 1918. Following the Treaty of Versailles, the Franco-German boundary moved to accommodate the return of the ‘lost provinces’ Alsace-Lorraine to France, and throughout the interwar years contemporaries viewed this border as one of the most strategically and symbolically important boundaries on the European continent. It was, on the one hand, France’s defensive limits, while, on the other, it was a meeting point between distinct national communities, who shared a language and culture. This border thus became a site that reflected broader fears and concerns, as worries over Alsace’s integration in the 1920s gave way to anxieties about the threat posed by Nazi Germany in the 1930s. By focusing upon the border, this article reveals that the return of Alsace involved negotiation both between centre and periphery and across the frontier, and sheds light on the growing insecurities of the Third Republic in its final two decades.