Era Of Federalism Research Articles

The Kerguelen Archipelago and Australian Security Anxieties

The Kerguelen archipelago in the Southern Indian Ocean was never militarised and never posed a realistic naval threat to Australia or the British Empire during the twentieth century. However, there were two episodes, once in the Federation Era and during the Second World War, when there was debate within Australia as to whether this outlying French possession posed a threat to Australian security. By examining these periods of Australian anxiety surrounding the Kerguelen archipelago, it becomes possible to see that these concerns were more reflective of Australian strategic angst than any tangible threat posed by a remote, unpopulated, nominal French possession. This episode is an example of a broader Australian angst in the early and mid‐twentieth century that remote colonial possessions could be weaponised to isolate Australia and threaten it. The Kerguelens represent one of the most peculiar examples of the manifestations of Australian strategic insecurity.

A Fire Bell in the Past: The Missouri Crisis at 200: Western Slavery, National Impasse ed. by Jeffrey L. Pasley and John Craig Hammond

Reviewed by: A Fire Bell in the Past: The Missouri Crisis at 200: Western Slavery, National Impasse ed. by Jeffrey L. Pasley and John Craig Hammond Van Gosse (bio) Keywords Missour Crisis, Slavery, Antislavery, Sectionalism A Fire Bell in the Past: The Missouri Crisis at 200: Western Slavery, National Impasse. Edited by Jeffrey L. Pasley and John Craig Hammond. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2021. Pp. 426. Cloth, $45.00.) This volume is that rare thing: an edited collection in which the whole is considerably greater than the sum of the parts. Pasley, Hammond, and their authors offer a profound reconsideration of the early republic, challenging the edifice built by historians like Gordon Wood, in which race and slavery register as distractions from the main thrust of post-Revolutionary consolidation. The editors' Introduction proposes revisions on multiple fronts, since "the first two decades of the nineteenth century remain one of the least studied and most poorly understood periods in American history" (11). This gap reflects the periodization of the First Republic (1790–1860) as a series of discrete chunks (the Era of Federalism, the Age of Jackson, and so on), avoiding the larger continuity of sectional contestation over the problem of slavery. Positing the struggle in 1819–1821 as a fulcrum in this [End Page 642] larger dynamic indicts the blinkered historiography of the early republic, which has never "dealt easily or accurately with anything connected to the Missouri Crisis: slavery, the trans-Appalachian West, or even the nineteenth century" (11). This volume not only challenges scholarship that elides the centrality of slavery; it also poses a powerful corrective to historians of race and slavery who elide formal politics. In the editors' sum-up, "By the 1990s, historians working on the social and cultural history of race and slavery often felt free to eschew political events altogether" (15). That silence made it easier for political historians to pose grand narratives skating over the "peculiar institution." With great brio, this volume rides into the terrain left open by these mutually reinforcing exclusions. Putting the Missouri Crisis at the center of post-Revolutionary history, its authors explore both the "crisis" itself and what it represents, the long struggle over the explosion of racial capitalism inside a putatively republican order. What was hidden is revealed; the partisan fissuring of the Era of Good Feelings is no longer a meaningless churn; Jackson's southwestern wars no longer predestined "expansions"; James Tallmadge's amendment to bar slavery from Missouri not premature sectionalism but the eruption of rising antislavery outrage. The biggest shift proposed here is not temporal but spatial. In decisive ways, its authors turn the focus back to the West and away from Congress. Most previous studies (Glover Moore's pro-southern The Missouri Controversy, 1819–1821 in 1953; Sean Wilentz's influential 2004 article in the Journal of the Historical Society; Robert Pierce Forbes's groundbreaking The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath in 2007) focused on maneuvers in and around Washington.1 Missouri and the frontier into which it fit scarcely figured, a testament to enduring regional prejudices. No longer! Collectively, these essays clarify that the extraordinary influx of slaveholders into Missouri after 1810, and the possibility that such men would control the entire frontier, was the issue—not sectional power plays. Obviously, the latter precipitated the crisis: Tallmadge represented a strongly [End Page 643] antislavery constituency, as Sarah Gronningsater explicates with great subtlety, and, as John Van Atta outlines, the South felt threatened by "an aggression not just on slavery and slave-state sovereignty but also on them personally and their cultural identity … a comprehensive northern attack on the entire structure of their society, on their concept of manhood and the roots of their self-respect" (189). A re-centering on the trans-Mississippi West linked to both the juridically slaveless Northwest Territory and the new Cotton Kingdom is explored in three key articles (John Craig Hammond, "The Centrality of Slavery: Enslavement and Settler Sovereignty in Missouri, 1770–1820"; Robert Lee, "The Boon's Lick Land Rush and the Coming of the Missouri Crisis"; Christa Dierksheide, "Border Control: Slavery, Diffusion, and State Formation in the Era of the Missouri Crisis"). Dierksheide, in...

‘Jingo Dingo insanity’ and Mafeking Day: articulating madness in Federation-era Australia

In 1899, the Australian colonies sent military contingents to South Africa to support the British in fighting the Boer enemy. While some questioned the justice of the conflict, the public reaction to the war was akin to a ‘national insanity’. British victories in the first half of the war, particularly the relief of Mafeking in May 1900, saw noisy jingo crowds filling the streets of capital cities in celebration, resulting in public drunkenness and damage to property, behaviour typically deemed ‘mad’. Colonial society, faced with increases in lunacy rates, was not only in the process of comprehending madness, but also ideas about Australian nationalism in the period approaching Federation of 1901. These factors, added to popular involvement in a British war in South Africa, shaped political, police and press responses to the new manifestation of jingoism. The press, a site of both the production and advancement of public conceptions of insanity, drew upon the social language of madness to communicate the acceptability or unacceptability of specific jingoistic behaviour. This paper examines the metaphorical use of mad vocabularies by the colonial press during this period to explore the ‘arbitrary boundary’ between madness and sanity in Federation era Australia.

‘An Act of Grace’: Reading Gender and Nationalism within Australian South African War Pension Provisions

The South African War of 1899–1902 occurred during Australia's Federation era, a period that defined the future composition of the nation. It also marked a significant site of transformation in the provision of war pensions from charity alone to a coordinated response between charity and the state. During the conflict, pensions and benefits were deemed a privilege bestowed on deserving recipients, an approach in contrast with the inviolable duty felt by Federal authorities towards returned soldiers during and after World War I. This article examines ‘acts of grace’ within the surviving South African War pension and charity archive to determine how political and military authorities embodied ideas about Australian nationalism and gender in their consideration of those in need.

Clothing and fashion: American fashion from head to toe: v.1: Pre-Colonial times through the American Revolution; v.2: The Federal era through the 19th century; v.3: The early 20th century through World War II; v.4: The postwar period into the 21st century

Clothing and fashion: American fashion from head to toe: v.1: Pre-Colonial times through the American Revolution; v.2: The Federal era through the 19th century; v.3: The early 20th century through World War II; v.4: The postwar period into the 21st century

One people: Aboriginal assimilation and the White Australia ideal

This article uses a series of Commonwealth government assimilation propaganda booklets published between 1957 and 1963 as the starting point for an exploration of the relationship between Aboriginal assimilation policy and changing conceptions of Australian nationhood. It argues that the ethnic nationalism that provided the foundations of the White Australia policy in the federation era, and of Aboriginal policy for much of the interwar period, was giving way in the 1950s and 1960s to a stronger emphasis on civic nationalism; and that the Commonwealth promoted this shift in the interests of securing the national inclusion of indigenous Australians.

Two Centuries of Russian Sámi Policy: Arrangements for Autonomy and Participation Seen in Light of Imperial, Soviet and Federal Indigenous Minority Policy 1822–2014

This article reviews arrangements for Russian Sámi self-government during the Late Imperial (1822–1917), Soviet (1917–1991) and Federal (1992–) Eras of Russian history, comparing them to developments in the country's general indigenous minority policy. Since the Soviet Era, indigenous minority policy has been delimited to a subset of the country's actual indigenous nations – smaller groups traditionally involved in certain rural economic activities. State paternalism, the framing of indigenous minority policy as giving aid to weak groups, is a constant trait of Russian indigenous minority policy. This paternalism has been channelled towards different goals at different times – the building of Communist nations, assimilation, or traditionalist preservationism. Indigenous minority policy has generally been weakly institutionalized, and its interests come into conflict with stronger actors who anchor their political activity in northern economic development and state security. Different forms of territorial autonomy have been practiced throughout the period, non-territorial arrangements becoming more common only in the Federal Era. Russian Sámi politics generally match the national trends but are a case of particularly weak indigenous autonomy and participation. A very case-specific phenomenon is the Federal Era conflict over whether or not to import the Nordic Sámi Parliament model. Case-specifics are explained by the weak demographic position of the Russian Sámi, the lack of any significant symbolic connection between the province and its indigenous people, and the border-proximity and border-transcendence of the Sámi people, which has repeatedly been used to frame their activism as a security concern.

“A Nation for a Continent”: Australian Literature and the Cartographic Imaginary of the Federation Era

at a rally in Support oF Federation oF auStralian colonieS in Sydney suburb of Ashfield in 1897, Edmund Barton famously declared, For first time in history, we have a for a continent, and a continent for a na- tion (qtd. in Rutledge). On 1 January 1901, Barton would become first Prime Minister of Commonwealth of Australia.Barton's rhetoric, which hails new nation's unique status a country occu- pying an entire continent, is typical of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cultural nationalisms, which envisage an isomorphic alignment of literature, land, and nation. alignment is a process of imaginative projection involving what Homi K. Bhabha has called recurrent metaphor of landscape inscape of (143). As Wai Chee Dimock observes, This reproductive logic assumes that there is a seamless correspondence between temporal and spatial boundaries of and boundaries of all other expressive domains. And, because this causality goes all up and all down-it is also assumed that there is a literary domain lining up in just same way (2-3). But this align- ment, Dimock implies, is imagined rather than real; it is hypothesized a defin- ing feature of texts that more often than not betray anxieties and uncer- tainties about nationalist ideologies and porosity of geopolitical boundaries. In case of United States, for example, Paul Giles argues that the association of America, and by extension, subject of American literature, with current boundaries of United States is a formulation that should be seen confined to a relatively limited and specific time in history, roughly between end of American Civil War in 1865 and presidency of Jimmy Carter, which ended in 1981 (The Global Remapping 1). Giles calls this the arguing that at this time there was a desire to align idea of American literature closely with United States territory that has since been diluted by globaliza- tion. The corollary is that relation between American literature and geographi- cal projections of kind found in is not a natural and stable one, but one that is historically contingent, fluid over time, and likely to be diverse and contested at any given moment. Before, during, and after period, sense of country's identity is as uncertain its cartography (5).If it was conclusion of American Civil War that consolidated geogra- phy of nation (5)-that is to say, which began to allow disparate though powerful- ly imagined entities such North, South and, later, West, to be brought within what Benedict Anderson calls imagined community of nation-then in case of Australia, corresponding moment was debates and conventions associated with Federation from around 1888 to 1901. During Federation era, isomorphic association of literature, land, and found expression through what I will call, following Anderson, cartographic imaginary, a term that is meant to focus especially on role of maps in shaping imagined geographies, but which also includes related media such topographical engravings and photographic views. Contrary to Giles's implication of an achieved national period in American liter- ary history, however, I will argue that in Australia during Federation era, cartographic imaginary expressed an alignment of literature, land, and that was more wished for than achieved. While Federation did, to some extent, see successful projection of an imagined community, in other respects it exacer- bated issues of state competition and regional difference, and foregrounded problems of inclusion, seen most notably in state-based rivalries over location of new capital and scandalous failure to achieve agreement about a uniform railway-track gauge. …

The Deadlocked Election of 1800: Jefferson, Burr and the Union in the Balance (review)

The Deadlocked Election of 1800: Jefferson, Burr and the in the Balance. By James Roger Sharp. (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2010. Pp. 256; 8 ill. Cloth, $34.95.)Reviewed by Andrew W. RobertsonThe hundredth anniversary of the election of 1800 launched a veritable cottage industry of books on the subject.1 Nothing concentrates the mind on past events better than their re-enactment, and in many of these works, the election of 2000 looms as an all-encompassing comparison. For James Roger Sharp, however, the informative parallel to the election of 1800 is not Bush v. Gore but the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Sharp calls these the two most critical elections in American history, because each the potential for destroying the Union (169).Sharp shows us that, if the election of 1860 brought on civil war, the election of 1800 could easily have had a similarly ominous result for the survival of the Union: an extra-constitutional solution to a manufactured crisis. Only a dozen years into the second U.S. constitutional regime, the survival of the was nearly as imperiled by boardinghouse intrigues in the new capital as it was by armed rebellion sixty years later.Sharp comes to this project very well qualified to write about the political background of this critical election. Sharp's earlier work, American Politics in the Early Republic, is an erudite, eminently readable narrative history on the politics of the 1790s.2 Because Sharp is so well versed in the political context, he brings this era to life. Refreshingly, he shies away from easy parallels to present-day politics. From Sharp we learn that late eighteenth-century politics was about both personality and principle. He reveals to us the rivalries and insecurities of brilliant, ambitious men like Jefferson and Hamilton without neglecting their ideological differences or their roles as creators and managers of mass-based movements, the forerunners of political parties. Sharp also describes what he sees as the countervailing, competing and antithetical political philosophies of the federal era: the democratic and egalitarian popular spirit of the American Revolution versus the longstanding belief in classical republicanism that assumed a disinterested elite, who would serve a unified public interest (17).Sharp explains in vivid detail the dramatic oscillations in public support between the Federalists and Republicans in the late 1 790s. Here the author shows himself to be the master of the telling details of both state and national politics. In congressional elections and many contests for governor, the Republicans and Federalists were already engaged in a full-scale effort to mobilize as many of their voters as possible and get them to the polls. Sharp writes quite compellingly about the details of these increasingly democratic elections. He is very well informed about congressional and local elections, frequently citing the voting data collected by Philip Lampi at the American Antiquarian Society. On the other hand, as Sharp makes quite apparent, both parties increasingly attempted to restrict choice in presidential elections. In 1796, eight of the fifteen states provided for election of presidential electors. By 1800 only five of fifteen states had contests for electors. Among the states that decided to change the rules were Massachusetts, which feared losing electoral votes to Jefferson in Maine, and Virginia, which expected to maximize the vote for Jefferson by providing a winner-take-all contest for electors. In New York, the Federalists thought they had locked up the state's electoral vote for Adams by having the legislature select electors; instead, Aaron Burr waged a successful campaign to win the state legislative elections for the Republicans and wrest control of both houses of the legislature out of Federalist hands. Alexander Hamilton wrote to Governor John Jay suggesting that the lame-duck legislature revert to a system of selecting presidential electors in district elections. …

Clothing through American history: the federal era through antebellum, 1786-1860

Clothing through American history: the federal era through antebellum, 1786-1860

The Importance of Feeling English: American Literature and the British Diaspora, 1750-1850. By Leonard Tennenhouse. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. xii, 158 pp. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-691-09681-0.)

Leonard Tennenhouse builds on recent scholarship on early American writing—postcolonial, transatlantic, and book history—to argue, against conventional wisdom, that early U.S. culture did not break from English culture so much as perpetuate it with a twist. “American” identity emerged by enabling Britons in North America to continue to “feel” English. The concept of a British diaspora structures the book's central assumptions: that novels and poetry (reading tastes as well as literary production) offer unique insights into cultural transmission and change; that American reading and writing should be mapped within transatlantic circulation; and that motivations for such literary habits derived from the threat of being culturally cut off from the mother country. The argument unfolds via close readings of British and American texts from John Locke and George Berkeley to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Herman Melville, with much of the book dwelling on the federal era and early republic. Some explanations are more explicitly situated vis-à-vis book history than others: this is particularly true of the original, provocative examinations of the American reception of Samuel Richardson's novels. The Atlantic flow reverses in the case of Charles Brockden Brown's 1801 novel, Clara Howard, which Tennenhouse reads as a revision of Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling (1771) to talk about American variations on the cult of sensibility; he then carefully considers the 1807 London edition of Brown's novel, which he imagines Jane Austen borrowing from her local Minerva Press lending library. (Austen's male characters, he argues, are more closely aligned to a new American masculinity than to Mackenzie's or other eighteenth-century English models.) These close readings of literary texts aim to illustrate the significance of translatio studii—the “transfer of learning and the arts, or cultural authority, to [a] new imperial center” (p. 13), the process by which British Americans maintained English cultural identity and reciprocally affected the London metropole, even as they become newly American. Rather than simply imitating British culture, these authors engaged in “the transformative process of repetition, with a difference” (p. 128).

The Making of a Diasporic Identity: The Case of the Sydney Chinese Commercial Elite, 1890s-1900s

AbstractThis article is about a short moment in Chinese-Australian history at the turn of the 20th century when Chinese fruit and vegetable traders in Sydney were on the verge of major international success. The concerns of this new urban elite can be gleaned from their Chinese-language newspapers and civil societies which played an important role in the evolution of the diasporic identity of the Chinese in “White-Australia” — an experience involving more than merely a refinement of native kinship practices and inherited identities — in a process that invoked a distinctively modern sense of time, space, and the unfolding of history. This is an attempt to recount their experience chiefly by reference to the developments recorded in Chinese newspapers and the narratives related to the social institutions and networks associated with them in the Federation Era (1890s-1900s).

One People

This article uses a series of Commonwealth government assimilation propaganda booklets published between 1957 and 1963 as the starting point for an exploration of the relationship between Aboriginal assimilation policy and changing conceptions of Australian nationhood. It argues that the ethnic nationalism that provided the foundations of the White Australia policy in the federation era, and of Aboriginal policy for much of the interwar period, was giving way in the 1950s and 1960s to a stronger emphasis on civic nationalism; and that the Commonwealth promoted this shift in the interests of securing the national inclusion of indigenous Australians.This article has been peer-reviewed.

Birds and Environmental Management in Australia 1901–2001

This article reviews the central role of birds in environmental management in Australia throughout the twentieth century. Ai well as being indicators of the health of the environment, birds are also central to many ideas about the environment, as examples from three periods of environmental history show. In the early federation era around 1901, the central concern was for the birds themselves, threatened by the plumage trade. In the mid-century years, there was a growing concern for habitat, as conservation ideas became dominated by national parks. The last decades of the twentieth century, the ‘age of biodiversity’, have seen the emphasis move to species-richness. Because birds are conspicuous, diurnal and much loved by people, they have dominated ideas about environmental management. The advantages of using birds as environmental indicators include free labour' and community participation, but these also magnify responsibilities to ensure that the science that is built on amateur time, freely given, will give the best possible result for the environment.

Gender Equality: States as Laboratories

Two decades ago, the calls of women’s groups for gender equality captured the attention of the legislatures, the courts, and the academy. “Liberal” feminist theorists called for the passage of the federal Equal Rights Amendment (“ERA”) and advocated the Supreme Court’s application of heightened scrutiny to gender classifications. Meanwhile, “radical” feminist theorists claimed that the liberal approach would achieve mere formal equality or equality of treatment between men and women but would not establish women’s actual equality in society. These radical theorists called for more extensive, affirmative government measures to achieve substantive equality for women. The states’ failure to ratify the liberal-supported federal ERA and the Court’s failure to adopt a strict scrutiny standard for gender-classificatory laws may appear to have rendered this liberal-radical debate academic. With the adoption of state equal rights amendments by several states, however, this debate merely has shifted to different forums. Although state courts have interpreted their state ERAs largely in accordance with the liberal analysis, the case law from these states provides material from which to analyze the efficacy of both the liberal approach to gender equality and the radical theorists’ critique of that approach. States with ERAs, therefore, serve as laboratories in which to consider the larger issue concerning which approach is more promising for achieving women’s equality. Part I of this Note briefly surveys different theoretical approaches to equality in general, exploring the contours of symmetrical and asymmetrical theories of equality. Part II focuses on gender equality theory in particular and considers liberal feminists’ call for equality of treatment as well as radical feminists’ demand for equality of results. Part III examines state courts’ interpretations of their state ERAs -- in particular, in areas where the applications of radical and liberal feminism support different results -- in order to assess the efficacy of these theories in practice. Part IV draws some lessons from states’ experiments with equality and concludes that while the liberals’ call for gender-neutral legislation should be heeded in general, the radical approach offers important insights into how legislation and doctrine can be crafted to achieve formal and substantive equality for women.

Intergovernmental Management: The New Era of Federalism

Intergovernmental Management: The New Era of Federalism

A new era of federalism: Challenge for the U. S

National Civic ReviewVolume 62, Issue 1 p. 7-11 Article A new era of federalism: Challenge for the U. S George H. Romney, George H. Romney George H. Romney was secretary of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and is also former governor of Michigan. This is his address, November 28, 1972, at the National Municipal League's 78th annual National Conference on Government, MinneapolisSearch for more papers by this author George H. Romney, George H. Romney George H. Romney was secretary of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and is also former governor of Michigan. This is his address, November 28, 1972, at the National Municipal League's 78th annual National Conference on Government, MinneapolisSearch for more papers by this author First published: January 1973 https://doi.org/10.1002/ncr.4100620104 AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume62, Issue1January 1973Pages 7-11 RelatedInformation

Primary Education during the Colombian Federation: The School Reform of 1870

RADITIONALLY, HISTORIANS HAVE DISMISSED Colombian Federation (1863-1886) as an era of hopeless civil warfare which prepared way for rule of Rafael Nufiiez and Regeneration. It is clear that Rionegro Constitution of 1863, imposed by a faction of Liberals known as Radicals, so limited central government that it was powerless to maintain order among nine sovereign states.' The anti-clericalism of government heightened Conservative animosity and alienated more moderate Liberals. Regional uprisings were frequent. In his book La federation en Colombia, Jose de la Vega lists, for twentythree year period, one civil war, twelve revolutions, two coups d'etat, and six years of widespread agitation.2 While no one would deny that political confusion was prevalent during Federation, an over-emphasis on anarchy has obscured at least one positive accomplishment of Radical regime-the expansion of popular education. The Organic Decree of November 1, 1870, was Colombia's first attempt to establish a national system of obligatory, lay education. This decree began an intensive school reform that one writer has called the golden age of Colombian education.3 Periodicals of day reflected public concern over primary instruction that characterized this era. Opposition to reform contributed to outbreak of Civil War of 1876-1877 and hastened decline of Radicals. A review of reform movement-its background, its controversial nature, its successes and failures -gives new insight into Federation Era as well as revealing a significant episode in development of Colombian education.

A Very Human Survey: The Cross-Cultural Inquiries of R. H. Mathews

In addressing the life and legacy of R. H. Mathews (1841-1918), this article queries the emphasis on 'otherness' that is common in much post-colonial commentary. The focus here is on the sharing of knowledge and other experiences of familiarity across cultures. Mathews was an Australian-born surveyor who turned to anthropology in the 1890s, publishing prolifically in Australia and overseas. Well known in Aboriginal communities through much of eastern Australia, he took advantage of contacts he had developed during his career as a surveyor. Such experience gave him a personal understanding of the land which greatly influenced his anthropological writing. In addition to direct interview, he also acquired information through correspondence with graziers and officials with Aboriginal employees or other connections with indigenous people. The article draws from some of these letters, many of which survive in the extensive R. H. Mathews Papers at the National Library of Australia. To date, the main source of information on Mathews has been a three-part article by A. P. Elkin published in the 1970s. Much information has since become available, including the testimony of Aboriginal informants who were recorded by Janet Mathews, a grand daughter-in-law of R. H. who worked for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies as it was originally known (now AIATSIS). Mathews close connections in the Aboriginal world did nothing to protect him from the internecine feuding that characterised Australian anthropology in the Federation era. The article argues that Mathews' standing was damaged by a conspiracy involving the Melbourne-based Professor W. Baldwin Spencer who persuaded J. G. Frazer and other scholars in Britain never to acknowledge him or cite his work.

A Survey of the Roads of the United States of America, 1789

When the Constitution of the United States went into effect, in 1789, and the new Postmaster General began the organization of a national postal system, he had at his disposal no published map of the roads of the United States. One can imagine the pleasure with which he received, early in the following year, a proposal for such a map from an experienced and public-spirited engineer named Christopher Colles. Colles, in a petition, asked for public assistance to permit continued publication of a series of hand-size sheets that he had begun under the title A of the Roads of the United States of America. Although the Postmaster General supported Colles' request, Congress did not provide money, and apparently on this account the map series was never completed. However, Colles' own funds and those of private subscribers made possible the production of eighty-three sheets for general sale, a pioneer monument of American commercial route mapping. The sheets have now been reproduced in facsimile and published in a handsome book, together with a background monograph by Walter W. Ristow of the Library of Congress. The Survey sheets, keyed to an index map, individually bear two or three strip maps drawn to the scale of i4 inches to the mile. The bulk of the strip maps, taken together, represent a north-south stem connecting Albany, New York, and Yorktown, Virginia. The road as mapped approximates today's U. S. Highway 9 from Albany to New York City, State Highway 27 across New Jersey, U. S. Highway 13 from the New Jersey border at Trenton to Wilmington, Delaware, and U. S. Highway 40 from Wilmington to Baltimore. Along paths not closely related to modern major highways, the road led from Baltimore to the Potomac River at Georgetown, thence to Alexandria, and by way of Fredericksburg and Williamsburg to Yorktown. The few other roads shown by Colles were all attached to this via priiicipia. Three of them, in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia respectively, were simply short alternate routes; a fourth led ninety miles southeastward from Poughkeepsie, on the Albany-New York City road, to Stratford, Connecticut, and back from Stratford along the shore of Long Island Sound to the main route. The length of roadways represented totaled about one-third of an estimated three thousand miles that Colles originally had hoped to map. Colles' Survey allows a visit to countrysides otherwise hardly knowable today for want of comparable documentation. It records the little-improved wanderings of an interstate thoroughfare whose lack of bridges alone reflects the small amount of capital available for promotion of an exchange economy at the outset of the federal era. It locates the roadside installations of a rural, coastal-plain society whose principal service centers were taverns, smithies, and churches, whose cultivated lands were far less extensive than its forests, whose developed mineral sites were practically confined to minor iron deposits, and whose manufacturing stood generally at the level of the grist mill. Of special value are the eight ographers are sometimes accused of dealing w th insignificant topics. Gottmann ed fear no such accusation. While others ave been chanting the Requiem of Regional ography, he has produced a regional geography of such scope and quality as to cast seris doubt on this demise.-RAYMOND E. MURPHY 454