The Essex Institute of Salem

1933 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Howard Corning
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Source Material ◽  
The West ◽  
Unique Position ◽  
Ocean Shipping ◽  
Open Trade ◽  
American Flag

As a depository of source material relating to a wide variety of subjects, the Essex Institute holds a unique position. For many years it has been natural to turn to Salem for material on ocean shipping. In decades past, Salem wharves were lined with vessels which Salem merchants had built and manned, and which brought rich products from every civilized and barbaric land. There were Eastern ports where the names of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore were scarcely known, but where Salem was supposed to be the great emporium of the West. Letters addressed “Salem, U. S. A.” reached their destinations without delay. In 1825, there were one hundred ninety-eight vessels flying Salem signals, and Salem ships were the first to display the American flag in many foreign ports, as well as to open trade with St. Petersburg, Zanzibar, Sumatra, Calcutta, Bombay, Batavia, Arabia, Madagascar and Australia.

Gerald H. Thayer's ornithological work in St Vincent and the Grenadines, Lesser Antilles

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Wiley
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lesser Antilles ◽  
American Museum ◽  
The West ◽  
Comparative Zoology ◽  
North And South America ◽  
North And South

Gerald Handerson Thayer (1883–1939) was an artist, writer and naturalist who worked in North and South America, Europe and the West Indies. In the Lesser Antilles, Thayer made substantial contributions to the knowledge and conservation of birds in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Thayer observed and collected birds throughout much of St Vincent and on many of the Grenadines from January 1924 through to December 1925. Although he produced a preliminary manuscript containing interesting distributional notes and which is an early record of the region's ornithology, Thayer never published the results of his work in the islands. Some 413 bird and bird egg specimens have survived from his work in St Vincent and the Grenadines and are now housed in the American Museum of Natural History (New York City) and the Museum of Comparative Zoology (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Four hundred and fifty eight specimens of birds and eggs collected by Gerald and his father, Abbott, from other countries are held in museums in the United States.

Mafias on the Move

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Varese
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Market Expansion ◽  
The North ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
At Will

Organized crime is spreading like a global virus as mobs take advantage of open borders to establish local franchises at will. That at least is the fear, inspired by stories of Russian mobsters in New York, Chinese triads in London, and Italian mafias throughout the West. As this book explains, the truth is more complicated. The author has spent years researching mafia groups in Italy, Russia, the United States, and China, and argues that mafiosi often find themselves abroad against their will, rather than through a strategic plan to colonize new territories. Once there, they do not always succeed in establishing themselves. The book spells out the conditions that lead to their long-term success, namely sudden market expansion that is neither exploited by local rivals nor blocked by authorities. Ultimately the inability of the state to govern economic transformations gives mafias their opportunity. In a series of matched comparisons, the book charts the attempts of the Calabrese 'Ndrangheta to move to the north of Italy, and shows how the Sicilian mafia expanded to early twentieth-century New York, but failed around the same time to find a niche in Argentina. The book explains why the Russian mafia failed to penetrate Rome but succeeded in Hungary. A pioneering chapter on China examines the challenges that triads from Taiwan and Hong Kong find in branching out to the mainland. This book is both a compelling read and a sober assessment of the risks posed by globalization and immigration for the spread of mafias.

A Tale of a Few Cities: Interculturalism on the Road

1991 ◽  
Vol 7 (28) ◽  
pp. 315-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Schechner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
New York University ◽  
The West ◽  
Tiananmen Square ◽  
The Road ◽  
Performance Group ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
On The Road

This is a personal record of a theatre worker's journey to places where theatre is inextricably mixed with politics — or is no less significantly divorced from social concerns. Visiting mainland China and South Africa in the summer of 1990, Richard Schechner records how theatre people confronted the aftermath of major political upheavals – the crushing of hopes in Tiananmen Square, and the perhaps deceptive raising of them following the release of Nelson Mandela. His trip also took in the widely different perspectives and problems of Taiwan, where pluralism struggles (almost unnoticed in the West) to displace an ageing autocracy. Richard Schechner teaches at New York University, and recently returned to the editorial chair at The Drama Review, the journal he conducted through its vintage years in the 'sixties – at the same time creating the Performance Group, and beginning his researches into theatre and anthropology, the field in which he has published widely and innovatively in the interim.

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