The Making of an Eclectic Archive

2018 ◽  
pp. 151-168
Author(s):  
Clare Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Surgeon General ◽  
History Approach ◽  
Medical Dictionary ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Medical Interest

This chapter takes a transnational and connected history approach to the papers of Surgeon-General J.P. Walker, who was employed in the Indian Medical Service in the nineteenth century. Upon his retirement he began the process of compiling a great dictionary that reflected his medical interest in eclectic and specific medicine. Despite the surprising elision of ‘India’ from the draft of his great medical dictionary, its incorporation of the medical knowledge of Africans and Indigenous Americans reveals the globality that underpinned his medical knowledge and practice. In this respect, a critical reading of the epistemology of Walker's archive enables a new understanding of the relationship between medicine in and of Britain, South Asia and North America during the nineteenth century.

Freight Capacity and Utilization of the Erie and Great Lakes Canals before 1850

1976 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 852-877 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas F. McIlwraith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Great Lakes ◽  
Canal Enlargement ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Eastern Half ◽  
St Lawrence River

This paper deals with the relationship between tonnage capacity and utilization of the Erie, Welland and St. Lawrence River canals before 1850. Estimates are presented for the capacities of the canals, as built and modified. Comparison with the actual tonnage carried eastward for selected years shows that the British canals were grossly and increasingly underutilized, while the Erie's utilization was closely correlated with its capability, particularly through its eastern half. Reasons for this situation are given and it is argued that had British funds been redirected away from canal enlargement and applied to the construction of vessels and harbor facilities, the British might have entered upon a prosperous carrying trade within North America in the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Who speaks for extinct nations? The Beothuk and narrative voice

Literator ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Leggo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Narrative Voice ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Authentic Voice ◽  
Voice And Silence ◽  
The Relationship

The Beothuk of Newfoundland were among the first inhabitants of North America to encounter European explorers and settlers. By the first part of the nineteenth century the Beothuk were extinct, exterminated by the fishers and soldiers and settlers of western Europe. The last Beothuk was a woman named Shanadithit. She was captured and lived with white settlers for a few years before she died in 1829. Today all that remains of the Beothuk nation, which once numbered seven hundred to one thousand people, are some bones, arrowheads, tools, written records of explorers and settlers, and copies of drawings by Shanadithit in the Newfoundland Museum. In recent years several writers (all are white and male) have written fiction and poetry and drama about the Beothuk, including Peter Such (Riverrun, 1973), Paul O'Neill (Legends of a Lost Tribe, 1976), Sid Stephen (Beothuk Poems, 1976), Al Pittman ("Shanadithit," 1978), Geoffrey Ursell (The Running of the Deer; A Play, 1981), Donald Gale (Sooshewan: A Child of the Beothuk, 1988), and Kevin Major (Blood Red Ochre, 1990). A recurring theme in all these narratives is the theme of regret and guilt. These narrative accounts of the Beothuk raise significant questions about voice and narrative, including: Who can speak for Native peoples? Who can speak for extinct peoples? Are there peoples without voices? How is voice historically determined? What is the relationship between voice and power? How are the effects of voice generated? What is an authentic voice? How is voice related to the illusion of presence? What is the relation between voice and silence? In examining contemporary narrative accounts of the Beothuk my goal is to reveal the rhetorical ways in which the Beothuk are given voice(s) and to interrogate the ethical and pedagogical implications of contemporary authors revisiting and revisioning and re-voicing a nation of people long extinct.

TENDING TO OLD STORIES:DANIEL DERONDAAND HYSTERIA, REVISITED

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-465
Author(s):  
Doreen Thierauf
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Daniel Deronda ◽  
Herbert Spencer ◽  
New Novel ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Relationship

The appearance of the word‘dynamic’ on the first page of George Eliot's novel,Daniel Deronda(1876), to describe Gwendolen's unsettled/unsettling glance famously elicited critique from her publisher John Blackwood as well as from an anonymous reviewer at theExaminer, both of whom challenged Eliot's use of scientific jargon that had not yet entered her audience's everyday vocabulary. In line with this often-cited vignette, critics usually understand Eliot to respond thoughtfully and prophetically to late-nineteenth-century scientific trends. In the words of theExaminerreviewer, Eliot's “culture is scientific” (“New Novel” 125), probably more so than any other Victorian novelist's. Studies investigating the reciprocal relationship between Eliot's fiction, particularlyMiddlemarchandDaniel Deronda, and nineteenth-century scientific writing suggest her familiarity with notable works by Henry Lewes, Alexander Bain, William Carpenter, Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, James Sully, and others. Scholarship of the past three decades has largely focused on Eliot's application of Victorian theories regarding epistemology, evolution, and the relationship between mind and body. However, scholars have not yet fully examined Eliot's utilization of mid-nineteenth-century medical knowledge concerning the female body's proneness to hysteria, a connection that emerges prominently in her final novel.

The Cancer Problem

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnes Arnold-Forster
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Social History ◽  
British Empire ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Middlesex Hospital ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
History Of Cancer

This book offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in nineteenth-century Britain. The Cancer Problem begins by looking at a community of doctors and patients who lived and worked in the streets surrounding The Middlesex Hospital in London. It follows in their footsteps as they walked the labyrinthine lanes and passages that branched off Tottenham Court Road; then, through seven chapters, its focus expands to successively include the rivers, lakes, and forests of England, the mountains, poverty, and hunger of the four nations of the British Isles, the reluctant and resistant inhabitants of the British Empire, and the networks of scientists and doctors spread across Europe and North America. It argues that it was in the nineteenth century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease’s incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

scholarly journals Jousting Over Jurisdiction: Sovereignty and International Law in Late Nineteenth-Century South Asia

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-457
Author(s):  
Priyasha Saksena
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The State ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Government ◽  
Shared Language ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Relationship

The article examines the relationship between colonialism and international law by focusing on late nineteenth century debates surrounding the sovereignty of the “princely states” of colonial South Asia. The princely states were ruled by indigenous rulers and were not considered to be British territory, but remained subject to British “influence;” as a result, there were numerous controversies over their legal status. During the course of jurisdictional disputes, a variety of interested players - British politicians, colonial officials, international lawyers, rulers and advisors of princely states - engaged in debates over the idea of sovereignty to resolve questions of legal status, the extent of rights and powers, and to construct a political order that supported their interests and aspirations. I focus on legal texts written by British international lawyers and colonial officials as well as material relating to two jurisdictional disputes (one between the state of Travancore and the British Government and another between the state of Baroda and the British Government) to trace two versions of sovereignty that were articulated in late nineteenth century South Asia - unitary and divisible. In doing so, I argue that international law, and the doctrine of sovereignty in particular, became the shared language for participants to debate political problems and a key forum for the negotiation of political power.

scholarly journals Imperial or Settler Imperative? Indigenous Reserves as a Case Study for a Transcolonial Analysis of British Imperial Indigenous Policy

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-71
Author(s):  
Darren Reid
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Western Australia ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
British North America ◽  
Indigenous Policy ◽  
Interdependent System ◽  
Colonial Governance ◽  
The Relationship

My paper presents a comparative analysis of the development of Indigenous reserve systems in British North America and Western Australia across the nineteenth century. The existing historiography seeks to comprehend the relationship between the British metropole and the colonial periphery, and two opposing frameworks of colonial governance have been developed. One holds that the British Empire operated as an interdependent system, in which colonial Indigenous policies were determined by overarching imperial imperatives based upon imperial capitalism and liberal humanitarianism. The other holds that the explosive growth of settler communities undermined these imperial imperatives and facilitated governance guided by the settlers' need for land, labour, and security. This paper seeks to end the tension between these two frameworks by using Indigenous reserve systems as a case study for understanding colonial governance. Through an analysis of correspondence between local and imperial administrators, this paper argues that the development of Indigenous reserve systems reveals an entrenched conflict between imperial and local administrators lasting throughout the nineteenth century, a conflict in which the local governments of British North America and Western Australia subordinated imperial imperatives of imperial capitalism and liberal humanitarianism to local concerns of security and sovereignty. 

Translating the Scribe: Lithographic Print and Vernacularization in Colonial India, 1857–1915

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 281-300
Author(s):  
Amanda Lanzillo
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
North India ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Book Production ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
Arabic Script ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Focusing on the lithographic print revolution in North India, this article analyses the role played by scribes working in Perso-Arabic script in the consolidation of late nineteenth-century vernacular literary cultures. In South Asia, the rise of lithographic printing for Perso-Arabic script languages and the slow shift from classical Persian to vernacular Urdu as a literary register took place roughly contemporaneously. This article interrogates the positionality of scribes within these transitions. Because print in North India relied on lithography, not movable type, scribes remained an important part of book production on the Indian subcontinent through the early twentieth century. It analyses the education and models of employment of late nineteenth-century scribes. New scribal classes emerged during the transition to print and vernacular literary culture, in part due to the intervention of lithographic publishers into scribal education. The patronage of Urdu-language scribal manuals by lithographic printers reveals that scribal education in Urdu was directly informed by the demands of the print economy. Ultimately, using an analysis of scribal manuals, the article contributes to our knowledge of the social positioning of book producers in South Asia and demonstrates the vitality of certain practices associated with manuscript culture in the era of print.

Disease and Civilization: A Scottish Atlantic Network of Physicians in the Enlightenment

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-216
Author(s):  
Sarah Irving-Stonebraker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
Practice Of Medicine ◽  
Benjamin Rush ◽  
American Physician ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
A Current

Through an examination of the extensive papers, manuscripts and correspondence of American physician Benjamin Rush and his friends, this article argues that it is possible to map a network of Scottish-trained physicians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Atlantic world. These physicians, whose members included Benjamin Rush, John Redman, John Morgan, Adam Kuhn, and others, not only brought the Edinburgh model for medical pedagogy across the Atlantic, but also disseminated Scottish stadial theories of development, which they applied to their study of the natural history and medical practices of Native Americans and slaves. In doing so, these physicians developed theories about the relationship between civilization, historical progress and the practice of medicine. Exploring this network deepens our understanding of the transnational intellectual geography of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century British World. This article develops, in relation to Scotland, a current strand of scholarship that maps the colonial and global contexts of Enlightenment thought.

The Romantics in Alternate History from Hawthorne to Clarke: Generic Edges and the Counterfactual Turn

Romanticism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-215
Author(s):  
Alex Broadhead
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Alternate History ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Critical Interest

In 2009, Damian Walford Davies called for a counterfactual turn in Romantic studies, a move reflective of a wider growth of critical interest in the relationship between Romanticism and counterfactual historiography. In contrast to these more recent developments, the lives of the Romantics have provided a consistent source of speculation for authors of popular alternate history since the nineteenth century. Yet the aims of alternate history as a genre differ markedly from those of its more scholarly cousin, counterfactual historiography. How, then, might such works fit in to the proposed counterfactual turn? This article makes a case for the critical as well as the creative value of alternate histories featuring the Romantics. By exploring how these narratives differ from works of counterfactual historiography, it seeks to explain why the Romantics continue to inspire authors of alternate history and to illuminate the forking paths that Davies's counterfactual turn might take.

Pater's Parerga: Framing the Imaginary Portraits

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-135
Author(s):  
Giles Whiteley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Similar Operation ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Relationship

Walter Pater's late-nineteenth-century literary genre of the imaginary portrait has received relatively little critical attention. Conceived of as something of a continuum between his role as an art critic and his fictional pursuits, this essay probes the liminal space of the imaginary portraits, focusing on the role of the parergon, or frame, in his portraits. Guided by Pater's reading of Kant, who distinguishes between the work (ergon) and that which lies outside of the work (the parergon), between inside and outside, and contextualised alongside the analysis of Derrida, who shows how such distinctions have always already deconstructed themselves, I demonstrate a similar operation at work in the portraits. By closely analysing the parerga of two of Pater's portraits, ‘Duke Carl of Rosenmold’ (1887) and ‘Apollo in Picardy’ (1893), focusing on his partial quotation of Goethe in the former, and his playful autocitation and impersonation of Heine in the latter, I argue that Pater's parerga seek to destabilise the relationship between text and context so that the parerga do not lie outside the text but are implicated throughout in their reading, changing the portraits constitutively. As such, the formal structure of the parergon in Pater's portraits is also a theoretical fulcrum in his aesthetic criticism and marks that space where the limits of, and distinctions between, art and life become blurred.

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