The Chancellor, the Chancery, and the History of Law Reform

2004 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 615-617
Author(s):  
Michael Lobban

As both James Oldham and Joshua Getzler show in their perceptive and helpful comments, much work remains to be done on the history of both the nineteenth-century Chancery and the wider law reform movement. My discussion of the inconclusive nature of the political debate about Eldon's arrears leads Oldham to ask whether the Chancellor was really overburdened and whether the appointment of the Vice Chancellor was as counterproductive as many contemporaries claimed. On the first of these issues, the data show that while Eldon was in general able to deal with the caseload before him, it was in the 1810s—when “by a series of most important decisions, [he] systematized the law of bankruptcy”—that a dramatic arrear in appeals developed (see Figure 5), which contributed to the political pressure on him in the following decade. Oldham shows from a survey of his notebooks that Eldon heard roughly fifty cases a year from 1801–13; while according to official returns, in the 1820s, he heard more than forty appeals each year. But between 1813 and 1819, the number fell to about twelve cases a year. On the second issue, the data show that the creation of a Vice Chancellor did have an impact, but a relatively modest one. Lacking the distractions of the Great Seal, he could hear more original business; and cases set down and heard in Chancery increased by about 40 percent in the decade and a half after his appointment. While the number of appeals also increased, both numerically and proportionally, they remained at manageable levels.

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
pp. 793-812 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henio Hoyo

In his highly influential work on the “small,” stateless European nations, Hroch seems to assume that patriotic movements have a homogeneous view about the core relations or “ties” that constitute and identify their nations. This assumption seems generally correct for the cases Hroch studies. However, is it correct if applied to the study of those patriotic movements developing in comparatively larger, heterogeneous and underdeveloped societies, comprising several ethnic groups bound together by the colonialist rule of an autocratic empire? I argue that, while the colonial experience can lead to the creation of some ties among the dominated populations, it also affects the way patriotic movements perceive their own nations. As a result, the phase of patriotic agitation can involve diverse movements addressing the same nation, but each having a particular view on the features and history of it. Such contested patriotic doctrines can lead to very important variations in the political agendas and goals of those movements, especially when they reach the mass phase. To exemplify this, the nineteenth century movements in New Spain/Mexico will be used as an example.


Author(s):  
Nurit Yaari

This chapter examines the lack of continuous tradition of the art of the theatre in the history of Jewish culture. Theatre as art and institution was forbidden for Jews during most of their history, and although there were plays written in different times and places during the past centuries, no tradition of theatre evolved in Jewish culture until the middle of the nineteenth century. In view of this absence, the author discusses the genesis of Jewish theatre in Eastern Europe and in Eretz-Yisrael (The Land of Israel) since the late nineteenth century, encouraged by the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the emergence of Jewish nationalism, and the rebirth of Hebrew as a language of everyday life. Finally, the chapter traces the development of parallel strands of theatre that preceded the Israeli theatre and shadowed the emergence of the political infrastructure of the future State of Israel.


1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-193
Author(s):  
Kym Bird

The initial phase of women's drama in Canada coincides with the first wave of 19th-century Canadian feminism and the Canadian women's reform movement. At the time, a variety of women wrote and staged plays that grew out of their commitment to the political, ideological and social context of the movement. The 'Mock Parliament,' a form of theatrical parody in which men's and women's roles are reversed, was collectively created by different groups of suffragists in Manitoba, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. This article attempts to recuperate these works for a history of Canadian feminist theatre. It will argue that the 'dual' conservative and liberal ideology of the suffrage movement informs all aspects of the Mock Parliament. On the one hand, these plays critique the division of gender roles that material feminism wants to uphold; they are testimony to the strength of a woman's movement that knew how to work as equal players within traditionally structured political organizations. On the other hand, they betray the safe, moderate tactics of an upper and middle-class, white womanhood who wanted political representation but no structural social change. These opposing tensions are inherent in theatrical parody which is both imitative and critical.


2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 550-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assef Ashraf

AbstractThis article uses gift-giving practices in early nineteenth-century Iran as a window onto statecraft, governance, and center-periphery relations in the early Qajar state (1785–1925). It first demonstrates that gifts have a long history in the administrative and political history of Iran, the Persianate world, and broader Eurasia, before highlighting specific features found in Iran. The article argues that the pīshkish, a tributary gift-giving ceremony, constituted a central role in the political culture and economy of Qajar Iran, and was part of the process of presenting Qajar rule as a continuation of previous Iranian royal dynasties. Nevertheless, pīshkish ceremonies also illustrated the challenges Qajar rulers faced in exerting power in the provinces and winning the loyalty of provincial elites. Qajar statesmen viewed gifts and bribes, at least at a discursive level, in different terms, with the former clearly understood as an acceptable practice. Gifts and honors, like the khil‘at, presented to society were part of Qajar rulers' strategy of presenting themselves as just and legitimate. Finally, the article considers the use of gifts to influence diplomacy and ease relations between Iranians and foreign envoys, as well as the ways in which an inadequate gift could cause offense.


1986 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
Larry W. Yarak

One of the more perplexing issues in the history of Asante's relations with the Europeans on the nineteenth-century Gold Coast has been that of the origin and significance of the so-called “Elmina Note,” the pay document which authorized the Asantehene to collect two ounces of gold (or its equivalent in trade goods) per month from the Dutch authorities at Elmina. Not only have modern historians of Ghana evidenced no small amount of confusion on this matter, but during 1870/71 the Asantehene, the British, and the Dutch also disagreed strongly over the political significance of the note, as the Dutch negotiated to cede their “possessions” on the Gold Coast to the British. Failure to resolve these disagreements contributed significantly to the Asante decision to invade the British “protected” territories in 1873. This action in turn led to the British invasion of Asante in 1874, which most historians agree constitutes a critical watershed in Asante history. Clearly, the matter of the “Elmina Note” (or kostbrief as it was known to the Dutch) is one of some historical and historiographical importance. An examination of the relevant Dutch, Danish, and British documentation now makes possible a resolution of the major questions concerning its origin and meaning.The debates between the Asante, the British, and the Dutch show that in the later nineteenth century there was considerable agreement over certain issues: first, no one disputed that the Dutch had for some time past paid to the Asantehene (actually to an envoy dispatched by the king to Elmina) a stipend (or kostgeld, as the Dutch termed it) of two ounces of gold per month, or twentyfour ounces per year.


Author(s):  
Sean Hanretta

The concept of culture, in the Boasian sense of the learned, variable, and mutable “structures” underlying “the behavior of the individuals composing a social group collectively and individually,” has played an important role in the production of knowledge about many human societies. This chapter examines two moments in the history of the culture concept as applied to West Africa. First, a moment during the process of the concept's formation in the mid-nineteenth century; second, a moment in the 1950s that revealed the political limits of appeals to culture. Juxtaposing the lives of Edward Wilmot Blyden, the father of Pan-Africanism, and the Ghanaian doctor and poet Raphael Armattoe, one of the first Africans nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the chapter illuminates the diverse networks and shifting political valences that shaped the rise, redemption, and circumscription of the culture concept in Africa from colonialism to neoliberalism.


Author(s):  
Jean Louis Halpérin

Bentham has defended the idea of a general codification as a “map of the law” that could allow the comparison between the laws of different nations. This essay aims to use this relationship about the ideas of codifying the law and mapping the laws to think about the possibility of mapping the history of codification, taking as its point of departure the writing specialized codes - not only the civil codes. Mapping can be a means to deal with the relationships between the countries adopting a code, the opportunity to consider the relationships between the codes and the creation of new States, the national processes of unification, the adoption, the political and social revolutions and ruptures. Also, it will try to make correspondences between these phenomena in order to construct tables that could be represented through future maps.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-94
Author(s):  
Matt Cohen

Nineteenth-century struggles over mapping concepts and techniques yielded the forebears of digital humanistic data visualizations today, staging the political tensions of the deep map’s entry into the humanities. The careers of educational reformer Emma Hart Willard and Creek poet and critic Alexander Posey, who were both map-makers in their ways, exemplify the entanglements of the history of deep mapping. Willard was a feminist innovator in her work with historical visualization, but at the cost of solidifying a regime of indigenous vanishment. Posey fought for his people’s cultural survival, but he did so from within a bureaucratic engine made possible in part by Willard’s widespread pedagogy linking the American map with a vision of settler dominance. These two figures left us provocative maps, but also offer a way to reflect on the justness of map-making — on the difficulty of deepening the map wisely, or even ethically.   


2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 1840-1874 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAHIR KAMRAN

AbstractDuring the late nineteenth-century colonial era in India, theKhatam-e-Nubuwwat(Finality of the Prophethood) assumed remarkable salience as a theme for religious debate among Muslim sects. The controversies around the establishment of the Ahmadiya sect in 1889 brought the issue ofKhatam-e-Nubuwwatto the centre stage of religious polemic ormunazara.Tense relations continued between Ahmadiya and Sunnis, in particular, though the tension remained confined to the domain of religious polemic. However, immediately after Pakistan's creation, theKhatam-e-Nubuwwatsqueezed itself out of the epistemic confines of the ‘theological’ and entered the realm of the ‘political’.Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat(the Association for the Safety of the Finality of the Prophethood) grew out of the almost-defunctMajlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islamon 13 January 1949, with the principal objective of excluding the Ahmadiya sect from the Islamic fold.1This article seeks to reveal how theKhatam-e-Nubuwwathas impinged upon the course of Pakistani politics from 1949 onwards as an instrument of religious exclusion, peaking in 1953. The pre-history of religious exclusion, which had 1889 as a watershed—the year when the Ahmadiya sect took a definitive shape—thus forms the initial part of the article.


Author(s):  
Iain Walker

Chapter four recounts the arrival of Malagasy leaders on the islands of Mwali and Mayotte in order to profoundly shape the history of the latter island, sold to France to become a colony in 1841. The political maneuvers between France, Britain, Madagascar and Zanzibar had significant consequences on the three smaller islands, particularly as the British tried to suppress the slave trade, the fulcrum of local economies and the source of labor for French plantations on Mayotte. Only Ngazidja remained apart, until finally, towards the end of the century, both Britain and Zanzibar renounced their claims to and influence over the archipelago and France declared protectorates over the three westernmost islands. The development of struggling plantation economies on all the islands and the loss of their historical economic mercantile activities would spell economic disaster for the islands.


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