The supply of marine biological specimens (principally animals) for teaching and research in Great Britain from the nineteenth century until today

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. G. Moore

The nineteenth-century growth of biology, particularly as developed in Germany, was focused initially on morphology and anatomy. In Britain, the growth of biology followed T. H. Huxley's principle of teaching the characters of certain plants and animals selected as types of vegetable and animal organization, which brought demands for marine specimens for dissection. The history of the provision of such material in Britain is investigated, particularly apropos of the Marine Station at Millport. Supplementary information is presented on the equally long-standing specimen trade at Plymouth and on two small commercial concerns that supplied marine specimens (from the Isle of Luing and Shoreham-by-Sea). The demise of the specimen-supply trade in Britain in recent decades has resulted from curriculum changes in schools and universities no longer requiring students to do dissections (relating also to Health and Safety concerns about formalin-preserved material); and biology departments that can often no longer, as a result of financial stringency, afford the “luxury” of supplying students with the range of practical experiences that previous generations once valued so highly. The concern among some students about the ethics, or religious strictures, surrounding dissection is acknowledged. The need for biological conservation is stressed, as too, the need for awareness of the risks posed by alien species introduced into foreign ecosystems via international trade in live marine organisms.

Author(s):  
Bill Jenkins

The introduction sets the scene by exploring the role of Edinburgh as a centre for the development and propagation of pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories. It gives essential background on natural history in the Scottish capital in early nineteenth century and the history of evolutionary thought and outlines the aims and objectives of the book. In addition, it explores some of the historiographical issues raised by earlier historians of science who have discussed the role of Edinburgh in the development of evolutionary thought in Great Britain.


Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter

This chapter discusses statistics as social science. The systematic study of social numbers in the spirit of natural philosophy was pioneered during the 1660s, and was known for about a century and a half as political arithmetic. Its purpose, when not confined to the calculation of insurance or annuity rates, was the promotion of sound, well-informed state policy. Political arithmetic was, according to William Petty, the application of Baconian principles to the art of government. Implicit in the use by political arithmeticians of social numbers was the belief that the wealth and strength of the state depended strongly on the number and character of its subjects. Political arithmetic was supplanted by statistics in France and Great Britain around the beginning of the nineteenth century. The shift in terminology was accompanied by a subtle mutation of concepts that can be seen as one of the most important in the history of statistical thinking.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Paulami Guha Biswas

This article follows the debate on the implementation of the road cess in late nineteenth-century Bengal. To understand how ‘cess’ was defined, it enters the discussion on the problematic category of the ‘local’. The debate in the official circles mainly addressed two questions: whether ‘cess’ was a legal tax or not, and whether cess should be a local tax or a centralized one. The thematic division of the article coincides with the chronology of the road cess in India. The Bengal District Road Cess Act was passed in 1871. The debate on the appropriate incidence of the tax—whether its burden was to be borne by travellers on these roads, or by landholders for the construction of the roads—had intensified by the 1850s. Decades earlier, in the 1810s, the revenue officers of Bengal set out to inquire into the probable existence of a road tax in Shahabad district of Bihar. This article will trace the protracted stages of the history of the road cess in India from the 1780s to 1900, traversing through the theoretical debates on the Permanent Settlement and the practical experiences of cess collection in various districts.


1992 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl H. Metz

SummaryThe first part of this paper establishes the outlines of social policy in the course of the nineteenth century using Great Britain, Germany and France as examples, with particular emphasis on the differences arising from the varying political cultures of these countries. In the second part the paper attempts to establish comparisons for a generalized framework, also covering developments into the twentieth century. ‘Social policy’ in this instance means all state measures to safeguard the physical and social existence of employed workers on the basis of a criterion of fairness which is derived from their citizenship, it is political in other words. Safety ar work is as much a part of this as protection during illness, old age or unemployment. This study as a whole sets out to achieve some standardizations which will be useful in the analysis of the history of social policy and may also be helpful in the discussion of current socio-political problems.


2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-450
Author(s):  
Richard A. Keogh

The passage of the Emancipation Act in 1829 presented an opportunity for Catholics to reimagine their loyalty as equal subjects for the first time under the union between Great Britain and Ireland. This article explores the way Catholic loyalty was conceived in the decades that followed the act of 1829 through to the mid 1870s, when there was renewed focus on the civil allegiance of Catholics following the declaration of Papal infallibility. Historians are increasingly exploring a range of social, political and religious identities in nineteenth century Ireland, beyond the rigid binary paradigm of Catholic nationalisms and Protestant loyalisms that has dominated Irish historiography. However, Catholic loyalty in particular remains an anachronism and lacks sufficient conceptual clarity. Our understanding of a specifically Catholic variant of loyalty and its public and associational expression, beyond a number of biographical studies of relatively unique individuals, remains limited. By providing an exposition of episodes in the history of Catholic loyalty in the early and mid-Victorian years this article illuminates the phenomenon. It demonstrates that Irish Catholic loyalty took on different expressive forms, which were dependent on the individuals proclaiming their loyalty, their relationship to the objects of their loyalty, and its reception by the British state and Protestant establishment.


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