Stefan Uroš II Milutin Nemanjić (1282–1321)

King Stefan Uroš II Milutin Nemanjić (1282—Donje Nerodimlje, October 29, 1321) was a Serbian medieval king, the seventh ruler of the Serbian Nemanide dynasty, the son of King Stefan Uroš I (r. 1243–1276) and Queen Helen Nemanjić (see), the brother of the King Stefan Dragutin (r. 1276–1282) and the father of King Stefan Dečanski (r. 1322–1331). Together with his great grandfather Stefan Nemanja, the founder of the Nemanide dynasty, and his grandson, Emperor Stefan Uroš IV Dušan, King Milutin is considered the most powerful ruler of the Nemanide dynasty. The long and successful military breach of King Milutin, down the Vardar River Valley and deep into the Byzantine territories, represents the beginning of Serbian expansion into southeastern Europe, making it the dominant political power in the Balkan region in the 14th century. During that period, Serbian economic power grew rapidly, mostly because of the development of trading and mining. King Milutin founded Novo Brdo, an internationally important silver mining site. He started minting his own money, producing imitations of Venetian coins (grosso), which gradually diminished in value. This led to the ban of these coins by the Republic of Venice and provided King Milutin a place in Dante’s Divina Commedia. King Milutin had a specific philoktesia fervor: He built or renovated over three dozen Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries not only in Serbia but also in Thessaloniki, Mt. Athos, Constantinople and The Holy Land. Over fifteen of his portraits can be found in the monumental painting ensembles of Serbian medieval monasteries as well as on two icons.

The Chinese in Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, and Panama: Lessons in History, Identity, and Culture, and Interconnections with the Chinese in the Philippines

The Chinese in Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, and Panama have had long histories of migration dating back to the nineteenth century, when British and Spanish colonial powers started to bring them to the Caribbean and Latin America from Guangdong province. The primary goal was to provide labor for the sugar cane, guano, bird nest, gold and silver mining, and other industries. In the 1870s, Havana could boast of having the largest Chinatown in the Caribbean, with more than 10,000 Chinese. Today, it has fewer than 100 Chinese Cubans. Trinidad and Tobago’s population of Chinese waned after the nineteenth century, but many Trinidadians have some Chinese ancestry, while Panama currently has the highest percentage (7 percent) of Chinese among Latin American countries. What stories, approaches, and lessons can be learned by comparing their histories to that of the Chinese in the Philippines? More specifically, how are the experiences of the Chinese in these three countries, whether citizen or recent immigrant, similar to those in the Philippines? What can we learn from the scholarship on the Chinese in the Caribbean that can help shape our own research agenda in studying the Chinese in the Philippines? Through a combination of historical and ethnographic research, this essay discusses the ways in which the identities of each Chinese diasporic community are being shaped by local and external forces, including China’s increasing presence in the region. This essay hopes to serve as a guidepost to Chinese diaspora scholars interested in examining further the transhemispheric connections between the Caribbean and Southeast Asia.

The Banco de Avío

At Alamán’s initiative a law of 1830 established the Banco de Avío, a government-funded development bank for the spurring of industrialization, especially in the textile sector, with which his name has forever been associated. His views of industrialization as a development strategy as opposed to a renewed reliance upon silver mining are discussed, as well as the short- and long-term effects of loans made to textile entrepreneurs and the cronyism employed by Alamán both in organizing the Banco itself and in allotting its capital as loans to industrialists. The state of the textile industry in Mexico before and after the Banco is described.

Shafted

This chapter is devoted exclusively to Alamán’s efforts between the early 1820s and about 1830 to revive the Mexican silver mining industry on the basis of massive capital injections by British investors. The company he managed in Mexico between about 1825 and 1830 was the United Mexican Mining Association, one of the largest among a flock of such companies. The managerial, financial, and technical aspects of this company are discussed in detail, embracing Alamán’s relations with the British brokers of the company’s stock and his fellow managers, all Englishmen. His hopes of making a personal fortune from the enterprise did not materialize, and he left the concern over managerial differences in 1830, probably disillusioned by the experience with the idea that a revived silver-mining industry would restore Mexican economic prosperity after the destruction wrought by the decade of insurgency.

Weaving Disaster

This chapter is entirely devoted to Alamán’s foundation, in partnership with two other men, of an enormous textile factory, Cocolapan, near Orizaba in the state of Veracruz. The enterprise flourished only for a short time in the late 1830s and went into bankruptcy in the early 1840s. It is the thesis of the chapter that like his involvement in silver mining and his purchase of an hacienda, this venture was spurred by his ambition to lift his family back into the ranks of the rich elite of the new republic. But for a variety of reasons it failed, throwing Alamán into tangled bankruptcy litigation leaving him with a large personal debt overhang that undermined his entire economic position to the end of his life. The truth was that he had had little financial capital of his own to invest and was essentially sued by other investors for fraud.

The Spanish Cortes and a Final Sojourn in Paris (1821–1822)

Alamán was installed as a delegate to the Spanish Cortes in Madrid in May 1821, and would participate actively in its debates through the beginning of the following year, forming positive or conflictual relationships with a number of Mexicans he would encounter in his later political career. He successfully proposed reforms in the laws regulating the silver mining industry and backed an unsuccessful proposal to restructure the colonies in the direction of granting greater autonomy to New Spain and other kingdoms within the Empire. Meanwhile, New Spain was irrevocably headed toward a break with Spain and the Spanish deputies simply chose to ignore the situation there. Returning to Paris for a number of months Alamán attempted without success to form a mining company with French capital, and returned to what was now an independent Mexico in the fall of 1822, never to visit Europe again.

Assessing the potential environmental factors affecting cladoceran assemblage composition in arsenic-contaminated lakes near abandoned silver mines

Silver mining has a long history in Cobalt (Ontario, Canada), and it has left a complex environmental legacy where many lakes are contaminated with arsenic-rich mine tailings. In this exploratory survey, we examined subfossil Cladocera remains in the surface sediments of 22 lakes in the abandoned mining region to assess which environmental variables may be influencing the recent assemblage structure. Further, using a “top-bottom” paleolimnological approach, we compared the recent (top) and older (bottom) assemblages from a subset of 16 lakes to determine how cladoceran composition has changed in these lakes. Our regional survey suggests that the cladoceran assemblages in the Cobalt area are primarily structured by differences in lake depth, while site-specific limnological characteristics, including those related to past mining activities, may have limited roles in shaping the recent cladoceran compositions. The top-bottom paleolimnological analysis suggests that the cladoceran assemblages have changed in most lakes around Cobalt, however the magnitude and nature of changes varied across the study sites. As with most regional biological surveys, the responses to historical mining activities were not uniform across all sites, which further emphasizes the importance of considering site-specific limnological characteristics and multiple environmental stressors when assessing the impacts of mining pollution.