The Politics of Archives in Uganda

Since the beginning of the 21st century, archivists in Uganda have been pursuing a number of projects to make previously inaccessible archival collections available for research. All of this work of archival rehabilitation makes it hard to see the longer history of control and curatorship in the management of Uganda’s public record. Uganda’s archives have, over the course of decades, been rearranged and pruned in response to changing political and intellectual demands. In the 1950s and 1960s British and Ugandan officials sought to shield the paper record from examination. This regime of access control deprived campaigners of inspiration and evidence. During the 1970s, with the ascendancy of Idi Amin’s government, archives were rendered into a national patrimony. Civil servants hastened to ensure that the record of their accomplishments was stored in safe custody. Since the late 1980s the government of Yoweri Museveni has disinvested the state from the legacies of the past. For the Museveni government the slow decay of the public record has allowed the foreclosing of divisive debates about history. Uganda’s political history has been episodic and interrupted, and every new regime has had to struggle anew to author a narrative about national self-becoming. That is why Uganda’s governments have taken such dramatically different positions on the management of historical knowledge. Opening or withholding archival materials is a way of editing the public record. It makes some kinds of information state secrets and renders other aspects of the past into a legacy, a source of inspiration and orientation.

Introducing activities of the Archives of Infectious Diseases History (AIDH) project: Historical epidemiology

The AIDH is a project as a historical epidemiology. The AIDH aims to collect, maintain, and manage past epidemiological materials and to offer these materials to persons who are interested in the history and in the fields of tropical medicine and global health. In this paper, we introduce our purpose and activities and show a hypothesis about lymphatic filariasis with Brugia malayi in Japan as a case of historical epidemiology. We hope to build fruitful ties between historians and scholars of tropical medicine and global health workers through an interdisciplinary approach to the history of control of infectious diseases.

Patterns of smallpox mortality in London, England, over three centuries

Smallpox is unique among infectious diseases in the degree to which it devastated human populations, its long history of control interventions, and the fact that it has been successfully eradicated. Mortality from smallpox in London, England was carefully documented, weekly, for nearly 300 years, providing a rare and valuable source for the study of ecology and evolution of infectious disease. We describe and analyze smallpox mortality in London from 1664 to 1930. We digitized the weekly records published in the London Bills of Mortality (LBoM) and the Registrar General’s Weekly Returns (RGWRs). We annotated the resulting time series with a sequence of historical events that might have influenced smallpox dynamics in London. We present a spectral analysis that reveals how periodicities in reported smallpox mortality changed over decades and centuries; many of these changes in epidemic patterns are correlated with changes in control interventions and public health policies. We also examine how the seasonality of reported smallpox mortality changed from the 17th to 20th centuries in London.

Patterns of smallpox mortality in London, England, over three centuries

Smallpox is unique among infectious diseases in the degree to which it devasted human populations, its long history of control interventions, and the fact that it has been successfully eradicated. Mortality from smallpox in London, England, was carefully documented, weekly, for nearly 300 years, providing a rare and valuable source for the study of ecology and evolution of infectious disease. We describe and analyze smallpox mortality in London from 1664 to 1930. We digitized the weekly records published in the London Bills of Mortality and the Registrar General’s Weekly Returns. We annotated the resulting time series with a sequence of historical events that appear to have influenced smallpox dynamics in London. We present a spectral analysis that reveals how periodicities in smallpox dynamics changed over decades and centuries, and how these changes were related to control interventions and public health policy changes. We also examine how the seasonality of smallpox epidemics changed from the 17th to 20th centuries in London.

Asian Territorial Disputes and the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty: The Case of Dokdo

This Article analyzes whether the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, the only multilateral international agreement that draws borders in East Asia, resolves the longstanding dispute over Dokdo between Korea and Japan. It uses the dispute to draw larger lessons about the nature of the treaty that ended World War II in the Pacific and how it structured the peace in Asia differently from that in Europe. It uses U.S. archival material to reconstruct the history of the making of the Treaty, which continues to be the most significant international legal instrument governing post-WWII Asia. Although the Republic of Korea demonstrated a long history of control over Dokdo, Japan annexed the island on February 22, 1905. Japan places much importance on the Treaty’s silence because the Treaty otherwise required Japan to relinquish the territories it acquired before and during World War II. After the fall of the Nationalist government in China, the United States decided to rebuild Japan into a strong regional ally, and consequently negotiated a generous peace treaty with its former WWII enemy. This Article concludes that the Treaty left Dokdo, along with other important issues, open for future resolution.

From the history of control and seed business in Ukraine: the meaning and role of N.N. Kuleshov in its formation (1908–1926)

It covers the activities of the scientist-grower N.N. Kuleshov (1890–1968) in the context of the development of domestic control of seeds. It is not only deeply versed in the theoretical and practical problems of seed production and selection, but also the main principles of the organization and functioning of the control system. He made a significant contribution to its formation: Central led the seed of the Ukrainian SSR station, worked on the Kharkov Plant Breeding Station, participated in the All-Ukrainian Society of seed, congresses and meetings, developed a core program based on scientific and research activities of seed control stations. Along with other important problems crop area selection, seed were one of the major in its activities, especially in the first half of the work.