Government decisions before and during the First World War and the living standards in Germany during a drastic natural experiment

The First World War hit Germany severely, particularly the agricultural sector, because the outbreak came unexpected and its duration exceeded all expectations. Many resources necessary for agricultural production were required by the war economy and led to shortages and shrinking supplies. Many agricultural laborers were drafted and the blockade imposed by the allies prevented Germany from a great deal of imports. As a consequence, the nutritional situation was devastating, particularly after 1916, and hit all groups of the German society. The period under observation provides one of most drastic natural experiments in the 20th century. This study uses anthropometric data from German soldiers who served in the Second World War to trace living standards between the 1900s and the 1920s. In contrast to other approaches, this paper is able to distinguish between social groups by occupation, religious denominatio\n, regional origin, and city size. The results suggest that although all social strata were hit by famine conditions, the height of farmers, urban citizens, Catholics, and especially individuals born in the highly integrated food-import regions along the coast and the banks of the Rhine declined most.

Air pollutant contamination and acidification of surface waters in the North York Moors, UK: Multi-proxy evidence from the sediments of a moorland pool

Despite the extensive geographical range of palaeolimnological studies designed to assess the extent of surface water acidification in the United Kingdom during the 1980s, little attention was paid to the status of surface waters in the North York Moors (NYM). In this paper, we present sediment core data from a moorland pool in the NYM that provide a record of air pollution contamination and surface water acidification. The 41-cm-long core was divided into three lithostratigraphic units. The lower two comprise peaty soils and peats, respectively, that date to between approximately 8080 and 6740 cal. BP. The uppermost unit comprises peaty lake muds dating from between approximately ad 1790 and the present day (ad 2006). The lower two units contain pollen dominated by forest taxa, whereas the uppermost unit contains pollen indicative of open landscape conditions similar to those of the present. Heavy metal, spheroidal carbonaceous particle, mineral magnetics and stable isotope analysis of the upper sediments show clear evidence of contamination by air pollutants derived from fossil-fuel combustion over the last c. 150years, and diatom analysis indicates that the naturally acidic pool became more acidic during the 20th century. We conclude that the exceptionally acidic surface waters of the pool at present (pH=c. 4.1) are the result of a long history of air pollution and not because of naturally acidic local conditions. We argue that the highly acidic surface waters elsewhere in the NYM are similarly acidified and that the lack of evidence of significant recovery from acidification, despite major reductions in the emissions of acidic gases that have taken place over the last c. 30years, indicates the continuing influence of pollutant sulphur stored in catchment peats, a legacy of over 150years of acid deposition.

Session organiser/chair: Architecture, Infrastructure and the Making of Modern Ireland

‘A free Ireland would drain the bogs, would harness the rivers, would plant the wastes, would nationalise the railways and the waterways, would improve agriculture, would protect fisheries, would foster industries, would promote commerce, and beautify the cities …’ (Padraig Pearse, ‘From a Hermitage’, 1913)

Somewhat unusually in his often romantic writings Padraig Pearse – poet, pedagogue and revolutionary – chose to describe the future of an independent Ireland in terms of infrastructure and technological processes. Terence Brown’s locating of this excerpt at the beginning his seminal work Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922-2002 highlights the simultaneous and interlinking construction of both a new physical and cultural landscape for an independent modern nation. Lacking any significant industrial complex, the construction of new infrastructures in Ireland was seen throughout the 20th century as a key element in the building of the new State, just as the adoption of an international style modernism in architecture was perceived as a way to escape the colonial past. For Paul N. Edwards modernity and infrastructure are intimately connected.

‘infrastructures simultaneously shape and are shaped – in other words, co-construct – the condition of modernity. By linking macro, meso, and micro scales of time, space and social organisation, they form the stable foundation of modern social worlds’ (2003: 186).
Simultaneously omnipresent and invisible – infra means beneath – Edwards also points out that infrastructure tends only to become apparent when it is either new or broken. Interpreting the meso scale as being that of the building, this session calls for papers that critically and analytically investigate aspects of the architectures of infrastructure in 20th-century Ireland. Like the territory they explore these papers may range across scales to oscillate between a concern for the artefact and its physical landscape, and the larger, often hidden systems and networks that co-define this architecture.

The Modern Ordinary: Changing culture of living in Egypt’s traditional quarters at the turn of the twentieth Century

Having experienced social and political structures of the 19th century Europe, Western- educated Egyptian elite used public institutions to force legislative structures and procedures that ruled out traditional housing forms and spatial systems. This essay detects direct and indirect impact of these changes that informed the spatial change of modern living in Egypt in the first quarter of the twentieth century. It offers analysis of socio-spatial practices and change in ordinary Cairenes’ modes of everyday living, using social routine and interaction to explain spatial systems and changing house forms during the first quarter of the 20th century. In doing so, the essay utilized archival documents, accounts, formal decrees, and novels of the time as well as conducting survey of house forms and spatial organizations in Old Cairo.

Rapid glacial retreat on the Kamchatka Peninsula during the early 21st Century

Monitoring glacier fluctuations provides insights into changing glacial environments and recent climate change. The availability of satellite imagery offers the opportunity to view these changes for remote and inaccessible regions. Gaining an understanding of the ongoing changes in such regions is vital if a complete picture of glacial fluctuations globally is to be established. Here, satellite imagery (Landsat 7, 8 and ASTER) is used to conduct a multi-annual remote sensing survey of glacier fluctuations on the Kamchatka Peninsula (eastern Russia) over the 2000–2014 period. Glacier margins were digitised manually and reveal that, in 2000, the peninsula was occupied by 673 glaciers, with a total glacier surface area of 775.7 ± 27.9 km2 . By 2014, the number of glaciers had increased to 738 (reflecting the fragmentation of larger glaciers), but their surface area had decreased to 592.9 ± 20.4 km2 . This represents a ∼ 24 % decline in total glacier surface area between 2000 and 2014 and a notable acceleration in the rate of area loss since the late 20th century. Analysis of possible controls indicates that these glacier fluctuations were likely governed by variations in climate (particularly rising summer temperatures), though the response of individual glaciers was modulated by other (non-climatic) factors, principally glacier size, local shading and debris cover.