National Identity and National Unity in Contemporary East Timorese Literature

Beginning with a panoramic analysis of the role played by East Timorese poets in the struggle for liberation from Portuguese and Indonesian colonial rule, this article examines the extent to which an East Timorese national identity and unity repeatedly featured in the poetry of the 1970s and 80s are represented in contemporary Timorese literary production. By reading the work of the novelist Luís Cardoso, and the poets Abé Barreto and Celso Oliveira, the article also assesses whether the independent nation envisioned earlier by those such as Borja da Costa, Fernando Sylvan and Xanana Gusmão, has been realised. In doing so, critical attention is brought to bear on the intimate relationship between the specific material and political circumstances of East Timor and the literature produced in colonial and postcolonial moments in the nation’s history.

Half-precessional dynamics of monsoon rainfall near the East African Equator

External climate forcings-such as long-term changes in solar insolation-generate different climate responses in tropical and high latitude regions(1). Documenting the spatial and temporal variability of past climates is therefore critical for understanding how such forcings are translated into regional climate variability. In contrast to the data-richmiddle and high latitudes, high-quality climate-proxy records from equatorial regions are relatively few(2-4), especially from regions experiencing the bimodal seasonal rainfall distribution associated with twice-annual passage of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Here we present a continuous and well-resolved climate-proxy record of hydrological variability during the past 25,000 years from equatorial East Africa. Our results, based on complementary evidence from seismic-reflection stratigraphy and organic biomarker molecules in the sediment record of Lake Challa near Mount Kilimanjaro, reveal that monsoon rainfall in this region varied at half-precessional (similar to 11,500-year) intervals in phase with orbitally controlled insolation forcing. The southeasterly and northeasterly monsoons that advect moisture from the western Indian Ocean were strengthened in alternation when the inter-hemispheric insolation gradient was at a maximum; dry conditions prevailed when neither monsoon was intensified and modest local March or September insolation weakened the rain season that followed. On sub-millennial timescales, the temporal pattern of hydrological change on the East African Equator bears clear high-northern-latitude signatures, but on the orbital timescale it mainly responded to low-latitude insolation forcing. Predominance of low-latitude climate processes in this monsoon region can be attributed to the low-latitude position of its continental regions of surface air flow convergence, and its relative isolation from the Atlantic Ocean, where prominent meridional overturning circulation more tightly couples low-latitude climate regimes to high-latitude boundary conditions.

Megalithic Cultures in Britain and their relationship to Western Europe.:Meeting on Megalithic Culture. Comparing Prehistoric ruins of the East and Europe,

H. Kanaseki, Editor. 2003, UNESCO-Cultural Heritage Protection Office: Horen-Cho, Nara.

'Small places like St Helena have big questions to ask': the inaugural lecture of a Professor of Island Geography

This publication takes the form of a written version of my inaugural lecture, which was presented at Queen’s University Belfast on 10 March 2010. It is more personal and considerably more self-indulgent than would normally be acceptable in an article, with more of my own experiences and also my own references than would usually be considered proper. However, the bestowal of such a title as Professor of Island Geography is something of a marker of the maturity not just of myself but maybe also for island studies. After a section describing my path into island geography, the lecture deals with the negativities of islands and the seeming futility of studying them only then to identify a new or at least enhanced regard for islands as places with which to interact and to examine. Reference is made to islands throughout the world, but with some focus on the small islands off Ireland. The development of island studies as a discipline is then briefly described before the lecture concludes with reference to its title quotation on St Helena by considering that place’s islandness and how this affected/affects it in both the 17th and 21st centuries.

Gender and Welfare States in East Asia: Confucianism or Equality?

Is a Confucian cultural climate hostile to gender equality in families and public decision-making? What is the impact of gender equality legislation in East Asia? Approaches to these welfare regimes have ignored gender, while gendered accounts of welfare have neglected East Asia. Comparisons with Western welfare states show strong economies with life expectancy in Japan and South Korea above those of Western social democracies but in contrast there are extremely large gender gaps in employment, earning, unpaid work and parliamentary representation and conjoined with this low fertility rates and and minimal public social spending on childcare and early education.

In this volume, contributors address questions about gender equality in a Confucian context across a wide and varied social policy landscape, from Korea and Taiwan, where Confucian culture is deeply embedded, through China, with its transformations from Confucianism to communism and back, to the mixed cultural environments of Hong Kong and Japan. Overall, the collections asks: Has East Asia's rapid economic transformation been accompanied by social and cultural transformation?

Marine reservoir corrections: St Helena, South Atlantic Ocean

We present the first marine reservoir age and Delta R determination for the island of St. Helena using marine mollusk radiocarbon dates obtained from an historical context of known age. This represents the first marine reservoir a.-c and Delta R determination in the southern Atlantic Ocean within thousands of kilometers of the island. The depletion of C-14 in the shells indicates a rather larger reservoir age for that portion of the surface Atlantic than models indicate. The implication is that upwelling old water along the Namibian coast is transported for a considerable distance, although it is likely to be variable on a decadal timescale. An artilleryman's button, together with other artifacts found in a midden, demonstrate association of the mollusk shells with a narrow historic period of AD 1815-1835.

'In the Service of the Honourable East India Company': Politics and Identity in Dean Mahomet's Travels (1794)

The successful career of Dean Mahomet (1759-1851) as a migrant from India to Ireland (and later, England) has led to scholarly and popular interest in his work. His Travels through several parts of India in the Service of the Honourable East India Company (1794) published by subscription in Cork is reputedly the first English book by an Indian, and has been seen to counterbalance the many accounts of India by western travellers, and to assert, in autobiographical form, his identity as an Indian in 1790s Ireland. My paper analyses this text in relation to moral and economic criticisms of the East India Company in the eighteenth century, and in particular to legislation of 1793 which defined the role of the Company in Ireland’s trade with the east. These aspects of colonial politics involving Ireland and India as subject nations of Britain are shown to shape Mahomet’s discursive strategies and the complex identity produced in his text.