The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle - 1812 December

*Pages 497-504 are duplicated. Please check both November and December for these pages listed in the Index. Specific pages related to the War of 1812 include: Page 574: Battles at Fort Michilimackinac and the Invasion of Upper Canada by the Americans on October 12, 1812. Pages 576, 577, 578: Intelligence from Major General Sir Isaac Brock with mentions of the battles of Fort Detroit, Amherstburg, etc. Click on the pdf links to the right to view the monthly issue. The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle was a monthly periodical published in England during the years of 1736-1833. The volumes of interest from 1812-1815 were written and compiled by Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman. These volumes were printed in London by Nichols, Son and Bentley at Cicero's Head, Red Lion Passage and Fleet Street. The magazine contains accounts of important historical events, letters from noted figures, articles on geography, biographical entries for prominent people, poems, reviews of books and more.

The geography of tyranny and despair: development indicators and the hypothesis of genetic inevitability of national inequality

Development geography has long sought to understand why inequalities exist and the best ways to address them. Dependency theory sets out an historical rationale for under development based on colonialism and a legacy of developed core and under-developed periphery. Race is relevant in this theory only insofar that Europeans are white and the places they colonised were occupied by people with darker skin colour. There are no innate biological reasons why it happened in that order. However, a new theory for national inequalities proposed by Lynn and Vanhanen in a series of publications makes the case that poorer countries have that status because of a poorer genetic stock rather than an accident of history. They argue that IQ has a genetic basis and IQ is linked to ability. Thus races with a poorer IQ have less ability, and thus national IQ can be positively correlated with performance as measured by an indicator like GDP/capita. Their thesis is one of despair, as little can be done to improve genetic stock significantly other than a programme of eugenics. This paper summarises and critiques the Lynn and Vanhanen hypothesis and the assumptions upon which it is based, and uses this analysis to show how a human desire to simplify in order to manage can be dangerous in development geography. While the attention may naturally be focused on the 'national IQ' variables as a proxy measure of 'innate ability', the assumption of GDP per capita as an indicator of 'success' and 'achievement' is far more readily accepted without criticism. The paper makes the case that the current vogue for indicators, indices and cause-effect can be tyrannical.

Back to the margins in search of the core: "Foreign Land"'s geography of exclusion

The crisis of the national project in the early 1990s, caused by a short-lived but disastrous government, led Brazilian art cinema, for the first time, to look at itself as periphery and re-approach the old colonial center, Portugal. Terra estrangeira/Foreign Land (Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas, Brazil/Portugal, 1995), a film about Brazilian exiles in Portugal, is the best illustration of this perspective shift which provides a new sense of Brazil’s scale and position within a global context. Shot mainly on location in São Paulo, Lisbon and Cape Verde, it promotes the encounter of Lusophone peoples who find a common ground in their marginal situation. Rather than as a former empire, Portugal is defined by its situation at the edge of Europe and by beliefs such as Sebastianism, whose origins go back to the time when the country was dominated by Spain. As a result, notions of “core” or “center” are devolved to the realm of myth. The film’s carefully crafted dialogue combines Brazilian, Portuguese and Creole linguistic peculiarities into a common dialect of exclusion, while language puns trigger visual rhymes which refer back to the Cinema Novo (the Brazilian New Wave) repertoire and restage the imaginary of the discovery turned into unfulfilled utopia. The main characters also acquire historical resonances, as they are depicted as descendants of Iberian conquistadors turned into smugglers of precious stones in the present. Their activities define a circuit of international exchange which resonates with that of globalized cinema, a realm in which Foreign Land, made up of citations and homage to other cinemas, tries to retrieve a sense of belonging.

Back to the margins in search of the core: foreign land's geography of exclusion

The crisis of the national project in the early 1990s, caused by a short-lived but disastrous government, led Brazilian art cinema, for the first time, to look at itself as periphery and re-approach the old colonial centre, Portugal. Terra estrangeira/Foreign Land (Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas, Brazil/Portugal, 1995), a film about Brazilian exiles in Portugal, is the best illustration of this perspective shift aimed at providing a new sense of Brazil’s scale and position within a global context. Shot mainly on location in São Paulo, Lisbon and Cape Verde, it promotes the encounter of Lusophone peoples who find a common ground in their marginal situation. Even Portugal is defined by its location at the edge of Europe and by beliefs such as Sebastianism, whose origins go back to the time when the country was dominated by Spain. As a result, notions of ‘core’ or ‘centre’ are devolved to the realm of myth. The film’s carefully crafted dialogues combine Brazilian, Portuguese and Creole linguistic peculiarities into a common dialect of exclusion, while language puns trigger visual rhymes which refer back to the Cinema Novo (the Brazilian New Wave) repertoire and restage the imaginary of the discovery turned into unfulfilled utopia. The main characters also acquire historical resonances, as they are depicted as descendants of Iberian conquistadors turned into smugglers of precious stones in the present. Their activities define a circuit of international exchange which resonates with that of globalized cinema, a realm in which Foreign Land, made up of citations and homage to other cinemas, tries to retrieve a sense of belonging.

Andean pre-historical urban planning tradition

Urban design features that formed an Andean urban planning tradition through continual use across successive periods of time, civilizations and extensive, varied geography are identified. Some Andean urban features were also mirrored or pre-date similar ideas that occurred in other parts of the world, particularly ideas used by Spanish colonialism.

Beating space and time: historical gay sex and queer cultural geographies of masculinities

This article focuses on historical queer cultural geographies of masculinities and to do so it focuses on two cases/places. The first is an archival case/place: a partial assembly of documents of beats and their uses during and in the wake of Gay Liberation in Australia. The second is a literary case/place: Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, a canonical twentieth-century imbrication of male homosexuality and geography. This article will seek to rationalize the mobilization of these two asynchronous cases/places through the insights that both afford, when brought together, for elaborating contributions that queer readings of Nietzsche can make to contemporary queer theories of space, time and masculinities.

Essays on geography and diseases

This dissertation explores how diseases contributed to shape historical institutions and how health and diseases are still affecting modern comparative development. The overarching goal of this investigation is to identify the channels linking geographic suitability to diseases and the emergence of historical and modern insitutions, while tackling the endogenenity problems that traditionally undermine this literature. I attempt to do so by taking advantage of the vast amount of newly available historical data and of the richness of data accessible through the geographic information system (GIS). The first chapter of my thesis, 'Side Effects of Immunities: The African Slave Trade', proposes and test a novel explanation for the origins of slavery in the tropical regions of the Americas. I argue that Africans were especially attractive for employment in tropical areas because they were immune to many of the diseases that were ravaging those regions. In particular, Africans' resistance to malaria increased the profitability of slaves coming from the most malarial parts of Africa. In the second chapter of my thesis, 'Caste Systems and Technology in Pre-Modern Societies', I advance and test the hypothesis that caste systems, generally viewed as a hindrance to social mobility and development, had been comparatively advantageous at an early stage of economic development. In the third chapter, 'Malaria as Determinant of Modern Ethnolinguistic Diversity', I conjecture that in highly malarious areas the necessity to adapt and develop immunities specific to the local disease environment historically reduced mobility and increased isolation, thus leading to the formation of a higher number of different ethnolinguistic groups. In the final chapter, 'Malaria Risk and Civil Violence: A Disaggregated Analysis for Africa', I explore the relationship between malaria and violent conflicts. Using georeferenced data for Africa, the article shows that violent events are more frequent in areas where malaria risk is higher.

Civic Discipline: Geography in America, 1860-1890

Civic Discipline argues that the story of the origins of American geography is a distinctly "New York story." Wealthy businessmen began America's first geographical society - the American Geographical Society - in 1851, inspired by what geographical knowledge of the globe could offer an expanding American commercial Empire at home and abroad. AGS meetings were spectacularly popular among the public and press. At them, geography was cast as a science in the service of the public and civic good. Meanwhile though, AGS men's spatial and financial "missions" became closely linked. They helped improve derelict spaces in New York City and weighed in on controversial scientific questions of the day in the Arctic, yet the geographical knowledge they advanced - such as in the American West and in Central Africa - also created enormous personal wealth. Civic Discipline shows that it was not just that historical events shaped geography, but rather, that geography shaped historical events.

The Politics of the "New North": Putting History and Geography at Stake in Arctic Futures

References to a “New North” have snowballed across popular media in the past 10 years. By invoking the phrase, scientists, policy analysts, journalists and others draw attention to the collision of global warming and global investment in the Arctic today and project a variety of futures for the region and the planet. While changes are apparent, the trope of a “New North” is not new. Discourses that appraised unfamiliar situations at the top of the world have recurred throughout the twentieth century. They have also accompanied attempts to cajole, conquer, civilize, consume, conserve and capitalize upon the far north. This article examines these politics of the “New North” by critically reading “New North” texts from the North American Arctic between 1910 and 2010. In each case, appeals to novelty drew from evaluations of the historical record and assessments of the Arctic’s shifting position in global affairs. “New North” authors pinpointed the ways science, state power, capital and technology transformed northern landscapes at different moments in time. They also licensed political and corporate influence in the region by delimiting the colonial legacies already apparent there. Given these tendencies, scholars need to approach the most recent iteration of the “New North” carefully without concealing or repeating the most troubling aspects of the Arctic’s past.

A VEGETATION RECONSTRUCTION OF UNION COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA DURING THE EARLY HISTORICAL PERIOD (1755-1855)

This thesis assesses relationships between vegetation and topography and the impact of human tree-cutting on the vegetation of Union County during the early historical era (1755-1855). I use early warrant maps and forestry maps from the Pennsylvania historical archives and a warrantee map from the Union County courthouse depicting the distribution of witness trees and non-tree surveyed markers (posts and stones) in early European settlement land surveys to reconstruct the vegetation and compare vegetation by broad scale (mountains and valleys) and local scale (topographic classes with mountains and valleys) topography. I calculated marker density based on 2 km x 2 km grid cells to assess tree-cutting impacts. Valleys were mostly forests dominated by white oak (Quercus alba) with abundant hickory (Carya spp.), pine (Pinus spp.), and black oak (Quercus velutina), while pine dominated what were mostly pine-oak forests in the mountains. Within the valleys, pine was strongly associated with hilltops, eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) was abundant on north slopes, hickory was associated with south slopes, and riparian zones had high frequencies of ash (Fraxinus spp.) and hickory. In the mountains, white oak was infrequent on south slopes, chestnut (Castanea dentata) was more abundant on south slopes and ridgetops than north slopes and mountain coves, and white oak and maple (Acer spp.) were common in riparian zones. Marker density analysis suggests that trees were still common over most of the landscape by 1855. The findings suggest there were large differences in vegetation between valleys and mountains due in part to differences in elevation, and vegetation differed more by topographic classes in the valleys than in the mountains. Possible areas of tree-cutting were evenly distributed by topographic classes, suggesting Europeans settlers were clearing land and harvesting timber in most areas of Union County.

The New Electoral Geography of Central Europe

Zarycki studied the political map of Central Europe today on the basis of results of recent parliamentary and/or presidential elections in the Czech Republic, Hungary, L8ithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. He identified first the structure of regional political cleavages, then the spatial patterns emerging in different countries. He also considered the significance and eventual regional differentiation of various possible influences on these patterns, including urbanisation, historical heritage, ethnic factors, population movements, economic differentiation, the effects of the transformation, demographic factors, education and religion. Virtually all the countries showed a cleavage between more traditional, anti (or non-) communist regions and secular areas with higher post-communist support. Except in Ukraine and the Czech Republic, the post-communist party is dominated by the direct heirs of the former communist parties transformed into moderate left parties. The second major class of cleavages was typical of the Visegrad countries, i.e. the conflict between liberal, mostly metropolitan, regions and a different periphery, usually with a strong populist or anti-liberal appeal. This usually depends on the existence of a sizeable well-educated class, usually pro-market and pro-Western, and on the resolution of the conflict between post and anti-Communists. The third type of cleavage is based on ethnic factors and is clearest in Lithuania and Slovakia, where there are large ethnic minorities. Of factors influencing political behaviour, the two major ones identified were the historical heritage and urbanisation.