Famine and land in Ireland and India 1845-1880: James Caird and the political economy of hunger

The perception of Ireland and India as ‘zones of famine’ led many nineteenth-century observers to draw analogies between these two troublesome parts of the British empire. This article investigates this parallel through the career of James Caird (1816–92), and specifically his interventions in the latter stages of both the Great Irish Famine of 1845–50, and the Indian famines of 1876–9. Caird is best remembered as the joint author of the controversial dissenting minute in the Indian famine commission report of 1880; this article locates the roots of his stance in his previous engagements with Irish policy. Caird's interventions are used to track the trajectory of an evolving ‘Peelite’ position on famine relief, agricultural reconstruction, and land reform between the 1840s and 1880s. Despite some divergences, strong continuities exist between the two interventions – not least concern for the promotion of agricultural entrepreneurship, for actively assisting economic development in ‘backward’ economies, and an acknowledgement of state responsibility for preserving life as an end in itself. Above all in both cases it involved a critique of a laissez-faire dogmatism – whether manifest in the ‘Trevelyanism’ of 1846–50 or the Lytton–Temple system of 1876–9.

Short reflections on the history of African communication

This article aims to propose a chronological subdivision in the history of African communication. African communication today is one of the most important axes for implementing development strategies, sustaining education, health, and schooling programmes, and so on. However, many of these programmes fail due to a lack of or ineffective communication between international organisations, local elite and lay people. The reasons for this situation must be found in Africa’s history of communication, which has undergone radical transformations in its different phases. Using the functionalist analysis drawn up by Jakobson, this article proposes a new chronological subdivision of Africa’s history of communication, reflecting on the current contradictions in contemporary communication in Africa.

Dogs in the paradise: The influence of the cynical philosophy in the construction of the myth of the good savage

This paper studies the influence of cynic philosophy in the construction of the myth of the good savage. In the first part it studies the importance of cynicism in the XVI century and how the cynic influence of Erasmus, More and Montaigne was fundamental to the way that Europe approached the American indigenous. In the second part it studies the cynic motives that could have influenced in the construction of the myth of the good savage.

Teaching stylistics: analysing cohesion and narrative structure in a short story by Ernest Hemingway

The main aim of this article is to propose an exercise in stylistic analysis which can be employed in the teaching of English language. It details the design and results of a workshop activity on narrative carried out with undergraduates in a university department of English. The methods proposed are intended to enable students to obtain insights into aspects of cohesion and narrative structure; insights, it is suggested, which are not as readily obtainable through more traditional techniques of stylistic analysis. The text chosen for analysis is a short story by Ernest Hemingway comprising only 11 sentences. A jumbled version of this story is presented to students who are asked to assemble a cohesive and well-formed version of the story. Their (re)constructions are then compared with the original Hemingway version. Much interest, it is argued, lies in the ways in which the students justify their own versions in terms of their expectations about well-formedness in narrative. The activity is also intended to encourage students to see literary texts as a valuable means of providing insights into the subtleties of linguistic form and function.

A long-term study (1949-2005) of experimental introductions to an island; freshwater amphipods (Crustacea) in the Isle of Man (British Isles)

Using data from field introduction experiments with Gammarus spp. conducted in the rivers of a small island, commencing in 1949, with resampling in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and finally in 2005, we aimed to examine the long-term interaction of the native freshwater amphipod Gammarus duebeni celticus with the introduced G. pulex. Using physico-chemical data from a 2005 island-wide survey, we also aimed to find what environmental factors could influence the distribution of the two species.

James Anderson's Political Economy--His Influence on Smith and Malthus

James Anderson's powerful critique of Adam Smith's position on the corn export bounty was published in 1777. It focuse d on Smith's proposition that the bounty could not lead to increased corn production because it could not increase corn's real price. Smit h's response to the critique is traced in later editions of Wealth of Nations. While Anderson's critique of Smith influenced Thomas Malthu s's writings from 1803 onwards, his theory of differential rent did n ot influence Malthus at this stage. An examination of the evolution o f Malthus's ideas on rent between 1803 and 1815, however, indicates t hat Malthus knew and used Anderson's work on rent.