Representation in the English House of Commons: The New Boroughs, 1485–1640

SUMMARY

In this paper Norman Ball re-examines the well recognised process of enlarging the House of Commons in the Tudor and early Stuart periods by the creation of new, or the revival of old parliamentary boroughs. The usual explanation of the phenomenon has been that it met pressures from local gentry for wider access to parliamentary seats. The paper questions this interpretation, noting the new seats often appeared in areas that were already well provided with borough places. On the basis of a geographical analysis of the new boroughs it is shown that there was a preponderance of creations in the lands of the two royal duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster. It goes on to suggest that the main motive behind the creations was the need of the crown and its advisers to find places for reliable members who could assist the royal business managers in carrying through an expanding volume of parliamentary business.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict Since 1967 , by William B. Quandt. Securing Peace in the Middle East: Project on Economic Transition , by the Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East of the John F. The Passionate Attachment: America's Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present , by George W. Ball and Douglas B. Ball. Quagmire: America in the Middle East , by Leon T. Hadar. Sleeping on A Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel , by David Grossman. Translated from the Hebrew by Haim Watzman. Breaking the Ice: Rapprochement Between East and West Germany, the United States and China and Israel and Egypt , by Tony Armstrong. Syria and the United States: Eisenhower's Cold War in the Middle East , by David W. Lesch. The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq , by Kenneth R. Timmerman. After the Storm: The Changing Military Balance in the Middle East , by Anthony H. Cordesman. Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East , by Anthony H. Cordesman. Postmodernism, Reason and Religion by Ernest Gellner.     

Studies in War-time Organisation: (4) The Union's Supply Effort

South Africa's war-time supply problems have led to a spectacularsuccess for her infant industry, under Government direction,as this note by the editor of "South Africa" explains. As tothe future General Smuts has said (at Bloemfontein last December):"It will be the policy of the Government as early as possibleto restore full freedom to private enterprise, unhampered bycontrols, except in exceptional cases called for by overallinterest."     

Diplomacy in isolation

Isolated States: A Comparative Analysis by Deon Geldenhuys. Jonathan Ball, Johannesburg, 1990.764 pp. including notes and index.

South Africa's Foreign Policy: The Search for Status and Security 1945 ‐ 1988 by James Barber and John Barratt. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and Southern Book Publishers, Johannesburg, 1990. ix plus 398 pp. including appendix, notes and index.     

African Mental Ability

No question is more vital to the future of Africa than the mentalcapacity of its original inhabitants, whose two main groupingsare the Negro and the Bantu-speaking peoples. Nor is any questionless exactly known. It was therefore with surprise that manypeople learned earlier this year that Colonel Deneys Reitz hadmade the following statement in a war review at the Guildhallin London: "I am not an anthropologist and therefore not qualifiedto say whether our native tribes will ever be capable of evolvingup to European standards. Indeed the balance of scientific evidenceappears to lean to the contrary opinion." The Union High Commissionerin London speaks with the authority of a former South AfricanMinister of Native Affairs. Nevertheless this statement hasnot gone without challenge. The following article was writtenat our request by the Principal of the Adams Native Collegein Natal, who also represents the Natives of Natal and Zululandin the South African Senate. But the subject is of such importanceand such complexity that we have added an extended summary ofa book by Dr. S. Bieshcuvel, a psychologist now working withthe R.A.F., on "African Intelligence".Dr. Bieshcuvel‘swork, which has been delayed by the war, is a reply to someof the "scientific evidence" cited by Colonel Reitz. Althoughin his article Dr. Brookes mentions other work (by Dr. van Rensburg)more recent than Dr. Fick’s, the summary may give someidea of the complexity of the work of investigation requiredbefore it acquires a true scientific validity.     

Diplomacy Interrupted?: Macmahon Ball,Evatt and Labor's Policies in Occupied Japan*

Historiography on the Australian political and diplomatic role in the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952) gives disproportionate attention to the meetings between the Australian Minister for External Affairs, H.V. Evatt, and the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan (SCAP), General Douglas MacArthur, in Tokyo during 1947. These meetings are then linked to the subsequent resignation from the Allied Council for Japan (ACJ) of William Macmahon Ball, an Australian academic representing the British Commonwealth, and used to justify the claim that Australian policy towards Occupied Japan was unpredictable and ad hoc. This attention to Ball's resignation has distorted analysis of Australia's role in, and policies towards, Japan during the Occupation. This article argues that there is a need to develop a new historical discourse for the Australian role in the Occupation, one that moves beyond the intrigues of personalities and investigates diplomatic policy practice and its underlying ideals. This, in turn, may encourage other scholars to rethink the wider conduct and practice of foreign policy under the Labor governments of the 1940s.     

POLITICS WITHOUT PARTIES: AFGHANISTAN’S LONG ROAD TO DEMOCRACY

Democracy has not brought stability to Afghanistan in the almost two decades since the fall of the Taliban. But it would be wrong to conclude that the soil of Afghanistan is not conducive to the tree of democracy, when in reality it was never planted with any skill. Democracy did not fail in Afghanistan; it was never even tried.

A series of connected mistakes began with the introduction of a flawed electoral system, no insistence on a transparent register of voters, lack of proper scrutiny of polling, and a lack of support for the development of reformist political parties and other functioning civil society institutions. From the start the US did not see this as a ‘nation-building’ project, but nevertheless US officials made far-reaching decisions about the nature of Afghan democracy. These were seriously unsound, and the electoral system introduced itself operated against the development of strong democratic institutions.

This article outlines the problems inherent in the Single Non-Transferable Vote system, examines the history of Afghan political parties through the twentieth century and asks whether alternative and traditional forms of Afghan government provide any real obstacles to the development of modern politics. The 2004 constitution was the seventh since 1923: this was not a green field site in terms of institution-building as it was seen by many of the international officials who flooded in after the fall of the Taliban.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:
Saudi Arabia: Guarding the Desert Kingdom, by Anthony H. Cordesman.
Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, by Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim.
Iraq: Sanctions and Beyond, by Anthony H. Cordesman and Ahmed S. Hashim.
The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society under Asad and the Ba'th Party, by Nikolaos van Dam.
Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel, by Yaron Ezrahi.
Arab Women: Between Defiance and Restraint, edited by Suha Sabbagh.
Daughters of Palestine: Leading Women of the Palestinian National Movement, by Amal Kawar
George Ball: Behind the Scenes in U.S. Foreign Policy, by James A. Bill.
Muslim Politics, by Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori.     

宋代词乐东传的踪迹

高丽时代的音乐分为左右二部，左为唐乐，指新罗以后传入的中国系统的音乐；右为乡乐，即高丽的本土音乐。宋徽宗政和年间，大晟新乐在创制不久即传入高丽，并在宫廷演出。联章体、《九章机》在中国始见于南宋绍兴十六年（1146）刊行的《乐府雅词》中，而在高丽文宗二十七年（1073）已见演出。《高丽史·乐志》中“唐乐呈才”部分录有《抛球乐》等五种歌舞，与《全宋词》所载史浩《采莲舞》、《柘枝舞》等队舞的表演形式基本相同，却比史浩的时代早了大致100年。又其“唐乐”部分录有44个词调及词作。对于认知宋代词乐提供了珍贵资料；在可以考知作者的15首词中，有8首为柳永词，可知“凡有井水处能皆歌柳词”，不独西夏，在海东高丽亦是如此。本文对《韩国音乐史》中译本的一些讹误也作了纠正。     

GULF STATES' POLICY TOWARDS SYRIAN REFUGEES: CHARITY BEFORE HOSPITALITY

The regional turmoil in the Middle East since December 2010 has provided researchers with many topics for research. Despite a relatively large number of studies in recent years, none of them deal with one of the central questions – namely, the attitude of the Gulf States toward the misery of the Syrian refugees. While more than six million Syrians fled their homeland and became refugees, 1.5 million in Europe, few, if any, succeeded in relocating to the Gulf States.

This paper endeavors to explore the Gulf States' policy toward Arab (mostly Syrian) refugees. The major finding is that GCC members prefer to grant financial support to refugees outside of the Gulf region (this is justified as charity – Zakat) instead of hosting refugees. The combination of a fragile demographic structure, fear of political and social instability, and constant concern about infiltration by terrorists under the guise of refugees are the main reasons for the policy of closing the gates entirely to the refugees. These concerns also indicate that the idea of the nation state prevails over pan-Arab nationalism.     

The Wanderers

Dr. Jeffreys writes to say that he would be interested to hearof any other tribe whose name is a sobriquet for "wanderer"or "stranger". He has not dealt with Southern Africa, and wewould therefore suggest Angoni. Any reader who can add to thelist may care to get into touch with the writer of this articleat Bamenda, British Cameroons.     

Memory and taste in the collections and households of the Spanish nobility (nineteenth and early twentieth centuries): an introduction to the topic with some notes on the house of Osuna and the origins of the period room

“Albeit democratic, their coat of arms has pride of place”. Thus Romualdo Nogués defined, in 1890, Spanish collectors of bourgeois origin who had joined the ranks of the aristocracy. A few years later, in 1924, the Duke of Alba’s maiden speech at the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando justified his personal artistic worthiness on the basis of his ancestors’ collecting activities and the artworks they had amassed.

These two examples set the scene for the research questions studied in this monographic issue. The present introduction offers a bird’s eye view of the phenomenon and continues with a few remarks about the House of Osuna which, as is well known, occupied a pivotal position in Spanish nobility during the whole of the second half of the nineteenth century.     

ERRATA

Page 3, line 16, for "Clarke" read "Clark". Page 64, line 24, for "Johannesburg" read "Pretoria". Page 101, line 44, for "John" read "James". Page 102, Title, for "Ethiopia" read "Entrea". Page 132, 3 (b) 1953–4, for "23800" read "223,800". Page 160, line 7 from bottom, for "south" read "bush".      

III. A CONSERVATIVE VIEW

Colonel Ponsonby devoted the first half of his lecture to acomparison between East Africa and Central Asia, which he visitedlast winter. Concentrating mainly on Uzbekistan, he paid detailedtribute to the transformation of the last 21 years, and thenasked the question, could we have been more progressive, havingregard to the nature and state of civilisation of the people?He thought not. There is a difference between the 3000 yearsof history of the national entities round Samarkand or Bokharaand the tribes of E. Africa; there is a difference between existingAfrican conditions, and the Soviet doctrine of work, as laiddown in Article 12 of the Constitution: "He who does not workneither shall he eat." It is really only on the highest levelthat there is any similarity between the two areas, one of whichlooks to Moscow, the other to London, for methods of government,technical advice, and finance for schemes of development.     

ERRATA: VOL. 44, No. 175

P. 53, 1.6. For "only" read "more than". P. 87, 1.3. For "Father" read "Son".      

Boubou

He was only a little monkey, a very little one the first timeI saw him, not more than 9 inches tall; and when he died 3 yearslater, fully grown, he did not measure more than a foot anda half.     

Some Impressions of East Africa To-day

Mrs. Huxley has just returned from an extended visit to EastAfrica, in particular to Kenya, where her girlhood was spent.This is a lecture which she delivered at a combined meetingat the Royal Empire Society with Lord Hailey in the Chair, on30th July. It raises some very wide questions of colonial policy,even though she describes it herself as "rather disjointed andpersonal".     

Venezuela's Contemporary Political Crisis in Historical Context

Since the election of Hugo Chávez Frías to the Venezuelan presidency in 1998 on a platform of 'revolutionary' change, the country has been wracked by political turmoil and violence between pro- and anti-government groups. While the political crisis has been reported and portrayed as a new phenomenon that has emerged as a result of Chávez's policy programme and style of government, this article argues that the conflict has deep historical roots and that it has been shaped by the legacy of political organisation in the pre-Chávez period.     

CORRECTION

"THE SUDAN DEFENCE FORCE AND THE ITALIAN EAST AFRICAN CAMPAIGN"Vol.41,No. 164; July 1942; p. 168, 10th line:For "Akobo" read "Jokau."