Journal articles on the topic 'New Orleans (La.) – History, Military – 19th century'

AbstractNew York City English (NYCE) and New Orleans English (NOE) demonstrate remarkable similarity for cities located 1300 miles apart. Though the question of whether these dialects feature a shared history has fueled papers on the subject (Berger, 1980; Labov, 2007), there remain a number of issues with the historical record that prevent researchers from arriving at a consensus (Eble, 2016). This article presents linguistic evidence from constraint ranking comparisons of variable nonrhoticity andbought-raising in comparable contemporary samples of NYCE and NOE speakers. Findings demonstrate strikingly similar systems for (r), but dissimilar systems forbought-raising. We examine the results of our analyses in the context of evidence from previous comparisons of NYCE and NOE, concluding that the resemblance between the two dialects is likely due to diffusion from New York City to New Orleans, occurring in the 19th century beforebought-raising emerged in either variety.

The pirate, privateer and smuggler Jean Laffite dominated the mercantile life of New Orleans from 1809 to 1815 by exploiting the limited reach of a weak US government in its attempts to control over the frontier of the Louisiana Gulf Coast. Laffite’s status as a cultural anti-hero to the majority-French population, who disdained the American government and the war it initiated in 1812, saw much public support for his efforts to evade law enforcement. Such support, however, waned in the face of an overwhelming threat from British invaders in the autumn of 1814. Adept at survival, Laffite reinvented himself as a loyal patriot by contributing vital materiel to the shaky military defence of the city. In doing so, he ensured his freedom and became a hero of the Battle of New Orleans, a myth that endures to this day. His story demonstrates the limits of state power against piratical practices in the nineteenth century, particularly when they occurred on a distant shore, among a population who protected their cherished rogues.

The article examines the activities of public authorities to improve the procedure for manufacturing and acceptance of military products in the first third of the 19th century. The author notes that the unsatisfactory performance of military outfits by state-owned plants in the Urals, as well as numerous disputes over the rejection of metals, guns and shells between military receivers and the mining administration forced them to revise the existing laws governing acceptance of military products. There were two stages in the development of the regulatory framework for the military order. At the first stage, in 1804, on the initiative of the Minister of Finance, approved by the imperial decree, a special committee was created, consisting of the leaders of Ministry of Land Forces, the Naval Ministry and the Ministry of Finance. As a result, new rules for testing and acceptance of military products were developed. Already in 1808, those rules required processing, which was handled by the Scientific Committee for the Artillery Unit of the Artillery Department. Representatives of the Mining Department were also involved in the work on improving the rules. As a result, new requirements for accepting guns and shells were developed. The second stage of improving the legislation governing the production of military products covers the 1820s – early 1830s. By the early 1820s, state-owned plants of the Urals could no longer cope with the repeatedly increasing volumes of military orders. In addition, they were charged with the manufacture of new types of military products. As a result, in 1822, on the initiative of the Minister of Finance, a special committee was again created from the officials of the Artillery and Mining departments. The result of its activities was the improvement of the supply system of military products, the reduction in orders and the development of new rules for trial and acceptance of military products.

In 2018, A. R. George published a transliteration and translation of a large group of cuneiform letters, including more than 30 letters written in the name of king of Larsa Sumuel (1894–1866 BC) and his entourage. Letters were written at the very end of the reign of king Sumuel, when the long-standing rivalry between Larsa and its northern neighbor Isin intensified. King of Isin Erra-imitti, apparently tried to cut off Larsa from direct control over the water resources of the Euphrates, and his soldiers made constant raids on the border territories of Larsa. Sumuel in his letters exchanges information with the senior officers about the movement of the enemy, gives orders for the deployment of military units, for urgent construction of defensive structures, supplying military garrisons with grain, reconstruction of city walls damaged during enemy raids etc. When making decisions of a military and strategic nature, Sumuel, like other rulers of that time, tried to follow the will of the gods, the reflection of which could be “read” on the liver of the sacrificial animal. Documents published by A. George represent a valuable addition to a very meager collection of cuneiform sources from Larsa in the mid — 19th century BC. Their study makes it possible to trace the methods of government and warfare used by king Sumuel, and sheds new light on the dramatic events that ended the reign of this king.

Introduction. The article considers the development of military educational structures of the Russian military settlement organization at various stages of their activity. In the 1810s and 1850s, training battalions, squadrons, batteries, and combat reserve units trained children of Cantonese military settlers to serve in the army as Junior and non-commissioned officers. Specialized educational institutions taught topographers, builders, doctors, veterinarians, agronomists and other training specialists to serve in the settlement districts. Methods and materials. The author explores models of developing military educational institutions on the basis of materials of complexes of legislative, statistical and reporting documents applying methods of quantitative analysis (trend models, grouping method), comparative analysis using source-oriented, problem-oriented, and system-structural approaches. Analysis. All this made it possible to trace the evolution of government policy aimed at training army personnel and noncommissioned officers based on changing historical realities (the army’s needs for trained personnel, the reform of the military settlement organization), and the results of its implementation, as well as to show the numerical corps of graduates of training units of military settlements and its growth in time and space. Results. The main stages of the development of military educational structures of settlements and periods of their quantitative growth are also defined, which resulted in the multiplication of the number of graduates for the army service. The formation and expansion of the entire educational system of settlements was carried out as the need for special-profile personnel arose in the settled regiments. In the 1820s – 1850s, new special educational institutions were integrated into it, and primary education developed along a transformed vector.

In 1826, Sultan Mahmud II orchestrated the slaughter of 6,000–7,000 janissaries and, in order to incinerate any janissary remnants that had taken refuge there, burned the Belgrade Forest outside Istanbul. During his reign (1808–39), the sultan attacked many of the other bases of the ancien régime, such as the timar system, the lifetime tax farms, and the political autonomy of provincial notables. He also centralized the pious foundations, brought them under a special ministry, and expropriated their revenues. Such stories of Sultan Mahmud's dramatic and violent policies, as well as their 18th-century origins and their 19th-century legacies, are familiar ones in Ottoman and Middle Eastern history. It is a commonplace that Sultan Mahmud aimed to dismantle the power of the military and religious classes in favor of a new bureaucracy of administrators and scribes. And it is also known that his efforts had a major impact on the subsequent evolution of the Tanzimat reform programs during the later 19th century.

Abstract This article traces the history of the Cham and Malay military colonies in the southwestern provinces of Vietnam, from their creation in the eighteenth century to their dismantling during the last decades of the nineteenth century. The colonies were meant to protect the Khmero-Vietnamese border and secure Vietnamese positions in the southwestern regions (formerly part of Cambodia), as well as in eastern Cambodia. The study of the Chams and Malays in southern Vietnam sheds new light on the dynamics of power, the struggles for supremacy, and inter-ethnic associations during the process of state-building in Southeast Asia.

The present article reveals the history of relations between the south-western unions of communities of Dagestan and the Kingdom of Kakheti in the second half of the 18th - early 19th century. It is established that political and economic contacts between them, due to mutual cooperation, were generally of a peaceful and good-neighbourly nature. In the second half of the 18th century there was a significant strengthening of military-political and cultural ties between Georgia and Dagestan. The arrival of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus in the early 19th century not only shifted the balance of military and political forces in the region, but also radically changed the nature of trade and economic relations between Dagestan and Georgia. In this regard, the main attention is paid to the processes that began after the loss of Georgian statehood, when the border Dagestan communities tried to negotiate with the new authorities. Furthermore, the author reveals the policy of Dagestan feudal rulers, whom the unions of Dagestan communities saw as intermediaries in their relations with the Russian Empire. On the basis of numerous sources, both already published and identified by the author in the Central historical archive of Georgia, the article considers the most important events that took place in the region during the study period. According to the author, before the appointment of A. P. Ermolov to the Caucasus, St. Petersburg did not rush to assert its power there, content at first with "external signs of citizenship" of the highlanders. With the arrival of the latter, who pursued the policy on the well-known principle of "divide and conquer", the trade and economic blockade of the highlanders of Western Dagestan increased significantly, leading to their subsequent active participation in the people's liberation movement of the highlanders of the North-East Caucasus in the 20-50s' of the 19th century..

Ottoman coins have been registered in the Czech Lands since the beginning of the 18th century and have been systematically documented since the mid-19th century. The latest actualization comes from 1996, but the following massive use of metal detectors showed a serious need for a new summarization. Up until 2018, some 151 hoards/ single finds with the Ottoman coins, forgeries, and jetons have been registered in the territory of the Czech Republic. These coins came to the mentioned territory via the Ottoman European expansion since the 16th century, and their flow reached its peak in the 17th century. The massive appearance of the Ottoman coins in Bohemia, partly in Moravia and Silesia, in the 17th century represents a phenomenon connected with the Thirty Years War. In south and central Moravia, it is explained by the direct military impact of the Ottoman armies. The later import of these coins is associated with the Napoleonic Wars and with the Austro-Hungarian period through its Balkan connection.

The methodology of history determines what the authors will write in their books. The methodology of history is a subject of social philosophy. However, after analyzing the leading works printed before 1955 on the history of the Urals and Siberia of the 17th century, we came to the conclusion that historians did not mechanically illustrate the conclusions of social philosophy. At the end of the 19th century V. I. Lenin, relying on Karl Marx, drew a concept of the “new period of Russian history”. In the 1930s this scheme has become mandatory for all Russian historians. However, it quickly became clear that not all of its elements could be found in the Siberian history of the 17th century. The reasons may be related to the lack of sufficient autonomy for the merchants, great tax oppression, opportunities to benefit from social status, and military operations. Retaining full loyalty to the official thesis, in their concrete studies, the historians of Siberia have proved to be great empiricists and preferred to point out historical facts even if the facts did not fit into the official concept.

In the first third of the 19th century, the ethnic composition of Siberia underwent significant changes due to the emergence of new ethno dispersed groups. Among these ethno dispersed groups, Jews and Gypsies stood out in particular. The national policy of Emperor Nicholas I was oriented towards the homogenization of society. This policy of the Russian emperor was reflected in the duty of citizens to serve in the army. The obligation to send children to cantonists was extended to Jews and Gypsies of Siberia. Some of the so-called “soldiers of the era of Emperor Nicholas I” in the 1860s - 1880s. played an important role in the history of their ethnic groups. In this article, we consider the issues of the relationship between the Jewish society and the Gypsy society of the Siberian region during service in the Russian army. We will consider these issues using the example of the military cantonists of the 1830s - 1850s. This article was written mainly using archival materials that are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.

The Buena Vista Member of the Mississippian Cuyahoga Formation is an economically valuable freestone that is homogeneous with almost no sedimentary structures. The Buena Vista was one of the earliest clastic rocks quarried in Ohio. Early quarries dating at least back to 1814 were located in the hills on the north bank of the Ohio River near the village of Buena Vista, south-central Ohio. By the 1830s, quarries had also opened up along the route of the Ohio & Erie Canal in the Portsmouth area to the east; followed by quarries that opened along a railway line that ran north up the Scioto River valley. Waterways transported the Buena Vista to many cities and towns, including Cincinnati, Ohio, Louisville, Kentucky, and Evansville, Indiana, on the Ohio River, New Orleans on the Mississippi River, and Dayton and Columbus on the Ohio canal system. Later railways transported this stone further afield to Illinois, Wisconsin, and Alberta. Census reports, industry magazines, and other historical accounts document the use of this stone across much of the eastern US and into Canada. Historically, it has been used for a variety of items, including entire buildings, canal structures, fence posts, and laundry tubs. Some 19th-century structures built with this stone remain in cities where it was once commonly used. Literature reviews, field observations, and lab analyses are here compiled as a useful reference to both the urban and field geologist in the identification of the Buena Vista Member, a historically important building stone, in buildings and outcrops, respectively.

A history of social struggles in Uruguay is given, from the fights against the Spaniards in early 19th century until the present time. These fights were always influenced by imperialist appropriation of the country. After the Spain has withdrawn it was at first the English Imperialism, later the US-Imperialism which forced Uruguay’s economy to serve its needs. A comprise between rival fractions of Uruguay’s ruling class brought the country a long lasting period of stability and also some social reforms. Economic crisis, increasing social protest and a brutal military regime ended this period in the early seventies. A broad coalition of the Left Frente Amplio could not only survive the military regime, it grew continuously under democratic conditions. Since 1989 Frente Amplio rules in Montevideo, capital and biggest department of the country, and in 2004, its candidate won the presidential elections, starting a new economic policy as well as a new foreign policy.

The Devdorak Glacier located on the Eastern slope of Mt. Kazbek is known since the end of the 19th century for its catastrophic ice discharges into the river Terek canyon. The so-called «Kazbek blockages» stopped the river flow, thus leading to formation of a dammed lake. The lake was then broken through by the heavy floods. Evidences of such events are available for 1776, 1785, 1808, 1817, and 1832. Later on, the glacier surges did sometimes occur, but they never reached the river. The blockages interrupted the traffic on the Georgian Military Highway – the basic way across the main ridge of the Caucasus, for long time periods. Investigations of the Devdorak and other Mt. Kazbek glaciers were organized in 1862 and lasted until the end of 19th century. But the scientists could not reach a common consensus in resolving the main issues, i.e. the causes of the «blockages» and possibilities of their soon repetitions. Different hypotheses explaining the ice discharges by either morphology of the glacier and the river valley or by earthquakes were proposed. Some authors insisted on a probability of occurrence of new «blockages». But the mostly widespread opinion was that since all the Kazbek glaciers were in the state of degradation any risk of new «blockages» was absent while this tendency remained. Since the previous disasters, the Devdorak Glacier posed no threat for about two centuries. However in May 2014, a huge downfall of rock and ice suddenly came down on the glacier in its upper zone. As a result a large mass of rock, stones, and mud blocked the Terek river bed again. This event was not related to regime of the glacier itself. Most likely it was a new manifestation of the Mt. Kazbek volcanic activity.

France and England have, through the course of history, shared in many historical events, sometimes as the opposing countries on the battlefield and at other times united through conflict, research and discovery. The two countries have, since the late 19th and early 20th century, seen dramatic changes in the role and status of women within their societies, this being especially so with regard to the employment of women. No longer content with their dual roles as wife and mother, they have increasingly looked outside the home and family for a new challenge, and have increasingly turned to those areas of employment which have been seen as male preserves, including the armed forces, medicine and the police service. This paper seeks to trace the record of women's fight to enter the police forces of England and Wales and the non-military police forces of France.

This article studies one of the components of the history of modernization processes in the countries of South-Eastern Europe in the latter half of the 19th century – the early 20th century – military modernization. The purpose of research is to analyze the role of foreign military assistance in formation of military forces of Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Albania and Greece. Separate directions of military assistance provided to the countries of South-Eastern Europe in the form of military missions, training of officers in Europe, arms export and other aspects are disclosed. One of the markers of military development during the period in question was the military instructor activity of the developed European countries in the framework of military modernization of possible military allies in these countries. The lower limit of research is the Bosnian crisis in 1908 caused by annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary. The conflict was the reason of rapid militarization of the region. Military missions from the countries of Europe began their activity in Greece, Montenegro, Turkey. Thousands of officers from Balkan army studied in military establishments of Europe. The top limit of the research is the First world war І 1914-1918. The obvious success was attained with modernization of the armed forces of allies by military missions from Germany in Turkey and from France in Romania in that time. The work deals with the process of military modernization, i.e. the activities of military instructor missions of the leading European countries during the interwar period. The time interval of the study ranges within 1908-1918. This was the period marked by modernization of new national armies in Eastern Europe. Military missions played an important role in this complex process. The comparison of the results of transformations provides for better understanding of the regional specifics and concrete results of this form of military modernization of armed forces during the twenty-year interwar period. The method for comparing variations of military modernization of armies of Oriental countries occurring at the turn of the 20th centuries and reorganization of military forces of the countries of South-Eastern Europe is used. This method instantiates results, consequences, failures and success of military modernization. The research is relevant for studying modern processes of military modernization.

The methodology of history determines what the authors will write in their books. The methodology of history is a subject of social philosophy. However, after analyzing the leading works printed before 1955 on the history of the Urals and Siberia of the 17th century we came to the conclusion that historians did not mechanically illustrate the conclusions of social philosophy. At the end of the 19th century V. I. Lenin, relying on Karl Marx, drew a conception of the «new period of Russian history». In the 1930s this scheme has become mandatory for all Russian historians. However, it quickly became clear that not all of its elements could be found in the Siberian history of the 17th century. The reasons may be related to the lack of sufficient autonomy for the merchants, great tax oppression, opportunities to benefit from social status, and military operations. Retaining full loyalty to the official position, in their concrete studies, researchers of Siberian studies turned out to be great empiricists and preferred to point out historical facts even if the facts contradicted official schemes. In addition, in the 1960s there was a change in the key formulations of the scheme, towards recognizing greater complexity and variability of the historical process.

AbstractThis essay examines how administrative documents categorized the mamluks who served Ottoman governors of Tunis from the early 18th to the mid-19th century. The categorization of these state slaves-cum-servants illuminates three issues, namely, the relationships between Islamic states and societies, interactions between the Ottoman Empire and its provinces, and forms of military slavery around the globe. Seeing registers, letters, and historical chronicles as spaces of interaction allows us to break free from an a priori definition of mamluks. By exploring how slaves and servants contributed to defining themselves in administrative documents, I not only argue for a new understanding of the mamluk category, but also show that mamluks did not separate state and society. On the contrary, in the Tunisian case, mamluks connected the state to various imperial and provincial social forces.

The article discusses the problems of using archival materials and old editions in order to familiarize themselves with the history and culture of individual countries. Using the example of the practice of postmodern technology for digitizing non-academic historical documents by German authors, it is shown that they constitute a significant resource for expanding knowledge in the field of cultural studies, educational history, historical geography due to the presence of a text array and visual range. Visual imagery includes a wide range of artifacts, including national and military clothing, national symbols, historical geopolitical maps. Digitized editions of the 18th and 19th centuries, devoted to the problems of the history and culture of the Armenian people, being descriptive material, make a great contribution to the formation of a new scientific direction in Armenology. They allow you to get acquainted with authentic historical documents containing information about the geopolitical, historical, social, cultural, philosophical and pedagogical problems of the Caucasus in the 18th century. and XIX centuries. The article shows that subsequent scientific research on the problems of the history of the peoples of the Caucasus did not become widely known due to the lack of available digitalized historical sources containing the works of both Armenian and foreign authors.

Based on the analysis of materials from the Don periodicals of the second half of the 19th century as well as data from field ethnographic studies of the late 20th — early 21th century collected in places of compact residence of the Don Cossacks, the article reveals the status and functions of widows in the Don Cossack community and family. The cardinal changes in the situation of widowed women in the family and community, in the economic and ceremonial spheres of life are shown, and the mechanisms for their adaptation to the new status are revealed. Features of the militarized way of life in the Don Cossack communities had an impact on the position of widows in the family and community. They determined their high status associated with the main social function — the guardians of the military glory of husbands. The special property rights of widows and their active participation in the life of the community, including Cossack self-government, were associated with this. The community secured widows’ rights to land allotment of the deceased husband and his property, defended the rights of the widow and her children, focusing not only on legislation, but also on customary law. In the Cossack milieu, there were also forms of psychological rehabilitation of widows: their inclusion in the ritual life of the family and community, support through the communities of odnosumy (fellow soldiers) and odnosumok (“female fellow soldiers”). These mechanisms enabled women who found themselves in difficult life situations to find a new place in society, opened opportunities for psychological rehabilitation, spiritual realization and continuation of an active social life.

What about science, society and education in the history? In the 19th century Europe the figure of the scientific engineer is emerging. In Paris the Grandes Écoles were founded, where the most distinguished mathematicians of the time taught to students and drew up treaties. and Joseph–Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) and Gaspard Monge (1746–1818) were among the first professors of mathematics at École Polytechnique (1794), a military school for the training of engineers. In 1794 the École Normal of Paris was also born, in 1808, the École normale supérieure Paris was founded, a school that had as its goal the training of teachers of both science and humanities. On this model, with a Napoleonic decree of 1813, it was established the first foundation of the Scuola Normale in Pisa. The attention of the French mathematicians toward applications was therefore, at least in part, due to the need of educational institutions to train technicians for the new state. Such an attitude is not found in Germany, the country that in the nineteenth century was with France at the forefront of European mathematics. On the one hand, great importance was attributed to purely theoretical disciplines, such as number theory and abstract algebra, on the other hand the natural philosophy aim to frame in the same theory at all the physical disciplines. In Germany a great engineering school eventually developed which become dominant in Europe. But interaction between scientists and engineers has existed since ancient times: e.g., for the study of prototypes and machines for the society. Questions might be: when, why and how the tension between mathematics, physics, astronomy, gave rise to a new scientific discipline, the modern engineering? What is the conceptual bridge between sciences researches and the organization of technological researches in the development of the industry?

The dramatic currents of the history of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Balkans cannot be seen in a more comprehensive way, separate from the wider European / world context, geopolitical order, influence and consequences of the interesting logics of superpowers, models of de-Ottomanization and Balkanization. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was in a difficult position, pressured by numerous internal problems, exposed to external political pressures, conditions and wars. Crises and Ottoman military defeats in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and the "Great War" (1914-1918), along with the processes of de-Ottomanization and fragmentation of the territories in which they lived and the growth of divisions, disrupted the self-confidence of Muslims. Expulsions and mass exoduses of entire populations, especially Muslims, culminated in the Balkan wars. Bosniaks, as well as Muslims in the rest of "Ottoman Europe", found themselves in the ranks of several armies in the "Great War". Many Muslims from the Balkans, who arrived in the vast territory of the Empire in earlier times as refugees, also fought in the units of the Ottoman army. In that war it was defeated. On its remnants, a new state of Turkey (1923) was created after the Greco-Ottoman war (1919-1922).

Introduction. The article studies southeastern policies of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th century, its campaigns and the annexation of Central Asia. Goals. The work analyzes reasons for the activation of foreign policy in the region during the mentioned period. The course and goals of the conquest of the Khanates of Kokand and Khiva, Emirate of Bukhara are considered. Materials. The paper investigates data contained in reports by the State Councilor М. Bekchurin, and one more document ― Arabic-script travel records (manuscript) by a private soldier Husniyar currently stored at the Manuscript Collection of the Institute of History, Language and Literature (Ufa Federal Research Centre of the RAS) and for the first time studied as a historical source. Results. Messages about the beauty of Eastern cities and Asian wealth had long attracted attention of Russian monarchs. Finally, Russia’s attempts to penetrate into Central Asia were crowned with success. In just two decades, the vast country further extended its borders far to the south and became a neighbor of another one ― the British Empire. Nowadays, the study of the history of establishing relations with Kazakhstan and Central Asia, when the southeastern borders of Russia almost returned to those of the early 18th century, is relevant and practically expedient. Reports by State Councilor M. Bekchurin reveal the economic objectives of the government: Russian industry and trade were looking for new markets for their products. So, M. Bekchurin gives his suggestions how to facilitate the growth of trade. The manuscript of Husniyar’s travel notes contains observations of an ordinary soldier, his attitude and experience as a Muslim in the campaign against his co-religionists. The source makes it possible to present the set and route of one military formation. Both the documents provide an opportunity to depict this region in the late 19th century. Currently, there are independent countries across this territory with different state borders, and the ethnic composition of many settlements has changed significantly.

Introduction. Wargames are an ancient invention of humankind. A new type of wargames was made in the 19th century. Further it went through the evolution from a military application to historical simulation that can be used as a mathematical model in researching some issues of historical science. Methods. The authors base the research on the tradition of “cliometry” and “quantitative history”, which apply the following methods: variative analysis, method of average, and statistical analysis. Analysis. The paper presents the describtion of the main stages of wargames’ evolution and their influence on military arts and historical science. The authors consider the most important transformations: from entertaining board games to practical military guides and further to applied historical studies. The article describes the principals of creating such games and the influence of science subject area on their rules. The paper shows the boundaries of application of this method. The authors highlight advantages and disadvantages of game simulation and its practical potential as an auxiliary historical discipline. The paper also provides short analyses of the main monographs. The authors give examples of wargames that have played an important role in the development of game simulation, describe the main contemporary types of wargames, and give the criteria of historical accuracy and analytical potential. Results. Modern wargames allow us to make any military historical research more impersonal and measured. The researcher can adjust the rules more flexibly and determine the science subject borders. American researchers outlined the main principles of self-creating wargames for testing some hypothesis suggested by historians.

It is a well known truth that knowledge is often forgotten and has to be relearned. In medicine, this unfortunate trend is especially prevalent in the history of military surgery. The story of a Russian Princess, military surgeon, and poet, Dr. Vera Gedroits is one such forgotten story. Dr. Gedroits’ largely unrecognized contribution to military surgery was the adoption of laparotomy for penetrating abdominal wounds (PAWs). In the latter half of the 19th Century, the treatment of PAWs was controversial. However, the results of the Spanish-American (1898) and Boer (1899-1902) Wars and the outspoken opinions of prominent experts unified medical opinion; conservative treatment was clearly established as the treatment paradigm for PAWs at the birth of the 20th Century. Indeed, conservative treatment was officially adopted by the Russians at the outset of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). During this war, the bold surgical practices of Dr. Gedroits would seriously challenge this standard of care. Dr. Gedroits performed operations in a converted railway car in a Red Cross hospital train. Despite these suboptimal conditions, she performed laparotomies on victims of PAWs with unprecedented success. These results, which were largely due to strict surgical indications and technical skill, effectively demonstrated the importance of laparotomy in the treatment of such wounds. As a result, the Russians adopted operative treatment as the new standard of care. Interestingly however, no other countries seemed to take any notice. Dr. Gedroits’ results were barely remarked upon and quickly forgotten. Indeed, contemporary Western observers of the Russian medical outfit, and historians since, have interpreted the surgical results of the war to support conservative management. It was not until WWI, ten years later, that surgeons relearned the utility of laparotomy. The story of Dr. Gedroits, both before and after her innovative treatment in the Russo-Japanese war, deserves remembering. Bennett J. Princess Vera Gedroits: military surgeon, poet, and author. British Medical Journal 1992; 305(6868):1532-1534. Harvard V, Hoff J. Reports of Military Observers Attached to the Armies in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War. London: HMSO, 1908. Wallace C. War surgery of the abdomen. Lancet 1917; 189(4885):561-5568.

Oswald Spengler belongs to the trend in the so-called “conservative revolution” which was entitled “young conservatism” (Jungkonservative) in times of Weimar Republic and was close to the political position of German business and military elites. The projects of those elites before and during the First World War and their development up to the seizer of power by the Nazis and the Second World War apply to the geopolitics, and Spengler was one of the most talented representatives and creators of those plans in world politics. His views on the world politics are determined by the Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life) described in the fragments of his main “metaphysical” work Urfragen and his philosophy of history stated in the book “Decline of Europe”. Particular attention in the article is paid to his views on Russia, both in the second volume of “Decline of Europe” and in his last work “The Years of Decision”. The transition from culture to civilization that started in the 19th century, lead to the epoch of world wars and revolutions in the 20th century. According to Spengler, two types of revolution threatened the West, - the “white revolution” in western countries themselves, that Spengler termed “Bolshevism”, and the “colour revolution’ in the colonies. The military power of new Caesars would put the end to those revolutions, as well as liberalism and parliamentarism. According to Spengler, Germany was the only land, that preserved the main features of the “Nordic race”; and that’s why could unite Western countries in the struggle for self-preservation. Spengler’s heroic pessimism affirmed the readiness to resist the history course: the time of the “Faust” culture was nearly over, but for two more centuries it would be necessary to fight hard from the losing positions.

Introduction. Studies of American historians on the Civil War and Reconstruction continue to be central issues in the 21st century. There is an increased public demand for these studies. The author of the analytical review of American publications tries to answer the question of what this interest is related to. Methods. The author of the review uses the methodological tools such as the scientific principle of objectivity, the special historicalcomparative method and the systematic approach to answer this question. Analysis. The author points out the main areas of studying new aspects marked by American historians of the mid-19th century. These areas include the issues and interpretations on military, political, everyday, anthropological, social and cultural, and economic history. Besides, new approaches in peer-reviewed monographs for the comprehensive coverage of the study material of this issue are highlighted. Results. The interest of academicians and the American public to studying the historical period of the Civil War and Reconstruction, on the one hand, tells about carrying the deep psycho-civilizational trauma by all subsequent generations of both white and black Americans at this time, and on the other hand, this war debunks the myth of God’s chosen destiny of the American nation to build a “City on a Hill”. Constant refinements, additions, revisions, and reinterpretations of the events and consequences of the Civil War and Reconstruction in contemporary American historiography only confirm this conclusion. The publications selected by the reviewer on this issue for 2019 not only introduce new American historical works to Russian Americanists, but also provide an opportunity to expand their own research on this issue.

The Polish version of the article was published in “Roczniki Humanistyczne,” vol. 57 (2009), issue 2. The Sodality of Our Lady is a Catholic religious association for young people founded in the Jesuit College in Rome in 1563 by Fr Jan Leunis. The most gifted and devout boys joined the Sodality in order to spread the cult of the Mother of God. Popes provided care for the vibrantly developing movement because of the great influence Sodalities of Our Lady had on the religious formation of young people. Jesuits established Marian congregations of students attending colleges in all Catholic countries, forming an international elite organization of lay Catholics. Sodalities thrived and they spread to all social estates in the 17th and the first half of the 18th century. Not only did school students belong to it, but also popes, kings, the gentry, clergy, townsfolk, craftsmen, military men and servants. The chief objective of the Sodality was to live by the motto “Per Mariam ad Jesum.” The development of the Sodality was halted by the dissolution of the Jesuit Order. In the middle of the 19th century the pronouncement of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Virgin, made by Pope Pious IX, opened a new era of the cult and a new period in the history of the Sodality. In Poland, the first Marian congregation of school students was established in Braniewo in 1571. At the end of the 18th century, before the dissolution of the Jesuit Order, in Poland there were 66 colleges, seminaries and monastery schools, and there was always at least one congregation affiliated to each of the schools. At the end of the 19th century, school sodalities were revived in Galicia, i.e. in Tarnopol, Chyrów, Tarnów, and in a girls’ secondary school run by the Ursulines in Kraków. A dynamic development of Marian congregations of school students started after Poland regained independence in 1918. The centre of the sodalitarian movement for all the estates was Kraków. The movement gained solid foundations in the two powerful sodality unions of both secondary school boys and girls. Father Józef Winkowski established a sodality for boys, and Fr Józef Chrząszcz one for girls. Sodalities published their own magazines, organized conventions, pilgrimages to Jasna Góra (Częstochowa, Poland), and ran charity organizations. In the late 1930s, nearly seventeen thousand students of secondary schools throughout the country were members of school sodalities. At the dawn of the Second Polish Republic, the greatest number of school sodalities operated in Kraków. There were 11 boys’ sodalities in secondary state schools and one in a private school run by the Piarist Order, and 11 girls’ sodalities in state and private schools. The Sodality of Our Lady contributed to the religious revival in Poland. The development of this organization was halted by World War II. After the war, in the years 1945–1949, the operation of the Sodality of Our Lady was resumed in many centres. The liquidation of church organizations in 1949 stopped its work for good, and its members came to be persecuted by the Communist regime.

International trials of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are currently a matter of considerable interest – legal, political and human. The work of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda (ICTY and ICTR), set up respectively in 1993 and 1994, and the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague in 2002, have focused attention on the practice and value of such juridical processes both as forms of law and in terms of the events they address. The unexpected death of Slobodan Milosevic during his trial at the ICTY has only intensified the controversy aroused by such proceedings. Politics, history, memory, mourning, reparation and even reconciliation are inescapably part of the legal process, often in an explicit and even formal manner. This means that scholars in disciplines other than legal science and people from many backgrounds are interested in the work of such international tribunals and in the types of ‘truth’ that they seek to establish.Such trials are not new. The idea stems directly from the intersection of military violence and humanitarian impulses in the 19th century. Geneva law, emanating from the International Red Cross (founded after the main war of Italian unification), dealt with the humane treatment of wounded and prisoners. Hague law, which codified the conduct of belligerents towards non-combatants, grew from the Lieber Code devised by the Union during the American Civil War and from the attempts by European powers to regulate military conduct after the Franco-Prussian War, culminating in the Hague conferences of 1899 and 1907.

While the genesis of the drone technology is not clear, one thing is ideal: it emerged as a military apparatus and gained much attention during major wars, including the two world wars. Aside being used in combats and to deliver humanitarian services, drones have also been used extensively to kill both troops and civilians. Revolutionized in the 19th century, the drone technology was improved to be controlled as an unmanned aerial devices to mainly target troops. A new emerging field that has seen the application of the drone technology is the healthcare sector. Over the years, the health sector has increasingly relied on the device for timely transportation of essential articles across the globe. Since its introduction in health, scholars have attempted to address the impact of drones on healthcare across Africa and the world at large. Among other things, it has been reported by scholars that the device has the ability to overcome the menace of weather constraints, inadequate personnel and inaccessible roads within the healthcare sector. This notwithstanding, data on drones and drone application in Ghana and her healthcare sector in particular appears to be little within the drone literature. Also, few attempts have been made by scholars to highlight the use of drones in African countries. By using a narrative review approach, the current study attempts to address the gap above. Using this approach, a thorough literature search was performed to locate and assess scientific materials that focus on the application of drones in the military field and in the medical systems of Africa and Ghana in particular. With its sole responsibility to deliver items, stakeholders of health across several parts of the world have relied on drones to transport vital articles to health centers. Countries like Senegal, Madagascar, Rwanda and Malawi encouraged Ghana to consider the application of drones in her mainstream healthcare delivery. Findings from the study have revealed that Ghana’s adoption of the drone policy has enhanced the timely delivery of products such as test samples, blood and Personal Protective Equipment to various health centres and rural areas in particular. Drones have contributed to the delivery of equity in healthcare delivery in Ghana. We conclude that with the drone policy, the continent has the potential to record additional successes concerning the over-widened gap in healthcare between rural and urban populations.

The article analyzes the investigatory documentation from the fonds of the Central State Archive of the Kirov Region, containing important information on the history of state – Old Believers relations of the second quarter of the 19th century. The choice of sources comes from the fact that at that period, a very hard line was taken with Old Believers, numerous restrictions and prohibitions regulating all aspects of their religious and cultural life. In particular, the law imposed a ban on construction of new religious buildings, as well as on repair of dilapidated chapels; these were denied all external attributes of Orthodox churches. The law did not allow ordination of Old Believers ministers and limited their movement while performing spiritual rites. Finally, the legislation prohibited spreading of Old Faith and “seduction into the Raskol.” In case of violation of these laws and regulations, the Old Believers were subjected to various punishments. The study is based on investigatory documentation which testifies of repressive policies towards Old Believers. These records tell of the Old Believers’ reaction to the confessional policy and characterize the system of punishments. Among punishments used against Old Believers physical punishment (lashing), imprisonment (term of which was determined by the gravity of deed), and exile to the Transcaucasian (which included military service in the army) were prevalent. Most informative of all used sources are reports of bailiffs and uezd police officers, which contain important data on the progress of investigation, as well as property inventories compiled when searching Old Believers dwellings and chapels. On the whole, the studied investigatory records allow to trace the implementation of confessional policy in one region in the specified period of time and to determine its ultimate goal, that is, elimination of Old Believers.

The First World War, putting at risk the existence of many states, led to a controversial reaction from the scientific community. On the one hand, the war suspended many studies requiring a peaceful course of life and contradicted the very humanistic content of science, on the other hand, gave a powerful impetus to the development of many branches of chemistry, physics, agriculture etc. Scientists of all countries, including Germany and Russia, were called upon to actively participate not only in the implementation of military defense projects, but also in the creation of new technologies and weapons. At the same time, the war became the main reason for the break with the practice and ethical norms of scientific internationalism that existed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.During the First World War, it became clear that a new super-powerful weapon – oil had appeared. İn the war years, Azerbaijani oil was the only energy sourse in Russia, not counting firewood, since coal exports to Russia were stopped and Ukrainian coal mines were seized by the Germans. The First World War turned out to be a watershed in human history: for the first time, an internal combustion engine working on petroleum products was opposed to the muscular strength of horses and people — and they could not resist. The article highlights the development of science, especially the oil industry in Azerbaijan during the First World War and the two revolutions in Russia that followed in 1917. The role of the world famous scientists D.I. Mendeleev, I.M. Gubkin, D.I. Golubyatnikov, the Polish engineers P.Pototsky, V.Zglenitsky in the development of new technologies in the oil business, the construction of the first oil pipelines in Russia is shown.The article discusses the activities of the Baku Branch of the Imperial Russian Technical Society (BO IRTO), as well as features of its work during the war. In this society was carried out the work on the practical production of benzene and toluene from oil and coal in wartime. In addition, even before the war, the BO IRTO established the Emmanuel L. Nobel (the brother of Alfred Nobel) Prize,, whose main activity took place in Baku. The third brother Ludwig Nobel Prize was established in St. Petersburg and was awarded for outstanding achievements in the oil business. The article highlights the activities of the laureates of the Baku and St. Petersburg Nobel Prizes.

The article discusses the role of Polish and Polish diaspora organizations in the USA, and the role of their archives, libraries, and museum deposits in the study of the first years of the independent Polish state. The most important ones, created in the USA in the 19th and the 20th century by Polish immigrants, are the Józef Piłsudski Institute of America (located in New York), the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America (located in New York), the Polish Army Veterans’ Association in America (located in New York), the Polish Museum of America (located in Chicago), the Polish Archive in the Polish Catholic Mission in Orchard Lake near Detroit, and the Polish Music Center in Los Angeles. The key role in the study of the restoration of the Polish state in 1918-1923 plays the Józef Piłsudski Institute of America, established on 4 July 1943 as a descendant of the Institute for Research into the Modern Polish History functioning in Warsaw between 1923 and 1939. The institute holds the so-called Belvedere Archives, saved in 1939 from Warsaw and taken from Europe to New York. It contains the documents of the Adjutancy Commander in Chief from the years 1918-1922, illustrating the struggle for the borders of the restored Polish state; documents of the Ukrainian Military Mission, showing Polish-Ukrainian cooperation in the face of the threat from Bolshevik Russia; documents from three Silesian uprisings, and archives of well-known supporters of Piłsudski, e.g. General Julian Stachiewicz and Marshal Rydz-Śmigły. Other additional sources from the years 1918-1923 are stored by Polish diaspora institutions, including priceless and understudied documents concerning the prominent composer, diplomat, and politician Ignacy Jan Paderewski, as well as unique materials concerning Polish volunteers from the USA fighting along with General Józef Haller’s so-called Blue Army.

The changeover of the ruling of the modern Ukrainian territory between East and West had lasted for around 800 years beginning from the Mongol-Tatar invasion. It was that time when Batu Khan defeated Ancient Rus that the present territory of Ukraine came under complete and absolute ruling of the Tatar East. In the 16th century as a part of Lithuania Ukraine was included into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and then passed under the rule of the Polish magnates, under the yoke of the Western Polish civilization. In 1569 the Union of Lublin was signed that formalized the accession of the Ukrainian territory to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the period from the 10th to the 19th centuries there was no such state as Ukraine on the world political map. In the 10th century some part of the territory of present Ukraine was taken by Kievan Rus, in the 13th century — by Golden Horde, in the 14th-15th centuries — by Lithuania, Golden Horde and Russia. In the next centuries the territory of Ukraine was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, Poland and Russia. And only in 1918 the state of Ukraine appeared on the political map.Single Soviet Ukraine created by Bolsheviks did not present any internal cultural and language unity as it was always shared by different empires being the hostile and irreconcilable centers of force in Europe — the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russian Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire.In 1917-1920 about dozens of different republics were established in the territory of Ukraine. They were isolated within the borders of their formations. Accordingly, it may be said that in 1917-1920 Ukraine presented a mosaic of different formations which were often formed due to ambitions of some scoundrels and political adventurers striving to get to power and to become the leader of a state. But only the tough policy of Bolsheviks aimed to prevent the disintegration process permitted Ukraine to preserve its territory. After its election the Supreme Council started preparation of the Draft Declaration of Ukraine State Sovereignty simultaneously with the Draft Law on Ukraine State Sovereignty. Both drafts were considered in May 1990. After their discussion it was decided to develop the Draft Declaration of State Sovereignty.On July 16, 1990 the Ukrainian Parliament after long discussions adopted the Declaration on State Sovereignty of Ukraine by majority voting. This declaration which did not change and substitute the Constitution of Ukrainian SSR became a very important document for establishment of the Ukrainian statehood having laid the basis for the future Constitution of Ukraine.The concept of the new Constitution of Ukraine envisaged the establishment of the presidential republic. As a result, in June 1991 the laws «On Establishment of the Office of President of Ukrainian SSR with Making Alterations and Additions in the Constitution», «On President of Ukrainian SSR” and “On Election of President of Ukrainian SSR». The office of president was established to strengthen the vertical of executive power and to make it in the future independent of executive power of union bodies. The law assigned broad authorities to the president. Thus, the president acquired the right to cancel the decisions of the USSR bodies of executive power in the territory of Ukrainian SSR if they contradicted its constitution.By mid-1991 the legislative base was created in Ukraine which, in fact, made it an independent state as the laws adopted in 1990 and in the first half of 1991 brought out Ukraine from subordination to the USSR powers. The single economic, political and military space of the USSR practically ceased to exist. By this time Ukraine subordinated only nominally to union authorities. On August 24 the Extraordinary Meeting of Supreme Rada passed the Act on Declaration of Independence of Ukraine. That time it was also decided to conduct on December 01 the republican referendum to confirm the Act of Independence. This was done with a view to demonstrate to the union authorities that the Ukrainian people were endeavoring to become independent, thus, making legitimate the Act of Independence. After becoming independent in 1991 Ukraine entered the new stage of its development. The regional system of Ukraine revealed two clear poles — Donbass and Galichina which determined the country’s development for decades ahead.

Resumen: Los límites coloniales de América Latina habían sido definidos vagamente durante siglos: eran límites administrativos que organizaban la administración de un extenso territorio (para los cánones europeos), ocupado efectivamente de manera dispersa e irregular, con un archipiélago de enclaves urbanos conectados por el Camino Real.Desde las guerras de independencia (1800 - 1860), muchos territorios nacionales quedaron definidos, jurídicamente, a partir del principio del utis possidetis (la aceptación de antiguas unidades administrativas coloniales para los nuevos estados independientes) pero, de facto, el establecimiento efectivo de los límites territoriales se convirtió en uno de los problemas más difíciles de resolver para los nuevos estados latinoamericanos, en primer lugar debido a los constantes desacuerdos entre las partes y también debido la debilidad de los aparatos institucionales burocráticos que no disponían de medios materiales, instrumentales y recursos humanos para zanjar las disputas territoriales.Además, a lo largo del siglo XIX, al mismo tiempo que se constituían los estados nuevos en América latina y configuraban sus propios territorios se estaba reconceptualizando la propia idea de límite territorial, tanto en el terreno de la jurisprudencia internacional como en la teoría política: mientras que durante mucho tiempo los límites podían ser zonas o franjas de bordes difusos, los procesos de formación territorial modernos requirieron límites que pudieran escribirse en forma de líneas sobre los mapas. En la práctica los límites antiguos y nuevos fueron dibujados y rediseñados a lo largo del siglo XX durante complejas negociaciones, alianzas inestables y contiendas militares, e incluso algunos de ellos no pudieron resolverse y continúan sin encontrar solución.A las dificultades técnicas y jurídicas intrínsecas la demarcación de los límites, hay que agregar que las tradiciones historiográficas nacionales (y nacionalistas) que elaboraron relatos de formación territorial y argumentaciones para sostener sus reclamos territoriales que hicieron literalmente imposible que el montaje de los mapas de los nuevos estados nacionales latinoamericanos elaborados por cada país diera por resultado un mismo mapa político coherente de América latina (por el contrario, cada país latinoamericano produjo mapas de Sudamérica demarcando las fronteras de maneras diferentes).Este artículo explora la variedad de situaciones que se generaron para resolver el quimérico mapa político de Sudamérica y cómo los relatos que los propios estados nacionales crearon para narrar sus historias territoriales tendieron a construir historiografías autocentradas que prefirieron ignorar o desdibujar el proceso de formación territorial en el nivel regional de América latina concebido como un asunto de conjunto.Palabras clave: Mapa político, América latina, nación, límites, demarcación territorialAbstract: For centuries colonial boundaries in Latin America had been defined vaguely: they were administrative boundaries organising the administration of an extensive territory (for European canons), effectively occupied in a dispersed and irregular manner, with an archipelago of urban enclaves connected by the Camino Real (Royal Road).Since the wars of independence (1800 - 1860), many national territories were, de jure, defined from the principle of utis possidetis (the acceptance of old colonial administrative units for the new independent states) but, de facto, not effectively established as having territorial limits, giving rise to one of the greatest challenges for the nascent Latin American States. This was first due to the constant disagreement between the parties and second to the weaknesses in bureaucratic institutions lacking the materials, instruments and human resources to settle disputes.In addition, throughout the 19th century, hand-in-hand with the territorial formation of these modern states, there was a progressive reconceptualisation of the idea of the territorial limit, shifting from a strip or zone to a discrete, cartographic line. In practice, the 20th century saw old and new boundaries drawn and redrawn through complex negotiations, unstable alliances and military strife, some never settling and remaining today unresolved.Added to the technical and legal difficulties intrinsic to the demarcation of borders are national (and nationalist) historiographic traditions narrating stories of territorial formation and constructing arguments to sustain their territorial claims, making it literally impossible for the assembly of maps drawn up by the new Latin American nation states ever to result in a coherent political picture of Latin America.This article explores the variety of situations that were generated to solve the chimerical political map of South America and how the stories that the nation states created to narrate their territorial histories tended to build self-centred historiographies that ignored or blurred the global process of territorial formation in Latin America.Key words: Political map, Latin America, nation, borders, territorial demarcation.

Abstract. Effective map use in the field is based on orientation in two spaces: in a physical or geographical space and in a representational, graphic space. When using a map the wayfinding process includes the identification of the user’s geographical position in the field (starting point), the identification of the target and planning the route’s connecting the two points. However, the initial direction of the user is very rarely the orientation of the map, so the problem of navigation with maps is the translation of the representational space into the user’s actual situation. In other words, the projected or actual movement path during navigation must be transformed from one reference frame to the other. Spatial reference frame is a key issue in cartography and geovisualization. The transformation of the human subjects’ body-centred, egocentric reference system into an object-centred, allocentric reference system is a complex task. Maps are cognitive tools, traditionally representing large configurational spaces in visual, graphic form (Török 2019). They offer computational advantage over internal, human memory representation, organized into smaller spatial units. Apart from personal experience, learning from maps is a common practice (Meilinger et al. 2015). Supported by ubiquitous map services, prior to visiting unfamiliar places people consult maps to familiarize themselves, and this spatial learning results in memory structures with map-oriented reference frames. In modern societies the massive use of cartographic visualization in spatial thinking underlines the importance of modern cognitive cartographic research, resulting in new insights and consequences well beyond topographic map use (Zentai et al. 2006). Learning from maps influence the structure of the cognitive map. Increasing map use in modern information societies has strong effects on all spatial aspects of the human mind. Recent geo-visualizations, most importantly mobile navigational applications display maps with dynamic, head-up orientation and support the user by turn-by-turn voice navigation. Unfortunately, this practice does not support survey knowledge acquisition, cognitive map building and spatial memory training. The negative effect is decreasing navigational, or more generally spatial, ability of users of GPS navigational services. While the change of reference frame demands higher memory load for the human brain, the cost is compensated by the maintenance and development of human cognitive abilities.The North-is-up reference frame on cartographic maps is actually a rather modern cultural convention. However, we can trace its origin back to the astronomical-geometrical worldview of ancient Greek cosmology. The priority of north was adopted by Hellenic geography and became a classic tradition after the rediscovery of the 2nd c. work, a manual on making a map of the world by Ptolemy. He described the construction of the map in a geometric reference frame, in a north-oriented geographical coordinate system. Map making based on this new concept of geometric space had substantial influence on human spatial thinking from the Renaissance period on. Modern cartography is an Enlightenment project, and from the 19th century maps became common objects in European societies. In the 20th century cartographers and generations of map users were trained in geography with north-oriented maps, atlases – even globes were displayed with north on top. The representational history of cities in European cartography a case where cognitive cartographic issues strongly influenced cartographic practice and the importance of different reference frames is demonstrative. The modern city view as a new genre appears in the late 15th century and cities views were already popular at the time the Nuremberg Chronicle was printed with numerous illustrations (1493). However, how it is perhaps best exemplified by Sebastian Münster’s German Cosmography (from 1544) while maps were oriented north or south, the cities were given in perspective. In the Chronicle Buda, the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary, is represented from the east, while Münster included another woodcut, a view of the city from the south. After the long period of the Turkish occupation new representations of the former Hungarian capital were constructed by military engineers in connection with the siege of Buda (1686), representing the campaign’s target from military point of view. The cities Buda and Pest, stretching along the Danube, even in the 19th century they were represented with the river as a horizontal axis in landscape format views and maps. The significant change of the orientation of the city maps is the late 19th century, more specifically the period when topographic maps of the third military survey of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy became available. From this time on the historic material demonstrates that maps of Budapest (from 1872) are almost exclusively north-oriented. As a result of this process, generations learned geography from north oriented maps and school atlases.After our virtual reality experiments exploring spatial learning and navigation (Török et al. 2018), in the present field experiment we tested the interaction of local and global reference frames, the sense of geographical North in a sample of young adults. We created an ecologically valid experimental setting by selecting a special location at ELTE university campus in Budapest. In an enclosed vista space, positioned near the river Danube and heading an easterly direction, our participants were asked first to point to North. With good visibility of the river, a major, structural landmark in the configuration of the city we were interested how the misleading direction of the Danube influenced their directional sense. While the general course of the river is north-south, at the site of the experiment the river course changes to northwest-southeast, with a deviation of 30–40° from true north. We expected that the direction of the only visible global landmark, and, of course all the local landmarks, would result in similar pointing errors. In the first test series they were asked to point/draw toward salient urban landmarks in the city, that is in environmental space. In the second test series they pointed towards important cities in a large, geographical space. Finally, they once again indicated the direction of true North in the same geographic space.Our results are consistent with previous research (Frankenstein et al. 2012) that the participants had a clear sense of geographical North learned from maps, moreover, contradicting our expectations, the misleading course of the Danube and local geometry had little effect on the overall high accuracy of pointing to North. However, a few result deviated from the average and suggested high individual differences, presumably due to different spatial thinking strategies of participants. Test subjects living longer in Budapest had a much better sense of North, supporting the importance of learned components in this directional knowledge. Our experiment in the physical world resulted in supporting evidence that North is present in human cognitive map as the cardinal direction for orientation. The implications of the results of our experiment should be considered relevant when designing new maps and user interfaces. Another important result, our experiment suggest that local and global reference frames are not separate systems, but structured hierarchically and integrated in spatial orientation tasks. Although egocentric view may support direct scene recognition and object identification cartographers should construct navigational maps with geographic reference frame as well, especially in the case of extensive and complex environmental/geographical spaces, because these are still learned first from north oriented maps. The long tradition of paper maps, the history of cartography has a lasting effect of human understanding of the physical and virtual worlds.

This paper concerns the study of the specifics of self-consciousness and self-identity of one of the indige-nous minorities of Siberia — the Teleuts, in different periods of their ethnic history from the mid. 18th century until the present time. Main forms of Teleuts’ identity are considered: national; class; ethnic; ancestral and local. The instances of using various ethnonyms, genonymums and class attributes by Teleuts are analyzed. Identity multi-variance is considered as a mechanism of minority self-preservation and adaptation to the continuous assimilative influence of the nonethnic majority. The paper is based on the archival sources and field materials of the author collected during the expeditions to Teleuts in 1978–2014. The field materials include samples of the folklore, writ-ten folk literature, records of biographies, family chronicles and narratives about other societies recorded by the author. It has been shown how Teleuts ideas about other societies adjusted in the course of their adaptation to the new social and cultural environment within the Russian state. The attention has been drawn to how the ethnic consolidation of the Teleuts in the 19th–20th cc. transformed the local self-consciousness and self-identity. The names associated with small territorial communities often acquired derogatory sense and transferred from endo- to exo-type. It has been deduced how the legal status of the ethnic group within the state influences development of their ethnic culture. Notably, the non-Russians status of the Teleuts brought to them some rights and privileges in terms of the land tenure, taxes and exemption from the compulsory military service. On one hand, this has been helping to strengthen the national identity of the Teleuts, but on the other hand, it facilitates their ethnic self-affirmation. Teleuts have always been proud with their non-Russians status within the Russian state. The ethnic status of the Teleuts in the post-Soviet period is protected by their official recognition in 1989 as a separate ethnic group and subsequent affiliation with the indigenous minorities of the North.

The article is devoted to the consideration of the ethnonym origins and the formation of the Buryat tribe “Khongodor”. The study of this topic is one of the current problems, the resolution of which can clarify some unknown aspects of the ethnogenesis and ethnic history of the Buryats, as well as the origin of its separate local component. This article presents a new version, according to which the emergence of the ethnonym of the Buryat tribe was associated with ethnopolitical processes that took place in the early Buryat community. And this ethnopolitical community was dominated by Bulagats. This was indicated by the etymological analysis of the ethnonym “Khongodor” and the names of the main genera. These names indicate the dependent position of the bearers of these names on the leading Association. It explains the formation of the generic kernel Khongodors presented by these two groups. Its ethnic basis is based on the Oirat component, known in the Buryat tradition as “Segenut” or “Olet”. This ethnic element is also characterized by the presence of a Turkic admixture. This proves the Mongol origin of the Khongodor core. It was part of the early inhabitants of the Western Baikal region and did not represent a tribal formation during the period of Bulagat domination. Changes in the ethnic history of the Khongodors occur in the second half of the 17th century. This aspect is connected with the external factors – the military and political influence of the Russian state and the migration of Mongolian groups to the territory of Buryatia. All this had an impact on the internal structure of the Buryat community. The study proves that due to the Russian influence, which caused a violation of established ties within the Buryat community, conditions for the formation of an ethnolocal Khongodor association arose. From the Khongodors and Mongol groups (Khotogouts, Torgouts, Zungars), the Russian authorities organized an administrative formation that gave rise to the tribal formation. In the process of living together on the same administrative territory, they become aware of unity and form a common genealogical relationship. They take a common name and form a tribe. All this happened in the 18–19th centuries.

Введение. Становление исторической прозы для детей и юношества в русской литературе началось в первой трети XIX в. и было вызвано стремительным развитием отечественной историографии. Детской писательнице А. О. Ишимовой принадлежит заслуга создания первого адаптированного для детей исторического труда. Принцип художественного осмысления прошлого, фактический материал, концепция истории отечества были заимствованы Ишимовой из «Истории государства Российского» Карамзина. В своей «Истории России в рассказах для детей» писательница заложила жанровые доминанты нового документально-художественного рода сочинений в детско-юношеской литературе, среди которых можно выделить познавательную и нравственно-назидательную цели исторического труда; выбор политической идеологии, которой подчиняется концепция отечественной истории; опору на разные исторические источники, в числе которых важное место занимает современная историография; художественное осмысление прошлого, психологизацию исторического материала; включение фольклорных и авторских литературных текстов; диалогизацию монологического текста в форме обращений и вопросов к адресату и др. Цель – анализ поэтики исторического повествования, а также представленной концепции русской истории в исторических произведениях для детей А. О. Ишимовой и Е. Поселянина. Исследование продолжает необходимую работу в области изучения произведений второго ряда литературы и позволяет определить принципы формирования детско-юношеской исторической прозы XIX – начала XX в. Материал и методы. Дается анализ исторической книги для детей и юношества Е. Поселянина «Сказание о святых вождях Земли Русской». Исследование написано в русле сравнительно-исторической поэтики. Результаты и обсуждение. Созданное Л. Тихомировым государственно-правовое учение о монархическом принципе власти повлияло на идеологическую составляющую исторической книги для детей и юношества Е. Поселянина «Сказание о святых вождях Земли Русской». Поселянин описывает историю Древней Руси и затрагивает современную ему Российскую империю, основываясь на концепции о присущей природе российской государственности модели православной самодержавной монархии. В период обострившегося социально-политического кризиса в конце XIX – начале XX в., когда актуализировалась проблема переоценки российской государственности и общества, а также определялись перспективы развития России в контексте общеевропейских тенденций, Поселянин утверждает ценность и самодостаточность российской государственности, декларирует идею особого пути России. Заключение. Большинство сказаний о русских князьях Е. Поселянина представляют собой переложение их жизнеописаний, взятых из летописей, Четьих-Миней святителя Димитрия Ростовского, Пролога, древнерусских поучений, сказаний, воинских повестей, а также научных трудов историков XIX в. Разнообразие источников, ориентация как на древнерусский жанр исторического сказания, так и на современные писателю мемуарно-биографические жанры обусловили жанровое своеобразие «Сказания...», в котором житийные повести перемежаются с историко-биографическими очерками о русских князьях и святых, объединенных общим повествованием о трагических и героических событиях древнерусской истории. В «Сказании...» Поселянина сочетаются эпическое начало, лиризм и очерковость. Introduction. The development of historical prose for children and youth in Russian literature began in the first third of the 19th century and was caused by the rapid development of Russian historiography, which began with the publication of N. M. Karamzin. The children’s writer A. O. Ishimova is credited with creating the first historical work adapted for children. The principle of artistic comprehension of the past, factual material, the concept of the history of the fatherland was borrowed by Ishimova from Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State”. In her History of Russia in Stories for Children, the writer laid down the genre dominants of a new documentary-artistic kind of works in children’s and youth literature, among which one can single out the cognitive and moral-edifying goals of historical work; the choice of political ideology to which the concept of national history is subject; reliance on various historical sources, among which modern historiography occupies an important place; artistic comprehension of the past, psychologization of historical material; inclusion of folklore and author’s literary texts; dialogization of a monologue text in the form of addresses and questions to the addressee, etc. Aim and objectives. Analysis of the poetics of historical narration, as well as the presented concept of Russian history in historical works for children by A. O. Ishimova and E. Poselyanin. This study continues the necessary work in the field of studying the works of the second series of literature and allows us to determine the principles of the formation of children’s and youth’s historical prose of the XIX – early XX centuries. Material and methods. The article analyzes the historical book for children and youth by E. Poselyanin “On the holy leaders of the Russian Land”. The study is written in the mainstream of comparative historical poetics. Results and discussion. The state-legal doctrine of the monarchical principle of power created by L. Tikhomirov influenced the ideological component of the historical book for children and youth by E. Poselyanin “The Legend of the Holy Leaders of the Russian Land”. The villager describes the history of Ancient Rus and touches on the contemporary Russian Empire, based on the concept of the inherent nature of Russian statehood, the model of an Orthodox autocratic monarchy. During the aggravated socio-political crisis at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, when the problem of reassessing Russian statehood and society was actualized, and the prospects for the development of Russia in the context of general European trends were determined, Poselyanin affirms the value and self-sufficiency of Russian statehood, declares the idea of a special path for Russia. Conclusion. Most of the legends about the Russian princes E. Poselyanin are transcriptions of their biographies taken from the chronicles, the Chetykh-Minei of St. Demetrius of Rostov, the Prologue, Old Russian teachings, legends, military tales, as well as scientific works of historians of the 19th century. A variety of sources, an orientation both to the ancient Russian genre of historical legends and to the contemporary memoir and biographical genres of the writer determined the genre originality of the Legend, in which hagiographic stories are interspersed with historical and biographical sketches about Russian princes and saints, united by a common narrative about the tragic and heroic events of ancient Russian history. The Peasant’s Tale combines an epic beginning, lyricism and essayism.

In the new issue, our scientific journal offers you thirteen scientific articles. As always, we try to offer a wide variety of topics and areas and follow current trends in the history of science and technology. In the article by Olha Chumachenko, оn the basis of a wide base of sources, the article highlights and analyzes the development of research work of aircraft engine companies in Zaporizhzhia during the 1970s. The existence of a single system of functioning of the Zaporizhzhia production association “Motorobudivnyk” (now the Public Joint Stock Company “Motor Sich”) and the Zaporizhzhia Machine-Building Design Bureau “Progress” (now the State Enterprise “Ivchenko – Progress”) has been taken into account. Leonid Griffen and Nadiia Ryzheva present their vision of the essence of technology as a socio-historical phenomenon. The article reveals the authors' vision of the essence of the technology as a sociohistorical phenomenon. It is based on the idea that technology is not only a set of technical devices but a segment of the general system – a society – located between a social medium and its natural surroundings in the form of a peculiar social technosphere, which simultaneously separates and connects them. Definitely the article by Denis Kislov, which examines the period from the end of the XVII century to the beginning of the XIX century, is also of interest, when on the basis of deep philosophical concepts, a new vision of the development of statehood and human values raised. At this time, a certain re-thinking of the management and communication ideas of Antiquity and the Renaissance took place, which outlined the main promising trends in the statehood evolution, which to one degree or another were embodied in practice in the 19th and 20th centuries. A systematic approach and a comparative analysis of the causes and consequences of those years’ achievements for the present and the immediate future of the 21st century served as the methodological basis for a comprehensive review of the studies of that period. The article by Serhii Paliienko is devoted to an exploration of archaeological theory issues at the Institute of archaeology AS UkrSSR in the 1960s. This period is one of the worst studied in the history of Soviet archaeology. But it was the time when in the USSR archaeological researches reached the summit, quantitative methods and methods of natural sciences were applied and interest in theoretical issues had grown in archaeology. Now there are a lot of publications dedicated to theoretical discussions between archaeologists from Leningrad but the same researches about Kyiv scholars are still unknown The legacy of St. Luke in medical science, authors from Greece - this study aims to highlight key elements of the life of Valentyn Feliksovych Voino-Yasenetskyi and his scientific contribution to medicine. Among the scientists of European greatness, who at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries showed interest to the folklore of Galicia (Halychyna) and Galician Ukrainians, contributed to their national and cultural revival, one of the leading places is occupied by the outstanding Ukrainian scientist Ivan Verkhratskyi. He was both naturalist and philologist, as well as folklorist and ethnographer, organizer of scientific work, publisher and popularizer of Ukrainian literature, translator, publicist and famous public figure. I. H. Verkhratskyi was also an outstanding researcher of plants and animals of Eastern Galicia, a connoisseur of insects, especially butterflies, the author of the first school textbooks on natural science written in Ukrainian. A new emerging field that has seen the application of the drone technology is the healthcare sector. Over the years, the health sector has increasingly relied on the device for timely transportation of essential articles across the globe. Since its introduction in health, scholars have attempted to address the impact of drones on healthcare across Africa and the world at large. Among other things, it has been reported by scholars that the device has the ability to overcome the menace of weather constraints, inadequate personnel and inaccessible roads within the healthcare sector. This notwithstanding, data on drones and drone application in Ghana and her healthcare sector in particular appears to be little within the drone literature. Also, little attempt has been made by scholars to highlight the use of drones in African countries. By using a narrative review approach, the current study attempts to address the gap above. By this approach, a thorough literature search was performed to locate and assess scientific materials involving the application of drones in the military field and in the medical systems of Africans and Ghanaians in particular. The paper by Artemii Bernatskyi and Vladyslav Khaskin is devoted to the analysis of the history of the laser creation as one of the greatest technical inventions of the 20th century. This paper focuses on establishing a relation between the periodization of the stages of creation and implementation of certain types of lasers, with their influence on the invention of certain types of equipment and industrial technologies for processing the materials, the development of certain branches of the economy, and scientific-technological progress as a whole. The paper discusses the stages of: invention of the first laser; creation of the first commercial lasers; development of the first applications of lasers in industrial technologies for processing the materials. Special attention is paid to the “patent wars” that accompanied different stages of the creation of lasers. A comparative analysis of the market development for laser technology from the stage of creation to the present has been carried out. Nineteenth-century world exhibitions were platforms to demonstrate technical and technological changes that witnessed the modernization and industrialization of the world. World exhibitions have contributed to the promotion of new inventions and the popularization of already known, as well as the emergence of art objects of world importance. One of the most important world events at the turn of the century was the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. Thus, the author has tried to analyze the participation of representatives of the sugar industry in the World's Fair in 1900 and to define the role of exhibitions as indicators of economic development, to show the importance and influence of private entrepreneurs, especially from Ukraine, on the sugar industry and international contacts. The article by Viktor Verhunov highlights the life and creative path of the outstanding domestic scientist, theorist, methodologist and practitioner of agricultural engineering K. G. Schindler, associated with the formation of agricultural mechanics in Ukraine. The methodological foundation of the research is the principles of historicism, scientific nature and objectivity in reproducing the phenomena of the past based on the complex use of general scientific, special, interdisciplinary methods. For the first time a number of documents from Russian and Ukrainian archives, which reflect some facts of the professional biography of the scientist, were introduced into scientific circulation. The authors from Kremenchuk National University named after Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi presented a fascinating study of a bayonet fragment with severe damages of metal found in the city Kremenchuk (Ukraine) in one of the canals on the outskirts of the city, near the Dnipro River. Theoretical research to study blade weapons of the World War I period and the typology of the bayonets of that period, which made it possible to put forward an assumption about the possible identification of the object as a modified bayonet to the Mauser rifle has been carried out. Metal science expert examination was based on X-ray fluorescence spectrometry to determine the concentration of elements in the sample from the cleaned part of the blade. In the article by Mykola Ruban and Vadym Ponomarenko on the basis of the complex analysis of sources and scientific literature the attempt to investigate historical circumstances of development and construction of shunting electric locomotives at the Dnipropetrovsk electric locomotive plant has been made. The next scientific article continues the series of publications devoted to the assessment of activities of the heads of the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Empire. In this article, the authors have attempted to systematize and analyze historical data on the activities of Klavdii Semyonovych Nemeshaev as the Minister of Railways of the Russian Empire. The article also assesses the development and construction of railway network in the Russian Empire during Nemeshaev's office, in particular, of the Amur Line and Moscow Encircle Railway, as well as the increase in the capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The article discusses K. S. Nemeshaev's contribution to the development of technology and the introduction of a new type of freight steam locomotive for state-owned railways. We hope that everyone will find interesting useful information in the new issue. And, of course, we welcome your new submissions.

Abstract. The article explores the image of I. Mazepa in the context of numerous sources devoted to the personality of the Ukrainian hetman in historical science, literature and music. The analysis shows that the ideas of the great Ukrainian in the works of art evolve: from a traitor to a patriot. If in the 18th – 19th centuries artists created this image being inspired by myths, then from the early 20th century and up to the present time the historical approach has been dominant. In this paper the author suggests performing aspect basing on the vocal and scenic image of I. Mazepa created by him on the stage of Kharkiv National Opera and Ballet Theater named after M. Lysenko. The interpretation of the extraordinary personality of the Ukrainian hetman gives the audience an opportunity to look at Mazepa from a historical perspective. It is noted that his image in this performance is not limited to a national vision, but acquires a universal character. I. Mazepa’s personality is of great interest to modern Ukrainians living both in their historical homeland and far beyond its borders. At present, contradictory assessments of Mazepa’s role in the chronicle of Ukrainian history require the establishment of historical and artistic truth. P. Tchaikovsky’s opera Mazepa is perceived as a fruitful material to search for a new interpretation of the image. It was first performed on the stage of Kharkiv National Opera and Ballet Theater named after N. V. Lysenko on July 2, 2017 to mark the 330th anniversary of Ivan Mazepa’s election as hetman of Ukraine. This fact gives a chance to bring into focus a relevant performing interpretation of the image of this outstanding figure in Ukrainian history. Among the numerous historians and literary critics cited in the article, we find a new interpretation of Mazepa’s image in contrast to music studies (N. Lupak’s dissertation). The method of analysis is conditioned by the creative practice of the KhNAOBTh and its own performance experience. The purpose of the study is to substantiate the reinterpretation of Mazepa’s vocal and scenic image in the production of the P. I. Tchaikovsky’s opera of the same name on the stage of KhNAOBTh named after M. Lysenko (2017) basing on the critical analysis of scientific historiography. The attitude towards I. Mazepa as a historical personality and a person has always been ambiguous. He combined the incomparable: on the one hand, he was a great military and political figure who fought for the creation of the Ukrainian state, on the other hand – a treacherous traitor; at his initiative, 26 Orthodox churches were created throughout Ukraine and, at the same time, he was an apostate devotee who took part in the destruction of Ukrainian cities and villages; a person capable of loving in the broadest sense of the word. He had everything that attracted and aroused great interest of writers, composers, artists, directors not only in our country but also far beyond its borders. And each author interpreted the image of Mazepa in their own way. In the 19th century, the image of the Ukrainian hetman fell into the area of artistic interests of M. Staritsky. He, like Voltaire and Byron, used the Western European legend of Mazepa in the novel “Mazepa’s Youth”, which was appropriate for its genre (historical-adventure). Naturally, the idea of “independent Ukraine” did not fit into Russia’s interests. In Tchaikovsky’s opera Mazepa (1883), based on A. Pushkin’s story (libretto by V. P. Burenin) everything is quite complex. It is important to note that many researchers of Tchaikovsky’s creativity believe that in Tchaikovsky’s Mazepa historical facts are sidelined while lyrical love scenes dominate. There were a number of questions when the image of Mazepa was ctreated in the original Ukrainian version of the opera on the stage of Kharkiv National Academic Opera and Ballet Theater named after N. Lysenko. The main one is how to maintain faithfulness not only to historical but also to the life’s truth? The times of the Hetmanate in Ukraine were silenced for about 300 years, and, in particular, the true life of one of its most famous representatives was unknown. But in order to create an image, it is important to know the smallest shades of your character’s psychotype. As the lyrical scenes of Mary and Mazepa are the central line in the opera, it is necessary to understand what kind of relationship they really had. Kharkiv stage directors of P. Tchaikovsky’s opera (director Armen Kaloyan and conductor People’s Artist of Ukraine Garkusha) sought to convey this very episode from the life of Mazepa, who openly loves his darling and suffers from having to cruelly deal with her father and hurt her badly. In addition, there was created their own version of the text (by Victor Marinchak, Svetlana Oleshko and Mikhail Barbara) and changes were made to the musical dramaturgy of the opera. The main idea of stage directors was to transform the content of the opera into another field – to reveal the image of the hetman as a significant figure in the history of Ukraine, which was much more important for Mazepa than the alliance with Peter I. The difficulty of creating a vocal and scenic image of Mazepa lies in its multi-vector character, which should not interfere with artistic unity and integrity: Mazepa-lover (in the tradition of Western European romanticism), Mazepastatesman (Ukrainian national tradition) and, at the same time, in the interpretation of Kharkiv theatre Mazepa-traitor had to be neutralized (an enemy that is characteristic of Russian imperial thinking). The motives of torments, sorrow and, along with this, the rebellious nature of the protagonist become considerable in the opera, rising to genuine symbolism. Thus, in the vast number of works dedicated to I. Mazepa, his image is not limited to the national framework, but acquires a universal significance. Conclusions. Analysis has shown the evolution of ideas about the great Ukrainian: from traitor to patriot and legendary hetman. If in the 18th century the image of the Ukrainian hero was interpreted in many ways by its creators on the basis of myths, then in the 20th – 21st centuries the historical approach prevails in understanding performing interpretation of Mazepa. The creation of a complex, extraordinary personality on the opera stage requires from the performer, in addition to knowledge of Mazepa’s vocal part, a thorough study of various axiological judgments. The above given interpretations of I. Mazepa’s image reflect the irreconcilable confrontation and “blood” belonging of one or another author to different systems of values of the worldview. Such interpretations indicate that the image of I. Mazepa is interpreted as a symbol, an archetype of the national opera tradition. Undertaking further study of the theme can involve performing analysis of Mazepa’s image on the stages of Kyiv and Odessa opera theaters with a view of understanding the performing principles when teaching young vocalists in the class of solo singing.

The article aims to present historiographical perspectives for Military History theory. For this, the researchers had access to specialized bibliography to contextualize classics of the three strands, analyzing how history is written from the 19th century to contemporary times. The Traditional, Marxist, and New History currents, concomitant with examples described in works in Military History, received decisive contributions to professional improvement in scientific activity throughout this period. In this way, it provides young researchers with the opportunity to innovate and find new information to deepen the historical knowledge of Military History issues: leaders, institutions, mentality, and values.

IntroductionAs both a historical and cultural entity, the city of New Orleans has long-maintained a reputation as a centre for hedonistic and carnivaleque pleasures. Historically, images of mardi gras, jazz, and parties on the shores of the Mississippi have pervaded the cultural vision of the city as a “mecca” for “social life” (Marina 2), and successfully fed its tourism narratives. Simultaneously, however, a different kind of narrative also exists in the historical folds of the city’s urban mythology. Many tales of vampire sightings and supernatural accounts surround the area, and have contributed, over the years, to the establishment and mystification of New Orleans as a ‘vampire city’. This has produced, in turn, its own brand of vampire tourism (Murphy 2015). Mixed with historical rumours and Gothic folklore, the recent narratives of popular culture lie at the centre of the re-imagination of New Orleans as a vampire hub. Taking this idea as a point of departure, this article provides culturally- and historically-informed critical considerations of New Orleans as a ‘vampire city’, especially as portrayed in The Originals (2013-2017), a contemporary television series where vampires are the main protagonists. In the series, the historical narratives of New Orleans become entangled with – and are, at times, almost inseparable from – the fictional chronicles of the vampire in both aesthetic and conceptual terms.The critical connection between urban narratives and vampires representation, as far as New Orleans is concerned, is profoundly entangled with notions of both tourism and fictionalised popular accounts of folklore (Piatti-Farnell 172). In approaching the conceptual relationship between New Orleans as a cultural and historical entity and the vampire — in its folkloristic and imaginative context — the analysis will take a three-pronged approach: firstly, it will consider the historical narrative of tourism for the city of New Orleans; secondly, the city’s connection to vampires and other Gothicised entities will be considered, both historically and narratively; and finally, the analysis will focus on how the connection between New Orleans and Gothic folklore of the vampire is represented in The Originals, with the issue of cultural authenticity being brought into the foreground. A critical footnote must be given to the understanding of the term ‘New Orleans’ in this article as meaning primarily the French Quarter – or, the Vieux Carre – and its various representations. This geographical focus principally owes its existence to the profound cultural significance that the French Quarter has occupied in the history of New Orleans as a city, and, in particular, in its connection to narratives of magic and Gothic folklore, as well as the broader historical and contemporary tourism structures. A History of TourismSocial historian Kevin Fox Gotham agues that New Orleans as a city has been particularly successful in fabricating a sellable image of itself; tourism, Gotham reminds us, is about “the production of local difference, local cultures, and different local histories that appeal to visitors’ tastes for the exotic and the unique” (“Gentrification” 1100). In these terms, both the history and the socio-cultural ‘feel’ of the city cannot be separated from the visual constructs that accompany it. Over the decades, New Orleans has fabricated a distinct network of representational patterns for the Vieux Carre in particular, where the deployment of specific images, themes and motifs – which are, in truth, only peripherally tied to the city’ actual social and political history, and owe their creation and realisation more to the success of fictional narratives from film and literature – is employed to “stimulate tourist demands to buy and consume” (Gotham, “Gentrification” 1102). This image of the city as hedonistic site is well-acknowledged, has to be understood, at least partially, as a conscious construct aimed at the production an identity for itself, which the city can in turn sell to visitors, both domestically and internationally. New Orleans, Gotham suggests, is a ‘complex and constantly mutating city’, in which “meanings of place and community” are “inexorably intertwined with tourism” (Authentic 5). The view of New Orleans as a site of hedonistic pleasure is something that has been heavily capitalised upon by the tourism industry of the city for decades, if not centuries. A keen look at advertising pamphlets for the city, dating form the late Nineteenth century onwards, provides an overview of thematic selling points, that primarily focus on notions of jazz, endless parties and, in particular, nostalgic and distinctly rose-tinted views of the Old South and its glorious plantations (Thomas 7). The decadent view of New Orleans as a centre of carnal pleasures has often been recalled by scholars and lay observers alike; this vision of he city indeed holds deep historical roots, and is entangled with the city’s own economic structures, as well as its acculturated tourism ones. In the late 19th and early 20th century one of the things that New Orleans was very famous for was actually Storyville, the city’s red-light district, sanctioned in 1897 by municipal ordinance. Storyville quickly became a centralized attraction in the heart of New Orleans, so much so that it began being heavily advertised, especially through the publication of the ‘Blue Book’, a resource created for tourists. The Blue Book contained, in alphabetical order, information on all the prostitutes of Storyville. Storyville remained very popular and the most famous attraction in New Orleans until its demolition in 1919 Anthony Stanonis suggests that, in its ability to promote a sellable image for the city, “Storyville meshed with the intersts of business men in the age before mass tourism” (105).Even after the disappearance of Storyville, New Orleans continued to foster its image a site of hedonism, a narrative aided by a favourable administration, especially in the 1930s and 1940s. The French Quarter, in particular, “became a tawdry mélange of brothers and gambling dens operating with impunity under lax law enforcement” (Souther 16). The image of the city as a site for pleasures of worldly nature continued to be deeply rooted, and even survives in the following decades today, as visible in the numerous exotic dance parlours located on the famous Bourbon Street.Vampire TourismSimultaneously, however, a different kind of narrative also exists in the recent historical folds of the city’s urban mythology, where vampires, magic, and voodoo are an unavoidable presence. Many tales of vampire sightings and supernatural accounts surround the area, and have contributed, over the years, to the establishment and mystification of New Orleans as a ‘vampire city’. Kenneth Holditch contends that ‘”New Orleans is a city in love with its myths, mysteries and fantasies” (quoted in McKinney 8). In the contemporary era, these qualities are profoundly reflected in the city’s urban tourism image, where the vampire narrative is pushed into the foreground. When in the city, one might be lucky enough to take one of the many ‘vampire tours’ — often coupled with narratives of haunted locations — or visit the vampire bookshop, or even take part in the annual vampire ball. Indeed, the presence of vampires in New Orleans’s contemporary tourism narrative is so pervasive that one might be tempted to assume that it has always occupied a prominent place in the city’s cultural fabric. Nonetheless, this perception is not accurate: the historical evidence from tourism pamphlets for the city do not make any mentions of vampire tourism before the 1990s, and even then, the focus on the occult side of new Orleans tended to privilege stories of voodoo and hoodoo — a presence that still survives strongly in the cultural narrative city itself (Murphy 91). While the connection between vampires and New Orleans is a undoubtedly recent one, the development and establishment of New Orleans as vampire city cannot be thought of as a straight line. A number of cultural and historical currents appear to converge in the creation of the city’s vampire mystique. The history and geography of the city here could be an important factor, and a useful starting point; as the site of extreme immigration and ethnic and racial mingling New Orleans holds a reputation for mystery. The city was, of course, the regrettable site of a huge marketplace for the slave trade, so discussions of political economy could also be important here, although I’ll leave them for another time. As a city, New Orleans has often been described – by novelists, poets, and historians alike – as being somewhat ‘peculiar’. Simone de Behaviour was known to have remarked that that the city is surrounded by a “pearl grey” and ‘luminous’ air” (McKinney 1). In similar fashion, Oliver Evans claims the city carries “opalescent hints” (quoted in McKinney 1). New Orleans is famous for having a quite thick mist, the result of a high humidity levels in the air. To an observing eye, New Orleans seems immersed in an almost otherworldly ‘glow’, which bestows upon its limits an ethereal and mysterious quality (Piatti-Farnell 173). While this intention here is not to suggest that New Orleans is the only city to have mist – especially in the Southern States – one might venture to say that this physical phenomenon, joined with other occurrences and legends, has certainly contributed to the city’s Gothicised image. The geography of the city also makes it sadly famous for floods and their subsequent devastation, which over centuries have wrecked parts of the city irrevocably. New Orleans sits at a less than desirable geographical position, is no more than 17 feet above sea level, and much of it is at least five feet below (McKinney 5). In spite of its lamentable fame, hurricane Katrina was not the first devastating geo-meteorological phenomenon to hit and destroy most of New Orleans; one can trace similar hurricane occurrences in 1812 and 1915, which at the time significantly damaged parts of the French Quarter. The geographical position of New Orleans also owes to the city’s well-known history of disease such as the plague and tuberculosis – often associated, in previous centuries, with the miasma proper to reclaimed river lands. In similar terms, one must not forget New Orleans’s history of devastating fires – primarily in the years 1788, 1794, 1816, 1866 and 1919 – which slowly destroyed the main historical parts of the city, particularly in the Vieux Carre, and to some extent opened the way for regeneration and later gentrification as well. As a result of its troubled and destructive history, Louise McKinnon claims that the city ‒ perhaps unlike any others in the United States ‒ hinges on perpetual cycles of destruction and regeneration, continuously showing “the wear and tear of human life” (McKinney 6).It is indeed in this extremely important element that New Orleans finds a conceptual source in its connection to notions of the undead, and the vampire in particular. Historically, one can identify the pervasive use of Gothic terminology to describe New Orleans, even if, the descriptions themselves were more attuned to perceptions of the city’s architecture and metrological conditions, rather than the recollection of any folklore-inspired narratives of unread creatures. Because of its mutating, and often ill-maintained historical architecture – especially in the French Quarter - New Orleans has steadily maintained a reputation as a city of “splendid decay” (McKinney, 6). This highly lyrical and metaphorical approach plays an important part in building the city as a site of mystery and enchantment. Its decaying outlook functions as an unavoidable sign of how New Orleans continues to absorb, and simultaneously repel, as McKinney puts it, “the effects of its own history” (6).Nonetheless, the history of New Orleans as a cultural entity, especially in terms of tourism, has not been tied to vampires for centuries, as many imagine, and the city itself insists in its contemporary tourism narratives. Although a lot of folklore has survived around the city in connection to magic and mysticism, for a number of reasons, vampires have not always been in the foreground of its publicised cultural narratives. Mixed with historical rumours and Gothic folklore, the recent narratives of popular culture lie at the centre of the re-imagination of New Orleans as a vampire spot: most scholars claim that it all started with the publication of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976), but actually evidence shows that the vampire narrative for the city of New Orleans did not fully explode until the release of Neil Jordan’s cinematic adaptation of Interview with the Vampire (1994). This film really put New Orleans at the centre of the vampire narrative, indulging in the use of many iconic locations in the city as tied to vampire, and cementing the idea of New Orleans as a vampiric city (Piatti-Farnell 175). The impact of Rice’s work, and its adaptations, has also been picked up by numerous other examples of popular culture, including Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire mystery series, and its well-known television adaptation True Blood. Harris herself states in one of her novels: “New Orleans had been the place to go for vampires and those who wanted to be around them ever since Anne Rice had been proven right about their existence” (2). In spite of the fact that popular culture, rather than actual historical evidence, lies at the heart of the city’s cultural relationship with vampires, this does not detract from the fact that vampires themselves – as fabricated figures lying somewhere between folklore, history, and fiction – represent an influential part of New Orleans’s contemporary tourism narrative, building a bridge between historical storytelling, mythologised identities, and consumerism. The Originals: Vampires in the CityIndeed, the impact of popular culture in establishing and re-establishing the success of the vampire tourism narrative in New Orleans is undeniable. Contemporary examples continue to capitalise on the visual, cultural, and suggestively historical connection between the city’s landmarks and vampire tales, cementing the notion of New Orleans as a solid entity within the Gothic tourism narrative. One such successful example is The Originals. This television show is actually a spin-off of the Vampires Diaries, and begins with three vampires, the Mikaelson siblings (Niklaus, Elijah, and Rebekkah) returning to the city of New Orleans for the first time since 1919, when they were forced to flee by their vengeful father. In their absence, Niklaus's protégé, Marcel, took charge of the city. The storyline of The Originals focuses on battles within the vampire factions to regain control of the city, and eliminate the hold of other mystical creatures such as werewolves and witches (Anyiwo 175). The central narrative here is that the city belongs to the vampire, and there can be no other real Gothic presence in the Quarter. One can only wonder, even at this embryonic level, how this connects functions in a multifaceted way, extending the critique of the vampire’s relationship to New Orleans from the textual dimension of the TV show to the real life cultural narrative of the city itself. A large number of the narrative strands in The Originals are tied to city and its festivals, its celebrations, and its visions of the past, whether historically recorded, or living in the pages of its Gothic folklore. Vampires are actually claimed to have made New Orleans what it is today, and they undoubtedly rule it. As Marcel puts it: “The blood never stops flowing, and the party never ends” (Episode 1, “Always and Forever”). Even the vampiric mantra for New Orleans in The Originals is tied to the city’s existing and long-standing tourism narrative, as “the party never ends” is a reference to one of Bourbon Street’s famous slogans. Indeed, the pictorial influence of the city’s primary landmarks in The Originals is undeniable. In spite of the fact the inside scenes for The Originals were filmed in a studio, the outside shots in the series reveal a strong connections to the city itself, as viewers are left with no doubt as to the show’s setting. New Orleans is continuously mentioned and put on show – and pervasively referred to as “our city”, by the vampires. So much so, that New Orleans becomes the centre of the feud between supernatural forces, as the vampires fight witches and werewolves – among others- to maintain control over the city’s historical heart. The French Quarter, in particular, is given renewed life from the ashes of history into the beating heart of the vampire narrative, so much so that it almost becomes its own character in its own right, instrumental in constructing the vampire mystique. The impact of the vampire on constructing an image for the city of New Orleans is made explicit in The Originals, as the series explicitly shows vampires at the centre of the city’s history. Indeed, the show’s narrative goes as far as justifying the French Quarter’s history and even legends through the vampire metaphor. For instance, the series explains the devastating fire that destroyed the French Opera House in 1919 as the result of a Mikaelson vampire family feud. In similar terms, the vampires of the French Quarter are shown at the heart of the Casquette Girls narrative, a well-known tale from Eighteenth-century colonial New Orleans, where young women were shipped from France to the new Louisiana colony, in order to marry. The young women were said to bring small chests – or casquettes – containing their clothes (Crandle 47). The Originals, however, capitalises on the folkloristic interpretation that perceives the girls’ luggage as coffins potentially containing the undead, a popular version of the tale that can often be heard if taking part in one of the many vampire tours in New Orleans. One can see here how the chronicles of the French Quarter in New Orleans and the presumed narratives of the vampire in the city merge to become one and the same, blurring the lines between history and fiction, and presenting the notion of folklore as a verifiable entity of the everyday (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 25) It is essential to remember, en passant, that, as far as giving the undead their own historical chronicles in connection to New Orleans, The Originals is not alone in doing this. Other TV series like American Horror Story have provided Gothicised histories for the city, although in this case more connected to witchcraft, hoodoo, and voodoo, rather than vampires.What one can see taking place in The Originals is a form of alternate and revisionist history that is reminiscent of several instances of pulp and science fiction from the early 20th century, where the Gothic element lies at the centre of not only the fictional narrative, but also of the re-conceptualisation of historical time and space, as not absolute entities, but as narratives open to interpretation (Singles 103). The re-interpretation here is of course connected to the cultural anxieties that are intrinsic to the Gothic – of changes, shifts, and unwanted returns - and the vampire as a figure of intersections, signalling the shift between stages of existence. If it is true that, to paraphrase Paul Ricoeur’s famous contention, the past returns to “haunt” us (105), then the history of New Orleans in The Originals is both established and haunted by vampires, a pervasive shadow that provides the city itself with an almost tangible Gothic afterlife. This connection, of course, extends beyond the fictional world of the television series, and finds fertile ground in the cultural narratives that the city constructs for itself. The tourism narrative of New Orleans also lies at the heart of the reconstructive historical imagination, which purposefully re-invents the city as a constructed entity that is, in itself, extremely sellable. The Originals mentions on multiple occasions that certain bars — owned, of course, by vampires — host regular ‘vampire themed events’, to “keep the tourists happy”. The importance of maintaining a steady influx of vampire tourism into the Quarter is made very clear throughout, and the vampires are complicit in fostering it for a number of reasons: not only because it provides them and the city with a constant revenue, but also because it brings a continuous source of fresh blood for the vampires to feed on. As Marcel puts it: “Something's gotta draw in the out-of-towners. Otherwise we'd all go hungry” (Episode 1, “Always and Forever”). New Orleans, it is made clear, is not only portrayed as a vampire hub, but also as a hot spot for vampire tourism; as part of the tourism narratives, the vampires themselves — who commonly feign humanity — actually further ‘pretend’ to be vampires for the tourists, who expect to find vampires in the city. It is made clear in The Originals that vampires often put on a show – and bear in mind, these are vampires who pretend to be human, who pretend to be vampires for the tourists. They channel stereotypes that belong in Gothic novels and films, and that are, as far as the ‘real’ vampires of the series, are concerned, mostly fictional. The vampires that are presented to the tourists in The Originals are, inevitably, inauthentic, for the real vampires themselves purposefully portray the vision of vampires put forward by popular culture, together with its own motifs and stereotypes. The vampires happily perform their popular culture role, in order to meet the expectations of the tourist. This interaction — which sociologist Dean MacCannell would refer to, when discussing the dynamics of tourism, as “staged authenticity” (591) — is the basis of the appeal, and what continues to bring tourists back, generating profits for vampires and humans alike. Nina Auerbach has persuasively argued that the vampire is often eroticised through its connections to the “self-obsessed’ glamour of consumerism that ‘subordinates history to seductive object” (57).With the issue of authenticity brought into sharp relief, The Originals also foregrounds questions of authenticity in relation to New Orleans’s own vampire tourism narrative, which ostensibly bases into historical narratives of magic, horror, and folklore, and constructs a fictionalised urban tale, suitable to the tourism trade. The vampires of the French Quarter in The Originals act as the embodiment of the constructed image of New Orleans as the epitome of a vampire tourist destination. ConclusionThere is a clear suggestion in The Originals that vampires have evolved from simple creatures of old folklore, to ‘products’ that can be sold to expectant tourists. This evolution, as far as popular culture is concerned, is also inevitably tied to the conceptualisation of certain locations as ‘vampiric’, a notion that, in the contemporary era, hinges on intersecting narratives of culture, history, and identity. Within this, New Orleans has successfully constructed an image for itself as a vampire city, exploiting, in a number ways, the popular and purposefully historicised connection to the undead. In both tourism narratives and popular culture, of which The Originals is an ideal example, New Orleans’s urban image — often sited in constructions and re-constructions, re-birth and decay — is presented as a result of the vampire’s own existence, and thrives in the Gothicised afterlife of imagery, symbolism, and cultural persuasion. In these terms, the ‘inauthentic’ vampires of The Originals are an ideal allegory that provides a channelling ground for the issues surrounding the ‘inauthentic’ state of New Orleans a sellable tourism entity. As both hinge on images of popular representation and desirable symbols, the historical narratives of New Orleans become entangled with — and are, at times, almost inseparable from — the fictional chronicles of the vampire in both aesthetic and conceptual terms. ReferencesAnyiwo, U. Melissa. “The Female Vampire in Popular Culture.” Gender in the Vampire Narrative. Eds. Amanda Hobson and U. Melissa Anyiwo. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2016. 173-192. Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.Crandle, Marita Woywod. New Orleans Vampires: History and Legend. Stroud: The History Press, 2017.Gotham, Kevin Fox. Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture, and Race in the Big Easy. New York: New York University Press, 2007.———. “Tourism Gentrification: The Case of New Orleans’ Vieux Carre’.” Urban Studies 42.7 (2005): 1099-1121. Harris, Charlaine. All Together Dead. London: Gollancz, 2008.Interview with the Vampire. Dir. Neil Jordan. Geffen Pictures, 1994. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. “Mistaken Dichotomies.” Public Folklore. Eds. Robert Baron and Nick Spitzer. Oxford: University of Missisippi Press, 2007. 28-48.Marina, Peter J. Down and Out in New Orleans: Trangressive Living in the Informal Economy. New York: Columia University Press, 2017. McKinney, Louise. New Orleans: A Cultural History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.Murphy, Michael. Fear Dat New Orleans: A Guide to the Voodoo, Vampires, Graveyards & Ghosts of the Crescent City. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. The Vampire in Contemporary Popular Literature. London: Routledge, 2014. Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Singles, Kathleen. Alternate History: Playing with Contingency and Necessity. Boston: de Gruyter, 2013.Souther, Mark. New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City. Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana Press, 2006. Stanonis, Anthony J. Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918-1945. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006.The Originals. Seasons 1-4. CBS/Warner Bros Television. 2013-2017.Thomas, Lynell. Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

The history of the Galatea dates back to the 19th century when in 1896 she was launched and Christianised as Glenlee at Glasgow. She sailed as a merchant ship in the United Kingdom and Italy during the first period of her operational life, and was later adapted with mechanical propulsion. After several circumnavigations, in 1922 she was renamed Galatea to serve in the Spanish Navy, where she remained in service for 60 years. Since 1993 she has been resting in her hometown in Scotland as a museum ship. As a tribute to the extensive and remarkable history of this ship, and in order to recover and preserve the naval tradition in Spain, it has been proposed to design a ship with the same morphology as the Glenlee to stoke the spirit of the Galatea and inspire the construction of new sailing ships. She will be adapted as a military training ship of the Spanish Navy. Therefore, studies in stability, propulsion, general arrangement and structural calculations will be necessary to validate the transformation of the Glenlee into a new Galatea II complying with mandatory regulations and technological advances that will encourage its operation to the future naval officers of the Spanish Navy.

For many, the very idea of ‘history’ calls into question narratives of the past, distant and disconnected from our contemporary moment, and out of tune with the media-centred world of our post-2000 popular culture. This approach to history, however, is based on profound misconceptions, and does not take into account the fact that the present is history: we experience our historical moment via multiple and multi-faceted media practices, from using social media to watching movies, from watching television to consuming food. The past is, in turn, never far removed from our contemporary and everyday experiences, informing not only the way we live now, but the ways in which our futures are cemented. Ever cogniscant of this, history is changing and evolving. As Anthony Grafton put it in 2007, the function of history is “giving multiple methods and practices a place to meet, as antiquarianism intersected with ecclesiastical history, both collided with law, and all of them in turn experienced the shock of the new as travellers described unknown worlds to the east and, even more surprising, to the west” (122).There is a dictum invoked by historians to remind ourselves and others that History is, by its very nature, a construction: history is what we want it to be. As soon as we set to writing history, what we write is already in the thrall of distorting influences and culture. From the writer’s bias to the publisher’s constraints, History is always flawed. For the twenty-first century reader, our view on History is written, presented, read and critiqued, then revised and re-written, to be argued further in what can appear to be a continuous loop of publication. Within History, conflicts can be headlined by weighty semiotics like The History Wars, or by evolutions in historiography, from the simplistic dichotomy of Political vs Economic to ‘turns’ tracing the Sociological turn of the 1960s, the linguistic or cultural turn of the 1970s and 1980s and the material turn of the 2000s, or even the recent embracing of post-modern, indigenous, gender, and queer methodologies. But we hold that the culture of history itself is changing, partly through the immediacy of media and the embrace of online platforms, and partly through the ubiquitous presence of anonymous-but-informed readers, users and subscribers questioning, challenging and revising some of what has been held to be true for centuries. As Maria Grever and Sipe Stuurman and contend, “the citizens of the twenty-first century need a history that addresses their concerns as citizens of a particular nation, but also as world citizens” (3). In looking at ‘media and culture’ through the lens of ‘history’, it is possible to see and confront how History itself is changing before our eyes. We take history to be a lived-in subject. This issue of M/C Journal seeks to redress the critical balance by re-evaluating and re-visioning the notion of history in connection to media and culture. The intention is to see history as intersecting with all parts of life, in an open refusal of the often-reductive view that has long-surrounded history as an area of interest, both in and out of the academy. This critical stance answers the cultural shifts that we see intrinsic not only to history as a discipline, but also to the ways in which, in the cultural sense, history is shaped and adapted into the narrative of the everyday. The interaction of history, media, and culture evokes the principle that “in a globalizing world, an inward looking…canon” for the historical paradigm “will become less and less convincing. In the end, it might make history simply irrelevant” (Grever and Stuurman 3). The notion of history becoming irrelevant is something that, naturally, we fervently wish to avoid. The articles in this issue collectively aim to show the directions that research in history in taking in the 21st century. The approach to ‘history’ we take is, overall, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transnational, as we see history itself as an entity shifting boundaries and registers. The articles show distinctive ways in which history intersects with our media and cultural practices in the contemporary moment, as we simultaneously engage with critical exercises of re-discovery and re-evaluation, as well as indicative and diagnostic scholarly prerogatives. The issue draws strength from the points of intersection between articles, while maintaining a critical awareness of their different approaches to ‘history’, both as a critical entity and a disciplinary standpoint. After this editorial, this issue opens with a feature article by Adele Wessell, entitled “‘We Will Show the Country’: Bringing History to Life”. Here, Wessell provides an overview of the important concerns that historians are presented with as far as recording national chronicles is concerned, and the tendency over time to privilege written accounts. With a particular focus on the Australian context, Wessell considers the different and differing accounts of recording the past, and places food at the centre of the historical question, providing a tangible and cultural coordinate for the exploration of the national past, and its contemporary repercussions. Paul Ryder and Jonathan Foye’s article “Whose Speech Is It Anyway? Ownership, Authorship, and the Redfern Address” considers themes of ownership, authorship, and acknowledgement as they relate to the crafting, delivery, and reception of political speeches. In light of an ongoing debate over the authorship of the now well-known Redfern address, Ryder and Foye focus on the difficulty of identifying notions of creativity and colaboration as far as political speeches are concerned, and how this impacts on the historical and cultural relevance of political realities over time. The relationship between artistry, ownership, and memory is also the focus of Christina Chau in her article “Remediating Destroyed Human Bodies”. Chau investigates the connection between art and digital culture, by placing an empahsis on the relationship between the past and what she terms contemporaneity. In particular, Chau focuses on artists who ‘remediate’ news media and motifs within the broader popular culture scope, with an intent to monumentalise and historicise contemporary digital culture. The impact of digitisation of historical research is the focus of Rob Allen’s article, entitled “Lost and Found: The SEARCH for the Hidden and Forgotten”. Allen’s argument is foregrounded by the contention that much of the 19th century ‘disappeared’ from view in the 20th century. Considering the change in archival practices in the 21st century, Allen argues that digitisation has revolution the ways in which historical traces are accessed and re-evaluated, allowing for the re-discovery of previously (potentially) forgotten historical figures. Using the Victorian figure of John De Morgan as a primary example, this article considers the uses of digital sources to recover and reclaim the past. In “Blood on Boylston: Digital Memory and the Dramatisation of Recent History in Patriots Day”, Melanie Piper examines the movie phenomenon whereby historic events are offered as movie recreations within months of the event which they purport to re-present, asking questions like ‘when is too soon?’ when it comes to on-screen death and disaster sanitised for public viewing. Constructing the re-creation through the merging of social media representations and media files, actual footage and dramatised recreation in Patriots Day forces us to question the place of ‘crowd-sourced’ investigations, of online sense-making of events, and what Landsberg termed ‘prosthetic memory’ for mass culture. Patriots Day sits at what Piper calls “a somewhat uncomfortable intersection of fact and fiction, of docudrama and popcorn action movie”, requiring that we consider the history/media/culture nexus in such mediated dramatisations, concluding that our digital memories of the present will help make the prosthetic memories of the future. “‘The Blood Never Stops Flowing and the Party Never Ends’: The Originals and the Afterlife of New Orleans as a Vampire City” is authored by the issue’s own editor, Lorna Piatti-Farnell. Here, the discussion provides an analysis of New Orleans as a ‘vampire city’ as put forward in The Originals, a contemporary television series where vampires are the protagonists. Piatti-Farnell contends that, alongside New Orleans’ well-cemented reputation as tourism centre for hedonistic and carnivaleque pleasures, the historical folds of the city’s urban mythology also hold a distinctive narrative populated by vampire sightings. With this in mind, the article explores how, in The Originals, the historical narratives of New Orleans become entangled with – and are, at times, almost inseparable from – the fictional chronicles of the vampire in both aesthetic and conceptual terms.The historical and cultural connections to urban spaces, specially in relation to specific landmark venues, continues to be the focus of attention in Ailsa Brackley du Bois’s article “Repairing the Disjointed Narrative of Ballarat’s Theatre Royal”. In her analysis, du Bois explores the history of the Ballarat’s Theatre Royal, and aims to take some initial critical steps towards retrieving lost knowledge from fragmented archival records and what she terms cultural silence. Taking a look at the evolving history of the Theatre itself, form its construction to its later renovations, this article specifically suggests that many forces converged to affect the venue’s own historical popularity. Ultimately, du Bois offers the beginning of an investigation into the prospects for telling of the ‘real story’ behind the rise and fall of the Ballarat’s Theatre Royal as a cultural entity.Music can stimulate, placate and induce nostalgia; it can construct what some people call a ‘soundtrack for their lives’ or it can soothe hurts and create inter-personal connections. Kris Vavasour, in “Pop Songs and Solastalgia in a Broken City” examines how explicitly local pop songs and their ability to evoke memory meets Glenn Albrecht’s ‘solastalgia’, the disaster-created homesickness in people still at home, to restore hope for post-earthquake Christchurch people. For those who lived through the seismic upheavals of 2010 and 2011, memories of culture and media which provided a level inter-personal ‘glue’ are key to understanding how they endured such trying times. Music is revealed to be more than an historic soundtrack to this process; it is one of the key components to the re-emergence of the people and city. Music is also the focus of Jack Ellis’s article, “Material History: Record Collecting in the Digital Age”, which examines the improbable death-then-rise track of vinyl records in the twenty-first century. Once consigned to music history, vinyl records and vinyl record collections have recently emerged to become cultural icons, measures of taste and the semiotic of musical engagement and even counter[digital]-culture in an oppositional narrative to the convenience and usefulness of download files. Music collectors reveal their reasons for accumulating shelves of records instead of computer files of digital downloads in a series of interviews emphasising materiality, the embedding of legacy and a gradual redefinition of media history through vinyl record ownership. The intersections between gender studies, film studies, and history are the focus of Jay Daniel Thompson and Erin Reardon’s article, entitled “‘Mommy Killed Him’: Gender, Family and History in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)”. Here, Thompson and Reardon evaluate the nuanced representations of gender in Craven's well-known film, in order to situate it within the context of the historical period in which it was produced. Taking a particular look at the impact of 1980s Reaganite politics on the narrative, Thompson and Reardon contend that the families in Craven’s film are purposefully presented as dysfunctional. Ultimately, this article argues that the kind of patriarchal family structure endorsed by Reagan is thoroughly ridiculed in Nightmare. In the final article of the issue, Kate Warner plunges into the infamous decades-long ‘History Wars’ debate between revisionists and post-revisionists examining Australia’s Indigenous narrative, to discuss four recent seminal television drama shows. The depiction of, or engagement with, Aboriginal stories and story-telling emerges as critical to the nature of who owns the narrative, who holds the power and therefore, who owns the histories. Contrasting the fantastic fictions of Glitch and Cleverman is the realist The Secret River and Redfern Now, but also pared back is the nature of Aboriginal ownership and television show direction versus the traditional colonial hegemonies, each taking on aspects of the ‘History Wars’ debate to raise new questions and to create a new view on the past. In a journal of media and culture, history transcends both aspects. Yet, as our contributors have shown, both in their breadth and depth of engagement with, and definitions of history, easy ‘pigeonholing’ or typing of history falls apart as soon as analysis begins. As several writers have noted, issues of hegemony, colonialism and post-colonialism, indigenous voices and ways of looking at our own chronicles, all combine to determine how we see the past, how we view the future, and how we live in the present. The power of the media in the digital age has changed how we engage with history; the traditional culture of history residing with academic experts who produce weighty tomes surveying the past is revealed by these media-savvy cultural historians to show the past in an entirely new light.ReferencesGrafton, Anthony. What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007.Grever, Maria, and Siep Stuurman. Beyond the Canon: History for the 21st Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Current State of and Needs for Research on the Late Medieval Arms and Armour from the Territory of Present-day Poland. Perspective of the New MillenniumThe research on the Polish art of war conducted since the 19th century, during the interwar period, gained considerable intensity as aresult of the profound, critical studies on weaponry, documents mentioning the production of the military equipment in the Middle Ages, and iconographic sources concerning medieval military items. The next stage of studies on armament, in the time of Polish People’s Republic, can be associated with the beginning of the so-called ‘Millennium Research’ and the establishment of aweapons’ research centre in Łódź, gathered around Professor Andrzej Nadolski. The rapid development of archaeological excavations (which has taken place since the beginning of the 1990s and was on alarge scale extended to mediaeval towns and castles) resulted in asignificant increase in numbers of finds of military artefacts. Several source publications are associated with it, which emphasised the importance of finds of artefacts as well-established, independent objects enabling dating of the strata from which they were obtained.One should pay attention to several works that in the last two decades can be considered as milestones in the studies on the late-medieval armaments from the Polish territory. The synthesis Uzbrojenie wPolsce średniowiecznej 1450–1500 (Armaments in Late Medieval Poland in 1450–1500), summarising the current state of knowledge on military equipment, should be considered extremely important. Undoubtedly, Lech Marek’s book on cold steel arms should also be listed here. Significant progress was also made in the field of firearms, thanks to the works of Jan Szymczak and Piotr Strzyż. The symbolism of military equipment, broadly discussed in the works of Olgierd Ławrynowicz and Lech Marek, has also become an important direction of new research.However, there would not be such noticeable progress if it were not for the involved researchers. Marian Głosek, Piotr Strzyż, Olgierd Ławrynowicz, Piotr Świątkiewicz, Radosław Zdaniewicz, and Wojciech Wasiak are still very vigorously active in the field of military equipment studies. For many years, valuable works have been published by Antoni Romuald Chodyński, the curator of the weapon collection of the Malbork Castle Museum. Extremely important research on the technology of weaponry is implemented by Grzegorz Żabiński from the Institute of History, Jan Długosz Academy in Częstochowa. In the west of Poland, Lech Marek from Wrocław, Arkadiusz Michalak from Zielona Góra, and Andrzej Janowski from Szczecin persistently follow the path marked by Krzysztof Wachowski. It is also impossible not to mention the initiator of the establishment of the journal Acta Militaria Mediaevalia, Piotr Kotowicz from Sanok, publishing materials from today’s south-eastern Poland. The above-mentioned journal is akind of glue connecting the new generation of researchers.The enormous development of weaponry studies is undoubtedly associated with the participation of medieval historians in this research. Jan Szymczak and Tadeusz Grabarczyk from Łódź, and Mateusz Goliński from Wrocław have invaluable merits in the development of written sources concerned with the armament, manufacturing, and use of arms in today’s Poland. In the recent years the interdisciplinary approach to research has been developing intensively, covering not only the artefacts of arms themselves, but also studies on iconography, written records, symbolism of weapons as well as laboratory analyses and experimental reconstructions. Alot of emphasis has been placed on archaeometry and metallography of military equipment artefacts, enabling the discussion on the technology of their production and significantly extending the aspects of the studies themselves, which also creates great opportunities for interpretation. The idea of regional studies on weapons should be continued also for the late-medieval materials, which would allow to observe local differences in the popularity of individual types, as well as apace of implementing innovations and possible delays. Despite many annually published studies on sources, excavated in the course of archaeological research in our country, some regions of Poland are still blanks in terms of military equipment used there (Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Masovia). There is also anoticeable lack of comprehensive studies on the transitional armament, mainly covering the 13th century. The necessary condition for such studies seems to be aprofound inquiry, also in materials obtained during excavations from the past.Strict heritage protection of historic spaces and the related obligation to conduct archaeological excavations during investments, as well as the use of metal detectors on an increasing scale, resulted in the significant expansion of collections, which enables typological and chronological analyses as well as the recognition of not previously listed categories of military artefacts: caltrops, falchions, battle flails, maces, axes. The state of knowledge regarding shields still seems to be unsatisfactory. Not much is known about medieval royal armaments, despite several articles devoted to weapons having belonged to individual rulers. Unfortunately, there is anoticeable shortage of synthetic studies devoted to the horse tack and equestrian equipment, despite the existing works on particular parts of harnesia.Asignificant increase in the number of materials related to the armaments of burghers and urban garrisons (materials from Elbląg, Wrocław, Międzyrzecz, Krosno) allows completing the picture emerging from the analysis of bourgeois laws, inventories, and wills. Acomprehensive study of the military artefacts from Gdańsk is therefore much expected. The materials from towns allow for many conclusions regarding manufacturing of armaments by producers concentrated in guilds. Asignificant increase in the number of publications of late medieval materials from castles and strongholds allows analogous conclusions regarding the level of proficiency of manufacturers working for the needs of armed crews.It is also impossible to ignore the importance of museum studies in the fields of arms. In this context, one should note the gradual publication of the military collections of the National Museums (in Wrocław and Cracow).The underwater archaeological research, which has recently brought ahuge increase in the number of discovered military artefacts (often with preserved organic elements: leather, wood, bone), also contributed to developing the knowledge on the arms from the area of northern Poland used in the Late Middle Ages. Further technological progress related to environmental studies and remote-sensing research, connected with the spread of metal detectors and the methods of their use, as well as recent discoveries in Europe related to Battlefield Archaeology have also contributed to the renewed interest in researching battlegrounds in Poland.Looking ahead, however, it is difficult to be optimistic. The aforementioned lack of strong traditions in the field of military equipment studies currently developing in Poland in scattered research institutions, as well as the situation in university centres severely limits the possibilities of educating successors of researchers who are currently giving the direction and pace of Polish studies on late medieval armament.

The present day railway system in West Africa is the result of the transportpolicy developed by the colonial powers (France, Great Britain and Germany) at the end of the 19th century. lt is remarkable that no network of railways, like in Southern Africa, was brought about. The colonial railways in West Africa were built by the State or by a joint-stock company within the borders of one colony to export the raw materials from the production centres to the harbours. Nevertheless railways were built for more than economical grounds only, in West Africa they had to accomplish a strategic and military role by "opening Africa for the European civilization". Hargreaves calls railways the "heralds of new imperialism" and Baumgart speaks of the own dynamics of the railways, to push the European colonial powers further into Africa... The construction of a railway needed a very high capital investment and the European capitalists wouldn't like to take risks in areas that were not yet "pacified". It is remarkable how many projects to build a Transcontinental railway right across the Sahara desert largely remained on paper. Precisely because such plans did not materialize, however, the motive force they provided to such imperialist actions as political-territorial annexations can be traced all the more clearly.The French built the first railway in West Africa, the Dakar - St-Louis line (Senegal), between 1879 and 1885. This line stimulated the production of ground-nuts, although the French colonial-military lobby has had other motives. The real motivation became very clear at the construction of the Kayes - Bamako railway. Great difficulties needed the military occupation of the region and the violent recruitment of thousands of black labourers, all over the region. The same problems transformed the building of the Kayes-Dakar line into a real hell. Afterwards the Sine Saloum region has been through a "agricultural revolution", when the local ground-nuts-producers have been able toproduce forforeign markets. The first British railways were built in Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast-colony (Ghana). In Nigeria railway construction stimulated the growth of Lagos as an harbour and administrative centre. Lugard had plans for the unification of Nigeria by railways. The old Hausa town of Kano flourished after the opening of the Northern Railway, for other towns a period of decline had begun. Harbour cities and interior railwayheads caused an influx of population from periphery regions, the phenomenon is called "port concentration". Also the imperial Germany built a few railwaylines in theirformer colony Togo, to avoid the traffic flow off to the British railways. If s quite remarkable that the harbours at the Gulf of Guinea-coast developed much later than the harbours of Senegal and Sierra Leone.After the First World War only a few new railways were constructed, the revenues remained very low, so the (colonial) state had to take over many lines. The competition between railways and roadtransport demonstrated the first time in Nigeria, it was the beginning of the decline of railways as the most important transportsystems in West Africa. Only multinational companies built specific railways for the export of minerals (iron, ore and bauxite) after the Second World War, and the French completed the Abidjan - Ouaga-dougou railway (1956).The consequences of railway construction in West Africa on economic, demographic and social sphere were not so far-reaching as in Southern Africa, but the labour migration and the first labour unions of railwaymen organized strikes in Senegal and the Ivory Coast mentioned the changing social situation.The bibliography of the West African railways contains very useful studies about the financial policy of the railway companies and the governments, but only afew railways were already studied by economic historians. KEY WORDS : bibliographical survey, colonial history, economic and demographic consequences, railway development, West Africa

● At first haemophilus influenza was considered as the causative agent for influenza but after the research it has been found that it caused various other types of infections but not influenza. Influenza was caused by some flu virus which was first isolated from pigs in 1931 and from humans in 1933.(4) ● The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history it was caused by an H1N1 virus with the genes of avian origin although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated it spread worldwide during 1918 and 1919. (3) ● It was first identified in military personnel in spring 1980 it is estimated that about 500 million people or one third of the world's population became infected with this virus.(3) ● The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 6,75,000 deaths occurring in the United States. (3) ● Mortality was high in people younger than five years old ,20 to 40 years old and in 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people including those in the 20 to 40 year age group was a unique feature of this pandemic. (3) ● There was no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infection control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical intervention such as isolation quarantine good personal hygiene use of disinfectants and limitations of public gathering which were applied unevenly.(3) ● In the northern and southern parts of the world outbreaks occur mainly in the winter while around the equator outbreaks may occur at any time of the year .In the northern and southern parts of the world outbreaks occur mainly in the winter while around the equator outbreaks may occur at any time of the year.(7) ● In the 20th century three influenza pandemics occurred Spanish influenza in 1918 where the death toll ranged from 17- 200 million deaths, Asian influenza in 1957- 2 million deaths and Hong Kong influenza in 1968 -1 million deaths. ● The world health organisation declared an outbreak of a new type of influenza A or H1N1 to be a pandemic in June 2009. ● influenza may also affect other animals including pig horses and birds.(9) ● The name “influenza” originated in 15th century Italy, from an epidemic attributed to “influence of the stars.” The first pandemic that fits the description of influenza was in 1580. At least four pandemics of influenza occurred in the 19th century, and three occurred in the 20th century. The pandemic of “Spanish” influenza in 1918–1919 caused an estimated 21 million deaths worldwide. The first pandemic of the 21st century occurred in 2009–2010. Historically, influenza viruses of three HA subtypes (H1, H2 and H3) have acquired the ability to be transmitted efficiently between humans. Currently, influenza viruses of the H1 and H3 subtype co-circulate in humans, however influenza viruses of the H2, H5, H6, H7 and H9 subtype are also considered to represent a pandemic threat. In 1997, a large outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus in poultry in Hong Kong resulted in the first documented cases of direct transmission of HPAI H5N1 virus from poultry to humans, with a fatal outcome in 6 out of 18 cases [17]. As a result, this outbreak warranted the mass culling of 1.5 million chickens. In 2003, a large outbreak of an HPAI H7N7 virus in poultry in the Netherlands resulted in 89 cases of human infections, one of which was fatal [21]. HPAI H7N7 virus displayed an unusual tissue tropism; the virus targeted the conjunctiva, resulting in conjunctivitis, a symptom rarely reported for other influenza virus subtypes.(1)

● At first haemophilus influenza was considered as the causative agent for influenza but after the research it has been found that it caused various other types of infections but not influenza. Influenza was caused by some flu virus which was first isolated from pigs in 1931 and from humans in 1933.(4) ● The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history it was caused by an H1N1 virus with the genes of avian origin although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated it spread worldwide during 1918 and 1919. (3) ● It was first identified in military personnel in spring 1980 it is estimated that about 500 million people or one third of the world's population became infected with this virus.(3) ● The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 6,75,000 deaths occurring in the United States. (3) ● Mortality was high in people younger than five years old ,20 to 40 years old and in 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people including those in the 20 to 40 year age group was a unique feature of this pandemic. (3) ● There was no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infection control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical intervention such as isolation quarantine good personal hygiene use of disinfectants and limitations of public gathering which were applied unevenly.(3) ● In the northern and southern parts of the world outbreaks occur mainly in the winter while around the equator outbreaks may occur at any time of the year .In the northern and southern parts of the world outbreaks occur mainly in the winter while around the equator outbreaks may occur at any time of the year.(7) ● In the 20th century three influenza pandemics occurred Spanish influenza in 1918 where the death toll ranged from 17- 200 million deaths, Asian influenza in 1957- 2 million deaths and Hong Kong influenza in 1968 -1 million deaths. ● The world health organisation declared an outbreak of a new type of influenza A or H1N1 to be a pandemic in June 2009. ● influenza may also affect other animals including pig horses and birds.(9) ● The name “influenza” originated in 15th century Italy, from an epidemic attributed to “influence of the stars.” The first pandemic that fits the description of influenza was in 1580. At least four pandemics of influenza occurred in the 19th century, and three occurred in the 20th century. The pandemic of “Spanish” influenza in 1918–1919 caused an estimated 21 million deaths worldwide. The first pandemic of the 21st century occurred in 2009–2010. Historically, influenza viruses of three HA subtypes (H1, H2 and H3) have acquired the ability to be transmitted efficiently between humans. Currently, influenza viruses of the H1 and H3 subtype co-circulate in humans, however influenza viruses of the H2, H5, H6, H7 and H9 subtype are also considered to represent a pandemic threat. In 1997, a large outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 virus in poultry in Hong Kong resulted in the first documented cases of direct transmission of HPAI H5N1 virus from poultry to humans, with a fatal outcome in 6 out of 18 cases [17]. As a result, this outbreak warranted the mass culling of 1.5 million chickens. In 2003, a large outbreak of an HPAI H7N7 virus in poultry in the Netherlands resulted in 89 cases of human infections, one of which was fatal [21]. HPAI H7N7 virus displayed an unusual tissue tropism; the virus targeted the conjunctiva, resulting in conjunctivitis, a symptom rarely reported for other influenza virus subtypes.(1)

IntroductionCirque du Soleil, the largest live entertainment company in the world, has eight standing shows in Las Vegas alone, KÀ, Love, Mystère, Zumanity, Believe, Michael Jackson ONE, Zarkana and O. Close to 150 million spectators have seen Cirque du Soleil shows since the company’s beginnings in 1984 and it is estimated that over 15 million spectators will see a Cirque du Soleil show in 2014 (Cirque du Soleil). The Cirque du Soleil concept of circus as a form of theatre, with simple, often archetypal, narrative arcs conveyed without words, virtuoso physicality with the circus artists presented as characters in a fictional world, cutting-edge lighting and visuals, extraordinary innovative staging, and the uptake of new technology for special effects can all be linked back to an early form of circus which is sometimes termed illegitimate circus. In the late 18th century and early 19th century, in the age of Romanticism, only two theatres in London, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, plus the summer theatre in the Haymarket, had royal patents allowing them to produce plays or text-based productions, and these were considered legitimate theatres. (These theatres retained this monopoly until the Theatre Regulation Act of 1843; Saxon 301.) Other circuses and theatres such as Astley’s Amphitheatre, which were precluded from performing text-based works by the terms of their licenses, have been termed illegitimate (Moody 1). Perversely, the effect of licensing venues in this way, instead of having the desired effect of enshrining some particular forms of expression and “casting all others beyond the cultural pale,” served instead to help to cultivate a different kind of theatrical landscape, “a theatrical terrain with a new, rich and varied dramatic ecology” (Reed 255). A fundamental change to the theatrical culture of London took place, and pivotal to “that transformation was the emergence of an illegitimate theatrical culture” (Moody 1) with circus at its heart. An innovative and different form of performance, a theatre of the body, featuring spectacle and athleticism emerged, with “a sensuous, spectacular aesthetic largely wordless except for the lyrics of songs” (Bratton 117).This writing sets out to explore some of the strong parallels between the aesthetic that emerged in this early illegitimate circus and the aesthetic of the Montreal-based, multi-billion dollar entertainment empire of Cirque du Soleil. Although it is not fighting against legal restrictions and can in no way be considered illegitimate, the circus of Cirque du Soleil can be seen to be the descendant of the early circus entrepreneurs and their illegitimate aesthetic which arose out of the desire to find ways to continue to attract audiences to their shows in spite of the restrictions of the licenses granted to them. BackgroundCircus has served as an inspiration for many innovatory theatre productions including Peter Brook’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970) and Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers (1972) as well as the earlier experiments of Meyerhold, Eisenstein, Mayakovsky and other Soviet directors of the 1920’s (Saxon 299). A. H. Saxon points out, however, that the relationship between circus and theatre is a long-standing one that begins in the late 18th century and the early 19th century, when circus itself was theatre (Saxon 299).Modern circus was founded in London in 1768 by an ex-cavalryman and his wife, Philip and Patty Astley, and consisted of spectacular stunt horse riding taking place in a ring, with acts from traditional fairs such as juggling, acrobatics, clowning and wire-walking inserted to cover the changeovers between riding acts. From the very first shows entry was by paid ticket only and the early history of circus was driven by innovative, risk-taking entrepreneurs such as Philip Astley, who indeed built so many new amphitheatres for his productions that he became known as Amphi-Philip (Jando). After years of legal tussles with the authorities concerning the legal status of this new entertainment, a limited license was finally granted in 1783 for Astley’s Amphitheatre. This license precluded the performing of plays, anything text-based, or anything which had a script that resembled a play. Instead the annual license granted allowed only for “public dancing and music” and “other public entertainments of like kind” (St. Leon 9).Corporeal Dramaturgy and TextIn the face of the ban on scripted text, illegitimate circus turned to the human body and privileged it as a means of dramatic expression. A resultant dramaturgy focusing on the expressive capabilities of the performers’ bodies emerged. “The primacy of rhetoric and the spoken word in legitimate drama gave way […] to a corporeal dramaturgy which privileged the galvanic, affective capacity of the human body as a vehicle of dramatic expression” (Moody 83). Moody proposes that the “iconography of illegitimacy participated in a broader cultural and scientific transformation in which the human body began to be understood as an eloquent compendium of visible signs” (83). Even though the company has the use of text and dramatic dialogue freely available to it, Cirque du Soleil, shares this investment in the bodies of the performers and their “galvanic, affective capacity” (83) to communicate with the audience directly without the use of a scripted text, and this remains a constant between the two forms of circus. Robert Lepage, the director of two Cirque du Soleil shows, KÀ (2004) and more recently Totem (2010), speaking about KÀ in 2004, said, “We wanted it to be an epic story told not with the use of words, but with the universal language of body movement” (Lepage cited in Fink).In accordance with David Graver’s system of classifying performers’ bodies, Cirque du Soleil’s productions most usually present performers’ ‘character bodies’ in which the performers are understood by spectators to be playing fictional roles or characters (Hurley n/p) and this was also the case with illegitimate circus which right from its very beginnings presented its performers within narratives in which the performers are understood to be playing characters. In Cirque du Soleil’s shows, as with illegitimate circus, this presentation of the performers’ character bodies is interspersed with acts “that emphasize the extraordinary training and physical skill of the performers, that is which draw attention to the ‘performer body’ but always within the context of an overall narrative” (Fricker n.p.).Insertion of Vital TextAfter audience feedback, text was eventually added into KÀ (2004) in the form of a pre-recorded prologue inserted to enable people to follow the narrative arc, and in the show Wintuk (2007) there are tales that are sung by Jim Comcoran (Leroux 126). Interestingly early illegitimate circus creators, in their efforts to circumvent the ban on using dramatic dialogue, often inserted text into their performances in similar ways to the methods Cirque du Soleil chose for KÀ and Wintuk. Illegitimate circus included dramatic recitatives accompanied by music to facilitate the following of the storyline (Moody 28) in the same way that Cirque du Soleil inserted a pre-recorded prologue to KÀ to enable audience members to understand the narrative. Performers in illegitimate circus often conveyed essential information to the audience as lyrics of songs (Bratton 117) in the same way that Jim Comcoran does in Wintuk. Dramaturgical StructuresAstley from his very first circus show in 1768 began to set his equestrian stunts within a narrative. Billy Button’s Ride to Brentford (1768), showed a tailor, a novice rider, mounting backwards, losing his belongings and being thrown off the horse when it bucks. The act ends with the tailor being chased around the ring by his horse (Schlicke 161). Early circus innovators, searching for dramaturgy for their shows drew on contemporary warfare, creating vivid physical enactments of contemporary battles. They also created a new dramatic form known as Hippodramas (literally ‘horse dramas’ from hippos the Attic Greek for Horse), a hybridization of melodrama and circus featuring the trick riding skills of the early circus pioneers. The narrative arcs chosen were often archetypal or sourced from well-known contemporary books or poems. As Moody writes, at the heart of many of these shows “lay an archetypal narrative of the villainous usurper finally defeated” (Moody 30).One of the first hippodramas, The Blood Red Knight, opened at Astley’s Amphitheatre in 1810.Presented in dumbshow, and interspersed with grand chivalric processions, the show featured Alphonso’s rescue of his wife Isabella from her imprisonment and forced marriage to the evil knight Sir Rowland and concluded with the spectacular, fiery destruction of the castle and Sir Rowland’s death. (Moody 69)Another later hippodrama, The Spectre Monarch and his Phantom Steed, or the Genii Horseman of the Air (1830) was set in China where the rightful prince was ousted by a Tartar usurper who entered into a pact with the Spectre Monarch and received,a magic ring, by aid of which his unlawful desires were instantly gratified. Virtue, predictably won out in the end, and the discomforted villain, in a final settling of accounts with his dread master was borne off through the air in a car of fire pursued by Daemon Horsemen above THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA. (Saxon 303)Karen Fricker writes of early Cirque du Soleil shows that “while plot is doubtless too strong a word, each of Cirque’s recent shows has a distinct concept or theme, that is urbanity for Saltimbanco; nomadism in Varekai (2002) and humanity’s clownish spirit for Corteo (2005), and tend to follow the same very basic storyline, which is not narrated in words but suggested by the staging that connects the individual acts” (Fricker n/p). Leroux describes the early Cirque du Soleil shows as following a “proverbial and well-worn ‘collective transformation trope’” (Leroux 122) whilst Peta Tait points out that the narrative arc of Cirque du Soleil “ might be summarized as an innocent protagonist, often female, helped by an older identity, seemingly male, to face a challenging journey or search for identity; more generally, old versus young” (Tait 128). However Leroux discerns an increasing interest in narrative devices such as action and plot in Cirque du Soleil’s Las Vegas productions (Leroux 122). Fricker points out that “with KÀ, what Cirque sought – and indeed found in Lepage’s staging – was to push this storytelling tendency further into full-fledged plot and character” (Fricker n/p). Telling a story without words, apart from the inserted prologue, means that the narrative arc of Kà is, however, very simple. A young prince and princess, twins in a mythical Far Eastern kingdom, are separated when a ceremonial occasion is interrupted by an attack by a tribe of enemy warriors. A variety of adventures follow, most involving perilous escapes from bad guys with flaming arrows and fierce-looking body tattoos. After many trials, a happy reunion arrives. (Isherwood)This increasing emphasis on developing a plot and a narrative arc positions Cirque as moving closer in dramaturgical aesthetic to illegitimate circus.Visual TechnologiesTo increase the visual excitement of its shows and compensate for the absence of spoken dialogue, illegitimate circus in the late 18th and early 19th century drew on contemporaneous and emerging visual technologies. Some of the new visual technologies that Astley’s used have been termed pre-cinematic, including the panorama (or diorama as it is sometimes called) and “the phantasmagoria and other visual machines… [which] expanded the means through which an audience could be addressed” (O’Quinn, Governance 312). The panorama or diorama ran in the same way that a film runs in an analogue camera, rolling between vertical rollers on either side of the stage. In Astley’s production The Siege and Storming of Seringapatam (1800) he used another effect almost equivalent to a modern day camera zoom-in by showing scenic back drops which, as they moved through time, progressively moved geographically closer to the battle. This meant that “the increasing enlargement of scale-each successive scene has a smaller geographic space-has a telescopic event. Although the size of the performance space remains constant, the spatial parameters of the spectacle become increasingly magnified” (O’Quinn, Governance 345). In KÀ, Robert Lepage experiments with “cinematographic stage storytelling on a very grand scale” (Fricker n.p.). A KÀ press release (2005) from Cirque du Soleil describes the show “as a cinematic journey of aerial adventure” (Cirque du Soleil). Cirque du Soleil worked with ground-breaking visual technologies in KÀ, developing an interactive projected set. This involves the performers controlling what happens to the projected environment in real time, with the projected scenery responding to their movements. The performers’ movements are tracked by an infra-red sensitive camera above the stage, and by computer software written by Interactive Production Designer Olger Förterer. “In essence, what we have is an intelligent set,” says Förterer. “And everything the audience sees is created by the computer” (Cirque du Soleil).Contemporary Technology Cutting edge technologies, many of which came directly from contemporaneous warfare, were introduced into the illegitimate circus performance space by Astley and his competitors. These included explosions using redfire, a new military explosive that combined “strontia, shellac and chlorate of potash, [which] produced […] spectacular flame effects” (Moody 28). Redfire was used for ‘blow-ups,’ the spectacular explosions often occurring at the end of the performance when the villain’s castle or hideout was destroyed. Cirque du Soleil is also drawing on contemporary military technology for performance projects. Sparked: A Live interaction between Humans and Quadcopters (2014) is a recent short film released by Cirque du Soleil, which features the theatrical use of drones. The new collaboration between Cirque du Soleil, ETH Zurich and Verity Studios uses 10 quadcopters disguised as animated lampshades which take to the air, “carrying out the kinds of complex synchronized dance manoeuvres we usually see from the circus' famed acrobats” (Huffington Post). This shows, as with early illegitimate circus, the quick theatrical uptake of contemporary technology originally developed for use in warfare.Innovative StagingArrighi writes that the performance space that Astley developed was a “completely new theatrical configuration that had not been seen in Western culture before… [and] included a circular ring (primarily for equestrian performance) and a raised theatre stage (for pantomime and burletta)” (177) joined together by ramps that were large enough and strong enough to allow horses to be ridden over them during performances. The stage at Astley’s Amphitheatre was said to be the largest in Europe measuring over 130 feet across. A proscenium arch was installed in 1818 which could be adjusted in full view of the audience with the stage opening changing anywhere in size from forty to sixty feet (Saxon 300). The staging evolved so that it had the capacity to be multi-level, involving “immense [moveable] platforms or floors, rising above each other, and extending the whole width of the stage” (Meisel 214). The ability to transform the stage by the use of draped and masked platforms which could be moved mechanically, proved central to the creation of the “new hybrid genre of swashbuckling melodramas on horseback, or ‘hippodramas’” (Kwint, Leisure 46). Foot soldiers and mounted cavalry would fight their way across the elaborate sets and the production would culminate with a big finale that usually featured a burning castle (Kwint, Legitimization 95). Cirque du Soleil’s investment in high-tech staging can be clearly seen in KÀ. Mark Swed writes that KÀ is, “the most lavish production in the history of Western theatre. It is surely the most technologically advanced” (Swed). With a production budget of $165 million (Swed), theatre designer Michael Fisher has replaced the conventional stage floor with two huge moveable performance platforms and five smaller platforms that appear to float above a gigantic pit descending 51 feet below floor level. One of the larger platforms is a tatami floor that moves backwards and forwards, the other platform is described by the New York Times as being the most thrilling performer in the show.The most consistently thrilling performer, perhaps appropriately, isn't even human: It's the giant slab of machinery that serves as one of the two stages designed by Mark Fisher. Here Mr. Lepage's ability to use a single emblem or image for a variety of dramatic purposes is magnified to epic proportions. Rising and falling with amazing speed and ease, spinning and tilting to a full vertical position, this huge, hydraulically powered game board is a sandy beach in one segment, a sheer cliff wall in another and a battleground, viewed from above, for the evening's exuberantly cinematic climax. (Isherwood)In the climax a vertical battle is fought by aerialists fighting up and down the surface of the sand stone cliff with defeated fighters portrayed as tumbling down the surface of the cliff into the depths of the pit below. Cirque du Soleil’s production entitled O, which phonetically is the French word eau meaning water, is a collaboration with director Franco Dragone that has been running at Las Vegas’ Bellagio Hotel since 1998. O has grossed over a billion dollars since it opened in 1998 (Sylt and Reid). It is an aquatic circus or an aquadrama. In 1804, Charles Dibdin, one of Astley’s rivals, taking advantage of the nearby New River, “added to the accoutrements of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre a tank three feet deep, ninety feet long and as wide as twenty-four feet which could be filled with water from the New River” (Hays and Nickolopoulou 171) Sadler’s Wells presented aquadramas depicting many reconstructions of famous naval battles. One of the first of these was The Siege of Gibraltar (1804) that used “117 ships designed by the Woolwich Dockyard shipwrights and capable of firing their guns” (Hays and Nickolopoulou 5). To represent the drowning Spanish sailors saved by the British, “Dibdin used children, ‘who were seen swimming and affecting to struggle with the waves’”(5).O (1998) is the first Cirque production to be performed in a proscenium arch theatre, with the pool installed behind the proscenium arch. “To light the water in the pool, a majority of the front lighting comes from a subterranean light tunnel (at the same level as the pool) which has eleven 4" thick Plexiglas windows that open along the downstage perimeter of the pool” (Lampert-Greaux). Accompanied by a live orchestra, performers dive into the 53 x 90 foot pool from on high, they swim underwater lit by lights installed in the subterranean light tunnel and they also perform on perforated platforms that rise up out of the water and turn the pool into a solid stage floor. In many respects, Cirque du Soleil can be seen to be the inheritors of the spectacular illegitimate circus of the 18th and 19th Century. The inheritance can be seen in Cirque du Soleil’s entrepreneurial daring, the corporeal dramaturgy privileging the affective power of the body over the use of words, in the performers presented primarily as character bodies, and in the delivering of essential text either as a prologue or as lyrics to songs. It can also be seen in Cirque du Soleil’s innovative staging design, the uptake of military based technology and the experimentation with cutting edge visual effects. Although re-invigorating the tradition and creating spectacular shows that in many respects are entirely of the moment, Cirque du Soleil’s aesthetic roots can be clearly seen to draw deeply on the inheritance of illegitimate circus.ReferencesBratton, Jacky. “Romantic Melodrama.” The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre 1730-1830. Eds. Jane Moody and Daniel O'Quinn. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2007. 115-27. Bratton, Jacky. “What Is a Play? 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