Performances of peace: Utrecht 1713

The Peace of Utrecht (1713), which brought an end to the War of the Spanish Succession, was a milestone in global history. Performances of Peace aims to rethink the significance of the Peace of Utrecht by exploring the nexus between culture and politics. For too long, cultural and political historians have studied early modern international relations in isolation. By studying the political as well as the cultural aspects of this peace (and its concomitant paradoxes) from a broader perspective, this volume aims to shed new light on the relation between diplomacy and performative culture in the public spher

Ben Harris, Professor of Psychology and Histrory travels to the Netherlands

Professor Harris traveled to The Netherlands in August. While there he met with faculty members and administrators at Utrecht University to discuss ways to facilitate student and faculty exchanges between that university and UNH. He also participated in the annual meeting of the European Society for the History of Human Science (ESHHS)

The (absence of a) relationship between thermodynamic and logical reversibility

Landauer erasure seems to provide a powerful link between thermodynamics and information processing (logical computation). The only logical operations that require a generation of heat are logically irreversible ones, with the minimum heat generation being $kT \ln 2$ per bit of information lost. Nevertheless, it will be shown logical reversibility neither implies, nor is implied by thermodynamic reversibility. By examining thermodynamically reversible operations which are logically irreversible, it is possible to show that information and entropy, while having the same form, are conceptually different.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures. Based on talk at ESF Conference on Philosophical and Foundational Issues in Statistical Physics, Utrecht, November 2003. Submitted to Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physic

Political Broadside Ballads in Seventeenth-Century England: A Critical Bibliography (Pickering and Chatto: London, 2011)

Ballads on ‘affairs of state’ have been largely eschewed by scholars of popular political history, despite the growing digital availability of ballad literature. McShane’s extensive critical bibliography makes these texts accessible for the first time by providing a systematically and rigorously researched bibliography of all recorded and published broadside ballads on affairs of state between the outbreak of the Bishops’ Wars in 1639 to the Glorious Revolution in 1688. Based on comprehensive research into all the major holdings in the UK and USA, the bibliography locates, dates and fully indexes more than 3,100 ballad sheets. McShane, an authority on English print culture, also provides a 10,000-word introduction based on this original research. It sets out the history of printing background of the genre; the importance of typographical and material analysis in helping to understand the broadside as a marketed medium; and the significance of its collecting history to any notion of the ballad as representative of popular political mentalites. A reviewer notes, ‘this comprehensive bibliographic survey, which often corrects previous errors on dating and in its notes offers invaluable contextual information, will open up new research pathways’ (English Historical Review, 2013). McShane has been invited to speak on this research on numerous occasions, including Reading University’s Early Modern Research Centre Colloquium, ‘Printed Image and Decorative Print, 1500–1750′ (2013); the 8th Bildlore Congress, Bassano, Italy (2012); for the international panel on Popular Culture and Media Diversity at the ESSHC Conference, Glasgow University (2012); the ‘Popular Music Participation and the People’ symposium, Goldsmiths (2012); and Leeds University ‘Text and Orality’ research seminar (2011). She is currently a consultant to the JISC-funded Integrating Broadside Ballad Archives project, Bodleian Library (2011–13), and the Popularisation and Media Strategies 1700–1900 project, Utrecht University, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (2010–14)

Los problemas contables derivados de un caso de venta de esclavos Tierra Adentro en la Factoría de Buenos Aires en el contexto del Asiento de esclavos con Inglaterra: el caso Salinas (1731-1737)

El caso que analizamos en este artículo tuvo lugar en la primera mitad del siglo XVIII, en un contexto derivado e la firma del Tratado de Utrecht, que puso fin a la guerra de sucesión española, y por el que los ingleses, entre otras cosas, consiguieron el ansiado Asiento de esclavos con las colonias españolas en América y que administraría la South Sea Company. Tomando como referencia cierta documentación concreta del Archivo General de Indias (AGI) de Sevilla, relacionada con la venta de una partida de esclavos de la factoría que la Compañía tenía en Buenos Aire, el objetivo fundamental del trabajo es poner de manifiesto el tratamiento contable que recibía el esclavo, así como el estricto control económico a que eran sometidas las personas encargadas de su venta por parte de la empresa. Control del que se deriva, además, una valiosísima información, no sólo para la Historia de la Contabilidad, sino también para la Historia Económica en general y del comercio de esclavos en particular.The events analyzed in this paper took place in the first part of the 18th century, in the scenario resulting from the signature of the Treaty of Utrecht that put and end to the War of the Spanish Succession. Among other things, in virtue of the series of treaties signed in Utrecht, Spain ceded Gibraltar and Minorca to Great Britain as well as allowed the wished Asiento, the monopoly of slave trading with the Spanish colonies in America that would be managed by the South Sea Company. On the basis of certain documents available in the Archivo General de Indias (General Archive of the Indies) of Seville that relate to the sale of a party of slaves of the factory that the South Sea Company had in Buenos Aires, this paper describes the accounting treatment for slaves, as well as the strict economic control exerted on the persons in charge of their sale on behalf of the Company. The evidence presented provides valuable information, not only for Accounting History, but also for Economic History in general and, for the history of slave trading in particular

CULTURE, COMPANIONSHIP AND ACTIVITY-TRAVEL BEHAVIOR: A COMPARISON BETWEEN BEIJING (CHINA) AND UTRECHT (THE NETHERLANDS)

There is a long history of drawing a large cultural distinction between West and East based on the constructs of individualism and collectivism. This coincides with a growing awareness of urban spatial change from the perspective of activity-travel behavior. However, limited attention has been paid to this issue. This paper contributes to the literature on how to examine cultures by investigating companion choice in travel behavior based on activity diary surveys collected in Beijing (China) and Utrecht (the Netherlands). The results show that participants in Beijing travel more often with family members, whereas those in Utrecht tend to travel alone or with friends. These important differences are mediated through sociodemographic, travel purpose and transport mode. The findings provide evidence that collective behavior is popular in Eastern society, whereas individualistic behavior is prevalent in Western society. These results will hopefully stimulate further analysis of cultural differences in transportation policy

Evaluation of Alternate Cable Anchor Designs and Three-Cable Guardrail Adjacent to Steep Slope

Conference Programme NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF INFRASTRUCTURE, 26-28 SEPTEMBER 2014, AT THE DANISH POST & TELE MUSEUM FRIDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 10.00: Registration & welcome 10.30: Key Note Lecture I: “The tangled web of Europe and Infrastructures: Shining Futures and Dead Ends” Dr Léonard Laborie (Research Fellow at CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France) & Dr Alexander Badenoch (Universitair Docent, Utrecht University, the Netherlands) 11.30: Lunch at Café Hovedtelegr..

The Dutch Open Telescope: History, Status, Prospects

After many years of persistent telescope design and telescope construction, R.H. Hammerschlag has installed his Dutch Open Telescope (DOT) on La Palma. I brie y review its history and design. The future of optical solar physics at Utrecht hinges on a recently-funded three- year DOT science validation period. The initial aim is to obtain high- resolution image sequences in the G band, Ca II K and H as proxy- magnetometry in support of SOHO and TRACE

Supernova Remnants as the Sources of Galactic Cosmic Rays

The origin of cosmic rays holds still many mysteries hundred years after they were first discovered. Supernova remnants have for long been the most likely sources of Galactic cosmic rays. I discuss here some recent evidence that suggests that supernova remnants can indeed efficiently accelerate cosmic rays. For this conference devoted to the Astronomical Institute Utrecht I put the emphasis on work that was done in my group, but placed in a broader context: efficient cosmic-ray acceleration and the im- plications for cosmic-ray escape, synchrotron radiation and the evidence for magnetic- field amplification, potential X-ray synchrotron emission from cosmic-ray precursors, and I conclude with the implications of cosmic-ray escape for a Type Ia remnant like Tycho and a core-collapse remnant like Cas A.Comment: Proceedings of the Meeting "370 years of astronomy in Utrecht", Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, April 2-5, 2012 (ASPCS Conference Series