Empire, Spectacle and the Patriot King: British Responses to Eighteenth-Century Russian Empire

The article was submitted on 11.05.2016.Обращаясь к описаниям представлений, устраиваемых русскими царями, в трудах британских путешественников, автор показывает противоречивый характер британского взгляда на Российскую империю XVIII в. Россия традиционно изображалась как «чужая» империя, а приверженность Британии свободе и разуму противопоставлялась духу несвободы самодержавного государства и иррациональной тяге русского народа к традициям. Однако британские авторы рассказывали в своих отзывах о русских царях, таких как Петр I и его последователи, изображая их как просвещенных монархов. Впечатления британцев о зрелищах, устраиваемых царями, с одной стороны, акцентируют внимание на личностях русских монархов и их реформах и, с другой, иллюстрируют ограниченность народа и его неспособность рассуждать здраво и бороться за свободу. Автор утверждает, что это противоречие сформировалось в представлении британцев о России под влиянием идей Болингброка о царе-реформаторе и России как стране, занимающей промежуточное положение между Востоком и Западом.The author uses examples of British travellers’ responses to Russian tsars’ spectacles to argue that the British view of the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century fosters a contradiction. Traditionally Russia was depicted as an imperial Other in which British liberty and its attachment to reason is contrasted with Russian servility within the autocratic state and Russian citizens’ irrational attachment to tradition. Yet British writers complicate this depiction with Peter the Great, and later tsars, who are depicted frequently as enlightened reformers. Indeed, British travellers’ depictions of tsars’ spectacles at once foreground the tsar’s enlightened reforms and the tsar’s person, but also are characterized as limiting the spectators’ capacity to reason and to pursue liberty. The author maintains that this contradiction is accommodated in the British thought by Bolingbroke’s notion of a reform-minded patriot king and Russia’s often-portrayed middle position between East and West

Circular 59

This list of recommended annual flower varieties includes information on several hundred annual flower cultivars. The recommended varieties were selected from flowers grown in 1985 and 1986 at the Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station Farm at the University of Alaska- Fairbanks. While this is by no means a complete listing of varieties suitable for Interior gardens, it does reflect many years of experience in annual flower production at the AFES farm. The methods used to evaluate the flowers and definitions for terms used in the listing can be found under Data Collection.Introduction -- Methods: Bedding Plant Production, Field Conditions, Weather Conditions, Data Collection -- List of Recommended Annual Flower Varieties -- Photo Section -- Appendix 1. Seeding Information -- Appendix 2. Flower Varieties by Color: Blue, Purple; Red, Pink; Red, Pink and White Mixes; White; Yellow, Orange, Gold; Mixed Colors; Foliage Only -- Appendix 3. Bloom Period: Early Season, All Season, Midseason, Late Season, Frost Resistant -- Appendix 4. Plant Heights: Short Varieties, Medium Varieties, Tall Varieties -- Appendix 5. Flowers for Special Purposes: Hanging Baskets, Light Shade, Walls, Rock Garden, Background -- Appendix 6. Seed Source

Historical Exploration - Learning Lessons from the Past to Inform the Future

This report examines a number of exploration campaigns that have taken place during the last 700 years, and considers them from a risk perspective. The explorations are those led by Christopher Columbus, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Franklin, Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Company of Scotland to Darien and the Apollo project undertaken by NASA. To provide a wider context for investigating the selected exploration campaigns, we seek ways of finding analogies at mission, programmatic and strategic levels and thereby to develop common themes. Ultimately, the purpose of the study is to understand how risk has shaped past explorations, in order to learn lessons for the future. From this, we begin to identify and develop tools for assessing strategic risk in future explorations. Figure 0.1 (see Page 6) summarizes the key inputs used to shape the study, the process and the results, and provides a graphical overview of the methodology used in the project. The first step was to identify the potential cases that could be assessed and to create criteria for selection. These criteria were collaboratively developed through discussion with a Business Historian. From this, six cases were identified as meeting our key criteria. Preliminary analysis of two of the cases allowed us to develop an evaluation framework that was used across all six cases to ensure consistency. This framework was revised and developed further as all six cases were analyzed. A narrative and summary statistics were created for each exploration case studied, in addition to a method for visualizing the important dimensions that capture major events. These Risk Experience Diagrams illustrate how the realizations of events, linked to different types of risks, have influenced the historical development of each exploration campaign. From these diagrams, we can begin to compare risks across each of the cases using a common framework. In addition, exploration risks were classified in terms of mission, program and strategic risks. From this, a Venn diagram and Belief Network were developed to identify how different exploration risks interacted. These diagrams allow us to quickly view the key risk drivers and their interactions in each of the historical cases. By looking at the context in which individual missions take place we have been able to observe the dynamics within an exploration campaign, and gain an understanding of how these interact with influences from stakeholders and competitors. A qualitative model has been created to capture how these factors interact, and are further challenged by unwanted events such as mission failures and competitor successes. This Dynamic Systemic Risk Model is generic and applies broadly to all the exploration ventures studied. This model is an amalgamation of a System Dynamics model, hence incorporating the natural feedback loops within each exploration mission, and a risk model, in order to ensure that the unforeseen events that may occur can be incorporated into the modeling. Finally, an overview is given of the motivational drivers and summaries are presented of the overall costs borne in each exploration venture. An important observation is that all the cases - with the exception of Apollo - were failures in terms of meeting their original objectives. However, despite this, several were strategic successes and indeed changed goals as needed in an entrepreneurial way. The Risk Experience Diagrams developed for each case were used to quantitatively assess which risks were realized most often during our case studies and to draw comparisons at mission, program and strategic levels. In addition, using the Risk Experience Diagrams and the narrative of each case, specific lessons for future exploration were identified. There are three key conclusions to this study: Analyses of historical cases have shown that there exists a set of generic risk classes. This set of risk classes cover mission, program and strategic levels, and includes all the risks encountered in the cases studied. At mission level these are Leadership Decisions, Internal Events and External Events; at program level these are Lack of Learning, Resourcing and Mission Failure; at Strategic Level they are Programmatic Failure, Stakeholder Perception and Goal Change. In addition there are two further risks that impact at all levels: Self-Interest of Actors, and False Model. There is no reason to believe that these risk classes will not be applicable to future exploration and colonization campaigns. We have deliberately selected a range of different exploration and colonization campaigns, taking place between the 15th Century and the 20th Century. The generic risk framework is able to describe the significant types of risk for these missions. Furthermore, many of these risks relate to how human beings interact and learn lessons to guide their future behavior. Although we are better schooled than our forebears and are technically further advanced, there is no reason to think we are fundamentally better at identifying, prioritizing and controlling these classes of risk. Modern risk modeling techniques are capable of addressing mission and program risk but are not as well suited to strategic risk. We have observed that strategic risks are prevalent throughout historic exploration and colonization campaigns. However, systematic approaches do not exist at the moment to analyze such risks. A risk-informed approach to understanding what happened in the past helps us guard against the danger of assuming that those events were inevitable, and highlights those chance events that produced the history that the world experienced. In turn, it allows us to learn more clearly from the past about the way our modern risk modeling techniques might help us to manage the future - and also bring to light those areas where they may not. This study has been retrospective. Based on this analysis, the potential for developing the work in a prospective way by applying the risk models to future campaigns is discussed. Follow on work from this study will focus on creating a portfolio of tools for assessing strategic and programmatic risk

Advice to a Princess: the literary articulation of a religious, political and cultural programme for Mary Queen of Scots, 1562

No abstract available

Lepidoptera Recorded From the Islands of Western Lake Erie, With a Brief Account of Geology and Flora

A list of Lepidoptera from the islands of western Lake Erie is presented along with a brief account of the geology, flora, and human activities in the area. The checklist contains 169 species representing 27 families. Suggestions are made for the improvement of this preliminary checklist as well as for future research

Originalism and the Natural Born Citizen Clause

The enigmatic phrase natural born citizen poses a series of problems for contemporary originalism. New originalists, like Justice Scalia, focus on the public meaning of the constitutional text, but the notion of a natural born citizen was likely a term of art, derived from the idea of a natural born subject in English law--a category that most likely did not extend to persons, like John McCain, who were born outside sovereign territory. But the constitution speaks of citizens and not subjects, introducing uncertainties and ambiguities that might (or might not) make McCain eligible for the presidency. What was the original public meaning of the enigmatic phrase that establishes the eligibility for the office of President of the United States? There is general agreement on the core of settled meaning: some cases of inclusion and exclusion seem indisputable. As a matter of inclusion, anyone born on American soil with an American parent is clearly a natural born citizen. As a matter of exclusion, anyone whose citizenship is acquired after birth as a result of naturalization is clearly not a natural born citizen. But these clear cases of inclusion and exclusion do not exhaust the possibilities. John McCain\u27s citizenship was conferred by statute--perhaps before, but perhaps after his birth. That leaves John McCain in a twilight zone--neither clearly naturalized nor natural born. This essay explores the contribution of originalism as a theory of constitutional interpretation to the controversy over the meaning of the natural born citizenship clause. Part II of the essay explains the relevance of originalist constitutional theory to the controversy with special reference to the new originalism--the view of constitutional meaning that emphasizes public meaning of the constitutional text at the time each provision was framed and ratified. Part III argues that that the clause creates a problem for public meaning originalism--the phrase natural born citizen may not have had a widely shared public meaning in the late eighteenth century; the solution to this problem could be the notion of a term of art, in particular, the idea that the meaning of natural born citizen derives from the English concept of a natural born subject. Part IV considers the possibility that the original meaning of the natural born citizen clause is subject to an irreducible ambiguity. Part V concludes with reflections on the exemplary significance of the natural born citizen clause for constitutional theory

Images of Trebizond and the Pontos in Contemporary Literature in English with a Gothic Conclusion

A Byzantinist specializing in the history of the Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461), the author presents four books of different genres written in English and devoted to the medieval state on the south coast of the Black Sea. The most spectacular of them is a novel by Rose Macaulay, Towers of Trebizond. Dąbrowska wonders whether it is adequate to the Trebizondian past or whether it is a projection of the writer. She compares Macaulay’s novel with William Butler Yeats’s poems on Byzantium which excited the imagination of readers but were not meant to draw their attention to the Byzantine past. This is, obviously, the privilege of literature. As a historian, Dąbrowska juxtaposes Macaulay’s narration with the historical novel by Nicolas J. Holmes, the travelogue written by Michael Pereira and the reports of the last British Consul in Trabzon, Vorley Harris. The author of the article draws the reader’s attention to the history of a rather unknown and exotic region. The Empire of Trebizond ceased to exist in 1461, conquered by Mehmed II. At the same time the Sultan’s army attacked Wallachia and got a bitter lesson from its ruler Vlad Dracula. But this Romanian hero is remembered not because of his prowess on the battlefield but due to his cruelty which dominated literary fiction and separated historical facts from narrative reality. The contemporary reader is impressed by the image of a dreadful vampire, Dracula. The same goes for Byzantium perceived through the magic stanzas by Yeats, who never visited Istanbul. Rose Macaulay went to Trabzon but her vision of Trebizond is very close to Yeats’s images of Byzantium. In her story imagination is stronger than historical reality and it is imagination that seduces the reader