United States Copper Companies, the State, and Labour Conflict in Mexico, 1900-1910

Article explores worker strikes in the Mexican copper industry, incorporating elemetns of both traditional interpretations, emphasizing the activities as precursor to the Mexican Revolution, and revisionist interpretations presenting the strikes as industrial disputes without revolutionary pretensions

Chinese Plantation Workers and Social Conflict in Peru in the late Nineteenth Century

Examines Chinese plantation workers' transition from indentured servitude to wage labor in Peru of the late nineteenth century, providing detailed anlaysis of labour conditions in the Condor and Sana Valleys

Capitalist Agriculture and Labour Contracting in Northern Peru, 1880-1905

Article argues that the process of enganche, or the procurement of native highlanders to labor in coastal Peruvian sugar plantations, stemmed in the period 1880-1905 from elements of coercion and violence, as well as capital incentives

Imagining Mexico in 1910: Visions of the Patria in the Centennial Celebration in Mexico City

Mexico’s 1910 Centenario reflected a popular trend in Western Europe and its former colonies to use centenaries of important historical events to promote political programmes and philosophies through the construction of historical memory. Centennial organisers in Mexico linked Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and Jose´ Maria Morelos to President Porfirio Dı´az in words and symbols, and associated state formation and civic culture with Liberal leaders and policies, such as public education, material progress and secularism. The planners also promoted Morelos as a mestizo icon and symbol for national identity and integration, while they simultaneously celebrated Mexico’s pre-Columbian cultures and criticised contemporary natives as impediments to progress. The Centennial’s audience included hundreds of thousands of Mexicans as well as foreigners from around the globe, who came away with different impressions based on their cultural perspectives, political philosophies and material interests. Following the overthrow of Dı´az in 1911, Mexico’s revolutionary governments continued to use Independence Day celebrations to promote their programmes, including some whose origins lay in the Porfiriato. As we approach the bicentenary of Latin American independence, competing visions of patrias will likely surface and provide insights into the construction of historical memory and contemporary political discourse

Planters and Politics in Peru, 1895-1919

Article explores Peruvian political development in the period 1895-1919, with a focus on the activities of the Civilistas Party, Guillermo Billinghurst, and Augusto B. Leguia.Research for this article was funded by a Ford Foundation Fellowship in 1974-5 and by a Fulbright Fellowship in autumn 1987

Analysis of ZDDP content and thermal decomposition in motor oils using NAA and NMR

Zinc dialkyldithiophosphates (ZDDPs) are one of the most common anti-wear additives present in commercially-available motor oils. The ZDDP concentrations of motor oils are most commonly determined using inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES). As part of an undergraduate research project, we have determined the Zn concentrations of eight commercially-available motor oils and one oil additive using neutron activation analysis (NAA), which has potential for greater accuracy and less sensitivity to matrix effects as compared to ICP-AES. The 31P nuclear magnetic resonance (31P-NMR) spectra were also obtained for several oil additive samples which have been heated to various temperatures in order to study the thermal decomposition of ZDDPs.Comment: Manuscript has been accepted for publication in Physics Procedia as part of the proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Application of Accelerators in Research and Industry (CAARI 2014