Macroeconomic policy change: Ireland in comparative perspective

This paper sets out to develop an improved framework for examining critical junctures. This a priori framework is a significant improvement over existing critical juncture frameworks that lack any predictive element. It is an advance for historical institutionalism in particular, and political science in general. After the new framework is set out in detail here, it is tested. The framework is used to examine a number of potential critical junctures in macroeconomic policy, drawn from Ireland, Sweden, Britain, and America in the latter half of the twentieth century

Accounting for lives: Autobiography and biography in the accounts of Sir Thomas Myddelton, 1642–1666

This article significantly adds to the literature on the value of financial accounts, demonstrating their worth as both an autobiographical and biographical source. It argues that elite accounts can be seen both as a biography of the master, and an autobiography of the servant. It demonstrates this through analysis of the remarkably detailed Chirk accounts for the period 1642–1666, and the relationship of Thomas Prichard and Sir Thomas Myddelton II. This article uncovers insights into Myddelton’s life and character while revealing Prichard’s life in detail for the first time. This article provides a new model for considering financial accounts as both family chronicle/biography, and history from below/autobiography. Examining the accounts as a self-designed mirror for Myddelton and as a way of discovering the lives of his senior servants and household, the article casts new light on early modern social relationships

Late-Holocene faunal and landscape change in the Bahamas

We report an intertidal, bone-rich peat deposit on the windward (Atlantic Ocean) coast of Abaco, The Bahamas. The age of the Gilpin Point peat (c. 950-900 cal. yr BP) is based on five overlapping radiocarbon dates (one each from single pieces of wood of buttonwood Conocarpus erectus and sabal palm Sabal palmetto, and single bones of the Cuban crocodile Crocodylus rhombifer, Albury\u27s tortoise Chelonoidis alburyorum, and green turtle Chelonia mydas). The short time interval represented by the charcoal-rich peat suggests rapid sedimentation following initial anthropogenic fires on Abaco. The site\u27s diverse snail assemblage is dominated by terrestrial and freshwater species. The peat is exposed today only during exceptionally low tides, suggesting a lower sea level at the time of deposition as well as a degrading shoreline during the past millennium. Fossils from Gilpin Point represent a late-Holocene vertebrate community at the time of first human presence; only 10 of the 17 identified species of amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals still live on Abaco. Numerous unhealed bite marks on the inside of the thick carapaces of the green turtle attest to consumption by Cuban crocodiles, which probably scavenged turtles butchered by humans. This concept, along with the dense concentration of bones in the peat, and charring on some bones of the green turtle and Abaco tortoise, suggests a cultural origin of the bone deposit at Gilpin Point, where the only Amerindian artifact recovered thus far is a shell bead