Oxford University Press's Blog, page 562

Conflict in the Sangin district of Afghanistan

A version of this originally appeared on Mike Martin’s personal blog, Threshed Thought.

The news seems to have gone quiet about Sangin district in Helmand. Before Christmas there was an intense media storm that the district was about to fall to the ‘Taliban’. There were reports of the SAS being deployed, and the day after, the story of multiple Taliban commanders being killed in a night raid. As I have written before, it is impossible to separate every one with guns in Helmand into two groups: the ‘government’ and the ‘Taliban’, so it is difficult to see who the SAS were targeting, and who they were supporting.

As any sixth form army cadet will tell you, military operations must be based on a sound intelligence assessment of the the battle-space. So, what do we know about Sangin?

Sangin is one of the more contested districts in Helmand. The basis of this contest are the strangely gerrymandered 1964 district boundaries, which brought together an odd collection of tribes: mostly Ishaqzai and Alikozai, but also good doses of Alizai and Noorzai.

These tribes are all well represented elsewhere in Helmand or in neighbouring Kandahar, but none of them have pre-eminence in Sangin. This has led to a dispute over control of the district centre. Why? The group or individual that controls the district centre controls the market where the local drug dealing occurs (which they can tax), but it also results in control of the police. This is important in southern Afghanistan: the group that is the police is able to protect their own role in the drugs trade and persecute others’ roles, including manipulating government eradication to pursue their own tribal enemies.

In Sangin, the contest has historically been between the Ishaqzai and the Alikozai. During the Jihad (the war between the mujahidin and the communist government in the 1980s), these two tribal groups (and the multiple constituent sub-tribes) allied themselves with different jihadi groups. This enabled them to continue their inter-tribe feuding under the cover of holy war. Much the same is going on today.

When the Taliban arrived in 1994, they actually kicked out both the Ishaqzai and Alikozai warlords, although the Ishaqzai warlord’s men immediately began working for the Taliban. Once the Taliban fell, Karzai reinstated that Alikozai warlord–Dad Mohammad–and US special forces allowed him to conduct a reign of terror over the Ishaqzai communities to the south of Sangin district centre. The U.S. were not being vindictive or mischievous in their behaviour; they were just completely ignorant of the dynamics–something I suspect may be happening today.

The U.S. were so blind to local dynamics that when two of their special forces soldiers were killed in 2003, Dad Mohammad managed to convince them that the killers were in the Ishaqzai community. Shortly after, the US established a firebase in the compound of a ‘Lal Jan’–an Ishaqzai smuggler. This base then got handed over to the British–and became FOB Jackson–and it is now the ANA in base in Sangin. Lal Jan has been trying to get it back ever since.

Finally, let’s look at the comments of Hashim Alikozai, a Helmandi senator. He paints the conflict as a government:Taliban, good:bad, black:white dichotomy, except with the added twist that the Taliban were mostly from Pakistan. When western media interview Afghans, they usually look at the job title. But looking at his name, we can see he is Alikozai, so he is likely to have a bias when talking about Sangin.

This is the story of Afghanistan recently: the Afghan government is desperate to have the Americans (and to a lesser extent) the Europeans involved. This is because the US help them in all the various micro civil wars involving their local allies (in this case the Alikozai) that are taking place all over the country. Afghan government figures will repeatedly state that the situation is dire and can only be resolved with western help; viz the much-hyped (by the Afghan government) ‘rise’ of ISIS in Afghanistan recently.

So what is going on in Sangin?

It is likely to be a variation on local tribal groups, arranged around smugglers, who are trying to control the district centre. This is because they want to tax the local drugs trade, and to control the police. And why does the UK government want to be involved in this local spat between drug dealers? Because ten years ago we went there by mistake, and now we are still pretending we didn’t make a mistake. That is why we claim it is strategic, even though it is a collection of mud huts surrounded by poppy fields.

Featured image: “1st CEB, Coalition forces complete Outlaw Wrath, destroy more than 50 IEDs” by DVIDSHUB, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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Addressing anxiety in the teaching room: techniques to enhance mathematics and statistics education

In June 2015, I co-chaired the organising committee of the first international mathematics education conference of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) titled ‘Barriers and Enablers to Learning Maths’ with the University of Glasgow, who also hosted it. The two and a half day conference explored approaches to teaching and learning mathematics and was structured around ten parallel sessions that delegates could choose from, including ‘Addressing mathematics & statistics anxiety’ and ‘Enhancing engagement with mathematics & statistics.’

Mathematics and statistics anxiety is one of the major challenges involved in communicating mathematics and statistics to non-specialists. Students enrolled on degree programmes in several areas other than mathematics or statistics are required to study mandatory courses in mathematics and statistics as core elements of their degree programmes. Academics, educators, and researchers presented papers on how they have addressed this issue of anxiety using history, enhancing students’ self-belief, and individual support, demonstrating the relevance of the subjects to their respective degree work and making the learning process enjoyable.

The general consensus from the session was that:

Students with low confidence experience high levels of mathematics anxiety, which has an adverse impact on their academic performance;
University students are far from resilient to experiencing mathematics anxiety ;
It is most common in non-specialist university students;
It is not always related to students’ academic abilities but their prior learning experience of the subjects, self-efficacy and self-beliefs;
The increasing diversity of the university student population as a result of the high proportion of international students, widening participation and access to higher education, add new dimensions to this challenge;
This range of cultural, socio-economic and academic backgrounds of students manifests itself through diverse expectations and individual learning requirements that need to be carefully considered.

Delegates agreed that if educators involved in designing and delivering mathematics and statistics courses for non-specialist university students are aware of the implications of this diversity in student backgrounds, they should be able to appreciate the indispensable role of using a variety of teaching and learning approaches.

My personal view is that thinking like social scientists would make higher education practitioners more empathetic towards students. I think making course delivery student focused as well as student led would encourage students to share responsibility for their education. Focusing on connecting with students and being perceptive as well as receptive to students’ feedback and willing to revise teaching delivery can enhance the learning climate in teaching rooms. This would promote student interaction and encourage active learning.

Undergraduates can face several issues during their transition to university education, such as key gaps in their mathematical skills despite the fact that they have A-level Mathematics or equivalent. Effective practices were shared to include a blended learning project using online formative assessment followed by feedback and encouraging students to work within their Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978). Delegates were informed about two innovative Mathematics Support Centres (MSCs) that facilitate distant learning. MSCs have become important features of universities in the UK as well as overseas.

Undergraduates can face several issues during their transition to university education, such as key gaps in their mathematical skills despite the fact that they have A-level Mathematics or equivalent.

Educators shared their projects on scenario based training of statistics support teachers, instruction methods developed by mathematics teachers and using census data as well as other publicly available large data sets to support statistics literacy. Social media was explored as a tool to facilitate deep learning, enhance student engagement in science as well as engineering and improve students’ learning experience. There were presentations on the effective use of a virtual learning environment, audio feedback, and an online collaboration model to encourage students’ participation.

Delegates seemed to find online formative assessment practices worth incorporating into their teaching. The innovative Mathematics Support Centres (MSCs) that facilitate distant learning sounded appealing to several others. Delegates who had not experimented with Facebook were convinced after a paper presentation that Facebook is an area worth exploring to enhance student engagement.

I have used Facebook for promoting scholarly dialogue and collaborative research as well as enhancing student engagement with statistics and operational research methods since 2012. My rationale is to address mathematics and statistics anxiety by connecting with students which can be done without intruding into their personal territory, i.e. becoming their Facebook friends. I would argue that Facebook is an excellent online system which academics can use for posting topics for discussions, promoting interaction, addressing students’ queries, uploading course material and monitoring students’ progress. These study groups are easy to set up and promote inclusive education. It is a platform students are used to and view extremely positively.

Barriers to learning such as neurodiversity were also explored focusing on learning difficulties faced by visually-impaired and hearing-impaired learners. Other areas covered included language difficulties as a barrier to reading mathematics, dyslexia/dyscalculia and teachers’ negative bias against students from certain backgrounds. Gender imbalance was also discussed as a significant barrier with the general consensus being that more women should be encouraged, as well as supported, to pursue careers in mathematics.

In light of the existing literature and research relating to the difficulties blind learners face, it was agreed that this is an area that calls for further research to make mathematics more accessible to the blind. It was proposed that research on combining lexical rules, speech prosody and non-speech sounds would be desirable. Furthermore, providing tools for carrying out mathematical analysis may improve the situation for blind learners.

A critique on the fallacy of assuming a homogeneous student body and homogeneous teaching in a ‘what works’ approach introduced an interesting point of controversy in the midst of excitement and optimism about a range of initiatives. These exchanges of information on research, initiatives and projects should promote multi-disciplinary research collaboration in mathematics and statistics education.

The conference might impact research in a variety of themes related to statistics and mathematics education to include mathematics anxiety, inclusive practice and statistics anxiety.

A version of this article originally appeared on The London School of Economics and Political Science blog.

Featured image credit: calculator mathematics maths finance by Unsplash. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Top ten developments in international law in 2015

From the adoption of blockbuster treaties to the myriad of legal questions raised by the fight against ISIS, international law was front and centre in many of 2015’s top news stories. These events are likely to change the shape and scope of the international legal order for years to come. This post reflects on what arguably were some of the most notable developments over the past twelve months and issues they raised.

The adoption of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

In a year in which the news usually made for grim reading, the adoption of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change stood out as a hugely positive development. The Agreement is open to criticism and its success will depend on its implementation, but it is encouraging that international agreement can still be reached on questions as difficult as changing national energy policies for the sake of the global environment.

The (further) internationalization of the war in Syria

Syria’s civil war had already raised a number of very difficult legal questions but the fight against ISIS drew a number of third countries into the fray, raising some very thorny problems for the law on the use of force. Is the war internal or international or both, and what does that mean for the application of the law of armed conflict? Are countries like France and the UK now at war with Syria and, if so, what does that mean? Is Russia allowed to attack Syrian rebels and ISIS because Assad invited it? States’ positions on these questions, academic debate, and any future judicial challenges will shape the development of the laws of war.

The refugee crisis in Europe

Viewed through the lens of international law, the most important lesson from the refugee crisis in Europe is perhaps the failure of law to contribute meaningfully to a humanitarian disaster in the absence of political will. The 1951 Refugee Convention is clear in the status it affords refugees and numerous international human rights treaties set out minimum levels of protection that every human is entitled to, but international law’s lack of enforcement capability was made painfully clear by conditions suffered by many refugees. On a more positive note, a French court ordered that conditions be improved in the Calais refugee camp, particularly for minors, on the basis of international human rights obligations.

The negotiation and adoption of big regional trade deals

In a year that saw the death knell of the WTO’s long-suffering Doha Round, regional free trade deals were more important than ever. Negotiation of the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership advanced significantly with a deal possible in 2016, while the Trans-Pacific Partnership was agreed in October by twelve Pacific Rim states, including the United States and Japan. These big deals change the shape of the international trade system and risk undermining the WTO’s successful dispute settlement system.

Mounting tension in the South China Sea

Last year saw a further ratcheting up of tensions between China and many of its neighbours in the South China Sea, as well as between China and the United States, which stepped up military patrols to assert its freedom of navigation. China was accused of artificially expanding a number of rocks and reefs in the region in an attempt to turn them into islands, which generate more maritime entitlements. In October, an ITLOS arbitral panel decided it had jurisdiction to hear the Philippines’ claims against China on the merits. China boycotted the proceedings.

Palestine became a member of the International Criminal Court

In January, Palestine lodged a declaration with the ICC accepting its jurisdiction and formally acceded to the Rome Statute. The ICC’s Prosecutor promptly started a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine to determine whether or not it should start a proper investigation. This examination is ongoing but the expert opinion is that it is very unlikely, and perhaps undesirable, to result in a full investigation.

State surveillance and the right to privacy

Questions of privacy and surveillance remained at the forefront of debate in international law, with the UK government announcing draft legislation in November which would allow the police and security services to track citizens’ internet use. In December, a landmark European Court of Human Rights judgment found serious shortcomings in Russia’s regulation of surveillance meant that it violated the right to privacy. Underscoring the importance of this issue, the UN appointed its first ever Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy.

Continuing controversy surrounding investment arbitration

Criticism of investment arbitration continued, with commentators alarmed at the proposed provisions on arbitration in the TTIP. In June, an investment panel was first to acknowledge the impact of third-party funding on proceedings and to demand transparency on this from the parties. Later on in the year, a committee partially annulled a previous massive award against Ecuador because of issues around the investor’s identity and treaty-shopping. Whether this will be enough to satisfy critics in 2016 remains to be seen..

Key European Court of Human Rights judgments on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

In two landmark judgments (Chigarov and Others v Armenia and Sargsyan v Azerbaijan), the European Court found that both Armenia and Azerbaijan had violated the rights of individuals caught up in this frozen (though escalating) conflict. The decisions dealt with important questions about the European Convention of Human Rights’ reach and the need to establish property claims commissions, and are likely to influence the outcomes of thousands of similar claims still pending before the Court.

Croatia v Slovenia arbitration wiretap scandal

This was perhaps not one of the most important developments in 2015 but it was one of the most scandalous: the revelation that illicit phone calls between the Slovenian arbitrator and Slovenian agent involved in an arbitration with Croatia over a boundary dispute were secretly recorded. The recordings showed the two collaborating on how to secure the best possible outcome for Slovenia. The arbitrator resigned and Croatia withdrew from the proceedings, but the arbitration continued and an award is due in 2016.

Are there any key developments we have overlooked? Get in touch with us on Twitter or Facebook to continue the debate.

Featured image: Elkhorn Mountain Wilderness by Bob Wick. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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How do you pronounce “Pulitzer?”

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize, the annual prize in journalism and letters established by the estate of Joseph Pulitzer in 1916 and run by the Columbia School of Journalism (also established by Pulitzer’s estate). The first Pulitzer Prizes in reporting were given in 1917 to Herbert Bayard Swope of New York World for a series of articles titled “Inside the German Empire” and to the New York Tribune for its editorial on the first anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania. The first Pulitzers in literature were awarded that year to French ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand for his work, History With Americans of Past and Present Days, and to Laura E. Richards and Maude Howe Elliott for The Autobiography of Julia Ward Howe.

Over the years, the prize categories have evolved; poetry, general non-fiction, fiction, and more were added in the literary arts, and categories such as editorial cartooning, local and national investigative reporting, and editorial and feature photography were added in journalism. The category of telegraph reporting has quaintly fallen away. Today, there are more than twenty categories of awards. And it is worth noting that Oxford University Press books have won a fair share of awards—in history, biography, and even one in music.

This year, the Pulitzer Board is sponsoring a year-long celebration of the 100th awarding of the prizes, in collaboration with state humanities councils, journalism schools, museums, and foundations. A friend of mine, a Pulitzer winner himself, was telling me about this over coffee. “Wow,” I exclaimed, “I had no idea that the Pulitzer Prize was a hundred years old.”

“Portrait of United States publisher Joseph Pulitzer.” The Cyclopædia of American Biography (1918). Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

I pronounced the name PEW-lit-zer, and he gently explained the preferred pronunciation to me. The Pulitzer Board pronounces it PULL-it-sir, which is the way Joseph Pulitzer said it and liked it. A few days later, I was talking with another friend about the centenary and complimented him on pronouncing it as Pulitzer did. “Yeah,” he said. “I was saying PEW-lit-zer, but someone corrected me.”

The PEW-lit-zer versus PULL-it-sir situation got me to thinking about the pronunciation of names. It’s one of the few aspects of language where a dose of prescriptivism seems warranted. A person ought to be able to pronounce their name as they see fit (within orthographic reason, of course). I may not like your pronunciation of insurance, economics, or route, but I have no special authority to approve or correct it. However, with a name, the situation is different. The owner of the name gets to establish the pronunciation. So PULL-it-sir it is.

But why do so many American speakers say it the other way, with PEW as the first syllable? The answer to that lies in the phonological process of palatalization, and specifically what is known as u-palatalization. The term refers to the way that in English, consonants are often palatalized before a long u sound. A palatal semivowel (a gliding sound represented by the phonetic symbol /j/ but often spelled with a Y in popular transcriptions) occurs between the consonant and the long “u” vowel. Long u , by the way, is often phonetically transcribed as /u:/ but can be spelled in various ways as eau, oo, ou, ue, ew , or as u followed by a single consonant and a vowel (as in dude or tuna).

Palatalization before /u:/ tends to occur in some relatively well-defined phonetic situations, such as when the /u:/ occurs at the beginning of a work as in university or usual. That is why you use a rather than an with many words that start with u—perhaps they begin with /ju:/ not /u:/.

Palatalization is especially robust after labial consonants in American English. These include the stops /m/, /p/, and /b/ (as in mute, amuse, pew, pure, puerile, repute, beauty, bureau, vocabulary, constabulary) and also the fricatives /f/ and /v/ (as in fuse, fuel, fuel, futile, view, revue, uvula). Palatalization is not automatic after these sounds, however, and spelling is often a clue: pew and pooh, beauty and booty, feud and food, mute and moot.

This brings us back to Joseph Pulitzer, who emigrated to the United States in 1864. He was born in Hungary, where Pulitzer, or Politzer as it is sometimes spelled, was a common family name derived from a place name in southern Moravia, the village of Pullitz. In the United States, the spelling Pulitzer would have quite naturally been Anglicized as PEW-lit-zer by analogy to the other pu spellings like pure, puritanical, pubic, puce, and so on.

Palatalization, incidentally, is also common after velar consonants like /g/ and /k/ (as in cute, cue, skew, factual, regulate, angular, and argue), and you find a similar extension of palatalization in the pronunciation of the word coupon. Coupon is etymologically French (from the Old French couper, meaning “to cut”) but has the alternate pronunciations COOP-on and CUE-pon. And last week, I heard someone pronounce Kubrick as CUE-brick.

The pronunciations of coupon and Pulitzer aside, it turns out that the palatalized versions of many common words are often the older forms, still used among many speakers of British and Canadian English. Thus you hear palatalized due, tune, dune, news, lewd, and so on. Twentieth-century American speech tended to drop these palatal glides, but they seem to be re-emerging in some dialects. Perhaps there’s a Pulitzer in the story.

Image Credit: “Signature of United States publisher Joseph Pulitzer” (1918). Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Ukraine (finally) recognizes the hidden genocide of the Crimean Tatars

On 12 November 2015 the Ukrainian Parliament took the bold step of recognizing the destruction of the Crimean Tatar nation by the Soviet Army in 1944 as a genocide. The surviving Crimean Tatars hope that this long overdue action will shine an expository light on a genocide that has been kept hidden for decades and is still not recognized by Russia. For the shattered remnants of this once mighty nation that represents Europe’s last descendants of the medieval Mongols, this move is a first step towards exposing a long-concealed war crime.

Crimean Tatar saboteurs have also recently been involved in the destruction of pylons carrying power lines to Crimea that have plunged the peninsula into darkness. They have prevented repair crews from fixing the damaged pylons and are demanding the release of Tatar leaders jailed by the Russian government in the Crimea.

These two events combine to shed light on a long history of repression of this small Muslim ethnic group that began in the Tsarist epoch and continues to this day.

The Wartime Destruction of Europe’s Last Mongols

For all its contributions to civilization, modern Europe has a dark history of genocide going back to the Russian Empire’s genocidal assault on an ancient Caucasus Mountains race known as the Circassians in the mid-19th century (this Muslim ethnic group was so thoroughly exterminated by Russian Imperial troops that most Europeans today have never heard of them). Among the small, relatively-unknown Muslim nations to have faced genocide in Europe were the Crimean Tatars. The Crimean Tatars, the pitiful remnants of a once great Turkic-Mongol race descended from Golden Horde, were ethnically cleansed by the Russians for centuries before being forcefully included in the Soviet Union.

During World War II, the Nazi Wehrmacht invaded the Crimean Peninsula and 20,000 Crimean Tatars from a nation of just over 200,000 (i.e. 10 percent) were mobilized to fight in the Red Army. When the Soviet Army defending the Crimea was shattered in October 1941, many of these Crimean Tatars joined the ranks of hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians who were captured by the Germans. These prisoners of war were often forced to join the ranks of the victorious Germans or face firing squads. Several thousand Crimean Tatar captives were thus forcefully conscripted into the German Army, along with hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians.

When the Germans were expelled from the Crimea in May 1944, local Russians exaggerated this collaboration and hid the fact that thousands of Crimean Tatars had fought against the German invaders as partisans (anti-Nazi Soviet guerillas). This anti-Tatar propaganda by local Russians in the Crimea came at a most unfortunate time. In the spring of 1944, as Soviet troops stormed towards Berlin and occupied much of Eastern Europe, Stalin made plans to go with the momentum and invade northeastern Turkey to annex provinces lost to Imperial Russia in the 19th century. He planned to use the Crimea as a springboard to launch naval operations against the Turks and feared that the Turkic-Mongol Muslim Crimean Tatars (who had previously been allies with the Ottoman Turks) would act as a pro-Turkish fifth column. To prevent such an outcome, the entire Crimean Tatar nation including women, children, and thousands of men still fighting in the ranks of the Red Army were cynically declared “izmeniky rodina” (traitors to the motherland). They were then slated for genocide (along with several other targeted nations, such as the Muslim Chechen highlanders and the Kalmyk Mongol Buddhists).

On 18 May 1944, Soviet Red Army troops and soldiers from the NKVD (the early iteration of the KGB) surrounded the Crimean Tatar hamlets that were primarily located in the south Crimean Mountains and on the coast. They then herded the startled inhabitants to collection points and drove them to the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic capital of Simferopol. Those who moved too slow or resisted were gunned down in cold blood. The Crimean Tatars were then forced onto cattle trains and shipped in “echelons” to unknown destinations deep in Soviet Central Asia. Thousands died on the long journey from dysentery, starvation, typhus, and other diseases and their bodies were thrown from the packed cattle cars.

Most of the deportees were sent to the desert republic of Uzbekistan where they were greeted by rocks thrown at them by local Uzbeks who had been poisoned by the KGB’s propaganda against the Tatar deportees. Thousands died in the succeeding months from exposure and starvation but the survivors (who were kept in “special settler” camps) ultimately constructed earthen houses or built sheds. They remained in their KGB-guarded camps working menial and unhealthy jobs in factories until 1956. That year, the new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev released the deported nations (there were seven in all) from their camps and allowed most of them to return to their homelands.

Tragically, the Crimean Tatars were not permitted to return to the Crimea because it had been converted into an All-Union resort during their absence and their villages in the Crimea’s warm southern coast and mountains had been settled with Russians. Thus the Crimean Tatars exile was to be permanent and this scattered nation was slated to disappear from history.

Against all odds the survivors (only 54% of the Crimean Tatars survived according to a Tatar self-census) managed to pass on a sense of Crimean Tatar identity to their children and grandchildren. As they gradually overcame their collective tragedy and adjusted to life in deserts of Uzbekistan, the survivors of this genocide taught their children that the Crimea was their true homeland. For decades they fought a battle against the Soviet system to return to their homeland and thousands were arrested or re-deported for daring to sneak into the Crimea.

Finally, with the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, tens of thousands of Crimean Tatars began a mass migration back to their cherished homeland on the shores of the distant Black Sea. There, despite attacks by local Russians, they built hundreds of squatter camps which gradually became simple villages and reestablished their nation. Today there are approximately 250,000 Crimean Tatars living uneasily in a land that was conquered by Vladimir Putin last year and annexed from the Ukraine to Russia. Despite Russian efforts to crush their annual commemorations of the Surgun (the Exile), on May 18th the Crimean Tatars gather in the graveyards of their ancestors that were bulldozed during their exile and say prayers for the tens of thousands of people that died in a genocide that the Soviets kept hidden from the world until 1991. The Crimean Tatars face an uncertain future in Putin’s Russia, but, like other nations including the Armenians and Jews who have experienced genocide, vow they will never let their children forget the attempt to exterminate them as a people.

Image credit: “Kiev” by Juanedc, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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The exceptional English?

There is nothing new about the notion that the English, and their history, are exceptional. This idea has, however, recently attracted renewed attention, since certain EU-sceptics have tried to advance their cause by asserting the United Kingdom’s historic distinctiveness from the Continent. In political terms, this argument is dubious – even if the UK were exceptional in various past epochs, this would have little logical bearing on the desirability or otherwise of its participation in future European integration. The fundamental problem with the exceptionalist line is not, however, political illogicality, but historical naivety.

Many of the exceptionalists’ fallacies and bizarre generalisations have already been pointed out. There are, however, two points which deserve greater emphasis. The first is that those who propound the supposedly exceptional character of the UK frequently conflate it with England, or the island of Britain, or both. Thus, for example, a distinguished professor recently declared that the United Kingdom has had a “largely uninterrupted history since the Middle Ages.” Even if we set aside the question of what might constitute an interruption to ‘history’, this proposition is manifestly risible, since the UK did not even exist before 1707 (and was then initially confined to Britain). Rather, the statement appears to be invoking the longevity of the English kingdom, which would tally with the preceding observation that ‘Britain’ has not (with minor exceptions) been invaded since 1066. This comment is technically accurate, but the point is largely irrelevant save from an English standpoint – the Welsh and Scots have suffered many more recent invasions from within Britain itself. Thus, despite his frequent references to the UK, the professor’s underlying perspective is myopically English.

The second point is that such flaws in exceptionalists’ conceptualisations of the UK are often mirrored in their approaches to the rest of Europe. The notion of exceptionalism implies not just that England (or the UK) is unique, but also that it stands in contrast to some otherwise general norm. Yet exceptionalists frequently assume, rather than demonstrate, the existence of the norms from which they purport to identify difference. This is particularly evident in the work of those who base their claims to exceptionalism on the antiquity of the English kingdom, which was formed in the tenth century. Such writers often highlight contrasts with West Frankia, which covered an area roughly similar to modern France: at the same time as English kings were intensifying their domination, and the English kingdom was becoming a recognisable political unit, royal power was fragmenting on the other side of the Channel. That English political developments were different from those of West Frankia does not, however, make them an exception to some pan-Continental norm.

 The fundamental problem with the exceptionalist line is not, however, political illogicality, but historical naivety.

Indeed, if we broaden our perspective beyond West Frankia, it soon becomes apparent that there was no single generally-applicable pattern of change in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Many parts of Italy and (slightly later) Catalonia followed trajectories analogous to that of West Frankia, but other regions did not. East Frankia (i.e. Germany) saw no thoroughgoing collapse of kingly power, and its rulers greatly extended the geographical range of their hegemony; they do not, however, appear to have effected an intensification of royal administration akin to that undertaken by their English contemporaries. Similar points could be made about the northern Spanish kingdom of Asturias-León-Castile, which had, like England, – but unlike the other territories just discussed – been outwith the ninth-century Carolingian Empire. Yet another pattern of change, again on the periphery of the former Carolingian lands, is seen in the Hungarian kingdom. In the mid-tenth century, it did not exist as a settled territorial entity. By the eleventh century, however, its kings were issuing ordinances which imply the existence of administrative structures at least loosely similar to those which had been established by their English counterparts.

I do not claim that the early English kingdom closely resembled Hungary, or anywhere else in medieval Europe. Nor do I pretend to have proved that there has never been a time when the English represented an exception to a phenomenon prevailing across all or much of the Continent. Rather, my point is that different parts of tenth- and eleventh-century Europe saw a variety of political trajectories. Such heterogeneity is hardly surprising, and ought to serve as a warning to those tempted to make exceptionalist claims about other periods – before asserting that England (or the UK, or anywhere else) stood apart, one should first establish that there was indeed a norm. There is otherwise a real danger of treating the Continent as an indeterminate mass of foreigners, rendered homogeneous only by their foreign-ness.

In fairness to those who have characterised the English kingdom’s formation in exceptionalist terms, it is understandable that they should have assumed that all or much of the Continent followed a common trajectory in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Many of the most prominent works purporting to offer overviews of Europe in this period have been written by French academics. Such scholars – in contrast to English exceptionalists – frequently take the history of their own country (in the guise of West Frankia) as a paradigm for that of the whole Continent. English historians are right to react against this. If, however, one infers that the different pattern of change north of the Channel made the English kingdom exceptional, one implicitly accepts the claim that France’s path was the norm. Propositions about French typicality and English exceptionalism are thus complementary, indeed mutually reinforcing, but both are flawed, at least with respect to the political trends of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Perhaps claims about the supposedly exceptional nature of English historical development might hold less appeal if it were appreciated that they help to perpetuate a paradigm from – of all places – France.

Headline image credit: Map of Europe c. 900 A.D. by Ramsey Muir. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Money, money, money

In All’s Well that Ends Well (3.7), Helena devises a plan to ignite the affections of her husband, for which she needs the help of her new acquaintances, a widow and her daughter. The widow is naturally suspicious, but Helena persuades her by offering to pay for her daughter’s marriage:

To marry her I’ll add three thousand crowns


To what is passed already.


WIDOW:                                     I have yielded.

How should the actors say the last two lines? It’s not enough for Helen to speak the financial inducement in a routinely cajoling tone of voice, and for the Widow to reply in the tone of ‘Oh well, then, all right’. For 3000 crowns was a lot of money. A crown was a gold coin of varying value in different countries, but in the England of Shakespeare’s time it was worth about 5 shillings, a quarter of an old pound. 3000 crowns was therefore about £750.

According to the National Archives (2005) site, £1 in 1590 is equivalent to £125.29 today; by 1600, this had fallen to £100.64; and by 1610 to £97.88. For my purposes, an approximation will do: x100. A similar result emerges if we compute earning power: £100 in 1970 would have been £1.0.10d (£1.4) in wages in 1600. Taking into account inflation over the past ten years, these equivalents will be somewhat greater today.

So, Helena was offering the widow about £75,000 in today’s money. No wonder she yields so readily. The point is missed unless we get a ‘wait for it’ pause after ‘add’ in Helena’s offer and a truly amazed (‘gulp’) reaction. And it illustrates just how much Helena wants her husband back.

Who else gets offered such a sum? 3000 crowns is a king’s recompense – the annual sum given to young Fortinbras by his uncle for services rendered (Hamlet, 2.2.72). It’s the significant sum that Varro’s servant tells us his master is owed by Timon (Timon of Athens, 3.4.30), though Lucius is owed far more (5,000 crowns). That’s a lot: 5000 is close to the entire budget of the Master of the Revels (£1558) for 1572.

On that basis, we can see why Orlando was miffed by his bequest (As You Like It, 1.1.1-4):

As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion


bequeathed me by will but poor a thousand crowns,


and, as thou sayst, charged my brother on his blessing


to breed me well—and there begins my sadness.

That was a mere £250 (= £25,000 today), not enough to keep him in the manner to which he’d like to become accustomed. It’s the sort of figure you’d give if you were ransomed (2 Henry VI, 4.1.15) or if you were offering a reward for a rebel like Jack Cade (2 Henry VI, 4.8.64).

As the sums get larger, the dramatic contrast gets greater. Here’s Bagot talking to Aumerle (Richard II, 4.1.15-17):

I heard you say that you had rather refuse


The offer of an hundred thousand crowns


Than Bolingbroke’s return to England,

How big an offer would that have been? According to the King in Love’s Labour’s Lost (2.1.127-135), it’s equivalent to half the cost of a war, and a significant part of Aquitaine.

Madam, your father here doth intimate


The payment of a hundred thousand crowns,


Being but the one half of an entire sum


Disbursèd by my father in his wars.


But say that he, or we—as neither have—


Received that sum, yet there remains unpaid


A hundred thousand more, in surety of the which


One part of Aquitaine is bound to us,


Although not valued to the money’s worth.

That’s £2.5 million today. Bagot should be impressed.

So should Petruchio, when he hears what Katharina’s dowry would be (The Taming of the Shrew, 2.1.118-124)

PETRUCHIO: Then tell me, if I get your daughter’s love,


What dowry shall I have with her to wife?


BAPTISTA: After my death the one half of my lands,


And in possession twenty thousand crowns.


PETRUCHIO: And, for that dowry I’ll assure her of


Her widowhood, be it that she survive me,


In all my lands and leases whatsoever.

Petruchio might then say that last speech in a very impressed tone, for he’s being offered half a million (in today’s money). Baptista must be doing very well, for he gives away money like water – another half a million at the end of the play (5.2.112-116). It would seem he can’t pay enough to be rid of Katharina:

Now fair befall thee, good Petruchio!


The wager thou hast won, and I will add


Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns,


Another dowry to another daughter,


For she is changed, as she had never been.

These people have money to burn, and large sums are involved. What was happening at the other end of the scale?

Here we see some derisory sums being traded. When Monsieur le Fer offers Pistol 200 crowns (Henry V, 4.4.44), it doesn’t seem much for a life, though it impresses Pistol, for it was equivalent to about four years’ pay for a soldier (or an actor). And Petruchio is dismissive when he hears Lucentio’s suggestion for a wager (The Taming of the Shrew, 5.2.70):

HORTENSIO: What’s the wager?


LUCENTIO:                                 Twenty crowns.


PETRUCHIO: Twenty crowns?


I’ll venture so much of my hawk or hound,


But twenty times so much upon my wife.


LUCENTIO: A hundred then.


HORTENSIO:                     Content.

Twenty crowns is, as it were, a fiver, in Petruchio’s eyes. It’s a casual bet (Henry V, 4.1.218):

KING HENRY: Indeed, the French may lay twenty French crowns to one they will beat us…

On the other hand, depending on the circumstances, it’s not to be sneezed at. It’s always interesting to compare figures with the sums that Shakespeare and his contemporaries used in their own business dealings. For instance, 20 crowns was the sum he bequeathed in his will to each of the three sons of his sister Joan.

Small sums have to be seen in perspective, of course. How generous is King Edward being when he rewards the poor Frenchmen (King Edward III, 4.2.29)?

Go, Derby, go, and see they be relieved.


Command that victuals be appointed them,


And give to every one five crowns apiece.

That’s just £1.25, which doesn’t sound much, but 300 pence would keep a person in food for a couple of months. A thousand pounds apiece today.

And when Adam offers his master his savings, that is a huge amount for him (As You Like It, 2.3.38):

But do not so. I have five hundred crowns,


The thrifty hire I saved under your father…

He had saved £125 – about £12,500 today. As a servant, he would have been paid between 5 and 10 pence a day – between £10-15 a year. Nearly 80 now, he’s been part of the establishment for about 60 years (as we read at 2.3.71). He’d have earned between £600 and £900 in all, during that time. So he was putting away perhaps a quarter of his wages each week, on average. A thrifty man, indeed. And he is prepared to give it all up for Orlando.

This post is an adaptation of an article that originally appeared as part of a series in the magazine of Shakespeare’s Globe, Around the Globe (2012).

Featured image credit: ‘Coins’ by J.Dncsn. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Exploring spiral-host radio galaxies

Few know exactly what radio galaxies are, much less what factors influence their formation. Even so, new discoveries have brought these astronomical structures into the public eye, and researchers continue to investigate the mysterious conditions of their existence. Below, Veeresh Singh addresses the substance and implications of such discoveries, further elaborating on his research paper, “Discovery of rare double-lobe radio galaxies hosted in spiral galaxies,” recently published in Monthly Notices of Royal Astronomical Society.

What are radio galaxies?

A galaxy is a gigantic system possessing billions of stars, vast amounts of gas, dust, and dark matter held together by gravitational attraction. The typical size of galaxies can be anywhere from a few tens-of-thousands to a few hundreds-of-thousands of light-years. Our own solar system is part of a galaxy named the “Milky Way.” Observations made from telescopes have shown that our universe is full of billions of galaxies that are of different shapes (e.g., spiral, spheroidal, elliptical and irregular).

Studies on the motion of stars, gas, and dust close to the core of galaxies reveal that almost all galaxies host Super Massive Black Holes(SMBHs), which are millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun in their centres. In simple words, black holes are gravitationally collapsed systems in which gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape from the surface of their sphere of influence. Whenever matter is available in the vicinity of SMBHs, they accrete matter via gravitational pull and also eject a fraction of accreted matter—through outflowing bipolar collimated jets formed via magneto-hydro-dynamical processes.

Galaxies having accreting SMBH are called “active galaxies.” Some of these active galaxies exhibit radio-emitting overflowing jets extending well beyond the size of host galaxies’ stellar distribution. These active galaxies are called “radio galaxies.” As the name itself suggests, radio galaxies are powerful emitters of radio emissions and show radio morphology that consists of a core producing a pair of bipolar collimated jets terminating in two lobes. The radio core coincides with the centre of the host galaxy seen in optical light but the jet-lobe extends well-beyond the host galaxy and entrenches into the empty space between galaxies, i.e. “intergalactic region.” Radio galaxies are one of the largest structures in the Universe and the total end-to-end radio size can range from thousands to millions of light years.

Hercules. A radio galaxy hosted in a massive elliptical galaxy. Radio emission, overplotted on the optical image, is shown in pink highlighting large jet-lobe structure. A Milky Way-sized spiral galaxy is marked by white ellipse. Image adapted from a Hubble Heritage Release. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Baum and C. O’Dea (RIT), R. Perley and W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF), and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).

What is the shape of hosts of radio galaxies?

Traditionally, radio galaxies are found to be hosted in massive, gas-poor elliptical galaxies characterised by feeble star formation rates. It is believed that the relativistic jets emanating from the accreting SMBHs at their centres can easily plough through the rarer InterStellar Medium (ISM) of elliptical galaxies and reach scales of up to millions of light years.

How common are spiral-host radio galaxies?

Unlike conventional radio galaxies, which are almost always found in elliptical galaxies, we have discovered four radio galaxies (named in astronomical parlance as J0836+0532, J1159+5820, J1352+3126, and J1649+2635) that are found to be hosted in spiral galaxies. These extremely rare and enigmatic galaxies were found in a systematic search that combined a whopping 187,000 optical images of spiral galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR7 with the radio-emitting sources from two radio-surveys viz. ‘Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-cm (FIRST)’ and ‘NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS)’ both carried out with the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in the United States.

This is the first attempt to carry out an extensive systematic search to find spiral-host radio galaxies using largest existing sky surveys. Before this work, only four examples of spiral-host radio galaxies were known and three of these were discovered serendipitously.

What causes spiral galaxies to become radio-loud?

Understanding the formation of these newly discovered spiral-host radio galaxies is a challenge in the present theoretical model. Using current available data on these sources it is speculated that the formation of spiral-host double-lobe radio galaxies can be attributed to more than one factor, such as the occurrence of strong interactions or mergers with other galaxies, and the presence of an unusually massive SMBH, while keeping the spiral structures intact. Notably, all these galaxies contain an SMBH at their centre with a mass of approximately a billion times that of the Sun.

J083+0532, a spiral galaxy with million-light-years large radio emitting jet-lobe structure. Upper panel shows contours of radio emission overplotted on the optical image from Sloane Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Lower left panel represents the false colour radio image while lower right panel shows SDSS optical image. Image used with permission.

Since only one among four was found in a cluster environment, it implies that the large scale environment is not the prime reason for triggering radio emission. Mergers or interactions could be more likely. In fact, two galaxies—J1159+5820 and J1352+3126—in this study show evidence of mergers. However, another two galaxies—J0836+0532 and J1649+2635—are face-on spirals and do not show any detectable signature of disturbance caused by a recent merger with another galaxy.

How are galaxies currently being studied?

In order to attain a better understanding of the formation of these galaxies, the research team  is observing these galaxies at different frequencies. The team has already acquired low frequency radio observations with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India. The multi-frequency radio observations will enable the study of the radio structures at different spatial scales and also in estimating the time elapsed since the radio emitting jets were ejected from the centre of each galaxy.

What does the discovery of spiral-host radio galaxies mean to upcoming surveys?

The discovery of these spiral-host radio galaxies can be considered as a test bed to find rare populations of spiral-host double-lobe radio galaxies in the distant universe using more sensitive surveys from upcoming facilities such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Baum and C. O’Dea (RIT), R. Perley and W. Cotton (NRAO/AUI/NSF) and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA).

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10 crisp facts about money during Shakespeare’s time

Would you like to pay a halfpenny for a small beer, 1 shilling for a liter of wine, or less than 2 pounds for a horse? If you lived in 17th century England you could buy all of these and even afford Shakespeare’s First Folio, which was only £1 when it was published. Unfortunately, you would also probably earn a meager wage, possibly £2-£8 annually if you were lucky and labored as a yeoman. Actors, however, were fortunate enough to earn 6 shillings a week, which amounted to a yearly income of approximately £14. Here are 10 interesting facts about money in the world of Shakespeare and Elizabethan England.

The standard rate for an author writing a play was approximately £5-6 in the 1590s. By 1616, it was up to about £10 per play. To be fair, this was over four centuries ago and £1 in 1600 would be equal to approximately £100 in 2015.
In the 1600s, a performance at court would warrant a reward of £10 to the entire acting company. £10 is not much when split among an entire company of actors. However it is somewhat better than a year’s worth of wages of a provincial grammar-school master, which was around £20.
Shakespeare was Karl Marx’s favorite author, and when Marx moved to England in 1849, he read Shakespeare every day. Timon of Athens proved to be an influential source in Marx’s critique of capitalist money economy, as seen in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and in Capital, Volume 1.
The corn riots in the opening scenes of Coriolanus are meant to echo the actual Midland Uprising in England in 1607-1608. During this uprising, Shakespeare was a wealthy landowner from Stratford. He consistently protected his land, which was his source of income, rather than the townspeople’s rights.
Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623 was originally sold for only £1. Today, it commands a price in the range of £2.5-£3.5 million.
Out of the estimated 750 copies printed of the First Folio in 1623, only 233 are known to have survived; 82 are currently in the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
The word ‘gold’ appears in Timon of Athens far more frequently than in any other Shakespeare play. It is mentioned 36 times.
At the turn of the century in London, the cost of 1 kilogram of tobacco was over four times more expensive than the cost of Shakespeare’s First Folio. A horse cost only 10 shillings more than the First Folio.
To restrict the upwardly mobile classes from imitating the aristocracy, the English government passed laws on the right to wear particular items and fabrics of clothing. The laws mandated which colors and types of clothing, fabric, furs, and trims were allowed to people of various ranks or incomes. For example, only royalty and a distinct, distinguished people could wear the color purple.
The weekly wages for an actor were only 6 shillings, but at least it often included free food.

Featured Image: English silver shilling, James I, 1621-23; Clipped English silver shilling, Elizabeth I, 1558-1603 (British Museum). Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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Generations of asylum seekers

Like many people of Jewish ancestry of my age, I’m descended from three generations of asylum seekers. My paternal grandfather, George Polakoff, was born, according to family legend, in Brick Lane in London’s East End. His parents had fled the pogroms in Poland in the late 1800s. He married my grandmother Betty (Rivkah) Yauner, who claimed she was born on the ship coming to England but in fact was born in what is now the Ukraine, her family also leaving in flight from persecution.

My father, Herbert Wolff, came to England at the age of 8, with his older sister, on the Kindertransport, as a refugee from Nazi Germany. His parents disappeared not long after. Passenger lists show that they were put on a train from Frankfurt to Lodz, but there are no further records. It was not uncommon for the Jews in the transport to be murdered on route rather than taken to the ghetto and then to the camps. Perhaps a preferable fate.

With this family history behind me, questions of immigration are never far from my mind. I owe my existence to the generosity of the UK in taking in generations of refugees, as well as the kindness shown by one person – a wealthy unmarried Christian woman – who agreed to foster my father for a few months until his parents arrived, but as that never happened, becoming his guardian until adulthood.

I cannot know exactly why my grandparents didn’t leave Germany, unlike other family members who got out. They were not wealthy, although not poor either. My grandfather was a haberdasher’s merchant, dealing in buttons and ribbons. My grandmother had been a commercial artist. They had been loyal citizens. My grandfather fought for the Germans in the First World War, just as many members of my maternal family fought (and died) for the British. Probably they left it too late. By the time they were put on the transport to Poland they had lost everything. My grandfather could not trade, and they had moved in with another family in smaller accommodation.

Children of the “kindertransport”, statue at Liverpool Street Station, London. Image by Loco Steve. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Flickr.

Possibly the key moment in their lives was something for which they were not present, and of which possibly were never aware: the Evian Conference on 1938, to consider the situation of 400,000 Jews in Germany and 600,000 Jews in Austria who were being ‘cruelly oppressed’. The German government announced that the Jews were free to leave, and mocked other countries for their criticism of Germany’s treatment of the Jews but their refusal to offer help. A British civil servant’s report that I read in 1998, when papers were released under the 60 years rule, which unfortunately I cannot trace now, said something like: “Everyone is desperately saddened by the plight of the Jews. But the fact is that Canada is full, Australia is full, the United States has room only for a few thousand and the UK for a few hundred.” Just as now, sympathy was tempered by concern for the effects of immigration; a concern exceptionally well assessed by an editorial in the New Republic:

“[Nations] seem to believe that [immigrants] represent a net burden—as if their competition for jobs were certain to throw native citizens out of work, or as if they would otherwise have to be fed at public expense. There is a good deal of stubborn truth, under present circumstances, in this view, since the nations in question cannot keep their existing populations fully employed. Nevertheless there is no really good reason why it should be so. The worker who fears immigration because of the immigrant’s competition for jobs ought to be reassured by the reflection that for every new pair of hands to work there is at least one new mouth to feed and body to clothe, which should provide a market demand for the equivalent of what the hands can produce.”

But what should the UK and the US have done in 1938? Could they really have opened their borders to a million refugees? Possibly, for that seems to be what Germany is doing now. But it may have seemed unthinkable at the time, and when persecuted gypsies and East European Jews are added in the number of potential immigrants becomes mind-boggling.

Philosophical theories can help us think about these questions, even if, in themselves, they cannot solve them. The “cosmopolitan” position argues that we are all equally citizens of the world, and political boundaries have no moral force. Therefore, morally, anyone has the right to reside anywhere in the world. Opening borders at a time of crisis is not merely a matter of humanitarian sentiment, but of strict moral duty. On this cosmopolitan view moving from country to country should be like moving from state to state in the USA.

By contrast, the “nationalist” position regards the political community as having the right to control its own territory, including who may reside within it. After all the citizens of a country have built up the infrastructure through their efforts and taxes. Letting people in is an act of charity, and charity has its limits, tragic though the consequences of these limits may be.

In practice, ‘fear of the other’ draws many people to the nationalist view, but it can be criticised: why should the accident of where you happen to be born be so fateful for your prospects in life? But even if this argument is convincing on a moral level, in practice should we open our borders? Should the UK and US have done so in 1938, even if, as feared, it would have led to economic chaos?

No position is easy to defend. And when the problem is created by the evils of the Nazis or the horrors of Syrian civil war, it is no surprise that we struggle to find an acceptable solution. We may say that a balance must be struck. But that is to condemn hundreds of thousands of people to an uncertain fate.

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