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The Press stands firm against the French Revolution and Napoleon

By Simon Eliot

With the French Revolution creating a wave of exiles, the Press responded with a very uncharacteristic publication. This was a ‘Latin Testament of the Vulgate Translation’ for emigrant French clergy living in England after the Revolution. In 1796, the Learned (not the Bible) side of the Press issued Novum Testamentum Vulgatae Editionis: Juxta Exemplum Parisiis Editum apud Fratres Barbou. The title page went on to declare that it had been printed at the University of Oxford for the use of French clerics who were exiled in England. This edition was based, as the title makes clear, on editions published by the Barbou brothers, which had been printed at Paris from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. This particular edition had been overseen by a number of French priests ‘living in Winchester’. The reference is to the King’s House in Winchester which, until the government converted it into barracks in 1796, was home to around 600 exiled French clergy; these were later re-housed in Reading and in Thame in the Thames valley.

A total of some 4,000 copies of this edition were printed: “That 2,000 Copies of the Lat. Vulgate Testament (besides the additional 2,000 printed by order of the Marquis of Buckingham) be forwarded to the Bishop of St . Pol de Leon to be distributed under his direction … and the remainder sold at two shillings each.”

Though partly an exercise in charity, it was clearly anticipated that this New Testament might also be considered a commercial proposition. The published volume appears to be a particular form of duodecimo (strictly 12o in 6s, half-sheet imposition; the paper carried a watermarked date of ‘1794’) of 473 pages with a four-page preface by the Bishop addressed to ‘Meritissime Domine Vice-Cancellarie’, in which he expressed his gratitude to the University of Oxford for its support. At the end of the text there is a brief chronological table of New Testament events, followed by an ‘Index Geographicus’. A final unnumbered leaf carries a list of errata (29 in all) which reflected a rather different approach to that adopted by the Bible Side of the Press when issuing its editions of the King James Version of the New Testament. The latter were subjected to rigorous proof reading and re-reading in order to ensure that the word of God was as free from errors as was humanly possible. This edition of a Latin text, produced in extraordinary circumstances for the consumption of mostly foreign readers, was clearly a very different kettle of fish. Additionally, in printing this edition on the Learned Side rather than the Bible Side of the Press, the Delegates culturally quarantined the production of the Vulgate text and avoided any political or religious problems that might have arisen had the privileged side of the Press undertaken it. That the very peculiar and extreme circumstances which produced this anomaly were not to be repeated was made clear 99 year later when, it having been suggested in 1895 that the Press should produce a Roman Catholic Bible, the Delegates responded that they did not ‘think it desirable that such a work should be issued with the University Press Imprint’.

Later, as the threat from Napoleonic France increased, the Press recorded certain exceptional payments in its annual accounts. These accounts included many forms of overhead costs, some a constant feature of the Press’s outgoings, such as the cost of coals and firewood (£10.17.6 in 1800) or ‘taxes to Magdalen Parish’ (£8.16.0 in the same year). Others were temporary and related to the troubled times in which they were paid. The 1805-6 accounts list the payment of a ‘Militia Tax’ of 8s6d, which went up to 17s4d in the following year. Having missed the subsequent year, the Press paid two militia rates in 1808-9 amounting to £2-7-8. In 1812-3 the rate was £1-6-0, dropping to 13s in 1813-4 before vanishing from the accounts as the threat represented by Napoleon disappeared after the battle of Waterloo.

Simon Eliot is Professor of the History of the Book in the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. He is general editor of The History of Oxford University Press, and editor of its Volume II 1780-1896.

With access to extensive archives, The History of Oxford University Press is the first complete scholarly history of the Press, detailing its organization, publications, trade, and international development. Read previous blog posts about the history of Oxford University Press.

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Image credit: A Vulgate New Testament printed for the use of exiled French clergy, 1796. (Bodleian, N.T.Lat. 1796 f.2, 159 x 96mm). From the History of Oxford University Press. Courtesy of OUP Archives. Do not reproduce without permission.

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                Related StoriesWhat price books?TerrorFamily photos and the spectre of global leadership 

Terror

By Yair Amichai-Hamburger

On the Internet, terrorists can find a wide-open playground for particularly sophisticated violence. I have no doubt that the people at the US Department of Defense, when they brought about the inception of the Internet, never thought in their worst nightmares that come 2013, every terrorist splinter group would boast a website and that all the advantages of the Internet would be at the service of terrorists for organizing, planning, and executing their attacks on innocent people.

The Internet helps terror groups in a variety of activities: recruiting members, establishing communication, attaining publicity, and raising funds. Terror organizations direct their messages to their various audiences over the net with great sophistication. The primary audience is the central core of activists, who use the website as a platform for information about various activities. Messages are disguised by pre-agreed codes, and if you’re unfamiliar with the codes, you won’t understand what’s being talked about.

By means of such encoded messages, a global network of terror can operate with great efficiency. It can manage its affairs like an international corporation: the leader passes instructions to various operations officers around the world, and they pass instructions onward to their subordinates. Using the Internet for information transfer, the organization can create a compartmentalized network of activists who cannot identify one another. Even if one cell is exposed, the damage to the overall network is minimal. Ironically, that survivability was exactly the factor that guided the US Department of Defense when it set up the Internet in anticipation of a doomsday scenario.

The second audience that the terror websites speak to is the general community of supporters. Messages for them are open, not disguised, and the operational side is toned down a little. At the site for the general public, the focus is on negative messages regarding the terror organization’s target, and on legitimizing attacks against it without going into specifics. The site presents history in a way that suits its agenda, and often it tries to attract legitimate contributions for its activities by concealing them behind various charitable fronts.

Some of these sites sell souvenirs with the terror organization’s logo, as if it were a sports team. Thus fans can buy scarves or shirts that give them a strengthened sense of identification with the terror organization. The site allows visitors to join discussions, and in some cases it also tries to attract people from the community of true believers into the community of activists. Of course such a process is undertaken with much caution in order that spies not infiltrate the organization. When new volunteers are recruited, there is a great advantage to enlisting people who don’t fit the terrorist stereotype, since such people can serve as couriers without immediately arousing suspicion. On the other hand, the less the new volunteer belongs to the community from which the terror organization sprang, or resembles a member of that community, the greater the suspicion of untrustworthiness. So such a new volunteer will be performing under close watch, or will be assigned to a one-time task that is to end in the grave.

The third audience is the group to be terrorized. In addressing this group, the organization has the objective of arousing fear, and it publicizes its terror operations in order to “win” the audience to the idea that each of them, including their family and closest friends, is likely to be the next terror victim. This baleful message is accompanied by an ultimatum to the audience: if all its demands are not met, the terror organization will make good on all its threats. The terror organization will try to show that because it’s fighting for absolute justice and has no mercy as it makes its way to that goal, it’s unstoppable. It immortalizes its terrorism in well-concocted documentary films that portray successes among its deadly operations, and by documenting executions performed on camera.

Examining the way that terror organizations address their audiences over various channels, we can see that most terror organizations deploy a rather impressive public-relations corps. Many terror organizations, not satisfied with a website alone, expand onto social networks and use other net-based avenues such as e-mail, chats, and forums.

The language of terror is quite interesting. Terrorists lay all the blame on the other party, which they label the aggressor while they present themselves as the real victims who speak in the name of human rights and who champion the oppressed. Take for example the international terror organizations. They explain that terror is the only method they have for striking back defensively at the imperialist aggressor. The terror organizations delegitimize their opponents and describe their enemy as the ultimate aggressor, a perpetrator of criminal actions such as genocide, slaughter, and massacres. Sometimes the fight is considered part of a continuing religious war and the messages bear a religious aura. For instance, a jihad with the prophet Muhammad as the commander in chief, in charge of the courageous legions that the organization represents.

Terror organizations tend to describe their murderous activities as self-defense by a persecuted underdog. They ignore the human side of their victims and use the psychological tool of dehumanization against the opponent, defining it as a group that has no human face. Thus for example, after the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, the Al Qaeda organization completely ignored the thousands of murdered people and chose to focus on the indignities that the capitalist Americans had wreaked, and were continuing to wreak, and on the importance of the Twin Towers as a symbol of the western world’s decadence.

Yair Amichai-Hamburger is Director of The Research Center for Internet Psychology, Israel, and author of The Social Net: Understanding our online behavior. This article originally appeared as part of a series on Psychology Today.

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Image credit: Fingers on a keyboard, via iStockphoto.

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Proving Polybius wrong about elephants

By Adam L. Brandt and Alfred L. Roca

Do conservation genetics and ancient Greek history ever cross paths? Recently, a genetic study of a remnant population of elephants in Eritrea has also addressed an ancient mystery surrounding a battle in the Hellenistic world. After Alexander the Great died unexpectedly in 323 BC, his generals divided his territory, founding several empires. Their successors ended up fighting each other during the next few centuries, often using elephants to intimidate the enemy and disrupt military formations. The Seleucids, heirs to the lands neighboring India, traded treasure and territory for access to Indian war elephants. They fought the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, seeking control of the lands between the two empires during the Syrian Wars. The Ptolemaic pharaohs, desperate for their own pachydermal tanks, established outposts in what is today the country of Eritrea, to capture African elephants for warfare.

Elephants from the two continents were put to the test at the Battle of Raphia in 217 BC, between Antiochus III and Ptolemy IV Philopater. In The Histories, which includes the only known account of African and Asian elephants meeting in warfare, the Greek historian Polybius described the resulting fiasco:

“Most of Ptolemy’s elephants, however, declined the combat, as is the habit of African elephants; for unable to stand the smell and the trumpeting of the Indian elephants, and terrified, I suppose, also by their great size and strength, they at once turn tail and take to flight before they get near them. This is what happened on the present occasion; when Ptolemy’s elephants were thus thrown into confusion and driven back on their own lines.”

As every school child knows, Asian elephants are smaller than African elephants. So why did Polybius get this wrong?  One British writer, perhaps unconsciously affected by the corporal punishments meted out by Classics teachers to disruptive students at English schools, decided that Polybius must after all be correct. He pointed out that, although African savanna elephants are larger than Asian elephants, there is a different species of elephant that lives in the tropical forests of Africa, and which is smaller in size than the Asian elephant. Thus began the tale that the war elephants of the pharaohs were actually African forest elephants, ignoring the thousands of kilometers that separate the range of forest elephants from places where the Egyptians captured their war elephants. This tale was then perpetuated by subsequent authors, each citing authors before as definitive sources.

A savanna elephant in Kruger National Park, South Africa

In a recent conservation genetics study, we examined the elephants of Eritrea, the descendants of the population that was the source of Egyptian war elephants. Eritrea currently has the northernmost population of elephants in eastern Africa. Perhaps one or two hundred elephants persist there, in isolated and fragmented habitat. Using DNA isolated from non-invasively collected dung samples we examined three different genetic markers. First we looked at slow-evolving nuclear gene sequences in the Eritrean elephants. In every case the sites always had the same sequence found in hundreds of savanna elephants, and in no case did we ever get a match to sequences found across all forest elephants. This established that Eritrean elephants were savanna elephants.

When we then looked at very fast evolving regions of the nuclear genome, the Eritrean elephants proved to be a close match to savanna elephants in East Africa, and again were genetically unlike forest elephants. Finally, we looked at mitochondrial DNA, which often has a different pattern than other genetic markers in elephants. Mitochondrial DNA is transmitted only by females, and these females do not geographically disperse away from the natal heard. Very often, one can infer a signal of ancient genetic events that persist only in the pattern of the mitochondrial DNA. Yet in this case, the mitochondrial DNA agreed with the nuclear results: these were savanna elephants, and there was not the slightest trace of any ancient forest elephant presence in Eritrea.

Given this result, why did Polybius claim that the Asian elephants were larger than African elephants? It turns out that in the ancient world there was a legend that, due to the wet climate, animals were always larger in India than they were elsewhere. This legend was widespread among authors before and after Polybius. Go back and look at the way the translation of the Polybius text is worded. Even in translation, it is evident that Polybius has interjecting his own beliefs onto the account, and not recounting an actual observation.

Our genetic study indicated that the isolated population of elephants in Eritrea has low genetic diversity. Habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict are major concerns for conservation of this population, which luckily has not yet been impacted by China’s lust for illegal ivory. Increasing and protecting suitable habitat for their long-term survival is critical, and in the very long run it may become possible to create habitat corridors to other surviving but distant populations. Luckily, the government of Eritrea is committed to protecting the country’s natural environment, and has recently reported an increase in the range and number of elephants.

Adam L. Brandt is a PhD candidate, and Alfred L. Roca is an Assistant Professor, in the Department of Animal Sciences of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They are the authors of the paper ‘The elephants of Gash-Barka, Eritrea: Nuclear and mitochondrial genetic patterns‘ published in Journal of Heredity.

The Journal of Heredity covers organismal genetics: conservation genetics of endangered species, population structure and phylogeography, molecular evolution and speciation, molecular genetics of disease resistance in plants and animals, genetic biodiversity and relevant computer programs.

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Image credit: Savanna elephant in Kruger National Park, South Africa. By Felix Andrews (CC-BY-SA-3.0) via Wikimedia Commons.

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Dirty South hip hop and societal ills in the former Confederacy

Dirty South hip hop refers to a gritty rap culture first developed in the southern United States during the 1980s and the 1990s. Goodie Mob, an eccentric quartet from Atlanta, Georgia, titled a 1995 single “Dirty South” in order to shed light on myriad societal ills in the former Confederacy, where ethnic prejudice and racism seemed to be perennial sicknesses. Today the term is used to describe not only everyday life in Dixieland, but also an array of risqué artists, lyrics, clothes, and other fashion items that originated there. And even though some might say that dirty South hip hop, as a synthesis of global rap influences and aesthetics, lacks distinction, the emergence of Atlanta and other major Southern cities as recognized headquarters of urban popular culture has compelled many critics and fans to describe the phenomenon as unique. The following playlist, courtesy of Oxford African American Studies Center contributor Bertis English (Alabama State University), provides a wide-ranging selection of the most significant artists working in the genre.

Bertis English is an Associate Professor of History at Alabama State University. He has written about Atlanta’s unique contribution to hip hop on the Oxford African American Studies Center.

The Oxford African American Studies Center combines the authority of carefully edited reference works with sophisticated technology to create the most comprehensive collection of scholarship available online to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. The Oxford African American Studies Center is free for Black History Month. Simply use Username: blackhistorymonth and Password: onlineaccess to log in.

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Monthly gleanings for February 2014

By Anatoly Liberman

I am impressed.


Not long ago I asked two riddles. Who coined the phrase indefatigable assiduity and who said that inspiration does not come to the indolent? The phrase with assiduity turns up on the Internet at once (it occurs in the first chapter of The Pickwick Papers), but John Cowan pointed out that Dickens may have used (parodied?) a popular cliché of that time. I believed that the phrase was his invention. Apparently, it was not. But the second riddle seemed insoluble to me. Here I was also mistaken. Only the god Odin (about whom more “anon”) knew the riddle that no one could answer. Yes, indeed, it was Tchaikovsky who said so (in Russian: “Vdokhnoven’e—gost’ia, kotoraia ne iavliaetsia k lenivym”). My second source of surprise was Stephen Goranson’s comment. In the same post, I mentioned two reviews of Talbot’s book English Etymologies. As a matter of fact, I knew three but forgot about the third. I culled the reviews from Arnold’s biography of Talbot and from Arthur G. Kennedy’ bibliography of writings on the English language. However, Goranson discovered a bunch of other reviews. Although I am used to getting all kinds of recondite information from him, I was impressed. For years my humble wish has been to find an antedating for the OED and an item missed by Kennedy. So far I have succeeded only in the second endeavor (but even that only because he did not screen the myriad tiny publications and fugitive journals I used for my work). With Goranson such miracles happen every day. I dare not ask how he manages to do it.

An old debt.


In my January gleanings, I promised to return to the mail I received after my latest talk show on Minnesota Public Radio. The theme was buzzwords and hackneyed phrases. I have already had a chance to note that very many people are disgusted with the gratuitous use of important sounding clichés, meaningless adverbs, and silly circumlocutions. Yet the world does not heed their disgust. Here is a short list of the words and phrases the listeners despise: kick the can down the road (politicians have indeed almost kicked this battered can to its ultimate destination), no boots on the ground (a colorful phrase, but if you rub it in ten times a day, the color loses its luster), ratchet up (for instance, the pressure; I agree: just as people have substituted morph for change, impact for influence, and utilize for use, they have discarded increase ~ decrease and constantly ratchet things up and down—a technical term has broken loose like a tiger from a Zoo in India and spares no one on its way), granular (that is, “detailed”; a tasteless metaphor no one needs), cascading “arranged in a sequence” (a pretentious, florid metaphor), conscience laundering (when a guilt-ridden wealthy person makes a charitable investment; the reference and the irony are obvious, and the phrase may perhaps be allowed to survive as an insipid joke unless those who like to kick the can down the road decide to love it to death), folks (when people in high positions strike a “folksy” attitude but end up sounding condescending), the horrible word selfie (this one will, most likely, lose its charm with age), suspicious blends like sharknado, and the much-denigrated but indestructible adverb literally. “It is what it is” (another phrase one of our listeners hates).

Below I will quote part of a letter I received:

“I wanted to ask your opinion concerning a new turn of phrase I’ve been hearing much used by radio and television reporters. It is an existential threat. I can’t hear the phrase without thinking of adversaries throwing remaindered copies of Sartre and Camus at each other and I run for a dictionary to steady myself and remind myself of what existential means. This use, paired always with threat, seems very odd to me. Can you explain it to me?”

I have heard this phrase so many times that I am no longer afraid. Existential threat is obviously a threat to (our) existence. It seems to be a typical felicity of speech invented by journalists, who always try to say something striking and memorable. Danger or even great danger may not frighten you enough, but existential threat is sure to send shivers up or rather down your spine.

Back to Medieval Scandinavia

1. Does balderdash have anything to do with the name of the god Baldr (usually written as Balder in English)? No, it does not. Balder was the most beautiful god of them all, but fate decreed that he should be killed. His death showed that the gods were not immortal, and everything they tried to do after the heinous murder of their favorite went wrong. Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a post on balderdash (15 February 2012). There more can be found about this enigmatic word.

2. The tree Yggdrasill. A question about this name was sent by a well-informed reader. I know both sources he mentioned. The exact meaning of Yggdrasill is debatable. At some time, speakers understood it as a synonym for the world tree, but Yggdrasill seems to have been the most ancient name of Odin: ygg- “fear, terror” and -drasill “horse.” There is good reason to believe that at a very early stage in his career Odin was thought of as a horse god (not a protector of horses but a theriomorphic deity, half-horse, half-man, a centaur-like creature). If our correspondent is interested in details, he will find a detailed discussion of this myth and the name in my article published in the periodical NOWELE (= North-Western European Language Evolution) 62, 2011, 351-430. The root of drasill is dras, so that dra- cannot be abstracted from it. The word has no Baltic or Finno-Ugric cognates.

Ketchup.


Is this a Malayan word? Since A Bibliography of English Etymology does not grace the shelves of every public library, here are the relevant titles borrowed from it. Several publications appeared in Notes and Queries: vol. 1, 1849-50, p. 124; Series 4/IX, p. 279, Series7 /V, 1888, 475-476, and 7/VI, p.12 (the latter by Skeat; the older issues of this periodical are available online); The Babylonian & Oriental Record, vol. 3, 1889, 284-286; The Academy, vol. 36, 1889, pp. 358-359; and Manchester (City News) Notes and Queries, vol.7, 1890, No. 3, p.42. The OED states that the word is Chinese. But while dealing with the vocabulary current in that area and borrowed into English, linguists often have trouble deciding which language is the source of the English word. The article by Anthea Fraser Gupta “English Words from the Malay World” (Notes and Queries, vol. 253, 2008, 357-360) deals with this question in considerable detail. Ketchup is not mentioned in it.

The origin of bind “complain” (slang).


I do not know its origin and have not read anything about it. This sense of the verb bind seems to have originated in England, among pilots, so it is a RAF word (like gremlin, discussed in this blog not long ago). Since initially it could be used transitively (to bind someone), the development may have been from “fasten” (suggesting that one is in a bind and needs help?) and then “keep nagging and thus tie oneself to the other party; complain.” But without records of those intermediate steps, this is unprofitable guesswork. Since bitch “complain” had already existed by the early forties, bitching and binding, an alliterative phrase, naturally suggested itself. Perhaps specialists in slang among our correspondents are in a position to offer help, and, if I may again paraphrase The Pickwick Papers, provide us with the first ray of light which will illuminate the gloom and convert into a dazzling brilliance the obscurity in which the history of bind is now enveloped.

Here is Mrs. Gummidge, the world-famous specialist in bickering and binding

Why are there dialects in which got and hot do not rhyme?


While discussing horse and hoarse, I noted that one can often find a conservative or an advanced dialect in which the pronunciation differs from the Standard. Hot and got go back to dissimilar forms. The Old English for hot was hat, with long a (as in Modern Engl. father or spa). Conversely, got has always had short o. In Middle English, long a changed to long o (approximately as in Modern Engl. law or more), and one could expect Modern Engl. hote. Modern o in hot is believed to have been borrowed from the comparative and the superlative degree (hotter, hottest), in which long o was shortened. This is how the vowels of hot and got merged. But in such situations some dialects may prefer to obstruct the merger and keep the actors (vowels or consonants) apart. Therefore, we have areas in which the reflexes of shortened long o and the original short o still differ.

Chance coincidences.


In one of the letters I received, our correspondent asks whether certain relations between and among the words he detected might be real. For example, can grig, creek, and eel be cognates? Could ci-, the first syllable of Italian ciba “food,” be related to the syllable gi-, the beginning of the word for “earth,” and so forth? Yes, they could, but they are not. Similar ideas occurred to many people since at least Plato’s time, but especially in the Middle Ages. Sound symbolism and later associations often lead us astray. Every word has a history, and without knowing it, no etymology will achieve convincing results. Even Latin luna and Engl. moon are unrelated.

A few more questions will have to wait until the end of March. Here I would like to thank all those who direct my attention to various websites, whether dealing with word origins or Talbot’s achievements in photography. I follow every tip, and nothing our correspondents suggest is wasted, even if I do not always use their material in my posts.

Anatoly Liberman is the author of Word Origins And How We Know Them as well as An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears on the OUPblog each Wednesday. Send your etymology question to him care of blog@oup.com; he’ll do his best to avoid responding with “origin unknown.” Subscribe to Anatoly Liberman’s weekly etymology articles via email or RSS.

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Image credit: THE POLITICAL MRS. GUMMIDGE. (The finished Sketch by Sir John Tenniel for the “Punch” Cartoon, 2nd May, 1885. By Permission of Gilbert E. Samuel, Esq.) via Project Gutenberg.

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Interpreting theories in international relations

The basic problem for anyone wanting to understand contemporary world politics is the amount of material that is out there. Where on earth would you start if you wanted to explain the most important political processes? How, for example, would you explain the reasons behind 9/11, the War in Iraq, the recent global financial crisis, or the ongoing Syrian Civil War?

Whether you are aware of it or not, whenever you are faced with such issues, you have to resort to theories. A theory is not just a formal model with hypotheses and assumptions, rather, it is a kind of simplifying device that allows you to decide what the most important factors are.

Students often feel that the theoretical side of international relations is daunting, but think of it this way: imagine you own several pairs of sunglasses with different-coloured lenses. Put on the red pair and the world looks red, put on a yellow pair and it looks yellow. The world is not any different, it just looks different. So it is with theories.

In the following video, Professor Sir Steve Smith, author of The Globalization of World Politics, discuss different theories behind the Syrian Civil War, how to interpret them, and how they are important.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sir Steve Smith is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Exeter. He was President of Universities UK from 2009 to 2011, and President of the International Studies Association for 2003-4. He is Editor of International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity (with Tim Dunne and Milja Kurk) and Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases (with Tim Dunne and Amelia Hadfield), as well as author of many academic papers and chapters in major international journals and edited collections.

Trusted by over 300,000 students in over 120 countries, The Globalization of World Politics is the most authoritative and complete introduction to international relations available, making it the go-to text for students of international relations. You can view more related videos at the Online Resource Centre.

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                Related StoriesDid Russia really spend ‘$50 billion’ on the Sochi Olympics?Family photos and the spectre of global leadershipThe world’s revolutions 

Did Russia really spend ‘$50 billion’ on the Sochi Olympics?

By Michael Alexeev and Shlomo Weber

Much of the world watched the Winter Olympics in Sochi. While most people are primarily interested in the athletic achievements, the fact that the Games are taking place in Russia has also brought the Russian political system, economy, human rights, etc., into focus, inadvertently highlighting the interaction of the still pervasive Soviet legacy and the momentous changes since the collapse of the USSR.

Presumably the intended message of the Games is, as the Economist put it, “Russia is back.” The question, however, is back to what? Is it back simply in terms of playing a major role on the international stage or also back to the Soviet ways of doing things such as creating Potemkin villages and making wasteful investments that foster corruption?

One of the major themes in the media coverage on the eve of the Games was the cost of construction. The commonly cited number of approximately $50 billion would make the Sochi Olympics the most expensive Games ever. According to the Washington Post, this number has appeared in almost 2000 news accounts last year, yet it almost certainly misrepresents the true cost of the Games. It is based on a year-old statement by Dmitry Kozak, a deputy prime minister in charge of preparation for the Games, and it includes both the state budget expenditures of about $23 billion and private investments by Olympic sponsors, although some of these sponsors appear to have been pressured by the government to invest.

Moreover, on closer inspection, some of the “private” investments have been actually made by state-owned or state-controlled corporations such as the Russian Railways and Gazprom. Much of the funds have been spent on improving general infrastructure and it is unclear what part of this investment would have been made in the absence of the Games. The Russian government argues that the investments in infrastructure and at least some of the Olympic facilities have turned Sochi into a much more attractive resort for Russian vacationers and would replace foreign resort destinations for the Russian middle class. At the same time, the number provided by Kozak a year ago probably underestimates the actual expenditures as such large projects typically exceed their projected costs.

Like most large investment projects in Russia, the Olympics probably involved a substantial amount of corruption and fraud which are in part responsible for the high price tag. A report co-authored by the former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, a long-time critic of President Vladimir Putin, claimed that “between $25bn and $30bn have been stolen” from the funds invested in the Olympics. While Russian officials strongly deny the presence of widespread fraud in the Olympic construction projects, Nemtsov’s numbers are roughly in line with the estimates from a survey conducted by Mark J. Levin and Georgy A. Satarov, which found that bribe revenue in Russia amounted to about 50% of GDP in 2005. Of course, “bribe revenue” could involve some double counting because lower level officials may share bribes with their higher-ups, but at the same time construction projects represent notoriously fertile soil for corruption.

Whatever one thinks of the reliability of the investment or, for that matter, corruption numbers cited above, it is clear that public and private investments engendered by the Games have been substantial. Let’s put the $50 billion number into perspective: this sum represents about 2.5% of the Russian 2013 GDP. While rating agency Fitch says that this amount is too small to produce a significant impact on the state budget, this percentage is close to one half of approximately 5.5% of GDP of the United States post-2008 recession stimulus under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

This investment could help increase the size of the service sector, particularly tourism, in the Russian economy that continues to be highly dependent on oil and gas rents. While the diversification effect on the economy is likely to be relatively small, the impact on Krasnodar region that includes Sochi and the rest of the Russian Black Sea shoreline, as well as most of the Azov Sea shoreline, could be substantial. The new hotels could accommodate a three-fold increase in the number of tourists visiting the Sochi region. Perhaps the investment in residential housing and infrastructure could even facilitate, at least on the margin, relocation of some of the Russian population from the Northern parts of the country — a relocation that is needed but has not been proceeding at sufficiently fast pace.

Initially, the prospect of the Games hinted at a macroeconomic stimulus for Russia. Indeed, the Krasnodar region has been growing at roughly twice the rate of the rest of the economy since the Games were awarded to Russia in 2007. But the stimulating effect on the overall economy is hard to discern. Russia’s economic growth slowed down considerably in 2013, as was predicted by Revold Entov and Oleg Lugovoy, and in the last half of the year, the growth stalled almost completely, despite some recovery in much of the world. Moreover, the seasonally adjusted January index of manufacturing activity in Russia released on February 17 dropped to 48.0 — the lowest level since the 2009 crisis and almost a full point lower than an already weak level of December 2013.

As with most large projects, the effects of the Olympic Games on the Russian economy appear to be ambiguous and demonstrate both the new-found economic prowess of the country and the old ills of corruption and inefficiencies of the state involvement in the economy. Perhaps the best thing to do is to leave the more detailed analysis of these issues to some future date and for now simply enjoy the recent memories of Olympic competition and pageantry.

Michael Alexeev and Shlomo Weber are the co-editors of The Oxford Handbook of the Russian Economy. Michael Alexeev is a Professor of Economics at Indiana University in Bloomington. Shlomo Weber is the Robert H. and Nancy Dedman Trustee Professor of Economics at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and PINE Foundation Professor of Economics at the New Economic School of Moscow.

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Image credit: “Sochi Olympic Park Architecture” by Alex1983. Public domain via pixabay.

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The great Oxford World’s Classics debate

By Kirsty Doole

Last week the Oxford World’s Classics team were at Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford to witness the first Oxford World’s Classics debate. Over three days we invited seven academics who had each edited and written introductions and notes for books in the series to give a short, free talk in the shop. This then culminated in an evening event in Blackwell’s famous Norrington Room where we held a balloon debated, chaired by writer and academic Alexandra Harris.

For those unfamiliar with balloon debates, this is the premise: the seven books, represented by their editors, are in a hot air balloon, and the balloon is going down fast. In a bid to climb back up, we’re going to have to throw some books out of the balloon… but which ones? Each editor spoke for five minutes in passionate defence of their titles before the audience voted. The bottom three books were then “thrown overboard”. The remaining four speakers had another three minutes each to further convince the audience, before the final vote was taken.

The seven books in our metaphorical balloon were:

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (represented by Dinah Birch)


Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (represented by Helen Small)


Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (represented by Roger Luckhurst)


A Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh (represented by Kathryn Sutherland)


The Poetic Edda (represented by Carolyne Larrington)


Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (represented by Fiona Stafford)


The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (represented by Lesley Brown)

So who was saved? Find out in our slideshow of pictures from the event below:




The speakers
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All seven speakers plus chair, Alexandra Harris, prepare for the debate.

Alexandra Harris
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Writer and academic Alexandra Harris chaired the event.

A selection of OWCs
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Just a few of the OWCs on sale during the event.

Dinah Birch on Cranford
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Professor Dinah Birch defends Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Helen Small on Wuthering Heights
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Professor Helen Small makes a plea to the audience to save Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

Roger Luckhurst on Jekyll and Hyde
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Professor Roger Luckhurst makes the case for saving the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Kathryn Sutherland on A Memoir of Jane Austen
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Professor Kathryn Sutherland argues in favour of saving A Memoir of Jane Austen by her nephew, J. E. Austen-Leigh.

Austen with meat cleaver
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Kathryn Sutherland tries to boost her cause by bringing this mascot: Jane Austen holding a meat cleaver.

OWCs on the shelves
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Look at all our beautiful books!

Carolyne Larrington on The Poetic Edda
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Doing her bit for Old Norse, Dr Carolyne Larrington represents The Poetic Edda.

Fiona Stafford on Pride and Prejudice
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Would Professor Fiona Stafford succeed in saving Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice?

Lesley Brown on The Nicomachean Ethics
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In the face of stiff literary competition, Lesley Brown strikes a blow for philosophy with a passionate defence of Aristotle's The Nicomachean Ethics.

Joint winner! The Poetic Edda
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At the end of the debate we actually had a tie. Joint winners were The Poetic Edda and...

Joint winner! The Nicomachean Ethics
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...The Nicomachean Ethics! Well done Carolyne and Lesley!

Kirsty Doole is Publicity Manager for Oxford World’s Classics.

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics on Twitter, Facebook, or here on the OUPblog. Subscribe to only Oxford World’s Classics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

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Image credits: All photos by Kirsty Doole

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Family photos and the spectre of global leadership

By Michael Foley

The ‘family photograph’ is the visual climax of each G8 summit. Each is designed to portray world leaders earnestly engaged with global problems on behalf of a presumptive international constituency. These pictures have a high symbolic value in that they are designed not only to demonstrate that individual leaders can operate in conjunction with one another but also to infer the existence of an upward trajectory of global governance. These high profile meetings are choreographed to affirm the centrality of leadership in responding to global challenges and establishing agendas for co-ordinated action. In offering a host of symbolic and substantive points of appeal, the G8 summits project the image of an apparent cumulative agency which is exemplified in each gathering’s visual point of culmination — i.e. the singularly suggestive moment of world leaders set in close formation facing in the same direction and evoking a sense of concerted international leadership.

Leaders of the G8, accompanied by leaders of the EU, gather for the family photo at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland, 18 June 2013. Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via G8 UK Presidency Flickr.

However, beneath the synoptic impression lies the basis of a quite contrary outlook in respect to both the meaning that can be ascribed to these gatherings and the dynamics that propel the collective attendance of world leaders. It can be argued that the G8’s rationale of compounded leadership (i.e. assemblages of leaders from leading countries) operates to underline the organization’s intrinsic limitations as a definitive showcase of global governance. This is not to claim that the generic properties of global governance amount to a false prospectus, nor to diminish the effect of those achievements associated with specific advances at this level of organizational development. Nevertheless, when it comes to the heavily weighted emphasis upon leadership centrality that is the signature feature of the G8’s rationale, considerable doubts are raised over the authenticity of its symbolism and the motivations of its participants. Two interpretive strands in particular can assist in disclosing some of the interior tensions that afflict the G8’s projected logic.

First is the conjunction of different logics at work within the same context. In forming a high profile elite with an avowed sense of collaborative action, the G8 leaders cannot avoid providing a material display of the very attachments that routinely militate against the generation of effective international action. At one level, it might be argued that the power resources of these leaders are the essential precursors to the formation of global agendas. But at another level, the G8 can equally be regarded as an epiphenomenon of an international order built upon the established interests of its sovereign nation states — more especially the priorities of the leading powers which confer a preeminent value upon the condition of stability. Thus, G8 leaders inhabit two personas at the same time. Their primary task is to manage the inherent dualism in ways that offer the semblance of a constructive enterprise without compromising their core roles as national leaders — or in the case of the EU representatives their regional focus.

Unsurprisingly this situation fosters a distinctly bi-polar outlook not only amongst the participating principals but also on the part of the G8’s global audiences. Ironically, the positional and reputational value that is routinely ascribed to the idea of leadership in contemporary politics has merely exacerbated the problematic aspects of the situation. Put simply, the growth of global governance bodies has coincided with a systemic trend within states that has been marked by a shift towards a highly developed politics of competitive leadership. While some of its stylistic features have influenced the staging of G8 summits, other elements of its modus operandi are incompatible with an international medium.

The substance of this second strand can best be conveyed by one of the most influential developments in the promotion of leadership value at the national level and in particular within the advanced democracies. What has become known as ‘public leadership’ refers to the way that political leaders now habitually seek to enhance their status and leverage by cultivating a direct relationship between themselves and the concerns of a wider public constituency. In order to compensate for a growing number of structural weaknesses in their traditional and institutional bases, leaders now work to develop direct channels of communication to electorates and continuous displays of public outreach on an ever-widening array of issues. These strategies are designed both to circumvent — and even marginalise — other power centres and to generate alternative resources to strengthen the position of leaders in the formation of public opinion and policy agendas.

Apart from the momentary surge of publicity at G8 summits, individual leaders have few incentives to invest their limited resources with too close an affinity with such a body. They find that the G8 is simply not susceptible to the strategic and operational modes of public leadership. For example, public leadership is strongly associated with the personalised cultivation of alternative political spaces rather than with collaborative exercises within governance structures. Its leadership style emphasises high responsiveness and specific interventionism over long term consensus building. Public leadership also promotes dissenting attitudes and populist undercurrents which are difficult to transpose to an international setting. Finally while this kind of leadership may be adept at such key mobilising skills as the deployment of master narratives and the affirmation of identities, these techniques offer little traction in multiple leader contexts where unifying stories and cross-cultural identities are thin on the ground. Far from offering a wellspring of leadership resources, therefore, an international organization like the G8 can pose serious risks to the customised networks, idiosyncratic positioning and nuanced public profiles of its participating leaders.

As the gallery of G8 summit photos lengthens, and the indictments of lack of delivery and leadership failure become commonplace, serious questions are raised as to whether the regularity of these leadership conclaves indicates the presence of a genuinely evolutionary progression in global governance. It seems more likely that any substantive advance towards a transformative leadership will emanate through a punctuated equilibrium driven by the accelerants of sustained crisis and managed by alternative locations of agency such as city states and transnational coalitions.

Michael Foley teaches at the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University and author of Political Leadership: Themes, Contexts, and Critiques. He has published widely, including an acclaimed study of the US Senate and an extensive examination of the cultural influence of Newtonian mechanics upon American politics. He has developed a wide portfolio of interests that include the British politics, leadership studies, constitutional development, foreign policy, international relations, the devices of populism and the role of ideas in political engagement. Work in the latter category resulted in the publication of American Credo: The Place of Ideas in US Politics (Oxford University Press 2007). He is also conducting research into (i) the dynamics of contemporary populism; (ii) the role of new media technologies as a medium of political activity; and (iii) the issue of prime ministerial power in the UK system. He is currently joint editor of International Relations.

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Hey everybody! Meet Julia!

With our blog audience growing, so is our team! Julia Callaway joined the OUPblog family in November 2013 as our New York-based Deputy Editor and Social Media Coordinator here at Oxford University Press. Although she is new to the blog team and the New York office, she has has been at Oxford University Press based in the UK for the last three years. You can find her blogging at Oxford Academic, tweeting at @OUPAcademic, and in her free time she occasionally blogs at OxfordWords blog. In her pre-OUP life, she could be found in Paris, gorging on French cheese and delectable pastries (and teaching English).

When did you start working at OUP?

I started in the Oxford office as an Intern in Children’s Publicity just over three years ago, and about six months later I got my first full-time position, as a Marketing Assistant on the Institutional Marketing team. I transferred to the New York office this past November to do my current job.

What was your first job in publishing?

I lived in Paris for a year after college and I translated recipes for French Grazia Magazine. I have no idea if they were published or not.

What weird things do you have in your desk drawer?

Something that looks like a pack of gum, but when you take the stick of gum out it snaps your finger, courtesy of a certain Content Development Editor in the UK who convinced me he was just being generous.

What was your first blog post ever?

“Hella ridic new words to make you lolz” – the first blog post I wrote was on behalf of Oxford Dictionaries, to promote the quarterly dictionary update in August 2012. The first post I wrote under my own name was “L’anglais c’est super cool!,” and it still has the embarrassing comments from my parents’ friends in the comments section.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Los Angeles but moved to Oxford when I was 13, and I’ve pretty much been going back and forth between the two ever since.

What is the strangest thing currently on or in your desk?

Right after I transferred to the New York office, I got a package in the mail from my former colleagues in the UK with the most random assortment of things from around my old office. So, I have a star shaped slinky, a green polka-dot ribbon, a dried chili pepper, a strawberry-flavored lollipop, a plastic fork, a coin from Iran, a pack of half-eaten mints that say “Unite the Union”, a British penny, and two napkins from the coffee bar in the UK office.

What is your favorite word?

Borborygmus! And the plural: borborygmi. Great words.

What’s the funniest thing that ever happened to you at OUP?

There was a big snowman in the OUP quad last winter, and late one night, a friend and I went back to pick up our bikes. I turned around and he had picked up the entire 4-foot snowman from the base. And then he threw the whole thing at me.

What’s the most surprising thing you’ve found about working at OUP?

At the beginning I was surprised by how much of publishing is digital, and how between my internship and now, I never had anything to do with books. I’m also constantly surprised by how often people think “working in publishing” means either writing books (no I’m not an author) or printing books (I’m not a printer either).

What was the least?

The least surprising thing I’ve found working at OUP New York – the office is very far removed from the University and town. The Press’s almost-500 year old history is hard to fathom when we’re surrounded by the chaos that is Madison Avenue, and not by the Colleges and University buildings of Oxford.

Open the book you’re currently reading and turn to page 75. Tell us the title of the book, and the third sentence on that page.

“I have not been thinking of myself as a doctor, but as a man of science simply proving that an idiot is an idiot.”

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (Courtesy of a UK-based Senior Marketing Executive who gave it to me for my birthday. Thanks!)

What’s your most obscure talent?

I can lick my elbow. No, it’s not impossible.

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