Rum, policy, and the Portuguese: or, the maintenance of elite supremacy in post-emancipation British Guiana

Cette recherche en géographie historique, en Guyane Britannique au dix-neuvième siécle, étudie les raisons qui ont amené un groupe d' immigrants Portugais de Madère à dominer le commerce au détail à la fin de l' esclavage. Un recours à la théorie d' une société pluraliste nous indique la marche à suivre pour expliquer le ‘pourquoi’ de cette domination. Certains indices orientèrent notre recherche. Nous nous sommes demandés ‘pour qui’ cette société pluraliste était-elle si nécessaire et qui d'autres, en plus de Portugais, bénéficiaient de ce contrôle du commerce au détail. Nous avons la preuve évidente que les Portugais avaient reçu l'appui de l'élite europiéne, d'autre part les planteurs avaient tout intérêt à garder les Noirs comme ouvriers sur leurs plantations, les privant ainsi de leurs droits. Une importante immigration de main-d'euvre indienne engagée sous contract et l'appui des planteurs permit à l'élite de maintenir son contrôle de la colonie en établissant et en perpétuant les divisions ethniques sur les plans économique, social et géographique. The central questions of this research on the historical geography of nineteenth-century British Guiana are how and why an immigrant group from Madeira (the Portuguese) came to dominate the post-emancipation retail trade of the colony. A recourse to plural-society theory suggested where one should inquire. By asking for ‘whom’ the creation of a plural society was so necessary; and ‘who’ else, besides the Portuguese, benefited from Portuguese control of the retail trade, one received sufficient clues and direction to know where to look. Evidence was uncovered which established that the Portuguese initially received help from the European elite. This support and substantial indentured immigration from India enabled the elite to maintain its control of the colony by establishing and perpetuating ethnic divisions in the colony's economy, society, and geography.     

THE IMPORTANCE OF PERSISTENCE IN RESPONDENT SELECTION FOR PREELECTION SURVEYS

Different techniques for respondent selection can affect dataquality. These differences can result in variations in the distributionof partisans in preelection surveys, which in turn can havean effect on the distribution of candidate preference. Persistencein trying to interview designated respondents in telephone householdsincreased the number of Republicans in a 1984 sample, and thereforeReagan's margin over Mondale. Such differences in interviewingtechniques might account for some of the variations in nationalpreelection estimates of the outcome of the presidential election,and they suggest that caution be used in comparing marginalsfor party identification from different surveys employing differentrespondent selection techniques.     

"This Irreligious Art of Liing": Strategies of Disguise in Post-Reformation English Catholicism

Abstract  In the long Tridentine phase of Catholic history, the conduct of the Church, faith and praxis was nothing if not demonstrative in its execution, devising, for example, a triumphalist architectural and artistic form, the baroque, that shouted out its advertisements for an apparently ultra-confident creed. The great Council that created the tone of Catholicism over the four centuries that followed it defined the priest in particular as a public exemplar of the faith, a man of unambiguous integrity, stable residence and assured income.
In England, as in the Netherlands, in contrast, the practice of the faith was covert, not overt, and priests were men on the run, sacerdotal vagrants, adopting a culture of deceit and disguise that aligned their lifestyles were those of any criminal underground: they used disguises, false papers, encoded language, aliases and fictive personae, employed chains of people-handlers and safe-houses, setting up patterns of behaviour that distanced them (a) from the clerical requirements of the Tridentine Church itself and (b) from assumptions about truth that were becoming firmly embedded in English Protestant culture: Catholicism itself could be presented as an "irreligious art of liing".     

Comrades Compromised: The Zimbabwean and South African Liberation Struggles Compared and Contrasted

At the end of April (1992), President Mugabe was given a rough ride at the inaugural conference of the Zimbabwe Liberation War Veterans Association. Almost half of the some 36,000 veterans are unemployed, and Mugabe had to listen to accusations that his government was run by 'opportunists and bourgeois elements' who want to exclude the veterans.¹
Mr Mandela was himself booed (in April 1993) when he defended his partnership with Mr De Klerk. PAC leader Clarence Makwetu, whose APLA guerrillas have been killing white civilians, was cheered when he entered the stadium, obliging Mr Mandela to pause in his address.²     

Dependency and its Relationship to the Assessment of Care Needs of Elderly People

Correspondence to Dr Ian Gibbs, Social Policy Research Unit, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD Summary A number of previous studies of old people in residential homeshave suggested that a substantial minority are not in need ofthat form of care. The rapid growth in the number of peoplein private homes, supported by social security payments andentering without any independent assessment, has led to concernthat many more people enter residential homes without needingto be there. Social workers were employed in four areas to assess the needsof residents newly admitted to homes in the independent sectorand over eighty per cent were found to be in need of residentialcare. It is suggested that the measures of dependency used toindicate need in some previous studies fail to take into accountthe complex factors involved in deciding whether a person needsresidential care.     

PUBLIC OPINION AND THE PANAMA CANAL TREATIES OF 1977

In April 1978, after nine months of national debate, the Senatenarrowly ratified new Panama Canal treaties. Voting was apparentlyinfluenced by numerous opinion polls, which were seen as showingincreased support for the treaties. But several analysts haveshown that this interpretation was erroneous; public opinionconsistently opposed the treaties. This study attempts to determinewhat went wrong. It begins by arraying and analyzing all nationalpoll results on the topic in order to establish a coherent pictureof public opinion. It then identifies a number of polling andreporting practices which may have contributed to the misinterpretationof the findings. The study concludes with recommendations foralleviating these problems.