Judith Rowbotham

“Hear an indian sister’s plea”: Reporting the work of 19th-century british female missionaries

Abstract The mission work done by British women missionaries is a fruitful area of study—and an important part of that study is an examination of the ways in which that work was reported to the British public “at home,” in order to stir up interest and gain funding and recruits thereby. This reporting was not done via official reports so much as by accessing mass audiences through the various channels of popular culture, including letters, but also reports and stories in periodicals and tracts or pamphlets, hagiographic biographies, and even fiction. The work of missionary women was explained and justified through such popular reporting, and it was one way for women to take an active role in the maintenance of empire. A major feature in this exercise was the presentation of the various “native” populations, the potential converts, that missionary women worked among. Considerable space was devoted to describing racial and gender characteristics in general, and to delineating the various individuals—especially those “elevated” above the limitations of their racial and gender stereotype by conversion to Christianity. As with the reports from male missionaries, such writing was considered to have authority based on experience and moral credibility. Consequently, through these written reports, and their accompanying illustrations, cultural stereotypes were reinforced and made “coherent”; something that also had considerable implications for the establishing of white/British female “superiority.”

How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died

Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours. Their levels of physical activity and hence calorific intakes were approximately twice ours. They had relatively little access to alcohol and tobacco; and due to their correspondingly high intake of fruits, whole grains, oily fish and vegetables, they consumed levels of micro- and phytonutrients at approximately ten times the levels considered normal today. This paper relates the nutritional status of the mid-Victorians to their freedom from degenerative disease; and extrapolates recommendations for the cost-effective improvement of public health today.

An unsuitable and degraded diet? Part three: Victorian consumption patterns and their health benefits:

Principal findings Where our previous two papers documented the volume and variety of the mid-Victorian diet, this final paper reveals that the mid-Victorian diet conferred extremely significant protection against the major degenerative diseases, even amongst those who, because of their extremely limited incomes, might be considered to be significantly under-nourished and so vulnerable to such afflictions.

An unsuitable and degraded diet? Part one: public health lessons from the mid-Victorian working class diet

Principal findings The research resulting in this series of three papers (further papers to be published in succeeding issues of JRSM), drawing on a range of historical datasets viewed through the lens of current scientific understanding, indicates that cultural and other biases have distorted the historical record, leading to conclusions which test many current health policy assumptions about a steady improvement in British nutrition since the nineteenth century. As these papers show, the urban mid-Victorians, including the working classes, ate a notably good diet, including significant amounts of vegetables and fruit, which enabled a life expectancy matching that of today. We follow the example of George Rosen (a public health practitioner, and in his time editor of the American Journal of Public Health and Journal of the History of Medicine, among others), in believing that a historical dimension is essential to a sound perspective in public health today.1

Truth, law and hate in the virtual marketplace of ideas: perspectives on the regulation of Internet content

Rising international concern about the problem of hate speech on the Internet has led to calls for greater regulation. The Internet is arguably a true marketplace of ideas but one where ‘dangerous words’ may have a disproportionate impact. The paper suggests that looking to historical parallels can offer a more fruitful and workable solution moving beyond the current temptation of knee-jerk legislative responses and regulation; and one more universally acceptable. Lockes philosophical argument for free speech, for instance, delivered against a background of seventeenth-century religious intolerance and perceived sedition, provides interesting analogies to the current problem in relation to terrorism. We question whether current legal approaches to hate speech are practical and appropriate, and the extent to which the transposition of ‘real life’ regulation can be imposed onto ‘virtual life’ regulation. Is the Internet in fact a qualitatively different form of communication which renders Lockean principles, and their subsequent interpretations, powerless in the face of hate speech? The repressive extension of the law to criminalise the expression of ideas deemed offensive raises key issues relating to the problem of veracity and authenticity of Internet content. Not least that the legal enforcement of any such regulation may require an unacceptable level of State intrusion into personal communication and privacy. Drawing on the historical perspective reminds us that censorship is the enemy of democratic values and that while calls for censorship of hate speech on the Internet may appear superficially attractive, there are dangerous implications and undercurrents for our hard won liberties.

An unsuitable and degraded diet? Part two: realities of the mid-Victorian diet

Principal findings In this article we use a multiplicity of sources to document food availability in the period 1850–1900 and cross-reference this against earnings data to create a qualitative overview of the mid-Victorian diet, backed up by quantitative data where available and credible. Our findings reveal that in contrast to received wisdom, working-class mid-Victorians ate a superior version of the Mediterranean diet, with a much higher consumption of vegetables and fruits than has hitherto been realized. The positive impact of this diet on mid-Victorian health is described in the last article in this series, as are the implications for public health policy and research today.

‘Sand and Foam’: the changing identity of Lebanese tourism

It can be said that, in the last century at least, the pattern of tourism in a country has much to say about that country’s perceived identity, externally and internally, as well as indicating a range of other factors, including its economic and political health (see Hazbun, 2008). The history, and current state, of tourism particularly coastal tourism in Lebanon provides a fine illustration of this reality. As a leisure activity, Lebanese coastal tourism has been a relatively recent development historically, but Lebanese tourism ante-dates that modern reality, in a way that mirrors the nature of Lebanon’s engagement with both the West and the Arab world in the geographically contextualising Middle East from the end of the eighteenth century. Equally, the realities of Lebanese politics have been intimately entwined with Lebanon’s success as a tourist destination. Once closer, both politically and culturally, to the West, Lebanon now looks more to the Arab world for tourists without a direct Lebanese connection. By contrast, its engagement with the West is now largely through its globally dispersed diasporic communities in locations from Australia and the Americas to Africa, but including also groups in various European states such as UK. The author does not pretend to be a specialist in tourism studies or the history of tourism, but this article reflecting on an interesting contemporary historical perspective is soundly based on oral comment and information gained in Lebanon, combined with (in translation) Lebanese newspaper commentary as well as more traditional sources and some personal experience. It is, therefore, worth briefly rehearsing the history of Lebanon’s engagement with the wider world through the lens of tourism to the region, using as the guiding perspective the widely accepted concept of tourism as travel for pleasure, often (but not automatically) to unfamiliar locations. As Hazbun (2008, p. 77) has pointed out, the Levant is ‘a region replete with religious and cultural heritage sites’. Lebanon is no exception. However, up to the twentieth century, Lebanon was (to outsiders, at least) a geographical concept centred around Mount Lebanon within the Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire (Salibi, 1990). There was an internal quasi ‘tourist’ travel, which featured the indigenous elites from a range of religious communities, Muslim, Christian and Jewish. The cool, forested slopes of mountain ranges running parallel to the Mediterranean formed a welcome retreat from the heat of the coast and urban centres like Beirut in the summer months. The most notable remaining testament to this is the legacy of successive emirs (the local governors or

Gendering protest: Delineating the boundaries of acceptable everyday violence in nineteenth-century Britain

This article is an exploration of attitudes towards public protest through a perspective which focuses on the increasing use of gender to delineate the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable violence by the nineteenth century. The increasing association between public manifestations of protest and physical violence is argued as showing the extent to which the nineteenth century represented a new departure in attitudes towards protest because of associated negative attitudes towards violence in Britain. The key focus here is on England and Wales, although the Scottish dimension is also considered. The move to new formats for public protest (such as marches and public meetings) is explained through a depiction of the new hostility towards visible violence, especially that involving women either as participants or victims. The criminalising of protest because of its implications for violence within a society that increasingly valued ‘orderliness’ as a symbol of civilisation is portrayed through the use of a range of texts including newspapers and fiction.

Epilogue: The Rise of ‘The Queen’

This draws together the threads explored in the previous chapters, and examines the conclusions which can be drawn from these, as understood in the context of the Queen’s long reign as part of a consideration of the survival chances of the Windsor dynasty. The consciousness of the royal family, particularly the Queen herself, of being strongly associated with a Windsor approach to the monarchy as an institution is assessed, because of her very visibility. The implications of these factors for the future of the dynasty, and the institution, are also suggested. Issues such as the potential power still possessed by the monarchy via the royal prerogative are highlighted as matters for further investigation, but in the light of future events as these develop, including the potential issues which will necessarily arise surrounding any future Windsor accessions.

The Windsors and Ceremonial Events: State Occasions for the National Family

This chapter explores the uses of memoralisation made by the Windsors, where reflective retrospectives are used to emphasise the continuity of the British crown as doing its job for the nation and as a key player in the maintenance of a modern British familial identity. State events, where part of the continuity involved the religious and formal royal rituals employed historically, this chapter provides case studies of royal funerals in order to argue for a shift in the approach to commemoration under the Windsors. Such a shift manifested itself not just in the way in which the ceremonial dimensions were contextualised more in terms of family than formality and so made more accessible. It argues also that a high degree of collusion with the media (one in line with public expectation, however) has made this representation more credible. Key Windsor funerals, not just those of George V and George VI, but also those of other known and popularly loved members of the Windsor dynasty including the Queen Mother, are explored in this chapter.