Introduction

Water is an essential natural resource that is crucial for sustaining life and improving human well-being. Water constitutes 70% of the human body and about two-thirds of Earth's surface; hence, it is a vital resource not only for the sustenance of human body systems but also for livelihood and sustainable development of societies. Throughout history, humans have strived to improve their standard of living by enhancing their access to basic needs, mostly food, water, and raw materials. Thus, to make the best use of water resources, human societies since ancient times have endeavored to explore the meaning and significance of rivers and obtain a better understanding of their dynamics and processes. In ancient history, rivers such as Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile have been associated with the emergence of civilizations such as Egypt and Mesopotamia. Notably, rivers have profound spiritual and cultural epistemological value. Not only are they understood from the lens of spiritual and cultural ethos, but rivers are also considered a repertoire of knowledge about spirituality and culture. In this chapter, we shall explore rivers as sources of knowledge. The chapter is divided into three substantive parts: the first section explores the meaning and knowledge of rivers with a particular focus on African Indigenous communities; the second section explores African Indigenous knowledge about the utilization and conservation of rivers; and the third examines the evolving science of hydrological research and its future in Africa.

While Brigid of Kildare was known primarily as a dairy worker, she also engaged in textile work in her Vita Prima, making ‘with her own hands a linen [burial] shroud’ for St. Patrick at his request (suis manibus faceret linteamen). Brigid further supported the textile work of other women, providing miraculous assistance in the release of a gifted young weaver of Mag Cliach from bondage. When Brigid asked the weaver's mistress to grant her freedom, the mistress refused, because ‘the maidservant used to weave [many] clothes’ (ancilla enim multas vestes texebat) and was therefore highly valuable. The mistress then ‘displeased’ the saint (displicuit) by roughly grasping the weaver's skilled hand and ‘[dragging] her violently away from Brigit's side’ (tenuit manu ancillae suae, et traxit violenter a latere Brigidae eam). The mistress's ‘right hand … withered’ (manus dextera dominae aruit) and was restored only when she repented, after which the young weaver, no longer enslaved, followed Brigid and practiced her work productively in freedom. By joining in solidarity with the weaver, Brigid followed her consistent habit, liberating the young woman and her opera manuum, the work of her hands. Brigid's Vita Prima thus emphasizes two important aspects of textile-making, the province of women during the early medieval period: first, women of all social ranks participated in this art, making everything from rough cloth to elaborate luxury textiles; and second, women forged beneficial relationships through their textile work, both with their co-workers and with other supporters, friends, and associates.

The director of the Opéra pilloried in this article was Henri Duponchel (1794–1868), director between November 1847 and November 1849. He was an architect and stage designer and seems to have had no musical training. After Louis-Philippe's departure, the Académie royale de musique was renamed ‘Théatre de la Nation’ on 26 February 1848, then ‘Opéra-Théâtre de la Nation’ on 29 March. Berlioz had recently returned from London.

I always get in a muddle when it's a question of using their new title to mean the Opéra and the hitherto third opera house founded by M. Adam. I dare say other people will have the same problem. It seems to me difficult to work out in what sense ‘The Theatre of the Nation’ is not ‘national’, and how ‘The National Theatre’ can't be the theatre of the nation. Happily, the question is no more serious than knowing whether one should say ‘the shape’ or ‘the form’ of a hat; the great thing, at the moment, is to have both a hat and a head; because many people, in theatre and elsewhere, don't have a hat to put on their head, while heads, even in certain places where they’re of ultimate necessity, seem to be rarer than hats. As for the Opéra, we shall refrain from deciding whether it's in the same category as those places. We were there at its ‘opening’. One unimpressed wit claimed this word should be understood in the sense of ‘autopsy’. After the corpse's innards had been examined, the doctors unanimously attributed the cause of death far less to the wounds, dislocations, and contusions it received in the recent catastrophe which is still making Paris tremble, and more to an organic failure that had become incurable through its longevity.

The idea that England was blessed by the goodness of its monarch, the truth of its church, and the happiness of its condition proved unsustainable by the end of Charles I's personal rule. Stresses had become cracks, and cracks had become fissures, as the polity sought to contain its contradictions. Social leaders and consumers of news developed sharp opinions about the wisdom and direction of the king's foreign policy, his raising and spending of revenue, and his policies and patronage in religion. Though consensual constitutional arrangements underpinned a hereditary monarchy and a national protestant church, political and religious disagreements made enemies of neighbours, and spilled over into civil war.

The people featured in this book were caught up in these troubles. Their stories reflect and augment the well-known history of the reign of Charles I. They demonstrate, too, the possibility of exploring relationships between individual lives and the constraints and opportunities of larger historical forces. Chance and circumstances created and preserved unique documents, including revealing but neglected material in the National Archives. Creative enquiry yields fresh insights and connections, with many questions remaining. How limiting, how empowering, for example, were the social, economic, and demographic conditions of a person's origins and environment? What choices could people make that would relieve or exacerbate the tensions of their time? To what degree were the subjects of this study, and those connected to them, complicit in, or innocent of, the disruptions that eventuated in revolution?

The vast majority of the king's subjects conceived themselves as dutiful, orderly, and devout, and coped as best they could with the challenges of their age. Most, like their countrymen today, lived in the shadow of great events, and operated with local expectations.

At the time, the thirty-three-year-old dreamer did not yet know where his intuitions would lead him. Émile Jaques-Dalcroze had been hired a few years earlier as professor of harmony and solfège at the Geneva Conservatory, where he first discovered and tested what would become known in English as Eurhythmics. Initially called “la Gymnastique Rythmique” (Rhythmic Gymnastics), the name later became “la Rythmique” (Eurhythmics or Rhythmics). A musician through and through, he was extremely perceptive and had an exceptional gift for communication and a passionate interest in human behavior. Jaques-Dalcroze, however, was distressed by the absence of true musicality in many of his students. He felt that the primordial elements for musicians – consciousness of sound and rhythmic sensitivity – were underdeveloped; he confronted these obstacles continually in teaching music theory.

He thus remarked that “it is impossible to dictate correct chord progressions if the inner ear cannot evoke the anticipated echo of their resonance.” For Jaques-Dalcroze, the root of the problem lay in inappropriate teaching methods that overlooked the fact that students were not all born musicians, and consequently neglected ear training. He took it upon himself to find appropriate methods for his students to generate and develop those qualities that they did not demonstrate spontaneously, in particular the discerning ear and capacity to hear internally that were for him the most useful aptitudes for a musician.

The Welsh revivalist poet and forger Iolo Morganwg styled himself the ‘Bard of Liberty’, and a not insignificant part of the liberty he espoused was a vociferous opposition to slavery. From c.1790, Iolo wove together his ancient bardic and contemporary abolitionist identities as though they were natural complements to one another, just as he inserted elements of French Revolutionary politics into his recreated bardo-druidism. In various poems, his bardic mouthpieces ‘weep for AFRIC's injured race’, sing the praises of ‘Great WILBERFORCE’ (PLP, ii, pp. 209–10), and inveigh against ‘Vile Britons!’ (PLP, i, p. 145) and ‘lovers of blood’ who prop up the systems of enslavement. Iolo also took some practical steps to divest himself from the proceeds of slavery, vowing to refuse book subscriptions from Bristol enslavers, engaging in the boycott of West Indian sugar, and apparently refusing some of the proceeds of enslavement he could have received from his brothers in Jamaica. Though recognized in recent scholarship as a flawed adherent to his own abolitionist principles – particularly thanks to his eventual acceptance of an inheritance from his brothers’ Jamaican holdings – his bardic anti-slavery has become a foundational aspect of his modern reputation.

Some might interpret this neo-bardic abolitionism as a foretaste of the subsequent union between the Welsh national idea and the abolitionist cause. As Daniel G. Williams has argued, ‘an ethnic conception of Welshness developed in the nineteenth century, rooted in Nonconformity and temperance, with abolitionism also appearing as a fundamental political belief’. Still others might see Iolo's abolitionism as evidence of a Welsh tradition of identification with/as colonial victims (also explored in the previous chapter, pp. 171–2).

Introduction

Kano has been a cosmopolitan hub of commerce for centuries. It has hosted a diverse array of populations, including Tuaregs, Arabs, Nupe, Bariba, Kanuri, and Yoruba, who established vibrant diasporic settlements long before British colonial rule. This chapter delves into the economic development of Kano and the different waves of Yoruba migration. It explores their entrepreneurship and the politics of identity. In Kano, the Yoruba community forged a strong work identity, which became integral to their self-conception as both individuals and a community. Many Yoruba migrants maintained a strong connection with their homeland and its aspirations. This chapter provides insights into the locations of Yoruba migrant settlements in Sabon Gari and other parts of the Kano Emirate. We also examine the profiles of prominent Yoruba migrants, both men and women, to gain a deeper understanding of the intricate processes of citizenship, a sense of belonging, the influence of homeland politics, political integration and participation, transculturation, and their resilience in inter-group relations. Additionally, we explore the impact of the Northernization policy and labor market segmentation on the Yoruba community. Notably, after the conclusion of the Nigerian Civil War in 1970, Yoruba men and women played pivotal roles in the Committee on Abandoned Properties, contributing to the reintegration of Igbo migrants.

Colonialism and Yoruba Migration to Kano

Similar to the Yoruba migration to Ghana, the presence of Yoruba communities in Kano, northern Nigeria, dates back to the pre-colonial period. Before 1900, Kano, much like Yorubaland, was characterized by extensive commercial networks and the movement of people, typical of the western and central Sudan regions of Nigeria and certain Savanna and forest states.

WILLIAM DYNGLEY, PETERHOUSE SCHOLAR

13 July 1392 was a momentous day in the life of William Dyngley, the Ibeginn beginning of his life as a scholar of the bishop of Ely. Admitted as a probationary associate, he could not have known that he would spend the rest of his life at Peterhouse nor that he would dedicate his mature years to a project whose significance reached beyond the walls of the College. This young man was joining a small community of scholars, limited by statute to fourteen members. Six of the men present on that July day would leave Peterhouse by 1400 to be replaced by a new cadre of scholars who in turn would vacate their places for the security offered by benefices. It is not possible to retrieve all the names of the men who filled the statutory places in 1392, but Figure 1.1 summarises readily available information. Over a span of fifty years, as the Peterhouse community constantly changed with the influx of new scholars, William Dyngley remained a stable influence. By 1422 he was the senior Peterhouse scholar.

Introduction

Who benefited from the rapprochement between the United States and Spain at the beginning of the Cold War? This basic question has not yet been satisfactorily answered in the historiography, especially as one moves from the macro to the micro level and from the political to the economic dimension. The fact that the Spanish dictatorship was reinforced internally and internationally is not disputed, since the marriage of convenience between Madrid and Washington effectively put an end to the quarantine that the United Nations had imposed on Franco's Spain; nor is it in doubt that U.S. security strategy was underpinned as a result of the rapprochement, albeit at the cost of eroding the image of the North American giant as the champion of democracy in the post-war world. Specialists also seem to agree that Spain gained little if at all in the way of security, since the national territory and some of its major cities became a target of potential Soviet attacks and were exposed to accidents with U.S. nuclear weapons (such as the one in Palomares in 1966), all without the Spanish government obtaining a guarantee of security from Washington and given that the scale of modernization of the Spanish armed forces was far from what was intended. In economic terms, there seems to be a growing consensus that the bilateral rapprochement, although far from having effects comparable to the benefits derived from the Marshall Plan for countries such as Italy, did have positive effects for the Iberian country.

INTRODUCTION

Margaret Crawford lived in the parish of Denny, where she was a midwife. She was an older woman, the widow of George Horne. She was imprisoned on 14 January 1596 and brought before the presbytery of Stirling, accused of being a witch and an abuser of the people. She confessed that she had never received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper since before the Reformation. She denied all accusations.

The presbytery then questioned witnesses. On 19 January, several neighbours were summoned to testify against her. Out of fifteen witnesses, four did not want to testify. The same date, Crawford was interrogated, but she denied all charges and did not confess to witchcraft.

On 20 January, a female witness testified against her. On 28 January, nine witnesses were called to testify, but two of these persons did not come. On 4 February, new witnesses were summoned, one man and three women. Of these, one man and one woman testified against her.

On 25 February, the brethren of the presbytery wrote to the sheriff of Stirling and requested him to raise a commission to have Crawford tried for ‘witchcraft or abusing of the pepill’ (a phrase, echoing the 1563 witchcraft act, that later became ‘wichcraft and abusing of the pepill’). Thus, the case was moved from the presbytery to secular authority. This is the last information we get in her case.

Crawford was interrogated on an individual basis. No other persons suspected of witchcraft were mentioned, and no description of her alleged witchcraft was given. At the beginning of her confession, the sacraments of the church are mentioned. Witchcraft was not brought to the fore during the interrogation.

The brief entries are interesting because they show the relations between the presbytery and the sheriff.

The Bank of England, established on the Dutch pattern in 1694, made possible the loans to the government which financed the war. Millions of pounds were instantly subscribed whenever the bank needed it, at 3½ per cent for a fifteen-year loan. There was no such financial security in France, where the Marine suffered from the lack of finance available to the King, who was the ultimate arbiter in the case of Prize appeals. The Admiralty remained averse to spending money to the last, but despite their caution, government funds kept being supported by the public, and the Treasury never ran out of resources. The huge sums dispersed by the Treasury as Head Money were testament to the vigour with which both private and Royal Navy vessels obeyed the injunction to ‘protect the trade and annoy the enemy’. Testament, too, to the incentive ‘the service’ had been given.

Trade between nations created wealth, on which the stability of the government depended. As we have seen, the question as to whether the vigorous activities of protection and annoyance on the ocean were legal or not was addressed by the leading law lords of the day. Insurance was expensive but essential and brokers at Lloyd's were informed of merchant vessels which took themselves out of convoys, and therefore into the hands of French privateers.

Introduction: The Wrest Circle

In the mid-eighteenth century, Wrest Park was the intellectual home of a literary circle that centred on its owners, Jemima Marchioness Grey (1723–97) and Philip Yorke (later 2nd Earl of Hardwicke) (1720–90). Wrest Park was Grey's familial estate, which she inherited upon the death of her grandfather, the Duke of Kent, in June 1740, only a fortnight after her marriage to Yorke. The marriage had been arranged as an alliance between two powerful Whig families, but it also proved to be a union of minds that brought together two bookish individuals who had both fostered close academic friendships in their adolescence. Quite unconventionally, owing to the mutual academic interests that characterised their marriage, Yorke and Grey brought together these like-minded friends and formed their own scholarly network, the ‘Society at Wrest’. On Grey's side, this consisted of her young aunt, Mary Gregory (nee Grey) (1719–61), and the Bluestocking, Catherine Talbot (1721–70). Yorke's connections would make up the lion's share of the group. The Yorkes were an academic family, and Philip's brother, Charles (1722–70), and sisters, Elizabeth (later Lady Anson) (1725– 60) and Margaret (later Heathcote) (1733–69), also became immersed in the intellectual life at Wrest. In this respect, the heterosocial culture of the Wrest Circle was akin to that of the Bluestocking salons in affording equal respect to its female participants, and there was even some cross-over, as Catherine Talbot belonged to both groups.

Introduction and Historical Background

This chapter demonstrates Jaques-Dalcroze's influence on German piano pedagogy during the first three decades of the twentieth century. So far, this topic has hardly been taken into account in historical research on music education. We illustrate that piano pedagogues adapted piano exercises explicitly by Jaques-Dalcroze, assimilated his impulses into their piano pedagogical thinking, and further developed them. A paradigmatic comment for this purpose stems from the piano pedagogue Frieda Schmidt-Maritz. In 1925 she wrote that Jaques-Dalcroze “has spread valuable seeds for developing all perspectives in music education, whose fruitfulness also proves its value where his concept is left behind.”

Jaques-Dalcroze's pedagogical considerations were strongly influenced by current pedagogical trends. Reform movements such as the Reformpädagogik (progressive education), the Jugendbewegung (youth movement), or the Kunsterziehungsbewegung (art education movement) permeated German piano pedagogy with a child-centered approach. Thus, Jaques-Dalcroze applied analogous theorems to these movements in his approach to piano pedagogy, including illustration, self-activity, creativity, and musical interaction or playful learning. He states in 1907: “From the child, through close observation of the child's nature and the invention of rhythmic games for the child, a wide horizon has opened up for us.” In contrast to the piano teaching and learning of the nineteenth century, the singing and playing child with his or her natural movements is now raised to a musical ideal. According to Anna Epping, a student of Jaques-Dalcroze who implemented many of his postulates and exercises in piano teaching, the desire for musical activity and thus piano playing can be seen as inherent in every human being.