Introduction

Over the last few chapters, we have examined the interrelationship between rivers and development in Africa. In these chapters, we explored how rivers facilitate the transformation of human society through their immense contributions to urbanization, ecotourism, geopolitical development, and environmental and climatic changes. Meanwhile, the focus of this present chapter is on the interrelationship between rivers and industrialization. In this chapter, we seek to explore the role of rivers in the development of the African continent through its contributions to industrialization. Industrialization has been defined as a “socioeconomic process through which a society will change from pre-industrialization into industrialization,” a part of a broad-spectrum modernization process through the development and utilization of modern technologies. From the above definitions, it is evident that the importance of industrialization is premised on how it opens pathways for modernization and development. A thorough analysis of the interaction between industrialization and rivers has revealed that industrialization has a significant impact on river ecosystems, in addition to the important functions that rivers play in it. Because they are sources of hydropower energy, infrastructure for industrial operations, and routes for the transit of goods, rivers are essential to Africa's industrialization. On the other hand, serious environmental risks, including eutrophication, biomagnification, habitat destruction in aquatic environments, modifications to hydrological processes, and even changes in climate, are mostly brought on by fast industrialization. Developing sustainable methods for river use has become essential, considering the need to safeguard the environment while promoting industrial development.

In Chapter 2 I examined how genealogy as a memorial structure was used politically in works such as Walter Bower's Scotichronicon to encourage ways of thinking about national independence and identity. I suggested that Bower and other writers conceived of composition as an act of memory; rewriting the past became a crucial element of their process of creating a sense of collective identity in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century northern England and Scotland. While this chapter continues to examine the intersection of memory and historiography, I move away from discussions of genealogy to analyse how Bower remembered English acts of aggression in Scotland. I suggest that these memories were used within a proto-nationalist framework to disseminate a shared history that was understood to be representative of Scotland's struggle for identity and independence. The focus of this discussion is the Coupar Angus Scotichronicon, a shorter version of Bower's longer text. I argue that, within the Coupar Angus version of his history, Bower privileges particular moments of Anglo-Scottish conflict by entreating his readers to remember certain events of the Wars of Independence as formative moments of Scottish distinctiveness.

In the Middle Ages, memory, in the form of recollection, was a ‘task of composition’ rather than simply a means of retention: a creative tool of the mind, providing a basis for active contemplation. This creative aspect of memory – remembrance – points to the fact that memories are not only actively made, but that they are open to being repeatedly remade in myriad contexts. Through a close examination of the Coupar Angus Prologue, this process of historical reconstruction becomes distinctly apparent and increasingly political.

…from the tenth century on queens emerged in their own right. Whereas prior to that time the terminology used was “the queen of the king of Tara”, after that point the usage was simply “the queen of Tara”. Ó Corráin (1978) sees this as reflecting a major rise in the status of women. The queens of this time exercised considerable political and social influence (ibid.). It is clear from this that female images – whether they were goddesses or actual living people who took on a legendary character – were seen as powerful. Indeed women were believed to have special powers that men did not have (O hOgain, op. cit.).

Passed down orally from generation to generation and dating well into the Christian era, some goddesses were “gentle and protective” while others “instilled terror and panic in the opponent through magical powers and by their very presence”. Notable examples include: the sexual goddess of Connaught, Queen Maeve; the “pirate queen” Grainne Mhaol; and the goddesses of sovereignty who symbolised the land of Ireland. Although Gaelic society was certainly patriarchal during this time, the use of Brehon laws provided some freedoms to women. As noted by Fine-Davis, “women were granted extensive rights during this period, particularly with regard to marriage, divorce and property rights”. Partially overturned by the Norman invasion in the late twelfth century, Irish society was split into two communities: the Gaelic people who continued to live under forms of Brehon law; and Anglo-Normans who lived under the English Common Law.

The statuesque woman who improvised effortlessly at the piano was always known as “Madame Lasserre,” an authoritative but kindly presence in the classroom and in her many public demonstrations of Dalcroze teaching. As Dorothy de Val remembers, those of us studying with her in the 1960s were not aware of how distinguished our teacher was, or that she had been teaching in Toronto for nearly forty years. The classes were unlike any other, involving both physical movement and concentration as we struggled to coordinate our arms and legs. Madame let the music flowing from her fingers tell us what to do. The classes were held on Saturdays in a spacious, airy studio, with about a dozen students per class. All students were enrolled in a special program introduced at the Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) designed for school children already having lessons at the RCM. Madame Lasserre ran the classes efficiently, moving smoothly from one activity to the next. For me, these classes were instructive and, more importantly, great fun. I particularly enjoyed her improvisations and strove to emulate them myself. As an advanced student in the RCM program, I had to discontinue the classes after one year, much to my regret, replacing them with keyboard harmony. It was the memory of those classes that drove me to pursue Dalcroze Eurhythmics later in life.

Elizabeth Harcourt was born Elizabeth Venables-Vernon at Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire in 1746. In 1765 she married George Harcourt, Viscount Nuneham (1736–1809) who, on his father's death in 1777, became the second Earl Harcourt. Following a tour of the Continent in 1766, the couple spent much of their time between Nuneham Park in Oxfordshire and Harcourt House in London. In 1778 George Harcourt commissioned Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown to remodel the grounds and the house at Nuneham, planting trees, creating ‘Brown's Walk’ through woodland and enlarging the kitchen garden. From 1784 until 1817 Harcourt was Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte. George Harcourt died in 1809, and the title and estate passed to his brother William. Harcourt herself died in 1826. Over the course of her married life, Harcourt wrote and collated a body of correspondence and documents relating to the management of her and her husband's estates as well as hundreds of manuscript poems. Many of these poems are copied from print or are the original work of members of the Harcourts’ social network but Harcourt herself was the author of over one hundred poems. Her verses take in an array of themes, people, events and genres; Harcourt experimented thoughtfully with form and style. Many of her poems demonstrate the love and affection in which she held her husband and her mother; many more are written to relatives and friends, including two to Elizabeth Montagu.

With the founding of the German Reich came initiatives to establish an annual national holiday and to raise funds for the erection of a suitable national monument. Much of this activity originated in the overlapping spheres of Culture Protestantism and National Liberalism. Already in September 1870 the liberal Bremen pastor Jacob Kradolfer proposed an annual popular festival—what he called a youth festival (Jugendfest)—to be celebrated in conjunction with a church service. Through such a celebration, he hoped, the feeling of national unity engendered by the recent Battle of Sedan might be inculcated in what remained a German society divided by many social differences. Kradolfer chose this day, not, as he stressed, out of a desire to exalt German military power, but rather because he understood the capitulation of the French emperor before the Prussian king on September 2 as “as an act of divine and human justice, as the shining finger of God in world history.” As such, he reasoned, it should be celebrated as a “day of joy over the salvation of our people.”

Kradolfer's proposal came to nothing, but the idea of establishing a festival by means of which to foster a sense of national identity was soon taken up again.

No Corpus Christi play text survives from the town of Beverley, but the extensive civic accounts of the town record an active tradition of such plays from at least 1377 until the early sixteenth century. The records especially concern the role of the civic authorities in governing the plays, but from them it is possible to discover a good deal about a theatrical tradition apparently similar to and contemporary with that of its betterknown neighbour, York. As well as the Governors’ ordinances and central oversight of the guild performances, the records offer evidence of the Banns, the route taken by the pageants, the maintenance of standards of performance by sanctions against individuals and guilds, and even the content of some of the plays.

The Governors of the Play

Governance of the town of Beverley from 1320 was principally determined by the election of twelve ‘Keepers’ whose role in governing the town was instituted by the Magna Carta Communitatis (‘The Great Charter of the Community’) in 1359. Before 1320, the town had been represented by an alderman and two chamberlains, a system that appears to have taken some forty years to reform. The Keepers (custodes) were also known as the Governors (gubernatores) and they were charged with duties of the kind that we might today recognise as those of a town council. Initially, the Magna Carta Communitatis stipulated that tota communitas (‘the whole community’) should name eighteen potential Keepers from whom twelve should be selected to represent the town for three years.

By the 1980s, the practice of appointing special prayers and services for general use in the established churches of England and Scotland had become diffuse, as is explained in volume 3, pp. 687–90. It is straightforward to record special services and prayers for royal events: these are continued below, for the last years of the reign of Elizabeth II and the coronation of Charles III. For more general national and international events, the provision became complex and difficult to define. Church leaders were now more conscious that in practice calls to prayer had meaning only for regular churchgoers, rather than for the nation as a whole. Together with the ease of modern communications, this made them less discriminating than in the past about the type of event for which they issued calls to prayer, with the result that these became much more frequent. Now, too, appeals for prayers were often not accompanied by texts of special services or prayers; and when texts were suggested these commonly consisted of selections from the liturgical resources of Common worship, rather than the provision of new prayers. As these calls to prayer were now rarely reported in national newspapers (and recent records of church leaders are not yet open for research), the evidence is often elusive.

Consequently, for the period from the 1980s to 2014 only a few of these occasions were briefly noted.