Introduction

The central focus of discussion in this part, Part Two, of the book is the relationship between African rivers and the economies of individual African states, as well as the continent as a whole. African rivers, as argued in the previous chapters, have played a major role in the economic transformation of the contemporary African state. They have facilitated both intra- and interregional trade, boasted agricultural development on the continent by enhancing irrigation systems, and have played a key role in advancing hydropower and developing better transportation network systems across the continent. This chapter is a sequel to the discussion on African rivers’ contributions to economic development by examining with laser focus a specific industry that African rivers have interacted within the continent for centuries – artisanal mining. Artisanal mining is understood as small-scale mining of natural resources. While the size of operations that qualify as artisanal mining varies from country to country, it is generally believed to be the extraction of natural resources by a single person or group of persons (usually fewer than 10) who engage in manual labor with minimal capital investment. Artisanal mining operations are conducted in most parts of Africa without license or other forms of governmental regulation. Despite the challenge with regulation of this sector and the vast implications of its operations on the environment, there are yet some notable socioeconomic impacts it has created for both micro- and macro-economic levels. This chapter addresses the dynamics and implications of artisanal mining operations on African rivers, as well as the potential for these rivers to support the development of this centuries-old industry.

In the autumn of 1940 the British Broadcasting Corporation approached me with a request to broadcast regularly short messages over their system to my compatriots, commenting on the events of the war, with the purpose of endeavoring to influence the German public in the direction of the convictions that I have often uttered. I believed that I should not miss the opportunity of making contact, however loose and precarious, with the German people and also with the inhabitants of the subjugated territories, behind the back of the Nazi Government, which had deprived me of all means of exerting intellectual influence in Germany as soon as it had the power to do so. The suggestion was particularly attractive because my words were not to be broadcast from America by short wave, but from London by long or medium wave, and thus could be heard on the only type of radio the German people were permitted to have. It was also enticing to write German once again in the knowledge that the written words would be allowed to fulfill their purpose in the form in which they were conceived—in German. I agreed to send monthly messages, and after a few trials I asked for a prolongation of my speaking-time from five to eight minutes.

The broadcasts at first were transmitted in this way: I cabled my texts to London, where they were read by a German-speaking employee of the BBC. At my suggestion, a more complicated but more direct and therefore more attractive method was soon adopted.

It is probably too late to redeem Edward Martyn from his eccentricities: his most recent biographer describes him as ‘little more than a footnote in the annals of Irish history’. This seems unfair, even if Martyn's wilfulness, rebarbative misogyny, patrician contempt and obsequiousness in the matter of religious orthodoxy collectively account in fair measure for the general neglect that has befallen his achievements since his death in 1923. Yeats swiftly disavowed these achievements in the aftermath of his own success; Joyce identified his ‘incorrigible style’ as a fatal impediment to his reception, and George Moore, once upon a time his friend and companion, made him the Don Quixote of the Irish revival. ‘Dear Edward’, as Moore persistently calls him in Hail and Farewell, was not destined to be taken altogether seriously.

To distinguish between Martyn's difficult personality – his first biographer, Denis Gwynn, termed him ‘an uncloistered monk’ – and the preoccupations that animated his exceptionally versatile interest in the prospect of Irish cultural revival is nevertheless a worthwhile enterprise. If we recall that Martyn was a co-founder of the Irish Literary Theatre (with Yeats and Lady Gregory), a prominent member of the Gaelic League almost from its inception, the first president of Sinn Fein, an ardent supporter and vice president of the Dublin Feis Ceoil (from 1899), founder of the Palestrina Choir, an inveterate correspondent and essayist who prolifically contributed to several Irish periodicals, most notably D. P. Moran's The Leader, and a writer who championed the cause of Irish music for much of his working life, his eccentricities may at least begin to recede.

In 1766, Elizabeth Montagu – salon hostess, landowner, literary critic and letter-writer – wrote a series of letters recounting her experiences of a leisure trip to Scotland taken in the August of that year. She effuses over the view of Loch Lomond, the mountains of the Western Highlands and the hospitality that she received from the Edinburgh literati Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782), Hugh Blair (1718–1800), William Robertson (1721–93) and John Gregory (1724–73). In her representation of the Scottish landscape, conveyed in letters to her husband, sister and friends, the same sets of phrases recur. She consistently praises the landscape for its ‘cultivation’, combined with its ‘noble prospects’ and ‘sublime beauties’. The use of repetition as a device, and the occurrence of these phrases in combination with other creative moments of epistolary expression – contrasting clauses, and more complex patterns of replication, revision and circulation – signals Montagu's use of the letter's formal characteristics in expressing her approach to cultivation and agricultural improvement. As this chapter will address, through such representations, Montagu uses her epistolary landscapes to participate in the debates raised by Scotland's mid-century rational agricultural reform – debates on improvement practices, the notion of progress, and the role of literature in each. Montagu's engagement with Scottish improvement by these means reveals, first, her deep intellectual and methodical involvement in Enlightenment improvement in Scotland as a textual and material process, and second, it illuminates her innovative use of the formal qualities of the letter to engage with issues of improvement.

Behind every great endeavour, there is a dream, but where do dreams come from? In the previous chapter, I introduced the context surrounding the aspirations of Alfonso X to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. An almost torturous path enlightened by the conviction, which some would call obstinacy, of the Learned King to achieve a position that he considered rightfully his. But beyond this obstinacy lay an idea of empire that transcended the Pisan proposal of 1256.

The Fecho del Imperio was one of the most remarkable passages in the life of Alfonso X, and his attempts at achieving this ambition would even be remembered as stubborn and financially damaging to the kingdom by his successors. Alfonso X relentlessly pushed for his dream to come true, but in the end he seemed to be alone in this endeavour. However, the rule of Alfonso X had not been one of constant failure; there was progress in the conquest of the Muslim territory of the Iberian Peninsula, and, above all, in the intellectual achievements of his reign, materialised in the creation of a vast cultural and legislative corpus that, effectively, achieved some sort of royal centralisation and peninsular hegemony. As witnessed by his epithet of ‘the Learned’, his military, cultural and legislative successes begin to explain the king's tenacity but do not quite justify why he became almost obsessed with obtaining the crown of the Holy Roman Empire.

The programme on 25 April consisted entirely of works by Beethoven: the overture Die Weihe des Hauses (The Consecration of the House); the ‘Emperor’ Concerto [no. 5] in E-flat, played by Liszt, who followed it with a transcription of the song Adelaide; the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata in A played by Massart and Liszt; and the Pastoral Symphony conducted by Berlioz. Three lines about a singer that end the review are omitted.

This concert had a fine and noble purpose! It was a homage rendered to the greatest modern composer by the leading virtuoso of the day. Liszt is busy, as we know, putting together the sum needed to complete the Beethoven monument. He has already given several concerts in Germany for this cause, so he could not fail to invite the Parisians to add their belated offering as well; and they have responded with the best will in the world! The hall was full, the audience brilliant, full of enthusiasm and supremely intelligent.

The overture [Die Weihe des Hauses] op. 124, which opened the concert, was still unknown to the French public, but its fine qualities were immediately recognised, at least to judge by the warmth of their applause. It's one of six overtures in C by Beethoven, who had a particular affection for this key. The imposing, majestic introduction contains a theme of great beauty for the wind instruments. Then comes a trumpet fanfare whose style, despite its glitter, could be more distinguished; a very odd passage for bassoons is heard beneath, the tempo increases bit by bit to lead gradually from Andante maestoso to Allegro, as a way of passing from the first part of the work to the second without interruption.

In October 1959, the following note appeared in Der Spiegel: “Pola Negri, 62, once a diva of German silent film, now an American businesswoman and homeowner, traveled overseas again after waiting in vain in a Munich hotel for over a month for the finished screenplay of the film Herrin der Welt [Mistress of the World]. According to the wishes of director William Dieterle and producer Artur (‘Atze’) Brauner, she was to reap accolades in this new film once again. However, Negri did not like the first version of the script because the deviation from the treatment she agreed to seemed too far-reaching. After her departure, she declared she would only come back ‘when everything was in order.’”

Pola Negri was one of Weimar cinema's most internationally acclaimed stars, and Die Herrin der Welt (The Mistress of the World, Joe May, 1919/1920), which Hollywood veteran William Dieterle was slotted to remake, was one of the most monumental and expensive international adventure films of the Weimar Republic. Set against opulent domestic studio backdrops, May's eight-part silent adventure serial tested the possibilities of staging cinematic attractions by chasing an action heroine around the world from Europe to China, Africa, and the US, while showcasing a variety of technological gadgets. The Polish actress Pola Negri, daughter of a Romani tinsmith, moved to Berlin in 1917 to launch a successful career as an “exotic” vamp in early Weimar cinema, as Anjeana Hans discusses in this volume.

INTRODUCTION

Elizabeth Bathgate lived in the small coastal town of Eyemouth in Berwickshire. Her husband, Alexander Pae, was a maltman, and the couple seem to have been comfortably off, lending money and employing more than one servant. She was caught up in a local witchcraft panic in 1633, but achieved a narrow escape in her 1634 trial with the aid of a supportive husband and effective lawyers. Her case reveals much about community interactions and about sophisticated legal argument.

The Eyemouth panic began in the summer of 1633, and gathered momentum in the autumn with accusations against Agnes Allanshaw, Agnes Wilson, Alison Wilson, Elspeth Wilson and Katherine Wilson. The privy council granted a commission of justiciary for their trial on 26 November 1633, with the commissioners including John Ramsay of Edington, sheriff depute of Berwickshire. Elizabeth Bathgate's own trial record tells us that the confessions of Agnes Wilson and Alison Wilson named Isobel Sinclair, and Bathgate herself, as fellow-witches. On 9 December, the two Wilsons were made to ‘confront’ Sinclair and Bathgate, and the Wilsons declared that Sinclair and Bathgate had been with them at the sinking of George Huldie's ship by witchcraft. A commission of justiciary for the trial of Isobel Sinclair would be granted on 14 January 1634. But Elizabeth Bathgate proved to be harder to deal with.

The prosecutors imprisoned Bathgate in the tolbooth of Duns, the head burgh of Berwickshire. The leaders of her prosecution were Sir Patrick Home of Ayton and John Home, minister of Eyemouth, who were part of the team that had driven forward the prosecutions so far. Quite possibly the Homes hoped to torture her with sleep deprivation; there was mention at her trial of testimony that had been gathered during the previous ‘watching’ of Agnes Wilson. However, Bathgate's husband, Alexander Pae, acted promptly.

I consider the complete retranslation of Thomas Mann's fifty-eight Deutsche Hörer! radio addresses (1940 to 1945; fifty-nine if we include the “Address to Americans of German Descent”)––undertaken by three experts in comparative literature from California State University, Long Beach, Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts––to be a matter of particular urgency in our present international political and societal crisis. Perhaps the most important question regards what attention this translation will attract in the United States today: this plea, ultimately more humanistic than political, from a German author who had emigrated to the USA to his former countrymen who had stayed at home in the Nazi Reich.

Will the significance of the new translations be limited to fresh research projects by a few literary scholars, or perhaps to the interest of a handful of private Thomas Mann admirers? I do not think so. No doubt, the grave social and political wounds that the United States in particular has suffered in the course of recent decades, both in terms of foreign and domestic policy, cannot be compared in any way with the utter moral collapse that was the Nazi empire, which is the subject of Thomas Mann's speeches. But our nation––I was after all born in and am a citizen of the United States––which has fallen into a lamentable, strife-torn, and imperiled state, faces an extremely unsettled and precarious future.

INTRODUCTION

In Shetland, 31 persons were accused of witchcraft during the period 1602–1725: 23 women and eight men. The percentage of accused men in Shetland was 26 per cent, which is higher than for Scotland in general, and also higher than for Orkney. In the group of men, six were accused early, during the period 1602–16. Then there was a long pause until Magnus Laurenson was accused in 1674. Some of the records of his pre-trial investigation are preserved. The interrogators were all major landowners: Gilbert Neven of Windhouse, a justice of the peace; Robert Hunter of Lunna, chamberlain of Shetland; John Mitchell of Berrie, a collector of excise; and John Forrester, another chamberlain. The document below is their petition demanding that Laurenson should be tried. There is however no record of a formal trial for him.

Most of the witchcraft trials in Shetland deal with traditional witchcraft, maleficium, causing human illness and death or animal illness and death. In the earliest witchcraft trials in Shetland, neither the Devil nor the Devil’s pact are mentioned. There was a change in 1616, when new and learned demonological ideas came to the fore in a triple trial. A range of demonological ideas were confessed, all known from cases on the Scottish mainland: the Devil's pact, the Devil's mark, the Devil's child, a promise from the Devil, and sex with the Devil. However, in Shetland such notions did not last for a long time. Ideas related to demonology did not get a foothold there.

Magnus Laurenson is mentioned twice in court records, first in 1674 – a year when there were no other witchcraft trials in Shetland – and again in 1677. He lived in Gonfirth, in the north-west of Mainland, and was a practising healer.

The presence of a specific ‘proto-melodramatic’ culture prior to the arrival of melodrama in German-speaking countries should invite us to reconsider the argument according to which the Benda model brought to perfection Rousseau's rudimentary integration of music, while its poetic aspect remained specifically exemplary of the Sturm und Drang. Certainly, the rhetorical treatment of these librettos was in tune with the Sturm und Drang, but solely ascribing it to this German trend is only half of the answer. The expansion of the French style entrecoupé into the Sturm und Drang drama, allowing for a unique combination of pantomime, declamation, and music, was also a consequence of the theatrical culture that had developed around Lessing in Hamburg in the 1760s. In Goethe's Clavigo (1774), the hero's desperate final monologue applies a rhetoric that can be described as melodramatic, its many interjections interwoven with musical ritornelli: ‘Marie! Marie! Take me with you! Take me with you! Grim music is heard from inside. They are starting to walk to the tomb! – Stop! Stop! Don't close the casket! Let me see her one last time! […] The music continues. She's calling! I’m coming! – What fear grips me! What trembling holds me back! The music starts up for the third time and continues.’2 These outbursts and short sentences create a stylised texture for the fragmentary, the incomplete, powerfully triggering the Darstellung.

This poetics of incompletion was dictated by a conception of declamation in which the myth of immediacy, of the spontaneity of inspiration, could be fully acted out.

This first French performance of the tragedy with Mendelssohn's incidental music was on 21 May. As this is a play, not an opera, the characters spoke their lines, sometimes accompanied by the orchestra; the music is almost entirely for double chorus and orchestra.

It was an excellent occasion, whose literary value I leave to a more expert pen than mine to assess. I will allow myself merely to say that I was, like all the artists in the audience, profoundly moved by the powerful ideas of this Shakespeare of antiquity. I found it beautiful, noble, and touching and wept as much as is permitted without making oneself ridiculous. I applauded Bocage and Mlle Bourbier with all my might, as well as Mendelssohn's music, the choir, and the innovative, imposing stage production. Certainly the director of the Odéon, by giving new life to Sophocles, has done our culture a favour by demonstrating, by way of this famous example, that those men of today gifted with dramatic genius have simply been following the path of the classical playwrights in portraying nature and truth. This upsets certain people, it's true, who had different views about Sophocles and who now find him as vulgar as Shakespeare because he uses the right words. But why worry? Most audiences these days are quite happy that Tiresias should talk of ‘dogs’ and ‘crows’, and that when Creon learns of Eurydice's death he responds simply ‘O my poor wife!’, instead of following classical practice, as janitors do, with ‘O my unfortunate spouse!’

What shocks most people over this production is the intervention by the chorus, singing in response to the actors’ dialogues.