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Summary

WHY MIGHT A HISTORIAN KILL HIMSELF? And what would his ghost tell us? These questions are at the core of Christoph Hein's Horns Ende. In 1985, fourteen years after Honecker's “No Taboos” speech, and following two years of struggle with the censors, Christoph Hein's second major prose work appeared. Horns Ende deals with difficult issues of history and memory, asking, for example, what became of the Nazis who previously dwelt in the territory that became East Germany, and evoking memories of Stalinist show trials in the GDR in the 1950s. The presence of such issues in the novel delayed its publication. Aufbau and Luchterhand publishers, the former in the East, the latter in the West, had worked out a deal to publish the novel in East and West simultaneously. This is the same deal negotiated between the same two publishers that led to the publication of Wolf's Kein Ort. Nirgends in 1979. The Ministry of Culture, however, temporarily inhibited publication. Klaus Selbig, one of three censors who screened the novel, wrote a letter to Klaus Höpcke, the Minister of Culture from 1973 until 1989, dated May 10, 1984, in which he provided the following reason, among others, for halting publication of the book: “The impression remains that the story carries over into the present as a history of human cruelty. To be sure, the dialogues which precede the individual chapters and the concluding dialogue provide a kind of contrapunkt, but it requires an extremely thorough reading and a great deal of good will not to interpret this novel in the aforementioned sense.” The censors were correct in noting that the novel presents a “history of human cruelty,” part of which “carries over into the present,” that is, into the GDR. They were mistaken, however, in their reading of the dialogues between chapters, which include the posthumous voice of Horn, as a counterpoint to that history. Their misreading of those dialogues is further evident in the fact that they persuaded Hein to change the original title, Horn, to the title under which the work was later published, Horns Ende, because they thought that emphasizing Horn's death would demonstrate a disconnect between the histories of fascism and Stalinism, on the one hand, and the contemporary situation in the GDR, on the other.

Summary

‘How should a developing country government, concerned with tackling poverty amongst its citizens, think about its role in the energy sector?’ (Bond, in World Bank & ESMAP 2000, p. vii). This simple question has proven vexing for countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Energy is a particularly vexing policy area because of its connection to so many other sectors and because of the varied and mixed ways that the benefits of energy sector reform are communicated and can be communicated to citizens. What is, for example, the primary reason for introducing private sector providers? For increasing electricity tariffs? For building a hydroelectric dam in lieu of investing in decentralized renewable projects? Hence, the questions are not only about how a developing country government should think about its role in the energy sector but also what the implications are of the energy pathways or investments chosen. How, for example, does a government address the inequity in access to modern energy services? How are questions about the unequal distribution of electricity services communicated? How are policy and reform decisions framed, assigned meaning and communicated?

One way that these questions have been examined is through the study of ‘narratives’ or, in this case, energy narratives. As Roe (1991) notably highlighted, a narrative is a story with a beginning, middle and end. What makes a narrative powerful is not its veracity, or the evidence to support it, but the strength or power of the narrative in driving actions and convincing others of the merits of the action. A narrative does not need to be true; but if the narrative is powerful and there are no other narratives that can compete and usurp dominant narratives, then the dominant narrative persists. For environmental issues in Africa generally, dominant development narratives have historically produced inaccurate and sometimes destructive policy interventions (see Leach & Mearns 1996). Hence, it can be asked: what is the dominant energy narrative being promoted by governments and international organizations? How are policy reforms or investments being framed and assigned meaning? Are historical, social, political and economic conditions or contexts in African countries amenable to the energy narratives being promoted?

Shortly after Uganda's state electricity utility was unbundled, the government produced a national energy policy.

Summary

In his 1935 introduction to one of the first annotated editions of La Gatomaquia, Francisco Rodríguez Marín makes the case for the relative obscurity of Lope's burlesque masterpiece. He rails against ‘los que imaginan ser innecesaria la exégesis en cuanto a las obras de este autor’, proceeding to give examples of Lope's invented words (‘piramizar’, ‘ñifiñafe’, etc.) and phrases that the uninitiated reader might consider an obstacle to understanding. Despite Burguillos's claims that ‘la vega es llana’ (147, v. 8), my analysis of La Gatomaquia will show that the plain surface dissembles much deeper foundations.

Structured in seven relatively even silvas, in 2,802 verses, Burguillos's Gatomaquia is narrated by an indeterminate voice that oscillates in its identification with Lope, Burguillos of the sonnets, and neither. The central premise of the poem lies in a feline love triangle that purposely and comically echoes the classical Paris–Helen–Menelaus triangle; Marramaquiz, ‘gato romano’ (I, v. 80), woos the beautiful Zapaquilda, who is in turn won over by the foreign novelty of Micifuf, descendant of the biblical Noah's cat, Zapirón (III, v. 207). Marramaquiz, driven in his rage to the rapture of the traitorous feline ‘Helen’ on the day of her wedding to the tardy (and vain) Micifuf, must then face the bellicose retaliation of the foreign cat. The text is littered with mythological images of women being forcefully taken by the gods (the exploits of Jupiter appear most frequently) but these seem to be mostly superficial decor. The depth of the poem, as we will see, lies not in the embellishments of mythological tropes, but in Lope's process of mythologising his own works. Various factors that contribute to this process will feature in the following analysis, including the constantly fluctuating generic consistency of the poem, a carnivalesque ethos and a rhetoric of materialism that grounds displays of lofty erudition, as well as the often complex philosophical threads and the text's preoccupation with time and the stars. The somewhat theatrical aspect of the poem is foregrounded in the Advertimiento al señor lector as the poet claims that an Aristophanic facade obscures Platonic truths; rather than traditional emphasis on the neo-Platonic in Lope's work, my analysis will focus on the Aristophanic connection.

Summary

There are at the moment a score of Yacht Clubs in the United Kingdom, containing altogether about five thousand subscribing members … A national sport … ought certainly to have a Magazine, to register the regattas, cruises, crotchets, inventions, deeds, discussions, and opinion of its supporters.

The Lack of Political and Social Stability Needed for Yachting to Develop

The growth of yachting and yacht clubs in Great Britain was rather laboured after 1815 until the 1860s. To understand the reasons for this slow growth, we need to try to specify the conditions necessary for a yachting community to develop.

The Conditions Necessary for a Yachting Community To Develop

Summary

THE insular tradition of Charlemagne is concentrated in a small number of related core texts, repeatedly reworked in both languages. The theory that so few chansons de geste were translated into English during the Middle Ages because only certain texts were circulating in England in French is difficult to sustain, as noted in Chapter 1, for while fewer manuscript witnesses to the genre survive in insular than continental manuscripts, it is clear that other texts were known that have not survived or survive only in fragmentary form. At the very least we must admit to uncertainty; we cannot argue from an absence of surviving texts that a particular narrative was not known in England. Yet it remains striking that we have Middle English translations of only three chansons de geste: Fierabras, Otinel and the Chanson de Roland. This chapter is largely concerned with the engagement of the insular French versions of these narratives in their particular cultural and political milieux, including the manuscript contexts in which they are found.

Before turning to the major thematic concerns shared by the insular texts it is worth noting that there are also particularly strong thematic and narrative links connecting the original Old French texts which lie behind the insular narratives: Fierabras, Otinel, and both the chanson de geste and chronicle versions of the Roland narrative. Clear intertextual allusions invite us to read the Fierabras and Otinel material together, and both in conjunction with the matter of Roncevaux. Intertextual dialogue works in a complex way in the chanson de geste, as these narratives continue to be disseminated, at least in part, through oral performance as well as in manuscript; the written texts would continue to be received aurally. The texts are also particularly unstable and subject to remaniement, as noted in the Introduction. This allows ongoing debate and reconsideration of the themes raised by the narratives. As the texts are adapted and reinterpreted, the connections between them become more complex. In the continental tradition, the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle draws on the narrative found in the Chanson de Roland, while Otinel is best understood as a response to Fierabras.

Summary

In the lake region the decade from 1956 was marked by the expansion and growing maturity of crop production along the lines that had started in the previous dozen years. Feeding that expansion were once again the competitions and negotiations for places, spaces and valued agricultural resources that entered into yet another level of intensity and significance in that decade. Also important had been the technological factors that underwent some meaningful change and transformation beginning in the early 1950s. This was particularly true for the seed technologies, namely the brand new cultivars and improved seed varieties of the major food crops, including tef, wheat and corn/maize that originated from the modern centres of crop research and development that the Ethiopian state and its international allies had organized in the lake region and few other parts of the country after 1948. As this chapter seeks to demonstrate, the interaction of these two factors, namely the social and the technological, was what underpinned agricultural and environmental change and transformation in the region in the period examined.

SEEDS OF CHANGE

Already by the middle of the twentieth century, the majority of the lake region's farmers seem to have become self-sufficient in terms of seed capital. Yet neither that factor nor their success in crop production was able to deter them from embracing a new set of cultivars and seed varieties along the way. Of these, certainly the most attractive to them had been the varieties originating in the newly organized modern centres of crop research and development and community farms that started to grow in that region and some other parts of the country in the decade after 1948.

First among these was the school farm that the Seventh-day Adventist Mission organized in its Kuyera campus (located just to the north of Shashamane town) shortly after its establishment in 1948. Also important had been the community and demonstration farms that a group of retired soldiers and the Awasa Community Training Center (ACTC) organized in the northern outskirts of Awasa town in 1958 and 1962, respectively.

Summary

If, as shown in the previous two chapters, the lake region had been for the last half century a predominantly pastoral landscape, the situation started to change dramatically from 1942. Nothing illustrates that point better than the speed at which crop production expanded in that region in the next dozen years. Its major promoters had been an increasingly diverse group of populations, some of whom were also new to this region. Yet by far the most enterprising had been the local populations, most notably the pastoralists that developed interest in crop production more fondly than ever before. Although unprecedented, their new-found interest in farming was not, however, fortuitous. Rather, it was the strategy that they deliberately parlayed for contesting, renewing and asserting their entitlement rights on the land all over again. This is an important point, because the post-1942 period witnessed the escalation of the competitions for places and valued agricultural resources along previously existing and new lines. Among the factors that contributed to that escalation certainly the most important has been the demand for agricultural land and product that reached qualitatively new levels in Addis Ababa from 1942. Interestingly, it was by abandoning some of their traditional methods of land use and productive activity and by venturing in crop production that local pastoralists were able to cope with and thwart the pressures that they saw coming from Addis Ababa after that year. When seen from that angle, crop production was for them a means to a bigger end rather than an end in and of itself.

THE CONTOURS AND TECHNOLOGIES OF CROP PRODUCTION

By the time the joint Allied forces, mainly British and Ethiopian, drove the Italians out from their East African Empire in May 1941 the lake region was still a predominantly pastoral landscape. Supporting evidence to that argument can be found in the report that the British General Joyce published two years later. Joyce was a ranking member of the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA) that the British had organized in Addis Ababa following the Italian departure.

Summary

As I was revising this conclusion, news broke out in Ethiopia attesting the ‘suspension of the issuance of new licenses’ in land lease for largescale commercial farming. Already by then the Ethiopian state had leased out, at a deliberately deflated price of on average $0.90/hectare, over 2.43 million hectares of farming land to a total of 5,700 domestic and foreign firms. If that rate tended to suggest the feasibility and efficacy of the government's decade-old policy on large-scale land transfers for commercial farming, many of its clientele had nonetheless difficulty in ‘developing’ and utilizing most of the acquired properties for productive purposes in a prompt manner. From the same source, it is clear that these firms were able to bring under cultivation only a fraction (estimated between 15 and 30 per cent) of the leased land. Interestingly, that was the discrepancy that the Ethiopian state used as rationale, when it made the decision to halt the ‘issuance of new licenses in land lease’ for commercial farming effective 25 March 2016.

To its critics and opponents, this was only the second time that the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) was able to heed to popular demand and to reverse course on such a major policy matter since coming to power in May 1991. The first instance, they argue, can be found in the administration's willingness to scrap the newly adopted master plan for Addis Ababa in December 2015. As the available evidence suggests, one of the master plan's primary objectives was to significantly expand the city's boundaries in all directions. This was a controversial move because as a veritable exercise in land grabbing the master plan has tended to jeopardize and undermine the rights and livelihood practices of the smallholder farmers inhabiting the targeted territories. Politically as well, the master plan's adoption revealed the tensions and contradictions that had existed in Ethiopia's ethnically subsumed federal structure. If that was the arrangement that had kept Addis Ababa under the jurisdiction of the federal state, administering the territories that the proposed master plan had sought to appropriate for that city was the exclusive prerogative of the ostensibly autonomous regional state called Oromia. When seen from that angle, what that master plan had sought to accomplish in these territories amounted to a direct infringement and violation of state rights.

Summary

THE heroic literature of medieval England celebrates the acts of three groups of characters: English legendary heroes, King Arthur and his knights, and the Emperor Charlemagne and his Twelve Peers. The first two groups have received major recent scholarly attention, but the texts in the last group have been comparatively neglected, though a series of editions of the Middle English texts for the Early English Text Society in the late nineteenth century gave them a prominent identity as ‘The English Charlemagne Romances’. French-language Charlemagne texts continued to be produced for English readers well into the fifteenth century, and from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth century Middle English verse romances of Charlemagne were composed and copied. Caxton printed a prose life of Charles the Great as well as the Morte Darthur. However, while Arthurian themes persisted in English literature and culture, those of Charlemagne did not. This might seem explicable if he is viewed as the national hero of the French. Yet, to the puzzlement of some critics, the production of most English Charlemagne texts coincided with the Hundred Years’ War. Is it significant, therefore, that the original French texts already existed in Anglo-Norman form? In what sense might Charlemagne have had an established insular identity?

The texts traditionally named the ‘Matter of France’ deal with the legendary history of the Emperor Charlemagne, who is presented defending Christendom in campaigns against the Saracens with his Twelve Peers. In Old French the cycle du roi material extends to over fifty chansons de geste, but in the insular tradition, in both Anglo-Norman and Middle English versions, the focus is restricted to a few central, original narratives: the matter of Roncevaux (La Chanson de Roland and the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle), the Fierabras material (La Destruction de Rome, Fierabras), and Otinel. A chapter of this book is devoted to each of these traditions, but first we put this in a wider context of reception, with discussion of the circulation of the material in England and an examination of the texts in their manuscript contexts.

The aim of this study of ‘Charlemagne in England’ is to explore the insular literary tradition with equal focus on the Anglo-Norman and Middle English texts, examining the textual relations between them and the correspondences in narrative form and generic expectations.

Summary

A relatively new development in the history of the lake region's agriculture between 1966 and 1974 pertained to the growing availability and adoption by the local farmers of modern inputs, chemical fertilizers and improved seed varieties, on a hitherto unprecedented scale. The technologies’ major promoters had been the state-organized and internationally financed ‘fertilizer trial’ and the fully-fledged ‘regional’ development programmes that became operational in that region and other parts of the country in that period. The Green Revolution technologies that these intervention programmes provided were not only different but they also became increasingly popular among a growing number of the local farmers. However, in Addis Ababa, agricultural development became an increasingly controversial and polarizing subject almost overnight. In fact, to Haile Selassie's critics, such technology-focused intervention programmes were misplaced, if not also damaging to the farmers’ short- and long-term interests. This chapter seeks to understand the degree to which the percolation and bifurcation of the politics and practice of agricultural development impacted ecological change and transformation in the region during this period.

POINTS OF CONVERGENCE

In terms of agricultural development, the mid- to late-1960s were, in Ethiopia as in most other parts of Africa and the rest of the developing world, times of high expectations and great enthusiasm. Feeding that enthusiasm at the global scale were two factors that had their origins in the previous half decade. These were the coming to an end of European colonial rule in most parts of Africa and the advancement that was made in major international research institutions in terms of engineered, improved seed varieties of some of the major staples, such as wheat and corn/maize, and new fertilizer packages of equal significance. The implication that these two factors had in the future of the science, politics and practice of agricultural development in Africa was Janus-faced. On the one hand, these technological breakthroughs tended to affirm the accuracy of the popular view that posited agricultural development as an intrinsically bio-scientific and production-centred endeavour. On the other hand, the political changes that had started to take place in Africa after the end of colonial rule tended to revamp and strengthen, rather than undermine, state power in agricultural development.

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6 - Specters of Suicide: Christoph Hein's Horns Ende

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2 - The Politics of Provision: A History of Debate & Reform

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4 - La Gatomaquia

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Acknowledgements

Frontmatter

List of Abbreviations

6 - The Slow Expansion of Yachting in Britain, 1815–1870

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Bibliography

2 - Charlemagne ‘Translated’: The Anglo-Norman Tradition

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Acknowledgements

Frontmatter

4 - Fresh Encounters and Morphing Strategies: The changing organization of production in an era of agricultural intervention, 1956–1965

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3 - Blurring the Boundaries: The ascendancy of crop production in a flexible environment, 1942–1955

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Acknowledgements

Conclusion

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Index

List of Illustrations

Preface

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Acronyms & Abbreviations

5 - Inputs, Outputs and the Farm: Transformations in the science, politics and praxis of agricultural development, 1966–1974

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