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Functioning as “precedent” and “templates” for future transfers, the Greco-Turkish population exchange and the Lausanne Treaty) are undoubtedly events of world-historical significance. But they are also crucial in the genesis of the subfield of historical research we now call “World History”: they provided the backdrop against which Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889–1975) began sketching his magnum opus, A Study of History and developed the foundations of this subfield of history writing. This article revisits the so-called “Toynbee Affair” and places it in its intellectual and political contexts. First, it revisits the British classicist scholarship that provided the backdrop and initial inspiration for Toynbee as it shifted its gaze from ancient Rome to Greece, which was put forward as a better model for foreign and imperial policy. Next, it examines Toynbee’s wartime activities and shows that his attitudes towards the new states of Central Europe were based on principles that often stood in tension with his activities and views connected to the Middle East. During these years, Toynbee was an active participant in a discourse concerning the need to manage “mixed populations,” which moved to the forefront of a new form of internationalism, while also exposed to the writings of authors such as Oswald Spengler and Frederick J. Teggart, who pushed him to advance a new type of historiography. Third, the article looks at the uneven reception of Toynbee’s ideas after 1945, including his views on the US, the “Muslim civilization,” and his controversial views on Jews and the politics of the Middle East. The article concludes by arguing that his views, which rested on a deep suspicion of liminal hybridity or cultural mestizos, failed to transcend the basic logic of separation developed in Lausanne. Entirely on the contrary: Toynbee’s story offers us a case in which we can recognize the making of the interwar “cultural imaginaire” and “reinvention of differences,” which continues shaping our view of “the West’s” supposed borders to this day. Full article

Species whose behaviour or morphology diverges from typical patterns can provide unique insights on the evolutionary forces that promote diversity. Darwin recognised that while elaborate sexually selected traits mostly occurred among males, in a few species females possess such traits. Some species from the subfamily Empidinae (Diptera: Empididae) are among the animals that are often invoked to illustrate female ornaments. Empidines include taxa that exhibit varying levels of female ornament expression; some species possess multiple, elaborate female-specific ornaments while others have fewer and more modest adornments, and many species are altogether lacking discernible sexual ornamentation. This continuous variation in display traits in the Empidinae provides unique opportunities to explore the causes and consequences of sexually selected ornament expression. Here, we review the literature on sexual selection and mating systems in these flies and synthesise the evidence for various evolutionary forces that could conceivably create this impressive morphological and behavioural diversity, despite evolutionary constraints on female ornament exaggeration that help to explain its general rarity among animals. We also suggest some aspects of diversity that remain relatively unexplored or poorly understood, and close by offering suggestions for future research progress in the evolutionary ecology of mating behaviour among empidine flies. Full article

This paper presents an updated geological reconstruction of the Quaternary evolution of the River Thames at its downstream extremities, close to the North Sea coast, based on new data from multi-disciplinary and citizen-science sources. In this area, the interaction of the Thames with the MIS 12 (Anglian) glaciation is an important part of the Quaternary archive. The Anglian ice sheet, which reached parts of north and east London, was responsible for diverting the Thames southwards into its present course, although the footprint of the maximum ice sheet(s) does not reach the North Sea coast south of Hollesley, Suffolk. Further south, the coastal zone hosts pre-Anglian and early Anglian river-terrace deposits of the pre-diversion Thames system, superimposed upon which are products of later post-Anglian rivers, of both Middle and Late Pleistocene age. On the peninsula between the Stour and Blackwater–Colne estuaries, the lowest and most recent terrace of the pre-diversion Thames includes evidence directly pertaining to the glacial disruption event, for which geochronological data are reported here for the first time. The first post-diversion terrace of the Thames also reaches this peninsula, the river having essentially re-joined its original valley before crossing the alignment of the modern coastline. This terrace passes beneath Clacton-on-Sea, where it includes the type locality of the Clactonian Palaeolithic Industry. The area of interest to this paper, in NE Essex and southern Suffolk, includes a number of interglacial and Palaeolithic sites, the data from which assist in constraining the chronostratigraphy of the sequence. In some cases, there has been uncertainty as to whether these sites represent pre-Anglian environments and hominin occupations, part of the palaeo-Thames sequence, or whether they are the product of later post-Anglian streams, formed after the Thames had migrated southwards. This paper compiles evidence from a wide range of recent sources, including developer-funded archaeological appraisal and citizen-science activities, to explore and update the evidence from sites at Ipswich, Upper Dovercourt and Thorpe-le-Soken, as well as a number of localities associated with the Clacton Channel Deposits (host to the type-Clactonian), amongst others. The resulting new data are placed within the wider context of the Quaternary fluvial archives in southern Britain, with a discussion of how disparate sources of information, including the work of citizen scientists, have contributed. Full article