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This article performs a close reading of a newly discovered archive of letters to and from Charles de Gaulle, written between 1941 and 1944, to show how de Gaulle engaged in a process of auto-mythification. The archive features wartime correspondence between de Gaulle and various leaders of the British government, intelligence, and military, such as Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1941) Anthony Eden, and Chief of the Imperial General Staff General Alan Brooke. The study illuminates the problematic nature of Anglo-French collaboration in terms of shifting cultural perspectives, particularly with regard to the notion of authority. Such notions are inevitably contested, and this collection of letters is an unusually effective resource to reconstruct the essentially dialogic aspects of this contestation. Through contextualization of the correspondence, including both contemporary and retrospective accounts of the war, the article enriches our understanding of the implicit and explicit conflicts between British and French forces and the rhetorical strategies utilized to further each writer's aims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The humble ballot paper is a defining technology of elections throughout the world. This article interrogates its contested past by demonstrating - over a long period and in the context of three contrasting countries - how and why it emerged in the early modern period and how it was then used, abused and regulated in the context of the expanded, and eventually mass, electoral arenas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ironically, by the time that the ballot paper was firmly established, its monopoly was already being challenged by mechanical and then electronic media, which may eventually condemn it to extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses a longitudinal dataset on legal protection of shareholders over a 36 year period, 1970–2005, for four advanced countries, the UK, France, Germany and the USA. It examines two aspects of the legal origin hypothesis—whether shareholder protection is higher in the common law countries (UK and USA) than in the civil law countries (France and Germany) and whether shareholder protection matters for stock market development in the short and long runs. It also examines the ‘causation’ issue and the ‘endogeneity’ problem—whether greater shareholder protection leads to stock market development or whether stock market development leads to changes in law. The paper casts serious doubt on the validity of the basic theses of the Anglo Saxon legal and developmental model. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents an examination into the history of election law, voting procedure and the secret ballot in the United States, France, and Great Britain. The author notes earlier studies which suggest the origin of the secret ballot technique are in 19th century Australia, but contextualises the need for a larger globalization paradigm-centered historical methodology. An overview of election law in the three countries is then given, discussing their divergent developments of secure ballot counting.

This paper analyzes the relationship between the diffusion of new technologies and the decentralization of firms. Centralized control relies on the information of the principal, which we equate with publicly available information. Decentralized control, on the other hand, delegates authority to a manager with superior information. However, the manager can use his informational advantage to make choices that are not in the best interest of the principal. As the available public information about the specific technology increases, the tradeoff shifts in favor of centralization. We show that firms closer to the technological frontier, firms in more heterogeneous environments, and younger firms are more likely to choose decentralization. Using three data sets on French and British firms in the 1990s, we report robust correlations consistent with these predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the relative welfare costs of the various embargos and blockades of the years 1807-1814 in three countries: Britain, France, and the United States. Relative price evidence indicates that these blockades and embargos did restrict trade, and that Britain was less severely affected than her rivals. Benchmark welfare estimates for the United States are particularly high, at roughly 4-5% per annum. While absolute welfare estimates depend on elasticity assumptions, the US unambiguously came out worst in these disputes, and Britain almost surely suffered lower losses than France as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews theory and evidence on the ways in which regulation affects productivity outcomes. In a context of endogenous growth, it is argued that traditional measures of compliance costs miss the potentially most important impacts of regulation on productivity which occur through changes in incentives to invest and to innovate. Recent attempts to measure cross-country variations in the strength of product-market and employment regulation are considered and some weaknesses are highlighted. Nevertheless, consistent with endogenous growth models, there appears to be quite strong evidence that regulations which inhibit entry into product markets have an adverse effect on TFP growth in OECD countries. Although there are some discrepancies in the evidence, on most measures the UK appears lightly regulated relative to France and Germany, and this may have contributed to a reduction in the recent past in the UK's TFP gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the determination and consequences of organizational changes (OC) in a panel of British and French establishments. Organizational changes include the decentralization of authority, delayering of managerial functions, and increased multitasking. We argue that OC and skills are complements. We offer support for the hypothesis of ‘skill-biased’ organizational change with three empirical findings. First, organizational changes reduce the demand for unskilled workers in both countries. Second, OC is negatively associated with increases in regional skill price differentials (a measure of the relative supply of skill). Third, OC leads to greater productivity increases in establishments with larger initial skill endowments. Technical change is also complementary with human capital, but the effects of OC is not simply due to its correlation with technological change but has an independent role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principal objectives of this paper are to estimate and analyse the private value of patent rights in the United Kingdom, France and Germany during the post-1950 period, and to provide and consider some implications of an index of the `quality' (or average private value) of patents. Since patent rights are seldom marketed, their private value is in general unobserved. This paper makes inferences on the value of patent rights from the economic responses of patentees. in most countries patentees must pay an annual renewal fee in order to keep their patents in force. If it is assumed that agents make renewal decisions based on the value of the patent right obtained by renewal, then data on patent renewals and renewal fee schedules contain information on the distribution of the value of patent rights. In Section I we outline a simple economic model of patent renewal decisions which, when combined with the renewal data, allows us to estimate the distribution of the private value of patent protection. Section II describes the data set and provides some simple nonparametric evidence on shifts in the patent value distribution over time. In Section III we parameterise the model, and then present and discuss the estimates. This includes some discussion of the empirical correlates of intertemporal changes in the value distribution. Section IV derives estimates of the quantiles of the distribution of the value of patent rights, and compares our results to information on both the distribution of the value of patented ideas and on the resource cost of producing them. Section V considers some implications of our results for the distinction between measures of the quantity and the value of patents. The results indicate that the average value of patents varies across countries. We also use the estimates to examine the relationship between the decline in patenting activity since the late 1960s, the simultaneous fall in patents per unit of inventive output, and the contro... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has contributed to confirming the link between education and health in developed countries. The analysis is based on 11 European Union countries. We estimate country-specific health functions, where the dependent variable is self-reported health status and the education attainment is one of the main inputs. All eight waves (1994–2001) of the European Community Household Panel are deployed. A random effects ordered probit is estimated in order to control, to a given extent, for unobserved heterogeneity. Explanatory variables are both time invariant (education attainment and gender) and time varying (gross wages, hours of work, age and living alone). Results confirm the positive impact of secondary education on health in most cases and tertiary education in all cases, even after controlling for other inputs in the health function and taking unobserved heterogeneity into account. Secondary education has an impact on health in all countries in the sample except for The Netherlands and UK. The effect does not differ between secondary and tertiary education in France, Ireland and Greece. The correlation between education and health is interpreted in different but complementary ways by diverse approaches and we may not disentangle the precise mechanism that connects health with education from our results. Anyway, it seems clear that better coordination is needed between education and health policies to effectively improve health literacy. Other relevant results from our study are that women register poorer health than men, age contributes to worsening health status and wages contribute positively to health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The invention of the medium of photography and its commercialization as a cheap multiple during the 1850s and 1860s led to challenges to extant copyright laws in France and Great Britain. This paper traces the ways that debates over photographic copyright confronted current understandings of originality and mechanization and repeated arguments that had already been raised by laws governing prints and casts. The British Fine Arts Copyright Act of 1862, which extended statutory protection to all photographs, is contrasted with French cases, which struggled to accommodate photographs within the fine arts as defined by the copyright law of 1793. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the commemoration of the participation of South Africans supporting the British troops in the Battle of Somme in France. Effort of Jan Smuts, prime minister of the Union of South Africa, to campaign for the establishment of a National War Memorial in Delville Wood to pay homage to African volunteers; Information on the 3rd South African Infantry Brigade in the Somme offensive; Reaction of several South African officials to the Delville Wood commemorative sentiment.

The article presents views of people towards public opinion surveys in France and Great Britain. This paper discusses the results of a twin survey conducted in both countries with similar questionnaires on the image of opinion surveys among the public. Such an image study is particularly important because the general public is at the same time the source of our raw material and the consumer of our final product when survey results are published in France, this is a crucial point because, in recent years, the number of polls released in newspapers, magazines, on TV and radio, has increased tremendously, reaching an average of around 600 releases per year, i.e. eleven publications per week, these figures record only the polls conducted by the professional pollsters. Because polls have become such a successful fashion, the profession is confronted with the development of pseudo-polls, which completely ignore the basic rules of the art, but borrow the well known name of sondage, mini-sondages, micro-sondages, tele-sondages, etc. The risk is great that such abuses harm the image of a profession which, more than most, depends on the cooperation of the public.

Wood dust is an established carcinogen also linked to several non malignant respiratory disorders. A major limitation in research on wood dust and its health effects is the lack of (historical) quantitative estimates of occupational exposure for use in general population-based case-control or cohort studies. The present study aimed to develop a multinational quantitative Job Exposure Matrix (JEM) for wood dust exposure using exposure data from several Northern and Central European countries. For this, an occupational exposure database containing 12653 personal wood dust measurements collected between 1978 and 2007 in Denmark, Finland, France, The Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom (UK) was established. Measurement data were adjusted for differences in inhalable dust sampling efficiency resulting from the use of different dust samplers and analysed using linear mixed effect regression with job codes (ISCO-88) and country treated as random effects. Fixed effects were the year of measurement, the expert assessment of exposure intensity (no, low, and high exposure) for every ISCO-88 job code from an existing wood dust JEM and sampling duration. The results of the models suggest that wood dust exposure has declined annually by approximately 8%. Substantial differences in exposure levels between countries were observed with the highest levels in the United Kingdom and the lowest in Denmark and Norway, albeit with similar job rankings across countries. The jobs with the highest predicted exposure are floor layers and tile setters, wood-products machine operators, and building construction labourers with geometric mean levels for the year 1997 between 1.7 and 1.9 mg/m3. The predicted exposure estimates by the model are compared with the results of wood dust measurement data reported in the literature. The model predicted estimates for full-shift exposures were used to develop a time-dependent quantitative JEM for exposure to wood dust that can be used to estimate exposure for participants of general population studies in Northern European countries on the health effects from occupational exposure to wood dust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the contribution of intergenerational transfers (inheritances and gifts) and family background to wealth inequality in four OECD countries: France, Spain, Great Britain, and the USA. We compare the observed wealth distribution with a non-parametric counterfactual distribution where all differences in wealth associated with intergenerational transfers and family background are removed. Despite the diversity of the countries analysed, we find similar patterns. The combined contribution of intergenerational transfers and family background to wealth inequality is sizeable in the four countries, ranging from 36% in Great Britain to 49% in the USA. When interactions between the two factors are accounted for, and the Shapley value decomposition is used to fully disentangle the contribution of each factor based on its marginal contribution, intergenerational transfers account for between 26% in Great Britain and 36% of wealth inequality in France, with family background ranging from 9% in France to 17% in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief communication, we discuss the confusion of mortality with fatality in the interpretation of evidence in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and how this confusion affects the translation of science into policy and practice. We discuss how this confusion has influenced COVID-19 policy in France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom and discuss the implications for decision-making about COVID-19 vaccine distribution. We also discuss how this confusion is an example of a more general statistical fallacy we term the "Missing Link Fallacy." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the friendship between Huguenot poet Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas and King James VI of Scotland in the 16th century, and how their relationship affected Du Bartas popularity. The poet's diplomatic work for King Henri de Navarre of France is discussed, as well as his efforts to negotiate marriage between James and Henri's sister Catherine de Bourbon. Du Bartas route from France to Scotland is described, as well as his reputation in the court of Queen Elizabeth, and the author discusses the connection between diplomacy and English translations of French poetry.

This article contends that the revolutionary event in 1870, as far as British foreign policy was concerned, was the collapse of French power, rather than the unification of Germany. By focusing on the unification of Germany and Anglo-German relations, historians have missed the centrality of France in nineteenth-century British foreign policy. Despite friction over Belgium, Britain and France co-operated on many issues in the eighteen-sixties, most notably checking Russian ambitions in the Near East. Once French power collapsed in 1870, Britain could no longer resist Russian revisionist claims in the Black Sea. At the same time, Britain was forced to compromise with the United States over outstanding differences dating from the civil war. Isolated on the international stage, the British government had to reorient its policy around the world and the events of 1870 shaped the options open to policymakers in subsequent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination of the impact that World War I had on the establishment of peace in Europe in the years following the war, international politics and the European balance of power. It explores these issues by examining how the English and the French approached the issue of air power. It explores the national strength and power that was attributed to air power and discusses how France and Great Britain differed in their approaches to technology, industrial capacity and military mobilization.

New multivariate panel cointegration methods are used to analyze nominal exchange rates and prices in four major economies in Europe: France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom for the post-Bretton Woods period. We test for purchasing power parity (PPP) between these four countries and find that the theoretical PPP relationship does not hold. However, the estimated unrestricted relationship is found to be remarkably close to the theoretical one (1, −1.5, 0.9 instead of 1, −1,1). Relevant asymptotic results are stated, proved, and evaluated using Monte Carlo simulations. The asymptotic results are general and may hence be used in similar empirical contexts using the same model structure. Parametric bootstrap inference is used in order to deal with test size distortions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the place of transatlantic sensibility in the U.S. Revolution from 1775 to 1783. Distinctive features of the U.S., French and British political cultures after the revolutionary war; Definition of sensibility; Criticisms facing the culture of sensibility in Great Britain.

In this paper we define and estimate measures of labor market frictions using data on job durations. We compare different estimation methods and different types of data. We propose and apply an unconditional inference method that can be applied to aggregate duration data. It does not require wage data, it is invariant to the way in which wages are determined, and it allows workers to care about other job characteristics. The empirical analysis focuses on France, but we perform separate analyses for the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. We quantify the monopsony power due to search frictions and we examine the policy effects of the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, and search frictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sub-Saharan African (SSA) communities are part of a diverse and evolving African diaspora dispersed all over the world. Few studies have examined changes in eating habits of SSA communities who migrated in Western regions of the world. A critical review was conducted on the migration trends, dietary patterns, and dietary acculturation of SSA immigrants residing in the USA, the UK, and France. A comparative analysis revealed historical and contemporary influences of migration trends, the salience and significance of preserving traditional African diet post-migration, and the leading factors to and consequences of dietary acculturation. Limitations and recommendations for research and practice are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Guideline‐recommended antiemetic prophylaxis improves nausea and vomiting control in most patients undergoing chemotherapy. Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer/European Society for Medical Oncology (MASCC/ESMO) antiemetic guidelines recommend prophylaxis with a neurokinin‐1 receptor antagonist (NK1RA), a 5‐hydroxytryptamine‐3 receptor antagonist (5‐HT3RA), and dexamethasone for patients receiving highly emetogenic chemotherapy (HEC), including anthracycline‐cyclophosphamide (AC)‐ and carboplatin (considered moderately emetogenic chemotherapy)‐based chemotherapy. Here, we analyze the use of NK1RA–5‐HT3RA–dexamethasone for antiemetic prophylaxis associated with HEC and carboplatin. Methods: The data source was the Global Oncology Monitor (Ipsos Healthcare). Geographically representative physicians from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. were screened for treatment involvement and number of patients treated per month. Patients' data from January to December 2018 were collected from medical charts and extrapolated on the basis of the total number of physicians who prescribe chemotherapy. The emetic risk of chemotherapy was classified per MASCC/ESMO guidelines. Results: Data from 45,324 chemotherapy‐treated patients were collected, representing a total extrapolated prevalence of 1,394,848 chemotherapy treatments included in the analysis. NK1RAs were used in 45%, 42%, and 19% of patients receiving cisplatin‐, AC‐, and carboplatin‐based chemotherapy, respectively; 18%, 24%, and 7% received the guideline‐recommended NK1RA–5‐HT3RA–dexamethasone combination; no antiemetics were prescribed for 12% of the treatments. Often, physicians' perception of the emetic risk of chemotherapy did not follow MASCC/ESMO guideline classification. Conclusion: Low adherence to antiemetic guidelines was revealed in clinical practice in five European countries, with 15% of all HEC‐/carboplatin‐based treatments receiving guideline‐recommended NK1RA–5‐HT3RA–dexamethasone prophylaxis and 12% of them receiving no antiemetics. New strategies for improving guideline adherence are urgently needed. Implications for Practice: Despite recent advances in antiemetic therapy, a substantial proportion of patients experience nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy in daily clinical practice. Antiemetic guidelines aim at prevention of chemotherapy‐induced nausea and vomiting (CINV), and guideline‐consistent antiemetic therapy can effectively prevent vomiting and, to a lesser extent, nausea in most patients with cancer. This study reports low adherence to antiemetic guidelines in the highly emetogenic chemotherapy setting in daily clinical practice across five European countries. Opportunity exists to increase adherence to antiemetic guideline recommendations. Implementation of strategies to facilitate guideline adherence can potentially improve CINV control. Adherence to antiemetic guidelines is associated with improved control of chemotherapy‐induced nausea and vomiting. This article analyzes the use of guideline‐recommended NK1RA‐based regimens for antiemetic prophylaxis of highly emetogenic chemotherapy and carboplatin regimens in real‐world clinical practice across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-French relations through the prism of musical standardization. Bringing together perspectives from musicology, history of science, and political history, it demonstrates the holistic value of musical practices for the study of processes of political integration. In 1859, Napoléon III's government determined a national pitch to which musicians should tune their instruments. The following year, Britain's Society of Arts attempted to emulate this standard. Amid tense Anglo-French relations, British audiences interpreted the French pitch as a measure of the country's autocracy, and these political anxieties materialized through a redefinition of the standard. The challenges of introducing a musical pitch within a liberal political framework encountered in 1859 were subsequently echoed in debates over the reform of weights and measures following the 1860 free trade treaty between Britain and France. Both the economic and artistic integration of these countries involved the problem of how to regulate society within a laissez-faire state. Musical standardization has received little historiographical attention, but the regulation of this art offers insights into mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-French political culture. Entangled within complex network of industrial, institutional, and social structures, musical pitch demonstrates how problems of economic and social integration were inseparable from international and socio-political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists have long been aware of the need to improve our ability to predict the effect of divergent preference orderings on policy choices made by coalitions. More recently scholars have demonstrated the crucial role of differing assumptions about risk-taking preferences for predicting foreign policy choice. In this paper a theoretical approach for analyzing collective choice in the presence of risk and conflicting preferences is presented and then applied to a series of policy choices in Britain, France, and Germany in two historical periods: one, the three decades before World War I; the other, the decades after World War II. Although the specific cases examined all involve foreign and defense policy options that were embroiled in domestic disputes over extraction, the assumptions and hypotheses presented are designed to be applicable to collective decisionmaking in a wide variety of substantive areas. Indeed, they appear to provide a theoretically grounded interpretation for some characteristic patterns of policy choice that have long intrigued students of comparative foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section offers news briefs on the activities of several French Studies societies in Great Britain as of September 2012. The conference "Algeria Revisited: Contested Identities in the Colonial and Postcolonial Periods" was held at the University of Leicester in England to mark the 50th anniversary of Algeria's independence from France. A conference on the French garden's role in landscape architecture and garden history was held in Trinity College Dublin in Ireland.

This study illustrates a new view of industrial policy, based on the emerging organizational economics theory of the firm. Organizational economics regards the firm as a collection of skills/capabilities embedded in a network of relations with external transactors. Industrial policy shapes the local network, thereby defining domestic firms and delimiting their skill accumulation. In the pharmaceutical industry, British regulations of safety, pricing, basic research and foreign direct investment created a demanding local competitive environment for British firms, training British firms in skills that would facilitate global competitiveness. In France, very different regulations enticed French ethical drug firms to focus on a protected local market increasingly desynchronized from the worldwide industry. Thus, industrial policy laid the groundwork for the spectacular rise to global success of UK pharmaceutical firms and the corresponding failure of French firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the relationship between the evolution of corporate structure and the structure of the financial systems within the U.S., British, German, French and Japanese economies during the first half of the twentieth century. The financial system of each of these economies exerted an important influence on the development of corporate structure, but did so largely through facilitating, rather then determining, organizational innovation. The financial system of each of these economies influenced the selection environment within which firms developed, but this environment reflected the operation of other factors as well. The relationship between the evolution of corporate and financial structure is an interactive one that exhibits considerable path-dependence; the array of economic and technological opportunities available to one firm or to one economy contrasts with that faced by another firm or economy at a different historical moment.

Theories of immigrant integration and political-economic institutions starkly contrast the contemporary labour markets of France and the United Kingdom (UK). We draw out predictions from these theories and then, using Labour Force Surveys that we harmonize ourselves, we empirically examine inequalities that immigrants of disadvantaged minority origins face in labour force participation, employment, and earnings in the two societies. The UK labour market attracts immigrants who have a larger skills advantage over natives. Nevertheless, we find inequalities of strikingly similar magnitude in the two labour markets. In the UK, barriers to labour force participation are paramount, whereas in France, barriers to employment among active job-seekers are more important. Earnings inequalities are less significant in both countries. Overall, we conclude that barriers to opportunity are largely similar in the two countries for immigrants of disadvantaged minority origins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the height of the Cold War, major democratic arms suppliers have claimed that they take into consideration the human rights records of existing and potential purchasing states. After the Cold War, supplier policies suggested an increased focus on matters of human rights. But do their records match their rhetoric and their formal policies? We examine the arms transfer patterns of the four major democratic suppliers between 1976 and 2009. We argue that, if practice matches policy, then democratic suppliers should not transfer weapons to states violating human rights. However, because the global interests of these suppliers shift over time, we expect some transfers of major weapon systems to states that violate human rights, but not of the types most implicated in human rights abuses. Thus, we build on the existing arms transfer literature by disaggregating exports based on weapons type. The ordered logits we run for each major democratic supplier from 1976 to 2009 show that the major democratic suppliers generally do not account for human rights violations in the importing state, with the one exception being the United States transfer of land weapon systems. This research is important not only to arms and human rights research, but to foreign policy scholars in general. The patterns of supply and the continued preference of states to provide major conventional weapons to states with poor human rights records reveal important policy priorities for these democratic states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When investigating the association between brain tumors and use of mobile telephones, accurate data on tumor position are essential, due to the highly localized absorption of energy in the human brain from the radio-frequency fields emitted. We used a point process model to investigate this association using information that included tumor localization data from the INTERPHONE Study (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). Our main analysis included 792 regular mobile phone users diagnosed with a glioma between 2000 and 2004. Similar to earlier results, we found a statistically significant association between the intracranial distribution of gliomas and the self-reported location of the phone. When we accounted for the preferred side of the head not being exclusively used for all mobile phone calls, the results were similar. The association was independent of the cumulative call time and cumulative number of calls. However, our model used reported side of mobile phone use, which is potentially influenced by recall bias. The point process method provides an alternative to previously used epidemiologic research designs when one is including localization in the investigation of brain tumors and mobile phone use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In the decades following the discovery of the bacillus causing typhoid, in 1880, understanding of the disease formerly known as enteric fever was transformed, offering new possibilities for prevention. Gradually, measures that aimed to prevent infection from human carriers were developed, as were inoculations designed to confer immunity against typhoid and paratyphoid fevers. These were initially introduced in European armies that were regularly ravaged by typhoid, especially garrisons stationed in the colonies. This article reviews the research undertaken in the armed forces and the measures that they implemented in the years up to and during the First World War. Methods: The article is based on an analytical review of scientific literature from the early 19th century, focusing on the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. Results: The armies of the United Kingdom, Germany, and France undertook important work on the transmission of typhoid in the years between 1890 and 1918. Many preventive measures were introduced to deal with the spread of typhoid but these varied between the 3 countries, depending largely on their political traditions. Inoculation was particularly successful in preventing typhoid and greatly reduced the number of casualties from this disease during the First World War. Despite this, it proved difficult to prevent paratyphoid infection, and debates continued over which vaccines to use and whether or not immunization should be voluntary. Conclusions: By the end of the First World War, the value of inoculation in preventing the spread of typhoid had been proven. Its successful implementation demonstrates the importance of vaccination as a public health intervention during times of conflict and social upheaval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: It is well established in the literature that healthier diets cost more than unhealthy diets. Objective: The aim of this review was to examine the contribution of food prices and diet cost to socioeconomic inequalities in diet quality. Data Sources: A systematic literature search of the PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science databases was performed. Study Selection: Publications linking food prices, dietary quality, and socioeconomic status were selected. Data Extraction: Where possible, review conclusions were illustrated using a French national database of commonly consumed foods and their mean retail prices. Data Synthesis: Foods of lower nutritional value and lower-quality diets generally cost less per calorie and tended to be selected by groups of lower socioeconomic status. A number of nutrient-dense foods were available at low cost but were not always palatable or culturally acceptable to the low-income consumer. Acceptable healthier diets were uniformly associated with higher costs. Food budgets in poverty were insufficient to ensure optimum diets. Conclusions: Socioeconomic disparities in diet quality may be explained by the higher cost of healthy diets. Identifying food patterns that are nutrient rich, affordable, and appealing should be a priority to fight social inequalities in nutrition and health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Seven Countries Study in the 1960s showed very low mortality from coronary heart disease (CHD) in Japan, which was attributed to very low levels of total cholesterol. Studies of migrant Japanese to the USA in the 1970s documented increase in CHD rates, thus CHD mortality in Japan was expected to increase as their lifestyle became Westernized, yet CHD mortality has continued to decline since 1970. This study describes trends in CHD mortality and its risk factors since 1980 in Japan, contrasting those in other selected developed countries.Methods: We selected Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the USA. CHD mortality between 1980 and 2007 was obtained from WHO Statistical Information System. National data on traditional risk factors during the same period were obtained from literature and national surveys.Results: Age-adjusted CHD mortality continuously declined between 1980 and 2007 in all these countries. The decline was accompanied by a constant fall in total cholesterol except Japan where total cholesterol continuously rose. In the birth cohort of individuals currently aged 50-69 years, levels of total cholesterol have been higher in Japan than in the USA, yet CHD mortality in Japan remained the lowest: >67% lower in men and > 75% lower in women compared with the USA. The direction and magnitude of changes in other risk factors were generally similar between Japan and the other countries.Conclusions: Decline in CHD mortality despite a continuous rise in total cholesterol is unique. The observation may suggest some protective factors unique to Japanese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Lowering energy (calorie) intake is essential in managing a healthy weight. One method of doing this is substituting sugar with low/no-calorie sweeteners. The safety of sweeteners has been debated, but little is known about how they are perceived by professionals responsible for weight management advice. We sought to explore dietitian perceptions of sweeteners and to identify the practical advice they provide about them. Methods: We collected data in France, Germany, Hungary, Portugal and the United Kingdom. We used face-toface interviews and a novel online tool designed to engage people with online content in a way that approximates everyday processes of making sense of information. Results: We identified four approaches to sweeteners that dietitians took: (1) sweeteners should not be used, (2) they should be limited and used primarily as a transitional product, (3) sweetener use was decided by the client and (4) sweeteners should be recommended or at least allowed. Where dietitians are reticent to recommend sweeteners this is because they feel it is important for consumers to reduce their attachment to sweet tastes and of evidence linking the consumption of sweeteners to increased appetite. There is also uncertainty about the possible negative health effects of sweeteners. Conclusions: Dietitians' perceptions about sweeteners are uncertain, ambivalent and divergent, sometimes explicitly being linked to fears about adverse health effects. Clear and authoritative guidance is required on scientific evidence around sweeteners as well as the ways in which they can be used in dietetic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the motivation, scope, findings and reception of the survey of London, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham which the French journalist Léon Faucher published in Etudes sur l'Angleterre (1843-5). Sources include Faucher's letters, the original and revised text, the English translator's notes, and reviews in the British, French and German press. Faucher's fieldwork led him to question liberal orthodoxy and propose remedies to alleviate working-class distress. Exceptionally in eighteen-forties Britain, the continental socio-economic treatise was widely discussed and acclaimed. Elucidating Faucher's thought and setting it in context illuminates the contrast between him and other writers, particularly Friedrich Engels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scrutinizing and questioning contentious and failed policy decisions should result in discussing 'ifs, buts, and maybes', particularly when there are policy alternatives. This article scrutinizes and questions the British decision to reject Armenian proposals to form a legion of Armenian volunteers in 1914 and 1915, especially since in late 1916 the French, with British approval, established an Armenian legion (until 1919 called the Legion d'Orient); and because the first proposals for a legion were connected to British considerations, also overlooked, to land a force at Alexandretta. Nothing of substance has been published on the initial proposals to form an Armenian legion, and on its connection to the Armenian genocide and the proposed British landing at Alexandretta. By focusing on why the British rejected the proposal to form an Armenian legion and the implications, if any, for the Armenian genocide and the Allied discussions on where to attack the Ottoman empire during the first four months of 1915, this article offers important new insights into why the British and French failed to do anything to prevent the Armenian genocide, and got it wrong with their decision to land forces at Gallipoli in April 1915 instead of at Alexandretta. Imperialism lies at the heart of the explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines design books replicating Asian and Asian-inspired imagery in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England and France. Often created to provide craftsmen with new sets of decorative patterns, the designs compiled in these books served to imitate a range of new manufactured products imported from Asia, for which local demand was growing at a steady pace. Design books provide a particularly fruitful entry point into the European conception of the ‘orient’ by synthesising exotic images from a variety of pictorial sources into convenient formats. The present discussion focuses on two specific books: A Treatise of Japaning and Varnishing, by John Stalker and George Parker, published in London and Oxford in 1688, and Livre de desseins chinois, tirés d’après des originaux de Perse, des Indes, de la Chine et du Japon by Jean-Antoine Fraisse, which appeared in Paris in 1735. Using these case studies, I argue that not all patterns found in design books were intended to be replicated on real objects; some also circulated independently as images available to a broader consumer base than previously thought. I examine the books’ contents, publishing history and the marketing strategies employed for reaching wide audiences and generating a desire for the ‘orient’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the highlights of the one-day workshop which explored the position of Medieval French Studies in the Great Britain and was held at the Maison Française d'Oxford in June 2013. The opening and closing remarks were delivered by Simon Gaunt from King's College in London. The sessions focused on topics including the place of Medival French in the curriculum, the required tools to teach Medieval French language and literature, and the possibilities for pooling resources.

This article examines the place of Country of Origin Information (COI) in the British and French refugee status determination processes. It demonstrates that COI is crucial throughout those processes in both countries, and that there are important differences as well as similarities in the way it is treated. Following an overview of the refugee status determination process in each country, the article discusses different sources of COI and compares the uses of such information in both administrative and judicial procedures. It then compares the evaluation of COI in the UK and France, the role of COI in decision making, and the measures taken in both countries to try to improve the consistency of that decision making. More direct comparisons between the two national systems are then drawn with respect to their contrasting attitudes towards the Common EU Guidelines for Processing Country of Origin Information, and the different styles of field visit report generated by their official COI-producing organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 25 September 1513 Henry VIII made his formal entry into Tournai as king of France. An examination of this entry provides an insight into how seriously Henry took his claim to the throne of France. This article uses a range of sources and looks at the entry from the perspective of both Henry and the townspeople, and systematically analyses the different elements that formed a ceremonial entry during the period. It demonstrates that a royal entry was a moment of communication between ruler and ruled, and that Henry used the ceremony to develop good relations with Tournai's ruling elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses eighteenth century English author Arthur Young, focusing particularly on his two-volume work on political economy "Travels in France" which details his observations made during his travels of 1787 through 1790 about French institutions, intellectual pursuits, and agricultural endeavors. Topics considered include the Enlightenment, Grand Tours, travel writing, and agricultural literature. Scientific methods used during the period considered include the statistical method or the tabulation of data, experimental methods, and the use of inference in scientific analysis.

Background Systematic studies of delusional infestation (DI), also known as delusional parasitosis, are scarce. They lack either dermatological or psychiatric detail. Little is known about the specimens that patients provide to prove their infestation. There is no study on the current presentation of DI in Europe. Objectives To determine the number of true infestations, to assess with which pathogens patients believe themselves to be infested, and to gather details about the frequency and nature of the specimens and the containers used to store them, based on European study centres. Methods Retrospective study of consecutive cases with suspected DI from six centres (Dermatology, Psychiatry, Tropical Medicine) in four European countries (U.K., Germany, Italy, France). Results In total, 148 consecutive cases of suspected DI were included, i.e. the largest cohort reported. None of the patients had evidence of a genuine infestation, as shown by examinations by dermatologists and/or infectious disease specialists. Only 35% believed themselves to be infested by parasites; the majority reported a large number of other living or inanimate (17%) pathogens. Seventy-one patients (48%) presented with what they believed was proof of their infestation. These specimens were mostly skin particles or hair, and rarely insects (only very few of which were human pathogenic or anthropophilic, and none of these could be correlated with the clinical presentation), and only 4% were stored in matchboxes (three of 71). Conclusions This first multicentre study of DI in Europe confirms that the term 'delusional infestation' better reflects current and future variations of this entity than 'delusional parasitosis'. The presentation of proofs of infestation, commonly referred to as 'the matchbox sign', is typical but not obligatory in DI and might better be called 'the specimen sign'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores British commercial interests on the French Atlantic coast in the long seventeenth century. This is a period characterized by conflict, when trade between Britain and France was at times prohibited due to war or restricted because of political or economic policy. Despite prohibitions, however, commercial agents continued to facilitate exchanges along these routes, in some cases with the assistance of authorities. Here, specific Franco-Scottish trading links are explored and the experiences of Scottish commercial agents in the French Atlantic coast ports are compared with those of English and Irish, particularly during the Nine Years' War (1688-97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-13). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite the ban on misleading descriptors such as light or mild cigarettes in Europe, there are still widespread misperceptions of the relative harmfulness of different brands of cigarettes among smokers. This study examined the extent to which smokers in three European countries believed that some cigarette brands are less harmful and why, using data from the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Europe surveys. Methods: Cross-sectional analyses were completed among nationally representative samples of 4,956 current smokers (aged ≥ 18) from Germany (n = 1,515), France (n = 1,735) and the United Kingdom (n = 1,706) conducted between September 2006 and November 2007. Logistic regression models examined whether outcomes, including beliefs that some cigarettes could be less harmful than others, varied by socio-demographic and country of residence. Findings: Around a quarter of smokers in the UK and France, and a third in Germany believed some cigarettes are less harmful than others. Overall, of smokers who falsely believed that some cigarettes are less harmful, 86.3% thought that tar/nicotine yields, 48.7% taste, and 40.4% terms on packs such as ‘smooth’ or ‘ultra’ indicated less harmful brands. About a fifth of smokers across all countries chose their brand based on health reasons, and a similar proportion gave tar yields as a reason for choosing brands. Conclusions: Our research suggests that the current European Tobacco Products Directive is inadequate in eliminating misperceptions about the relative risk of brand descriptors on cigarettes. There is therefore an urgent need to protect smokers in Europe from these misperceptions via stronger measures such as plain packaging regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After 1911, Germany felt increasingly threatened by the Triple Entente. Secret intelligence from the Russian embassy in London revealed a growing cohesion among the Triple Entente partners: Britain, Russia, and France. In particular, Berlin feared the success of Raymond Poincaré of France, first as premier and then later as President, as he worked to convert the entente with London into an alliance and to reinforce alliance ties with Russia. In the summer of 1914 came the murders at Sarajevo of Habsburg Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. When Vienna decided to punish Serbia, Berlin agreed to support them in the belief that Russia would not back Serbia. But even if Russia did support Serbia, better a war now than later. Rather than be intimidated, Russia took escalatory actions of its own to help Serbia and their French ally. The First World War was the result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which explores the role of Great Britain in French national security policy following the First World War. It is suggested that Britain's commitment to France developed from that of military ally to joint-guarantor of mutual assistance pacts and international arbitration throughout Europe. Other topics include balance of power, support for internationalism, and the role of British sea-power.