The trauma of war rape: A comparative view on the Bosnian conflict and the Greek civil war

This paper explores the practice and the political context of war rapes in the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995) and in the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). It argues that conceptions about accountability and expected gender roles may lead social actors to commit atrocities that transgress the moral codes of their own society, while condemning their victims to silence. On the other hand, a change in the political context may undermine the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators and ultimately lead war rape victims to break their silence and bear witness. This argument is illustrated by a detailed analysis of one particular interview, in which a woman raped during the Greek Civil War decided to break her silence fifty years after the event. The interview material offers the opportunity to explore the effects of trauma and the multiple ways in which war rape victims may try to cope with past trauma and give meaning to a shattered life.     

The civil war and its aftermath

Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, 1640–1649. By David L. Smith (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xiv + 371 pp.

Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660–1685. By Alan Marshall (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xvi + 334 pp.

Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678–81. By Mark Knights (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xv + 424 pp.     

Partisan politics and the public sphere: The civil war north

The Civil War North presents an interesting case study of the relationship between a highly politicized public sphere and partisan electoral politics. Although the two‐party system remained intact throughout the war, the concept and practice of partisanship was challenged by the social experience of Northerners who ‘acted politically’ when they took part in the war effort. The creation of a mass citizen army and the mobilization of women and men on the home front meant that parties lost their function as the crucial mediating channel between citizen and government. The more that politics mattered, the less partisanship seemed to be relevant. The war exposed the latent non‐partisan political energies of Northern society. These conclusions bolster the arguments of those scholars who, questioning whether partisanship was as deep or as widespread as previously supposed, have begun to suggest that the ‘party period paradigm’ does not capture the entirety of the nineteenth‐century political experience.     

Childhood in the shadow of war: filled with work and play

This study was focused on war-time childhood. The target period covers the war years 1939–1945 and the years of post-war reconstruction. The research was based on memories of 13 participants who lived in the countryside in northern Finland during the Second World War. The purpose of the study was to find out what children's everyday life was like during the war. According to the results, children did play regardless of the war situation. Children also participated in household work actively. By highlighting children's experiences and perspectives, this study provided important information about children's survival during war time. The study also helps understanding the effects of wars from children's point of view.     

Climate change and the Syrian civil war revisited

For proponents of the view that anthropogenic climate change will become a ‘threat multiplier’ for instability in the decades ahead, the Syrian civil war has become a recurring reference point, providing apparently compelling evidence that such conflict effects are already with us. According to this view, human-induced climatic change was a contributory factor in the extreme drought experienced within Syria prior to its civil war; this drought in turn led to large-scale migration; and this migration in turn exacerbated the socio-economic stresses that underpinned Syria's descent into war. This article provides a systematic interrogation of these claims, and finds little merit to them. Amongst other things it shows that there is no clear and reliable evidence that anthropogenic climate change was a factor in Syria's pre-civil war drought; that this drought did not cause anywhere near the scale of migration that is often alleged; and that there exists no solid evidence that drought migration pressures in Syria contributed to civil war onset. The Syria case, the article finds, does not support ‘threat multiplier’ views of the impacts of climate change; to the contrary, we conclude, policymakers, commentators and scholars alike should exercise far greater caution when drawing such linkages or when securitising climate change.     

Revolution,uprising, civil war: the conceptual dilemmas of 1956

There were from the very beginning two ways of conceptualising the events of 1956 in Hungary, labelling it as a revolution or a national uprising. There also emerged a third way of conceptual definition when what occurred in 1956 was named an anti-totalitarian movement. From the theoretical perspective of Begriffsgeschichte the Hungarian events of 1956 cannot simply be assumed under the notion of ‘revolution’, the term first applied to what took place in France in 1789, since it was not the kind of a forceful collective effort leading to an unknown future. The notion of ‘revolutio’ works better to describe the analytical meaning of the Hungarian anti-Soviet and anti-Communist disturbance. The reason has been that the main thrust of the Hungarian situation in 1956 was similar to the seventeenth-century English and the eighteenth-century American ‘revolutions’, to return definitively to a point of departure by regaining some of the formerly lost social and political liberties.     

The views of Franco's regime on the 'children's issue' during the Greek civil war

Abstract

The suggestion is made here that, as part of its effort to identify the Spanish civil war with that of Greece, Madrid adopted the view that the two cases were similar in order to identify Franco's regime with the other anti-communist regimes of Western Europe at the beginning of Cold War. During the civil wars in both Spain (1936–9) and Greece (1946–9), the 'children's issue' became an important factor for humanitarian as well as for propaganda reasons. Indeed, the correspondence between the measures taken for the care of children by the two conflicting sides in both countries is impressive, in spite of the structural differences between the two civil conflicts.     

Ivoirian identity constructions: ethnicity and nationalism in the prelude to civil war

ABSTRACT. The recent and unresolved conflict in Côte d'Ivoire has received little attention in the English‐speaking world. Where it is discussed, the instrumentalist view of ethnic conflict predominates. This is a linear and structural argument. It examines how pre‐given ethnic groups gained political voice in clashes over control of economic resources, and were subsequently manipulated by political elites with personal agendas. This paper questions the coherence of group identity and instead emphasises the agency of individuals. It argues that the meaning of ethnic identity was transformed as social and economic grievances led to conflict between political groupings. This approach accords individual Ivoirians more responsibility for determining the boundaries of ethnic and nationalist exclusion, and for participating in the ensuing violent conflict.     

The importance of the emperor: Lothar I and the Frankish civil war, 840–843

Lothar I's perspective on the Frankish civil war has not previously been explored. Close analysis of the distribution and wording of the most significant body of evidence produced by Lothar's circle, his charters, casts new light on the politics of the civil war. The imperial title and questions of legitimate inheritance emerge as factors of crucial importance, which shape not only Lothar's self-presentation in the charters, but also Nithard's influential account of the war, and negative portrayal of Lothar.     

A historiography of an ahistoricity: on the beothuk indians

The Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland have long been perceived as a cultural anachronism in the native history of northeastern North America. They appeared to represent cultural holdovers from some earlier age that had been preserved in a primitive state due to isolation on a cold North Atlantic isle. To many, their history seemed shallow, timeless even. Those that supported this position did so by drawing on four lines of evidence. They interpreted Beothuk material culture and other cultural “traits” as indicative of an archaic state; they cited the Beothuk's place of residence‐a northern island‐as evidence of isolation from other peoples and the march of time; they cited linguistic differences as further evidence of isolation; and finally, the fact that the Beothuk became extinct seemed to offer proof that these people had indeed belonged to another age, incapable of making the leap from prehistory to the modern era. This article explores this evidence and attempts to understand the “logic” or rationale by which scholars come to view the Beothuk and their history as timeless.     

Population size, concentration, and civil war. A geographically disaggregated analysis

Why do larger countries have more armed conflict? This paper surveys three sets of hypotheses put forward in the conflict literature regarding the relationship between the size and location of population groups. These hypotheses are based on population mass and concentrations, distances, and some residual state-level characteristics. The hypotheses are tested with a new dataset – ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Events Dataset) – that disaggregates internal conflicts into individual events. The analysis covers 14 countries in Central Africa. The conflict event data are juxtaposed with geographically disaggregated data on populations, distance to capitals, borders, and road networks. The paper develops a statistical method to analyze these types of data. The analysis shows that the risk of conflict events increases with local population size, and is particularly large in highly populous locations within a country. We find only a moderate difference in conflict-proneness between areas located close to or far from a country's capital, except when combined with population concentration: Conflict events cluster particularly strongly in larger population concentrations that are distant from the capital, such as the Eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo.     

庐陵史学特征及其在中国史学史上的地位

庐陵史学发达宏富,史备众体,尤其是在宋明时期,史学大家叠出,史学著作丰硕,史书类型繁多。诞生了龙衮、欧阳修、徐梦莘、罗泌、龙文彬等众多的史学家,编撰了《江南野史》、《新唐书》、《新五代史》、《集古录》、《三朝北盟会编》、《路史》、《西域行程记》、《广舆图》、《豫章书》和《明会要》等重要史学著作。庐陵史学重文献网罗、考证和历史经验总结,从整体上看具有父子同撰、通今博古、文史兼通、诗文咏史、金石证史等特征,有史料、校勘和辑佚价值。庐陵史学享誉海内外,口碑较好,在中国史学史上具有重要地位和作用。     

Raising the dead: war,memory and American national identity*

Abstract. The dead, particularly the war dead, play a central role in the development of nationalism, nowhere more so than in America. America's mid‐nineteenth century Civil War produced a recognisable and influential ‘cult of the dead’, comparable in its construction with similar developments in Europe following World War I. Focused on the figure of the fallen soldier, especially the volunteer soldier, this cult found physical expression in the development of national cemeteries devoted not just to the burial of those who fell in the war but to the idea of America as a nation, in the development of monuments to the dead that, again, reinforced the new national symbolism of the war era, and in the beginnings of Memorial Day, an American sacred ceremony with clear parallels with the later Armistice Day ceremonies in Europe. In all these developments, America preceded the European nations by several decades, making America a valuable case study for the role that the cult of the fallen soldier plays in national development more generally.     

The German politics of war: Kunduz and the war in Afghanistan

This article analyses the way in which Germany's participation in the international intervention in Afghanistan has shaped and transformed the country's politics of defence and deriving policies. It argues that in the wake of operational challenges posed by the insurgency in northern Afghanistan since 2007, and in particular the increasing rate of German combat fatalities, established post‐Cold War dogmas of German politics are becoming subject to erosion. Developments in the Kunduz region of northern Afghanistan, with the tanker bombing of 4 September 2009 as its apex, have had a catalyst function in this process. In particular, strategic, operational and tactical requirements for counterinsurgency operations have had significant politico‐strategic repercussions for the country's defence and security policy more generally. As a result, in recent years the Bundeswehr has begun to undergo a far‐reaching structural process of military adaptation and innovation. The article explains and analyses this phenomenon of political change and military learning in the context of political paralysis.