Born of fire: The pursuit of the ‘white gold’

For more than 300 years, scores of historians and researchers have vigorously argued about the question who might have been the genuine inventor of European porcelain of Meissen fame: Johann Friedrich Böttger or Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. Although the story of the invention of porcelain has been told countless times, the exact circumstances of its discovery are still shrouded in mystery. For a very long time the palm has been awarded to Böttger, but today, the scale is increasingly tilting toward Tschirnhaus. In this contribution, ancient letters and laboratory notes, and modern phase diagrams and microstructural investigation are being used to paint a picture of royal desire, efficient research organization, arduous labor, ingenious reasoning, but also treason, camouflage, bald lies, and perfidy.     

The ‘Rebalancing’ of New Caledonia’s Economy

This article assesses the impact of ‘rebalancing’ (ré-équilibrage) policies implemented in New Caledonia following the Noumea Accord in 1998. These policies were designed to redress the disadvantages of the Indigenous Kanak population (both at the political and at the socio-economic level) and to foster Kanak support for a post-Noumea Accord deal with the non-Indigenous population. It outlines the institutional framework of the Noumea Accord and its impact on development policy, exploring the structural dynamics of the New Caledonian economy and the extent of achievements in reducing inequalities. Conventional indicators demonstrate some accomplishments as regards reducing provincial inequalities but this article argues that the goals of rebalancing remain far from achieved and it explores the reasons for those shortcomings. I argue that most difficulties stem from the lack of structural reforms and absence of a shared vision of development. Nevertheless, scope does exist in New Caledonia for fostering balanced development that is environmentally and socially sustainable and better adapted to local specificities.     

Going Against the Flow: Sinn Féin’s Unusual Hungarian ‘Roots’

Can states as well as non-state political ‘actors’ learn from the history of cognate entities elsewhere in time and space, and if so how and when does this policy knowledge get ‘transferred’ across international borders? This article deals with this question, addressing a short-lived Hungarian ‘tutorial’ that, during the early twentieth century, certain policy elites in Ireland imagined might have great applicability to the political transformation of the Emerald Isle, in effect ushering in an era of political autonomy from the United Kingdom, and doing so via a ‘third way’ that skirted both the Scylla of parliamentary formulations aimed at securing ‘home rule’ for Ireland and the Charybdis of revolutionary violence. In the political agenda of Sinn Féin during its first decade of existence, Hungary loomed as a desirable political model for Ireland, with the party’s leading intellectual, Arthur Griffith, insisting that the means by which Hungary had achieved autonomy within the Hapsburg Empire in 1867 could also serve as the means for securing Ireland’s own autonomy in the first decades of the twentieth century. This article explores what policy initiatives Arthur Griffith thought he saw in the Hungarian experience that were worthy of being ‘transferred’ to the Irish situation.     

The vanity of dogmatizing: The three ‘versions’

This essay reevaluates the Weimar writings of Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, specifically, their intellectual efforts to replace the political authority of Kantian liberalism with, respectively, a ‘political theology’ and ‘Biblical atheism’ derived from the thought of early-modern state theorists like Hobbes and Spinoza. Schmitt and Strauss each insisted that post-Kantian Enlightenment rationality was unraveling into a way of thinking that violently rejected ‘form’ of any kind, fixated myopically on material things and lacked any conception of the external constraints that invariably condition the possibilities of philosophy, morality and politics. They considered Kantian reason and liberal politics to pose serious threats to ‘genuine’ expressions of rationality and as dangerous obfuscations of the necessity of political order—of the brute fact that human beings stand in need of ‘being ruled,’ as such.     

‘New Art History’ vs. ‘Old History’: writing art history

Abstract

The three strange poems in English which constitute the section ‘Foreign Language Verse’ in Cavafy's Unpublished Poems present problems of authorship, interpretation and preservation. Who wrote them? What are they about? Why did Cavafy, who destroyed so much, trouble to keep them? The purpose of the present note is to provide plausible, if not definitive, answers to these three questions. The poems under discussion are, ‘Leaving Therápia’, ‘Darkness and Shadows’ and the untitled poem that begins, ‘More happy thou, performing Member’.     

New regionalism in Turkey: questioning the ‘new’ and the ‘regional’

Turkey’s regional policies are inspired by the new regionalism theory. During past two decades, key concepts of new regionalism, including knowledge economies, specialization, networked cities and innovation, have been incorporated in policy documents. At the same time, Turkey comes from a strong central state tradition that controls local and regional development. At first insight, new regionalism and strong central state control do not fit in the same frame. This research analyses the trajectory of regional policies in Turkey with the aim of explaining how these seemingly incompatible policies can coexist. It argues that regional policies developed at the central state level utilized new regionalism as a part of the strategy to maintain power in the course of transformation of the nation state.     

‘The Materialls for the Building’: Reuniting Francis Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum and New Atlantis

Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum and his New Atlantis both appeared soon after his death, edited by his chaplain, Rawley. The works are, on the face of it, dissimilar, and have been treated as unrelated, on the assumption that Rawley was merely attempting to rush out (in the wake of his employer’s death) two works that had occupied his last years. In order to establish just what their relation is, we need to establish, first, whether New Atlantis was simply a last‐minute addition to the Sylva volume; second, what Rawley says about their association and how he effects it; and third, whether the two works have other concerns in common that would have led Bacon himself to consider them as companion pieces. Such an examination shows that there were intrinsically connected pieces, and can be used to throw light on the aims of both works.     

‘History Has Begun a New Chapter’: US Political-Opinion Journals and the Outbreak of the Korean War

In the pages of the United States’ leading political-opinion journals, different ideological camps had very different answers to the issues raised by the outbreak of war in Korea in the summer of 1950. Left liberals placed a great deal of blame for the outbreak of war on South Korean President Syngman Rhee, while conservatives and hawkish liberals used the occasion to lambast President Truman and Secretary of State Acheson. Hawkish liberals welcomed the possibility of a global showdown with Communism, while conservatives disapproved of US intervention in Korea for reasons both political and constitutional. In sum, the debate that dominated the pages of US opinion journals in the first weeks and months of the Korean War was both heated and robust, and exposes the ideological fault lines of the early cold war. To wit, hawkish liberals held positions that anticipated the birth of neoconservatism some two decades later. And conservative voices utilised their newfound platforms in The Freeman and The American Mercury to attack the Truman administration on a whole host of foreign-policy issues, revealing in greater detail than has previously been shown the role that international affairs played in the birth of the New American Right.     

Pleasure: ‘The Choice of Hercules’

In this article I contend that John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism has been widely misunderstood, and hence the importance of his philosophical project has been diminished. This misunderstanding arises primarily from misconceptions regarding Mill’s definition of pleasure. However, these misconceptions may be successfully resolved by reflecting on Mill’s educational roots and his commitment to Greco-Roman philosophy. In particular, I hold that a deeper understanding of Mill’s philosophical progenitors (i.e., Aristotle and Epicurus) would lead us to conclude that for Mill the “pleasures” of the Utilitarian project are in the final analysis nothing other than the “pleasures” of the mind and conscience. Thus, by following Mill’s line of reasoning and adhering to some of the salient points of his work, specifically in Chapter 2 of Utilitarianism, we may reach a richer and more nuanced understanding of his impressive philosophical project.     

The New World and the ‘New Turks’: the American-Turkish Claims Commission and Armenian-Americans’ contested citizenship in the interwar period

The flourishing of nativist political sentiments during the recent United States presidential election has resulted in popular speculation about who is, and who is not, a ‘real’ American. Foreign-born citizens’ struggles to forge a sense of civic belonging amid fears of national disloyalty have significant precedent. This article examines one such historical episode, which centres on a claims commission established between the United States and Turkey during the interwar period. The American-Turkish Claims Commission was intended to aid the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two nations through the resolution of private claims. For the hundreds of Armenian-Americans who filed claims, the Commission provided an unparalleled opportunity to seek their new government’s assistance in claiming compensation from the Republic of Turkey for losses incurred during the Armenian genocide. However, such faith was unwarranted, as the United States excluded from consideration all of the claims made by American citizens who were former Ottoman subjects. This article examines the reasons behind the exclusion of these claims and raises questions as to how immigrant communities can overcome the narrowing of what it means to be American both on the world stage and at home.     

The ‘indomitable’ Pignatellis

The fall of Fascism generates contrasting feeling in Italy, now liberated by the Allied troops. In this new scenario, the search for new forms of democratic gathering coexists with its opposite: the aim to recreate an experience now historically ended (the Fascist regime). Indeed, many southern Italians still believe in Fascism and, despite Mussolini's execution in Piazzale Loreto, they kindle the hope of a new Fascist era. Arguably, they see the death of Mussolini as an opportunity to refashion the Fascist ideology, by returning to the myths of its origins. They envision a new form of Fascism, free from political contamination and compromise, and a new regime able to realize the programmes that the old regime has failed to realize. Maria and Valerio Pignatelli represent the dream of a Fascist revival, characterized by innovative and original characters. They find many supporters in the southern regions, especially in Calabria, reversing the stereotype of an ‘apolitical’ and passive south. Therefore, the aim of this article is to reconstruct the Fascist revival in post-war southern Italy through the history of its main exponents.