Inventing traditions: interests,parables and nostalgia in the history of nuclear energy

Abstract

From the late 1960s on, light-water designs dominated the market for nuclear reactors in most Western countries. Up to that point in time, many national governments, scientists and industrialists had favoured the rival concepts of heavy-water and graphite-moderated plants. The article focuses on Sweden and West Germany, where central actors only reluctantly gave up their support for domestically developed heavy-water solutions. Studying new archival material and adopting Hobsbawm and Ranger’s concept of the ‘invention of tradition’, the authors analyze how contemporary actors mobilized both the nation and the past when arguing for plants using natural uranium and heavy water. The paper documents how autarkic arguments were superseded by nostalgic sentiments, and how-subsequently-historians have come to perpetuate apologetic parables like ‘Swedish line’ and ‘tradition’, respectively.     

War, suffering and modern German history

This introduction proceeds in five steps. First, it briefly considers the etymology of the term "suffering," as well as the way in which scholars from different disciplines have approached it conceptually and empirically. Second, drawing on the contributions to this issue, it raises general themes emerging from the study of the Thirty Years, Franco-Prussian and First World Wars, with particular attention to gender, the disabled, and Jewish-German veterans. Finally, it considers the most politically contested field of German suffering - the Second World War - and reflects on how that suffering can be narrated and understood without running into the intellectual dead ends of either self-pity or collective guilt.     

明治末期的神社整理与国家神道

战前日本政府推行的国家神道对近代日本的国家进程产生了不可估量的影响,同时它也是束缚战前日本国民的精神桎梏。明治末期由政府所进行的神社整理,是地方改良运动的重要一环,同时也被称为神社史上的"第二次维新",它对国家神道深入到社会的最末端起了重要作用。研究这一问题对于我们深入理解战前日本的国家神道具有重要意义。     

日本幕末维新期的“三国同盟论”

从历史连续性看,以中日韩三国为主体的"东亚共同体"构想的原生态,可以上溯至日本幕末维新期。胜海舟所主倡的"三国同盟论",应该说与其具有相似的思想特质。该论说的主要内容包括:提倡东亚三国联合对抗西方列强;主张共建强大的海军;互通有无及共同进行学术研究等。今天看来,"三国同盟论"仍然具有一定的进步意义。     

Pioneering Iranian Studies in Meiji Japan: Between Modern Academia and International Strategy

This article explores the relationship between academic studies concerning Iran in Meiji Japan (1868?1912) and Orientalism in Western scholarship. Many researchers who have limited their definition of Iranian studies to the professional works published since the 1930s have concluded that there is an indirect relation between Iranian studies in Japan and Orientalism. In contrast, this paper takes it in a wider sense to mean all academic studies regarding Iran. The paper focuses on two such important proto-academic fields regarding foreign countries in Meiji Japan: geography and international politics. It concludes that the pioneering Iranian studies scholars in the Meiji period were not totally immune to Orientalism on the one hand but, on the other, that their research on Iran was less closely connected to imperialism than the Western scholarship that Edward Said famously critiqued.     

明治时期的藩阀与政党——以民意为中心

明治维新后,如何处理官民关系,并将民意有效反映在政治上,是政府的一大课题.在福泽谕吉等人看来,只有官民协调,政府积极向民众解释政策方向,在官民互动中把握民意,才能形成好的社会风气,政府才能巩固.议会召开之后,官民关系表现为政府与政党的关系,二者在议会中对抗、妥协,各自标榜对民意的占有.藩阀政府的“超然主义”因自身解释的不足、民党强势反对等,无法充分实现;而民党因组织程序、政务能力等,亦不能有效集约民意,获取支持.经过初期议会的交锋,民党自省以图改革,而伊藤博文亦高唱政党改良,二者趋向一致,最终实现了政友会的成立.     

Continuity and change in Angola: insights from modern history

Angola may be entering a pivotal moment, triggered by persistently low oil prices and its president José Eduardo dos Santos (the world's second longest‐serving president) signalling that he may step down in 2018. Will this result in continuity or change? This review article of six books on modern Angola shows that since 1820, significant dips in international commodity prices have marked moments of lasting political change in the country. They also show that the history of Angolan nationalism is one of deep divisions and that political loyalty and support were often more about survival or ambition than about ideology and ethnicity. Throughout modern Angolan history personalities, such as Agostinho Neto, Jonas Savimbi and José Eduardo dos Santos, have also played a critical role in determining the country's fortunes. The single greatest foreign influence on Angola might be Cuba's ‘internationalist solidarity’ of sending up to five per cent of its population to Angola between 1976 and 1991 in support of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA). Over a decade later, the Chinese also found that the MPLA government determined their partnership. This review article examines the strength of Angolan agency and how the drivers of change are complex, determined by personality politics, geopolitics, prestige, solidarity, cost–benefit analysis and timing.