In Search of the Good Life: Life‐History of a Kenyan Indian Settler. A Sartrean Approach to Biography and History

This article recounts how a young Shi’a Muslim Indian born in north‐west India migrated to Kenya in the early twentieth century in the context of the evolving trade linking the two continents, and rose to become a successful merchant and respected member of the community. It portrays the struggles that he undertook with fellow Kenyan Indians against British colonial policies of racial discrimination and political marginalization, and shows some of the unintended consequences of these actions for the group in the post‐colonial period. Through the application of Jean‐Paul’s Sartre’s concepts of project, situation, seriality and dialectical totalization, the article attempts to capture some of the historical processes that took place during the period at four interconnected levels: individual; communal; regional; and global.     

Some Notes on the History of the Cardinals’ Rings

Missionary activity in the eighth century was carried out in the eastern frontier zone of the Frankish kingdom—Frisia, Hessen, Franconia, Thuringia, Bavaria. The ecclesiastical centres in Hessen, St Boniface's base area, tended to be elevated sites in strategic positions, already enclosed and in the gift of the Frankish ruling house. The re-use of fortified sites for monastic foundations echoes, and may derive from, similar use in Britain and Ireland of Roman military sites and prehistoric hill-forts. The west end of churches directly associated with St Boniface received special treatment, in one case at least as a result of influence from St Peter's, Rome.

The substance of this paper was delivered to the Institute at its meeting on 15 October 1980.     

A Tale of Two Poll Books – Wareham 1702 and Dorchester 1705

The politics of Queen Anne's reign are characterised as the rage of party; Whigs and Tories contended over religion, the constitution and the succession, and foreign policy. This struggle was taken to the electorate in five elections during Anne's reign, and these raise a question concerning electors’ motivations, the answer to which remains elusive: were they acting according to principle, or reflecting the electoral interests to which they were subject? This article analyses the two surviving poll books for Dorset elections in the age of Anne, those at Wareham in 1702 and at Dorchester in 1705. It focuses principally on the voting behaviour of those engaged in the towns’ governance structures: corporation members, councils of freemen and local parishes. However, it also considers the behaviour of other categories of voter: politicians, the clergy and non-conformists. The analysis shows how electoral interest was mediated through the towns’ governing institutions and suggests that (at least in these two cases) negotiation between the parties had a greater role in the outcome than has sometimes been suggested. It also demonstrates the limits of the electoral influence of the boroughs’ elites: significant numbers of voters were simply not prepared to be led.     

A King’s Two Bodies: The Northern Wei Emperor Wencheng and Representations of the Power of His Monarchy

This article examines the various ways in which the Northern Wei emperor Wenchengdi (440–465; r. 452–465) was portrayed to his subjects. As is the case with many monarchs in many countries, he played different parts before different groups. For his soldiers, he was represented as a great hunter and marksman; to farmers in the lowlands, as a caring protector and benefactor; to potentially rebellious groups on the periphery, as a strong and steady observer of their actions. At the same time, it was in his reign that the Northern Wei court began efforts to use Buddhism as an overarching way to justify rule to all within the realm, by initiating construction of the famous cave-temples at Yungang, where “Buddhas became emperors and emperors Buddhas.” The spectacles through which Wenchengdi was portrayed are contextualized by a parallel examination of the very difficult life of the person behind the pomp and circumstance.     

Earthquake Faulting Effects on Buried Pipelines – Case History and Centrifuge Study

Permanent ground deformation (PGD) is one of the most damaging hazards for continuous buried lifelines. This hazard is especially severe when the PGD results in net compression in the pipe. In that case, buckling of pipe material can occur. If buckling is moderate, deformation of the pipe cross-section can lead to flow restriction and high friction losses, and eventually require line replacement. If buckling is severe, high localized strains can lead to pipe rupture, loss of contents, and possible pollution of surrounding soil. In this article, centrifuge tests of buried pipelines subject to abrupt ground failure in the form of surface faulting are presented. The fault movement results in mostly compression in the pipe. The test results are compared with a case history of pipe failure in the 1999 Izmit, Turkey earthquake and also with the results from the centrifuge tests which result in net tension in the pipe. The experimental setup, procedures, and instrumentation are described in detail. Suggestions for design practice are offered based on the analysis of results from both the 1999 Izmit case history and the centrifuge modeling.     

‘Who Will Write the History of Tears?’ History of Ideas and History of Emotions from Eighteenth-Century France to the Present

Summary

The aim of this article is to shed light on the methodological relationship between the history of ideas and the history of emotions, starting from the conception of weeping in the eighteenth-century French reflection. This period was critical for the defining of the modern concept of emotion because it encompassed the development of a new aesthetic and moral code centred on the exasperation of sensitivity and an exaggerated use of tears. This study brings out, in terms of methodology, the importance that the analysis of tears assumed from two points of view: on the one hand, it places the problem in a framework determined by history and culture (the object of study for the history of emotions); on the other, it recognises the unavoidable axiological and moral element that characterised crying (the object of study for the history of ideas). After a brief reconstruction of the discussion of tears in the history of emotion—from the histoire des mentalités to the ‘emotional turn’—and in the history of ideas, respectively, the article outlines some potential areas for research in an interdisciplinary perspective.     

Elamite Karintaš and Avestan Kvirinta: Notes on the Early History of Kerend

The toponym Kerend has a long history. This study explores the appearance of Kerend in pre-modern sources, beginning with the toponym Karinta? in the late second millennium BC. Kassite, Elamite and Assyrian rivalry for control over the central western Zagros mountains is discussed and the survival of the name in later antiquity is investigated. A derivative of the name appears in Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography and in the Parthian Stations of Isidore of Charax, as well as in the late Antique Cosmographia of the Anonymous Geographer of Ravenna. A homonymous name from the area east of the Caspian Sea is also discussed, as are several unrelated names occurring in other sources (Achaemenid Elamite, Armenian).     

Biography and the Making of Transnational Imperialism: Karl Gützlaff on the China Coast, 1831–1851

This essay challenges the ‘methodological territorialism’ and ‘methodological nationalism’ prevalent in recent studies of imperial biographies, examining the role of the German Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff (1801–1851) in establishing a transnational form of free-trade imperialism in China. A native of Prussia and a missionary by training, Gützlaff was first posted in the Netherlands East Indies before associating himself with British interests on the China coast. However, his loyalty was not limited to one imperialist power. In the 1840s, Gützlaff promoted German trade with China, and at certain points of time he also supported American as well as Scandinavian interests. In addition to making a name for himself as a cultural broker and promoter of free trade and diplomatic representation, he also became involved with various forms of imperialism, from the more fluid commercial variant to the more formalised power structures of territorial rule. The case of Gützlaff therefore lends itself to a reflection about the permeable and shifting boundaries of empires. Moreover, it calls for a reassessment of German imperialism in the period before 1871, showing how Germany's involvement with ‘Western’ global expansion was palpable and not merely confined to the realm of colonial fantasy.     

Comments on ‘Dictionary on Tibetan History and Culture'

WiththeworldbecomingincreasinqlyknowledgeableaboutTibet,astheveilisliftedfromitsface,aTibetanculturalcrazehasemerged.ItisagainstthisbackqroundthattheDictionaryonTibetanHistoryandCulturewaspublishedbytheTibetPeople'sPublishinqHouseandtheZhejiangPeople'sPublishingHouseinJune1998.WithWanqRaoandChenQinqyinqasthemainauthors,thedictionaryrunsto700,000words.ThedictionaryreflectsthehistoryandstatusofTibetanstudiesinChina.Thedictionaryspansatimerangingfromtheancienttomodernperiodsandcoversva…     

Reflections on the History and Historians of the black woman’s role in the community of slaves: enslaved women and intimate partner sexual violence

Taking as points of inspiration Peter Parish’s 1989 book, Slavery: History and Historians, and Angela Davis’s seminal 1971 article, “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” this probes both historiographically and methodologically some of the challenges faced by historians writing about the lives of enslaved women through a case study of intimate partner violence among enslaved people in the antebellum South. Because rape and sexual assault have been defined in the past as non-consensual sexual acts supported by surviving legal evidence (generally testimony from court trials), it is hard for historians to research rape and sexual violence under slavery (especially marital rape) as there was no legal standing for the rape of enslaved women or the rape of any woman within marriage. This article suggests enslaved women recognized that black men could both be perpetrators of sexual violence and simultaneously be victims of the system of slavery. It also argues women stoically tolerated being forced into intimate relationships, sometimes even staying with “husbands” imposed upon them after emancipation.     

From Organismic Biology as History and Philosophy to the History and Philosophy of Biology—the Work of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger in the German Context**

In this paper, I ask about the broader context of the history and philosophy of biology in the German-speaking world as the place in which Hans-Jörg Rheinberger began his work. Three German philosophical traditions—neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, and Lebensphilosophie—were interested in the developments and conceptual challenges of the life sciences in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their reflections were taken up by life scientists under the terms theoretische Biologie (theoretical biology) and allgemeine Biologie (general biology), i. e., for theoretical and methodological reflections. They used historical and philosophical perspectives to develop vitalistic, organicist, or holistic approaches to life. In my paper, I argue that the resulting discourse did not come to an end in 1945. Increasingly detached from biological research, it formed an important context for the formation of the field of history and philosophy of biology. In Rheinberger's work, we can see the “Spalten” and “Fugen”—the continuities and discontinuities—that this tradition left there.     

Is Small Beautiful? Microhistory and the History of Everyday Life

Books reviewed in this article:
The History of Everyday Life. Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life Edited by Alf Lüdtke, translated by William Templer
Jeux d'Échelles. La micro-analyse àl'expérience Edited by Jacques Revel