Ethnic return migration and the nation‐state: encouraging the diaspora to return ‘home’

ABSTRACT. Countries of immigration are generally faced with a dilemma: they wish to accept immigrants for economic purposes, but also to restrict immigration for ethnonational reasons. This is especially true in ethnic nation‐states, where immigration is seen as a threat to ethnonational unity more than in civic nation‐states. However, in recent decades, various ethnic nation‐states have adopted immigration policies that have encouraged their diasporic descendants born and raised abroad to return to their ethnic homeland. Ethnic return migration apparently solves the immigration dilemma by providing ethnic nation‐states with a much‐needed unskilled labour force without causing ethnonational disruption because the immigrants are co‐ethnic descendants. After comparing ethnic return migration policies in European and East Asian countries, this article analyses the development of such policies in Japan and their eventual failure to solve the country's immigration dilemma. As a result, Japan (and other ethnic nation‐states) have imposed restrictions on ethnic return migration.     

从环境的历史到环境史——关于环境史研究的一种认识

By and large, there are three kinds of research on environment: the history of environment as a field of natural history studies, the history of environment as within the scope of history of society studies, and environmental history as the study of the relationship between human and nature. The methodological perspective of the relationship between humanity and environmental distinguishes the third from the previous two. From this perspective, when we probe the mutual effects between human and nature, we will stress on their interactions. The new era and the realities of contemporary society foster the rise of environmental history, which has not only theoretical values but also practical significance. Translated from Xueshu Yanjiu 学术研究 (Academic Research), 2006, (9):12–22     

Minority nations and attitudes towards immigration: the case of Quebec

Growing international migration constitutes a tremendous challenge for contemporary democracies, no more so than for minority nations. An important challenge for the latter is one of acceptance of immigration from the native‐born population, in a context in which immigrant can be seen as both a cultural and a political threat. In this article we ask what explains attitudes towards immigration in minority nations. More specifically, we seek to provide answers to these questions: What is the impact of cultural insecurity on attitudes towards immigration in minority nations? Is strong attachment to a minority nation associated with less positive attitudes towards immigration? And finally, are proponents of independence for minority nations more likely to favour a reduction in the level of immigration than those who oppose it? The article seeks to answer these questions by exploring the case of Quebec.     

The Franciscans and the Scottish Wars of Independence: an Irish perspective

The intention of this paper is to examine the role of the Franciscans in the Scottish Wars of Independence. Many of the studies relating to this period have been confined to either the political or ecclesiastical arena. They also choose to treat the individual countries of the British Isles in an unconnected fashion. This paper is intended to redress the balance, using the involvement of the Franciscan friars in Ireland and Scotland to study political events on either side of the Irish Sea. By examining the actions of diverse nationalities belonging to a single order I hope to establish why the Franciscans saw fit to involve themselves in either the nativist or royalist causes and to determine it was purely race that dictated their actions when their countrymen went to war.     

A community out of balance: nationality law and migration politics in the history of post-unification Italy

Italian government policies concerning foreign immigration have to be understood in the context of laws on nationality. Since the time of unification, Italian laws on nationality have been closely determined by policies on emigration and immigration. As a result, the laws regarding the nationality status of Italian emigrants returning from abroad, and for foreign immigrants in Italy, have on the whole been determined by the procedures adopted for the acquisition or deprivation of Italian nationality. This is a subject that has not been studied and this article reconstructs the principal stages in the development of Italian nationality laws from the early twentieth century to the present. This reveals that Italian nationality law treats Italian emigrants and foreign immigrants in very different ways. Both the legal system and government policy has in the past been extremely generous towards the former and has made both the preservation and the reacquisition of nationality relatively easy for Italian nationals, even before there were practical motives for this (e.g. the right for Italians living overseas to vote). When it comes to foreign immigrants, however, Italian law is amongst the most restrictive in western Europe. The article concludes by arguing that this underlying imbalance is a major but largely ignored weakness in Italian democracy.     

试析上古时期的历史记忆与历史记载

上古时期口耳相传的历史记忆是后世历史记载的源头.在相关的历史记载中还可以看到其某些影子.出现于早期历史记忆中的"人"多为"英雄"或"圣人",而非普通的人.逐渐剥落掉神的身影,而呈现出真正的"人"面貌,已经是野蛮与文明之际的事情.但是即使在这个时期,人--神之间仍然有着千丝万缕的联系.历史记忆是古代文明出现上升的阶梯.     

东魏北齐史官制度与官修史书——再论史馆修史始于北齐

东魏迁都邺城,学术文化中心转移,北魏太和以来积累的文明成果萃集邺下,为东魏北齐史官制度的发展与《魏书》编纂提供了良好条件,并由此形成了史馆修史与大臣监修制度。大臣监修与史馆修史二者一体,史馆是一专门修史机构,似在宫禁集书省与起居省内,已不同于北魏秘书省之史阁。大臣监修改变了北魏以来秘书监、丞典领国史的传统,入馆修史加兼著作,脱离了秘书著作系统。著作从秘书省游离出来,与集注起居形成更加密切的关系。东魏北齐沿承北魏,置集书省和起居省,北魏以守尚书典注起居,东魏北齐以散骑常侍等侍官监领或撰修起居注。史馆修史与起居集注,造就了《魏书》、《齐书》、《齐纪》等史书。东魏北齐史官制度变化的依据为礼制的修订,唐代礼多因循北齐,故其史馆修史制度亦上承北齐。     

Absence makes the heart grow fonder: transatlantic Irish nationalism and the 1867 Rising

L'éloignement renforce l'affection: le nationalisme irlandais transatlantique et l'insurrection de 1867

While nationalist temporal narratives continue to be demythologized, relatively little comparative work has been done to demythologize nationalist spatial narratives. Consequently, the theorizing of nationalism often remains safely corralled within the territorial boundaries of a respective nation-state. In order to advance theoretical understandings of nationalism, it is imperative that geographers break this sedentary spell. This paper seeks to do just that, through analysis of a particularly vehement brand of nineteenth-century Irish nationalism known as Fenianism, and by revealing the crucial role that the Irish diaspora played in the transatlantic development of Irish nationalism.

Pendant que se poursuit la démythification des récits nationalistes d'ordre temporel, proportionnellement peu d'études comparatives ont été menées pour démythifier les récits nationalistes d'ordre spatial. De ce fait, la théorisation du nationalisme est généralement circonscrite à l'intérieur des limites territoriales d'un état-nation en particulier. Pour faire progresser les savoirs théoriques sur le nationalisme, il importe que les géographes puisse rompre ce charme sédentaire. Cet article vise à rendre compte de cela par un examen d'une sorte particulièrement véhémente de nationalisme irlandais au dix-neuvième siècle connu sous l'appellation de Fénianisme. Il montre aussi le rôle déterminant que jouait la diaspora irlandaise dans la montée du nationalisme irlandais transatlantique.

La ausencia es al amor lo que al fuego el aire: que apaga el pequeño y aviva el grande: el nacionalismo irlandés transatlántico y el levantamiento del año 1867

Aunque se sigue sacando del terreno de la mitología las narrativas nacionalistas temporales, hay pocos trabajos comparativos que hacen lo mismo con las narrativas nacionalistas espaciales. Por consiguiente la teorización sobre el nacionalismo se queda encorralada dentro de las fronteras territoriales de una respectiva nación-estado. Si los geógrafos quieren potenciar entendimientos teoréticos sobre el nacionalismo es imprescindible que rompan este hechizo sedentario. Es éste el objetivo de este papel y tratamos de hacerlo por el análisis de un tipo de nacionalismo irlandés del siglo diecinueve llamado Fenianismo, que era especialmente vehemente, y por revelar el papel decisivo de la diáspora irlandesa en el desarrollo transatlántico del nacionalismo irlandés.     

陈独秀与中国近代史研究

陈独秀是中国早期的马克思主义者,他在五四时期对鸦片战争以来的中国近代史作了比较系统的研究,与同时期的李大钊一样是中国近代史研究的开创者.陈独秀以唯物史观为指导,从西方列强入侵中国和中国社会自身的变化来分析近代中国的社会性质,认为近代中国的生产方式发生变动,政治上成为"半殖民地",进而提出民主革命是近代中国社会的历史主题,反帝反封建是民主革命的基本任务.陈独秀还以"革命史"观看待近代中国的重大历史事件,对义和团运动、戊戌维新、辛亥革命、五四运动等历史事件在中国民主革命的历史地位进行了比较细致的研究,深化了对近代中国历史的认识.从中国近代史研究的近百年历程看,陈独秀对中国近代史的研究为近代史研究"革命史范式"的建立做了基础性的工作,是近代史研究"革命史范式"的重要开创者.     

Experimental history: the appeal of postmodemism in historiography

Use, truth and time constitute the basic elements of the epistemological structure of history. That structure went through three stages: pre-modern (from ancient times to the late eighteenth century, before the professionalization of history took place), modern (the period of professional history, from the late eighteenth century to the 1970s), and post modern (post 1970s). In these three stages, use, truth, and time successively occupied the core of the epistemological structure of history. Postmodernist history, which puts time at the core of its epistemology, is an extreme form of historicism. Even more than historicism, it has emphasized the determining effect of time and change on historical truth and historical consciousness. The privatization of historical narrative and reading has prodded history to become experimental. Experimental history no longer proclaims the truth about the past. Instead, under specific historical circumstances, it strives to produce texts that will be recognized by individual historians and provides these texts to readers, who will make their own judgments. Whether these texts are true will be decided through the uses they produce. In this way, any historiographical practice will be an experiment conducted by an historian in the present and that will consist in searching for the truth about the past. The success of this experiment will depend entirely on the experimental environment, that is, on the conditions provided by the reading environment. __________ Translated from: Beijing Shifan Daxue Xuebao 北京师范大学学报 (Journal of Beijing Normal University), Vol. 5, 2004     

30年来的中国近代思想文化史研究

30年来的中国近代思想史研究,依据研究重心的变化可以分为三个阶段:一是1978年到80年代末,研究重点集中于思想家个案及政治思想史方面;二是80年代末到90年代末,研究重心逐渐转变为以社会思潮史及思想家个案为主;三是90年代末以来,研究重心集中于社会思潮史和学术思想史领域.正是在研究重心的逐渐转移过程之中,近代思想史研究的广度不断拓宽,研究深度亦渐次深化.改革开放之后中国学术界最引人注目的现象之一,是中国文化史研究的复兴;90年代以后中国文化史发展的新趋势,是社会文化史研究的勃然兴起.长期无人问津或受人冷落的研究领域,如近代科技文化、民间宗教、民间意识与观念、文化心态、公共空间领域、新词语与观念变迁等,受到学术界的广泛关注并出现了许多研究成果.近代社会文化史正在成为史学新观念和新方法的一个重要生长点.     

Cold War landscapes: towards an environmental history of US development programmes in the 1950s and 1960s

This essay examines the environmental history of US development programs during the early Cold War. The first part of the essay revisits Point Four programs, arguing that resource development was an essential, but now frequently overlooked component. The rest of the article reviews several recent scholarly works about development to examine changes in three crucial parts of the global environment: river systems, agriculture, and human health. These recent works show how central environmental manipulations were to American development programs. I stress the importance of looking not just at the ideas behind a project, but also what happens ‘on the ground,’ especially the meanings local residents attach to environmental changes.     

Landscapes, land use, and the history of territory formation: An example from the Puebloan southwest

Territories are spatial units that encompass the broadest range of a society's land-use behaviors as well as the history of human interactions with the natural landscape. Drawing from published documents pertaining to the North American Indian Land Claims and to the prehistory and history of land use among the Hopi Indians of Arizona, this paper integrates spatial, material, and historical variables of land use behavior (1) to formulate an empirical definition of territory and (2) to develop a generalized life history of territory formation that can be applied explicitly to the archaeological record.     

Fallout from the thunder: poetry and politics in Seamus Heaney's District and Circle

This article examines Heaney's preoccupation in District and Circle (2006) with international political events during this ‘new age of anxiety’, and how he initially approaches these circuitously through a return to originary, boyhood experiences. Such momentous acts as the attacks of 9/ll, the ‘War on Terror’ and the London bombings are filtered through, juxtaposed with and illuminated by episodes both from the ancient past and Heaney's family history. In attendance, as always, throughout the latest volume is the poet's diverse literary ancestry, a reminder of how his work exemplifies core claims made in ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919), where Eliot argues that ‘what makes the writer most acutely conscious of his own place in time’ is ‘the historical sense’, ‘a feeling for the whole of literature’ from Homer onwards. Thus, alongside its detailed address to politics and such crucial literary matters as structure, form and metaphor, the essay repeatedly returns to the intertextual ‘presences’ which haunt and animate Heaney's continuing creative project.     

Predicament and responses: Discussions of history education in early modern China

ABSTRACT

Since the early modern era, following the abolishment of the imperial civil service exam and the rise of modern schools, the subject of history was included in education at all levels, from primary to tertiary. However, in comparison with traditional society, the degree of attention devoted to historical knowledge has in fact declined rather than improved. In the 1920s, many contemporaries vocally criticized and pondered the low level of historical knowledge among primary and secondary school students, and occasionally voiced dissatisfaction with history education at the university level as well. Critics primarily focused their discussions on the insufficient attention for history classes, imperfect standards formulated for history classes, poor history teaching materials, and lack of qualified, specialized teachers, forming a universal consensus among contemporaries on the failure of history education. However, the widespread opprobrium attached to history education was closely tied to two facts: first, the historians of early modern China had as yet failed to compile a general history of China acceptable to the majority, greatly disappointing many educators; second, historical resources failed to exercise the mobilizing effect on early modern Chinese society that contemporaries had hoped for, and history thus often became the scapegoat paying the price for practical setbacks and failures in the political arena.     

批判与革新：南粤史家张荫麟历史哲学管窥

张荫麟是中国近代学术史上著名的史学家,他在历史哲学领域颇有建树,他批评目的史观、循环史观、进步史观、辩证法史观、演化史观等传统历史哲学观点,试图建立一套新的、完善的历史哲学体系,这是中国近代历史理论建设的重大创举。发掘与总结张荫麟在历史哲学研究方面的成就,不仅有利于考察20世纪前半期中国历史理论的演变,而且对于继承先哲学术遗产、创新史学理论学科发展亦大有裨益。     

The field, the museum and the lecture hall: the spaces of natural history in Victorian Cornwall

This paper contributes to our understandings of the geographies of science through an analysis of nineteenth–century natural history and, in particular, of the provincial natural history society. Focusing on nineteenth–century Cornwall and one of the main natural history societies operating in the county at that time – the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society – it is argued that a set of key spaces were integral to the operations and outputs of such societies. The paper details the significance of the Penzance Society's museum, field sites and lecture hall as sites for communal work of local natural historians. They were also important, it is argued, in their construction of West Cornwall as a site of national natural scientific importance. Lastly, these spaces defined an agenda for regional scientific study. In particular, they promoted a taxonomic method that would transform local people into rigorous scientists and the local region into a 'book of nature'.     

Prehistoric population history: from the Late Glacial to the Late Neolithic in Central and Northern Europe

Summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates are used to make inferences about the history of population fluctuations from the Mesolithic to the late Neolithic for three countries in central and northern Europe: Germany, Poland and Denmark. Two different methods of summing the dates produce very similar overall patterns. The validity of the aggregate patterns is supported by a number of regional studies based on other lines of evidence. The dramatic rise in population associated with the arrival of farming in these areas that is visible in the date distributions is not surprising. Much more unexpected are the fluctuations during the course of the Neolithic, and especially the indications of a drop in population at the end of the LBK early Neolithic that lasted for nearly a millennium. Possible reasons for the pattern are discussed.     

Thirty years of modern Chinese history studies: past experiences and prospective trends

This paper presents an overview of and comments on a symposium concerning modern Chinese history held in Beijing, China in October 2009. It is composed of four parts: first, the paradigm issues of modern Chinese historical studies; second, indigenous reorientation and the study of regional social history; third, the relationship between social history and regional social history; fourth, the history of scholarship on the Chinese revolution. All the conference participants were prestigious scholars in the fields of modern Chinese history and Ming–Qing historical studies in Mainland China. The attending scholars provided in-depth and well considered views about the macro issues of this discipline. Furthermore, the discussion was very active and productive. This paper reflects the latest trends in the field of modern Chinese historical studies in Mainland China.     

Theory and the history of cartography

Abstract

Cartographic history has been dominated by an empiricism that treats the nature of maps as self‐evident and which denies the presence of any theory. In contrast, this paper argues that theories lie at the root of all empirical study whether or not they are acknowledged. The linear, progressive model of cartographic development, for example, is not a law deduced from historical evidence; if it were it would be easily and quickly dismissed. It derives instead from our cultural beliefs concerning the nature of maps, which is to say from our unexamined theories. Historians of cartography need to be critical of their assumptions and preconceptions. Theoretical discussions in the history of cartography must address not whether we should use theory at all but to which theories we should adhere. It is inadequate simply to knock theories down. We must establish a debate in which old understandings of maps, of their creation, and of their use are replaced by better (that is, more consistent and coherent) theories.