“土木之變”明兵力及傷亡人數考

土木之變明軍兵力有五十萬和二十萬兩說,傷亡人數則有死傷數十萬、死者數十萬,以及死傷十萬、死者三萬人等多種說法。本文考定:英宗親征出兵二十五萬,土木之變明兵力二十萬,死傷十萬,其中死者三萬。     

Review Article: Professional,Political, and Mercenary Soldiers

Since the late 1970s, most scholarship on the origins of the Zionist–Palestinian conflict has emphasised the actions and agency of the Palestinian Arabs and Zionists, with a focus on the period before 1914. It is argued in this article, however, that the expectation of and commitment to political independence on both sides, a defining feature of the conflict, did not emerge until 1918, and that the actions of the British government in Palestine during the final year of the First World War drove this fundamental shift. Following Britain's occupation of southern Palestine in December 1917, the British administration undertook an extensive propaganda operation in the country to advertise their backing for Arab nationalism and Zionism. This campaign was part of the British government's wider endeavour to mobilise support for the Allied war effort and British imperial expansion in the Middle East in the new age of nationality. It led, the article contends, to a war for national sovereignty over Palestine between two statist nationalist movements. Rather than emphasise British colonial agency at the expense of that of the Palestinian Arabs and Zionists, the article argues that this development derived from a complex interaction between the three parties within the context of radical changes in international politics.     

Global Networks and Local Prison Reforms: Monarchs, Bureaucrats and Penological Experts in Early Nineteenth-Century Prussia

This essay takes the Prussian prison reforms of the first halfof the nineteenth century as an example to demonstrate the emergenceof specific networks of penological experts which crossed nationalboundaries as well as the seemingly clear division between stateand non-state agencies. It is based on the actor-network approachas developed initially in the works of Bruno Latour and others.The paper tries to show that this approach can help us to understandhow state reform processes actually worked. Building on this,it argues that networks of such different groups as state administrations,monarchs, lawyers and penological experts overlapped in thepenitentiary as the central tool of the state's treatment ofprisoners. These groups claimed for themselves a monopoly ondefining the function, construction and legitimization of thereforming machine. For each of these groups, the prison meantsomething different, but no group could implement its ideaswithout the support of the others. Each group had to seek alliesin order to overcome resistance, whether from the interestsof other agents or technological faults. Reform, therefore,must not be understood as a one-way process in which one reformingparty translates its ideal type of prison into practice. Rather,it must be seen as a process of adaptation in which power relationsbetween the actors balance each other out via networks.     

Early Railways 6: Papers from the Sixth Annual Early Railways Conference

Abstract

Mass production of decorative tiles enabled nineteenth and twentieth century builders and architects to 'beautify' the 'halls of the noble and the churches of the peasant'. Tiles were also used for public houses, fire stations, inebriates' homes and turkish baths, etc. Maw of Jackfield in the Ironbridge Gorge and Craven Dunnill and Company of the same place, were two of the most important manufacturers of decorative tiles, and their products, a triumph of Victorian mass production, can still be seen in many places.     

Homeland Heroes: Migrants and Soldiers in the Neoliberal Era

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between neoliberalism and nationalism through the counterintuitive comparison of journeys travelled by US citizens as they enlist in the military and by unauthorized Central Americans as they migrate to the United States. We argue that, however different the context and content of their decisions and their lives, Central American migrants and US soldiers are both connected within a larger political economy. We complicate the idea of migrants and soldiers as purely rational economic actors, but we also reject the idea, imputed onto migrants and soldiers by neoliberal states, that they are naturally nationalistic actors. Migrants and soldiers embody a neoliberal subjectivity produced through processes of violence, capital accumulation and militarization. Yet, as we examine throughout this paper, their construction as homeland heroes within the national imaginary masks the ways their labor and their mobility serve the institutionalization of neoliberal statecraft.