The Gender of Europe's Commercial Economy, 1200–1700

This essay proposes that between about 1200 and 1700, commerce was rescued from the margins of the European moral economy with the help of a gender binary that took shape among a rising class of European merchant and artisan families. Among this class, a more rigid sexual division of labour was accompanied by a cultural narrative that credited tradesmen with the ability to serve the social whole and charged their wives and daughters with the task of ridding consumption of the taint of sin. The story of the commercial revolution in Europe was, thus, in part a social, legal and cultural history that redefined male and female for a rising class of people and, in fact, helped define the class itself.     

‘The Men Have Come’: Gender and Militarisation in Kampala, 1966–86

This article explores the gender implications of the militarisation of the Mengo neighbourhood of Kampala. It analyses how the hyper‐militarisation under post‐colonial regimes, particularly those of Milton Obote and Idi Amin, marked a significant gender reversal. The military presence in Mengo emasculated civilian men, who were attacked and abused by soldiers, and led women to assume the roles of ‘protectors’ who safeguarded men, children and their homes. Women volunteered for the most dangerous tasks at the household and community levels and faced constant dangers, including rape, violence and other forms of abuse. Using oral histories collected from the residents in Mengo in 2014, I examine this reconfiguration of gender roles and its reverberations in contemporary Mengo. Interviews with the women and men from Kampala describe the various ways women protected people and spaces and at the same time stress men's vulnerability. This article therefore challenges popular conceptions of women as weak and vulnerable and in need of men's protection in militarised situations.     

Enhancing Understanding of the Emergence of Global Trade: Analysis of 17th‐ to 19th‐Century Spanish Coins Recovered from Western Australian Shipwrecks Using Laser Ablation – Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometry (LA–ICP–MS)

This research uses legacy data from shipwrecks to further our understanding of global silver movement in the 17th to 19th centuries by analysing a collection of silver coins held by the Western Australian Museum. Three hundred and eighty‐nine silver coins were analysed for their trace element fingerprint in order to identify provenance. The coins are a selection from the ships Batavia, Vergulde Draeck, Zuytdorp, Rapid and Correio da Azia, all wrecked off the coast of Western Australia between 1629 and 1816. Analysis was undertaken using laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry (LA–ICP–MS), a relatively non‐destructive technique with a sensitivity of parts per million to parts per billion. Data were interpreted using linear discriminant analysis (LDA), which allowed the coins of known provenance to be sorted into identifiable subgroups on the basis of their trace and minor elemental fingerprints, while 27 unidentified coins were compared with this database and their mint of origin predicted. These results have implications for the provenance determination of archaeological artefacts of many materials.     

The Nanjing Courtesan Ma Shouzhen (1548–1604): Gender,Space and Painting in the Late Ming Pleasure Quarter

The city of Nanjing in the late Ming period (1550–1644) was a bustling commercial and cultural centre. In its pleasure quarter along the Qinhuai River, literati and officials mingled with elite courtesans who, educated in painting, poetry and music, used their cultural capital in order enhance their visibility and sociability, and obtain the literati's patronage. The extraordinary gender relations of the entertainment district were specific to its socio‐historical environment, where courtesans, although still highly dependent on men, partook in the public scene and exceeded some gender stereotypes and Confucian values, as they owned material goods and enjoyed higher physical mobility than their female counterparts in the gentry. The geographical space shared by courtesans and literati was principally a social and intellectual space, where they generated cultural productions and established social practices. In order to explore the concepts of gender and space in urban settings, this article analyses the case of the as redundant elite courtesan Ma Shouzhen (1548–1604), who was a renowned painter and poetess. A close look at her case contributes to further understanding the construction of social space and expressions of gendered subjectivity in the southern metropolitan courtesan environment.     

Gender and Post‐war Relief: Support for War‐Widowed Mothers in Occupied Japan (1945–52)

This article analyses the gender implications that emerged through welfare support for the war‐bereaved in post‐Asia‐Pacific War Japan. It follows the foundation, activities and dissolution of the Federation of Bereaved War Victims, the first support group for the war‐bereaved that initially began as an organisation for military widows. After its dissolution, members of the Federation went on to create two separate groups – the Victims’ Federation and Widows’ Federation – whose members, scope and objectives presented stark gendered divisions. By examining this divide, and by analysing the earlier histories of the organisations, this article explores the relationships among gender, military, death and bereavement, and post‐war relief. The article pays particular attention to the tensions and negotiations among various interest groups, including military widows, women widowed from other causes, feminist activists, male lawmakers, bereaved fathers and the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. I place the dissolution of the Federation in its social and political contexts and analyse its relationship to the contemporaneous discussions on female citizenship. In particular, I focus on two areas mobilised by Japanese feminist activists since the early twentieth century: suffrage and motherhood. The short history of the Federation provides a means to examine the reconfiguration of the connection between gender and citizenship during the demilitarisation and democratisation processes that occurred in occupied Japan.     

Paradoxes of Gender: Writing History in Post-Communist Russia 1987–1998

The paper analyses the main trends in Russian historiography concerning women's history and gender studies between 1987 and 1998. These developments are evaluated in the context of social, political and cultural changes in Russia in the period of transition from socialist to market economy. The paper argues that, despite the liberalisation of political and intellectual life in Russia following Gorbachev's reforms, the research on gender in the past years and present-day Russia is impeded, on the one hand, by the economic strains on Russia's academic community, which faces a Darwinian struggle for survival, and, on the other, by the persistence of dominant paradigms of history writing inherent in the Soviet ideology. However, the positive developments in the field of gender studies, which should be seen in the context of general regeneration of historical discipline from the ideological constraints, must not be neglected. The paper also draws attention to the field of gender studies and religion, focusing on the outcomes of recent research on Old Believer communities in nineteenth-century Russia.