Van Beck Hall. Politics Without Parties, 1780–1791

Abstract.

Eighteenth-century English common-law courts used petit juries in civil litigation to try issues of fact or find damages after defendants defaulted. In colonial Virginia, county sheriffs impaneled potential jurors for trials of the issue; before trial, litigants selected a 12-man jury during voir dire. By contrast, juries on writs of inquiry to ascertain damages were selected solely by sheriffs and reached verdicts under the sheriff's supervision. Scholarly consensus holds juror selection to have been prejudiced, but pure probability predictions generated with hypergeometric distributions indicate that on writs of inquiry sheriffs often picked jurors in a functionally random manner. This article presents a new test for identifying bias in jury selection by identifying improbable numbers of magistrates, constables, and grand jurors.     

Salutary Lessons: Native Police and the ‘Civilising’ Role of Legalised Violence in Colonial Australia

Over much of the nineteenth century, recurring problems of covert and opportunistic conflict between settlers and Indigenous peoples produced considerable debate across the British settler world about how frontier violence could be legally curbed. At the same time, the difficulty of imposing a rule of law on new frontiers was often seen by colonial states as justification for the imposition of order through force. Examining all the mainland Australian colonies from the 1830s to the end of the nineteenth century, this paper asks how this contradictory dilemma played out through deployment of ‘native police’ and the ‘civilising’ role of legalised violence as a strategy for managing the settler frontier. In light of wider debate about a humanely administered empire, Australia’s first native police force established in New South Wales in 1837 was conceived as a measure that would assist in the conciliation and ‘amelioration’ of Aboriginal people. In the coming decades, other Australian colonies employed native police either as dedicated forces or as individual assistants attached to mounted police detachments. Over time, the capacity they held to impose extreme violence on Aboriginal populations in the service of protecting pastoral investments came to reflect an implicit acceptance that punitive measures were required to bring order to disorderly frontiers.

By tracing a gradual shift in the perceived role of native police from one of ‘civilising’ Aboriginal people to one of ‘civilising’ the settler state itself, this paper draws out some of the conditions under which state-sanctioned force became naturalised and legitimated. It concludes that, as an instrument of frontier management, native policing reflected an enduring problem for Australia’s colonial governments in reconciling a legal obligation to treat Aboriginal people as subjects of the crown with a perceived requirement to bring them under colonial authority through the ‘salutary lessons’ of legalised violence.     

Taphonomic evidence for site formation processes at fort Christanna

Fort Christanna was an early eighteenth century Indian trading post on the western frontier of Virginia. This paper describes and interprets the faunal remains recovered during three seasons of excavation at the site. Taxonomic and body part representation are examined to gain insight into diet on the frontier, food provisioning at the fort, and the relationship between the fort's occupants and the neighbouring Indian settlement. These interpretations are limited by the poor preservation apparent in the faunal assemblage. The patterning of a variety of different surface modifications is explored to understand the taphonomic history of the assemblage. These characteristics of the assemblage seem to be related largely to the bone refuse disposal practices of the fort's occupants, and thus give important insight into a crucial aspect of the site formation processes.     

The Qing Dynasty Ministry of Justice Memorials and “The New History”

The Qing Dynasty Grand Secretariat Archives are considered to be among the four great ancient texts discovered in modern Chinese history, and the memorials from the Ministry of Justice have garnered particular attention due to their well-preserved socio-economic content(s). From the 20th century onwards the New History, with its emphasis on drawing upon the social sciences’ discussions of citizens, communities and society, came to replace the more traditional “Imperial Genealogy” style of historiography, affording us a grander view of history. Progressing forward with “the times,” the New History continued to innovate and diversify the field; in terms of Qing dynasty social historical research, it brought about constant exploration and change within the field, first having shifted from socio-economic history to social history, then moving on to life history, the investigation of the “seeds of capitalism,” class relations, lower-class society, marriage and family relations, law and justice, gender studies, daily life (“life, livelihood and environment”), and so on, continually pushing the boundaries of academic research. Yet, underlying all this change was a close relationship between the use of the Ministry of Justice Memorials and the field’s overall development. This article not only introduces several findings made by academicians in using the Ministry of Justice Memorials, but also sets out to further reveal the relationship between the New History and the memorials themselves, probing into the deeper question of broader changes in historiography and their relationship with generational shifts in intellectual thought.     

Bringing the feudal law back home: social practice and the law of fiefs in Italy and Provence (1100–1250)

ABSTRACT

The Libri feudorum is a composite law book containing the customary laws of fiefs held in Lombardy which were codified in 1100–1250. Its function in shaping a late medieval ‘feudal vocabulary’ and, ultimately, modern models of feudalism was highlighted by Susan Reynolds and lies at the core of her anti-feudalism paradigm. This paper questions the disjuncture between social practice and learned law that underlies the paradigm, by analysing the context and making of the Libri feudorum and of legal writings associated with it – by Pillius de Medicina, Iacobus de Ardizone and Jean Blanc. By showing how practice could shape legal tools used by learned lawyers to frame fiefs and by reassessing the influence of the Libri feudorum on practice, the paper challenges the idea that fiefs were the outcome of professional or academic law and unveils aspects of the practical nature and intellectual dimension of lawyerly writing.     

Performing the nation in anti‐colonial protest in interwar Morocco

This article applies a process approach to the study of nationalism, analysing anti‐colonial protest in interwar Morocco to address how and why elite‐constructed national identity resonates for larger audiences. Using Alexander's social performance model to study nationalist contention, it examines how a Muslim prayer ritual was re‐purposed by Moroccan nationalists to galvanise mass protest against a French divide‐and‐rule colonial policy towards Moroccan Berbers that they believed threatened Morocco's ethno‐religious national unity. By looking at how national identity was forged in the context of contentious performances and why certain religious (Islam) and ethnic (Arab) components were drawn on to define the Moroccan nation, this study offers a model for answering why national identity gets defined in specific ways and how the nation gains salience for broader publics as a category of collective identity.     

In the Long ‘Run’: Kanak Stockmen,the Cattle Frontier and Colonial Power Relations in New Caledonia, 1870–1988

ABSTRACT For more than a century, from the 1870s to the 1980s, stockmen were important intermediaries and figures of power and influence in the construction, maintenance and renewal of the colonial order in New Caledonia. Social relations between Kanak and settlers working in the cattle ‘runs’ permitted a unique form of mobility spanning the frontier. The relations developed between chiefs and cattle farmers are central to the processes by which certain administrative chieftaincies emerged in the late‐nineteenth century, and by which Kanak entered the ‘political’ sphere in the second half of the twentieth century. With reference to the locality of Koné, this article traces the political alliances fashioned between Kanak stockmen and their employers in the context of colonisation, rebellion, evangelisation, post‐war political emancipation, local development and, finally, the struggle between supporters and opponents of independence in the 1980s.     

Locality,Mobility and Governmentality in Colonial/Postcolonial New Caledonia: The case of the Kouare tribe (xûâ Xârâgwii), Thio (Cöö)

The colonial history of New Caledonia has been one of dispossession, alienation, and racial segregation. Indigenous people did not experience a life of all‐embracing confinement and immobility. Instead, Kanak localities were historically shaped by the interplay of colonial projects, ideas, tensions, power relations, practices, representations, values, norms, and emotions. Based on the example of Thio, located on the south‐east coast of New Caledonia, this article explores these transformations, focusing on processes of localization and mobility in the colonial and postcolonial eras. The first section focuses on the encounter with and the interplay between different organisations in Thio: the missionary, mining, pastoral, and administrative frontiers. The second section explores the multilayered history of the landscape and settlement patterns in Xârâgwii/Kouare (a tribe located in the mountainous part of Thio), and the third section analyses the interplay of locality and mobility since World War II. The final section examines the ‘invention’ of the tribe as part of colonial governmental projects. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the meaning of this evolving dialectic in the current context of decolonization.     

从村童到学术大师:韩儒林评传

20世纪的中国史学有两大流派,即实证主义史学和马克思主义史学。韩儒林先生是一位掌握实证史学方法、努力用马克思主义观点解释历史现象的史学家。他在元史和边疆史地研究方面取得了丰硕成就,成为一代学术大师。     

关于医学社会史的理论思考

医学社会史是从社会史的角度,运用多学科的研究方法,通过对历史上人们医药活动的考察来认识社会(文化)的形态及其变迁的历史学分支学科;其研究对象包括历史上人们医药活动的共时性结构和历时性变迁;其研究方法要求做到传统史学方法现代化,西方史学方法本土化以及其他学科方法史学化;从学科价值上看,医学社会史的研究不仅可以丰富社会史的内涵,而且可以促使史学工作者重新审视历史学的对象和价值。     

Universal,colonial, or Indonesian heritage? A multi-scalar approach to the historical representations and management of colonial heritage in the Old Town of Jakarta (Kota Tua) during its bid for World Heritage nomination in 2015–2018

ABSTRACT

Between 2015 and 2018 the Indonesian government unsuccessfully applied for World Heritage status for the old Dutch colonial neighborhood of Kota Tua in Jakarta. As this article aims to show, analyzing the process of writing a nomination dossier, especially in the case of a failed nomination, can be revealing in unraveling the inner workings of heritage conservation efforts and the many actors that are involved on different ‘scales’ and levels surrounding the heritage. As the project of writing the nomination dossier was delegated to a consortium of private actors from the elite circles of Jakarta, this article will finally address both the difficulties and advantages of involving the private sector in such nomination processes.     

Exceptional Sovereignty? Guantánamo Bay and the Re‐Colonial Present

Abstract: The US government has presented Guantánamo Bay to the world through the lens of “exceptional sovereignty”. This argument holds that international law does not apply at Guantanamo because while America has “complete authority” over the base “ultimate sovereignty” rests with Cuba. Many accounts rightly critical of the abuses of power taking place at Guantanamo similarly understand it as something wholly abnormal—a literal “non‐place”. But in falling back on this argument both the American position and many of its critics have tended to “black box” what is taking place within the camp. In this paper I suggest that we ditch any sort of critique that says Guantanamo is somehow outside of the law and instead replace this line of argument with a critical history of the deployment of a particular sort of Executive power there. From this perspective, Guantanamo is better understood as a rather more normal part of the current imperial moment and connected up in various ways to American imaginations and materialisations of power. As a way of exploring some of these connections in greater detail, I examine the construction of Guantanamo as a particular sort of social space by drawing upon the accounts of those who have been there: former guards, detainees and their defence lawyers.     

Making Headlines in a State of Emergency: The Case of the Times of Cyprus, 1955–1960

The final years of British rule in Cyprus were marked by the colonial government’s use of authoritarian measures to impose control over the local press. The most problematic publication during the 1955–60 period was the Times of Cyprus, an English-language newspaper edited and owned by experienced British journalist Charles Foley. This article examines the fraught relationship between Foley’s newspaper and the colonial government against a backdrop of social instability and political violence. In particular, it focuses on the role the newspaper played as a conduit of information between Cyprus and Britain, conveying the experience of colonial rule to influential readers in London and reporting British support for self-determination to a Cypriot reading public. This ability to undermine official control over the flow of intelligence between the colonial periphery and its metropolitan centre unsettled the British administration, leading to repeated but ultimately unsuccessful efforts to proscribe the newspaper.     

试论历史人类学与中国近代史研究中的几个问题

兴起于20世纪80年代中后期的历史人类学,尽管从学术传承上分属于两个不同的学科,但它的出现为消融历史学与人类学的边界,促成两个学科的交叉与融合,起到了不可低估的作用。在历史学内,“历史人类学”的形成亦经历了一个从社会史、社会文化史到历史人类学的演变过程。而在中国近代史领域,历史人类学已经展开一些研究实践,但是尚需进一步提倡。这种提倡表现在三个方面:底层视角、区域经验、文本与田野互动。历史人类学会对中国近代史研究产生有益的影响,会成为一种介于宏大叙事与经验性实证研究的“中层理论”。从历史学科的本位出发,历史人类学对人类学的吸收借鉴颇多,但是不能轻易放弃历史学科本位。     

回顾与展望:社会史视野下的中国蝗灾史研究

近二十多年来,社会史新颖的视角使史学研究趋向丰富和深入,但这并未引起蝗灾史研究者的重视。本文以蝗灾与社会的互动关系为线索,在梳理蝗灾史研究的发展脉络的基础上,对目前的研究不足提出几点看法,并就蝗灾史研究中应该引入新的视角和方法、挖掘新的历史资料等方面做出展望。     

Securing Modernity: Towards an Ethnography of Power in Contemporary Melanesia

ABSTRACT Contemporary public discourses, which depict Melanesian nation states as weak or as having failed, serve to legitimize the imposition of external, neo‐paternal, regulatory structures on former colonies. Such discourses problematise the numerous local experiments that combine custom, state structures and religion so as to create modern Melanesian ways of governing. Starting with the colonial policy of indirect rule, Melanesia has had a long history of experiments that have sought to tie together different regimes of power in relays, which are meant to remediate, supplement and strengthen state structures. Today, those relays are pathologised as dysfunctional precisely because they can be used to subvert, contest and divert state programs. Current political problems arising from growing ethnic and economic divisions are producing new conflicts, new moral languages for figuring evil, and new tactics and technologies of power. Many of these new experiments seek to reconnect the nation state with the moral authority, pastoral regimes, and individualizing practices of Christianity.