TOCQUEVILLE AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Tocqueville Unveiled : The Historian and His Sources for The Old Regime and the Revolution . By Robert T. Gannett Jr.     

1989: THE CHRONOPOLITICS OF REVOLUTION

A failed effort at “reform from above” or a dramatic reassertion of “people power”? Almost thirty-five years on, studies of the Revolutions of 1989 continue to be framed by these two polarities. However, this historiographical focus has meant that scholars have often overlooked the actual content and character of protest itself. This article argues that one way of reinjecting agency and ideas back into our historical understanding of 1989 is through examining the chronopolitics of revolution: that is to say, by addressing how the control and interpretation of time became a political battlefield, a site of contention and negotiation, between Communist regimes, on the one hand, and political activists and society, on the other. Investigating events in the German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia, the article contains two central claims: first, that an interrogation of the concept of “chronopolitics” can provide a new angle by which to grasp the revolutionary character of “1989” and the democratic transformations that resulted and, second, by way of inversion, that a study of the temporal experiences across 1989 and the early 1990s can in turn shed light on the analytical value of “chronopolitics” more generally.     

THE SOCIAL EVALUATION OF A TERRITORY UNDER CONDITIONS OF THE SCIENTIFIC-TECHNICAL REVOLUTION

The present practice of economic and technological evaluation of a territory for development purposes is found to be inadequate because the evaluation made by Soviet planning and design agencies does not always coincide with the perception of particular places by individual citizens. As a result, the outflow from rural areas has been particularly heavy in areas where agricultural labor is especially short, and the predominant direction of interregional migration has been southward rather than to the east, where it is most needed. It is therefore suggested that spatial planning is based on a social evaluation of territory that would eliminate the present conflicts in perception and bring the interests of society more into line with the interests of individual citizens. Social evaluation is based on two value indicators: (1) the uniqueness of the creative process localized in a particular place, tending to make that place attractive; (2) accessibility of the place from surrounding areas. One possible approach to measuring the social attractiveness of a place is the extent to which individuals strive to establish direct contact (visits, direct dealings) or indirect contacts (eliciting of information) with that place.     

辛亥光复浙江军政府军票的发行

今年是辛亥革命九十周年，我将辛亥革命浙江光复时的经过与军票发行情形作一简介，与各位同好共同研究、探讨。     

ORGANIC RESIDUE ANALYSIS IN ARCHAEOLOGY: THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL BIOMARKER REVOLUTION*

Organic residue analysis utilizes analytical organic chemical techniques to identify the nature and origins of organic remains that cannot be characterized using traditional techniques of archaeological investigation (because they are either amorphous or invisible). The field is founded upon the principle that the biomolecular, or biochemical, components of organic materials associated with human activity survive in a wide variety of locations and deposits at archaeological sites. The archaeological information contained in organic residues is represented by the biomolecular components of the natural products that contribute to the formation of a given residue. By applying appropriate separation (chromatographic) and identification (mass spectrometric) techniques, the preserved, and altered, biomolecular components of such residues can be revealed. Once identified, the Archaeological Biomarker Concept can be applied, wherein the structure and even isotopic composition(s) of a given biomolecule or suite of biomolecules (the ‘chemical fingerprint’) can be related to the compositions of organisms exploited by humans in the past. As the organic residue field emerges from its pre‐paradigmatic phase, and the organic residue revolution gathers pace, the way is open for challenging many long‐held archaeological hypotheses and offering new perspectives on the study of human activity in the past.     

FROM REVOLUTION TO MODERNIZATION: THE PARADIGMATIC TRANSITION IN CHINESE HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE REFORM ERA

Chinese historiography of modern China in the 1980s and 1990s underwent a paradigmatic transition: in place of the traditional revolutionary historiography that bases its analyses on Marxist methodologies and highlights rebellions and revolutions as the overarching themes in modern Chinese history, the emerging modernization paradigm builds its conceptual framework on borrowed modernization theory and foregrounds top‐down, incremental reforms as the main force propelling China's evolution to modernity. This article scrutinizes the origins of the new paradigm in the context of a burgeoning modernization discourse in reform‐era China. It further examines the fundamental divides between the two types of historiography in their respective constructions of master narratives and their different approaches to representing historical events in modern China. Behind the prevalence of the modernization paradigm in Chinese historiography is Chinese historians' unchanged commitment to serving present political needs by interpreting the past.     

FAMILY,KINSHIP AND REVOLUTION: THE RUSSIAN NOBILITY, 1917-23

Abstract

This article examines the importance of family and kin to the Russian nobility during the Russian Revolution. It focuses on the experiences of four interrelated families to show how nobles used family connections for a variety of purposes prior to I9I7. This helped them to maintain their predominant position within tsarist society. The article argues that these links continued after the revolution, helping nobles survive everyday hardship and official persecution under the new regime; in some cases, surprisingly large family ‘communities’ of nobles emerged. These communities persisted into the I920S and even when they disbanded the wider family maintained its central position in noble life.     

北洋袁世凯政府军用钞票样本与一九一三年“二次革命”

一、问题的提出1 91 2—1 91 3年民国初建 ,政局飘忽不定。有关这一时期国家的财政状况 ,见诸于文献档案及后人著述中比比皆是“府库如洗”、“罗掘俱穷”、“日以借款为生活”之语。据不完全资料 ,1 91 2— 1 91 3年中央政府的财政收入 (不含外债 )仅 2 0 0 0万元 ,而军费支出达到 2 9亿元① 。为摆脱“中央国库空虚 ,收入毫无”、财力极度匮乏的困境 ,袁世凯政府曾经主办过一次不成功的货币发行 ,1 91 2年 3月度支部大臣周自齐提出的以中华民国国库名义发行“中华民国度支部兑换券”呈文获准 ,但因信用不足 ,这个名称怪异的钞票行之不远 …     

辛亥革命首义之地军用钞票试考

辛亥革命时期的历史货币,特别是军用钞票,由于发行有地域性,印数有限,加上时局变迁。回收焚毁等原因,留存下来数量极少。湖北为辛亥革命首义之地,又是迎击清王朝派兵会剿的主战场,因此,这里的军用钞票尤为引人关注。1949年钱万能编的