Servicing Customers in Revolutionary Times: The Experience of the Collectivized Barcelona Water Company during the Spanish Civil War

Debates on the total or partial privatization of water usually follow the rationale that efficient and rational management is best left to the private sphere. In this paper and using a historical example, we attempt to assess critically this assumption arguing that efficiency and rationality in resource management are and have been an asset of collective management as well. We present the case of the Barcelona Water Company, run by its workers during the Spanish Civil War, to illustrate how in certain cases, gains in economic efficiency and rational management that had been impossible to accomplish under standard private management, were achieved by collective action. Workers management during this period not only improved efficiency and rationality but to a large extent did so also procuring equity and fairness in the provision of water to the citizens of Barcelona despite the harsh conditions brought about by the war.     

美国内战时期南部邦联政府的财政政策

美国内战期间,南部邦联财政政策的主要目标是筹措资金。为达到此目的,南部邦联政府采取了征税和发行国库券与债券等措施。由于通过征税获得的财政收入微乎其微,南部邦联政府的财政资金便主要依靠发行国库券和债券。此举固然使得南部邦联政府短期获得一部分可支配资金,但由于南部邦联没有坚实雄厚的财政基础,又得不到外来有力的资金援助和支持,因此南部邦联财政政策并未实现既定目标,反而引发了通货膨胀和物价飞涨,加剧了南部邦联的民心涣散,最终加速了南部邦联的失败。     

Combined Arms Warfare in the Spanish Civil War: The Assault on the Republican Defence Line at Fatarella Ridge

Abstract

In terms of approaches to warfare, the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) has traditionally been seen as a transition between the First and Second World Wars. The idea is based on several reports written by designated observers from Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union. Certainly, some of the tactics and equipment of these armies made their first appearance during this conflict.

However, this view raises several questions, as the experience and tactics observed in the Spanish battlefields often do not match those seen during the first phases of the Second World War. Were the innovations adopted by all sides and units? How did the new tactics influence the outcome of the conflict? Which tactics were tested and discarded for better ones?

It is difficult to address these questions using only textual sources, given the particularities of this war. To improve our understanding of the evolution of warfare, we need to combine textual sources with archaeological data and spatial analysis, and integrate the knowledge.

This study examines the assault on Republican positions at Fatarella Ridge during the last phase of the Battle of the Ebro (1938). In particular, the work explores, using spatial analysis of archaeological and textual sources, the level at which combined arms warfare was applied during the final months of the war. The use of an integrated methodology has allowed us to reconstruct the engagement and provides interesting insights into the evolution of tactics and fortification during this conflict.     

“Urban Ecology Under Fire”: Water Supply in Madrid During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

This paper investigates the critical role of workers to enhance the resilience of water supply services in cities at war through analyzing the case of Madrid and the Madrid water company Canales del Lozoya during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). We argue that securing the protection of vital urban flows mediated through infrastructures is a key objective of cities under attack. In doing so we contend that examining how those affected by the interruption of these flows cope with the situation represents a valuable but largely neglected form of water management. We illustrate how quotidian knowledge about the urban geography of water flows may have important repercussions for the war effort itself. In a nutshell, the case of Madrid offers an early account of the critical role of water workers in sustaining “urban ecologies under fire” securing the complex urban metabolism while also contributing to the struggle against invading forces.     

Sheffield Castle and The Aftermath of The English Civil War

The demolition of castles following the English Civil War is often seen as an inevitable consequence of the conflict, with their slighting often being ascribed to a need to prevent further bloodshed and punish the ruling elite. However, recent studies have demonstrated that the destruction of elite buildings during this period was far from straightforward, and this complexity is reflected in the methodology employed to damage them. At Sheffield, so extensive was this damage that, less than a century later, not a trace remained of what had once been one of the largest castles in South Yorkshire. Whilst little remains of the building itself, the rare survival of a set of demolition accounts, alongside a large number of other sources including personal correspondence, estate rentals and town records, means it is possible to explore in great detail the circumstances of the castle’s slighting. Through these a far more nuanced picture of civil conflict emerges with the castle’s destruction taking place within a complicated dialogue between the Lord of the Manor, Parliament’s officials and the inhabitants of Sheffield themselves.     

美苏冷战与中国内战的起因和结局——以东北为中心的考察

二战结束后,中国东北成为美苏两国与中国国共双方关注和争夺的焦点地区,并最终形成了以美国和国民党为一方,以共产党和苏联为另一方的对峙格局,导致了中国内战在东北的爆发,东北也成为美苏关系在东亚转冷的起点。在苏联的支持下,中国共产党取得了辽沈战役的胜利,奠定了中国革命胜利的基础,而国民党则逐渐丧失了美国的支持,这在外因上决定了中国内战的结局。     

But There Was No War: The Impossibility of a United States Invasion of Canada after the Civil War

The notion that the United States threatened to invade the Canadian colonies after the Civil War persists to this day. Alleged British and Canadian support for the Confederate States angered Washington so much that Canadians feared military action. This menace started the Confederation movement that created the Dominion in 1867. This article argues otherwise by pointing to the careful diplomacy during the war—and rapid changes afterwards—each worked against the threat of a war. Tensions rose and fell with events such as the Trent Affair of 1861 and the St. Albans Raid of 1864, but each country otherwise sought to avoid trouble. Neither side deployed troops to the border during the war. After Appomattox, Union soldiers headed north but only to return home. Demobilization, combined with military deployments to the former Confederacy and the West, and resolute diplomacy afterwards, further prevented conflict. Not even the Fenian raids of 1866 and 1870 could disturb the peace.     

The Battle of Cheriton: the analysis of artefacts from an English Civil War Battlefield

The Battle of Cheriton in 1644, one of many English Civil War battles, was a major turning point in the war. The battle has not been studied in detail, but the battlefield has been subject to extensive amateur metal detecting. Until now, only a very small percentage of the Cheriton battlefield assemblage has been examined. This paper aims to gain a new understanding of the events of the battle by analysing the assemblage of small finds that has been collected from the battlefield site. The result of this analysis is that the true location can now be provided with some certainty, along with a better understanding of the events and range of weapons used at the battle.     

The Most Desperate Scoundrels Unhung: Bounty Jumpers and Recruitment Fraud in the Civil War North

This article explores public attitudes toward wartime recruitment brokers and bounty jumpers. Those who enlisted merely to reap the financial rewards of doing so and then deserted, and often repeated the process, proved a striking example of the prevalence of corruption in northern society. The exposure of this practice touched on deep‐seated public fears. Bounty jumpers displayed greed, cowardice, and a lack of patriotism, all alarming manifestations of corruption and unmanliness. Many northerners were also convinced that bounty jumpers represented either disloyal and inassimilable immigrants or a professional criminal underclass, reflecting intense fears and doubts related to the region’s explosive urbanization and modernization.     

鸦片战争时期的战俘问题

战俘问题一直是人类文明史上一个值得关注的问题:不同文明冲突过程中,如何对待和处理战俘,体现着冲突双方的观念、相互认知和交往方式.鸦片战争史研究中,战俘问题一直是被忽略的战争组成部分.鸦片战争时期战俘的获取、处置、交涉,以及其中反映出的观念,是我们了解这场战争的一个侧面,也是由此观察清王朝的一个视角.     

The Denbigh Project: excavation of a Civil War blockade-runner, J. Barto Arnold III

The blockade-runner Denbigh , one of the most successful and famous of the American Civil War, was located and recorded near Galveston in December, 1997. The site, 41GV143, was identified during a reconnaissance by the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, Texas A&M University. The 182-ft (55.5 m)-long, iron hulled, 258-ton displacement side-wheeler was built in 1860 by Laird, Sons & Co. of Birkenhead as a coastal paddle steamer and, when new, was considered a crack ship with all the latest features of design and technology.
This paper covers the 2000 excavation phase of an underwater archaeology project to investigate the Denbigh . It is the third in a series of preliminary progress reports. The report also provides updated findings on the ship's history.     

Stiffening Abe: William Pitt Fessenden and the Role of the Broker Politician in the Civil War Congress

The difficult but by no means dysfunctional relationship between President Abraham Lincoln and Congress remains an understudied aspect of Civil War history. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at a comprehensive or convincing explanation for Union victory until that relationship is limned more precisely. This article contends that U.S. Senator William Pitt Fessenden (1806–69) played a critical mediating role in the wartime Congress. He did so firstly in his capacities as chair of the Senate finance committee and close associate of U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and secondly as a public supporter of executive war powers. Although the influential Maine Republican had serious doubts about the effectiveness of the Lincoln administration, his determination to quash the southern rebellion and considerable powers of self‐restraint enabled him to act as an important and constructive broker between the White House and the fractious Republicans on Capitol Hill.     

Imaginative geographies of distant suffering: two cases of the Syrian Civil War on television

The paper builds upon distant suffering studies and the ‘analytics of mediation’. It observes how television performances of suffering expose spectators to dispositions to feel, think and act towards each instance of suffering. It analyses the news coverage of civilians’ suffering in the Syrian Civil War that was presented by Czech public television broadcaster. The interpretation of imaginative geographies expands the analysis because of the need for more spatially sensitive approaches to distant suffering. Imaginative geographies coproduce diverse spacetimes and distant suffering studies often overlook how media performances are shaped according to spacetimes where suffering occurs. Two spacetimes are contrasted here; the Syrian Civil War before and after the Islamic State gained prominence in it. In both cases, the aim is to interpret in what ways the distance is translated into difference through imaginative geographies and how it shapes television performances of suffering. The analysis shows that Orientalist imaginative geographies appear in both cases. However, while in the first case imaginative geographies empower pity and dispositions to act towards suffering, in the second case they do not. It is because of the difference between Bashar al-Assad as a local Oriental persecutor and the Islamic State as the global threat.     

加害与受害的双重变奏——对朝鲜BC级战犯的审判及其遗留问题

因日本殖民者在朝鲜实施强制动员计划,许多朝鲜青年被迫或自愿应募为战俘营看守,协助日军看管盟军战俘。日本战败后,盟国为了追究日本法西斯虐待战俘、侵犯人权的罪行,设置军事法庭进行审判,一些战俘营的朝鲜看守作为BC级战犯被起诉和审判,129人被判决有罪。朝鲜BC级战犯背负"对日协力者"的名声,遭遇来自亲朋故旧的蔑视,同时给在故乡的亲人带来了不堪承受的精神压力,一些战犯既不能回归祖国,也无法融入日本社会,面临精神和物质的双重困境,扮演了加害者与受害者的双重角色。他们为了洗刷罪名、恢复名誉、争取合法权益而进行了持久的抗争。     

The curious case of Catherine Mary Hewitt and U.S. Major General of Volunteers John Fulton Reynolds: bodies,mourning the dead,and religion in the era of the American Civil War

ABSTRACT

At the time of his death at the Battle of Gettysburg, General Reynolds was the highest-ranking Union officer killed in the American Civil War. The return of the General’s body from the battlefront represented an uncommon feature of a war noted for its industrial scale and for the casualties it produced. How loved ones grieved Reynolds illustrates mourning practices among middle- to upper-class women in the Civil War North and underscores the centrality of death in nineteenth-century America. The death of Reynolds also occasioned the introduction of Reynolds’s sisters to the General’s secret fiancée, a Roman Catholic convert. Writers have attributed the clandestine nature of the engagement, and the General’s reluctance to introduce his fiancée to family, to Catherine Hewitt’s Roman Catholicism. But Catholics in the North received greater accommodation in mainline Protestant society than previously imagined, and the many kindnesses that the Reynolds family showed Hewitt point to an increasing acceptance of Catholics among Protestants in established social settings. Finally, Reynolds’s loved ones mourned him in religious and Victorian overtones, but it is not altogether clear that for them religion functioned as the predominant paradigm from which they elicited a transcendent meaning of the General’s death. In this local context, the responses of Reynolds’s loved ones to his death suggest the waning of religious belief in the era of the American Civil War.     

The politics of memory: Commemorating the centenary of the First World War

This symposium examines how the centenary of the First World War has been marked in five countries: Australia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. Given their distinctive national historical experiences and political cultures, the metanarratives of the war in these countries differ; as does the relationship between the state and sub-state actors in memory making. However, in each case the commemorations of the war have been shaped by a negotiation between the state and other agents of memory at the sub-state level. National memory has also been consciously projected into international relations, through carefully orchestrated anniversary ceremonies and performative memorial diplomacy. But, despite these transnational commemorative practices, the centenary of the war remains predominantly framed within local and national imaginings.

这次研讨会议论了一战百年在奥地利、法国、德国、英国、美国这五个国家是如何庆祝的。考虑到各国不同的历史经验以及政治文化,这些国家关于一战的元叙事各不相同,国家与次国家主体关系的记忆也是如此。不过,每个国家的战争纪念,都是国家与其他次国家层面主体协商的结果。通过精心策划的纪念仪式日以及表演性纪念外交,国家记忆被有意识地投射到了国际关系之中。除了这些跨国纪念活动,一战的记忆主要是在地方以及国家的想象框架内形成的。     

The Politics of Provisioning: Feeding South Asian Prisoners During the First World War

During the First World War, the German and British Governments supplied culturally appropriate rations and secured special facilities for food preparation and consumption for South Asian prisoners of war whose loyalty both governments sought. The food provided in POW camps to South Asians serves as an index of the political status of colonial subjects at a moment when the future of European empires was far from certain. The British Government’s approach to feeding its South Asian servicemen held by the enemy thus reveals this population’s place within Britain’s wartime national and imperial imaginary and in its post-war planning.     

The Politics of Communist Biography: Alfred Kantorowicz and the Spanish Civil War

After the German communist author Alfred Kantorowicz's breakwith Communism in 1957, he was lionized by his supporters asan icon of humanism and antifascism, and vilified by his formerallies as a turncoat and traitor. In his autobiographical writings,Kantorowicz portrayed himself as a victim of Stalinism, whohad always been opposed to the authoritarian and repressiveaspects of Communism. Again and again he returned to his timein the International Brigades as a way of illustrating bothhis commitment to antifascism and the betrayal of grassrootsCommunism by the party leadership. But contemporary recordsreveal a more ambiguous picture: not only was Kantorowicz along-time functionary, he was also more involved in the repressiveaspects of Communism than he later cared to admit. This articleargues that, like many ex-Communist biographies of the ColdWar, Kantorowicz's memoirs are shot through with retrospectiveself-justification. Given his post-1957 loathing for Communism,he needed to explain why he had joined the party in the firstplace, and then remained an active member for twenty-five years.By organizing his life around the dichotomies of footsoldiersand functionaries, antifascism and Stalinism, and censorshipand truth, Kantorowicz was able to avoid discussing his ownculpability as a Communist functionary.     

The Holy War in Syria: Cemal Pasha and the Ottoman Plan to conquer Egypt in the First World War

This article aims to analyse the importance of the Egyptian campaign to Ottoman policy in the First World War. It seeks to add to our knowledge of the Ottoman war experience by putting the focus on the empire’s preparations for conquering Egypt and by giving priority to understand the aims of the expedition. The expedition itself is placed within the context of the jihad policy adopted at the beginning of the war and which sought to put an end to the Entente’s colonial domination of Muslim countries. The Ottomans’ propaganda initiatives in support of the measures were meant to motivate support among the Syrian population through the idea of holy war.     

H. L. Hunley Revealed: documentation,deconcretion, and recent developments in the investigation of an American Civil War submarine from 1864

Since 2014, the conservation staff at Clemson University's Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston, South Carolina have been removing the concretion from the hull of H. L. Hunley, an American Civil War submarine lost 1864. In parallel, the archaeological team has been documenting the condition of the hull, the concretion layers, and the hull features revealed by the deconcretion process. This involved photography, direct measurements, and 3D scanning. This article will discuss the strategy for recording the concretion, the techniques used to document the newly revealed hull and its unique features, and the preliminary analysis of their archaeological significance.