Method and Memory in the Midwestern "Lincoln Inquiry": Oral Testimony and Abraham Lincoln Studies, 1865 1938

This article narrates the role of oral testimony in the fieldof Abraham Lincoln studies from 1865 through the 1930s. Collectedin the form of letters, affidavits, and face-to-face interviews,this mounting body of "eyewitness evidence" dominated the discoursefor two generations and reflective, public practice culminatedin the organization of a "Lincoln Inquiry" in the Midwest duringthe 1920s and 1930s. For a time, practitioners successfullydefended themselves against increasing positivist assaults onthe credibility of oral testimony. Their interests and effortsresonate with later oral history practice and theory about method,authorship, performance, and memory, and their story highlightsthe contingency inherent in the development of oral historicalpractice in America.     

History,tradition, and memory among the Basques

This article explores the historical commemoration, the Alarde of the Spanish-Basque town of Hondarribia, re-enacted for almost 400 years. It is a social account of the past portrayed through a history of local militarism and a history of commemorative performance. Since 1996, controversy has divided local inhabitants concerning wider female-inclusion in the male-dominated event, separating the town into factions, traditionalists (asserting traditions remain the same) and feminists (advocating broader female involvement). Theoretical concerns include examining traditions and their gradual transformations over time, rather than as episodic change; that interpreting the past can be competitive over rights of belonging; that history may be influenced by different agencies of gender, kin ties, memory, politics, and social experience; that people do not purposefully ignore the passage of time but may be protecting communal harmony; that commemorative rites are more than embodied performances; and that history can be a multiple, contested, and lived experience.     

Five thousand years of atmospheric Ni,Zn, As,and Cd deposition recorded in bogs from NW Iberia: prehistoric and historic anthropogenic contributions

The analysis of environmental archives from across the world has demonstrated that human perturbation of the geochemical cycles of trace metals and the resultant atmospheric metal contamination date back, at least, several millennia. However, an understanding of the local processes and timing of changes in trace metal deposition is also essential for a proper global interpretation. The Iberian Peninsula was a major mining area since prehistoric times and the analysis of environmental archives provides a good opportunity to improve our understanding of the history of mining and metallurgy in Europe. We present the results from three ¹⁴C dated peat cores from the Xistral Mountains (NW Iberia). These records are used to reconstruct past atmospheric deposition of Ni, Zn, As, and Cd. The chronology of the changes in concentrations and metal accumulation rates was found to be concordant in the three bogs, and showed great similarity to total Pb, Hg, and Pb isotope ratios as determined in previous investigations. They present a consistent view of changes in atmospheric pollution and the importance of metals in the development of human societies, especially: i) the first evidence of atmospheric metal pollution 3400 years ago, which is simultaneous with the expansion of the Atlantic Bronze Koine; ii) a pollution event between 2350 and 2150 years ago, associated to the development of so-called Celtic culture (local Late Iron Age); iii) a dramatic increase of metal fluxes in Roman times; iv) a severe and rapid increase in the last 250 years corresponding to the beginning of the industrial revolution in Europe, reflecting the emergence of the new dominant sources of pollution, and v) the increase of long range atmospheric transport of pollutants. Our data suggest that all detected ancient (until ca. 1450 cal BP) periods of enhanced Ni, Zn, As, and Cd accumulation may have had an anthropogenic origin, related to the onset and development of mining and metallurgy.     

《中国史学名著评介》新版序

《中国史学名著评介》新版五卷本,是在1990年版三卷本基础上修订完善而成。这次修订主要有三方面内容:一是对原有86部史学名著的评介文章,进行校刊修改;二是补写了古代和近代14部史学名著,又新增了与史学有关的22部著作,包括笔记、目录、史学工具书、类书、丛书等;三是增补现代部分史学名著70部,遍布于史学研究各领域,分成四、五两卷。选入书目,主要考虑该书在史学界的地位、影响,或能够为广大读者提供必要的史学知识。     

"斯迈尔斯神话":19世纪英国社会对工业家起源的认识

"斯迈尔斯神话"是19世纪英国社会关于工业家起源的普遍认识,即认为在工业革命中涌现的工业家们大多是践行了"自助"原则的"自我塑造者"。这种认识的产生和流传既有一定的社会现实基础,也与工业家阶层有意识的"创造"和"宣扬"分不开。对工业家的起源所进行的计量史学研究发现,他们主要来自中等阶级,而不是劳工阶级,从而揭示了"神话"的可信性。作为一种社会认识,"斯迈尔斯神话"是中等阶级为工业财富寻求合法性辩护的意识形态工具,对19世纪英国社会其他阶层的观念和英国的现代化进程也产生了深刻影响。     

"That Food of the Memory which Gives the Clue to Profitable Research": Oral history as a source for local, regional, and family history in the nineteenth and early twentieth century

Numerous local, regional and family historians in the nineteenthand early twentieth century collected oral narrations and conductedinterviews as a form to document information that otherwisemight have never been preserved. Family historians, in particular,not only practiced interviewing relatives for family histories,but also encouraged the practice in how-to-do manuals amongtheir peers. While advocating the practice, family historiansalso reflected about the value of "traditionary evidence" collectedthrough interviews and other means. These reflections by familyhistorians mirrored the discussions about the value of traditionsand memories as historical sources among several professionalhistorians at the time. These reflections were shaped by a modernizedunderstanding of tradition, which combined a reverential approachto the authoritarian element of tradition with a critical approachquestioning the validity of tradition. In this context, oralhistory was both a tool to negotiate the value of traditionand a mirror to the contemporary understanding of tradition.     

《历史》与命运:希罗多德命运观初探

对人类命运的关注是希罗多德《历史》最突出的主题。这个主题的形成与他所处的时代氛围密切相关。古希腊自然哲学直接启发了希罗多德对命运的思考,史诗和悲剧更进一步促成了他对人类命运的关注和同情。希罗多德敏锐地把握到了命运的变化无常,作品着力于人物命运的书写,传达了历史的变易意识。命运对希罗多德而言,既是变化不定、不可把握和预测的,又是命中注定、无从逃脱的,一切生灭变化导致了命运的无常,命运本身就是变化,就是无常,无常是命运的永恒特性。他对命运的思考既充满了哲学的深邃,又力显史家情怀,诗家笔法。这使得他的《历史》历久弥新,吸引着一代代的史家和普通读者。因为命运不拘何时,总是牵动着人心,人类面对的根本问题从未改变。     

The Limits of Sasanian History: Between Iranian,Islamic and Late Antique Studies

This essay discusses the position of Sasanian Studies from its inception in the late nineteenth century, to its reinvigoration at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The work also discusses the development of the field of Sasanian history and civilization vis-à-vis the three fields of Iranian, Islamic and Late Antique Studies. It is posited that Sasanians have benefited from cross-disciplinary and new historical frameworks that go beyond the traditional field of Iranian Studies, which was never as interested in the history of the period.     

Landscape Archaeology,Heritage and the Community in Devon: An Oral History Approach

In the context of recent media, governmental, academic and popular attention and enthusiasm for debates surrounding the construction and meaning of the British countryside, this paper outlines the potential for oral history to make a contribution. Working in Devon, the authors outline how an oral history methodology can engage with the fields of landscape archaeology and heritage studies. As well as augmenting and supporting more traditional approaches to landscape, oral history techniques can be used to challenge and destabilise existing knowledge, thereby moving the process of ‘democratisation’ in knowledge construction of the rural landscape from practices of scientific ‘complicity’ towards one of critical engagement.     

History,Memory, and Moral Knowledge: William Godwin's Essay on Sepulchres (1809)

In 1809 the radical English philosopher, novelist, and historian William Godwin published Essay on Sepulchres—a proposal to mark the burial sites of the morally great with a simple wooden cross. This paper explores Godwin's essay in terms of his evolution as moral philosopher and historian. While Godwin is commonly renowned as a utilitarian rationalist given to optimistic assertions on human perfectibility, this essay demonstrates the extent to which his moral theory depended on emotion and intuition and how he came to posit an alternative mode of historical perception which queried the progressivist assumptions of ‘Enlightenment’ historiography.     

History, Memory, and Identity in Modern Singapore: Testimonies from the Urban Margins

In 2006–2007, I interviewed elderly Singaporeans on theirexperiences of resettlement from an urban kampong (village)to emergency public housing after a great fire in 1961. I learnedmuch about the lives of semiautonomous dwellers in an unauthorizedsettlement and the individual and social transformation followingtheir rehousing. My informants also highlighted what the experiencesmeant to them and their identity in a modern city-state. Thispaper treats the testimonies as both source and social memoryand seeks to avoid the essentialism into which many social historians,oral history practitioners, and memory scholars have fallenin their approach toward the craft. As a source of social history,when used in conjunction with other historical sources, thereminiscences are patently useful for understanding the roleof public housing in transforming a marginal population intoan integrated citizenry. This enables the writing of a new socialhistory of postwar Singapore that departs from the discursiveofficial accounts of urban kampong life and of the 1961 inferno.At the same time, the oral history also underlines powerfulsocial and political influences on individual memory, beingmarked by nostalgia for the kampong and ambivalence toward theimagined character of younger Singaporeans. Statements on therumors of government-inspired arson in the 1961 calamity, however,constitute a significant countermyth in contemporary society,revealing a more critical side to the social memory.     

虎耳如锯猜想:基于环境史的解读

北宋汀州最早出现了"虎耳有缺"的记载,并且将之与老虎吃人联系起来,认为虎每食一人,则耳成一缺。本文试图从环境史的角度提出一种猜想,认为虎耳上的缺口乃"伤口","两耳如锯"则是说此虎伤痕累累。这些都是老虎生存竞争的结果。而老虎生存竞争并在身上留下缺口至宋代时为人所留意,则又与唐宋时期的人口增长,经济开发,以及植被的破坏有着密切的关系。虎耳有缺如锯也可以视作环境恶化的标志。同时,古人对虎耳有缺的观察及其解释,也从一个侧面反映了中国古代生物知识增长的机制,以及宗教文化在传统中国科学发展中的作用。