Steamboat Montana (1879–1884)—Leviathan of the American Plains

Thanks to Hollywood, average Americans would define the history of the opening up of the West in terms of epic pistol duels, vast open plains, and wagon-trains of hopeful immigrants. Large segments of American Western history, however, are still unexamined. These include a fascinating maritime history, a hidden saga of river steam transportation that explains the efficient westward movement of huge numbers of immigrants and vast quantities of supplies. This text outlines the archaeological documentation and analysis of the western river-steamer Montana , of immense proportions and an advanced marine technology far removed from her ocean-going ancestors.
© 2006 The Authors     

Eduard Hitzig's experiences in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871): the case of Joseph Masseau

It is well known that Fritsch and Hitzig published the results of their experiments on cortical stimulation in 1870, the year in which the Franco-Prussian War (FPW) broke out. Several tall stories are found about Hitzig's role in the FPW; stories that have not been well documented. During this war, he worked at the military hospital in Nancy, where he was allowed to admit to his ward soldiers with head wounds. He made a close observation of the 20-year-old French soldier Joseph Masseau, who suffered from a right-sided cerebral abscess following a gunshot wound sustained during the Loire campaign on December 10, 1870 and was looked after in the military hospital of Nancy in January and February 1871. Hitzig related the clinical and autopsy observations to his recent experimental findings. A translation into English of part of the case report is provided.     

相对成熟的西方边疆理论简论(1871-1945)

1945年前的80多年间,西方国家涉及边疆(含边界)问题的理论进入相对成熟的时期,主要是国际法和地缘政治学的相关理论发展迅速,美国、俄国、英国、日本等国的相关理论都得到较为全面的发展。这些理论内容广泛,又具有鲜明的时代性,大多数带有“强权即公理”的特点,或者为帝国主义瓜分世界的种种现象进行解释,或者公然地为大国主宰世界、扩张疆土服务。     

Sir Henry Cavendish (1732–1804), Parliamentarian in Two Countries

Sir Henry Cavendish, who sat in the Irish parliament from 1766 to 1768 and from 1776 to 1800, and in the Westminster parliament from 1768 to 1774, was a parliamentarian par excellence. His chief claim to fame is as a parliamentary diarist, in both houses of commons, noting down in shorthand some five million words. But this article is on Cavendish as a politician. He was a prolific speaker in both parliaments. But finding himself only a second‐rate debater, he cultivated two fields of expertise: finance, and, above all, parliamentary procedure. Here his knowledge soon became unequalled, and virtually unchallenged by the last two decades of the Irish parliament, where he became notorious as a master of obstruction. His political career was erratic, often in opposition, increasingly in government, a permanent officeholder by the end.     

‘A strong and prosperous condition’ — the geography of state building and social reform in Peter the Great's Russia

The point is often made that the rise of the modern state in Europe provided models which have been influential, if not actually copied, across much of the rest of the world. In Russia during the reign of Peter the Great (1682–1725), not only was the tsar aware of the European experience of state building, but consciously strove to base many of his political and social reforms on European models. Peter aimed at sweeping reform of the Russian state and society in the attempt to bring them into the modern world. The paper argues that the reforms were necessarily geographical, involving an attempt radically to reconstruct the country's economic and social geography. The focus is upon the spatial implications of reform, including the founding and development of the city of St. Petersburg as an experiment in social reconstruction. In the event, Peter's success was only partial, and the end product quite different from the models which had influenced his reforms. It is argued that this relative failure derived not only from the widespread resistance to reform but also from geographical, social and cultural circumstances peculiar to Russia. Greater scholarly sensitivity to the social and cultural contexts in which state building occurs might stimulate more cross-cultural and comparative perspectives and enrich this important area of social theory.