THE DYNAMICS OF SUBCENTER FORMATION: MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, 1861–1906

Midtown Manhattan is the largest business district in the country. Yet only a few miles to the south is another district centered at Wall Street. This paper aims to investigate when and why midtown emerged as a separate business district. We have created a new data set from historical New York City directories that provide the employment location, residence, and job type for several thousand residents in the late‐19th and early‐20th centuries. We supplement this data with additional records from historical business directories. The evidence suggests that early midtown firms appeared there in order to be closer to local residential customers who had been moving north on the island throughout the 19th century. Once several industries appeared in midtown, it triggered a spatial equilibrium readjustment in the 1880s, which then promoted the rise of skyscrapers in midtown around the turn of the 20th century. This process occurred several years before the opening of Grand Central Station in 1913.     

Colonization, kidnap and confinement in the Andamans penal colony, 1771–1864

This paper explores practices of kidnap and confinement in the Andamans penal colony, for the period 1771-1864. It argues that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries indigenous captivity was key to successful colonization. The British kidnapped islanders in an effort to educate them about the supposed benefits of colonial settlement, and in the hope that they would become their cultural advocates. The paper shows also that the close observations that accompanied the confinement of islanders informed global discussions about ‘race’ and ‘origin’, so that the Islands were brought into a larger global frame of understanding around indigenous - settler contact. The paper draws out some of the complexities and specificities of the colonial encounter in the Andamans. It argues that with respect to sexual violence, there was a significant gender dimension to colonization and confinement. Finally, it suggests that in a settlement comprising a penal colony and its associated infrastructure (and no free settlement) there were no straightforward distinctions between ‘colonizer’ and ‘colonized’. Rather, there were significant overlaps between the treatment and experiences of convicts and islanders, and these expressed something of the inherent ambiguities of the penal colonization of the Andamans itself.     

抗战时期的中央博物馆文物西迁

从1937年直至抗战胜利,故宫博物院和中央博物院的大批珍贵文物由南京出发、分三条线进行了万里播迁的惊险历程。国宝们最终平安存放于四川各地,直到抗战胜利再安全返回。在战争状况下任何情况均有可能发生,国宝命系民族文化之根,因此当时高层曾提出政府垮了可以重建,文化之根脉中断则难以为继。这批文物的迁移路线直接由当时高层少数人决定,随时变化,事先并无计划。而三条线路的运送人员互相也不知道彼此的情况。在大批文物转运过程中,中央博物院职员家誊也辗转于西迁途中。最后与中央研究院史语所、中国营造学社,共同落户宜宾李庄,开始了中国历史上一段不凡的学术生涯。     

Fatherhood and the British Fathercraft Movement, 1919–39

Fathercraft and Fathers' Councils ‐ male adjuncts to Maternity and Infant Welfare Centres ‐ reacted to the maternal dominance in infant welfare and parenting in interwar Britain by arguing that fathers should play a crucial role in the upbringing of children. This article outlines how rigid ideas about the 'public' and 'private' spheres meant that education schemes for fathers had to be explicitly and recognisably 'masculine' and were often focused on public functions that reinforced a man's traditional function as a breadwinner and provider. Yet, at the core of the fathercraft message was the idea that these traditional functions were insufficient. Fathers, it was argued, should have an active and involved role in their children's lives and men could no longer adequately fulfil their duties from the margins of the family. However, within a culture that placed great emphasis on motherhood and gender differences, the idea of instructing men in parenting was fraught with contradiction, confusion and resistance. Fathercraft was one version of fatherhood that attempted to reconcile these contradictions in a desire to involve fathers more fully with their children for the good of the Infant Welfare Movement, mothers and, indeed, for men themselves.