Atlantic consumption of French rum and brandy and economic growth in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Caribbean

Why did the production of rum in the French West Indies not achieve the same success within the French Atlantic as it did in the British Atlantic world? Surveying the history of rum production in the French Caribbean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this article contends that the reason why no regional trade in rum developed in French North America resulted from fierce industrial and institutional competition from brandy producers in metropolitan France. Rum, nevertheless, remained significant within the culture and economy of Native Americans and African Americans. This article seeks to add nuance to the wider debate of the ability of the trans-border diffusion of new ideas to stimulate and institutionalize industrial and economic growth in the Atlantic world. French entrepreneurs were no less ‘entrepreneurial’ than their British counterparts, but real constraints on consumption on both sides of the Atlantic created insufficient demand.     

从近20年《历史地理学杂志》的相关文章看西方历史动物地理研究的新动向与启示

东西方历史学、地理学的不同特点及发展方向,使双方历史动物地理的研究也有所不同。通过对2000—2018年英国《历史地理学杂志》所刊历史动物地理相关文章的分析,可以发现近年来西方历史动物地理有议题与方法的多样化、关注与人类密切接触的常见动物、关注中小尺度具体空间下的动物这三个研究动向。在此基础上,相关研究成果不仅填补了历史研究中的一些空白,更对一些历史问题提出了新解,在推动史学研究的同时,也进一步突破了人类中心主义思想。这些研究长处值得我国历史动物地理研究在坚持自身优势的基础上加以借鉴。     

近代中国人对西方科学文化的几种解读

近代以来,中国从传统的科学和技术向近代的科学和技术转变,是在西方科学文化影响下完成的。这一过程亦是近代中国人对西方科学文化的认知过程。这一认知过程中,不同人物对接纳西方科学文化有或深或浅的解读,其中,“道器”与“体用”的文化认知模式是近代中国人解读西方科学文化的基本特征。     

The Bonifacian mission and female religious in Wessex

With only two Kentish exceptions, the West Saxon identity of the English female correspondents of Boniface and Lull can be affirmed. Together with other evidence, the letters imply a considerable number of female religious in Wessex in the late seventh and eighth centuries, but with a distribution confined to the western parts of the kingdom. The foundation of these religious communities appears to belong to a particular phase of West Saxon conversion and political expansion.     

Behind the Façade of the Rites Controversy: The Intriguing Contrast of Chinese and European Theism

The Chinese rites controversy of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has been often studied, but hitherto mostly as a quasi-linguistic-and-technical dispute between the followers of Matteo Ricci, the legendary founder of the Jesuit China mission, and his many different enemies in the Catholic Church. In reality the involved debate was much more complex than that at every turn. To show this and more, this article takes a close look again at how and why Chinese terms and customs came to figure in Ricci's proselytising work in China, how they were challenged both inside and outside the Jesuit China mission, how the Chinese reacted and why, and what the debate revealed about the intriguing contrast of Chinese and European theism.     

近年来西方学术界关于毛泽东"一条线"外交战略的研究述评

近10年以来,西方学术界对毛泽东“一条线”外交战略的成因、内容、历史作用及局限性进行了更全面更深入的考察,提出了一些较有新意的看法。西方学：术界的这些探讨在一定程度上有助于国外深入研究毛泽东外交战略和新中国外交史,对当今中国学者深入研究毛泽东外交战略和新中国外交史亦有一定的参考价值。     

Sexual relationships and working lives of free Afro-Caribbean women

The article explores how the sexual relationships and working lives of free Afro-Caribbean women in the town of Christiansted, St. Croix, the Danish-Norwegian West Indies, were affected by discourses of race and gender during the period c. 1780–1820. To further the understanding of the conditions of the free Afro-Caribbean women in Christiansted, the article relates to the situation in other Caribbean colonies, especially the British West Indies, based on the assumption that it was the same discourses of race and gender that swept through all the Caribbean slave societies. I n its approach, the article is inspired by concepts of race and gender in postcolonial studies.

The investigation shows the prevalence in the Danish-Norwegian West Indies of discourses of Afro-Caribbean women as, on the one hand, unwomanly and physically strong and, on the other hand, promiscuous and of easy virtue. On this basis, the article argues that the interplay between these gendered racial discourses and the social practices of the free Afro-Caribbean women were in fact far more complex than previous international research has suggested. In the sexual and work relations of daily life, discourses were interpreted more fluently, and a number of competing conditions and ideas challenged or worked against the idea of Afro-Caribbean racial inferiority. Among these were, for instance, the women’s social position and European ideas of work appropriate for women.     

The Gendered Identities of the ‘Lieutenant Nun’: Rethinking the Story of a Female Warrior in Early Modern Spain

This article analyses the story of Catalina de Erauso, a Spanish nun, who escaped from a convent at the beginning of the seventeenth century to begin a new life as a military warrior serving under the King of Spain in colonial Latin America. Her story reveals that notions of sex and gender at the time were surprisingly elastic and flexible, and often more associated with acts and behaviour than with physical bodies. By examining how the personage of the Lieutenant Nun has been treated in Spain and in Britain in the nineteenth century, this article also evaluates the extent to which certain pre‐modern ideas about sex and gender continued to survive two centuries later.     

Imagining an Imperial Modernity: Universities and the West African Roots of Colonial Development

This article takes the formation and work of the ‘Elliot’ Commission on Higher Education in West Africa (1943–45) to reconsider the roots of British colonial development. Late colonial universities were major development projects, although they have rarely been considered as such. Focusing particularly on the Nigerian experience and the controversy over Yaba Higher College (founded 1934), the article contends that late colonial plans for universities were not produced in Britain and then exported to West African colonies. Rather, they were formed through interactions between agendas and ideas with roots in West Africa, Britain and elsewhere. These debates exhibited asymmetries of power but produced some consensus about university development. African and British actors conceptualised modern education by combining their local concerns with a variety of supra-local geographical frames for development, which included the British Empire and the individual colony. The British Empire did not in this case forestall development, but shaped the ways in which development was conceived.     

The Overseeing Mother: Revisiting the Frontal-Pose Lady in the Wu Family Shrines in Second-Century China

Located in present-day Jiaxiang in Shandong province, the Wu family shrines built during the second century in the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220) were among the best-known works in Chinese art history. Although for centuries scholars have exhaustively studied the pictorial programs, the frontal-pose female image situated on the second floor of the central pavilion carved at the rear wall of the shrines has remained a question. Beginning with the woman's eyes, this article demonstrates that the image is more than a generic portrait (“hard motif”), but rather represents “feminine overseeing from above” (“soft motif”). This synthetic motif combines three different earlier motifs – the frontal-pose hostess enjoying entertainment, the elevated spectator, and the Queen Mother of the West. By creatively fusing the three motifs into one unity, the Jiaxiang artists lent to the frontal-pose lady a unique power: she not only dominated the center of the composition, but also, like a divine being, commanded a unified view of the surroundings on the lofty building, hence echoing the political reality of the empress mother's “overseeing the court” in the second century during Eastern Han dynasty.     

明清时期福州西湖水环境变迁及其治理研究

明清时期,福州西湖水环境总体趋劣。明代西湖水源较为充足,水质状况良好;万历以降,受民间占垦等社会因素影响,湖域面积缩减,水质日渐趋下;清代中后期,福州城内水道淤浅,江潮渐绝,西湖水源趋向单一。明清时期西湖水环境的变动,除了受区域气候干湿变化、山地森林水土保持以及湖泊含沙量的影响之外,还与人为的水地之争密切相关。由于人地关系紧张,加之水资源权属不清、新垦湖田税赋征收模糊等,获取湖利的必然性刺激了民间占湖为地的行为。地方官府也曾采取如修闸筑坝护堤、追返侵地还湖、清理粪秽淤泥等治理措施,并取得阶段性成效,但受区域人口、土地资源与生存环境等社会经济因素的影响,西湖历经多次治理仍积弊难除。     

论中国疆域最终奠定的时空坐标

本文认为,资料断限于1820年的《嘉庆重修大清一统志》(“嘉庆志”)及所附“皇舆全图”,既承载着中国历史内在发展所能达到的空间极致,又记述着康熙帝祖孙四代对领土、边界、主权与边民所具有的清晰界定与认知理念,还附丽着沙俄与西欧列强对清朝领土主权的国际承认。因此,本文将中国疆域最终奠定的空间坐标判定在“嘉庆志”及所附“皇舆全图”所确定的领域。同时,1820年的清朝疆域,既是中国疆域范围的最终底定极点,也是东西方力量对比最终逆转的临界点,更是中国国势由强转弱的最后时刻。故本文将中国疆域最终奠定的时间坐标判定在该年。     

Capitalism and the emergent world order

The two‐centuries‐old hegemony of the West is coming to an end. The ‘revolutions of modernity’ that fuelled the rise of the West are now accessible to all states. As a consequence, the power gap that developed during the nineteenth century and which served as the foundation for a core–periphery international order is closing. The result is a shift from a world of ‘centred globalism’ to one of ‘decentred globalism’. At the same time, as power is becoming more diffuse, the degree of ideological difference among the leading powers is shrinking. Indeed, because all Great Powers in the contemporary world are in some form capitalist, the ideological bandwidth of the emerging international order is narrower than it has been for a century. The question is whether this relative ideological homogeneity will generate geo‐economic or geopolitical competition among the four main modes of capitalist governance: liberal democratic, social democratic, competitive authoritarian and state bureaucratic. This article assesses the strengths and weaknesses of these four modes of capitalist governance, and probes the main contours of inter‐capitalist competition. Will the political differences between democratic and authoritarian capitalists override their shared interests or be mediated by them? Will there be conflicting capitalisms as there were in the early part of the twentieth century? Or will the contemporary world see the development of some kind of concert of capitalist powers? A world of politically differentiated capitalisms is likely to be with us for some time. As such, a central task facing policy‐makers is to ensure that geo‐economic competition takes place without generating geopolitical conflict.     

The Consorts of King Wu and King Wen in the Bronze Inscriptions of Early Chou

Abstract

Daodejing is an essential text in Chinese culture. The number of its English translations exceeds a total of 112 editions. The first one was produced by John Chalmers, who was a Scottish missionary from London Missionary Society stationed in Hong Kong and Canton for a long period of time. Chalmers's close missionary colleague, James Legge, who was subsequently the first Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford, produced another translation. This paper aims at revealing the socio-cultural and intellectual processes behind the making of these two translations. In so doing, it discusses the differences in the two texts and explores the reasons for their differences.

Christian missionaries in China were the agents for the cultural interactions between China and the West. Not only did they bring the Christian message to China, but they also introduced the Chinese ideas through their translations and writings to their Western audience. This should be a fruitful and important topic for serious scholarship in both the studies in Sinology and in the history of translation.     

The structuring of political territory in early printed atlases

Abstract

The atlas emerged as a cartographic and bibliographic response to early modern Europeans’ search for geographical order in a rapidly changing world. In particular, atlases were mediators in the restructuring of European ideas about political territory which culminated in the emergence (by the end of the eighteenth century) of the territorial state and its progeny, the nation‐state. For more than two centuries atlases defined political territories ever more precisely for their readers and expressed hierarchical relationships among those territories, while giving form to the political territoriality and geopolitical orientations of particular nations.     

Edward Abramowski's concept of stateless socialism and its impact on progressive social movements in Poland in the twentieth century

The author traces the impact of Abramowski's ideas on the recent history of Poland. His concepts were not only popular in the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and the syndicalist movement in the interwar period (1918–1939), but they also exerted a profound influence on the cooperative movement and democratic left-wing opposition in the 1970s and 1980s. The leaders of the Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR) were much influenced by Abramowski's ideas and, according to some researchers, the Solidarity movement from 1980 to 1981 in Poland was the culmination of his concepts. Today's anti-systemic movements in Poland (anarchists, syndicalists, alter-globalists) are also inspired by Abramowski. The author also draws attention to certain similarities between Abramowski's ideas, Kropotkin's idea, Gramsci's concept of civil society and the thought of the young Marx. The author also outlines Abramowski's social ideas in the context of ideas promoted by the main theoreticians of the Polish left in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.     

Maritime Archaeology and the Early Atlantic Trade: research at Elmina,Ghana

This article details recent maritime archaeological research off the town of Elmina in coastal Ghana. Founded in 1482, Elmina Castle was the first and largest European outpost in sub‐Saharan West Africa, and remained a centre of maritime trade for almost four centuries. Survey and diver investigations led to the discovery of several sites, including a shipwreck dating to the mid 17th century, which is characterized by a mass of trade goods, cannon and buried hull remains. A second Dutch vessel dating to c.1700 was documented after its discovery during dredging operations in the Benya Lagoon adjacent to Elmina. These sites present an opportunity to study ships and cargoes involved in the West African trade.     

Saynes Mill: excavation of a tide mill on the River Lea,London

Excavations at 150 Stratford High Street, London E15, found evidence for Saynes Mill, a tide powered grain mill of medieval origin, converted in 1745–62 into a pumping station for the West Ham Water Company with an engine installed by John Smeaton. The large-scale reconstruction meant that there was limited survival of earlier buildings, but many later structures survived almost intact and stretches of the quays that flanked the Waterworks River were also recorded. The excavated remains of both the buildings and revetments spanned the period from the late 15th to the late 19th centuries.