William Morris Hughes,Empire and Nationalism: The Legacy of the First World War

Despite the amplitude with which Prime Minister W. M. Hughes voiced Australian claims during the First World War, his conduct in the immediate postwar years shows that his nationalism remained consistent with an imperial and British standpoint. This proposition is illustrated with reference to Hughes' role in the 1921 imperial conference, the Chanak crisis, and his post-prime ministerial memoir. While obsessed with expedients to improve the speed and scope of intra-imperial communications and thus facilitate consultation, Hughes was concerned to ensure that Australia played a proper role in arriving at a consensus on the deep common interest that unified Britain and the Dominions. His lack of concern for extending the scope for independent action won by the Dominions during the war, his dismissive remarks regarding the British role in the League of Nations, and the vehemence of his communications with London in 1922, must all be seen within the context of an imperial loyalty that survived the war undiminished.     

张骞“凿空”西域

张骞,汉中人,建元中为郎。是时天子问匈奴降者,皆言匈奴破月氏王,以其头为饮器,月氏遁逃,而常怨仇匈奴,无与共击之。汉方欲事灭胡,闻此言,因欲通使。道必更匈奴中,乃募能使者。骞以郎应募,使月氏,与堂邑氏故胡奴甘父俱出陇西。经匈奴,匈奴得之,传诣单于。单于留之,曰：“月氏在吾北,汉何以得往使？吾欲越使,汉肯听我乎？”留骞十余岁,与妻有子,然骞持汉节不失。--《史记·大宛列传》 历史的呼唤 司马迁与张骞均为西汉同时代人,尽管史家讲究“生不列传”,但由于张骞两次出使西域,出生入死,敢为人先,打击匈奴,交好西域,当时也为惊天地、泣鬼神之壮举,故司马迁在《史记·大宛列传》中,开篇即以数百字介绍张骞生平业绩及贡献。东汉班固作《汉书》时,则把张骞、大将军李广利并列建立专节作传,使得张骞“凿空”,开拓丝绸之路的历史功勋,名标青史,永垂后世。2000年间,非但没有被岁月淹没,倒因为中西方政治、经济、科技、文化交流,丝绸之路至今仍是中西交往的重要通道,被誉为“欧亚大陆桥”,在我国对外经济交流上发挥着重大作用。追思先贤,当年张骞不畏艰险,“凿空”丝路的精神也益发应该彰显、发扬光大,张骞当之无愧地被列为世界级的文化名人。     

The Prehistory of the Tibetan Plateau to the Seventh Century A.D.: Perspectives and Research from China and the West Since 1950

Until recently, there has been no sense of a Tibetan prehistory. Beginning in the 1970s, however, Chinese archaeologists began to systematically explore the plateau, and began to draw an outline of the deep Tibetan past. The pace of research accelerated rapidly in the 1990s, which brought this outline into sharper focus. This paper reviews what is known of Tibetan prehistory until the seventh century A.D., when the Tibetan empire was established. Topics covered in this paper include a consideration of the antiquity of a human presence upon the plateau, changing adaptive strategies following the end of the glacial epoch, the advent of the Neolithic, and the emergence of social and political complexity. Despite significant advances in our knowledge of the Tibetan past, much work remains to be done before models of process can be examined in any detail.