“Relying on America”: The CPI’s Propaganda in China and Its Influence on China’s Pursuit of a New National Identity before the May Fourth Movement*

At the beginning of the 20th century, American officials, newspapermen, and businessmen in China promoted and participated in the establishment of a branch of the Committee on Public Information (CPI) in China. The purposes of the China station were to compete with other foreign states seeking influence in China, to promote American values and to eventually lead China down an “American” path. The CPI China station built an image of America as a friendly country which offered political and economic assistance and held a leading position in the new postwar order, an example which China could use for its own development. Chinese people were quick to respond to this propaganda as they wanted their concerns to be addressed at the Paris Peace Conference and sought to reform their national identity. The idea of a Wilsonian international order gained support in China through effective propaganda. After the diplomatic defeat in Paris, however, some Chinese began to consider a path very different from that of America. The CPI’s promotion of a particular development path for China and new world order had various effects on the country. The propaganda came at a time when the Chinese were searching for a new national identity and gained support from many groups. In addition, the Chinese people were not passive listeners of the propaganda and did not blindly accept the information that was “fed” to them.     

边疆的空间涵义及其人文地理研究框架

基于空间维度的地理学边疆研究一直为欧美地理学界所关注,并促进了地理学的理论建构。相比之下,我国的边疆研究一直以历史学为主流,人文地理学在边疆研究中的地位有待加强。本文通过对边疆概念的评述认为,习惯上的领土边疆概念无法反映当前边疆所具有的多重涵义,根据功能的不同对边疆进行类型划分十分必要。为此作者将边疆划分为政治边疆、文化边疆和拓居边疆三种类型,并分析了每一类型边疆的空间涵义。基于边疆的分类与空间涵义,本文构建了一个根植于人文地理学的边疆研究框架,并初步提出了人文地理学边疆研究的维度、视角及重点内容。     

Colonial Refractions of a Malakulan Chief

During the early 20th century, Western adventurers sought encounters with and images of Pacific people to entertain white audiences. But they were often reliant on resident European missionaries to facilitate their access to the glamorous Other. Missionaries were themselves also creators of Indigenous representations intended for Western consumption, to raise support for their enterprise. This paper examines the uneasy relationship between these groups by bringing together archival resources from disparate disciplines – colonial-era adventure-travelogue and mission history – to uncover an unacknowledged relationship between the American film-maker and photographer Martin Johnson and Australian Seventh-day Adventist missionaries in Vanuatu between 1917 and 1920. My focus is a Big Nambas village on Malakula, Vanuatu, which found itself the nexus of conflicting colonial gazes. Representations of its headman Nihapat, refracted through the lenses of a travelogue-adventurer and the narratives of missionaries, highlight Indigenous agency as he and his people contended with their predicament under colonialism.     

20世纪六七十年代美国华裔青年“新左派”团体探析

论文论述了20世纪六七十年代美国华裔青年"新左派"团体产生的社会政治背景,华裔青年新左派团体的兴衰与转型。论文认为,华裔青年新左派团体作为亚裔美国人运动一支不容忽视的力量,从校园斗争转向唐人街,开展"草根阶层"运动和"为人民服务"行动,力图发动普通华人向不平等、不公正的社会制度发起挑战,争取应得的平等权益。他们的努力确实取得了一定的成效,让唐人街失学的青少年、失业的劳工、贫困的租客等获得了一些教育、就业、医疗等方面的福利。但是,这些左翼团体主张以"革命斗争"推翻美国政府,脱离了社会实际,因而得不到大多数华人的认同,有的只维持几年就解散了,有的转向"温和",接受了美国主流政治的游戏规则。虽然受特定时代思潮的影响,有一定的"局限性",但其在美国华人民权运动史上的贡献不应被遗忘。正是他们无私无畏的斗争,并发挥教育和引领的作用,才使得普通华人民众的维权意识得以提升,给相对保守"沉默"的华人社区带来一股革新之气。     

Exploring place marketing by American microbreweries: neolocal expressions of ethnicity and race

The American craft brewing scene has exhibited continued growth over the past several decades fueled by the desire of many patrons to opt for unique, local brews in the place of homogenous national and international brands. Previous research reports that American microbreweries often express neolocalism in the marketing of their products: using local place names, people, events, landscape features, and icons on their labeling and in their names to establish roots with the local environment and culture. By way of qualitatively surveying 1564 microbrewery websites, this paper looks through a neolocal lens to examine microbrewery usage of ethnicity and race in their marketing efforts. Microbreweries are found to express ethnicity and race in their marketing schemes to a limited extent within which ethnicity, more so than race, is demonstrated. Specific examples include references to ethnic ties to the Scots-Irish in Appalachia, specific Native American tribes throughout the country, and Latino, specifically Mexican/Mexican-American, cultural heritage in the American southwest. In addition, findings reflect the demographics of the industry, which is dominated by whites of European descent.     

An English approach to the American frontier

Studies of frontier migration in the American west are hampered by lack of data because few records contain evidence of reasons for migrating or evidence of decisions taken by individual migrants or groups of migrants. An extensive collection of letters from two English brothers who, in 1882, migrated to an English farm colony in north-west Iowa, then moved into horse-raising in Wyoming, then returned to Iowa, and later went back to Wyoming, provides an unusually illuminating case study in frontier migration. The letters reveal reasons for the frequent moves in the west over a seventeen-year period ending with the brothers' successful establishment as sheep ranchers in Wyoming. They show how each shift was conditioned by their previous experience of economic difficulties and by their persistent reliance upon contacts in England.     

明清侨寓徽商子弟教育的特色

明清时期,徽商在经商之地侨寓的现象相当普遍,为子弟成名计,徽商及其子弟在侨寓地展开了一系列教育活动,并形成了自己鲜明的特色：教育成效卓著,教育与科举发展存在县份分布上的不平衡;徽商取代士而成为明清侨寓徽商子弟教育机构创办的真正主体;教育理念开放变通等。这既体现了明清的时代特色,也与商人教育的特点相契合。     

State Stigmatisation in Urban Turkey: Managing the “Insurgent” Squatter Dwellers in Dikmen Valley

This paper contributes to the accounts of territorial stigmatisation by examining the state role in it in the case of Turkey, a country that suffers from growing state power. The existing debates are mainly restricted to its function as an economic strategy paving the way for capital accumulation through devaluing working-class people and places. Drawing on textual analysis of political speeches, local newsletters and mainstream national newspapers and fieldwork material that include interviews and observations in Dikmen Valley where some squatter communities mobilised against the state-imposed urban transformation project, I demonstrate that state conceptualisation of “problem people” targets the “insurgent” rather than the “unprofitable” groups. Stigma in urban settings functions in inciting the desire to meet the patterns deemed appropriate by the state, rather than the market. Moving from that, I argue that stigma is used as a state-led political strategy, which is integral to the growing authoritarianism in Turkey.     

The cannonade of Valmy

Abstract

The eccentric American zoologist Richard Lynch Garner (1848–1920) spent almost two decades living with Nkomi people in southern Gabon between 1893 and 1918. His essays often discussed the connections between occult beliefs and political change during the chaotic era of concessionary companies in the colony. This period is often seen by historians as a violent period that destroyed pre-colonial political institutions in equatorial Africa. However, Garner described how he engaged with local occult beliefs in ways that reveal the continued use of landlord/stranger relationships in the colony. While Garner employed chemicals and phonographs as a means of gaining authority over his African hosts, Gabonese people sought to incorporate Garner into their communities through healing rituals and boycotts backed by supernatural threats. Although the American constructed Gabonese people as gullible and backward, a close reading of his writings demonstrates how southern Gabonese communities placed Garner and his technology into a long tradition that tied together European wealth, supernatural forces, and rights of local people over foreigners. The nineteenth century Nkomi kingdom might have crumbled, but links between occult forces and political power survived and adapted to the new realities of the early colonial era.     

Country report: The ambiguities of social and cultural geography in Greece

This paper contributes to debates on the empirical and conceptual potentials of anti-essentializing notions such as ‘thirdspace’ with the aim to open new epistemological and political grounds. Based on the findings of ethnographic research, I critically examine two spatial strategies (the deliberate creation of an ethnic neighbourhood, and the securing of a community centre) that Latin American immigrants in Toronto, Canada, developed to appropriate urban space and lay claims to equal rights. The case of Latin Americans' struggle for belonging in Toronto serves to reflect on how and why new immigrant groups today (re)construct collective identity spatially. I argue that immigrants strategically essentialize their identities in and through place in order to make themselves visible and their voices heard. Ethnic places represent sites of resistance and creation where immigrants construct their own subjectivities while also redefining dominant notions of inclusion and citizenship. Although locally grounded, these new immigrant identities remain fluid and engage with multiple forms of exclusion

[The] situation is simply sad; the [Latin American] community … is one of the most orphan communities … in [Toronto] … [We] don't even have a place where to dig our own grave basically. If there is need to get together … a meeting … there is no place. We have to be looking for a basement … for a recreational centre to give us a room … If there is a social or cultural event, we do not have a place where … we can present what we have … [It] is sad and it is a reality. (Cesar Palacio, city councillor candidate to Toronto's 2003 municipal elections, interview, 2 May 2003, translated from Spanish)     

Trump’s populism: lessons from Latin America

This paper compares left-wing Latin American populism with Donald Trump. Despite their different social bases and economic policies, they use a similar logic to construct politics as an antagonistic struggle between two camps. Left-wing and right-wing populists aim to rupture existing political institutions to give power to the people, yet they differ in how they construct this category. Whereas Trump used ethnic criteria to differentiate the people from three out groups – Mexicans, Muslims, and African-American militant organisations – left-wing Latin American populists used political and socio-economic criteria. Despite their democratising promises, Latin American populists like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador undermined democracy from within. Even though stronger institutions might protect American democracy, Trump has disfigured democracy.     

The Political Poetry of Le Roi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and Mudhafar Al‐ Nawwab: a Comparative Perspective

This paper critically examines selected texts from the political poetry of the African American poet, Le Roi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and the dissident Iraqi poet, Mudhafar Al‐Nawwab, in order to underline the radical aesthetics operative in their poetry and emphasize their condemnation of the hegemonic forces which attempted to dominate the African American community and the Arab World. Illuminating common areas of interest that link these two poets together, the paper explores their attitudes toward the aggressive and inhuman policies advocated by racist and repressive agencies in the United States and the Arab World which sought to brutalize their nations. The paper also illustrates their points of view toward major issues such as oppression, struggle, and identity, in addition to their efforts to revolutionize the collective consciousness of African American and Arab people at times of national crises and political turmoil.     

Betwixt and Between: Trauma,Survival and the Aboriginal Troopers of the Queensland Native Mounted Police

ABSTRACT

Much has been written about the history of the Queensland Native Mounted Police, mostly focussing on its development, its white officers, how much the Colonial Government genuinely knew about the actions of the Force, and how many people were killed during the frontier wars. Far less attention has been given to the Aboriginal men of the force, the nature of their recruitment, and the long-term traumatic impacts on Aboriginal peoples’ and communities’ psyches rather than broadscale changes to Aboriginal culture per se. This article examines the historical and ongoing psychological impacts of dispossession and frontier violence on Aboriginal people. Specifically, we argue that massacres, frontier violence, displacement, and the ultimate dispossession of land and destruction of traditional cultural practices resulted in both individual and collective inter-generational trauma for Aboriginal peoples. We posit that, despite the Australian frontier wars taking place over a century ago, their impacts continue to reverberate today in a range of different ways, many of which are as yet only partially understood.     

Border Practices,Boundaries, and the Control of Resource Access: A Case from China,Thailand and Burma

This article traces border practices along boundaries that China and Thailand share with Burma. It portrays a spectrum of small border polities, from principalities on the fringes of Southeast Asian kingdoms, through Nationalist troops in Burma following their defeat in China, to ‘drug lords’ and ‘rebel armies’. The focus here is on Akha village heads who have worked their connections in multiple directions, including into Burma, to position themselves as patrons controlling local resource access. With state appointment as border guardians, village heads become chiefs of new kinds of small border entities, protecting the border for the homeland while enabling certain illicit information, people, and goods to cross. In regions with a history of complex patronage relations, state efforts to control peripheral people, resources, and territories have in fact produced small border chiefs, with practices similar to those of frontier princes in the past.     

'The last frontier': rationalizing the spread of farming into the boreal woods of Canada, c. 1910–1940

As the twentieth century opened, there were rumours that the cheap land underpinning the dramatic spread of settlement in the previous century might be running out. There were strong motivations, generated particularly by the large body of land seekers with a passion for farming, to hold off the demise of the famous agricultural frontier. Also wedded to the continuation of a frontier were politicians and civil servants across the country. Whether it was a subconscious expectation that the frontier would simply continue or a fear that its disappearance would lead to unpredictable social disturbance, politicians encouraged expansion beyond what was known to be good farmland. The major source of new land, from c . 1910, was the boreal forest. There was a steady accumulation of information about the North that was readily available to government officials but only indirectly to ordinary land seekers. Although the news about farming conditions in the boreal margin was unpromising except for a few pockets, independent and assisted farm settlements continued into the 1930s. The typical two-thirds of farm failure within one generation in most of the new boreal settlements caused a great deal of settler grief and forced reluctant officials to respond to the negative scientific evidence and to reassess frontier nostalgia. The Second World War provided both a denouement of the northern farm settlement and a reason for many people to depart the 'last frontier'.     

汉代对西南边疆的经营

本文论述了汉代经营西南边疆的政策措施及其效果。汉代在西南边疆地区实行“以其故俗治”的政策,适应中央集权制统治的需要,符合边疆民族地区实际,有利于汉朝统治秩序的稳定和西南边疆经济文化的发展;另一方面,汉代边疆战略重点始终在北方和西北,对西南边疆的经营规模和力度仍然是很有限的,边远山区尤其如此。     

Looking Out to Look In: The Use of the Periphery in China's Geopolitical Narratives

Using a previous paper published in Eurasian Geography and Economics (Agnew, 2012) as a point of departure, an American geographer and specialist on China explores the role of the periphery (frontier, borderlands) in forging perceptions of China's place in the world. By presenting counter-narratives to the myth of a singular Chinese culture/ethnicity spreading inexorably from a Yellow River hearth region over five millennia, the author demonstrates how the Chinese have "looked out" (i.e., used a complex and seemingly alien frontier space) in order to "look in" (mark a "Chinese" identity as culturally homogeneous even when it was not). The paper examines how this process worked through time to repeatedly reinvent an unambiguous and knowable China from histories of intermixing, ambiguity, and spatial complexity. It contrasts a Mao-era perspective of a periphery marking the leading edge of an expanding and homogeneous Chinese culture with post-Mao and post-socialist narratives, which view the periphery more as a "contact zone" between China and its neighbors, where Han ethnicity and Chinese civilization alike are viewed as having absorbed external influences.     

Public Domesticity during the Indian Reform Era; or,Mrs. Jackson is induced to go to Washington

White middle-class American women were heavily involved in lobbying for and implementing Indian reform legislation during the late nineteenth century. The General Allotment Act mandated the break-up of reservations and imposed upon Native peoples the twinned institutions of private property and male-headed families in the hopes that they would assimilate to American 'civilisation'. White women thus appeared to be imposing their own gender norms on others as they sought to inculcate the characteristics Native people would need for American citizenship. They negotiated this paradox of imposing classed, gendered and racialised hierarchies in the name of equality through spatially articulating hierarchies of race, class and gender. Rather than appeal to the conventional liberal dichotomy of public and private, the author reads these activists as authorising their political activity through the dualism of civilised and savage. The latter spaces produced oppression, which was understood as the inability to participate in politics as much as exclusion from participation in politics. It was the maternal duty of white middle-class women to civilise people, thus delivering them from oppression, through transforming the spaces in which they lived.     

Social integration at a frontier and the creation of Mississippian social identity in southwestern Virginia

ABSTRACT

Frontier areas are poor in labor but rich in land. To be successful, frontiers must attract people and socially integrate them using both low- and high-level social integrative mechanisms, which can range from basic work groups to elaborate feasts. Craft production can be a useful means of accomplishing low and high levels of social integration because it can be done as part of a work group but for special purposes, such as exchange. In the process of social integration, social identity specific to the types of crafts produced and their uses emerges. This paper examines a Mississippian frontier site, Carter Robinson, and discusses evidence for the production and use of ceramics and shell beads as integrative mechanisms at the Southern Appalachian Mississippian frontier area. Through the use of these types of mechanisms I argue that both a communal social identity and an identity of social inequality were created at Carter Robinson which resulted in the production and reproduction of Mississippian identity.