Historicizing the German Question: Toward an International History of the Cold War

Book reviewed:
William Glenn Gray. Germany's Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949–1969 . Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. xii + 351 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, index. $49.95 (cloth).     

Ordinary Writing and Scribal Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain: Memory Books

This article is a study of the survival of scribal culture in nineteenth-century Spain in the form of the so-called ‘memory books’ (libros de memorias). I analyse their relationship with the educational developments of the period, as well as the material characteristics and the content of these texts, in order to define their typical features. These texts were the products of hybrid writing practices, in the sense that several elements were frequently superimposed on one another: economic news, personal, family and social events and even historical details. Hence the similarity between the memory books and other genres such as account books (libros de cuentas) and family books (libros de familia). Lastly, I will examine some nineteenth-century examples as epigones of a writing genre which had its origins in the later Middle Ages and Early Modern period.

“One morning, while tidying up the bedroom, Rosa opened the drawer in the trunk where Cholo kept his papers. There she found the papers about the property and, in a corner, together with the Family Book and the social security booklet, the papers from the bank […]. And she was about to put it away when it occurred to her to take off the elastic band around the big folder which Cholo had kept from his time in Switzerland. There were things, names and so on that she didn’t understand, but in the middle there were also some of the cards she had sent from Aran.”1 1.?Manuel Rivas, En salvaje compañía (1994) (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1998), 100–101. View all notes     

Beyond Comfort: German and English Military Chaplains and the Memory of the Great War, 1919–1929

How did German and English military chaplains commemorate the Great War? The established historiography broadly interprets war commemoration in the post‐war period in two ways. One approach presents commemoration as a ritual of healing that soothed the bereft. The other emphasizes the political function of commemoration, interpreting it as a way of reshaping the war in collective memory to legitimize the status quo — by venerating sacrifices made for the nation, it put the nation beyond question to strengthen allegiance to the established order. Both interpretations treat the language of war commemoration as one of consolation and comfort. Military chaplains, however, espoused a more ambitious mission. For them, the purpose of war commemoration was to inculcate dissatisfaction, guilt, and discomfort. This was because they remembered the war as a contest of ideas embodied in the clash of nations, a contest that was still unsettled. Their purpose was therefore the antithesis to consolation and conventional patriotism: to mobilize the living to honour their “blood debt” to the dead through the language of agitation. They themselves had participated in a war regarded by the churches as a campaign of regeneration through blood, in which sacrifice and suffering would revitalize their nations by bringing them to repentance, piety, and social cohesion. Because they were implicated personally in that incomplete crusade, they were especially anxious to realize the mission and complete the sacrifices of the dead. Anglican ex‐chaplains predominantly implored their congregations to ensure a permanent peace that had been purchased by blood, whereas German Protestants invoked a resurrected Volk reclaiming its status as a chosen people. Each articulated a politics of remembrance, one formed on the vision of a war to end all wars, the other on a vision of a war to resurrect the Reich as the Kingdom of God. While the political content of their memories was different, they shared an attitude to the function of remembrance, as a ritual to mobilize and arouse rather than console. Both groups preached that the peace was a continuation of an unfinished moral and spiritual struggle. Furthermore, while always honouring the dead, they stressed that the worth of their sacrifices was no longer guaranteed but contingent upon the conduct of living and future generations. Despite the divergences that emerged from their different confessional and national traditions, and from their respective circumstances, they shared a common moral language.     

Heroic History and Chiefly Chapels in 19th Century Tahiti

ABSTRACT This article seeks to understand mass conversion to Christianity in early 19th century Tahiti as the re‐materialisation of a heroic social field. Beginning with a re‐consideration of Sahlins' notion of ‘heroic history’, I argue that heroic Tahitian history was a distinctive combination of chiefly and collective action. The cultural structure of this history was reflected in three architectural moments: the building of a chapel for the high chief, Pomare, at Mo'orea, the generalised replication of this act through the construction, within a very short period, of some 70 chapels at Tahiti, and the building of a monumental chapel for Pomare at Tahiti. This article is a ‘prequel’ to an earlier publication on mass conversion to Christianity and church construction in Rarotonga.     

从军方到学界:抗战军事史研究在台湾

在台湾,军事史研究并非学界主流,抗战军事史研究亦然。不过由于抗战终究是一场战争,军事是不可忽视的面向,学界仍有一定的研究,这方面最早由刘凤翰开拓,时间在40年前,至今已颇有积累。学界研究之外,早在70年前的战争时期,军方于"编纂"方面已有所投入,然后在"研究"方面配合军方战略学的发展,形成其研究范式。军方与学界相交流,成为台湾抗战军事史研究的重要历程。本文分梳军方抗战军事史发展脉络,析论军方与学界学术推进的关系,归纳学界当前研究重点。通过对史学史的探讨、方法论变迁的述论,除了整体研析70年来的抗战军事史发展,或可为今后进一步研究提供参考。