Cooperation networks and actors in semi‐colonial China, 1860–1911

This paper focuses on “cooperation networks” for the provision of public goods and services as a specific form of governance in late imperial China. While concentrating on differing forms of local self‐regulation at the end of the Qing dynasty, the article pinpoints several actors involved in the cooperation networks and (re)classifies them along the continuum of “public” and “private.” In addition to state and non‐state actors, the players included semi‐state or hybrid actors with profound network advantages who played a crucial role in the provision of governance services, as well as colonial and transnational actors who occasionally took part in this cooperation. To contextualize these actors and illustrate their modes of interaction, this paper will describe cooperation networks established for the provision of disaster relief and education in local society in late Qing China. In so doing, this paper also will question participants' motives and describe their personal gains, as well as the accumulation of symbolic capital as major incentives.     

Debating Natural Law in the Banda Islands: A Case Study in Anglo–Dutch Imperial Competition in the East Indies, 1609–1621

This article examines Anglo–Dutch rivalry in the Banda Islands in the period from 1609 to 1621, with a particular focus on the process of claiming initiated by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and English East India Company (EIC). Historians have paid little attention to the precise legal justifications employed by these organisations, and how they affected the outcome of events. For both companies, treaties with Asian rulers and peoples were essential in staking out claims to trade and territory. Because so many different parties were involved, individual documents had to serve multiple purposes, both on the ground in the East Indies and at the negotiating tables back in Europe. Whenever a VOC or EIC official presented a treaty to a Bandanese leader, he had to recognise local power structures in the Spice Islands, but also needed to consider his European competitors in the area, his superiors in Batavia or Bantam, and the company directors back in Amsterdam or London. Consequently, the safest and most reliable course of action was to make as many arguments as possible, piling them on top of one another. The result was an inherently messy process of claiming, yet one that was also clearly intelligible to most parties involved, including Asian rulers and peoples. A constantly changing legal suite extended to freedom of trade and navigation, contracts and alliances with native peoples, just war, conquest, actual possession, and the (perceived) surrender of native sovereignty to European authorities.     

Accident Investigations: a comparative perspective on societal safety in Norway and Sweden, 1970–2010

The topic for the article is the growing awareness of risk and safety in Norway and Sweden during the last decades of the 20th century, and how the two Scandinavian states have organized investigations of accidents. In many western states accident investigations have moved from sector specific boards to permanent multi-modal commissions. This has also been the case in the two Scandinavian states. But this comparative study reveals different paths and varying speed towards a ‘safety culture’. The Swedish Accident Investigation Board was established in 1990, while its Norwegian opposite partner was established in 2008. Common for the two countries is that reorganization of investigation boards has taken place as political actions after major accidents, rather than as a consequence of risk assessments.