Identity Formation at a French Colonial Outpost in the North American Interior

Identity formation is a central issue in colonial and post-colonial studies. The ways in which people defined and expressed their identities along multiple dimensions have material implications that are archaeologically accessible. For social archaeologists, material variation is actively constituted and the archaeological record is the residue of a system of signs that individuals used in the construction of class, status, gender, race, and ethnic relations. In the context of French and Native interactions, social identities were fluid, situational, and malleable. The interactions engendered by the fur trade and colonialism in New France had material consequences for identity formation that are being investigated at Fort St. Joseph, an 18th-century frontier outpost in the western Great Lakes.     

非洲史研究的新视野——环境史

与世界其他国家和地区的历史研究相比,非洲史研究起步晚、难度大。但是即便如此,20世纪的非洲史研究还是取得了长足进步,尤其是在民族解放运动取得胜利之后。非洲史研究不但成为世界史研究中一道亮丽的风景,而且为冲破历史研究中的“西方话语霸权”贡献出了自己的地方性知识,丰富了世界史研究的史料学、理论观点、方法论。环境史是继传统史学、殖民主义史学和民族主义史学之后的另一重要流派。本将从史学史的角度着重分析环境史在非洲史研究中的兴起发展、主要的观点和方法以及存在的问题。     

Building in Colonial Louisiana: Creolization and the Survival of French Traditions

Documents and limited archaeological evidence indicate that the building methods of the Louisiana Acadians during the colonial period strongly reflected a heritage of late-medieval and early-modern French methods and techniques of constructing vernacular buildings.     

“奉辞伐罪”:伊利里亚战争与罗马东扩

从公元前3世纪晚期至前2世纪中期,地处亚得里亚海东岸的伊利里亚人与罗马多次交战。缕析波利比乌斯等古典史家的记述,交战历程依次为:伊利里亚人劫掠和扩张、罗马商人和伊萨向元老院控诉和求援、罗马遣使交涉、伊利里亚人蛮横回应、罗马出兵讨伐。着眼于史实层面,罗马遣使交涉,基本是其对外扩张中先礼后兵的惯常策略,也是其强化宣战理由的重要环节。而就历史叙事而论,波氏的伊利里亚战争文本,一方面将罗马对伊利里亚的征服呈现为奉辞伐罪、解救他邦的功业;另一方面是论证罗马优良政体及其在罗马统一地中海世界中所发挥的有力作用,在此叙事逻辑指引下,伊利里亚成为罗马需要匡谬正俗的对象。     

Women and Law in Colonial India: A Social History

Book reviewed in this article: Women and Law in Colonial India: A Social History, by Srimati Basu.     

Review Article: Nations and Empires in Colonial North America

GREGORY EVANS DOWD. War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi, 360. $32.00 (US); ERIC HINDERAKER and PETER C. MANCALL. At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Pp. ix, 210. $17.95 (US), paper; JANE T. MERRITT. At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003; dist. Toronto: SBS. Pp. vi, 338. $32.95 (CDN), paper; MICHAEL LEROY OBERG. Uncas: First of the Mohegans. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. ix, 268. $27.50 (US). Reviewed by Gary Clayton Anderson     

Brutes, beasts and empire: veterinary medicine and environmental policy in French North Africa and British India

The deep, and persistent, colonial roots of many contemporary environmental policies around the world have been increasingly recognized over the last decade. Research in the sectors of agriculture, forestry, human medicine, and public health has illuminated how environmental policies were constructed and utilized during the colonial period, as well as how many of these policies remain influential today. This paper examines the as yet little explored contribution of colonial veterinary medicine to the development and implementation of environmental policy. By comparing the experiences of the French in North Africa and the British in India, it demonstrates that some colonial veterinarians had a great deal of influence on environmental policy while others had very little. In French North Africa veterinarians played a significant role in developing rangeland management policies that impacted large swaths of these three territories, policies that can still be felt today. In British India, by contrast, the role of colonial veterinarians in developing environmental policy was much more circumscribed and, in the end, largely inconsequential. The paper suggests that three primary factors account for most of this dissimilarity: the differences in animal diseases present in India and the Maghreb; the differences between French and British veterinary education before the twentieth century; and the differences in colonial administration between the two European powers.