丝路开通之初帕提亚帝国境内的东西交通路线

丝绸之路的具体路径是学界在中外交流领域长期关注的焦点.张骞凿空之时,正是帕提亚帝国疆域大扩张时期,从两河流域到中亚的道路基本在其控制之下.从西到东,帕提亚帝国的领土可分为三大区域:亚述一巴比伦尼亚地区、伊朗高原上的波斯腹地以及赫卡尼亚以东的不稳定控制地域.自亚历山大东征至四大帝国并立时的1-2世纪,帕提亚帝国境内的东西...     

Silk Road glass in Xinjiang,China: chemical compositional analysis and interpretation using a high-resolution portable XRF spectrometer

In this paper we explore the major, minor and some trace elements of sixty-five glass beads from eighteen oasis sites both north and south of the Taklamakan Desert, the ancient centre of the Silk Routes linking East and West; the samples date from the Warring States period (475–2211 BCE) to the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE). Using a high-resolution portable XRF spectrometer, with special attention to issues of surface weathering and sample preparation, we obtained quantitative chemical compositional data that, when combined with archaeological context and the technology of bead manufacture, provide the basis for an understanding of both changes in glass type over time, and possible source areas for the Xinjiang glasses. While glass beads at the early sites (1st c. BCE to 4th c. CE) were coming primarily from Kushan-controlled territories in northern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, with a small contribution from central China, most of the later glass (4th–10th c. CE) is similar to that produced in the Sasanian Empire at such sites as Veh Ardashir in central Iraq. These changes most likely reflect changing cultural and economic conditions in the Silk Road towns.     

The Consumptive Ruins Archaeology of Consuming Past in the Middle East

After the collapse of Ottoman Empire and division of old Iran, the new geography of Middle East needed new identities. The ancient mythical past could not respond the new idea of identity anymore; because of that, the archaeological past replaced the mythical ones. All over the Middle East, the heaven of archaeologists, was excavated; ancient ruins were recovered and redefined. In such a context, the archaeological evidences remained in the hands of Middle Easterner governments. During mid-1960–1970s, Pan Arabism and Pan Aryanism both raised in the region. In both Iran and Syria, the governments celebrated ancient empires. Such festivals have been known responsible for further fundamental thoughts relevant to archaeological past. The world witnessed the demolish of Palmyra ancient ruins by ISIS. Such an action is the other site of propagandist abuse of ancient ruins by governments. Both consume the past, and both try to redefine it: one in form of demolishing and the other in form of propaganda. In this article, the authors endorsed on various forms of consuming the past in the Middle East by opposition groups and by governments.     

Contributions to the agrarian history of Eastern Arabia I. Implements and cultivation techniques

This paper focuses on early agricultural implements in eastern Arabia, examining four hoe blades and an ard share ranging in date from mid-2nd millennium B.C. through the Seleucid or Parthian period. These objects are considered in light of more recent ethnohistoric evidence pertaining to garden cultivation by hand and the plough in the region.     

萨珊波斯帝国在拜占廷金币传入过程中的影响

地处东西两大文明交汇点的萨珊波斯帝国,不仅本身创造出灿烂辉煌的文明,也为东西商贸文化交流做出了巨大的贡献。本文以中国出现之拜占廷金币及其仿制品为线索,考察萨珊波斯帝国在罗马帝国（及拜占廷帝国）与东方之间的联系作用,证明它在拜占廷金币向东传播、流向中国的过程中有着非常重要的影响,是古代东西经济文化交流的重要媒介之一。     

South Africa and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–6

The Italo-Ethiopian War led to an extensive debate in the Union of South Africa about the future of the League of Nations’ system of collective security. The different political and social groupings in the dominion interpreted the meaning of the war for the Union from a diversity of perspectives. The Italian aggression in East Africa reverberated in the context of concurrent debates about the Union's position in relation to the British Empire. These debates were influenced by the tensions between Afrikaners and English-speaking South Africans but also by disagreement within the Afrikaner community about South African policies vis-à-vis the British Empire. The Afrikaner-dominated Union Government had to navigate between its commitments to the League on the one hand and criticism from the extreme nationalist Afrikaner opposition on the other, which claimed that South Africa's sovereignty was diminished by Britain's leading role in the League. As a mandatory power in South West Africa, the Union was also concerned to sustain League principles in order to safeguard its sub-imperialist aspirations on the continent. The public debates were strongly influenced by a discourse on ‘civilisation’, which not only reflected ambiguous views of the status of Ethiopia as a member of the League of Nations, but also raised questions about the stability of white hegemony in a segregationist state.     

Reading Livy against Livy: The dream and nightmare of (American) empire1

Recent debates over the rise of an American Empire have relied on analogies to past empires, from ancient Athens to modern Britain. Such historical analogies, while inexact and debatable, are a basic mode of understanding our relation to the past. This article explores the analogy of the United States to the Roman Empire. The figure of Rome is a contested legacy, as can be seen in the long-ago writings of Livy and Tacitus, in the developing ideal of Rome during the Middle Ages, and in the works of modern scholars and poets living under Soviet domination in Poland. Tacitus tells us that the most profound symptoms of empire may be seen in the homeland. The debate over analogies for the American Empire is thus a debate over the “state of America's soul.”     

The circulation of precious metals in the Arab Empire: the case of the near and the Middle East*

The analysis by nuclear activation techniques and by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry combined with an UV laser of a large number of gold coins issued in the Arab Empire from the seventh to the 12th century ad showed that several different supplying sources were used, according to the region and to the period. The aim of this paper is to point out the circulation of gold in the Near and Middle Eastern mints of the Arab Empire and to make a parallel with the mints’ policies running in the other regions of the Empire, such as North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and the Sicily. The identification of different gold ores by means of characteristic trace elements indicated recycling of the ancient coinage and, after ad 750, the minting in the entire Arab Empire of different new gold ores: Egyptian type, North Eastern type and West African type. The analysis of a small number of silver coins from the same periods and regions also showed a change in the ore supply after ad 750.     

The Ottomans and the West: Some Thoughts on Mutual Perceptions and Good Government

Sir Jack Goody has been exploring the changing dynamics of East/West relations in numerous brilliant works. The key question concerns the dominance of the West since the eighteenth century. Are there features unique to the West which lead to its superiority both in arms and in culture? Or, were the last 200 years a mere passing moment in the “longue durée”? The history of the Ottomans from the thirteenth to the twentieth century provides a good background for Goody’s critical arguments. They turn out to be an unexpectedly tough adversary in the First World War, and yet the Empire fails. Does the Ottoman experience and the Turkish transformation provide new insights for the role of Islam in politics? Are there lessons to be learnt in the conduct of military operations against radical Islamic groups concerning the need for good, responsible and, above all, just governance?     

Crusade or cooperation? Savary de Brèves’s treatises on the Ottoman Empire

This article examines two treatises by François Savary de Brèves, French ambassador to Constantinople (1589-1605) and to the Holy See (1608-14), one promoting a crusade against the Ottoman Empire and the other championing the Franco-Ottoman alliance. By closely reading these ostensibly paradoxical texts, which were published in the same volume, I argue that de Brèves’s true intent was to advocate cooperation between France and the Ottoman Empire as a long-term foreign policy objective. This article draws attention to the significant roles played in the political, diplomatic and intellectual worlds of early-seventeenth-century France by Savary de Brèves, a largely forgotten figure. It highlights the ambivalent image of the Ottomans in early modern Europe and contributes to recent scholarship on the interactions between the Islamic East and Christian West.     

The Enigma of the Great Thapsus Harbour Mole

On the East coast of Tunisia, between Sousse and Sfax, lie the scant remains of the ancient city of Thapsus, notable mainly for a battle fought in the civil war in 46 BC. Visits by the authors resulted in the discovery of one of the longest‐known harbour moles in the entire Roman Empire. No ancient sources make reference to any work of such magnitude and the paper suggests that the harbour was never completed, but might have been started by the local emperors Gordianus, none of whom survived long enough to have executed such a project.     

Conclusion: Reflections on the Nuclear Order

ABSTRACT

The papers in this special issue examine the nuclear order that began to emerge in the 1970s after the entry into force of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970 and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreements in 1972. Several general themes are discussed: the international economy and the nuclear order; strengthening the non-proliferation regime; reactions to US non-proliferation policy; the East–West arms race; the nuclear order in 1980; the international system and nuclear order. The argument is made that the changes in the international system in the 1970s had important effects on the nuclear order, creating a North–South axis alongside the existing East–West axis; provoking disagreements and disputes over the transfer of nuclear technology; and giving greater prominence to nuclear power in a period of energy crises. This is still an order of states in which transnational and international NGOs play a secondary role. There were a variety of responses to the new order: acceptance; resentment; attempts at modification; independence; evasion and circumvention. The constitution of the order was a matter of great interest to a good number of states and the focus of many debates and much political conflict.     

The politics of the Balfour Declaration: Nationalism,imperialism and the limits of Zionist-British cooperation

This article proposes a new perspective on the much debated question of why the British government published the Balfour Declaration? It argues that the Declaration was published as part of the struggle that took place in the course of the First World War between two rival factions in the British government on the question of the future of the Ottoman Empire: the “radical” faction that strove to partition the Ottoman Empire as a means to extend the British imperial hold on the Middle East, and the “reformist” faction that opposed this. By promising to turn Palestine into “a national home for the Jewish people” the Declaration advanced the radical agenda of dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and expansion of British imperialism in the Middle East.     

‘Hereditary Guardians of the Nation’: The House of Lords and the East India Company in the Age of the American Revolution

The reform of the East India Company following its acquisition of vast territories in Bengal in the mid 1760s raised hopes that it could provide Britain with a fund to alleviate the burdens of the national debt in the wake of the failure of American taxation. Concomitantly, it elicited genuine fears that the acquisition of such revenues and patronage by the state would radically augment the already overgrown ‘influence of the crown’. Studies of the parliamentary debates surrounding East India reform have consistently emphasized the house of commons as the principal scene of action. Inspired by the work of Clyve Jones in reasserting the centrality of the house of lords as a ‘pillar’ of the 18th-century constitution, this essay seeks to redress the balance, arguing that the Lords was a key arena through which co-ordinated parliamentary and extra-parliamentary activities and press campaigns altered the trajectory of the regulation and reform of the East India Company. Through the use of its distinct privileges, such as the right of opposition lords to protest any vote of the House and the right of peers to an audience with the monarch, as well as its determination to uphold its status as a mediator between the powers of the crown and the Commons, the upper chamber played a crucial role in shaping debates in the 1770s and 1780s over the future of the East India Company and its place in a burgeoning British Empire.     

The nuclear nation and the German question: an American reactor in West Berlin

This essay analyses the relationship between nuclear technology and ideas about the nation in the late 1950s by looking at the US–West German bilateral agreement and at American proposals to develop reactors in West Berlin, both of which emerged from Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace programme. American efforts to maintain tight control over the German nuclear sphere contradicted the claim that reactors were solely instruments of peace. At the same time, plans to build a reactor in West Berlin underscored that city's status as an occupied city with an uncertain future and with ill-defined relationships to East and West Germany.     

‘Eastern History with Western Eyes’: E.A. Freeman,Islam and Orientalism

E.A. Freeman is remembered today as a confident proponent of English superiority, whose historical writings were distorted by mid-Victorian prejudices in favour of the Aryan race. This perspective privileges some of Freeman's ideas and works above others, and obscures the complexities of his view of the past which only fully emerge through an examination of his two neglected works on the East: The History and Conquests of the Saracens (1856) and The Ottoman Power in Europe (1877). In analysing Freeman's obscure Oriental volumes this article uses the insights of Edward Said who argued that the West exploits the East according to contemporary exigency and consistently represents the Orient as ‘other’. It demonstrates that Freeman composed the Saracens and Ottoman Power in direct response to Britain's support of the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War and Eastern Crisis, and re-arranged the past to represent the Turk as distinct from, and inferior to, the West. Freeman's account of the distinctiveness of the Orient, however, suggests the need to revise literature on Western approaches to the East which has assumed that antagonism towards Islam declined in the modern period, or was masked behind narratives that purported to be secular and objective but which continued to empower Europe and subjugate the Orient. Juxtaposing Freeman's narratives on Western and Eastern history, I argue that his association of Christianity with European progress and Islam with Eastern barbarism is key to understanding his deep fear of cultural contact with the Orient. Far from bolstering the strength and power of the West vis-à-vis the East, Freeman's account of the fearful barbarity of the Islamic Orient is underpinned by his belief in an anti-Christian, Judeo-Islamic, conspiracy that threatened the West with degeneration and recapitulation.     

The historical origins of the vegetative state: Received wisdom and the utility of the text

The persistent vegetative state (PVS) is one of the most iconic and misunderstood phrases in clinical neuroscience. Coined as a diagnostic category by Scottish neurosurgeon Bryan Jennett and American neurologist Fred Plum in 1972, the phrase “vegetative” first appeared in Aristotle’s treatise On the Soul (circa mid-fourth century BCE). Aristotle influenced neuroscientists of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Xavier Bichat and Walter Timme, and informed their conceptions of the vegetative nervous system. Plum credits Bichat and Timme in his use of the phrase, thus putting the ancient and modern in dialogue. In addition to exploring Aristotle’s definition of the “vegetative” in the original Greek, we put Aristotle in conversation with his contemporaries—Plato and the Hippocratics—to better apprehend theories of mind and consciousness in antiquity. Utilizing the discipline of reception studies in classics scholarship, we demonstrate the importance of etymology and historical origin when considering modern medical nosology.