日本三角缘神兽镜和中国东汉三国时期画像镜、神人神兽镜的布局及设计思想探讨

本文首次从日本三角缘神兽镜和中国东汉三国时期画像镜、神人神兽镜的布局考证出发指出两国铜镜的相似及差异乃是源于历史上第一次中日文化交流的结果,它们诞生于不同的使用目的和方式,以此诠释日本三角缘神兽镜是两国工匠共同在日本本土设计制造。     

On official corruption in the Yuan dynasty

The vicious cycle of official corruption got worse unprecedentedly in the Yuan dynasty (ca. 1279–1368). Corrupt officials at all levels from the local to the central governments were “extremely shameless and greedy.” Even many court ministers got involved in the vicious cycle of corruption. The top officialdom was polluted and degenerated badly because the Mongolian nobles made their “Sauqat” (taking gifts) tradition and the Semu, both official and merchant groups, took bribes as a way to amass wealth. Although the Mongol Yuan rulers did make a set of anti-corruption policies such as detailed rules of censorship and inspection relating to corruption crimes, these didn’t work well. Of all the reasons of the Yuan official corruption, the old Mongolian steppe traditions play the most important role, which formed the context for the low salary, improper selection and poor quality of the officials and of bending the law wrongly to pardon official misconduct. __________ Translated from: Nankai Xuebao Zhexue Shehui Kexue Ban 南开学报: 哲学社会科学版 (Nankai Journal, Philosophy and Social Science Edition), Vol.5, 2004, by Zhang Weiwei     

The supernatural protector of Constantinople: the Virgin and her icons in the tradition of the Avar siege

Abstract

Previous scholarship has maintained that icons of the Virgin were carried in procession during the Avar siege of Constantinople in A.D. 626. Based on a close reading of the primary sources from the seventh to the fourteenth centuries, this paper will argue in contrast that a tight linkage between Marian icons and protection of the Byzantine capital did not occur until after Iconoclasm. The larger implications of this conclusion concern the evolution of the cult of the Virgin in Constantinople from its initial focus on relics to a cult centered on icons and icon processions as it emerged in the second half of the tenth century.     

Natural encounters: climate,weather and the Italian Renaissance

This paper examines a key issue in the history of the climate in the pre-instrumental period, that is, how to use narrative sources which make frequent references to weather events, but which need contextualised interpretation. The paper follows an argument that climatological techniques for deriving temperature indices from chronicles, though they have become increasingly elaborate and refined, nevertheless leave out much that is of interest to the social historian. This paper explores the area of the what-is-left-behind when chronicle narratives are reduced to numerical indices. Investigating a broad range of Latin and Italian chronicles from fourteenth and fifteenth-century Italy, the paper draws three main conclusions: that sensitivity to weather events not only varied greatly among writers (as one might expect) but so too did their use of severe weather to serve the purposes of narrative (through sequencing, metaphor and analogy); that sensitivity to meteorological anomaly changed during the period, especially in the fifteenth century with the spread of prognosticating verses; and that the broadening of chroniclers' interests in weather, both ordinary and extraordinary, and in its effects on everyday, material life may allow a connection to and re-evaluation of the Burckhartian idea of the Renaissance ‘discovery of the world’.     

Political Aspects of Poverty,Income Distribution and their Measurement: Some Examples from Rural Java

… with a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, Sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. Mr Gradgrind in Dickens's Hard Times. Research has indicated that in rural areas, the income of the poor has increased faster than that of the rich … in 1967, 9 out of 10 Indonesians lived below the poverty line; in 1970, 8 out of 10, and in 1976 only 3 out of 10. This means the benefits of development are being distributed … How do we react to these figures? One may still suggest various reservations concerning the indicators of increasing equality. For example, it should be made clear to the layman to what extent the poverty line standard based on the World Bank research is sufficiently valid and objective to be used as a measure and a guide for Indonesian society. We also need further clarification of the more rapid income increases among the poor compared to the rich in rural society. For according to other research, they say that the gap between land-owners and labourers is also increasing. Kompas editorial, 18 August, 1977, Jakarta (translated).     

英国退出印度的官方心态调整

英国财政困境与殖民统治问题是英国从印度退却的现实背景,然而,英国政府错误地认为自己仍然是印度独立进程的主导者,维持印度统一并把印度羁留在英联邦正是英国在此心态影响下制定的双重战略。内阁使团失败表明印度主要矛盾已经从殖民者与民族主义者对立转变为印度国大党与穆斯林联盟之间的利益斗争。随着印度局势恶化,英国政府的主导者心态转变为焦虑与无奈。蒙巴顿在形势压力下放弃统一印度的主张,承认了印巴分治的事实。英国政府在印度独立进程中的心态调整表明英国主动权非常有限,印度政治局势才是理解非殖民化的关键。     

Colonial encounters,local knowledge and the making of the cartographic archive in the Venetian Peloponnese

Current research on the cartography of the Venetian Empire rests on a state-centred perspective which reduces maps to mere technical tools in the service of maritime expansion and colonial government. In contrast, this paper argues that such an approach cannot sufficiently account for the multiple ethnocartographic transactions between Venetian authorities and local communities which defined Venetian map-making projects. Taking the seventeenth-century conquest of the Peloponnese as its focus, the paper proposes to rethink the Venetian cartographic archive as constituted through a set of socio-cultural and political practices involving both colonial surveyors and native inhabitants. By analysing the assemblage of cartographic knowledge in the context of the encounter between colonisers and colonised, the paper examines topographical surveys as the product of cross-cultural communication shaped through negotiation, competition and unequal dialogue. Ultimately, the paper aims to show the heuristic value of a dialogic approach to cartography for a better understanding of both the colonial society of the Venetian Peloponnese and the making of knowledge in Venice's overseas empire.     

Rufus W. Peckham and the Pursuit of Economic Freedom

It is striking that Rufus W. Peckham has received so little scholarly attention and remains without a biography. He was, of course, the author of Lochner v. New York (1905), ¹ one of the most famous and contested decisions in the history of the Supreme Court. Moreover, Peckham wrote important opinions dealing with contractual freedom, anti‐trust law, eminent domain, dormant commerce power, and the Eleventh Amendment. Indeed, Owen M. Fiss maintains that Peckham and David J. Brewer were intellectual leaders of the Fuller Court, “influential within the dominant coalition and the source of the ideas that gave the Court its sweep and direction.” Even when they did not prevail, Fiss observed, Peckham and Brewer “set the terms for the debate.” ²     

赫·维·伊瓦特与澳大利亚独立外交

伊瓦特是澳大利亚现代史上杰出的外交家、政治家与法学家。他在任职澳大利亚外交部长的九年间 ,不仅从英国手中夺回外交与国防的独立大权 ,而且确立了与亚洲友好交往的新亚洲政策 ,他是澳大利亚独立外交的设计师 ,从而使其祖国自立于世界独立国家之林。伊瓦特在国际舞台上纵横捭阖 ,叱咤风云 ,博得了世人一次次喝彩。正当他声誉日隆时 ,工党在 1 94 9年下台 ,他也因此下台。随着政局的变化 ,澳大利亚的外交政策也发生了变化 ,但到 2 0世纪 70年代 ,澳大利亚有远见的政治家纠正了错误 ,继续推行伊瓦特所确立的独立外交与新亚洲政策。伊瓦特是一位有功于国家的外交家。