Legislation and politics in late Carolingian Italy: the Ravenna constitutions

This article considers some overlooked evidence for royal legislation in the dying days of the Carolingian empire, a series of charters known as the Ravenna constitutions. These documents, which deal with the status of Italian freemen, are often analysed as sources for social history but rarely as texts in their own right. Reconstructing the context in which the charters were issued enables us to cast light on political events and royal self‐representation in early 880s Italy; and by drawing attention to the peculiarities of their form, we can use them to reflect more broadly on the nature of Carolingian capitulary legislation and the meaning of its disappearance at the end of the ninth century.     

Songs of Sisterhood: Feminist Political Practice between Empire and Internationalism 1910–20

This article seeks to understand how feminist thought and practice in the early twentieth century intersected with emergent movements against British imperialism. By tracing relations between Indian, Irish and British feminists, it delineates the diverse ways in which women, across imperial spaces, adopted emergent languages of internationalism and female fraternity to further their political ambitions. This article moves beyond the geographical boundaries of colony and metropole to uncover a much wider circulation of ideas, practices and solidarities amongst feminist networks in the early twentieth century. Collectively, the stories presented in this article convey multiple feminist political imaginaries in an era defined at once by imperial crisis and the rise of internationalism. They show that women's choices of political association in the autumn of empire were determined by their ideological affinity, political practice and social class rather than their country of origin or ethnic identity alone.     

Social Careers Across Imperial Spaces: An Empire Family in the Dutch-British World, 1811-1933

Here the object biography of a scale model of an old Dutch colonial sugar factory directs us to the history of an extended family, and demonstrates the connectedness of people and identities across and within European imperial spaces in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This case study shows how people in colonial Indonesia became ‘Dutch’ through their social networks and cultural capital (for instance a European education). They even came to belong to the colonial and national Dutch elites while, because of their descent, also belonging to the British colonial and national elites. These intertwined Dutch and British imperial spaces formed people’s identities and status: the family discussed here became an important trans-imperial patrician family with a broad imperial ‘spatial imagination’, diverse identities and social circles. It was mostly women who played important roles in these transnational processes— roles indeed that they played well into the early twentieth century when colonial empires ceased to exist and the nation-state became the ‘natural’ social and political form of the modern world, obscuring these transnational processes.     

Notice of the Cross-Legged Sepulchral Effigies,Existing at Cashel

Evidence recovered on the site known from late ninth-century charters as Æthelred’s hithe illustrates successive phases in the early development of London as an international port. While two middle Anglo-Saxon female skeletons were found in foreshore deposits, coins and other metalwork, along with the remains of gangplank trestles, suggest the site was a trading shore from at least the later ninth century. Riverside construction followed by the late tenth century: several low waterfront embankments date to the late tenth and early eleventh century, the waterfront was divided into regular plots and timber buildings erected. Reused nautical and building timbers include fragments of a Frisian ship and an arcaded building.     

THE ENDURING PUBLIC STRUGGLE TO CONSTRUCT,CONTROL, AND CHALLENGE HISTORICAL MEMORIES

Sumit Guha's History and Collective Memory in South Asia, 1200–2000 develops important arguments about the public significance of historical knowledge and the essential role of historians in public life. All societies need collective memories to sustain their cultural identities, as Guha shows in this wide‐ranging account of how such memories have been constructed in South Asian societies since the thirteenth century. The knowledge of historical experts is increasingly challenged or derided by contemporary social groups and political activists, who circulate their own historical narratives via new networks of communication. Political uses of historical knowledge are not new, however, as Guha shows in detailed accounts of how Hindu, Muslim, and British imperial regimes all used historical narratives to justify their own power. He also explains how other social groups challenged official historical narratives with their own popular stories about the past. This book contributes to recent work in global intellectual history by comparing similarities in the historical practices of premodern Europe and South Asia, discussing the cross‐cultural exchanges in colonial‐era institutions, and describing postcolonial challenges to European ideas. Guha thus offers an insightful analysis of how social and political forces influence and respond to the cloistered institutions that produce historical knowledge and construct collective memories. He concludes that evidence‐based historical narratives must be continually defended amid current public assaults on historical knowledge in both South Asia and the United States. More generally, Guha's book suggests the need for ongoing analysis of how public events, social conflicts, and new communication systems can reshape or discredit the work of historical experts.     

Metamorphoses of the early medieval signum of a ruler in the Carolingian world

This article uses the approach of diplomatic semiotics to explore early medieval signs of authority in charters and on coins, especially the monogram and the sign of the cross used as an individual ‘signature’. Coins and charters used these signs communicating royal or imperial authority differently, addressing diverse regional and social audiences. From the fifth through the ninth centuries, the early medieval signum of a ruler gradually transformed from the individualizing sign of a particular monarch, designed to differentiate him symbolically from other rulers, to the generalizing sign of the king by the grace of God, which as a visual attribute of authority could be shared by several rulers. This transformation signified the inauguration of a new ‘medieval’ tradition in the communication of authority in late Carolingian times.     

From County College to Civic University,Leeds, 1904

Abstract

This article considers the development of the Yorkshire College, the setting up of the federal Victoria University as an examining institution, its subsequent dissolution with the granting of separate charters to its member colleges (Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds) and to Sheffield which had been seeking to move to membership. The resources available to Manchester and Liverpool supported their ambition for independent charters while the Yorkshire College with fewer local resources was opposed to the dissolution. In the later years of the nineteenth century the Privy Council had not agreed to the principle of individual teaching institutions examining and granting degrees to their own students, fearing that this would undermine standards. The change implicit in the granting of separate charters to these Northern universities was to set the pattern for university development nationally for much of the twentieth century. Moreover, earlier fears notwithstanding, experience at Leeds after 1904 also showed the subsequent benefit of this change in terms of resources. One institution which owed its creation to the new charters of 1903 and 1904 was the Joint Matriculation Board.     

The use and abuse of hostages in later Anglo‐Saxon England

This paper explores the use of hostages in political relations in Anglo‐Saxon England, often between different ethnic groups. Although much of the evidence relates to the ninth century when hostages were used as a means of guaranteeing the peace agreements made between King Alfred and his Viking adversaries, consideration will be given here to the use of hostages in the broader context of the late Anglo‐Saxon period. The paper discusses whether the significance of these arrangements lay in their projection of imperial power or in their practicality as a crude political tool whose effectiveness in maintaining an agreement lay in a tangible threat. Both of these aspects of Anglo‐Saxon hostageship are examined, especially with regard to peacemaking, the extent to which it could be successful, and why.     

Aristocratic families and social stability in eleventh-century Provence

For many aristocratic families in southern France and Catalonia, the eleventh century was a period marked by a series of challenges to their estates, and therefore to their economic and social well-being. Studies on this subject have shown that these families responded by turning inward, relying upon the strengths and sacrifices of each of its members, and by adopting an aggressively defensive posture towards the rest of society. While this tightening of links among family members often resulted in conflicts with other groups and individuals in society, it had other less obvious results — it gave individual relatives the authority to speak for, and assume responsibility for, the actions of one another. If this new family unity was often disruptive to society, in other ways it had an important stabilizing influence in society.     

Transforming the Classic Political Forest: Contentious Territories in Java

Java’s extensive political forests and their contentious social relations have been profoundly transformed since the turn of the 21^st century. This paper analyses new forms of forest land use, control, and revenue distribution, shaping and shaped by political-economic changes and neoliberal-era reforms. Villagers’ expanded uses, access to, and control of the forest understory under the violently thinned out canopies of the main tree species has generated newly spatialised forest politics, with new institutions and forest labour practices. The changes in land, species, and labour controls, and in villagers’ access to forest products and revenues define this historical transformation in the constitution of Java’s classic political forest. Contentious co-production has resulted in fragmented territories and a momentary (at least) weakening of state controls within the old imperial political forest.     

Reacting to the Powers that Be: Investigations of a Calabrian,Post-Medieval Community

The town of Bova (Calabria, Italy) is a post-medieval montane community that remained inaccessible well into the twentieth century. Archival research, field survey, and spatial analyses provide a foundation for investigating the effects of social and political restructuring on the economic and social development of the community. Attitudes of laxness, disinterest, or ignorance have been attributed to inhabitants of this region. They can be interpreted as projected upon the citizens of Bova and others in southern Calabria by those in more urban centers to the north. Potentially, they reflect preferred survival strategies in the face of shifting imperial control.     

Crown,communication and the colonial post: Stamps,the monarchy and the British empire

This article investigates some of the possibilities for imperial history of using philatelic evidence. It explores the ways in which the British empire as a working world system was underpinned by the Imperial Penny Postage and the production and use of postage stamps bearing the images of successive British monarchs and other British imperial iconography. With particular emphasis on the reign of George V, who took an especially close interest in philatelic matters, it charts and discusses some of the ways in which British, dominion, Indian and colonial postage stamp issues (including their commissioning, design and public reception) reflected political and aesthetic judgments at home and overseas, and expressed sometimes unexpected notions of appropriate imperial, dominion and colonial imagery. It provides some cultural evidence supporting the contention that the apogee of the British imperial system may have occurred sometime in the middle years of the twentieth century.     

明代皇权转移之际的合法性博弈

本文通过对明朝皇权转移之际种种关涉政治合法性的博弈进行考察,透视明代皇位继承的文化和心理条件,对帝制体系运行中传统、实力、社会心理、人事关系间的纠结进行剖析。明代除曾发生建文、永乐间武装争位情况外,其他过渡较平稳的皇权转移仍常伴随围绕政治合法性的博弈,皇帝、士大夫、后妃、贵族、宦官都在其间扮演角色。皇权转移关乎国运、政局、民生,由此形成具有制度、文化、时局综合含义的更替规范和社会期待。这种期待,具有一定程度上降低皇权随意更迭的约束作用,凸显合法性构建的必要,但总体而言,明代皇权转移仍在传统政治范围内,没有发生“转型”的明确迹象。     

Imperial Citizenship or Else: Liberal Ideals and the India Unmaking of Empire, 1890–1919

ABSTRACT

This article examines three connected campaigns for Indian imperial citizenship which spanned the period 1890 to 1919, and their impact on the emergence of radical South Asian anticolonialism. It shifts our focus from individuals and ideologues who sought the status of British imperial citizens, to address the agitations which commenced to attain such a status within a reconstructed British Empire. Specific attention is paid to the conditions which encouraged South Asian patriots to imagine that the ideal of equal imperial citizenship within an imperial federation was a feasible political objective, to the illiberal official retreat from such an ideal, and to the political ramifications of this retreat. In conclusion, this article argues that the quest for Indian imperial citizenship, which spanned the Empire from South Africa to Canada, has been a much-neglected chapter in the evolution of anti-colonial nationalism in South Asia which deserves to be reinserted in the grand meta-narrative of the region’s twentieth century history.     

Lamas,Empresses and Tea: Early Twentieth-Century Sino-British Encounters in Eastern Tibet

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Tibetan plateau was a zone of intense imperial contact—and competition—between British India and Qing China. Even before the 1904 Younghusband Expedition to Lhasa, Indian rupees had become the primary currency of commercial exchange across the plateau, and British explorers had gathered detailed knowledge of both the presumed natural resource bounty of eastern Tibet and the lucrative border tea trade traversing it. This article explores models manifested by these interactions between British and Qing officials, merchants and explorers in the Kham region of ethnographic Tibet and the role empires played in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century global spread of Euro-American norms. Although Sichuan officials directly engaged with administering Kham shared a common perception of Khampa society with their British counterparts, they also recognised the encroachment of Indian rupees and British explorers as challenges to Qing authority, if not a prologue to territorial expansion paralleling the contemporaneous scramble for concessions in coastal China. Beginning with the establishment of the Zongli Yamen in 1861, close Sino-British interaction along two tracks, British ‘lessons’ in statecraft and diplomacy in the imperial capital Beijing and commercial and political actions in the imperial borderland of Kham, provided models for Qing assertion of exclusive authority on the plateau. Two globalising norms inflected in these British models—territoriality and sovereignty—fostered transformative policies in the borderland during the first decade of the twentieth century. Implemented by Sichuan officials, these policies sought to undermine Lhasa's local challenge to Chinese authority via monasteries, thereby legitimising appeal to international law to repel regional challenges from both British India and Russia. This article analyses in depth two examples of these policies in action: a silver coin modelled on the Empress Victoria Indian rupee and a monopoly tea company partly modelled on British Indian tea firms and the Indian Tea Association. Both contributed to weakening the political, social and economic power projected into Kham by British India and Lhasa. The adaptation of these models in Qing policies fostered by the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Sino-British encounter in Kham reveals the conduits through which Euro-American norms of authority were shared, and demonstrates their power to transform relations in the interstices of global power, where empires met empires and states met states.     

New evidence for the Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles from Fatih Camii, Istanbul

The Church of the Holy Apostles was one of the most important buildings in Byzantine Constantinople. The mausolea of Constantine the Great (the main imperial burial place until the eleventh century) and of Justinian I were in the complex surrounding this vast cruciform church. Nothing of this complex appeared to have survived its demolition to clear the site of the Ottoman mosque complex of Fatih Camii after 1461. Fieldwork in 2001 recorded walls pre–dating the fifteenth–century phase of the mosque complex, still standing above ground level and apparently including a large rectilinear structure. This is identified as the Church of the Holy Apostles and an adjacent enclosure may be that containing the mausoleum of Constantine the Great. The reconstructed church plan resembles those of St John of Ephesus and St Mark's (San Marco), Venice – churches known to have been modelled on the Church of the Holy Apostles, Constantinople.     

Narratives of success and narratives of failure: representations of the career of King Hugh of Italy (c.885–948)

Hugh of Arles, king of Italy between 926 and 947, has come to be regarded as one of the more successful kings of Italy in the tenth century. The evidence of his charters supports this conclusion, showing how effectively he managed to insert members of his own Provençal family into the existing political fabric of northern Italy. Contemporary narrative sources tell the same story, but as one of failure. For Rather of Verona, Liutprand of Cremona and even Flodoard of Reims, Hugh and his family were suspect and their sexual mores questionable. Their texts intervened in contemporary politics not simply as records of Hugh's inadequacies but as real political actors that helped to make that failure happen.     

Han Chinese,Manchu, and Western Spaces: The Changing Facade of Imperial Education in Qing Beijing

The physical spaces of imperial education during the Qing were carefully constructed sites of political architecture that sought to shape the behavior of princes, emperors, and their teachers while projecting dynamic images of power. This article examines a range of buildings associated with the Qing pedagogical apparatus. It argues that the changing spaces of imperial education drew on both classical ideals and international iconographies of power to create and disseminate a fluid vision of rule. In the eighteenth century, the Qianlong emperor ordered the construction of the Biyong Hall at the center of the Imperial Academy in Beijing for exclusive use by the emperor during the Imperial Lecture, combining classical Han Chinese and Manchu expressions of authority. Throughout the nineteenth century, heirs to the throne and young emperors were trained in classrooms filled with calligraphy penned by their ancestors. Aphorisms drawing on the Confucian classics, as well as Daoist and Buddhist texts, urged the young rulers to strive for dynastic renewal. Finally, at the start of the twentieth century as the Qing worked to transition to a constitutional monarchy, imperial classrooms around Beijing were infused with Western architectural styles, incorporating new strands of authority for the reforming Qing dynasty.     

The geography and natural resources of Bolivia

This paper tries to show the main thread of Scottish national identity in the nineteenth century and how Scotland's close connection with the empire did not asuage Scottish desires to retain a national identity. The paper tries to illustrate that the interpretation of the union connection by the Scottish political classes was central to the understanding of Scotland as a nation during the period. Examples are also provided of the way in which the union could be questioned in this century, but this was with the caveat that this would necessarily be limited; for such was the extent to which national identity was played out on an imperial stage. Although Scots never lost sight of their distinctiveness, any extension of the critique of union would have ultimately worked against their ability to confidently display their identity as they did quite successfully in the nineteenth century.