Towards a mighty union: how to create a democratic European superpower

A strong European Union is needed today more than ever: to act as a reliable partner to the United States, Great Britain and the other great democracies; to deal with the growing threats on her southern and eastern periphery; and most pressingly of all, to deal with the euro sovereign debt crisis. In order to do so, Europeans will have to abandon the gradualist fallacy that union will be achieved in small incremental steps and learn the lesson of history that all successful mergers, such as the British and the American, have been carried out in one fell swoop at a time of extreme crisis. They will have to recognize that the road to unity took a fatal turn when the failure of the European Defence Community caused a bifurcation between politico‐military and economic integration. Today, as we face potential fiscal and economic meltdown and as the external threats to Europe mount, we have another opportunity. We can only seize it, however, if we realize that full European union, if there is to be one, will be an event, not a process. It must follow more or less the American example with a directly elected presidency, a house of representatives elected by population and a senate, which represents the former nation‐states and regions. There is no need for the United Kingdom to be part of this project, but it is essential that both unions work together for the common good. Because the existing political elites are incapable of rising to the occasion—and in many cases are actually antipathetic to it—the task must fall to a new pan‐European party: the Party of Democratic Union.     

Global commodity networks, ethical trade and governmentality: organizing business responsibility in the Kenyan cut flower industry

This paper engages critically with current ethical trading practice in the global cut flower trade, focusing on the specific case of Kenyan export production for European markets. Notions of governmentality are adopted in the analysis, in order to understand the rationalities and materialities that underpin the organizational geographies of business responsibility in this context, and serve to re-regulate the trading network. Mentalities of stakeholding and practices of auditing are shown to play prominent roles in this process. However, it is argued that regulatory contradictions associated with the audit economy place organizational limits on the effective practice of ethical trade.     

Free trade, feudal remnants and international equilibrium in Gaetano Filangieri's Science of Legislation

In his main work, The Science of Legislation (1780–1783), the Neapolitan Gaetano Filangieri proposed a set of extensive political and cultural reforms. These reforms were necessary to free eighteenth-century societies from the remnants of feudal institutions that obstructed international peace and economic growth. Filangieri's ideas were shaped by the international political climate between the seven Years’ War and the eve of the French Revolution. Reinterpreting Montesquieu and Genovesi through the influences of French radical and Enlightenment thought (Helvétius, Raynal, l’Encyclopédie), as well as the economics of Hume, Verri and the Physiocrats, he concluded that European modernity was inherently contradictory.From this perspective Filangieri set out to force a clean break between the technical horizons of mercantilism and enlightened absolutism and a society based on civil rights, a fair distribution of wealth and resources, and free trade. Proper ‘scientific’ knowledge of the rules and principles of legislation would allow governments to balance out the natural and cultural factors that characterise individual states, and to identify the appropriate model for social and economic development. If all states acted on their proper interest, international free trade and peaceful competition between states would emerge and the potential for general economic growth be materialised. Thus, the natural equilibrium and ‘universal consensus’ among nations could be restored.     

Italy and Africa: how to forget colonialism

Abstract

The debate on colonialism places great emphasis on the composite set of transformations put in motion by colonialism fully to give birth to what became the post-colonial state in independent Africa. Many authors suggest that Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa was too weak to perform this task. The present article intends to review the influence and effects of the Italian colonial experience for state making in the Horn of Africa. This also brings about one of the main anomalies of the Horn of Africa, where colonialism ended without a process of true decolonization, in the sense of a confrontation between colonized and colonizers in the transfer of power from metropolitan rule to African representatives. The present Italian foreign policy in Africa is similarly conditioned by its colonial history: besides its focus on the Horn of Africa, which was the centre of Italy's colonial expansion as well as the only post-Second WorldWar administration (Italian Trust Administration of Somalia – AFIS), the relations between Italy and Africa reflect the many inconsistencies and uncertainties of the colonial experience.     

像鸟儿在西藏天空自由滑翔

最好的飞行场地,肯定要有很好的气流条件、绝美的风景,以及具有一定挑战性的飞行路线,这才能最大的体现滑翔伞飞行的魅力。西藏就属于这样的地方。滑翔伞是世界上最轻便的飞行器,凭借气流,滑翔伞可以盘高飞远。目前滑翔伞飞行直线距离世界纪录为588.27公里,盘升高度世界纪录为8157米。有着世界屋脊之称的西藏,对滑翔伞飞行爱好者来讲自然有着非凡的魅力。而美丽的圣湖——羊卓雍措(以下简称羊湖),则是在西藏滑翔的首选之地。     

Constructing free trade: from Manchester boosterism to global management

The free trade doctrine, now global common knowledge, has followed a complex spatio-temporal path of knowledge production from its origins in Manchester at the turn of the nineteenth century. While grounded in normative and cognitive claims, its transformation from local self-interest to global doctrine was a result of the scale-jumping tactics of the Anti-Corn Law League, combined with the popularity in Western Europe of private property liberalism and the hegemonic global positionality of early nineteenth-century Britain. Corn Law repeal in 1846 in London was constructed as the point in space–time where doctrine became practice, and Britain's subsequent prosperity was seen as proof of its validity. After 1880, except in Britain until 1914 and the colonies, performance belied the doctrine as progressive liberalism became influential, and import-substituting industrialization an effective catch-up strategy, for other nations. The free trade doctrine was reasserted, however, with the emergence of US hegemony, as a rationale for breaking up non-US colonial preference systems and, more recently, neoliberalism. The free trade doctrine is now performed routinely under the auspices of the World Trade Organization. Nevertheless, it remains a local epistemology, whose truth-like status is kept insulated from rigorous challenge by alternative epistemologies and practices.     

Cultural and trade practices in Sincu Bara (Senegal): a multi-proxy investigation

The Sincu Bara site in Senegal is one of the most famous archeological sites in Western Africa. Here we present the results of a multi-proxy study that combined microscopic analyses, carbon content, stable carbon isotope (δ¹³C) and radiocarbon (¹⁴C) measurements. This investigation exhibits a chronological framework in two phases: from 400 yr AD to 650 yr AD and 650 yr AD to 900 yr AD. Furthermore, it shows that besides basic potteries, some potsherds are notable for a temper exclusively made with human-harvested C4 plants. Finally, the ¹⁴C analysis performed on the organic slip strongly indicates the use of bitumen or bitumen-derived products for red slip preparation. This suggests the establishment of trade relationships with Nigerian and/or Trans-Saharan populations as early as 400 yr AD.     

Detecting the medieval cod trade: a new method and first results

This paper explores the potential of stable isotope analysis to identify the approximate region of catch of cod by analysing bones from medieval settlements in northern and western Europe. It measures the δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values of cod bone collagen from medieval control samples collected from sites around Arctic Norway, the North Sea, the Kattegat and the Baltic Sea. These data were considered likely to differ by region due to, for example, variation in the length of the food chain, water temperature and salinity. We find that geographical structuring is indeed evident, making it possible to identify bones from cod caught in distant waters. These results provide a new methodology for studying the growth of long-range trade in dried cod and the related expansion of fishing effort—important aspects of the development of commercialisation in medieval Europe. As a first test of the method, we analyse three collections of cod bones tentatively interpreted as imported dried fish based on a priori zooarchaeological criteria. The results tentatively suggest that cod were being transported or traded over very long distances since the end of the first millennium AD.