No Idle Past: Uses of History in the 1830 Indian Removal Debates

I n April and May 1830, heated debates occurred in Congress over whether to remove the Cherokee Indians from certain sections of Georgia and resettle them further west, in what would become Oklahoma. Numerous accounts exist examining the events surrounding removal, which resulted in the notorious "Trail of Tears," and the various motivations of the debate participants. Historians have attributed desire for removal to land hunger, humanitarian concern for the Indians'welfare, a desire to shore up national security, and blatant racism. Some see it as part of a continuing struggle against the perceived Indian enemy, and even as a component of the new rhetorical struggle between the Democrats and Whigs as they sought to define political participation during the Second Party system.¹ No author yet, however, has undertaken an examination of the ways in which the debaters manipulated past events in constructing their arguments either in support of removal or against this policy. This article deals specifically with the uses to which history was put in the 1830 congressional debates on Indian removal.     

联邦德国社会史学派与文化史学派的争议--20世纪末联邦德国史学流派争议

20世纪末,联邦德国历史科学发生了重大变化。已经取得重大成就的社会史学派在与传统历史主义学派继续竞争的同时,又迎来了一系列新史学流派的挑战。本篇介绍的是社会史学派与文化史学派之间的争论。联邦德国文化史学派既是西方文化史学派的支流,也是本国社会史学派以及大学体制发展变化的结果。文化史学派与社会史学派的争议围绕“社会”与“文化”两个核心史学概念展开。文化史学派的挑战在年轻社会史学家中引起了很大的反响。目前,两大学派的竞争仍在继续,预言谁胜谁负,还为时过早。     

Introduction: Danto and His Critics: After the End of Art and Art History

In Bielefeld, Germany in April, 1997 an author conference was devoted to Arthur C. Danto's 1995 Mellon Lectures After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History (Princeton,1997). This essay provides an introduction to seven essays given at that conference and expanded for this Theme Issue of History and Theory . Danto presented his view of the nature of art in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981). He then added in the Mellon lectures a sociological perspective on the current situation of the visual arts, and an Hegelian historiography. The history of art has ended, Danto claims, and we now live in a posthistorical era. Since in his well-known book on historiography, Analytical Philosophy of History (1965), Danto is unsympathetic to Hegel's speculative ways of thinking about history, his adaptation of this Hegelian framework is surprising. Danto's strategy in After the End of Art is best understood by grasping the way in which he transformed the purely philosophical account of The Transfiguration into a historical account. Recognizing that his philosophical analysis provided a good way of explaining the development of art in the modern period, Danto radically changed the context of his argument. In this process, he opened up discussion of some serious but as yet unanswered questions about his original thesis, and about the plausibility of Hegel's claim that the history of art has ended.
Hegel . . . did not declare that modern art had ended or would disintegrate. . . . his attitude towards future art was optimistic, not pessimistic. . . . According to his dialectic . . . art . . . has no end but will evolve forever with time.     

Disrupting Gentrification: From Barricades and Housing Occupations to an Insurgent Urban Subaltern History in a Southern City

Housing struggles are key to disrupting gentrification capital flows and dispossessions. Based on life histories, key informant interviews, and six years of engaged ethnography with slum activists in the Philippine capital, this paper explicates political geographies of insurgent housing practices, including community barricades and housing occupations, and marks a history of militant subaltern struggles for the right to the city. I contend that these highly-organised insurgent practices disrupt real estate capital pathways and nurture political subjectification where emancipatory spaces and socialities of care can be founded. Moreover, I intervene in the lack of attendance to the co-constitution of barricades and occupations to less visible forms of insurgent housing practices. As these are emplaced to other subaltern times and spaces, political knowledges and subjectivities developed against forced evictions and demolitions enhance anti-gentrification struggles. In tracing this militant urban history, I mark the incremental advance of subaltern housing struggles in a Southern economy highly reliant on real estate capital investments.     

Inventing the Victorian age: the Greville Diary and its Early Critics

The Journals of Charles Greville, clerk to the Privy Council from 1821 to 1859 are among the most well-known, well-respected and widely cited sources for the political and social history of their times. What is less well-known is the controversy they aroused among Greville's Victorian readers when first published (less than a decade after Greville's death) in 1874. The purpose of investigation here is to chart the course and extent of reader reaction as it unfolded during 1874–75, to explore ways of accounting for its intensity and, finally, to attempt evaluation of its impact as a cultural experience conducive to the emergence among readers of a conscious recognition of themselves as ‘Victorians’. When read in the context of the preoccupations of its first readers, Greville's Journals prove to be anything but a dead historical source. Instead, reader reaction is found to be driven by a series of contemporary concerns. They include the question of the degree of respect owing to hereditary authority; the definition of standards of honourable behaviour in protection of the private dealings of people of public reputation; and the very degree of reliability to be attributed to diary-based ‘memoirs’, given their contestable genre. Even so, participants in the controversies which broke out on all these fronts found themselves admitting common ground in acknowledging across their differences that the ‘Victorian’ age in which they lived was a decisive cultural and political break from the past world the Journals recorded.     

History to Prehistory: an Archaeology of Being Indian

This paper explores a conception of being Indian in New Orleans that complicates and localizes Indian histories and identities. It poses that the notion of “being Indian” may be approached not only through the history and archaeology of persons but also as an identity such that being Indian itself is an artifact produced by a wide range of people in the development of New Orleans in the colonial and post-colonial periods. Employing a critical reading of intercultural relations, I explore archaeological evidence that suggests colonial New Orleans was created in both Indian and non-Indian terms through exchange. In this process archaeology shows that being Indian was part of a widely-shared colonial strategy that places a fluid Indian identity at the center of local history. The paper also considers how the marginalization of Indian people in the early nineteenth century was one way New Orleans and the greater southeast connected with dominant American sensibilities. Developing with the idea of “prehistory,” nineteenth-century Native Americans were distanced as a cultural other and pushed to margins of New Orleans society. The subsequent internal tensions of assimilation and removal derailed Indian challenges to White domination they had employed over the previous 100 years. As this action coincides with the invention of American archaeology as the science of prehistory, the paper concludes with a critical reflection on archaeological terminology.

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Re′sume′ Cet article explore l’idée d’être Amérindien à la Nouvelle-Orléans qui rend plus complexes et plus spécifiquement locales les histoires et caractères identitaires amérindiens. Il suggère que la notion d’ ? être amérindien ? peut être appréhendée non seulement à travers l'histoire et l'archéologie des personnes, mais également par le biais d’une identité à proprement parler, procédant de l’acceptation qu’être Amérindien est en lui-même une construction empruntant à un large éventail de personnes de la région de la Nouvelle-Orléans durant la période coloniale et post-coloniale. Utilisant une lecture critique des relations interculturelles, j'explore les faits archéologiques qui suggèrent que la Nouvelle-Orléans coloniale fut créée selon des principes à la foi amérindiens et non amérindiens par l’entremise d’échanges. Dans ce processus, l'archéologie démontre qu' ? être amérindien ? faisait partie d'une stratégie coloniale largement utilisée et qui se servait d’une identité amérindienne polyvalente comme point central de l'histoire locale. Cet article traite également de la fa?on dont la marginalisation du peuple amérindien au début du 19ème siècle fut un moyen par lequel la Nouvelle-Orléans et plus largement le sud-est sont entrés en adéquation avec la sensibilité américaine dominante. En même temps que se développait l’idée de ? préhistoire ?, les amérindiens du 19ième siècle furent écartés en temps qu’? autre culture ? et repoussés aux marges de la société de la Nouvelle-Orléans. Les tensions internes qui ont suivi, liées à leur assimilation et déplacement, ont entravées les efforts des Amérindiens contre la domination des Blancs, efforts déployés au cours des 100 années précédentes. Ceci co?ncidant avec l’invention de l’archéologie américaine comme la science de la préhistoire, cet article termine avec une discussion critique de la terminologie archéologique.

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Resumen Esta ponencia explora una concepción de ser Indio/a en New Orleans que complica y localiza historias e identidades Indias. Propone que se puede abordar la noción de “ser Indio/a” no sólo a través de la historia y la arqueología de las personas, sino también como una identidad que hace que ser Indio/a sea en si mismo un artefacto producido por una amplia porción de gente en el desarrollo de New Orleans en los períodos coloniales y post-coloniales. Usando una lectura crítica de relaciones interculturales, exploro la evidencia arqueológica que sugiere que el New Orleans colonial fue creado en términos Indios y no-Indios por el intercambio. En este proceso la arqueología demuestra que ser Indio/a era parte de una estrategia colonial extensamente compartida que ubica una identidad India fluida en el centro de la historia local. La ponencia también considera la manera como la marginalización del pueblo Indio al comienzo del siglo XIX fue una forma a través de la cual New Orleans y el gran sudeste se conectaban con las sensibilidades norteamericanas dominantes. Al desarrollarse con la idea de “prehistoria”, los Nativos norteamericanos del siglo XIX fueron distanciados como un otro cultural y desplazados a los márgenes de la sociedad de New Orleans. Las tensiones internas subsiguientes de asimilación y extirpación torcieron el curso de los desafíos Indios al dominio blanco que habían estado usando en los últimos cien a?os. Como esta acción coincide con la invención de la arqueología norteamericana como la ciencia de la prehistoria, la ponencia concluye con una reflexión crítica de la terminología arqueológica.

     

History and Policy Studies

This article deals with actual and potential contributions of history to policy studies. Some historians have attempted to influence specific policies through their writings, others have held policy-relevant positions in government agencies, while others have functioned in roles that have made them official preservers of our past. The authors discuss a number of ways in which history is relevant to policy studies-among them, the conception of history as a policy laboratory, as a source for perspective about the development of current policies, as a source of theoretically interesting rare or unique occurrences, and as a repository of values to which appeals can be made to justify current and proposed policies. Historians are becoming aware of the need for alternative careers to teaching in universities and this has led them to seek an increase in the number of policy-relevant positions for historians in government.     

近20年来近代中国海关史研究述评

海关是一个国家监督管理进出口国境的货物、物品和运输工具并执行关税法规及其他进出口管制法令、规章的行政管理机关。其主要任务是依照国家法令对进出国境的货物、货币、金银、证券、行李物品、邮递物品和运载上述货物、物品及旅客进出境携带货物、物品征收关税;查缉走私;编制进出境统计。     

环境史和环境史研究的生态学意识

本文从三个方面探讨了环境史和环境史研究的生态学意识以及环境史研究的发展趋势。环境史是在战后环境保护运动的推动下产生的 ,是意识变革的产物 ;现代生态学为环境史研究提供了新的视角和方法论 ;生态学研究的发展对环境史研究产生了影响。     

Subaltern Empowerment in the Geoweb: Tensions between Publicity and Privacy

Geographers have argued that the emergence of the geospatial web, or geoweb, represents a radical shift away from the state's monopolization of geospatial technologies. Like the public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) movement before it, the geoweb research agenda has emphasized a desire for empowerment and participatory democracy. However, this research agenda has also inherited a conceptualization of power that emphasizes the linkages between empowerment and public visibility, and this paper argues that this inheritance opens potentially sensitive geoweb data to exploitation. Geographers therefore have an important role to play in emphasizing the need to explore ways of harnessing the power of the geoweb for marginalized communities while nonetheless maintaining those communities' privacy. This paper uses work with the Maijuna indigenous people of Peru as a case study to begin a discussion about how the political goals of disempowered people may be best obtained through both public and private uses of the geoweb.