Algerian Orphans and Colonial Christianity in Algeria, 1866-1939

This article considers the exceptional fate of the orphan survivorsof the great Algerian demographic crisis of the late 1860s whosubsequently converted to Catholicism. Using a prosopographicalapproach, this study seeks to highlight the complexities ofnational identity in France and to explore some of the racialtensions emerging in Algeria in the late nineteenth century.     

The informer, the lover and the gift giver: female collaborators in Pau 1940-1946

In July 1940 the Armistice Commission sent a German delegationto Pau in south-western France. The delegation included AndréMüller, a Nazi who also worked for the German SecurityPolice. Müller's twenty-nine letters to a female collaborator,alongside the testimonies of those who knew the two friends,provide an unusual opportunity to recapture a sense of day-to-dayrelations between the occupied and occupiers. The Nazi officer'sletters reveal his reflections on the war, his hopes and, aboveall, his material needs. The cycle of epistolary exchange thatlinked the two friends entailed a unidirectional flow of giftsfrom the female collaborator to Müller. The letters, goodsand services they exchanged raise important questions aboutthe location of power, indebtedness and gratitude in Franco-Germanpartnerships; they also provide an opportunity to test assumptionsabout the inequality of such relationships in occupied France.The court testimonies in Pau also offer rare insights into femaleinvolvement in collaborationist movements, which were primarilya male sphere of activity and influence.     

On the evolution of the Castel Goffredo hosiery cluster: a life cycle perspective

The ‘life cycle’ approach has become popular in studies on industrial clusters. However, some concerns have been raised over the inherent determinism of this approach and its tendencies to focus exclusively on cluster internal dynamics while neglecting the role of external factors and socio-economic contingencies. This paper addresses these criticisms by investigating the long-term development of Castel Goffredo, a traditional textile cluster in Italy. In our analysis, we identify and characterize the main stages of the life cycle and its antecedents. We single out the main triggering factors behind each of these stages and show that a variety of factors, both external and internal to the cluster, contributed to its development. Our findings confirm that an ‘adaptive’ cycle approach, which focuses also on contingencies and external factors, appear to be appropriate for investigating the long-term evolution of clusters.     

Alien coins and foreign exchange banking in a medieval commune: Thirteenth-century Lucca

The tithing returns sent to Rome in 1296 from the dioceses of Tuscany reveal a variety of coins, foreign to each particular episcopate, included in the mix. This article deals with the presence, and presumably prior circulation, of coins of foreign provenence in thirteenth-century Lucca as indicated in the Lucchese notarial materials of the period. The results are analyzed and then compared with the representation of the types of coins included in Lucca's 1296 tithe, and explanations set forth as to why certain coins, e.g. the gros tournois, should be conspicuously under-represented in comparison with other Tuscan dioceses while the Venetian groat was over-represented. It is further argued that the determining factor for the lack or abundance of certain alien coins in Lucca turns on the availability or absence of routine mechanisms for the transfer of obligations abroad through foreign exchange banking which obviated the need for significant shipments of physical specie or bullion.     

Alien coins and foreign exchange banking in a medieval commune: Thirteenth-century Lucca

In der Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts liefen Gerüchte durch Europa von einem mächtigen christlichen Herrscher im Rücken des Islam, mit Namen ‘Priester Johannes’, in dessen riesigem Reich den Berichten nach sozialer Frieden herrschte, wunderbare Völker, Tiere und Pflanzen, auch wertvolle Edelsteine mit wunderkräftiger Wirkung zu finden sein sollten.Nachdem dieses Reich anfangs in Indien gesucht wurde, verlegte man es im 13. Jahrhundert nach Zentralasien und im 14. Jahrhundert nach Äthiopien. Heinrich der Seefahrer und seine Kapitäne versuchten, diesen mächtigen Herrscher zu erreichen, um mit ihm den Islam im Rücken anzugreifen. Aber erst 1517 gelang es den Portugiesen, den äthiopischen Herrscher persönlich zu treffen und ihm gegen seine islamischen Gegner zu helfen. Durch ungeschickte Politik machten sich die Portugiesen verhaβ, wurden verfolgt und 1640 endgültig aus Äthiopien vertrieben.Mit einem interdisziplinären Ansatz, der sich im wesentlichen auf die Fächer Geschichte und Ethnologie, aber auch Geographie, Germanistik und Theologie, stützt, wird der Versuch unternommen zu klären, ob es diesen Priester Johannes wirklich gab und wo sein Reich lag oder, falls es beides nicht gab, wer im 12. Jahrhundert Interesse an der ‘Erfindung’ einer solchen Person hatte und welche Folgen dies in den folgenden Jahrhunderten zeigte.     

Muscles,Nerves, and Sex: The Contradictions of the Medical Approach to Female Bodies in Movement in France, 1847–1914

From the early nineteenth century in France, the treatment of hysteria was connected to both physical and moral development. As a result, therapeutic treatments envisaged by medical practitioners were influenced by and related to the formulation of precepts of medical gymnastics. This article considers how ‘physical education’ for women became part of medical discourse, specifically the elaboration of ‘body treatment’ as a remedy against nervous disorders including hysteria. From the Second Republic (1848) to the years of the belle epoque (1914), the discourse concerning the medical cause of ‘hysterical madness’ is marked by the progressive discrediting of reflections that located the causes of pathology in the genitals. However, the shaping of a neuro‐cerebral etiology did not fully replace discussions of the relationship between hysteria, female bodies and the uterus. While the current historiography emphasises the participation of doctors in the production and legitimation of physical exercises in the nineteenth century, some aspects of this process are not yet fully explored. We examine the ambivalences of medical discourse, between the rhetoric of the eternally wounded woman and the need to develop women's abilities (intellectual, moral, and physical) to ensure healthy children. And despite the shadows that still obscure the etiology of nervous disorders, there is, in our period, a genuine dynamic favouring experimental therapeutics. The ‘movement disorders’, such as chorea, hysteria or neurasthenia, were handled by increasingly well‐established regimes utilising physical exercise. The introduction of gymnastics in the hospital played a fundamental role in this process; it enabled experimentation and lent legitimacy to physical exercise as therapy.