“The Cause of This Blackness”: The Early American Republic and the Construction of Race

Abstract

Race is routinely defined as “socially constructed,” from which it follows that there was a time before its construction. What that time looked like, and how Africans were then viewed by white Americans, is difficult to perceive from a vantage point within the paradigm of race. This essay considers important but neglected cultural referents to argue that a binary distinction between black and white did not emerge on theoretical grounds until the 1780s, when Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia shrewdly redirected growing challenges to slavery into quasi-metaphysical reflections on the gulf between whites and blacks.     

The politics of time during the Napoleonic Consulate, 1799–1804

ABSTRACT

The French Revolution generated an acceleration of political time that disrupted old assumptions about the legitimacy and durability of political authority. Following the coup of 18 Brumaire, Napoleon and his counsellors had to confront the challenge of erecting a legitimate regime that would endure in a political environment where regimes that endured very often appeared illegitimate. This article examines how the French Consulate (1799–1804) sought to manage revolutionary time by practising a politics of temporal dilation. The embryonic institutions of the Consulate – from the Légion d’honneur to the lycées – were designed to decompress popular perceptions of time, at least as they related to political life, by charting a verifiable pathway for the nascent regime to develop steadily and incrementally through history. The collective perception of the present was made to expand, re-validating the notion of historical experience and slowing the unruly onset of the political future. Time would cease to be the medium of rupture. This article examines how the temporal assumptions embedded within the regime discourses and political practices of the Napoleonic Consulate were central to the construction of its own legitimacy.     

杰斐逊的联邦制思想与“国内改进”政策的延滞

对杰斐逊而言,联邦制意味着联邦政府和各州政府共同分享国家主权,其中,联邦政府享有管理对外事务(包括国际和州际事务)的权力,而各州政府则享有管理对内事务的权力。他主张对宪法进行严格解释,强调联邦政府的权力严格地限于宪法中所列举的范围。在杰斐逊执政时期,他赞同联邦政府进行国内改进(即交通建设),但是,由于宪法并没有明确授予联邦政府进行国内改进的权力,他强调必须通过一项宪法修正案,明确授予联邦政府有关权力,其目的在于维护他关于联邦制的一贯主张,维护联邦政府和各州政府之间的权力划分。主要由于杰斐逊的联邦制思想的阻碍,联邦政府的国内改进政策始终延滞不前。     

The Republicans Are the Nation? Thomas Jefferson,William Duane,and the Evolution of the Republican Coalition, 1809–1815

This essay explores Thomas Jefferson's early retirement political activity and binary vision of Federalism/Republicanism within the context of the broader political economic forces of the early nineteenth century. It shows that his notions of unity and legitimacy, so rooted in the life and death struggles of 1790s state building, increasingly no longer were relevant. His participation in a minor affair illuminates this point quite well. In the spring of 1811, Jefferson played a central role in a battle over loyalty, editorial prerogative, and the maintenance of party unity. It began when William Duane, book publisher, editor of the Philadelphia Aurora and long-time power broker within the coalition, sought Jefferson's help in securing funding from Virginia Republicans. Duane was facing a financial meltdown, and he hoped that the “sage of Monticello” might provide him a way out. Jefferson ultimately rejected the request in the name of party harmony, the irony of which is that Duane's “schism” reflected more of the future of the Republican movement than the harmonious nation Jefferson was hoping to preserve.     

Deciphering Sedition in Sab

The colliding agendas of abolitionism, feminism, and nationalism that coexist within Avellaneda's Sab (1841) have encumbered a clear ideological interpretation of the novel. If recent scholarship has demonstrated that Sab functions more as a narrative of feminist liberation than slave emancipation, the critical inclination towards the feminist reading—albeit sound—has overshadowed a handful of seemingly anomalous moments in which the title character alludes to slave uprisings. After one of Sab's insurrectionary moments, the narrator even situates the protagonist's remarks, and the white characters' reaction to them, within the context of the prolonged conflicts that comprise the Haitian revolution (1789–1804). The violent language might cause fleeting discomfort or confusion for the white landowners; however, Sab's words do not bring about any disastrous effect. This study will posit that the coalescence of the incendiary speech and the references to the French colony provides Avellaneda with a stratagem that momentarily bolsters Sab's abolitionist capacity while leaving the feminist reading untouched.     

The politics of finance in Napoleonic Italy (1802‐1814)

Abstract

The Republic and Kingdom of Italy (1802‐14) served as an important source of revenues for Napoleonic France. Most importantly, the authorities had to pay for a growing Italian army and for the French troops in northern Italy. To satisfy the Emperor's increasing financial pressure, Prina, the Finance Minister, increased the tax burden and reorganized the financial administration and tax collection. Prina kept a moderate property tax to secure the support of the landowners and raised indirect taxes, thereby increasing the burden on the poor. His reforms in the financial administration made it more orderly, uniform and efficient, thus strengthening the central state. While Prina modernized the financial machinery and expanded the state's resources, the fiscal pressure contributed to growing hostility from the population to the Napoleonic state. Following the fall of the Kingdom of Italy, the Austrians left the Napoleonic financial system intact, a demonstration of Prina's effective reforms and long‐term impact.     

Scale frames and counter-scale frames: constructing the problem of environmental injustice

The concept of environmental injustice raises difficult questions about on how best to measure and address environmental inequities across space, and environmental justice politics are permeated by considerable debate over the nature and spatial extent of both problem and possible solutions. This paper theorizes the politics of environmental justice as a politics of scale in order to explore how environmental justice activists respond to the scalar ambiguity inherent in the political concept of environmental justice. With a case study of a controversy over a proposed polyvinylchloride production facility in rural Convent, Louisiana, I develop the concept of scale frames and counter-scale frames as strategic discursive representations of a social grievance that do the work of naming, blaming, and claiming, with meaningful reference to particular geographic scales. The significance of scale is expressed alternatively within these frames as an analytical spatial category, as scales of regulation, as territorial framework(s) for cultural legitimacy, and as a means of inclusion, exclusion and legitimation.     

The lost cause: failed French ultimata and the restoration of papal rule in Rome in 1849

In one of history’s ironies, the republic that arose in Rome out of Europe’s revolutionary wave in 1848 was crushed by the new republic that had formed in France at the same time. In an additional irony, the destruction of the Roman Republic and the restoration of the papal theocracy were overseen by the internationally renowned champion of constitutional rights and freedom, Alexis de Tocqueville, then France’s foreign minister. This article sheds new light on this dramatic series of events through an examination of the French diplomatic correspondence, which reveals growing dismay at the direction in which events were unfolding. The correspondence also gives a sense of how close the French came to abandoning the pope, a decision that could have changed the course of Italian and French, as well as Church history.     

犹太名人会议研究

为削弱法国境内犹太人的民族性,拿破仑帝国政府召开了犹太名人会议。会议讨论的内容是拿破仑确定的,主要包括:犹太人要与非犹太人通婚;要视法兰西为自己的祖国;削弱拉比(Rabbi)权力;禁止放高利贷等。这些问题的实质是要以法兰西民族为蓝本,从而对犹太人进行法兰西式的改造,体现出强烈的文化种族主义倾向。     

Beneath the Rising Sun: “Frenchness” and the Archaeology of Desire

This article takes the case of “rouge pot” fragments found in an archaeological context in New Orleans’ French Quarter associated with the circa 1822 Rising Sun Hotel and investigates the discourses and desires that shape our interpretations of artifacts. We argue that archaeological, historiographic, and public desires overlap and inform one another in a complex web of relations. In New Orleans, the particular web into which the archaeology of cosmetic jars and hotel sites can fall is spun by the ways in which the former French colonial capital is sexualized in both textbooks and folk songs.     

Transforming the Dutch Republic into the Kingdom of Holland: the Netherlands between Republicanism and Monarchy (1795–1815)1

In 1806 more than two centuries of the republican form of government in the Northern Netherlands came to an end. For a long time, historiography had it that the Dutch were indifferent to the end of the Republic and the establishment of the Kingdom of Holland. The transformation was, however, a much more dynamic process than has been portrayed. King Louis Bonaparte had the difficult task of acquainting a republican people with monarchy. Even though republicanism had lost much of its appeal by 1806, and the usefulness of democratic institutions was put into question, many Batavians nourished anti-monarchism. The Dutch state was one of many European client states that began to experience tensions between the gains of the revolution and the Napoleonic Realpolitik that was geared towards limiting popular sovereignty and expanding the French Empire. Louis Bonaparte, and later the Restoration monarchs, tried to reconcile popular sovereignty and monarchic authority by propagating the constitutional monarchy as the ideal juste milieu (middle way) between extremes.     

What Do Objects Want?

This paper develops an argument for the agency of objects, looking at the effects objects have on people. Groups of related objects, such as pots or metal ornaments, create stylistic universes which affect producers and users of new objects, bound by the canons of style. For an object to be socially powerful in a recognized manner, the form of the object lays down certain rules of use which influence the sensory and emotional impacts of the object. Formal properties of artifacts are influenced by the genealogy of the object class, including historical continuities and changes, and also its perceived source. The forms of objects, the historical trajectories of the class of objects and their perceived sources combine to have social effects on people, shaping people as socially effective entities. Britain’s incorporation into the Roman Empire between 150 BC and AD 200 provides an excellent case study through which to look at the changing corpora of objects, which had continuities and changes in form, a set of subtle attributions of sources and a complex range of social effects.     

沙皇俄国与阿古柏政权的关系——兼析沙俄与英国的相关角逐和争夺

为了恢复与发展同新疆地区的贸易,为了与英国争夺在新疆的利益,俄国与阿古柏政权积极发展非法关系。沙俄利用阿古柏政权,通过各种手段,谋取到了在新疆的很多侵略权益。《俄阿条约》的签订表明俄国与阿古柏政权之间的相互勾结、利用达到了高潮。俄国与后期阿古柏政权的关系较为冷却疏远。俄国和英国围绕阿古柏政权也展开了一系列角逐。     

1919年中英关于西藏问题的交涉

1919年中英就西藏问题进行了交涉。北京政府提出解决西藏问题的新建议。英国希望迅速解决西藏问题 ,交涉时在西藏与中国内地分界线问题上表现出灵活的立场 ,但北京政府突然中断谈判使其感觉受到了愚弄 ,并在外交上对中国进行了报复。日本干预西藏问题的谈判 ,遭到英国的强烈反对。北京政府采取“拖延”谈判的策略 ,对英交涉的立场也越来越强硬 ,最终挫败了英国迅速解决西藏问题、侵犯中国主权的图谋。     

英俄私分帕米尔与清政府的立场

本文以19世纪末的中亚为背景,运用新近刊布的国内外档案、文书等第一手资料,详尽论述了清末英俄以强凌弱,私分帕米尔,瓜分中国领土的经过,并对清政府为捍卫国土主权,与英俄据理力争的严正立场予以新的阐释,以深入理解该时期英俄争夺中亚势力范围的真实目的和清政府的领土主权意识,对稳定新疆局势,维护祖统一有一定的现实意义。