Een‐Gonyama Gonyama!: Zulu Origins of the Boy Scout Movement and the Africanisation of Imperial Britain

British imperialists in the late 19th century denigrated non‐western cultures in rationalising the partition of Africa, but they also had to assimilate African values and traditions to make the imperial system work. The partisans of empire also romanticised non‐western cultures to convince the British public to support the imperial enterprise. In doing so, they introduced significant African and Asian elements into British popular culture, thereby refuting the assumption that the empire had little influence on the historical development of metropolitan Britain. Robert Baden‐Powell conceived of the Boy Scout movement as a cure for the social instability and potential military weakness of Edwardian Britain. Influenced profoundly by his service as a colonial military officer, Africa loomed large in Baden‐Powell's imagination. He was particularly taken with the Zulu. King Cetshwayo's crushing defeat of the British army at Isandhlawana in 1879 fixed their reputation as a ‘martial tribe’ in the imagination of the British public. Baden‐Powell romanticised the Zulus' discipline, and courage, and adapted many of their cultural institutions to scouting. Baden‐Powell's appropriation and reinterpretation of African culture illustrates the influence of subject peoples of the empire on metropolitan British politics and society. Scouting's romanticised trappings of African culture captured the imagination of tens of thousands of Edwardian boys and helped make Baden‐Powell's organisation the premier uniformed youth movement in Britain. Although confident that they were superior to their African subjects, British politicians, educators, and social reformers agreed with Baden‐Powell that ‘tribal’ Africans preserved many of the manly virtues that had been wiped by the industrial age.     

On the Origins of Pottery

Renewed research interest in the origins of pottery has illuminated an array of possible precipitating causes and environmental contexts in which pottery began to be made and used. This article is an attempt at synthesizing some of these data in hopes of stimulating further research into this intriguing topic. Following a review of theories on the origins of pottery, discussion proceeds to a survey of geographic and cultural contexts of low-fired or unfired pottery, highlighting the role(s) of pottery among contemporary hunter-gatherers and summarizing data pertaining to varied uses of pottery containers. It is argued that objects of unfired and low-fired clay were created as part of early prestige technologies of material representations beginning in the Upper Paleolithic and are part of an early software horizon. Clay began to be more widely manipulated by nonsedentary, complex hunter-gatherers in the very Late Pleistocene and early Holocene in areas of resource abundance, especially in tropical/subtropical coastal/riverine zones, as part of more general processes of resource and social intensification (such as competitive feasting or communal ritual). Knowledge of making and using pottery containers spread widely as prestige technology and as practical technology, the kind and timing of its adoption or reinvention varying from location to location depending on specific needs and circumstances.     

伊达拉里亚人起源考

伊达拉里亚人(Etrusci)这一古老民族,大约从公元前8世纪中期起居住在意大利半岛北起阿诺河(Amo)、南至台波河(Tiber)、西到第勒尼安海(Mare Tyrrhennum)、东邻翁布里亚(Um．bria)地区,这一地区被称为伊达拉里亚(Etruria)。公元前7至前6世纪伊达拉里亚人势力最为强盛,他们从意大利半岛扩展到北至波河平原,南达康帕尼亚地区,     

罗马平民起源问题初探

在罗马早期史研究中，平民(Plebs)的起源问题是一个难点。自19世纪以来，西方学术界一直存在着各种不同的意见和争论。围绕“罗马平民最初是否属于罗马共同体的成员”这个问题，一些学认为，罗马平民主要来自王政时代被征服地区的移民，对于以“罗马人民”     

Theology and the Origins of Conflict

Abstract

War has its origins in the clash of socially-constructed identities, interests, and norms of behavior of states and armed nonstate actors. This essay examines the economic, political, and cultural factors that contributed to the construction of such identities, interests, and norms during the Shining Path insurgency and the Peruvian government’s response in the years from 1980 to 2000. Drawing on the three levels of liberation outlined by Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, the essay then describes how theology enriches without replacing socio-political and cultural explanations of the Peruvian conflict. The practices that formed both the Shining Path and the government’s response to it can be described as social sin, whereas the Catholic Church in Peru’s commitment to truth and the creation of community solidarity became practices that, by imitating the self-giving love of Christ, helped overcome violence and build peace.     

Offspring of the Sama Kingdom

LangDarma,Tuboking,waskilledin84s2.Twoofhissons,WesumandYundain,foughteachotherforpower.Duringtheperiod,slavesinDorgansiineasternTuborevolted,forcinqtheTuboroyalfamiliestofleewestwardin985.Bekortsang,sonofWesum,waskilledbytherevoltingslaves.Hisson,GyideNyimafledtoBurang,wherehemarriedthedaughterofaminister,andhadthreesons.ThefirstsonoccupiedMangyuandlaterbecametheleaderofLhadaka;thesecondsonseizedBurang,becomingifsleader,andthethirdsoncontrolledZabolang,foundingtheGugeKingdominZadaCoun…     

Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity

ABSTRACT

Across a broad range of late nineteenth-century French medical texts that described the newly denoted sexual pathologies of frigidity, inversion, fetishism, nymphomania, sadism and masochism, one finds a term being used for which no current equivalent exists. This term is l’amour morbide – morbid love. Its use was initially as common in respectable medical texts as it later became in erotic fictional writings. In some cases, it appeared to refer to a particular sexual pathology, albeit one which troubled the very notion of perversion as aberrant or abnormal. This article considers the role that l’amour morbide played in the sorting of medical terminology for describing sexual perversions in late nineteenth-century France, and examines what its relationship was to degenerationist thought. Engaging with Ian Hacking’s notion of “transient mental illnesses” produced by unique cultural ecologies, it is proposed that morbid love occupied the space between decadent culture of fin-de-siècle France on the one hand, and on the other hand degenerationist frames adopted by French doctors in the context of international medical and psychiatric conversations.     

农业和文明起源

文明起源在考古学上是一个复杂的问题,牵涉到人类社会的许多方面。其中一个重要方面就是农业。本文试图强调农业对文明起源所起的推动作用,并提出一些有关农业考古的看法,希望对目前正在进行的中华文明探源工程和类似课题有所帮助。     

雉的王国

<正>雉科,鸟纲鸡形目下的一科,包括鸡形目的绝大多数成员,比如我们熟悉的红腹锦鸡、孔雀、鹧鸪,皆属此科。雉是鸟类中色彩最为绚丽的一种,不仅具有五彩缤纷的羽毛和优雅美丽的体态,而且也与华夏民族的衍生息息相关。中国拥有着大约1/3的雉科鸟类,其中超过一半是国家重点保护物种,中国也因此被誉为"雉的王国"。     

试论美国工业化的起源

学术界对于美国工业化起源的一般说法是:由于拿破仑战争的影响和向西部的开拓带来东部农业和商业的衰退,引起商业资本向制造业转移.本文在借鉴原工业化理论的基础上试图指出:美国从奠基时代开始,就与世界上最先进的国家站在了同一个起跑线上.建国以后,它在殖民地时期所奠定的工场手工业的基础上,又积极借鉴英国的先进技术,利用东部繁荣的农业所带来的旺盛的市场需求,结合当地的实际情况,走上了一条越来越远离英国的工业化发展道路.