The Archaeology of German and British Colonial Entanglements in Kpando-Ghana

In talking about the cultural diversity of Africa’s past, the archaeological assessment of West African sites with mangled tangible and intangible fragments of German and British and/or French colonial encounters should not be ignored but rather discussed. This research explores how specific daily material cultural practices of German and British colonizers and Kpando indigenes in the Volta Region of Ghana were enmeshed in a medley of geopolitical, ideological and exchange connections. Through the use of archaeological, archival and ethnographic sources, this paper examines how daily practices of the people of Kpando were impacted by pre-colonial and dual colonial political economic pressures from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. This paper archaeologically explores how colonial officials maintained and renegotiated the norms of domesticity/gentility/Europeaness in their encounter with Akpini domestic technology, foodways and cultural practices.     

墨西哥革命:从官方史学到修正派史学

墨西哥革命史学思潮的发展趋势与革命后墨西哥经济、政治、思想和学术潮流的变化密不可分。革命期间到20世纪30年代,各革命派系皆站在自身的立场上评价墨西哥革命;30年代后,为了促进国家的统一,在墨西哥政府和执政党的直接倡导和参与下,创立了墨西哥革命的官方史学;四五十年代后,特别是1968年特拉特洛尔科事件后,随着墨西哥经济增长和政治稳定奇迹的终结,以及国内历史学科的发展和国际学术交流的影响,产生了修正派史学。然而,80年代以后,修正派史学在某些方面也受到一定的质疑。     

Countryside-versus-City in European Thought: German and British Anti-Urbanism between the Wars

The idea that the city is a place of sin and immorality is as old as urban civilization. But what does anti-urban thought mean in societies which are highly urbanized under the conditions of modern industrialism? Furthermore, is anti-urbanism in the interwar period a German völkisch phenomenon––one further stride on Germany's special path? And what does rural revival and the “back-to-the-land” cult mean in Great Britain, the first industrial nation? This article seeks to provide an answer to these questions by exploring anti-urbanist writing between the End of the First World War and 1933 in Germany, and 1939 in Britain. By examining two key themes it aims to show that the clear-cut distinction between German anti-urban radicalisation and the West's coming to terms with urbanisation cannot be maintained. Firstly, attention will be drawn to the ambiguity of perceptions of the city in the writings of “Conservative Revolutionary” authors in the Weimar Republic. In a second step, the British “back-to-the-land” movement, whose advocates developed comprehensive anti-urban third-way theories in the interwar period and were themselves part of a broader popular anti-industrial movement and a rural cult throughout the 1930s, will be examined.     

The British at Weihaiwei: A Case Study in the Irrationality of Empire

The grand spectacle of Britain's return of Hong Kong, its colony since the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, to Chinese sovereignty in July 1997 served to dramatize to a global audience the end of imperialism in its most overt political form. Beginning with China's defeat in the First Opium War in 1842, Britain and other European powers came to exercise varying degrees of forcible dominion, wrapped in a confusing array of legal guises, over parts of this proud but endangered country. Known to the Chinese ever since as the "unequal treaties," these agreements progressively infringed on China's sovereignty, administrative and legal integrity, and economic viability. Extraterritorial rights exempting foreigners from Chinese justice, treaty ports where administration was in the hands of foreigners, and foreign control of extensive portions of Chinese bureaucratic administration, including even the country's ability to collect revenue through the Maritime Customs Service—all became part of the elaborate edifice of extraordinary rights and privileges that the powers created for themselves in the name of the "great game" of empire in China.¹     

Revisionism Reconsidered: 'Property-owning Democracy' and Egalitarian Strategy in Post-War Britain

Revisionist socialists of the 1950s and 1960s are typicallydepicted as advocates of the ‘Keynesian welfare state’route to economic equality. This article argues that this isan oversimplification: while the revisionists supported thewelfare state, they also aimed to promote equality by redistributingprivate property and expanding social ownership, endorsing anegalitarian version of a ‘property-owning democracy’.The article first discusses the political ideals and calculationsthat motivated the revisionists’ interest in this modelof egalitarian strategy and then examines in turn the threemutually reinforcing strands of policy that this goal generated:greater progressive taxation of wealth; measures to diffuseprivate property ownership and access to marketable skills;and the expansion of novel forms of social ownership.     

Asymmetrical Historical Comparison: the Case of the German Sonderweg

Frequently, historical comparisons are asymmetrical in the sense that they investigate one case carefully while limiting themselves to a mere sketch of the other case(s) which serve(s) as comparative reference point(s). The debate on the German Sonderweg (special path) and the rich historical literature originating from this debate can serve as examples. This article reconstructs the pros and cons within this controversial debate, reports its results and puts it into a broader historical context. It analyzes the comparative logic implied by the Sonderweg thesis and argues that the interpretation of modern German history in the sense of a Sonderweg can only be maintained if related to the question why Germany turned fascist and totalitarian in the interwar period while other (comparable) societies did not, and if Western countries are selected as units of comparison. The choice of comparative reference points turns out to be decisive and partly dependent on normative priorities and conventions. The article points to dangers and opportunities inherent in asymmetrical comparison.     

Jean Renoir,The Rules of the Game,Reputation, and Revisionism

Jean Renoir's film La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) was first shown in Paris, in 1939, and is now generally regarded as one of his masterpieces. But there is a strange side to the film. What most critics and reference books say concerning it—and they tend to say much the same thing—does not, to put it bluntly, square with the facts. What they say is that La Règle du jeu is about an aristocratic house-party that is a microcosm of the corruptness and exhaustion of French society on the eve of World War II. Far from perceiving in La Règle du jeu evidence of the “corruption” and “exhaustion” in French society that led to the country's defeat and occupation by the Germans during World War II, however, the author of this essay attempts to see the film for what it is—not for what historicist critics want it to be.