Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire

This article reviews six essay collections and one monographon late medieval and early modern political culture in the HolyRoman Empire. Following a general survey of historiographicaltrends and a discussion of the specific contributions of theworks under review (covering topics from international relations,state formation and the role of language to representative assembliesand the exercise of power in towns and villages), it attemptsa preliminary sketch of the basic parameters of pre-modern politics.Prominent insights include shifts in the balance between oral,ritual and written communication, the significance of informalbonds and the negotiated quality of developments at all levelsof government. The conclusion assesses the potential of the‘new’ political history and calls for renewed effortsto link discourses, representations and perceptions to the norms,structures and socio-economic conditions with which they interacted.     

Contesting Conquests: Nineteenth-Century German and Polish Historiography of the Expansion of the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Union

The problem of conquests and territorial expansion, including their interpretation, evaluation, and legitimisation, has been crucial for European national historiographies. Consequently, attempts by the Holy Roman emperors, particularly of the Saxon and Hohenstaufen dynasties, to control Italy and Burgundy were hotly debated among nineteenth-century German historians, while Poland's union with Lithuania, and the annexation of the vast territories of the east which followed, was a central topic for Polish historians of the time. Modern historians of historiography in both countries have carefully analysed these narratives, emphasising their ideological and political contexts, such as their involvement in the Grossdeutsch versus Kleindeutsch controversy and the controversy between the so-called Cracow and Warsaw historical schools. In this paper I propose a comparative analysis of these two discourses which dealt with analogical issues and, as I demonstrate, developed with a parallel dynamic. Such an analysis, I argue, allows an escape from the paradigm of national exceptionalism, and the discovery of what was typical or, perhaps, constitutive of the discourse on territorial expansion of the time, instead of focusing on the uniqueness of the national context. This analysis embraces the conceptualisation, argumentation, and rhetoric of those nineteenth-century German and Polish historians discussing the expansion of the medieval Holy Empire and early-modern Poland. Moreover, it locates their interpretations within an international context of a broader Western historiographical tradition, involving issues of domination, cultural transfer, and colonialism. Finally, it examines the parallel mechanism of searching for, advocating, and perpetuating the idea of uniqueness of national history.     

Areopagitica,freedom of the press,and heterodox religion in the Holy Roman Empire

Milton’s Areopagitica (1644) is widely recognised as a foundational work in the philosophical history of the freedom of the press, although it had little impact upon first publication. However, in 1989 Leo Miller discovered an early German-language critique of Areopagitica from 1647, preserved among the papers of the Anglo-Prussian intelligencer Samuel Hartlib. The present article identifies the critic as the Brandenburg scholar Joachim Hübner, a key member of Hartlib’s networks. Available evidence suggests strongly that Hübner considered translating Milton’s tract in order to promote the printing and distribution of heterodox doctrines of spiritualist Christianity in the Holy Roman Empire. Using the short critique of Areopagitica as a springboard, this article demonstrates through biographical and contextual research the interrelations of political and religious cultures of the period, and that questions of freedom of the press were central to promoters of heterodox religious doctrine not only in England but also on the continent.     

Approaches to the Roman Empire: A Perspective

MIRIAM T. GRIFFIN. Nero: The End of A Dynasty. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984. Pp. 320. $25 (US); RICHARD J.A. TALBERT. The Senate of Imperial Rome. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984. Pp. xviii, 583. $60 (US); J.B. CAMPBELL. The Emperor and the Roman Army 31 BC-AD 235. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Pp. xx, 468. $54 (US); ROBERT L. WILKEN. The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984. Pp. xx, 214. $18.95 (US); HOWARD CLARK KEE. Miracle in the Early Christian World: A Study in Sociohistorical Method. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983. Pp. xii, 320. $25 (US).     

Edward Gibbon and the Roman Empire

MARTIN GILBERT. Second World War. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989. Pp. xix, 846.

BARRIE and FRANCIS PITT. The Chronological Atlas of World War II. London: Macmillan, 1989. Pp. xi, 178.

CORRELLI BARNETT, ed. Hitler's Generals. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989. Pp. xix, 497.

GEOFFREY ROBERTS. The Unholy Alliance: Stalin's Pact with Hitler. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989. Pp. xviii, 296.

VICTOR SUVOROV. Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?, trans. Thomas B. Beattie. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1990. Pp. xvii, 364.

ROY DOUGLAS. The World War 1939–1943: The Cartoonists' Vision. London and New York: Routledge, 1990. Pp. xii, 300.

PAUL FUSSELL. Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Pp. x, 330.     

共和国晚期至帝国初期古罗马人的希腊观

公元前3世纪初至公元1世纪初,罗马经历了重要的文化转型,罗马文化受到希腊文化的全面影响。在此转型期中,罗马人对希腊的态度非常复杂,用两分法来分析这种态度并不合适。本文从紧张忧虑、反观比较和鉴别选择三种态度分析罗马人的希腊观,认为在同希腊的对照中,罗马人进一步明确了自己的文化身份。     

Crows: From Holy to Evil Birds

Ridingonhorseback,IpassedDagarVillagebytheNyemo-QuxuHighway.A.truckbehindmewasobviouslyinahurryonitswaytosomewhere,andthedriverkeptpressingthehorntourgememakewayforhim.Allofasudden,adarkcloudrosefromnearbywalnuttreestowardthebluesky.Itwasactuallyadarkcloudofcrows.Outofcuriosity,Imovedtothewalnuttrees.Icountedcrownestsandfoundtheynumberedmorethan100.SKILLSOFCROWS.Crowsaregoodatbuildingnests.Eachnestiscomposedofsevenlayers,andeachlayerisbuiltwithmaterialsdifferentfromotherlayers.Notall…     

论罗马帝国消防军

罗马帝国消防军是奥古斯都统治时期建立的专门负责首都消防与夜间治安的准军事性组织。它的建立是奥古斯都对传统消防模式的革新,更是其行使元首权力、维护社会秩序稳定、巩固元首制的要略之一。消防军通过完善的预、接警机制,及时发现与扑救火灾,执行旨在抑制火灾发生的消防巡检,不仅提高了居民消防安全意识,更使火灾次数明显减少。消防军还结合夜间消防巡逻,维护首都夜间治安,在其巡逻下,罗马夜间秩序稳定。消防军是古罗马一创举,说明罗马帝国政府意识到保证消防安全与维护社会秩序稳定在促进社会与国家和谐发展上的重要作用。     

The Rolt Memorial Lecture, 1983 Our Debt to Roman Engineering: The Water Supply of Lincoln to the Present Day

Abstract

Lincoln was one of the four colonia of Roman Britain and therefore intended to serve as an example of cultured urban life to the surrounding region. A good water supply was essential in Roman towns but Lincoln, stand above the 200ft contour, could not receive a normal gravity fed system. This paper examines the archaeological evidence for the water supply to Roman Lincoln and looks at how the problem was solved in later generations. Dr Lewis argues that a comparison of the solutions to engineering problems of even the distant past and the present is an important aspect of industrial archaeology.