Napoleon,Jefferson, and the Louisiana Purchase

Why did Napoleon sell Louisiana to the United States? Unfortunately, he left very few written traces of his Louisiana policy and, therefore, historians disagree. Their explanations tend to emphasise one of three factors: the diplomacy of President Thomas Jefferson; France's coming war with Britain; or the impact of the black rebels of the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti). The most heated disagreements revolve around the differing assessments of the role played by Jefferson. This article argues that Jefferson played no role in Napoleon's decision to sell the colony. It acknowledges that the British were crucial, because war with Britain meant that Louisiana would be lost to France. But why was Louisiana undefended? The troops Napoleon wanted to send there never arrived. They went instead to Haiti. And they remained there. If black resistance in Haiti had collapsed quickly, as Napoleon expected, there would have been thousands of French soldiers in Louisiana by the spring of 1803, when the French war with Britain began. By defeating Napoleon, the men whom Jefferson deemed ‘cannibals’ made it possible for him to acquire Louisiana and achieve what an eminent US historian has called his ‘greatest triumph’.     

无人区的辽阔与壮美

<正>由于气候环境严苛,一直以来,中国的四大无人区都鲜有人涉足,是探险者内心中难以企及的生命极限。原始,荒凉,粗犷,野性……在我国西部地区,沉睡着一片广袤无垠的土地,一个被专家和学者称为“生命禁区”的地方,那里人迹罕至,寸草难生;那里风景迥异,景致诱人。那里分布着中国的四大无人区——羌塘自然保护区、可可西里自然保护区、阿尔金山自然保护区和罗布泊。由于气候环境严苛,一直以来,中国的四大无人区都鲜有人涉足,是探险     

Trongyul, a Beautiful Land in North Tibet

The Lhamo Monastery Town,a small town known as the "center of the south" in ancient times,lies at the junction of Gansu,Qinghai and Sichuan.The town is divided into two parts by a stream known as White Dragon River.     

国际机遇的利用与美国向太平洋的领土扩张——“路易斯安那购买”和“阿拉斯加购买”新探

18、19世纪之交英法争夺欧洲霸权和世界殖民霸权的斗争使拿破仑决定将法国的北美殖民地路易斯安那卖给美国,19世纪中期俄国在克里米亚战争中败于英法之手的窘境迫使亚历山大二世向美国兜售俄国的殖民地阿拉斯加。美国在上述英法争霸、克里米亚战争和波兰起义等时期,通过推行对欧洲列强的中立政策和实施灵活的外交策略,抓紧国际机遇,坐收渔翁之利,先后将这两块殖民地收入囊中,实现了将领土扩张到太平洋之滨的愿望。"路易斯安那购买"和"阿拉斯加购买"都是欧洲列强纷争和美国充分利用国际机遇的结果。推行适合本国国情和世界形势的中立的外交政策和充分利用国际机遇的策略,是美国崛起的一个重要原因。     

邂逅无人区的美丽生灵

<正>在前往罗布泊的路上,徒经塔克拉玛干沙漠时,我被一片一望无际的千年胡杨林深深吸引,不由自主地停下脚步与胡杨共度了一天。胡杨树被维吾尔人称之为“托克拉克”,意为“最美丽的树”。由于它在严寒酷暑的打击下还能顽强地生存,又被称为“沙漠英雄树”。活着昂首一千年,死后挺立一千年,倒下不朽一千年,铮铮铁骨千年铸,不屈品质万年颂。胡杨有顽强的性格,也有独特的美。在朝日、夕阳的照耀下,胡杨的的千姿百态显得更加文雅优美。     

YARLUNG ZANGBO RIVER VALLEY:A Beautiful and Richly Endowed Land

heYarlungZangboRiverisaffectionatelyreferredtobyTibetansastheMotherRiver.Itsvalleyteemswithamazingfolklorescenicsitesandrichlyendowednaturalresources.HIGHESTRIVER.TheYarlungZangboRivermeandersthroughtheSouthernTibetP1ateaufromwesttoeast,viaXigaze,Lhasa,Sh…     

伪满洲国日本人移民用地征购政策

伪满洲国建立后,日本便不失时机地向中国东北大规模推行日本人农业移民．以达到土地和人口的占领,进而实现长期霸占的目的。为此日本关东军等有关侵略机构便煞费苦心炮制了一系列日本农业移民用地取得的方针、政策,并以军事为后盾,对中国东北的土地进行疯狂的强行“征用”、“收买”和掠夺,给中国人民带来了深重的灾难。     

Shit Beautiful: Tambu and Kina Revisited

The concept of inalienability as discussed by Annette Weiner (1992) seems to privilege Polynesia over Melanesia in terms of a more ‘evolved’ logic of object possession. Two instantiations of material culture from the Wiru and Tolai people, pearlshells and coils of shell-money respectively, are compared and assessed for their inclusion into the category of “inalienable possessions.” The conclusion argues against fitting Melanesian artefacts into a developmental continuum of inalienability, and signals the need for a more contextual and aesthetic reading of material culture in comparative projects.     

Beautiful city: Leisure amenities and urban growth

Modern urban economic theory and policymakers are coming to see the provision of consumer‐leisure amenities as a way to attract population, especially the highly skilled and their employers. However, past studies have arguably only provided indirect evidence of the importance of leisure amenities for urban development. In this paper, we propose and validate the number of tourist trips and the number of crowdsourced picturesque locations as measures of consumer revealed preferences for local lifestyle amenities. Urban population growth in the 1990–2010 period was about 10% points (about one standard deviation) higher in a metro area that was perceived as twice more picturesque. This measure ties with low taxes as the most important predictor of urban population growth. “Beautiful cities” disproportionally attracted highly educated individuals and experienced faster housing price appreciation, especially in supply‐inelastic markets. In contrast to the generally declining trend of the American central city, neighborhoods that were close to central recreational districts have experienced economic growth, although at the cost of minority displacement.     

Building in Colonial Louisiana: Creolization and the Survival of French Traditions

Documents and limited archaeological evidence indicate that the building methods of the Louisiana Acadians during the colonial period strongly reflected a heritage of late-medieval and early-modern French methods and techniques of constructing vernacular buildings.     

Making and Mastering Violent Environments: Following the Infrastructures of Accumulation in Coastal Louisiana

Louisiana’s coastal wetlands have been disappearing at an alarming rate over the past several decades, with the greatest harm experienced by vulnerable populations (poor and racialised residents). It was not until 2005 that the state legislature responded with a much-lauded Master Plan tasked with integrating the construction of new flood control infrastructure with wetland restoration. Seeking to unsettle this initiative, we develop a historical-geographical materialist approach to follow the entanglements between infrastructural production and capital accumulation in Louisiana over the past several hundred years. In so doing, we present a two-fold argument: that the making and mastering infrastructural violence has always been part of the historical unfolding of the socio-spatial dynamics of capitalism; and that infrastructural development has played an integral role in this duality at every historical turn. The capitalist state, at both the federal and state levels, has played a vital role in producing and controlling this violence.     

Gender and Environmental Justice in Louisiana: Blurring the boundaries of public and private spheres

Many scholars have examined the implications and effects of a putative dichotomy between public-as-masculine and private-as-feminine spheres on community activism, and suggest that women's community activism blurs this ideological divide in numerous ways. This article draws on a case study of a siting conflict in St. James Parish, Louisiana, to examine how, in the process of blurring boundaries between gendered spheres of interest and activity, predominantly women environmental justice activists contended with differently gendered contexts. Concepts of performance and performativity shed light on how gendered hierarchies of public and private sphere activism both constrained and enabled the protest group's political practice.