英国近代海滨休闲城市初探

英国是世界上首先实现城市化的国家,其城市化进程中海滨休闲城市(镇)的发展非常引人注目,在19世纪上半叶,海滨休闲城市的发展速度甚至超过了伦敦和其他工业城市,使所有其他类型的城镇相形见绌。因此研究英国休闲城镇的崛起与发展历程,不仅有助于加深对近代英国历史发展进程的理解,而且对于在进行城市化、大力发展旅游等第三产业的国家,也有一定的借鉴意义。     

论近代英国内阁制的形成

英国是西方世界首创内阁制的国家。早在斯图亚特王朝后期,在种种主客观因素的推动下,此前处于萌芽状态的内阁逐渐走向公开化、独立化、制度化,由此标志着内阁制在英国的形成。不过,与18世纪中后叶的责任制内阁相比,此间的内阁依然残留着君主政治的痕迹。对于王权的依附以及与议会之间缺乏必然的关联,使得责任制在内阁中还未建立起来。只有到汉诺威王朝时期,当王权急剧衰落、议会主权地位确立后,早期的内阁制才完成了向责任内阁制的转变。     

Self-Ownership and Moral Relations to Self in Early Modern Britain

Summary

This paper scrutinises early modern thinking about our moral relations to ourselves. It begins by reiterating the too-often-ignored point that full self-ownership was not a position defended in Britain—by Locke or anyone else. In fact, the actual early modern positions about the moral relations we have to ourselves have been obscured by our present-day interest in self-ownership. The paper goes on to organise the moral history of the self by examining the reasons available for prohibiting self-harm. Those reasons typically had their source in God, self, and others. Major divisions in the period arose over which kinds of reasons could be invoked and why. The defining feature of this intellectual landscape was the debate between ‘other-regarding’ and ‘dignity’ theorists, who differed over the moral status of the self and over its importance as a source of moral reasons. More dramatically and controversially, various freethinkers and sceptics questioned the importance of God as a source of prohibitions for self-harm. After offering an interpretation of this history, the paper concludes by noting some connections and contrasts between early modern and present-day moral and political philosophy on the moral status of the self.     

The New Militia: War,Politics and Gender in 1750s Britain

This article explores the role of gender in the debates around the creation of a ‘New Militia’ at the beginning of the Seven Years War. The humiliating military defeats of 1756 had precipitated a cultural crisis that focused upon gender distinctions, as the ‘effeminacy’ of men and the ‘boldness’ of women threatened to collapse the social order. In this context, militia service was presented as a cure for the nation's moral, social, political and sexual ills. This article therefore examines a range of textual and visual sources in order to suggest that certain mid‐Georgian political worldviews were fundamentally gendered, since they were predicated upon martial masculine virtues of the citizenry.