本杰明·富兰克林与早期费城的公共社会

以富兰克林在费城社会活动的轨迹为视角,通过对城市精英在推动城市社会公共领域的发展、促进公民公共意识的形成等方面的作用的考察,可以得出如下结论：独立前的北美不同于近代早期的欧洲,殖民政府很少承担城市的公共事务;在城市精英的组织和领导下,公民积极参与和管理公共事务,开创了近代城市的管理模式。     

When Words Fail: William Pitt, Benjamin Franklin and the Imperial Crisis of 1766

Passage of an American stamp tax in 1765 produced a sharp political backlash before the year was out. That new tax was part of a larger programme of imperial reform championed by the Grenville ministry. Now out of power, Grenville and his supporters resisted the growing desire in both houses of parliament to end the imperial crisis by repealing the new tax. During debates that began in early 1766 there were those few, most notably William Pitt, who wanted to discuss constitutional ultimates as part of the move toward repeal. Pitt contended that parliament did not have the authority to tax the colonies directly. Grenville disagreed and warned that if parliament accepted any limit to its supremacy the colonists would eventually claim legislative autonomy. When debating the distinction – if indeed any such distinction existed – between taxation and legislation, and between internal and external taxes, Pitt, Grenville and their parliamentary contemporaries raised questions about authority and power that they could not answer. There were no words to describe perfectly the imperial relationship, a relationship that, as Benjamin Franklin hinted in his testimony to the Commons, was always subject to change anyway. Avoiding constitutional questions had not seemed to work; trying to answer them did not work any better, at least in the contentious atmosphere of that moment.     

争夺中国东北:1900至1903年的美国对俄外交

190 0年至 190 3年俄国占据中国东北期间 ,美国为了维护其在中国东北的利益 ,与俄国展开了一场激烈的外交争夺。美国积极利用英国和日本施加于俄国的压力 ,与俄国暗中展开谈判。其间 ,美国以牺牲中国权益包括“中国完整”为诱饵 ,诱使俄国同意美国在东北“利益均沾”。由于列强争夺态势的复杂性及利益的不可调和性 ,美俄谈判无果。最后美国逐渐转向支持日本对俄开战的政策。整个过程说明了美国对华“门户开放”政策的实用主义的特点