见贤思齐、臻于至善:18世纪法国社会中富含美德的竞争观念

émulation乃是18世纪法国精英经常谈及的概念,在启蒙时代的文化与社会生活中扮演了颇为重要的角色。该词具有竞争之含义,但它所指的不是对于利益、权力与财富的争夺,而是在美德、优点和荣誉方面追赶甚至超越他人。18世纪后期,此概念在保有其追求美德与优长之意蕴的同时,逐渐深化了参与竞争,获取成功的内涵。这一趋向与当时法国教育、艺术领域以及各省学院中盛行以竞赛、展览和征文等形式鼓励竞争意识的现象相一致。启蒙时代的某些法国精英力图将本质上体现了贵族精神的竞争意识转变为一种民族精神,从而实现社会改良之目的。他们希冀通过倡导竞争观念重塑法国人的道德风尚与精神面貌,并且推动农业和商业的发展。     

Prehistory of Chihuahua and Sonora,Mexico

The North American Southwest includes much of Mexico as well as the southwestern United States. The area north of the international border has been studied intensively and its culture history is widely known; the portion south of the border has usually been ignored. This essay proposes a new term for the entire culture area, Northern Mexico, and provides a summary of local sequences for two states in the region, Chihuahua and Sonora. The general sequence in the U.S. Southwest (Paleo-Indian, Archaic, and Ceramic periods) also holds in northwest Mexico. Preceramic occupations are poorly known. The Ceramic period saw the rise of a number of local cultures, which varied greatly in adaptation and social complexity. The basic culture pattern of Northern Mexico is derived from that of central Mexico, but direct Mesoamerican intervention in the region was apparently limited. While the issue of Mesoamerican-Northern Mexican relationships has dominated scholarly debate for decades, the greater need is to define and explain cultural variability within and between local sequences.     

The Garrison Revisited: Gibraltar in the Eighteenth Century

In the 1940s, scholars across a variety of disciplines started using phrases such as ‘garrison state’ and ‘garrison mentality’ to describe societies where military imperatives predominated. They frequently argued that a perpetual sense of threat and a profound feeling of isolation shaped the outlook of residents in these communities. Such terms continue to surface in contemporary scholarship and popular media, where ‘the garrison’ often remains a stock image. Evidence from eighteenth-century Gibraltar, however, suggests that traditional readings of the garrison as an insulated fortress should be reconsidered. The survival of this strategic outpost actually required that colonial administrators rely on an array of foreigners to keep it supplied during times of both war and peace. At Gibraltar, the garrison was neither isolated from its surrounding environment nor perpetually threatened by its cosmopolitan residents—instead, inescapable dependence on a motley local population often rendered administrators willing to accommodate the alien in their midst and to acknowledge the interconnections between military and civilian.     

Lost and Found: the Woman Writer in the Eighteenth Century

Jennifer Summit, Lost Property: the Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380–1589 Jane Spencer, Aphra Behn's Afterlife Harriet Guest, Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750’1810 Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Cliona O Gallchoir and Penny Warburton (eds), Women, Writing and the Public Sphere, 1700’1830     

The Atlantic Empires in the Eighteenth Century

Spanish America; John J. Tepaske     

Experiencing Climate: Finding Weather in Eighteenth Century Cumbria

This article examines whether Tim Ingold's concept of the ‘weather-world’ can be applied within discussions of climate in archaeology. Using a case study of eighteenth century Cumbria, the article first looks at the issues arising when environmental models are used to investigate landscape change. It then assesses the insights on landscape, weather and farming that can be gained from two historical diaries. It is recognised that advances in complex ecosystem and agent-based modelling have improved ‘climate change archaeology’, but that there are aspects of people's relationships with the weather and climate that are ill-suited to quantification. The article concludes by arguing that people's qualitative engagements with the weather are integral to how past people viewed and used the landscape.     

Brush-Piling: Eighteenth Century Engineering in an American Wilderness

Abstract

Old Mill was one of a small group of early silk mills established in East Cheshire during the mid-18th century. It was notable for its size, and for the involvement of James Brindley in its construction. The mill was extended and a beam engine added c. 1830, but it was partially demolished in 1939. In 2003 the remaining structures were demolished, which provided the opportunity for a programme of building recording and excavation. James Brindley's role is examined in terms of the application of water power, and the context of the classical architecture and likely geological provenance of Old Mill is discussed.