The Tung Oil Boom in Australasia: a Network Perspective

Ideas about networks are explored in the context of the interest within the British Empire and the United States of America in planting Tung Oil trees (Aleurites fordii) during the 1920s and 1930s. Closer attention is paid to the Australian and New Zealand experience and short-lived enthusiasm for the search for seeds, the collation of information on growth rates, and the planting of Tung trees. The paper briefly distinguishes various types of network research in human geography and concludes by raising some questions about space and time in network approaches in the social sciences more generally.     

The Internal Security Acts of 1798: The Founding Generation and the Judiciary during America's First National Security Crisis

It is a truism that a nation must protect itself from internal enemies as well as foreign threats of aggression and invasion. But that is not the entire matter. Our American democracy has striven, with mixed success, to be careful that the justified ends of the American experiment—freedom, justice, and the rule of law—are not sacrificed on the altar of the means to protect these ends.     

关于美国第一次退还部分庚款的几个问题

1909年的美国第一次退款兴学,是近代中美关系史和中国近代留学史上的一件大事。就退款的过程来看,此次退款主要不是清朝驻美公使梁诚运动的结果,也非1905年抵制美货运动的结果,而是因为美国政府从赔款一开始就有退还的打算。将赔款用于兴学主要也是出于美方的意图,而非出于梁诚的倡议和清政府的自愿;其中,美国驻华公使柔克义起了重要作用。美国将退款用于兴学,一方面固然是从美国的长远利益出发,但同时在客观上促进了当时中国的改革和进步。因此,这是一件对中美两国都有利的事情,值得重新评价。     

Inducement and Coercion on the Trucial Coast: The First Oil Agreements

This examination of the processes which culminated in the signing of the first oil concessions on the Trucial Coast constitutes a case study of the interaction between political and commercial interests within Britain's informal empire. It looks at the extent to which the aims and approaches of the British political authorities and of the oil company overlapped, coincided or conflicted, and at the strategies adopted by both in their dealings with the third element in the negotiations, the local rulers. In addition, the nature, extent and variations of local collaboration are analysed. Finally, the outcomes of the negotiations are reconsidered, and the possibility raised that a qualified form of collaboration might achieve satisfactory results for a local ruler, despite the overwhelming odds stacked against him.     

Greening America's Skylines: The Diffusion of Low-Salience Policies

The diffusion literature is replete with examples of highly salient policies spreading across subnational governments. However, low-salience policies that do not benefit from a groundswell of public opinion also spread across jurisdictions in patterns that appear similar to those of other, more well-known policy ideas. This research is an investigation of the mechanisms that propagate low-salience policies. I analyze the adoption of the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) Leadership in Energy Efficient Design standard across 119 U.S. cities from 2000 to 2008. The investigation indicates that a knowledge broker, in this case the USGBC, occupies critical roles in linking a low-salience policy to a broader set of widely held societal values, developing a common policy vocabulary, providing a base policy that jurisdictions may freely adapt, and creating a diffusion infrastructure by acting as a communication hub for existing and interested jurisdictions to discuss innovations and progress.     

The China Hearings: America's Shifting Paradigm on China

This article attempts to fill a hole in rapprochement literature by examining the 1966 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the People's Republic of China. Historian Michael Lumbers contends that the China hearings served as a watershed in American attitudes toward China. This article explains how and why this change occurred. The China hearings contributed to Sino-American rapprochement in two different ways. One, the witnesses suggested to the public a new policy toward China, containment without isolation. The popularity of containment without isolation and the Johnson administration's use of it in their policy reorientation suggest that the China hearings had an effect. The hearings were not only a turning point, but also the culmination of a larger process. It demonstrated that American sentiment toward China had clearly moved away from hostility and toward cooperation. And during the 1960s, scholars of East Asian studies served as opinion leaders in this process.     

The China Museum Boom: soft power and cultural nationalism

ABSTRACT

We document major changes in museum supply in China between 1996 and 2015. These years have seen the opening of many small, low budget and locally managed museums; an increase in the average size and expenditure of all museums; and significant investments in a few large and centrally managed superstar museums. Chinese people have access to larger and better museums and pay lower admission fees. Regional inequalities in museum growth are smaller than inequalities in GDP growth. We relate these findings with the small literature on Chinese museums and specifically the notions of soft power and cultural nationalism.