Footsteps of History

We have been covering Xigaze over the past 15 years since the commencement ofChina's Tibet. Through these reports we take our readers to that part of the world, introduc-ing them to the people there, the landscape and scenery. However,our reades wrote toexpress their hope to learn more about Xigaze.     

The Invention of History: The Pre‐History of a Concept from Homer to Herodotus

The following pages, which deal with the pre‐history of the concept of history from Homer to Herodotus, first propose to decenter and historicize the Greek experience. After briefly presenting earlier and different experiences, they focus on three figures: the soothsayer, the bard, and the historian. Starting from a series of Mesopotamian oracles (known as “historical oracles” because they make use in the apodosis of the perfect and not the future tense), they question the relations between divination and history, conceived as two, certainly different, sciences of the past, but which share the same intellectual space in the hands of the same specialists. The Greek choices were different. Their historiography presupposes the epic, which played the role of a generative matrix. Herodotus wished to rival Homer; what he ultimately became was Herodotus. Writing dominates; prose replaces verse; the Muse, who sees and knows everything, is no longer around. So I would suggest understanding the emblematic word “historia” as a subsititute, which operates as an analogue of the (previous) omnivision of the Muse. But before that, Herodotean “invention”— the meeting of Odysseus and the bard Demodocus, where for the first time the fall of Troy is told—can be seen as the beginning, poetically speaking at least, of the category of history.     

希罗多德:历史学的开创与异域文明的话语

本文的主旨在于从希腊思想史的角度,阐明希罗多德的突破性成就,并解读其历史书写的特定视角。文章提出,历史学并非自然而然出现的,而是在特定的思想文化背景中产生的。就古代希腊而言,历史学能够从神话史观中独立出来,理性思想方式的确立起了决定性作用。希罗多德发扬赫卡泰俄斯已经表现出来的历史意识,开创了西方历史学。与此同时,通过对异域文明的描述,希罗多德向希腊人展示了一个由希腊人和蛮族人这相互对立的两部分所组成的世界,奠定了影响至今的东西方二分的世界史书写传统。     

The Chevert: A History

The Chevert was built for Napoleon III's navy between 1850 and 1863. It served as a transport to supply French colonies in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its service was primarily in peacetime, never entering into battle. It entered the private merchant service in the early 1870s and in 1875 served William Macleay's scientific expedition to New Guinea, which became known as the Chevert Expedition. It subsequently re-entered the merchant service before being wrecked in a cyclone in 1880. Not yet lost to history, it served as an office and impromptu fortress in Vanuatu: firstly for the English and then for the French. Its final resting place was Port Sandwich, Malekula, Vanuatu. For a relatively small transport ship it attracted many more headlines than its weight might predict.     

In the Footsteps of J. Alfred Griffiths: a Cataclysmic History of Great Artesian Basin Springs in Queensland,Australia

The first systematic survey of springs of the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) was conducted between 1896 and 1898 by J. Alfred Griffiths. His survey documents 107 GAB spring‐groups from western, northern and central Queensland. These springs were located and assessed by the authors between 1998 and 2000, and the results of this comparison are presented in this paper. Eighty‐seven of 107 (81%) of spring‐groups are no longer active. Of the remaining springs the flows of at least eight are substantially less than that witnessed a century ago. The tapping of the GAB by thousands of bores and consequent reduction of artesian pressure is clearly the overwhelming cause of diminished flows and spring inactivity. The cataclysmic loss of springs has had disastrous impacts on the biota of spring wetlands, almost certainly resulting in the extinction of endemic spring species.     

The Treaty of Paris, 1783: A Historiographical Challenge

‘“Moral Purpose is the Important Thing”: David E. LiIienthal, Iran, and the Meaning of Development in the US, 1956–63,’ examines the complex history of postwar development policy and thought. Instead of focusing exclusively on economic growth, technological innovation, and poIitics in US modernization efforts, it addresses the role of private interests and the question of intentionality, meaning, and ethics. David Lilienthal's work in Khuzestan, Iran illustrates the contested nature of postwar development as multiple interests – whether government affiliates, academic think tanks, or private industry – competed for the right to determine America's approach. As an alternative to the discourse of modernization theory in the 1950s, Lilienthal privileged moral idealism without ignoring the empirical realities in the Khuzestm project. Lilienthal's ultimate failure illuminates the many sides of postwar development and deepens our understanding of the pressures before modernization theory as it became the dominant paradigm the cold war.