'Minorities with a Message': The Beveridge Report on Broadcasting (1949-1951) and Wales

This article explores the significance of the report of theBeveridge Committee on Broadcasting (1949–1951)—whichwas charged with considering all aspects of post-war broadcastingin Britain at a time of political, social, economic and culturalchange—in relation to Wales. It argues that the interactionbetween the committee and the Welsh political and cultural andgroups that submitted evidence to the committee allows for aninsight into the cultural politics of Wales during the earlypost-war period. It also argues that a study of the report throwslight onto issues of broadcasting and nationhood, the significanceof the Welsh language in defining nationhood and a nationalconsciousness and the relationship between a minority languageand the state, at a time of political and cultural change. Astudy of the Welsh dimension of the committee's report alsoprovides a framework for an understanding of the broadcastingpolitics of Wales in the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, the articleexemplifies the tensions that existed between what media historianJames Curran calls the ‘newness and modernity’ ofthe broadcast media and a political and cultural elite whichsought to preserve a ‘traditional’ way of life inthe face of the perceived impact of those media.     

女国民的兴起:近代中国女性主体身份与文学实践

The construction of “citizen-state” relations in the intellectual world of modern China and the establishment of individual citizenship in political discourse have opened up a political and discourse sphere for modern women to strive for new identities, wherein some intellectually advanced women have managed to establish their individual identity as “female citizen” by carrying the debate on the relationship between women and the state with regard to their rights and responsibilities, and on the relationship between gender role and citizenship. Though the idea of “female citizen” was not provided with a political theory of practical significance, the subject identity of women, however, was repeatedly spoken about and strengthened in brand-new literary practices, resulting in a dynamic discourse of “female citizen”; in the meantime, disagreements concerning the concepts of “female rights,” “civil rights,” and “natural rights” have all helped create significant tension inside the related discourse sphere. Translated by Feng Mei from Nankai Xuebao 南开学报 (Journal of Nankai University), 2008, (4): 40–47     

"五德终始"说之终结——兼论宋代以降传统政治文化的嬗变

The Five Virtues theory, designed to legitimate rules, was based on the belief in a cosmological system. The theory of the Five Virtues was replaced by the theory of Confucian orthodoxy based on moral critics during the renaissance of Confucianism in the Song Dynasty. The intellectual elites in the Song Dynasty launched a campaign against the Five Phases theory and the Apocryphal Texts, Fengshan, and Chuanguoxi, which constituted the main body of traditional political culture. They sought to eliminate the theoretical value of these traditions and eradicate their influence on people’s thoughts. Their high keyed and advanced political and ethical notions during the Song period became universal values in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. The changes in the traditional political culture reveal the intellectual trends from the Song Dynasty throughout the Qing Dynasty. Translated by Luo Hui from Zhongguo Shehui Kexue 中国社会科学 (Social Sciences in China), 2006, (2): 177–191     

Mass Politics and the Techniques of Leadership: The Promise and Perils of Propaganda in Weimar Germany

This paper traces the development of ideas about ‘professional’and ‘scientific’ publicity during the Weimar era,and their gradual absorption by mainstream politicians and officialsfrom the late 1920s onwards. The unprecedented wartime effortsto influence domestic morale and the scandalous revelationsof misinformation afterwards greatly increased popular awarenessof the ability of élites to manipulate public opinion,and generated intense interest in the problems of communicatingwith mass publics. Nowhere was this fascination greater thanin Germany, where many attributed their defeat primarily tosuperior enemy propaganda. The result was a wide-ranging postwardiscourse about the power of this modern ‘weapon’and its unavoidability as a part of modern political and commerciallife. Far from learning the so-called ‘lessons of thewar’, government self-representation efforts were steadilycriticized by journalists and advertisers as both quantitativelyand qualitatively inadequate. Whereas most republicans regarded‘propaganda’ as mendacious and unstatesmanlike,many of the radical parties’ publicity efforts clearlyreflected the basic tenets of the concurrent propaganda discourse,in particular the emphasis on emotional appeal and ritualisticsymbols. During the crisis of the early 1930s, amidst the visiblesuccess of the Nazis’ advertising-inspired campaigning,the spread of this discourse across the political spectrum helpedto hollow out democratic conceptualizations of leadership andpublic opinion from the very centre of Weimar political life.     

The haircutting movement in modern China (1903–1927): Analysis from the view of “body”

Modern China was an intense period of “body rebuilding.” Within the field of body history in China, the modern Chinese history has been rediscovered and reinterpreted from the view of “body.” In this paper, the author attempts to explore the movement of women’s haircutting in modern China and analyzes its social and political meaning from the view of body organ, gender, politics and culture. The conclusion is that the women’s haircutting movement in modern China was involved in the pursuit of state power, women’s rights, and political power in different levels.     

Behind the form: A historical analysis of the agriculture encouragement system in the Song dynasty

Using the political culture analysis method, this paper discusses the origin, contents and functions of the agriculture encouragement system of the Song dynasty, which originated from the pre-Qin period (221–207 BC). The main content of this system in its early stage is that in the early Spring days, the king symbolically ploughed a piece of land near the suburbs of his capital in order to send to his subjects a clear message of the importance he attached to agriculture. It was expected that peasants would be encouraged by his majesty’s guidance, and thus agricultural production of the countryside would be promoted. With the rationalization of the political system since the Qin period, agricultural encouragement gradually became a routine work of the Chinese governments at different levels. Under the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), “agricultural encouragement envoy” was added to the official rank of heads of counties and prefectures. They each were required to take the responsibility of persuading peasants in their jurisdiction to work harder in the field. The actual work as an “agricultural encouragement envoy” in the Song dynasty was to go to the countryside to reward peasants with food and wine in early February, and to write an essay to express his encouragement, and to distribute it to the peasants. Formalistic as it is, the agricultural encouragement system is a typical manifestation of the traditional Chinese political culture. As one of its social impacts on the Song society, it helped the spread of advanced agricultural technology with its institutional basis. __________ Translated from: Zhejiang Daxue Xuebao, Renwen Shehui Kexue Ban 浙江大学学报: 人文社会科学版 (Journal of Zhejiang University, Humanities and Social Science), No. 1, 2004     

'Shareholder value' versus the regions: the closure of the Vaux Brewery in Sunderland

‘Financialization’ and ‘shareholder value’loom large in the closure of the Vaux Brewery in Sunderland.They are necessarily intertwined with the geographies of spaceand place. Geography inevitably enters into assessments of shareholdervalue by social agents. A geographical political economy approachargues that generalized pressures created by financializationand shareholder value are mediated and contested by specificand particular configurations of spatialized social relations,social agency, and socio-institutional contexts over time, acrossspace, and in place. Geographical political economy frames theanalysis of the Vaux Brewery closure in Sunderland. A more spatiallysensitive, place aware, and locally and regionally rooted financialinfrastructure may be necessary but not sufficient to underpinlocal and regional development.     

Queuing up in Post-War Britain

This article traces a history of the queue in post-war Britain,both in relation to its changing social organization and itsshifting symbolism. In the immediate post-war period, with thecontinuation of rationing and shortages, the queue was exploitedfor its political capital by Conservative politicians like WinstonChurchill, who equated queuing with meddling socialism. As queuingceased to be an explicitly political issue in the 1950s and1960s, it began to be linked implicitly with the issue of national‘decline’, which dominated political discussionand social commentary from the late 1950s onwards. The queuesin banks and post offices, in particular, were seen as a symptomof the ‘British disease’ of badly trained, poorlymotivated employees and mediocre management. In the 1970s and1980s, the ‘dole queue’ also became part of a politicizedmythology of decline, although much of its imagery was borrowedfrom the 1930s. In the Thatcher era, queuing was increasinglytransformed by queue management theories and technologies. Beingprimarily market-led, this queuing revolution was an unevenphenomenon. In low-status public spaces, such as bus stops,people were still left to improvise their own queue discipline;and organizations like banks used queueless services to focuson valued clientele. The changing nature of the queue thus revealsmuch about the relationship between quotidian routine, politics,and the market in the post-war era. ^* J.Moran{at}livjm.ac.uk     

Banquo's Ghost: Lord Salisbury, Harold Macmillan, and the High Politics of Decolonization, 1957-1963

This article reconstructs the bitter political argument betweenLord Salisbury and Harold Macmillan over decolonization. Inorder to do so it makes extensive use of their private papers.It describes their view of each other and their political manoeuvres.The article argues that Macmillan and Salisbury themselves wereso obsessed by their conflict that it dominated much of theprime minister's thinking on the empire throughout his premiership.The obsessive nature of the struggle was a result of genuineideological differences but took on its particular characterbecause the two principals had known each since their schooldays.The account contends that a political contest between intimatescan best be understood through the lens of ‘intimate history’.     

革命与生意——以辛亥革命时期的上海为例

From 1911 to 1913, in big streets and small lanes, in famous parks and thriving stores, and in tea houses and grand restaurants located in such cities as Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing and Wuchang, numerous business opportunities were born out of the Revolution of 1911. By using the political giants and military leaders around Shanghai, business firms skillfully dealt with the difficulties of the continually changing political situation and managed to keep their businesses afloat, succeeding in their response to the consumption demands of the public. It can be argued that the Revolution of 1911 played a distinct role in the development of businesses in Shanghai during that time. __________ Translated by Zhong Chen from Shilin 史林 (Historical Review), 2008, (3): 137–150     

Whose Opinion?: Changing Attitudes Towards Opinion Polling in British politics, 1937-1964

This article examines the early history of opinion polling inBritish politics, focusing on the initial antagonism to pollingmethods within the political and media elite in the 1930s, andthe gradual integration of polling into the political systemafter World War II. It rejects the technological determinismof scholars who assume that the adoption of opinion pollingfollowed naturally on the creation of such methodology; andinstead focuses on the time-lag between the advent of pollingand its integration into political life. While not an explicitlycomparative study, a major question which this study considersis why were British politicians and publishers so much slowerto embrace opinion research than their American counterparts?In answering this question, this article examines various structuralfeatures of the British political system, cultural assumptionsabout parliamentary politics, and specific historical aspectsof the advent of opinion polling in Britain which affected thereception of the new methodology. While this article concludesthat structural factors—namely the return of a competitivetwo-party system after the Second World War—ultimatelyled the political parties to experiment with opinion polling,this article argues that continued ambivalence about the useof poll data can only be understood through a considerationof the cultural and historical circumstances surrounding theintroduction of polling.     

For the Community: Scottish Historical Archaeology and the Politics of Land Reform

In Scotland, land reform is, historically and still today, a defining political issue and a subject of debate. Central to this debate are different ideological understandings of the rural past. In this paper, I discuss the nature of the Scottish land question and explore several of the main—sometimes complementary, sometimes conflicting—ideologies concerning land, as put forward or supported by different constituencies: politicians; landowners; crofters; Scots more generally; and members of the Scottish diaspora. I consider the histories to which these ideologies relate and seek to locate the historical archaeology of rural Scotland in its political and social contexts.     

The Six Fevrier 1934 and the 'Survival' of the French Republic

The Paris riots of the six février 1934 are rememberedchiefly as the event that provided the initial spark and theeventual rationale for the anti-fascist Popular Front. However,most French historians have tended to downplay the importanceof the riots themselves, arguing that the Republic was not underserious threat, and that the Left at the time greatly exaggeratedthe danger. Indeed, the fact that the regime ‘survived’these events has often been cited as proof of its resilience,of France’s deep-rooted ‘democratic political culture’,and its inbuilt ‘immunity’ to fascism. This historiographicalreview argues that the standard interpretation of the six févrieris deeply flawed, especially in its tendency to deduce the intentionsof the actors from the outcome of the events. The six févrierconstituted a serious challenge to the regime, and created adangerously fluid situation in which a variety of ‘outcomes’became possible. It should be analysed not as a discrete andtemporally circumscribed event but as a key moment in an ongoingprocess of political radicalization on the French Right.     

Empire, Internationalism, and the Campaign against the Traffic in Women and Children in the 1920s

This article assesses the inter-war campaign against traffickingin women and children, with a particular focus on the leadingrole played by British and British-dominated voluntary associations.This humanitarian campaign was conducted by social relief organizationssuch as the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene (AMSH)and the International Bureau for the Suppression of the Trafficin Women and Children (IBSTWC). While organized opposition totrafficking in persons was not new, these groups consciously‘internationalized’ their advocacy and lobbyingefforts in the 1920s and 1930s. Although their work againsttrafficking in the Straits Settlements, or the prostitutionrings operating in the Mediterranean, was driven in part bythe desire to protect Britain's national prestige, their moralimpetus and their cooperation with non-British bodies reflectedwider international concerns. The article also explores theuse of public diplomacy as a new political tool, with a particularfocus on the public-private cooperation evident in the Leagueof Nations' work to combat the trade. Finally, the article advancessome conclusions as to why British women's political organizationsin particular were some of the earliest ‘internationalists’,how successful internationalists were in combating transnationalsocial problems, and to what extent inter-war internationalistsestablished a precedent for the subsequent growth of internationalsocial relief organizations.     

Metallurgy in Ancient Eastern Asia: Retrospect and Prospects

Metallurgy has been taken as essential to the development of Chinese civilization. Archaeological study has been particularistic and evolutionary, tied to traditional Chinese historiography, and modern Marxist models of social development. Modern studies suggest that metallurgy emerged independently in a ‘core’ area and then spread to ‘peripheral’ areas by way of political expansion and cultural diffusion over many millennia, and that metallurgy was also homegrown. New excavations suggest: multiple early centers of production; that the Chinese case belongs to a regional context; that native sources of ores were significant; that metals were used in several pre-state level societies.     

民国时期乡村建设运动的农村改造模式

The campaign of rural reconstruction during the republic period was a comprehensive exploration of the changes in the traditional countryside. It establishes that the transformation of the countryside is a key issue in China’s modernization and attempts to find an effective way to connect the two. In political transformation, it promoted the system of democratic autonomy; in the transformation of agricultural economy, it advocated a joint-stock system with enterprise and market features; in the transformation of farmers’ quality, it tried to equip the farmers with basic modern cultural and technological knowledge. The characters above show a pattern of relatively systematic reconstruction of the countryside with modern significances. Translated by Li Dan from Jindaishi Yanjiu 近代史研究 (Modern Chinese History Studies), 2006, (4): 95–110     

The Annaberg as a German--Polish Lieu de Memoire

This essay analyses a fiercely contested transnational lieude mémoire in twentieth-century Polish—German history:the Annaberg. Historiography has thus far largely neglectedthe role played by this ‘holy mountain’ of UpperSilesia, a symbol that has stood at the heart of a number ofcompeting identity-forging narratives. The competition overthe Annaberg as a site for multiple collective memories occurredon three distinct but often overlapping levels: first betweennation-states, secondly between ideological camps, and thirdlybetween national- and local-level actors. Drawing on a substantialbody of primary sources, this article contributes both to thescholarly investigation of a political myth that cast a longshadow over German—Polish relations and to the growingacademic interest in transnational ‘realms of memory’.     

Revisionism Reconsidered: 'Property-owning Democracy' and Egalitarian Strategy in Post-War Britain

Revisionist socialists of the 1950s and 1960s are typicallydepicted as advocates of the ‘Keynesian welfare state’route to economic equality. This article argues that this isan oversimplification: while the revisionists supported thewelfare state, they also aimed to promote equality by redistributingprivate property and expanding social ownership, endorsing anegalitarian version of a ‘property-owning democracy’.The article first discusses the political ideals and calculationsthat motivated the revisionists’ interest in this modelof egalitarian strategy and then examines in turn the threemutually reinforcing strands of policy that this goal generated:greater progressive taxation of wealth; measures to diffuseprivate property ownership and access to marketable skills;and the expansion of novel forms of social ownership.     

Internal Decolonization? British Politics since Thatcher as Post-colonial Trauma

In recent years a growing number of commentators, especiallyones associated with the idea of a ‘new imperial history’,have argued that British politics and culture remained moreheavily shaped by colonialism and decolonization than had previouslyconventionally been thought. This paper pursues that line ofthought in relation to political debates during and since the1980s, especially those concerning devolution, constitutionalreform, and race relations. It then, however, highlights somemajor problems with and limitations of this kind of argument,suggesting that the emerging historiography of Britain's ‘internaldecolonization’ remains at present empirically weak, conceptuallycloudy, and often unhelpfully polarized.