Western Imperialism and Military Reform in Japan and China

This paper compares the initial efforts at military reform in China and Japan in the late nineteenth century. Changes in military organization and training are situated within a global process of military transformation represented by changes in the structure of the Prussian army. The Prussian staff system and planning program were imported into both Japan and China, but with quite different results. The paper contrasts centralization and standardization as typified by the new Japanese army with the decentered approaches in China. The paper argues that although there was substantive change in China, the Qing state was unable to impose a uniform plan for military Westernization. As a result, the new armies were never integrated into a common organization capable of defending the state from external aggression.     

商王朝恐怖主义策略起源与兴衰背景--同中美洲阿兹特克帝国恐怖主义策略比较分析

文章分析了商王朝恐怖主义策略在商代政治领域的兴衰及背景,结合同中美洲阿兹特克帝国恐怖主义策略及其历史背景的对比观察,认识到恐怖主义在国策中作用的兴衰,同有关统治者的统治自信心强弱程度以及周围政治环境对他压力的大小息息相关。当一个原本弱小的文化在短期内拥有和控制广大疆域和众多民族的国家时,恐怖主义策略是常被采用的统治方法之一。     

现代科技再次揭开埃及法老死因之谜 图坦卡门

他死时年仅十几岁,是一个强大家族的最后继承人。这一家族统治埃及及其帝国长达数百年。他被葬入墓中,并最终被人遗忘。自从1922年他的陵寝被人发现后,世人一直在猜测他究竟遭遇了什么,其中最极端的猜测认为他是被人谋杀。在被发现80多年后,他第一次离开墓室,接受了CT扫描(上)。这为人们揣测他的生前诸事提供了新的线索,也为描绘这位少年法老的准确法医学复原图(右)提供了精确的资料。     

Sanctioned Heterodoxy: Local Cults in Two Chinese Catholic Villages, 1900-Present

While ecclesiastic and state authorities in Europe largely abolished medieval cults of saints because of their “heterodoxy,” late-imperial and modern Chinese Catholic communities in Shanxi still promulgate local cults dedicated to women and men who are believed to have performed posthumous miracles or who represent heroic virtue. Although constrained beneath the scrutiny of imperial, ecclesial, and modern political ideas of “orthodoxy” and “heterodoxy,” two Shanxi Catholic villages, Dongergou and Liangquandao (Liuhecun), have managed to preserve and promote Sister Maria Assunta Pallotta and Father Wang Shiwei as contemporary versions of traditional local cults. One of the manifest characteristics of these two Chinese Catholic local cults is how they have been transformed by traditional Daoist cults and have successfully survived in a liminal space between “orthodox” and “heterodox.” Relying on archival materials from the former Taiyuan Catholic Diocese Archive, records held in Roman archives, and oral testimonies, intricate patterns of accommodation and resistance to political and church authorities can be discerned as means for these remote Catholic villages to construct identity and cultivate social cohesion.     

Introduction： Interfaces in Qing Frontier History

Inspired by the vibrant state of the last several decades of scholarship concerning the Qing frontier, the three authors of this introduction organized the “International Workshop on Defining the Jecen： The Evolution of the Qing Frontier, 1644-1918,” which took place on May 25-26, 2012, at the sponsoring institutions-Hong Kong Baptist University and the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong. The primary objective of the workshop was to foster dialogue among colleagues from several Asian and North American institutions who currently are researching the Qing frontier. All participants were encouraged to contribute insights into long-standing questions based on the methodologies derived from their own scholarly backgrounds. Apart from aiming to break down unnecessary barriers of language, geography, and theoretical orientation, the conference also promoted two approaches to the topic that will simultaneously further the progress of contemporary pioneers and open fresh paths for future innovation.     

The Wire: Progress,Paradox, and Disaster in the Strategic Networking of China, 1881–1901

This study of the introduction of telegraphy to China in the late-nineteenth century tells three interrelated stories: China’s pursuit of telegraphic sovereignty with its strategic networking of the empire in the period 1881–99; the functioning of China’s hybrid express courier-telegraphic communications infrastructure; and the international communications crisis during the Boxer Uprising and the “Siege of the Legations” in 1900. The material reality of two inter-connected networks—the privately owned Imperial Telegraph Administration network and the government-run telegraph network—allowed Qing-era Beijing and its provincial governors to communicate with much greater speed. The materiality of these networks—how this new communications technology affected the practical realities of government communications, including the ease of lateral communications between provincial governors—is explored in the context of the communications crisis of 1900. In May and June of 1900 all telegraph lines to Beijing, and throughout much of North China, were cut or otherwise destroyed. While these blinded Western governments are no longer able to exchange telegrams with their Beijing-based envoys, the Qing express courier system continued to operate. Moreover, both the court and provincial officials quickly improvised ad hoc telegraphic communication protocols through the use of “transfer telegrams” (zhuandian) that relied on mounted express couriers between Beijing and those North China telegraph stations with working network connections. This assessment of real-time secret imperial communications between the Qing court and the provinces is based on the documentary register Suishou dengji (Records of [documents] at hand) maintained by communications managers in the Grand Council. China lost its telegraphic sovereignty in the capital region when Allied troops occupied the Beijing-Tianjin line of communications in the summer and fall of 1900. Moreover, Western dreams of laying, landing, and controlling submarine cables on the China coast were finally realized in North China by the end of 1900. The British, therefore, were able to add a critical section to their planned global network of secure telegraphic communications. China’s recognition of the Western and Japanese right of protecting the Beijing-Tianjin line of communications was codified in Article 9 of the Boxer Protocol of September 1901. These losses of China’s telegraphic sovereignty would not be completely reversed until after 1949.     

克拉斯基诺古城遗址瓦当的纹饰

克拉斯基诺古城遗址位于滨海边疆区南部的楚卡诺夫卡河(杨奇河)右岸的河口附近,距离克拉斯基诺镇西南2公里.从1980年开始,在В.И.博尔金的领导下,对遗址进行了发掘工作.这期间收集到的资料证明,在古城址范国内存在着内容丰富的寺庙综合体.