‘Iustitiam non includo’: Carl Schmitt, Hugo Grotius and the Ius Publicum Europaeum

Through a discussion of Hugo Grotius’ conception of just war, this essay shows that within his critique of liberalism, Schmitt clashed with the very intellectual tradition he claimed to represent. Both historically and philosophically Schmitt's concept of the Ius Publicum Europaeum was a mirage. Indeed, his concept of the political was a rejection of the moral and civil philosophy that sees politics as the world of active citizens and commonwealths arguing with each other about fundamental questions of justice and equity.     

Taxonomic characterisation of fresh Dipterocarpaceae resins by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS): providing clues for identification of unknown archaeological resins

Plant and particularly non-wood forest products have played an important role in the evolution of human cultures all over the world, as source of food but also of raw substances fulfilling material, spiritual, and medicinal requirements. Plant exudates and particularly dammar resins (Dipterocarpaceae family) were widely used in the past in Asia notably as waterproofing and caulking materials. This study focuses on the GC–MS chemical characterisation of freshly collected dammars and establishes new molecular parameters enabling discrimination between dammars and other types of plant resin, whatever their botanical origin. Such analyses provide clues for a precise identification (taxonomy, occurrence of other material in addition to the resin, alteration state) of unknown resinous material discovered in archaeological contexts. The value of our approach is illustrated by the taxonomic characterisation of two samples collected in jars from the Brunei wreck and a Chinese junk lost more than 40 km off the Sultanate of Brunei during the end of the fifteenth century or the early beginning of the sixteenth century.     

Iskandar's Bibulous Business: Wine,Drunkenness and the Calls to the Sāqī in Nizāmī Ganjavī's Sharaf-nāma

The twelfth-century poet Nizāmī Ganjavī has produced his version of the adventures of Alexander as a unique composition mingling known Persian historiography and Qur'anic legends with unusual non-Islamic, especially Greek, elements in order to create his Iskandar-nāma (containing two parts, the Sharaf-nāma and the Iqbāl-nāma) as a synthesis of eastern and western cultures. A first point is the examination of the reasons behind the importance given to wine and drunkenness within the narrative. The poet has stressed this further by heading each chapter with a call to the sāqī. The essay examines the appositeness of the invocations with the episodes in the narrative, it analyses examples of wine imagery (containing references to medicine, to the mirror and to religion) and questions the relation between authorial persona, narrator and characters, examining in particular the famous teetotaler claim in one of the introductory chapters of the first part of the Iskandar-nāma.     

Water wizards: reshaping wet nature and society

The article investigates how humans ‘networked’ wet nature and how this affected the shaping of Dutch society. First, it takes a grand view of Dutch history and describes how wet network building intertwined with the shaping of the Dutch landscape, its economy and its polity. Second, it investigates the specific challenges of wet network building—integrating potentially conflicting uses of water into one design—for the case of the national fresh water supply network (1940–1971). Finally, it discusses ecological damage, emerging new risks and cultural patterns related to wet network building.     

Networking Europe

The paper explores processes of transnational network building in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. The first section reviews several relevant literatures. It concludes that historiographies of Europe often recognize the pivotal importance of transnational network building, but fail to analyse network developments as well as their entanglement with wider historical processes. Specialized infrastructure studies exist in economic and technological history, but have a distinct (sub)national focus. The networking of Europe has not been investigated. The second section presents a preliminary narrative of transnational network building in the 19th and 20th century. It highlights the relationship between network building and political events in different eras, as well as different types of ambiguities or tensions. The conclusion suggests a number of topics for further research.     

Science,industry and the colonial state: a shift from a German- to a Dutch-controlled cinchona and quinine cartel (1880–1920)

This study shows how control over delicately balanced supply chains from raw material to the final product shifted from one national industry to another. By 1920, Dutch cinchona producers and quinine manufacturers dominated the international cartel that controlled the worldwide production and distribution of quinine (an antimalarial), quinine sulphate (a semi-finished product) and cinchona (the raw material). Twenty years earlier, however, this cartel had been controlled by the German pharmaceutical industry. How can we understand the shift of power in the world’s first pharmaceutical cartel? We argue that the internal shift of power was largely the result of the following three factors: a global industrial laboratory revolution; the vertical integration of a transoceanic network of cinchona producers, quinine manufacturers, (colonial) scientists and state officials across the Dutch Empire; and Germany’s economic isolation during the First World War.     

Lamentations 3,1-6: An anti-psalm 23

This essay addresses two different Biblical bulks of text. On the one hand, the essay approaches Psalm 23. On the other hand, however, does the essay equally approach Genesis 4 that documents the chronicles of Cain, Abel, Lemech and the descendents of Adam and Eve after the slay of Abel by Cain. The rationale for addressing simultaneously these two bodies of Biblical text that seem to be divorced from each other, is the following. In the case of both texts, the first encounter with them appears to surrender the impression that two textual components had been glued to each other while lacking any common denominator whatsoever. Nevertheless, in both cases an analytical scrutiny does unveil a cluster of links between the two texts that are seemingly devoid of any reciprocal bond. In the case of Psalm 23, the common denominator between the Psalm's two seemingly detached parts does consist on a tight, detailed analogy between the metaphors utilized to portray the Lord and His pious believer. In the case of Genesis 4, however, the unearthed link between the text's ensemble of components is found to be among the characters that perform along two leading parameters, death and life. Hence in both cases what was initially considered a text that is devoid of a plausible connection between its parts, is found out as a text that its parts are united in the most cogent and equally tight fashion.