Gasparo Contarini’s Relazione of November 1525 to the Venetian Senate on the divergent dynamics of the Spanish and Portuguese world empires

This contribution seeks to present Gasparo Contarini’s diplomatic report (Relazione), made following three years in Venetian service in Spain between 1522–1525, to unfamiliar readers, as well as to elucidate its contents. It was a time when ground-breaking reports of the first global circumnavigation by Magellan/Elcano and conquests in the New World undertaken by Hernán Cortés were filtering back to the Spanish ruler, Charles V. Projects for the colonization of Brazil in neighbouring Portugal were afoot, as were attempts by other parties to reach the contested Spiceries by new routes. International juries were constituted to decide upon the division of the world’s spaces, culminating in the Treaty of Saragossa, and controversial maps were drawn up both to make sense of potentially new continents like the Americas, and to plead different cases at the upcoming tribunals. It is asked why such a polarized picture of successful Spanish and unsuccessful Portuguese imperial fortunes is provided by Contarini, at a time of great rivalry between Spain and Portugal, and it is suggested that Contarini – who did not personally travel to Portugal – may simply be following a rhetorical precedent fashioned by previous diplomats like Ca’Masser, Vincenzo Quirini and Pietro Pasqualigo. Historical, personal and documentary context (Contarini’s 400 dispacci, for example) is provided, and comparisons drawn to the letters and reports of other contemporary observers, like the Polish diplomat Jan Dantyszek at the Spanish court, as well as contemporary travellers and businessmen, like Jörg Pock in Lisbon.     

Berlin: The Metropolis as a Production Space

Metropolitan regions can be regarded as economic areas comprising various sub-economies with different forms of economic and spatial organization. The purpose of this article is to undertake a critical appraisal of the vision of Berlin as a 'service metropolis' through empirical observation of sectoral trends and locational patterns in the city, and to establish that Berlin's urban area is a major production space with a complex fabric of specialized production districts. This spatial organization will be examined in terms of the level of agglomeration of various sub-economies with special reference to the formation of local enterprise clusters in the Berlin economic area. Berlin's specialization profile and the employment trend in the city compared with other metropolitan cities in Germany make it clear that the metropolis of Berlin is under threat as a production space, and this threat partly stems from the way in which the real estate business has developed in the Berlin area.     

Civility,Male Friendship,and Masonic Sociability in Nineteenth‐Century Germany

Largely neglected by historians who assume that its heyday passed in Europe with the demise of the Old Regime, Freemasonry in fact became a mass phenomenon among German (and French as well as American) middle‐class men in the nineteenth century. Masonic secrecy made possible a form of sociability which allowed men to experience intimate relations with each other. Within the lodge, men could experience the emotional drama of the rituals while, both in public and in the family, men increasingly sought to comply with the ideal of a man ruled by reason. Masonic rituals entailed the implicit message that the most important presupposition for civility, moral improvement and a ‘brotherhood of all men’ was male friendship.     

Strengthening the Polycentric Urban System in Europe: Conclusions from the ESDP

The first European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) document agreed in May 1999 calls for closer cooperation at the EU level in response to the challenges posed by globalization and the increasingly transnational impact of spatial development in Europe. The ESDP maps out a common approach to spatial development in the EU member states and supports an integrated perspective for European spatial development which goes beyond specialist viewpoints. This article focuses on the relationship between key statements on the European urban system contained in the ESDP and the 'real' structures and changes within this urban system. It also examines possible conclusions from the ESDP for urban policy in Europe in the light of the activities already launched to translate the ESDP into practice in the urban dimension of European spatial development.     

Negotiating Post‐Socialist Property and State: Struggles over Forests in Albania and Romania

Since the demise of socialism, countries of Central and Eastern Europe have experienced intense negotiations over access and property. This article uses four case studies on struggles over forest in Albania and Romania to examine how these negotiations intersect with processes constituting authority. The cases demonstrate significant variations in the configurations of property and authority regarding forest, but they also reflect the influence of national politics in the two countries. In Albania, custom not only competes with the state as an institution sanctioning rights to forest but actually emerges as an alternative politico‐legal institution contesting state authority more broadly. In Romania, local struggles over forests play out the contestations between personalized and law‐based exercises of state authority at the national level. These insights suggest that due to their radical nature and simultaneous occurrence, negotiations over property and authority have challenged the position of post‐socialist states as primary politico‐legal institutions and have generated different exercises of state authority.     

Capacity Development as the Model for Development Aid Organizations

Sociological studies of organizational fashions tend to focus on commercial firms. This article looks at the Capacity Development concept that is globally applied as a model in governmentally supported development assistance organizations. The organizations themselves adopt the concept, asserting that an increase in ‘capacities’ in developing countries will contribute to a higher success rate for projects. This article argues that a primary function of concepts such as Capacity Development is to meet the legitimacy requirements of development assistance organizations. The more the effectiveness of these organizations is criticized or challenged, the more they feel the need to defend themselves by developing new — and hopefully more effective — concepts.     

Informal (In)security in Urban Afghanistan

Poverty and insecurity in Afghan cities are intricately intertwined with conditions of “informality.” The term and the realities it describes refer to living situations in which basic needs and activities such as work, housing, and social security are unprotected by laws and standards. Immersion into such a convolution of informality determines the life of a majority among urban populations in Afghanistan and conveys a deep sense of insecurity for the urban poor. The paper looks at how rapid and unprecedented urban growth in Afghanistan goes along with rising levels of livelihood insecurity and explores how the urban poor cope with livelihood risks through a range of informal arrangements. Conceptually, the notion of “informal security regimes” helps capture informality as a coping strategy and how it relates to urban poverty in Afghanistan. Informed by extensive empirical fieldwork, the paper identifies different elements of the “informal security regime” in urban Afghanistan and explores their specific operations. The paper is mainly focused on the Afghan capital, Kabul, supplemented with evidence from other urban sites in Afghanistan.     

位于尼姆鲁德遗址的亚述那西尔帕二世的卡拉克西北宫殿中的新亚述浅浮雕彩绘．慕尼黑的研究成果

路德维格一世在1825—1848年间任巴伐利亚的国王,1863年他从尼姆鲁德遗址获得了7个浅浮雕艺术品。最近进行的对这些浮雕作品的修复使得其上残留的原始彩绘重新被人们发现,本文讨论了对这些原始彩绘面貌进行重现的可能性及存在的相关问题。