Controlling the Waters of Granducal Florence: A New Look at Stefano Bonsignori's View of the City (1584)

ABSTRACT

A striking feature of Stefano Bonsignori's Nova pulcherrimae civitatis Florentiae topographia accuratissime delineata, printed in 1584, is the pre-eminence of the Arno River and the detailed depiction of a variety of often quite minor water-related structures. This large (nine-sheet) map was dedicated to Francesco I de' Medici, Granduke of Florence. Contemporary initiatives and legislation as well as works of art and literature reveal that water management had been an important aspect of the policies of Francesco's father, Cosimo I, whose achievements had transformed the city's landscape and whose efforts earned the Medici ruler the title of Granduke of Tuscany in 1569. Bonsignori's portrayal of urban structures was created as a celebration of Cosimo's architectural legacy, and the depiction of the Arno, with its embankments and riverside structures, along with some of the city's fountains and wells, acknowledged granducal ambition to control its waters.     

Bridging Cultures: The Forging of the China Consular Mind

ABSTRACT

This article examines the imperial socialisation of young consular officials and how they were prepared for their role as intermediaries between Britain and China. Drawing on private papers and public archives, it uses the career of one such official to analyse the processes which took place when they joined the China Consular Service and how their evolving mentality reflected and further shaped its collective mind. It argues that such officials learned to develop a cultural sensitivity towards China which would be key to their ability to forge the collaborative relationships that underpinned the British presence. Whilst it is generally acknowledged that that presence was marked by an unquestioning belief in the imperial mission, there has been less focus on how that sensitivity enabled Britain to maintain its dominant position in China until the outbreak of the First World War. The article argues that, although that sensitivity was self-serving, and notwithstanding the unequal treaties, it derived from a genuine interest in and sympathy for the country which was instilled into officials from the outset of their careers. However, those elements also helped perpetuate the degradation of China's sovereignty during this period. To understand how this took place and why China continues to characterise the period as ‘the century of humiliation’, we need first to explore how that sensitivity, with its underlying ambiguities and tensions, was forged and sustained as part of the mind-set of the consular service.     

The Nor’-Wester and the Saskatchewan Gold Rush

ABSTRACT

This article explores the phenomenon of how news about the discovery of gold on the North Saskatchewan River in British administrated Rupert's Land was propagated by the press in the early 1860s. It tracks the resonance of gold rush news first in the Nor’-Wester, a newspaper published in the Red River Settlement, and then reveals how this paper's coverage was re-published and transmitted across the Anglophone world. The article shows how news about the Saskatchewan gold rush was highly politicised. In the Red River Settlement, editors of the Nor’-Wester sought to spur on the British parliament to implement responsible government in the colony, issuing dire warnings about the potential repercussions of a mass migration to the region and the need to act precipitously. Likewise, in newspapers across North America, editors republished and endorsed news from the Nor’-Wester about the Saskatchewan gold fields to benefit their own communities. But while editors championed the Saskatchewan gold fields to lure potential gold rushers to the region, no large-scale migration to the Northwest occurred. While news about the Saskatchewan gold fields may have been popular across the Anglophone world, it was not actionable. While news reports conveyed the impression that a gold rush was ongoing on the North Saskatchewan River, the reality on the ground did not match the press coverage.     

Single women and housing choices in urban Japan

Japan has experienced a particularly sharp decline in marriage in recent decades and a subsequent increase in ‘never-marrieds’ and single-person households. Social fragmentation has been associated with prolonged economic instability and neoliberalization that has restructured employment, housing and policy contexts. A particular social concern has been the difficulties facing those who do not follow conventional married life-courses. While marriage has been important to progress up a housing ladder and property asset ownership, singledom constrains housing choices and shapes very different life-chances over the life-course. This is especially true for single women who are disadvantaged in both housing and labour markets. This article examines the ongoing restructuring of housing opportunities that are helping reshape gender differences and experiences, as well as the new housing careers being followed by the growing number of urban single women in Japan. Based on interviews with female singles in metropolitan Tokyo, as well as secondary data from national surveys, the article considers how housing opportunities and choices are being renegotiated in regard to changing expectations of marriage, life-courses and home. We also reflect upon relationships between housing choices, social policy, single life-courses and processes of individualization.     

Scaling heritage. The construction of scales in the submission process of alpinism to UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage list

ABSTRACT

For the last two decades, the polysemous notion of ‘scale’ has drawn an increasing amount of attention among scholars studying heritage policies and practices, often with regard to UNESCO conventions. Significantly, in many of these works, terms such as ‘global’, ‘national’ and ‘local’ are connected to categories of ‘scale’ or ‘level’ that are taken for granted by the scholars who use them to guide their analysis. This paper, in contrast, promotes a different, constructivist understanding of the notion of scale. From our perspective, there is an added value to be found in focusing—without using any preconceived or external conception of scale—on the ways in which stakeholders conceive of and use scale throughout the processes of heritage making. Using the case of alpinism and the creation of its file for submission to the Intangible Cultural Heritage list, we show that the interest of this approach lies in its comprehensive ability to highlight how people define, elaborate and use scale in order to qualify their practices or to achieve specific goals.     

Problematizing silences in intangible heritage: unsettling historical records of women in protests

Abstract

This paper addresses questions of women’s visibility in constructed histories, as well as levels of recognition concerning their participation in politics through historical narratives. In particular, historical narratives representing women in protest in the context of waterfront heritage zones associated with the shipbuilding industry are examined, based on examples of two public art projects: Strong Women of the Clydeside: Protests and Suffragettes from Govan’s Hidden Histories led by the artist t s Beall in the Govan area of Glasgow, Scotland and Shipyard is a Woman by Arteria Association and Metropolitanka in Gdansk, Poland.     

‘What remains? An empty doll-case’: Deconstruction and Imagination in Victorian Narratives of Doll Production

Increasing interest in the Victorians' relationships with the material world has led many critics to turn to periodical publications and, in particular, to process articles and other forms of industrial writing as sources for new insight. This article contributes to this growing body of scholarship by examining narratives of doll production. Because dolls are objects that Victorians celebrated for their imaginative potential and that were often not intended to be treated as ordinary commodities, such narratives can shed light on the intricate relationships between materiality and the imagination. In revealing the process of production, these narratives deconstruct dolls, reducing them to a collection of material parts. By some accounts, these parts are brought to life through a specialized process of manufacture that dehumanizes the workers who make them and robs them of their imaginative agency. While this deconstructive exploration can be seen as an extension of the ‘melancholy and gloom’ that Baudelaire describes as the result of children's destructive compulsion to see the insides of their toys, it could also generate new imaginative possibilities. By inviting readers to behold commodities in a state of transformation, I argue, narratives of doll production demand a more imaginative attitude towards commodities as objects shaped by their material histories.     

壳聚糖/二氧化硅复合仿生膜对 碳酸盐石材的保护作用

为探讨壳聚糖/二氧化硅复合仿生膜对碳酸盐石材的保护作用,采用仿生合成技术,以十六烷基三甲基溴化铵为有机模板,能过壳聚糖调控二氧化硅颗粒的生长,在碳酸盐石材表面仿生合成得到了一层壳聚糖/二氧化硅复合保护膜,对其基本性能进行了检测评价,并利用衰减全反射红外光谱和场发射环境扫描电子显微镜表征了膜的结构形貌。实验结果表明,该膜具有优良的耐酸、耐污性能,提高了膜层的抗冻融性和耐热老化性能,并保留了石材原有的吸水性和透气性。壳聚糖/二氧化硅复合膜改善了单一二氧化硅膜的开裂问题,且该保护膜与石材基体结合紧密、膜层薄,小影响石材外脱,是一种良好的碳酸盐石材保护材料。     

修昔底德选用史料方法刍议

修昔底德的史著以叙述伯罗奔尼撒战争为主要内容,涉及希腊世界主要城邦的政治、军事、经济、外交以及海陆交通等方面丰富多样的史料。修昔底德按照自己处理史料的原则,对于战前史和战争史本身的史料分别采取了不同的处理方法。对于战前史料的选择和考信方法主要采用比较考异法和反溯法;对于当代史料的选用及考信方法主要采取实录法、辨异法、推测法、纠错法、隐微法等五种。修昔底德貌似如实直书的表象背后,隐含着名副其实的“修昔底德陷阱”。     

An Assessment of the Influence of the Inter-Tropical Discontinuity on Inter-Annual Rainfall Characteristics in Nigeria

This study assessed the influence of the Inter-Tropical Discontinuity (ITD) on inter-annual rainfall characteristics in Nigeria between 1970 and 2000. This involved determining the strength and direction of the relationships between the total annual rainfalls in the extreme southern and northern parts of the country and the total annual rainfalls during the period of the Little Dry Season in southwestern Nigeria, and the surface locations of the ITD over Nigeria and some other factors that may impact ITD characteristics (such as the pressure differences between Azores, Libyan and St. Helena anticyclones and the sea surface temperature of the Gulf of Guinea). Results indicate that although the surface location of the ITD significantly accounts for rainfall inter-annual variability in Nigeria, it does so in the northern part of the country only. Pressure differences between the various anticyclones were observed to be another significant factor influencing inter-annual rainfall variability in the north. However, the influence of the sea surface temperature of the Gulf of Guinea on the rainfall characteristics in the northern region is ill-defined. It was also noted that the only factor influencing inter-annual variability in the Little Dry Season rainfall in the southwest and the total annual rainfalls in the south is the sea surface temperature of the Gulf of Guinea. The results obtained indicate that the total annual rainfalls in the north have significant positive relationships with the surface location of the ITD but significant negative relationships with the pressure differences between the Azores, Libyan and St. Helena anticyclones. The Little Dry Season rainfalls and total annual rainfalls in the south have significant positive relationships with the sea surface temperature of the Gulf of Guinea.