船桥会与清代陕南地方社会

船桥会是清初至民国末年汉江流域普遍存在的民间组织,它依托渡口而存在,并募集资金以建桥造船,利涉汉江.清代陕南船桥会内部实行有章可循的科层制管理,权责明晰.绅粮公议基础上推举的首士和会首在任期内全权负责船桥会事务,会首掌管会产,冬则搭桥,夏则造船,并负责拣选和雇佣水夫、巡河.水夫负责摆渡,巡河负责监督.南郑县案例表明,水...     

顾颉刚先生在西北

“七七事变”后,顾颉刚接受管理中英庚子赔款董事会的委托,考察设计西北教育。考察设计工作告一段落后,顾颉刚深入考察了河、湟、洮、岷地区的民族社会,并在发展西北民族教育、民族经济、民族关系等方面提出了独到的见解和有益的建议。     

浙路风潮再反思——光复会计划失败的原因

光复会计划在浙路风潮中之所以失败,一是由于绅商的两重性及清政府各级官员的自救之策弱化了朝野冲突;二是光复会本身的“异端性“及革命处于低潮、对下层民众缺乏深入细致的宣传组织工作、与立宪派较量的力度不够;三是中下层民众斗争的焦点集中在“认购路股“的方式上,及农民的相对漠然态度、宁波帮工人的特殊性、股金来源涉及面不广等因素使其计划缺乏广泛而彻底的群众基础.     

刘少奇毛泽东新民主主义社会构思之比较

建国前后,刘少奇与毛泽东在新民主主义社会发展前途、党的领导地位、中心任务、国营经济的领导成份等重大治国方略上有一致的认识,这是他们从同样的政治理念思考重大问题必然得出的结论;在关于新民主主义社会发展战略实施步骤、对城乡私人经济的具体态度上有不同的看法,这是他们各自探索的客观反映。     

A civilized nation: Japan and the Red Cross 1877–1900

Abstract

The history of both the Red Cross and the Japanese Red Cross is based on a teleological and eurocentric narrative which is strongly shaped by national histories and focused on persons. To assume 1863 as the founding date of the Red Cross is highly debatable, considering that most national relief organisations were renamed ‘Red Cross Societies’ only in the 1880s. In this Japan is no exception, since first a Haku-Ai-Sha (Philanthropic Society) was founded in 1877 and then turned into the Japanese Red Cross Society in 1887. Japanese actors must be regarded as intrinsically motivated and active participants in the Red Cross movement who saw an ideal and a model in the Euro-American ‘way of civilisation’ and humanity. It has taken about 30 years to turn the Haku-Ai-Sha in Japan into a humanitarian society which is accepted both at home and abroad and, with its 728,507 members in 1900, which constituted the largest Red Cross Society in the world.     

Jesuit thalassology reconsidered: the Mediterranean and the geopolitics of Jesuit missionary aims in seventeenth-century Ethiopia

During the second half of the sixteenth century, the Society of Jesus relied heavily on Portuguese trade routes in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in order to reach Ethiopia. However, geopolitical shifts, particularly the rise of Ottoman sea power in the Indian Ocean and the Spanish conquest of Portugal in 1580, ended this route’s viability for the Jesuits. In order to sustain Jesuit connections with Ethiopia, Father General Mutio Vitelleschi decided in 1627 to abandon the Portuguese and send four Jesuits with French passports through Ottoman territory and up the Nile, whence they would travel overland into Ethiopia. After arriving in Egypt, however, the Jesuits were arrested, interrogated and expelled by the Ottoman governor, who suspected that they were Habsburg spies. The course of this failed Jesuit effort to reach Ethiopia has three important implications for our understanding of the Mediterranean and its relationship with other sea spaces in terms of early modern empire building and Catholic evangelization. First, the decision to abandon the Portuguese in favour of the French illuminates how the Mediterranean remained at the fore of the Society of Jesus’s missionary efforts. Second, French willingness to protect the Jesuits demonstrates that Louis XIII of France saw the Mediterranean as an important theatre for achieving his political, religious and economic goals. Third, the Ottoman decision to arrest and expel the Jesuits due to fears that they were in Egypt to assist in a Coptic rebellion and concomitant Hapsburg invasion demonstrates both Ottoman anxiety concerning the rise of European religio-imperial ambitions and the Ottomans’ ability to control foreigners travelling through their lands. In sum, these developments illuminate a larger thalassological picture of the Mediterranean, which, like other sea spaces, obtained as an important contact zone where early modern powers competed to build empires and save souls.     

Nixon's Coup: Establishing the NATO Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society, 1969–70

In early 1969 the new US President, Richard Nixon, suggested the expansion of allied political consultation, as well as the setting up of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) committee which would deal with environmental problems. The Americans stressed that their proposal did not involve merely the technical aspects of environmental protection, but also the need for modern governance to evolve in order to safeguard the ‘quality of life’, a prime aspect affecting the legitimisation of the political and social systems. The US proposal was not received enthusiastically by the allies, who had little desire for radical changes, and did not regard this as a proper subject for the alliance; some even feared that a NATO role in environmental questions might mask a US disengagement from European security, especially during an era of détente. However, after making sure that the new committee would be fully under the control of the Council (in accordance with NATO's inter-governmental character), the allies finally agreed to its creation. The NATO discussions on the Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society (CCMS) point to the emergence of a new, more complex international agenda, and raise interesting questions regarding transatlantic relations during an era of wider transitions.     

The archaeology of industry; people and places

The development of industrial archaeology over the last 50 years can be traced through articles published in PMA. The early stages of recording the standing remains of industrial activity were augmented by detailed studies of groups of structures which revealed the organization of the manufacturing process. From the late 1980s, developer-funded excavations became important following extensive remediation work on brownfield sites. Greater attention was paid to the social context of past industrial activity including workers’ housing and institutional buildings, and this has continued with studies of oral history. New challenges considered include studies of modern technologies, de-industrialization and the digital revolution.     

Europe and the American mind∗†

Wells's The New Machiavelli (1911) offers an excellent case study of the use of anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism as both a philosophical and a rhetorical strategy. In Remington, Wells creates a protagonist who follows Machiavellian rules of behaviour and denounces those who do likewise. The novel is structured to show Remington's progress from an idealist refutation of Machiavellism, through a recognition of its necessity, to the formulation of a private and political method for the necessary pursuit of Machiavellian principles under the disguise of anti-Machiavellism, including trenchant criticisms of Fabians as anti-Machiavellian Machiavellians. These stages, culminating in complete personal and public failure, are reflected in Remington's party allegiances, and broadened by Wells into an account of British party ideologies around the turn of the twentieth century. Wells's rhetorical design for mapping and assessing anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism is paralleled by an exploration of that technique in himself, attested by the predominance of autobiographical elements in The New Machiavelli, and by similarities between Remington's and Wells's own deception of others and themselves. Far from incidental, anti-Machiavellian Machiavellism is the motif that unites the shifting party allegiances, political conceits and moral hypocrisies, and private and public failures of Wells, Remington, and of the period of British politics that they intend to encapsulate.