Currents,visions and voyages: historical geographies of the sea

This paper offers a prospectus for a version of historical geography that puts the seas and oceans at the centre of its concerns. This is pursued in three ways. First, via a discussion of the epistemological and historiographic perspectives that might be taken on geographies of the sea, which argues that the view from the ocean can develop geographies of spaces beyond the local and the national, and can attend to the relationships between the human and natural worlds. Second, through a consideration of the imaginative, aesthetic and sensuous geographies of the sea that contends that maritime worlds open up new experiential dimensions and new forms of representation. Finally, in a survey of the material and social worlds of the oceans that suggests that new life can thereby be breathed into current concerns with global political economy, material geographies, the relationship between knowledge and located practice, and the intersections of social and spatial difference. The paper also provides an introduction to a special issue on the historical geography of the sea.     

On the origin of the tree Spondias mombin in Africa

This paper examines evidence for the origin of the tree Spondias mombin in Africa, where it is generally described as introduced from the Neotropics. Based on biogeographical, ecological, and historical evidence, this paper argues that the tree reached Africa via natural, long-distance dispersal, and should be considered an African native plant. The idea that it is introduced appeared in 1868, when it was a scientifically justifiable conclusion reflecting the limitations of nineteenth-century biogeographical knowledge. By the early twentieth century, representing Spondias mombin as a human introduction in Africa was no longer scientifically justifiable because of advances in knowledge of the African flora and plant dispersal ecology. Nonetheless, most authors continued to represent the tree as introduced, in part because such representation was consonant with dominant images of the African environment: (a) that the continent had suffered extensive deforestation in the recent past, and (b) that Africa's flora was depauperate in fruit trees prior to the coming of Europeans. Recent authors continue to describe Spondias mombin as introduced because they have not sufficiently considered the historic contexts of primary and secondary sources on Neotropical plant introductions in Africa. This paper concludes that the human role in creating the African portion of the trans-Atlantic tropical flora has been overemphasized. Natural plant dispersal across the Atlantic may be more frequent than generally accepted.     

Shaping Public Perception: Polish Illustrated Press and the Image of Polish Naturalists Working in Latin America, 1844–1885

This article will investigate the ways in which Polish illustrated press contributed to communicating and reporting the work of Polish émigré naturalists working in Latin America to the Polish general public living in the Prussian, Russian and Austrian partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth 1844–1885. It examines the ways in which illustrations were used to shape the public's opinion about the significance of these migrants’ scientific achievements. The Polish illustrated press, its authors and editors were instrumental in shaping the public's perceptions of the reach of Polish scientists, and exploring their impact on broader scientific debates, thereby situating Polish people and their work in a global context. The didactic and opinion-making role of the illustrated press was highly influential among Polish audiences during this period, at a time when the survival of Polish identity, culture, language, and education was uncertain. Illustrated weeklies were one of the vectors through which high science was made accessible to the Polish public. A study of pictures in Polish illustrated press will help to explain how they contributed towards shaping the images in the public eye of naturalists’ scientific work, and discourses about science and its actors more broadly.     

Prometheus Unbound: Southern Caucasia in Prehistory

This paper examines the intellectual traditions and recent advances in the archaeology of the Bronze and Iron Ages of the South Caucasus. The first goal of the paper is to provide an account of the scholarly traditions that have oriented research in the region since the mid-nineteenth century. This discussion provides a detailed case study of an archaeological tradition that arose within the context of Russian and Soviet research—traditions still poorly understood within Western archaeology. Yet archaeology in the South Caucasus was strongly influenced by international research in neighboring southwest Asia, and thus the region’s intellectual currents often diverged from the debates and priorities that predominated in Moscow. The second goal of this paper is to outline the primary issues that orient contemporary work in the region from the Neolithic through the Urartian period. My interest here is both didactic and prognostic. While I am concerned to fairly represent the primary foci of contemporary regional scholarship, I also make an argument for a deeper investigation of the constitution of social life. Such studies are critical to the advancement of archaeology in the South Caucasus over the coming decade.     

Friedrich Ratzel and the nature of (political) geography

It is impossible to understand Ratzel's Politische Geographie without placing the figure of its author in the perspective of the critical bourgeois geography of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. From this point of view, Ratzel is the last representative of this bourgeois movement born in the first part of the eighteenth century in Germany with the name of “pure geography” or “natural geography”, and developed in the following century thanks to the great works of Karl Ritter and Alexander von Humboldt. The purpose of bourgeois critical geography was to create a geographical discourse (a reasoning) able to transcend the identification between geographic knowledge and cartographic representation that was maintained by the Staatsgeographen—that is by the state geographers who defended the feudal aristocratic regime. But it is precisely this identification that German bourgeois geographers appropriated in the second half of the nineteenth century, after the bourgeoisie came into power through a compromise with its ancient political opponent. Only Ratzel, direct heir of the Erdkunde tradition of Ritter and von Humboldt, was an exception by opposing the new bourgeois state geography with his own state-based geography.     

史部类目源流考略

中国古代史学非常发达,历史文献极为丰富。本文对古代官私书目中较为常见的史部类目,考析其渊源,辨正其流变。     

陈垣晚年史学及学术思想的升华

陈垣先生晚年目睹国家和民族的新兴 ,学术思想不断升华 ,进一步明确了学术为人民、为社会服务的方向 ,他刻苦学习辩证唯物论和历史唯物论 ,逐步形成了新的世界观和唯物史观。他晚年把渊博的学识奉献给国家和人民 ,将大量精力投入新中国学术文化事业的规划和建设中 ,发挥了重要的顾问和指导作用 ,这是他晚年学术成就不可忽视的重要方面。陈先生晚年依然在史学耕耘不息 ,撰写了 40多篇学术论文 ,主持了大型的古籍整理项目。先生晚年的历史考证周匝缜密 ,益臻佳境 ,善于由小见大 ,求得历史真相和通识     

现代馆的时代含义

艺术的力量不容忽视,南京博物院艺术陈列馆的现代馆需要鲜明的个性,这个个性要具有时代特色浓厚的展示内容来填充,从而达到推动社会文明进程及城市发展的目的,这是本文努力强调的。     

正统性、地方化与文化的创制——潮州民间神信仰的象征与历史意义

从秦朝开始,潮州地区就与整个岭南地区一起,归属中原王朝的政治“版图”。但是,王朝教化与地域社会之间的契合,却经历了长期复杂的互动过程。在这一过程中,宋元之际和明末清初的变化尤其具有重要的意义。三山国王和双忠公是在潮州乡村庙宇中最经常见到的两个神祗。这两个神明信仰的形成及其象征意义的转换,与潮州地区数百年来王朝教化与地域社会复杂互动的契合过程有着密切的关系。     

由儒学神化看《五经》特点

儒学神化是中国思想史上一个独特的历史政治现象，它根源于先汉《五经》，又创造了不同于先汉《五经》的新儒学体系。它依据自身神化的理论需求和《五经》的特点，在神化的过程中，直接吸收了《五经》之一的《春秋》理论，又委婉地排斥了其它四经，完成了儒学在西汉的神化。从儒学神化的发展变化过程来考察儒学《五经》，既能全面考察《五经》的特点，又能全面认清儒学神化与《五经》的关系。