Dutch Mercenaries in the Tsar’s Service: The Van Bockhoven Clan

Historians have pointed out that the Dutch played a key role in Europe’s Military Revolution. Neither the Dutch role as the foremost international arms traders of the seventeenth century nor the significance of Dutch officers in seventeenth-century militaries has been very much studied. This essay suggests that the Dutch were rather more influential in Russia’s adoption of some of the key innovations of the Military Revolution than the historiography of late Muscovy has acknowledged. It does this by investigating the importance for Russia’ military modernization of a Dutch officers’ clan, that of the van Bockhovens. They provide a telling case study of the extent of this Dutch influence.

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史学研究贵在有新进展——评《华侨与中国民族民主革命》

史学研究的价值在于有新进展。没有新进展,只是重复劳动,就无价值可言。比如构建新体系,采用新资料,提出新观点;在片断、分散研究的基础上进行整体、系统研究;在简略、粗浅研究基础上进行全面、深入研究等,都可以实现史学研究的新进展。     

The Dichotomous Legacy of the Catholic Church’s Opposition to the Philippine Revolution of 1896

ABSTRACT

This article examines the repositioning of the Catholic Church in the aftermath of the Philippine Revolution of 1896–98, during the transfer of Spanish to American colonial rule. It reviews the consultations between the outgoing Spanish bishops and the Vatican’s Apostolic Delegate, Placido Chapelle, in January 1900, and the subsequent religious settlement promulgated in the Vatican’s Apostolic Constitution for the Philippine Church, Quae mari Sinico, in 1902. The Delegate’s identification with the Spanish bishops and their opposition to Filipino nationalist aspirations and the Filipino secular clergy confirmed the anti-Filipino position of the Church in the American colonial period. Both the Filipino bishops and the American bishops opposed independence and distrusted the nationalist leaders as anti-clerical Masons. This is followed by a discussion of the claimed reconciliation of Church and Filipino political aspirations in the post-Vatican II period in the 1960s, which culminated in the Church’s role in bringing down President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Committed to a theology of social justice, the bishops now aligned the Church with progressive democratic nationalists. In its successful opposition to the Marcos dictatorship in the name of “People’s Power,” the hierarchy claimed that through the “Miracle of EDSA” the Church had identified with and indeed represented the political will of the Filipino people.     

French Revolutionary Transformations of Diplomatic Practice: The Case of Franco–Ottoman Relations, 1792–17971

Abstract

This article focuses on questions of rupture and continuity in European international relations around 1800, taking French revolutionary diplomatic practice in the Ottoman Empire as a case in point. Historians who have studied the conduct of French revolutionary diplomacy tend to emphasize the ruptures in revolutionary diplomatic practice. The analysis of Franco-Ottoman alliance negotiations (1792–1797) does not fully match with this assessment. Although it is certainly true that the Revolution led to great alterations in French diplomatic culture, French diplomats were often far from discarding all diplomatic conventions. The article gives a short overview over the diplomatic agents working for the French embassy and their reactions to the Revolution in France. It then presents the Ottoman reaction to the regime change in France, in particular with regards to the transition from monarchy to republic. The main focus is on the question of innovation and continuity in diplomatic practice and on the self-representation of the new French state.     

Ukraine’s national integration before and after 2014. Shifting ‘East–West’ polarization line and strengthening political community

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the question of Ukraine’s societal polarization along the East-West line and the state of cohesion and endurance of its political community. In both political and academic discourses, Ukraine is often characterized as a country split between Western and Eastern regional and societal parts belonging to some wider geopolitical and cultural entities. Moreover, the recent upheavals in the life of the country – Euromaidan Revolution, illegal annexation of Crimea and Russian-Ukrainian war in Donbas – have actualized the allegations about Ukraine as a feeble state structure on the brink of disintegration and collapse. The findings in this study challenge both of these claims and it is argued that Ukraine is not a deeply divided or failed state. In practice, the East-West political polarization line is not clearly defined, but to the extent that it does surface in the political and electoral contests, this line has been moving from west to east since the early 1990s. The shifting of the polarization line implies that political and cultural identities in Ukraine are not fixed and, at the same time, reflects a strengthening cohesion of Ukraine’s political and cultural space. These findings are confirmed by the improved and ever-increasing convergence of Ukrainian society following the Euromaidan and Russian military aggression.     

The Experiences of a Polish Family from the Eastern Borderlands (1914–1921): The Protassewiczes of Borki

ABSTRACT

This article examines how two generations of a large Polish landed family from the Grodno governorate in the Russian Empire were affected by the political and social upheavals brought about by World War One, the Russian Revolution, the threat of Bolshevism, and the rebirth of a Polish state. The Protassewiczes, like other landed noble families in the region, despite their Polish- Lithuanian identity, enjoyed a privileged social status in tsarist Russia. Marriage and work took many of the family’s members to Wilno (Vilnius) and Siberia, while a younger member studied in Austrian Galicia where he joined Pi?sudski’s organisation. The article describes the evacuation to Taganrog in 1915 of the senior Protassewicz and his subsequent return to Borki in 1918 to face the ensuing Polish-Soviet War. Two members of the family who were engaged in railway building in Siberia met a tragic end. The younger generation participated in Polish military efforts in the east in 1919–21 and adapted successfully to life in restored Poland. Attention is paid to issues of national identity raised by rival Polish and Lithuanian claims to Wilno in the context of the fall of empires and the emergence of new national states.     

评建国到“文革”前的“文化革命”

新中国成立后特别是 1 958年以后 ,曾有过一场声势浩大的“文化革命”运动 ,而且这一运动最终与“文化大革命”联系在一起 ,并成为后者发动的重要突破口。本文力图对“文化革命”的源起、嬗变、内容、形成及最终结果作一客观的分析和评价。