Lords,settlers and shifting frontiers in medieval Catalonia

This article examines how settler conditions on formerly Muslim-ruled land in the area known as New Catalonia (in north-eastern Iberia) changed as the territory was consolidated by Christian landlords and migrants from the north, and increasingly buffered from the border with Islam by conquests against Muslim Valencia over several generations following its conquest in the mid-twelfth century. Most landlords responded to the conditions of the local land market, but there is little evidence that the region as a whole, or even favourable sub-markets, experienced a straightforward trajectory from liberal to heavier tenant obligations. While lords in Old Catalonia are known to have limited peasant mobility from the later twelfth century in order to diminish an exodus to territory with more franchises in New Catalonia, lords in New Catalonia from the early thirteenth century were not able to respond to a similar extent to the territorial offerings in northern Valencia. Their overall ability to erode or reformulate exemptions and other privileges was checked by customary practice, insufficient settlement density and increased regulation which accompanied a rise in royal administrative capacity.     

Drainage on the Grand Prairie: the birth of a hydraulic society on the Midwestern frontier

The Grand Prairie of east central Illinois was notorious for a marshy environment that prevented dense agricultural settlement until late in the nineteenth century. While recent historical–geographical scholarship has focused on innovations in drainage technology, drainage-related laws and institutions, and the ecological impacts of wetland reclamation, it has largely failed to account for the persistence of agrarian structure, and its key component, land tenure, on the Grand Prairie. Late-nineteenth-century reclamation efforts were not quite so transformative as previously believed. The same landed elite that dominated in the pre-drainage era quickly emerged atop a system of public drainage that held the key to the region’s economic future. In this paper, we extend Karl Wittfogel and Donald Worster’s theorizations about ‘hydraulic civilizations’ from the realm of irrigation to that of drainage. While drainage was indeed important in shaping the history of east central Illinois, we argue that a distinctive social order in east central Illinois emerged from, and was shaped by, an older agrarian structure that had developed in response to marshy, unpredictable conditions before drainage began in the late 1800s. The beneficiaries of the old order did not yield power easily, and instead skillfully capitalized on the new opportunities presented by drainage enterprises, to create a ‘hydraulic society’ on the prairie. The new order continued to rely on the exploitation of tenant farmers even as the landscape itself was transformed into the intensely managed and highly productive Corn Belt of today.     

徐世昌与延吉边务交涉

1907-1909年,中日之间发生了关于“间岛”问题的严重交涉。时任东三省总督的徐世昌在交涉中起到了非常重要的作用,主要表现在选贤任能、注重情报、洞悉阴谋、全盘谋划、灵活外交等方面,有利地遏制了日人的侵略阴谋。     

Frontier Landscape – Lapland in the Tradition of Finnish Landscape Painting

Abstract

Finnish artists depicted Lapland as a frontier. The position of the Lappish landscape as a part of the Finnish landscape painting tradition is explored through a framework based on art and cultural history as well as humanistic and cultural geography. Paintings from three historical periods are analyzed: the early and later period of Finland as an autonomous Russian Grand Duchy (1809–1917), the first decades after the independence of Finland (1917–1939) and the Second World War (1939–1945). Lapland is today the borderline of leisure and work and the frontier of Finnish and Sámi cultures. Earlier Lappish landscapes were places of Sámi nomadism and Finnish farming, which can be seen in the Lappish landscape paintings from the 1890s to 1920s. Finnish art tradition, however, was not ready to accept Lapland, the northern frontier, as a part of Finland. During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s the meaning of the northern borderline grew and Lapponism, the golden years of Lappish landscape and tourism, began. During the Lapponism period there were few paintings depicting Sámi culture, because the Sámi were thought to be primitive or Mongolian, and were not accepted as part of Finnish culture.     

Were the Miao Kings "Prophets of Renewal"? The Case of the 1795-1797 Hunan Miao Revolt

This essay considers the concept of "prophets of renewal" introduced by James Scott in The Art of Not Being Governed:An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009),as seen in the context of the 1795-97 Miao revolt along China's Hunan-Guizhou border.The appearance ofa "Miao King" and four "Wu kings" centering anti-Qing resistance in an intractable highland-utilizing native legends,spirit possession,investment of officials,and multi-ethnic recruitment-suggests a case of"Zomia" (the vast Southeast Asian Massif) prophets in action,as Scott himself suggests.Closer examination,however,reveals a more complex and uncertain picture,characterized by division between rival lords and an overall dearth of institutional,ideological,or cosmological elaboration,all further obscured by a paucity of historical sources.The Miao kings might be seen as prophets of renewal in a general sense,but the fit is inexact.There is still value,however,in considering Scott's model in the study of this event.It enables a sharper conceptualization of the agency of the Miao people,while offering a case for comparison with analogous instances of religiously-based native resistance on other Qing frontiers.     

瓦剌与明代大同贡市

从瓦刺的兴起到衰落,明瓦以朝贡为核心建立的边疆关系动荡不羁,围绕贡道建立的贡市贸易成为影响明蒙关系的核心要素.大同作为瓦刺贡道的重要地点,其贡市贸易经历了均势博弈下的约贡路市、瓦刺崛起下的通贡马市、明廷全面内守下的绝贡闭市和外羁内守下的封贡互市四个时期.大同贡市实践表明,朝贡关系中明廷政治利益和蒙古经济利益的非均势博弈...     

Private agricultural colonization on a Brazilian frontier, 1970–1980

Private colonization is the use of companies and cooperatives to survey, demarcate and occupy land, build infrastructure, open roads, plan urban areas, and provide health services and education. Although state-directed colonization projects are strongly implicated in recent environmental and social changes in the Brazilian Amazon, areas settled by private colonization were larger than state-led settlement. The paper considers this poorly examined aspect of the region's recent settlement history by focusing upon a colonization cooperative and private company that settled smallholders from southern Brazil to eastern Mato Grosso State between 1970 and 1980. The analysis emphasizes how private colonization cooperatives successfully secured land title, setting the stage for subsequent commercial agricultural development. This study rejects prevailing interpretations of private colonization as a tool of authoritarian government in Brazil. Rather, private colonization secured land tenure and organized an economically viable production system in a frontier environment of unpredictable state bureaucracies, high transaction costs, risk, and precarious markets.     

The Middle Ground, “Middle Ground Moments,” and Accommodation in the Study of Later Qing Borderland History

This article examines Richard White’s concept of the “middle ground” and its prospective application to the study of China’s Qing (1644–1911) borderlands from the late eighteenth century. It argues that although White’s model, in its specific formulation, is problematic to apply due to the dissimilarity of Qing conditions, it yet has value and can be adapted. One possibility is advanced in the notion of “middle ground moments,” briefly explored in the cases of Shaanxi’s Dabashan highlands in a “population boom,” Hunan’s Miao Frontier in the “fog of war,” and Xinjiang’s Kashgar crossroads during the “fall of empires.” Focusing on group exchange, adaptation, and hybridization offers insight into regional cultural creation, as well as a means to question received narratives of breakdown, pacification, resistance, or Great Game struggle. Such modeling, and shared attention to accommodation perspectives generally, also presents a space for dialogue across the New Qing History and Chinese nationalist divide in Qing frontier studies.