‘In the very eye of the storm’: India,the UN,and the Lebanon crisis of 1958

This paper effectively provides the view from New Delhi of the crisis in Lebanon in 1958, UN intervention in the conflict, and subsequent peacekeeping in the region. The account uses archival material from the National Archives of India, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, the UNARMS, the National Archives, UK, and published primary material. Most significantly, the paper revisits the memoirs of Ambassador Rajeshwar Dayal (the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative) who was seconded from the Indian Foreign Service for the special purpose of UN arbitration in the Lebanon Crisis. Dayal played a pivotal role in defining India’s position in the crisis, and through Indian contributions to mediation and peacekeeping, in the UN. Furthermore, given India’s relationships with many other non-aligned nations in the region, the paper takes a broader view of the narratives surrounding the crisis and eventual US intervention and victory from mainly Indian sources, thus contributing to the study of the short-lived crisis.     

Macroscopic analysis of the bead assemblage from the South Arabian port of Sumhuram,Oman (seasons 2000–2013)

The city of Sumhuram (300 BC–AD 500) is the most important pre‐Islamic settlement in Dhofar, southern Oman. Since the time of its discovery it was evident that its commercial vocation placed it within a complex system of exchange between India and the Mediterranean. Sumhuram was a key site of the kingdom of Hadramawt, built in a place that was geographically strategic to control the most important Indian Ocean trade routes. The importance of the site made the bead assemblage exceptionally rich in materials, technologies used in the production, and provenance. The study of the relationship between materials and shapes, necessary for the creation of a specific typology, has revealed a number of trends. These, in connection with the reference stratigraphy have, in some cases, enabled the identification of differences on a chronological basis. Furthermore, it is possible to detect different uses of materials in different areas of the city. The variety of imported products (raw materials and products) once again underlines the importance of this city‐port in the international maritime trade and its strong connections with India.     

U.S. Environmental Policy Implementation on Tribal Lands: Trust,Neglect, and Justice

This study investigates the implementation of U.S. environmental protection laws under American Indian tribal governance. The landmark laws of the 1970s that form the core of America's environmental policy regime made no mention of American Indian tribal lands, and the subsequent research literature on environmental policy has given them little attention. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has primary implementation responsibility for environmental protection laws on tribal lands, which offers a unique opportunity to study direct federal implementation apart from typical joint state–federal implementation. Further, because Indian reservations are homes to a disproportionately poor, historically subjugated racial group, analysis of environmental programs on tribal lands offers a unique perspective on environmental justice. We analyze enforcement of and compliance with the Clean Water Act (CWA) and Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to compare the implementation of environmental policy on tribal lands with nontribal facilities. Analysis reveals that, compared with nontribal facilities, tribal facilities experience less rigorous CWA and SDWA enforcement and are more likely to violate these laws.     

“南海Ⅰ号”两件出水瓷器文物的保护与修复

"南海Ⅰ号"沉船在出水前已沉没海底800余年,以瓷器为主的文物由于受到海水、海洋生物及海洋沉积物等侵蚀,出现了吸盐、土蚀、缺损等病害。为对出水瓷器文物进行保护和修复,本研究选取其中两件不同窑口的瓷器,从文物保存状况、制作工艺、病害情况等方面进行分析,用酒精、丙酮、柠檬酸等化学溶剂和超声波清洗去除瓷器胎釉吸附的盐分及表面的土蚀等病害;并遵循恢复文物原状与可辨识性相结合的原则,采用环氧树脂胶、滑石粉、丙烯酸树脂漆等材料对瓷器进行修复,收到了良好的效果。不仅有利于文物的长期保存和增加展陈效果,还为以后大批量相同保存环境和病害的出水瓷器文物的保护与修复提供了参考和借鉴。     

Walking the Thin Line: India's Anti-Racist Diplomatic Practice in South Africa,Canada, and Australia, 1946–55

Historians of India's foreign policy have often failed to see beyond the ‘Great man’ Jawaharlal Nehru. This Nehru-centric vision is not only misleading, but also unfair to Nehru. Here, we seek to take the gaze off Nehru and New Delhi so as to view Indian foreign policy from different locations. We examine the ways in which India's diplomats in Australia, Canada, and South Africa resisted racial discrimination. India's anti-racist diplomacy has most often been viewed as pointless moralistic ranting: the domain of the ‘hypersensitive, emotional’ Indian. We argue, however, based on largely unexamined archival material and an emphasis on the practice of Indian diplomacy, that India's diplomats in these bastions of settler-colonial racism were tactful, strategic, and effective in challenging racist, colonial practices and bringing an anti-racist discourse to international politics. Nehruvian foreign-policy discourse, and its goal of an anti-racist world order, then, was tempered by its diplomatic practices. In particular, this occurred outside of New Delhi in places where India's hopes for productive international relationships clashed with its Nehruvian worldview.     

丝绸之路与麦积山石窟

麦积山石窟是中国六大石窟中修建较早的具中国化特色的一座石窟。本文将这一石窟放在中国佛教文化传播的大背景上 ,探讨了它的建窟时间、艺术特色及历史作用     

‘The Cow is Still the Most Important Figure in Indian Politics!’: Religion,Imperial Culture and the Shaping of Indian Political Reform in the 1930s

This essay assesses the impact of imperial culture, particularly constructions of India and hinduism, on British responses to the Indian nationalist movement in the 1930s. The essay draws on personal and governmental papers, paying special attention to the language and vocabulary employed by British policy makers concerned with Indian affairs. The major issue addressed here is the British presumption that the 1935 Government of India Act, a plan for a federated India with British central control, would defuse nationalist agitation. Such a sanguine view of this proposal seemed misplaced, given the popular success of the nationalists, especially Gandhi, and given the explicit demands of Indians for full self‐government. However, such an optimistic assessment drew on presumptions about Indian political and social behaviour, and especially on conceptions of hinduism. Policy makers in Britain and India argued along well‐established lines, that hinduism inculcated moral and physical weakness, among other deficiencies, and that a British offer of compromise would attract many Indians who feared continuing confrontation with the Raj. Moreover, colonial advisors relied on a belief that social and caste divisions within hinduism would recur within the nationalist ranks as well. This sense that Indians would respond to half‐measures of reform persisted until the 1937 provincial elections. Though British administrators predicted only a moderate showing by the Indian National Congress, the polling proved otherwise, as Congress took power in the majority of the provinces. The Raj lasted another decade, but the confident cultural assumptions sustaining it took a fatal blow.     

The forgotten slaves of Tromelin (Indian Ocean): new geoarchaeological data

Here we present geoarchaeological results from Tromelin, a small 1-km² atoll in the Indian Ocean, looking to elucidate human–environment interactions following the wrecking of the l'Utile in 1761. Abandoned by their French crew, around 60 Madagascans were enforced to form a micro-society on this remote island for a 15-year period. Little, however, is known about the cultural and environmental adaptations the population made during their stay. This study focuses on sediment archives from Site 5, where GRAN/INRAP archaeological work in 2008 brought to light three rooms attributed to the survivor's living quarters. Particular emphasis is placed on the impacts of cyclonic storm surges, natural hazards that presented serious environmental risks to the long-term survival of the slaves. The small size of Tromelin renders it a particularly discrete unit of analysis for such a study. We have identified four chronostratigraphic units at the site. (1) Unit 4 constitutes coarse white sand incorporating rounded gravels and reworked head and branch corals. No anthropogenic material is attested. We attribute this unit to a storm layer preceding the 1761 occupation of Tromelin. (2) Unit 3 yielded a multiplicity of archaeological material and corresponds to the 18th century cultural layer. The unit varies in thickness from 10 to 40 cm. (3) Unit 2 constitutes a 20 to 40 cm sand sheet across much of Site 5 that we attribute to a powerful cyclone event. It forms an unconformable contact above unit 3 and can be divided into two distinct sub-units, 2a and 2b. Sub-unit 2a is characterised by an inverse grading of the sediments, constituting coarse sands at the base grading into rounded biogenic gravels in the upper part. This sedimentology is typical of increasing flow velocity and is diagnostic of a storm setup flow. The transition to sub-unit 2b marks the onset of the waning flow, characterised by a sharp fall in relative flow velocities. These overwash deposits buried much of the archaeological remains and have been critical to the preservation of the vestiges through to present-day. (4) Unit 1 corresponds to a layer of infill incorporating blocks of coral and cultural objects dating from the 19th to 20th centuries.     

Anarchist Anti-Imperialism: Guy Aldred and the Indian Revolutionary Movement, 1909–14

This article examines the British anarchist Guy Aldred’s involvement in the Indian revolutionary movement from 1909 to 1914 in order to reflect on solidarities and antagonisms between anarchism and anti-colonial movements in the early twentieth century. Drawing on Aldred’s writings, court material and intelligence reports, it explores, first, his decision to print the suppressed Indian nationalist periodical The Indian Sociologist in August 1909 and, second, his involvement in Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s disputed arrest and deportation, which was brought to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in October 1910. In spite of recent attempts by historians to bring the Indian revolutionary movement into much closer conjunction with anarchism than previously assumed, Aldred’s engagement with the Indian freedom struggle has escaped sustained historical attention. Addressing this silence, the article argues that Aldred’s anti-imperialism was rooted in his anarchist visions of freedom, including freedom of the press, and reveals a more unusual concern with the question of colonialism than shown by almost any other British anarchist in the early twentieth century. At the same time, it cautions that Aldred was blind to the problems of Indian nationalism, especially the Hindu variety espoused by Savarkar, which leaves his anarchist anti-imperialism much compromised.     

Depth records and ocean volumes: Ocean profiling by sounding technology, 1850-1930

Oceanographic research commencing in the mid-19th century could not rely on the direct observation of its object, but had to create its images of ocean depth through remote investigation. Depth became a matter of scientific definitions, systematic measurements, and graphic representations. In the course of a century, the opaque ocean of the 1850s was densely depicted in physical terms and transformed into a technically and scientifically sound oceanic volume. Tracing the history of deep-sea sounding technology from wire sounding around 1850 to acoustic sounding in the early 1920s, the paper investigates the relation and interplay between conceptual, pictorial, and technological depth performance. Addressing the conditions and limitations oceanographers encountered in producing single measurements and arranging them into profiles and contour line charts, the paper takes on a narrative approach to spatial representation: resembling a narrated or written story, the texture of depth depended on the richness and coherence of its plots.