Oliver Cromwell and the Cambridge Elections of 1640

Oliver Cromwell's many biographers have been puzzled by his elections as MP for Cambridge in 1640. His connections with the town at this time were slight. Historians have, therefore, fallen back on his supposed opposition to the draining of the fens or, more recently, on possible aristocratic patronage. This article proposes a new theory, based on a rehabilitation of a very old source, James Heath's Flagellum, one of the earliest Cromwell biographies. Heath claimed that Cromwell had been elected with the support of a group of minor members of the corporation. Although very garbled, the Flagellum account probably records genuine details about the election and the men it identified as Cromwell's key supporters can be shown to have opposed the religious policies of the local bishop, Matthew Wren of Ely. Cromwell was probably elected as a critic of Wren.     

人类学视野下的宗教──中国乡村社会控制中的一种力量

人类社会中的宗教具有多种多样的文化功能,社会控制就是其中之一。本文从人类学的角度论述了宗教在中国乡村社会控制中所起的作用。     

吐蕃占领时期的敦煌宗教文明

在李唐王朝处于平定安史之乱时期 ,吐蕃乘机占领了河西北广大地区达七十多年。在此期间 ,敦煌呈现出佛教、景教、摩尼教、苯教、祆教多种宗教共存的局面。本文援引大量文献资料 ,对上述宗教的基本状况及相互关系作了论述     

Die Auswanderung: religion, culture, and migration among Old Colony Mennonites

Migrations among the Mennonite people were historically undertaken in an attempt to secure religious freedom. Migrations are still being made by the most conservative Mennonite groups. This article briefly examines the process of migration in Mennonite history, and emphasizes the role of migration among one particular group, the Old Colony. A Mennonite settlement in northern Alberta serves as a case study for this investigation, and demonstrates that the preservation of lifestyle is a fundamental objective of all Old Colony migrations. Between 1950 and 1970, families from this community moved, in succession, to another part of northern Alberta, to a new settlement in Belize, and finally, in a remarkable exodus, to Bolivia.     

THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER?

Alon Confino has issued a desideratum to other historians that they should bring questions and insights from cultural history to bear on the study of the Holocaust. Taking the work of Saul Friedländer as his point of departure, Confino nonetheless sets out on a path different from Friedländer's. He turns away from the goal of “integrated history” and instead seeks to investigate the realm of German culture, understood as encompassing much more than just Nazi ideology. By analyzing how the Holocaust has come to be perceived as unprecedented, as a rupture in human history, and furthermore by treating Jewish victims' sense of disbelief as an artifact of the past, one that has continued to inform unduly the historical understanding of the Holocaust up to the present day, historians will be able to account anew for what made the persecution and extermination of Jews imaginable and thus possible. With Confino's approach, a major historiographical question resurfaces, however: namely, what place an analysis of non‐Germans should occupy in the history of the Holocaust, and in particular what place should be accorded to Jewish voices? This essay argues that we cannot make sense of why Germans supported and carried out the Holocaust without also considering Jewish contemporaneous perspectives and imaginings.     

Artisan dynamics in the age of colonialism: the social history of Moroccan Jewish goldsmiths in the inter-war period

The article highlights the social history of Jewish goldsmiths in French Morocco between the two World Wars, a period in which the global capitalist system challenged their historical monopoly over production and commerce. Continued external intervention (Moroccan commercial treaties with European capitalist markets), direct competition (the import of cheap industrial products and an influx of entrepreneurs), the mechanisation of local manufacturing, the encouragement of individualism resulting in the breakdown of Jewish social cohesion and the taking over of political institutions by France (the Makhzen) and its local agent (the Muhtaseb) had all eroded the Jewish monopoly of the precious-metals industry and created an unexpected atmosphere of strong economic, political and judicial pressures on Jewish goldsmiths. In order to explore the struggle and survival of Jewish goldsmiths in the new economic order, the article addresses the following key questions: (1) What was the influence of various forces, both external and internal, on the Jewish goldsmiths' industry?; (2) How did the artisans respond to and cope with these new economic conditions?; and (3) Why did the Protectorate revert back from liberal economic policy to that of local producers' protection?     

“Religious Violence as Modern Myth”

Abstract

In this essay the author summarizes the argument of his book entitled The Myth of Religious Violence, whose main contention is that there is no reason to suppose that people are more likely to kill for a god than for a whole other host of “secular” ideologies and practices that behave in the way that “religions” do. The author then goes on to respond to various critiques that have been made of the book since its appearance in 2009.     

Citizenship and religion in the Italian constitutions, 1796-1849

This article explores the link between religion and politics, religious liberty and the rights of religious minorities, by focusing on the constitutions which Italian states adopted and discarded from 1796 to 1849. It concerns questions about the ‘national character’ and the rights and duties of the citizen, and argues that - far from being ‘an outlet’ for material discontent - questions of religious identity and pluralism were integral to the Risorgimento definition of liberty. In this context, the author explores also the Mazzinian vision of a democratic republic inspired by an acephalous and non-hierarchical civil religion, similar to the Unitarian Transcendentalism practiced by some of his New York admirers - a far cry from the ‘religions of politics’ inspired by Saint Simon and Auguste Comte.     

史家王树枏及其《欧洲族类源流略》

王树枏是清末民初一位政治家、历史家,他的《欧洲族类源流略》是集中体现兵思想的历史著述。本书对欧洲历史夹叙夹议,并且时时对照中国,以种族考察为纲领而论述国家的兴衰,不同于一般外国历史地理之书,这是一个明显的特点。作者的撰著宗旨是要汲取欧洲各民族的历史鉴戒,探求中国保国、保种、保教的途径。但他主张君主政体优于民主制度,认为中国上古文化是西学之源,表现出比较保守的思想倾向,也有不少错误的臆测。王树枏在近代的思想、立场与个人经历,体现的是一大批具备爱国精神,却脱离不开传统思想体系束缚之士人的尴尬处境,然而,其社会群体的历史影响,则不可忽视。     

影响马来西亚马华两族关系的文化与政治因素

从不同的宗教信仰对马华两族的融合与通婚的阻碍、自成体系的语言与媒体对彼此沟通的影响、族群政治动员在强化族群意识方面所起的作用等文化特征和族群政治的角度,探讨了影响马华两族关系的原因。结论是:马华两族宗教信仰和语言教育的区分、马来西亚特殊的族群政治态势,是影响马华两族关系发展的几个重要因素。