Communicating with the European Resistance: an assessment of the Special Operations Executive’s wireless facilities in the UK during the Second World War

Summary: This article presents for the first time an examination of the Special Operations Executive’s (SOE) UK-based communication facilities. Established in 1940, SOE was responsible for coordinating all acts of sabotage against the enemy overseas. This was only possible with the aid of a reliable communications link with the Resistance. By examining SOE’s Home Stations, this article will demonstrate the value the organization placed in reliable wireless communications.     

Food for Rome: A stable isotope investigation of diet in the Imperial period (1st–3rd centuries AD)

During the Empire, the population of Rome was composed mostly of lower-class free citizens and slaves. Viewed from historical records, the Roman diet included primarily olives, wine, and wheat, but poor and enslaved Romans may have eaten whatever they were able to find and afford, leading to significant heterogeneity in the Roman diet. Previous carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of skeletons from Imperial Italy have begun to reveal variation in diet, but little is known about what people ate in the capital city. This study complements previous work by adding new isotope data from human skeletons found in two Imperial-period (1st–3rd centuries AD) cemeteries in Rome. These data suggest that urban and suburban diets differed, most notably in the consumption of the C₄ grain millet. Comparing these new data with all published palaeodietary data from Imperial Italy demonstrates that significant variation existed in the diet of the common people.     

废科举后清末乡村学务中的权势转移

科考废止,学堂制度植入乡村社会,引发了乡村社会内部权力格局的变动。依据科举制度安身立命或完成上升性社会流动的原既得利益群体,遭遇到不同程度的困厄命运。与此同时,随着学务权在地方行政系统中重要性的日益显著,造成了新的权力资源在国家一社会以及乡村精英内部各派势力之间的重新分配。过渡时代的乡村权力网络、不同群体以兴办学务为契机分别置身其中,分享权力又相互争夺对权力的主导权。他们之间的这种矛盾关系,又并非处在一种简单的“新”、“旧”对立或现代与传统的对立当中。掩映于简单对立之下,实为地方权力资源因地域、时势等条件的差异在不同利益群体间的重新配置。学务场域内权力关系的变动折射出过渡时期乡村社会内部复杂的权力格局。     

宋代国子监刻书考论

宋代国子监既是中央教育机构,也是国家主要刻书机构,并兼有管理各地图书刻印之责。为满足其政治、思想统治,宋廷对国子监刻书之内容及其质量控制、机构设置及其管理、图书刻印发行出售等方面都订有颇为详备之制度,从而对当时各地州县官学大量印行图书,以及后世国子监刻书产生了重大影响。     

The Pahlavi National Library Project: Education and Modernization in Late Pahlavi Iran

This paper examines the Pahlavi National Library, the planning for which began in 1972 and expired in 1978 on the eve of the Islamic Revolution. The Pahlavi National Library was to rank in size and eminence with the great libraries of the world, yet this extraordinary project has hitherto received little to no scholarly attention. Using documents primarily from the archives of the shah’s cultural counsellor at the imperial court, Shojā?eddin Shafā, this paper looks in detail at a number of initiatives spearheaded by Shafā from the early 1960s, which essentially laid the groundwork for the Pahlavi National Library, in order to understand how the shah’s regime used culture and scholarship to further its political goals. The paper proceeds to investigate the Pahlavi National Library, analyzing it in the context of the shah’s domestic and foreign policy objectives.     

殿试制度起源考辨

殿试制度是科举制度研究中一个非常重要的问题,而关于殿试制度的起始时间学界一直说法不一。本文以三级考试为参照系,以此前一直被忽略的覆试制度为切入点,通过对与殿试起源相关诸问题的详细辨析,彻底澄清了殿试与覆试的联系与区别,否定了武则天载初元年、南唐乾德二年及宋开宝六年为殿试之始诸说,从而最终确定殿试制度正式开始的时间是宋太祖开宝八年。     

辽代平原公主墓志考释

在辽宁阜新县八家子乡乌兰木图山南麓,有一处辽代后族萧氏的家族墓地,即乌兰木图辽墓群。1981年1月在此发现了辽圣宗太平九年(1029年)的萧仅墓[1],1996年7     

山西太原青阳河北汉太惠妃墓发掘简报

2009年底～2010年初,太原市文物考古研究所在山西省太原市晋源区青阳河村抢救性考古发掘了一座墓葬,墓葬墓室绘有壁画,并出土墓志一合,经确认为北汉太惠妃王氏之墓。该墓葬纪年明确,是目前唯一一座经过科学发掘并公布资料的北汉墓葬,为近代墓葬研究提供了重要的实物资料。     

‘Un engin de torture,une baïonnette à crochets; une arme blanche déshonorée’: an historical-archaeological evaluation of the Sawback bayonets of the Deutsches Heer

ABSTRACT

The Imperial German Army (Deutsches Herr) was unique among the combatants in World War One (WW1) in issuing to a proportion of its soldiers a bayonet whose blade back was fashioned as a saw. A common belief developed quickly among the Allies that these sawback bayonets were weapons specifically intended to inflict a particularly vicious type of wound. After setting out the origins of this class of weapon and explaining their real purpose, the two main types of sawback bayonet available to the Deutsches Heer during WW1 are then concisely described. Its reputation as a weapon of especial barbarity is outlined, along with an overview of bayonet use in combat between the mid-nineteenth century and 1918, as evidenced by official sources, highlighting the lack of any specific contemporary references to the use of or the wounds caused by sawback bayonets. The article concludes by detailing the contemporary German sources relevant to its withdrawal from service use in 1917.     

Languages of Hegemony on the Eighteenth-Century Kazakh Steppe

ABSTRACT

Were the Kazakhs part of the Russian Empire after Khan Abulkhayir's 1731 oath? For many decades, Russian scholarship insisted that they were, although the work of Virginia Martin, Noda Jin and others has recently suggested other interpretations. My article shows that neither Kazakhs nor Russian officials thought of their relationship as a form of annexation. Instead, the Kazakhs used the arrival of the Qing Empire in Central Eurasia in the 1750s to triangulate between their two more powerful neighbors, maintaining a constant distance from Russian power. For Russian officials, this kind of relationship proved to be advantageous, ultimately because Kazakh mediation enabled Russian trade with Xinjiang. The final incorporation of the Kazakhs starting in 1822 had more to do with the withdrawal of Qing power from the steppe than the expansion of Russian authority.