The Training of Secret Police in Conflictual Intelligence Cultures: British Failure in the Middle East during the Cold War

This article explores the nature of security training chiefly associated with MI5. It shows that, akin to the security training implemented throughout the colonies, policy-makers in London hoped to strengthen Middle Eastern security services via British training, which would safeguard British interests in the region. This article argues that an unintended consequence was that strengthening Middle Eastern security services became part of the problem rather than the solution. The policy served mainly to bolster increasingly unpopular, authoritarian regimes against a rising tide of anti-British sentiment. Thus, British foreign, more specifically anti-Communist, policy in the Middle East was short-sighted and a failure.     

Out of Arabia: British Strategy and the Fate of Local Forces in Aden,South Yemen,and Oman, 1967–76

The British engagement with Oman from 1967–76 came at a time when other imperial and defence commitments were being reduced in the Gulf region and elsewhere. Following the ignominious retreat from Aden, the British chose to support the Omani regime in its conflict with Communist-inspired insurgents (1970–6). This article gives context to the dichotomy of outcomes in southern Arabia and examines the role of local military forces in the counter-insurgencies. It demonstrates that Britain's domestic political considerations, regional strategic requirements, and concerns for its global reputation, rather than counterinsurgency operations and the local forces, were the main drivers of outcomes. Insurgents and local actors nevertheless responded to changes taking place in and around Oman, recalibrating their decision to co-operate or resist on their own terms, and changes in the international support for the insurgents were decisive. The key argument is that the dynamic combinations of international support, British strategic assumptions and miscalculations, and local agency, were crucially important to the outcomes in the region. The ‘fate’ of those who had allied with, or resisted, the British, needs to be set in this context.     

Comparing Communities—The Limits of Typology

Across the disciplines, communities and identities are usually classified into general categories, such as ethnic, tribal, territorial, civic, religious or political communities/identities. This may be useful in many instances to structure the field and highlight certain distinctive features. But, as this contribution will argue, such typologies do not provide a sound basis for comparison. This holds true both for intercultural and for interdisciplinary comparison. For instance, religion was configured rather differently in ancient Rome, late Antique Christianity and early Islam, and each of them differed fundamentally from our modern concept of religion (as opposed to a secular sphere). The same applies to ethnicity. Likewise, historians and social anthropologists (and even specific schools within the disciplines) operate with often rather differently configured concepts in this area. In fact, most actual communities are framed by more than one “vision of community”; they are rarely only ethnic, religious or political. Their shared frames of reference can be compared: for instance, ancestral lineages, supernatural origins, sacred places, shared history, tribal solidarities, legal practices, exchange networks or outside perceptions. Such frames of references of course overlap and typically create more than one level of identification. This contribution will take the example of the new peoples and powers that emerged after the end of the Roman Empire in the West (such as Goths, Franks and Anglo-Saxons). What shaped these communities, and how did ethnic, territorial, religious and political identifiers interact in the process?     

About Times: Some Reflections and Resonances Prompted by Reading a Draft Paper by David Zeitlyn

Responding to David Zeitlyn's introduction, the paper considers implications of different conceptions or gamuts of time. Flows and connections between pasts and futures are considered in the light of Huw Price's work on the philosophy of time and by thinking seriously about how science fiction writers have considered the paradoxes of time travel.     

《中华大帝国史》与英国汉学

西班牙传教士门多萨的《中华大帝国史》（1585）是第一部对中国社会、文化、历史等各个方面进行全方位介绍的通史型的巨作。1588年该著的英译本在英国广泛流传,成为英国人获得真实且周详的中国文化资料库。该著对英国人中国观的形成,汉学知识的获得起到了重要的启蒙作用,是英国人认识和了解汉学之肇始。     

A regional examination of surgery and fracture treatment in Iron Age and Roman Britain

The study macroscopically examined 270 sexed adults and 190 subadult individuals for evidence of ante mortem fractures and surgical practice in Dorset, during the Iron Age (5th century BC to 1st century AD) and Romano‐British period (1st century to the end of the 4th century AD), in order to understand medical treatment in both periods and determine the extent to which these practices changed post conquest (43 AD). As treatment during these periods is not well understood, a conservative approach to fracture analysis was employed, which attempted to minimise the influence of fracture type and location on results by excluding bones in which fracture deformities may only be corrected by surgery. The study also excluded fractures resulting from bone mineralisation diseases or neoplasms. Skeletal evidence for surgical treatment was identified using funerary, taphonomic and osteological criterion to determine when the surgery took place, and to establish that changes were not caused by post mortem activity. The analysis of fracture treatment demonstrated that in both periods, adult fractures were well set with few secondary changes; a result also influenced by the stable nature of the fracture types. No evidence for sex‐differences in treatment was observed. Evidence for surgery was identified in two Romano‐British individuals: an unsuccessful limb amputation, and an embryotomy procedure that was most likely carried out in an attempt to save the mother. This regional assessment of medical treatment has shown that in both periods, highly skilled practitioners were able to successfully treat a range of fractures and by doing so, minimised the patient's risk of impairment. The study also supplements the very limited archaeological evidence for medical practice and surgery in Iron Age and Roman Britain, and suggests that post conquest, surgical knowledge rapidly increased in association with wider socio‐cultural developments in education, pharmacology and sanitation. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Investigating perceptions of antisocial behaviour and neighbourhood ethnic heterogeneity in the British Crime Survey

There is much concern in the UK about the effects on community cohesion of antisocial behaviour, but to date relatively little is known about the geography of such behaviour: for what sort of people, and in what sort of places, are high levels of antisocial behaviour a problem? What are the links, if any, between such behaviour and local socio-economic conditions, and how do such perceptions relate to local crime rates? Using data from the British Crime Survey and other secondary datasets, we develop and extend previous work that has investigated links between individual socio-economic characteristics, neighbourhood characteristics and individual perceptions of antisocial behaviour. A multilevel modelling approach is used to ensure that individual- and area-level effects are not conflated. Secondly we extend the substantive knowledge surrounding the relationship between neighbourhood ethnic heterogeneity and individual perceptions of antisocial behaviour. In so doing, we challenge recent contentions that heterogeneity is associated with declining social cohesion and trust. We conclude that at a small-area scale for England, the primary area-level determinants of high levels of antisocial behaviour lie in material circumstances, and that ethnic heterogeneity has no discernible effect on perceptions of antisocial behaviour.     

读陈法《方孝孺论》的启悟

曾被时人称作“大儒”的方孝孺,陈法在《方孝孺论》中则指出那是人们“习而不察”所致,并针对方孝孺在靖难之役中的表现,批评方氏是“不学无术,刚愎自用”的渺小人物,批评他身为惠帝重臣,竟然违背“君子以仁义之道光辅其君”的准则,以致国亡谚死,牵连八百余名无辜,可谓不仁、不智;《方论》还批评惠帝庸劣无能,提出“且为建文者,为夷、齐、泰伯之让,则至德光昭千古矣”的主张,颇有些顺应潮流、与时俱进的思想。     

马继业与辛亥革命前后英国在新疆势力的发展

20世纪初,尤其在辛亥革命前后,英国对新疆的渗透与扩张加剧,这突出表现在英国驻喀什噶尔领事馆的建立上。本主要通过阐述英国驻喀什噶尔首任领事马继业的活动,介绍了英国驻喀什噶尔领事馆的建立及其初步发展,并指出这是英国侵华的一个组成部分,它给近代新疆带来了严重的后果,但同时也在一定程度上促进了近代中英关系的发展。     

The effect of soil conditions on the long-term corrosion of buried tin-bronzes and copper

The object of this work was to relate the corrosion of tin-bronzes to the chemical condition of the soil in which they have been buried, most of them since the Bronze Age. Naturally, it was not easy to obtain recent hoards with their related soils, and considerable reliance had to be placed on recorded finds by taking recent soil samples from sites on which hoards were found over a hundred years earlier. Even so, with the exception of peat, a reasonable relationship appears to exist between the pH of the soil and the state of the metal. Acid soils are aggressive to metals and alkaline soils are benign. In no cases were sulphate reducing bacteria active in promoting corrosion. In the main, peat and peaty soils were benign in spite of their acidity, probably due to the protective action of polyphenols.