“哥德堡”号走私鸦片的反思

“哥德堡”号商船的主人瑞典东印度公司,虽然号称从未向中国贩运过鸦片,但其实是中国贩运鸦片的始作俑者。清廷对国内社会各阶层普遍吸食鸦片现象控制不力,从而变相助长了西方列强的鸦片倾销行为,加速了晚清封建社会的崩溃。     

“奉辞伐罪”:伊利里亚战争与罗马东扩

从公元前3世纪晚期至前2世纪中期,地处亚得里亚海东岸的伊利里亚人与罗马多次交战。缕析波利比乌斯等古典史家的记述,交战历程依次为:伊利里亚人劫掠和扩张、罗马商人和伊萨向元老院控诉和求援、罗马遣使交涉、伊利里亚人蛮横回应、罗马出兵讨伐。着眼于史实层面,罗马遣使交涉,基本是其对外扩张中先礼后兵的惯常策略,也是其强化宣战理由的重要环节。而就历史叙事而论,波氏的伊利里亚战争文本,一方面将罗马对伊利里亚的征服呈现为奉辞伐罪、解救他邦的功业;另一方面是论证罗马优良政体及其在罗马统一地中海世界中所发挥的有力作用,在此叙事逻辑指引下,伊利里亚成为罗马需要匡谬正俗的对象。     

‘Barbarity more suited to Savages’: British soldiers’ views of Spanish and Portuguese violence during the Peninsular War, 1808–1814

This article explores British soldiers’ reactions to the violence that Iberian soldiers, guerrillas and civilians perpetrated against wounded French soldiers and prisoners of war during the Peninsular War. Whilst they saw this violence as retaliatory, and sympathized with the suffering of the occupied, British soldiers were shocked, disturbed and outraged, often leading them to self-identify with their very enemy — the French. On one level, this violence was seen as a fundamental violation of customary rules of war. Yet further, in British minds it revealed a deeper Iberian culture of violence and way of war, which set the Iberian peoples apart from ‘civilized’ nations.     

Three Scandinavian Counterfactual Scenarios from the Napoleonic Wars

The article focuses on the possibilities of counterfactual history through three showcases from the Scandinavian theatre of the Napoleonic Wars. The scenarios are based on clearly described and plausible points of divergence, i.e. single, identifiable historical events that could have resulted in a different outcome. The counterfactuals are explored by means of systematic extrapolation. The first scenario presents the possibility of a Danish victory against the British naval expedition in the Battle of Copenhagen Roads in 1801. The scenario seeks to answer the question whether the Danish victory could have maintained the League of Armed Neutrality intact in some form, keeping Scandinavia out of the Napoleonic Wars altogether. The second scenario describes the Abborfors border dispute of 1803, which historically nearly triggered a war between Sweden and Russia. The extrapolation focuses on the hypothetical consequences of a premature Swedish-Russian conflict in 1803, and its impact on the War of the Third Coalition. The third scenario explores the hypothetical French invasion of Jutland in 1807, and the potential of Scandinavia as a strategic quagmire of the Napoleonic Wars, comparable to what Spain became in our timeline.     

Wirtschaftswunder in Pretzfeld,upper Franconia: Interactions between science,technology, and corporate strategies in Siemens semiconductor rectifier research & development, 1945–1956

Abstract

Immediately after World War II, when emergency production of non‐electrotechnical products such as stoves, pots, etc. at Siemens amounted to more than 50% and the return to normal production and old standards was the primary company goal, one man, Eberhard Spenke, thought far ahead. Power semiconductor rectifiers were to be designed and manufactured on a scientific basis rather than as a result of trial and error methods. The theory of rectification in semiconductor‐metal contacts that had been found by the Siemens theoretical physicist Walter H. Schottky was to serve as a starting point. First, apartments for researchers had to be built in a former stable at Pretzfeld Castle, Upper Franconia; lab equipment was then procured. On September 1, 1947, research work began, and the first selenium rectifiers were made on three old kitchen tables. In 1956, Spenke proudly presented the world's first reproducible silicon power rectifier elements (for a reverse voltage of 1000 V and a maximum forward current of 300 A when forced‐air‐cooled) at the international semiconductor conference in Garmisch‐Partenkirchen, Bavaria. Siemens had thus become a world leader in power electronics.

The example of Eberhard Spenke and his team can give valuable guidelines for organizing Research & Development efficiently within a big corporation. It shows that the amount of money spent on R&D is not necessarily the determining factor of success. At least equally important are such elements as personal leadership in small research groups rather than bureaucratic administration of research, the ability to foresee technological and market developments, direct contacts between the leading researchers and the top management, open‐mindedness of the top management to new ideas and approaches, and the motivation of employees.     

论鸦片战争前后中国边疆史地研究热潮中的史书编纂

中国边疆史地研究的史书编纂在鸦片战争前后出现了新的发展趋向 ,主要表现在 :由边疆史地研究引发对域外史地的研究 ;史地学者能够根据社会变动的需要 ,灵活变通地运用史书体裁、体例 ,撰述了一批具有个性色彩和时代特色的史地著作。这是对章学诚寻求史学变革之道的有力回应 ,反映了中国传统学术的重要变化。     

New Chinese Military History, 1839–1951: What’s the Story?

Since 1990, New Chinese Military History in the West has remedied scholarly neglect of Chinese warfare and changed the usual stories of modern China. These studies disproved Orientalist assumptions of a unique “Chinese way of war” or a strategic culture that avoided aggressive confrontation. Scholars also challenge the assumption that Confucian immobility led to a clash of civilizations and decisive defeat in the Opium Wars, First Sino-Japanese War, and Boxer War of 1900. In fact, Qing officials were quick and successful in creating a new military regime. New military histories of the warlords, the Sino-Japanese Wars, and the Chinese Civil War show that developing new types of warfare was central in creating the new nation. All these wars split the country into factions that were supported by outside powers: they were internationalized civil wars. The article also asks how the choice of terms, labels, and categories shapes interpretations and political messages.     

Fidelity and Sacrifice: The Gender Discourse of Traders in Pre- and Post-Opium War Canton

This article examines the discourse of two American couples in the China trade regarding fidelity and sacrifice during the period in which the spatial confines of the Canton system gave way to the intensified interactions of the Treaty Port era. Before the Opium War, when the Qing court had mandated that Western husbands conducting business in Canton live apart from their wives, marital tension was accentuated by the separation from absentee husbands. In the subsequent Treaty Port era, enhanced spatial mobility of the couples did not assuage their concerns. Instead, intensified cross-cultural encounters allowed them to project their feelings and expectations on the “foreign other” as racial categories developed and their imperial proclivities began to escalate. Bringing the Western women in contact with elite Chinese and other Western women only aggravated their agitation as they faced their Chinese counterparts, whom they readily construed as competitors. The socio-political and spatial reconfigurations provided new dimensions to the discourse of fidelity and sacrifice. The voices of the American couples recorded here are those of individuals, but the underlying anxiety they articulated represented the growing pains of more intimate Sino-Western encounters.