Colonial Dreams and Nightmares: British and French Perceptions of Republican Policies in Spanish Morocco (1931–1936)

Historians’ continuing interest in the origins of the Spanish Civil War has recently extended to the colonial policies of the Spanish Second Republic in Morocco, a relatively unexplored issue in previous decades, which has informed new approaches to the military uprising of July 1936. Foreign sources and archives, however, have been generally overlooked in this context. This article claims that British and French delegates in Morocco made critical observations about republican reforms in Spanish Morocco, which have much to add to this debate. They raised questions regarding the continuity of republican policies in Morocco and the anti-republican attitudes within the Army of Africa. They also challenged conventional knowledge concerning the difficulties encountered by alternative colonial projects in Morocco. In the end, their reports not only questioned metropolitan options but also anticipated the attitudes of the British and French governments, vis-à-vis the military rebellion.     

Yoshikatsu Sugiura's Contribution to the Development of Quantum Physics in Japan

Previous research in the history of physics has led us to believe that Yoshio Nishina (1890–1951) virtually single‐handedly imported quantum physics into Japan. However, there are first‐hand accounts that Yoshikatsu Sugiura (1895–1960) also played an important role. Sugiura made his name in quantum chemistry with his contribution to the Heitler‐London theory of the chemical bond. Yet, historians of physics have paid scant attention to him. This paper brings forward information on Sugiura from his letters, his scientific papers, and his own recollections until ca. 1930. By examining this material, the present paper studies Sugiura's accomplishments in Europe and his contributions to the development of quantum physics in Japan. We conclude that Sugiura was one of the most important physicists when it comes to the arrival of quantum physics in Japan. In addition, we assess why he has been under‐appreciated in the history of physics in Japan. Our historical study on Sugiura suggests that, in addition to the position Nishina and his students rightfully occupy, there still are important unexplored aspects in the history of Japanese quantum physics.     

Researchers,bureaucrats and the lifeworlds of cultural policy

This paper reflects on the value of cultural policy research, particularly when such research forms part of projects that seek to produce insights or ‘outcomes’ that are useful to non-university research partners. The paper draws from the author’s involvement in a project examining cultural diversity in the arts that was funded as part of the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Project scheme. It addresses Eleonora Belfiore’s provocation that this kind of instrumental cultural policy research routinely amounts to ‘bullshit.’ However, in order to understand the critical function of such research, there needs to be greater attention to the lifeworlds of cultural policy and the multiplicity of the policy-making process. This multiplicity both complicates the possibilities for usefulness in policy research, at the same time that it enables such research to be generative in unpredictable ways.     

The Subsumption of Space and the Spatiality of Subsumption: Primitive Accumulation and the Transition to Capitalism in Shanghai,China

Abstract: Based on extensive interviews, this study is the first systematic attempt to map the spatio‐temporal evolution of production networks linking urban, state‐owned enterprises and rural, township and village‐owned enterprises in reform‐era China. It identifies two distinct regimes of urban‐to‐rural subcontracting patterns and conventions. The first, which developed and prospered from the mid‐1980s until the mid‐1990s, brought rural workers and the countryside into a relatively extensive relationship with urban capital, and thus represented a partial transition to capitalism. Its violent reconfiguration in the wake of a series of sectoral crises in the late 1990s led to the widespread privatisation of rural enterprises, and the emergence and consolidation of a second regime that simultaneously constituted a significant intensification of relations, the capture of the rural by the urban, and a new stage in this region's transition. This paper argues that these regimes are analogous to the formal and real subsumption of labor to capital, respectively, and that subsumption may be a more useful analytic for understanding the process of capture and transition than primitive accumulation: the latter concept alone, without reference to the dynamics of the social/spatial division of labor, risks missing other ways that exploitive connections can be constructed between places. This paper thus seeks to recast the relationship between these two concepts, and to develop a larger vocabulary in which subsumption, like primitive accumulation, is both spatial and ongoing and internal to capitalist accumulation.     

Epipaleolithic/early Neolithic settlements at Qinghai Lake,western China

Transitions from terminal Pleistocene Upper Paleolithic foraging to Holocene Neolithic farming and pastoralist economic orientations in the northern Tibetan Plateau are examined from the perspective of Epipaleolithic sites located near Qinghai Lake, Qinghai Province, western China. Jiangxigou 2 is an artifact-rich, multicomponent midden site with the main period of occupation dating ca. 9000–5000 cal yr BP, containing abundant flaked stone artifacts including a substantial proportion of microlithic tools, abundant faunal remains including gazelle, deer, and sheep, and a small number of ceramics, including the oldest known on the Tibetan Plateau. Heimahe 3, on the other hand, is a brief hunter's camp dating ca. 8450 cal yr BP, with evident affinities to late Upper Paleolithic camps in the same region that date several thousand years older. The two distinctively different sites are probably nodes within a single Epipaleolithic foraging system that developed on the margins of the high Tibetan Plateau during the early Holocene, and that served as a basis for colonization of the high-altitude Plateau at that time. Jiangxigou 2 appears to be connected to early Neolithic agricultural settlements along the upper Yellow River (Huang He) drainage during the middle Holocene, and may provide insights into forager–agriculturalist interactions that lead to the development of pastoralist systems in the region.     

Lichenometric constraints on the age of the Huashan Grottoes, East China

Lichenometry is a method of dating that has been widely used in glaciated areas for determining the minimum age of exposure of a geomorphic landform during the late Holocene. This paper presents a regional calibration data set of lichen thallus sizes versus rock surface ages for the Huashan area, East China, based on measurements of yellow-green Rhizocarpon lichens on the known-age substrates at eight sites. An empirical relationship between thallus sizes and rock surface ages was established using both the traditional regression and the Bayesian approaches. Using the Bayesian calibration, the minimum age of the Huashan Grottoes was dated from 450 ± 60 to 330 ± 60 years ago, corresponding to the late Ming Dynasty (AD 1477–1632). These dates are generally consistent with those predicted from the regression-based linear growth curve. Our results suggest that applications of this technique can be safely extended to the non-glaciated areas.     

The canopic jars of Rameses II: real use revealed by molecular study of organic residues

Four blue-glazed faience jars, on exhibition in the Louvre Museum, are referred to as the canopic jars of Rameses II. Their recent typological re-examination rendered this original assignment questionable. In order to clearly determine their use, a study of two successive organic residues from the canopic jars, using molecular biomarkers analysed by GC-MS and LC-MS and absolute dating by ¹⁴C, was initiated. The results revealed that these two materials were not contemporary to the reign of Rameses II. The first one, scraped from the interior face of one jar, was identified as an unguent made of coniferous oil and animal fat and dated from the Third Intermediate Period. The second one, originally stored with glued linen inside one jar, is likely an embalming substance, made of pure vegetable resin (Pistacia) and dated from the Ptolemaic Period. These results clarify a controversy which has been lasting over a century. The famous blue-glazed faience jars are not the canopic jars of Rameses II but are confirmed as situlae which were reused at least two times: first to store unguents during the Intermediate Period and later to store embalming packages of an unknown person during the Ptolemaic period.     

What can pollen grains from the Terracotta Army tell us?

The provenance of more than 2200-year-old terracotta warriors and horses in the Qin Shihuang Mausoleum is still a mystery, even though some researchers have inferred that the terracotta figures were produced near the mausoleum. The sporomorphs (pollen and spores) extracted from terracotta fragments of a warrior and a horse and compared with those obtained from soil samples from the Qin Dynasty layer in Pit No. 2 of the Qin Shihuang Mausoleum indicate that the pollen spectrum from the terracotta horse is different from that of the warrior, but similar to the local soil samples. Herbaceous pollen was dominant in the warrior sample, while arboreal pollen predominates in the horse and soil samples. Palynological evidence suggests that the terracotta horses were produced at a locality near the mausoleum, while the warrior came from a site which was further afield.     

"天高皇帝近":一个重要的中国思想史命题——雷戈《秦汉之际的政治思想与皇权主义》评介

雷戈所著《秦汉之际的政治思想与皇权主义》一书,认为从秦朝到汉初的思想史发展阶段是中国思想史上皇权主义意识形态的生成和确立时期,并将其概括为"后战国时代";采用独特的"历史-思想"研究法,从政治制度、官场规则和官吏的政治生活中,挖掘特定时期的政治思想共识,为政治思想史研究开辟了新的路径,并扩大了思想史的资料范围;认为秦汉时期生成的皇权主义秩序,把"天高皇帝远"的制度现实变为"天高皇帝近"的观念实存,实现了对人们思想的可控性,从此,思想成为皇权可以控制和规范的领域,达到了有效的思想专制。这是秦汉以降中国思想史发展的基本特征。该书在研究方法的创新和思想深度的开掘上,都做出了独到的贡献。