‘Germany’s salvation’: Carl Schmitt’s teleological history of the Second Reich

Although Schmitt’s enthusiastic conversion to National Socialism is well known, his short history of the German Kaiserreich, published in 1934, remains neglected in Anglophone scholarship. This article contextualizes Schmitt’s narrative through the National Socialist conception of history and its accompanying teleology leading to the formation of the Third Reich. By placing Schmitt’s historical text in conversation with his earlier Staat, Bewegung, Volk, this article argues that Schmitt appropriated the history of the Kaiserreich to construct liberalism as a social pathology which could only be cured through the ‘concrete state theory’ he outlined in Staat, Bewegung, Volk. Furthermore, this article argues that Schmitt’s history relied heavily on propagandistic clichés of the Third Reich and thereby functioned as a rhetorical legitimation of Hitler’s rise to power.     

Diedrich Westermann and the Ambiguities of Colonial Science in the Inter-War Era

Diedrich Westermann (1875–1956) was a key figure in the establishment of African studies in Germany and Britain. He was a pioneer German linguist and member of the founding generation of German Africanists (Afrikanistik) who played a significant role in the field. As professor at Berlin University, the co-director of the International Institute of African Languages and Culture (IIALC) in London from 1926 and an adviser to Lord Hailey’s research team for the monumental ‘An African Survey’ (1938), he was central to the promotion of policy research in the African colonial context during the inter-war era. His own work focused on the phonetics and orthography of the Sudanic languages and the methodologies he pioneered were widely adopted in West Africa. As editor of the journals Koloniale Rundschau (Berlin) and Africa (London), with links to Rockefeller research funding, he was able, with Malinowski and J. H. Oldham, to wield considerable influence over the shape of anthropological and linguistic research for more than 20 years. His links to the Colonial Office and the International Missionary Council (IMC) in London and the Berlin Missionary Society (BMS) and the Colonial Department of the Third Reich, meant that he was uniquely placed as an adviser to both governments. This would seem to raise important questions about the similarities and differences in the climates of scientific work in these diverse contexts which has to date not attracted much attention. Westermann’s career provides a portrait of the complex academic inter-war era that Africanists scholars needed to navigate in a world charged with political conflict and the seeds of development debates that were to come to fruition with UNESCO initiatives in the post-war years.     

《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。     

美国“国家安全国家”的创生

1940年代中期至1950年代末,冷战对美国国家构建产生了重大深远的影响:一种全新的现代美国国家形态——"国家安全国家"——在"为总体冷战而进行总体准备"的过程中被塑造出来。国家安全国家构成对美国主流政治传统的重大偏离,其创生、扩张和演进是冷战时期美国国家构建和总体政治变迁的重要方面。它不仅涉及联邦政府组织体制和对外政策决策程序的重组,也涉及国家和社会关系的重构。国家安全国家的中枢制度和标志是国家安全委员会,其经历的持续变动体现了国家安全国家与"帝王式总统权"之间存在复杂的共生和互动关系。在更广阔的历史背景中,国家安全国家的重大意义在于它与"福利国家"和"管理型国家"共同构成20世纪美国国家构建和国家扩张长期运动的三个基本向度。     

试论日伪的东亚联盟运动

日本侵华战争期间,在日本国内和中国伪政权统治区曾分别形成了规模庞大的东亚联盟运动。东亚联盟运动以“王道主义”为指导理念,以“国防共同、经济一体化、政治独立、文化沟通”为基本内容,从思想上、文化上为日本独占中国、称霸世界的目的服务。日本的东亚联盟以尊重中国的“政治独立”相标榜,比日本国内其他侵略理论和“兴亚”运动更加具有欺骗性。汪精卫伪国民政府的东亚联盟运动则与新国民运动相配合,旨在加强伪政权的统治,为投敌行径制造理论根据。     

中研院史语所与北大史学系的学术关系

国立中央研究院历史语言研究所和国立北京大学史学系,是现代中国史学发展史上两个极重要的学术阵地。从20世纪30年代开始,两者建立起紧密的学术关系。以傅斯年为首的史语所研究人员不仅纷纷到北大史学系兼课,而且通过对北大史学系课程进行改造,使两者在学术精神上达到一致。其结果是,一批深受史语所学术精神影响的“尖子生”被培养出来,并被选入史语所工作。北大史学系某种程度上成了史语所的人才库。另一方面,史语所的学术精神,也通过北大史学系对现代中国史学发展发生着持久性的影响。     

False,cheap and degraded: when history,economy and environment collided at Cades Cove,Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Great Smoky Mountains National Park was created in 1934 after decades of popular activism. The National Park Service initially planned to restore wildness to all formerly settled lands through the process of secondary succession, but did not in a valley in the northwest corner of the park, Cades Cove. Transforming the 1200-ha agricultural setting into forest would have eliminated the visual charm highly prized by the tourists who had long come there. Additionally, experts promoted the preservation of Cades Cove's historic–cultural landscape because they falsely perceived the local culture to be a relic of the past. The Park Service acceded, but its commitment to historic preservation was tempered by a concern to minimize its expenses. Consequently, an agricultural permit system was adopted in 1945, which allowed modern farmers to operate on the historic landscape, keeping it open. This cheap method kept open the beautiful vistas of Cades Cove. Unfortunately, the agency's commitment to beauty and economy led to decades of ecological degradation, including water pollution and species extirpation. Only in the last two decades, has park management moved away from its focus on a low-cost, attractive landscape to embrace one that is also ecologically healthy, and thus more sustainable.     

地缘政治关系简析

本文从地缘政治学分析国际政治大国与全球地理环境之间的关系实质,即地理位置、综合国力和战略利益在地域政治体系中的相互联系、制约和影响,及变化规律.     

Mapping coexistence in Italy: Reshaping the cartographic feelings of the plural nation

Rarely considered from the perspective of ordinary citizens as opposed to institutional actors, national maps have been primarily deconstructed as abstract tools of power that express nationalist agendas. This paper offers an alternative examination of the map as a performative tool of national pluralism. In tune with the most recent conceptualizations of everyday forms of nationhood, I explore multiple creative auto-cartographies of Italy as experiential images for investigating the coexistence of several senses of nationhood and cultural diversity. To this end, I combine an inductive visual content analysis of nearly three hundred remappings of Italy, uploaded online by readers of a popular national newspaper, La Repubblica, with a visual semiotic reading of six samples. Here, the playful idea of remapping the nation becomes a catalyst to produce or resist a sense of belonging to the nation, while eliciting a wider spectrum of feelings with regard to internal and external perceived meaningful others. This paper concludes that the different ways in which ordinary people map the nation have to be taken seriously, as they show evidence that these readers absorb and decode, but also resist or challenge, different mainstream discourses regarding the idea of nationality, coexistence, and cultural diversity.     

Scotland,Atlantic slavery and the Scottish National Party: From colonised to coloniser in the political imagination

Over the last three decades, a major shift has taken place in Scottish nationalist understandings of Scotland's colonial past. During the second half of the twentieth century, independence supporters viewed Scotland's relationship with England in colonial terms. Since the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999, nationalists have increasingly recognised Scots' role in Atlantic slavery. This paper explores this change within the Scottish National Party (SNP) using archival sources, published material and Scottish Parliamentary records. It demonstrates that a maturing historiography has drawn attention to Scotland's slavery past. History has become politically relevant in transatlantic deliberations over racial injustice, which have grown in intensity since the international Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. SNP ministers and parliamentarians have responded to this context by incorporating addressing Scotland's role in Atlantic slavery within a case for independence that is styled as progressive and contrasts with the more recalcitrant attitudes, which predominate at UK level.