The Broad Spectrum Revolution at 40: Resource diversity,intensification, and an alternative to optimal foraging explanations

More than 40 years ago Kent Flannery coined the term Broad Spectrum Revolution (BSR) in reference to a broadening of the subsistence base of Late Pleistocene hunter–gatherers in the Near East that preceded and helped pave the way for the domestication and plants and animals and the emergence of agriculture. Set within a demographic density model that projected differential rates of population growth and emigration in different resource zones of the Near East, Flannery’s BSR quickly became a global construct linking resource diversification and intensification to imbalances between population and environmental carrying capacity. In recent years the BSR has proven especially attractive to researchers working within an optimal foraging theory (OFT) framework in which diversification and intensification of subsistence only occurs within the context of resource depression, caused by either demographic pressure or environmental deterioration. This OFT perspective, that situates human societies in a one-way adaptive framework as they are forced to adapt to declining availability of optimal resources, however, is increasingly being called into question. Numerous examples of diversification and intensification are being documented in contexts of resource abundance shaped, in part, by deliberate human efforts at ecosystem engineering intended to promote resource productivity. An alternative approach, framed within a newer paradigm from evolutionary biology, niche construction theory (NCT), provides a more powerful explanatory framework for the BSR wherever it occurred.     

宗教与美国革命

长期以来,国内史学界在研究和探讨美国革命时,大多从政治、宪法、经济、贸易、黑奴和民族等视角阐述美国革命的渊源和意义,鲜有宗教因素方面的考量。北美殖民地与英国宗主国在两大宗教问题上存在着冲突,宗教在推动殖民地走上美国革命之路方面发挥了重要作用。法印战争结束后,随着英国在宗教和政治上加大对北美殖民地的干预和控制,宗教自由和政治自由成为一枚硬币的两面,两者不可须臾缺一。正是在这个意义上,殖民地争取宗教自由的斗争促进和推动了美国革命的爆发和发展。     

The Shots that Reverberated for a Long Time, 1916–1932: The Irish Revolution,the Bolsheviks and the European Left

Abstract

This article explores the interaction between the Irish Revolution and the October Revolution within the wider context of the First World War and the Paris Peace Conference. From an Irish republican perspective, it was clear that neither Wilsonian principles nor Bolshevik theories and statements could be relied upon. Self-determination for Ireland became the object of heated debates among newspapers and leading personalities of the Left and far-Left in Europe while the Easter Rising and the execution of James Connolly were used to settle accounts between various factions of the European Left and far-Left well into the interwar period.     

Conceiving the Republic of Mankind: The Political Thought of Anacharsis Cloots

During the French Revolution, Jean-Baptiste “Anacharsis” Cloots (1755–1794) developed a theory of the world state as the means to guarantee perpetual peace for mankind. Though his ideas have largely been misunderstood, Cloots's political writings were in fact an extensive plea for a more cosmopolitan understanding of the French Revolution. His system adapted institutions and concepts of the French revolutionary republic for a world state, the republic of mankind. This essay recovers his political vision and connects it both to the heritage of eighteenth-century political thought, especially Rousseau, and to revolutionary political culture. The goal is to retrieve the meaning of Cloots's universal republic, and with it a chapter in the history of cosmopolitan thought.     

Lieutenant-Colonel John Rede: West Country Leveller and Baptist pioneer

This study of the life of Leveller ally John Rede, Governor of Poole, seeks to illuminate the crucial relationship between a group of West Country Presbyterians, Independents, political and religious radicals, and Leveller allies during the critical years of the English Revolution, 1647–1651. In the course of this discussion it aims to shed some light on one of the longest-standing debates about the Levellers: the degree to which they formed an effective and coherent political movement. It concludes with an assessment of the balance of forces between the Levellers and radical Independents and their opponents. It then goes on to trace one line of religious and political descent from those events through John Rede’s work in establishing the particular Baptist church of Porton in Wiltshire.     

The “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”: China's modern trauma

This paper examines and analyses the causes and consequences of the Cultural Revolution in China. This great twentieth century Chinese trauma cannot be detached from Mao as a person. He was its initiator and – as a charismatic leader – stood above the people and the party, and in the consciousness of the majority of the people was perceived as a great, compelling leader. This paper traces the historical setting, the causes, the process and the consequences of this tremendous political and social movement. In addition, the role of Mao and the concepts of his followers are scrutinized. Finally, the issue of whether or not the Cultural Revolution should be classified as a “revolution” is discussed.     

Wuming: an underground art group during the Cultural Revolution

The Wuming painting group opened its first public exhibition in Beijing in 1979. The hundreds of small paintings exhibited were accumulated through years of clandestine art practice stretching back to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. This article traces the history of the Wuming group and its art – describing the social identities of the artists, exploring the historical context of the group's formation, reconstructing the underground art and cultural activities, and contextualizing the group's artistic innovations. The history of this underground art group addresses larger debates over Chinese modernity, and over the interpretation of the history of the Cultural Revolution in today's global context.     

Notes on contributors

Abstract

There are at least two options or approaches available to those who seek to evaluate Garibaldi's life in its entirety. The first option envisages Garibaldi as a revolutionary figure firmly devoted to the cause of the people and the advancement of human rights. The second sees him as putting his popularity in the service of a sovereign monarch, but managing nevertheless to salvage something of the ideals of his youth. There are indeed double aspects to Garibaldi, who was both republican and monarchist, simultaneously a rebel and a man of order. As a rebel he fought against kings, popes and emperors; as a man of order he relied on the effectiveness of temporary dictatorship (his own in Rome in 1849 and the king's dictatorship in 1860). He broke with Mazzini when he chose to pursue national unification in collaboration with the monarchy. That choice limited his freedom of action, and he felt betrayed when he became aware of the consequences in the last years of his life. Paradoxically, it is Mazzini's death in 1872 that released Garibaldi from his subjection to King Victor Emmanuel II, and allowed him to live out the last years of his life more or less at peace with himself as a socialist who put the well being of the people ahead of everything else.     

Revolution and the Jews

Taking the public demonstrations in France after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo as its starting point, the essay considers the active role Jews played in shaping the relationship between religion and politics in modern Europe to argue that this history can allow us to think more expansively about the position of Islam in current discussions of theo-politics in France and Europe more broadly.