Reversing the view of ‘political pilgrims’: re-examining Italian travelogues about China in the 1950s

Scholars often consider the mostly positive representations of China by Italian visitors in the 1950s as the false and embellished depictions of political pilgrims. This article challenges this oversimplified interpretation. Based on evidence from commonly cited travel accounts, this article argues that Italian writers’ leftist political sympathies did not necessarily lead to self-censorship or intentional embellishment of China, nor did the host country’s control and surveillance over foreigners simply make Italian visitors willing to cooperate or produce positive feedback. Putting these travel accounts in their social and historical contexts, the article shows that Italian intellectuals’ positive representations of China in the 1950s, as well as the severe criticisms that were raised in the 1960s and 1970s, were rooted in reality and reflected the radical changes in Chinese society and Sino-Italian relations over the course of the Maoist era (1949–1976).     

‘A Young Tory’? The Early Parliamentary Career of Charles James Fox 1768–74

This article seeks to redress the neglect, even by his biographers, of Fox's early career, when he made over 250 speeches in the house of commons in six years. The period when young Fox supported government was an inappropriate prelude to his later fame as opponent of Prime Minister Pitt and champion of ‘liberal causes’. He was anything but a ‘man of the people’ in his authoritarian attitude and detestation of popular opinion, and yet there were signs that he would not be an administration man in the mould of his father, Henry Fox.     

柏克政治思想述评

柏克的政治思想内容庞杂,学界争论也较多,尽管一般地他被看做保守主义的教父,但同时也具有自由主义的面相。要完整地把握柏克的思想,似需从两方面着手：（1）在英国及其殖民地政治事务上,他常常表现出自由主义的一面。不过,从英格兰政治思想史角度来看,则背离了洛克所奠基的自由主义原则。（2）在法国革命问题上,他的思想表现出更多的保守主义成分,且这一思想直接导致了辉格党的分裂,却也砥砺了后来的保守党;这种保守主义思想应用于英国及其殖民地的政治事务也许是适当的,但若用来指导其他国家则是荒谬的,甚或是“反动的”。     

法国大革命时期关于非婚生子女生父搜索的争论

生父搜索指非婚生子女或其生母为了获得抚养费或提出财产要求而公开指认其生父的诉请权。18世纪法国的法理、习俗与法律鼓励生父搜索。法国大革命时期对此进行了激烈的争论,最终导致生父搜索的取消。为了强化这一点,保护合法的父家长制的家庭及其财产的安全,1804年《法国民法典》完全禁止生父搜索。     

Reformation(en) und Wissenschaft(en). Einführung in das Tagungsthema

Based on a brief historiographical survey, the article aims at tracing some intellectual relationships between early modern science and the protestant Reformation (or the various individual reformations underlying it). Besides the mere structural analogies of the two reform movements and their common debt to Renaissance humanism, common elements such as the new reading of texts and the new role of the individual, but also the philosophical link between voluntarism and the notion of natural law, are discussed. However, the ambiguous attitude towards natural knowledge and the wide variety within the European protestant movement ask for a much closer look into the relationships between science and the Reformation than has been hitherto been achieved.     

Working-Class Women and Republicanism in the French Revolution of 1848

Abstract

Following the February Revolution in 1848, working-class women as well as men attempted to hold the government to its promise of the right to work, through street demonstrations, individual and collective demands for work, and participation in the national workshops that had been established in an attempt to address the problem of unemployment in the capital. In the process, these activists articulated what scholars have labelled as a democratic socialist vision of republicanism. In June of 1848, women participated in the insurrection that sought to defend the vision of a social republic. While the republicanism of working-class men and bourgeois women such as George Sand has been examined, studies of working-class women in the first half of the nineteenth century have to this point focused on the romantic socialist influences that shaped their activities, in particular the Saint-Simonian movement. Drawing primarily on individual letters, police interrogations and newspaper reports, a vision of republicanism emerges that includes the ability for women to sustain their families through waged as well as household labour. This concept of republican virtue based itself not in suffrage but in women's capacity to act as both producers and consumers under just and equitable conditions.     

From Populism To Protagonism (and Back?) in Bolivarian Venezuela: Rethinking Ernesto Laclau’s on Populist Reason

Ernesto Laclau’s On Populist Reason, now over a decade old, is one of our generation’s most nuanced contributions to debates on political community and social change in the era of mass democracy. Against critiques of populism as illiberal demagoguery, Laclau’s conceptualization emphasizes the discursive nature of power and politics and considers populist sequences as radical democratic openings in an era of consolidated global neoliberal capitalism. This article considers the shifting terrain of democracy – from liberal, to populist, and finally to protagonistic forms – in the context of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. I argue that despite Laclau’s important contributions, the formulations of power that underlie his populist reason are symptomatic rather than critical of contemporary liberal politics. The article offers an analysis of Bolivarian Venezuela that emphasizes popular experimentation with protagonism as an expression of democracy based in grassroots collective autonomy and direct democracy over the representation and managed development of the modern state.     

A synopsis of the international symposium in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the 1911 Revolution

The International Symposium in Commemoration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the 1911 Revolution was held in Wuhan from 12 to 15 October 2011. Participants engaged in lively discussions around the following significant academic issues: the dilemma of the New Policy Reform of the Qing, the background of the 1911 Revolution, its historical process, the intellectual circles during the 1911 Revolution, politics and society, the main players, finance and economics during the revolutionary period, centennial memory and reinterpretations, and the historical meaning and legacy of the 1911 Revolution. The current article is a synopsis of the symposium.     

论辛亥革命中的巡防队

晚清巡防队是清政府军政改革中保留下来的一种新旧混杂的军队,长期以来史学界对于辛亥革命时期军队的研究主要集中在新军上,对于巡防队的研究基本上是一片空白.本文对巡防队的历史和巡防队在辛亥革命中的表现及作用进行研究,认为清政府对于巡防队的改造存在诸多问题;巡防队在辛亥革命中有一定的表现,在不同的省区其作用是不一样的;但是也不能忽视其反面作用,军队起义意味着对中国传统文化意识的强烈挑战,造成了军阀政治的悲惨结局,影响了半个世纪中国社会的发展进程.