The sack that never happened: Little Gidding,puritan soldiers,and the making of a myth

It is commonly asserted that the manor at Little Gidding was deliberately sacked by puritan soldiers in 1646, dispersing the Ferrar family, and abruptly bringing to a permanent end their communal life of formal religious devotion. In his poem Little Gidding, T. S. Eliot used this shutting down of the Ferrars’ religious life to contrast worldly failure with the permanence of spiritual values, and the violent closure of Little Gidding and the destruction of the house is generally seen as emblematic of the religious disputes of the 1640s. But, as this paper shows, the sack never happened, and many of the supporting elements of the story are also imaginary. The myth of the sack can be traced back to one eighteenth-century account of soldiers plundering the house to steal valuables, and the paper examines the way it has since evolved and been embellished to create a compelling but untrue narrative.     

Ethnic boundaries and boundary-making in handicrafts: examples from northern Norway,Sweden and Finland

When ethnicity is said to be manifest and practised through handicrafts, these seemingly innocent objects become political. They raise questions concerning who can do what handicraft, who can use what symbols or what developments are “allowed”. They illustrate the continuous production of ethnic norms and boundaries, especially when global tourism enters into the equation. Taking a social constructivist perspective, our study addresses ethnic boundaries and boundary-making in handicrafts in northern Sweden, Norway and Finland. Our findings are based on fieldwork (35 interviewees) with people of diverse local backgrounds making and selling handicrafts. Methodologically, we avoid preselecting people based on ethnicity, but instead contribute to an understanding of the constitutive processes of ethnicity by looking at how ethnic talk comes into conversations about handicrafts. Our findings demonstrate that the interviewees draw an ethnic divide between “Sámi”/“non-Sámi”, while other ethnic-choices move to the background. This divide can be seen to be amplified by tourism. The boundary for who can make a Sámi handicraft or use Sámi symbols remains significant, yet also fluid. The article deepens the understanding of the Sámi/non-Sámi ethnic categorization, here in relation to handicrafts. It also helps unravel the complexities between tourism, ethnicities and handicrafts more broadly.     

尼克松政府对中国钓鱼岛政策初探

尼克松政府时期是美国关于中国钓鱼岛政策的基本定位时期。在返还琉球群岛的过程中,美国单方面擅自将钓鱼岛的"施政权"返还日本,中日钓鱼岛争端由此产生。在钓鱼岛主权归属问题上,尼克松政府保持"中立"立场。在《日美共同合作和安全条约》是否适用于钓鱼岛问题上,尼克松政府一方面对日作出了默许的承诺,但另一方面却极力淡化甚至回避对其采取实际行动。在与台湾当局交涉钓鱼岛的问题上,尼克松政府否决了将钓鱼岛"施政权"从日本手中重新收回的建议,并建议日本与台湾当局进行协商解决。     

论中国对越美和谈态度的转变及其对中越关系的影响(1968～1971年)

中国领导人对越南战争的态度在1968～1971年间发生了转变,即1968年初至1969年上半年,坚决反对越南与美国谈判;1969年下半年至1970年8月,从不干涉越美和谈转变为支持越南谈判;1970年9月后,态度鲜明地支持和谈。中国前后两种立场都引起越南的强烈不满。虽然中国没有以牺牲越南的利益来换得中美关系的缓和,而且在自己并不富裕的条件下,仍给予了越南大量的无偿援助,但这些努力都没有改变越南对中国的不满、疑虑与不安。在中美缓和与越美谈判的进程中,中越关系却不断恶化,这为后来双方的冲突埋下了隐患。     

1950年美国媒体对马克南入藏事件的报道剖析

20世纪40年代,以美国国务院驻中国迪化领事馆副领事身份为掩护的中情局间谍马克南在中国新疆从事秘密谍报活动,并于新中国成立前夕率一行五人队伍自中国新疆秘密入藏。但《纽约时报》等美国媒体却矢口否认马克南的间谍身份,并指责"中国的宣传机器在制造美国特务案例"。美国媒体对马克南入藏事件的报道是历史真实与谎言的混合体,其报道内容的缺失,直接影响了美国民众对事实真相的全面了解和客观判断,对今日美国人"西藏观"的形成产生了消极的影响。     

A method for chronological apportioning of ceramic assemblages

Artifact assemblages from long-inhabited sites may include ceramic types and wares from multiple time periods, making temporal comparisons between sites difficult. This is especially problematic in macro-regional data sets compiled from multiple sources with varying degrees of chronological control. We present a method for chronological apportioning of ceramic assemblages that considers site occupation dates, ceramic production dates, and popularity distribution curves. The chronological apportioning can also be adjusted to take into account different population sizes during the site occupation span. Our method is illustrated with ceramic data from late prehispanic sites in the San Pedro Valley and Tonto Basin, Arizona, U.S.A., compiled as part of the Southwest Social Networks Project. The accuracy of the apportioning method is evaluated by comparing apportioned assemblages with those from nearby contemporaneous single component sites.     

Student Empowerment through 'Area Analysis'

As a result of the teaching quality assessment at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences in Groningen (Netherlands), the course 'Gebiedsanalyse' (Area Analysis) was set up in spring 1998. The aim was to provide an opportunity for the development of transferable and geographical skills in the context of a group-based research project at level II. In addition, an effort was made to move from tutor-led to student-led learning. Experiences from the past 3 years have shown that Area Analysis has been largely successful in providing an opportunity for the application of geographical and transferable skills but also for the 'deep empowerment' of undergraduate students.     

The dissolution of ancient Kvenland and the transformation of the Kvens as an ethnic group of people. On changing ethnic categorizations in communicative and collective memories

ABSTRACT

The aim is to trace how the ethnonym Kven and the interrelated imagination of Kvenland changed over time in Nordic political discourse from the Viking Age to the mid-eighteenth century. In the negotiations over fixed borders between Sweden, Denmark and Russia, recognition of ethnic groups played an important political role in legitimating the territorial claims of the states. It brought the history of ethnic groups to the table and in the process made visible ethnonyms and names for provinces used previously. The continuity of the ethnonyms is investigated as a chronological chain of communicative and collective memory. The ethnonym and the territory of Kvenland were used by the Norwegians to maintain an ethnic boundary with the Finnish speakers in the upper Bothnian area. The names Kven and Kvenland were never used in Sweden. The investigation shows that the Kvens constituted a group of Finnish speaking people existing in continuity from the Viking Age. Their core territory was situated in the upper Gulf of Bothnia area. When this was integrated into the Swedish kingdom the inhabitants were designated Finns by the Swedes. The Finnish speakers in Tornedalen, thus, kept their linguistic and cultural continuity but lost their western Scandinavian ethnonym Kven.     

Peering into the Fog of War: The Geography of the WikiLeaks Afghanistan War Logs, 2004-2009

A team of U.S. political geographers analyzes the secret Afghanistan war logs released by WikiLeaks.org. They offer the chance to examine in detail the dynamics of the conflict in that country. Doing so in a spatial framework is possible because each of the 77,000 events has geographic coordinates and dates. Using cartographic and geostatistical tools, the authors map the changing distribution of the events and compare them to the well-known violent-events ACLED database (see O'Loughlin et al., 2010 in this issue). They conclude that ACLED comprises a representative set of the more comprehensive data in the released files. The released war logs show that the Afghan insurgency spread rapidly in 2008-2009, that the insurgency is moving out of its traditional Pashtun heartlands, and remains mostly rural in location. Hotspot and cluster analysis identifies the key locations of the current war, which indicate that it is relocating to new provinces in Afghanistan while intensifying in the eastern border regions and in the south.     

The Little Revolution in New South Wales, 1808

In this article, ‘Development’ and developmentist ideas, two increasingly fashionable areas of historical inquiry, are explored in the context of relations between the United States and Brazil through the middle decades of the twentieth century, with three arguments made along the way. First, and in contrast to much academic and extra-academic received wisdom (as well as the official pronouncements of US diplomats), the United States government offered no singular or consistent approach to ‘development’ in its dealings with Brazil. Second, an unofficial vision of development (here termed ‘market developmentalism’) that has so far eluded the attention of historians of developmentalist ideas emerged earlier than the official developmentalisms that have been the main object of historiographic interest to date. Third, this unofficial, largely private, consumption-oriented developmentalism is shown to have enjoyed an outsized influence in Brazil, dwarfing the influence enjoyed by those inconsistent varieties of developmentalism espoused by US diplomats between the 1940s and the 1960s.