Europe's confused transmutation: the realignment of moral cartography in Juan de la Cosa's Mappa Mundi (1500)

Following the voyages of Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci in the last decade of the fifteenth century, the New World of the Americas entered the cartographic and moral consciousness of Europe. In the 1500 mappa mundi of Juan de la Cosa, navigator and map-maker, we see Europe as a hybrid moral entity, a transitional blend of the medieval and the modern at the crossroads between two mappings of Europe. This paper argues that the Juan De la Cosa map represents a blurred transition between map-making traditions and a mixed moral rhetoric of European identity. The De la Cosa map operates across two sets of imagined axes: held horizontally, the map is set to a Ptolemaic grid with Europe straddling the Prime Meridian, and yet when held vertically it presents a medieval moral continuum in which the Americas occupy an ascendant position, a verdant new Jerusalem in contrast to the Babylon of the Old World. Europe is both drawn to the centre of a new world order, and also pushed to the moral margins in an echo of the medieval mappa mundi still imperfectly resolved.     

Jute cultivation in the Lower Amazon, 1940–1990: an ethnographic account from Santarém, Pará, Brazil

The Amazon region has long been a place of economic booms and busts. Much attention in the historical literature on Amazonia has focused on the largest and most famous regional economic boom, the Rubber Boom, a period of sustained economic prosperity for some from 1860 to 1920. Other ‘booms’ have occurred in the region as well and this paper describes and discusses one of those others. The paper demonstrates how an export economy in a global periphery (coffee in Brazil) affected economic development in a periphery of that same country and makes a methodological contribution by demonstrating how ethnographic research can contribute to an understanding of a historical period when the paper trail is weak.Jute, a fiber crop, dominated agricultural production along the Amazon River floodplain in the reach between Manaus and Santarém, Brazil, from the late 1930s until the early 1990s. The crop was introduced to the region by Japanese immigrants in order to supply the demand for jute sacking in the south of Brazil where such sacks were used to package commodities, especially coffee. Local smallholder cultivators grew and processed jute, production being mediated initially through Japanese middlemen, later by Brazilians. Poor fiber quality, several external shocks, including the removal of tariffs on imported jute, and especially changes in commodity packaging such as bulk handling and the use of synthetic sacks instead of jute sacks for the transport of coffee beans, the Amazonian jute market collapsed in the early 1990s. Despite its collapse, the legacy of the boom is still evident in the physical and social landscapes in the region.     

从乡村商店到百货商店--1877年至20世纪20年代美国南方乡村的经济生活

随着收成制在战后美国南方的确立,乡村商店成为南方转型初期经济生活的重要部分。它的特点是“靠男性消费者为生,以农作物借贷制为杠杆,商品综合经营”。但是,世纪之交,由于工业化力量的推动和现代消费观念的冲击,乡村商店从南方经济生活中逐渐淡出,“以吸引女性消费者为主,采用现金支付或分期付款形式”的百货商店取而代之,并且广告在经济生活中起越来越重要的作用,南方经济生活逐步走向现代化。     

《明清以来苏州社会史碑刻集》校点献疑

本文重点从韵文的角度,讨论《明清以来苏州社会史碑刻集》的若干校点问题。     

上海私营金融业的联合之路:由联合放款、联合经营到联合管理

1949年5月上海解放后,不同层次的私营金融业在走向公私合营的共同目标中,所需的时间、具体的过程有着较大的区别。上海私营金融业曾两次组织对生产与其他经济事业的联合放款,此外规模较大的银行较早实现了公私合营,而数十家中小行庄公司则通过组成四个联营集团进行多种业务的联合经营并逐步过渡到两个联合总管理处,实现了从业务到人事、财务、组织多种形式的联合管理,最后在条件成熟的时候与大银行共同组成统一的公私合营银行。政府对上海地区数量众多的私营金融机构采取了导向联放、联营和联管的循序渐进的谨慎政策,是符合整个中国金融业历史实际的正确之举,体现了中国私营金融业社会主义改造的历史必然性和复杂性。     

被边缘化的群体：印度华侨华人社会的变迁

针对国内外印度华侨华人研究边缘化的现状,从人口特征、职业特征、文教事业及社团、宗教信仰及族际通婚等方面对20世纪50年代的印度华侨社会进行了分析,对印度排华运动、由此造成的印度华人社会的衰落,以及中国政府接侨及归侨的安置情况进行了阐述,认为印度社会经济的快速发展和两国关系的改善和发展,将会对印度华人社会产生积极的影响。     

中国经济转轨时期民营企业信用缺失的诱因与治理

信用是企业生存和发展的基础,是规范市场秩序的根本保障一在我国经济转轨时期成长、壮大起来的民营企业,信用缺失成为其发展的最大障碍。民营企业的失信行为不仅与“道德”有关,更是制度缺失导致的结果：关注民营企业,充分认识信用缺失的诱因并加以治理,对民营企业乃至市场经济的发展具有战略意义。     

History after the end: post-socialist difference in a (post)modern world

This paper makes an intervention in the debates on postmodernism as dominant social and cultural order of the present from the perspective of post-socialist transformation. Grounded in an analysis of theoretical discourses and of qualitative interviews, it highlights the hierarchical time/space constructions and universalizing tendencies inherent in many proclamations of the postmodern epoch and contests the uncritical acceptance of the 'end of history' metanarrative. Post-socialist transformation is shown to be a complex process that fits uneasily into pre-given categories and disrupts an ordering logic that divides between a western, postmodern 'us' and 'the rest' of the world. My argument is formulated on the basis of research on the transformative processes in former east Germany.     

三线建设调整改造的历史考察

三线建设是我国社会主义经济发展史上一个重要的历史事件。 2 0世纪 80年代 ,三线建设遗留下来的问题与国内国际形势的变化愈发不协调 ,国家着手对三线建设进行调整改造 ,主要内容与方式是中观和微观的布局调整、产品结构调整以及一线、三线合作等方面 ;三线调整改造具有布局调整为主与其他方式兼顾、政府扶持与企业自谋出路相结合等特点 ,是在新的历史条件下对过去三线建设遗留问题的矫正 ,是三线地区经济、国防建设在新形势下的继续和完善     

传统城市空间的近代转型:以上海县城为例(1905-1914)

学界对于传统中国城市空间近代转型相对缺乏关注。通过对上海县城的研究发现,在人口压力增加、城市用地紧张、环境恶化及租界示范效应的多重作用下,明清治所城市空间结构不再适用于20世纪初的上海县城,城市空间亟待改造。上海县城市政机构的设立为解决这一需求提供了制度保障与财力支持,故县城得以开展前所未有的大规模建设,包括道路、排水、桥梁、码头、义冢迁移、公地改造、市容清理等,以不同以往的空间结构重塑了上海县城。这种因人地关系紧张带来的适应性改善不限于上海一地,而具有普遍性的意义。