AROUND 1968 – DANISH HISTORIOGRAPHY

This article is divided into three parts. The first part outlines the cultural and political leftist revolt of the 1960s and 1970s in Denmark by presenting the different periodizations linked to various aspects of the revolt and by introducing a variety of perceptions of its causes, course and impact. In the next section, apart from pointing out some of the important lacunae, I provide an overview of the genres and topics that characterise the historiography. Studies of social movements and political parties, for example, are heavily overrepresented. In the third and concluding part, I propose that the thematic and methodological distinction in the historiography between the cultural and political aspects of the revolt should be blurred and deconstructed.     

The cultural construction of Italy in Albania and vice versa: Migration dynamics,strategies of resistance and politics of mutual self-definition across colonialism and post-colonialism

This article analyses the shifting ways in which Italy has been strategically represented in Albania during the different key passages of the latter's relatively recent history as a sovereign independent state. As a parallel narrative, the article also examines the way Albania has been equally strategically represented in Italy before and during the two periods in which Italy has been militarily involved in Albania, and the way this has been consistent with an attempt to elaborate and sustain a politically strategic definition of Italian identity and culture. The history of the asymmetrical relationship between Albania and Italy is deeply embedded in the social, cultural and political environments that are on the two shores of the Adriatic Sea. The cultural construction of Albania in Italy and vice versa of Italy in Albania should be linked to seemingly independent instances of domestic reforms. The dynamics of projective identification or dis-identification stemming from these instances should be seen as intertwined within two parallel processes of mutual definition encompassing both the colonial and the postcolonial relations between and within the two countries.     

Colonial rule,colonial repression and war crimes in the Italian colonies

A strange silence has long reigned in the public memory as well as in Italian historical studies regarding possible crimes committed by Italy in its colonial territories. The aim of this article is to reflect on the reasons for this silence through an examination of the major historiographical questions and a review of the few studies available on the subject. The historiographical use of the judicial category of ‘crimes’ or ‘war crimes’ should not be taken for granted, above all in examining the history of the colonial experience. The most important authors have ignored the risk that the sensationalistic use of the category ‘crime’ – in itself an extraordinary and exceptional event – can make one forget the weight of the ordinary running of a colonial power. With these precautions, the article offers a list of the principal episodes historians now unanimously define as crimes. These episodes eliminate any possibility of taking refuge in the self-absolving and vague appeals to stereotypes of Italians as ‘good people’. The article concludes by defining precisely the triple order of silences that together produced the general silence that the author considers an obstacle and a post-colonial stain on the memory of colonial Italy.     

Defending ‘the Principle of Representation’: Andrew Bisset,The English Civil War,and The History of the Struggle for Parliamentary Government in England

Abstract

Victorian attitudes to the past were varied and in some cases irreconcilable. Newer standards of expertise and objectivity coexisted with older approaches, and the idea that history should be used for present purposes remained intact. Throughout the Victorian age there were circumstances in which history was a polemical tool, designed to give one set of interpretations or values or policies an advantage over its rivals. This article explores the work of a relatively neglected figure in Victorian historiography – the reform-minded historian and lawyer Andrew Bisset (1803–1891) – whose primary goal was to illustrate and advance what he called ‘the principle of representation’. He discussed people and events of the past to this end, offending reviewers along the way because of his obvious political agenda, but also developing a rigorous source-based style, usefully evaluating for his readers the work of Macaulay, Carlyle, and others, and helping to shape Victorian opinion about, in particular, the political and religious crises of seventeenth-century Britain. Like others, Bisset believed that the disputes of that period had relevance to the public controversies of his own day. This article is designed to contribute to ongoing debates about the Victorians’ relationship with the past.     

永恒的薪火——怀念我的老师白寿彝先生

白寿彝先生把自己一生贡献给史学事业.他的治史体现出崇高的精神境界,这就是研究历史是为了推动历史发展的气魄,治史中不断创新的器识以及世界史的胸怀.先生研究历史的眼光是开阔的,他总是从世界范围内认识历史学问题.     

1997-1999年史学评论状况评析

统计资料表明,近年来史学评论及其理论研究越来越受到史学界的重视,出现了学术书评建设、学风与学术规范建设、世纪末中国史学回顾等史学评论热潮.但从整体来看,史学评论在数量上还远远低于专业学术文章,在质量上则参差不齐,相当一部分评论学术质量不高;在史学评论学科与理论建设方面,则存在着明显不利于自身发展的思想倾向.因此,当代中国的史学评论尚不能真正实践其矫正史学发展方向和规范史学活动的学科目标,史学评论理论建设和学科建设依然任重而道远.     

正视·总结·继承·发展——2007年高教版《中国近现代史纲要》的理论特色

2007年高等教育出版社出版的《中国近现代史纲要》具有鲜明的文化发展意识、民族发展意识、史学批评意识、历史总结意识和自觉的会通意识等特点。该书的面世不仅有助于推动高校学生思想政治教育的深入和历史教育的进一步发展,而且还在一定意义上体现出当代中国马克思主义史学的理论意义和发展趋势,可以看作是中国马克思主义史学工作者进入21世纪后对中国近现代史的最新研究和解读。     

《史学原论》在中国的传播和影响

五四时期,在我国史学专业化的背景下,《史学原论》作为西方史学方法论的经典教科书,在史学界流传甚广。胡适、李泰菜、梁启超等人的著作深受此书的影响。民国时期不少青年学生赴法留学,跟随《史学原论》著者研习史学方法,这些中国留学生归国后执教于各地大学历史系,极力宣扬师说,使西方史学方法论在大学课程设置中得到贯彻,“史学方法”被官方定为必修课。这本教科书在中国现代史学专业化进程中产生了重大的作用。     

Pacific Coconut: Comestible,Comfort and Commodity

ABSTRACT

As the title implies this special issue concentrates on the coconut in its older usages and its transformation into commodities. The coconut has many histories, with specific intersections with each Pacific island society, indeed each community and family. This brief introduction seeks to give an overview of its penetration into the lives and societies at several levels, from small clans to major companies, from growers to governments, all implicated along the commodity chain. In spite of the coconut’s ubiquity, the historiography has never addressed it fully but taken it rather as a given, one player in capitalism in the region, yet in fact, for over a hundred years, it was the star product upon which many governments and people across the tropical Pacific depended for income. We hope that some aspects of the coconut’s complexity and meaning are brought to light in the following new contributions to its history.     

Memorial soliloquies in post-colonial Rhodes and the ghost of Mediterranean cosmopolitanism

This paper is based on a close reading of Greek and Rodesli (Rhodian Jewish) narratives focusing on the time when Rhodes was under Italian (1912–1943) and then German (1943–1945) rule, the last period when religiously diverse communities coexisted in the island. While Greek historiography seeks to vindicate the island’s final integration into the Greek national space, Rodesli memory is meant to preserve the heritage of a community destroyed by the Nazis. Notably, these corpuses make no references to one another. This phenomenon of soliloquy, the article argues, is illustrative of a competitive memory characteristic of recollections of the past in the eastern Mediterranean and challenges nostalgic invocations of a pre-national, “cosmopolitan” Mediterranean. Broadening the discussion to other post-Ottoman settings, the article draws attention to property redistribution in the aftermath of ethnic cleansing as a major factor in the separation of memory along communal lines. Noting the omnipresence of the figure of the “ghost” in the literature on the region, the paper finally explores the heuristic potential of hauntology to conceive histories of the region that would be inclusive and yet attentive to the differences in the nature, purpose and reciprocal indifference of the sources and of the asymmetrical relations of power in which they were produced.