Consumption of Chinese goods in southwestern Europe: a multi-relational database and the vicarious consumption theory as alternative model to the industrious revolution (eighteenth century)

This article discusses the application of new technologies, software coding and computer analysis in the social sciences and humanities, mainly in the field of economic history. In the last two decades, the use of new computer technologies among historians to develop theories and solve questions has fostered a vibrant historiographical debate. However, these new digital tools have largely been used as an end in themselves, rather than as a means to develop hypotheses and answer questions. This has prevented researchers from fully exploiting such technologies in their field. In this article, I discuss how I designed a new multi-relational database using the “Access” package and SQL language to test the “industrious revolution” hypothesis and present the “vicarious consumption” theory as an alternative model for analyzing the eighteenth-century circulation of Chinese goods in the Western Mediterranean region. It presents the cross-referencing method I used to analyze the historical information I collected, mainly from probate inventories and trade records. This method makes it possible to navigate through the data in a way that goes beyond the traditional use of “excel” tables.     

AT THE ROOTS OF THE ‘FINLAND BOOM’

Finland enjoys a positive country image in Japan, where, reportedly, enthusiasm for things Finnish reached the state of a ‘boom’ during the 2000s–2010s. What is this positive visibility based on? To shed light on the foundations of Finland’s visibility in Japan, this article tracks Finland’s national imaging there from a historical perspective. Through an empirical study of Finnish diplomatic archives, the article looks beyond nation branding – the latest mode in the official promotion of states to foreign audiences – and opens a window into the past practices of Finland’s official promotion in the distant East Asian case. In the 1960s, the Press Bureau of Finland’s Foreign Ministry drafted an image policy to support Finland’s neutrality and to broaden the country’s interaction with the West. The policy was implemented through Finland’s embassies, and therefore Finland’s newly defined characteristics also became actively promoted in Tokyo. As a result of this intensification of Finnish public diplomacy in the Cold War, many of the modern aspects of Finland’s later nation branding in Japan were introduced. Of the redefined official autostereotype, cultural and commercial dimensions proved the easiest to promote, whereas its foreign political dimension was met with the most local contradiction.     

Ensuring Benevolent Neutrality: The British Government's Appeasement of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939

This article examines the development of British non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Previous studies have focused heavily on pro-rebel or anti-Republican sentiments among British officials in London and abroad, and often apply the term ‘malevolent neutrality’ to the motives behind the policy. However, utilising records from the National Archives as well as private papers, this article evaluates British non-intervention within the context of appeasement and demonstrates a clear link between the two policies. By examining British neutrality through the lens of appeasement, this study will enhance our understanding of British diplomacy in the 1930s and the links between non-intervention in Spain and the growing threat of fascism in Europe. It argues that the British Government adopted and maintained a policy of strict neutrality in order to avoid an escalation of the conflict and to place itself in a better position from which it could establish a good relationship with whichever side emerged victorious. As it became increasingly clear that the rebels were going to overthrow the Republic, the British Government began to tacitly appease General Franco in an attempt to avoid a hostile Spain in the build up to the Second World War.     

Iran–US Public Health Cooperative Organization (PHCO): Education,Healthcare, and Health Services in the Southwest of Iran (Fars), 1950–60

Fars is among the largest provinces of Iran that received the most technical assistance from the American economic delegation in the 1950s. After settling in the province and during ten years of activity, the American delegation provided technical assistance in the fields of health engineering, health education, preventive medicine, nursing, medical services, and medical education. This paper explains how the technical assistance of US personnel contributed to the general health of the Fars province. The findings of this research show that after the formation of the Public Health Cooperative Organization (PHCO) in 1950, not only did most of the cities and villages of this province began to enjoy safe drinking water, but also public health improved. Additionally, the birth of children with disabilities and the spread of infectious diseases such as malaria and trachoma declined by means of preventive medicine centers and health education.     

Changes in the body,glaze and enamel compositions of early Meissen porcelain, 1723–c.1740

The evolution of early Meissen body, glaze and colorant compositions is examined using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) measurements on three artefacts that can be accurately dated to the period 1723–c.1740. The results are interpreted based on recipes recorded in the earliest documents of the Meissen archives. The pure Aue kaolinite contains low levels of Ti and can be distinguished from secondary clays, for example, clay from Colditz. The excess Ti in the glaze versus the body reported earlier and confirmed by the present authors is explained by the exclusive use of Colditz clay for the glaze, as described in the recipes before 1730, providing a terminus ante quem for Meissen porcelain exhibiting this particular asymmetry. After 1730, the presence of elevated Ti in the body could serve as a marker for the experimental admixture of clays to Aue kaolinite to alter its properties. Based on the detection of As, Ba and Bi, it is suggested that smalt from Erzgebirge was the colorant for blue enamels until at least 1725.     

Excavations at MR11 on Marawah Island (Abu Dhabi,UAE): new insight into the architecture and planning of Arabian Neolithic settlements and early evidence for pearling

In 1992, an archaeological survey of Marawah Island conducted by the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey identified two significant Neolithic settlements known as MR1 and MR11. Both sites are constructed on prominent rocky platforms located towards the western end of the island. In 2000 and 2003, small-scale excavations took place at MR11, with the first full excavation taking place in 2004. Excavations continued at MR11 between 2014 up to 2019. Radiocarbon dating demonstrates that the site was occupied between the earliest part of the sixth millennium to the mid-fifth millennium BC. Three areas have been so far examined. Area A—a tripartite house (2004 and 2014–2017 excavation seasons); Area B—a partial structure (in 2003 and 2017–2018); and Area C—a series of at least five rooms (in 2017–2019). The results provide a valuable new insight into the architecture and planning of Arabian Neolithic settlements in the region, as well as the earliest known evidence for pearling.     

Red Foxes in the Filing Cabinet: Günter Tembrock's Image Collection and Media Use in Mid-Century Ethology**

This paper considers the epistemic career of visual media in ethology in the mid-20th century. Above all, ethologists claimed close contact with research animals and drew scientific evidence from these human-animal communities, particularly in public relations. However, if we look into the toolboxes of comparative behavioral biologists, it becomes evident that scientifically valid research results were primarily obtained by experimenting with model images. These visual specimens tell a technical story of the methodological requirements in behavioral science necessary to bridge everyday observations between the laboratory and the field. By neutralizing individual traces of animal bodies as well as their observers, they prompted the abstraction of ethological hypotheses. The case study of East-German biologist Günter Tembrock (1918–2011), who maintained his own collection of newspaper clippings, drawings, photographs, and films, offers a new perspective on the methodological development of this field. Furthermore, this article contributes to a scholarly discussion geared toward expanding the spaces of ethological research. My analysis of the image collections of the Forschungsstätte für Tierpsychologie presents the archive as a relevant site of study in the history of ethology.     

Learning soft skills the hard way: Historiographical considerations on the cultural adjustment process of German-speaking émigré neuroscientists in Canada, 1933 to 1963

ABSTRACT

This article is a historiographical exploration of the special forms of knowledge generation and knowledge transmission that occur along local cultural boundaries in the modern neurosciences. Following the inauguration of the so-called “Law on the Re-Establishment of a Professional Civil Service” in Nazi Germany on April 7, 1933, hundreds of Jewish and oppositional neurologists, neuropathologists, and psychiatrists were forced out of their academic positions, having to leave their home countries and local knowledge economies and traditions for Canada and the United States. A closer analysis of their living and working conditions will create an understanding of some of the elements and factors that determined the international forced migration waves of physicians and clinical neuroscientists in the twentieth century from a historiographical perspective. While I am particularly looking here at new case examples regarding the forced migration during the National Socialist period in Germany, the analysis follows German-speaking émigré neurologists and psychiatrists who found refuge and settled in Canada. These individuals form an understudied group of refugee medical professionals, despite the fact that the subsegments of refugee neurologists and clinical psychoanalysts in the United States, for example, have been a fairly well-investigated population, as the works of Grob (1983), Lunbeck (1995), or Ash and Soellner (1996) have shown. This article is primarily an exploration of the adjustment and acculturation processes of several highly versatile and well-rounded German-speaking physicians, who had received their prior education in neurology, psychiatry, and basic brain research. They were forced out of their academic home institutions and had to leave their clinical research fields as well as their disciplinary self-understanding behind on the other side of the Atlantic.     

Border collapse and boundary maintenance: militarisation and the micro-geographies of violence in Israel–Palestine

Drawing upon subaltern geopolitics and feminist geography, this article explores how militarisation shapes micro-geographies of violence and occupation in Israel–Palestine. While accounts of spectacular and large-scale political violence dominate popular imaginaries and academic analyses in/of the region, a shift to the micro-scale foregrounds the relationship between power, politics and space at the level of everyday life. In the context of Israel–Palestine, micro-geographies have revealed dynamic strategies for ‘getting by’ or ‘dealing with’ the occupation, as practiced by Palestinian populations in the face of spatialised violence. However, this article considers how Jewish Israelis actively shape the spatial micro-politics of power within and along the borders of the Israeli state. Based on 12 months of ethnographic research in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem during 2010–2011, an analysis of everyday narratives illustrates how relations of violence, occupation and domination rely upon gendered dynamics of border collapse and boundary maintenance. Here, the borders between home front and battlefield break down at the same time as communal boundaries are reproduced, generating conditions of ‘total militarism’ wherein military interests and agendas are both actively and passively diffused. Through gendering the militarised micro-geographies of violence among Jewish Israelis, this article reveals how individuals construct, navigate and regulate the everyday spaces of occupation, detailing more precisely how macro political power endures.     

Theorizing a child–dog encounter in the slums of La Paz using post-humanistic approaches in order to disrupt universalisms in current ‘child in nature’ debates

This paper theorizes children's interspecies relation with dogs in La Paz Bolivia utilizing post-humanism and new materialism as its approach. This approach allows for the deconstructing of human–nature binaries found in discourses central to the children in nature movement. Questioning the universalizing of children's experience in nature the paper considers three propositions. Firstly, what if children were viewed as nature rather than outside of it. Secondly, can the objects or ‘things’ of nature be viewed as animated. And finally, how sensitive is the contemporary imperative to reconnect children to a romanticized more natured life, to children's diverse worldly experiences. I explore these propositions drawing on a study where I have adopted a materialist ontology and theorized using the work of [Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] and her concept of intra-action as adopted by Rautio [2013a. “Children Who Carry Stones in Their Pockets: On Autotelic Material Practices in Everyday Life.” Children's Geographies 11 (4): 394–408]. Based on my child–dog interspecies exploration, I will conclude by re-addressing the three propositions.