1912－1924年留日士官生与中国军事现代化成败

清末民初,积弱不振的中国在内忧外患的冲击下,接连向日本派遣了大批留学生,专习陆军,这些留日士官生学成归国后,被充实到各个军事部门。他们无论在主持军事教育,还是在充任现役军官方面,均做出了不同程度的贡献。但囿于时代的限制,他们纷纷卷入了军阀混战的旋涡,从而在中国军事现代化进程中留下了败笔。     

THE SWEDISH CONSULAR SERVICE IN SOUTHERN EUROPE, 1720–18151

This paper deals with the origins and functions of the Swedish consular service in Southern Europe between 1720 and 1815. It is argued that establishment of the consular service was a necessary part of the Swedish policy of trade expansion. Consuls acted partly as commission agents of Swedish merchant and shipowners, because Sweden lacked established trading contacts in the area. Partly, consuls had official diplomatic functions, especially in North Africa. The consular service is conceived as an institutional arrangement reducing transaction costs of Swedish agents. This article suggests that reduction in protection costs in particular was a significant competitive advantage of Swedish merchants and shipowners and was due to peace treaties with the Barbary states in North Africa and Sweden's neutrality in the 18th‐century great power conflicts.     

发达国家的农业现代化对我国农业发展的启示

本文系统地分析了发达国家农业现代化的特点,从发达国家农业现代化与我国农业生产现状的结合点上,探讨了今后我国农业发展的途径与策略。     

试论南京城市近代化的特征

南京在中国历史上占有特殊的地位,有十个朝代先后在此建都,是赫赫有名的王者之城。按照中国古代的堪舆术,南京是虎踞龙蟠的风水宝地,王气极盛。相传楚威王曾在此埋金镇地,以压王气,于是有了“金陵”之称。又传秦始皇曾引淮水北流,以泄王气,于是便有了“秦淮”。孙...     

Cartographical evidence of efforts to develop Acre during the last decades of Ottoman rule: did the Ottomans neglect the city?

Using dozens of Ottoman maps from the Central Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, the article challenges the prevailing standpoint regarding the historical-geographic process that took place on both sides of the Bay of Acre/haifa during the last decades of the Ottoman period, and led to Haifa’s emergence as one of the most important port towns in the eastern Mediterranean, and concomitantly to Acre’s demise and negligence. To date, the few researchers who have dealt with this process, especially from the viewpoint of Haifa’s local history, have viewed the Ottoman regime as a passive force that did not act to preserve the status or economic strength of Acre, the regional headquarters, the province’s capital city and the region’s most important town for many years. We argue that the central Ottoman government in Istanbul did not perceive the process of Acre’s demise and Haifa’s rise as a deterministic process. Official Ottoman maps drawn at the request of the imperial centre as early as the 1880s show that plans existed to develop Acre and its region. These plans, even if only partially implemented, would have clearly contributed to preserving Acre’s status over Haifa. The Ottomans attempted to preserve the geo-strategic status of Acre and its importance and made plans to upgrade various infrastructures in the town’s vicinity, which might have changed processes related to physical conditions and powerful technological advances. This approach, which is based on the belief in the human ability to confront and deal with deterministic geographic and physical conditions, seems to have been the foundation of Ottoman planning in the case of Acre. The Ottomans’ capacity to implement these plans was very limited, however, and they eventually had to acknowledge this reality. Thus, Acre was reduced to its formal status as the capital of an Ottoman administrative district until the end of the Ottoman rule in Palestine. In a way, its fate was not very different from that of other traditional centres of Ottoman rule along the eastern Mediterranean coast, whose importance diminished at that time, while new centres that were more cosmopolitan and connected to developments overseas came to power.     

West European Countries and Their Foreign Policy in the Views of the Russian Liberals of Mid-to-Late Nineteenth Century

The article analyses the perception of the mid-to-late nineteenth-century Russian liberals of the West European states and their foreign policy of the time towards Russia. The article discloses the main features and differences in assessing the West and Russia as its part. It allows to reveal such features in Russian liberalism as common provisions and values typical of world liberal theory and a number of special features which resulted in developing different schools of liberal movement in Russia. The article underlines that the range of liberal ideas varied from selective borrowing of some elements of the western political system to their complete adaptation in Russia. The article focuses on the opinion of a number of national-oriented Russian liberals of the time who put forward a priority task to modernize the country, to implement liberal reforms, but not to strengthen its foreign policy power which, according to them, prevents improving well-being of the people and social stabilization.

The study allows to define a main vector of the ideological pursuit of the Russian liberals, the part of whom tried to enroot the liberal ideas in the backward peasant country.     

An airline at the crossroads of the world: Ariana Afghan Airlines,modernization, and the global Cold War

In 1957, the United States government provided funding for Pan American World Airways to purchase a 49% share in Afghanistan’s national airline, Ariana Afghan Airlines. While unusual in its scope, the arrangement was part of a broader program of US technical assistance, administered jointly by government agencies and private corporations, to newly formed airlines in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Between 1955 and 1965, technical assistance for commercial aviation was critical to the USA’s Cold War strategy to win ‘hearts and minds,’ and to contain Soviet influence, in the developing world. Using Ariana as a case study, this article examines what was at stake for the USA – politically, economically, and culturally – in aviation technical assistance projects. However, the article also argues that such projects should be seen as instances of ‘co‐production,’ in which recipients of technical assistance exploited superpower rivalries and actively shaped the airplane’s uses and meanings.     

Nation and state building in Italy: recent historiographical interpretations (1989–1997), I: Unification to Fascism

Abstract

This is the first part of a general historiographical review of recent studies on the formation of the modern Italian nation and national identities. The review is organized chronologically and the first part covers literature on the development of the Italian state and society to the end of the nineteenth century.     

中国文化现代化与东亚合作

本文尝试将中国文化现代化与东亚合作议题结合起来进行整体性思考,以探讨区域文化传统的传承、大众文化与文化产业合作以及有益于共同利益的、面向未来的"文化共同体"建构。首先,提出了观察和思考中国文化现代化路径的三个维度:民族本源、地区基础和全球视野。其次,梳理了东亚文化传统的同质性内容和共同演进逻辑,讨论了以东亚文化传统为基石构建面向未来的"文化共同体"的可能性。其三,以全球范围内的文化"同质化"趋势为背景,提出应立足东亚三国文化产业领域的既有优势、合作基础和共同市场,构造一条成熟有序的大众文化生产与传播"链条"。     

土耳其的近代化:一般道路与特殊问题

奥斯曼帝国上层人物推行的旨在富国强兵的改革揭开了土耳其近代化的序幕,土耳其开始了从传统农牧业社会向现代工业社会的转变。这也是近代其他落后国家曾面临的共同选择,所走的一般道路,并无特殊之处。然而,从奥斯曼帝国瓦解到土耳其新生,这一过程中遇到的问题与其他国家和地区完全不同。影响土耳其近代化的主要因素包括:生产关系变革的自身条件不足,自强改革运动走了弯路,社会经济转型的阻力大于动力;在世界体系中的半边缘化地位的制约。奥斯曼土耳其特殊的地缘环境、特殊的政治宗教因素,以及卷入第一次世界大战造成的严重后果,决定了土耳其社会发展的步伐和走势。