Een‐Gonyama Gonyama!: Zulu Origins of the Boy Scout Movement and the Africanisation of Imperial Britain

British imperialists in the late 19th century denigrated non‐western cultures in rationalising the partition of Africa, but they also had to assimilate African values and traditions to make the imperial system work. The partisans of empire also romanticised non‐western cultures to convince the British public to support the imperial enterprise. In doing so, they introduced significant African and Asian elements into British popular culture, thereby refuting the assumption that the empire had little influence on the historical development of metropolitan Britain. Robert Baden‐Powell conceived of the Boy Scout movement as a cure for the social instability and potential military weakness of Edwardian Britain. Influenced profoundly by his service as a colonial military officer, Africa loomed large in Baden‐Powell's imagination. He was particularly taken with the Zulu. King Cetshwayo's crushing defeat of the British army at Isandhlawana in 1879 fixed their reputation as a ‘martial tribe’ in the imagination of the British public. Baden‐Powell romanticised the Zulus' discipline, and courage, and adapted many of their cultural institutions to scouting. Baden‐Powell's appropriation and reinterpretation of African culture illustrates the influence of subject peoples of the empire on metropolitan British politics and society. Scouting's romanticised trappings of African culture captured the imagination of tens of thousands of Edwardian boys and helped make Baden‐Powell's organisation the premier uniformed youth movement in Britain. Although confident that they were superior to their African subjects, British politicians, educators, and social reformers agreed with Baden‐Powell that ‘tribal’ Africans preserved many of the manly virtues that had been wiped by the industrial age.     

“Aufrechterhaltung der gemeinsamen Kultur”. Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft und die Österreichisch‐Deutsche Wissenschaftshilfe in der Zwischenkriegszeit

“Maintaining a Common Culture” – The German Research Foundation and the Austrian‐German Scientific Aid in the Interbellum. After the end of the Great War, private as well as public research funding in Austria was anaemic and slow to develop. Whereas the German state‐funded Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) was established as early as 1920, first steps in that direction were only taken in Austria in the late 1920s. In 1929, the Österreichisch‐deutsche Wissenschaftshilfe (ÖDW) was founded under the auspices of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the DFG. Although prima facie on an equal footing, the new research funding organisation was in fact highly dependent on its German cooperation partner. The article explores for the first time ÖDW's position within the German and Austrian science and foreign policies, which aimed to promote the idea of unification of both states within the German Reich. A quantitative analysis of the subsidies policy in the first five years of existence shows that the ÖDW gave financial aid primarily to conservative research fields‘ affecting the intellectual balance of power in the First Austrian Republic. Policy continuities and discontinuities of the organisation in the course of the national‐socialist rise to power in Germany after 1933 are examined in the second part of the article. The article thus both increases our knowledge about the most important German research funding organisation DFG‘ and identifies some of the fundamental structural features of Austrian science policy in the interwar years.     

戴戡试评

戴戡是辛亥革命时进入政界的显要人物,数十年来对其评价多持否定态度。本文认为戴戡在护国运动和反对帝制复辟的历史关键时刻立场正确坚定,应作实事求是的评价。     

民初北洋政府德育教育失败的反思——以尊孔运动为考察中心

以尊孔运动为主要内容的民初北洋政府德育教育,其结果以失败而告终,究其原因集中体现在政策缺乏连续性、理论宣传的内在矛盾、民间资源借助不力、舆论氛围恶化四个方面。探究其败因得到以下启示:1.政策的连续性是德育教育成功的前提;2.内在机理完善的理论宣传是德育教育成功的基础;3.有效借助非政府资源是德育教育成功的保障;4.营造良好的舆论氛围是德育教育成功的关键。     

Patriotism,nationalism and modernity: the patriotic societies in the Danish conglomerate state, 1769–1814

ABSTRACT. This article investigates sixty‐three patriotic societies established in the Danish conglomerate state during the Age of Enlightenment, since they can throw light on the pre‐national collective identities. It explains how the patriotic societies had both an external function in regard to society and an internal function among their members. It analyses how the members comprehended patriotism and how they propagated ideas of solidarity and good citizenship to a wider audience. The patriotism of the eighteenth century is also compared with the nationalism of the nineteenth century, and the way they reflect two different understandings of core concepts such as state, language and folk culture is explained. However, both ideologies correlate to modernity, since they reflect the same dialectic tension in the relationship between the individual, the social community and the modern state.     

Wholeness and individuality: Revisiting the New Culture Movement,as symbolized by May Fourth

Abstract

The May Fourth New Culture Movement was a “convergent historical movement,” as well as a movement with a central purport and an intrinsic wholeness. The image of a homogeneous May Fourth formed unintentionally, and was also constructed by contemporaries and later generations. By examining the connections between the 1911 Revolution and the New Culture Movement from a more macroscopic perspective, exploring whether the latter was in fact a response to external impact or a self-awakening, observing how the debate over new versus old in the early Republican era developed to the point of a “culture” war, how the two-sided efforts for radical reforms reconciled destruction and construction, the interaction between the student movement and the New Culture Movement, and other aspects, thus examining the legacy of the New Culture Movement via perceptions in the post–May Fourth era, we can see that May Fourth has become a symbol of the New Culture Movement.     

A Methodology for the Evaluation of Hygrometric and Mechanical Properties of Consolidated Stones

Several authors agree that stone surface consolidation works should not significantly alter original mechanical and hygrometric properties of the stones in order to avoid differential stress between the consolidated and non-consolidated parts. Specific limitedly destructive methodologies have been developed for assessing the variation in both mechanical and hygrometric properties, but they require preliminary calibration procedures that are very costly to adopt in terms of both time and money. This research study describes an analytical and experimental procedure aimed at obtaining the necessary hygrometric and mechanical characterization of natural and/or artificial stone, before and after consolidation works, by simply assessing the variation in the distribution of the porous structure.     

The Importance of Cheltenham: Imperialism,Liminality and Gustav Holst

The study of liminality, pioneered by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, and reinvigorated by Victor Turner, considers the ambiguity that exists for individuals as they move between defined groups or identities. Reconsidering the relationship between the British composer, Gustav Holst (1874–1934), and his birthplace, the west country spa town of Cheltenham, provides not only a case study of the general liminality of the professional musician, but of a figure who is betwixt and between in almost all aspects of his life. In essence, Holst is the archetype of a liminal being. This study problematizes Holst's place in the received history of British music, arguing that his liminality has been overlooked in various attempts to make his life and music fit a mainstream narrative for English musical culture, the so-called Second English Musical Renaissance. The origins of that liminality are explored by considering Holst's relationship with Victorian Cheltenham, ranging widely from the civic to the religious, from the public to the private, and from the individual to the social. This includes his contact with prominent influences such as imperialism and evangelicalism, but also elements that are seemingly more marginal to the town but central for Holst, such as Theosophy. Doing so clarifies the origins and importance of Holst's relentlessly liminal status in Victorian and Edwardian society, demonstrating how such reconsiderations can reshape the historical narrative of Victorian influence on the twentieth century.     

A Theological Response to ‘The Case for a Pre-emptive Strike’

Abstract

After the enlargement of the European Union at the beginning of 2007, Western Europe has seen an enormous migration of East European Roma people begging in the streets. In this article, I will focus on some juridical as well as moral dilemmas these street beggars, mostly Romanian Roma, have raised in the EU territory and especially in the Nordic countries. I will also reflect on the historical facts and on past legislation where it is necessary to provide the background for the current situation. I shall argue that to hinder the right to free movement of Roma beggars in the European Union territory by criminalizing their begging and camping violates their fundamental rights. Moreover, such treatment in this case is tantamount to ethnic discrimination.