南宋川陕战区兵力部署的失衡与吴曦之变

南宋在川陕战区兵力部署中,基于战略防御和节制武将的考虑,形成兴州、金州、兴元府三大屯驻重心。在具体兵力分布上,由于吴氏武将集团的影响,兴州驻军的数量与实力最为强大,呈现出严重的失衡状态。兴州驻军力量过于强大是吴曦据兴州叛变的关键因素。吴曦叛变平定后,南宋对兴州军事力量予以分化,又导致兵力分散和不利于边疆防御的弊端,体现出南宋削弱地方军事力量与加强边疆防御的两难困境。川陕战区兵力部署的演变,蕴涵着南宋加强中央集权的真实内容。     

The two starting points of World War II: a reexamination from a global perspective

Although the factual chronology of World War II is not in dispute, how to best make sense of these facts and how to objectively evaluate that history have always been limited by political circumstances and personal biases. Viewing WWII seven decades later, we need to move away from Eurocentrism and to stop seeing the war from the prism of a European war or Pacific war. The entire history of WWII, from beginning to end, including its several phases characterized by fermentation, outbreak, climax, and conclusion, is extremely complex. This paper argues that the war has two origins or starting points because it resulted from disparate prewar conditions in Europe and Asia. Viewed from this perspective, the strategic importance of the China Theater in WWII and the enormous sacrifices and contributions the Chinese people made to the victory over Fascism and for world peace ought to be given due credit.     

Multi/Interdisciplinary investigations into Italy and World War I: An introduction

This introductory article details some of the main points that characterized Italian politics and culture in the period leading up to World War I and during the war itself, and then surveys the contributions of each article in this series that further investigates the period. The authors note the febrile nature of Italian domestic politics before the war which challenged traditional liberal parliamentarism. This political challenge was accompanied by a challenge to traditional art, and no movement epitomized these twin challenges to the old order like Futurism. Yet, though the Futurists and other nationalist groups glorified war and helped push Italy into the conflict, the country was hardly united. In fact, the hope was that war would finally unify the nation and erase the shame of Italy’s lackluster military performances since unification. As such, Italy’s cultural experience of the war was somewhat unique, in that the desire to prove its martial valor did not lead to the level of denunciations that other nations’ artists and writers produced – though there were some critics. Ialongo’s article traces the Futurist contribution to this pro-war ethic. Reich shows how the popularity of the Maciste alpino film during the war built upon this desire to unify the nation behind the war. And Palanti’s analysis of the post-war film Umanità notes that there were critics in Italy willing to challenge the cult of war.     

Maciste goes to war: Maciste alpino (1916)

During the war years, both fiction and non-fiction films relating to the war populated Italian screens. This article examines Maciste alpino (1916), one of the best known and best received of the popular Maciste series of Italian silent cinema, in light of several factors: the growing nationalist movement that saw intervention in World War I as the means of creating political consensus; the sophistication and development of narrative, character, and attractions in the Maciste series; and its relation to popular film genres such as comic serials and the emerging strongman genre. Maciste functioned as a modern weapon par excellence, a Futurist mechanized man whose muscled body constituted its own fighting machine. At the same time, through his humor, goodwill, and muscled physique he became a national symbol of Italian wartime might.     

‘Slowing down the going-away process’ — Tom Stoppard and Soviet Dissent

Tom Stoppard is a playwright most noted for his ferocious wordplay and playful approach to reality. In the 1970s and 1980s, his concern for like-minded prisoners of conscience in the Soviet bloc informed his activism on their behalf, utilising his public profile in an attempt to reposition their plight in the West. Stoppard’s activism was largely informed by his involvement with a number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working to publicise human rights violations in the Soviet Union, who provided him with the most up to date information on these abuses, and gave him access to dissidents. This article explores Stoppard’s activism on behalf of Soviet prisoners of conscience, highlighting the impact that these organisations had on his activism. Through an assessment of Stoppard’s efforts, it highlights the important role that NGOs and celebrity politics played during the cold war.     

国际法、女权保护与第一次世界大战期间的英德宣传战

宣称战争因某种道德理想而展开是一次大战的显特征,国际法、平民权益特别是妇女儿童权益保护就成了区分和衡量战争正义合法与否的标尺。英德关于非人道作战方式的合法性争执凸显出国际法存在的严重缺失及其在宣传战中作用的有限性,而侵害最易成为战争受难的妇女儿童权利便成了宣传战中最能调动舆论情绪、最易产生宣传效果的主题,这也是英国适时将宣传战主题从德国违反国际法切换到德军大规模强暴妇女儿童上来的主要原因。     

1840-1860年间清政府三种外交体系分析

两次鸦片战争期间的中外关系,如果按照类型分析法标准来划分,可以基本分为朝贡体系Ⅰ型、Ⅱ型和Ⅲ型三类。中国与三类国家间的关系及其各自体制内部的演变错综复杂。两次鸦片战争之间的中外关系显然发生了重要变化。澄清这一时期中外关系复杂的性质,对中国近代史研究具有重要意义。     

Science as propaganda: Swedish scientists and the co-production of American hegemony in Sweden during the cold war, 1953–68

This article takes a close look at how the United States used the funding of scientific research in Sweden as a hegemonic and propaganda tool in the 1950s and 1960s. It shows that non-aligned Sweden functioned just as much as a node in the international science network set up by the Americans after the Second World War as did the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries. These funds were awarded mainly to an elite network of prominent Swedish scientists. The article sheds interesting light on the controversies of such funding in Sweden during the cold war and adds important knowledge about Swedish–American relations during the cold war. The article argues that this Swedish scientific elite co-produced US hegemony in Sweden by actively seeking out American military funding and by making use of it. It also argues that US funding was intended to portray the United States as an altruistic patron of science in the world and thus serve American propagandistic purposes as well.     

Carl Schmitt on land and sea

Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), one of the leading conservative legal thinkers of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany, is best known today for his critique of liberalism. Between the late 1930s and mid-1950s, Schmitt wrote numerous articles and two books addressing the mythical and geopolitical significance of land and sea. In recent years, these texts have begun to attract attention from historians as well as theorists. This article reconstructs the origins of Schmitt's theories about land and sea, and shows how they developed in the context of his efforts to delegitimize the British Empire and justify the persecution of Jews. It also explains how Schmitt selectively misread the history of maritime law in order to critique the ‘freedom of the seas.’ Finally, it reveals that the meaning Schmitt ascribed to ‘the opposition of the elements of land and sea’ changed dramatically to suit his political needs. For all their evocative qualities and insights, Schmitt's texts on land and sea do not constitute a coherent theory, but rather a shifting field of polemical positions in search of theoretical support.