The politics of finance in Napoleonic Italy (1802‐1814)

Abstract

The Republic and Kingdom of Italy (1802‐14) served as an important source of revenues for Napoleonic France. Most importantly, the authorities had to pay for a growing Italian army and for the French troops in northern Italy. To satisfy the Emperor's increasing financial pressure, Prina, the Finance Minister, increased the tax burden and reorganized the financial administration and tax collection. Prina kept a moderate property tax to secure the support of the landowners and raised indirect taxes, thereby increasing the burden on the poor. His reforms in the financial administration made it more orderly, uniform and efficient, thus strengthening the central state. While Prina modernized the financial machinery and expanded the state's resources, the fiscal pressure contributed to growing hostility from the population to the Napoleonic state. Following the fall of the Kingdom of Italy, the Austrians left the Napoleonic financial system intact, a demonstration of Prina's effective reforms and long‐term impact.     

STAVNE REFORMATORY:

One single institution, Stavne reformatory in Trondheim, is followed through 50 years of institutional history. What do inquiries into maltreatment and abuse disclose about the use of violence over time at Stavne reformatory? Change and continuity is discussed: what conditions may have contributed to the reproduction of violent patterns, and what conditions may have counteracted the use of violence?     

新见小邾国有铭青铜器探析

近年来追缴的小邾国青铜器中,邾寿父鼎、邾眉父匜被盗于距东江小邾国墓地仅1.5千米的横岭埠遗址,器主是小邾国宗室贵族。郳公戈被盗于大韩墓地,年代为春秋晚期偏晚,是小邾国君郳公克父的自作器,综合文献记载和郳公镈铭文,推知克父应即小邾国春秋末期的国君恭公或惠公。两件邾季簠是小邾国君之幼弟为其妻仲娸作的媵器。     

Two AHA Sessions: The Revolutionary Mr. Kuhn and the Evolutionary Mr. Bertalanffy

Abstract

Quantitative methods of content analysis have become established in most subfields of political science, but remain relatively unutilized in studies of political theory, despite the exclusive focus of that subfield on textual sources. This article develops a variation of content analysis—termed usage analysis—and employs it to resolve a standing debate in scholarship on Cicero's political theory regarding the synonymy of the major Latin terms for the state (civitas and res publica). The resulting distinction between these concepts then informs an exposition of Cicero's ideal state not as the Roman Republic itself or the mixed constitution alone, but as a universal, everlasting political society supported by justice, a mixed constitution, and active citizenship.     

Revisiting the South Korean developmental state after the 1997 financial crisis

This study reassesses the conventional wisdom surrounding the developmental state of South Korea (hereafter Korea) since the 1997 Korean financial crisis. The conventional wisdom is that, as a result of the continued structural reforms prompted by the crisis, the Korean developmental state, inherently characterised by active or direct state intervention, strong economic and industrial policies, the chaebol-oriented economic policy, and labour exclusion, has finally begun to dissolve in earnest. In this study, we have considered whether that is really the case and also which theoretical implications can be drawn from this consideration. Analysis of the Korean developmental state following the 1997 crisis has indicated that, quite contrary to conventional wisdom, the developmental state has continued to prevail as a core policy framework of the Korean administrations even after the crisis. There is no doubt that the continued structural and market reform after the crisis certainly undermined the Korean developmental state to a certain degree, but that does not mean the beginning of the end of the Korean developmental state at all. For much evidence strongly indicates that the Korean developmental state still remains intact and strong despite the structural reforms, on account of the successive Korean governments’ assiduous and deliberate efforts to maintain and reinforce it. Even after the crisis, the Kim Dae-Jung and post-Kim regimes have hardly abandoned many of their market interventionist policies. Such market interventionist policies, which were routinely practised under the military regime in the 1960s and 1970s, diametrically contravene the argument that the Korean developmental state has begun to dissolve as a result of structural reform after the 1997 crisis. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Korean developmental state persists as usual. All this information, then, suggests that path dependence is in action in the case of the Korean developmental state, and this suggests a further hypothesis that the Korean developmental state is very likely to persist in the future as well, despite increasing globalisation pressure, given the strong path dependence.     

In Defence of the Secular? Islamisation,Christians and (New) Politics in Urbane Malaysia

Besides the clarion call for a “new politics” by opposition political parties, a significant catalyst that arguably swayed Christian electoral choices in the landmark Malaysian general elections of March 2008 was the counsel by religious leaders to safeguard “the secular state”. This action was prompted by recent high profile controversial legal cases that were perceived to be a serious erosion of the freedom of religion clause guaranteed in the secularist Federal Constitution. In this essay, I not only examine the recent antecedents of this course of action but also delve into the more distant past in order to draw out how the apparently impervious categories of “religion” and “the secular” have been implicated in the structuring of social and political imaginaries in Malaysia.     

Policing the Holy Nation: The State and Righteous Violence in Vanuatu

ABSTRACT In Vanuatu, the police force has in recent years been strengthened by foreign government aid. AusAid and NZAid are heavily involved inside the police force, seeking to create ‘good governance’ and to shape Vanuatu's national developments. However, these measures also coincide with some other unexpected developments. Recent cases of violence, and especially of sorcery, have led the police to intervene in a quest for moral order. Police are becoming part of the articulation of new occult understandings of wealth and power. These developments are traced back partly to the history of colonial governance and the idea of righteous violence, but also to current restructurings of the Vanuatu state and growing Christian conceptions of Vanuatu as a holy nation.     

CALIFORNIA IRREDENTA

Kevin Starr's Golden Dreams is the culmination to some forty years of scholarship on the unfolding theme of a “California Dream,” that imaginal component to the growth of the self‐identity and increasing international economic power of the most populous state in the American Union. Indeed, the period 1950–1963 that the book meticulously covers forms in many ways the most imposing manifestation of that Dream. This essay reviews the central features of Starr's account, particularly the infrastructural foundations in transportation, water supply, and higher education realized by a triumvirate of California governors, both Republican and Democrat, who regarded themselves as nonpartisan members of the “Party of California”; the expansion of California's major cities: Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco; the characteristics of the Silent Generation and the culture of “cool Jazz” that dominated the period; as well as the rise of dissident elements among environmentalists, minorities, and Beats, that foretold the protest period of the 1960s. This essay then asks whether Starr has avoided the larger implications of his own narrative that California from this period on had become in most respects a putative nation‐state in its own right. From the global impact of its major media industry—Hollywood—to the continued advances of its economic clout throughout the rest of the century as at times the fifth largest economic entity in the world, California may need to be increasingly regarded as a world civilization in itself rather than as a regional civilization to which Starr's historical narrative has so far constricted it.     

IS COMPARATIVE HISTORY POSSIBLE?

In recent years the trend toward comparative histories, frequently read in terms of transnational studies, has produced some remarkably exciting work. The prospect of the comparative is gaining broader appeal, a development we should applaud but at the same time begin to examine in a critical fashion. This essay lays out some of the problems involved in comparative work and suggests ways in which we might profitably utilize these potential snares in productive ways. Comparative history has the potential to operate as a “bridge‐builder,” encouraging inventive thinking that moves scholars beyond the familiar terrain of their training. In this respect, it encourages original and innovative ways of approaching historical work. But there are lessons to be learned and problems to be faced in managing a complex scholarly enterprise of this kind. Comparative work runs the risk of reproducing and consolidating older models of universalist history that assume universal standards. It further runs the risk of assuming rather than historicizing the idea of the nation as a fixed point of historical reference rather than seeing the nation itself as a site for historical scrutiny. In this paper, my goal is to lay out these problems alongside the palpable rewards of comparative work, and then to suggest how we might turn such problems to our advantage.     

The Gift We Bring

Abstract

Miroslav Volf’s A Public Faith invites religious traditions, especially Christianity, to bring their best elements into the public square in a spirit of hospitality and engagement for the common good. With regard to Christianity, he claims that one of the best elements we can offer the public square is a complexly relational vision of the human person made to love self, others, God. In this essay Dávila proposes that the preferential option for the poor is a particular expression of this anthropological vision of Christianity that is well poised for public engagement based on humility and care for the most vulnerable members of society. Following Volf’s proposal, the option for the poor functions as a paradigm for imaginative and creative engagement in the public square that might help people of faith navigate seemingly intractable political and cultural disagreements in the public square.