Woman's Work in the Service of Empire: Lady Margaret Field (1905–94) from School Teacher to Governor's Wife

The presence of single and also of married British women in overseas colonies, especially those employed by or married to men in the Colonial Service in the later colonial period, has been the subject of scholarly enquiry. Their lives, roles and values and their distinctive contribution, if any, to the development of empire and of its ending have been debated. Their gendered roles were usually subordinate in a masculine culture of empire, and especially as wives they are commonly regarded as marginalised. The archived records left by Lady Margaret Field reveal her commitment as a single woman to a colonial mission and her sense of achievement as a school teacher and educational administrator, while also acknowledging the independence and career satisfactions she subsequently lost when she married a senior Colonial Service officer who rose to be a governor. But it is also apparent that, though incorporated and subordinate as a governor's wife to her husband's career, she was not marginalised to a separate sphere. As is evident from this case study, governors’ wives had important and demanding political duties, and such responsibilities need to be acknowledged.     

18～19世纪英国"友谊会"运动述论

在英国社会保障发展史上,18、19世纪是“友谊会”等民间互助组织快速发展的时期。但对“友谊会”运动这一历史现象的成因,国内外学界长期以来没有一个明确的解释。通过对18、19世纪英国“友谊会”等民间互助组织兴盛与衰落过程的历史考察表明,“友谊会”运动的出现,是此时社会上日益增长的社会保障和救助需求与英国国家职能尚未完全扩及到社会保障领域、很好地满足人们对社会福利需求的结果,“友谊会”等民间互助组织的出现与迅速发展是对18、19世纪英国国家职能在社会保障领域中缺位的重要填充。     

晚清民初现代“文明”和“文化”概念的形成及其历史实践

在晚清民初的历史语境里,中国传统的“文明”和“文化”概念先是大体经历了一个摆脱轻视物质、经济、军事方面的内容,形成内蕴进化理念的新的现代“文明”概念——广义的现代“文化”概念,再从另一维度部分地回归与“武化”、物质化相对的中国传统“文明”和“文化”的关键内涵,进而获取新的思想资源、重建一种新的狭义“文化”概念的过程,最终复构成了一个广、狭义内涵并存的、带有矛盾性的现代“文化”概念结构。这两个重要的现代概念形成和演变的过程,同时也是当时的中国人运用它们进行社会改革的实践过程。戊戌时期,现代“文明”概念已经在趋新士大夫中逐渐流行开来,并携带一系列现代性主导价值观念,成为维新运动得以全方位展开不容忽视的思想依托;而狭义“文化”概念的出现及其与广义概念的合构,则影响了五四新文化运动的进程。     

马克思学说研究会与中国共产主义组织的起源

以往若干史著记载了李大钊曾于1918年在北京发起过马克思学说研究会,但由于史料缺乏,近来多被学者否认。笔者根据当时的报载文章、早年俄国顾问撰写的《中共简史》,并参以当事者的回忆,认为马克思学说研究会确曾于1918年底至1919年上半年存在过。这个研究会的产生涉及苏俄人士与中国进步知识分子的初期联系与活动。虽然该会的参加人员、活动时间、组织形式都不怎么固定,是一个十分松散的非正式学会,却在中国开启了组织马克思主义团体的先河,成为中国共产主义组织的源头。     

‘Meddling with Politics’: The Political Role of Foreign Missions in the Early Nineteenth Century

The proper character of the relationship between missionaries and politics shaped one of the most contentious debates within the first century of the modern missionary movement. While the leadership of the missionary societies repeatedly insisted upon the separation between the work of the gospel and politics, missionaries in the field frequently found it difficult to remove themselves from political controversies. John Philip and James Read served with the London Missionary Society in the Cape Colony for most of the first half of the 19th century. Their persistent defence of the interests of the colonial Khoi made them controversial figures in the debates over the social, political and economic structures of the Cape Colony. Missionaries like Read and Philip, rarely described their activities as ‘political’, and certainly did not conceive of their work as in any way related to the patronage‐ridden political system of the early 19th century. Nonetheless, in their promotion of the ideas of religious and civil equality, and in their effective use of public opinion to shape government and public perception of colonial policy, their actions reflected many of the important changes taking place in contemporary British politics. Dissenting political activity focused on the issues of the defence of religious liberty, the struggle to secure their own civil equality, and the debate over the proper relationship between church and state. These issues also played a crucial role in colonial politics throughout the period. This essay will illustrate the important role of the foreign missionary movement in this process. Examining the work of Philip and Read enables us to identify the ways that issues of domestic politics helped to shape the political debates emerging in Britain's expanding empire.     

太湖流域史前社会的礼器与礼制

史前太湖流域,礼器出现在社会初步分化的崧泽文化时期;良渚文化时期已经是一个分层的复杂社会,社会成员分化成为不同的等级、阶层,与此相适应,太湖流域史前社会出现了陶质、石质和玉质三种不同质地的礼器,并有着比较严格的使用制度,太湖流域史前社会的礼仪制度初步形成。     

Colonowhen, Colonowho, Colonowhere, Colonowhy: Exploring the Meaning behind the Use of Colonoware Ceramics in Nineteenth-Century Manassas, Virginia

This paper explores the meaning and use of colonoware ceramics recovered from six archaeological sites dating from the nineteenth-century at Manassas, Virginia. Americans, both free and enslaved, occupied this landscape. Archaeological investigations have recovered colonoware at some nineteenth-century domestic sites but not others. The occurrence of colonoware at these sites is patterned: colonoware in nineteenth-century Manassas was not an “ethnic” marker denoting peoples of African descent, but rather a social marker that distinguished enslaved people from free. People of free and enslaved status attributed negative connotations to colonoware. Enslaved servants employed colonoware out of economic necessity, not as a way to express ethnicity.     

The Evolution and Destruction of Oorlam Communities in the Rustenburg District of South Africa: The Cases of Welgeval and Bethlehem, 1850s–1980

Abstract

This is a study of two Oorlam communities in the Rustenburg district. The one, Welgeval, was predominantly rural, the other Bethlehem, otherwise known as the Oorlam Locasie, in Rustenburg town itself, was mostly urban in character. They were situated no more than 60 kilometres apart. They were both off-springs of Boer, later Afrikaner society, and, to a lesser extent, of attachment to missionaries. They both survived for approximately the same duration, and both were victims, in slightly different ways, of apartheid. There was some known contact between the two communities. The emergence of their respective histories has rested in part on land restitution claims, which like many across South Africa, have brought to light previously forgotten or uncovered remembrances. There are, therefore, significant points of similarity and comparison between them. This article further complements the existing literature of previous scholars on the Oorlam by uncovering the experiences of two more sites of Oorlam occupation. Finally a study of the two communities raises interesting issues regarding their identity and the ways in which they have remembered and reconstructed their pasts.     

Picturing knowledge: Chinese brushwork illustrations of Western natural history in a late Qing periodical, 1907–1911

In recent years, a number of studies have examined the introduction of Western learning into China after the late nineteenth century. Many of these works discuss how Chinese scholarship might have been reshaped by Western classification and structure of knowledge, and ask how it absorbed and adopted the vocabulary and language of Western learning. While defining the newly emerged idea of “national essence”, late Qing Chinese literati, notably the members of the Society for Preserving National Learning, also tried to incorporate Western scientific knowledge, as they understood and perceived it, into the framework of Chinese learning. From 1907–1911, more than a hundred botanical and zoological illustrations, drawn more or less according to Western scientific norm, appeared in Guocui xuebao, a journal published by the Society for Preserving National Learning. These pictures are an indication of the attempts made by late Qing Chinese literati to integrate Chinese and Western scholarship. Focusing on these drawings, this paper examines how the painter Cai Shou might have adopted and applied the natural history knowledge and the drawing techniques he acquired through various means. It also asks with what ideal late Qing and early Republican Chinese literati might have identified themselves.     

Visual Memory of the 1911 Revolution,edited by Yang Tianshi and Tan Xufeng

The history of religious societies under the puppet Manchukuo regime has not been studied to a great extent. By examining the historical materials of the Red Swastika Society, an eclectic religious association that blended Daoist and Buddhist practices and notions, this article attempts to delineate the activities of that religious organization in northeast Chinese society, and argues that the apolitical and non-partisan philanthropic activities of the Red Swastika Society were challenged by both nationalism and imperialism. Prior to World War II, collaboration between the Red Swastika Society and a new Japanese religion, ōmotokyō, had been politicized by right-wing Japanese politicians. During the period of Japanese rule in Manchukuo, the Red Swastika Society had to abandon its political neutrality after being politically suppressed. To some extent, it was transformed into a propagandistic society that advocated the legitimacy of the puppet Manchukuo regime, of which it became a vassal.