Unfastening Israel's Future from the Occupation: Israeli Plans for Partial Annexation of West Bank Territory

Israeli plans to partially annex West Bank territory have mainly been perceived as frustrating the two-state solution, and as putting Palestine/Israel on a path leading to the one-state alternative. This paper analyses partial annexation plans without assuming that the future of Palestine/Israel would necessarily abide by either statist resolution. It argues that by ostensibly distancing Israel's hold of the West Bank from an identifiable configuration of a belligerent occupation, partial annexation is offered to Jewish Israelis as a path for detaching the futurity of the two nations, and as a trajectory for normalising the Israeli state, without having to make what much of this public would see as painful concessions. It further explores settlers’ objections to such plans, claiming that even a partial incorporation of West Bank territory into formal Israel is expected to erode the exclusivity of Jewish domination which Israel has been upholding in its settler-colonial frontier.     

From resistance to revolution: the limits of nonviolence in Arendt’s ‘Civil Disobedience’

ABSTRACT

Arendt’s work on civil disobedience sets out an optimistic portrayal of the possibilities of such forms of action in re-energising the spirit of American politics in the late twentieth century. Civil disobedience should not simply be tolerated, she argued, but incorporated into the legal structure of the American political system. Her work is usually seen to promote an idea of civil disobedience that is thus bound to existing constitutional principles and essentially nonviolent. However, by looking at Arendt’s discussion and critique of various practices of civil disobedience in 1960s and 1970s America, specifically in relation to the nonviolence movement influenced by Martin Luther King, and on the other side, the more militant Black Power movement, a different idea of civil disobedience emerges. This paper argues that whilst, for Arendt, civil disobedience within America certainly possesses the constitutionally restorative potential she assigns to it, in a broader sense – theoretically, globally, and even in terms of alternative ideologies within America – her conception of civil disobedience is in itself neither necessarily constitutional, nor nonviolent. It is, instead, a form of revolutionary action, whose limits are set only by politics itself, and specifically, Arendt’s criterion of publicity.     

Reports of the Cook voyages in the Hamburgischer Correspondent

The beginnings of a racialised order in Oceania, and of German involvement in such, reach back a long way. In this article, the author traces elements of this racialisation back to the years before the first formal European settlement on the Australian continent. She examines important aspects of the German journalistic reception of James Cook’s voyages to the Pacific by focusing on one particularly highly networked and very widely distributed newspaper and its reporting in the period 1768–1787. She uses this to show how the editors, and especially London-based German-speaking correspondents, consciously leveraged an Anglophilia that was typical of the Hanseatic city of Hamburg in a way that encouraged their German-speaking readers, wherever they might be, to closely identify with British exploration and even claim ownership of these events themselves. Anglophilia and the German-language reporting of the Cook voyages, therefore, supplied raw materials for an entangled sense of imperial identity.     

The Extra‐Parliamentary Organisation of the Whig Junto in the Reign of William III

There is much evidence for the parliamentary organisation of the whig junto in Queen Anne's reign, but little for its extra‐parliamentary organisation. This note gives evidence for such extra‐parliamentary organisation late in the reign of William III from letters by both James Vernon and Robert Harley, which describe meetings of the junto and some of its supporters in the country houses of followers in the summers of 1698, 1699 and 1700.     

The End of the Gamble: The Termination of the Virginia Lotteries in March 1621*

The sudden cancellation of the Virginia lotteries during the first sitting of the parliament of 1621 was not part of a general parliamentary attack on monopolies but a calculated political act intended to pressure the Virginia Company of London to pay more taxes than required by its charter of 1612. The appropriate context for considering the cancellation is the financial difficulties of James I and the search for funds by Sir Lionel Cranfield. The cancellation coincided with a rejection of a new charter for the company, possibly incited by Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador in England. The cancellation of the lotteries was the most important turning point in the history of Jamestown and started the company on its downward spiral.     

Technospatial imaginaries: Masud Rana and the vernacularization of popular Cold War geopolitics in East Pakistan, 1966–1971

Abstract

The cold war in East Pakistan was intimately connected with nationalism and nation-building. One of the central aspects of such nation-building was the articulation of a new sense of national territoriality. Technology was central to these attempts to radically reimagine space. This is what I call technospatiality. Material, political and symbolic resources of the cold war were mobilized in the production of these new technospatialities. Popular cold war geopolitics engendered in cultural productions such as the James Bond films were creatively vernacularized to produce new, nationally useful technospatial imaginaries. In this article I look at how Kazi Anwar Hussain’s hugely successful spy-thrillers articulated this new technospatial imaginaries by drawing upon and reworking contemporary technopolitical objects, projects and anxieties.     

异质文化初次接触的启示——詹姆斯·库克之死个案研究

传统上,库克之死被归咎于夏威夷人的"野蛮",然而该观点却不能解释相关的另一现象:为什么在死后相当长的时间中,库克仍被岛民当做神灵祭拜?从18世纪的夏威夷社会文化本身去解读这一问题,会带给我们更具说服力的解释。在库克与夏威夷人接触的时候,"土著"文化与西方文化的交流还相对平等,夏威夷文化并且还起到更主体化的作用,库克为首的殖民者是被纳入到夏威夷本地文化中理解的。库克的死,可以启发我们去进一步探究异质文化初次碰撞的方式和模式问题。     

14C测定判别武王克商年代范围始末

武王克商年代是我国古代编年中的一个关键点,近年来^14C测定技术有了重要发展,我国^14C测年界在此基础上探讨了^14C方法应用于商周历史纪年的希望。1996年夏商周断代工程正式立项,利用^14C测定判别武王克商年代范围的任务得以实施。1998年初两个常规^14C实验室以3‰测定精度,前后开始对陕西丰镐遗址出土样品^14C测定,并于1998年10月6－7日先后公布了^14C数据,提出武王克商代范围应判别在公元前1050－1020年间。1998年下半年AMS室开始测定。三室测定数据对比结果基本相合,利用殷墟,琉璃河等遗址出土的样品系列作^14C测定得出的结果,与上述年代范围一致。1998年11月30日公布了天计算结果,与测定结果不谋而合,经多方面反复验证,历时近二年,都无法动摇已有的判别结果,具有较高的可信度。     

建国初期的冀朝鼎

新中国诞生后,百废待兴。冀朝鼎在帝国主义实施禁运和经济封锁的困难面前,积极探索中国外经贸的新体制,加强外汇管理,以灵活的外交,与11个国家签定了外贸协定,还成功地与日本、英国等未建交国家进行“民间贸易”．打破西方列强的孤立政策．开创了中国对外交往与贸易的新局面。     

HISTORY AS PHILOSOPHY

Historians have taken a beating in recent times from an array of critics troubled by our persistent unwillingness to properly theorize our work. This essay contends that their criticisms have generally failed to make headway among mainstream historians owing to a little noticed cognitive byproduct of our work that I call history as philosophy. In so doing I offer a novel defense of professional history as it has been understood and practiced in the Anglophone world over the last half‐century or so while suggesting, in conclusion, that historians could not do other than they do without serious psychic and societal loss.