Constructing national identity in Canada's capital, 1900–2000: Confederation Square and the National War Memorial

Ottawa's Confederation Square was initially planned to be a civic plaza to balance the nearby federal presence of Parliament Hill. A century of federal planning, with the direct involvement of Prime Minister W.L. Mackenzie King, repositioned it as a national space in the City Beautiful style. Recent renovations have improved its pedestrian amenity and restored much of the original plan by French urban designer Jacques Gréber. The square contains the National War Memorial and the National Arts Centre, yet is a weak public space due to weak edge definition, animation, and spatial enclosure. The war memorial design was selected in a 1925 international competition won by Britain's Vernon March. The Great War monument was not installed until the 1939 Royal visit, and Mackenzie King intended that the re-planning of the capital would be the World War II memorial. However, the symbolic meaning of the Great War monument gradually expanded to become the place of remembrance for all Canadian war sacrifices. The National War Memorial is more successful as a symbolic object than Confederation Square is as a public space, yet both have evolved into important elements of the Canadian capital's national identity.     

Acts of heritage,acts of value: memorialising at the Chattri Indian Memorial,UK

Abstract

The Chattri Indian Memorial is a public site that hosts and embodies heritage in complex ways. Standing on the edge of Brighton, UK in a once-remote part of the Sussex Downs, the Memorial was built in 1921 to honour Indian soldiers who fought on the Western Front during the First World War. As both a sacred place and a space of socio-cultural heritagization processes, the monument is an enduring testament of past values of war heroism, but also more ephemeral practices of ritual. The article documents the heritage-making at work within memorialisation at the Chattri as a case study, examining how differing ‘valuations’ of a memorial site can be enacted through time, between material form and immaterial practices, and across cultures. The article theorises participants’ current affective practices as conscious ‘past presencing’ , and analyses how their conscious acts of heritage-making affectively enacted values of morality, community and belonging.     

Tourism and Tragedy: The Memorial at Belzec,Poland

In 1942, within in a period of 10 months, 500,000 people were systematically murdered in a specially built death camp at Belzec, Poland. When it had served its purpose the Nazis demolished it, and to hide its existence, grassed the site over, allowing the atrocities performed there to remain virtually hidden from public view for over 60 years. In 2004 an important new Holocaust memorial, covering the whole death camp area, was opened. Visually striking, this conceptual art/architectural artwork affectively elicits strong visitor responses. I explore ways in which the materiality of the reconfigured site makes the invisibility of such horror and collective loss paramount. My interpretation and visual analysis shows how ‘memory work’ can operate through viewer experience. This paper locates Belzec within its historical context and includes a related discussion about Polish–Jewish relationships up to the present. As a significant heritage site, Belzec’s new role in Polish Holocaust tourism is examined.     

New Delhi’s All-India War Memorial (India Gate): Death,Monumentality and the Lasting Legacy of Empire in India

This paper traces the colonial and postcolonial histories of one of India’s most iconic structures, New Delhi’s All-India War Memorial. Designed and built by Edwin Lutyens immediately after the Great War, the memorial commemorated both Indian soldiers who had died in defence of the empire and the reason for such human sacrifice. As such the memorial reaffirmed and celebrated Britain and India’s unbreakable imperial bond, now strengthened by the fiery crucible of war. After independence in 1947, India took ownership of the memorial by renaming it India Gate to symbolise the country’s transition from what it had been to what it was becoming through India’s passion to be free. In the process, the memorial was re-evaluated and re-imagined in ways that transformed this site of unwelcome colonial memory into one of India’s most important symbols of national renewal. And yet this new interpretation remained as highly contested and problematic as its original colonial meaning. While the memorial became a site of national cohesion for many, it also perpetuated a colonial politics of division along communal (religious) and inter-communal (caste) lines that has eroded a sense of well-being and security for significant sections of the Indian community. Today, India Gate serves as a symbol of both national renewal and national fragmentation.     

Ghostly Remains and Converging Memories: Yūshūkan and the Australian War Memorial Exhibit the Pacific War

Focusing on the Yūshūkan museum in Tokyo, and the Australian War Memorial Museum in Canberra, this article engages how pain and sacrifice in the Pacific War are represented through the characters of kamikaze and prisoners of war respectively. Despite the inimical historical, political and moral orientations, these institutions’ presentations of memory of war display some interesting overlaps. After establishing that historical, cultural and political contexts are significant in assessing how and why pain and sacrifice in the war are engaged by each institution, I examine the Japanese midget submarine attack on Sydney in 1942, which effectively bridges both institutions. By assessing the emotive nature of the exhibitions it becomes apparent that while the framing of this single act of violence is culturally esoteric, themes of bravery, heroism, loyalty and sacrifice cross cultures.     

洛阳北窑西周墓地性质初探

洛阳北窑西周墓地,埋葬人员庞杂,随葬大量毁坏的兵器和车马器、随葬器物分层埋葬和无嫁女的媵器等特征,不仅与其它地区西周贵族墓地有明显不同,而且与西周时期实行的族葬墓制度也不合,结合《周礼》关于西周墓葬制度的相关记载,联系到这里曾是“成周八师”的驻防地,我们认为这处墓地是“成周八师”阵亡将士的“陵园”。     

肥致碑及相关问题

肥致碑,1991年出土于河南省偃师县(今改市)南蔡庄一座东汉墓内。偃师县文物管理委员会编写的发掘简报见《文物》1992年第9期。简报发表后,备受海峡两岸学者的关注。20年来,公开发表的研究文章不下20多篇。文章内容相对集中在碑文的释读、肥致碑的性质、碑文记述与墓内被葬者的问题、碑文反映的东汉社会风气和碑文的书法艺术等五个方面。后面两个问题,研究者的看法基本一致,兹不赘述。前三个问题,看法     

Digging in the Dark: The Underground War on the Western Front in World War I

Throughout the First World War, with the trenches largely static, the combatants tried to break the deadlock by tunnelling under one another’s trenches. The Tunnelling Companies of the British Royal Engineers were engaged in a bitter struggle against German Pioneers that left both sides with heavy casualties. A project to determine the location of one particular act of heroism in that underground war has resulted in the erection of a monument to the Tunnellers at Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée in northern France.     

清乾隆四十六年至五十一年西安城墙维修工程考——基于奏折档案的探讨

在清代西安城墙的历次维修中,以乾隆四十六年至五十一年(1781-1786年)的工程规模最大。本文基于大量清代奏折档案,对这次维修工程的缘起、工程分期与做法、督工官员与工匠、经费数额与来源、工料产地、数量及其运输等具体问题进行了深入考辨,指出包括城墙维修在内的清代西安城市建设与关中区域社会经济发展和生态环境变迁之间具有紧密联系。