Networking Europe

The paper explores processes of transnational network building in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. The first section reviews several relevant literatures. It concludes that historiographies of Europe often recognize the pivotal importance of transnational network building, but fail to analyse network developments as well as their entanglement with wider historical processes. Specialized infrastructure studies exist in economic and technological history, but have a distinct (sub)national focus. The networking of Europe has not been investigated. The second section presents a preliminary narrative of transnational network building in the 19th and 20th century. It highlights the relationship between network building and political events in different eras, as well as different types of ambiguities or tensions. The conclusion suggests a number of topics for further research.     

宋代南外宗正司入闽及其影响

南外宗正司是宋代管理外居宗室的机构。宋金交战,为躲避战乱,它辗转迁入福建泉州。南外宗正司的机构非常健全,宗室在闽蓬勃发展。南外宗正司的入闽,对提高泉州乃至福建的历史地位以及促进福建经济文化的繁荣均有深远的影响。     

《古今图书集成》版本考

《古今图书集成》编制过程留世档案很少,所以许多细节问题多有待考证,另外由于卷帙浩繁,出版印刷时间较长,各图书馆在著录版本和出版印刷时问等细节上,也常有错误之处。特别是最近国内外《古今图书集成》零本的高价拍卖,使了解此书版本情况的读者日益增多。本文经过多方考察并且对照各版次实物进行了详细的考证。纠正了许多常见的错误。     

科举制的起源与进士科的起始

“科举”一词有广义与狭义之分。广义的科举指分科举人 ,即西汉以后分科目察举或制诏甄试人才授予官职的制度 ;狭义的科举指进士科举 ,即隋代设立进士科以后用考试来选拔人才授予官职的制度。进士科举不始于隋文帝时而始于隋炀帝大业元年。炀帝始建进士科时并未予以特别的重视 ,进士科举的重要意义是因后来它在中国社会政治和文化教育上影响日益重大而为后人所赋予的     

The value of empire: tenth-century Bulgaria between Magyars,Pechenegs and Byzantium

The article seeks to explain the connection between the migration of the Magyars and Pechenegs in central and south-east Europe, in the late ninth and early tenth century, and the conflict between Byzantium and Bulgaria during the same period. Through reference to anthropologists discussing the relations between nomadic and sedentary societies (Khazanov, Barfield), and historians studying medieval rituals (Buc, Althoff, Koziol), the article interprets the aggressive policy of the Bulgarian tsar Symeon as a consistent effort to displace Byzantium as major partner of the nomadic polities in the area. By subverting the principles of Byzantine diplomacy and political culture, Symeon turned his own kingdom into a society-structuring factor in the nomadic world. The article evaluates the very meaning of imperial claims not so much in legal terms, as an effort to guarantee Bulgaria’s sovereignty in a Byzantium-centred world, but in the real-time capacity of a ruler to make use of imperial symbols and act upon the dynamically changing conjuncture.     

Difference Between the Self and the Heathen. European Imperial Culture in Dutch Missionary Exhibitions, 1909–1957

‘Imperial culture’ is a concept coined by British historiography to describe the influence of imperialism on metropolitan British culture. Although it is now used in other national historiographies as well, it would appear that we have not yet realised the concept's full potential. This article, drawing on recent scholarship emphasising the transnational connections in European imperial cultures, investigates the implications of seeing imperial culture as a European phenomenon and as a European mentality. For this purpose, this article uses the narrative that was propagated at a specific national practice where empire met a metropolitan European society as a case study: missionary exhibitions in the Netherlands in the first half of the twentieth century. Here, Catholic and Protestant missionaries displayed objects from the indigenous, colonised populations who they were trying to convert and hereby legitimised and underpinned imperialism in Dutch culture. However, their significance went deeper than that. This article argues that the missionaries’ narrative transcended the national level and promoted ideas of Christianity as a European religion and civilisation as a European trait. A European community based on religious, cultural, and racial traits was set against a generic non-European heathen world. However, national and denominational frames of reference also remained in place. With this case study, the article explores the possibilities and difficulties that arise from studying imperial culture as a European mentality.