The minor rural aristocracy and great lords in thirteenth-century Tuscany: three cases from the entourage of the Guidi counts

This article examines relations in thirteenth-century Tuscany between the minor rural aristocracy and great rural lords, that is, those based outside cities. The subject is approached through a study based on three families, with special emphasis on the way they were bound to the extended family of the Guidi counts, who were prominent at the highest level in the thirteenth-century kingdom of Italy. In the thirteenth century, attendance on the counts was not attractive to families of the minor aristocracy: it was universally acknowledged that the great rural lords of Tuscany had little to offer their adherents in terms of wealth, power and prestige, incentives which could be obtained from the cities of the region. Minor aristocrats who chose to live as professional soldiers were particularly attracted to the cities, which were always in need of soldiers for their armies.     

Colonies and Colonisation in Bulwer Lytton’s The Caxtons,A Strange Story and The Coming Race

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, an eminently popular novelist, published The Caxtons in 1849. Though sub-titled A Family Picture and mainly concerned with domestic life, it included a lengthy disquisition on colonisation and emigration, its value to British society and its role in extending civilisation by spreading ‘God’s law, improvement’. His colonial example was ‘Australia’. A Radical MP in the 1830s, but opposed to the encroachment of ‘democracy’ and supportive of the Corn Laws, in the early 1850s Lytton turned to the Conservative Party. In 1858–59 he served as secretary of state for the colonies. In the light of his experience, his view of Australia and of self-governing colonies was modified, as A Strange Story (1862) shows. But in 1871, in The Coming Race, an elaborate satire on democracy and egalitarianism, he made a distinct addition to the colonial theme of The Caxtons. He did not doubt that ‘improvement’ and colonisation produced evidence of ‘the triumph of civilization’, but a metaphor embedded in the later novel indicated the inevitability of displacement of aboriginal inhabitants by Anglo-Saxon settlers.     

近代德国传统贵族与资产阶级的融合

在近代史上,德国贵族之所以牢牢地掌握着国家统治权,一个重要的原因在于他们与资产阶级的相互融合,利益日趋一致。一方面,贵族在经济上资产阶级化,另一方面,大资产阶级在政治上不断贵族化,而且相互之间通过频繁的联姻加强联系。贵族与资产阶级之间的这种密切关系为贵族在近代资本主义社会的统治奠定了政治基础。     

Against the current. Essays in the history of ideas

In An Essay upon Civil Government (1722), Andrew Michael Ramsay mounted a sustained attack upon the development throughout English history of popular government. According to Ramsay, popular involvement in sovereignty had led to the decline of society and the revolutions of the seventeenth century. In his own time, Parliament had become a despotic instrument of government, riven with faction and driven by a multiplicity of laws that manifested a widespread corruption in the state. Ramsay's solution to this degeneracy was the extirpation of Parliament, and its substitution with a monarchy moderated by an aristocratic senate. Ramsay's adoption of certain “Country” elements, including a return to the first principles of the constitution, claimed to reflect the principles of contemporary French aristocratic theory which called for the reform of government through the nobility. In his desire to exclude popular government, and reverse the decline of the state, however, Ramsay utilised the theory with which Bossuet had defended Louis XIV's absolute France. Intriguingly, traces of the natural law system which fortified Ramsay's theory can be found in Viscount Bolingbroke's subsequent attack on Walpole's Whig ministry and the corruption of the state.     

No Italian Stalingrads. The C.G.I.L. and the working class in the northern industrial heartlands, 1945-1955

ABSTRACT

This article challenges conventional wisdom on the northern Italian industrial heartlands during the first decade after the Second World War. For there still exists a certain mythology about the post-war proletarian north as a region that was both intensely political and united in purpose. What this article demonstrates is that the ‘industrial triangle’ of Genoa, Milan and Turin was far more divided than historians have assumed. By revisiting the manifold (wildcat) strikes, trade union demonstrations, and factory occupations of the early post-war years, it shows the industrial north to be divided along both social and geographical lines. In doing so, it sheds fresh light on the series of defeats that the main Italian trade union confederation (C.G.I.L.) suffered in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It argues that these defeats were due as much to the explicit politicization of labour struggles and their exclusive focus on the interests of skilled workers as to the hostile socio-political climate in which the C.G.I.L. had to operate.     

英国贵族阶级属性和等级制的演变

在一千多年的历史中 ,就阶级属性而言 ,英国先后出现了原始部落军事贵族、封建贵族、资本主义土地贵族、工商业资产阶级贵族和中产阶级“工党贵族”;而贵族等级制和名号的变化则主要有五次 :先后在盎格鲁 -撒克逊时期、诺曼征服之后、1 4— 1 5世纪、1 7世纪初和 1 958年。     

英国近代贵族大地产论略

近代英国经济的特征之一是贵族大地产的兴盛。从17世纪晚期至19世纪中期,为数不多的贵族始终占有相当份额的地产。甚至就整个欧洲而言,英国贵族大地产的规模和影响也格外突出。英国贵族地产大多是采用资本主义方式经营的,它在一定时期内适应着英国的生产力发展。英国近代贵族阶级长期占有大量地产,既有历史原因,也有社会政治因素;属于封建主义残余的贵族财产等级制和长子继承制,对维护贵族阶级大地产制也起着重要作用。     

试论魏晋隋唐时期的宗族政策

魏晋南北朝时期,既是中古宗族势力发展的顶点,也是其由盛而衰的转折点。各王朝在巩固与发展的过程中,一方面虽然必须借助于宗族与士族势力的支持;另一方面,它们都与异己的宗族与士族势力进行着强力的较量,并开始清理宗族势力在乡村社会中的根基。就其宗族政策而言,魏晋以依托为主,南北朝以收拢为主;收拢之力度南不如北。至隋唐时期,旧式宗族逐渐消解,新式宗族开始登上历史舞台,隋唐王朝则从制度上完成了对宗族这一社会力量的有效分解与钳制。在隋唐宗族政策的冲击下,中古宗族的政治与军事功能逐渐消退,经济互助功能以及血缘凝聚力的效能与影响明显逊于前代,宗族威权发生蜕变,开始了向近古新型宗族的演进。     

“周氏以降,选无清浊”辨

史载"周氏以降,选无清浊",虽然在一定程度上反映了西魏、北周时期选官制度发生变化的一面,但却忽略了其时选举制度依旧注重门第与官分清浊的一面。西魏、北周时期,九品中正制依然是占据着主导地位的选官制度,并在维护关陇士族和当朝勋贵的仕宦特权方面发挥着重要作用。其时职官制度仍有流内与流外之分,"九命"与"九秩",就是在北魏"九流三清"和"勋品流外"官的基础上发展演变而来,是北周官分清浊的重要表现形式。西魏、北周的清浊观念也十分显著。"周氏以降,选无清浊",并未全面、真实地反映当时选官制度与职官制度的实情。     

Korea's Aristocratic Moods: Re-examining Chos[obreve]n Social and Political History

Despite the vast influence of “Chinese culture” on Korea, the Chos[obreve]n dynasty (1392–1910) was a distinct cultural sphere governed by its own internal logic that centred on the aristocracy. Over the past twenty years, the importance of this fact has received emphasis in detailed studies by Deuchler (1992 Deuchler, Martina. 1992. The Confucian transformation of Korea: A study of society and ideology, Cambridge, MA and London: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University.  [Google Scholar]), Palais (1996 Palais, B. James. 1996. Confucian statecraft and Korean institutions: Yu Hy[obreve]ngw[obreve]n and the late Ch[obreve]son dynasty, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.  [Google Scholar]) and Duncan (2000 Duncan, B. John. 2000. The origins of the Chos[obreve]n dynasty, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.  [Google Scholar]). The recent works by Hwang, Park and Kim that are the subject of this essay constitute a triptych of studies that further illuminate theimplications of social status in Chos[obreve]n and show how South Korea's transformation over the past five decades represents a radical deviation from the defining characteristics of its Confucian past.