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.     

公职人员行政法律意识解析--以江苏省文化系统公职人员为对象

目前我国法治水平的提高,除了必须关注法律自身的完善外,公职人员的行政法律意识直接影响和决定着依法行政的进程,进而影响到依法治国的步伐。本文从解析江苏省文化系统公职人员行政法律意识这一微观角度入手,宏观上阐述公职人员行政法律意识存在误区的原因,并提出增强法律意识的方法和途径,为依法行政做些理论和实践上的探讨。     

现代性及其限度：民国文官考试制度平议

民国文官考试制度是一个传统与现代的混合体.其现代性主要体现为法制化程度的提高,平等性和开放性的增强,考试权的独立和考试内容的现代化.但是对经义考试的保留,对传统科举制考试程序的模仿,考试与任用的脱节,党治和军治色彩的存在,个人因素的干扰,派系势力的抗拒等,又使民国文官考试制度的现代性受到极大限制,难以发挥其应有的功效.     

Indentured servitude and convict labour in the Danish-Norwegian West Indies, 1671–1755

The article explores how indentured servitude and the use of convict labour began and evolved in the Danish-Norwegian West Indies in the period 1671–1755. It examines the intentions and realities behind indentured servitude and convict labour on the islands, and compares these with the workings and use of indentured servants in the British West Indies.

Similar to conditions in the British West Indies, the lowest social strata of white society in the Danish-Norwegian West Indies consisted of a small population of convicts and indentured servants. The use of these groups as part of the labour force took place from the onset of colonisation in 1672 until 1755, the period in which the islands were governed by the West Indian and Guinean Company, WIGC (Vestindisk-Guineisk Kompagni). The analysis reveals that the importation and deployment of indentured servants and convicts can be divided into two distinct periods. Until 1700, the objective of the WIGC was to provide cheap labour for the colony. After 1700, however, the aim was to recruit qualified personnel and to secure the planters against slave rebellion by increasing the white Danish population. As convicts provided neither qualifications nor security, convict transportations to the Danish-Norwegian West Indies ceased after 1700. After 1755, when the Danish-Norwegian Crown purchased the colonies from the WIGC, Danish convict labour and indentured servants were no longer imported to the colony. By contrast, in the British West Indies, imports of indentured servants and convicts continued to play a significant role.

The article explores the physical and legal conditions of the indentured servants and convicts, who constituted the lowest social group in white colonial society and were in some respects considered slaves.     

Servants and Bourgeois Life in Urban Sweden in the Early 20th Century

By 1900, most Swedish servants had a rural background. They had migrated to the city from the countryside to perform domestic service in private households. Here they met bourgeois ideals of the comfortable home where the masters could demand home-cooked meals, clean clothes and pleasant surroundings. Servants were needed in order to fulfil this ideal. Yet, the number of domestic servants declined strongly in urban Sweden during the first half of the 20th century. This problem is often called ‘the servant crisis’. We explore the background to the scarcity of servants, the relationships between masters and servants and the role of servants in creating economic and cultural distinctions. We analyse the various adaptations of bourgeois households to the decline of domestic servants. Qualitative sources from private letters, diaries and autobiographies are combined with quantitative evidence from censuses.     

Avenging ‘Bridget’: Irish domestic servants and middle-class America in the short stories of Maeve Brennan

This article will examine the representation of Irish women servants in Maeve Brennan's short stories, first published in The New Yorker in the 1950s, and collected in The Rose Garden (2001). The Irish ‘Bridget’, the most publicly visible, if troubling, image of Irish womanhood in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, has received much-needed attention from historians and social scientists in the last decade, and is a central figure in discussions of Irish women and diasporic identity in the American context. Drawing on this body of work, and focusing in detail on key stories from the collection, including ‘The Bride’, ‘The View from the Kitchen’, ‘The Anachronism’, ‘The Divine Fireplace’, and ‘The Servants’ Dance', I argue that Brennan's reimagining of the Irish Bridget can be approached as a form of feminist revisionism, as Brennan's stories enter into a charged dialogue with the history of imagining the Irish woman servant as an undesirable but necessary presence in middle-class American domestic culture. Brennan's self-reflexive reworking of this paradigm is informed by her work as a satirist for The New Yorker, and proves an effective means of writing back to this problematic history, as she takes up recognisable tropes and motifs from earlier representations of Bridget in popular and literary culture, and alters them in knowing and subversive ways.     

Housekeeper,correspondent and confidante: the under-told story of Mrs Hayes of Charlecote Park, 1744–73

All too often, servants are accorded limited space in country house studies: rarely allowed to venture beyond the kitchen and service rooms, either in academic studies or interpretations for visitors. They are defined by their work not their lives and are seen as serving the physical rather than social or emotional needs of the owner. This paper challenges this viewpoint by exploring the relationship between George Lucy, owner of Charlecote Park in Warwickshire and his housekeeper, Mrs Phillipa Hayes. Drawing on their mutual correspondence, on other letters to and from Mrs Hayes, and on her Household Book, I construct a richer and more nuanced picture of the multiple roles that could be played by a senior servant. She was a housekeeper, but also a correspondent, confidante and hostess, who offered comfort and pleasure to her employer as well as sound economic and social management of his household. Although in some ways unusual, this case study illustrates the importance of placing senior servants more centrally when exploring the country house.     

抗战时期中国公务员任用制度

八年抗战时期,国民政府变通普通行政人员、边远省区和具有特殊性质公务员的任用法规,降低考试及格人员的任职资格。与此同时,统一人事管理制度,补办公务员甄别审查,推行公务员、备用人员、军用文职人员的登记,以及公务员的聘用、派用与内外调任制度,兼顾了公务员任用制度的常态发展。这些举措,体现了公务员的依法任用,顺应了抗战建国的需要。由于公务员任用制度本身存在缺点,在执行的过程中"事前审查"变成"事后追认",以及专制制度的危害,孙中山关于考试权独立的理想没有完全实现。     

Public administration in the Australian Journal of Political Science: A review

This article reviews publications on public administration in the Australian Journal of Political Science (AJPS). A distinction needs to be drawn between public administration as a discipline and as a field of inquiry that engages specialists from several areas. The latter has been more significant in Australia in contrast to Europe and the United States. The questions discussed in the AJPS cover changes in the field and practice of public administration; the state and government; the structures of local government, public organisation and federalism; interfaces between public administration and other sectors and institutions; and issues with public sector reform and accountability. Despite the emphasis on governance in discourse and practice, the role of government continues to be central, and what emerges from experiments in new governance is that the authority of government and the significance of hierarchy (compared to markets and networks) very often remains pivotal.     

数字图书馆与公务员远程教育

近年来,各级行政学院在公务员培训中开展了不同模式、不同层次的远程教育实践活动。在公务员远程教育中,数字图书馆具有为教师备课和各级公务员学习提供文献资料支持与服务的作用,是远程教育培训的第二课堂。远程教育应用于公务员培训领域,有利于扩大培训规模,有效化解工学矛盾,提高培训质量和效率。