The development of the longbow in late medieval England and ‘technological determinism’

Traditional understandings of the development of the medieval English longbow and its role in the fourteenth-century ‘infantry revolution’ have recently been challenged by historians. This article responds to the revisionists, arguing based on archaeological, iconographic and textual evidence that the proper longbow was a weapon of extraordinary power, and was qualitatively different from – and more effective than – the shorter self-bows that were the norm in England (and western Europe generally) before the fourteenth century. It is further argued that acknowledging the importance of the weapon as a necessary element of any credible explanation of English military successes in the era of the Hundred Years War does not constitute ‘technological determinism’.     

20世纪七八十年代引滦工程决策历程

水资源短缺一直制约着京津唐地区经济和社会的发展。20世纪70年代,因缺水引发的经济、社会问题逐渐凸显,促使中央和地方政府开始考虑实施跨流域调水工程。引滦工程作为北方最大的跨流域调水工程,其决策经历了曲折的过程。1958年,北京和唐山曾分别提出引滦河水的设想,唐山还实施了引滦入还和引还入陡工程。1972年,海河流域大旱促使中央做出加快实施引滦工程的决定,但由于地质情况复杂等原因,引滦工程设计方案被反复修改。1981年,天津提出了单独引滦济津路线并得到了中央的支持。引滦工程对缓解京津唐用水紧张发挥了重要作用,天津是引滦工程受益最大的地区。     

Java's forgotten pearls: the history and disappearance of pearl fishing in the Segara Anakan lagoon, South Java, Indonesia

Pearls have been a valued resource in most cultures that had access to them. A number of historically important pearling grounds were situated in the waters around today's Indonesia. One of these areas, now largely forgotten, was the Segara Anakan lagoon in South Java. In the seventeenth century, Dutch colonists exploited the lagoon's pearls. Afterwards, the lagoon's oysters were locally exploited as a food item until the late 1970s. While the pearl fishery attracted considerable attention in the colonial literature, its disappearance, by contrast, went largely undocumented. Nowadays, the oysters no longer are found in the lagoon as a result of extensive sedimentation processes. Their former existence is only preserved in the memory of local people. This article examines the history and fate of the pearls of Segara Anakan, providing an example of a formerly valued species whose existence simply became forgotten outside the area.     

Island Biocultural Assemblages — The Case of Kinmen Island

ABSTRACT A growing mass of research contributes to our understanding of how biological and cultural diversity are related in complex and important ways. This paper presents an assembling process of biodiversity and cultural diversity on an island, Kin‐men (Quemoy), based on 1600 years of its environmental history. The study shows that the island's biocultural assemblages are a result both of external relations with the island's surrounding environment and internal relations within the island's changing human ecology. Distant political powers and economic forces are the two major external influences that have affected the flow of natural and cultural elements to and from the island, while ‘screening effects’ and ‘isolation effects’ are two factors that explain internal interactions. The island's biocultural assembling processes reveal that the openness of the island facilitates increase in the diversity of biocultural elements, while its less disturbed isolated condition fosters natural succession and co‐evolution. The study suggests that biocultural assemblages and the associated processes of co‐evolution and nature–society interactions are accomplished through the intermittent opportunities purposively provided by or inadvertently found in the openings and closures of boundaries, setting the scene for both boundary crossings and bounded shelter, by intent or chance.     

The Left(s) and Nationalism(s) in contemporary Western Europe

This article introduces our themed section on The Left(s) and Nationalism(s), which provides a comparative analysis of the relationship between nationalism and different left-wing parties in Western Europe. It highlights the innovative comparative perspectives offered by this themed section, which not only concerns a series of different geographical cases studies but also involves the ideological plurality of the Left. The larger research question that our contributors address is how different left-wing parties have dealt with the inherent ideological tension between the universality claimed by the Left and the particularism inherent in nationalism, as a doctrine and a principle of political legitimacy. The article stresses three main contributions of our themed section: (1) Western European left-wing parties do engage with the themes of nationalism and nationhood, but they often rely on convenient silence to solve some of the contradictions with their progressive ideology. (2) None of these parties have formulated thick versions of the respective national identities. (3) State-wide left-wing parties have used instrumental conceptions of nationhood to address the challenge of separatist parties, but only with mixed results.     

“A plantation can be a commons”: Re‐Earthing Sapelo Island through Abolition Ecology

This paper is based on the 2018 Neil Smith Lecture presented at the University of St Andrews. It considers the plantation past/futures of Sapelo Island, Georgia, one of the Sea Islands forming an archipelago along the US Southeastern coast. I work through the abolitionist efforts of the Saltwater Geechee’s who have resided there since at least 1803 to better understand how we can mobilise an emancipatory politics of land and property and to produce commons that work to repair and heal the violence done through enslavement and ongoing displacement. I weave together a series of historical threads to better situate linked ideas of abolition democracy and abolition geography, and to extend the notion of abolition ecology as a strategic notion to connect Eurocentric based political ecologies with the emancipatory tradition of Black geographies.     

胡人发型:中古“剪头胡雏”艺术形象试解

古人发型是文化界长期关注的一个重要现象。发型不仅是时代的特征与时尚的符号,也是各个族群的辨识标志。从北朝到隋唐的中古社会,"剪头胡雏"的文物图像屡屡出现,一般来说,此类胡人形象是剪发而不是束发,在当时以"高髻为尚"的社会习俗中,"剪头胡雏"发型是有着"阶级感"的存在,是有关底层胡人的直观艺术产物。也说明当时入华胡人还没有彻底"汉化",仍然保留着本族群的发型特征。该发式是胡人与汉人的区别,也是其身份归属的象征。     

明代苏州宗族形态探研

明人追求通过修谱与祠祭表达祖先崇拜和宗族共同体的意识。明人的祖先祭祀,依据祭祖地点,可以划分为墓祭、家祭、祠祭。娄坚《徐氏宗谱序》分析了明代江南故家大族与谱牒不盛的问题,认为吴人不能聚族在于习俗的鄙、奢所造成的,强调通过宗族建设移风易俗。明代族谱更加盛行,表现出强烈的以谱法接济宗法的观念。苏州士大夫发扬光大了宋代范仲淹设置义田、义庄的传统,以此赡族进行宗族建设,官府倡导并保护义田与义庄,形成了不同于其他地区宗族形态的特色。明代苏州处于宗族组织化的新阶段。     

部落与民族主义的竞逐——1953年法国在摩洛哥的政变与格拉维部落的兴衰

部落构成了中东社会生活的一个重要层面,是理解中东国家必不可少的视角。1953年,法国在摩洛哥发动政变,废黜了支持民族主义力量的苏丹穆罕默德五世。格拉维部落在此期间经历了兴衰起落。此次政变集中反映了摩洛哥国内部落和民族主义力量对国家政权的竞逐,是观察中东地区部落和国家间复杂逻辑关系的典型个案。摩洛哥传统势力的代表格拉维部落与国家间关系表现出复杂形态:部落利用国家力量实现崛起,部落对抗民族主义力量发动政变企图控制国家,最后部落被国家抛弃而衰落。在部落和民族主义竞逐国家政权的过程中,法国殖民者成为二者沉浮的决定性因素和制衡力量。由于部落对国家认同的脆弱性,殖民主义政权得以通过玩弄部落认同对殖民地进行分而治之。     

Cattle Slaughter Industry in Qing China: State Ban,Muslim Dominance,and the Western Diet

Cattle slaughter and beef consumption are barely mentioned in the literature on Chinese economic, food, or animal history. This is possibly due to the widely held popular and scholarly assumption that beef was avoided and even considered taboo in the daily diet of Chinese people in premodern times. This article investigates the tangible regulation and practice of cattle slaughter in Qing China—the period when the beef taboo was argued to be formally subsumed into Chinese morality. I ask the following questions: To what extent did the Qing state ban cattle slaughter? How was the ban enforced in the localities? Did Chinese people slaughter cattle for consumption? Were there lawful beef markets in Qing China proper? How did increasing beef-eating Western sojourners since the mid-19th century impact this sector? Accordingly, I demonstrate that with the leeway provided by the state, the cattle slaughter industry developed in many regions of China proper, especially large cities. In this sector, Chinese Muslim merchants played a dominant role, even though the Han merchants could outnumber them. Their efforts have prepared the state and Chinese merchants to better cope with new circumstances since the mid-19th century. Broadly, this paper sheds light on how different religious, ethnic, and national groups affected the economy and the practice of law in the Qing dynasty.