Głos Kasandry. Prognostyczne wizje wojny ("Przyszła wojna" Władysława Sikorskiego i "Dwa końce świata" Antoniego Słonimskiego)

This article explores the topic on interaction between fundamental rights protected in the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia (Satversme), international human rights and European Union law. The author reflects the evolution of the principle of openness in Satversme toward international human rights by analysing influence of international human rights law upon Latvia’s fundamental rights protection system through the course of history – in the interwar period, after the restoration of the independence and in adoption of fundamental rights chapter of Satversme. Further on, the author analyses the application of international human rights law and European Union law in the Constitutional Court’s jurisprudence and identifies controversial issues.

With the unrelenting unrest in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the Sudan, the plight of refugees has become an increasingly discussed topic in international relations. Why do we have refugees? When did the refugee 'problem' emerge? How can the refugee ever be reconciled with an international system that rests on sovereignty? Looking at three key periods - the inter-war period, the Cold War and the present day - Emma Haddad demonstrates how a specific image has defined the refugee since the international states system arose in its modern form and that refugees have thus been qualitatively the same over the course of history. This historical and normative approach suggests new ways to understand refugees and to formulate responses to them. By examining the issue from an international society perspective, this book highlights how refugees are an inevitable, if unanticipated, result of erecting political borders.

With the unrelenting unrest in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and the Sudan, the plight of refugees has become an increasingly discussed topic in international relations. Why do we have refugees? When did the refugee 'problem' emerge? How can the refugee ever be reconciled with an international system that rests on sovereignty? Looking at three key periods - the inter-war period, the Cold War and the present day - Emma Haddad demonstrates how a specific image has defined the refugee since the international states system arose in its modern form and that refugees have thus been qualitatively the same over the course of history. This historical and normative approach suggests new ways to understand refugees and to formulate responses to them. By examining the issue from an international society perspective, this book highlights how refugees are an inevitable, if unanticipated, result of erecting political borders.

The historical reality in the Indonesian novel with the perspective of New Historicism is a theoretical and practical study that focuses on historical and literary issues. The Indonesian novel that became the focus of the study was the work of Y.B. Mangunwijaya, namely Burung-Burung Manyar that represent historical events of the struggle of the Indonesian (Year 1945-1949) in a different color from historical texts in general. Therefore, this study aims to describe in depth the objective reality of the nation's struggle during the national revolution in the novel Burung-Burung Manyar by Y.B. Mangunwijaya. The research method used is qualitative interpretive with parallel reading between literary texts at events which represent the historical representation of the nation's struggle. Data collection techniques with documentation with the main instrument is the researcher assisted by tabulation of objective reality data in the novel Burung-Burung Manyar by Y.B. Mangunwijaya. Data analysis techniques begin with data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The results showed that the objective reality studied was historical facts originating from artifacts or in the form of objects, relics and places, then social life, mental conditions, and ecology. Furthermore, the events, places and characters contained in the novel are imaginative, but in them there are hidden facts. When linked with fact and fiction, reality and fiction in a broad sense, history turns out to be in conflict with literature. The objective reality in the course of history is realist statement.

In July 1967, one month after Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, and Golan Heights, Israel's Military Advocate General (MAG), Colonel Meir Shamgar, appeared before a Knesset committee to discuss the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)’s duties in the areas under its control. Col. Shamgar had led the MAG Corps in the preparations in the event that a future war would find the army occupying beyond Israel's borders. Col. Shamgar began his presentation by stating: In terms of the legal background, our point of departure is that we have to respect both the fundamental pursuits of the State of Israel as its military forces begin to control an area that has been liberated by the IDF, and the rules of public international law that apply to the actions of any military in control of an area that was, until its entry, subject to the sovereignty of a foreign political entity. The guiding rules in this realm are the rules of public international law, which are reflected in The Hague Regulations of 1907 … and in the … Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians in Times of War.

Summary After 1946, ie. after embracing Christianity, Roman Brandstaetter would often point to the Biblical Jonah as a role model for both his life and his artistic endeavour. In the interwar period, when he was a columnist of Nowy Głos, a New York Polish-Jewish periodical, he used the penname Romanus. The ‘Roman’ Jew appears to have treated his columns as a form of an artistic and civic ‘investigation’ into scandalous cases of breaking the law, destruction of cultural values and violation of social norms. Although it his was hardly ‘a new voice’ with the potential to change the course of history, he did become an intransigent defender of free speech. Brought up on the Bible and the best traditions of Polish literature and culture, Brandstaetter, the self-appointed disciple of Adam Mickiewicz, could not but stand up to the challenge of anti-Semitic aggression.

Nicolae Steinhardt was a refined intellectual who asserted himself in the interwar period through his collaboration with journals such as Revista Fundațiilor Regale, Revista Burgheză, Victoria, Libertatea etc. Apart from the topics that prove N. Steinhardt's love of literature and of any aspect related to culture and art, many of his interwar articles reveal a fine analytical sense at the political level. Steinhardt’s anchoring in political life and his concern for understanding political concepts and identifying the features of effective governance are revealed by reading, analysing and exposing the political ideas launched by various thinkers.In the interwar Steinhardtian journalism one finds pertinent radiographs of different political events that changed the course of history, dissections of political ideologies but also critical analyses of the political ideas of important thinkers of different political “colours” and various ethnic origins, such as: Alexis de Tocqueville, Joseph Barthélemy, Lucien Prévost-Paradol, Benjamin Constant, Silvio Trentin, André Suarès, Georges Sorel, Saint-Simon etc. The way of reporting to the works and their theories is intended to be an objective one by pointing out some positive and negative aspects, but in essence they reflect the author's subjectivity and Steinhardt's political conceptions: the distinction between democracy and liberalism, support for constitutional monarchy and people’s freedom, hostility to universal suffrage as a form of mass tyranny, opposition to any form of totalitarianism.

This review essay explores British grand strategy during the interwar period, drawing on David French’s Deterrence, Coercion, and Appeasement and G. C. Peden’s Churchill, Chamberlain, and Appeasement. French contrasts the confidence of British leaders in the 1920s with the cautious approach of their successors, notably Neville Chamberlain. Peden’s account is more sympathetic to Chamberlain, highlighting the obstacles in maintaining an effective balance of power. Through counterfactual analysis, Peden questions whether alternative strategies would have changed the course of history. The essay also considers the centrality of air power to the history of appeasement and suggests avenues for future counterfactual research.

The article presents the theoretical aspects of teaching Polish history at schools from 1945 to 1994. The author emphasizes that the Poles undeniably are a nation whose identity and national character have been shaped to a great extent by tradition and history education. It has been proven that the national character is formed in the course of history and the factors contributing to it may be easily recognized. When the national character manages to specify itself it tends to stability and rejection or assimilation destructive influence. It turned out that of great importance is that the national character is never exclusively unique or uncommon; it is rather a combination of widespread features typical for many nations. These two trends of historical influence existed side by side despite their contrary character which was especially clear within fifty years. The formation of the historical consciousness of the contemporary Poles has been proudly influenced by the image of the interwar period of 1918-1939. The author concludes that the expansion of history propaganda function did not result in a change in social awareness of history. People rejected the official history (even reliably presented facts) since they still had in mind the practice of the Stalin period and the faults of the recent history; instead, they resorted to 'private' history which was frequently based on books of the 19th-century authors.

Historians often ignore, treat cursorily, or relegate to footnotes specific incidents in international relations in order to facilitate the construction of a larger narrative. The contributors to this volume argue that researchers do so to their peril, as individual or seemingly isolated incidents can play significant roles in the overall course of history. Incidents are crucial in determining the mental maps that decision makers form regarding the countries and individuals with whom they interact. Incidents can either initiate or block new policies with consequences that are both far-reaching and unexpected. People make foreign policy and an understanding of what elements of an incident were important to these individuals at key points essential to an appreciation of policies subsequently advocated. How individuals view other cultures and nations, how they react to the actions of such nations, and their perceptions of such actions all form key components in this study. Using a variety of examples, these essays show the value of detailed examinations of events, illuminating such matters as British policy in the Far East, French imperial policy, Italian military actions in the interwar period, British attitudes toward Hitler, and the effect of the Soviet Union on British thinking in the 1930s.

Among economists the work of John Sutton on industrial organisation has greatly altered the way they look at concentration and market structure. In his works he stresses the importance of exogenous and endogenous sunk costs to explain the evolution of market structure in various industrial sectors. His theory has its foundations in the context of game theoretic literature which models increasingly dominated the field of industrial organisation. Among economic historians though this theory has not yet gotten its deserved attention. Apart from a notable exception, most economic historians have stuck with older models such as Bain's structure-conduct-performance paradigm in their attempts to explain industrial concentration in the course of history. Sutton's model can be somewhat complicated if one is not accustomed to this economic literature and involves quite some explaining of economic methodology. Nevertheless better understanding of business history can probably be achieved by applying or testing Sutton's endogenous cost model on economic history. Aside from some robust implications of the model, the eventual outcome depends delicately on historical and institutional factors giving way to historical analysis. Since the evolution of technology has an important place in the theory, research on the history of technology can be very useful for the model. Some subsets of industries, referred to as high-alpha industries, are especially qualified to be studied using Sutton's theory. These are industries were incurring high endogenous sunk costs, mostly through advertising or R&D spending, is possible. Most sectors of the food industry, being an advertising intensive industry where perceived quality matters a lot, qualify par excellence to apply Sutton's concept.

Every five years, historians from all over the world gather to discuss whatever happen to be the major issues of the time in their discipline. These congresses are organised by an International Committee of the Historical Sciences to which are affiliated more than fifty national sections and around forty research institutions and associations. This ‘ecumenical council of the historians’ (Karl Dietrich Erdmann) was, at the beginning of the twentieth century and during the inter-war years, a means of conducting national disputes, a showcase of national research achievements and also an attempt to overcome the national narrowness of nineteenth century historiography. After 1945 the conferences became an object of the Cold War but also one of the few platforms on which historians from both sides of the Iron Curtain could meet. All in all, these congresses, throughout their long and honourable history, remained eurocentric and entirely focused on the historiography of the West. The choice of Sydney as the location of the twentieth world congress of historians was in itself a signal. For the first time in the long history of the congresses, around one thousand three hundred historians from seventy countries congregated in the southern hemisphere, for the first time the meeting was neither in Europe nor in North America. It was time to at long last take seriously the global ambitions of the organisation and of the discipline it represents. The programme, too, aimed at a universalisation of the research landscape. The preferred method was comparative, the key issue cultural transfer. Both have to go hand in hand if historians want to advance to a global historiography which deserves that name. This became especially clear in the impressive lecture by the anthropologist Anne Salmond on the connection between humans and nature in the Pacific region. The history of Polynesia simply could not be written without the history of many exchanges between diverse cultures. Australian history certainly does not feature among the special interests of most of the historians assembled in Sydney. For this reason, congratulations must go to the local organisers, Martyn Lyons and his colleague Penny Russell, on the collection of essays tracing the most important debates in Australian history and which was given to each participant for free. The stimulating book frequently returns to the tensions between the history of white Australia and the history of the indigenous people. The congress itself had a section focusing on this tension between settlers and indigenous peoples in a comparative perspective. The forms of violence and the reactions to violence were quite varied under colonialism. Everywhere comparisons and culture transfers provided the key theme in the labyrinth of sessions in Sydney. This was shown in the three large themes which each occupied a whole day. Environmental history, Myths and History, and War and Peace constituted the thematic blocks linking all five continents. The ecohistorians naturally emphasised the importance of environmental factors for the course of history. Time and again, the papers highlighted the strong CISH CONFERENCE 2005

In this publication the attempt was undertaken to present the economic history, spatial development and contemporary image of two cities – Lviv and Łodź. Lviv is situated on an upland in the western part of Ukraine, and Łodź in a lowland area in the central part of Poland. In the interwar period Łodź was the second and Lviv the third biggest city of the Polish Republic. Currently, both cities have a similar number of inhabitants, but they differ substantially as regards the city area within administrative boundaries and average population density. Although so different in their historical course of development, both cities encounter at the moment many similar problems and challenges, facing the necessity to create their future prosperity exploiting their specific local potentials and to continue their best traditions of urban growth in all aspects – spatial, social, cultural and economic.

The University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization (nine volumes) makes available to students and teachers a unique selection of primary documents, many in new translations. These readings, prepared for the highly praised Western civilization sequence at the University of Chicago, were chosen by an outstanding group of scholars whose experience teaching that course spans almost four decades. Each volume includes rarely anthologized selections as well as standard, more familiar texts; a bibliography of recommended parallel readings; and introductions providing background for the selections. Beginning with Periclean Athens and concluding with twentieth-century Europe, these source materials enable teachers and students to explore a variety of critical approaches to important events and themes in Western history. Individual volumes provide essential background reading for courses covering specific eras and periods. The complete nine-volume series is ideal for general courses in history and Western civilization sequences.

The University of Chicago Readings in Western Civilization (nine volumes) makes available to students and teachers a unique selection of primary documents, many in new translations. These readings, prepared for the highly praised Western civilization sequence at the University of Chicago, were chosen by an outstanding group of scholars whose experience teaching that course spans almost four decades. Each volume includes rarely anthologized selections as well as standard, more familiar texts; a bibliography of recommended parallel readings; and introductions providing background for the selections. Beginning with Periclean Athens and concluding with twentieth-century Europe, these source materials enable teachers and students to explore a variety of critical approaches to important events and themes in Western history. Individual volumes provide essential background reading for courses covering specific eras and periods. The complete nine-volume series is ideal for general courses in history and Western civilization sequences.