Centuries Of Conflict Research Articles

Exhumations of Polish Soldiers in Lithuania: History and Methods of Research

The article describes the search for the remains of Polish soldiers in Lithuania from 1992 to the present day, and presents how such research has evolved, and what archaeological research methodology is used. The involvement of specialists from different institutions and disciplines in such searches is discussed. Although the article deals with the search for the remains of all Polish soldiers who died in the course of the 20th century conflicts in general, it is notable that the most numerous part of them is made up of the soldiers of Armia Krajowa. The main data available for such searches is the testimonies of live witnesses, supplemented and refined by archaeological and anthropological research. The methodology of such research is still being shaped on a case-by-case basis, so it is important to review and familiarise oneself with researches that has been carried out and cases of (un)successes, as this may help to plan further, more productive research and searches for individuals from this period in the future.

Wartime Endovascular Therapy: A Historical View.

Endovascular techniques for managing vascular trauma have become increasingly more common. However, these techniques have had limited application in recent conflicts. Using lessons from 20th century conflicts, the present study aims to highlight how advances made in the past may provide a roadmap to improving surgical capabilities in the future.

Human Rights and Oppressed Peoples: Collected Essays and Speeches

Human Rights and Oppressed Peoples: Collected Essays and Speeches

The Prosaic Stateness of Secularism: Diversity, Incoherence and Divergence in the Application of laïcité

ABSTRACT France’s idiosyncratic form of secularism, laïcité, is a highly contested principle bound up in centuries of conflict over the state’s relationship to religious practice. Of late, commentators have interpreted it as taking somewhat of an authoritarian turn as it is used to disproportionately identify and suppress signs of overt Muslim religiosity, including notably within the public school system. I apply Painter’s ‘prosaic stateness’ framework to understand how educators interpret and rework laïcité within the French public school to produce ‘actually-existing’ laïcité. In particular, I show that educators are situated within three ‘spatialities’ through which laïcité inhabits French schooling: the idealised space of the French republic set against religious obscurantism, schools as spaces of inviolable neutrality, and risky bodies who refuse to conform to norms of republican citizenship. Within these spatialities, educators enact a prosaic stateness of laïcité through their experiences of diversity of the student populations they serve, the incoherence of the institution they work for, and the divergence of the policies they end up applying.

The issues of diaspora and displacement in Elif Shafak's The Island of Missing Trees

This paper aims to analyse the issues of diaspora and displacement in Elif Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees. The novel focuses on the Kazantzakis family that is forced to flee their homeland Cyprus to England. A unique aspect of the novel is that half of it is narrated by a fig tree. Therefore, this novel will be analysed both from Multicultural and Ecocritical perspectives. To analyse the data, this research uses a qualitative descriptive method, particularly textual analysis. In the end, the result of this paper shows a connection between the issues of diaspora and displacement with natural environment. This analysis is important because in the 21st century conflicts are still happening, which force people to leave their homeland and significantly affect the natural environment.

АБЫЛАЙ-КИТ, СЕМИПАЛАТ ҚАМАЛДАРЫНЫҢ САЛЫНУ ТАРИХЫ ХҮІІ-ХІХ ҒАСЫРЛАРДАҒЫ БАТЫС, ОРЫС ЗЕРТТЕУШІЛЕРІ ЖАЗБАЛАРЫНДА (мақсаты, маңызы)

The article describes the history of the construction of medieval Jungian cult buildings Abylaikit, Semipalatinsk and Dolon - Karagai in the eastern part of Kazakhstan on the basis of the works of European and Russian researchers of the XVIII-XIX centuries and their functions. The features of the construction of these religious structures are given, analysis of the reasons for their destruction. Based on the construction and operation of these construction sites, a description of the course of Kazakhstan-Dzhungarian and Kazakhstan-Russian relations in East Kazakhstan, the Altai Territory of that period is given. It is estimated to be the place of these religious monuments in the history of Kazakhstan. Diplomatic relations of the Kazakh Khanate with neighboring countries in the XVIII century and mutual conflicts between the Kazakh Khanate and the Dzhungarian Khanate, the heroic feats of Abylai Khan, Cabanbai Batyr, Bogenbai Batyr and others during the invasion of the Qin Empire in the Kazakh Khanate to the State Archives of Russia and Kazakhstan, the actual data considered And systematically represented on the basis of ancient and modern scientific literature in domestic and foreign scientific libraries. Famous from the beginning of the 18th century, one of the few scientific destroyed rooms in Abilaykit, retained the remnants of religious books written by the Mongolian letter, thus the construction has even more religious and historical significance.

In the Christian Archives: Sacrifice, the Higher Criticism, and the History of Religion

Much recent scholarship has shown just how indebted the secular sciences of religion were to the Protestant world from which they grew. Yet this “Protestant world” is typically described schematically, as if Protestantism offered a coherent worldview or even a consistent set of doctrines. A different picture emerges if we deepen our historical horizon, and explore the reflexes, aspirations, and norms that have found a home in the Christian (in this case, Protestant) theological imagination. This “Christian archive” was a heterogeneous place, with room for many things that we would now call secular or even profane. Protestant reform in fact began by condemning this heterogeneity, insisting that much of what the church had come to see was sacred was, at best, only and all too human. Yet centuries of conflict in Europe over the truth of Christianity only pluralized this archive further. The nineteenth-century history of religion grew less out of “Protestantism,” in other words, than out of the sedimented mixture of theological, historical, philological, and anthropological materials inherited from these earlier moments. It was, moreover, also an intellectual project that discovered new uses for these materials and thereby opened new horizons of humanistic inquiry. This article makes this argument with reference to sacrifice—a theological challenge for Christian thinkers from the outset of the tradition, but especially for Protestants; a magnet for diverse historical, anthropological, and theological reflections; and a productive zone of inquiry for the nineteenth-century German philosophers, philologians, and “higher critics” of the Hebrew Bible who together helped create the modern history of religion.

An Aggregation of Lion Hunters

Abstract The initial stages of the Second Anglo Boer War demonstrated the efficacy of the Boer tactical system, which produced some astounding results. Boer mobility, coupled with directive command, individual initiative, and logistical flexibility allowed the Boers to practice an effective form of manoeuvre warfare. The Boers neither reduced their way of war to writing nor produced manuals on their tactical or operational doctrine. Their doctrine existed as an institutional belief system evolved over centuries of conflict with the tribes of southern Africa and the British. The Boer military lacked insight at the strategic level, and early brilliant Boer successes at the tactical level were not enough to swing a strategic victory. This article aims to reveal the Boer way of war through its evolution and development at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels using the lens of the Second Anglo Boer War and the German South West African campaign 1915.

Co-existing with dingoes: Challenges and solutions to implementing non-lethal management

Where wild carnivores such as the Australian dingo interact with and impact on livestock enterprises, lethal control and landscape-scale exclusion are commonly employed. However, interest in alternative non-lethal management approaches has recently increased. This is evidenced by several reviews of non-lethal methods that can be said to be working toward improved coexistence. Nevertheless, and despite centuries of conflict, our non-lethal human-wildlife coexistence toolkit remains remarkably deficient. Innovation and evaluation of non-lethal methods should be prioritised to ensure that the economic, ecological, cultural and intrinsic values of dingoes are retained, while minimising the economic and emotional costs of conflict with livestock producers. In this paper we summarise some of the practical tools that might be effective in relation to the dingo, particularly those yet to be formally investigated, and discuss some of the possible hurdles to implementation. We conclude by suggesting pathways for human-dingo coexistence, and the steps necessary for appropriately evaluating non-lethal tools.

Conflict, Convergence, or Coexistence: The Strategic Logic of Education in Reframing World Order

This paper is international relations of a sort, in the avalanche of education to the global conflict and conflict resolution. Education takes position of conflict resolution in the spheres of re-framing world order. The paper derives its theoretical underpinnings in the agenda setting of the relevant of ‘Education’ to conflict prevention in 21st century conflicts, which are beclouded with global concern over the interrelated effects of climate change, the economic crises, energy depletion, food and water shortages, natural disasters and conflicts of all sorts which have devastating effects on humanity and the future of the planet – earth. The findings of the study support the thesis that the emerging processes of educational transformation is prevalent in contemporary political commentary and analysis in resolving numerous global conflicts. It is under this trajectory that my proposition stands to assert that educational planning must go beyond the traditional mechanism to consider the unpredictable nature of our times; in being flexible and rapid in implementation and responsive to local needs. Considerably, it is on this that training and research in sustainable development and skills for peaceful inter-human relatives, good governance, the prevention of conflict and peace building are priorities elaborated in this paper. The paper therefore, is a highlight for conflict prevention within the education sector and other relevant bodies, analyzing the root causes of conflict and the role education can play in reframing World Order in 21st century.

Prisoners of History: Explaining Why Statist Belgium Has School Vouchers While Liberal America Does Not

ABSTRACTThe United States is widely characterized as having liberal (limited state) ideology and institutions, while Belgium is relatively statist. Yet the United States relies primarily on local public monopolies to provide elementary and secondary education, while Belgium provides schooling through robust education free markets including and in some locales dominated by publicly funded faith-based schools. We present comparative case studies of the evolution of each educational system, in search of explanations. Our American case summarizes prior accounts, while the Belgian case uses archival research. The evolution of each system reflects similar late 19th and early 20th Century conflicts between the Catholic Church and the state, though American “public” schools were essentially Protestant, and Protestant majorities eventually imposed state-funded quasimonopolies. In contrast, in Belgium the contending parties (traditionalist Catholics opposing Liberals) had relatively equal political power over the long term, giving each incentives for market-based compromises which still endure Belgian school wars, Blaine Amendments, Catholic education, school choice and religion, school vouchers.

Nationalist Transformations: Music, Ritual, and the Work of Memory in Cambodia and Thailand

Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Cambodia and its diaspora since 2004, this article explores tensions that arise when individuals and institutions impose nation-state ideologies on music and ritual that predate the nation-state concept and transcend official state boundaries. In numerous contexts, musicians and dancers in Cambodia and Thailand perform offerings and blessings that honor their teachers and initiate artistic lineages. Due to broad influence from India and centuries of conflict and borrowing, these rituals—though not necessarily their musical content—have proliferated in these two countries. I describe these nearly identical rituals—called thvāy grū in Khmer and wai khruu in Thai—and their contexts before outlining the historical narratives that have led to their attainment of political and nationalist significance. Today, individuals and institutions in both nations claim that these rituals effect a continuity that reflects each country’s unique national identity. Using Paul Ricoeur’s essay on “Memory and Forgetting,” I argue that these rituals fulfill a “duty to remember” that, in Cambodia’s case, counteracts a colonial narrative of decline. However, this remembering works against an equally essential task, what Ricoeur calls “the duty to forget.” I argue that the prioritizing of memory over forgetting, enacted by the thvāy grū and wai khruu, contributes to the continuing animosity and violence between Cambodia and Thailand. In making this argument, I attempt to show how ethnomusicology can move beyond consideration of how ritual reflects social structures to explore music and ritual’s role in inculcating political thought.

Central Asia as the economic and geopolitical tension nexus: Some implications for the world futures

During the last millennium the world economic and geopolitical conflicts were to a great extent connected: different crises in the World System's evolution stimulated geopolitical shifts and vice versa. This article argues that in the 15th century different geopolitical events and conflicts in Central Asia initiated the fall of the previous World System and the rise of the new one. This transformation resulted in the fall of overland and river trade routes, including the Great Silk Route, which passed through Central Asia. World trade shifted to sea and ocean routes, and European countries became the center of the new World System. Now, in the beginning of the 21st century a new transformation of the World System is underway. The center of economic and political development is migrating gradually to the East: this is why the geopolitical role of the Central Asian states is increasing. Central Asian states are a very important part of the New Silk Route; this route is to connect Eastern Asia with Europe and the Middle East. The United States, China, Russia, and other states are ardently competing to control the New Silk Route. Hence, different geopolitical, social, and military conflicts are probable in Central Asia. So economic and political integration in Eurasia between Russia, China, the United States and Central Asian states is very important for the geopolitical stabilization of the region. The article evaluates the main scenarios of geopolitical changes in Central Asia.

Kammen, Douglas. Three centuries of conflict in East Timor. xv, 231 pp., tables, figs, illus., bibliogr. London, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2015. £51.50 (cloth)

Journal of the Royal Anthropological InstituteVolume 23, Issue 3 p. 633-634 Book review Kammen, , , Douglas. Three centuries of conflict in East Timor. xv, 231 pp., tables, figs, illus., bibliogr. London, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2015. £51.50 (cloth) Laura S. Meitzner Yoder, Laura S. Meitzner Yoder Wheaton CollegeSearch for more papers by this author Laura S. Meitzner Yoder, Laura S. Meitzner Yoder Wheaton CollegeSearch for more papers by this author First published: 04 August 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12664Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume23, Issue3September 2017Pages 633-634 RelatedInformation

Psyche in historical context: Identity and existence in Captain Ahab and King Lear

IntroductionWhat ties Ahab, the notorious captain of the Pequod in Herman Melville's 1851 novel, Moby-Dick, to King Lear, the desperate old regent from William Shakespeare's eponymous play published in 1608, is not only their overabundant quest for meaning, or their obsession with pursuing their targets, but their idiosyncratic experiencing of themselves in their personal realities.AimsCaptain Ahab is put in relation with King Lear, in order to show in what way issues of identity and of existence emerge in the course of their fictional lives. Lear is considered to have had deep influence on Melville the author in creating the character of Ahab. Since, in terms of present-day psychopathology, both fictional characters present with symptoms, their issues when put in historical context can untangle their personal realities.MethodsThrough a close reading of the characters’ behaviour and experiencing in historical context, issues of identity and of existence are elaborated on in order to advance to the psychodramatic substrate.ResultsWhereas at the beginning of the seventeenth century conflicts are newly transposed to characters’ minds instead of surroundings, the nineteenth century still sees Ahab's monomania on the outside. Identity and existence have increasingly been placed in individual psyche, though.ConclusionsA paradigmatic change in personality concept at the turn of the modern epoch enables psychiatry and psychopathology to conceptualize the individual and to derive identity and existence from. Collective identity gives way to personal identity. With that, choice, interpretation, and failing are individualized.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.

Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor

Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor

Political Regime Type and Warfare: Evidence from 600 Years of European History

Is the democratic peace a wholly modern phenomenon or a continuation of previous historical trends? This paper offers the first quantitative analysis of political regime type and conflict in late medieval and early modern Europe. We argue that the modern democratic peace is borne out of centuries of conflict between early parliamentary regimes, which enabled states to raise greater fiscal resources to put toward warfare. To test this argument, we construct a new dyadic panel database of all conflicts, belligerents, and political regime types for the full universe of sovereign polities in Europe between 1200 and 1800. Our database includes more than 900 conflicts and 80 polities. We find that parliamentary regimes fought significantly more than non-parliamentary regimes, both overall and against each other. Furthermore, we find that the causal relationship between parliaments and warfare was reciprocal, with war participation creating the demand for parliamentary institutions, and such institutions creating the capacity for more war. Our results suggest that the institutional predecessors of modern democracies were regimes with significant capacity to make war, but -- until recently -- not enough constraints to prevent it.

Self-Determination and Power-Sharing in Israel/Palestine

This article surveys three different concepts of political self-determination that may be applied to the Israel/Palestine conflict, and considers how they may or may not justify power-sharing arrangements of the type suggested by Brendan O’Leary. In addition, the various forms of both two-state and one-state solutions are considered for their congruence with the best understanding of self-determination. The three forms of the self-determination principle are: statist, national, and ecological. The author argues that only the last is justifiable as the basis for a settlement of the conflict, as well as more generally for twenty-first century conflicts over resources and territory. In theory, ecological self-determination would justify a one-state solution that would unify the region in order to maintain its resources sustainably. But both solutions face myriad political obstacles. The author discusses the difference between consociation and federation, two theories of power-sharing, both with disadvantages, and concludes that O’Leary has suggested an interesting approach that focuses not on the end-state solution, but on intermediate proposals to begin the process of cooperation. The author concludes by maintaining that the main obstacles are neither philosophical nor policy-oriented, but political, and suggests some reasons for cautious optimism in that regard.

Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor by Douglas Kammen

Reviewed by: Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor by Douglas Kammen David Webster (bio) Douglas Kammen. Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2015. 240 pp. Travelers to the town of Maubara tend to be weekend visitors from Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste (East Timor), or foreigners in search of dive sites. Even if they wander into the old Dutch fort, few visitors know much about the days when Maubara was a strong Timorese kingdom, about its historic alliance with the Netherlands, or about the violence that runs like a blooded thread through Maubara’s history under Portuguese, Japanese, Indonesian, and Timorese governments. Douglas Kammen, whose previous work addresses mass violence in East Timor during the Indonesian occupation (1975–99), picks up the thread of violence in this book and traces if back through three hundred years with a micro-history of the kingdom (and, subsequently, a sub-district) of Maubara, for much of its history “a very small place in a remote colony at the furthest edge of a vagabond empire” (119). His story of Maubara and its leading families, at the same time, has larger ambitions, aiming at learning lessons about mass violence in general and at stitching together evidence from colonial archives and from local memory. The historic kingdom, of course, is not the same as today’s seaside village, with its beach café, marketplace, and local NGO selling handicrafts and cold drinks from the courtyard of the old fort. The kingdom’s centers lay higher up Mount Maubara, with authority often dispersed among different settlements and families. Kammen examines the longue durée in a limited locale. “Stranger kings” established a kingdom in Maubara that is there in the archival records, but almost entirely absent from local memory. Kammen reconstructs this early history based on archival records, without oral history to help him. (Despite hundreds of interviews on which Kammen relied, discussed later, the people in Maubara simply didn’t talk about this aspect of the past.) Local memory does recall the coming of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to Maubara and the kingdom’s alliance with the Dutch, though in hazy fashion. Again, Kammen’s careful reconstruction of the surprising alliance between Maubara and the VOC (whose empire eventually became the Dutch East Indies) relies on archival documentation. The VOC and the ruling houses of Maubara were allied from the 1750s to the 1850s. This century of mutual benefit saw VOC rulers in Kupang, West Timor, extend their influence into the central part of the island, advancing their contest with the Portuguese who claimed the alliance or allegiance of most of this area. Maubara became “the centerpiece of VOC expansion into north-central Timor” (47) while benefiting from the VOC alliance by seemingly strengthening itself relative to neighboring kingdoms. Kammen’s account reveals Maubara as an autonomous actor in wider regional currents, not a mere pawn in a battle between colonial powers. It was only in 1859 that Portuguese control started to arrive in Maubara, which local [End Page 151] rulers resisted because they did not want to surrender access to overseas trading networks or ties (represented in the symbolic realm through gifts of Dutch flags and other items) with the VOC in Kupang. To Kammen, the symbolic realm matters more. People in Maubara know that the imposing seaside fort is a colonial construction. Its physicality should serve as a reminder of the Dutch presence and of the days of Maubara’s glory. Yet Kammen’s interviews show local memory dwelling more on division between lineages and on origin stories than on past greatness; on individuals, not on statecraft. The motives of Maubara’s rulers cannot be made visible in colonial archives or in oral history, and Kammen thus follows the thread of local memory, seeking meaning and finding continuities. From a colonial viewpoint, the story of Maubara coming under Portuguese rule is typical. European power increased in pace with economic change. Portugal’s desire for ever-greater coffee production transformed Maubara’s local economy and social structure as it became a major center of coffee production. Some individuals in Maubara opposed increasing colonial political control, while...

No Good Options against ISIS Barbarism? Human Shields in 21st Century Conflicts

One of the most vexing conundrums of 21st century warfare has been not just the explosive growth in the use of human shields, but the apparent systemization of the tactic, particularly by nonstate actors. In noting the international prohibition, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) defines the practice as the “intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives.”