Events In World History Research Articles

“Remembering” World War II and Willingness to Fight

Students from 22 nations answered a survey on the most important events in world history. At the national level, free recalling and a positive evaluation of World War II (WWII) were associated with World Values Survey willingness to fight for the country in a war and being a victorious nation. Willingness to fight, a more benign evaluation of WWII, and recall of WWII were associated with nation-level scores on power distance and low postmaterialism, suggesting that values stressing obedience and competition between nations are associated with support for collective violence, whereas values of expressive individualism are negatively related. Internal political violence was unrelated to willingness to fight, excluding direct learning as an explanation of legitimization of violence. Recall of wars in general (operationalized by WWI recall) was also unrelated to willingness to fight. Results replicate and extend Archer and Gartner's classic study showing the legitimization of violence by war to the domain of collective remembering.

Love 's Time and the Reader: Ethical Effects of Nachtr�glichkeit in Toni Morrison's Love

Love's Time and the Reader:Ethical Effects of Nachträglichkeit in Toni Morrison's Love Jean Wyatt (bio) "The structure is the argument." Toni Morrison Temporal discontinuities and nonlinear narrative structures characterize many of Toni Morrison's novels. Morrison's fictions, taken as a whole, rewrite African American history—a history of disruption, dispossession, and displacement; in her later novels especially, formal breaks in chronological sequence reflect these upheavals and the psychic dislocations that accompany them. In Beloved, for example, disturbances of temporal sequence reflect, among other things, the traumatic displacements of the Middle Passage, which severed the enslaved Africans from their land, their culture, their ancestors, and their past.1 In Love the characters' severance from their past is a personal, not a world-historical event, an individual rather than a collective trauma. Yet in one respect at least, Heed's and Christine's experience parallels the experience of the captive Africans on the slave-ships: as a result of an early traumatic separation from the love that had been the ground of their childhood development, Heed and Christine lose connection with their past and its rich field of potentials and are consequently disoriented with regard to their present and future. The events that disrupt their temporal order are themselves a violation of chronology: Heed's marriage at eleven to her twelve-year-old playmate Christine's grandfather, the successful black entrepreneur Bill Cosey—and, hidden behind that marriage, the earlier intrusion of adult sexuality into the childhood world through Cosey's molestation [End Page 193] of Heed. From the moment Heed is catapulted untimely into the world of adult sexuality and marriage, Heed and Christine lose the ability to order their lives fruitfully in relation to time's passage. Narrative displacements reflect the protagonists' temporal disorientation, so that the time of the reading is itself discontinuous: we witness the effects—the long wasting of Heed's and Christine's lives—before we uncover its cause, the premature marriage, nearly two-thirds through the novel; and we are privy to the beginning of things—to the deep love between Christine and Heed when they were young girls—only at the end of the novel, after 183 pages of witnessing the two women's bitter enmity. The ending not only overthrows our expectations of narrative sequence, but reveals that the text has misled the reader about the most basic question one can ask about a novel: What is this story about? At the end, the new information about the characters' past—about the events that caused the whole sequence the reader has just processed—makes the reader reconstruct everything that has come before: the story centers not on the wanderings of male desire, as we had been led to believe, but on the mutual love of little girls. The structuring of Love around a time lag in the reader's relation to systems of meaning suggests a new perspective on Freud's model of Nachträglichkeit (variously translated as deferred action, après-coup, and afterwardsness)2—and new ways of using that temporal paradigm to illuminate reader response to the asymmetries of nonlinear narrative structures like Morrison's. This complex temporal structure, which Freud recognized in many of his hysterical patients, is composed of (at least) two scenes widely separated in time: in the first scene a child is exposed to some action on the part of an adult, usually a sexual act of some kind, that the child does not have the requisite knowledge or psychosexual development to understand. Years later, after the child has passed puberty and entered the world of adult sexuality, a second incident occurs that through some superficial resemblance reminds her of the first scene, and she reacts with the emotional and cognitive responses that would have been appropriate to the first scene. Jean Laplanche, the contemporary theorist responsible for elaborating Freud's nachträglich model, often cites the example of "Emma" from Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology (Freud 411–16; Laplanche 38–43). At the age of eight, Emma goes into a shop to buy candy, and the shopkeeper gropes her through her clothes while grinning; Emma, not yet inducted...

The South Korean forest dilemma

SUMMARY In what was probably the best orchestrated and publicly cohesive reforestation event in world history, the people of South Korea came together in the 1970s and 1980s and reforested their country after it had been denuded during thirty-five years of Japanese colonization and the subsequent Korean War. Reforestation was needed at the time primarily for developing a domestic timber supply to support its largely rural and agrarian economy. But South Korea has changed. It is now one of the world's most densely populated countries with a rapidly increasing industrial economy, and more than half its population is urban. It is no longer clear that providing a domestic timber supply is either desirable or feasible. In this article, we argue that providing recreational opportunities, especially for urbanites, and ecological restoration for biodiversity conservation are now the best strategic uses of Korea's forests.

Remembering the Historical Present

471 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. I had the benefit of reading versions of this paper at a number of institutions, and I wish to record the help I received at the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, the New School for Social Research, Waseda University (Tokyo), and the University of Washington. I also want to thank Kristin Ross, Carol Gluck, and Hyun Ok Park for commenting on earlier revisions of the manuscript. Remembering the Historical Present

Introduction

‘They forgot her like a bad dream … Remembering seemed unwise.’ Toni Morrison, Beloved Until this year British responses to the slave-trade and slavery might well have been characterized as a collective forgetting. Yet 2007 has seen an unprecedented range of activities associated with the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade. The television programmes, books, talks, exhibitions and drama productions that are taking place all over the country mark the extent of involvement in a debate over the meanings of that legacy. Museums, galleries, community groups, churches, schools, universities, libraries, theatres, publishers, the press and the media have engaged in multiple initiatives exploring slavery and abolition, raising questions about the legacy of the transatlantic slave-trade in British society. The Museum in Docklands, for example (featured in our cover design), has a new permanent exhibition opening in October on ‘London, Sugar and Slavery’. All this activity, it is worth noting, is a peculiarly British phenomenon. The British initiative on the abolition of the trade in 1807 was a world-historical event with effects on the scale of the international trade and its banning by other countries. Yet in the Caribbean there has been extensive reluctance as well as widespread indifference on questions of commemoration. Slavery is seen by many in the region as a matter of anger, shame and humiliation, not something to be dwelt upon. While the British were anxious to forget it for one set of reasons, Afro-Caribbeans had another. In the U.S., for rather different reasons, there has been little interest in the bicentenary. So why all the activity in Britain this year?

Towards a Bandung spirit‐based civil society movement: reflection from Yogyakarta commemoration of Bandung Asian‐African Conference

This article deals with a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Bandung Asian–African Conference 1955. Held in a modest way, in Yogyakarta, Bandung and Bangkok, the commemoration leaves, a durable contribution: the conference book – an anthology of reflections related to this world historical event. Written by 16 socially engaged intellectuals, academics and activists from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and USA, the book is entitled ‘BANDUNG 2005: Rethinking Solidarity in Global Society. The Challenge of Globalisation for Social and Solidarity Movements.’ The objective of the work is to look for alternatives to the present undesirable World Order and Globalisation. Put in the perspective of social history (of social struggle, social movement, or social change), the Yogyakarta Commemoration of the Bandung Asian–African Conference deserves close attention. The actors involved in the publication and in the meeting, the messages they delivered and the projects they proposed, are too important to be ignored. This article presents an analytical review on the commemoration, especially on the content of the book, completed by a concluding remark on the prospect of the movement.

It Made You Think of Home: The Haunting Journal of Deward Barnes, Canadian Expeditionary Force: 1916-1919 (review)

Reviewed by: It Made You Think of Home: The Haunting Journal of Deward Barnes, Canadian Expeditionary Force: 1916-1919 Glenn Wright (bio) Bruce Cane . It Made You Think of Home: The Haunting Journal of Deward Barnes, Canadian Expeditionary Force: 1916-1919Dundurn. 318. $35.00 Over six hundred thousand Canadian men and women served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF) during the First World War. It was and remains one of the most important events in world history, as Margaret Macmillan demonstrates in her study of the peace-making process, Paris 1919. For Canada too, the war had a significant impact on the course of our national development, and while less than a handful of our First War veterans remain, the war continues to occupy a prominent place in our consciousness. The 'Canada Remembers' program, sponsored by Veterans Affairs Canada, ensures that the sacrifices and achievements of our veterans are recognized, battlefield tours are popular, and books on the war are published and republished in great numbers. Canadian literature on the First War is extensive - biographies, memoirs, histories of battles and regiments, novels and poetry, and, in recent years, community histories. Throughout the war, soldiers were able to communicate with their families and loved ones by correspondence, but personal diaries and journals were strictly forbidden. Fortunately, a number of soldiers and nursing sisters chose to ignore the regulations and the historical record is better for the risks they took to leave us with first-hand accounts of their experiences. Many diaries were used as the basis for memoirs published soon after the war, while others were tucked away in drawers or trunks, forgotten and unread for several decades. Deward Barnes was born in Toronto in September 1888. He never attended high school and for several years prior to the war, he was employed at National Casket. In February 1916, he answered the call to arms and volunteered with the 180th Battalion, CEF. He arrived in England in November of the same year, was drafted to the 19th Battalion, and moved to France with his unit in April 1917. He missed the battle for Vimy Ridge but, over the course of the next eighteen months, saw his share of the fighting at Hill 70, Passchendaele, and the Allied breakthrough in August 1918. In October 1918, he received a 'blighty' when he was wounded by machine-gun fire. Following weeks of hospitalization and convalescence in England, Barnes arrived home in Toronto in March 1919. He had experienced the gruesome realities of war: he counted friends among the dead and in March 1918, he was selected to take part in the execution of a fellow soldier who had been convicted of desertion. Contrary to regulations, Deward Barnes kept a diary from the day he enlisted until he returned to Toronto in 1919. Like many soldier diarists, he recorded events, both large and small, of military life, but he often reflected on the war and on his own experiences in a way not always found in accounts of this nature. Seven years after the war, he transcribed his diaries in a series of notebooks, added some details, and then put his war story away for posterity. Now, in the capable hands of editor Bruce Cane, Barnes's story of the war is available to a wide audience for the first time. [End Page 371] Wartime diaries and letters are often published with few editorial enhancements, but Cane took a different approach and annotated the diary, providing the reader with the broad context by elaborating on events described by Barnes, filling in details about military life and operations that Barnes took for granted. In doing so, Cane has produced a very interesting account of one man's war, not to detract from the diary itself, but to place it firmly in the milieu in which it was written. This allows the reader fully to appreciate Barnes's experiences as a solider in the CEF. This is an excellent addition to Canadian first-hand accounts of the Great War, and brings us close to the realities of a war that continues to capture our imagination almost ninety years after the guns went silent. [End Page 372...

The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology ed. by David Bagchi and David C. Steinmetz

BOOK REVIEWS The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology. Edited by DAVID BAGCHI and DAVID C. STEINMETZ. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. x + 298. $70.00 (cloth), $25.99 (paper). ISBN 0-521-77224-9 (cloth), 0-521-77662-7 (paper). This well-conceived volume of introductions makes clear the breadth and vigor of theological thought and writing in the sixteenth century in Europe. Sixteen scholars offer introductory accounts for nonspecialists of the main figures and schools, beginning with late medieval systematic theology, Lollardry, and the Hussite reformation. Some chapters are outstanding. E. Rummel is solid on Erasmus's genuinely theological contribution. S. Hendrix is concise but splendidly informative on Luther's teaching through the phases of his incredible productivity. R. Kolb charts well the movement of Lutheran theology through the controversies leading to the Formula of Concord (1577). D. Steinmetz surveys Calvin surehandedly, R. Muller exudes vigor and mastery on Reformed theology after Calvin, and W. 0. Packull clears a path through the maze of Anabaptist theological works. D. Bagchi is informative and thoughtful on early Catholic controversialists. Other chapters seem to have less to offer theologically, for example, on Cranmer and on writing in Reformation Scotland. The volume begins with the editors' introduction, emphasizing how a knowledge of theology is essential to understanding the world-historical event ofthe Reformation. They tell quite well how present-day scholarship situates the era's theology, that is, in relation to the wider sixteenth-century culture, to early modern confessionalizing drives in cities and principalities, and to the interaction between elites and the ordinary lives of believers. The bibliographies are generally good (for critical comments, see below). The volume's conclusion is accurate on directions for ongoing research, leading to an engaging final word to an intended student-reader. An index will serve well anyone wanting to study how the main figures handled major theological topics, such as baptism, the meaning of the Old Testament, the church, eucharist, God, justification, predestination, and sacraments. Problems and defects in the volume come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. Some small flaws escaped editorial oversight, as when the author of the chapter on the Hussites speaks of "observation" where "observance" is meant (23) and of "conservation" for "consecration" (24). The Formula ofConcord is 289 290 BOOK REVIEWS wrongly dated in 1579 on page 135. Also, Steinmetz erroneously promotes Johann Gropper to be archbishop of Cologne (240). In the medium range of problems, the structure ofthe volume leads it to omit reference to valuable recent studies that treat significant areas of life (and death) in the Reformation era by studying topics across multiple authors and taking up the same issue in different confessional settings. One thinks of C. Eire, The War against the Idols (1986), on iconoclasm, and of B. Gregory, Salvation at Stake (1999), on martyrs and martyrological literature. Some lacunae limit the value of the bibliographies, beginning with omissions of some primary texts available in English, such as Jan Hus's "On Simony," in M. Spinka, ed., Advocates ofReform (1953); Martin Bucer's "The Kingdom of Christ," given in large part in W. Pauck, ed., Melanchthon and Bucer (1969); and Willam Tyndale's Answer to More in the critical edition by A. O'Donnell and J. Wicks (2000), in which this reviewer offered a concise account of Tyndale's impressive theological tenets. W. P. Stephens's chapter on Zwingli, which digests his Zwingli: An Introduction to His Thought (1992), notes the importance for the Zurich reformer of his reading of "Hoen's letter" (89), but then offers no help to one wanting to learn more about Hoen or even locate a copy of the letter. For this, one should consult H. A. Oberman, ed., Forerunners of the Reformation (originally 1966, newly released by James Clarke, 2003). Later in the volume, Packull presents the SchleitheimArticles as a good expression ofAnabaptist faith and community life, but offers no help toward finding the text of the Articles, which are given in M. G. Baylor, ed., The Radical Reformation (1991). Secondary studies deserving but not receiving mention in the Companion are R. Rex, The Lollards (2002) and G. Tavard, The Starting Point of Calvin's Theology (2000...

Explaining 1989 - Soviet Imperial Breakdown and Structural Stasis

A new hypothesis for explaining the world historical event of 1989 is proposed: The Soviet imperial association was immobilised by a structural stasis. Structural stasis was the condition that made Soviet imperial breakdown possible. As the leadership sought to mobilise the imperial association in the late 1980s the breakdown became increasingly likely. Once the resort to violence was heavily constrained and the imperial association lost control over borders and space the breakdown became inevitable. The hypothesis is theoretically well grounded in a Weberian theory of domination, which is elaborated to include indicators of illegitimate domination. Methodologically the hypothesis is bolstered by the most advanced models of social and cultural change available, which are developed to account for structural and cultural conditioning as well as probability and contingency. Theory, methodology and model foster an explanatory understanding. It is anticipated that this new hypothesis will prevail over alternative political, economic, military and cultural explanations.

The Enola Gay and the Smithsonian Institution

On August 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, which ushered on the end of World War II. For the 50th anniversary of this major event in world history, the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institute produced an exhibit. A controversy erupted, however, over the exhibit's historical authenticity. Nostalgic veterans, for example, complained that the museum displayed a misrepresented version of history that was too politically correct. After concisely covering the background of the Enola Gay and its mission, this study focuses on the controversy surrounding the museum exhibit. Issues covered include casualty figures, ethical questions, and political correctness, among others. The viewpoints of such groups as museum personnel, exhibit organizers, veterans, and historians are covered. Appendices offer information on content analysis of the National Air and Space Museum exhibit script, non-museum materials that were intended to complement the exhibit script, and the importance of full disclosure in research.

From flows to violence

Recent globalization theory reflected a chain of world historical events since the end of the Cold War. Globalization theories were tools for the making of political alliances between market liberals and political liberals. From the mid-1990s a broad range of institutionalist social science programs showed that globalization outcomes were often better explained by institutional logics (including cultural ones) than by global flows per se. This is, among others, illustrated by the debate on global inequality data. The emerging debate on empire and imperalism is discussed as a logical offshoot of the globalization discussion just as the phenomenon itself is seen as a likely outcome of an epoch of market-driven globalization. Globalization was predicated on the emergence of a US-led transnational western state structure on behalf of the transnational capitalist class based in finance and the large corporations. Territory and space have become more important rather than less, but the explanation of regional trajectories must now be located more firmly in the interaction between local and global structures. This leads to a new agenda in the social sciences: one oriented toward common interdisciplinary programs with a limited range of core questions - about state formations, class formations, mobilizations, claim making, and associated cultural processes. Programs should be more theory driven, comparative, and in search of explanations of divergent spatial and temporal outcomes of universal process.

Social Representations of Events and People in World History Across 12 Cultures

Social representations of world history were assessed using the open-ended questions, “What are the most important events in world history?” and “Who are the most influential persons in world history in the last 1,000 years?”Data from six Asian and six Western samples showed cross-cultural consensus. Historical representations were (a) focused on the recent past, (b) centered around politics and war, and (c) dominated by the events of the World Wars and (d) the individual Hitler, who was universally perceived as negative. (e) Representations were more Eurocentric than ethnocentric.(f) The importance of economics and science was underrepresented.(g) Most cultures nominated people (more than events) idiosyncratic to their own culture. These data reflect power relations in the world and provide resources and constraints for the conduct of international relations. The degree of cross-cultural consensus suggests that hybridity across Eastern and Western cultures in the representation of knowledge may be underestimated.

China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia

Preface Acknowledgments Note on Names, Dates, Weights and Measures, and Chinese Characters Introduction History, Time, and Memory The Qing Conquests as a World Historical Event PART ONE: THE FORMATION OF THE CENTRAL EURASIAN STATES 1. Environments, State Building, and National Identity The Unboundedness of Central Eurasia Trade, Transport, and Travel The Frontier Zone Isolation and Integration 2. The Ming, Muscovy, and Siberia, 1400-1600 The Ming and the Mongols State Formation in Muscovy and Russian Expansion Siberian and Chinese Frontiers 3. Central Eurasian Interactions and the Rise of the Manchus, 1600-1670 Building the Zunghar State The Rise of the Manchus Mongolian Influence on the Manchu State Early Modern State Building Compared PART TWO: CONTENDING FOR POWER 4. Manchus, Mongols, and Russians in Conflict, 1670-1690 Kangxi the Ruler Galdan's Intervention Kangxi's First Personal Expedition The Treaty of Nerchinsk and the Excluded Middle 5. Eating Snow: The End of Galdan, 1690-1697 The Dolon Nor Assembly The Battle of Jao Modo The Emperor Rewrites History The Final Campaigns and the Fate of Galdan 6. Imperial Overreach and Zunghar Survival, 1700-1731 The Rise of Tsewang Rabdan Three Central Eurasian Travelers The Penetration of Turkestan and Tibet The New Emperor Changes Tack 7. The Final Blows, 1734-1771 Transforming the Barbarians through Trade The Death Knell of the Zunghar State The Conquest of Turkestan The Return of the Torghuts PART THREE: THE ECONOMIC BASIS OF POWER 8. Cannons on Camelback: Ecological Structures and Economic Conjunctures Galdan the State Builder Nian Gengyao and the Incorporation of Qinghai Administering the Frontier 9. Land Settlement and Military Colonies Deportation from Turfan Settlement of Xinjiang Colonization and Land Clearance Economic Development 10. Harvests and Relief Harvests and Yields Granary Reserves The Contribution Scandal The Relief Campaign of 1756 11. Currency and Commerce Money on the Frontier, from Song through Ming Integration and Stabilization Commerce as a Weapon of War Tribute and Frontier Trade PART FOUR: FIXING FRONTIERS 12. Moving through the Land Travel and Authority Marking Space in Stone Maps and Power Expanding the Imperial Gaze 13. Marking Time: Writing Imperial History Kangxi's Campaign History Yongzheng and the Dayi Juemilu Qianlong's Account of the Zunghar Mongols A View from the Frontier Nomadic Chronicles PART FIVE: LEGACIES AND IMPLICATIONS 14. Writing the National History of Conquest Statecraft Writers and Empire Geopolitics and Emperor Worship Chinese Historians and the Multicultural State Soviet and Mongolian Attacks on Qing Aggression Empires, Nations, and Peoples 15. State Building in Europe and Asia The Political Ecology of Frontier Conquest European, Chinese, and Inner Asian Models Theories of Nomadic Empires Rethinking the Qing in the World 16. Frontier Expansion in the Rise and Fall of the Qing The End of the Qing State Northwest and Southern Frontiers The Negotiated State Commercialization and Regionalization APPENDIXES A. Rulers and Reigns B. The Yongzheng Emperor Reels from the News of the Disaster, 1731 C. Haggling at the Border D. Gansu Harvests and Yields E. Climate and Harvests in the Northwest Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Illustration Credits Index

Humanism and the Studia Humanitatis after 9/11/01: Rethinking the Anthropologos

But if man is to find his way once again into the nearness of Being he must first learn to exist in the nameless. In the same way he must recognize the seductions of the public realm as well as the importance of the private. Before he speaks man must first let himself be claimed again by Being, taking the risk that under this claim he will seldom have much to say. Only thus will the preciousness of its essence be once more bestowed upon the word, and upon man a home for dwelling in the truth of Being. —Martin Heidegger1 It is even part of my good fortune not to be a house-owner, Nietzsche already wrote in the Gay Science. Today we should have to add: it is part of morality not to be at home in one's home. —Theodor Adorno2 Of course [responding to his Jewish interlocutor's observation that his criticism of Zionism for attaching too much importance to home sounded very Jewish]. I'm the last Jewish intellectual. You don't know anyone else. All of your other Jewish intellectuals are now suburban squires. From Amos Oz to all these people here in America. So I'm the last one. The only true follower of Adorno. Let me put it this way: I'm a Jewish-Palestinian. —Edward Said3 [End Page 219] In 1991, following the disintegration and demise of the Soviet Union and its empire, Francis Fukuyama published an essay (later expanded to book length) which announced "the end of history" and the advent of a "new [global] world order" under the aegis of American liberal capitalist democracy.4 This annunciation was justified by appealing not to history but to History, that is, to a Hegelian/Kojèvian ontology which assumes that history is characterized by a directional dialectic process that, in the end, precipitates a world in which historical contradictions have been sublimated into a harmonious and conflict free totality. To arrive at this Quixotically optimistic and brutally reductive—world picture, Fukuyama, as Derrida and others have shown,5 was compelled by the binarist logic of this metaphysical ontology, this representation of history from after or above its disseminations (meta ta physika)—to overlook and discount the volatility that has characterized modern history, and, more important, the violence that the West, not least America, has perpetrated to produce this global volatility. I am not simply referring to the sustained practice of Western imperialism vis a vis its "Other" that began in the heady age of exploration. This was the predatory history that bore witness to the virtual extinction of the natives of North and South America, the African slave trade, the ruthless colonization and exploitation of the Middle East and India, and the destabilization of China and Japan, and, in its culminating phase, to the wholesale slaughter of World War I and, following World War II, to the carnage of the "small" hot wars of the Cold War, not least the one undertaken by the United States in Southeast Asia, in the name of "saving" it for "the free world," a "hot war" during which approx-imately two million Vietnamese were killed, their land destroyed by bombs and chemicals, their rice culture shattered, and their organic community reduced to a society of refugees. I am also referring to the modern Western interpretation of being, which was simultaneous and indissolubly complicitous with this devastating global imperial practice: specifically, its supplanting of the Word of the Christian God (the theo-logos) by the Word of Man—the anthropologos—as the measure of all things, spatial and temporal, and the mode of inquiry and learning endemic to this apotheosis of Man which came to be called humanist studies, Studia Humanitatis. Subsequent world historical events—not least the rise of a militant Islamic reaction to American hegemony in the Middle East—have subverted Fukuyama's euphoric...

The Siberian Frontier between “White Mission” and “Yellow Peril,” 1890s–1920s

The Russian conquest of Siberia was not only a remarkable event in world history like the conquest of the New World by the Western European nations, but also a decisive step in Russia's empire-building. Through territorial enlargement the empire became multiethnic. This process resembled the expansion of the white settlers in North America. Like North America, Siberia represented an “open frontier.” Harsh nature and the encounter between the white settlers and the “savages” formed the identity of the frontier. From the perspective of modern cultural anthropology the frontier also shaped reflections on the self and the other. There existed, however, a decisive difference to the American frontier: Siberia became a meeting ground for Russian and Asian cultures. Whereas the American frontier—except in the encounter with Mexico—remained isolated, Russians early came in contact with Asian nations. From the early emergence of a modern state in Russia during the era of Enlightenment, Russia came into manifold contacts with “civilized” Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans) and with “uncivilized” Asians, i.e. the tribes of Siberia. At the junction between Europe and Asia, Russia as a Eurasian empire was the sole country in Europe which was so near to Asia. It was therefore logical that Russia felt a kind of mission toward Asia and required the role of a mediator between Europe and Asia.

Shadowing history: National narratives and the persistence of the everyday

The issue this paper wishes to address is how history, as encoded in historiography of history-writing, is actually based upon its capacity to conceal, disguise and indeed suppress the everyday. This is especially true when you consider that most history is really driven by the nation state and that far from envisaging a history free or rescued from the nation, most history-writing ends up reinforcing it. In other words, history’s primary vocation has been to displace the constant danger posed by the surplus of everyday life, to overcome its apparent ‘trivia’, ‘banalities’ and untidiness in order to find an encompassing register that will fix meaning. With Hegel, narrative was given the role of supplying the maximal unity by which to grasp the meaning of history. What immediately got privileged was, of course, the nation state in the making of world historical events or and ultimately class, subjects who can claim world historical agency. By the same measure, the surplus or messy residues of modern life, especially its immensely staggering complexities, its endless incompletions and repetitions – all irreducible – are repressed or in some instances the microcosmic is sometimes mobilized to reinforce macrocosmic meaning. (This has frequently been called history from below and what Germans have called Alltagsgeschichte.) What I would like to do is explore the category of everydayness, ushered in with the masses and the appearance of the subaltern, as a minimal unity that provides its own principle of historical temporality that easily challenges the practice of history-writing as we know it.

Civil Society in China: A Dynamic Field of Study

Civil Society in China: A Dynamic Field of Study Guobin Yang (bio) Deborah S. Davis, Richard Kraus, Barry Naughton, and Elizabeth Perry, editors. Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ix, 449 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 0521474108. Paperback, ISBN 0521479436. Deborah S. Davis , editor. The Consumer Revolution in Urban China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. xiii, 366 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 0520216393. Paperback, ISBN 0520216407. Randy Kluver and John H. Powers, editors. Civic Discourse, Civil Society, and Chinese Communities. Stamford, Connecticut: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1999. xii, 296 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 1567504426. Paperback, ISBN 1567504434. Timothy Brook and B. Michael Frolic, editors. Civil Society in China. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. xii, 244 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 0765600919. Paperback, ISBN 0765600927. Richard Madsen . China's Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xiii, 183 pp. Paperback, ISBN 0520213262. Gordon White, Jude Howell, and Shang Xiaoyuan. In Search of Civil] Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. x, 241 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 0198289561. Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden, editors. Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance. London: Routledge, 2000. xii, 249 pp. Hardcover, ISBN 0415204909. Paperback, ISBN 0415223342. The seven books under review here were not chosen in any well-planned way to reflect all the major recent achievements in research on civil society in China. Some of them happened to be sent by the publishers for review; a few came at my request. While this short list is far from complete, it provides an adequate starting [End Page 1] point for a general review of the field. Much of my discussion will refer to these books but will not be limited to them. My main goal is to delineate the achievements and challenges of this new field. I will start with a brief discussion of the initial academic interest, followed by a survey of the first major debate in this area. I will then devote three separate sections to the four central components of civil society: public sphere, social organizations, individual autonomy, and popular resistance. The classification of civil society into these four components is based on my understanding of how the concept is defined and used in the current literature. Some scholars may focus more on associational life than on individuals. Others may be more interested in the public sphere than in popular protest. But it is helpful, if only to structure the analysis that follows, to think of these as interrelated elements of a civil society, a more or less organized public realm for the protection of the rights of citizens and the construction of civic values, sometimes through collective protest. In the concluding part of this essay, I will make several general observations about the state of the field and describe some future research areas. My general conclusion is that the study of civil society in China has been a dynamic field and will remain so because many new research questions invite explorations and answers. Initial Interest Academic interest in civil society in China arose in response to the world-historical events of 1989: the student protests in China and the fall of the Berlin Wall in Eastern Europe. Xin Gu provides a useful review of the initial interest.1 He credits the Danish scholar Clemens Strubbe Ostergaard as the first to introduce the concept of "civil society" into this academic discourse and the American scholar Craig Calhoun as the first to use the related concept of "public sphere." In both cases these concepts were used to analyze the 1989 student movement. Ostergaard argues that the significant changes in Chinese society before 1989 had created a "nascent civil society" of citizen groups and thus provided a social basis for the movement.2 While Calhoun's analysis focuses on how the movement itself transformed Tiananmen Square from an official ceremonial space into a public sphere of critical discourse, he suggests that the cultural debates and mass media discourse (especially that surrounding the TV series River Elegy [Heshang]) before the movement had an impact...

Liberatory, nationalising and moralising by ellipsis: reading and listening to Lhussein Slaoui's song Lmirikan

The popular song of Lhussein Slaoui, Lmirikan, is presented in the larger historical and political contexts of its first appearance. Sung during the American landing in World War II, it records this decisive event in world history but also sings about the social reality of Morocco. A literal reading of the song's lyrics conveys an acute sense of misogyny compounded with colonialism and racism, but a closer reading reveals a complex and highly politicised commentary on the contemporaneous sociopolitical atmosphere. Through his dexterous use of irony and innovation within a closed musical tradition, Slaoui offers by ellipsis a highly liberatory, nationalising and moralising tale. His remarks, then, concerning the implications of an overtly consumerist ethos and the subsequent erosion of social cohesion are even more pertinent today, making Slaoui thus a pioneer and his song prefatory to the social movement wary of American hegemony.

Boundaries, Maps, and Movement: Chinese, Russian, and Mongolian Empires in Early Modern Central Eurasia

Comparative responses to global processes that affected China and the other early modern empires. Central Eurasia during the seventeent and eighteenth centuries offers one important site because three agrarian states contended for power: the Muscovite/Russian empire, expanding eastwards across Siberia; the Manchu Qing expanding first south-east, then northwest into the Central Asian steppes, deserts, and oases; and the Mongolian empire of the Zunghars, who created an autonomous state in western Mongolia, Turkestan, and Tibet. Although, between the mid-seventeenth and the mid-eighteenth centuries, the Zunghars rivalled Russian and Chinese power, by 1760 the Qing had crushed the state and exterminated the Zunghar people. The Qing then established permanent control, which lasted until the fall of the empire in 1911, over all of present-day Mongolia (Inner and Outer), Xinjiang, and Tibet. The elimination of a powerful, independent Mongol-nomadic state in the steppe was a world-historical event. The closure of the steppe frontier meant the end of an age of fluidity, ecumenical exchange, fighting, and shifting of boundaries, and the division, dispersal, and extermination of the Mongols, who are now scattered from the Volga river to North China, one of the widest involuntary diasporas to occur on the continent. The outcome was the bipolar division of Central Asia between two empires, marked by a border delimited in treaty negotiations between the Chinese and the Russians. The bipolar division effectively lasted from 1760 until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Outer Mongolia, despite proclaiming its independence in 1911, became a Soviet satellite under Red Army occupation in 1921.1 The division persists conceptually in the terminology generally used to describe the broad, physiographically unbounded region lying between

Holocaust topologies: singularity, politics, space

This paper explores the Holocaust through three figures of singularity: exception (the Holocaust as a unique event in world history); extremity (the Holocaust as a limit case that discloses what only remains latent in other instances); and serial erasure (the Holocaust as a transpearing trace of the attempt to terminate the interminable). Whilst these figures have been respectively associated with debates in History, Sociology and Continental Philosophy, they have almost invariably been divorced from considerations of physical and social space. This lacuna is particularly disappointing, however, in so far as our understanding of the Holocaust is seriously impoverished by such a failure to map the geopolitics, geohistories and geophilosophies that were its conditions of possibility. Likewise, geographical knowledge is itself impoverished by its widespread and continuing failure to engage in any concerted and significant way with the Holocaust. Accordingly, our presentation explores the conceptualization of singularity as a potential means of theoretically informing debate on the spaces of the Holocaust. The paper situates the Holocaust in relation to the Nazis′ attempt to produce Lebensraum (living-space for the Aryan race) through Entfernung (removal of the Jews from the German lifeworld). This not only clarifies many of the difficulties encountered in the existing Holocaust literature, but also specifies the extent to which the Auschwitz universe of gas chambers and crematoria, in which millions of human beings were systematically killed, was employed by the Nazis to produce the space of the Third Reich.