First-hand Material Research Articles

‘Des singes, c’était le narcisse’: class, imitation and performing monkeys in late-eighteenth century Paris

This paper focuses on the use of performing monkeys in boulevard and foire theatres in late eighteenth-century Paris. I will concentrate on the issues raised by ‘Turco,’ Jean-Baptiste Nicolet’s legendary acting monkey at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, who was most cherished for his antics and ability to emulate the Comédie-Française’s leading actor François-René Molé in 1767–1768. Relying on first-hand materials drawn from Nicolet’s contemporaries’ letters, drawings, ‘anecdotes’ and memoirs, I will contend that Turco’s acrobatic feats anthropomorphized him to the extent of equaling modern circus acrobats. Secondly, I will argue that his success when parodying the ‘sacred’ French actor unearths class struggles reflected in the schism between the aristocratic, state-subsidized Comédie-Française and the rest of popular playhouses. I will conclude by stating that Turco’s performances transcended Denis Diderot’s acting theories swinging between intuitive and reflexive acting, as described in Paradox of the Actor (1773–1777).

Outward foreign direct investment in agriculture by Chinese companies: land grabbing or win–win?

Using the firsthand materials collected during on-site fieldworks and in-depth interviews, this paper examines the dimensions, especially the motives, for driving Chinese firms to invest in agriculture overseas from the macro (or government’s)- and micro (or firms’)-perspectives, as well as the impact of Chinese firms’ agricultural outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) from the multi-stakeholder perspective. From the perspective of China’s central government, the goal of encouraging domestic enterprises’ overseas investment in agriculture is not to ensure national grain security, but to stabilise the domestic supply of strategic agricultural products. From the micro-perspective, the impetuses for driving Chinese firms to invest in agriculture overseas are diverse and land exploitation is just one of them. They may wish to compete with local producers and some of the enterprises do not have a strong awareness of environmental protection and social responsibility. This is not the whole story. Chinese enterprises’ agricultural OFDI increases agricultural investment and reduces poverty in the host countries, and expands the supply of agricultural products of the local markets. In the long run, the growing presence of Chinese firms with advanced technology will yield the benefits of competition: an expansion of local supplies while providing cheap technology that can be duplicated by local farmers. Only a very small proportion of the agricultural products grown abroad is sold back to China, while a large part is sold domestically or exported to a third market. Therefore, Chinese firms’ agricultural OFDI has offered little direct, but some indirect, help in guaranteeing China’s food security. Perhaps, China’s diplomatic and political benefits obtained through agricultural OFDI outweigh the benefits of ensuring food security. Chinese enterprises’ agricultural OFDI is a win–win situation for the host countries and for China.

Beyond unemployment: Informal employment and heterogeneous motivations for participating in street vending in present-day China

The proliferation of urban street vending in developing countries is generally viewed as being as a result of unemployment. Using a theoretical approach based on mainstream perspectives on informal employment and first-hand material from 200 semi-structured vendor interviews in Guangzhou, we challenge this view by revealing the heterogeneity of people’s motivations for participating in street vending in present-day China. Various types of labourers, including wage workers, farmers, the unemployed and small businesspeople, participate in street vending with diverse motivations, but in a common attempt to improve their livelihoods. Such motivations are driven both by the labourers’ responses to multiple socio-economic forces including unemployment, the low quality of waged jobs, rural poverty, the difficulties of maintaining a formal business and the poor remuneration of jobs in cities, and by their desire to achieve autonomy and flexibility. Street vending is mainly argued to be an effective strategy of ordinary labourers to cope with the unfavourable situations they face amidst socio-economic transformation. It should not be seen as a problem, but a potential part of the solution to the problems arising from socio-economic transformation in post-reform China.

The Turkish Left and the Kurdish Question

This essay examines Marxist Turkish left’s engagement with the Kurdish question in Turkey. It aims to portray, on the basis of some first-hand material, the theoretical inclinations and political attitudes of the main legal and illegal Marxist parties and organizations concerning the Kurdish question. It basically argues that the Turkish Marxists’ stressful engagement with the Kurdish question can be viewed in four periods corresponding to four conditions: encounter, union, separation, and divorce.

美国拉美裔文学研究的开山之作—评《当代美国拉美裔文学研究》

《当代美国拉美裔文学研究》(2014年)是国内当代美国拉美裔文学研究的开山之作。该书全面介绍了美国拉美裔文学的文化来源、文学分支、作家流散经历及化成身份的文学表达、人物多重文化身份的建构以及多元化的叙事方式等美国拉美裔文学的发展概况，并结合重点拉美裔作家及作品进行了逐一解析。该书有4大突出特点，一是问题意识，抓住当代美国拉美裔文学研究的关键问题；二是创新精神，采用了大量的第一手材料，内容新颖；三是历史本位，通过历史振叶寻根，观澜索源；四是综合方法，兼用历史学、政治学、社会学、文化学等诸多学科的研究材料和视角。本书论述严谨，具有很高的学术水准，对国内美国拉美裔文学研究做出了前所未有的贡献。 A Study on Contemporary American Latino Literature (2014) is “pioneer work” of domestic contemporary American Latino literature studies. The book is divided into six chapters, which introduces comprehensively the cultural source of American Latino literature, literary branches, the Diaspora experiences of writers, the literary expression of identity, the construction of the character’s multiple culture identity, diversified narrative methods and the general situation of American Latino literature, analyzing the main writers and their works one by one. A Study on Contemporary American Latino Literature has four prominent features. The first is the problem consciousness, seizing the key problems of contemporary American Latino literature study; the second is the creative spirit, using a large number of first-hand materials of novel content; the third is it is history oriented, shaking the leaves to find the roots and enjoy the stream to find the source through history; the fourth is its comprehensive method, using the research materials and perspectives of many other disciplines such as history, political science, sociology and culture. Rigorous in explicating, and high on academic level, the book makes unprecedented contribution to domestic American Latino literature study, which is hard to surpass.

A View of Flexible Housing in China

LI Shanshan's doctoral dissertation features a picture of Flexible Housing in the Chinese context, covering development history, current situation of typical projects, and possible application in the future. It is conducted under the assumption that the specific expressions of flexible housing are closely connected with social backgrounds, and reveals preliminarily the effectiveness of flexibility in resisting the change. The research is concentrated on, but not confined to the particular situation in China. Conversely, it also pays attention to the international counterparts. The prominent researches and practices, especially in Europe, provide an important reference for this research. Meanwhile, the achievements in Chinese context are systematically introduced. This study is assisted by three scientific tools. Firstly, it is dependent on the national and international literatures. The national literature helps it to inquire into the existing researches conducted by the Chinese scholars. The international researches provide it plenty of available references, by which the research concept was improved. Secondly, face-to-face interview, as a sociological method, is employed to obtain the first-hand material. The interviewees includes the architects who devoted themselves in this topic, the inhabitants who are accommodated by flexible housing, and other roles who are closely connected with flexible housing. Thirdly, the study gets support by the documents preserved in the Architectural Archives

SINCLAIR LEWIS REMEMBERED

SINCLAIR LEWIS REMEMBERED. Ed. Gary Scharnhorst and Matthew Hofer. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2012. xiv + 400 pp. $49.95.In Sinclair Lewis Remembered, editors Gary Scharnhorst and Matthew Hofer have compiled accounts of the famous Nobel Prize-winning author by people who knew him. The book includes reports from seventy-eight different witnesses and organizes their material in accord with the chronology of Lewis's life (1885-1951) so that readers can have the experience of an unfolding from childhood to death, conveyed through eyewitness accounts only. Discussions by people who knew Lewis a long time, such as Chicago book reviewer Fanny Butcher, are broken into segments, with each selection appearing in the book at the appropriate time. In the words of the editors, the volume offers an anecdotal account of Lewis's life, a collaborative biography that presents the complexity of his personality in a way no single biographer (9).The editors have done a good job finding sources. Scharnhorst and Hofer include the major sources known to Lewis scholars, which comprise the bulk of the entries, and add two interviews that they identify as new to the field, one from 1915, in which W. D. Inglis records the author giving upbeat self-help advice, and another from 1921, in which Charles Phillips Russell records Lewis in England distinguishing between Main Street America and Main Street Britain. The editors quietly add as well a small handful of unfamiliar items, including an interesting reminiscence by Emile Gauvreau, a young journalist at the New Haven Journal-Courier when Lewis was working there as a Yale student.The new book is welcome not only because it finds fresh sources but also because it is the first one-volume collection of firsthand material on Lewis, and it is certainly the first effort to tell his life story through primary texts. Surveying them all, a reader can feel more closely connected to the record than with a normal biography, in which everything filters through the biographer. A reader can judge the sources on their merits and decide which ones exhibit the most understanding. The difference between the revealing and the less revealing shows clearly. A short recollection by Harold Loeb, though perceptive, is not as insightful as the reminiscence by Charles Breasted, who was closer to Lewis and knew him longer. Loeb suggested that Lewis might have been blind to the stuffiness of Carol in Main Street (1920) because she was so like his wife Grace (108), whereas Breasted knew that Lewis understood Carol's weaknesses and even identified with her himself (103).Another advantage of an assembly of witnesses is the way the collective testimony can confirm essential features of the subject, as, for example, Lewis's interest in performing extemporaneous monologues. At least twelve people who knew him at various times from his twenties until his death report seeing him create characters spontaneously. Witnesses often say these performances were brilliant, though sometimes long. Another essential Lewis quality, confirmed by as many as six witnesses, was his identification with the characters in his novels, not only with relatively positive ones such as Carol Kennicott but also with seeming targets of satire such as George Babbitt and Elmer Gantry. Instead of thinking of them as alien, he thought of them fondly, almost as if they were part of himself. As Alfred Harcourt notes, if Lewis could not feel himself a part of the character, he would give up writing on the subject (185). This insight helps to explain why Lewis never wrote his long-projected labor novel. As many as six witnesses confirm the extended effort he gave to this undertaking. Putting together their accounts with hints from other writers, one can see that the labor novel never materialized because Lewis knew that his sense of the subject was not sharp enough.A highlight of the new book is a story by Budd Schulberg that takes place right after the publication of It Can't Happen Here (1935). …

SINCLAIR LEWIS REMEMBERED

SINCLAIR LEWIS REMEMBERED. Ed. Gary Scharnhorst and Matthew Hofer. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2012. xiv + 400 pp. $49.95.In Sinclair Lewis Remembered, editors Gary Scharnhorst and Matthew Hofer have compiled accounts of the famous Nobel Prize-winning author by people who knew him. The book includes reports from seventy-eight different witnesses and organizes their material in accord with the chronology of Lewis's life (1885-1951) so that readers can have the experience of an unfolding biography from childhood to death, conveyed through eyewitness accounts only. Discussions by people who knew Lewis a long time, such as Chicago book reviewer Fanny Butcher, are broken into segments, with each selection appearing in the book at the appropriate time. In the words of the editors, the volume offers an "anecdotal account of Lewis's life," a "collaborative biography" that presents the "complexity of his personality in a way no single biographer could" (9).The editors have done a good job finding sources. Scharnhorst and Hofer include the major sources known to Lewis scholars, which comprise the bulk of the entries, and add two interviews that they identify as new to the field, one from 1915, in which W. D. Inglis records the author giving upbeat self-help advice, and another from 1921, in which Charles Phillips Russell records Lewis in England distinguishing between Main Street America and Main Street Britain. The editors quietly add as well a small handful of unfamiliar items, including an interesting reminiscence by Emile Gauvreau, a young journalist at the New Haven Journal-Courier when Lewis was working there as a Yale student.The new book is welcome not only because it finds fresh sources but also because it is the first one-volume collection of firsthand material on Lewis, and it is certainly the first effort to tell his life story through primary texts. Surveying them all, a reader can feel more closely connected to the record than with a normal biography, in which everything filters through the biographer. A reader can judge the sources on their merits and decide which ones exhibit the most understanding. The difference between the revealing and the less revealing shows clearly. A short recollection by Harold Loeb, though perceptive, is not as insightful as the reminiscence by Charles Breasted, who was closer to Lewis and knew him longer. Loeb suggested that Lewis might have been "blind to the stuffiness of Carol Kennicott" in Main Street (1920) because she was so like his wife Grace (108), whereas Breasted knew that Lewis understood Carol's weaknesses and even identified with her himself (103).Another advantage of an assembly of witnesses is the way the collective testimony can confirm essential features of the subject, as, for example, Lewis's interest in performing extemporaneous monologues. At least twelve people who knew him at various times from his twenties until his death report seeing him create characters spontaneously. Witnesses often say these performances were brilliant, though sometimes long. Another essential Lewis quality, confirmed by as many as six witnesses, was his identification with the characters in his novels, not only with relatively positive ones such as Carol Kennicott but also with seeming targets of satire such as George Babbitt and Elmer Gantry. Instead of thinking of them as alien, he thought of them fondly, almost as if they were part of himself. As Alfred Harcourt notes, if Lewis could not feel himself a part of the character, he would give up writing on the subject (185). This insight helps to explain why Lewis never wrote his long-projected labor novel. As many as six witnesses confirm the extended effort he gave to this undertaking. Putting together their accounts with hints from other writers, one can see that the labor novel never materialized because Lewis knew that his sense of the subject was not sharp enough.A highlight of the new book is a story by Budd Schulberg that takes place right after the publication of It Can't Happen Here (1935). …

The Use of Chinese Buddhist Theories in Counselling, Psychotherapy, Psychology, and Mental Health Research: An Integrative Review

The current integrative review investigated thematic studies relevant to incorporating Chinese Buddhism into counselling, psychotherapy, psychology, and mental health; identified topical and methodological gaps; and, finally, proposed future research directions for developing Chinese-Buddhism-oriented counselling theories. The review search included 22 Chinese and English databases, selecting 146 publications (n = 130 in English; n = 16 in Chinese). Results indicated that (i) three prominent themes were how compassion, Mahāyāna, and loving-kindness could be integrated into therapeutic interventions, (ii) 63.7 % were theoretical discussions, whereas 26.7 % were empirical inquiries, and (iii) only 2.1 % used primary source data. Considered overall, the findings reveal a need to explore more fully Chinese-Buddhism-based counselling theories by Buddhist first-hand materials and involving qualitative methods.

Experimental Measurements Research on Internal Micro-Environment of Individually Ventilated Cage System

This paper firstly presents the operation principle of individually ventilated cages (IVC) system. Measurements on micro-environment of IVC system in laboratory animal room at University of South China are conducted to attain the internal environment parameters (Temperature, humidity, air velocity, air cleanliness and noise). Research results show that internal micro-environment parameters basically meet national standards about the barrier environment, but internal air distribution is uneven. In IVC system, air velocities in the edge side are higher than in the middle side, and the maximum air velocity is about 10% larger than the minimum value. Temperature in internal micro-environment depends on indoor temperatures which IVC system located in, and there has a close correlation between air velocity and temperatures. Internal environment evaluation could provide the first-hand research materials for guiding the breeding and management of laboratory animal.

At Freedom’s Door, by Malcolm Lyall Darling

Malcolm Darling’s 1,400-mile tour through north India between November 1946 and March 1947 captures one of the most important periods in South Asia’s political transition. This was the last year of British power in her greatest overseas colony—a phase in which decisions about India’s freedom were still balanced between two broad possibilities: a larger unitary state, or division between Hindustan and Pakistan. The book immerses the reader in this time, not via the normal corridors of power or larger constitutional structures, but from the position of ordinary Indians. It reveals, as Ian Talbot points out in the introduction, first-hand material on peasant political culture, exploring the meanings of ‘freedom’, British rule, and Pakistan for some of north India’s village populations. This is presented by one of the most peculiar colonial paternalists: Darling was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and was descended from a wealthy family of letters. Yet he held ‘advanced liberal views’, which set him apart from the racial exclusivity of much of Anglo-Indian life. In 1946, Darling was long retired from the Indian Civil Service. Nevertheless, he still maintained valuable Indian friendships. At the start of the journey, the future Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, stood ‘on a small table in his office in front of a vast map of India’ (p. 6), to point out possible routes for Darling through the United Provinces (UP).

Impacts of Tourism Development in Ban had Rin Community at Koh Phangan Island, Thailand: A Sustainable Tourism Perspective

This paper documents the problems and impacts of the tourism development in Ban Had Rin Community at Koh Phangan Island. The study focuses on sustainable tourism including the environment, socio-culture and economic aspects. This study investigates the qualitative data from the second-hand materials as the Thailand government’s publication, research papers and website on tourism involved in the phase one, and the first-hand materials as the field survey to assess the impacts of tourism on the community in the phase two. In conclusion, the study suggests that if tourism development will be successful, Ban Had Rin Community should be planned and managed in a sustainable manner.

Chinese Sources on the 1903–04 British Military Expedition to Tibet

AbstractChinese sources, especially first-hand materials such as archive collections, field-work reports and Amban Youtai?s diary, have been little considered or consulted in the international debate on issues of modern Tibetan history. Although these Chinese sources would make their studies more balanced, Western scholars who do not understand Chinese characters tend to rely English sources only, with very few of them using Tibetan sources as well. However, just as it has become more and more common in academic circles in China for Chinese scholars to use English or other foreign-language sources in their studies of Tibetan history, so also should Western scholars realise how important the Chinese sources are for studies of Tibetan history, for Tibet has been related to China so closely and for such a long time.

Tectono-paleogeographic study of the Early Cretaceous in the Songliao Basin

Based on first-hand material from the geological exploration of petroleum, we made a detailed study of the tectonic development in the Early Cretaceous and the distribution of basement rifts in the Songliao Basin. The sedimentary characteristics of this epoch and the tectono-paleogeography of the basin were expounded. The results show that in its early stages, the Songliao Basin was characterized by a detached faulted basin in which mainly lake facies developed among mountains. It became gradually one lake during the late stages of the Early Cretaceous. During this period, the fault activity in the Songliao Basin changed from a turbulent to a quiet development, the water area from small separated lakes to one large lake, in which the sedimentary facies were divided into asymmetric eastern and western parts. In the basin a volcanic clastic rock-alluvial fan system developed and a fan delta-lake-small delta-river system was mainly deposited. Our research also shows that the basement rifts not only controlled the distribution of fault depressions and the tectonic development in the Early Cretaceous, but had also an effect on the orientation of sedimentation, source area and river system, which determine the tectono-paleogeography of the Early Cretaceous.

CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA: SOCIALIST, CIVILIAN OR TRADITIONAL?

Taxonomy, as a methodological tool introduced from natural science, brought the categorization of legal systems to comparative law.1The term ‘legal family’2is normally used as a metaphor, because it recognizes that within each grouping there are many variations. Each of the legal families is regarded as a combination of fundamental features of legal systems which have certain similarities. As an analytical device, taxonomy renders the comparison of different laws and legal institutions manageable by means of simplifying or abstracting the diverse and complicated realities of a myriad of legal systems. As a result, the concept of legal families acts as a support for legal borrowing and transplantation, as well as comprising an inevitable part of most comparative law works. Even where as few as two jurisdictions are involved, the categorization of legal families is still a useful tool for most comparative legal analysis. Assisted by the notion of legal families, comparativists can readily understand and explore an unfamiliar legal system.3Normally, such scholars tend to accept the conventional or widely accepted categorization of a particular legal system as belonging to a certain legal family. However, without detailed scrutiny of the first-hand material, distortions may arise as a result of preconceptions held at the beginning of the comparative study.4

Can Unilateral Trade Measures Significantly Reduce Leakage and Competitiveness Pressures on EU-ETS-Constrained Industries? The Case of China Export Taxes and VAT Rebates

The unilateral use of export restricting measures such as export taxes and VAT refund by China on energy-intensive sectors has raised both hopes and concerns over the last couple of years inside the EU. From a European perspective indeed, export restricting measures on products where China represents a decisive share of world production are likely to ease the competitive pressure faced by European import-competing industries, through both a quantity (import volumes decline) and price (world price rise) effect. Mirroring the border trade adjustment (BTA) scheme originally contemplated in the EU, trade restrictions on Chinese exports might hence have an effect on trade “comparable” to any border adjustment mechanism set in a large importing country. Concerns regard first the environmental motives if any of such export restraints, and second, provided that they are part of a national commitment to combat climate change, the exact amount to which these trade effects could be part of a deal by actually avoiding leakages outside the EU. Both concerns are addressed in this paper. We show that at least formally and legally, China’s export restraints on energy-intensive products are presented by Chinese officials as contributor to China’s overall environmental goals. The second concern we more lengthy dwell upon is to the extent to which EU import and China export adjustment mechanisms have comparable effects from a climate change perspective. Focusing on steel, aluminum and cement where risks of leakage are deemed plausible and export restricting measures have been raised in China during the last couple of years, we assess the comparability of China and EU commitment to combat climate change through a proxy given by the EU-ETS quota price equivalent of China’s export restrictions set on energy intensive products. After reviewing the rationale and current level of export taxes and VAT rebates on steel, aluminum and cement in China, we present the basic formula of EU-ETS quota price equivalent of China’s export restricting measures, and then apply it to steel, aluminum and cement. Our estimates of the EU-ETS quota price equivalent of Chinese exports restrictions provide figures of similar magnitude as the envisaged range of EU-ETS CO2 price, except for cement. We conclude by analysing the policy implications, and particularly, the leverage effects such export restraints could have in shaping a climate deal. Ongoing discussions with EU and Chinese officials triggered by IDDRI on this issue will provide first-hand material for such policy implications.

North Korea's military-diplomatic campaigns, 1966-2008

This book examines North Korea’s nuclear diplomacy over a long time period from the early 1960s, setting its dangerous brinkmanship in the wider context of North Korea’s military and diplomatic campaigns to achieve its political goals. It argues that the last four decades of military demonstrates Pyongyang’s consistent, use of military tools to advance strategic objectives vis a vis its adversaries. It shows how recent behavior of the North Korean government is entirely consistent with its behavior over this longer period: the North Korean government’s conduct (rather than being haphazard or reactive) is rational – in the Clausewitzian sense of being ready to use force as an extension of diplomacy by other means. The book goes on to demonstrate that North Korea’s calculated adventurism has come full circle: what we are seeing now is a modified repetition of earlier events – such as the Pueblo incident of 1968 and the nuclear and missile diplomacy of the 1990s. Using extensive interviews in the United States and South Korea, including those with defected North Korean government officials, alongside newly declassified first-hand material from U.S., South Korean, and former Communist-bloc archives, the book argues that whilst North Korea’s military-diplomatic campaigns have intensified, its policy objectives have become more conservative and are aimed at regime survival, normalization of relations with the United States and Japan, and obtaining economic aid.

Earthworm resources in the Gangetic Plain of Uttar Pradesh, India

Based on an extensive survey of Gangetic Plain of Uttar Pradesh during August – October 2008, the communication reports first-hand information on 11 taxa of earthworms belonging to 6 genera and 2 families, that were commonly found in the study area. This constitutes 26.3% of total Indian earthworm fauna. Of these, 4 taxa are exotic with extra Indian origin. The information on their scientific names, family, distribution, locality and voucher specimen no.(s), habitat, soil texture etc are given for each species enumerated in the text. The study contributes first-hand material on earthworm fauna of the study area, thus for neglecting and likely to add more native species to the existing ones which are very specific for vermicomposting process. Key words: Biodiversity, earthworm, agro-climatic zones, Gangetic Plain, India.

What Ever Happened to Baseball History?: Keynote Speech to the Sixteenth Annual NINE Spring Training Conference, March 14, 2009

Each baseball season brings new anniversaries and milestones, but events of this nature are only made meaningful by a shared reverence for the game's past. It's a history that is being constantly made and remade, while announcers and color commentators describe it--before, as, and after it happens. The 2008 season brought another bounty of reminders of baseball's storied history. One of the game's great shrines, Yankee Stadium, was shown out in style by a parade and All-Star Game, and the game paid homage to the centennial of its unofficial anthem, among many other milestones. Yet these celebrations also reveal that baseball narrowly defines its own history and overlooks a great deal. The past two years have marked the 150th anniversaries of the founding of baseball's first governing body, the National Association of Base Ball Players, and of the first game at which admission was charged. Did you miss baseball's tribute to those two gigantic steps in transforming a regional variant into the national pastime? You weren't alone. To be sure, both took place before 1900 and the advent of so-called modern baseball, but I consider that a vague and meaningless distinction. Americans haven't lost interest in the Civil War because it predated modern warfare, so why does a sport steeped in history neglect an enormous part of its past? I wish to propose an answer to that question that may surprise many of you. This gaping hole in baseball's history was not just the result of benign neglect but of a deliberate overwriting of the real history with another. The result was that students of baseball history all too often asked the wrong questions and, accordingly, arrived at the wrong answers. The two men most responsible for this situation are both Hall of Famers--those men are Henry Chadwick and Albert Goodwill Spalding. Of course, neither Chadwick nor Spalding was a historian. The problem, however, is that nobody else was writing baseball history while there were many eyewitnesses alive. The unfortunate result was that when baseball history did start to be written, all too often it was based upon something written by either Spalding or Chadwick. That is a problem, first of all, because Chadwick and Spalding were both participants and, as with any participant, their accounts assign themselves larger roles than they deserve. But there is a far more serious problem than that, because their versions of events represented an attractive narrative that was designed to sell a specific product. Spalding was the creator of the Spalding Guide and Chadwick was its longtime editor. The Spalding Guide is a valuable source of first-hand material, but all too often it is read as history when, in fact, it was an advertisement designed to sell two things: tickets to National League baseball games and the baseball equipment manufactured by Spalding's sporting goods firm. Spalding and Chadwick created such an attractive narrative that few saw them as salesmen for these products. Their writings came to be viewed as objective history, and this had enormous consequences. It is, I believe, largely because of these two men that we now have a view of the baseball world in which the National League is the center of the baseball universe and all other participants and all other leagues are of secondary importance. That is a distorted perspective, and it is such a serious distortion that it is not just an issue for people, like myself, who write about the history of early baseball--it is of great importance to anyone interested in the serious study of almost any aspect of baseball. Implicit in the Chadwick-Spalding conception of baseball history is a hierarchical structure. At the top of that hierarchy was the National League, which reigned supreme until the American League came along in 1901. Beneath the National League was the American Association of the 1880s and the various minor leagues that cooperated with the National League. …

African Girls' Samplers from Mission Schools in Sierra Leone (1820s to 1840s)

In an article in this journal almost fifteen years ago, Colleen Kriger discussed the reluctance of historians of Africa to use objects as sources in their research. She pointed to the rich reservoir of objects “made by African hands” in museum collections around the world, which lies virtually untapped by historians. However, she also noted that while objects are “unusually eloquent remnants from the past,” they are problematic sources, presenting “special difficulties in evaluation and interpretation.”The purpose of this article is to draw attention to the existence of a number of embroidery samplers that were stitched by African girls in mission schools in the British colony of Sierra Leone in the period from the 1820s to the 1840s. So far, I have found thirteen of these samplers, which are preserved in a number of archival, private and museum collections in Europe and the USA. To historians, these pieces of needlework are of interest because they were generated by a group of people for whom we do not usually have first-hand documentary material. Moreover, they represent the direct material traces of the activity of the girls who made them, and thus appear to offer the possibility of an emphatic insight into their experience.However, these “textile documents” present serious problems of interpretation. What exactly can they be expected to tell the modern historian? In particular, how far, in fact, do they express the perspectives of the African girls who made them, as distinct from the European missionaries who directed their work? Careful source criticism and an examination of the purpose for which they were produced will help to clarify these issues.