Imperial Attitudes Research Articles

Ethnographic Observations of the Wartime Everyday Life of the Population of Southern Ukraine: Post-Expedition Reflections

Based on field materials, an attempt has been made to analyze the state of self-awareness among modern residents of the former centre of freedoms of the Zaporizhzhian Army, which included parts of the present-day Dnipropetrovsk and Kherson regions. The transformations taking place in this socio-cultural space and their influence on self-identification processes are traced from an anthropological perspective. Examples of russian imperial attitude towards the cultural landscape of the southern Naddniprianshchyna in different historical periods are provided. Parallels are drawn with the testimonies of the renowned traveller and ethnographer, Alexander Afanasyev-Chuzhbinsky, who, in the mid‑19th century, exploring the region and noted negative trends regarding the economic practices of the new owners of Zaporizhzhia lands. It is argued that a similar destructive impact on nature and culture was the practice of constructing large dams on the Dnipro River during the Soviet period, which generated a distinct conflict between russian imperial and Ukrainian worldviews. Through the prism of the author’s collected testimonies during expeditions to the places of the Cossack Great Meadow visited by A. Afanasyev-Chuzhbinsky, contemporary events during the russian-Ukrainian war are comprehended. The focus is on the issue of the new genocide and ecocide brought by the occupiers to the south of Ukraine as a result of the explosion of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station. The study reveals family strategies for preserving cultural memory concerning the former landscape and the role of the Zaporizhzhian Cossacks in modern processes of self-identification, through which not only the indigenous inhabitants but also participants of new waves of migration mentally assimilated the Zaporizhzhia heritage. Consequently, the military component of the cultural landscape of the Southern Naddniprianshchyna under the new conditions of the russian-Ukrainian war is capable of indirectly influencing the Ukrainian society. All of this calls for active protective measures regarding the cultural heritage and further comprehensive organization of scientific research in various fields of natural and socio-humanitarian sciences in order to preserve the values of the region and the development of Ukraine as a whole.

The USSR as a “Great Power”: Imperial Narratives and the State’s Status, 1920–1935

This article analyses the adaptation and re-semantisation of the “great power” concept in Soviet public discourse between 1920 and 1935. The actualisation of the “great power” concept in the public discourse of this period was associated with the need to comprehend the USSR in the system of international relations, the one of “great powers”. After the First World War and the revolutionary events of the early twentieth century, Russia was excluded from the European system of international relations, and the USSR had to fight for the recognition of the new state formation. Simultaneously, the new authorities had to defend their positions within the country. In addition, the new state was in a complex relationship with the legacy of the Russian Empire. Denying numerous imperial attitudes at the ideological level, the USSR had to deal with old institutions, including the diplomatic and authoritative language of Imperial Russia. At the same time, new goals required revision of inconvenient intellectual constructs. The author aims to establish how the “great power” concept was rethought and appropriated by the Bolsheviks and the Soviet authorities after the 1917 Revolution and the Civil War (1917–1922). The author identifies several main stages of rethinking the concept in public discourse and, based on an analysis of the press, proves that the “great power” concept was only partially resemanticised. It acquired new semantic connotations (primarily ideological) while retaining a significant part of the previous pre-revolutionary attitudes. The author reveals that from the early 1920s, there were attempts to assign the “great power” status to Soviet Russia. During this period, the great-power narrative was re-actualised and stabilised. The main factor confirming the “great power” status is the country’s internal successes.

The British Lion’s Triumph over the Bengal Tiger: The Royal Combat and the Allegory of Imperial Dominance

This article shows how the allegory of British-tiger rivalry became a distinct feature in 19th-century British imperial visual culture to imagined imperial attitudes over India. After the second Anglo-Mysore war (1799) between the East Indian Company and the Tipu Sultan, in 1808, a visual description of lion-tiger bloodshed was issued as a medal by the East India Company to reward its troops. Such a description shows a lion, representing the British nation’s suppression over a Bengal tiger, the royal emblem of Tipu Sultan. After this, the same imagery served to be imagined and visualised the British dominance and control over ruthless and unwilling India. Moreover, in such an allegory, a fiction of dead white women was added to invoke nationalism among Britons. This raises a feminist issue of how this fictional image of victimised women fulfils the British masculine agenda of imperialism and nationalism while the women remain deprived.

Art and Politics across the Atlantic: The Atlas maritimo del Reyno de el Perù, Chile, Costa Patagónica Oriental, y Occidental (1797)

ABSTRACT Comprised of eight charts and eight views that map the coastline of the Americas from Ecuador to Brazil, the Atlas maritimo del Reyno de el Perù, Chile, Costa Patagónica Oriental, y Occidental is an exquisite example of eighteenth-century Spanish American manuscript cartography whose production and content contribute to understanding imperial expansion and artistic exchange in the Atlantic World. Commissioned by a pilot of the Indies fleet and produced in Montevideo, this presentation atlas highlights a confluence of local and imperial interests in the cartographic production of the River Plate region. Sources include the works of prominent European explorers, and analysis of the atlas’ elaborate trompe l’oeil cartouches suggests potential artistic links with Andalusia and France. The atlas also reflects changing imperial attitudes towards Patagonia as a geostrategic location, and advances Spanish claims to the region.

A post‐imperial, pluralist nationalism? From the Five Nation Republic of China to multicultural Taiwan

AbstractAlthough many nations emerged during the collapse of the empire, the case of China is curious in its failure to divide into separate nation‐states. Resisting disunion, the Republic of China (ROC) adopted a rhetoric of national pluralism and laid claim to the fallen Qing Empire's vast territory. This divergence from other post‐imperial nationalisms engenders questions about the legacy of imperialism in the ROC's approaches to nation‐building. Such questions remain salient after the ROC retreat to Taiwan (1949), as since the end of martial law (1987), the ROC has championed itself as a model of multiculturalism. This paper examines the extent to which today's ‘Multicultural Taiwan’ paradigm differs from 20th‐century official conceptualisations of pluralism, through discourse analysis of publications from the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission (MTAC). Investigation finds that despite centring Taiwan in national ideology, certain Chinese imperialist attitudes towards cultural hierarchy remained influential in MTAC representations of pluralism within Asia.

Ireland and America: Empire, Revolution, and Sovereignty ed. by Patrick Griffin and Francis D. Cogliano

Reviewed by: Ireland and America: Empire, Revolution, and Sovereignty ed. by Patrick Griffin and Francis D. Cogliano Nicola Martin (bio) Ireland, Early United States, American Revolution, Empire, Imperialism, Sovereignty Ireland and America: Empire, Revolution, and Sovereignty. Edited by Patrick Griffin and Francis D. Cogliano. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2021. Pp. 356. Cloth, $49.50.) This volume is the fruit of a conference held to examine Ireland and America as places that were both shaped by, and actively shaped, empire and revolution. Patrick Griffin and Francis D. Cogliano have done an excellent job in selecting and drawing together thirteen broadly ranging, both chronologically and geographically, contributions to achieve their aim of complicating current understandings of both places. Written by renowned experts in Atlantic history, the essays employ a wide range of sources to interrogate various aspects of empire and revolution, all engaging with the central comparative of the volume to frame their studies. The essays in Part One provide direct comparisons between Ireland and America on themes including resistance to empire, alternatives to independence, and the experiences of dominant minorities in the empire. Those in Part Two broaden out to examine a number of themes related to the revolutionary era, such as mapping, religion and ideology, and post-independence readjustments, using the comparative as a framework for their investigations. In many ways Nicholas Canny's opening essay sets up that comparative, demonstrating how Irish Catholics interacted with, and were characterized by, European empires from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Canny posits this group as one that was part of, yet also somewhat apart from, both Europe and empire. Having set the scene of Irish interactions and position in the Atlantic world, the remaining essays in Part One deal [End Page 163] with a wide range of issues that demonstrate connections and disconnects between Ireland and America. Gordon S. Wood uses revolutionary pamphlets to demonstrate how patriot polemicists used the Irish example, sometimes distorting it in the process, to set out their arguments as to why Parliament had no constitutional authority over them. Eliga Gould outlines a third way between independence and continued subordination, which Ireland achieved through its negotiated settlement of 1782 and which demonstrated a significant divergence from the American patriots, for whom such an option was no longer acceptable. Other essays in Part One are concerned with the volume's key themes of mobilization and imperial attitudes. T. H. Breen posits the British response to the Boston Tea Party and the Easter Rising, rather than the events themselves, as the spark for popular mobilization, while Matthew P. Dziennik emphasises the importance of military mobilization for reinforcing British and American attitudes toward the Irish. Trevor Burnard rounds off Part One with an examination of the development of new imperial attitudes within both the British imperial elite and the imperial populations of Jamaica and Ireland in the 1780s, demonstrating the consequences of the American Revolution throughout the British Atlantic world. In Part Two, the essays move away from direct comparison to a broader framework that draws on the earlier arguments about connections and disconnect to provide important insights to America and the wider Atlantic world before, during, and after the Revolution. Highlights include Max Edelson's study of cadastral maps to illustrate the ad hoc system the British and its imperial peoples used to allocate land throughout the empire during the seventeenth century, a system that invariably ignored Indigenous systems of land allocation. Rachel Banke's investigation of the correspondence and papers of the Earl of Bute and King George III is another important contribution. Banke examines the papers to outline the key tenets of their ideas for imperial reform, convincingly arguing that these were shaped by European influences as a result of George's "enlightened absolutism" (212) and the realities of the post-Seven Years' War context. A key theme running through several essays in Part Two is the new realities and questions of nation and statehood created by the American Revolution. Jessica Choppin Roney examines the co-opting of the Declaration of Independence by Americans who sought support for their own bids for statehood, while Annette Gordon-Reed outlines the constitutional questions arising from the revolution and...

Trial by Virus: Colonial Medicine and the 1883 Cholera in Egypt

Trial by Virus: Colonial Medicine and the 1883 Cholera in Egypt Christopher S Rose Introduction On June 22, 1883, consular health authorities in the Egyptian port city of Damietta contacted the Maritime Health and Quarantine Board at Alexandria with the news that cases of severe gastritis ending in fatality had been reported.2 These were telltale symptoms of cholera, a highly contagious and lethal disease whose appearance in one of the main ports serving ships transiting the Suez Canal would be a cause for concern. A multinational commission was dispatched and confirmed the grim news: cholera had returned to Egypt after an eighteen-year absence. Although the appearance of cholera was never welcome, it appeared at a particularly delicate time for Egypt; Great Britain had invaded the previous year to suppress an anti-government revolt and had restored the Khedive Tewfiq (whose government was indebted to British and French banks) to the throne. The 1883 epidemic was a trial by fire—nay, trial by virus—for the Anglo-Egyptian government, which had been established less than a year earlier. In this article, I show that the approach taken by the Anglo-Egyptian government’s response to the cholera outbreak represented a shift in imperial attitudes toward the control of epidemic disease, layered upon imperial attitudes regarding health, hygiene and care of the body in a colonial setting. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the Egyptian state had invested substantially in health to boost the nation’s economic and military strength, and to address European concerns about the potential for diseases to be transmitted along trade routes. In the process, a certain amount of negotiation was required with the Egyptian population as consumers of medical services, regarding how treatment would be delivered, by whom, and where. During the 1883 epidemic the new Anglo-Egyptian administration introduced new policies and attitudes about what constituted modern medical practice, the appropriate relationship between medical provider and consumer, and the ways in which the consumer was expected to behave. I argue that this is a key moment of transition in which public health in Egypt came to bear the hallmarks of the paradigm known as “colonial medicine,” in which personal hygiene practices and the acceptance of medical care were seen as necessary markers of modernity and progress—even when such restrictions came at the expense of nearly fifty thousand Egyptian lives. Imperialism and health in Egypt It is something of a cliché in Egyptian history to begin the narrative of the “modern” period with the three-year partial occupation by the French army under Bonaparte (1798–1801). While it is no longer universally accepted that the French incursion represents a definitive rupture from the Ottoman/Mamluk past, the multivolume Description de l’Egypte produced by the French expedition containing descriptions of health, medicine and pharmacology at the turn of the nineteenth century, albeit filtered through an imperial lens, remains a useful benchmark against which to gauge subsequent developments in public health over the course of the nineteenth century.3 Laverne Kuhkne, whose Lives at Risk remains one of the key surveys of Egyptian public health prior to the British period, has observed that, Metropolitan French condescension aside, the level of health services available in Egypt in 1800 was probably comparable to that of contemporary rural France, in that both were fairly rudimentary and quality care was largely restricted to elites who could afford to travel to seek care or hire a private physician.4 In the 1820s, Egypt’s Ottoman viceroy Mehmet Ali (1805–1848) contracted a Frenchman, Antoine-Barthélémy Clot, to develop a military health service following a devastating outbreak of plague, and a high incidence of syphilis among enlisted men serving in Syria. Clot insisted that military and civilian health were intertwined, and oversaw the creation of medical corps intended to treat both populations, educated at two medical schools—one for women—whose graduates were sent to work in a network of hospitals, clinics and dispensaries throughout the Nile Valley.5 However, Clot’s rigid insistence on Europeanizing medical practice in Egypt ran into its first obstacle when the national medical corps, accompanied by military officers and sent into the...

Razor-sharp charms: Hugh Grant’s image renegotiation and the turn to villains

ABSTRACT In the last decade, Hugh Grant has been going through something resembling a career revival. After retreating from his roles as an English gentleman and romantic lead during the mid-2000s, Grant has recently re-emerged to garner critical acclaim in productions, such as Paddington 2 (2017), The Gentlemen (2019), and The Undoing (2020). What these roles have in common is that Grant has abandoned his days as prince charming in favour of a series of unlikeable characters and morally complex villains. This article analyses how this turn to villain signifies a renegotiation of Hugh Grant’s star image and how this career revival stands into contact with his previous persona. Combining a close reading of some of Grant’s recent films, together with a discussion of press discourse and interviews, I account for how Grant’s villain performances are shaped and mediated by different artistic, commercial, and discursive forces. As such, I elucidate how Grant’s renegotiation of his image helps distances himself from his previous career phase, is utilised by filmmakers to subvert audience expectations, and invites us to question the patriarchal and English imperialist attitudes that lay embedded in his previous performances.

Интеллектуальные истоки "мягкой силы" Российской империи: публицистическая деятельность А. Г. Киркора

After the suppression of the January Uprising of 1863-1864 in the highest power circles of the Russian Empire, a new strategy for stabilizing the socio-political situation in the North-Western Territory was taking shape, which manifested itself, on the one hand, in strengthening integration trends, and on the other, in interaction with the pro-Russian-oriented local public, the use of whose intellectual potential was necessary for development of an optimal political course towards the region. The publicist and writer A.H. Kirkor became one of those representatives of the regional public in the second half of the 19th century who were actively involved in the process of forming a positive symbolic capital of imperial principles in the North-Western Territory. With his active journalistic and scientific activities, he contributed to the development of the ideological and theoretical foundations of the “soft power” strategy of the Russian authorities, expressed in the formation of an attractive image of the Russian Empire, capable of attracting the sympathy of the population of the outskirts to the fundamental institutional and value imperial attitudes. The purpose of this study is to consider the ideological and theoretical foundations of the “soft power” strategy of the empire, specific non-conflict methods and practices of managing the North-Western Territory, which were proposed by A.H. Kirkor in the second half of the 1860s - early 1870s. It is concluded that on the pages of the “Novoe vremya” newspaper, Kirkor outlined those methods and basic ideological provisions, with the help of which, in his opinion, it was necessary to build a national policy in the Western Territory in order to implement the main ideological setting of the empire's “soft power” strategy, namely, to make sure that “all-Russian interests” are really dear to everyone who lives in this region. The publicist managed to outline the main non-conflict methods of influence aimed at forming a supra-confessional community of the “Russian people” among the indigenous population of the region and allowing de-Polonization, while acting gently and tactfully, attracting the local intellectual community to their side. Kirkor's views on the problem of managing the Western Territory became one of the theoretical foundations that were included in the intellectual basis of the “soft power” strategy of the empire, implemented by the Russian authorities in the educational, cultural, educational, scientific, intellectual, memorial and other areas in the 1880s - 1890s.

CHANGING SEMATICS OF THE ADJECTIVE "UKRAINIAN" DURING THE UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION OF 1917–1921

This article presents consideration of the sematic characteristics of the adjective "Ukrainian" that was changing during the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921. The uses of this lexical unit selected from the journal records of Ye. Chykalenko and V. Vynnychenko served as a material of the study. The article marks an increase of semantic compatibility of the adjective "Ukrainian" as compared to the texts describing events in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. During the Ukrainian Revolution the adjective developed the ability to characterize the State and its institutions and was combined with the lexical units that demonstrated significance of separation from the Empire (independent, national, sovereign). Its synonyms expressing imperial attitude to the Ukrainian that existed in the Russian Empire’s public discourse in the early 20th century became irrelevant. At the same time the antonymous pair "Ukrainian – Little Russian" revealed an opposition of the truly Ukrainian and the colonial, associated with the imperial vision. The events of the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1921 resulted in anchoring in the native speakers’ minds of a new cognitive model structures verbalized by the adjective "Ukrainian". This naming unit changed its status in the language code – transferred to the political category. Transition to the political status occurred by overcoming semantic restrictions specific to the nomens designating colonized peoples, disruption of semantic relations with the lexical units of the imperial discourse, and by opposing the inherent and imperial vision of the Ukrainian.

Historical Memory as a Means of Implementing the Internal and External Policy of the Republic of Poland

The article deals with the phenomenon of the historical memory of the Republic of Poland, which is currently aimed at solving the internal and external tasks of the state in the following directions. The first concerns a number of geopolitical and practical issues of relations with Germany, the second revolves around relations with the Russian Federation, and the third is focused on the “Volyn problem”, which is naturally extrapolated to relations with Ukraine. Such a trichotomy was formed throughout the 20th century and continues to this day. If until 2014 German and Volyn unresolved issues prevailed in Polish politics and public life, then Russia’s invasion and war against Ukraine strengthened the Russian component of the Polish narrative of memory, aimed at debunking Moscow’s aggressive policy.
 The origins and essence of the problems in Poland’s relations with Germany, as well as with Russia, are similar in many issues, and in some dimensions even coincide. The geopolitical weight of politicians of the leading states resemble each other in terms of historical origins and the nature of problems, disrespectful assessments of their opponents or competitors, imperial attitudes toward their own and conquered peoples, and economic characteristics bequeathed to them by previous state formations. Relations between the Republic of Poland and Germany are closely intertwined. Complicated by territorial claims, they became particularly acute during the Cold War. The constructive dialogue of these European states reached a consensus level only with the unification of Germany in 1990. However, a final understanding has not yet been reached, as the Polish side still raises the issue of guilt towards the Poles on the part of Germany, which, according to Polish statements, did not sufficiently compensate for the losses of the Poles period of the Second World War.

Acadian Expulsion of 1755 as an Expression of British Imperial Interests

This paper seeks to answer the question “why did the British Empire expel the Acadians from their homeland in 1755?” Despite the simplicity of the question, the answer is decidedly more complex. This essay goes through the many factors contributing to their deportation, from historical equivalents that proved the expulsion was not an isolated event, the Acadians’ inability to comprehend what was coming and respond accordingly as well as their refusal to sign oaths of allegiance, and the British designs for Acadia as a potential Protestant colony suitable for economic growth and defence against the French Empire. This paper also discusses the significant roles individual actors like William Shirley and Charles Lawrence played by acting on their own accord, and how the British justified an act many considered reprehensible, even in the 18th century, due to it being part of a wider Imperial attitude.

The New German-speaking School of Balkankompetenzen: Knowledge production and truth claims in post-colonial post-communist context

In this paper, I show how some strands of contemporary Western scholarship in Albanian studies reproduce substantive empirical and methodological flaws and perpetuate imperial attitudes and othering stereotypes. In particular, I level a number of criticisms at what I refer to as the New German-speaking School of Balkankompetenzen that has colonized Albanian and more generally Southeastern European issues. I argue that disregard and patronizing of local scholars, and occasionally over-reliance on essentialized, insufficient or misinterpreted research outcomes, can be shown in the writings of various scholars that are representative of strategic othering, methodological essentialism, dubious deconstructionism and outright misinterpretation of Albanian foundational myths, national history, social structures, and cultural behavior. Arguably, this methodological imperialism reproduces a discourse of Western superiority that serves to legitimate Western political, economic and social control.

The “Yellow” and “Jewish” Question in the Russian Far East: Managing Foreignness, Productivity, and Colonization, 1858-1914

This article compares the Russian empire’s “Yellow” and “Jewish” question in the Far East, contrasting imperial officials’ attitudes toward Chinese, Korean, and Jewish settlement and economic activities in the Priamurskii Krai. Considering these groups side by side reveals how the empire treated Jews as its own internal other, and how discourse about Jews in the Western borderlands could be broadened to include other groups the Russian empire viewed as a threat: in this case, Chinese and Korean migrants and settlers. The article details the legal limbo these three groups existed in between 1858–1884, and the development of anti-Asian and anti-Jewish attitudes after administrative boundaries were redrawn in 1884. Despite the small number of Jews in the region, local officials and the Ministries of Justice and Interior debated the “Jewish Question” in the Priamur, and Jews were considered the archetypical economic exploiter for those Russian officials and Russian settlers who wanted to underscore the perceived economic threat of Chinese and Korean settlers. While the empire formerly considered Jews as a potentially productive colonizing element, this article uses the regional example of the Far East to consider how imperial attitudes toward non-Russian elements of the population weighed the economic usefulness of undesirable groups against their perceived cultural threat.

J.C. Byrne, Entrepreneurial Imperialism and the Question of Indigenous Rights

ABSTRACT This is a study of Joseph C. Byrne, an Irish entrepreneur who embarked on a number of colonial schemes and fashioned himself as an emigration expert. In 1848 he published Twelve Years’ Wanderings in the British Colonies. From 1835 to 1847, followed by a number of emigrant guides to the individual Australian colonies, the Cape of Good Hope and Port Natal. Descriptions of indigenous peoples proliferate throughout Byrne’s guides. While his texts were informed by his own travels, he also quoted liberally from official correspondence, newspapers, and other contemporary works. His accounts reflect both his own opinions, and also a broad spectrum of imperial attitudes and approaches towards Indigenous peoples. This article explores Byrne’s ideas of how Indigenous peoples might best serve the interest of British emigrants: that is how they might or might not be made ‘useful’ to British subjects, and also, in some cases, how their inevitable demise would provide ‘peculiar advantages to emigrants’. His accounts of Indigenous people illustrate the problems posed by the ‘native question’ in imperial thinking, and the way in which Britain grappled to envisage the future place of indigenous people within its colonies in the face of growing settler demands for land.

El Santo vs. Mystery Science Theater 3000: Lucha Libre’s Transnational Journey into American Popular Culture

Foreign cinemas have often been positioned as higher-brow alternatives to Hollywood fare, yet every national cinema has some manner of skeleton in the closet. For Mexico, the mass-produced Santo films—starring masked luchador El Santo, who fought off a bevy of monsters in over fifty films throughout the fifties, sixties, and seventies—epitomized the divide between beloved popular culture artifact and shameful counterpoint to national cinematic narrative. Due to the films’ lowbrow status in Mexico, they traveled easily into new, similarly lowbrow international spaces, including American drive-ins, late-night television, and Mystery Science Theater 3000. Yet, while the films appeared in these new formats with their nationality largely deemphasized, their Mexicanness was in fact an essential component of the infantilization through which most audiences in the United States and Canada approached them. Drawing on Jeffrey Sconce’s work on paracinema; Ella Shohat’s and Dolores Tierney’s notions of racial and colonialist cinematic readings; and Heather Levi’s, Andrew Syder’s, and Tierney’s histories of El Santo, this article identifies the imperialist attitudes that characterized initial transnational encounters between North Americans and the Santo films, as well as how those frameworks influenced later depictions of lucha libre outside of Mexico even decades later.

Hungarian Adriatic Association in the Age of State-Building Nationalism. Opportunities for a Hungarian ‘marine researcher’

The Hungarian Adriatic Association (HAA) is evidence of the relationship between cultural nationalism and science in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. By examining the cultural and scientific activities of the middle class, which provided the association both with members and with audience, this article shows that at the time of the development of oceanography, cultural nationalism in Hungary had an impact on the development of numerous disciplines, e.g. history, geography. Through the connection between cultural nationalism and oceanography and by means of the seaport of dualistic Hungary (Fiume/ Rijeka), the idea of the Hungarian empire is also manifested as a kind of condensation of the imperial attitude of the Monarchy. The emergence of the HAA followed Austrian and Italian models, and the professional career and relations of the founder and president of the association, Bela Gonda, help to understand the Hungarian oceanographic aspirations and to explore the results of the foundation and operation of the association.

The Colonial/Imperial History of Insect Food Avoidance in the United States

AbstractInterest in edible insects has increased greatly since the 2013 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization demonstrated that insects offer an appealing option for a more sustainable livestock alternative. However, overcoming the cultural bias against insect consumption is necessary in order to see widespread adoption. In order to overcome the bias, it is important to first understand it. There is not a simple answer as to why westerners do not eat insects, but using the United States as an example, this paper works to untangle the history that western culture has with insects as food; a history that is stained by the colonial exploitation of native peoples. Notions that insects are a ‘primitive’ food source and the strong disgust response they trigger can be traced back to the 15th century and Age of Exploration. These ideas have persisted because of the perpetuation of European imperial attitudes and the unconscious transfer of the disgust emotion from parents to offspring for many generations. Fortunately, continued outreach events that normalize insects as food, especially those open to families, will be helpful in reprogramming mindsets that have been deeply rooted in our culture for centuries.

Between Technological Nostalgia and Engineering Imperialism

Kuinka ulkomainen teknologia vaikuttaa maan teollistumiseen? Tätä kysymystä lähestytään ”teknologisen geopolitiikan” kautta tarkastelemalla näkemyksiä ja tulkintoja, joita suomalaiset tekniikan alan toimijat esittivät koskien Itä-Aasian suurvallan, Kiinan teknologiaa ja teollistumista. Artikkeli tutkii, kuinka keisarillista Kiinaa kuvattiin vuosina 1880–1912 Suomen ”teknisteollisen julkisuuden” keskeisellä foorumilla, suomalaisissa tekniikan alan aikakauslehdissä. Tämä artikkeli tuo uuden näkökulman Suomen tekniikan historian tutkimuskentälle kartoittamalla Suomen ja Kiinan suhdetta teknologian ja teollistumisen kautta. Se tarjoaa myös uuden tutkimusotteen digitaaliseen historiaan hyödyntämällä laadullista ja määrällistä haku- ja luentatapaa (”readsearch”) suomalaiseen tekniikan alan lehtiaineistoon. Tutkimus tuo esiin, kuinka kiinalainen teknologia ja teollisuus esiintyi lehdissä pääosin kahdella tavalla. Ensinnäkin teksteissä kuvattiin Kiinan varhaishistoriallista kehitystä ja perinteistä teknologiaa, mikä toimi ”nostalgisena” vastaparina tuoreimpien länsimaisten teollisten edistysaskeleiden kuvaukselle. Toiseksi käsiteltäessä uudempia aikakauden teknologioita lehtitekstien painopiste oli lännen vahvuuksissa, ja huomio kiinnitettiin Kiinan taloudellisen ja kaupallisen potentiaalin tai maan luonnonvarojen hyödyntämiseen. Artikkeli syventää tätä suurvaltapolitiikan näkökulmaa tarkastelemalla kahden suomalaisen insinöörin uraa läntisten siirtomaapyrkimysten palveluksessa ja valottaa siten aiemmin sivuun jääneitä, suomalaisia imperialistisia asenteita.

Human Rights: A Cross-Cultural Conception

On examining the political theories of John Rawls and Charles Beitz, this paper is a product of the perceived disparities between the idealism of human rights theory and the socio-political failures of the real-time human rights corpus. With both theorists serving as the moral and theoretical foundations of the discourse, the loci of their arguments will be presented and dissected in light of contemporary political attitudes. This paper aims to scrutinise the human rights discourse through the lens I believe to be its most damaging: cultural pluralism and a simultaneous tendency toward (neo)-imperialist attitudes. Moreover, with the current literature failing to provide adequately constructive answers, I have endeavoured to present a compelling commentary on where I believe the necessitating changes lie culturally, attitudinally, and politically. In preserving and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a productive and morally beneficial basis on which to ground this commentary, this paper assumes ‘human rights’ to refer to the articles enshrined in this United Nations’ document. This conception and the attitudes and actions surrounding it have nonetheless incurred significant and warranted criticism, consideration of which prompted the proposed conception that human rights be defined politically as rights to choose.