Imperial Influence Research Articles

The discovery of France: a historical geography from the Revolution to the First World War

While Gustave Eiffel was changing the skyline of Paris, large parts of France were still terra incognita. Even in the age of railways and newspapers, France was a land of ancient tribal divisions, prehistoric communication networks, and pre-Christian beliefs. French itself was a minority language.Graham Robb describes that unknown world in arresting narrative detail. He recounts the epic journeys of mapmakers, scientists, soldiers, administrators, and intrepid tourists, of itinerant workers, pilgrims, and herdsmen with their millions of migratory domestic animals. We learn how France was explored, charted, and colonized, and how the imperial influence of Paris was gradually extended throughout a kingdom of isolated towns and villages.The Discovery of France explains how the modern nation came to be and how poorly understood that nation still is today. Above all, it shows how much of France-past and present-remains to be discovered.

The Imperial Implications of Medieval Translations: Old Norse and Middle English Versions of Marie de France's Lais

B ) Y examining the adaptations of Marie de France's Lais into Old Norse and Middle English, this article seeks to explore issues of cultural dominance and imperial influence in textual transmis sion during the late Middle Ages in northern Europe. The interrela tions of the various national cultures and the respective medieval ver naculars, Old French, Middle English, and Old Norse, will be explored through linguistic and contextual analysis of the translations. The inten tion is to provide a comparative model of translation as intercultural by drawing on and conversing with postcolonial studies. Critical discourse about imperialism tends to focus on the aggression of a dominant na tion, the empire, upon an ethnically defined other. Despite the com plex interplay of cultural authority and subordination in late medieval Europe, the definition of empire tends to shift such discussions away from the Middle Ages toward later periods of postcolonial activity. Recent studies, however, have borrowed the theoretical approaches of postcolonial studies to examine the complexities and ambivalences of intercultural relations in the medieval period.' While many adherents of postcolonial theories warn against their geographic and temporal

Wari’s imperial influence on local Nasca diet: The stable isotope evidence

The highland Wari Empire established a presence within the Nasca region of south coastal Peru during the Middle Horizon period. To clarify the nature of this interaction, we analyzed stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios of human bone collagen from individuals living in the Southern Nasca Region (SNR) before (1–750 AD) and during (750–1000 AD) imperial influence. The stable isotope data do not indicate that the Wari Empire transformed maize agricultural labor in the Las Trancas Valley of the SNR. In fact, during both time periods, Nasca people had access to a wide range of food items. During the imperial period, however, dietary breadth increased, with greater inter-individual differences in meat consumption and C 3 foods. During a time of probable population increase, some high status individuals consumed more meat and maize than others. Other individuals consumed less meat and more C 3 foods such as beans, potatoes, huarango, or quinoa, which may reflect less meat availability for some individuals within the population. There is, however, no average difference in diet between the sexes, which is consistent with a similar consumption of maize. This suggests that maize consumed in the form of beer ( chicha), in contrast to ethnographic reports of feasting, was not differentially distributed between males and females. Apparently, the Wari interest in the Las Trancas Valley of the SNR was focused on resources other than maize.

The development of company law in India: The case of the Companies Act 1956

The influence of social and cultural context, including imperial influences, and politics on the promulgation of the Companies Act 1956 in post independence India, focusing in particular on accounting regulations incorporated in the Act, is explored using a framework based on the work of McKinnon [McKinnon JL. The historical development of the operational form of corporate reporting regulation in Japan. New York: Garland; 1986]. Within the framework, the promulgation of the Companies Act 1956 is analysed into three phases: source, diffusion and reaction with all phases being influenced by the social and cultural context of India and political processes. In particular, the importance of the role of the government and the socio-economic and cultural context of India is indicated in both the need for, and in the process of, change to the Companies Act 1956.

Monastic Imprisonment in Justinian's Novels

In the period between 542 and 556 c.e. Justinian issued a number of laws that prescribed monastic imprisonment as punishment for both higher clergy and members of the lay elite. Through this legislation, the emperor introduced into Roman law the unprecedented concept of corrective imprisonment as a penalty. Starting from a detailed analysis of the laws, this article demonstrates how the emperor's innovations built upon both traditional legal practices and on more recent ecclesiastical and monastic ideals. With monastic imprisonment, Justinian adapted the Roman custom of domestic internment as a substitute for the penalty of exile for elite criminals. The reason for using monasteries, rather than private households, to provide this public service of prisoner internment may, on the one hand, have been practical. Ideals of hospitality within a Christian monastic context and imperial influence especially over Constantinopolitan monasteries may have encouraged Justinian to believe that monasteries were far less likely to avoid an obligation to host an exile convict than private households. On the other hand, the emperor also saw monastic imprisonment as offering additional, historically unprecedented benefits over traditional domestic internment. As the emperor tried to make sure in his own legislation on monastic life, monasteries ideally provided an institutional and architectural framework, as well as a guiding penitential ideology based on an ideal of correction, which not only offered the opportunity for enhanced supervision, but also for spiritual correction of the criminal. Justinian's innovations may have been inspired by the established use of monasteries as penitential space for failing clerics in ecclesiastical legislation. However, his specific aim in using monasteries as places of penance, for which an ecclesiastical precedent does not exist, seems to have been to police the sexual promiscuity which he discerned among the married laity at his own court.

The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain by Bernard Porter (review)

452 Рецензии/Reviews Kavita DATLA Bernard Porter, The AbsentMinded Imperialists: Empire, Society , and Culture in Britain (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 475 pp., ill. Bibliography , Index. ISBN: 0-19-929959-5. For historians of the formerly colonized world, those of Asia and Africa especially, the impact of empire has been central to their scholarly concerns. In Britain, on the other hand, as Bernard Porter himself points out, this has not necessarily been the case – as witnessed by the fact that study of the empire has been for the most part conducted by a limited number of specialists. In the 1980s, and most notably in the work of Edward Said, the question of empire’s effects on Europe, and European culture and scholarship, began to be raised forcefully and persistently by academics. It is not without some irony then, that one of the most respected of British Empire historians, Bernard Porter, should turn to the questions raised by Edward Said and colonial studies more generally in order to argue that nineteenth and twentieth century British society was much less affected by empire than in many cases it is assumed to be. Absent-Minded Imperialists brings together a wide variety of British cultural artifacts, from school land of industry, worker activists, liberated women, and socialist intellectuals . In other words, in his scholarly and literary works Franko created a social and cultural space for a new generation of patriots to inhabit . In the process, he also proved that these modern realities could be described in the Ukrainian language, no longer just a peasant vernacular. Hrytsak argues, in contrast to much of the previous scholarship, that it was the radical political culture (identified primarily with Franko) rather than the cumulative result of the Ukrainian national movement that caused the final transition from pre-national Ruthenian to a modern, national Ukrainian identity in Galicia (P. 435). Based on more than a decade of painstaking research, Hrytsak’s book stands out among other recent works by Ukrainian historians for its conceptual vigor, impressive erudition , and beautiful writing style. Ukrainian research centers in North America would do a great favor to the profession by publishing an English translation of this work. 453 Ab Imperio, 3/2007 textbooks and newspapers, to films, musical compositions, festivals, and architecture, in order to understand whether they, and therefore Britain itself, were influenced by the empire. Along the way, Porter pays close attention to how these different texts, performances, and monuments might have affected their multiple audiences. Porter is also careful to place these various artifacts within a larger context, attempting to understand how reflective they were of print, audio, or visual culture more generally, and to think about the multiple influences that might have had a hand in creating them. Porter assembles this great body of evidence in order to argue that the vast majority of British people were unaware of the British Empire (absent-mindedness does not capture this exactly), and that of the remainder, many were critical of the empire, or imperial policy. Lending texture to Porter’s account are the two principle themes around which his argument is organized : chronology and class. So while Porter argues that “Britain had never been a convincing imperial society” (P. 282), he is also committed to thinking through the variety of responses evoked by empire both across society and across time. The book itself is divided into thirteen chapters. The first seven of these chapters, along with providing an overall introduction to his argument, are roughly devoted to examining the influence of imperialism in nineteenth century Britain up to the period of the 1880s. These seven chapters are further divided to pay special attention to different classes of British society – a decision that Porter justifies by virtue of their separate schooling systems, levels of literacy, and access to the British political system. Chapters eight through eleven take up the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the early half of the twentieth. Here, Porter argues that imperialism became more prevalent – appearing more often in textbooks or finding expression in propaganda societies for example – though he would caution against overstating the influence of imperialism on society at home even in this...

In pursuit of self‐determination: Indigenous women's challenges to traditional diplomatic spaces

Due to colonization and on‐going imperial influences, Indigenous women have had to create new diplomatic spaces at the global, regional, state, and local levels to pursue simultaneous negotiations and assertions for both their individual rights as women and collective rights as members of Indigenous nations. Through a series of case studies, such as the recent Haudenosaunee re‐occupation of Caledonia and Indigenous women's narratives of their own work and positions, we argue that Indigenous women engage in a politics of intersectionality as well as multi‐layered citizenship in framing their diplomatic engagements. These frameworks reveal that spirituality and politics are interconnected and Indigenous women's multiple and intersecting roles and responsibilities, i.e., as family members, clan mothers, leaders, etc. are an integral part of any examination of Indigenous diplomatic strategies, thus challenging the traditional definitions of state‐based diplomacy as well as a purely collective rights understanding of Indigenous self‐determination.

Empire, Cultures and Identities in Nineteenth‐ and Twentieth‐Century Britain

AbstractOver the last twenty years, historians have sought to gauge how the experience of establishing an empire overseas impacted upon the ways that British people thought about themselves and the world around them. As evidence has accumulated, so an increasingly heated historical debate about the exact significance of that source material has been generated. This article looks at where this controversy has taken us, assessing the range of evidence available and the different viewpoints adopted by various historians. It argues that, rather than present our conclusions in polarised terms, we need to acknowledge the wide range of imperial influences working on multiple British cultures and identities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Moreover, given the problematic nature of the available evidence, we should acknowledge the difficulties inherent in any attempt to gauge the impact of those influences. Empire may well have helped to shape British cultures and identities, but it is not clear that it did so in a simple fashion, or that we have sufficient evidence to come to firm conclusions about its impact.

Religion, Difference, and the Limits of British Imperial History

The following books are under consideration in this review: Imperial Bibles, Domestic Bodies: Women, Sexuality, and Religion in the Victorian Market, by Mary Wilson Carpenter; pp. xxii + 206. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003, $39.95. Missionary Women: Gender, Professionalism and the Victorian Idea of Christian Mission, by Rhonda Anne Semple; pp. xvii + 285. Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2003, £60.00, $110.00. The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions, 1880–1914, edited by Andrew Porter; pp. x + 264. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2003, $45.00, £32.99. Missions, Nationalism and the End of Empire, edited by Brian Stanley; pp. x + 313. Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2003, $45.00, £32.99. Religion versus Empire?: British Protestantism, Missionaries, and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914, by Andrew Porter; pp. xviii + 373. Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Palgrave, 2004, £60.00, $74.95, £18.99 paper, $29.95 paper. Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818–1940, by Jeffrey Cox; pp. ix + 357. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002, $55.00. Critical reflections on the connections between religion and empire building have been central to the rekindling of interest in the history of the British Empire over the past two decades. In the early 1980s, the study of empire was in crisis. Imperial history, an approach that took the Empire as a whole as its analytical field and that was generally seen as both distinct and distant from British history, labored under three significant impediments. First, the growth of [End Page 427] national historiographies in each of the former colonies threatened the viability, and even desirability, of imperial history. In a landmark 1984 essay, David Fieldhouse stressed the impossibility of any imperial historian being able to keep up with all the significant research being produced about each colony, making it increasingly necessary for future research to be grounded in a single colonial site that could be used as a vantage point on the Empire as a whole. Certainly given the growing volume and vitality of these national historiographies, the broad history of the Empire and the perspective of imperial history were less likely to appeal to historians based in these former colonies. Second, and following from this, in the early 1980s imperial history as a teaching field often had limited appeal outside British universities. Generally the Empire was not made central in the teaching of British history in colleges in the United States, and imperial history had largely been displaced in other former British colonies, where, as Ann Curthoys has pointed out, national history had become the staple of undergraduate classrooms and where graduate students and academic historians labored to build up detailed pictures of the national past. Third, and to my mind most importantly, John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson's work from the 1950s on the economics of the Empire had come not only to dominate imperial history but also threatened to smother it. Robin Winks suggests that Gallagher and Robinson initiated a "historiographical revolution" that not only set the key grounds for academic debate about the imperial past but also dictated the essential approach of two generations of imperial historians (653). Historians following in their wake repeatedly asked the same questions Gallagher and Robinson had—albeit very significant ones about "informal" imperial influence, the role of indigenous "collaborators," and the dynamics of both expansion and decolonization. Graduate students pursued very similar questions whether they were working on Punjab or Rhodesia, and historians used the same kind of sources in the same ways. As a result, imperial historians followed narrow channels of research, testing the Gallagher–Robinson thesis—which had seen imperial expansion as emerging out of local crises in the periphery rather than being driven by any metropolitan ideology—for its applicability to various locales and at various points in time. This focus in turn pushed a range of other important research areas—including...

Old Europe, New Europe and the USA

The collapse of Communism in Europe and the recent enlargement of the European Union have significantly refashioned the world. As one of three developed economic blocs (Europe, North America and East Asia) Europe has increased in size and yet faces internal divisions between old and new Europe. While having shared interests, these blocs are also rivals, as is most strikingly reflected in the struggle for markets and over the expansion of imperial influence. At the same time globalization, economic transformation and integration have been profoundly shaped by Anglo-American/neo-liberal economic ideologies. The aim of this paper is to consider some of the implications of these developments for the new Europe extending from the Atlantic to Russia. Essentially it will deal with two issues. First, it will ask whether Europe has lost economic momentum relative to its trans-Atlantic rival, qualifying the earlier view that Rhine capitalism was superior to Anglo-American capitalism. Second, after considering the question of whether the European Union is a catch-up machine in a world in which inequalities are frequently widening, it will consider in some detail the territorial and social impacts of transition in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the former Soviet Union (FSU). Throughout, attention will be paid to the impact of market-led models of development on growth and inequality, and the way in which a subjection of different parts of Europe to similar economic mechanisms, while in some senses making different parts of the continent more similar, also produces profoundly differentiated economic and social geographies.

Reassessing the chronology of Biblical Edom: new excavations and14C dates from Khirbat en-Nahas (Jordan)

An international team of researchers show how high-precision radiocarbon dating is liberating us from chronological assumptions based on Biblical research. Surface and topographic mapping at the large copper-working site of Khirbat en-Nahas was followed by stratigraphic excavations at an ancient fortress and two metal processing facilities located on the site surface. The results were spectacular. Occupation begins here in the eleventh century BC and the monumental fortress is built in the tenth. If this site can be equated with the rise of the Biblical kingdom of Edom it can now be seen to: have its roots in local Iron Age societies; is considerably earlier than previous scholars assumed; and proves that complex societies existed in Edom long before the influence of Assyrian imperialism was felt in the region from the eighth – sixth centuries BC.

Coercing virtue: the worldwide rule of judges

In Coercing Virtue, leading social and legal commentator Judge Robert H. Bork focuses his gaze on one of the most powerful but overlooked forces in a long-running and now global culture war: judges. He describes the increasing influence of judicial imperialism - courts taking more and more decisions out of the realm of democratic governance - and tries to explain the surprisingly passive response of citizens when judges usurp their right to govern themselves. He also discusses the relation between judicial activism and steady erosion of the ideals of democracy and the rule of law. This erosion is slow, but, warns Bork, it has the capacity to alter our form of government without any public deliberation or consent. Bork's thesis is that judicial imperialism is rampant among Western nations and that this prevailing trend suggests an underlying problem more fundamental than mere bad luck in choosing judges. He explains that judges everywhere have aligned themselves with the which is composed of professors, journalists, members of the entertainment industry, and others who earn their livings with words and images. Bork argues that, ironically, members of the intellectual class are not necessarily very good at real intellectual work and that all too frequently their dominant passion is socialism. Although socialism's economic program is out of favor, that program is only one manifestation of the socialist desire for leveling in all areas of life. In particular, Bork asserts, there is a socialism of the culture that demands a flattening of moral and social hierarchies. Judges who belong and respond to the intellectual class, implement this agenda through rulings that purport to be constitutional but have little, if any, basis in actual constitutions. Coercing Virtue shows how numerous aspects of the activists' program - hostility to religion, destruction of sexual standards, endorsement of racial and sexual preferences in employment and university admissions, the invention of a right to choose abortion, to name only a few - have spread across national boundaries. He calls on citizens in all Western-style democracies to stand up and take notice of what is happening in their courts before it is too late.

‘inebriates’, ‘heathens’, templars and suffragists: Scotland and imperial feminism c. 1870-1914

This article examines the extent to which the British Empire was central to the women's suffrage debate within the Scottish Christian Union. This analysis follows two trends in the historiography of Britain and of women's suffrage: an integration of the ‘domestic’ and the ‘imperial’ in the historiography of Britain; and a recognition of internationalism within women's suffrage. This discussion points to regional diversity within Great Britain and to the influence of imperialism and evangelicalism on women's activism in the so-called Celtic fringe. In so doing, this article aims to contribute to a more complex representation of middle-class women's participation in Britain's temperance and women's suffrage movements.

The British Imperial Century, 1815-1914: A World History Perspective

Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: The Imperial Century Chapter 3: India Chapter 4: Africa Chapter 5: British Imperial Influence in China and the Ottoman Empire Chapter 6: The Consequences of Empire

Gentlemen and Freeholders: Electoral Politics in Colonial Virginia

This text explores the role of elections in the public culture of Britain's most populous North American colony during the middle decades of the 18th century. In this pre-Revolutionary world, the author explains, wealthy men with stately homes, fine clothes and a genuine belief in rule by of Ability and Fortune shared the local political arena with common freeholders - small planters with 100 acres and a servant or slave to help cultivate the labour intensive tobacco crop. Gentlemen clearly ruled this society; yet they did so with the electoral support of the freeholders. How did such a system work? Many previous studies of 18th-century Virginia's local politics have portrayed a stable, consistent and uniform public culture extending from 1725 to 1815 and variously described as aristocratic, oligarchic, democratic or ritualistic. Kolp proposes a model of local political culture as shaped by regional , provincial and imperial influences but primarily conditioned by local personalities and issues. Drawing on a variety of primary sources, he reveals who ran for office, who voted and with what frequency; he explains how candidates jostled for position before running for office, how they appealed to freeholders, how public issues and private considerations influenced voter behaviour and whether levels of competition can contribute to a better understanding of social stability and unrest.

Cartographie coloniale et encadrement des populations en Afrique coloniale française, dans la première moitié du XXe siècle

During the conquest, colonial cartography had geopolitical strategic stakes : it was intended to secure imperial influence over the African continent. Colonial mapping later helped to assert the economic and administrative control over the territories. The progressive improvement of the map accuracy demonstrates how geographical knowledge served to establish investment priorities. In addition, as a colonial pedagogie tool, maps illustrated the power of empires. In Europe, they helped metropolitan opinions familiarize themselves with the existing empires. Locally, maps played an important role in identifying the boundaries of submitted peoples, and linking them to specific territories. Ethnographic maps were crucial toolsfor confining and controlling ethnic groups. The desire to establish colonial power through a better knowledge of the lansdcape and its inhabitants was one ofthe central reasons behind the creation of colonial geographic departments.

Free France, the British Government and the Future of French Indo-China, 1940–45

This article traces the development of Gaullist and British policies with respect to Indo-China from the fall of France in 1940 to the end of the Far Eastern war five years later. Directed toward restoring imperial influence in Southeast Asia, these policies were sophisticated and complex, but they bore little fruit owing to the relative strategic insignificance of Indo-China during this period, and the imperatives of Anglo-American relations.

The Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Pre-Revolutionary Virginia

E LECTIONS to the House of Burgesses, for many years overlooked by historians, now play a central role in discussions of the political culture of pre-Revolutionary Virginia. Few scholars who have written on colonial politics in recent decades have failed to take note of these important local events. Although reading different political, social, or cultural messages from elections, most portray the Virginia electoral system as static, consistent, and uniform. It has rarely been depicted as dynamically responsive to local, regional, provincial, or imperial influences. As expressed by Charles S. Sydnor, Robert E. Brown and B. Katherine Brown, Edmund S. Morgan, and others, the dominant interpretation finds a common set of electoral conventions and behaviors operative across the counties and regions of Virginia from about I 725 to about i 815. Because the legal framework for elections changed little after I735 and was minimally affected by the Revolution, the behavior of candidates and voters is assumed to have changed little. Evidence from elections in I728, 1768, or I799, for example, is used to build a composite portrait spanning nearly a century. Similarly, electoral activities are believed to have been relatively uniform across localities; evidence from Accomack County on the Eastern Shore, trans-Allegheny Augusta, tidewater Richmond County, or piedmont Hanover blends into a snapshot for the entire colony. Because the same set of electoral rules applied to every constituency, the game of politics must have been played everywhere the same.' Historians dissenting from this static image emphasize change and diversity. Prior to 1725, according to one view, voters were swept up in a series of disputes between local elites and governors and adopted an

‘Strong cultures’ and distinctive religions: The influence of imperialism upon British communities of South Asian origin

Abstract The article begins with a discussion of contrasts drawn between ‘weak’ Afro‐Caribbean and ‘strong’ South Asian cultures in Britain and the association frequently pointed to in such contrasts between ‘strong’ South Asian cultures and the persistence of distinctive religious behaviour. It is argued that the mere fact of distinctiveness does not in itself explain the prominent role taken by religion in the creation of formal associations by South Asian groupings, especially when the religious diversity of South Asians is recognised. The article proceeds to argue that an examination of British policy in India during the period of empire can disclose reasons for the reliance by a variety of South Asian groups upon religion as a source of social cohesion. It is suggested in conclusion that the contrast between ‘weak’ Afro‐Caribbean and ‘strong’ South Asian cultures is doubly misleading due to its negative valuation of Afro‐Caribbean cultures and the uncritical view it encourages of the elements upon which it implies ‘strong’ South Asian cultures are based.

The Selection of Southern Sung Village Officers: To Whom Power?

Chinese imperial absolutism was born in the Sung the centralizing policies of Tai-tsu and T'ai-tsung were ancestral to the despotism of the Ming and Ch'ing.1 Though always autocratic in theory and sometimes autocratic in practice, Chinese rulers during the first millennium of the empire often found their powers circumscribed by the influence of the men around them. But, after the founding of the Sung the general trend was toward the placing in the hands of the ruler of greater power over the officials, while simultaneously augmenting the power and prestige of the Confucian bureaucrats as a group.2 To some extent and at some times this increase in imperial and official influence was translated into increased control over local affairs.3 But the road from the qualified power of pre-Sung times to the near absolutism of the Ming was not straight. Monarchical authority waxed and waned ; control over the people grew at times and at times declined. The Southern Sung was a period of weakening control over the countryside a