Late Nineteenth Early Twentieth Research Articles

Trains and cameras: Photography and the creation of a railway landscape in Portugal (late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries)

Trains and cameras: Photography and the creation of a railway landscape in Portugal (late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries)

Regularization of the Solution of a Nonlinear Integral Equation of the First Kind

Integral equations, the main branch of mathematics, are widely used in physics, engineering, mechanics, control theory and other fields. Related to the application of integral equations, new fields are developing, such as economics, some sections of biology, etc. The theory of integral equations mainly developed in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century, starting with Vito Volterra (1982, 1986), Eric Ivar Fredholm (2010), David Hilbert, Erhard Schmidt, etc. scientists began to study it. Nevertheless, within the framework of mathematical concepts that existed before the first half of the twentieth century, such problems were considered incorrect because a small change in the given functions led to a greater change in the desired functions. The Volterra equation of the first kind is an integral equation that has an exact solution only in some cases. The limit of integration has been carried out in very small quantities on non-classical linear and nonlinear integral equations with variable limits and the construction of solutions in these works is based on numerical methods. Therefore, for the so-called non-classical Volterra integral equations, it is relevant to determine the conditions that ensure the uniqueness and regularization of their solutions. In this paper, the uniqueness of the solution of the non-classical nonlinear integral Volterra equation of the first kind is resolved. The aim of the study is to solve the non-classical Volterra integral equation of the first kind, that is, to determine the conditions that ensure the uniqueness of the solution of the nonlinear non-classical Volterra integral equation of the first kind. The proposed methods can be used for the study of integral, integral-differential equations such as the Volterra integral equation of the first kind, as well as for the qualitative study of some applied processes in physics, ecology, medicine, geophysics, and the theory of control of complex systems.

An historical reassessment of the maritime Southeast Asian forest and marine commodities trade and its implications for archaeological investigations of Asian contact in northern Australia

This paper reassesses the maritime Southeast Asian forest and marine commodities trade from the sixteenth century to World War I. The ‘Macassan’ traders who visited northern Australia were primarily from Makassar and southern Sulawesi (including Bugis, or Bajau and Sumbawan immigrants) and the Lesser Sunda Islands (to where these ethnic groups had migrated) but also included the Indigenous Australians who accompanied them on their voyages. Research into other ethnic groups (Chinese, Makassar-Malay, Seram Laut Islanders, Solorese and Timorese mariners) also associated with both northern Australia and the maritime Southeast Asian forest and marine trade suggests that they be included in the ‘Macassan’ group. Analysis of historical sources for the late nineteenth–early twentieth century Macassan trepang (sea cucumber) industry in north Australia demonstrates that perahu spare cargo capacity was filled with additional commodities when the trepang harvest was low, ensuring voyage profitability. Comparison of the maritime Southeast Asian trade with ethnographic, archaeological, historical, and linguistic evidence in northern Australia, suggests that 20 commodities were likely to have been exported from the latter, seven of which have never before been mentioned in the literature. Mapping of the Macassan routes transporting the 20 commodities shows that northern Australia was connected to a vast network of maritime Southeast and East Asian trade with global reach. The importance of these findings for Asian contact archaeology in northern Australia is threefold: (1) archaeologists should look beyond ceramic provenance, metal, and glass to seek material and chronological evidence for the extraction and processing of a wider range of forest and marine commodities; (2) evidence for the extraction of particular commodities might be a proxy for age estimation of a site; and (3) the origins of introduced material culture will reflect its East, South, and Southeast Asian and, ultimately, global connectivity.

‘Striking the Mighty Anvil Known as “Propaganda”’: Journalism and the Institutionalization of Sport in Spain, 1890–1920

Sports journalism played a crucial role in the early institutionalization process of sport in Spain (late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries), prompting the creation of regional and, ultimately, national federations gathering clubs in each discipline with the aim of regulating, organizing and promoting these. This is particularly the case of the more relevant disciplines of the time: cycling, gymnastics, association football and athletics. In all four cases, governing bodies emerged later than in neighbouring, more developed countries like France, Italy and Britain/England, and the sporting press played a central role in promoting, organizing, and sustaining the corresponding regional and national federations. Although various journalists, editors and publishers played a crucial role in this endeavour, one individual stands out: Narciso Masferrer Sala. Masferrer was the cornerstone of sports journalism and institutionalization in Spain from the last decade of the nineteenth century until his death in 1941. Although not involved in the initial creation of the Unión Velocipédica Española, he took its reins in 1899 and steered the organization through the turbulent 1900–1913 period; he led almost single-handedly the founding of the Federación Gimnástica Española in 1898; he launched a successful campaign to set up the Federación Española de Clubs de Football in 1909 and sustained the entity through the stormy 1910–1913 years; and in 1915 he led the campaign to create the Federación Atlética Catalana, forerunner of the Federación Atlética Española, established a few years later.

The Problem of the “Lost Intelligentsia” and Its Solutions in the Lithuanian Press of the Late Nineteenth–Early Twentieth Century

The Problem of the “Lost Intelligentsia” and Its Solutions in the Lithuanian Press of the Late Nineteenth–Early Twentieth Century

Czy naprawdę unia została wykreślona z projektów Litwy nowoczesnej w końcu XIX – na początku XX wieku?

The article offers a critical assessment of the deeply entrenched view in Lithuanian and Polish historiography that the idea of the (Lublin) Union was erased from the Lithuanian statehood projects created within the Lithuanian national movement in the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries. Summarising the critical assessments made against this idea, several theses were formulated based on which further research could be conducted that could explain the effects of the Union on the formation and development of “Lithuanian federalism”.

Images and symbols of ancient civilizations in the works of Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Alexander Chayanov in the context of the literary and philosophical process of the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries

The article considers the interpretation of the culture and philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Babylon in the texts of writers of the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries. This topic was highly important and widely discussed in connection with the outstanding discoveries of archaeological expeditions in the 1900–1920s in the Valley of the Kings on the Nile. In his treatise “Tajna trekh: Egipet i Vavilon” (“The Mystery of the Three: Egypt and Babylon”), Dmitry Merezhkovsky, referring to religious views of the previous eras, attempted to find an ideological synthesis that could unite and reconcile people in the hard times of wars and revolutions. Alexander Chayanov in his story “Puteshestvie moego brata Alekseia v stranu krest’ianskoj utopii” (“The Journey of My Brother Alexei into the Land of Peasant Utopia”) turned to the biblical symbolism of the Tower of Babel which sought to overcome, as it were, the chaos that engulfed society—to give a warning against rash prometheistic ideas. He examined the ability of man to fight against the power of fate, to remain true to himself and to his ideas. In his mystical stories there can be traced allusions to the mysteries of the goddess Isis. Their heroines bear chthonic features. Chayanov examined how the feeling of love can destroy or revive the hero depending on his integrity and readiness to undergo evolution in order to find harmony.

Museum Cooperation Between Africa and Europe: A New Field for Museum Studies edited by Thomas Laely, Marc Meyer, and Raphael Schwere

Museum Cooperation Between Africa and Europe: A New Field for Museum Studies edited by Thomas Laely, Marc Meyer, and Raphael Schwere

The Russian School of Philosophy of Law in the Context of Pavel I. Novgorodtsev’s Work

ABSTRACT This article is devoted to the work of the eminent Russian legal scholar and thinker Pavel I. Novgorodtsev. This is nearly the first time that Novgorodtsev’s philosophy of law is considered as the central link in the formation of the Russian school of philosophy of law (late nineteenth–early twentieth century). The thinker’s doctrine of natural law, which closely binds law and morality, serves as the basis of his philosophical–legal conception. This article draws attention to the fact that his natural law can be considered a socio-ethical theory of law, or as social ethics. It also identifies the normative theory in Novgorodtsev’s work that the thinker considers not only within the legal field of relationships but also in the social reality of interpersonal communication. The article provides the definition of “law” as formulated by the legal scholar. Philosophical–legal discourses are also of interest: between the philosopher Vladimir S. Solovyov and the legal scholar Boris N. Chicherin and between Leon I. Petrażycki and Pavel I. Novgorodtsev, in particular, on the issues of correlating law and morality in social life. The article also provides a comparative analysis of interest in issues related to philosophy of law on the part of both Russian thinkers and Western European experts in the field of juridical sciences.

Organization of trade ports activity management in Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century

This article presents some arguments for the presence of two different models of organization of sea trade ports management in European countries at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on the basis of national regulatory acts analysis. . By studying the main models of the management of trade ports in Europe in the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries, and in the framework of main legal systems, we can distinguish, on the one hand, the continental model of the commercial ports management, which is characterized by inclusion of sea trading ports in the state economy with the creation of a developed management apparatus and empowerment of it; and, on the other hand, the Anglo-Saxon model, common in Great Britain and its subordinate territories, in which commercial seaports were in private hands, and the state is limited only to the control over the execution of basic commercial and maritime rituals. The use of other models of commercial ports management was associated with the specifics of individual regions structure and the presence of institution of free cities.

HYGIENIC PERIODICALS AND THE SHAPING OF DISCOURSE OF PUBLIC HEALTH IN LVIV AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

During the nineteenth century socio-political and economic transformations, as well as scientific discoveries, changed views on health and its value. Also,the concept of public health, which was no longer concentrated on the individual but on a group of people, was included in the sphere of interest of thebroader strata of society in the Central and Eastern Europe. The hygienic movement occupied an important modernizing segment in a wide range ofsocial movement and had an influence on changes in urban space during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Cleanliness and health became signsof modern city and civilization.More noticeable public interest to hygienic ideas in Lviv emerged in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century. One of the manifestations of this was the emergence of hygienic periodicals that focused on issues of public health issues, and especially hygiene, covered almost all areas of everyday life – hygieneof clothing, nutrition, school an urban hygiene etc. At the first time, such journal was published in Lviv during 1872. Four periodicals dedicated to hygiene were published in the city in the period between 1902 and 1914. The publishing of all these periodicals was a non-profit enterprise, and editors were constantly looking for financial resources to ensure their existence.In the first place, the initiative of publishing belonged to Ukrainian and Polish doctors. Lviv hygienic periodicals were published in Polish and Ukrainian and were addressed to the respective national communities. They discussed the same issues, spread the same ideas, but focused mostly on Polish or Ukrainian readers, reflected the socio-political ideas of that time and integrated the concept of health into the competitive ideas of national development.

Parents, Spouses, Children: The Use of Language in the Noble Families of Lithuanian Intellectuals (the Late Nineteenth-Early Twentieth Century)

In Lithuanian historiography, the metaphor of ‘the split-off branch’ is often used when speaking of the fate of the nobility that did not take an active part in the process of the re-establishment of the modern Lithuanian nation and its state. The majority of the nobility identified themselves with the modern Polish nation, and only individual families of the nobles such as the Biržiška brothers, the Lazdynų Pelėda sisters, Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė, Šatrijos Ragana (Marija Pečkauskaitė), Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė, and some others became involved in the Lithuanian national movement. For many of them, ‘becoming a Lithuanian again’ was a rather complex psychological process when often one not only had to oppose the environment of their parents and extended families, but also to learn the Lithuanian language. The aim of this article is to find out how noble Lithuanian intelligentsia families made the move from using Polish to speaking Lithuanian at home. As an additional theme, the article addresses the question as to which language was used for communication in the families of those who had made up their minds to identify themselves with the modern Lithuanian nation, in other words, which language was used in the families of parents, spouses, and offspring. The article reflects not completed research but only its beginning. Very likely, it pinpoints a new research problem and points to possible ways of approaching it. The first part of the article addresses the question whether there existed an unequivocal requirement in the Lithuanian national discourse of the late nineteenth-early twentieth century for the nobility involved in the Lithuanian national movement to use the Lithuanian language at home as well. The second part of the article dwells on several questions. First of all, an attempt is made to find out which language was used for communication between parents and their children determined to join the Lithuanian national movement. On the other hand, the article also discusses how the Lithuanian language used to be learnt, how Lithuanian functioned among the parents, spouses, and the offspring of noble intelligentsia families. So far, these questions have not been addressed in Lithuanian historiography. Late in the nineteenth-early in the twentieth century, noble Lithuanian intelligentsia families in many instances preserved the Polish language in their written communication, although quite a number of the parents of such families knew and could speak Lithuanian, and there were many who supported the national self-determination of their offspring. It should be pointed out that at that time a growing number of noble intelligentsia families were aspiring at starting nationally-engaged families, in which both the spouses and the children had to learn Lithuanian. The instances when one of the spouses did not support the national self-determination of the other and tried to obstruct the formation of Lithuanian national identity in later generations were gradually becoming rarer.

Questioning Modernity in Indonesia and Malaysia ed. by Wendy Mee and Joel S. Kahn

Reviewed by: Questioning Modernity in Indonesia and Malaysia ed. by Wendy Mee and Joel S. Kahn Anton O. Zakharov Questioning Modernity in Indonesia and Malaysia Wendy Mee and Joel S. Kahn (eds) Singapore: NUS Press in association with Kyoto University Press, 2012. vi, 257 pp. Kyoto CDEAS series on Asian studies, 5. ISBN 978-9971-69-563-7 (paperback) The contemporary world faces many challenges, both conceptual and empirical. Modernity has been disputed or seriously questioned. Postmodernist rhetoric claims modernity to be rather outdated despite the fact that to be modern simply means to be contemporary, to be here-and-now; therefore postmodern is modern, too. The book edited by Wendy Mee and Joel S. Kahn offers a good overview of current trends in treating questions and/or controversies of modernity in Malaysia and Indonesia. In the Introduction, Mee and Kahn offer to release modernity from its Western conceptual framework and to treat it as culturally grounded discursive stories of ‘self-designated moderns … about themselves and their societies’ (p. 7). Mee and Kahn also criticize a conceptual link between modernity and cultural traits of Western origin, capitalism, secularization, instrumental rationality, individualization, and monetarization of values among them. The anthropologists argue that modernity in no way means Westernization, and accept Bruno Latour’s famous idea (We Have Never Been Modern, 1993) that even the West has ‘never been modern’ (p. 7), preserving ‘pre-modern’ traditions and practices in its cultural, social, political and even economic spheres. The book comprises three main parts: ‘Transnational and Border-zone Modernities’, ‘Nation-states and Citizenships’, and ‘Cultural and Moral Orientations’. The last part completely focuses on Malaysia, whereas the two earlier parts balance between Indonesian and Malaysian studies. (For criticism of the [End Page 157] predominance of Malaysian case-studies in the book see the review by Jennifer Yang Hui; taking a contrary stance, Kewin W. Fogg praises such a structure because ‘Malaysia especially is a paragon for a state project promoting ‘Islamic modernity’. The first part opens with Kahn’s chapter ‘Islam and Capitalism in the Frontiers and Borderlands of the Modern Malay World’, where he develops his theory of Other Malays: Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Malay World (Singapore University Press, 2006). Kahn shows a significant role played by Muslim entrepreneurs in modernizing economic developments on the fringes of the centre-oriented states at least since the 1870s. He reformulates Max Weber’s idea of the strong psychological connection between the growth of capitalism and religion in the way that, despite Weber’s thesis of inextricable ties between capitalism and Protestant ideology, the capitalist developments may be shaped and strengthened by Islamic imaginaries whereas Islam has played ‘an important role in shaping patterns of economic practice’ (p. 43). But Kahn also stresses that ‘it would … be a mistake to speak of a Southeast Asian version of Islamic capitalism’ because the ‘Islamic institutional framework is absent’ there (p. 43). In the chapter ‘Malay Social Imaginaries: Nation-state and Other Collective Identities in Indonesia’, Kenneth Young has shown that in the late nineteenth–early twentieth century there were several ‘imagined communities’ among the Malays and in the Malay World, namely rising secular nationalisms and the notion of an all-Muslim community, or ummah (watan java in Indonesian). These imagined communities, which Young follows Taylor in calling ‘social imaginaries’, were essentially modern. They shared anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist ideas but differed in their orientations and world-views. Secular nationalism in British Malaya focused on, and struggled for, the rights and privileges of the Malays as true native inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula. Secular nationalism in insular Southeast Asia, in the Netherland Indies, aimed to find and/or establish the unity of extremely diverse island populations. The unifying foundation lay in the common Malay language which had long been a lingua franca for merchants, sailors and pilgrims throughout the Indonesian/Malay archipelago; Malay became the basis of the official Indonesian language (Bahasa Indonesia). Sukarno’s five principles (Pancasila) also contributed to unifying nation building. The Indonesian secular nationalist discourse was also influenced by the perception of the local Chinese as ‘outsiders/outlanders’ despite the fact that these people spoke only a Malay/Indonesian language and...

Geç Osmanlı öğüt kitaplarında kısırlık

Bu makalede geç Osmanlı tıp ve öğüt kitaplarının kısırlık ya da istendiği halde çocuk sahibi olamama sorununa yaklaşımı incelenmektedir. Kısırlık ve tedavisi üzerine yapılan tartışmalar on dokuzuncu yüzyıl boyunca yürütülen nüfus artışını sağlamaya yönelik politikaların bir uzantısı olarak düşünülmelidir. Bu dönemde Osmanlı matbuat kültürünün önemli bir türü olan öğüt kitaplarında üretilen söylemler ve fikirler aracılığıyla özelde kısırlık genel olarak da nüfus politikalarının toplumsallaşmasını ve daha geniş kitlelerin gözünde görünürlük hale gelmesini sağlamıştır. Bu çalışmada, Osmanlı tıp doktorları ve aydınlarının doğum ve doğurmayı neredeyse insanî ve millî bir vazife gibi tanımladığı ve kısırlık ve tedavisini de böylesi bir çerçeveye oturttuğu gösterilmeye çalışılacaktır. Bu doğrultuda bu çalışmada kısırlığın sadece bedensel ya da tıbbî bir sorun olmayıp aynı zamanda toplumsal ve politik bir mesele olarak kavranabileceği ileri sürülmektedir. Yukarıda da belirtildiği gibi nüfus ve doğum politikaları aslında daha makro düzeydeki politik görüşlerin dile getirildiği, kendilerini ifşa ettiği bir alandır. Osmanlı tıp doktorları ve aydınları, nüfus artışını önlerine bir politik hedef olarak koyarken nüfusu geniş anlamıyla ele almış ve nüfusu salt sayılardan ibaret değil, toplum ve gelecek tahayyülleriyle ilişkili bir mesele olarak kavramışlardır. Bu çalışma, popüler tıp kitaplarında ve öğüt kitaplarını incelemek suretiyle geç Osmanlı matbuat kültüründe kısırlığın, tıbbî, ahlakî ve sosyal boyutlarını incelemektedir

Beyond the ‘Communal’ 1920s: The Problem of Intention, Legislative Pragmatism, and the Making of Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code

Late nineteenth–early twentieth century Punjab has been commonly regarded as a space for ‘competitive communalism’ whereby each of the province’s major religious communities participated in activities that increased hostilities between the communities. Such an assertion has been substantiated with reference to an increasing number of publications that were quickly deemed offensive to one or the other religious community of the Punjab and then banned. This article examines the controversies following the publication of one such pamphlet ‘Rangila Rasul’. These ultimately necessitated the addition of section 295A to the Indian Penal Code (IPC), a section that would punish those who, ‘with deliberate and malicious intention,’ insulted or attempted to insult ‘religious beliefs’ of any class of His Majesty’s subjects. Reading contemporary newspaper commentaries alongside debates in the legislative assembly, I show that legislators were able to rise above the interests of their religious communities (as Hindu or Muslim publicists) to speak for a larger putative ‘Indian’ community, collective, or nation. Far from being a textbook example of communalism, the debates bring into sharp relief an alternate moment in the making of an ‘Indian’ nation.

Re-presenting the margins: revisiting the Scottish countryside in L. G. Gibbon’s Sunset Song

In his The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists Raymond Williams comments on the gradual institutionalisation of the dominant (Anglo-American) version of modernism and the cooption of its subversive possibilities by the capitalist market dynamics, which it at least in some forms tried to challenge, or bypass, in the initial phase of its emergence in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century (Politics 35). As several critics have amply demonstrated, one of the defining features of this ‘established,’ market-governed tradition of modernism was a many-pronged ideological ambivalence in its response to social modernity. Such ambivalence or inbetweenness of the modernists, which stands in conspicuous contrast to their aesthetic radicalism, as Williams has argued, was a part of the broader ‘structure of feeling’ of dominant cultural formations in their clash with emergent ones at a specific historical context. Hence Williams’ suggestion that artistic and other institutional practices, ‘these laws, constitutions, theories, ideologies, which are so often claimed as natural, or as having universal validity or significance, simply have to be seen as expressing and ratifying the domination of a particular class’ (Problems 36-37). The dominant modernist discourses, more often than not, either prioritized the middle classes over the working classes, the masculine over the feminine, the urban over the provincial, the elite over the popular, or took an ambivalent stance in times of conflict between the two poles of these dyads. The crises the hegemonic class, gender or space faced at the turn of the century and the culture of negotiations, new compromises and new institutional practices the crises generated have been subjects of extensive critical enquiry in several disciplines. The historian Eric Hobsbawm, for one example, has devoted an entire chapter, ‘Who’s Who or the Uncertainties of the Bourgeoisie’ in his The Age of Empire 1875-1914 (165-91) to understand the nature of the culture of ambivalence which was one of the products of this crisis.

Koreiskii etiket: opyt’etnograficheskogo issledovaniia (Korean etiquette: an ethnographic study) by Denis A. Samsonov

Reviewed by: Koreiskii etiket: opyt’etnograficheskogo issledovaniia (Korean etiquette: an ethnographic study) by Denis A. Samsonov V. Ivanov Konstantin, Ph.D. Candidate Koreiskii etiket: opyt’etnograficheskogo issledovaniia (Korean etiquette: an ethnographic study) by Denis A. Samsonov. St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2013. 144pp. This work is devoted to one of the key themes of Korean studies: Korean traditional etiquette. Neo-Confucianism placed particular importance on rules of ritual and ceremony, the observance of which was a key to social harmony. This work is notable because it examines a number of elements of traditional Korean culture from the perspective of Russian researchers. This study focuses on the most common forms of ritual and etiquette behavior among Koreans. Furthermore, the author shows the relationship of such behavior to the traditional worldview and religious beliefs of Koreans. In [End Page 399] this work the author consistently considers the relational and behavioral aspects of the traditional Korean family, analyzes the etiquette of life cycle rituals, elements of Korea’s traditional costumes, as well as some important kinesic aspects of communication (i.e. body language such as facial expressions and gestures) in contemporary Korean society (kinesics denotes non-verbal behavior related to movement, either by some part of the body or the body as a whole). This work is based on three main sources: 1) the notes and papers of Russian travelers in Korea in the late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries; 2) the works of Russian and Soviet researchers dedicated to the study of the traditions of Far Eastern peoples (especially Koreans and Chinese); and 3) the works of contemporary Korean scientists dedicated to the study of traditional Korean etiquette and its role in modern Korean life. The first group of sources deserves further comment. Despite the fact that Russian travelers in Korea were not professional orientalists, their high level of education and observation skills allowed them to describe in detail images of Korea during a period of tremendous change (1880s–1900s). Samsonov’s work takes into account the experiences of famous Russian and Soviet era Korea specialists: Zharylgasinova, Ionova, Kurbanov, Atknine, and Lankov, among others. It should be added here that the author defended his thesis on the topic “Ethnic stereotypes of Korean behavior” in 2007. As far as I know, Samsonov did not conduct field ethnographic research in Korea, so he had to rely on the works of contemporary Korean social scientists to create a full picture of his subject. Samsonov notes that among his sources, the research of Korean social scientist Yi Kwanggyu 李光奎 played an important role in his study of Korean family etiquette. Because the studies of Yi Kwanggyu were undertaken from the 1950s to the 1970s, though this was a period when the Korean countryside was undergoing great change, they captured aspects of Korea’s traditional lifestyle. Part one, “The Korean system of kinship and family etiquette,” is dedicated to an examination of the traditional Korean kinship system and its role in the formation of social relationships and Korean family etiquette. The author examines in considerable detail the system of kinship relationships and the nomenclature of relatives in Korea (a subject that is rather complicated for unskilled Western readers). It should be noted that the explanations of the author are quite easy to understand. In the second chapter of the first part, the author gives a description of traditional Korean family etiquette. Also, he considers the roles of husband and wife and the relationship between father and son. Part two, “The etiquette of life cycle observances,” consists of three chapters. [End Page 400] The first chapter is devoted to the rituals associated with childbearing, childbirth, and the tol chanch’i ceremony. The second chapter focuses on the ceremonies associated with the coming-of-age of young Koreans, such as the kwallye 冠禮 (the coming-of-age ceremony for a young man) or kyerye 筓禮 (a similar ceremony for girls). Further, the author examines the complex of rituals that form the wedding ceremony, or hollye 婚礼. Finally, the third charter of part two is devoted to the sixtieth anniversary ceremony, or hwangap 還甲 (also known as hoegap 回甲), funeral and mourning rites, or sangnye 喪禮, and ancestor worship ceremonies, or cherye 祭禮. In addition, part two includes photographs of various...

La foresta tropicale come paradiso perduto: Green Mansions di W.H. Hudson

In W.H. Hudson’s Green Mansions (1904) the mysterious and enchanting quality of the natural world is represented through the writer’s powerful imagination, and the exotic landscape of the South American rainforest is related to British territorial expansion: according to a long-standing literary tradition, the European colonial desire is projected onto remote, unknown places. On the one hand, the pristine forest appears a pure space, a site unspoiled by colonial expansion, the primitive and sacred world nourishing Western exotic dreams. On the other hand, by revisiting the myth of the lost paradise, Hudson conveys the late nineteenth-early twentieth century European perception of the tropical world, a patchwork of Charles Darwin’s theories, Biblical echoes and colonial ideology. Abel surrenders to the influence of the wild, ventures into the weird and entangled forest, seemingly refusing male invasion and domination. Rima’s subsequent death symbolizes the ecological catastrophe brought about by the Europeans in the primitive world of South America: the feathered bird-girl is assimilated to an Edenic being at the mercy of destructive forces. At the same time, Abel’s wish to possess the land reinforces the colonial viewpoint of the narration, while the movement from civilization to the wilderness implies the representation of a Darwinian struggle. Hudson frames the tropical space as substantially ambiguous, attractive and destructive for both colonizers and colonized, and through his narrative he introduces the fear of natural loss in the extreme form of the extinction of the green world.

Deserters, Converts, Cossacks and Revolutionaries: Russians in Iranian Military Service 1800–1920

Russians entered Iranian military service in this period in two waves, each wave characterizing a specific period in Iranian–Russian relations. The first was subaltern in origin and came in the form of the deserters from the Russian imperial army who fled to Tabriz in the early nineteenth century and who made a significant contribution to Iranian efforts to build a modern army. The second took place in the late nineteenth–early twentieth century and consisted of representatives of the tsarist military elite, Russian Cossack officers, who came to Iran between 1879 and 1920 and formed the Iranian Cossack Brigade, and their opposites, Caucasian revolutionaries who joined the constitutional movement in order to continue their struggle against the Russian imperial regime. The article raises a series of questions, not only about the extent of Russian influence suggested by the presence of Russian soldiers, but also about its character. Why did Iran place such a high value on Russian military expertise? Who were the Russians who served in the Iranian military? How were they received in Iran? What effect did Iranian society exercise on them and to what extent did the changes transforming Russia affect the roles they played in Iran?

Interdecadal Variations in ENSO Teleconnection to the Indo–Western Pacific for 1870–2007

Slow modulation of interannual variability and its relationship to El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is investigated for the period of 1870–2007 using shipboard surface meteorological observations along a frequently traveled track across the north Indian Ocean (NIO; from the Gulf of Aden through Malacca Strait) and the South China Sea (to Luzon Strait). During the decades in the late nineteenth–early twentieth century and in the late twentieth century, the El Niño–induced NIO warming persists longer than during the 1910s–mid-1970s, well into the summer following the peak of El Niño. During the epochs of the prolonged NIO warming, rainfall drops and sea level pressure rises over the tropical northwest Pacific in summer following El Niño. Conversely, during the period when the NIO warming dissipates earlier, these atmospheric anomalies are not well developed. This supports the Indian Ocean capacitor concept as a mechanism prolonging El Niño influence into summer through the persistent Indian Ocean warming after El Niño itself has dissipated. The above centennial modulation of ENSO teleconnection to the Indo–northwest Pacific region is reproduced in an atmospheric general circulation model forced by observed SST. The modulation is correlated not with the Pacific decadal oscillation but rather with the ENSO variance itself. When ENSO is strong, its effect in the Indo–northwest Pacific strengthens and vice versa. The fact that enhanced ENSO teleconnections occurred 100 years ago during the late nineteenth–early twentieth century indicates that the recent strengthening of the ENSO correlation over the Indo–western Pacific may not entirely be due to global warming but reflect natural variability.