Military Conquest Research Articles

“Sturdy Boulders that Protect the Realm” Early Medieval Chinese Thinkers on Decentralized Governance

The period between the formal end of the Han dynasty in 220 ce and the reestablishment of unified imperial authority in the Sui-Tang period (late sixth century ce) is considered one of political fragmentation and recurrent military conflict. During three centuries, several kingdoms and short-lived dynasties were established and destroyed, either by military conquest or by court intrigues and coups. In this context, many political thinkers of the time looked back to the long rule of the Han as a time of peace and prosperity, and argued that it was the institutions of centralized governance that propped the dynasty’s long-lasting reign. Against this view, a handful of thinkers claimed that the Zhou-style system of investiture offered several advantages to secure the permanence of the ruling house and improve the governance of the realm. Among them, the Wei dynasty thinker Cao Jiong argued that the Zhou system was superior to centralized rule both in moral and military terms, while the Jin dynasty scholar Lu Ji discussed the benefits and problems of relying mostly on kin for controlling the realm. By identifying the key ideas in these writings in relation to the historical context of the early medieval period in China, I will challenge the longstanding assumption that post-Han thinkers advocated for the institutions of centralized administration over those of decentralized governance.

China's Lonely Revolution: The Local Communist Movement of Hainan Island, 1926–1956 by Jeremy A. Murray

Reviewed by: China's Lonely Revolution: The Local Communist Movement of Hainan Island, 1926–1956 by Jeremy A. Murray Fabio Lanza Jeremy A. Murray. China's Lonely Revolution: The Local Communist Movement of Hainan Island, 1926–1956. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017. 237 pp. $85.00 (cloth), $25.95 (paper). China's Lonely Revolution is the first study in English of the Communist movement on Hainan Island, from the unpromising founding of the local Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1926 to the first few years after the liberation of the island by a joint offensive of mainland forces and the Hainan column in 1950. In this well-researched monograph, Jeremy A. Murray provides another vivid example showing that the Chinese Revolution was not a univocal, centralized, or even well-coordinated affair. Rather, the long and complex struggles of Communist fighters—as well as all the other non-Communist actors who joined them—from the 1920s up to the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War look more like a series of "revolutions," sharing overarching, if continuously evolving, goals but embedded in local situations and expressed in specific and contingent practices. This is already enough to recommend the book. Murray focuses on the Hainanese character of the Hainan Communist revolution, clearly pushing against an official "mainland" narrative that, since the early 1950s, has obscured the role of local leaders and islands activists who, basically with no support from and often with no connection to the central CCP, kept the revolutionary struggle going. As the Hainan leaders proudly declared in 1950, "for twenty-three years, the Red Flag did not fall" (1) on the tropical island. Murray's analysis of these 23 years is often cast against the knowledge that this regional emphasis would eventually create problems for Hainan CCP leaders in the early 1950s, when they would be accused of "localism" and often marginalized in the implementation of center-driven policies; he thus connects the political struggles of the early People's Republic of China (PRC) with the long history of "pragmatism, improvisation, and isolation" (1) that characterized the Hainan revolutionary experience. After a mad rush through centuries of Hainan's relations with the mainland in the first introductory chapter, the book follows a more or less chronological sequence: Murray describes the shifting political prospects of Hainan revolutionaries in the 1910s and early 1920s, moving then to the founding of the CCP and the early, troubled history of the Communist movement in Hainan, which, like its mainland counterpart, was almost completely annihilated by Nationalist repression. The Japanese occupation led to a very unstable alliance between the two Chinese parties, but it was a different alliance that would be crucial for the fate of the revolution, that between the Communists and the indigenous Li (黎) people who inhabited the island's interior. This was, as Murray notes, one of the main factors that allowed for the Hainan column—as the local CCP group was [End Page E-13] called—to survive and establish solid bases, but it was also an alliance that was declaredly anti-Guomindang, as it was the Nationalists (and not the Japanese) who had exercised unprecedented pressure on Li territories. The second half of the book is by far the most interesting and revealing, as Murray describes three important moments in the history of the Hainan Communist movement and of its relationship with the larger revolution taking place on the mainland. Chapter 6 details the refusal on the part of the Hainan fighters to leave the island and join the main force in the north of China, as ordered by the central CCP, a refusal that was motivated by practical and political considerations and that left the local forces almost completely isolated in fighting for their own survival during the civil war. The liberation of Hainan in 1950, when People's Liberation Army troops crossed the treacherous Qiongzhou Strait to join the local Hainan guerrilla fighters, is taken up in chapter 7; the military conquest was a brief affair, but a more lasting, if theoretical, battle was fought over how to construct the narrative of liberation...

청질서의 성립과 조청관계의 안정화: 1644∼1700

The “Ch"ing Order”, a new international order in East Asia established by the Ch"ing occupation of Peking in 1644, was different from the unitary and customary order made by the Ming Dynasty. The old order ensured uniform distinctions between the Han people and non-Han people and between in and outside mainland China through linking the policy of removing the embargo to the tribute formalities. However, the Ch"ing Dynasty built a dual foreign relation system and applied different principles to the southeastern waters and the northwestern inner Asia region, which had been under the Ming order. Since the Ch"ing order was completely different from the Ming Order, the Chosŏn-Ch"ing relations was not a simple replacement of the previous Chosŏn-Ming relations. The Chosŏn-Ming relations was formed and maintained through the exchange of voluntary and peaceful tribute, which was based on the Sadaejaso (事大字小) idea, an important part of Neo-Confucian order. In contrast, the Chosŏn-Ch"ing relations represented a forced sovereign and subject structure formed by two wars (Chŏngmyo-horan in 1627 and Pyŏngcha-horan in 1636) caused by the Ch"ing. Therefore, from the beginning Chosŏn did not have the Sadaejaso idea towards the Ch"ing in spite of the formal sovereign and subject relations between them. In fact, the relations were complicated by mutual suspicion, check, coercion, and revengeful thoughts. However, soon after the Ch"ing occupation of Peking in 1644, it successfully replaced the Ming and strengthened it domination of China. As a result, its coercive policies against Chosŏn were gradually alleviated, and Chosŏn had no choice but to admit the Ch"ing’s power and status. In this respect, the Chosŏn-Ch"ing relations reflected the unique nature of relations formed by the military conquest in terms of content although it also inherited the exemplary relations between Chosŏn and Ming to a certain extent. Thus, the Ch"ing partially applied the principle of excluding the Han people, which was applied to the northwestern inner Asia region, to Chosŏn unlike other states that had been under the Ming Order. The latter part of the 17th century can be characterized as a transition period, which witnessed the settlement of the unique Chosŏn-Ch"ing relations. The distrust and confrontation before the Ch"ing occupation of Peking in 1644 had been transformed to the stability and peace of the 18th century. The stabilization of the relations between the two countries was reflected in trade. The trade led by yeokgwan (official translators) and sasang (private businessmen) became active. On the basis of the relations, the two countries were able to contribute to the stability and peace in East Asia in the late 17th century, which lasted until the mid-19th century.

The Bird and the Mountains: A Note on Psalm 11

This paper demonstrates that the bird and the mountains phrase in Ps 11:1 compares well with a common metaphor relating to siege warfare and military conquest found in Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions and considers the resulting implications.

Reading the March: Interpretations and Constructions of the Welsh Marcher Lordships and the Church in Wales, c. 1100–1284

AbstractReading historians' views on the March of Wales from the 19th century onwards reveals a range of interpretations of the region, but these have been predominantly secular in nature. Historical constructions of Marcher lordship have varied depending on the way historiographical trends have developed, and how this subject could be placed and understood within frameworks for understanding the medieval history of England and Wales as a whole. Not since the mid‐20th century have scholars dealt with the relationship between the Church in Wales and the impact this had on the constructions and development of Marcher lordships. This article explores this gap, focusing on the interplay between Church and lordship and the scope for further exploration of earlier, influential ideas, such as R. R. Davies' view that the church in the Wales played a ‘subjugation’ role in support of the military conquest, and the more nuanced observations of Glanmor Williams, who allowed for a more complicated picture to emerge based on brief analysis of certain events before 1282. In following the threads of these scholars and highlighting more recent studies, particularly in the field of family studies, where individual case studies of Marcher families has revealed more of this complex picture, this article argues for a microcosmic approach to tackle the gap and opens up avenues for future studies.

The Vietnam Central Coastline and the Emergent Nguyễn State, c. 1500-1700: Port, Coastline, Hinterland Interrelations

This study, building upon earlier works published from 2011 to the present, focuses on sixteenth through eighteenth century Cochinchina’s upstream-downstream networked relations and how they contributed to the re-development of the region’s economy and consequently its political and social development, with particular emphasis on its coastal ports and related trade under the Nguyễn. These relations revolve around tightly connected interactions among diverse groups including long-term resident diasporic Fujian merchant communities, newly introduced Chan Buddhist monks, maritime-based Chinese pro-Ming piratical syndicates, local Cham raiding cohorts, and the alien Nguyễn clan who in 1600 claimed political authority over the Vietnamese littoral’s central coastal region (Trung Bộ) and extended central lands (Miền Trung). The partnerships the Nguyễn established with each of these groups (merchants, monks, pirates, upstream and downstream multiethnic communities) enabled the major ports of Đà Năng, and particularly, of Hội An, to thrive and produce the income needed to support both the Nguyễn bureaucracy and its military conquest of the southern third of the littoral. Over the course of the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries, the Nguyễn co-opted the cultural, spiritual, and maritime-based power and influence exercised by each of each these groups in an initial effort to fulfill its dynastic ambitions that remained unfulfilled until 1802. This work moves beyond other regional studies by using the approach proposed in Michael Pearson’s writings regarding the Indian Ocean ports-of-trade littoral and extending them eastward, to the further edges of the Indian Ocean borderless world, and applying them to the complex interactions of the Vietnamese littoral populations-coastal urban and hinterland - as they contributed to the development of the central Vietnamese littoral’s ports-of-trade and of Nguyễn authority and power in this era.

The Impossible Ancien Régime colonial: Postcolonial Haiti and the Perils of the French Restoration

The Impossible Ancien Régime colonial: Postcolonial Haiti and the Perils of the French Restoration This article discusses the consequences of Napoleon's downfall for the world's first modern post-slavery state, Haiti. It focuses on the interplay between the French colonial office's diplomatic missions that were lobbied by dispossessed planters to recover the lost colony and the Haitian propaganda to guarantee national independence. These relations ultimately contributed to a shift in French colonial politics towards Haiti, from military conquest and re-enslavement to financial indemnification. Taking the rhetoric of pacification beyond Europe, French diplomacy presented racial hierarchies as an extension of the 1814 compromise between old and new elites in metropolitan France. The Haitian side, however, insisted on the sharp contradiction between the supposed reconciliation in France and a quasi-restoration of the Ancien Régime colonial. Drawing on Haitian, French and British source material, this article analyses how Haitian propaganda attacked the precarious political legitimacy of Restoration France from an extra-European viewpoint to exert pressure on European colonial politics. Relying on Haiti as a model for slave emancipation, British abolitionists significantly contributed to excluding the option of the Ancien Régime colonial. The debate on Haiti's future forced Louis XVIII's government to ponder the political risks of colonial restoration. In the outcome, financial indemnification became France's primary condition for recognising Haitian independence in 1825.

Vera Keller. Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725. xi + 350 pp., illus., index. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. £64.99 (cloth).

Vera Keller. <i>Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575–1725</i>. xi + 350 pp., illus., index. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. £64.99 (cloth).

Book Review: The Persian Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia

This encyclopedia is the first English language reference source to focus exclusively on ancient Iran during the period of its great empires before the arrival of Islam from 700 BCE to 651 CE. The major empires were the Medes, the Achaemenids, the Seleucids, the Arsacids (Parthians), and the Sasanians. Ancient Iran covered a geographic area that varied over time. At its greatest expanse the Achaemenid Empire (559–330 BCE) ruled territory continuous from Thrace in southeastern Europe to the Indus River in India. Almost as large was the Seleucid Empire (305–125 BCE) which was not Iranian or Persian but Macedonian, founded by one of Alexander the Great’s generals after his death. With the expansion of the empires through military conquests and the administrative control of vast geographic areas, Kia emphasizes that languages, ethnicities, religions, and cultures of the Persian empires were very diverse and that Persia itself was actually a southern province of Greater Iran.

Calderón’s Theater of the New World: Historical Mimesis in La aurora en Copacabana

Lope de Vega, in the dedicatoria to La campana de Aragon , included in the Parte XV de las Comedias , famously pondered historical drama as an effective means to “renovar la fama desde los teatros a las memorias de las gentes” (qtd. in Case 203–04). Due to its eminent ability to make history come alive before the eyes of the audience, the emerging historical drama was certainly the most popular instance of what may be termed the contemporary obsession with history, and thus the most important aesthetic vehicle for the formation of collective memory and cultural identity during this crucial period of nascent European nation states. Examining the case of Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s juxtaposition of orthodox Catholic religious practice and parallel Amerindian rites in La aurora en Copacabana , the present essay proposes a novel approach to his often misunderstood play about the military and religious conquest of Inca Peru, introducing the concept of “historical mimesis” to describe the universal or philosophical, plausible but not veristic, creative and performative staging of history.

Epics of Empire and Frontier: Alonso de Ercilla and Gaspar de Villagrá as Spanish Colonial Chroniclers by Celia López-Chávez

Reviewed by: Epics of Empire and Frontier: Alonso de Ercilla and Gaspar de Villagrá as Spanish Colonial Chroniclers by Celia López-Chávez Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra Epics of Empire and Frontier: Alonso de Ercilla and Gaspar de Villagrá as Spanish Colonial Chroniclers. By Celia López-Chávez. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Pp. 392. Notes, bibliography, illustrations, index.) The epics La Araucana and Historia de la Nueva Mexico praise heroes, one the anticolonial Mapuches, the other creole Spanish American conquistadors. López-Chávez maintains that these two poems, which describe the conquest of southern Chile in the 1550s and northern Mexico in the 1590s, document debates over the justice of colonization while helping to invent the “frontier” as a spatial category. La Araucana is a strange epic. While lionizing empire, it praises the indigenous resistance to colonization. Critics have read the poem either as a version of the pro-imperial Aeneid of Virgil or as the Chilean equivalent of the anti-imperial Pharsalia of Lucan. How to understand this deeply schizophrenic poem? López-Chávez reads the poem through the debates over the justice of colonization that pitted Ginés de Sepúlveda against Bartolomé de las Casas in Valladolid in the 1540s. Ercilla, its creator, was a poet who defended the right of the Spanish monarchy to spread its empire globally while also taking issue with the legal titles of conquistadors to Indian lands and labor. López-Chávez shows that Ercilla’s celebration of Mapuche resistance was part of larger legal discourse of “defensive war.” Like a good follower of the Dominicans, Ercilla believed that natives had the right to organize armies when their lands and leadership were illegally under attack. La Araucana casts the leader of the Spanish conquistadors, Pedro de Valdivia, as a gold-hungry predator, solely interested in plundering communities. Valdivia’s death in battle at the hands [End Page 98] of Mapuche warriors like Lautaro and Caupolicán appears, therefore, as a just reward. This very critique of the conquistadors allowed Ercilla to justify the munificence and power of Iberian kingship to spread justice and Christianity. An ode to the global monarquía de España could also be a paean to native resistance. Unlike La Araucana, Villagrá’s poem, Historia de la Nueva México, features a Spanish Aeneas. López-Chávez finds Historia unabashedly imperial. Yet Historia was no simple-minded copy of Virgil’s Aeneid. The poem, it turns out, was part of an effort by Villagrá to defend himself and the creole Aeneas Juan de Oñate against charges of having broken the Ordenanzas of 1573, which clearly barred the military conquest of indigenous peoples. Historia is a text that introduces dozens of primary sources to cast the Creole leaders of the expedition as individuals who had followed the letter of the law and every detail stipulated in the legal contract (capitulaciones) between Oñate and the viceroy. Oñate and Villagrá were eventually brought to court for their crimes against the Pueblo Indians of Acoma. Villagrá’s Historia, López-Chávez shows, was part of his own legal defense. Villagrá portrayed Oñate’s entrada to New Mexico as the peaceful transmission of indigenous authority to the rightful representatives of the Spanish monarch who, in turn, secured the land to establish Franciscan missions, not self-aggrandizing encomiendas. Ceremonial treaties of transmission of vassalage, not willy-nilly conquistador violence, purportedly characterized Oñate’s entrada. Villagrá sought to demonstrate that the massacre of Acoma was legal, for it occurred only after the Pueblo had declared themselves vassals of the crown with the purpose of luring Oñate’s army into a trap. Oñate and Villagrá’s actions in Acoma, therefore, were not random acts of cruelty but rightful proceedings according to the doctrine of just war. López-Chávez also seeks to present La Araucana and Historia as epics that introduced the spatial category of the “frontier,” that is, landscapes at once bountiful and barren, beautiful and repugnant, insignificant and memorable, harsh and welcoming. The book is, therefore, a study of the ideological construction of the “frontier” as a...

Udział dominikanów w chrystianizacji Prus do połowy XIII wieku

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the attempts to the Christianization of Prussia were resumed. The greatest and lasting results brought the Cistercian mission, led by the missionary bishop, Christian. The arrival of the Teutonic and DominicanOrders to Prussia changed the political, social and religious situation in this area dramatically. The Teutonic Order in the thirteenth century was dealing with creating their statehood and with the military conquest of the land. In converting the pagans, they were very glad to count on the assistance of the Dominican Order. The Dominican merits in the evangelism were so large that the Holy See was entrusting the priests from this Order with the most important ecclesiastical offices. By the end of the thirteenth century the Dominican Order gained in Prussia and also abroad the universal acclaim and respect, which raised objections and concerns of the Teutonic Order.

A Modern Peace? Schumpeter, the Decline of Conflict, and the Investment–War Trade-Off

Drawing on the writings of Joseph Schumpeter, we develop and explore a new theory of international conflict. We outline a simple mechanism whereby industrialization fosters peace, suggesting that industrialized states are more peaceful because they can gain more by investing at home than by pursuing foreign military conquest. We borrow from Schumpeter to argue that our mechanism is distinct from traditional measures of liberalism. Empirically, we propose a measure of industrial development, based on a state’s economic structure. Using World Bank sector-specific economic data, our exploratory analysis shows that a more industrialized economy significantly reduces the likelihood that a state will be involved in a fatal military conflict. We show that this result is robust across a number of model specifications and independent of both democracy and capitalism. We propose this as an interesting first step toward a broader research program on modernization and conflict.

Immersion is the new ritual: the miqveh at Khirbat al-Mukhayyat (Jordan) and Hasmonean agro-economic policies in the Late Hellenistic period

The 2014 season of excavation at Khirbat al-Mukhayyat, Jordan, unearthed a stepped ritual bath or miqveh dating to the Late Hellenistic Period. Though there are numerous wine presses that are found in the vicinity, the site itself does not have a substantial settlement during this period. Mukhayyat was likely an agricultural settlement with a limited population associated with the production of wine. This local wine production reflects an increased desire amongst the transplanted Jewish population to maintain ritual purity in the Late Hellenistic Period in this region, as promoted by the Hasmoneans. Viticulture and wine production were presumably under Hasmonean control and their economic influence expanded alongside their military conquests.

China Public Diplomacy in Asia Pacific

Since 1990, for more than sixteen years, Beijing has been attempting to shape the diplomatic and strategic environment in maritime Asia, projecting an image of itself as an innately trustworthy great power. As a part of this public relations campaign, Chinese leaders have retailed the story of Zheng He, the former Ming Dynasty eunuch admiral who voyaged to destinations throughout Asia continent, the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean six centuries ago. They have touted the feats of Zheng He, who sojourned in maritime Asia without attempting military conquest, as a metaphor for China’s current peaceful ascent in the regional maritime domain. In doing so, Beijing hopes to convince regional leaders in Southeast Asia and South Asia that it remains Pacific in outlook. Thus can be counted on not to abuse the sea power it is amassing. An attractive vision of China, they hope, will avert the tendency of regional states to band together to balance Chinese power. Still Chinese diplomats have had the luxury to tell story how they wanted; since deployments of China naval forces beyond East Asia remained abstract. Beijing neither saw the need nor boasted the capacity to maintain strong forces far from Chinese shores. However, the headline-grabbing dispatch of two destroyers and a combat logistics ship to the Gulf of Aden on counter-piracy duty in late 2008 has put China squarely in international spotlight. By depicting itself as an inherently defensive power, China has set a high standard for its behavior at sea. Fellow Asian countries will hold Beijing to this lofty benchmark, and measuring its actions against the manipulated Chinese leaders story that developed around Zheng He’s voyages for centuries. Beijing’s anti-piracy mission offers an ideal opportunity to explore empirically the efficacy of Chinese Soft Power. To conclude, this paper examines how the Zheng He narratives motivates and assesses the substance messages that Chinese leaders are attempting to convey to Asian capitals. This study then elaborate to some extent that China’s unprecedented naval presence in the Indian Ocean has dovetailed with Zheng He legendary history followed by the expansive larger strategy of easing regional misgivings about Chinese maritime power. The paper also analyzes how India as a target audience respond to China’s global and regional ambitions, drawing several preliminary conclusions about the effectiveness and the prospects of Chinese public diplomacy as the element of power in international politics.

The Mapuche in Modern Chile: A Cultural History

The author of this book studies the representation of the Mapuche people from the military occupation of their land (1861–1881) until the present. As the author herself explains, “Alongside an analysis of Mapuche political activism, the following chapters investigate the multiple, contesting ways in which Mapuche and Chilean artists, writers, and intellectuals have grappled with the country's history of internal colonialism” (p. 4). She does so by “deal[ing] with poetry more substantially than any other form of cultural production, but [by] also incorporat[ing] popular music, photography, theater, testimonial writing, ethnographic studies, and literary criticism” (p. 4). Another major concern of the book is state cultural policy toward the Mapuche, which is intimately connected to political or socioeconomic reforms. The author “bring[s] to the forefront some of the key shifts in cultural policy so as to expand our understanding of Chilean state discourses on the ‘indigenous question’” (p. 4). She also “scrutinizes changes to the teaching curriculum at both local and national levels,” as well as government policies relating to museums and national monuments (pp. 4–5). This book, in other words, is an analysis of images and words as discourse, with the aim of resolving the following questions: What did military conquest mean for the Mapuche and Chilean military officers, beyond the obvious economic, political, and territorial consequences? What did compulsory primary education in the early twentieth century mean for the Mapuche? In what ways did they engage with national debates about schooling and with broader state discourses of civilization and modernization? What type of education did they seek? What did discourses of indigenismo (since 1940) mean for Chilean and Mapuche intellectuals?The author's analysis “focuses mainly on the relationship between indigenous Mapuche identities and Chilean national identities,” building upon the historiography of race and nation in Latin America to “explore not only how Mapuche people have challenged dominant national imaginaries in Chile, but also how they have participated in the construction of these imaginaries” (p. 10). The author shows how the discourse of mestizaje (cultural and racial mixing), instead of granting the Mapuche people an increased presence within Chilean society, allows for the ignoring of their existence, putting contemporary Mapuche identity in doubt or denial. Crow also highlights “Chilean intellectuals who have recast official discourses of mestizaje so as to reinforce the presence of indigenous peoples in Chile, and—more significantly—to assume their own indigenous heritage” (p. 11). Furthermore, the book examines the “complex intersections between class and indigenous identity in Chile,” exploring not only the Left's problematic subsumption of the Mapuche within the peasant masses—a theoretical move that effaces indigenous cultural particularity—but also contrary attempts to robustly “link programs of social and racial vindication without diminishing the significance of either” (p. 11).In chapter 4, Crow examines these issues for the 1960s and the early 1970s. There is evidence, for example, that President Salvador Allende and his main advisers understood the specificity of the Mapuche being (the identity of the Mapuche in the ontological sense) as different from the Chilean peasantry, whereas other intellectuals (not the Allende government advisers) ignored this difference, influenced by an evolutionary and developmental paradigm. During this period, according to the author, “Mapuche culture became increasingly visible . . . despite, in conjunction with, or indeed sometimes as a direct result of government initiatives” (p. 17). She concludes that Allende “acknowledged that the Mapuche had a distinct culture and history, and he engaged with some of their demands in this regard, but not all and not always,” an ambiguous conclusion that does not resolve the contradiction between recognition or ignorance (or nonrecognition) of the specificity of the Mapuches' issues (pp. 147–48). But this ambiguity is also the result of the fact that the question of Allende's stance toward the Mapuche has not been fully resolved by scholars.This work reliably follows the documentary evidence and develops a scholarly apparatus for addressing Mapuche cultural history, though, of course, it does not exhaust the literature, especially the most recent (which is constantly growing). Crow's methodology is sound and is presented in clear language. This book is important for its attempt to make a cultural history and for its attempt at objectivity, the author maintaining emotional distance from her subject. The book will be of interest to specialists, students, academics, and activists, Chilean and Mapuche, in the fields of history and various human sciences.

Chinese Military History and the Qing Dynasty, 1644–1911: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Empire

Over the past twenty years, historical research has re-evaluated Chinese historical use of military power and political control. From 1644 to 1911, the Qing Empire was unquestionably a successful state, ruling a massive area extending from the Sea of Japan to Central Asia and the borders of India. Recent scholarship has focused on the explicitly “imperial” nature of the Qing Empire and the conflicted territorial and ethnic legacies of this last Chinese dynasty. In addition, historians have reevaluated the role of the Qing ruling military elite, drawn from the Manchu people, with tenuous cultural connections to their ethnically Han subjects, in an attempts to clarify patterns of “Chinese” imperialism and determine if the Manchu goals and practices are part of a broader Chinese military tradition. Despite the challenges of understanding the complex nature of the Qing Empire, the undeniable skill in military conquest redrew territorial boundaries, re-located ethnic groups and developed patterns of military and political power that continue to resonate throughout Asia.

Il ruolo delle città portuali nelle dinamiche del commercio tra Adriatico e Ionio nell’alto Medioevo (V-IX sec.)

Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages the routes that connected East and West underwent many changes. New archaeological discoveries show the economic vitality of some Ionian port cities close Corfu’s channel during the 7th and 8th century, in contrast to other Mediterranean regions. Some pottery contexts found in the ports of Saranda, Butrint and Durres are framed perfectly in the dynamics of Mediterranean trade, with substantial growth of quantity of finds especially at this time. This trend is very different from what occurred in Middle and North Adriatic sites. The numerous contexts so far studied a spike in imports towards the middle of the fifth century and a consistent volume of trade until the middle of the 6th century. In this period we observed in the Adriatic port-cities a turnaround of imports from North Africa, towards the Eastern Mediterranean products, that Justinian war was not only a military conquest but also the supremacy of Eastern merchants in Western ports.

The Archaeology of Pericolonialism: Responses of the “Unconquered” to Spanish Conquest and Colonialism in Ifugao, Philippines

Pericolonial archaeology investigates areas where European military conquests were unsuccessful, but were economically and politically affected by conquests and subsequent colonial activities in adjacent regions. By using a case study from the Philippines, this article focuses on the responses of indigenous peoples in the highland Philippines who appear to have resisted Spanish cooptation. The archaeological record suggests that economic and political intensification occurred in Ifugao coinciding with the appearance of the Spanish in the northern Philippines. This work on pericolonial archaeology shows that the effects of colonialism extended far beyond the areas actually colonized. More importantly, the investigations reported in this essay add to the increasing evidence of the false differentiation of the colonized and the “uncolonized.”

Chinamitales: defensores y justicias k’ichee’ en las comunidades indígenas del altiplano de Guatemala colonial

The present article examines the functions of indigenous advocates whose position as ward leaders (chinamitales) in K’ichee’ societies existed in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and continued into the colonial nineteenth century in Guatemala. This was a hereditary legal and administrative position that elites in K’ichee’an society enjoyed as a result and reward of military conquest in the Pre-Columbian era. Chinamitales advocated for the inhabitants of their wards who were both elites and non-elites in land disputes and in criminal matters. They persisted in indigenous communities from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century as officially unrecognized legal advocates who participated in tribunals in indigenous communities at the local level and advocated for their constituents before their indigenous town councils. They also acted in a similar capacity as the indigenous municipal council, making last testaments, nominating candidates for local town council elections and positions in the church laity, collecting tribute, and choosing laborers for the repartimiento. Their advocacy spilled over into colonial judicial proceedings at the regional and high court levels when disagreements arose within indigenous communities over land disenfranchisement and whenever they sensed that the indigenous municipal council was not protecting their interests.