National Glory Research Articles

God, games and national glory: thanksgiving and the ritual of sport in American culture, 1876–1926

(1993). God, games and national glory: thanksgiving and the ritual of sport in American culture, 1876–1926. The International Journal of the History of Sport: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 242-249.

Labor and imperial democracy in prewar Japan

Labor and Imperial Democracy in Prewar Japan examines the political role played by working men and women in prewar Tokyo and offers a reinterpretation of the broader dynamics of Japan's prewar political history. Gordon argues that such phenomena as riots, labor disputes, and union organizing can best be understood as part of an early twentieth-century movement for 'imperial democracy' shaped by the nineteenth-century drive to promote capitalism and build a modern nation and empire. When the propertied, educated leaders of this movement gained a share of power in the 1920s, they disagreed on how far to go toward incorporating working men and women into an expanded body politic. For their part, workers became ambivalent toward working within the imperial democratic system. In this context, the intense polarization of laborers and owners during the Depression helped ultimately to destroy the legitimacy of imperial democracy. Gordon suggests that the thought and behavior of Japanese workers both reflected and furthered the intense concern with popular participation and national power that has marked Japan's modern history. He points to a post-World War II legacy for imperial democracy in both the organization of the working class movement and the popular willingness to see GNP growth as an index of national glory. Importantly, Gordon shows how historians might reconsider the roles of tenant farmers, students, and female activists, for example, in the rise and transformation of imperial democracy.

A camera in the service of National Glory

A camera in the service of National Glory

Endre Ady’s Summons to National Regeneration in Hungary, 1900-1919

In 1896 Hungarians celebrated the one thousandth anniversary of their conquest of the Central European Plains. Intoxicated with the heady wine of nationalism, they seemed almost to believe that their millennium prefigured the thousand-year reign of Christ prophesied in the book of Revelation. Public officials loudly proclaimed Hungary to be the best of all possible worlds and extolled the virtues of patriotism in the most extravagant terms. Publicists eulogized the Hungarian national genius and lamented that all of Eastern Europe was not ruled by Magyars. The most enthusiastic patriots confidently predicted yet another thousand years of national glory.

Moral Values and International Politics

It is illusory to think that politics can be free of values. Those spokesmen of realpolitik whom we read long after passing of their historical era called not for repudiation but reinterpretation of values. Machiavelli wrote of virtu, Rousseau of the noble savage, and nationalists of national glory. The debate over values, despite claims of so-called value-free social science, has never been between one school of thought espousing values and another rejecting all values. Rather, almost always, it involves two groups with different sets and concepts of values-different perspectives on nature and content of values. No one who lives in human community can be wholly amoral, if he would work with and deserve trust and response of others. We recall reference by Harold Nicolson to classic definition of diplomat as a man sent abroad to lie and deceive in interest in his country. Yes, said Nicolson, but also he must return to negotiate another day. Part of our problem in gaining clarity on values in international politics is that most of us are endlessly tempted either to inflate or to disparage role of morality in politics and thus fall prey at opposite extremes to moralism or cynicism in our views.

For Science and National Glory. The Spanish Scientific Expedition to America, 1862-1866. Robert Ryal Miller

<i>For Science and National Glory. The Spanish Scientific Expedition to America, 1862-1866</i>. Robert Ryal Miller

For Science and National Glory. The Spanish Scientific Expedition to America, 1862-1866

For Science and National Glory. The Spanish Scientific Expedition to America, 1862-1866

For Science and National Glory. The Spanish Scientific Expedition to America, 1862-1866.

For Science and National Glory. The Spanish Scientific Expedition to America, 1862-1866.

For Science and National Glory: The Spanish Scientific Expedition to America, 1862-1866

For Science and National Glory: The Spanish Scientific Expedition to America, 1862-1866

The personal price of national glory

The personal price of national glory

New Light on Dante and Islam

Thirty-four years have passed since the Discorso de recepcion of the then young Arabist, don Miguel Asin Palacios, was presented in the Spanish Academy; and I still recall the impression of astonishment, admiration and almost alarm which the first reading of the Escatologia musulmana en la Divina Comedia aroused in my father, one of the first to spread the ideas of Asin in Italy—such was the impact of the novelty, the audacity, and the wide range of his thesis and his conclusions. I vaguely recall the discordant voices of both Orientalist and Dante criticism in the heated atmosphere of the centennial celebrations of 1921, the enthusiasm of the neophytes, the scandalised consternation of the idolators, and the profound echo of agreement and disagreement which Asin's book aroused, as surely no other publication of the centenary. Then, everywhere to some extent but above all in Italy, the voices of dissent prevailed, from those of the more or less reasoning and reasonable disbelievers to those of the early believers whose faith began to vacillate, as was the case of my father. Asin answered these, with lively and often cogent dialectic, in his Historia y critica de una polemica. Then the dispute languished and expired, leaving on both sides, as usually happens in these cases, a whole series of misunderstandings which had not been clarified. Among Asin's non-Orientalist critics—even among the most learned of them, and perhaps in the very measure of their learning—the initial prejudice against that strange world remained invincible: that world aberrant in language, custom, place, and civilisation, which the erudite Spaniard had brought into abrupt contact with the Christian-Latin world, the only background against which the figure of Dante had customarily been seen. On the other hand, the conviction was firmly planted in Asin's mind that the opposition to his theory, especially from the Italian point of view, was moved not only (as was indeed quite true) by mental laziness, by horror novi, by intellectual vitalde in the face of the bitter new truth he proposed, but also and above all, by cultural nationalism, by the set purpose of defending at any price a national glory whose originality and hitherto unquestioned greatness had been disparaged. He had been at pains to point out at the end of his book that the poetic glory of Dante was in no way compromised by the close, continuous, and fundamental dependence which he believed he had found between Dante's vision of the other world and Islamic eschatology; even so, Italian pride in the absolute originality of the sacred poem had been hurt, and this, Asin thought, more than any other motive, had inspired the Italian reaction.

The Alleged Babylonian Discovery of the Precession of the Equinoxes

1. HISTORIANS constantly face two closely related problems: to make new textual material available and to destroy generally accepted theories. The present paper is concerned with the latter aspect, in the case of the more and more frequently quoted statement that the Babylonian astronomer Kidinnu was the discoverer of the precession of the equinoxes and that this event can be dated in 379 B. c., thus antedating Hipparchus by about two and one-half centuries. It may seem as if we were dealing here with one of those questions of priority which are of very little significance. Actually the problem has wider implications. It is closely related to the problem of the date of origin of Babylonian mathematical astronomy, which exercised a deep influence on Greek astronomy and its continuation in the Middle Ages. It is furthermore of importance for the evaluation of Babylonian astronomy and the mutual role of observation versus theory during the Seleucid period. Consequently it seems to me worth while to discuss in some detail the above-mentioned theory (which was developed by Schnabel in 1923 and 1927) and to demonstrate that none of the arguments on which it was based can be upheld. I hasten to add that I do not have the slightest interest in questions of personal or national glory and that I see no special merit in restoring to Hipparchus the priority which he held before Schnabel's publications; nor do I pretend to know now more about the history of precession than one knew 50 years ago. As a matter of fact, I shall mention at the end a short notice from Theon Alexandrinus which makes the early history more difficult than ever. I have tried to make the following discussion as non-technical as possible. The reader who is familiar with the methods of ancient astronomy will

The Secret of National Glory

The Secret of National Glory

The Apocalypse of John: II. The Thought, Style, and Method of Apocalyptic

Apocalyptic flourished after prophecy had declined. Prophecy was at its best in the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries B. c.; apocalyptic reached its zenith in the second and first centuries B. c. and the first century A. D. An interval of three hundred years witnessed the decline of prophecy and the rise of apocalyptic. The change was due to the incoming of legalism. The period following the Exile was chiefly marked by the codification of the national law, the canonization of the Pentateuch, the inauguration of professional study and interpretation of the law, and the establishment of local synagogues among the people for instructing them in the law and inculcating obedience. Ezra (fl. 458 B. c.) was the founder and leader of this new era,2 but Ezekiel the prophet-priest more than a century before in Babylon had been its precursor. The priests' code, comprising a portion of Exodus and Numbers and the whole of Leviticus, grew up through the sixth century in Babylon chiefly, and was carried to Judea by Ezra. The nation, under the political suzerainty of Persia, became a hierarchy. Priests, with their law and ritual, dominated Jewish life. No wonder that prophetism declined; it was stifled by literalism and ceremonialism. Nevertheless, the dreams of future national glory revived, and in the second century B. c. flourished, in another form and under another

Life and Naval Career of Admiral Sir Richard J. Strachan, Baronet, G.C.B.

The duties required of a captain of the navy during the Continental war, at the beginning of the present century, were peculiarly difficult. They often involved questions of great national importance, which required intelligence, judgment, and energy, not always united in the same person. On the possessors of such qualities we look back with pride and satisfaction, as to them we owe our high position among the nations. Similar occasions may not again occur for developing such qualities. International and maritime law is now more correctly defined, and the same scope is not given to commanders of iron-clads, as to those who commanded wooden ships. The latter depended on their sailing qualities and power of manoeuvring; the former have only to find out the weak parts of their antagonists, and by the weight of artillery to send their opponents to the bottom. But while these changes in ships have taken place, the race of seamen continues the same. The like courage remains, ready to fight the country's battles and to gain victories, as in former days, when the sailor was prepared to undergo every hardship, and with calmness and sagacity to take advantage of every passing event for maintaining the national glory.

Jeremiah Horrox

I.IF national glory can ever be connected with a natural phenomenon, the transit of Venus over the sun's disc may be said to bring peculiar distinction to England. It is in a manner inscribed upon one of the most brilliant pages of our naval history; it led to some of the most remarkable discoveries for which mankind is indebted to our geographical enterprise, and made the renown of our most famous navigator. A hundred and thirty years before Cook, the phenomenon itself, was, for the first time in human history, accurately observed in a corner of England, by an English youth, self-taught, and provided with few of the appliances of scientific research. Now that the spectacle, so striking in itself, so sublime in the infrequent regularity of its recurrence, so important as the key to numerous astronomical problems, is again attracting the attention of civilised mankind, now that the expanse of ocean from Honolulu to Kerguelen's Land is about to be dotted with watchers from the other side of the earth, the occasion appears favourable for recalling the memory of the original observer, Jeremiah Horrox, curate of Hoole, near Preston, in his day one of the most insignificant of English hamlets.

On Fuel: its Nature, Value, and Application

Although England has derived great part of her national glory from the fact of her being situated near the centre of the earth’s civilization, and from her insular position affording capabilities for commerce which the extreme richness of her soil enables her to originate and support, yet there is one condition of her political power, the absence of which has caused nations, otherwise similarly endowed, to fall far short of our own both in agricultural and manufacturing development. This condition it is my object in this paper to bring in detail more prominently before you. I allude to the existence of large, almost illimitable, resources of fuel. Whether the processes of manufacture, the operations of agriculture, or the facilities for speedy transit of manufactured products from different parts of our own, or the most distant of foreign countries, are conceived to be the chief agents in the advancement of our national prosperity, in all and each we cannot but recognise the absolute necessity, everywhere so strikingly manifest, of an abundant and economical production of artificial heat. In nature, heat appears as an universally distributed vivifying and fructifying principle; and in art the elimination of force is almost equally dependent on its presence. The following remarks will, however, illustrate more clearly the different applications of which it is capable. I propose first to consider the nature of the different fuels in common use; and, secondly, to ascertain the relative economic value of each, concluding with deducing from such values a few ...