National History Research Articles

Weathered remains: Bioarchaeology, identity, and the landscape

AbstractThis article explores the making of identity for two sets of human skeletal remains, labeled 1928 Hurricane Victims 1 and 2 Belle Glade. The remains are so poorly preserved that traditional bioarchaeological analysis to explore their perimortem identity is not possible. However, an exploration of their postmortem identity allows us to examine the relationship between landscape, soil, memory, and bodies in bioarchaeology. This article challenges us to consider how bioarchaeology “makes” identity. It does so against the backdrop of one of the worst natural history disasters in United States history, the 1928 Lake Okeechobee Hurricane in Belle Glade, Florida. The loss of some 2,000 to 3,000 individuals in one night, primarily Black migrant farm laborers, is little remembered in national history, but it profoundly shaped the region, and contributes to an ongoing creation of a category of skeletal remains found in the area even today and labeled hurricane victims.

I giorni dell’alluvione in Romagna. Riflessioni tra storia e orografia del territorio

The flood that hit Romagna on 16 May was an environmental disaster without precedent, in terms of gravity and scale, in national history. The article explores a chronicle of those days, attempting to provide a historical perspective, in an area that is largely the result of reclamation works, built with the labour of farm workers and resting on a precarious balance that must be protected.

Global Perspectives: Navigating the Diverse Terrain of Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) acts as a conduit for corporations to merge business practices with ethical considerations, extending their purview beyond mere profit accumulation. The goal is to offer a thorough overview of CSR's progression and transformation, tracing its journey from an initial focus on a restricted set of stakeholders to a more expansive and globally impactful perspective. This exploration delves into the evolving nature of the concept, expanding from its initial localized emphasis to encompass a diverse spectrum of stakeholders. CSR's explicit mandate is to achieve enhanced management of all stakeholders, fostering increased accountability. Whether grounded in philanthropy or directed towards transparency, ethics, or community well-being, CSR places emphasis on environmental, social, and economic dimensions. While these dimensions take precedence for virtually all nations, the specific focal points vary, influenced by factors such as national history, policies, laws, and public preferences. This paper seeks to delve into the essence of CSR, subsequently investigating its presence and significance in both developed and developing nations. Significantly, distinctions in the role of governments regarding CSR activities come to light when contrasting developed and developing countries. The paper constitutes a reflective and comparative examination, drawing insights from diverse existing research literature across various countries globally.

‘Wider than the realm of England’: the Hosack family heritage, Atlantic slavery and casting Mary, Queen of Scots for the nation

In 1871 the Scottish-born magistrate John Hosack (1809–87) was described as ‘the chivalrous and most recent defender’ of Mary, Queen of Scots. After writing a popular historical account of her life, he had presented a plaster cast bust of her Westminster effigy to London’s National Portrait Gallery, which it then used to create an electrotype sculpture with the help of Elkington & Co. This article interrogates the ‘value’ of this sculpture as a cultural heritage object by retracing its history. It places Hosack’s desire to replicate and commemorate Scottish heritage alongside his family ties to Jamaica, including the parallel life of his half-brother William and the wealth John derived from his father’s sugar profits, which relied on African enslavement. It argues the importance of understanding how such legacies enabled individuals to participate in cultural philanthropy in the Victorian period, which simultaneously distanced them from their Atlantic pasts. It also considers how, in its transformation into an electrotype, Hosack’s cast became part of a wider effort by museums and galleries to replicate national heritage using manufacturing methods indebted to the industrial economy intertwined with the British Empire. Sculpture offered a powerful medium through which to fortify national history, but its commemorative capacity can, and should, be unpicked to better understand British legacies of enslavement and colonialism.

Damnations of Memory: Monument Attacks in the United States, 2015–2021

The United States is in the midst of a struggle over how to remember national history. Since the mid-2010s, much of this struggle has focused on historic monuments. No other country has seen as many monument attacks, renamings, and removals as the United States in this period. This article explores whether monument attacks are an acting out of value conflicts. The distinction between “heroic” and “wounded” modes of remembering the past helps to understand attackers’ motivations. The author compares three types of attacks: 1) on monuments that represent racism, slavery, and white supremacy; 2) monuments associated with violence against Native Americans; and 3) the storming of the u.s. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Freud defined “acting out” (abagieren) as a form of nonverbal working through of past conflicts. Instead of a conscious remembering, a suppressed affect is acted out by repeating it (Wiederholung). The more that conscious remembering is repressed, the stronger the will to act out. This article argues that acting out is a failed attempt at resolving value conflicts.

Vlast' svetskaya i cerkovnaya: cezarepapistskij konflikt v Rossii XX v.

The article examines the experience of research in the current historiography of the relationship between secular and ecclesiastical authorities. Their clash in the modern history of Russia (in the events of the revolution of the early 20th century) is described as a Caesarepapist conflict that came at the stage of active modernization and revolutionization of public consciousness. The change of the state system entailed the rejection of a number of traditional public institutions, including the ''dominant Orthodoxy''. Historiographical interpretations of this conflict, which is significant for national history and self-consciousness, influence modern research discourses and self-identification of governmental and confessional institutions, the practice of their appeal to historical experience, defining the modern narrative of state-church relations in Russia of the 20th century.

A Spectral Archive: Mona Kareem's Feminist Imaginary in Ināth al-Ashbāḥ (Femme Ghosts)

Abstract: In this article I explore Mona Kareem's visionary feminism in her trilingual poetry collection Ināth al-Ashbāḥ ( Femme Ghosts ) (2019). I intervene in the classist colonial logic embraced by contemporary liberal feminism in Kuwait by offering a critical alternative in Kareem's poetics of the body. The article examines Kareem's engagement with the gendered, classed, and racialized body as a site of knowledge production that proves illegible to the oil-producing state. It argues that Kareem expresses a "spectral archive" from the embodied knowledge of marginalization in her poems "Eulogies for Futures to Come/Marthiyāt al-'uyūn" ("Who Hide Their Eyes"). The spectral archive is a haunting literary site of knowledge which exposes the violence of systemic oppression and exceeds nativist narratives of subjectivity constructed by official national history. It emerges in her deployment of the speculative, emphasis on the tension between the corporeal and the spectral, experimentation with poetic form and translation practices, and positing queerness as a liminal process of detaching normative gender from sex assigned at birth. The spectral archive underscores the failure of sovereign standards of subjectivity to grasp the role of feminist poetics in creating transformative imaginaries, it represents a new ethical approach to feminist discourse on social justice in Kuwait.

A Waldensian Pastor Between the Confessional Myth and National Genealogy History and Religious Reform in Emilio Comba (1839–1904)

AbstractEmilio Comba, a leading Waldensian historian in the nineteenth century, was a strong advocate for nation-building in post-unification Italy. This article examines the relationship between Comba's “making Italians” endeavors and his historical writings, focusing mainly on his appropriation of the preceding confessional framework. As a fervent nationalist and evangelical pastor, Comba believed that true Risorgimento required not only political independence but also a religious reform of the Italian nation that would restore Italians to the original Religion of Christ. He envisioned this national reform as a realization of both liberty and the Gospel within the universal history of the Christian religion. Comba employed historical writings to support his claims, attempting to demonstrate how Italy was a perennially Protestant nation on the one hand and to serve as a magistra vitae for fellow citizens on the other. This article argues that Comba relied on a genealogical narrative structure inherited from the early modern protestant historiography in presenting his national history. By recasting its composition according to a category of the nation, he transformed a confessional genealogy of the true church into a national one. From a broader perspective, this article calls for further reflection on the role that the early modern intellectual framework played in the process of modern nation-building.

Envisioning the Revolution: Art and the Creation of Mexico’s Communist Party

Abstract This article analyzes the interactions of artists, Mexico’s Communist Party, or the Partido Comunista Mexicano (pcm), and the Mexican state within the context of Mexico’s vibrant post-revolutionary era. Although during these early years the Party’s official membership numbers remained relatively minimal, this article argues that the extraordinary influence of Mexico’s creative participants on the politics of the period was significant. During the 1920s the pcm derived a great deal of prestige from its association with art and the muralists, including Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, and as a result Mexico’s lively political and artistic scene attracted the attention of writers, photographers, artists, and intellectuals from all over the world. Art and politics intertwined as artists played major roles in political affairs, and politicians appropriated the arts to transmit the “official” national history. Indeed, during these exhilarating years, the artists and the pcm built a powerful coalition, and one whose influence endured long beyond the 1920s.

Inscription on the Monument in honor of Möngke qaghan 1257 in Mongolia: Interpretation and analysis of the Chinese text

In 2022, the Chinggis Khan Museum in Ulaanbaatar installed a new exhibit — The Stela “释迦院碑” (Monument from the Shakya Pavilion), which dates back to 1257. It was transported from the National History Museum, where it came after careful study back in 1956. Now, more than 65 years later, Mongolian scientists have resumed the study of inscriptions on this Stela. The text includes 3 lines of Old Mongolian and 12 lines of Chinese (wenyan), the 10th line is mostly damaged. So far, 263 characters have been recognized. The content of the text is attractive from a cultural and historical point of view, and has a clear Buddhist orientation with references to Confucian and Taoist ideas. In addition, this monument contains important information on the history and religion of the Oirats in the middle of the 13th century. It is interesting that the inscription has not attracted the attention of Russian researchers and was practically not mentioned in related works. This article presents a translation-interpretation of the Chinese text into Russian with comments.

The Role of Yusuf Akçura in the Formation of Turkish National Historiography

This article discusses the formation of Yusuf Akçura as a professional historian and one of the founders of the Turkish national historiography in the Republican period. Researchers of his works used to focus on his socio-political activities, educational and public work. His role as one of the first Turkish historiographers, who took seriously the idea of the Turkic origin of the Turkish nation, remains still understudied basically. It is noteworthy that he stood at the foundations of the official concept of national history after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Akçura succeeded to include (pre-)modern history of the Turkic peoples of Eurasia in the Thesis on Turkish History (see: [Türk Tarihinin Ana Hatları, 1930]), which became the basis of the official historiography in Republican Turkey. As is known, M. K. Ataturk noticed him and introduced him into the group of the new Turkish political elite charged to formulate the official republican historical and educational discourse in the early 1930s. It was because of Akçura’s works, that history of the Turks began to be studied and taught in Republican Turkey.

Patterns of Plunder: Corruption and the Failure of the Indian Reservation System, 1851–1887

Abstract Between the reservation system’s creation in 1851 and its partial dismantling in the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887, the Office (now Bureau) of Indian Affairs tasked Indian agents with administering a complicated mixture of goods and services known as “annuities,” which were designed to make reservations viable and survivable for Native people. This article demonstrates that Indian agents instead systematically swindled Native people of their promised payments, intensifying crippling poverty at a crucial moment in Native history and deepening a climate of distrust and acrimony across much of the American West. Rather than strengthening Native communities, federal expenditures enriched the settler communities that surrounded them, becoming in effect a backdoor subsidy for westward expansion and a key source of economic power in frontier communities. Meanwhile, the supposed failure of reservations to become economically viable in these early decades provided justification for reformers who sought to impose more coercive forms of control and assimilation on Native people, such as boarding schools and land allotment. By focusing on the financial workings of the underexamined early reservation period, this article demonstrates how corruption in the Office of Indian Affairs shaped both Native American and western history in profound and irreversible ways.

Development of higher education in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Historical and statistical analysis

The article presents the development of higher education in Bosnia and Herzegovina from its first serious beginnings after the Second World War until today. Considering the modest foundations of education in general, its highest level is an expression of the entire socio-historical development. The specific geographical position caused the intertwining of different influences from the East and the West on the soil of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This was also reflected in different approaches to education during the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and later the two Yugoslavias, up to today's independent state. These conceptions had their consequences in the development of education and society's attitude towards it. However, the period after the Second World War proved to be the most intense due to the parallel work on the fast elimination of the problems of illiteracy, the lack of schools, teaching staff and the availability of education to the masses. Therefore, the radical social transformation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was particularly noticeable in the field of education. The basic source of data is official statistics from the era of Yugoslavia and contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina. Data from the two entities and the Brčko district were combined when possible. The most important author's publications, regional and foreign, which can contribute to a better knowledge of this topic, were consulted as well. Emphasis is placed on the change in the total number of students and the participation of the male and female population in this cycle of education. Some specific tendencies were noticed. The first is a negative downward trend occurred after achieving historical growth in the number of students. In this way is represented the gradual change in the educational structure of this age group. At the end of the observed period, it is visibly different compared to the initial state. Different factors have had an impact in different periods. First of all, these are the (un)availability of education for women and the weakness of school infrastructure. Today's values are the result of negative demographic trends such as declining birth rates and migration. What unites all periods are the consequences of the direct war losses of the population. The results in the previous decade are still at a high level compared to the Yugoslav period. However, Bosnia and Herzegovina still lags behind other countries in the region. Moreover, its results are barely more than half of the European average. Slower growth, and later a decrease in the number of students shows a long-term lack of interest in higher education among this part of the population. This is why the gender gap is widening. Considering the essential role of education in the progress of society as a whole, the development of higher education contributes to a large extent to the better living standard of the population, creating the necessary preconditions for different social relations. In the first place, there is an improved position of women due to greater economic independence. The scientific contribution of this work is not negligible either, and is reflected in pointing out numerous research opportunities. At the first place, there is an interdisciplinary connection of history, geography (demography) and sociology. On the basis of demographic data, it is possible to draw historical conclusions explained by sociological laws and phenomena. Further, the change of focus from political to social topics could be a small incentive for future research on national history. Moreover, this approach enables comparisons at various levels: from local, through national to regional, and beyond. Transnational connections established in this way can be a new form of consensus on important topics. In this way, the place of a society in the world is determined and the necessary objective idea of its abilities and problems is acquired.

The digital numismatics research development in Ukraine (2013-2021)

The significance of this historiographical study lies in the need to summarise the preliminary results of numismatic scientific thought development in the field of digitalisation and to determine further prospects for both digitalisation itself and scientific directions for its study. The research objective was to systematise and review the Ukrainian historiography concerning the use of modern technologies and general digitalisation processes in numismatic science during the period from 2013 to 2021: a crucial period from the beginning of the publication of the first works in this research area in Ukraine to its full institutionalisation and integration into international cooperation. The work was written using critical, comparative, evolutionary historiographical research methods and meta-analysis of sources, which allowed to determine the direction of the scientists’ interests and general trends in the digitalisation study development in numismatics. In the study process the author conducted a historiographical analysis of the national scholars’ works on the problems of numismatic digitalisation in 2013- 2021 in order to identify the views and changes related to the problem under study and to draw balanced and reasonable conclusions. The conducted study results showed that during mentioned period not only the Ukrainian scientific numismatic community prestige increased, but also new knowledge was formed, new methods and approaches in the numismatics study were rethought and formed. The study results demonstrated the importance of incorporating digital tools into the numismatists’ scientific practice, and specific recommendations for future research in this area are developed, considering its role in expanding opportunities for domestic research in the field of numismatics. The relevance and expediency of using specialised Internet sources for numismatic research, as well as their role in revealing new facts about the history of coinage and money circulation, were emphasised. The article analysed scientific publications that emphasise the importance of having official and properly structured resources that could serve as a basis for further research. The practical value lies in the possibility of applying the results and recommendations of the research in planning the topics of further numismatic and historiographical research, preparing lectures on the national numismatics history

Formation of a Document Fund in the Languages of the Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia, and the Far East

The main mission of the National Library of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is the formation of the documentary heritage of the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East. The document fund in the languages of the indigenous peoples of the North of the National Library of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) was formed from publications in five languages: Even, Evenki, Yukagir, Chukchi and Dolgan. The main principle by which the library fund was completed was an exhaustive collection of all published documents. The history of the book fund in the languages of the peoples of the North is divided into five chronological periods. The first period (1812—1917) is associated with the activities of the Russian Orthodox mission. The second (1918—1960) includes the creation of the Committee of the North (1924), the opening of the library (1925) and the beginning of the introduction of universal primary education in Yakutia. At that time, the People’s Commissariat of Education of the Yakut ASSR published and distributed the first ABC books for adults. The third period (1961—1990) was marked by the problem of publishing literature in the languages of the Evens, Yukagirs and Chukchi. In total, 3—5 books were published in the Even language per year, literature in other languages of the peoples of the North was not published. Languages were on the verge of extinction, there were no necessary conditions for their preservation. The fourth period (1991—2020) is associated with the completely destroyed book supply system in the early 1990s, the beginning of the commercialization of publishing. In 1990, the library was returned to the national status, which played a positive role in the formation of national and local history documents. The modern stage of the development of the book fund in the languages of the peoples of the North began in 2021, when the “Strategy for the Development of Librarianship in the Russian Federation for the period up to 2030” was adopted, which fixed the main tasks, directions and measures of state policy in the field of librarianship. In July 2022 The Government of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) has approved the “Strategy for the Development of Librarianship in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) for the period up to 2032”, which defines the main tasks for the formation of a depository storage fund for documents in the languages of all indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East. As of January 1, 2023, the document fund in the languages of the peoples of the North numbered 2,659 copies. Work continues to preserve the documentary heritage of the small peoples of the North. The electronic library of the National Library of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is being developed, and the digital project “Knigakan: about the Arctic and the indigenous peoples of the North” is being implemented as part of it. The digital library of the indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East “Knigakan” currently has 2,760 digitized documents that are in great demand among readers. The electronic publishing house of the National Library of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) plans to publish books in all languages of the small peoples of the North, including endangered languages, and preserve them for future generations. The long-term task is to create a depository storage fund for documents in the languages of all indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East. This project should intensify efforts to preserve and ensure free access to the documentary heritage of indigenous minorities, the development of linguistic and cultural diversity of the peoples of Russia.

From Books to Airplanes: The Materiality of Global and Urban Entanglements

The articles in this special section employ histories of cities to examine the relationship between human ambitions and the transformation of space, the development of power discrepancies, and unequal access to material and natural resources. They also reveal the relevance of this quintessential human creation to global dynamics on our planet by unveiling the complex and often messy intersection between urban trajectories, local, imperial, or national histories and longue durée global developments. More than a case study, each article delves into the details of the materiality of the urban history they examine to explain how cities exist in the world, or in Richard Harris’s words, “how cities matter” to our shared planetary past and present. In this manner, they answer the call for new conversations about the historical relationship between our urban past and our broader global reality.

Finish—Spare the Shame: Realism of Hellish Quart and Alt-Sarmatian Ideology

This article provides in-depth analysis of Hellish Quart: a fighting game set in 17th century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and cherished for its realism, vis-a-vis Neosarmatian ideology of the Polish alt-right: the current iteration of centuries-old origin myth of Polish nobility. While we do not consider the game a willing participant in the proliferation of Alt-Sarmatian ideas, we claim the pervasiveness of Sarmatism within Polish national identity makes it difficult not to consider the conservative approach to national history a “realistic one.” In this article, we present the shortened history of both Sarmatian myth and the special place sabre-fighting occupies in Polish culture, and utilize them to understand ideological entanglement of the “realism” offered by Hellish Quart regarding the vision of the past and the mechanics of combat.

Prominent physician and manager of health care in the Crimea (on the 120th anniversary of the death of N.N. Betling)

The year 2022 marks the 120th anniversary of the death of Nikolai Nikolaevich Betling, one of the most prominent representatives of pre-revolutionary medicine in the Taurida Gubernia. For more than thirty years he was the head of the Taurida Gubernatorial Zemstvo Hospital, which he took over in a very difficult and crucial period — soon after it was transferred from the Prikaz Public Charity to the Taurida Gubernatorial Zemstvo. It was his efforts that laid the foundation for the development of not only the practical medicine of the region, but also the surgical research center of the Gubernia. For his outstanding contribution to medicine, Betling was awarded not only several orders, but also the title of honorary nobility, and after his death a street in Simferopol was named in his honour. However, over a century later, Betling’s legacy has been forgotten. Today Betling’s name is known only to some local historians and is practically not mentioned in scientific publications. The authors of the article analyzed pre-revolutionary literature sources and searched among archival documents, plans and photographs. Today, in the main building of the former hospital is a Department of Human Anatomy of Institute “Medical Academy named after S.I. Georgievsky”, where medical students of junior courses are trained. Resurrecting the memory of such figures of Medicine as Betling is a fertile ground for creating a sense of pride in the national history of Medicine among aspiring physicians.

Australia’s Presidents? Herbert Hoover and Lyndon B. Johnson Remembered

Among US presidents, Herbert Hoover and Lyndon Johnson had the strongest ties to Australia. Hoover spent over a year in Australia as a mining engineer before launching a career in international business, food relief, and politics. In 1942, LBJ passed part of his pre-presidential career in Australia. Yet Johnson’s presidential tour in 1966, coupled with his return in 1967, generated massive enthusiasm and modest protests against the Vietnam War. President Johnson’s visits helped to solidify and celebrate US-Australian ties while encouraging Australian independence, even if during a war directed from Washington. While Hoover left his mark on Australia’s landscape in the mines he promoted and the sites that still stand, Australians found little appealing in the dour, Depression-era president who had come and gone without regarding their country as a friend or ally. Johnson thus became a consequential figure in Australia’s national history in ways Hoover never did.

The ABC of history education: a comparison of Australian, British and Canadian approaches to teaching national and First Nations histories

PurposeThis essay engages with scholarship on history as a discipline, curriculum documents and academic and public commentary on the teaching of history in Australian, British and Canadian secondary contexts to better understand the influence of the tension between political pressure and disciplinary practice that drives the history wars in settler-colonial nations, how this plays out in secondary history classrooms and the ramifications this may have on students' democratic dispositions.Design/methodology/approachThis article aims to compare secondary history curricula and pedagogies in Australia, Britain and Canada to better articulate and conceptualise the influence of the “history wars” over the teaching of national histories upon the intended and enacted curriculum and how this contributes to the formation of democratic dispositions within students. A conceptual model, drawing on the curriculum assessment of Porter (2006) and Gross and Terra's definition of “difficult pasts” has been developed and used as the basis for this comparison. This model highlights the competing influences of political pressure upon curriculum creation and disciplinary change shaping pedagogy, and the impact these forces may have upon students' experience.FindingsThe debate around what content students learn, and why, is fraught because it is a conversation about what each nation values and how they construct their own national identity(ies). This is particularly timely when the democratic self-identification of many nations is being challenged. The seditious conspiracy to storm the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, Orban's “illiberal democracy” in Hungary and the neo-Nazis in Melbourne, Australia are examples of the rise of anti-democratic sentiment globally. Thus, new consideration of how we teach national histories and the impact this has on the formation of democratic dispositions and skills is pressing.Originality/valueThe new articulation of a conceptual model for the impact of the history wars on education is an innovative synthesis of wide-ranging research on: the impacts of neoliberalism and cultural restorationism upon the development of intended curriculum; discipline-informed inquiry pedagogies used to enact the curriculum; and the teaching of national narratives as a political act. This comprehensive comparison of the ways in which history education in settler-colonial nations has developed over time provides new insight into the common elements of national history education, and the role this education can play in developing democratic dispositions.