WARFARE, COMPETITION, AND THE DURABILITY OF ‘POLITICAL SMALLNESS’ IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BUSOGA

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM FITZSIMONS

AbstractMost scholarship on the military history of precolonial Africa focuses on state-level conflict, drawing on examples such as the Asante, Buganda, Zulu, and Kongo kingdoms. The current article instead examines connections between warfare and political history in the politically fragmented setting of nineteenth-century Busoga, Uganda, where a small geographical region hosted more than fifty micro-kingdoms competing as peer polities. Using sources that include a rich corpus of oral traditions and early archival documents, this article offers a reconstruction of military practices and ideologies alongside political histories of important Busoga kingdoms during the long nineteenth century. The article argues that routine political destabilization caused by competition between royal leaders, combined with shifting interests of commoner soldiers, continuously reconstituted a multi-polar power structure throughout the region. This approach moves beyond assessing the role of warfare in state formation to ask how military conflict could be a creative force in small-scale politics as well.

Author(s):  
Александр Каменский

The history of suicide in Russia, especially prior to the nineteenth century, remains understudied. While in most European countries the process of decriminalization and secularization of suicide was underway, in Russia, with the introduction of the Military Article of 1715, it was formally criminalized. On the basis of the study of more than 350 newly examined archival cases, this article examines how the transfer of suicide investigations to secular authorities also entailed secularization, while the peculiarities of the Russian judicial and investigative system, as well as lacunae in the legislation, actually led to the gradual decriminalization of suicide. At the same time, although among Russians, as well as among other peoples, a number of superstitions were associated with suicide, there is no evidence in the archival documents studied in this article of a particularly emotional perception of suicide. The phenomenon of suicide in eighteenth-century Russia, when compared to early modern Europe, did not have any significant, fundamental differences. However, the features of the Russian judicial-investigative system made this phenomenon less public, less visible and less significant for public consciousness.  


2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-297
Author(s):  
C. Martín Albaladejo ◽  
F. Carmona Vivar

Using the Sixth International Congress of Entomology (Madrid, 1935) as an example, we present a representative case of science as a social construct and its importance to the history of the winning side of a war to construct a memory that supports its own version of events. The Congress was held prior to the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939); however, the proceedings were not published until 1940. An examination of the proceedings and of archival documents show the exclusion of contributions initially intended for publication, particularly those by Spanish entomologists who were politically aligned with the Second Spanish Republic, the losing side, and who, as a result, suffered reprisals after the military conflict. These documents suggest that their contributions were rejected for reasons unrelated to their scientific investigations but due to the political inclinations of the editor.


Author(s):  
Angela V. Dolgova

During the Civil War, Soviet workers had to fight against desertion and banditry. Since the majority of the country’s population was the peasantry, a confrontation arose with the Soviet government of that part of it that could not accept it. More often than not, peasants fell under such Bolshevik propaganda labels as “white gangs” or “gangs of deserters”, which had spread through the efforts of the party-Soviet propaganda machine. According to archival documents, local Soviet workers used terror not only to suppress resistance, but also as a forced measure caused by the real military-political situation in the Perm Governorate. The fight for the establishment of the power of the Soviets was fought against banditry, not desertion, and was fierce. Consequently, the widespread thesis in the history of the Civil War in the Perm Governorate about mass desertion is nothing more than an assumption. The line of the Eastern Front passed next to the Osinsky District, so the most fierce fight unfolded here, which in turn had an impact on the military-political situation in the governorate as a whole.


2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes W. Hofmeyr

Met die 450e herdenking van die Heidelbergse Kategismus as vertrekpunt, word met die huidige en die vorige artikel gepoog om lig te werp op die plek, die rol en die interpretasie van die opstanding van Jesus Christus in veral Sondag 17 en 22, spesifiek in die konteks van twee besondere eras in die Nederduitse Gereformeerde (NG) Kerk. In die vorige artikel is allereers ’n bespreking gevoer oor die Heidelbergse Kategismus (HK). Daar is gekyk na die resepsie van die betrokke HK-geloofsartikels in die era van Andrew Murray, spesifiek teen die agtergrond van die negentiende-eeuse liberale teologie in Nederland. In die huidige artikel word soortgelyk gekyk na die resepsie van die betrokke HK-geloofsartikels in die NG Kerk na 2000, teen die agtergrond van die herverskyning van die negentiende-eeuse liberale teologie in die vorm van die Jesus Seminaar, die Nuwe Hervorming en ondersteuners daarvan binne die NG Kerk. Sowel die negentiende-eeuse liberale stryd in die NG Kerk asook die stryd oor die opstanding in die NG Kerk van die eerste dekade van die een-en-twintigste eeu, soos verder in hierdie artikel sal blyk, was gekenmerk deur kontekstueelbepaalde uniekhede. Die gemene deler was dat albei deel was van tye van teologiese vrysinnigheid. In die lig van hierdie bespreking word tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat die NG Kerk tans, betreffende haar identiteit as gereformeerde kerk waarskynlik in ’n kritieke geloofs- en toekomskrisis verkeer. Dit impliseer kommerwekkende gevolge vir haar Skrifverstaan en getuienis as belydenis en belydende kerk van Jesus Christus en haar toekoms. Alleen duidelike visie, verantwoordelike leierskap en ’n herontdekking van die verlossingskrag van Christus se kruis en opstanding sal herstellende, positiewe en dinamiese oplossings kan bied om sodoende die NG Kerk te red van ’n snelwentelende afwaartse spiraal.With the 450th celebrations of the origin of the Heidelberg Catechism (HC) in mind, the main aim of this and the previous article is to focus on the place, role and interpretation of the doctrine of the resurrection in HC (Sunday 17 and 22), within two very specific and critical eras in the history of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) in South Africa. The first article focused on the reception of the HC in the time of Andrew Murray during the nineteenth century, and specifically against the background of the then liberal theology in both the Netherlands and South Africa. In this current article I look at the reception of the same HC articles (Sunday 17 and 22) in the DRC after 2000, against the background of the reappearance of the nineteenth century liberal theology in the Netherlands, and specifically with reference to the Jesus Seminar, the New Reformation and those sympathetic to the latter in the DRC. Both these nineteenth- and twenty-first-century developments had their own unique contexts but what they had in common were a specific theological liberal mindset. In view of this discussion it is concluded that the DRC as a reformed church is not only caught up in an identity crisis, but even in a survival crisis of no small proportions. This also has serious implications for its use of Scripture and its confessional character. Only strong vision, able leadership and a rediscovery of the redeeming power of the cross and resurrection of Christ will be able to provide a remedial, positive, and dynamic solution, saving the DRC from an ever downward spiral.


Author(s):  
Charissa J. Threat

This chapter traces the early evolution of nursing from the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth century, with particular emphasis on how nursing care became both gendered and racialized in civilian society. Focusing on the history of the Army Nurse Corps (ANC), it explores the relationship between the military and civilian populace to illuminate trends in nursing practices, debates about work, and concerns about war taking place in the larger civil society. It also examines how war and military nursing needs shaped the evolution of the modern nursing profession and how nursing became embroiled in the politics of intimate care, along with the implications for gender roles and race relations that permeated social relationships and interactions in civilian society. The chapter points to the Civil War as the transformative moment in the history of nursing in the United States, moving nursing from an unpaid obligation to a paid occupation. Finally, it discusses the impact of the introduction of formal nurse training during the last quarter of the nineteenth century on African American nurses.


1996 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 87-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Jansen

For the reconstruction of the history of the aftermath of the Mali empire, that is, the period 1500-1800, oral traditions are the only source of information. The history of this period has been reconstructed by Person and Niane. Their work has gained widespread acceptance. In this paper I will argue that these scholars made significant methodological errors—in particular, in interpreting chronology in genealogies, and their reading of stories about invasions and the seizure of power by younger brothers.My reading of the oral tradition raises questions about the nature of both sixteenth- and nineteenth-century Mande (that is the triangle Bamako-Kita-Kankan (see map), the region where the ‘Malinke’ live), and the medieval Mali empire, because I think that Mande royal genealogies have wrongly been considered to represent claims to the imperial throne of the Mali empire. In contrast, my reading of oral tradition suggests in retrospect that the organizational structure of the Mali empire may have been segmentary, and not centralized, ranking between segments under discussion, each group thereby creating a hierarchical image.The conventional wisdom seems to be that the Mali empire collapsed/disintegrated in the period from 1500 and 1800. As Person put it:Dans le triangle malinké, on ne trouvera plus au XIX siècle que des kafu, ces petites unités étatiques qui forment les cellules politiques fondamentales du monde mandingue. Certains d'entre eux savaient faire reconnaître leur hégémonie à leurs voisins, mais aucune structure politique permante n'existait à un niveau supérieur. Beaucoup d'entre eux, dont les plus puissants et les plus peuplés, seront alors commandées par des lignées Kééta qui se réclament avec quelque vraisemblance des empereurs du Mali médiéval.


1992 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Priscilla Smith Naro

The transition from slave to free labor in the Americas involved many and varied forms of internal labor and land adjustments which affected slaves, landless farmers, and large scale producers in rural areas. Unlike Haiti and the United States South, the Brazilian process of emancipation was gradual and did not involve violent structural ruptures with the past. The Land Law of 1850, the Law of the Free Womb of 1871 and the 1885 Sexagenarian Law marked fundamental phases in an ongoing process of state participation in the organization of the free labor market, which culminated in Abolition on 13 May 1888, and the onset of the Republic on 15 November of the following year. Current analyses of the late nineteenth century emphasize continuity and define the state as its own agent, embarking on a course of conservative modernization which unfolded during the process of transition from the liberalism of a nineteenth-century empire to the interventionist Republic which was ushered in, in 1889. The planter class, joined with emerging but weak Brazilian industrial and financial sectors and upheld by the military, contributed to an Estado Oligárquico, in Marcelo Carmagnani's terminology, linked by coffee production into the world economy as a flourishing dependent peripheral economy. But the process, which until recently was associated with the coffee export sector and its relation to urbanization and industrialization, has now taken on broader dimensions. A developed domestic economy, composed of a complex and sophisticated internal food supply network, operated alongside the export economy throughout the nineteenth century. Although unstudied from the political perspective of small-scale food producers who were displaced by the coffee economy, the broader issue of food provision could not be dissociated from conservative modernization, the basic issues of which would be carried forth during the course of the First Republic in the form of “Ruralismo.”


1990 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas M. Peers

The history of the East India Company's rule of India is marked by sporadic outbursts of civil-military conflict. It was not unknown in India for European officers to down tools and commit acts that bordered on outright mutiny. Perhaps this could be expected when, on the one hand, the Company, as a commercial body, sought to maximize its profits, while on the other, the army was essentially a mercenary force, ever grasping for a larger slice of the fiscal pie. If, however, we penetrate deeper into the labyrinth of their relations, we find that the issues at stake lose their simplicity. In the early nineteenth century, a third group came into play, further confusing the state of civil-military relations in India. The Anglo-Indian bureaucracy, which had incorporated military attitudes into the operating system of British India, had begun to assert itself. Through such spokesmen as Thomas Munro, John Malcolm, Charles Metcalfe and Mountstuart Elphinstone, an increasingly militarized rule of British India was put forward, angering the court of directors and allowing the officers to mask their private interest under the guise of the national interest. This ideology of militarism, however, must be firmly placed within the context of nineteenth-century British India for it bore little resemblance to those strains of militarism witnessed elsewhere.


1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 29-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz A. J. Szabo

The Habsburg monarchy was never a major sea power, and for most of its four centuries of existence it had no substantial navy at all. Especially before the nineteenth century the history of Habsburg naval armaments, therefore, is of little interest to the military specialist and more significant as a footnote to the domestic political history of the monarchy. At no time was this more the case than during the reign of Maria Theresa (1740–1780). From a military point of view the naval projects of this period could furnish, at best, the plot of an opera buffa, but from an administrative and economic point of view they highlight some of the most fundamental problems of enlightened absolutism in Austria.


2020 ◽  
pp. 97-101
Author(s):  
T.V. Tishkina

The process of forming the fund and the features of the military-historical exposition of the Museum of History of Education in Barnaul is considered. The institution has been operating since 2008 under the direction of O.V. Kakotkina. Museum Fund it is more than 12, 5 thousand of items. Considerable attention has been paid to manning collections reflecting wartime events. The article analyzes the exposition of the hall “Education in Barnaul during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945)”. The museum staff and artist-designer N.A. Burdina carried out the exposition. When creating the exposition, the principles of scientificness, subjectivity and communication are observed. Over 230 exhibits are presented in the sections of the exposition: letters, photos, awards, archival documents, household items 1930-1940, artifacts obtained as a result of excavations at battlefields in the Novgorod region, etc. A variety of modern museum equipment was used to accommodate them. About 7000 people visit the museum annually. They get acquainted with the exposition of the hall during museum or in their own. It is noted that the activities of the museum are important for the preservation, study and promotion of the heritage of Barnaul educators.


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