scholarly journals The Local versus the Global in the history of relativity: The case of Belgium

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-250
Author(s):  
Sjang L. ten Hagen

ArgumentThis article contributes to a global history of relativity, by exploring how Einstein’s theory was appropriated in Belgium. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, yet the early-twentieth-century Belgian context, because of its cultural diversity and reflectiveness of global conditions (the principal example being the First World War), proves well-suited to expose transnational flows and patterns in the global history of relativity. The attempts of Belgian physicist Théophile de Donder to contribute to relativity physics during the 1910s and 1920s illustrate the role of the war in shaping the transnational networks through which relativity circulated. The local attitudes of conservative Belgian Catholic scientists and philosophers, who denied that relativity was philosophically significant, exemplify a global pattern: while critics of relativity feared to become marginalized by the scientific, political, and cultural revolutions that Einstein and his theory were taken to represent, supporters sympathized with these revolutions.

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 22-33
Author(s):  
T.N. GELLA ◽  

The main purpose of the article is to analyze the views of a famous British historian G.D.G. Cole on the history of the British workers' and UK socialist movement in the early twentieth century. The arti-cle focuses on the historian's assessment and the reasons for the workers' strike movement intensi-fication on the eve of the First World War, the specifics of such trends as labourism, trade unionism and syndicalism.


1951 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-210
Author(s):  
Klemens von Klemperer

National Bolshevism represents a chapter in German-Russian relations since the First World War. As a policy advocating an Eastern orientation for Germany it is a most puzzling and at this day a very acute phenomenon. To those educated to observe the spectrum of political opinions in terms of Right and Left, with the extreme Right at the opposite end from the extreme Left, National Bolshevism seems a paradox. It suggests the meeting of extremes. More concretely the term stands for a rapprochement between German nationalism and Russian Communism. The story of National Bolshevism is the story of two “strange bedfellows.”In the effort to comprehend this upsetting pattern it might be recalled that modern psychology has in many ways succeeded in breaking down our traditional thinking about human relations. Love, for example, has lost its meaning apart from hate, which has become its alter ego. We might be tempted to translate this finding into political terms, and National Bolshevism would appear as an example of a political love-hate relationship. It might also be suggested that the further we get from the origins and die more insight we gain into die workings of die two twentieth century extremes — Fascism and Communism — the more we are struck by dieir affinities. We grant diat Fascism is nodiing more dian “doctrineless dynamism,” whereas Communism goes back to die solid doctrinaire structure of Marxism. And even through European history since 1917 often threatened to lead up to an ultimate conflict between Fascism and Communism, die “transmutation” through which Marxism has gone in modern Russia has brought it ironically close to Fascism. It has become increasingly evident that die fight between die two was a mere sham battle.


2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenda Sluga

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to restore the history of internationalism to our understanding of the legacy of the First World War, and the role of universities in that past. It begins by emphasising the war’s twin legacy, namely, the twin principles of the peace: national self-determination and the League of Nations. Design/methodology/approach It focuses on the intersecting significance and meaning attributed to the related terms patriotism and humanity, nationalism and internationalism, during the war and after. A key focus is the memorialization of Edith Cavell, and the role of men and women in supporting a League of Nations. Findings The author finds that contrary to conventional historical opinion, internationalism was as significant as nationalism during the war and after, thanks to the influence and ideas of men and women connected through university networks. Research limitations/implications The author’s argument is based on an examination of British imperial sources in particular. Originality/value The implications of this argument are that historians need to recover the international past in histories of nationalism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-83
Author(s):  
Seyyed Alireza Golshani ◽  
Mohammad Ebrahim Zohalinezhad ◽  
Mohammad Hossein Taghrir ◽  
Sedigheh Ghasempoor ◽  
Alireza Salehi

The Spanish Flu was one of the disasters in the history of Iran, especially Southern Iran, which led to the death of a significant number of people in Iran. It started on October 29, 1917, and lasted till 1920 – a disaster that we can claim changed the history. In one of the First World War battlefields in southern Iran in 1918, there was nothing left until the end of World War I and when the battle between Iranian warriors (especially people of Dashtestan and Tangestan in Bushehr, Arabs, and people of Bakhtiari in Khuzestan and people of Kazerun and Qashqai in Fars) and British forces had reached its peak. As each second encouraged the triumph for the Iranians, a flu outbreak among Iranian warriors led to many deaths and, as a result, military withdrawal. The flu outbreak in Kazerun, Firoozabad, Farshband, Abadeh, and even in Shiraz changed the end of the war. In this article, we attempt to discuss the role of the Spanish flu outbreak at the end of one of the forefronts of World War I.


Author(s):  
Н.Ю. Стоюхина ◽  
А.А. Костригин

Статья посвящена недостаточно изученному вопросу в истории российской психологии - деятельности отечественных психологов в годы Первой мировой войны. Авторы обобщили найденные на данный момент сведения о нахождении и роли разных психологов как в военных событиях, так и в научной и общественной жизни того времени. Представляются три группы персоналий в зависимости от того, в каком положении по отношению к военным действиям они оказались: участие в действующей армии; пребывание в Германии во время войны в качестве пленного гражданского лица; жизнь и научная деятельность в тылу. Среди психологов, которые служили в армии во время Первой мировой войны, рассматриваются биографические данные и воспоминания П.Н. Шефтеля, Г.Я. Трошина, В.Ф, Чижа, А.Б. Залкинда, И.А. Арямова, Л.Н. Войтоловского, А.А. Смирнова, Б.М. Теплова, М.Я. Басова, Л.А. Бызова, М.В. Шика. К группе психологов, которые оказались в Германии во время войны, относятся А.О. Маковельский, А.Ф. Лосев, И.Н. Шпильрейн, Н.Е. Румянцев. Описываются результаты научных событий, состоявшихся в России в годы Первой мировой войны, - Третий и Четвертый Всероссийские съезды по экспериментальной педагогике, исследовательские работы в Психологическом институте им. Л.Г. Щукиной, коллективные публикации. Отмечается, что обращение к деятельности психологов во время Первой мировой войны является важным с позиций не только истории психологии, но и исторической психологии: кроме изучения жизненного пути персоналий и анализа результатов научных исследований этого периода представляет интерес и описание образа и роли ученого в военное время, особенностей научной активности в военных условиях. Авторы статьи призывают профессиональное сообщество дополнить список персоналий, которые принимали участие в Первой мировой войне и на которых война оказала значимое влияние, и другими именами. The article is devoted to an insufficiently studied issue in the history of Russian psychology - the activities of Russian psychologists during the First World War. The authors summarized the information found to date about the location and role of various psychologists both in military events and in the scientific and social life of that time. Three groups of personalities are presented, depending on the position in which they found themselves in relation to military operations: participation in the active army; stay in Germany during the war as a captured civilian; life and scientific activities in the rear. Among psychologists who served in the army during the First World War, the authors describe the biographical data and memories of P.N. Sheftel, G. Ya. Troshin, V.F. Chizh, A.B. Zalkind, I.A. Aryamov, L.N. Voitolovsky, A.A. Smirnov, B.M. Teplov, M.Ya. Basov, L.A. Byzov, M.V. Shik. The group of psychologists who remained in Germany includes A.O. Makovelsky, A.F. Losev, I.N. Spielrein, N.E. Rumyantsev. The article describes the results of scientific events in Russia that took place during the First World War - the Third and Fourth All-Russian congresses on experimental pedagogy, research work at the Psychological institute named after L.G. Shchukina, collective publications. It is noted that the appeal to the activities of psychologists during the First World War is important from the standpoint of both history of psychology and historical psychology: in addition to studying the life path of personalities and analyzing the results of scientific research of this period, it is also of interest to describe the image and role of a scientist in wartime, features of scientific activity in war conditions. The authors of the article urge the professional community to add other names to the list of personalities who took part in the First World War and on whom the war had a significant impact.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Cole

No figure is more powerful as a symbol of mass warfare in the twentieth century than the civilian, whose vulnerability on a world scale challenges the moral life of our societies. The story of the civilian has recently become the focus of scholarship on the First World War. This paper discusses some of the wartime writings of H. G. Wells – arguably the most influential and widely-read civilian writer during and immediately after the war, who has been completely overlooked by literary critics and war scholars – to argue that in several wartime works with huge readerships, Wells took up the position of civilian in new and activist terms, first, as a matter of imagination, and second, as a matter of responsibility. Wells's textual efforts intersect in intriguing ways with more familiar war writings, but also depart quite radically from them, as he boldly assigns the role of world pacifist to those at home – out of combat, but sharing with soldiers a sense of rage and frustration, and a belief that such violence must not become the world's norm.


2017 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 233-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Gregory

ABSTRACTThis article is intended to suggest an approach to the global history of the First World War that can provide a method of managing the potentially unwieldy concept of global conflict by understanding it through the war's impact on localities. By concentrating on four relatively small but significant cities; Oxford in England, Halifax in Nova Scotia, Jerusalem in Palestine and Verdun in eastern France, which experienced the war in very different ways, it looks at both the movement of people and things and the symbolic interconnectivities that made the war a ‘world war’. This local focus helps challenge both the primacy of self-contained national history and the focus on the violent interaction of the opposing sides which are the more normal ways of narrating the war. It does not deny the usefulness of these traditional structures of narration and explanation but suggests that there are different and complementary ways the war can be viewed, which create different emphasis and chronologies.


1999 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Hall

Euripides' Medea has penetrated to parts of modernity most mythical figures have not reached. Since she first rolled off the printing presses half a millennium ago, she has inspired hundreds of performances, plays, paintings, and operas. Medea has murdered her way into a privileged place in the history of the imagination of the West, and can today command huge audiences in the commercial theatre. Yet in Britain, at least, her popularity on the stage is a relatively recent phenomenon. Medea has transcended history partly because she enacts a primal terror universal to human beings: that the motherfigure shouldintentionallydestroy her own children. Yet this dimension of the ancient tragedy was until the twentieth century found so disturbing as largely to prevent unadapted performances. On the British stage it was not until 1907 that Euripides'Medeawas performed, without alteration, in English translation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-105

The article discusses a neglected aspect in the history of the Second World War and the role of Armenians and their motivation to fight against the Nazi Germany. The author suggests that the memory of the Genocide against the Armenians perpetratrated by Turkey in the First World War with connivence from Germany played an important role in the memory of Soviet Armenians enrolled in the Red Army. This is one of the explanations why the present day Republic of Armenia still maintains – from different reasons – the name The Great Patriotic War instead of Second World War, like Russia.


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