Transimperial History - Connectivity, Cooperation and Competition

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Hedinger ◽  
Nadin Heέ
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Japanese Empire ◽  
Imperial History ◽  
Cooperation And Competition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One ◽  
Empire Studies ◽  
Shed Light

Transimperial History – Connectivity, Cooperation and Competition This Forum article argues that a turn in empire history is needed, one which we label «transimperial». Whereas national history has been transnationalized in recent decades, the history of empires has, by and large, remained nationalized. Since transnational history, global history, postcolonial studies and new imperial history all offer an abundance of tools to tear down imperial borders and deconstruct nationalized narratives, the moment seems to have come for a shift, namely for what we call a transimperial approach to imperial history. We seek to show how such an approach makes it possible to dynamize and decentralize the history of empires both on the level of empirical research and historiographical narratives. By including marginalized empires we offer a way to overcome British centrism of empire studies. On the methodological level, this contribution seeks to discuss imperial competition, cooperation and connectivity not as separate phenomena but as entangled processes. The point is not to analytically isolate cooperation or competition but to shed light on how they reinforced each other and how connectivity plays into this. The article shows that a key to establishing a transimperial approach is to consider time and space together by focusing on the transformative aspect of competition, cooperation and connectivity in spaces in-between empires. In this article, we highlight transimperial histories avant la lettre, on which such an approach can rely. Finally, we discuss how this approach helps challenge essentializing master narratives in empire studies, be it the one in which the British Empire serves as a model for other empires or the one where the Japanese empire is seen as a mimicry of European imperialism.

Der Fall des Philosophen

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Gekle
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Oedipus Complex ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Ernst Bloch ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
History Of ◽  
Painful Experience ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One

The history of mental development on the one and the history of his writings on the other hand form the two separate but essentially intertwined strands of an archeology of Ernst Bloch´s thought undertaken in this book. Bloch as a philosopher is peculiar in that his initial access to thought rose from the depths of early, painful experience. To give expression to this experience, he not only needed to develop new categories, but first and foremost had to find words for it: the experience of the uncanny and the abysmal, of which he tells in Spuren, is on the level of philosophical theory juxtaposed by the “Dunkel des gerade gelebten Augenblicks” (darkness of the moment just lived) and his discovery of a “Noch-nicht-Bewusstes” (not-yet-conscious), thus metaphysically undermining the classical Oedipus complex in the succession of Freud. In this book, psyche, work and the history of the 20th century appear concentrated in Ernst Bloch the philosopher and contemporary witness, who paid tribute to these supra-individual powers in his work as much as he hoped to transgress them.

scholarly journals Authorial Self and Modernity as Reflected in Diaries and Memoirs. Three 19th-Century Hungarian Case Studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-97
Author(s):  
Béla Mester
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Individual Character ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One

Abstract The role of the diaries and memoirs in the process of the conscious self-reflection and their contribution to the emergence of modern individual personalities are well-known facts of the intellectual history. The present paper intends to analyze a special form of the creation of modern individual character; it is the self-creation of the writer as a conscious personality, often with a clearly formulated opinion about her/his own social role. There will be offered several examples from the 19th-century history of the Hungarian intelligentsia. This period is more or less identical with the modernization of the “cultural industry” in Hungary, dominated by the periodicals with their deadlines, fixed lengths of the articles, and professional editing houses on the one hand and the cultural nation building on the other. Concerning the possible social and cultural role of the intelligentsia, it is the moment of the birth of a new type, so-called public intellectual. I will focus on three written sources, a diary of a Calvinist student of theology, Péter (Litkei) Tóth, the memoirs of an influential public intellectual, Gusztáv Szontagh, and a belletristic printed diary of a young intellectual, János Asbóth.

‘Abd al-Qādir al-Marāghī and ‘Alī b. Muḥammad Binā'ī: two fifteenth-century examples of notation Part 2: Commentary

1995 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-39
Author(s):  
O. Wright
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Text Setting ◽  
Musical Practice ◽  
Reliable Evidence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
History Of Composition ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

Part 1 of this paper was concerned principally with the various problems that confront any attempt to provide a satisfactory transcription of these two examples. Given the nature of the difficulties encountered, it is clear that any generalizations we might wish to derive from them can only be tentative and provisional. Nevertheless, the paucity of comparable material, which on the one hand renders the interpretative hurdles all the more difficult to surmount, on the other makes the urge to draw at least some conclusions from the material provided by ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Marāghī and Binā'ī well-nigh irresistible. Such conclusions would involve, essentially, an assessment of the extent to which their notations shed light on the musical practice of the period and provide reliable evidence for the history of composition and styles of textsetting. But in any evaluation of this nature it is essential to avoid the temptation to confuse the sources with the speculative editorial interventions that produce the versions presented in part 1 (exs. 26–8 and 30). The area about which least can be said with regard to the naqsh notated by Binā'ī is, therefore, the nature of the text-setting, while with regard to ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Marāghī's notations it is, rather, the first topic we may consider, the relationship between melody and the underlying articulation of the rhythmic cycle.

scholarly journals The role of museums in Russia’s and China’s cultural diplomacies

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 865-882
Author(s):  
Vladimir I. Fokin ◽  
Elena E. Elts
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
One Belt One Road ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One ◽  
Revolutionary History

Russia and China have both shown increasing interest in the promotion their cultural achievements and have utilized culture as essential soft-power resource. Moreover, the concept of ‘soft power’ has gained popularity in Russia’s and China’s academic and political discourse. Russian-Chinese cultural cooperation is gaining momentum due to this exchange, and the scale and the depth of the cultural projects have expanded. At the moment, museums are involved in development of diplomatic relations, including within the framework of friendship societies, and through the development of the Russian-Chinese tourism. ‘Red tourism’ (it means visiting the monuments of the revolutionary history of Russia) in particular has expanded through the implementation of cultural seasons, Cross-Years of Culture, and the promotion of cultural exchanges of contemporary art. As shown in the case of Hermitage, Moscow Kremlin Museums, National Museum of China, Palace Museum ‘Gugong’ in Beijing, famous world museums have been carrying out the ambitious development programmes, scaling up their resource capacities, and since the beginning of the 21st century have begun to promote their brand. The article considers the potential for museums to participate in the development of bilateral relations, and in improving the foreign-policy image of both countries. The authors’ research reveals the features of museum diplomacy, areas of museums’ international activities that enhanced the efficiency of Russia’s and China’s soft power and identifies the common avenues for disseminating the neoliberal messages in museum sphere. Moreover, particular attention is paid by the authors’ to ‘soft power’ rankings and to lists of the most visited museums. Furthermore, new modalities of international museum cooperation are discussed by the authors, with a focus on areas of joint collaboration within the framework of SCO, BRICS, and the “One belt, one road” initiative. The authors conclude that there is a need to improve the legal framework for Russian-Chinese museum cooperation in response to the deepening interaction and transformation of the role of museums in both international and bilateral relations.

scholarly journals The True Face of Pre-Colonial Africa in “Things Fall Apart”

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (30) ◽  
pp. 96-104
Author(s):  
Ecevit Bekler
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Western World ◽  
Chinua Achebe ◽  
Important Place ◽  
History Of ◽  
Things Fall Apart ◽  
Authentic Environment ◽  
African Writers ◽  
The One

The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe is known to be one of the most influential African writers and holds an important place in postcolonial studies. His main aim was to reconstructthe wrongly established beliefs, ideas, and thoughts of the Western world regarding Africa. To realize his aim, he made careful selections in his choice of language, which contributed greatly to sharing his observations, ideas, and beliefs with the rest of the world. He wrote his novels in English, believing that doing so would be more powerful in conveying the true face of pre-colonial Africa, rather than in Nigerian, which could not be as effective as the language of the colonizers. Achebe’s complaint was that the history of Africa had mainly been written by white men who did not belong to his continent and who would not judge life there fairly. With his novels, he changed the prejudices of those who had never been to Africa, and he managed to convert the negative ideas and feelings caused by the portrayal of his continent to positive ones. Things Fall Apart is a novel whose mission is to portray Africa in a very realistic and authentic environment, contrary to the one-sided point of view of the colonizers. The novel presents us, in very authentic language, with many details about the customs, rituals, daily life practices, ceremonies, beliefs, and even jokes of the African Igbos. Chinua Achebe thus realizes his aim in revealing that African tribes, although regarded as having a primitive life and being very far from civilization, in fact had their own life with traditions and a culture specific to themselves.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Bill Bell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
History Of Reading ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
Intimate Connection ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Moment

Beginning with the moment in Robinson Crusoe when the castaway rescues a cache of books before the ship goes down, this introduction situates the history of nineteenth-century reading in the intimate connection that is made between itinerant readers and their books. Crusoe is the culmination of a historic tradition and does much to define later perceptions of the place of reading and the formation of later assumptions about the ability of books to provide consolation for readers under strange skies. This introduction goes on to account for scholarly assumptions about the place of texts in the British empire and some of the fundamental approaches to the history of reading that have occupied scholars over recent decades.

Introduction

Keshab ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
John A. Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Imperial History ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bengal Renaissance

This chapter argues that Keshab Chandra Sen’s worldview was shaped by the cultural, intellectual and religious traditions of both India and Britain. It situates the study in the context of current scholarship concerning new imperial history, histories of identity and subjectivity, postcolonial studies and subaltern studies. It sets out the methodological and theoretical framework of the book, with particular reference to discourse analysis, theories of identity and subjectivity, postcolonial theory, liberalism and universalism. It provides a brief biographical introduction to Keshab Chandra Sen and argues that he is a significant and neglected figure in the history of Bengal and the Bengal renaissance.

Antecedents of the Burma Road: British Plans for a Burma-China Railway in the Nineteenth Century

1962 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph C. Croizier
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Business Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Geographic Knowledge ◽  
Engineering Problems ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Engineering Projects

Among the most obvious and durable monuments to the colonial age in Asia are the great engineering projects which have permanently transformed the physical and economic geography of the continent. Many of these have an interesting history of their own, both in the political and commercial history of the country building them and on the level of international politics. This is true not only for such successfully completed projects as the Suez Canal or the Trans-Siberian Railway, but also for great schemes which were never realized. In Southeast Asia the long-discussed Kra Canal is the most famous instance of the latter, but it is not unique. Throughout most of the second half of the Nineteenth Century the British Government and especially the British business community dallied with the idea of a rail link between the Bay of Bengal and the interior provinces of China. Those familiar with the building of the Burma Road will understand the enormous engineering problems involved in such a plan. But for most of the Nineteenth Century geographic knowledge of Southeast Asia was extremely vague and the lure of a several thousand mile shortcut to the perennially fascinating markets of China exerted a strong pull on the imagination of a commercial nation. Ultimately, international political complications and sound economic logic killed ven the idea of such a railway. But the light it throws on government — business relations within the British Empire and on imperial rivalries in Southeast Asia makes the story of the first Burma Road, the one that was never built, well worth the telling.

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