Resources for the History of Gabon in French Missionary Archives in Rome

1981 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 323-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Gardinier
Keyword(s):  
Elementary Education ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Past Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Holy Ghost ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Second World

The archives of two Roman Catholic congregations of French origin which have missionaries in Gabon are located in Rome: the Sisters of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception of Castres (commonly called the Blue Sisters) and the Brothers of Saint Gabriel of Saint Laurent-sur Sèvres. The Blue Sisters were founded by Emilie de Villeneuve in 1836 to improve the condition of women, in particular by educating poor and orphaned girls. The Brothers of Saint Gabriel were organized by Louis Grignion de Montfort in 1715 to provide a primary education for poor boys and were reorganized in 1821 by Gabriel Deshayes. Initially both congregations worked only in France. They entered Gabon at the request of the Holy Ghost Fathers-the sisters in 1849 and the brothers in 1900. The sisters had communities at most of the mission stations--in the Estuary at first and from the 1880s along the Ogooué river and other points in the interior. The brothers operated schools at Libreville and Lambaréné, and after the Second World War at Port-Gentil and Oyem as well. During the past century both congregations became primarily missionary bodies, with the sisters active in Africa and South America and the brothers in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. These international activities led to the transfer of their headquarters to Rome in the 1950s.The sisters who worked in Gabon prior to the Second World War included many with intelligence but few with much formal education beyond the primary grades. They spent their time in social service, health care, and elementary education. The latter included French as well as religion and the domestic arts. The sisters had much less contact with the government or the colonial administration than did the Holy Ghost Fathers, who were their ecclesiastical superiors. Though some sisters toured to provide medical aid to persons away from the mission stations, most of their contacts with Africans took place in or near the stations.

Colossus, Codebreaking, and the Digital Age

Colossus ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Budiansky
Keyword(s):  
Digital Age ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The paths that took men and women from their ordinary lives and deposited them on the doorstep of the odd profession of cryptanalysis were always tortuous, accidental, and unpredictable. The full story of the Colossus, the pioneering electronic device developed by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS) to break German teleprinter ciphers in the Second World War, is fundamentally a story of several of these accidental paths converging at a remarkable moment in the history of electronics—and of the wartime urgency that set these men and women on these odd paths. Were it not for the wartime necessity of codebreaking, and were it not for particular statistical and logical properties of the teleprinter ciphers that were so eminently suited to electronic analysis, the history of computing might have taken a very different course. The fact that Britain’s codebreakers cracked the high-level teleprinter ciphers of the German Army and Luftwaffe high command during the Second World War has been public knowledge since the 1970s. But the recent declassification of new documents about Colossus and the teleprinter ciphers, and the willingness of key participants to discuss their roles more fully, has laid bare as never before the technical challenges they faced—not to mention the intense pressures, the false steps, and the extraordinary risks and leaps of faith along the way. It has also clarified the true role that the Colossus machines played in the advent of the digital age. Though they were neither general-purpose nor stored-program computers themselves, the Colossi sparked the imaginations of many scientists, among them Alan Turing and Max Newman, who would go on to help launch the post-war revolution that ushered in the age of the digital, general-purpose, stored-program electronic computer. Yet the story of Colossus really begins not with electronics at all, but with codebreaking; and to understand how and why the Colossi were developed and to properly place their capabilities in historical context, it is necessary to understand the problem they were built to solve, and the people who were given the job of solving it.

The Anschluss

1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Danchev
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Waste Land ◽  
Francis Fukuyama ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Historical Analogy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

Historical analogiesOn 2 August 1990, much to everyone's surprise, Hitler invaded Kuwait. The ensuing conflict was mired in history—as Francis Fukuyama might say—or at least in historical analogy. The ruling analogy was with the Second World War; more exactly, with the origins and nature of that war. George Bush's constant reference during the Second Gulf War was Martin Gilbert's Second World War, a monumental construction well described as ‘a bleak, desolate evocation of the horrors of war, a modern Waste Land, an unremitting catalogue of killing, atrocity and exiguous survival’. The paperback edition of this exacting volume weighs three pounds. The text runs to 747 pages. Understandably, the President stashed his copy on board Air Force One. ‘I'm reading a book’, he informed an audience in Burlington, Vermont, in October 1990, ‘and it's a book of history, a great, big, thick history of World War II, and there's a parallel between what Hitler did to Poland and what Saddam Hussein has done to Kuwait’. As Paul Fussell has reminded us, the wartime refrain was Remember Pearl Harbor. “ ‘No one ever shouted or sang Remember Poland’? Not until 1990, that is. Of course, Bush himself had served in that war, as he was not slow to remind the electorate: he flew fifty-eight missions as a pilot in the Pacific. For those who wondered what he knew of Poland, Gilbert's book—at once a chronicle of remembrance and an indictment—told him this:

Memory as Rite de Passage. Towards a Postmoralistic Historiography of the Second World War

Itinerario ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madelon de Keizer
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
World War ◽  
Japanese Occupation ◽  
East Indies ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

As a native of the Netherlands, I have been imbued with an awareness of the history of the Second World War in both Europe and the Pacific ever since I was a child, though I must admit that the Japanese occupation of the Dutch colony in the Dutch East Indies from 1942 to 1945 plays a less important part in my imagination than thefiveyears of German occupation of the Netherlands. My parents and brothers can directly recollect the latter dark period, and I see it vividly in my mind's eye, born (in 1948) and bred as I was in Rotterdam, the city whose centre was razed to the ground by the German air raid in May 1940. The effects of the bombs were still clearly visible during the years in which I was growing up there. Given this double Dutch memory – memory of the hostilities in Europe, and memory of South-East Asia – it hardly seems fortuitous that the Dutch scholar Ian Buruma chose the German and Japanese memory of the Second World War and of the War in the Pacific as the theme for his 1994 publication The Wages of Guilt.

The Latgale theatre in Rezekne (1921-1940)

2014 ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Silvija Geikina
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
World War ◽  
Dramatic Works ◽  
Don Giovanni ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Second World

<p>The existence of The Latgale Theatre in Rezekne was not long. It existed for just a couple of decades, from 1921 to 1944. Similarly to other Latvian theatres, The Latgale Theatre in Rezekne opened its first performances soon after the declaration of Latvian independence in 1918.<br />In 1920`s almost every Latvian city established a theatre troupe with some professional but mostly – amateur actors. This activity and the desire to work in the culture field shows the Latvian nation's spiritual strength and vitality in spite of the difficult economic and political situation.<br />The Latgale Theatre's first performance took place in 1921, 4th April. It was Maurice Matherlink's play of simbols – 'Sister Beatrice' in the direction of Karl Hamsters. Hamsters' choice of material already shows his original literary taste. Looking at other peripheral theatres' repertoires during this period, it can be seen that they mostly consist of less sophisticated dramatic works from such authors as Aspazija, Blaumanis, Alunana, John Akuraters and other Latvian author plays.<br />Like other Latvian peripheral theatres, Latgale Rezekne Theatre did not receive any material support from the government. It had to find its own funding to produce shows. Soon The Latvian Culture Promotion Society Rezekne branch took the theatre under its wing. But it did not have sufficiant funds either, therefore in early 1920`s regular performances in Rezekne did not happen. In 1924 Rezekne established the association "Latgale nation castle". The society activists started building the construction project. Joseph Trasuns was elected as the first President of the Society but the board was composed by Joseph Becker, John Draught, Peter Zadvinskis and others. One of the first tasks of the association was to create The Latgale culture centre in Rezekne.<br />The next stage in the history of The Latgale Theatre is rightly considered one of the most prominent and artistically significant in 1930`s, and is associated with Ernests Feldmanis. He was working in The Latgale Theatre from 1933-1937. With his arrival, Latgale Theatre successfuly got out of the artistic exhaustion and delighted its audience with a number of bright and major productions. Ernest Feldmanis offered productions of plays which Latgale citizens had not seen before: Shakespeare's 'The Taming of the marriage', E. Woolf's 'A Tale of Death', F. Molnar's 'The Devil', Moliere's 'Don Giovanni', Wild's 'An Ideal husband.'<br />The existing productions as well as the future prospects of the theatre came to an end along with the Second World War, during which the theatre building got destroyed. It was renovated after the war and utilised by amateur theatres.<br />The aim of this work is to research the operation of The Latgale Theatre form its first performance in 1921 till the last one in 1944, discovering the historical situation in Latvia during 1920`s and 30`s, which could have resulted in a possible emergence of a new theatre in Rezekne. The article explains the theatre’s repertoire policy and the directors’ job.<br />The methods used: media analysis method and museum material analysis.</p>

The myth of declining violence: Liberal evolutionism and violent complexity

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Lewis ◽  
Belinda Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Past Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
The Past ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

The publication of Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature popularized an emerging orthodoxy in political and social science – that is, that violence and warfare have been declining over the past century, particularly since the end of the Second World War. Invoking the scientific and political neutrality of their data and evidence, Pinker and other ‘declinists’ insist that powerful, liberal democratic states have subdued humans’ evolutionary disposition to violence. This article analyses the heuristic validity and political framework of these claims. The article examines, in particular, the declinists’ interpretation and use of demographic, archaeological, anthropological and historical evidence. The article argues that the declinists’ arguments are embedded in a utopian liberalism that has its own deep roots in the ‘cultural volition’ and history of human violence. The article concludes that the declinists have either misunderstood or misrepresented the evidence in order to promote their own neoliberal political interests and ideologies.

The Planetary Test

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Orit Halpern
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Tropical Environment ◽  
World War ◽  
Climate Control ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Richard Neutra ◽  
Second World

In 1943, in the midst of the Second World War, the famous architect Richard Neutra was commissioned by the government of Puerto Rico to build hospitals and schools. In response, he produced a number of prototypes and processes investigating different ways to ventilate and climate control buildings in the sub-tropical environment of the island through technology. Neutra famously labeled his work in Puerto Rico a Planetary Test. This article examines this history of making climate a medium for design and the implications of these practices for our present

Turning Aliens into Socialists

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Moberg
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Swedish History ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Highly Evolved

Immediately after the Second World War Sweden was struck by a wave of sightings of strange flying objects. In some cases these mass sightings resulted in panic, particularly after authorities failed to identify them. Decades later, these phenomena were interpreted by two members of the Swedish UFO movement, Erland Sandqvist and Gösta Rehn, as alien spaceships, or UFOs. Rehn argued that ‘[t]here is nothing so dramatic in the Swedish history of UFOs as this invasion of alien fly-things’ (Rehn 1969: 50). In this article the interpretation of such sightings proposed by these authors, namely that we are visited by extraterrestrials from outer space, is approached from the perspective of myth theory. According to this mythical theme, not only are we are not alone in the universe, but also the history of humankind has been shaped by encounters with more highly-evolved alien beings. In their modern day form, these kinds of ideas about aliens and UFOs originated in the United States. The reasoning of Sandqvist and Rehn exemplifies the localization process that took place as members of the Swedish UFO movement began to produce their own narratives about aliens and UFOs. The question I will address is: in what ways do these stories change in new contexts? Texts produced by the Swedish UFO movement are analyzed as a case study of this process.

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