The Challenge of the Past: The Quest for Historical Legitimacy in Independent Eritrea

2001 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 239-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Reid

In the 1960s a host of African nations discovered their independence and, with it, rediscovered the pleasure and the pain of the past. States such as Nigeria and Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda, using both local and expatriate scholars, embarked on the reconstruction of “national histories,” with an enthusiasm which, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, seems enviable. From an academic point of view, this period witnessed the rejection of the colonial distortion of Africa's past—i.e., the idea that basically the continent had none worth talking about—and the historiographical offensive which was thus launched may be seen to have been ultimately successful.In terms of African politics, history was seen in many new states as a means of nation-building and the fostering of national identity. In Tanzania, for example, precolonial leaders such as Mirambo and Nyungu-ya-Mawe, the relative linguistic unity provided by Swahili, and the anticolonial Maji Maji uprising were used, both consciously and subliminally, to encourage the idea that Tanzanians had shared historical experiences which straddled both the precolonial and the colonial eras.It must be conceded that history did not always prove as reliable an ally to African politicians as to scholars of Africa. Penetration into the Nigerian past served, indirectly at least, to magnify the regionalism which had already troubled the decolonization process in that territory, and underlined the distinct historical experiences of, for example, the Yoruba in the south and the Hausa-Fulani in the north.

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-194
Author(s):  
Marc van Zoggel

Abstract Historically, the glorification of the past and the eulogizing of national heroes in art and literature have been constructive elements in the process of nation building. In the postmodern era, however, a cultivation of national history and its great men and women is often regarded outdated or even suspect and regressive. The ‘nine eleven’ terrorist attacks in the United States and the rise and assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn intensified an ongoing debate in the Netherlands about the meaning and value of a shared ‘Dutch national identity’ in a multicultural, diversified society. In this article, I argue that several novels and poems about Dutch naval hero Michiel de Ruyter (1607-1676), published in or in the wake of the ‘De Ruyter year 2007’, both reproduce and challenge a wide range of voices, viewpoints and sentiments within the hot topic of national identity in the twenty-first century.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-222
Author(s):  
Nadezhda O. Bleich ◽  

The article is devoted to the consideration of the worldview positions of famous educators of the past century regarding the state of school education among Muslims of the North Caucasus region. It is proved that the enlighteners advocated the creation of a new type of national non-class school and the construction of the didactic foundations of the educational process in it. The novelty of the work is that, based on the analysis of the views of the advanced intelligentsia of the region, aimed at understanding the current socio-cultural situation, an attempt was made to scientifically understand the problems and prospects for the development of the Muslim educational system of the past from the point of view of the modern scientific paradigm. The practical significance of the publication lies in expanding the understanding of the system of Mohammedan education in the context of its historical heritage, which will help to comprehend modern problems associated with the reform of general and vocational education in the national Muslim republics.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1441-1449 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Yu ◽  
X. Ke ◽  
H. D. Shen ◽  
Y. F. Li

Abstract. Prior to ~1880 AD locust swarms periodically raged across both the North American Plains (NAP) and East Asian Plains (EAP). After this date, locust outbreaks almost never recurred on the NAP but have continued to cause problems on the EAP. The large quantities of pesticides used in the major agriculture regions of the NAP in the late 1870s have been suggested as a possible reason for the disappearance of locust outbreaks in this area. Extensive applications of modern, i.e. more effective, chemical pesticides were also used in the granary regions of the EAP in the 1950s in an effort to reduce pest outbreaks. However, locust swarms returned again in many areas of China in the 1960s. Therefore, locust extinction on the NAP still remains a puzzle. Frequent locust outbreaks on the EAP over the past 130 yr may offer clues to the key factors that control the disappearance of locust outbreaks on the NAP. This study analysed the climate extremes and monthly temperature–precipitation combinations for the NAP and EAP, and found that differences in the frequencies of these climate combinations resulted in the contrasting locust fates in the two regions: restricting locust outbreaks in the NAP but inducing such events in the EAP. Validation shows that severe EAP locust outbreak years were coincidental with extreme climate-combination years. Therefore, we suggest that changes in frequency, extremes and trends in climate can explain why the fate of locust outbreaks in the EAP was different from that in the NAP. The results also suggest that, with present global warming trends, precautionary measures should be taken to make sure other similar pest infestations do not occur in either region.


2021 ◽  
Vol 136 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-41
Author(s):  
Marc Boone ◽  
Tom Verschaffel

Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden was en is een Nederlands-Belgisch project. Belgische, in de realiteit enkel Vlaamse, historici hebben een rol gespeeld in de redactie en als auteurs van bijdragen. Het aandeel van het Zuiden is altijd kleiner geweest dan dat van het Noorden. Het tijdschrift poogde via een (meestal) paritaire samenstelling van de redactie en initiatieven, zoals comparatief opgezette themadossiers, de balans te herstellen. Aangezien het tijdschrift, zeker wat het Zuiden betreft, nauw verbonden was met de universitaire historische vakgroepen, in het bijzonder die van Gent en Leuven, weerspiegelen de evoluties van dit Belgische aandeel algemene verschuivingen in het academisch bedrijf. Uitbreiding van de onderzoeksfinanciering zorgde voor een aangroei en voor een verjonging en vervrouwelijking van het auteursbestand en van de redactie. Ook andere ontwikkelingen in het historisch bedrijf van de voorbije halve eeuw, zoals het verschijnen van nieuwe tijdschriften en de internationalisering van het onderzoek, hadden een impact op de plaats van het tijdschrift en bijgevolg ook op Vlaamse bijdragen en hun auteurs.Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden was and is a Dutch-Belgian project. Belgian, though in fact only Flemish, historians have edited and authored contributions. The share from the South has always been smaller than that from the North. Via a generally balanced composition of the editorial board and initiatives, such as comparatively structured special issues and forums, the journal aimed to restore the balance. Since the journal, especially in the South, was closely affiliated with university history departments, those of the universities of Ghent and Leuven in particular, the evolutions of this Belgian share therefore reflect general shifts in academia. Expansion of research financing brought about accretion, rejuvenation and feminisation of the stock of authors and editors alike. Other developments in historical scholarship from the past half century, such as the appearance of new journals and internationalisation of research, had an impact on the positioning of the journal and consequently on Flemish contributions and their authors as well.


2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Kraft

Environmental policy and politics in the United States have changed dramatically over the past three decades. What began in the late 1960s as an heroic effort by an incipient environmental movement to conserve dwindling natural resources and prevent further deterioration of the air, water, and land has been transformed over more than three decades into an extraordinarily complex, diverse, and often controversial array of environmental policies. Those policies occupy a continuing position of high visibility on the political agenda at all levels of government, and environmental values are widely embraced by the American public. Yet throughout the 1990s environmental policies and programs were characterized as much by sharp political conflict as by the consensus over policy goals and means that reigned during the early to mid-1970s. As the twenty-first century approaches, there is considerable value in looking back at this exceptional period to under-stand the nature of the transformation and its implications for the future.


Author(s):  
P. R. Dando

The known range of the northern rockling, Ciliata septentrionalis, extends from Iceland and northern Norway in the north to Plymouth in the south (Wheeler, 1965). This species has probably been confused with the five-bearded rockling, C. mustela (L.), in the past (Wheeler, 1969) and this together with the small size of the fish, enabling it to escape through the mesh of most trawls, may explain the paucity of records and knowledge of the species. Brook, (1885, 1888) described the egg and larval development of C. mustela but the egg and larva of C. septentrionalis have not been described. It is probable that the abundance of both these species can only be estimated by a combination of fecundity studies and egg and larval counts.


2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Sutejo K. Widodo

Rice and fish could be complementing each other as human primary needs for nutrition. However, both these commodities have a history with the opposite. Although Java island is surrounded by the waters of the sea, in the past the population in meeting the needs of fish, mainly marine fish, mostly done by the fishermen who brought in fish catches from other areas or imported, in the form of salted fish and dried fish, since the Dutch colonial government and gradually began to set the political self-sufficient self-reliance in the 1960s. This article discusses the dynamics of policy on fishing in the north coast of Java, with a historical approach with a span of years 1900 to 2000.


2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter van Dam

AbstractDecolonization challenged people across the globe to define their place in a new postcolonial order. This challenge was felt in international political and economic affairs, but it also affected daily lives across the globe. The history of fair trade activism as seen from the Netherlands highlights how citizens in the North grappled to position themselves in a postcolonial consumer society. Interventions by fair trade activists connected debates about the morals of their society to the consequences of decolonization. They reacted to the imbalances of the global market in the wake of decolonization, joining critics from the South in demanding more equitable global relations. It was around this issue of “fair trade” that a transnational coalition of moderate and more radical activists emerged after the 1960s. This coalition held widely dissimilar views regarding the politics of the left and the use of consumer activism. The analysis of their interventions demonstrates that during the postwar era attempts at transforming the global market were inextricably interwoven with visions of a postcolonial order.


2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (16) ◽  
pp. 6046-6066 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yalin Fan ◽  
Isaac M. Held ◽  
Shian-Jiann Lin ◽  
Xiaolan L. Wang

Abstract Surface wind (U10) and significant wave height (Hs) response to global warming are investigated using a coupled atmosphere–wave model by perturbing the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) with anomalies generated by the Working Group on Coupled Modeling (WGCM) phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) coupled models that use the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4)/Special Report on Emissions Scenarios A1B (SRES A1B) scenario late in the twenty-first century. Several consistent changes were observed across all four realizations for the seasonal means: robust increase of U10 and Hs in the Southern Ocean for both the austral summer and winter due to the poleward shift of the jet stream; a dipole pattern of the U10 and Hs with increases in the northeast sector and decreases at the midlatitude during boreal winter in the North Atlantic due to the more frequent occurrence of the positive phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO); and strong decrease of U10 and Hs in the tropical western Pacific Ocean during austral summer, which might be caused by the joint effect of the weakening of the Walker circulation and the large hurricane frequency decrease in the South Pacific. Changes of the 99th percentile U10 and Hs are twice as strong as changes in the seasonal means, and the maximum changes are mainly dominated by the changes in hurricanes. Robust strong decreases of U10 and Hs in the South Pacific are obtained because of the large hurricane frequency decrease, while the results in the Northern Hemisphere basins differ among the models. An additional sensitivity experiment suggests that the qualitative response of U10 and Hs is not affected by using SST anomalies only and maintaining the radiative forcing unchanged (using 1980 values), as in this study.


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