Journal Description
Histories
Histories
is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal on inquiry of change and continuity of human societies (on various scales and with different approaches, including environmental, social and technological studies), published quarterly online by MDPI.
- Open Access— free for readers, with article processing charges (APC) paid by authors or their institutions.
- Rapid Publication: manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision is provided to authors approximately 59.5 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 9.6 days (median values for papers published in this journal in the second half of 2023).
- Recognition of Reviewers: APC discount vouchers, optional signed peer review, and reviewer names published annually in the journal.
Latest Articles
The Evolution of Warfare and Weapons in Japan, 792–1392
Histories 2024, 4(1), 24-37; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories4010002 (registering DOI) - 16 Jan 2024
Abstract
The fearsome Japanese samurai, a legendary figure whose primary attribute was loyalty or honor, needs no introduction. He is strongly associated with the equally famous katana. The popular image of the samurai probably would appear wearing armor but certainly does not carry a
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The fearsome Japanese samurai, a legendary figure whose primary attribute was loyalty or honor, needs no introduction. He is strongly associated with the equally famous katana. The popular image of the samurai probably would appear wearing armor but certainly does not carry a shield. This figure, many assume, must have dominated medieval Japan. Yet is this samurai image accurate? Can it withstand sustained scrutiny? What was Japanese warfare really like 1000 years ago? In this article, I evaluate the key sources on medieval warfare in Japan, identifying the contributions of each and pointing out some methodological problems they face. The most prominent casualty of this synthetic analysis is the pop culture image of the heroic and honorable sword-wielding samurai.
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Visualising the Modern Housewife: US Occupier Women and the Home in the Allied Occupation of Germany, 1945–1949
Histories 2024, 4(1), 1-23; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories4010001 - 03 Jan 2024
Abstract
Thousands of Allied women arrived in occupied Germany after the Second World War as the wives of military and civilian men working in the occupation apparatus. Yet rarely have these women been seen as active agents of occupier power and knowledge. One way
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Thousands of Allied women arrived in occupied Germany after the Second World War as the wives of military and civilian men working in the occupation apparatus. Yet rarely have these women been seen as active agents of occupier power and knowledge. One way of understanding their role, or how it was imagined, is through images and textual representations. With a focus on the early years of occupation (1945–1949) and visual representations of US wives, this article examines the occupation household that was serviced by occupied domestic workers, in turn drawing comparisons to imperial contexts. Visual cues in selected photographs and caricatures suggest a presumed superior occupier modernity that was both performative and educative, mediated by a class-like asymmetrical relationship. These representations have been divided into three key themes: economic modernity, as through consumerism; domestic modernity in the home; and modern gender and family relations. Here, occupier women’s bodies were contrasted against the occupied to signify the power, prestige and modernity of her nation as an occupying power, in turn revealing both the shape of everyday power relations in the home and the paradoxical aims of the occupation itself.
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(This article belongs to the Section Cultural History)
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Spinoza and Enlightened Pleasures
Histories 2023, 3(4), 371-380; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3040025 - 05 Dec 2023
Abstract
Spinoza recognizes that worldly pleasures are not contrary to the life of the philosophical sage, but such pursuits must be carefully directed. He distinguishes between a joy that affects only some parts of the body (titillatio) and joy that extends through
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Spinoza recognizes that worldly pleasures are not contrary to the life of the philosophical sage, but such pursuits must be carefully directed. He distinguishes between a joy that affects only some parts of the body (titillatio) and joy that extends through the body as a whole (hilaritas or “cheerfulness”). Titillation can be excessive, since it can blind us to our other needs. But cheerfulness cannot be excessive, since the whole body is improved at once. In his account of cheerfulness, Spinoza can be understood to be describing the life of a liefhebber, which is the Dutch term for a connoisseur, or an enlightened and discriminating consumer of worldly pleasures. It is a strikingly appropriate discussion given his own historical context, in which the Dutch culture found itself suddenly in possession of delights from around the world. This paper will explore Spinoza’s account of pleasure and cheerfulness in its context, with reference to other authors who were wrestling with the problem of finding the appropriate place for worldly pleasures in a culture of broadly Calvinist sympathies.
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Seamen’s Guilds, Labor Organizations and Social Protest in Northern Iberia in the Late Middle Ages
Histories 2023, 3(4), 354-370; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3040024 - 29 Nov 2023
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Craft guilds have been at the core of important historiographical debates on the economic, social and political history of medieval cities for twenty years. The aim of this article is to examine the seamen’s guilds in the town ports of the Northern Peninsula
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Craft guilds have been at the core of important historiographical debates on the economic, social and political history of medieval cities for twenty years. The aim of this article is to examine the seamen’s guilds in the town ports of the Northern Peninsula in the Late Middle Ages. This study analyzes fundamental aspects of the social assistance, labor organization and social identity of the town ports, which were located on the maritime border of the Kingdom of Castile. In contrast to the more classic view of the craft guilds as protectionist institutions, which only served the interests of a privileged group of masters, this analysis highlights the contribution of the seamen’s craft guilds to the organization of labor at sea, the training of sea workers, the ability to negotiate with merchants and avoid labor exploitation, the provision of social assistance to the most vulnerable population, and the ability to lead the social protest for the guilders’ representation in the urban government. In summary, it is concluded that the seafarers’ guilds were constituted as networks of mutual help between individuals in the labor, welfare and political spheres of the population of the town ports of northern Iberia in the Late Middle Ages.
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Open AccessEditorial
Images of Nature: Introduction to the Special Issue
by
Histories 2023, 3(4), 348-353; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3040023 - 18 Oct 2023
Abstract
This Special Issue on ‘Images of Nature’ in the longue durée has its origins in a historical conference on ‘Nature’ at the University of Geneva in the summer of 2022 (6th Swiss History Days, 29 June–1 July 2022) [...]
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Images of Nature—From the Middle Ages to (Non-)Western Modernities)
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Naturmenschen? Alexander von Humboldt and Indigenous People
Histories 2023, 3(4), 331-347; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3040022 - 18 Oct 2023
Cited by 1
Abstract
In the numerous texts he wrote about his grand voyage to the Americas (1799–1804), the Berlin-born, highly influential, independent scholar Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) considers the people in Spanish America time and time again. While Humboldt was trained as a botanist, geologist, and
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In the numerous texts he wrote about his grand voyage to the Americas (1799–1804), the Berlin-born, highly influential, independent scholar Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) considers the people in Spanish America time and time again. While Humboldt was trained as a botanist, geologist, and mining engineer, he was nevertheless fascinated by indigenous actors who employed specific competencies as they operated in their natural environments and their own socio-cultural contexts, which were distinctly different from those in Europe. His perspectives on indigenous people are complex and refer back to various current discourses of his day. Although these texts address very different topics across a range of disciplines, they nevertheless clearly testify to his intense interest in Latin American society and culture. Humboldt repeatedly reconsiders his approaches to these topics; in a characteristically Humboldtian manner, he attempts to understand quite diverse phenomena by means of precise, on-site observation, comparison, and contextualization. In so doing, his argumentation oscillated between the poles established and defined by contemporary discourse, namely ‘savage’ and ‘barbarism’ on one side of the spectrum, and ‘civilization’ on the other.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Images of Nature—From the Middle Ages to (Non-)Western Modernities)
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The Toynbee Affair at 100: The Birth of ‘World History’ and the Long Shadow of the Interwar Liberal Imaginaire
Histories 2023, 3(4), 308-330; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3040021 - 04 Oct 2023
Abstract
Functioning as “precedent” and “templates” for future transfers, the Greco-Turkish population exchange and the Lausanne Treaty) are undoubtedly events of world-historical significance. But they are also crucial in the genesis of the subfield of historical research we now call “World History”: they provided
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Functioning as “precedent” and “templates” for future transfers, the Greco-Turkish population exchange and the Lausanne Treaty) are undoubtedly events of world-historical significance. But they are also crucial in the genesis of the subfield of historical research we now call “World History”: they provided the backdrop against which Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889–1975) began sketching his magnum opus, A Study of History and developed the foundations of this subfield of history writing. This article revisits the so-called “Toynbee Affair” and places it in its intellectual and political contexts. First, it revisits the British classicist scholarship that provided the backdrop and initial inspiration for Toynbee as it shifted its gaze from ancient Rome to Greece, which was put forward as a better model for foreign and imperial policy. Next, it examines Toynbee’s wartime activities and shows that his attitudes towards the new states of Central Europe were based on principles that often stood in tension with his activities and views connected to the Middle East. During these years, Toynbee was an active participant in a discourse concerning the need to manage “mixed populations,” which moved to the forefront of a new form of internationalism, while also exposed to the writings of authors such as Oswald Spengler and Frederick J. Teggart, who pushed him to advance a new type of historiography. Third, the article looks at the uneven reception of Toynbee’s ideas after 1945, including his views on the US, the “Muslim civilization,” and his controversial views on Jews and the politics of the Middle East. The article concludes by arguing that his views, which rested on a deep suspicion of liminal hybridity or cultural mestizos, failed to transcend the basic logic of separation developed in Lausanne. Entirely on the contrary: Toynbee’s story offers us a case in which we can recognize the making of the interwar “cultural imaginaire” and “reinvention of differences,” which continues shaping our view of “the West’s” supposed borders to this day.
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(This article belongs to the Section Historiography)
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Barcelona, Naples and Salonika: Ethnic and Civic Nationalism in Three Mediterranean Port Cities (1888–1915)
Histories 2023, 3(3), 288-307; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3030020 - 05 Sep 2023
Abstract
How far is port cities’ cosmopolitan inclination reflected in the type of nationalism prevailing in the surrounding area or region? How do these relationships change in different timeframes, one determined by nationalist modernization, the other by neoliberal globalization? This article attempts to respond
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How far is port cities’ cosmopolitan inclination reflected in the type of nationalism prevailing in the surrounding area or region? How do these relationships change in different timeframes, one determined by nationalist modernization, the other by neoliberal globalization? This article attempts to respond to this question by looking at three Northern Mediterranean port cities (Barcelona, Naples, and Salonica) in two different time settings: the advent of the centralizing nation-state preceding WW1 and the advent of free-market deregulation policies adopted worldwide since the 1980s. It does so by adapting a new critical reading of Hans Kohn’s dichotomy on civic/ethnic nationalism—and extending it to the realm of culture in an age of deep global transformations.
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(This article belongs to the Section Cultural History)
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The Singapore Stone: Documenting the Origins, Destruction, Journey and Legacy of an Undeciphered Stone Monolith
Histories 2023, 3(3), 271-287; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3030019 - 03 Sep 2023
Abstract
The Singapore Stone was a large monolith present at the mouth of the Singapore River, clad with a faded inscription that was a point of interest for local and foreign antiquarians and other enthusiasts, as no person—native or otherwise—could decipher the meaning of
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The Singapore Stone was a large monolith present at the mouth of the Singapore River, clad with a faded inscription that was a point of interest for local and foreign antiquarians and other enthusiasts, as no person—native or otherwise—could decipher the meaning of its tongue. Tragically, the stone was blasted in 1848 by East India Company engineers as part of works to widen the mouth of the river. Only four fragments were saved; these were sent to Calcutta’s Asiatic Society of Bengal and later placed in the custody of the Indian Museum. Today, only one fragment remains, which was returned to Singapore in 1919 and at present is displayed in the National Museum of Singapore. Over the past century and a half, there has been great interest in the fate of the lost fragments and in the mysterious inscription that the fragments hold. There have been various attempts at deciphering the Stone, with a variety of suggested interpretations and languages. This research paper compiles and documents both the physical journey of the fragments and the various attempts at deciphering them, aiming to comprehensively detail the Stone’s origins and journey from its erection to its present residence while providing an analysis of the past attempts at decipherment and the future of this effort.
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(This article belongs to the Section Cultural History)
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Unravelling the Mystery of the Singapore Stone: A Comparative Analysis with the Calcutta Stone and the Possible Kawi Connection
Histories 2023, 3(3), 261-270; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3030018 - 29 Aug 2023
Abstract
The Singapore Stone, discovered in 1819, was blown up in 1843 and remains an enigma today. Several studies have suggested the script to be Kawi, a Brahmic script used between the 8th and 16th centuries in Java and other parts of Southeast Asia.
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The Singapore Stone, discovered in 1819, was blown up in 1843 and remains an enigma today. Several studies have suggested the script to be Kawi, a Brahmic script used between the 8th and 16th centuries in Java and other parts of Southeast Asia. The language remains unknown but is thought to be Old Javanese, Sanskrit, or Tamil. There is great historical value in finding out what the script says, and it is the aim of this project to offer deeper insight into this undeciphered inscription. In this paper, an in-depth comparison of the Singapore Stone with the Calcutta Stone (1041 CE), a prominent example of a Later Kawi inscription, is performed. Brief comparisons of the Singapore Stone with other inscriptions are also conducted. Numerous characters on the Singapore Stone are matched to those on the Calcutta Stone. However, the Singapore Stone appears to have a much lower frequency of diacritics and clusters. Such a phenomenon is anomalous and could have hindered decryption efforts thus far. Nonetheless, an identification and comparison of such character signs are attempted. Overall, the two inscriptions are shown to share many stylistic similarities, suggesting that the Singapore Stone could be dated to the Later Kawi period.
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(This article belongs to the Section Cultural History)
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Daniel Sennert’s Corpuscularian Reforms to Natural Philosophy
Histories 2023, 3(3), 245-260; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3030017 - 16 Aug 2023
Cited by 1
Abstract
Daniel Sennert (1572–1637), professor of medicine and natural philosophy in Wittenberg, defended a highly unusual philosophical system. This paper examines Sennert’s vision of natural philosophy within the context of the rapidly changing environment of the seventeenth century and relates his philosophical innovations to
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Daniel Sennert (1572–1637), professor of medicine and natural philosophy in Wittenberg, defended a highly unusual philosophical system. This paper examines Sennert’s vision of natural philosophy within the context of the rapidly changing environment of the seventeenth century and relates his philosophical innovations to his methodology. The main result is that Sennert’s postulation of corpuscles with substantial forms, though it takes place within the framework of Aristotelian natural philosophy, directly influences his philosophical view of qualities.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Images of Nature—From the Middle Ages to (Non-)Western Modernities)
Open AccessEssay
Changing Natures: On Theory and Practice of Breeding in the European Middle Ages
Histories 2023, 3(3), 231-244; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3030016 - 18 Jul 2023
Cited by 1
Abstract
While throughout modern history it has been shown how thoroughly biological discourses were shaped by conceptions originating in the theory and praxis of breeding, for the medieval period similar studies are mostly absent. This paper offers a symmetrical history of theory and praxis
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While throughout modern history it has been shown how thoroughly biological discourses were shaped by conceptions originating in the theory and praxis of breeding, for the medieval period similar studies are mostly absent. This paper offers a symmetrical history of theory and praxis of breeding by asking to what extent they shaped medieval conceptions of human ‘race’ and ‘ancestry’ in Europe. For scholarly knowledge of breeding, the analysis relies on Albertus Magnus’ extensive Aristotelian work De animalibus. For the practical knowledge of the breeders, scattered indications from the secondary literature are compiled and promising primary sources are outlined for further research. The paper finds that various concepts and practices whose origins are commonly placed in the early modern period were already present in the Middle Ages, including the concept of reproductive heredity and the view that creation diversified over time through reproductive ancestry. Breeding practices, thus, existed before the rise of genetics in modern biology. The medieval conceptions of ‘race’ and ‘ancestry’ underwent conceptual transfers from the non-human into the human sphere, collapsing the qualitative distinction of the two spheres into one quantitively graded overarching image of nature.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Images of Nature—From the Middle Ages to (Non-)Western Modernities)
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A Puzzling Religious Inscription from Medieval Tuscany: Symbology and Interpretation
Histories 2023, 3(3), 219-230; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3030015 - 05 Jul 2023
Abstract
At the entrance of some churches in Tuscany (Italy), the reproduction of an apparently undecipherable inscription can be found. Beginning in the 18th century, this epigraphic puzzle has originated a debate on its interpretation. This study proposes a hypothesis based on the Latin
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At the entrance of some churches in Tuscany (Italy), the reproduction of an apparently undecipherable inscription can be found. Beginning in the 18th century, this epigraphic puzzle has originated a debate on its interpretation. This study proposes a hypothesis based on the Latin alphabet used in texts contemporary to the churches where the inscription is reproduced and a possible interpretation of the message consistent with the official religious doctrine. The proposed deciphering is extended to the full text, including some signs that were previously considered geometric forms or a specific elaboration of letters not attested in other contemporary documents.
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(This article belongs to the Section Cultural History)
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Haunted in Desolation: The Murder of Captain John Gunnison, Reconsidered
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Histories 2023, 3(2), 198-218; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3020014 - 09 Jun 2023
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Deserts confuse, fogging memory and electrifying the imagination. In 1853, on Utah’s Sevier River, a ritualized killing spawned a folklore of deserts that lives on to this day. Captain John W. Gunnison, an engineer, had detoured into an ambush. Dismembered, decapitated, his heart
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Deserts confuse, fogging memory and electrifying the imagination. In 1853, on Utah’s Sevier River, a ritualized killing spawned a folklore of deserts that lives on to this day. Captain John W. Gunnison, an engineer, had detoured into an ambush. Dismembered, decapitated, his heart torn from his chest, he had died, it was said, by order of the Mormon prophet and Utah’s Latter-day Saints. Fabulized over the decades, the tale was contorted with an evil king in a desert kingdom, with ghoulish assassins and restless corpses undead. Folklore saw what historians have been slow to perceive about hauntings in desolation. Memories of trauma run deep in disquieting strangeness. Places presumed to be empty set dark expectations for horror.
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Open AccessEssay
A Political Ecology of the Body: Nature in French Anarchist Pedagogy around 1900
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Histories 2023, 3(2), 189-197; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3020013 - 06 Jun 2023
Cited by 1
Abstract
This essay historicizes the concept of nature in French anarchist pedagogy around 1900. I argue that anarchist cosmology was not dualist in the sense that it did not neatly separate the natural from the cultural or social. Nature was rather understood as an
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This essay historicizes the concept of nature in French anarchist pedagogy around 1900. I argue that anarchist cosmology was not dualist in the sense that it did not neatly separate the natural from the cultural or social. Nature was rather understood as an ever-evolving realm that encompassed nonhuman and human entities. This example should encourage historical scholarship to look more deeply into what anthropologists sometimes call “naturalist ontology”. Instead of conceiving it as a fixed worldview, we should investigate its genealogy, transformations, and contestations.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Images of Nature—From the Middle Ages to (Non-)Western Modernities)
Open AccessEssay
‘Apart from the Experiences of Subjects There Is Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, Bare Nothingness’—Nature and Subjectivity in Alfred North Whitehead
Histories 2023, 3(2), 176-188; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3020012 - 02 Jun 2023
Cited by 1
Abstract
While long ignored, the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead has attracted considerable interest and wide academic reception since the 2000s. One reason for the renewed interest in Whitehead’s work is most certainly that his philosophy and concepts offer a way out of dualistic
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While long ignored, the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead has attracted considerable interest and wide academic reception since the 2000s. One reason for the renewed interest in Whitehead’s work is most certainly that his philosophy and concepts offer a way out of dualistic schemes of thought that have dominated the conceptual framework of the West since modernity. In my paper, I focus on Whitehead’s undoing of the opposition between nature and subjectivity, for it is a crucial aspect of Whitehead’s concept of nature not to exclude subjectivity from the ‘realm of nature’. For Whitehead, subjectivity is a fundamental feature of the whole of reality and by no means exclusively human, leading to a radically non-anthropocentric, pluralistic notion of the subject.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Images of Nature—From the Middle Ages to (Non-)Western Modernities)
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A Theological Age: A New Way of Looking at the History of the West
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Histories 2023, 3(2), 156-175; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3020011 - 29 May 2023
Abstract
This paper argues that the current age is best understood as a theological age in that its normal approach to the world is one based on a high level of abstraction. Theology stands in contrast with piety, which derives much more from immediate
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This paper argues that the current age is best understood as a theological age in that its normal approach to the world is one based on a high level of abstraction. Theology stands in contrast with piety, which derives much more from immediate experience and embodies common sense. The cultural and intellectual development of Europe and the West can be understood in terms of the interaction of two distinct modes of thinking and viewing the world, namely theology and piety, and the way in which theology has come to dominate Western culture to the detriment of piety. Hence, the dominance of Greek rationalism within the West has led to a one-sided culture that gives priority to rationalist modes of thought. There has been a continuing tradition of piety in the West, but its existence has tended to be somewhat fugitive as can be seen, for example, in Musil’s depiction of the ‘other condition’ and in J S Mill’s personal breakdown caused by an excess of theology. The implications of a theological approach for history are evident as historical developments are viewed through the rigid prisms of perspectives that either fragment the study of history into a series of disconnected narratives endowed with their unique telos or impose an all-encompassing narrative that erases differences as well as potentialities. In both cases, it is the theological mode of thought—which has dominated the West since the so-called birth of rationalism—that turns history into ideology. This paper contends that the current condition calls for a new history of philosophy that captures and responds to the crisis affecting the West’s self-understanding and sense of purpose.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Frontiers in History)
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Charging Complicity in Abuses, Ignoring Beneficial Engagement: How American Conservatives Secured the Blocking of U.S. Funds for the UNFPA by Misrepresenting the UN’s Efforts to Reform China’s One-Child Policy
Histories 2023, 3(2), 129-155; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3020010 - 01 May 2023
Abstract
We describe a key moment during the world’s attempt to come to terms with enormously expanding populations. China was an extreme case, both in the magnitude of its population explosion and in its government’s control of reproduction through the One-Child Policy (OCP). The
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We describe a key moment during the world’s attempt to come to terms with enormously expanding populations. China was an extreme case, both in the magnitude of its population explosion and in its government’s control of reproduction through the One-Child Policy (OCP). The U.S. had been a founder and the main financial supporter of The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Starting in 1998, UNFPA’s program in China attempted to move the OCP away from two decades of coercive family planning and toward acceptance of the women’s rights–centered global consensus that emerged from the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development. In 2001, a conservative U.S. organization, the Population Research Institute, claimed to have gathered evidence of UNFPA’s involvement in Chinese coercion. Although several investigations, including one sent by President George W. Bush himself, refuted this evidence, and UNFPA had used no U.S. funds in China, conservative political power was sufficient to cause President George W. Bush to eliminate all U.S. funding for UNFPA’s activities everywhere in the world. Ironically, this period was exactly when the UNFPA project had shown that coercion was unnecessary. China eventually followed the UNFPA’s lead, liberalizing and eventually ending the OCP.
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(This article belongs to the Section Political History)
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Nature as a Huge Organism: Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (1776–1837) and Early Ecology in German Romantic Science
Histories 2023, 3(2), 112-128; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3020009 - 21 Apr 2023
Cited by 1
Abstract
The following article explores ideas of early ecological thinking within the natural sciences of early-19th-century Germany and discusses its possible roots. It tries to shed some light on the work of Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus who developed a holistic understanding of nature. The historical
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The following article explores ideas of early ecological thinking within the natural sciences of early-19th-century Germany and discusses its possible roots. It tries to shed some light on the work of Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus who developed a holistic understanding of nature. The historical background and 18th-century ideas Treviranus relies on will be described—namely, the ‘great chain of being’, the idea of nature as a vast network of interconnected living beings and the question about the existence of vital forces that cause movement, growth or reproduction. Reference will especially be made to Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus’ main work, the six-volume Biologie oder Philosophie der lebenden Natur für Naturforscher und Aerzte (Biology or Philosophy of Living Nature for Natural Scientists and Physicians) published in Göttingen between 1802 and 1822 and the somewhat later synopsis Erscheinungen und Gesetze des organischen Lebens (Phenomena and Laws of Organic Life) printed in Bremen in 1831 and 1832.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Images of Nature—From the Middle Ages to (Non-)Western Modernities)
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Prehistory and Ideology in Cold War Southeast Asia: The Politics of Wartime Archaeology in Thailand and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1954–1975
Histories 2023, 3(2), 98-111; https://doi.org/10.3390/histories3020008 - 21 Apr 2023
Abstract
The two decades comprised within the partition of Vietnam and the end of the Indochina Wars surprisingly saw major advances in prehistoric archaeology in the region. This article examines the political context and implications of archaeological investigations conducted in Thailand and the Democratic
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The two decades comprised within the partition of Vietnam and the end of the Indochina Wars surprisingly saw major advances in prehistoric archaeology in the region. This article examines the political context and implications of archaeological investigations conducted in Thailand and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam under the guidance of, respectively, American and Soviet specialists, as an aspect of the cultural Cold War. Archaeological discoveries in both countries debunked colonial archaeology’s account of prehistoric Southeast Asia as a passive recipient of Chinese cultural influence by documenting autonomous technological development. The article argues that the new image of mainland Southeast Asia’ prehistory that formed by the early 1970s reflected the superpowers’ objective of empowering the region’s postcolonial nation-states notwithstanding their political contrasts, yet it was not equally congruent with the nationalist narratives of Thailand and North Vietnam.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Frontiers in History)
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