Biography and (Global) Microhistory

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Gamsa

AbstractThis article has two goals. It reflects on the recent developments and agenda of an approach to historical writing that is now becoming known by the name global microhistory, and it analyses the attention which this approach pays to individual lives. It also explores some of the challenges in writing the biography of a city alongside the life history of a person. The city is Harbin, a former Russian-managed railway hub in Manchuria, today a province capital in Northeast China. The person is Baron Roger Budberg (1867–1926), a physician of Baltic German origin who arrived in Harbin during the Russo-Japanese war and remained there until his death, leaving published works and unpublished correspondence in German and Russian. My forthcoming book about Budberg and Harbin challenges the distinction between writing “biography”, on the one hand, and “history”, on the other, while navigating between the “micro” and “macro” layers of historical enquiry.

1902 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 319-358
Author(s):  
R. Stewart MacDougall

In the case of any harmful insect of economic importance, in order to war against it, or apply remedial measures at all intelligently, a knowledge of the life-history of the pest is necessary. This proposition will, I think, meet with such ready acceptance as to render proof unnecessary, but I might in illustration mention two cases which came under my own observation, where in the one case a knowledge of the round of life of the attacking insect saved a whole forest, and in the other proved of great importance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan M Kenyon

Drawing on long-term ethnographic research in the Blue Nile town of Sennar, supported by archival and historical documentation, this article explores the history of Zar spirit possession in Sudan, and the light this throws on the interplay of religions over the past 150 years. Life history data supports the argument that contemporary Zar is grounded in forms and rituals derived from the ranks of the ninteenth-century Ottoman army, and these remain the basis of ritual events, even as they accommodate ongoing changes in this part of Africa. Many of these changes are linked to the dynamic interplay of Zar with forms of Islam, on the one hand, and Christianity, on the other. In the former colonial periods, political power resided with the British, and Khawaja (European) Christian Zar spirits are remembered as far more important. Today that authority in Zar has shifted to spirits of foreign Muslims and local holy men, on the one hand, and to subaltern Blacks, on the other. These speak to concerns of new generations of adepts even as changes in the larger political and religious landscapes continue to transform the context of Zar.


2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 328-350
Author(s):  
Stefan Van den Bossche

De naam van heimatauteur Omer Wattez refereert meestal aan het door hem gecreëerde geografische begrip 'Vlaamsche Ardennen'. Literair-historisch gezien viel hij echter door de mazen van het net. Vandaag zou de literatuurwetenschap hem als een middlebrow-schrijver typeren: een exponent van het middenveld waarin de literatuur sterke democratiserende doelen dient. De breuklijn in Wattez' leven en werk is die tussen de Germaanse en Romaanse cultuur. De auteur verdiepte zich in de Duitse en Oud-Germaanse cultuur en zou talloze publicaties over het thema leveren, veeleer van pedagogische aard en met de bedoeling de contemporaine verfransing van het Vlaamse cultuurleven te counteren. De schrijver besteedde op nogal eenzijdige wijze aandacht aan de Germaanse kant van de Vlaamse cultuur, iets waar zijn lidmaatschap van het Brusselse kunstgenootschap De Distel niet vreemd was. Meteen na de oprichting in 1881 was daar al een germanofiele instroom merkbaar. Het genootschap viel op door verscheidene Duitsgezinde acties die geleidelijk overgingen in een politiek pangermanisme, de droom om Germaanse volkeren onder één vlag te verzamelen. Omstreeks 1900 trad Wattez opt als een van de leidinggevende figuren van het tijdschrift Germania (1898-1905), een initiatief van Alduitse oorsprong. Eerder had hij zich bij voorkeur als dichter en novellist gemanifesteerd. Hoe dan ook zal vooral zijn boekwerk De Vlaamsche Ardennen blijven de tand des tijds doorstaan. Het koppelen van uiteenlopende toeristische facetten en oden aan het onbezoedelde landschap van zijn jeugd enerzijds en literaire cultuur anderzijds lijkt typisch te zijn aan een flink deel van Wattez' oeuvre.________The legacy of a literary centipede. About the regional author Omer Wattez (1857-1935)The name of regional author Omer Wattez is usually mentioned in reference to the geographical concept of the ‘Flemish Ardennes’ that he created. However, it is difficult to pinpoint him from a literary historical point of view. At present the history of modern literature would characterise him as a middlebrow-author: an exponent of the mainstream in which literature serves strong democratising objectives. The fault line in Wattez' life and work lies between German and Romanic culture. The author delved into the German and Old-German culture and was to produce numerous publications on that topic, which were of a rather pedagogical nature and intended to strike back at the contemporary Frenchification of Flemish cultural life. The author paid attention to the German side of Flemish literature from a rather one-sided point of view, which might well be explained by his membership of the Brussels art society De Distel. Immediately after its foundation in 1881, a Germanophile influx was already noticeable. The society attracted attention by engaging in several pro-German actions, which gradually turned into a political Pan-Germanism, the dream to unit all German nations under one flag. Circa 1900 Wattez acted as one of the protagonists of the periodical Germania (1898-1905), an initiative of All-German origin. Previous to this, he had manifested himself preferably as a poet and novelist. At any rate, it will be in particular his book The Flemish Ardennes that will stand the test of time. The linking of a variety of tourist aspects and odes to the untarnished landscape of his youth on the one hand and literary culture on the other hand appears to characterise a large part of the works of Wattez.


2019 ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Piotr Kędzia

The operations of the Łódź Sports Club in the interwar period are an important part of the history of sport in the city of Łódź, as well as Poland. The Club’s prestige and successes should be chiefly attributed to the athletes’ and the coaches’ commitment, coupled with the activists’ organisational skills. A historical analysis of the Club’s operations indicates that, in addition to training athletes in various disciplines, the establishment was also involved in a wide range of impressive cultural and educational activities. These centred on organising reading rooms, talks, lectures, social meetings and trips as well as promoting patriotic values and the idea of fair play. Hence, the Club’s educational work was channelled into axiological models of sports competition on the one hand, and into propagating education and culture on the other.


2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-70
Author(s):  
Douglas Finn ◽  

In this article, I explore how Augustine uses sermonic rhetoric to bring about the transfiguration of Babylon, the city of humankind, into Jerusalem, the city of God. Focusing on Enarratio in Psalmum 147, I show how Augustine situates his audience between two spectacles, the Roman theater and games and the eschatological vision of God. Augustine seeks to turn his hearers’ eyes and hearts from the one spectacle to the other, from the love of this world to love of the next. In the process, Augustine wages battle on two fronts: he criticizes pagan Roman culture, on the one hand, and Donatist Christian separatism and perfectionism, on the other. Through his preaching, Augustine stages yet another spectacle, the history of God’s mercy and love, whereby God affirmed the world’s goodness by using it as the means of healing and transfiguration. Indeed, Augustine does not simply depict the spectacle of salvation; he seeks to make his hearers into that spectacle by exhorting them to practice mercy, thereby inscribing them into the history of God’s love and helping gradually transfigure them into the heavenly Jerusalem.


2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Lunney

Cities and nature may seem mutually exclusive, but the animal inhabitants, both native and introduced, from pets to pests, are a major component of city life. Using Sydney as an example, this paper takes a critical look at cities and nature, more narrowly zoology, with a long-term view, i.e. one with intergenerational equity in mind. In the rapid conversion of bush to farmland, then suburbs and industrial areas, flora and fauna have not been given a strong voice. We need a new ethic for this new urban ecosystem, one which encompasses dealing with exotic species, pests and vermin on the one hand, and relic native animal populations on the other. Plans for sustainability in environment, economics and society need to recognise that these are interrelated subjects, not separate entities. I argue that knowing the natural history of Sydney is integral to understanding the city, its history, and its sustainability.


1886 ◽  
Vol 3 (7) ◽  
pp. 293-300
Author(s):  
R. D. Oldham

In any inquiry into the history of the earth as a whole, we are met at the outset by a serious difficulty. In human affairs a general view of history, not confined to a single country, would be practically impossible, were we ignorant of the relations of the various eras from which different races reckon their dates: thus, it would be impossible to write a connected account of the history of Europe in the classical period were it not possible to determine the relation of the Olympian era to that dating from the foundation of the city of Eome. Yet the supposed case is not unlike that to which the geologist addresses himself when he endeavours to make a connected survey of such widely-separated regions as Europe, India, Australia, and America.In the supposed case of the Greek and Roman eras, there are numerous points of contact, principally dates of battles, which, having been recorded by both nations according to their own system, enable us to compare the two, and so to determine what would be the date of any event, recorded by the one, had it been recorded by the other. But in geology we have no such points of contact; there is a very general tendency to regard any two series of beds, in which a few fossil forms specifically identical are found, as of contemporaneous origin. That this view is erroneous, and that it would be nearer the truth to say that two widely-separated beds, in which the same forms are found, could not be of contemporaneous origin, was long ago pointed out by Forbes and Huxley, the word homotaxis being invented by the latter to express the relation existing.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-104
Author(s):  
Luis Rojas

This article summarizes the main aspects of the Workshop on Sustainable Intervention of Cultural Heritage, which is a course developed at UNIACC University, in Santiago de Chile, since 2016. Its relevance consists, on the one hand, of contributing to the achievement of the content standards defined in international agreements on the teaching of architecture, such as the UNESCO / UIA Charter of architecture training. On the other hand, of thinking about the production of new spaces in relation to existing buildings with and without patrimony character, through the academic formation of undergraduate students, based upon the heritage values that make them an important part of the history of the city and its neighborhoods. Keywords: teaching, architecture, sustainability, UNIACC, industrial heritage.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4 (1)) ◽  
pp. 157-198
Author(s):  
Janusz Oszytko

The article is a new contribution to the local history of Opole of 1933–1945 in the light of not known and not published archival documents about the pre-war Nazi leaders of the Opole Regency and the anti-Hitler opposition as well. Those documents are stored both in the State Archive in Opole (file: Gestapo Oppeln) and in the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN Archive – various archive files). The first part of the article describes the Nazi elite of the Opole Regency in the period of 1933–1945. This interesting and complicated history of Opole and Opole region concerns the operation of the NSDAP monoparty, as well as its affiliated organizations and repressive organs of a totalitarian state. This part of the article was developed mainly from various files from the Institute of National Remembrance. The second part describes the anti-Hitler opposition in the Opole Regency in the period of 1933–1945. Very interesting and also not known in the scientific circulation are materials about political opponents, collected by Gestapostelle Oppeln, which are right now being published by the author of the article, following the previous article about the files relating to the Jews (dealt with in articles by J. Oszytko) and to the Poles (in a book by Dermin and Popiołek) which were kept by the Gestapo in Opole. To summarize, the article casts light on the history of the city, with respect to, on the one hand, the rise of German totalitarianism changing into one-party domination of the NSDAP party, and – on the other hand – the scope of persecution of parties and persons standing in opposition to Hitler’s rule in our city and region.  


2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markian Prokopovych

AbstractThe historiography on the nineteenth-century architecture of Lemberg—and, for that matter, on Lwów, Lvov, and L'viv—remains a contested field among different national camps. At the same time, these conflicting historiographic traditions have not been able to treat the complex history of this multiethnic city in an adequate manner. On the one hand, there exists a prevailing tendency to view the Habsburg period in the city's history through a national lens, highlighting only those facts and figures that would confirm the city being—or becoming—a bastion of a particular national culture. Consequently, Polish and Ukrainian literature often neglected entire projects and even time periods, assuming that, prior to Lemberg's municipal autonomy of 1867, the entire urban planning achievement by the Austrian German-speaking bureaucracy was insignificant to the city's history and had therefore no consequence for the later fin-de-siècle developments. On the other hand, superficial assumptions of Lemberg serving as “crossroads of civilizations” and “little Vienna of the East” lacked a critical perspective and often overlooked significant local phenomena that evolved independently from Viennese or other influence. In arguing against these simplistic assumptions, this paper suggests an alternative, syncretic approach that combines entangled history and a careful treatment of the ethnic dimension in Lemberg's history.


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