History, Philosophy and Religious Studies
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The Department of History, Philosophy and Religious Studies is part of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Our faculty and students explore ideas, beliefs, and the development of human societies. The department offers majors and minors at the undergraduate level and it makes a significant contribution to the MA in Eurasian Studies.Our trans-disciplinary department is committed to pursuing excellence in research and teaching in all of its many areas of expertise. We believe that teaching and research must go hand-in-hand. All courses are therefore led by dedicated experts at the forefront of their fields.
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Item Open Access Le paysage de la décolonisation de la métropole Hong Kong-Macao(L'Harmattan, 1997) Forêt, PhilippeLes facteurs apolitiques qui dirigent la mondialisation de l'économie sont en train de brutalement détruire l'architecture vernaculaire chinoise ainsi que le riche symbolisme lié à l'aménagement traditionnel du paysage. Le but de cet article est plus précisément de proposer une description des effets sur l'environnement du retour à la Chine des dernières colonies européennes en Asie orientale.Item Open Access Railroad literature on suitable places : How the Japanese government railways forged an "old China" travel culture(Chronos Verlag, 2003) Forêt, PhilippeThis empirical study on advertising campaigns and the art of running trains in distant places finds its theoretical significance in a view of history where real and imagined geographies interact. The railroad companies of the Japanese Empire did much more than transport passengers and carry freight: their express trains embodied a particular view of a world centered on racial, nationalist and dynastic myths. Modernity as ideology and the everyday experience of colonialism combined in Manchuria to generate a particular perception of China as a decadent and romantic culture.Item Open Access De la vertu au vice: l'espace des loisirs à Macao (1910-1930)(2003-05-16) Forêt, PhilippeLe nom Macao (Aomen en chinois, Ou-mun en cantonais) proviendrait d’une corruption du nom du temple A-ma (Make miao en chinois, Ma-kok miu en cantonais) qui se situe à l’entrée (men, mun) du Port Intérieur. Le temple est fondé au moins deux siècles avant l’arrivée des Portugais. Il est dédié à l’impératrice divine A-ma ou Mazu tianhou, qui est la patronne des pêcheurs et des marins...Item Open Access White Todas’. The Politics of Race and Class amongst European Settlers on the Nilgiri Hills c1860 – 1900(2004) Morrison, Alexander StephenThis article argues that it is not possible to generalise about the politics and racial attitudes of so-called 'unofficial' Europeans in India from observations of the community in Calcutta which, precisely because it was so large, was atypical. Elsewhere where the number of Europeans was smaller, attitudes towards Indians were more complex, and hostility towards the 'official element' of Europeans in civil and military employ with the Government of India was often greater than racial antagonism towards Indians. The Nilgiri Hills in South India, with a population of about 1,500 settlers, are a case in point. The 'White Todas' (the name is taken from a pastoral Hill-tribe) felt distinct from the 'official' Europeans who came up to the main hill-station, Ootacamund, the summer capital of the Madras Presidency, during the hot weather. To avoid complete political emasculation, the 'Todas' at times had to forge political alliances with wealthy Indian mercantile elites, with whom their interests often coincided.Item Open Access Les blancs du Tibet : histoire des solutions adoptées pour résoudre le plus magnifique problème de la géographie(Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2004) Forêt, PhilippeCet article traite d'un demi-échec dans l'histoire des blancs de cartes. Une tentative de revivification lexicale, sans pour autant aboutir, suffit à modifier les mécanismes d'évaluation de la découverte géographique. Un géographe prestigieux a désigné d'un nom désuet l'espace qu'il a exploré, avant de voir ses travaux rejetés par ses collègues. L'objet de la dispute, qui oppose en 1909 la Royal Geographical Society de Londres (RGS) et le docteur Sven Hedin, le champion des écoles de géographie de l'Europe continentale, est le Transhimalaya. Cette querelle redéfinit la mise en oeuvre des politiques scientifiques, un sujet dont l'importance justifie l'examen des codes de conduite auxquels les géographes adhèrent. Plus fondamentalement, je cherche à analyser les procédures de remplissage des blancs de carte qu'emploie la géographie savante de la Belle Epoque au moment même où l'acceptation implicite de ces pratiques n'apparaît plus comme allant de soi. Ce que j'étudie est donc moins la viabilité d'un nom que la viabilité des pratiques des géographes et des cartographes européens en Asie centrale.Item Open Access «De la vertu au vice: l’espace des loisirs à Macao (1910–1930)»(Chronos Verlag, 2005) Forêt, Philippe;Je propose un jeu sur l'espace des loisirs, sur la célébration et le dénigrement d'une baie et d'une rue, sur le mariage et le divorce d'une ville et de son littoral, et sur les pratiques iconographiques de répétition et de répression. Puisque nous parlons de jeu, il nous faut des cartes et un tapis vert qui nous sont précisément fournis par les établissements de Macao. Bien plus que tout autre participant, l'industrie du jeu a en effet dirigé les changements dramatiques qu'a connus Macao au cours du XXe siècle. Dramatique n'est pas un terme trop faible pour qualifier l'évolution toute en contradictions de l'image de soi, de l'identité collective, de la conception de la modernité, et de la stratégie suivie par Macao pour éviter la marginalité.Item Open Access Globalizing Macau. The Emotional Costs of Modernity (1910-1930)(Routledge, 2006) Forêt, PhilippeThis chapter deals with the ambiguity that political authorities feel toward culture and history when they are pressed to enlarge and modernize urban infrastructures. I will discuss the strategy followed by the Harbour Works Department of Macau as the city sought to reposition itself as an international trade centre. I examine Macau's spatial transformation between 1910, when a progressive regime came to power in Lisbon, and 1930, when the first extension phase of the Porto Exterior facilities was completed.Item Open Access A Plague on both your Houses(2006) Morrison, Alexander StephenI wrote this article in response to a polemical debate between Niall Ferguson and Priyamvada Gopal in the pages of the Guardian in 2006. I had hoped that it might be published in the comment pages, but no such luck... It deals with the unjustified assumptions which parties on both sides of this debate make about the omnipotence of Imperial Rule.Item Open Access Russian Rule in Turkestan and the Example of British India ca1865 - 1917(2006) Morrison, Alexander StephenThis article argues that Russia's Empire in Central Asia is best understood in comparison with the other Western Colonial Empires of the nineteenth century, specifically Britain's Indian Empire. It examines nineteenth-century Russian travellers' accounts of British India, and the `Asianist' tradition which argued that Russians had a greater affinity with Asian peoples than other Europeans, and that the nature of their empire was consequently different. In the case of Turkestan it rejects this assumption on the basis of research in Russian and Uzbek archives, and of the differing views expressed in books and journals by Russian military officers and imperial administrators of the dayItem Open Access Kartographie der Kontinuität: Vom vormodernen Ostasien zum postmodernen Hong Kong(Rombach, 2007) Forêt, Philippe; Glauser, Jürg; Kiening, ChristianMit meinen folgenden Ausführungen möchte ich zu einem neuen Verständnis der Vormoderne beitragen, einer Epoche, die viel offener für die kulturelle Vielfalt und toleranter gegenüber inkohärenten Entwicklungen ist als auf den ersten Blick erkennbar. Ich befasse mich mit den Gründen für das Fortleben der vormodernen Kartographie und mit der Rolle, die sie an den überraschenden Orten in Ostasien spielt.Item Open Access Is China ––––––––––––––– flat? A minor contribution to counterfactual geography(2008-12-11) Forêt, PhilippeThe French philosophers Gilles Deleuze (1925-95) and Félix Guattari (1930-92) gathered two seminal texts in On The Line. In "Rhizome," Deleuze and Guattari introduced a new kind of thinking, which is both nondialectical and non-hierarchical, substituted pragmatic and free-floating logic to our usual binary, oppositional, and exclusive logic model, and offered an early template to understand the internet. In "Politics," Deleuze and Guattari envisaged society as a series of lines, reinvented politics as a process of flux whose outcome is always unpredictable, and suggested that the creativity and multiplicity of its flows can redirect and question capitalism. According to On The Line, China always rebounds after most of the country is destroyed. China starts up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines, when it is shattered at a given spot. A rupture occurs in China whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight. After each rupture, there is a danger that China will stratify again everything, from Taoist resurgences to communist concretions. China experts can never posit a dualism or a dichotomy, even in the rudimentary form of the good and bad. China has valued the making of flat spaces, traditionally for food production and today for profit-making in the well-connected global economy. China's vision of state-building has always been at odds with the physical reality of a country rich in hills and mountains. We have had so far thirty centuries of unsustainable development.Item Open Access The dependence of libertarianism on the notion of sovereignty: rejoinder to morton(Critical Review Foundation, 2009) Duffel, SiegfriedG. E. Morton tries to defend libertarianism against my claim that it relies on an implausible secularization of ideas of divine sovereignty. But it is not true, as he claims, that morality itself entails human sovereignty: witness the moral theories of divine-command theorists and philosophical consequentialists. Nor is it true that sovereignty can be conceptually transferred from God to equal human individuals, since they would have no legitimate way to legislate over each other, short of a unanimous “general will.” Nor, finally, does the idea of first possession rescue private property rights, since it is as applicable to animals and children as to adult human beings.Item Open Access ‘Applied Orientalism’ in British India and Tsarist Turkestan(2009-07) Morrison, Alexander Stephen‘We cannot promise to those who may choose Oriental scholarship, that they shall find themselves abreast, in all the various high-roads of life which lead to profit and distinction, with the men who shall have devoted themselves to acquiring the knowledge which in these days is power, the intellectual treasures which make fifty years of Europe better than a cycle in Cathay, which are the sinews of peaceful empire as surely as money is the sinew of war.’Item Open Access The Swiss contributions to the international development of cartography: The Eduard Imhof Era(2009-07-12) Forêt, PhilippeMy paper is about a project that will examine Switzerland's participation, during five decades, in the institutional and intellectual emancipation of the map-based sciences. I intend to provide a thematic and dispassionate account of the achievements of Swiss cartography and cartographers, and document the crucial initiatives a Swiss academic took to develop cartography worldwide. In the course of my analysis of Professor Eduard Imhof's interactions with his foreign colleagues, I will add cultural as well as technical perspectives to the interpretation of contemporary progress in the mapping sciences. For the Swiss school of cartography, the Imhof era (1920-1970) was more formative than the bet-ter-studied Dufour and Siegfried Maps period (1845-1926). Despite the contentious political environment of his time, E. Imhof (1895-1986) used his personal charisma to systematically encourage cooperation worldwide. Through the seminars he led and the International Cartographic Association he created and chaired, E. Imhof federated the cartographers from across the world. I will explain how by 1970, on the eve of the digital revolution, he had forged a common professional identity and improved modes and venues to communicate across the discipline. Eduard Imhof will thus allow us to touch on two important themes in science and society: the geography of knowledge and the adoption of new theories, standards and methods by the international scientific community.Item Open Access The role of Central Asia in the discovery of global warming(2009-11-11) Forêt, PhilippeThe review of precise field maps and photographs should help me reconstruct not only the environmental and cultural history of Central Asia, but also the scholarly debate on climate that occurred during the first three decades of last century. I will very specifically investigate expedition reports because these publications exemplify the methodological guidelines enforced by the scholarly community. I will indeed argue that Stein's Explorations in Turkestan or Hedin's Sino-Swedish "Scientific Expedition to the North-western Provinces of China" provide a useful framework to analyze the first debate on global warming.Item Open Access Item Open Access Au delà de la frontière scientifique, la frontière du réel en Asie centrale chinoise(2010-02-04) Forêt, PhilippeTo comprehend the role of frontier and frontier-making in the scientific controversy on the "geographical pivot history," I will propose a short account of the remarkable topographical expeditions that explored the Gobi, Taklamakan, Qinghai and Kevir deserts.Item Open Access Staking a Claim in Paradise : The Appropriation of Central Asia by the Capitals of China (1625-1945)(2010-11-01) Forêt, PhilippeLecture given at the China in Asia colloquia series, 2010-2011 OBJECTIVE Understand the non-Chinese notions at work in landscape-making and in thegarden architecture of the imperial capitals of China. METHODOLOGY Examine imperial villas, gardens and temples. Hypothesis: These sites represent physically and explicitly theories andtechniques on landscape appropriation. Case study: The residences of the Qing dynasty (1625-1912) in Shenyang, Beijing (Yuanming yuan and Yihe yuan) and in Chengde (Bishu shanzhuang),and those of Manchoukouo (1932-1945). EXPECTED RESULTS Conceptualize the Qing landscape through changes in scale rather thanthrough ruptures in time.Item Open Access Central Asia as a part of the Russian Empire(2011) Morrison, Alexander StephenAn excessively lengthy review article analysing the collectively-authored volume 'Tsentral'naya Aziya v Sostave Rossiiskoi Imperii', published by 'Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie' in 2007Item Open Access Writing the Russian Conquest of Central Asia(2012) Morrison, Alexander StephenBetween 1839 and 1895, Imperial Russia annexed approximately 1,500,000 square miles of territory in Central Asia, an example of European expansion that in speed and scale is matched only by the 'Scramble for Africa' or the British annexation of India slightly earlier. Unlike the latter, however, it has generated a very meagre modern historiography, and the interaction of Russian motives, local dynamics and ideological and technological change which brought it about are still very imperfectly understood. In English-language historiography the dominant interpretation is that of the 'Great Game', asserting that it was designed to threaten the British in India, something which tells us much more about how the British perceived it than it does about either Russian motives or the Central Asian experience of Conquest. In Russian-language writing the emphasis is usually placed on the Moscow textile industry's need for a secure source of raw cotton and a captive market for Russian manufactured goods, crude economic determinism derived from the works of Lenin rather than from any actual evidence. The paucity of modern research is all the more surprising given the richness of the available sources – not only archival and published documents, but Islamic chronicles, officer memoirs, and military historiography which together represent an earlier, diverse and now largely ignored written legacy. This material is under-used and long overdue a reappraisal, but it has to be handled with caution. In the case of chronicles in Persian and Turkic this is because they are the product of an elite literary tradition more concerned with the internal politics of the Central Asian khanates than with the Russian advance itself. In the Russian case it can be deceptive in at least two respects – firstly because although it involved very small bodies of troops, this was one of the few unequivocally successful military campaigns for Russian arms in the nineteenth century. The weight of published campaign memoirs (almost exclusively by officers) is thus disproportionate both to the numbers who took part and to the purely military (as opposed to logistical) dangers and difficulties they encountered in what was for the most part a classic case of asymmetrical colonial warfare. The other reason is that well before the conquest came to an end it was being quite deliberately narrated and mythologised in official historical works, beginning perhaps with the ‘Historical Section’ of K. P. von Kaufman’s Turkestanskii Al’bom (1871-2) and the campaign histories of the Khiva Expedition of 1873. During his tenure as War Minister the Turkestanskii General Alexei Kuropatkin commissioned both M. A. Terent’ev’s Istoriya Zavoevaniya Srednei Azii (1906) and A. G. Serebrennikov’s vast publication of documents related to the conquest (1908 – 1915). This process reached its peak in 1915, with the memorialisation and commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the fall of Tashkent. The last major article published by Voennyi Sbornik, running for the whole of 1916, even as Central Asia was convulsed by revolt, and still unfinished when the February Revolution broke out, was on the lessons which the Central Asian conquest supposedly held for Russia’s immediate challenges on the Eastern Front. This paper will analyse both the process of composition and the purposes for which these works were used by the Russian military establishment, and attempt to establish what, if any, impact they had on educated society in Russia.