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Item Open Access The Fatimid Legacy and the Foundation of the Modern Nizari Ismaili Imamate(I. B. Tauris., 2017) Beben, Daniel; Daftary, Farhad; Jiwa, ShainoolThe Fatimid era is ubiquitous today in the discourse of the Nizari Ismaili imamate. Yet this was not always the case. As with other societies and religious communities the world over, the arrangement and presentation of history in the Ismaili tradition has evolved in the course of time, with new historiographical agendas and subjects of emphasis emerging or receding in response to changes in the political and social contexts. In this chapter the place of the Fatimids in the cultural memory of the Nizari Ismailis in the post-Mongol era will be explored. 2 It will be argued that the emphasis placed on the Fatimid era in present-day Nizari discourse is a relatively recent development, rooted in the dynamic changes that occurred in the social and political context of the community in the 18th and 19th centuries.Item Open Access Religious Identity in the Pamirs: The Institutionalization of the Ismāʿīlī Daʿwa in Shughnān(in: Identity, History and Trans-Nationality in Central Asia: The Mountain Communities of Pamir. Routledge, 2018) Beben, Daniel; Dagiev, Dagikhudo; Faucher, CaroleOne of the most conspicuous aspects of the culture and identity of the Pamiri peoples today is the prevalence of Jsma'TIT ShT'ism within the region. Yet the prominence of Jsma'Tlism in the Pamirs in the present day is matched equally by the uncertainty that surrounds the question of the date and circumstances of its introduction. While both scholarship and the oral traditions of the Parniri peoples ascribe a foundational role in the introduction and spread of lsma'Tlism in the region to the 11 th-century lsma'TIT poet, hilosopher and missionary (dii 'l) Na$ir-i Khusraw, the subsequent history of the Isma'TITmission or da 'wa in the region in the centuries foJlowing his death remains almost entirely obscure (Beben, 2017a). Alongside Na~ir-i Khusraw, the lsma'TITs of Shughnan also maintain oral traditions concerning the role of a legendary figure by the name of Shah Khamush, who, along with several companions, is likewise credited with a later role in the establishment or re-establishment of the Isma'TIT da 'wa in the region (Gross, 2013). By contrast with Na$ir-i Khusraw, whose historical role as a representative of the lsma'TIT da 'iva is well -attested, the figure of Shah Khamush and his historical identify is far more ambiguous. A closer examination of the evidence reveals a much more diverse and equivocal array of narratives connected with this individual that circulated in the past, in comparison with those that are reflected in public memory today.Item Open Access From Tibet Confidentially. The Secret Correspondence of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama to Agvan Dorzhiev, 1912–1925(Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 2012) Samten, Jampa; Tsyrempilov, NikolayLetters, like human beings, can have complicated fates. This is especially true for the letters presented here – letters that were for many years stored on the dusty shelves of the Antireligious Museum of Verkhneudinsk. Today, both the museum and its city bear different names. The museum is now known as the National Museum of Buriatia, the city as Ulan-Ude. One may suppose that after the famous owner of these letters died in a prison hospital in November 1938, the letters, together with the rest of his property, were confiscated by NKVD officers. The officers probably assumed them to be religious writings, and handed them over to the Antireligious Museum. This is only speculation, of course, but the fact remains that the letters were stored for almost seventy years in the reserve funds of the Museum, completely unknown to the scholarly community, until they were introduced to us in 2004. Half of the preserved letters are of a private nature, but another half are of considerable significance for specialists in the history of modern Tibet.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 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 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 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 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 «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 Challenges to fieldwork before 1914 and today: Adaptation, Omission, Rediscovery(Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, 2014) Forêt, PhilippeJohn Chappell and, before him, Lord Curzon have reminded us that much can be gained from reviewing earlier writings and from listening to interruptions and silence.1 In January 2010, I discovered with amazement a wealth of unpublished observations while scrutinizing the drafts of maps made by the productive and flamboyant Dr. Sven Hedin (1865–1952). Secluded for decades in the National Archives of Sweden, Hedin’s precise information on the vegetation types, soil and water qualities, animal tracks, former shorelines, and abandoned settlements of Tibet and Xinjiang would have been valuable for the elaboration of a theory on climate change in extreme environments...Item Open Access How “Modern” was Russian Imperialism?(2012) Morrison, Alexander StephenIn this paper I explore the characteristics which historians normally attribute to 'modern' forms of Imperialism, and whether these make sense when applied to Russia. I conclude by making some tentative suggestions as to where the real distinctiveness of the Russian Empire lies.Item Open Access Item Open Access Human rights(2015) Duffel, Siegfried"As I’m writing this, Christians are brutally murdering Muslims in the Central African Republic; people in Syria are being bombed, starved, and tortured; and homosexuals still face the death penalty in Iran as well as long prison sentences in countries like Uganda and Nigeria and persecution by thugs in many countries. These atrocities and many other disturbing phenomena are often called “human rights violations.” What gives them this status? That is a question about which there has been a surprising amount of disagreement among political philosophers."Item Open Access Moral Philosophy(2013) Duffel, SiegfriedThis article examines long-standing debates in moral philosophy that are relevant to international human rights law. It discusses the political conception of human rights and the four challenges to moral philosophy which include the notion that no particular religious tradition or particular comprehensive doctrine (or morality) grounded human rights and the belief that natural rights theories end up misrepresenting and narrowing the scope of human rights. This article also highlights the importance of the work of moral philosophers to the understanding of contemporary human rights and explains that the traditions of natural rights theories still influence contemporary human rights language in profound waysItem Open Access Oriel and the wider world(Oxford University Press, 2013-11) Morrison, Alexander StephenItem Open Access The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union: too soon to talk of Echoes?(2015) Morrison, Alexander StephenThis paper is a rather general 'thought piece' in which I have unwisely allowed myself to speculate on some of the contemporary resonances of the Russian Imperial and Soviet past. I have not updated it since 2012, and in the nature of these things parts of it already look dated. As Sir Walter Raleigh put it when justifying the decision to write his 'History of the World' only about Antiquity 'Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth.' My father discovered this twenty-four years ago when writing a biography of Boris Yeltsin, and I owe the quotation to him. n.b. the published version of this paper also includes an egregious factual error on the second page - the Treaty of Nerchinsk between Russia and Qing China of course dates to 1689, not 1657.Item Open Access Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk land in the Zarafshan Valley after the Russian Conquest(2013) Morrison, Alexander StephenThis paper is a revision and correction of Chapter 3 of my 2008 monograph ('Russian Rule in Samarkand') in which I made a number of errors and misjudgements. The most glaring of these was to confuse a Bukharan tax official (the amlakdar) with the owner of 'mulk' (a category of landed property which usually carried some form of tax exemption). I have disentangled these, added some further evidence, and reconsidered the evidence which I put forward in my book. I argue that Russian attempts to implement at what is sometimes called 'land reform' in the Zarafshan Valley in the 1860s and 1870s are better understood as a fiscal measure, rather than anything to do with property rights. The Russians found the Bukharan land tax system impossible to understand, and so proceeded to dismantle it, abolishing the annual assessment of the quantity and value of the harvest (which had been the responsibility of the amlakdar) and also refusing to recognise claims made by religious elites in the region that they were entitled to tax breaks on their mulk property. However, the system the Russians put in place instead placed enormous power in the hands of village oligarchies, ensuring that at the lower levels the Russians had little control over how the tax burden was allocated, and almost certainly collected far less than their Bukharan predecessors. The Russians also failed in their attempt to have the region's land declared the patrimony of the state. The paradoxical result was that, at least in the Zarafshan Valley (and quite possibly in other sedentary regions of Central Asia) the advent of the colonial regime meant a reduced tax burden, less state oversight, and security of property at least equal to what had existed before.