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Sexual violence created an utterly asymmetric constellation between the offender and the violated person, as well as between the accuser and the court. This paper differentiates and criticises this simple and static view. With a comparative perspective on European examples and based on court records of the communal state of Zurich, the paper discusses how to dealwith the conceptual and empirical problems arising in a historical analysis: How can we make pre-modern and modern sources relate to each other? How can we approach what “rape" and “abuse" meant for the contemporaries?What can we find out about the constellations between the accusers, the defendants and the court? How can we understand the sentences which seem extremely unjust to us today as being fair at that time? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conceptualizes the history of the future in the twentieth century. The present future is always multi-faceted: produced by diverse actors, it concerns different aspects of the world, and is articulated in many ways. We suggest a divergence from the Koselleckian notion of a unified horizon of expectation. Rather than concentrating on the contents of visions of the future, we focus on the processes by which the future is generated. Distinguishing between futures of expectation, creation, risk, and conservation, we offer both a systematic account and a heuristic to analyze the pluralization of the future in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of a "third world" rose to prominence in international political discourse around 1960 and vanished around 1990. It designated a group of countries aligned with neither of the two other worlds. I argue in this article that the term needs to be situated in a larger history of the perception of global difference at least as old as the Enlightenment. The peculiar career of the concept of the "third world" is connected both to changes in the order of knowledge and, more specifically, to the history of economic thought, of which it is an effect. The paper thus focuses on the emergence of the term around 1960 and investigates the irrelevance of economics in late colonialism as opposed to the prominence of economic experts in the post-1945 world order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary research, the history of Protestant mission societies is often studied as a constitutive element of political, social, and cultural developments within the broader frame of non-European and colonial history. Mission societies are viewed as translocal enterprises and analysed as multi levelled, interactive, and dialogical phenomena. The paper focuses on specific forms of mediation within the mission context in eighteenth century South India carried out by intermediaries (middlemen/interpreters/translators) who had developed the skills and knowledge required for these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the political and social conflicts in 18th century Val de Bagnes. The existence of a large genealogical database of its population provides new insights into the mobilization patterns of an early modern rural area. Our prosopographical approach, which attempts to identify the protagonists of the different conflicts, reveals the existence of well-organized and relatively stable political factions. Rather than simply being shaped by personal solidarities, they had a coherent political program. Comparison with genealogical data reveals the influence of kinship ties within the political factions, which are responsible for continuities within the structure of political conflicts. However, kinship alone does not explain the logic of political mobilization, other social networks like spiritual kinship or village solidarities also need to be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Age of Revolutions brought about political refugees as a mass phenomenon. While scholars have emphasized mutual influences between revolutions across the Atlantic and the broad horizons of the revolutionaries, they have not applied the same methodological rigor to those who opposed or fled revolutionary change. This article brings together cases from the American, the French, the Haitian and Spanish-American revolutions, and examines the geographic horizons, similarities and connections between the different refugee movements. It argues that a comparative and entangled history of these exiles provides a host of new insights on the history of the Atlantic during this period: from the reconfiguration of political communities and early forms of migration control and humanitarian assistance to the changing boundaries of freedom and new spaces of transnational politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the nineteenth century, the crusade against gambling became a global trend. It was deeply embedded in the civilizing mission of Western nations, which sought to uplift both their own lower classes and other “uncivilized” parts of the world. The anti-gambling movement was rooted in ideas like the bourgeois work ethic and its norms of discipline, temperance and merit. Most European countries reacted to the anti-gambling pressure by prohibiting or severely restricting lotteries, casinos and betting. In India, the British provoked a long-lasting controversy by taking action against indigenous gambling practices. In Siam, the political elite made the prohibition of gambling a part of its own civilizing mission in order to prevent colonial rule and because it considered gambling to be a major obstacle to the modernization of Siamese society and economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge about the complex history of voluntary associations is one of the key aspects to understanding the organization of modern society. There is, however, a remarkable lack of suitable approaches for analyzing them.We suggest four strategies for historicizing voluntary associations: Considering the specific sociological type of organization; dealing with the changeable motives of members; looking at intricate relations between societal and state actors; and understanding the sphere of voluntary associations as a social network.We conclude that these perspectives will lead to new insights in the history of voluntary associations, with all its continuities, tensions and transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the cyclical trajectory of the British coal miner from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. Within less than one generation, the miner turned from doomed industrial proletarian to self-assured embodiment of the future back to doomed proletarian. The renaissance of King Coal in the 1970s proved short-lived, and yet it needs to be taken seriously if one is to understand the nature of the coal strike of 1984/85 and the rundown of the industry that followed. Indeed, the figure of the miner offers a lens for reconfiguring our understanding of the 1970s and British contemporary history more generally, as the article seeks to demonstrate both empirically and conceptually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the history of development there has been a tendency to attribute developmental initiatives to coordinating centres in the global north and view countries in the south as recipients, a phenomenon that continues to the present day. The Central American Nutrition Institute (INCAP) is by contrast an example of a regional institution that not only generated a considerable body of knowledge concerning the nutritional state of the region and policy proposals but also advocated an alternative development model emphasizing local resources. Although INCAP enjoyed some success in disseminating a number of its ideas through international organisations, the implementation of its vision was ultimately hampered by the unstable political situation prevailing in Central America in the time period analyzed in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the rise of public debt in Italy since the 1970s. It argues that Italy's path into debt differed from other countries of Southern Europe. Rather than historical path-dependencies, both the macro-economic conditions during the 1970s and the specific interests of the institutions involved in the debt management can explain the countries growing deficits. The article shows how the Italian central bank was able to increase its institutional power, while the financial sector profited from the trade in government bonds and treasury certificates. The high saving rates of private households, which financed a huge part of the public debt, explain why there have been no dramatic bank insolvencies or external debt crises in Italy since the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, the causes and events that have ultimately led to states being unable to service their debts have often been remarkably similar. This article adopts a different perspective and investigates how assumptions about economic uncertainty determine future expectations and influence decision-making in public debt crises. The article explores these questions through an analysis of the postwar shift in the global market for public loans, and the role of financial organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the Bank for International Settlements. The findings suggest that the crisis of the 1980s caused the ideas and practices of international debt settlement to be rewritten due to changes made in the market for national-debt instruments, which was established as a direct response to the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces the topics of the January 2015 issue of the social history periodical "Geschichte und Gesellschaft" with a focus on the use of counterworlds as a research tool with case studies including the Kurt and Erna Kretschmann environmental protection center in East Germany, encounters between clergy and liberals in late 19th-century Poland, and the influence of idealized Native American values on the Protestant church in West Germany during the 1960s and 1970s.

The article examines the role of foreign expert advisers from West Germany in the fishing industry in Thailand from 1959 to 1975. The author analyzes the social and symbolic dimensions of German development aid aimed at the economic modernization of developing countries. Issues discussed include German and Thai understandings of fish as livestock and as a natural resource, conflicts between economic interests and environmental concerns, for example with regard to the problem of overfishing, and the symbolic capital of economic development.

The article presents a political history of the Islamic countries that emerged from the Ottoman and Russian Empires in the aftermath of World War I. The author highlights Muslim attitudes toward republicanism, parliamentary government, and constitutionalism. Examples discussed in detail include the brief independence of majority-Muslim areas of the former Russian Empire in Central Asia and their reintegration into the Soviet Union, the Kemalist revolution in Turkey between 1918 and 1923, and the short-lived Socialist revolution in the province of Gilan, Iran, led by Iranian military officer Mirza Kuchak Khan from 1920-1921.

The article examines debates about the respective utility of railroads and roads as cargo transportation means in Great Britain and Germany in the interwar period. The author highlights the competition between railways and trucking as the primary mode of freight transport and that this competition was indicative of broader social changes in the two countries. Among other topics, she also discusses the work of transportation planners, state policies concerning transportation, and transportation management as a form of social engineering.

The article traces the history of the Bretton Woods monetary system from its inception in the mid-1940s to its collapse in the early 1970s. Focusing particularly on economic, monetary, and fiscal policy in the Federal Republic of Germany during this time period, the authors chart debates in West German politics, in the European Economic Community (EWG/EEC), and internationally on such questions as currency revaluations, the global market for gold, and the contribution of competing interest rate policies, particularly of the German Bundesbank and the U.S. Federal Reserve System, to the breakdown of the monetary system. The influence of the Bretton Woods System on the subsequent system of cooperative monetary policy in the EEC, known as the Snake in the Tunnel, is also considered.

The European tradition of what became known as “classical" music is unique among Western arts because it resisted influences from non-Western civilisations. In the contemporary world, both the European canon of musical masterpieces and the social setting of western musical life have been exported to many different parts of the world with few changes. This tradition of European musicmaking should not obscure the global contexts in which music evolved, in particular from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. This article outlines several of these contexts, including exoticism, colonial rule, the mobility of musicians, the impact of new reproductive technologies, and the concept of “world music". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In shaping the institution of the museum, the French revolutionaries similarly established it as a cultural agent resting upon specific cultural techniques which still account for its modernity down to the present day. On the backdrop of the all-embracing notion of the “new world" which the revolutionaries repetitiously made use of, the discussions about the creation of the Louvre outlined the museum's genuine cultural performance in terms of museification. The following article tries to develop this argument and expounds a poetics of the modern museum being essentially grounded, first, on the present as most important time line, second, on the aesthetics of the exhibits, and third, on the utopian moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents and discusses the poetics of the museum while basing on an historical investigation of the museum as an institution in France between the years 1790-1795. Thus, the article determines that the French revolutionaries that stood behind the establishment of the museum, based its concept on a set of cultural techniques that have remained relevant throughout history and thus play a role in the present as well. The revolutionaries used the narrative of "a new world" when creating the Louvre museum. The article consequently explores the poetics of the museum in modernity while concentrating on its aesthetics from an historical perspective.

The debate regarding the applicability of the secularization thesis needs to make a sharp distinction between the context in which it was created and the grounds for its validity. The aim of this essay is to find empirically and theoretically wellfounded arguments against the secularization theory and to examine whether they are justified or not. But before announcing one's intention of criticizing the secularization theory, one needs to know what it actually says. Frequently an abridged, unilateral concept of the theory is used enabling one to dissociate oneself from it critically. Therefore, this essay starts with a brief presentation of the main presumptions of the secularization theory, goes on to list the major points of criticism before ending with a discussion of their justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For roughly a decade, highly controversial arguments about colonial history and its relevance for contemporary France have marked public and scholarly debate on the “République (post)coloniale". The older master narrative arguing that the Empire's significance for metropolitan society was very limited has been challenged by scholars calling for a postcolonial turn in French historical writing. Against this backdrop, the article reassesses the impact of decolonisation on France in the 1960s and 1970s. Two arguments are brought forward: Firstly, the minimal impact-thesis of traditional historiography is indeed inadequate. Secondly, postcolonial inspired literature, which so far has focused too narrowly on cultural dimensions, needs to be complemented. Therefore, the authors discuss the impact of decolonisation on French political life, its economy and migration history. In sum, the article proposes a broad research agenda for the study of a “République décolonisée". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of decolonization on the former colonialist empire France. The author argues that traditional historiography of the colonial era marginalised the effect of French colonialism on French culture and consciousness, and did not reflect adequately the violence of the processes of colonialism and decolonization in the social and the political arena. Topics mentioned include migration, racism, and cultural conflict in post-colonial France.

History has for a long time focused on the stable aspects of societies; recently, however, in the context of a rising interest in global interconnections, people on the move have caught the attention of historians. The article follows this interest in stressing the importance of faster mobility for sustaining the expansion of empires or the development of a world economy in the wave of globalisation at the turn of the 20th century. Yet at the same time – and this has mostly been neglected – it is crucial on the one hand to distinguish different kinds of mobility and on the other to analyse how these differentiations were actually established at a time of increasing acceleration. This is pursued by first introducing concepts that have developed such a differentiated approach towards mobility, or rather mobilities. Subsequently these arguments are taken further through an investigation of the political processes that determine the distinction between different mobilities. This structuring of mobilities becomes most evident in spaces where different trajectories overlap and intersect. What emerges is neither all-encompassing acceleration nor the hardening of borders and constraints, but rather the channelling of movements in an attempt to bring them under control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst labour history has always been aware of the emotional dimensions of strike activities, the latter have hardly been given systematic consideration. This article seeks to assess the potential of impulses from the “emotional turn" for a cultural renewal of strike history. After some remarks on empirical problems of operationalising theoretical models, it examines the role of emotions at different stages of strikes, types and functions of spontaneous and organised emotion work, the impact of emotions on strike-related violence, and emotions as an issue in strike discourses. On balance, strike-related emotions appear as a system of communication vessels, in which all involved actors participate and which is influenced by various situational factors and cultural concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of “development" was an important part of the global re-orderingwhich took place afterWorldWar II.With the rise of the development paradigm, the hour of the planners began to strike. “We are all planners now,"W. Arthur Lewis declared in 1949. Lewis, who originated from the Caribbean and taught development economics in Manchester, embodied like no one else the confidence in the “development potential" of the states in Africa and Asia struggling for independence. Lewis was deeply convinced that the political economies of the “ThirdWorld"would flourish on the basis of careful planning and with the help of the “right" economic programs.This article analyses at some examples the planning efforts of late colonial administrations in Africa and traces the way from the promise of planning to the end of the planning euphoria in the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike other planning regimes of the 20th century, state socialismemployed an image of the plan that operated at the level of myth. Its single plan implied a single planner, the party, which understood the laws governing social development. In theory, the technical intelligentsia translated this knowledge into scientifically correct technical practice. In practice, however, the plan and planning took on a paradoxical relationship. While the plan suggested control and comprehensive knowledge, technical planning raised concrete problems that revealed the limits of control and knowledge. The system of contracts in the GDR illustrates the point:When technical planners called for binding contracts that would showhowfirms actually functioned, planning cameinto conflict with the assumptions of the plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]