Contents and Summaries

No. 2 May,

2022

 

A Comparison of the Development of Sea Power in the Ancient World ( Part I )

MA Keyao

Influenced by the geographical environment, economic demand, nautical equipment and technology, some ancient countries developed sea power earlier, some became maritime empires, and some developed sea power slowly. The geographical environment of Ancient Greek Poleis made them develop sea power and expand their living space. Even Sparta, which was developed in agriculture, had become a maritime power in the fight for hegemony. The Persian Empire had the strength to build warships, but it didn’t have its own naval talents, so it didn’t have enough strength to occupy Greece. Rome defeated Carthage with its own navy and became a maritime power in its aggression and expansion. Ancient Chinese dynasties took agriculture as the foundation, and its geographical environment always led to the invasion of nomads in the northwest. Therefore, the main energy of unifying the country was used to resist the strong enemies in the northwest. All the operations at sea were aimed at conquering adjacent regions, not for the purpose of economic plunder. In Song Dynasty, there was a trend to develop sea power, and after Song Dynasty, there was an economic foundation to do so. However, the implementation of the ban on maritime trade in Ming and Qing Dynasties stagnated the momentum of ancient China’s development of sea power.

 

 

Representatives of Athens and Corinth at the Court of Archidamas, King of Sparta, from the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides on JSTOR

A Commentary on “Imperial Turn” ——Also A Study on the Relationship Between Imperial History and World History

WANG Jiafeng

Since the end of the last century, the so-called “imperial turn” has sprung up in the western academic circle, that is, paying attention to the Empire in reality and history, writing the “new Empire history” and driving the all-round revival of the Empire history. This “turn” comes into being because with the process of globalization, the influence of the United States is becoming greater and greater, while the sovereignty of traditional nation-state is weakening, and the world is facing a series of important new problems; also because of the influence of post-modernism, post-colonialism, new cultural history and other thoughts, people begin to explain the economic and social life of the Empire from a new perspective. The concept of “Empire” is relatively broad, often equivalent to what is usually called great powers. The Empires in history have left many experiences and lessons in domestic governance and foreign affairs, some of which are still worth learning. Since this wave of “imperial turn” is closely related to the behavior of the United States which is increasing imperial, the current imperial history fever can be said to be closely related to the future fate of nation-state and the trend of world evolution, which deserves our attention. Imperial history is not the same as world history. Clarifying its relationship with world history will help us to deeply understand the evolution of human civilization.

 

The Establishment and Changes of the Household Registration System in Modern Japan

WANG Pengfei

In modern Japan, the household registration system was the main basis for the government to grasp population information, conscript and levy taxes, implement administrative management and enforce laws, and it was also an important way for the state to educate and control the people. As a node of individual rights and social control, the institutional changes of the household registration system reflected the modernization process of Japan to a certain extent. Immediately after the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese government began to compile the household registration, which was compiled into a national household registration, namely the household registration of Renshen year in 1871, and then established the household registration system in modern Japan through three household registration reforms in 1886, 127 1898 and 1914. The household registration system laid the foundation for the Japanese government to concentrate on promoting the modernization of the country, but the retention of the feudal “Iye system” in the household registration system and the strengthening of household sovereignty after the debate of Civil Code, restricted individual rights and laid the groundwork for fascism.

 

The Inchoation of Modern Japanese Trade Association and the Reconstruction of Integrated Organization－A Case Study of Tea Industry Cooperative

SONG Shilei

From the disintegration of Kabunakama to the set up of voluntary associations, and then to the establishment of trade association, the Japanese tea industry cooperative was inseparable from the Meiji government’s policy of “Shokusann kougyou”. After the United States and other countries regulated the quality of imported tea, the Japanese government and the tea industry issued the Rule of Tea Industry Cooperation, which combined various Japanese practitioners into a strong community of interests through the tea industry cooperative, promoted the development of the Japanese tea industry, improved the ability to compete with China, and met the market needs of the United States and other western countries. It was a general trend for Japanese industry cooperatives to carry out integrated transformation, such as silk reeling industry, which also formed a similar cooperative at the same period. Furthermore, this model also transplanted to Taiwan which was a colony forcibly seized from China. Since the late Qing Dynasty, China had been paying attention to the Japanese tea industry cooperative. Taking the Japanese cooperative system as a reference, Nanjing National Government had implemented cooperatives and other systems, which had achieved certain results, but also had many incompatibilities.

 

The Formation of the International View of Law Merchant in the 17th Century England

 CHAI Bin and CHANG Shixin

In the 17th century England, some people in the business and legal circles began to pay attention to and study the jurisprudence of merchant. They actively advocated the international character of merchant law, or thought that it was international law, and the international view of British merchant law came into being. The formation of this concept benefited from the continuous expansion of foreign trade space, which gave birth to the British’s international vision, and also benefited from the businessmen and their supporters in the legal circle who advocated maintaining the internationality of the merchant law and the jurisdiction of the commercial court. At the same time, this concept also exposed real purpose of some businessmen, which was that maintained their franchise and monopoly in the name of calling for the maintenance of the merchant law and reducing the interference of common law courts in commercial cases.

The Name and Nature of the Tudor Regime

LU Lianchao and LI Wei

The doctrine that Tudor monarchy was despotism had been circulating in China for a long time. Since Liu Xincheng questioned it in the early 1990s, there had been no further research on this issue in the academic circles. The Tudor Dynasty was a centralized Commonwealth, which realized through the tripartite coordination of the King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons in parliament, rather than a despotic monarchy. The concept of “Tudor despotism” was proposed by William Stubbs, systematically demonstrated by J. R. Green as a “new monarchy”, and mistakenly transplanted by A. F. Pollard as a prelude to the constitutional government. In the 1960s, F. W. Maitland, K. B. McFarlane, Patrick Collinson and other British historians constantly confirmed that the concept of Tudor despotism was not tenable, and Collinson also gave a new definition as “monarchical republic”. It was more practical that the Tudor regime was monarchical republic.

 

On the Christianization of The Hungarian Nation and Its Influence

TANG Xiaoxiao

Magyars, the main ethnic group of Hungary in the middle ages, were a nomadic people with the background of Urals. They believed in primitive religion at first, and moved to Pannonia plain at the end of the 9th century. They mingled with the original local residents and gradually formed the Hungarian nation. Under the influence of the international situation and the needs of national development, the Hungarian nation converted to Christianity. The Christianization of the Hungarian nation not only cleared away the obstacles for the establishment of a feudal state, which accelerated the process of civilization; but also laid an important foundation for its integration into the European civilization circle and even the formation of a new Eurasian civilization contact zone.