Hasil untuk "History of France"

Mateusz Baca, Barbara Bujalska, Danijela Popović et al.

Abstract Background The field vole, an abundant and widespread microtine rodent, is a complex comprised of three cryptic species: the short-tailed field vole (Microtus agrestis) which is present over much of Eurasia, the Mediterranean field vole (Microtus lavernedii) in southern Europe, and the Portuguese field vole (Microtus rozianus) in western Spain and Portugal. Previous research has shown high genomic differentiation of these three lineages. However, the details of the process underlying their divergence remain unknown. Results We analyse 70 mitogenomes and 16 nuclear genomes of modern specimens, and 83 mitogenomes and 12 nuclear genomes of ancient specimens spanning the last 75 thousand years (ka). We estimate the divergence of Portuguese from short-tailed and Mediterranean field voles to be ca. 220 ka ago and of the latter two species to be ca. 110 ka ago, earlier than previous estimates involving only modern sequences. The divergence times we obtain match those between major mitochondrial lineages of cold-adapted and steppe rodents in Europe. We find signatures of gene flow within and between field vole lineages, with some analyses suggesting a hybrid origin of the Mediterranean lineage. Ancient specimens from the Italian Peninsula reveal a previously unrecognised lineage that show evidence of genetic exchange with other populations. Conclusions The pattern of genetic variation in the field vole species complex demonstrates the impact of stadial-interstadial cycles in generating recurrent episodes of allopatry and connectivity of populations, a situation which could only be revealed by our dense genomic sampling over time.

Lauren Pankin

This article analyzes Charles Géniaux’s pioneering use of flash photography in his 1903 work, La vieille France qui s’en va, to construct an image of rural Brittany by illuminating the interiors of traditional Breton farms with the artificial light of the flash. Géniaux participates in a dual project: he aligns himself with the fin-de-siècle discourse lamenting the disappearance of rural traditions in the face of modernity and constructs a national history through the patrimonialization of the regional. By highlighting the furniture and customs presented as vestiges of a bygone past, Géniaux effaces and anonymizes contemporary Breton peasants, presenting them as unconscious guardians of a heritage they cannot fully appreciate. The article examines how Géniaux’s use of the flash, by prioritizing material heritage over the inhabitants, contributes to freezing a dynamic Breton culture and transforming it into a spectacle intended for urban audiences, thus anticipating its relegation to the past and its potential integration into private collections.

Galina V. Aksenova

The author considers the life V.N. Khitrovo (1834-1903) who was to a greater extent known as the founder of the Orthodox Palestine Society and, to a lesser extent, as a statesman. In 1856, he became an official in the Naval Ministry, where he served under the command of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich until April 1863, during the transformation of the financial reporting system in the Naval Ministry. The article describes for the first time V.N. Khitrovo’s service in the Office of the Control Department and the Commissariat Department of the Ministry and shows the features of his service. The author reveals the significance of V.N. Khitrovo's business trip to France in 1858. The introduction into scientific use of the documents from the naval archive made it possible to characterize the nature of Khitrovo’s activity during the studies and the practical training he had in the Reporting Department of the French Ministry of Finance and Arsenal. In addition, the author analyzed for the first time V.N. Khitrovo’s works devoted to the history of accounting and justification of the need to introduce a double-entry bookkeeping system. The conducted research allowed us to come to the conclusion that during his years of service in the Naval Ministry, V.N. Khitrovo gained critical experience in organizing financial control and accounting, which later allowed him to effectively organize the financial activities of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society.

Hiroto Sato, Konan Shimizu

In social learning environments, agents acquire information from both private signals and the observed actions of predecessors, referred to as history. We define the value of history as the gain in expected payoff from accessing both the private signal and history, compared to relying on the signal alone. We first characterize the information structures that maximize this value, showing that it is highest under a mixture of full information and no information. We then apply these insights to a model of markets for history, where a monopolistic data seller collects and sells access to history. In equilibrium, the seller's dynamic pricing becomes the value of history for each agent. This gives the seller incentives to increase the value of history by designing the information structure. The seller optimal information discloses less information than the socially optimal level.

Daniele Dominici

The history of the Arcetri Institute of Physics at the University of Florence is analyzed from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1960s. Thanks to the arrival of Garbasso in 1913, not only did the Institute gain new premises on Arcetri hill, but also hosted brilliant young physicists such as Rita Brunetti, Enrico Fermi, Franco Rasetti in the '20s and Enrico Persico, Bruno Rossi, Gilberto Bernardini, Daria Bocciarelli, Lorenzo Emo Capodilista, Giuseppe Occhialini and Giulio Racah in the '30s, engaged in the emerging fields of Quantum Mechanics and Cosmic Rays. This internationally renowned Arcetri School dissolved in the late 1930s mainly for the transfer of its protagonists to chairs in other Italian or foreign universities. After the war, the legacy was taken up by some students of this school who formed research groups in the fields of nuclear physics and elementary particle physics. As far as theoretical physics is concerned, after the Fermi and Persico periods, these studies enjoyed a new expansion in the sixties thanks to the arrival of Raoul Gatto who created in Arcetri the first Italian school of theoretical physics.

Cyril Milleret, Christophe Duchamp, Sarah Bauduin et al.

Population size is a key metric for management and conservation. This is especially true for large carnivore populations for which management decisions are often based on population size estimates. In France, gray wolves (Canis lupus) have been monitored for more than two decades using non-invasive genetic sampling and capture-recapture models. Population size estimates directly inform the annual number of wolves that can be killed legally. It is therefore key to use appropriate methods to obtain robust population size estimates. To track the recent numerical and geographical expansion of the population, a substantial increase in sample collection was performed during the winter 2023/24 within the entire wolf distribution range in France. A total of 1964 samples were genotyped and assigned to 576 different individuals using microsatellites genetic markers. During the winter 2023/24, spatial capture-recapture models estimated the wolf population size in France to be likely between 920 and 1125 individuals (95% credible interval). Detection probability varied spatially and was positively influenced by snow cover and accessibility. Wolf density was strongly associated with the recent presence of the species, reflecting the ongoing recolonization process from the Alps. This work illustrates the usefulness of non-invasive genetic data and spatial capture-recapture for large-scale population assessment. It also lays the ground for future improvements in monitoring to fully exploit the potential of spatial capture-recapture models.

Kevin France, Girish Duvvuri, Cynthia Froning et al.

The extreme-ultraviolet (EUV; 100 -- 911 Å) spectra of F, G, K, and M stars provide diagnostics of the stellar chromosphere through the corona, with line and continuum formation temperatures spanning roughly 10$^{4}$ - 10$^{7}$ K. The EUV stellar spectrum in turn drives atmospheric photochemistry and numerous escape processes on orbiting planets. We present a new study of the EUV history of solar-type stars, using new and archival {\it Hubble Space Telescope} observations of solar analogs (T$_{\odot}$ $\pm$ 150 K for stars older than 100 Myr) and ``Young Suns" (age $<$ 100 Myr) that will evolve into main sequence early G-type stars to predict the 90 -- 360 Å EUV flux from a sample of 23 stars. We find that the EUV activity evolution for solar-type stars follows a two-component behavior: a saturated L(EUV)/L$_{bol}$ plateau (at a level of about 10$^{-4}$) followed by a power law decay ($α$ $\approx$ $-$1.1) after ages of $\approx$ 50 -- 100 Myr. Consequently, the EUV flux incident at 1 AU around solar analogs varies over the lifetime of the Sun, ranging from 100 $\times$ the present day UV irradiance at 10 Myr to 0.3 $\times$ the present-day level at 10 Gyr. We find that the EUV luminosity is approximately the same as the soft X-ray luminosity up to approximately 1 Gyr, after which the EUV luminosity of the stars dominate. In comparison to Sun-like stars, the EUV saturation level of early/mid M dwarfs is several times higher and lasts $\sim$10 -- 20 times longer.

Arzu Melek Ozgumus

It is always very interesting to read the German history, which sheds light on a nation which has been built in less than two centuries and hit almost the top of Human Development Index. The origins of its economic and political dominance can be traced back to the beginning of the German Empire’s formation. In Blood and Iron, Katja Hoyer delves into the rise of German Empire and its eventual fall, leading to the First World War, a pivotal event that reshaped the European map. In the first chapter of the book, Hoyer covers the period between 1815-1871, beginning with the Vienna Congress in 1815, where Austria-Hungary and Prussia started their competition on the hegemony over the German states – which ultimately resolved in favor of Prussia. After defeating Napoleon, Prussia gained Rhineland and Ruhr coalfields during this period hinting at their burgeoning industrial and economic power. Although the German Confederation created at that time was led by Austria, the balance of power began to shift with the rise of Otto von Bismarck in the politics. Bismarck was a junker, landowner nobility, who became a member of the Prussian Parliament in 1847. Following his terms as Ambassador in France and Russia, he was recalled to Berlin by Wilhelm I in 1862 to support passing the military budget. This was the beginning of a relationship between Wilhelm I and Bismarck that will have a defining impact in history, a relationship Hojeremphasizes as having a profound impact on German politics. Starting from this point in the book, Hoyer frequently reminds the reader of the famous “blood and iron” speech of Bismarck, in which he emphasizes that Germany's fate would be determined through decisive military and industrial strength. This speech becomes a recurring theme in Hoyer's analysis.  Bismarck’s Reich, the second chapter of the book, focuses on the years when Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm ruled as the Chancellor and Emperor of the German Empire respectively, from 1871 to 1888. It begins with Wilhelm, the King of Prussia, becoming the Emperor of the German Empire, and getting the title of Kaiser Wilhelm on 18 January 1871 in Versailles Place after the defeat of France in the Franco-German was of 1870-71. The chapter introduces the governmental structure of the Reich, which consisted of the Kaiser, Imperial Chancellor, the Bundesrat (the upper of parliament), and Reichstag (the parliament). Hoyer meticulously examines how Bismarck ensures the central role given to Prussia, and how he uses his power and position to create a German national identity. She explores how Bismarck implements a cultural strategy, Kulturkampf, to suppress the religious identities, especially of Catholic minorities under Protestant Prussian rule. Kulturkampf also aimed at the secularization of education and this has been a milestone in the creation of young generations with German identity. Despite resistance and the rise of pro-Catholic Centre Party (Deutsche Zentrumspartei) in politics, Hojer argues the enduring impact of this through the end of the book when discussing the First World War. In this chapter, the writer also briefly mentions the Jewish Question, as it was a significant debate around the same time. She emphasizes events like financial crisis or migration of Polish Jews taking over jobs of Germans which increased anti-Semitism. However, both Kaiser and the Chancellor viewed the Jewish issue as a matter of religion, rather than one of race. Through careful analysis, Hoyer captures the complexities of governance, cultural strategies, and social tensions during this formative period of the German Empire. In this chapter, Hoyer also underlines diplomatic skills of Bismarck. While she doesn’t mention the Concert of Europe when discussing Bismarck’s foreign policy, she clearly indicates how carefully he keeps a balance between all European powers. She criticizes him, in the following parts of the book, for building all his foreign policy around himself, which was doomed to fail after his resignation. The writer kept the third chapter of the book, Three Emperors and a Chancellor, covering the period between 1888 and 1890 notably brief, as this was a transition period. The chapter succinctly outlines key events such as the death of Kaiser Wilhelm, the brief reign of his son Freidrich III, wo passed away in just 99 days after his coronation, and the ascension of son Wilhelm II as the last Kaiser. Bismarck continues to be the Chancellor, counselling three successive emperors. However, the rising tensions and disagreements with Kaiser Wilhelm II ultimately leads to his resignation in 1890. The fourth chapter, Wilhelm’s Reich, serves as the second major segment of the book following Bismarck’s Reich. Hoyer portraits Wilhelm II as a young, ambitious, brave and visionary Emperor, unlike his grandfather’s, more modest and humbler demeanor. Due to his powerful character, Wilhelm II prefers Chancellors that he can easily control, and who can maintain a low profile in the politics. Under Wilhelm II’s leadership, he encourages further technological and industrial development, paving the way to German Empire to get a unique place in global trade with its specialization. While these developments increase the national wealth, but this was not reflected in people’s purchasing power. The working class becomes poorer, despite bankers, mostly Jews, becomes richer. The developing technology causes a decline in the need for workforce, exacerbating the challenges faced by a growing population. Developments in chemistry, resulted in new fertilizers, causes the food prices to decrease and leads the farmers into poverty, who eventually migrate to urban areas to seek jobs. Despite economic turmoil, Wilhelm II sought budget approval from the Reichstag to modernize the army. His ambitions to expand military power, however, intensified with the introduction of Weltpolitik, which was the imperialist foreign policy to make German Empire a world power. The book underlines that Wilhelm II saw Weltpolitik to bring all Germans’ together, including liberals, conservatives, social democrats, proving the power of iron in blood in German politics. Initially the writer expresses her hesitations about the character of Wilhelm II, questioning whether he was intelligent and proactive, or merely ignorant and easily influenced by a small circle of advisors. By the end of the fourth chapter, however, she clearly indicates how easily he was influenced by others, a vulnerability which ultimately leads him to take the decisions that brought his country into the First World War. In the fifth chapter, Catastrophe, Hojer summarizes the First World War and how Germany’s plans failed after the war began. Because of Weltpolitik, Great Britain, France and Russia allies against Germany, culminatinginto a war of attrition where both sides face with heavy loses. By the end of the war, Germany faced inevitable military defeat, widespread poverty among its population, with the British naval blockade worsening the situation. These aspects led to end of the war with armistice negotiations, which forced Kaiser Wilhelm II’s abdication and declaration of Germany as a republic.  In the final chapter, Hoyer concludes by highlighting the flawed foundations of the German nation, “blood and iron”, and how it destroyed borders, empire and military of Germany. But she also emphasizes Bismarck’s legacy and its enduring influence, and that it will survive with the rise of defensive nationalism after the defeat in the First World War. Hoyer summarizes the history of German Empire by touching upon education, literacy, education, religion, economy and socio-cultural changes of the time. She provides a clear picture of the nation-building process that lead to small German states into Germany we know today. Details she focused on, indeed, helps the reader to understand the German society, industry and economy today. Hoyer’s book can be seen as portraying Bismarck as the person who built the German nation -and national identity-, and Wilhelm II as the one who lead to the collapse of the Empire. While this seems a plausible approach initially, the details she provides explain the context of the time. It was the time when the collapse of Ottoman Empire has started, the European powers’ competition over its territory was already risking the Concert of Europe, and there was little chance for small German states to survive without a confederation. She also emphasizes how naturally these states stick to Germany even after the First World War. In other words, while she underlines the top-down nature of policies and transformation of German nation, she also gives hints about how inevitable this change was by focusing on the industrial and economic dynamics of the time.

Jean-Yves Barbier

In France, the Fourvière promontory, the original founding site of the Roman colony of Lyon/Lugdunum (Metropolis of Lyon), extends southwards into the line of hills that was left behind by the Alpine glaciers of the Lyon plateau, marking the steep eastern edge of the Massif Central at its point of contact with the Rhone Graben and river valley. Within this transitional zone, the steep hillside at the foot of which flows the Saône, downstream from and at its confluence with the Rhône in Antiquity, extends from west to east between the communes of Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon (Metropolis of Lyon) and La Mulatière (Metropolis of Lyon) around a north-south road built into a ledge that follows, mid-slope, the direction of the Narbonne road that provided access to Lugdunum from the south. Facing east, this steep slope is known as the Balme de Fontanières and, thanks to the complex history of its geological formation, it offers abundant water resources, as evidenced by the resurgences and catchments from various periods in the vicinity of the eponymous road.The Romans could neither have ignored nor neglected the availability of these nearby resources, especially as to the north and west of the town, they had been forced to develop the remarkable network of four aqueducts spanning over 200 km long –including those of the Gier, Mont d’Or, Yzeron and Brévenne rivers– which captured the attention of renowned researchers such as G. M. Delorme, F. Artaud and C. Germain de Montauzan and, more recently, the leading experts on the “Four Lyon aqueducts,” a working group led by the Archéologie et Archéométrie (ArAr) laboratory. An examination of ancient references demonstrates that the remains of an aqueduct were known to exist in the Balme de Fontanières, but that they were too imprecise or had been misinterpreted and thus remained nearly entirely ignored throughout the 20th century.Curiously forgotten, F. Gabut’s description of a section of buried canal uncovered in the second half of the 19th century during groundworks for the construction of a house recently reappeared in a cultural heritage guidebook, thus re-launching the survey that would allow for the successive description of three remains found in situ. As a result of these investigations, it is now possible to confirm the existence of a fifth aqueduct at Fontanières, as well as to partially reconstruct its route over a distance of almost 1.50 km. It could have drawn water from hillside springs, such as those along the Fournache slopes below the town of Sainte-Foy, and collected it through the Balme cave in a buried canal, whose cross-section measures just 0.43 m less wide than that of the Mont d’Or aqueduct, though their configuration is otherwise quite similar, except for its covering, which was not found in the case of Fontanières. Its dimensions are comparable to those of certain sections of the Yzeron aqueduct. At La Mulatière, a well-preserved 19 m section of the canal is still visible within the Cave de la Fleurie, and 500 m further north, portions of its foundation were found in the Fontanières gardens, in proximity to numerous reused blocks of tile mortar that reveal the destruction of the pipe it was intended to support.Finally, diligent and unrelenting research, combining fortuitous location scouting and field surveys, tenacious consultation of archives and exploitation of a network of local contacts, led to the discovery, 1 km further north, in Lyon’s 5th arrondissement, of another section of the canal, over 18 m long, as far as the scree filling in its extension in the heights of the Montée Saint-Laurent, downstream from the Rue des Trois-Artichauts towards Choulans. A rigorous altimetric approach confirms, as F. Gabut had already rightly observed at the end of the 19th century, that the water would indeed have flowed from south to north towards Lyon/Lugdunum, rendering obsolete prior interpretations of an extension of the Brévenne aqueduct from its arrival at Saint-Irénée towards the south-east. At mid-slope, downstream from the Narbonne road, at an estimated invert elevation of 223 m, the canal had to negotiate the contours of the steep terrain of the Balme de Fontanières, without resorting to the aerial installations required by its four large and prestigious counterparts supplying the city’s highest districts from the west. It couldn’t compete with them, but it was an aqueduct that used the nearby resources provided by the groundwater of the Lyonnais plateau and the outlets on its eastern slopes. Indeed, this aqueduct was able to supply the intermediary levels of the Fourvière hill on the right bank of the Saône, as well as the sites (villae, craft or port facilities, sanctuaries, fountains or thermae) located below, and as far as the banks where the Rhône and Saône rivers converged. Many hypotheses have been put forward about its source, profile, destination and dating, but only the discovery of new elements will allow us to draw further conclusions.

Simon Malmenvall

Franc Grivec (1878–1963), a long-time professor at the Faculty of Theology in Ljubljana, is considered a pioneer in systematic research of Eastern Christianity among Slovenian authors. A significant part of Grivec’s published work is dedicated to the ideational analysis of the October Revolution of 1917, which presented a topical public issue of his time, conditioned by socio-economic change and the seeking of new collective identities. This is most thoroughly addressed in the monograph for a wider audience (National Consciousness and Bolshevism) originally written by Grivec based on his lectures to the primary- and high-school teachers of Ljubljana in 1944. According to Grivec, the extremism of the Bolsheviks represents a part of the wider mechanism of Russian cultural history, in which the concept of a messianic mission, starting with the idea of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” appeared several times. The mentioned author calls on Catholic intellectuals to assert Christian principles in public and foster a reflected national consciousness as opposed to the internationalist socialism, in order to prevent the success of the revolution on Slovenian soil. His views are organically complemented by France Dolinar (1915–1983), a representative of the younger generation of Catholic scholars of the time, who decided to live in emigration due to the political pressures in his homeland. Dolinar draws close to Grivec with the emphasis on the engagement for the common national cause against the “political partisan mindset”; on the other hand, Dolinar surpasses Grivec with his idea for the independent Slovenian state, which would be a real opposite to the socialist theory on the extinction of nations.

Ryan M. McGranaghan

This review examines complexity science in Heliophysics, describing it not as a discipline, but as a paradigm. In the context of Heliophysics, complexity science is the study of a star, interplanetary environment, magnetosphere, upper and terrestrial atmospheres, and planetary surface as interacting subsystems. Complexity science studies entities in a system (e.g., electrons in an atom, planets in a solar system, individuals in a society) and their interactions, and is the nature of what emerges from these interactions. It is a paradigm that employs systems approaches and is inherently multi- and cross-scale. Heliophysics processes span at least 15 orders of magnitude in space and another 15 in time, and its reaches go well beyond our own solar system and Earth's space environment to touch planetary, exoplanetary, and astrophysical domains. It is an uncommon domain within which to explore complexity science. This review article excavates the lived and living history of complexity science in Heliophysics. It identifies five dimensions of complexity science. It then proceeds in three epochal parts: 1) A pivotal year in the Complexity Heliophysics paradigm: 1996; 2) The transitional years that established foundations of the paradigm (1996-2010); and 3) The emergent literature largely beyond 2010. The history reveals a grand challenge that confronts most physical sciences to understand the research intersection between fundamental science (e.g., complexity science) and applied science (e.g., artificial intelligence and machine learning). A risk science framework is suggested as a way of formulating the challenges in a way that the two converge. The intention is to provide inspiration and guide future research. It will be instructive to Heliophysics researchers, but also to any reader interested in or hoping to advance the frontier of systems and complexity science.

Clément GUÉZAIS

The history of the relationship between France and Scotland is deeply rooted in the unstable context of late medieval Europe. First drafted in the late 13th century, the yet-to-be Auld Alliance” was to stand for several centuries. Its heritage, overshadowed either by sentimentalism or harsh criticism, is still a matter for debate. This study aims at exploring this narrative and at pushing beyond the usual and restrictive boundaries of traditional warfare. By looking at the diplomatic sources that initially defined and shaped the Alliance, it appears that the Franco-Scottish league was serving more than one purpose, that its military aspects were inherently limited, and that its main ambition was probably not to crush the English might on conventional battlefields. The Alliance was built and promoted in the name of peace, as a public and international display of mutual love between Christian princes, involving their peoples and realms in the process. The Alliance proved to be a powerful tool of legitimacy for the kings of France and Scotland, as well as a political and highly symbolic apparatus aimed at mutually reinforcing the rightful stance of the allies against the cruel and ungodly claims of the English kings.

Jean Christophe Contini

Often associated with Céline because of his anti-Semitism and his conduct during World War II, Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and his Cantos were discovered in France thanks to the extensive translations carried out by Denis Roche and the publication of a double issue of Cahier de l’Herne edited by Dominique de Roux and Michel Beaujour, who also invited the “Great Pan” to Paris in 1965 on the occasion of his 80th anniversary, more than forty years after his last visit to this city.However, one often overlooks the fact that this French reception (rendered problematic by a French, rather than American, history of nationalism, fascism and anti-Semitism) began with translations and comments made as early as the mid-1950s by several French poets and writers: Alain Bosquet, Michel Mohrt, Michel Butor and René Laubiès, who first translated and published a selection of Pound’s Cantos and poems in 1958.

Maria Papadopoulou, Zacharoula Smyrnaiou

Digital technologies, such as the Internet and Artificial Intelligence, are part of our daily lives, influencing broader aspects of our way of life, as well as the way we interact with the past. Having dramatically changed the ways in which knowledge is produced and consumed, the algorithmic age has also radically changed the relationship that the general public has with History. Fields of History such as Public and Oral History have particularly benefitted from the rise of digital culture. How does our digital culture affect the way we think, study, research and teach the past, as historical evidence spreads rapidly in the public sphere? How do digital technologies promote the study, writing and teaching of History? What should historians, students of history and pre-service history teachers be critically aware of, when swarmed with digitized or born-digital content, constantly growing on the Internet? And while these changes are now visible globally, how is the discipline of History situated within the digital transformation rapidly advancing in Greece? Finally, what are the consequences of these changes for History as a subject taught at Greek secondary schools? These are some of the issues raised in the text that follows, which is part of the course materials of the undergraduate course offered during winter semester 2020-2021 at the School University of Athens, School of Philosophy, Pedagogy, Psychology. Course Title: 'Pedagogics of History: Theory and Practice', Academic Institution: School of Philosophy-Pedagogy-Psychology, University of Athens.

Frank Müller

Une politique de la non-identité est rarement perçue sous l’aspect du changement qu’implique la conception de la non-identité au concept de la politique. La conception de la non-identité permet une critique de présuppositions politiques – comme : unité et communauté, authenticité et domination – qui mène à une dissolution du concept de politique connu.

Dieter BRANDES

The old historical wounds of Europe are century-old wounds like the “Northern Ireland conflict”, the Russia–Finland conflict, the Poland–Germany–Russia conflict, the long-lasting conflict between Ottomans, Hungary, and later, the Habsburg and the Russian Empire, but also the thousand-year-old religious borderline between Eastern and Western culture. Moreover, the first half of the 20th century in (the Christian) Europe is characterized by wars and genocide in a terrible, hitherto unknown dimension. About 10 million people died in World War I and about 50 million in World War II. Countries all over Europe like Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine were involved in these war-related events. Many unhealed mental wounds are still deeply rooted in the hearts of individuals and peoples. Unhealed wounds also remained concerning the genocides of the 20th century, like the Armenian genocide, the Holodomor in Ukraine, the Holocaust against Jews and Gypsies, the genocide against Tatars in the Crimean region. Finally, let us remember the million fold wounds that arose from the communist dictatorships. After World War II, we have to mention the wounds inflicted by many additional European conflicts like the ones between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Georgia and Russia, Ukraine and Russia, the Bosnia–Croatia–Serbia conflict regarding the dissolution of the old state of Yugoslavia, the conflict between Greeks and Turks regarding Northern Cyprus, the Moldova–Russia conflict regarding Transdniestria etc. “The need for healing and reconciliation in our broken world cannot be overemphasized. The pain and burden of memories of ongoing, recent and past conflicts haunt and hamper normal life and progress. The process for ‘Healing of Memories’ is designed to advocate for, develop and promote healing of memories and other healing and reconciliation processes in Churches and faith communities, so as to strengthen their role as channels of hope, healing and reconciliation in our world today.” This was part of the final message of the WCC “European Ecumenical and Interreligious Consultation on ´Healing of Memories’ on 4th-6th May 2010”, in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the one hand, the Bible leads us to peace and reconciliation, like in Prov 16:7 in the Old Testament: “When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him”, or in the new Testament, when in Cor 5:18, Paul says “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”  Moreover, the European Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican, and Catholic churches avowed in the Final Document of the Second European Ecumenical Assembly in Graz 1997: “The church communities must confess that throughout history they often showed themselves as a bad example for the Christian message of reconciliation and ´religions and churches became themselves part of the problem´.” Therefore, the European churches signed in their common Charta Oecumenica in chapter 3: “In the spirit of the Gospel, we must reappraise together the history of the Christian churches, which has been marked by many beneficial experiences, but also by schisms, hostilities and even armed conflicts.” There have been several church initiatives of reconciliation in Europe, like the Stuttgart Church Confession of Guilt, the reconciliation process between the Polish Ecumenical Council and the Evangelical Church in Germany, the Czechian and German church reconciliation process, the reconciliation process between the Church of Norway and the Sámi, the reconciliation process in Northern Ireland, the process called „Reconciliation in Europe between the Churches in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Germany”, the Anglican–Orthodox Dialog, the Porvoo process between the Anglican and the Lutheran Churches, the Pro Oriente reconciliation process regarding the schism of the “Unions of Brest and Transylvania”. The “Healing of Memories” (HoM) process – originally developed in South Africa as a counselling methodology for the healing of personal emotional wounds after the apartheid – was further developed in South Eastern Europe on behalf of CPCE, CEC, and WCC into a process between cultures and religions. Healing of Memories between cultures and religions is a methodology to help overcome frozen history and “hi-stories” by putting emphasis on voices that were not heard, ignored or not acknowledged so far. According to its methodology, HoM is a “process of the generations” that implicates the three steps of “walking together through history”, “sharing the pain of others”, and “preparing the future together”. The HoM process between cultures and religions adds to the above “three historical steps” the previous step: “Interdisciplinary researching of the history of the nations, cultures and religions and/or communities.” For these HoM processes, special training courses have been developed in Romania in order to train facilitators, which have been recognised and adopted in the meantime as master courses at the universities of Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár, Alba Iulia/Gyulafehérvár, and Sibiu/Nagyszeben.

Richard de Grijs

Longitude determination at sea gained increasing commercial importance in the late Middle Ages, spawned by a commensurate increase in long-distance merchant shipping activity. Prior to the successful development of an accurate marine timepiece in the late-eighteenth century, marine navigators relied predominantly on the Moon for their time and longitude determinations. Lunar eclipses had been used for relative position determinations since Antiquity, but their rare occurrences precludes their routine use as reliable way markers. Measuring lunar distances, using the projected positions on the sky of the Moon and bright reference objects--the Sun or one or more bright stars--became the method of choice. It gained in profile and importance through the British Board of Longitude's endorsement in 1765 of the establishment of a Nautical Almanac. Numerous 'projectors' jumped onto the bandwagon, leading to a proliferation of lunar ephemeris tables. Chronometers became both more affordable and more commonplace by the mid-nineteenth century, signaling the beginning of the end for the lunar distance method as a means to determine one's longitude at sea.

Alessio Rocci

In June 1888, Oliver Heaviside received by mail an officially unpublished pamphlet, which was written and printed by the American author Willard J. Gibbs around 1881-1884. This original document is preserved in the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. Heaviside studied Gibbs's work very carefully and wrote some annotations in the margins of the booklet. He was a strong defender of Gibbs's work on vector analysis against quaternionists, even if he criticized Gibbs's notation system. The aim of our paper is to analyse Heaviside's annotations and to investigate the role played by the American physicist in the development of Heaviside's work.

Frédéric Audren

This paper presents Jacques Flach’s Collège de France course in primitive law, which he taught from 1892 until 1904. It insists on the specificity of his historical and comparative approach. Ever attentive to studying institutions in their context, Flach proposes an innovative interpretation of feudalism, seeks to write a global history of law and endeavours to stress the institutional alterity of primitive societies. Flach is therefore among the first scholars to teach social and legal anthropology in France.

Evanghelia Stead

This special issue originates from the seventh annual conference of the European&nbsp;Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit) I was entrusted with hosting in Paris on&nbsp;‘Periodicals In-Between: Periodicals in the Ecology of Print and Visual Cultures’.&nbsp;The event took place between the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Inalco and Paris-Sorbonne University in June 2018. A bilingual venue, it brought together young and&nbsp;advanced scholars and discussed the complex parts played by periodicals in a rich&nbsp;array of cultural and scientific settings and milieus from numerous points of view:&nbsp;history of literature, art history, press and media, visual studies, comparative literature,&nbsp;theatre studies, scientific cultures, translation and reception studies. A variety of serial&nbsp;publications were considered: reviews, magazines, parts, supplements, pull-outs, journals,&nbsp;annuals, anthologies, book series, newspapers, even a radio broadcast. This special issue&nbsp;proposes a few select contributions developed into research articles. By presenting them&nbsp;and recalling the conference’s main arguments and themes, the introduction offers&nbsp;an overview of investigations, and highlights some of the hypotheses significant for&nbsp;periodical studies today.