Histories

This article focuses on ponds and reservoirs (PRs) in Sanuki, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. Sanuki is a region in the Seto Inland Sea with low annual rainfall. In 1999, there were 14,619 PRs in the 1877 km² area. Mannō-ike, the largest PR, is said to have been constructed at the beginning of the ninth century by Kūkai, one of Japan’s most prominent Buddhist monks. Such huge man-made structures could have been achieved only through collective human labor. The motivation to build large PRs was driven by the risk of drought. However, it is important to note that there were many more small PRs managed by individuals or families than one might imagine. PRs can range in size from huge to small and in location from mountainous areas to mountain foothills and plains. Rather than hard clustering, which classifies PRs according to a single logic, this article takes a new, historically holistic approach by using soft clustering to analyze the classification mechanism by considering the “Living Spaces” the world of all living organisms, including humans, and quantifying its complex logic. Full article

John Adams asserted that the historical summation of republican political thought can be found in one writer: Polybius of Megalopolis. More clearly than any other, Polybius articulated those qualities that define good statesmen and citizens and make republics strong and successful. This article will examine this claim by bringing new historical analysis to Book 6 of Polybius’ Histories in order to identify the republican virtues important to Polybius. Polybius believed that Rome survived its early defeats in the Second Punic War and emerged triumphant over all of its enemies due to a unique combination of morals and merits that characterized good statesmen and strong republics. These extended deeper than political institutions and into the social fabric that bound the Roman people together and defined their relationships with one another, both in their homes as citizens and on campaign as soldiers. This article will work through Polybius’ analysis and show how Rome’s constitution used political institutions to suppress civic vices; armies in the field to cultivate civic service, sacrifice, and skill; military camps to shape public notions of duty, honor, and shame; and Roman families—as exemplified in public funerals—to habituate and showcase personal and civic virtues. Full article

Historically, singlehood is a growing demographic trend shaped by economic, social, and personal factors. This study examines the key influences associated with this phenomenon across diverse global contexts based on empirical evidence provided by WVS (World Values Survey), which covers over 100 countries and spans four decades. A multi-technique analytical approach is applied to identify the most robust predictors of singlehood. This approach involves feature selection, cross-validation, robustness checks, and statistical modeling (parsimonious models with near-excellent or excellent classification accuracy as AUCROC > 0.9). The results indicate that age and parental status are negatively associated with singlehood, while precarious employment status is positively linked. Co-residence with parents also appears closely related to singlehood. Other factors, including education level, social class, and settlement size, also correlate with singlehood patterns, as resulting from supplemental analyses. Moreover, gender and regional analyses reveal some variations in these associations, highlighting the interplay between personal, cultural, and economic contexts. These findings also align with social and economic theories of marriage, emphasizing the impact of life course factors, financial stability, and cultural norms. They contribute to a deeper understanding of demographic shifts. They also provide meaningful and well-founded insights as well as strategic guidance for policy in areas such as youth employment, social welfare, urban planning, and demographic adaptation. Full article

The figure of Íñigo Ibáñez de Arteita exemplifies military and social advancement during the transition from the 15th to the 16th century. Drawing upon archival materials from Lequeitio, notarial records from Valencia and Barcelona, and royal sources such as the Registro General del Sello and the proceedings of the Royal Chancery, this study examines his multifaceted profile. It introduces his family roots in the Basque town of Lequeitio and traces his trajectory—from his roles as merchant, transporter, and pirate in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, to his service as captain in the Catholic Monarchs’ fleet stationed in the Strait of Gibraltar, and as second-in-command in the 1495 expedition to Italy. His paradigmatic evolution enables an analysis of the rise of an extraordinary figure from one of the leading bourgeois families of Biscay, who—thanks to substantial real estate holdings, influential social and political networks, and remarkable nautical expertise—came to command one of the earliest permanent war fleets of his time. Full article

Gerald Horne’s explication of Cold War-era political history as negotiated white supremacy leads to an enhanced understanding of Japan in the Cold War. Although subject to important qualifications, Japanese anti-racism and solidarity with non-white peoples before, during, and after World War II contextualizes the view held by American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois—and complicated and in places contested by Horne—that Japan was, in many ways, a champion of anti-white supremacy. The experiences of Black American servicemen and -women who served in Japan during the Cold War provide important historical grounding for Du Bois’ initial, state-centered insights about Japan as an anti-racist power. This modified “Du Bois Thesis” in turn guides the Horne Thesis, on the role of white supremacy in modern global history, into a deeper harmony with the history of Cold War Japan. Full article

This study critically examines the structure, mechanisms, and enduring relevance of character education embedded in the indigenous knowledge systems of the Greater Horn of Africa. Pre-colonial African societies upheld sophisticated educational frameworks that emphasized holistic moral formation and communal character development, values that continue to influence rural communities today. Drawing on an integrative literature review, the paper identifies preparationism, functionalism, and communalism as core philosophical foundations shaping these systems. Moral and civic values were cultivated through informal, lifelong learning, guided by the collaborative roles of the home and community in fostering respect, responsibility, and social cohesion. Central pedagogical instruments included initiation rites, which provided structured moral instruction, and oral literature, which transmitted ethical reasoning and cultural wisdom. The findings underscore the continued relevance of indigenous character education in addressing contemporary societal challenges and advocate for Decolonizing the Mind as a pathway to revitalizing these traditions. The study concludes that reformed rites of passage, when purged of harmful elements, preserve cultural identity and strengthen communal ethics, offering a sustainable model for moral and civic education in modern Horn of African contexts. Full article

From the perspective of environmental history, which examines the interplay between socio-economic development and the natural environment, this paper discusses the evolution of Japanese landscapes. These landscapes evolved in somewhat different ways, absorbing influences from China and the West. Following the country’s opening up in the late 19th century, various forest management techniques were introduced from Europe and America. This paper examines the environmental history of the changes to the landscape that accompanied rapid Westernisation and the guidance provided by “Forest aesthetics” in forest operations—a crucial element of the landscape. Proposed by H. von Salisch, forest aesthetics is a forest management philosophy that provided guidelines for sustainability before the concept of ecosystems emerged. Although Japan is a small nation comprising elongated islands, mountains cover 67% of its land area. Its north-south orientation means that each region has unique forests and ways of life. This overview examines historical information concerning the formation of gardens and artificial forests, landscape transformations, and perceptions of forests across different eras. Using primarily secondary sources dating from around the 11th century, it demonstrates that, even in Japan, which is subject to natural disturbances under a monsoon climate, the sustainability of gardens and forests could be achieved by emulating the nature advocated for by forest aesthetics as closely as possible. This approach also considered hunting. Full article

This paper introduces an AI-assisted human-centered and minimalist software stack and data model to structure and store early modern serial sources related to early-modern Catholic Church administration. The Vatican Archive preserves vast quantities of documents recording its administrative history. To date, the sheer volume and technical character of these Latin manuscripts have made systematic study appear nearly impossible. The multinational project GRACEFUL17 unfolds seventeenth-century Church governance on a large scale with the help of AI. It leverages simple but efficient NLP (NER, span categorizer, fuzzy searches) and classifier (gradient boost) techniques that run fast, reliably, and reproducibly to allow for multi-user offline work environments, as well as quick but controlled data modelling in a knowledge graph. By documenting this workflow, the paper enhances replicability and provides a rationale for specific design decisions beyond technical documentation. This paper advocates the use of “weak AI” on several grounds. Functionally, non-LLM pipelines offer stricter controllability and avoid many of the semantic biases introduced by large language models. They also require fewer training overheads and run locally with ease. Methodologically, the combination of simple AI models and symbolic reasoning underscores the indispensable role of human expertise: only experts can provide the ground truth necessary for models to reproduce and formalize complex semantic concepts and phenomena, rather than outsourcing this interpretive work to foundation models. Full article

At the beginning of the 19th century, Ottoman–Iranian relations entered a new diplomatic phase shaped by Russia’s expansion in the Caucasus and Britain’s growing influence in the Persian Gulf. This shared perception of external threats led to the establishment of a more structured and representative diplomatic framework between the two empires. This study examines the embassy of Yâsincizâde Abdülvehhâb Efendi, who was appointed as Ottoman ambassador to Iran between 1810 and 1813, in the context of a shifting diplomatic mindset. Yâsincizâde’s mission is analyzed not merely as a temporary diplomatic engagement, but as a form of ideological, sectarian, and cultural representation by a figure from the ulema class. Based on archival sources, the study reveals that his diplomatic reports and observations provided critical input to the central administration, contributing to the development of more institutionalized and long-term strategies in Ottoman policy toward Iran. By focusing on the transitional character of his embassy, the paper reassesses the evolving role of religious scholars in Ottoman foreign relations and situates this case between the classical sefaretnâme tradition and emerging modern diplomatic practices. Full article

This article compares the reactions of Sofía Casanova (1861–1958) and Emma Goldman (1869–1940) to the Russian Revolution. On most issues, the Gallegan Catholic, bourgeois, conservative, monarchist, and anti-communist Sofía Casanova did not agree with the Russian and North American socialist, communist, anarchist, internationalist, and advocate of free love Emma Goldman. But political labels are surprisingly unhelpful when comparing the attitudes of these two thinkers to the Russian Revolution. From rather different starting points, they ended up with very similar conclusions: starting by welcoming the revolution, they both ended up excoriating it. They may form part of a more common pattern in which people with opposite political labels may have more in common than the labels prepare us to expect. Full article

This paper examines the period of rapid economic growth that followed World War II. The main focus of the analysis is on the factors that contributed to this era of prosperity, including economic reconstruction through the Marshall Plan, Keynesian policies of full employment and state intervention, and technological advancements that increased productivity and boosted international trade. At the same time, the paper explores the expansion of the welfare state, which improved living conditions, raised wages, and ensured social stability. The present research analyses economic inequalities between social groups and countries, the intersection between environmental degradation and intense industrial development, and structural weaknesses that arose during the studied period. Particular reference is also made to the social and political tensions associated with the labor movement and the rise in social demands, as well as the geopolitical challenges of the Cold War. Finally, the paper connects the Golden Age with the subsequent economic instability of the 1970s, marked by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the oil crises. While the 1950–1970 period left a positive legacy, it also revealed the limitations of a development model that was not entirely sustainable, leading to a gradual transition towards a new economic reality. Full article

This article focuses on Florida’s death row in the 1960s and 1970s when executions stopped, even though juries continued to return capital verdicts for murder and (until 1977) rape. It first challenges the conventional wisdom surrounding the moratorium years as there were no executions in Florida from mid-May 1964 until May 1979. It investigates the overlapping governor-initiated pauses, court-ordered postponements, and significant state and national court rulings in this period. This article then explores the experiences of male death row prisoners who were held in solitary confinement with limited human contact on a special wing in the Florida State Prison at Raiford, an often violent and unstable maximum-security state prison. Prior to the Furman v. Georgia (1972) U.S. Supreme Court decision, capital prisoners in Florida waited for up to twelve years for courts and politicians to make crucial death penalty decisions. Death row conditions declined as the number of penalized bodies increased threefold between 1963 and 1972. However, Florida’s death row also became a crucial political, social, and cultural space in which some prisoners directly challenged the biopower of the state prison system, by submitting hand-written legal appeals, offering to participate in military service and medical-scientific research, and engaging in collective petitioning and hunger strike. Full article

Postcolonialism stands as a synergy between new and old sets of literature that have come together unevenly and in different ways. Postcolonial interventions have contended with IR core themes over the past four decades. Over the last two decades, there has also been a boom in the scholarship that examines non-Western IR, with some emerging from the contributions of critical theorists who sought to question the dominance of mainstream perspectives such as (neo)realism, liberal institutionalism, and constructivism. How has postcolonialism influenced IR, and how does it relate to non-Western approaches of the ‘international’? This article presents a historical categorization of postcolonial interventions on world politics as postcolonial 1.0 (the anti-colonial struggles against empire); 2.0 (subaltern studies, discourse and Otherness); and 3.0 (disrupting hegemonic epistemes). It then provides a review of whether and how postcolonial approaches align with the movement towards a non-Western IR. Full article

This paper investigates the complex interplay between European and pre-Hispanic urban traditions in shaping colonial urbanism across the Americas, with particular emphasis on the transformation of the City of Mexico atop the remnants of the ancient city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. It contends that the development of the viceregal capital was not merely a straightforward transplantation of the Castilian urban model, but rather a process profoundly influenced—and in many respects enabled—by the sophisticated spatial organisation of the Mexica metropolis. The research examines how the foundational urban layout of Mexico-Tenochtitlan informed the design of the colonial city, highlighting both continuities and divergences between indigenous and Castilian urban frameworks, and analysing the fusion of these traditions in the formation of a novel urban entity. Employing a historical-analytical methodology, this article combines documentary research, comparative analysis of urban configurations from both cultures, and case studies of early colonial settlements. The findings suggest that the City of Mexico evolved into a paradigm of hybrid urbanism, wherein European planning doctrines were adapted and interwoven with enduring indigenous spatial logics and symbolic systems—a synthesis that not only characterised the viceregal capital but also established a precedent for urban development throughout Spanish America. Full article

This article critiques penal philosophy and practice in contemporary society through the lens of historical–ecclesial tradition. The article opens with a discussion of the penitential rituals in the first Christian monasteries and the eventual adoption of some of these rituals in the earliest state penitentiaries in the U.S. It is argued that a nonviolent and coherent penal ideology was advocated from the inception of Christian monasticism and subsequently maintained over the centuries due to three paradigmatic values and commitments. These values and commitments, which form the basis of the critique, are a theological metanarrative, a moral ontology, and a belief in sin as an existential fact. These tenets are used to interrogate the traditional justifications of punishment that have guided government policy throughout modern history, in the U.S. and abroad. Full article

Historical discussions regarding labour organizing within American prisons tend to focus on the period stretching from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, framing those years as both the origin and apex of nationalized and organized inmate-led strikes behind bars. This focus is partly due to a counter-historical assumption that the rebellions of previous eras were primarily focused on “good housekeeping” and were not political in nature. This article challenges ongoing scholarly assumptions that incarcerated Americans were ever pre-political, providing a microhistorical account of the first significant labour unrest at New York’s Attica State Prison in 1932. Through an analysis of the strike’s leadership structure, this paper claims that there is no reason to believe that incarcerated Americans lacked political identities prior to their contact with conscientious objectors, Marxist revolutionaries, and other educated ideologues. Rather, this article contends that the Depression-era Jewish and Italian inmates who led the 1932 Attica strike carried into the prison their own form of political pragmatism, drawn from their experiences operating within interwar-era organized crime syndicates. While this was not a universal experience among incarcerated people, it is indicative of the notion that interwar-era strikes throughout the country surely drew from their own local, informal political norms. This paper concludes that it is unlikely any penal rebellion could exist outside of politics and that historians of prison rebellions must be more willing to look for indirect indicators of political identities that naturally emerge from the struggles of everyday life. Full article

The two-decade-long occupation of East Timor by Indonesia has long been the focus of debate within genocide studies, with scholars on one side arguing for its recognition as “genocide” and, on the other, insisting on its exclusion from acknowledgment as such due to its inability to satisfy certain legal criteria. Our article revisits this conflict and the surrounding debate in order to stake out a larger claim about the logic of the legal form in contemporary global order. Following a growing critical scholarship in genocide studies, we argue that the concept of genocide itself entrenches harmful understandings of global order and contributes to structures which encourage the mass violence it nominally aims to identify and prevent. Far from being singular, it further represents fundamental limitations regarding the legal form as a mechanism of justice and resistance. To support this claim, we use the failure of various justice and reconciliation mechanisms to prosecute genocide in East Timor to illustrate the ways in which a legal system predicated on imperialism shapes both the behavior of a newly minted domestic elite and the larger project of state sovereignty itself. Full article

The image of the Virgin Mary appears with increasing frequency in written sources from the 12th and 13th centuries compared to earlier periods. Three major works produced by four eyewitness authors of the Albigensian Crusade (Historia Albigensis, Chronica, and Canso de la Crozada) reflect on and respond to this popular theme. These sources focus on the Albigensian Crusade against heretical groups, particularly the Cathars, and employ the Virgin Mary motif for various purposes. The Virgin Mary is presented as a Catholic model for women drawn to Catharism (a movement in which female spiritual leadership was also present) as a divine protector of the just side in war and as a means of legitimizing the authors’ claims. While Mary appears sporadically in Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay’s Historia Albigensis, she is extensively invoked in the Canso by both William and his anonymous successor. In contrast, the image of the Virgin Mary is scarcely mentioned in Chronica, likely due to the narrative’s intended audience and objectives. This article aims to provide a comparative analysis of how the image of the Virgin Mary is utilized in these primary sources from the Albigensian Crusade and to offer a new perspective on the relationship between historical events and authors’ intentions, laying the groundwork for further research. Full article

Galileo and the telescope revolutionized the concept of the Sun. The discovery of its rotation was possible due to the continuous observation of the sunspots. The faculae and the maculae with umbra and penumbra became accessible daily to new instruments, leaving the perfectly lucid disk to the realm of symbolism. Was this new view possible before the telescope? Technically, pinhole cameras can show the largest sunspots, as well as the naked eye under very particular conditions. However such observations were too scattered to produce any change in the established understanding of the Sun. Synoptic observations of the largest sunspots of the XXV solar cycle made with the naked eye, pinhole camera, and a telescope in camera obscura are presented and compared with the historical ones. Sunspots could have been discovered in Florence as early as 1475 with the pinhole meridian line of S. Maria del Fiore: the Spörer minimum (1460–1550) of the solar activity prevented it. Indications of white light flares and prominence observations appear in a drawing dated back to 1635, well before the first H-alpha inspections in the 19th century. Full article