Red Cross Society in Imperial China, 1904–1912: A Historical Analysis

The Red Cross Society was introduced to China in the 1900s, when the nation was under the authoritarian reign of Qing dynasty. Famines and rebellions, along with the invasion of foreign military forces, created tremendous humanitarian crises that the corrupted imperial government was incapable to address. The Red Cross model was found to be a pragmatic solution by Chinese philanthropists. Using archived press releases, correspondences, and government statements, the study reconstructs the founding process of the first Chinese Red Cross organization from 1904 to 1912. The analysis reveals that the organization reflected the congruent interest of the imperial court and social elites in preserving the sovereignty and was therefore promoted by key players from both political and civil spheres. The trajectory of Red Cross movement in imperial China supports the synergism perspective of institutional theories. It demonstrates how micro-level factors such as leadership ties and alliances contribute to the interdependence of public and private sectors and facilitate the transformation of traditional charity to modern philanthropy.     

The black presence through criminal records, 1780–1830

Over the past two decades historians have displayed an increasing interest in the history of black people in Britain. As a result of important recent work much is now known of a group of exceptional black literary figures (Equiano, Sancho, and Cugoano), the ‘leaders’ of the black community, whilst the vast majority of eighteenth and nineteenth century black people remain in anonymity. This anonymity is attributable in part to the paucity of primary source material relating to rank‐and‐file blacks. In order to gain insights into the black community, this article analyses criminal records — a class of records whose value for our purposes is that it focuses essentially on the eighteenth and nineteenth century poor, both black and white.     

Some findings on Britain's black working class, 1900–1914

The identification of members of a visible minority in early twentieth century Britain not only shows something of their participation in working class life but also that black people were not solely resident in towns and cities. As Britain was highly urbanized, the presence of such migrants in rural areas suggests that the number of black people in Britain was higher than has been assumed.     

Policies for older volunteers: A study of Germany and Italy, 1990–2008

Older people increase their well-being and contribute to the community when they volunteer. Therefore, policy-makers sometimes consider supporting older volunteers. However, they reach different conclusions on whether they should introduce policies for older volunteers, and on what policy would be the most suitable. This article studies how policies for older volunteers emerged in Germany and Italy, both countries having one of the oldest populations in the world. It explores the political discourse on older volunteers, and how this discourse translates into policies. To do this, the article presents data collected in expert interviews and document analysis. Findings show that German policy-makers stress the contribution of volunteering to older people's well-being and have introduced policies for older volunteers. Italian policy-makers, in contrast, frame older volunteers as social service providers and have decided not to single out specific age groups in their policies for volunteers. Moreover, the policies are influenced by the policy-makers' perceptions and path-dependencies, meaning policies and institutions that were introduced in the past. These findings suggest that whether or not policies for older volunteers emerge depends less on the characteristics of the older population and more on the society and its political traditions.     

The civilizing and sportization of Gaelic football in Ireland: 1884–2009

Over the course of the last 125 years the sport of Gaelic football in Ireland has undergone a sportization and civilizing process as the rules governing the sport became stricter and players developed greater levels of self-control. However, the civilizing of Gaelic football was a particularly fragile and uneven process. The growing social desire to diminish displays of violence was moderated by ambivalence towards violence. Gradually the external social controls on players increased and, greater and more stable levels of internalization occurred reflected by more advanced levels of player self-restraint in the control of violence. At the same time the threshold of shame toward displays of violence advanced. This transformation was shaped by lengthening chains of social interdependencies in Ireland.     

East European Jewish migrants and settlers in Belgium, 1880–1914: a transatlantic perspective

This article analyses whether the Jews leaving Tsarist Russia and the Austro‐Hungarian Empire, part of the transatlantic mass migration of the end of the nineteenth century, became subject to state control. Most emigrants from Eastern Europe in this period passed through the ports of Bremen, Hamburg and Antwerp. In the 1880s only a few emigrants were not welcome in America and sent back to Europe, but economic competition and the supposed health threat immigrants posed meant the US became the trendsetter in implementing protectionist immigration policy in the 1890s. More emigrants were returned to Europe because of the newly erected US federal immigration control stations, but many more were denied the possibility to leave for the United States by the remote control mechanism which the American authorities enforced on the European authorities and the shipping companies. At the Russian–German border and the port of Antwerp, shipping companies stopped transit migrants who were deemed medically unacceptable by American standards. The shipping companies became subcontractors for the American authorities as they risked heavy fines if they transported unwanted emigrants. The Belgian authorities refused to collaborate with the Americans and defended their sovereignty, and made shipping companies in the port of Antwerp solely responsible for the American remote migration control. Due to the private migration control at the port of Antwerp transit migrants became stuck in Belgium. The Belgian authorities wanted these stranded migrants to return “home.” It seems that the number of stranded migrants remained manageable as the Belgian authorities did not make the shipping companies pay the bill. They were able to get away by making some symbolic gestures and these migrants were supported by charitable contributions from the local Jewish community.     

Policy shifts and state agencies: Britain and Germany, 1918–1933

Theory and Society -     

Networking Respectability: Class,Gender and Ethnicity among the Irish in South Wales, 1845–1914

Irish migrants in nineteenth-century Britain are often seen as embodying the antithesis of the hegemonic values of respectability, temperance, self-help and mutuality that became entrenched among sections of the British working class from c.1850. This essay argues that Irish friendly and temperance societies in south Wales embraced these values and acted as networks for the dissemination of such ideals in Irish communities, assisted by the Catholic Church. A consideration of the activities of Irish societies reveals the complex interplay between ethnic, class and gender identities in a minority ethnic group. These identities are explored through an examination of the nature of ethnic networks and the messages they sought to convey. The study also examines the performative aspect of identity formation by considering Irish public processions, the dress of processionists and the responses to them.     

Sacred lambencies and thin crusts: Scottish writers,industrialisation and anomie, 1785–1914

Abstract

You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass’ ... This essay is a biography of this traumatic Edwrdian image, expressed in J. G. Fraser and H. G. Wells as well as in John Buchan's first thriller, The Power‐House of 1913. It traces the creer of the volcanic metaphor, particularly eruptive in Scotland, beyond Carlyle's French Revolution to the scientific controversies of the Enlightenment.     

Networks,Communication and the Irish Protestant Diaspora in Northern England,c.1860–1914

This study seeks to explore transnational communication among migrants of the Irish diaspora through an examination of the Orange Order's networks. It draws upon rare local and district records and press accounts to explain the migratory links and social worlds of Orange emigrants from Ulster. The substance of the study echoes the findings of Canadian historians who have much richer records than exist in the public domain in Britain. It demonstrates how Orangemen in Ireland came to recognise the diasporic dimension of their movement, and how members used the Order to negotiate some of the pathways of migration that were an important feature of their lives, and in the lives of the working class more generally. The essay generally seeks to demonstrate that the Orange Order acted as a network of friendship, camaraderie and support for emigrants and immigrants in the British World in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.