Academic literature on the topic 'People´s Comissariat of Foreign Trade'

This article provides an analysis of China ‘s initiative called the New Silk Road, which involves stimulating the economy of the People ‘s Republic of China by accelerating the delivery of goods to Europe and generally improving the transport situation. It is noted that the strategy for Russia to realize its transit potential could be the operational preparation of international transport corridors on its territory and effective diplomacy to convince neighbouring rival countries to join Russian projects, to develop proposals for them on favorable conditions of foreign trade relations and transportation of goods through the territory of the Russian Federation.

International trade is an important factor of economic growth. While foreign trade has existed throughout the history, its political, economic and social importance has grown significantly in the last centuries. The objective of the contribution is to use machine learning forecasting for predicting the balance of trade of the Czech Republic (CR) and the People´s Republic of China (PRC) through analysing and machine learning forecasting of the CR import from the PRC and the CR export to the PRC. The data set includes monthly trade balance intervals from January 2000 to June 2019. The contribution investigates and subsequently smooths two time series: the CR import from the PRC; the CR export to the PRC. The balance of trade of both countries in the entire monitored period is negative from the perspective of the CR. A total of 10,000 neural networks are generated. 5 neural structures with the best characteristics are retained. Neural networks are able to capture both the trend of the entire time series and its seasonal fluctuations, but it is necessary to work with time series lag. The CR import from the PRC is growing and it is expected to grow in the future. The CR export to the PRC is growing and it is expected to grow in the future, but its increase in absolute values will be slower than the increase of the CR import from the PRC.

A number of studies reveal that export expansion is widely regarded as a means to attain higher rate of economic growth. In a dynamic setting, trade usually enhances technological up-gradation, higher rates of productivity, attracts inward investment and facilitates economic growth. One of the most viable development strategies for a country‟s economic success is to find its own niche in the global marketplace, which means to be able to tap the demands of the world economy. Many developing countries have been trying to overcome a dismal economic situation by promoting international trade. In these efforts, exports have been viewed as an „engine‟ ofeconomic growth. With the emergence of the World Trade Organization, the institutional framework for freer multilateral movement of goods and services has been strengthened. Although the Indian Economy has been benefited from the time new economic reforms were initiated since 1991, North-Eastern Region still remains to be far from the purview of India‟s rapid development. With its geographical remoteness, inherent deficiency in infrastructure and the bad publicity for recurrent ethnic strife and militant activities, the region obviously could not become an attractive destination for private and foreign capital investment. But in this period of globalization, where closer cross-border economic ties are being speeding up in many parts of the world, border trade has come to be looked upon with a lot of expectation in this region to break free from the shackles of geographic remoteness. Given the natural and human resource potential of Assam, the need for higher growth has recently been felt by various sections of the people as well as the State and Central Governments.

The Continent of Africa had been of great importance to many Countries outside Africa, Since the begining of the slave trade when European slave merchants invaded Africa and estalished the trade in human beings, which forced the migration of millions of Africans to America and the West Indies. Since then, the Continent had faced a continued influx of people for different purposes even after the abolution of slavery. The main attraction to Africa, has been its human and rich mineral resources scattered across the continent, as well as its vast market for foreign goods.This paper examines the relations between the republic of Turkey and countries of the African Continent, especially in 1990’s and 2000’s when the republic of Turkey began to develop interest to have relation with African countries. There were so many reasons that motivated and ignited the interest of Turkey in Africa all of a sudden, and this paper tried to present such reasons and also show how the republic of Turkey tried to establish such relations, the manner in which Turkey went about realising this objective of having deep economic, political and social relation with countries of the African Continent. The paper also tried to look at relations between Ottoman Turkey and Africa, though as a background to the present relations.It tried also to see what challenges there are in this relations, in the future or now, and also tried as much as possible to look at some policy suggestions regarding this symbiotic relations between Turkey and African countries. The paper argues that Pan Africanism poses a challenge to relations between Turkey and Africa and offered some policy suggestions that will deepen integration between Turkey and African States.

This article focuses on a neglected part of the well-known Balassa–Samuelson (B-S) effect in international trade, namely, the specific role of tourism in equilibrating the purchasing power parities across areas. The article aims to highlight in particular the cultural bias in destination choice by foreign tourists and its importance as a barrier for eradicating economic inequality between countries. We consider international tourism here as a mixed type of tradable service that leads to – short-time, but potentially massive – cross-border movements of people that can impact income redistribution among countries. Our claim is that this short-time movement is positively biased towards culturally closer localities. The recognition of this role of cultural proximity in the tourist choice destination can help fine-tune empirical models of international goods or services to reality. To test our hypothesis, a unique big data set for the EU28 and all the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (4031 observations on the shares of outbound tourists per country) is composed for the year 2014. We use data from the UN World Tourism Organization, Centre d’Etudes Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales (CEPII, Paris; especially on linguistic proximity), and the six well-known Hofstede indices of cultural dimension: individualism, power–distance relationship, masculinity, uncertainty, indulgence and long-term orientation. To fully specify our tourist destination model, we include also climate-related explanatory variables, reflecting sun, rain and wind differences between sending and recipient countries. Regression analysis with fixed effects and a hierarchical (multilevel) model both lead to consistent empirical estimates. Our results clearly demonstrate that tourism is a significant counter-balancing factor for the B-S effect that seems to be present and related to non-trade sectors and wages across the countries involved. Moreover, we find that linguistic proximity is statistically and economically the most powerful quantitative proxy for cultural factors, which determine the outbound tourists’ destination choice.

The so-called “BRICS nations” have recently proven to be the most fascinating group of worldwide economies that collaborate with each other. The name is an acronym for an association comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The BRICS members are all developing or newly industrialised countries, they are however distinguished by their large, rapidly growing economies and their significant impact on regional and global affairs. Before the inclusion of South Africa, the organisation was known as BRIC. On 13 April 2011, when South Africa joined the group, BRIC gained the letter “S”. The name “BRIC” itself was used for the first time by Jim O’Neill, a British economist of Goldman Sachs. Published in November 2001 and then widespread, O’Neill’s forecast predicted that by the half of the 21st century those countries would have become world powers. As of 2014, the BRICS countries represent almost 3 billion people – approximately 40% of the entire world population. The five nations have a combined nominal GDP of US$ 16.039 trillion, equivalent to approximately 20% of the gross world product, and an estimated US$ 4 trillion in combined foreign reserves. Since 2010, the representatives of the BRICS government have been meeting annually at formal summits. The nations within this group do not form a political alliance or an official trade association. The priorities of the members are as follows: Development of a new currency system; Reforming the United Nations, Increasing the role of developing countries in the international monetary institutions. Having regard to the emerging political and economic changes on a global scale, the BRICS nations have been undertaking new ventures and initiatives aimed to make them key players on the international arena. Today, it is really captivating to see to what extent those intentions are real and exercisable.

The Diplomatic relations between Mexico and the People´s Republic of China were established on February 14, 1972, after the Mexican government joined in October 1971 to vote in favor of the Asian country joining the United Nations as sole representative of that nation and accepting the principle of "one China" based on the recognition of the indivisibility of its territory. Even though China and Mexico have not signed any Free Trade Agreement, economically speaking China is today the second largest commercial partner of Mexico in the world and the third global destination of Mexican exports. Under the Mexico-China Comprehensive Strategic Association, agreements have been generated that have improved Mexico's access to the Chinese market. Still the bilateral trade balance between these two countries has been in deficit for Mexico, especially as a result of the push achieved by the PRC after joining the World Trade Organization.This research attempts to analyses the trade relationship between Mexico and China in the context SWOT analysis, that it, from the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats such partnership has, also analyses whether or not this two nations are strategic partners, as well as whether or not their economies reflect any benefit as a consequence of their trade activity. At the end of this research, it was found that Mexico's trade exchange with China has not opened real opportunities for Mexican foreign trade, and therefore has not managed to become a key factor in the growth of the Mexican economy, which partly is due to the deficit reported by México, which show that commercial exchange has not been equitable between the two parties.

Crailsheim, Eberhard / Maria D. Elizalde (Hrsg.), The Representation of External Threats. From the Middle Ages to the Modern World (History of Warfare, 123), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XV u. 466 S., € 127,00. (Wolfgang Reinhard, Freiburg i. Br.) Höfele, Andreas / Beate Kellner (Hrsg.), Natur in politischen Ordnungsentwürfen der Vormoderne. Unter Mitwirkung von Christian Kaiser, Paderborn 2018, Fink, 224 S., € 59,00. (Stefano Saracino, Erfurt / München) Jütte, Robert / Romedio Schmitz-Esser (Hrsg.), Handgebrauch. Geschichten von der Hand aus dem Mittelalter und der Frühen Neuzeit, Paderborn 2019, Fink, 320 S. / Abb., € 44,90. (Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Berlin / Münster) Tomaini, Thea (Hrsg.), Dealing with the Dead. Mortality and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Explorations in Medieval Culture, 5), Leiden / Boston 2018, Brill, XI u. 449 S. / Abb., € 135,00. (Ralf-Peter Fuchs, Essen) Lahtinen, Anu / Mia Korpiola (Hrsg.), Dying Prepared in Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe (The Northern World, 82), Leiden / Boston 2018, Brill, IX u. 211 S. / Abb., € 85,00. (Ralf-Peter Fuchs, Essen) Dyer, Christopher / Erik Thoen / Tom Williamson (Hrsg.), Peasants and Their Fields. The Rationale of Open-Field Agriculture, c. 700 - 1800 (CORN Publication Series, 16), Turnhout 2018, Brepols, X u. 275 S. / Abb., € 84,00. (Werner Troßbach, Fulda) Andermann, Kurt / Nina Gallion (Hrsg.), Weg und Steg. Aspekte des Verkehrswesens von der Spätantike bis zum Ende des Alten Reiches (Kraichtaler Kolloquien, 11), Ostfildern 2018, Thorbecke, 262 S. / Abb., € 29,00. (Sascha Bütow, Magdeburg) Jaspert, Nikolas / Christian A. Neumann / Marco di Branco (Hrsg.), Ein Meer und seine Heiligen. Hagiographie im mittelalterlichen Mediterraneum (Mittelmeerstudien, 18), Paderborn 2018, Fink / Schöningh, 405 S. / Abb., € 148,00. (Michael North, Greifswald) Müller, Harald (Hrsg.), Der Verlust der Eindeutigkeit. Zur Krise päpstlicher Autorität im Kampf um die Cathedra Petri (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, Kolloquien 95), Berlin / Boston 2017, de Gruyter Oldenbourg, X u. 244 S. / graph. Darst., € 69,95. (Thomas Wetzstein, Eichstätt) Ehrensperger, Alfred, Geschichte des Gottesdienstes in Zürich Stadt und Land im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Reformation bis 1531 (Geschichte des Gottesdienstes in den evangelisch-reformierten Kirchen der Deutschschweiz, 5), Zürich 2019, Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 814 S., € 76,00. (Andreas Odenthal, Bonn) Demurger, Alain, Die Verfolgung der Templer. Chronik einer Vernichtung. 1307 - 1314. Aus dem Französischen v. Anne Leube / Wolf H. Leube, München 2017, Beck, 408 S. / Karten, € 26,95. (Jochen Burgtorf, Fullerton) Caudrey, Philip J., Military Society and the Court of Chivalry in the Age of the Hundred Years War (Warfare in History), Woodbridge / Rochester 2019, The Boydell Press, XII u. 227 S., £ 60,00. (Stefan G. Holz, Heidelberg) Hesse, Christian / Regula Schmid / Roland Gerber (Hrsg.), Eroberung und Inbesitznahme. Die Eroberung des Aargaus 1415 im europäischen Vergleich / Conquest and Occupation. The 1415 Seizure of the Aargau in European Perspective, Ostfildern 2017, Thorbecke, VII u. 320 S. / Abb., € 45,00. (Rainer Hugener, Zürich) Krafft, Otfried, Landgraf Ludwig I. von Hessen (1402 - 1458). Politik und historiographische Rezeption (Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Hessen, 88), Marburg 2018, Historische Kommission für Hessen, XII u. 880 S. / Abb., € 48,00. (Uwe Schirmer, Jena) Neustadt, Cornelia, Kommunikation im Konflikt. König Erik VII. von Dänemark und die Städte im südlichen Ostseeraum (1423 - 1435) (Europa im Mittelalter, 32), Berlin / Boston 2018, de Gruyter, XV u. 540 S. / Abb., € 109,05. (Carsten Jahnke, Kopenhagen) Kekewich, Margaret, Sir John Fortescue and the Governance of England, Woodbridge / Rochester 2018, The Boydell Press, XXIII u. 367 S. / Abb., £ 60,00. (Maree Shirota, Heidelberg) MacGregor, Arthur, Naturalists in the Field. Collecting, Recording and Preserving the Natural World from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Emergence of Natural History, 2), Leiden / London 2018, Brill, XXIX u. 999 S. / Abb., € 270,00. (Bettina Dietz, Hongkong) Jones, Pamela M. / Barbara Wisch / Simon Ditchfield (Hrsg.), A Companion to Early Modern Rome, 1492 - 1692 (Brill’s Companions to European History, 17), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XXIII u. 629 S., € 171,00. (Wolfgang Reinhard, Freiburg i. Br.) Frömmer, Judith, Italien im Heiligen Land. Typologien frühneuzeitlicher Gründungsnarrative, [Göttingen] 2018, Konstanz University Press, 402 S. / Abb., € 49,00. (Cornel Zwierlein, Berlin) De Benedictis, Angela, Neither Disobedients nor Rebels. Lawful Resistance in Early Modern Italy (Viella History, Art and Humanities Collection, 6), Rom 2018, Viella, 230 S., € 55,00. (Wolfgang Reinhard, Freiburg i. Br.) Raggio, Osvaldo, Feuds and State Formation, 1550 - 1700. The Backcountry of the Republic of Genoa (Early Modern History: Society and Culture), Cham 2018, Palgrave Macmillan, XXV u. 316 S., € 85,49. (Magnus Ressel, Frankfurt a. M.) Ingram, Kevin, Converso Non-Conformism in Early Modern Spain. Bad Blood and Faith from Alonso de Cartagena to Diego Velázquez, Cham 2018, Palgrave Macmillan, XX u. 370 S. / Abb., € 85,59. (Joël Graf, Bern) Kirschvink, Dominik, Die Revision als Rechtsmittel im Alten Reich (Schriften zur Rechtsgeschichte, 184), Berlin 2019, Duncker & Humblot, 230 S., € 74,90. (Tobias Schenk, Wien) Haag, Norbert, Dynastie, Region, Konfession. Die Hochstifte des Heiligen Römischen Reiches Deutscher Nation zwischen Dynastisierung und Konfessionalisierung (1448 - 1648), 3 Bde. (Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte, 166), Münster 2018, Aschendorff, XXV u. 2170 S., € 239,00. (Kurt Andermann, Karlsruhe / Freiburg i. Br.) Steinfels, Marc / Helmut Meyer, Vom Scharfrichteramt ins Zürcher Bürgertum. Die Familie Volmar-Steinfels und der Schweizer Strafvollzug, Zürich 2018, Chronos, 335 S. / Abb., € 58,00. (Francisca Loetz, Zürich) Kohnle, Armin (Hrsg.), Luthers Tod. Ereignis und Wirkung (Schriften der Stiftung Luthergedenkstätten in Sachsen-Anhalt, 23), Leipzig 2019, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 386 S. / Abb., € 48,00. (Eike Wolgast, Heidelberg) Zwierlein, Cornel / Vincenzo Lavenia (Hrsg.), Fruits of Migration. Heterodox Italian Migrants and Central European Culture 1550 - 1620 (Intersections, 57), Leiden / Boston 2018, Brill, XII u. 402 S., € 127,00. (Stephan Steiner, Wien) „Inquisitionis Hispanicae Artes“: The Arts of the Spanish Inquisition. Reginaldus Gonsalvius Montanus. A Critical Edition of the „Sanctae Inquisitionis Hispanicae Artes aliquot“ (1567) with a Modern English Translation, hrsg. v. Marcos J. Herráiz Pareja / Ignacio J. García Pinilla / Jonathan L. Nelson (Heterodoxia Iberica 2), Leiden / Boston 2018, Brill, VII u. 515 S., € 187,00. (Wolfram Drews, Münster) Lattmann, Christopher, Der Teufel, die Hexe und der Rechtsgelehrte. Crimen magiae und Hexenprozess in Jean Bodins „De la Démonomanie des Sorciers“ (Studien zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte, 318), Frankfurt a. M. 2019, Klostermann, XVI u. 390 S., € 69,00. (Andreas Flurschütz da Cruz, Bamberg) Gorrochategui Santos, Luis, The English Armada. The Greatest Naval Disaster in English History, übers. v. Peter J. Gold, London / New York 2018, VIII u. 323 S. / Abb., £ 26,99. (Patrick Schmidt, Rostock) Schäfer-Griebel, Alexandra, Die Medialität der Französischen Religionskriege. Frankreich und das Heilige Römische Reich 1589 (Beiträge zur Kommunikationsgeschichte, 30), Stuttgart 2018, Steiner, 556 S. / Abb., € 84,00. (Mona Garloff, Stuttgart / Wien) Malettke, Klaus, Richelieu. Ein Leben im Dienste des Königs und Frankreichs, Paderborn 2018, Schöningh, 1076 S. / Abb., € 128,00. (Michael Rohrschneider, Bonn) Windler, Christian, Missionare in Persien. Kulturelle Diversität und Normenkonkurrenz im globalen Katholizismus (17.-18. Jahrhundert) (Externa, 12), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2018, Böhlau, 764 S. / Abb., € 95,00. (Tobias Winnerling, Düsseldorf) Amsler, Nadine, Jesuits and Matriarchs. Domestic Worship in Early Modern China, Seattle 2018, University of Washington Press, X u. 258 S. / Abb., $ 30,00. (Tobias Winnerling, Düsseldorf) Seppel, Marten / Keith Tribe (Hrsg.), Cameralism in Practice. State Administration and Economy in Early Modern Europe (People, Markets, Goods, 10), Woodbridge / Rochester 2017, Boydell Press, XI u. 315 S., £ 25,00. (Justus Nipperdey, Saarbrücken) Fludd, Robert, Utriusque Cosmi Historia. Faksimile-Edition der Ausgabe Oppenheim/Frankfurt, Johann Theodor de Bry, 1617 - 1624, 4 Bde. in 5 Teilbde., hrsg. u. mit ausführlichen Einleitungen versehen v. Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (Clavis pansophiae, 5), Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2018, Frommann-Holzboog, XXX u. 2198 S., € 1980,00. (Martin Mulsow, Gotha / Erfurt) Rebitsch, Robert (Hrsg.), 1618. Der Beginn des Dreißigjährigen Krieges, Wien / Köln / Weimar 2017, Böhlau, 229 S., € 24,00. (Fabian Schulze, Neu-Ulm / Augsburg) Kilián, Jan, Der Gerber und der Krieg. Soziale Biographie eines böhmischen Bürgers aus der Zeit des Dreißigjährigen Krieges, Berlin 2018, Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 247 S., € 49,00. (Robert Jütte, Stuttgart) Caldari, Valentina / Sara J. Wolfson (Hrsg.), Stuart Marriage Diplomacy. Dynastic Politics in Their European Context, 1604 - 1630 (Studies in Earl Modern Cultural, Political and Social History, 31), Woodbridge / Rochester 2018, The Boydell Press, XVIII u. 367 S., £ 75,00. (Martin Foerster, Hamburg) Blakemore, Richard J. / Elaine Murphy, The British Civil Wars at Sea, 1638 - 1653, Woodbridge 2018, The Boydell Press, X u. 225 S. / Abb., £ 65,00. (Jann M. Witt, Laboe) Deflers, Isabelle / Christian Kühner (Hrsg.), Ludwig XIV. - Vorbild und Feindbild. Inszenierung und Rezeption der Herrschaft eines barocken Monarchen zwischen Heroisierung, Nachahmung und Dämonisierung / Louis XIV - fascination et répulsion. Mise en scène et réception du règne d’un monarque baroque entre héroïsation, imitation et diabolisation (Studien des Frankreich-Zentrums der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, 25), Berlin 2018, Schmidt, 296 S. / Abb., € 69,95. (Anuschka Tischer, Würzburg) Pérez Sarrión, Guillermo, The Emergence of a National Market in Spain, 1650 - 1800. Trade Networks, Foreign Powers and the State, übers. v. Daniel Duffield, London [u. a.] 2017, Bloomsbury Academic, XXI u. 331 S., £ 26,09. (Hanna Sonkajärvi, Rio de Janeiro) Alimento, Antonella / Koen Stapelbroek (Hrsg.), The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century. Balance of Power, Balance of Trade, Cham 2017, Palgrave Macmillan, XI u. 472 S., € 103,99. (Justus Nipperdey, Saarbrücken) McDowell, Paula, The Invention of the Oral. Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Chicago / London 2017, University of Chicago Press, XIII u. 353 S. / Abb., $ 45,00. (Markus Friedrich, Hamburg) Bernhard, Jan-Andrea / Judith Engeler (Hrsg.), „Dass das Blut der heiligen Wunden mich durchgehet alle Stunden“. Frauen und ihre Lektüre im Pietismus, Zürich 2019, Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 161 S. /Abb., € 21,90. (Helga Meise, Reims) Hammer-Luza, Elke, Im Arrest. Zucht-‍, Arbeits- und Strafhäuser in Graz (1700 - 1850) (Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung. Ergänzungsband, 63; Forschungen zur geschichtlichen Landeskunde der Steiermark, 83), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2019, Böhlau, 556 S. / Abb., € 85,00. (Simon Karstens, Trier) Oldach, Robert, Stadt und Festung Stralsund. Die schwedische Militärpräsenz in Schwedisch-Pommern 1721 - 1807 (Quellen und Studien aus den Landesarchiven Mecklenburg-Vorpommerns, 20), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2018, Böhlau, 518 S. / Abb., € 60,00. (Michael Busch, Rostock) Koller, Ekaterina E., Religiöse Grenzgänger im östlichen Europa. Glaubensenthusiasten um die Prophetin Ekaterina Tatarinova und den Pseudomessias Jakob Frank im Vergleich (1750 - 1850) (Lebenswelten osteuropäischer Juden, 17), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2019, Böhlau, 352 S., € 60,00. (Agnieszka Pufelska, Lüneburg) Häberlein, Mark / Holger Zaunstöck (Hrsg.), Halle als Zentrum der Mehrsprachigkeit im langen 18. Jahrhundert (Hallesche Forschungen, 47), Halle a. d. S. 2017, Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen, VI u. 265 S. / Abb., € 56,00. (Martin Gierl, Göttingen) Geffarth, Renko / Markus Meumann / Holger Zaunstöck (Hrsg.), Kampf um die Aufklärung? Institutionelle Konkurrenzen und intellektuelle Vielfalt im Halle des 18. Jahrhunderts, Halle a. d. S. 2018, Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 334 S., € 50,00. (Martin Gierl, Göttingen) Giro d’Italia. Die Reiseberichte des bayerischen Kurprinzen Karl Albrecht (1715/16). Eine historisch-kritische Edition, hrsg. v. Andrea Zedler / Jörg Zedler (Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 90), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2019, Böhlau, 694 S. / Abb., € 90,00. (Michael Maurer, Jena) Backerra, Charlotte, Wien und London, 1727 - 1735. Internationale Beziehungen im frühen 18. Jahrhundert (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für europäische Geschichte Mainz, 253), Göttingen 2018, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 474 S., € 80,00. (Michael Schaich, London) Gottesdienst im Bamberger Dom zwischen Barock und Aufklärung. Die Handschrift des Ordinarius L des Subkustos Johann Graff von 1730 als Edition mit Kommentar, hrsg. v. Franz Kohlschein / Werner Zeißner unter Mitarbeit v. Walter Milutzki (Studien zur Bamberger Bistumsgeschichte, 9), Petersberg 2018, Imhoff, 687 S. / Abb., € 79,00. (Tillmann Lohse, Berlin / Leipzig) Warnke, Marcus, Logistik und friderizianische Kriegsführung. Eine Studie zur Verteilung, Mobilisierung und Wirkungsmächtigkeit militärisch relevanter Ressourcen im Siebenjährigen Krieg am Beispiel des Jahres 1757 (Quellen und Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preußischen Geschichte, 50), Berlin 2018, Duncker & Humblot, 696 S. / Abb., € 139,90. (Tilman Stieve, Aachen) Frey, Linda / Marsha Frey, The Culture of French Revolutionary Diplomacy. In the Face of Europe (Studies in Diplomacy and International Relations), Cham 2018, Palgrave Macmillan, XI u. 300 S., € 149,79. (Christine Vogel, Vechta) Wagner, Johann Conrad, „Meine Erfahrungen in dem gegenwärtigen Kriege“. Tagebuch des Feldzugs mit Herzog Carl August von Weimar, hrsg. v. Edith Zehm (Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft, 78), Göttingen 2018, Wallstein, 552 S. / Abb. / Faltkarte, € 59,00. (Michael Kaiser, Köln / Bonn) Zamoyski, Adam, Napoleon. Ein Leben. Aus dem Englischen übers. v. Ruth Keen / Erhard Stölting, München 2018, Beck, 863 S. / Abb., € 29,95. (Hans-Ulrich Thamer, Münster)

Kumar, Krishan, Visions of Empire. How Five Imperial Regimes Shaped the World, Princeton / Oxford 2017, Princeton University Press, XVIII u. 576 S. / Abb., £ 32,95. (Wolfgang Reinhard) Drews, Wolfram / Christian Scholl (Hrsg.), Transkulturelle Verflechtungsprozesse in der Vormoderne (Das Mittelalter. Beihefte, 3), Berlin/Boston 2016,de Gruyter, XXIII u.287 S. / Abb., € 89,95. (Jenny Rahel Oesterle) Jochum, Georg, ”Plus Ultra“ oder die Erfindung der Moderne. Zur neuzeitlichen Entgrenzung der okzidentalen Welt (Global Studies), Bielefeld 2017, transcript, 602 S. / Abb., € 44,99. (Wolfgang Reinhard) Raeymaekers, Dries / Sebastiaan Derks (Hrsg.), The Key to Power? The Culture of Access in Princely Courts, 1400–1750 (Rulers and Elites, 8), Leiden/Boston 2016, Brill, XIII u. 352 S. / Abb., € 135,00. (Andreas Pecar) Knobler, Adam, Mythology and Diplomacy in the Age of Exploration (European Expansion and Indigenous Response, 23), Leiden / Boston 2017, Brill, XI u. 151 S., € 99,00; als Brill MyBook € 25,00. (Tobias Winnerling) Muhlack, Ulrich, Renaissance und Humanismus (Enzyklopädie deutscher Geschichte, 93), Berlin / Boston 2017, de Gruyter Oldenbourg, IX u. 276 S., € 24,95 (Volker Reinhardt) Hamm, Berndt / Thomas Kaufmann (Hrsg.), Wie fromm waren die Humanisten? (Wolfenbütteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung, 33), Wiesbaden 2016, Harrassowitz in Kommission, 359 S. / Abb., € 84,00. (Nikolaus Staubach) Auge, Oliver (Hrsg.), König, Reich und Fürsten im Mittelalter. Abschlusstagung des Greifswalder ”Principes-Projekts“. Festschrift für Karl-Heinz Spieß (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Universität Greifswald, 12), Stuttgart 2017, Steiner, 593 S. / Abb., € 94,00. (Andreas Büttner) Huang, Angela, Die Textilien des Hanseraums. Produktion und Distribution einer spätmittelalterlichen Fernhandelsware (Quellen und Darstellungen zur hansischen Geschichte. Neue Folge, 71), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2015, Böhlau, 311 S. / graph. Darst., € 40,00. (Kirsten O. Frieling) Hirbodian, Sigrid / Peter Rückert (Hrsg.), Württembergische Städte im späten Mittelalter. Herrschaft, Wirtschaft und Kultur im Vergleich (Tübinger Bausteine zur Landesgeschichte, 26), Ostfildern 2016, Thorbecke, 332 S. / Abb., € 35,00.(Stefan G. Holz) Esch, Claudia, Zwischen Institution und Individuum. Bürgerliche Handlungsspielräume im mittelalterlichen Bamberg (Stadt und Region in der Vormoderne, 4), Würzburg 2016, Ergon, 576 S. / graph. Darst., € 72,00. (Ulrich Knefelkamp) Mayer, Hans E., Von der Cour des Bourgeois zum öffentlichen Notariat. Die freiwillige Gerichtsbarkeit in den Kreuzfahrerstaaten (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Schriften, 70), Wiesbaden 2016, Harrassowitz, XXXIV u. 526 S., € 70,00. (Wolf Zöller) Hesse, Christian, Synthese und Aufbruch. 1346–1410 (Gebhardt. Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte, 7b), Stuttgart 2017, Klett-Cotta, XLVIII u. 300 S., € 45,00. (Gabriela Signori) Frey, Stefan, Fromme feste Junker. Neuer Stadtadel im spätmittelalterlichen Zürich (Mitteilungen der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zürich, 84), Zürich 2017, Chronos, 216 S. / Abb., € 43,00. (Christof Rolker) Matter-Bacon, Nicole, Städtische Ehepaare im Spätmittelalter. Verhaltensmuster und Handlungsspielräume imZürich des 15. Jahrhunderts (Wissenschaftliche Beiträge aus dem Tectum Verlag. Reihe: Geschichtswissenschaft, 30), Marburg 2016, Tectum, 412 S., € 39,95. (Elisabeth Vavra) Halter-Pernet, Colee / Felix Hammerli, Zürichs streitbarer Gelehrter im Spätmittelalter. Mit Übersetzungen aus dem Lateinischenv.Helena Müller u. Erika Egner Eid, Zürich 2017, Chronos, 446 S. / Abb., € 52,00. (Martina Wehrli-Johns) Kyle, Sarah R., Medicine and Humanism inLate Medieval Italy. The Carrara Herbal in Padua (Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean), London / New York 2017, Routledge, XIII u. 243 S. / Abb., £ 95,00. (Klaus Bergdolt) Nodl, Martin, Das Kuttenberger Dekret von 1409. Von der Eintracht zum Konflikt der Prager Universitätsnationen. Aus dem Tschechischen übers. v. Roswitha u. Pavel Cervicek (Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Mitteleuropa, 51), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 404 S. / Abb., € 55,00. (Blanka Zilynská) Ellermann, Julia / Dennis Hormuth / Volker Seresse (Hrsg.), Politische Kultur im frühneuzeitlichen Europa. Festschrift für Olaf Mörke zum 65. Geburtstag (Geist und Wissen, 26), Kiel 2017, Ludwig, 421 S. / Abb., € 56,80. (Wolfgang Reinhard) Horowski, Leonhard, Das Europa der Könige. Macht und Spiel an den Höfen des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Reinbek 2017, Rowohlt, 1119 S. / Abb., € 39,95. (Ronald G. Asch) Rössner, Philipp R. (Hrsg.),Economic Growth and the Origins of Modern Political Economy.Economic Reasons of State, 1500–2000, London/NewYork 2016, Routledge, XII u. 317 S. / Abb., £ 95,00. (Justus Nipperdey) Burgdorf, Wolfgang (Bearb.), Die Wahlkapitulationen der römisch-deutschen Könige und Kaiser 1519–1792 (Quellen zur Geschichte des Heiligen Römischen Reiches, 1), Göttingen 2015, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 884 S., € 90,00. Burgdorf, Wolfgang, Protokonstitutionalismus. Die Reichsverfassung in den Wahlkapitulationen der römisch-deutschen Könige und Kaiser 1519–1792 (Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 94), Göttingen / Bristol 2015, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 226 S., € 60,00. Durchhardt, Heinz (Hrsg.), Wahlkapitulationen in Europa (Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 95), Göttingen / Bristol 2015, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 172 S. / Abb, € 55,00. (Alexander Denzler) Durst, Benjamin, Archive des Völkerrechts. Gedruckte Sammlungen europäischer Mächteverträge in der Frühen Neuzeit (Colloquia Augustana, 34), Berlin/Boston 2016, de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 494 S. / Abb., € 79,95. (Anuschka Tischer) Krischer, André, Die Macht des Verfahrens. Englische Hochverratsprozesse 1554–1848 (Verhandeln, Verfahren, Entscheiden, 3), Münster 2017, Aschendorff, VII u. 720 S. / Abb., € 79,00. (Ronald G. Asch) Elmer, Peter, Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England, Oxford / New York 2016, Oxford University Press, X u. 369 S., £ 65,00. (Gerd Schwerhoff) Mentzer, Raymond A. / Betrand Van Ruymbeke (Hrsg.), A Companion to the Huguenots (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 68), Leiden/Boston 2016, Brill, XV u. 481 S. / Abb., € 229,00; als Brill MyBook € 25,00. (Ulrich Niggemann) Cevolini, Alberto (Hrsg.), Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe (Library of the Written Word, 53; The Handpress World, 40), Leiden / Boston 2016, Brill, XI u. 389 S., € 154,00. (Martin Gierl) Freist, Dagmar / Susanne Lachenicht (Hrsg.), Connecting Worlds and People. Early Modern Diasporas, Abingdon / New York 2017, Routledge, XIII u. 149 S./ graph. Darst., £ 95,00. (Thomas Dorfner) Boer, Wietsede / Karl A. E. Enenkel / Walter S. Melion(Hrsg.), Jesuit Image Theory (Intersections, 45), Leiden / Boston 2016, Brill, XIX u. 497 S. / Abb., € 172,00. (Dominik Sieber) Abreu, Laurinda, The Political and Social Dynamics of Poverty, Poor Relief and Health Care in Early-Modern Portugal (The History of Medicine in Context), London / New York 2016, Routledge, VI u. 302 S. / graph. Darst., £ 110,00. (Robert Jütte) Häberlein, Mark (Hrsg.), Sprachmeister. Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte eines prekären Berufsstands (Schriften der Matthias-Kramer-Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der Geschichte des Fremdsprachenerwerbs und der Mehrsprachigkeit, 1), Bamberg 2015, University of Bamberg Press, 218 S. / Abb., € 18,00. (Michael Schaich) Handley, Sasha, Sleep in Early Modern England, New Haven / London 2016, Yale University Press, XII u. 280 S. / Abb., $ 65,00. (Marion Kintzinger) Nieden, Marcel (Hrsg.), Ketzer, Held und Prediger. Martin Luther im Gedächtnis der Deutschen, Darmstadt 2017, Lambert Schneider, 248 S. / Abb., € 49,95. Rößler, Hole (Hrsg.), Luthermania. Ansichten einer Kultfigur (Ausstellungskataloge der Herzog August Bibliothek, 99), Wiesbaden 2017, Harrassowitz in Kommission, 407 S. / Abb., € 39,80. (Eike Wolgast) Eser, Thomas / Stephanie Armer (Hrsg.), Luther, Kolumbus und die Folgen. Welt im Wandel 1500–1600. Ausstellung im Germanischen Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg vom 13. Juli bis 12. November 2017, Nürnberg 2017, Verlag des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, 312 S. / Abb., € 36,00.(Heinz Schilling) Biagioni, Mario, The Radical Reformation and the Making of Modern Europe. A Lasting Heritage (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, 207), Leiden / Boston 2017, Brill, XI u. 180 S., € 108,00. (Hans-Jürgen Goertz) Peters, Christian, Vom Humanismus zum Täuferreich. Der Weg des Bernhard Rothmann (Refo500 Academic Studies, 38), Göttingen / Bristol 2017, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 201 S. / Abb., € 90,00. (James M. Stayer) Bräuer, Siegfried / Günther Vogler / Thomas Müntzer, Neu Ordnung machen in der Welt. Eine Biographie, Gütersloh 2016, Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 496 S./ Abb., € 58,00. (Ulrich Bubenheimer) Müntzer, Thomas, Manuskripte und Notizen, hrsg. v. Armin Kohnle/Eike Wolgast unter Mitarbeit v. Vasily Arslanov / Alexander Bartmuß / Christine Haustein (Thomas-Müntzer-Ausgabe. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 1), Leipzig 2017, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaftenzu Leipzig/Evangelische Verlagsanstalt inKommission, XXIII u. 546 S., € 58,00. (Cornel Zwierlein) Selderhuis, Herman J. / Arnold Huijgen (Hrsg.), Calvinus Pastor Ecclesiae. Papers of the Eleventh International Congress on Calvin Research (Reformed Historical Theology, 39), Göttingen / Bristol 2016, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 467 S., € 120,00. (Iris Fleßenkämper) McCallum, John, Scotland’s LongReformation.NewPerspectives on Scottish Religion, c. 1500–c. 1600 (St AndrewsStudies in Reformation History), Leiden/Boston 2016, Brill, XI u. 230 S. / Abb., € 110,00. (Martin Foerster) Toenjes, Christopher, Islam, the Turks and the Making of the Reformation. The History of the Ottoman Empire in John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, Frankfurt a. M. [u. a.] 2016, Lang, XVI u. 447 S. / Abb., € 74,70. (Stefan Hanß) GarcÍa-Arenal (Hrsg.), After Conversion. Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity (Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700), Leiden / Boston 2016, Brill, XII u. 463 S. / Abb., € 181,00; als eBook open access. Norton, Claire, ConversionandIslam in the EarlyModernMediterranean.The Lure of the Other (Routledge Research in Early Modern History), London / New York 2017, Routledge, X u. 222 S. / Abb., £ 110,00; als eBook £ 35,99. (Christian Windler) Graf, Tobias P., The Sultan’s Renegades. Christian-European Converts to Islam and the Making of the Ottoman Elite,1575–1610, Oxford 2017, Oxford University Press, XX u. 261 S. / Abb., £ 65,00. (Arkadiusz Blaszczyk) Hans Dernschwam’s Tagebuch einer Reise nach Konstantinopel und Kleinasien (1553/55), hrsg. v. Franz Babinger, ins Neuhochdeutsche übers. v. Jörg Riecke, Berlin 2014, Duncker & Humblot, XXXVII u. 300 S. / Abb., € 69,90. (Mathis Leibetseder) Comerford, Kathleen M., Jesuit Foundations and Medici Power, 1532–1621 (Jesuit Studies, 7), Leiden / Boston 2017, Brill, XVI u. 316 S. / graph. Darst., € 142,00. (Fabian Fechner) Nicolaus von Amsdorff, Ausgewählte Schriften der Jahre 1550 bis 1562 aus der ehemaligen Eisenacher Ministerialbibliothek, hrsg. v. Hagen Jäger (Leucorea-Studien zur Geschichte der Reformation und der Lutherischen Orthodoxie, 32), Leipzig 2017, Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 284 S., € 48,00. (Volker Leppin) Piltz, Eric / Gerd Schwerhoff (Hrsg.), Gottlosigkeit und Eigensinn. Religiöse Devianz im konfessionellen Zeitalter (Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung. Beiheft, 51), Berlin 2015, Duncker & Humblot, 530 S. / Abb., € 69,90. (Martin Scheutz) Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm / Friedrich Vollhardt (Hrsg.), Ideengeschichte um 1600. Konstellationen zwischen Schulmetaphysik, Konfessionalisierung und hermetischer Spekulation (Problemata, 158), Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2017, Frommann-Holzboog, 338 S. / Abb., € 68,00. (Tobias Winnerling) Friedrich, Markus / Sascha Salatowsky / Luise Schorn-Schütte (Hrsg.), Konfession, Politik und Gelehrsamkeit. Der Jenaer Theologe Johann Gerhard (1582–1637) im Kontext seiner Zeit (Gothaer Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, 11), Stuttgart 2017, Steiner, 280 S., € 52,00. (Martin Gierl) Schleinert, Dirk / Monika Schneikart (Hrsg.), Zwischen Thronsaal und Frawenzimmer. Handlungsfelder pommerscher Fürstinnen um 1600 (Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Pommern. Reihe V: Forschungen zur pommerschen Geschichte, 50), Köln / Weimar / Wien 2017, Böhlau, 402 S. / Abb., € 55,00. (Katrin Keller) Wareing, John, Indentured Migration and the Servant Trade from London to America, 1618–1718. „There is Great Want of Servants“, Oxford / New York 2017, Oxford University Press, VIII u. 298 S. / Abb., £ 75,00. (Mark Häberlein) May, Niels F., Zwischen fürstlicher Repräsentation und adliger Statuspolitik. Das Kongresszeremoniell bei den westfälischen Friedensverhandlungen (Beihefte der Francia, 82), Ostfildern 2016, Thorbecke, 284 S., € 42,00. (Anuschka Tischer) Haupt, Herbert, Ein Herr von Stand und Würde. Fürst Johann Adam Andreas von Liechtenstein (1657–1712). Mosaiksteine eines Lebens, Köln / Weimar / Wien 2016, Böhlau, 389 S. / Abb., € 47,00. (Thomas Winkelbauer) Homa, Bernhard, Die Tübinger Philosophische Fakultät 1652–1752. Institution – Disziplinen – Lehrkräfte (Contubernium, 85), Stuttgart 2016, Steiner, 428 S. / 1 CDROM, € 69,00. (Martin Gierl) Windler, Christian (Hrsg.), Kongressorte der Frühen Neuzeit im europäischen Vergleich. Der Friede von Baden (1714), Köln/Weimar/Wien 2016, Böhlau, 303 S. / Abb., € 19,90. (Regina Dauser) Pecar, Andreas / Holger Zaunstöck / Thomas Müller-Bahlke (Hrsg.), Wie pietistisch kann Adel sein? Hallescher Pietismus und Reichsadel im 18. Jahrhundert (Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte Sachsen-Anhalts, 10), Halle a. d. S. 2016, Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 176 S. / Abb., € 25,00. (Martin Gierl) Eißner, Daniel, Erweckte Handwerker im Umfeld des Pietismus. Zur religiösen Selbstermächtigung in der Frühen Neuzeit (Hallesche Forschungen, 43), Halle a. d. S. / Wiesbaden 2016, Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen / Harrassowitz in Kommission, IX u. 384 S., € 52,00. (Martin Gierl) Black, Jeremy, British Politics and Foreign Policy, 1744–57. Mid-Century Crisis, Farnham / Burlington 2015, Ashgate, XIV u. 267 S., £ 70,00. (Michael Schaich) Stobart, Jon / Mark Rothery (Hrsg.), Consumption and the Country House, Oxford / New York 2016, Oxford University Press, X u. 304 S. / Abb., £ 65,00. (Michael Maurer) Diest, Johann von, Wirtschaftspolitik und Lobbyismus im 18. Jahrhundert. Eine quellenbasierte Neubewertung der wechselseitigen Einflussnahme von Obrigkeit und Wirtschaft in Brandenburg-Preußen und Kurhannover (Herrschaft und soziale Systeme in der Frühen Neuzeit, 23), Göttingen 2016, V&R unipress, 392 S., € 55,00. (Justus Nipperdey) Kech, Kerstin, Hofhaltung und Hofzeremoniell der Bamberger Fürstbischöfe in der Spätphase des Alten Reichs (Stadt und Region in der Vormoderne, 6; Veröffentlichungen des Stadtarchivs Bamberg, 28), Würzburg 2016, Ergon, 430 S. / Abb., € 58,00. (Bettina Braun) Fischer, Ole (Hrsg.), Aufgeklärte Lebenswelten (Studien zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte Schleswig-Holsteins, 54), Stuttgart 2016, Steiner, 242 S., € 29,00. (Dominik Hünniger) Rheinheimer, Martin, Ipke und Angens. Die Welt eines nordfriesischen Schiffers und seiner Frau (1787–1801) (Studien zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte Schleswig-Holsteins, 55), Stuttgart 2016, Steiner, 161 S. / Abb., € 29,90. (Jann M. Witt) Maurer, Michael, Wilhelm von Humboldt. Ein Leben als Werk, Köln/Weimar/Wien 2016, Böhlau, 310 S. / Abb., € 25,00. (Jann M. Witt)

By the time you read this, it will be wrong. Things seemed to be moving so fast in these first days after airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania earth. Each certainty is as carelessly dropped as it was once carelessly assumed. The sounds of lower Manhattan that used to serve as white noise for residents—sirens, screeches, screams—are no longer signs without a referent. Instead, they make folks stare and stop, hurry and hustle, wondering whether the noises we know so well are in fact, this time, coefficients of a new reality. At the time of writing, the events themselves are also signs without referents—there has been no direct claim of responsibility, and little proof offered by accusers since the 11th. But it has been assumed that there is a link to US foreign policy, its military and economic presence in the Arab world, and opposition to it that seeks revenge. In the intervening weeks the US media and the war planners have supplied their own narrow frameworks, making New York’s “ground zero” into the starting point for a new escalation of global violence. We want to write here about the combination of sources and sensations that came that day, and the jumble of knowledges and emotions that filled our minds. Working late the night before, Toby was awoken in the morning by one of the planes right overhead. That happens sometimes. I have long expected a crash when I’ve heard the roar of jet engines so close—but I didn’t this time. Often when that sound hits me, I get up and go for a run down by the water, just near Wall Street. Something kept me back that day. Instead, I headed for my laptop. Because I cannot rely on local media to tell me very much about the role of the US in world affairs, I was reading the British newspaper The Guardian on-line when it flashed a two-line report about the planes. I looked up at the calendar above my desk to see whether it was April 1st. Truly. Then I got off-line and turned on the TV to watch CNN. That second, the phone rang. My quasi-ex-girlfriend I’m still in love with called from the mid-West. She was due to leave that day for the Bay Area. Was I alright? We spoke for a bit. She said my cell phone was out, and indeed it was for the remainder of the day. As I hung up from her, my friend Ana rang, tearful and concerned. Her husband, Patrick, had left an hour before for work in New Jersey, and it seemed like a dangerous separation. All separations were potentially fatal that day. You wanted to know where everyone was, every minute. She told me she had been trying to contact Palestinian friends who worked and attended school near the event—their ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds made for real poignancy, as we both thought of the prejudice they would (probably) face, regardless of the eventual who/what/when/where/how of these events. We agreed to meet at Bruno’s, a bakery on La Guardia Place. For some reason I really took my time, though, before getting to Ana. I shampooed and shaved under the shower. This was a horror, and I needed to look my best, even as men and women were losing and risking their lives. I can only interpret what I did as an attempt to impose normalcy and control on the situation, on my environment. When I finally made it down there, she’d located our friends. They were safe. We stood in the street and watched the Towers. Horrified by the sight of human beings tumbling to their deaths, we turned to buy a tea/coffee—again some ludicrous normalization—but were drawn back by chilling screams from the street. Racing outside, we saw the second Tower collapse, and clutched at each other. People were streaming towards us from further downtown. We decided to be with our Palestinian friends in their apartment. When we arrived, we learnt that Mark had been four minutes away from the WTC when the first plane hit. I tried to call my daughter in London and my father in Canberra, but to no avail. I rang the mid-West, and asked my maybe-former novia to call England and Australia to report in on me. Our friend Jenine got through to relatives on the West Bank. Israeli tanks had commenced a bombardment there, right after the planes had struck New York. Family members spoke to her from under the kitchen table, where they were taking refuge from the shelling of their house. Then we gave ourselves over to television, like so many others around the world, even though these events were happening only a mile away. We wanted to hear official word, but there was just a huge absence—Bush was busy learning to read in Florida, then leading from the front in Louisiana and Nebraska. As the day wore on, we split up and regrouped, meeting folks. One guy was in the subway when smoke filled the car. Noone could breathe properly, people were screaming, and his only thought was for his dog DeNiro back in Brooklyn. From the panic of the train, he managed to call his mom on a cell to ask her to feed “DeNiro” that night, because it looked like he wouldn’t get home. A pregnant woman feared for her unborn as she fled the blasts, pushing the stroller with her baby in it as she did so. Away from these heart-rending tales from strangers, there was the fear: good grief, what horrible price would the US Government extract for this, and who would be the overt and covert agents and targets of that suffering? What blood-lust would this generate? What would be the pattern of retaliation and counter-retaliation? What would become of civil rights and cultural inclusiveness? So a jumble of emotions came forward, I assume in all of us. Anger was not there for me, just intense sorrow, shock, and fear, and the desire for intimacy. Network television appeared to offer me that, but in an ultimately unsatisfactory way. For I think I saw the end-result of reality TV that day. I have since decided to call this ‘emotionalization’—network TV’s tendency to substitute analysis of US politics and economics with a stress on feelings. Of course, powerful emotions have been engaged by this horror, and there is value in addressing that fact and letting out the pain. I certainly needed to do so. But on that day and subsequent ones, I looked to the networks, traditional sources of current-affairs knowledge, for just that—informed, multi-perspectival journalism that would allow me to make sense of my feelings, and come to a just and reasoned decision about how the US should respond. I waited in vain. No such commentary came forward. Just a lot of asinine inquiries from reporters that were identical to those they pose to basketballers after a game: Question—‘How do you feel now?’ Answer—‘God was with me today.’ For the networks were insistent on asking everyone in sight how they felt about the end of las torres gemelas. In this case, we heard the feelings of survivors, firefighters, viewers, media mavens, Republican and Democrat hacks, and vacuous Beltway state-of-the-nation pundits. But learning of the military-political economy, global inequality, and ideologies and organizations that made for our grief and loss—for that, there was no space. TV had forgotten how to do it. My principal feeling soon became one of frustration. So I headed back to where I began the day—The Guardian web site, where I was given insightful analysis of the messy factors of history, religion, economics, and politics that had created this situation. As I dealt with the tragedy of folks whose lives had been so cruelly lost, I pondered what it would take for this to stop. Or whether this was just the beginning. I knew one thing—the answers wouldn’t come from mainstream US television, no matter how full of feelings it was. And that made Toby anxious. And afraid. He still is. And so the dreams come. In one, I am suddenly furloughed from my job with an orchestra, as audience numbers tumble. I make my evening-wear way to my locker along with the other players, emptying it of bubble gum and instrument. The next night, I see a gigantic, fifty-feet high wave heading for the city beach where I’ve come to swim. Somehow I am sheltered behind a huge wall, as all the people around me die. Dripping, I turn to find myself in a media-stereotype “crack house” of the early ’90s—desperate-looking black men, endless doorways, sudden police arrival, and my earnest search for a passport that will explain away my presence. I awake in horror, to the realization that the passport was already open and stamped—racialization at work for Toby, every day and in every way, as a white man in New York City. Ana’s husband, Patrick, was at work ten miles from Manhattan when “it” happened. In the hallway, I overheard some talk about two planes crashing, but went to teach anyway in my usual morning stupor. This was just the usual chatter of disaster junkies. I didn’t hear the words, “World Trade Center” until ten thirty, at the end of the class at the college I teach at in New Jersey, across the Hudson river. A friend and colleague walked in and told me the news of the attack, to which I replied “You must be fucking joking.” He was a little offended. Students were milling haphazardly on the campus in the late summer weather, some looking panicked like me. My first thought was of some general failure of the air-traffic control system. There must be planes falling out of the sky all over the country. Then the height of the towers: how far towards our apartment in Greenwich Village would the towers fall? Neither of us worked in the financial district a mile downtown, but was Ana safe? Where on the college campus could I see what was happening? I recognized the same physical sensation I had felt the morning after Hurricane Andrew in Miami seeing at a distance the wreckage of our shattered apartment across a suburban golf course strewn with debris and flattened power lines. Now I was trapped in the suburbs again at an unbridgeable distance from my wife and friends who were witnessing the attacks first hand. Were they safe? What on earth was going on? This feeling of being cut off, my path to the familiar places of home blocked, remained for weeks my dominant experience of the disaster. In my office, phone calls to the city didn’t work. There were six voice-mail messages from my teenaged brother Alex in small-town England giving a running commentary on the attack and its aftermath that he was witnessing live on television while I dutifully taught my writing class. “Hello, Patrick, where are you? Oh my god, another plane just hit the towers. Where are you?” The web was choked: no access to newspapers online. Email worked, but no one was wasting time writing. My office window looked out over a soccer field to the still woodlands of western New Jersey: behind me to the east the disaster must be unfolding. Finally I found a website with a live stream from ABC television, which I watched flickering and stilted on the tiny screen. It had all already happened: both towers already collapsed, the Pentagon attacked, another plane shot down over Pennsylvania, unconfirmed reports said, there were other hijacked aircraft still out there unaccounted for. Manhattan was sealed off. George Washington Bridge, Lincoln and Holland tunnels, all the bridges and tunnels from New Jersey I used to mock shut down. Police actions sealed off the highways into “the city.” The city I liked to think of as the capital of the world was cut off completely from the outside, suddenly vulnerable and under siege. There was no way to get home. The phone rang abruptly and Alex, three thousand miles away, told me he had spoken to Ana earlier and she was safe. After a dozen tries, I managed to get through and spoke to her, learning that she and Toby had seen people jumping and then the second tower fall. Other friends had been even closer. Everyone was safe, we thought. I sat for another couple of hours in my office uselessly. The news was incoherent, stories contradictory, loops of the planes hitting the towers only just ready for recycling. The attacks were already being transformed into “the World Trade Center Disaster,” not yet the ahistorical singularity of the emergency “nine one one.” Stranded, I had to spend the night in New Jersey at my boss’s house, reminded again of the boundless generosity of Americans to relative strangers. In an effort to protect his young son from the as yet unfiltered images saturating cable and Internet, my friend’s TV set was turned off and we did our best to reassure. We listened surreptitiously to news bulletins on AM radio, hoping that the roads would open. Walking the dog with my friend’s wife and son we crossed a park on the ridge on which Upper Montclair sits. Ten miles away a huge column of smoke was rising from lower Manhattan, where the stunning absence of the towers was clearly visible. The summer evening was unnervingly still. We kicked a soccer ball around on the front lawn and a woman walked distracted by, shocked and pale up the tree-lined suburban street, suffering her own wordless trauma. I remembered that though most of my students were ordinary working people, Montclair is a well-off dormitory for the financial sector and high rises of Wall Street and Midtown. For the time being, this was a white-collar disaster. I slept a short night in my friend’s house, waking to hope I had dreamed it all, and took the commuter train in with shell-shocked bankers and corporate types. All men, all looking nervously across the river toward glimpses of the Manhattan skyline as the train neared Hoboken. “I can’t believe they’re making us go in,” one guy had repeated on the station platform. He had watched the attacks from his office in Midtown, “The whole thing.” Inside the train we all sat in silence. Up from the PATH train station on 9th street I came onto a carless 6th Avenue. At 14th street barricades now sealed off downtown from the rest of the world. I walked down the middle of the avenue to a newspaper stand; the Indian proprietor shrugged “No deliveries below 14th.” I had not realized that the closer to the disaster you came, the less information would be available. Except, I assumed, for the evidence of my senses. But at 8 am the Village was eerily still, few people about, nothing in the sky, including the twin towers. I walked to Houston Street, which was full of trucks and police vehicles. Tractor trailers sat carrying concrete barriers. Below Houston, each street into Soho was barricaded and manned by huddles of cops. I had walked effortlessly up into the “lockdown,” but this was the “frozen zone.” There was no going further south towards the towers. I walked the few blocks home, found my wife sleeping, and climbed into bed, still in my clothes from the day before. “Your heart is racing,” she said. I realized that I hadn’t known if I would get back, and now I never wanted to leave again; it was still only eight thirty am. Lying there, I felt the terrible wonder of a distant bystander for the first-hand witness. Ana’s face couldn’t tell me what she had seen. I felt I needed to know more, to see and understand. Even though I knew the effort was useless: I could never bridge that gap that had trapped me ten miles away, my back turned to the unfolding disaster. The television was useless: we don’t have cable, and the mast on top of the North Tower, which Ana had watched fall, had relayed all the network channels. I knew I had to go down and see the wreckage. Later I would realize how lucky I had been not to suffer from “disaster envy.” Unbelievably, in retrospect, I commuted into work the second day after the attack, dogged by the same unnerving sensation that I would not get back—to the wounded, humbled former center of the world. My students were uneasy, all talked out. I was a novelty, a New Yorker living in the Village a mile from the towers, but I was forty-eight hours late. Out of place in both places. I felt torn up, but not angry. Back in the city at night, people were eating and drinking with a vengeance, the air filled with acrid sicklysweet smoke from the burning wreckage. Eyes stang and nose ran with a bitter acrid taste. Who knows what we’re breathing in, we joked nervously. A friend’s wife had fallen out with him for refusing to wear a protective mask in the house. He shrugged a wordlessly reassuring smile. What could any of us do? I walked with Ana down to the top of West Broadway from where the towers had commanded the skyline over SoHo; downtown dense smoke blocked the view to the disaster. A crowd of onlookers pushed up against the barricades all day, some weeping, others gawping. A tall guy was filming the grieving faces with a video camera, which was somehow the worst thing of all, the first sign of the disaster tourism that was already mushrooming downtown. Across the street an Asian artist sat painting the street scene in streaky black and white; he had scrubbed out two white columns where the towers would have been. “That’s the first thing I’ve seen that’s made me feel any better,” Ana said. We thanked him, but he shrugged blankly, still in shock I supposed. On the Friday, the clampdown. I watched the Mayor and Police Chief hold a press conference in which they angrily told the stream of volunteers to “ground zero” that they weren’t needed. “We can handle this ourselves. We thank you. But we don’t need your help,” Commissioner Kerik said. After the free-for-all of the first couple of days, with its amazing spontaneities and common gestures of goodwill, the clampdown was going into effect. I decided to go down to Canal Street and see if it was true that no one was welcome anymore. So many paths through the city were blocked now. “Lock down, frozen zone, war zone, the site, combat zone, ground zero, state troopers, secured perimeter, national guard, humvees, family center”: a disturbing new vocabulary that seemed to stamp the logic of Giuliani’s sanitized and over-policed Manhattan onto the wounded hulk of the city. The Mayor had been magnificent in the heat of the crisis; Churchillian, many were saying—and indeed, Giuliani quickly appeared on the cover of Cigar Afficionado, complete with wing collar and the misquotation from Kipling, “Captain Courageous.” Churchill had not believed in peacetime politics either, and he never got over losing his empire. Now the regime of command and control over New York’s citizens and its economy was being stabilized and reimposed. The sealed-off, disfigured, and newly militarized spaces of the New York through which I have always loved to wander at all hours seemed to have been put beyond reach for the duration. And, in the new post-“9/11” post-history, the duration could last forever. The violence of the attacks seemed to have elicited a heavy-handed official reaction that sought to contain and constrict the best qualities of New York. I felt more anger at the clampdown than I did at the demolition of the towers. I knew this was unreasonable, but I feared the reaction, the spread of the racial harassment and racial profiling that I had already heard of from my students in New Jersey. This militarizing of the urban landscape seemed to negate the sprawling, freewheeling, boundless largesse and tolerance on which New York had complacently claimed a monopoly. For many the towers stood for that as well, not just as the monumental outposts of global finance that had been attacked. Could the American flag mean something different? For a few days, perhaps—on the helmets of firemen and construction workers. But not for long. On the Saturday, I found an unmanned barricade way east along Canal Street and rode my bike past throngs of Chinatown residents, by the Federal jail block where prisoners from the first World Trade Center bombing were still being held. I headed south and west towards Tribeca; below the barricades in the frozen zone, you could roam freely, the cops and soldiers assuming you belonged there. I felt uneasy, doubting my own motives for being there, feeling the blood drain from my head in the same numbing shock I’d felt every time I headed downtown towards the site. I looped towards Greenwich Avenue, passing an abandoned bank full of emergency supplies and boxes of protective masks. Crushed cars still smeared with pulverized concrete and encrusted with paperwork strewn by the blast sat on the street near the disabled telephone exchange. On one side of the avenue stood a horde of onlookers, on the other television crews, all looking two blocks south towards a colossal pile of twisted and smoking steel, seven stories high. We were told to stay off the street by long-suffering national guardsmen and women with southern accents, kids. Nothing happening, just the aftermath. The TV crews were interviewing worn-out, dust-covered volunteers and firemen who sat quietly leaning against the railings of a park filled with scraps of paper. Out on the West Side highway, a high-tech truck was offering free cellular phone calls. The six lanes by the river were full of construction machinery and military vehicles. Ambulances rolled slowly uptown, bodies inside? I locked my bike redundantly to a lamppost and crossed under the hostile gaze of plainclothes police to another media encampment. On the path by the river, two camera crews were complaining bitterly in the heat. “After five days of this I’ve had enough.” They weren’t talking about the trauma, bodies, or the wreckage, but censorship. “Any blue light special gets to roll right down there, but they see your press pass and it’s get outta here. I’ve had enough.” I fronted out the surly cops and ducked under the tape onto the path, walking onto a Pier on which we’d spent many lazy afternoons watching the river at sunset. Dust everywhere, police boats docked and waiting, a crane ominously dredging mud into a barge. I walked back past the camera operators onto the highway and walked up to an interview in process. Perfectly composed, a fire chief and his crew from some small town in upstate New York were politely declining to give details about what they’d seen at “ground zero.” The men’s faces were dust streaked, their eyes slightly dazed with the shock of a horror previously unimaginable to most Americans. They were here to help the best they could, now they’d done as much as anyone could. “It’s time for us to go home.” The chief was eloquent, almost rehearsed in his precision. It was like a Magnum press photo. But he was refusing to cooperate with the media’s obsessive emotionalism. I walked down the highway, joining construction workers, volunteers, police, and firemen in their hundreds at Chambers Street. No one paid me any attention; it was absurd. I joined several other watchers on the stairs by Stuyvesant High School, which was now the headquarters for the recovery crews. Just two or three blocks away, the huge jagged teeth of the towers’ beautiful tracery lurched out onto the highway above huge mounds of debris. The TV images of the shattered scene made sense as I placed them into what was left of a familiar Sunday afternoon geography of bike rides and walks by the river, picnics in the park lying on the grass and gazing up at the infinite solidity of the towers. Demolished. It was breathtaking. If “they” could do that, they could do anything. Across the street at tables military policeman were checking credentials of the milling volunteers and issuing the pink and orange tags that gave access to ground zero. Without warning, there was a sudden stampede running full pelt up from the disaster site, men and women in fatigues, burly construction workers, firemen in bunker gear. I ran a few yards then stopped. Other people milled around idly, ignoring the panic, smoking and talking in low voices. It was a mainly white, blue-collar scene. All these men wearing flags and carrying crowbars and flashlights. In their company, the intolerance and rage I associated with flags and construction sites was nowhere to be seen. They were dealing with a torn and twisted otherness that dwarfed machismo or bigotry. I talked to a moustachioed, pony-tailed construction worker who’d hitched a ride from the mid-west to “come and help out.” He was staying at the Y, he said, it was kind of rough. “Have you been down there?” he asked, pointing towards the wreckage. “You’re British, you weren’t in World War Two were you?” I replied in the negative. “It’s worse ’n that. I went down last night and you can’t imagine it. You don’t want to see it if you don’t have to.” Did I know any welcoming ladies? he asked. The Y was kind of tough. When I saw TV images of President Bush speaking to the recovery crews and steelworkers at “ground zero” a couple of days later, shouting through a bullhorn to chants of “USA, USA” I knew nothing had changed. New York’s suffering was subject to a second hijacking by the brokers of national unity. New York had never been America, and now its terrible human loss and its great humanity were redesignated in the name of the nation, of the coming war. The signs without a referent were being forcibly appropriated, locked into an impoverished patriotic framework, interpreted for “us” by a compliant media and an opportunistic regime eager to reign in civil liberties, to unloose its war machine and tighten its grip on the Muslim world. That day, drawn to the river again, I had watched F18 fighter jets flying patterns over Manhattan as Bush’s helicopters came in across the river. Otherwise empty of air traffic, “our” skies were being torn up by the military jets: it was somehow the worst sight yet, worse than the wreckage or the bands of disaster tourists on Canal Street, a sign of further violence yet to come. There was a carrier out there beyond New York harbor, there to protect us: the bruising, blustering city once open to all comers. That felt worst of all. In the intervening weeks, we have seen other, more unstable ways of interpreting the signs of September 11 and its aftermath. Many have circulated on the Internet, past the blockages and blockades placed on urban spaces and intellectual life. Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s work was banished (at least temporarily) from the canon of avant-garde electronic music when he described the attack on las torres gemelas as akin to a work of art. If Jacques Derrida had described it as an act of deconstruction (turning technological modernity literally in on itself), or Jean Baudrillard had announced that the event was so thick with mediation it had not truly taken place, something similar would have happened to them (and still may). This is because, as Don DeLillo so eloquently put it in implicit reaction to the plaintive cry “Why do they hate us?”: “it is the power of American culture to penetrate every wall, home, life and mind”—whether via military action or cultural iconography. All these positions are correct, however grisly and annoying they may be. What GK Chesterton called the “flints and tiles” of nineteenth-century European urban existence were rent asunder like so many victims of high-altitude US bombing raids. As a First-World disaster, it became knowable as the first-ever US “ground zero” such precisely through the high premium immediately set on the lives of Manhattan residents and the rarefied discussion of how to commemorate the high-altitude towers. When, a few weeks later, an American Airlines plane crashed on take-off from Queens, that borough was left open to all comers. Manhattan was locked down, flown over by “friendly” bombers. In stark contrast to the open if desperate faces on the street of 11 September, people went about their business with heads bowed even lower than is customary. Contradictory deconstructions and valuations of Manhattan lives mean that September 11 will live in infamy and hyper-knowability. The vengeful United States government and population continue on their way. Local residents must ponder insurance claims, real-estate values, children’s terrors, and their own roles in something beyond their ken. New York had been forced beyond being the center of the financial world. It had become a military target, a place that was receiving as well as dispatching the slings and arrows of global fortune. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby. "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php>. Chicago Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby, "A Day That Will Live In … ?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Deer, Patrick and Miller, Toby. (2002) A Day That Will Live In … ?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/adaythat.php> ([your date of access]).

Die Dissertation untersucht am Beispiel des Volkskommissariates für Außenhandel die Entstehung der frühen Sowjetbürokratie und analysiert administrative und politische Prozesse, die der Herausbildung des Stalinismus vorangingen. Gegenstand der Untersuchung sind die Probleme des staatlich organisierten Außenhandels sowie die Schwierigkeiten bei der Anknüpfung von Handelsbeziehungen zu den kapitalistischen Staaten in der Zeit nach der Revolution. Außenpolitische Faktoren und weltwirtschaftliche Voraussetzungen werden in diesem Zusammenhang ebenso berücksichtigt wie die zum Teil widersprüchlichen Interessen des sowjetischen Außenhandels einerseits und der sowjetschen Diplomatie anderseits. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage nach dem Verhältnis zwischen Parteiapparat und Regierungsbürokratie sowie die Rolle der Volkskommissariate im politischen Entscheidungsprozeß. Die Verfasserin konzentriert sich in diesem Zusammenhang auf drei Themenkomplexe: die Kaderpolitik der KPR(b) gegenüber dem Volkskommissariat für Außenhandel, den organisatorischen Wandel in dieser Behörde während der Neuen Ökonomischen Politik sowie das Zusammenspiel einzelner Partei- und Wirtschaftsbehörden bei der Entscheidung konkreter handelspolitischer Fragen.
This dissertation examines the People´s Comissariat of Foreign Trade as an example of the development of early Soviet bureaucracy and analyses administrative and political processes, proceeding the rise of stalinism. The study deals with the problems of centrally planned foreign trade and the difficulties of establishing trading connections to the capitalistic states in the post-revolutionary period. In this context international factors and conditions, dictated by world economy, are considered as well as the contradictory interests of Soviet foreign trade on one hand and soviet diplomacy on the other hand. The focus is set on decision-making concerning the relationship between party apparatus and the People´s Comissariats. In this context the author concentrates on three aspects: the influence of CK´s Policy of Cadre selection on People´s Comissariat of Foreign Trade, the organizational change in this institution during the New Economic Policy and the cooperation between the various economic and party institutions, concerning the decision on concrete questions of foreign trade.

The automation of university libraries in Brazil underwent a restraint of trade on computers and software, which took place in the country between 1980 and 1990, restricting the initial use of automation systems. However, they were often developed in creative ways: systems and applications were created and used in various universities, some as free software, others based on the ISIS platform from Unesco, in addition to using modern foreign systems, which only occurred in the 1990’s. This chapter provides a historical overview of the development of automation in the country’s university libraries, from the moment in which Brazilian researchers began to disseminate information technology, creating an automation culture in higher education institutions. Many people and institutions have also contributed to promoting and implementing automation in university libraries. This paper is on future perspectives of academic library automation in Brazil with discovery tools, next generation cloud-based systems and library automation equipment. Some possible future developments are also presented.