The ‘Forgotten’ People: Turkey's Artisans in the 1950s

This paper intends to shed light into a social class, the Turkish artisans who were ignored by the mainstream historiography for a variety of reasons. Yet, they were the ones who formed the bulk of the middle-class in the following decades, helped shape the contours of Turkish politics and were seen as responsible for propogating the ideology of conservatism. In fact, without a thorough analyses of this social class, one could hardly grasped the evolution of the so-called modernization process Turkey underwent for the last half a century or so. By using parliamentary records, periodicals, newspapers and memoirs of the time as well as artisans' own journals, we trace the social and ideological demands of the Turkish artisans of the 1950s and bring about a comparative perspective by using the historical experiences of other countries. We argue that their conservatism should not be confused with the modern day conservatism since they represented a version of a peculiar form of progressive ideas and demands together with pro-Western and pro-capitalist inspirations.     

Pearson’s Mission: Revisiting Noel Pearson’s Revisionist History of Hope Vale

In 2000, Noel Pearson drew on his experiences of growing up on the Hope Vale, the Guugu Yimidhirr–speaking community that emerged from the Cape Bedford mission in the south east of Cape York, to write a revisionist history of the region. Indigenous communities were “strong, if bruised” in the wake of colonisation, he argued, but had descended into chaos since the 1970s because alcohol and welfare benefits had undermined the formerly resilient Aboriginal norms of “responsibility”. This paper offers a critical review of this politically potent account of the past, drawing on alternative oral histories, ethnographies and ethnohistories of Hope Vale, including Pearson’s own honours thesis (1986). Without challenging this sketch of his own experience, nor the sincerity of his nostalgia for the mission of his youth, I argue that Pearson’s more recent retellings are selective. In particular, his revisionist history overlooks evidence of drug abuse in the early colonial period and overstates both Guugu Yimidhirr agency in the process of missionisation and the uniformity and representativeness of the community that developed at Cape Bedford. Finally, I offer some possible personal, philosophical and political explanations for Pearson’s shifting approach to the past.     

Re-gendering Chinese History: Zhao Mei’s Emperor Wu Zetian

Historians who share the written Chinese language as a carrier of cultural signification have negotiated the image of female emperor Wu Zetian with the signs of the times designated by the needs of the present. The female writer Zhao Mei's new biography Woman: Wu Zetian deconstructs the historical and cultural representation of Wu Zetian as the 'bad unwoman'; links a woman's private, and subjective experiences with her public and political activities; and demonstrates that how the former influences the latter. This paper examines how the participation of contemporary biographers in knowledge production constructs, legitimises and maintains the image of Wu Zetian as a woman and a ruler. It argues that Zhao Mei's biography of Wu Zetian manages to confront the established dominance of male hierarchy, questions the 'stigmatised identity' of this historical character as being stable and universal and, consequently re-genders an important chapter in Chinese history.     

The Islamist Uprising in Syria, 1976–82: The History and Legacy of a Failed Revolt

The Islamist Uprising in Syria between 1976 and 1982 remains understudied in view of the growing availability of new primary sources on the subject. The present article explores the unfolding of the Revolt, examining the causes for its eventual defeat and the long-term legacy of the Uprising. It argues that the Islamist Uprising in Syria failed for a variety of reasons, first and foremost internal disunity and indecisiveness, leading to a lack of military preparedness, planning, and coordination at critical junctures, and a lack of mass mobilization for the Revolt. Failure to rally sufficient foreign support made the Uprising crumble in the face of the regime’s unrestrained brutality. Rather than serving as a rallying cry for the Syrian opposition, the defeat at Hama has had a divisive effect, illustrated by the contradictory narratives embraced by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and their jihadi opponents.     

The Cultural Revolution in Inner Mongolia 1967–1969: The Purge of the “Heirs of Genghis Khan”

This is the edited text of the Lecture which he delivered to the Society on 8 January 2008, immediately after he had been presented with the Sir Percy Sykes Medal. 1 1. The Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal, established in 1947, in memory of Sir Percy Sykes (1869–1945), a British soldier and diplomat who spent 25 years associated with Iran, and was author of one of the first histories of that country, A History of Persia, as well as of the travel book Ten Thousand Miles in Persia. The medal is ‘to be awarded by the Council of The Royal Society for Asian Affairs at such time or times as the council may in its discretion think fit, to any distinguished traveller, writer or other distinguished person whatsoever approved by the Society, who is deemed to have increased man's knowledge of and stimulated man's interest in Asian countries, or done work furthering cultural relations between the Commonwealth and Asian countries?…’. Sit Percy Sykes is not to be confused with his contemporary, Sir Mark Sykes, co-author of the 1916 Anglo-French ‘Sykes-Picot’ Agreement. Previous recipients of the award have included Freya Stark, Albert Hourani, Ella Maillart, Hugh Richardson, Giuseppe Tucci, Gunnar Jarring, Denis Wright, Peter Hopkirk, Mark Tully and William Dalrymple. (See Activities of the Society, page 332 of this issue.)