Volume 298, Issue 3

Within the series of horse races that many cities of Northern and Central Italy organised since the thirteenth century, the Florentine palio in honour of San Giovanni, the city’s patron saint, took an eminent position during the Quattrocento. This annual race was not only manifoldly interwoven with the spatial, social and economic fabric of the city. Moreover, as a stage for political and dynastic competition its significance spread well beyond the city boundaries. In contrast to previous studies concentrating on festive and representational aspects, this contribution highlights the sportive competition of performance and prestige as the core of this palio race. Its competitive patterns are taken into consideration on three different fields: Firstly, the focus lies on the spatial arrangement of the race-course and its civic semantics; secondly, the contribution discusses the relationship between noble and civic patrons and their racehorses that were objects of transcultural trade and of a stud policy requiring huge investments; finally, the third section concerns the performance of the racehorses that created a specified memoria and, through betting, could be transformed into monetary profits and losses. In sum, this contribution reveals some key points of a fifteenth-century urban sport culture, as well as the guidelines of a redefined history of pre-modern sport.

James Brooke (1803–1868) was born to an East India Company official in Bengal and founder of the dynasty of the so-called White Rajahs of Sarawak. He first visited the Sarawak region of Borneo in 1838. Two years later he was involved in the stamping out of a rebellion. As a reward the Sultan of Brunei gave him the control of Sarawak, and once this position was agreed to by the British government it was perpetuated by Brooke’s nephew and heir, Charles Brooke (1829–1917). James Brooke modernized the administration, introducing a simpler system of taxation and suppressing piracy. When a commission of inquiry was set up in Singapore to examine complaints of cruelty against indigenous people, he was freed of the charge and Brooke was confirmed in his position as British Commissioner and Consul-General in Borneo. The public in Britain which he encountered only at a short visit to England in 1847, was ambivalent between admiring a colonial hero and sharply critizising his arbitrary colonial policy beyond the official mind. „Character“, a victorian key-word, was debated, likewise the question in what categories colonial expansion could be seen. Brooke is a good example for the „helplessness“ and the „unfinished“ of the nineteenth-century British Empire.

The effects of World War I on women’s lives are still an open to historical debate. Similarly, the influence of the war on the increasingly international feminist scene is still contested. World War I aggravated feminism’s dilemma in the era of nationalism: the idea of boundless solidarity between women was challenged by the call for unconditional support for one’s own nation in wartime. This article analyses the different ways in which bourgeois and socialist feminists faced the „paradox of feminism“ (Joan W. Scott). The International Socialist Women’s Conference in Berne in March 1915, and the International Women’s Congress at The Hague at the end of April 1915 can be seen as milestones in the history of feminist activism for peace. Examining these conferences allows us to highlight solidarity, participation and peace as values common to feminists involved in peace efforts, but also demonstrates that socialist and bourgeois peace activists gave different meanings to these key notions. It reveals why it was impossible for both wings of the women’s movement to form a common front against war in the name of peace.