Arts and Humanities

Abstract: The article examines the everyday survival practices of the Kazakh aul in the context of the socio economic crisis of the early 1930s. The aim of the study is to identify the main forms of adaptation of the Kazakh population to administrative pressure and the destruction of the traditional economic system. In contrast to approaches that view population behavior primarily through the lens of adaptation and open resistance, the article focuses on everyday actions that helped people conserve resources and keep Kazakh auls viable. The source base consists of archival materials and published documents, and the analysis shows that survival included practices such as preserving and redistributing food and property, hiding some livestock, forced relocation, and changing usual farming practices. These actions did not always take the form of open protest; however, they testified to the Kazakh aul population's desire to seek opportunities to save their family and household independently. At the same time, everyday survival practices could be combined with collective action and other forms of resistance. Using problem-chronological, historical-genetic, and historical-comparative methods, the study traces how families and individual farms used available resources and social connections amid the growing crisis. It shows that survival strategies varied with the specific circumstances these families and households faced. Everyday actions aimed at preserving the family and household could be combined with collective action and other forms of resistance. This lets us consider survival and resistance not as mutually exclusive behaviors, but as different ways the population acts in a crisis. The study examines migration movements, kinship and neighborly forms of mutual assistance, the preservation and concealment of food resources, the search for alternative sources of livelihood, and changes in economic practices. It has been established that in times of crisis, the population used available material resources, kinship ties, and spatial mobility to preserve the family and householfile. In conclusion, it is stated that the everyday survival practices of the Kazakh population in the auls varied depending on the specific circumstances and opportunities available to each individual family.

Abstract: The present study examines some writings on local history by the award-winning American scholar Constance McLaughlin Green (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1897 - Annapolis, Maryland, 1975), who is primarily known for her contributions to the fields of urban, sociocultural, economic and technological history. Her approach to local history focuses on two things: the continuity of a community and the role of ordinary people in history. In particular, her methodological essay on local historical research, entitled “Changes in the Community”, deals with the seemingly paradoxical double thread of perpetual change and infinite continuity that characterises the history of communities. McLaughlin Green’s modern outlook and her vivid writing highlight the insights her methodological approach offers. This paper aims to renew interest in this highly regarded and celebrated researcher, who seems to have fallen into oblivion in recent years, though she represents a bridge between local history with an antiquarian focus and the modern discipline of urban history, and anticipates approaches of subsequent local and urban historiography.

Abstract: This article examines the official citations of Canada’s 81 Victoria Cross (VC) recipients as a corpus of historical texts documenting battlefield heroism. Drawing on archival material from the London Gazette and the Government of Canada’s Department of National Defence, the study analyzes the narratives describing the actions for which the decoration was awarded. Using NVivo to organize and code the text, the study employed both inductive and deductive approaches to identify recurring themes in the citations. These themes include sacrificial devotion to comrades, decisive individual initiative, inspirational battlefield leadership, and perseverance in the face of severe injury or overwhelming enemy fire. Descriptive analysis of the recipients also reveals structural patterns in award distribution across conflicts, ranks, and demographic backgrounds. Taken together, the findings highlight how official military narratives constructed and commemorated heroism within the Canadian wartime experience. The article also reflects on the absence of Canadian VC awards in recent conflicts, suggesting that acts of exceptional bravery in contemporary operations, including those in Afghanistan, merit renewed consideration, in line with recognition practices in other Commonwealth nations.

Abstract: Colonial and apartheid legacies have profoundly shaped land ownership, land use management, and rural spatiality in South Africa. In Ndlovukazi (also known as Lesseyton) Village, located outside Komani (formerly Queenstown) within the Enoch Mgijima Local Municipality in the Eastern Province, the rural patterns that emerged after 1994 remain closely linked to these historical legacies. This paper provides a historical analysis of colonial-apartheid influences on land ownership and land use management, as well as a perspective on recent developments in rural spatial trends in Ndlovukazi Village. These historical dynamics are examined within the broader context of South Africa’s post-1994 land justice, rural spatiality, land use management and on-going challenges of racialised land ownership in South Africa.

Abstract: Records of classic texts are gradually changing from analog to digital formats, and thus various analytical visualizations are appearing that use text data. These digital visualizations allow users to grasp the storylines of books more quickly. A process for defining the relational data between characters and expressing it in data networks has been developed recently. Consequently, we can now easily analyze the core information obtained within relevant historical periods. It is possible to analyze an event in detail using different types of data and visualizations. Therefore, in this study, we developed a visualization system called Echoes of Joseon, which can analyze an event by focusing on the attribute data for each character. To test the feasibility of this system, we used data from the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty. This system establishes and utilizes metadata related to character information in the Annals, thereby allowing us to easily find, compare, and analyze various patterns related to character attributes in each period. Furthermore, by quantifying multi-dimensional metrics through a Quantitative Archetype Matrix, our approach enables a deeper and more structured ex-amination of evolving character trajectories and their systemic impacts.

Abstract: This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the formation, transformation, and contemporary development of the public catering system in the Fergana Valley during the years of independence, taking into account its historical foundations and socio-economic changes. Particular attention is paid to the region’s national culinary traditions, food products, traditional preparation methods, and the activities of public catering establishments. The study examines the transition from a centrally planned system to a market-oriented economy, including changes in ownership, privatization, the emergence and expansion of private entrepreneurship, modernization, diversification of services, changing consumer demand, foreign economic and cultural relations, tourism development, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent recovery. The research employs historical, comparative-historical, chronological-descriptive, historiographical, and content analysis methods and is based on archival documents, statistical materials, normative-legal acts, scholarly publications, conference proceedings, official government decisions, and relevant Scopus-indexed studies. The findings demonstrate that the transformation of public catering was a multidimensional historical process involving changes in ownership and organizational structures, modernization of enterprises, diversification of services, technological innovations, and changing consumer needs. The study also considers the prospective adaptation of social supermarkets (SSMs) and food banks to the socio-economic and institutional conditions of Uzbekistan as potential mechanisms for reducing food waste, strengthening food security, and supporting socially vulnerable groups. Overall, the transformation of public catering in the Fergana Valley reflects the interconnected effects of economic reforms, institutional changes, technological innovations, tourism development, foreign relations, and evolving social and consumer needs during the post-independence period.

Abstract: This article reconstructs the emergence of Mekorot, founded in 1937, as a transition from settlement-by-settlement water development to regional water governance in Mandatory Palestine. Drawing on Mekorot protocols, Kishon planning documents, Palestine Economic Corporation records, hydrogeological surveys, and contemporary water-law debates, it asks why a regional utility became attractive in the mid-1930s. The article argues that Mekorot arose from four interacting management problems: hydrological heterogeneity, fragmented capital investment, uncertain demand, and institutional fragmentation. Picard’s 1935–1936 survey showed that much of the western Jezreel Valley had weak or uneconomic local groundwater while fissure zones near the Carmel offered substantially larger yields. The Kishon project responded by pooling sources, capital, and consumers within a common system. By 1938 it reportedly included 18 wells, about 17 km of steel mains, several pumping stations, and contracts with 13 agricultural settlements covering approximately 4550 dunams of initial irrigation demand. Expansion toward Haifa diversified demand and allowed hydraulic costs, economies of network scale, and developmental tariff policy to be managed together. The case shows how regional water governance could emerge before sovereign state institutions while remaining politically bounded and environmentally consequential.

Abstract: In ancient Japan, wet-rice agriculture is thought to have been introduced around 1000 BC, followed by sustained population growth. In 1978, Shuichi Koyama estimated the populations of the Jomon and Yayoi periods (ca. 8100 BC–AD 200) on the basis of the number of archaeological sites. However, the number of sites identified and excavated has since increased severalfold, making it desirable to reassess Koyama’s population estimates. In this study, we provide revised population estimates for the Early, Middle, and Late Yayoi periods (ca. 400 BC–AD 200), for which relevant data are relatively readily available. The estimates are based on the latest available nationwide survey conducted by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2021 and follow the basic framework of Koyama’s population estimation method. The results suggest that, over approximately 1,200 years from ca. 400 BC to AD 800, the population growth rate remained relatively constant at approximately 0.35% per year, corresponding to an approximate doubling of the population every 200 years. This pattern indicates that the population of ancient Japan may have increased approximately exponentially during this period. The estimated population for the Late Yayoi period (ca. AD 200) was approximately 600,000, broadly consistent with Koyama’s original estimate. An important exception, however, was observed in Tohoku and Kyushu, where the estimated population declined during the Late Yayoi period. In addition to a cooling climate, this decline may have been linked to social and political upheavals, such as the "Civil War of Wa" in the second century and the turmoil that ensued following the death of Himiko—the queen of Yamatai—in the third century. Fukuoka Prefecture in northern Kyushu is estimated to have had the largest Late Yayoi population, suggesting that Yamatai, a major polity of the period, may have been located there.

Abstract: This study examines the first seventeen years of Imam Mohammad ibn Saud's rule in Diriyah, from his accession in 1727 CE (1139 AH) to his alliance with Sheikh Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in 1744 CE. Long treated as a prelude to that alliance, the period is analyzed here as the founding phase of the First Saudi State, as formally recognized by the 2022 Royal Order establishing Founding Day. Combining the analytical-historical method with a structural approach, the study applies a three-level critical framework (external criticism, internal criticism, and contextual analysis) to the Najdi chronicles, a hostile contemporary narrative, and more than twenty regional, archaeological, numismatic, and memory studies published between 2021 and 2026. The results show that Diriyah expanded little in territory during these years yet built a coherent political order under severe structural constraint. That order rested on four elements: a defensive balance toward Banu Khalid and other stronger neighbors; durable local alliances; the careful management of settled–Bedouin relations within a subsistence oasis economy; and a pre-ideological discourse of lineage, security, and justice that converted practical performance into symbolic capital. This strategy of latency kept the ruling house cohesive, preserved the emirate's autonomy, and gave Diriyah the stability that later allowed it to adopt and sustain a broader religious and political project. The findings support the historiographical dating of the Saudi state to 1727, show that the accumulation of legitimacy preceded the growth of coercive and fiscal capacity, and identify the founding phase as the institutional and symbolic reference point of the Kingdom's contemporary national narrative and of Saudi Vision 2030.

Abstract: The Middle East includes at least two major empires, namely Ottoman and Persian. In Part 1 of this review, we focus on the studies of the scientific developments of the Ottomans, and we discussed their contributions in different fields, such as astronomy, medicine, and earth sciences, etc. In terms of Ottoman astronomy, Ulugh Beg (1394-1449) compiled Zij-i Sultani (astronomical table and star catalogue). His student, Ali Qushji (1403-74), wrote the mathematical work entitled al-Muḥammadiyya fī al-ḥisāb (The Muḥammadiyya Treatise on Arithmetic) and the astronomical works entitled al-Fathiyya (The Treatise of Conquest). For medicine, Şerafeddin Sabuncuoğlu (1385-1468) published Cerrahiyyetü’l-Haniyye (Imperial surgery), and Şanizade Mehmed Ataullah Efendi (1771-1826) wrote Teşrih-ül Ebdan ve Tercümânı Kıbale-i Feylesûfan (the first illustrated anatomy textbook in Ottoman-Turkish medicine). For Ottoman earth sciences, Piri Reis (1470-1553) published his 1513 world map and his nautical atlas, the Kitab-ı Bahriye (Book of the Sea). Kâtip Çelebi (1609-57) compiled a vast universal bibliographic encyclopaedia of books and sciences, the Kaşf az-Zunūn. This review should form another discourse of modern scientific advances, other than the European narrative.

Abstract: This paper examines the development of science, technology, and engineering in Persia from the Achaemenid period under Cyrus the Great to the modern era. It traces the evolution of Persian knowledge across astronomy, medicine, earth sciences, and civil engineering, emphasizing the close relationship between scientific inquiry, practical needs, and state development. The study highlights major figures including al-Khwarizmi, al-Razi (Rhazes), Avicenna (Ibn Sina), al-Biruni, al-Karaji, Omar Khayyam, and Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, whose contributions to medicine, astronomy, hydrology, and natural philosophy profoundly influenced the wider Islamic world and, in some cases, medieval Europe. It also examines major technological achievements, including Achaemenid hydraulic systems, Sasanian dams and bridges, Persian qanats, Safavid urban and hydraulic engineering, and the modernization of engineering education and infrastructure under the Qajar and Pahlavi states. By bringing together the histories of science, medicine, engineering, and technological exchange, the paper argues that Persian scientific development should not be understood simply as the transmission of Greek or European knowledge. Rather, Persian scholars and technical specialists actively adapted, synthesized, and extended knowledge from Greek, Indian, Mesopotamian, Islamic, and European traditions, creating a distinctive and enduring intellectual and technological tradition.

Abstract: The paper examines the history of the forest owned by the Dukes of Sermoneta, the Caetani family, situated in the Pontine Marshes region south of Rome. Chronologically, the study covers the period from the early decades of the nineteenth century—when the Dukes of Sermoneta began intensive exploitation of the woodland to meet the growing demand for coal and firewood—to the early 1920s, when the descendants of Duke Onorato Caetani VII decided to sell off the land still covered by woodland in order to focus on agricultural development. Through our case study, we outline a long historical period characterised by a variety of economic and commercial activities, which can be reconstructed thanks to the existence of a wealth of first-hand archival material. The main consequence of the decisions taken by the Caetani family—a prime example of a large noble estate—was the reduction in the area of lowland woodland, thereby initiating the first phase of the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes. The Caetani family implemented an entrepreneurial strategy that marked a significant shift in the region’s environmental balance.

Abstract: The Industrial Revolution is commonly periodized through successive technological discontinuities associated with mechanization, steam, electricity, mass production, computing, digital networks, and artificial intelligence. This paper proposes an alternative variable of historical observation: the functional-delegability frontier, defined as the historically demonstrated set of functions whose execution by technical systems is technically feasible under identifiable operating conditions. A function is specified independently of its mechanism as a transformation from an admissible input domain to a required output condition under specified operating conditions, F = (I, O, C). The framework distinguishes extensive expansion, in which a previously non-demonstrated function enters technical executability, from intensive expansion, in which the domain or conditions of an already delegable function broaden. It further separates functional flexibility—the range of distinct functions executable through a common architecture—from recursive expansion, in which delegated functions materially participate in developing additional technical capabilities. Historical cases ranging from pre-industrial automatic regulation and textile machinery to machine tools, punched-card systems, automatic telephone switching, general-purpose computing, industrial robotics, and machine learning are used to test the distinctions. The paper advances, as a falsifiable historical hypothesis rather than a definition, that mechanization, electrification, computing, digital technologies, and artificial intelligence can be interpreted as major technological discontinuities within a single, still-unfolding Industrial Revolution. The claim rests not on simple technological continuity but primarily on two proposed continuities: repeated reallocation of executable functions between humans and technical systems, and cumulative dependence of later technological systems on capabilities generated in earlier industrial development. A further, separately testable proposition is that delegated functions increasingly participate in producing subsequent technical capabilities, particularly after programmable computing. The framework does not explain the causes of industrialization or predict the economic consequences of automation; it offers a complementary historical variable through which continuity can be examined across technological discontinuities.

Abstract: Beginning in the 1860s, both the Kingdom of Serbia (Yugoslavia) and Romania gained notoriety as important regional factors in the South-Eastern European struggle for power. The beginning of the 20th century marks the strategic emergence of common interests between the two states and significant growth of the trading volume between the two. In this context, the heightening presence of Belgrade on Romanian territory was noticed, both politically, highlighted by consular representation, and economic interest, defined through the Danubian navigation- commerce binomial relation. In the first three decades of the 20th century, The Yugoslav Kingdom represented an important factor in Danubian navigation and an active presence in Romanian ports. The main vector in promoting their economic interests in the region was the Serbian Navigation Company, which became the Serbian Navigation Service, and subsequently, the Yugoslav Navigation Service. This service operated in the majority of Romanian ports and competed successfully against a multitude of significant, long-standing companies. The dynamization of commercial trade on the Danube presupposed the operationalization of a consular network in Belgrade that included the port of Brăila and the capital city, Bucharest. Between 1906 and 1932 the presence of 15 official Serbian (Yugoslav) consuls was recorded in Romania, of which 6 were based in Brăila and 9 in Bucharest. In relation to the regional scale of the Serbian (Yugoslav) Kingdom in the aforementioned time period, Belgrade had a consistent politico-economic presence in Romania, the interstate relations reaching significant heights that have temporarily contributed to the consolidation of regional stability.

Abstract: Background: In 1983 Plaitakis and Duvoisin identified Homeric moly with Galanthus nivalis L., and read the Circe episode as the earliest recorded use of an anticholinesterase against antimuscarinic poisoning. The identification held for four decades. Recent multidisciplinary criticism has now put its philological and biogeographical foundations in doubt. Objective: To ask what survives of the pharmacological thesis once those foundations are removed — by reconstructing the clinical phenotype the poem describes, extracting the constraints the texts actually impose, and testing five candidate taxa against them. Methods: Critical review, integrating the Homeric and classical sources (Theophrastus, Dioscorides) with Amaryllidaceae phytochemistry and with the clinical toxicology of antimuscarinic delirium. Results: The phenotype as narrated, delirium with inner awareness preserved (noos empedos), corresponds closely to central antimuscarinic toxicity. Five constraints emerge from the texts: a dark-tunicated bulb, a white flower, arduous extraction, an inland habitat, and the pharmacodynamic capacity to reverse the syndrome. Against these, Galanthus nivalis performs well on morphology and pharmacology and badly on biogeography, being effectively absent from the Aegean lowlands. Peganum harmala does possess anticholinesterase activity, contrary to a claim often made in this debate, but its habit is wrong and so is its ecology. Allium nigrum belongs to the moly of the later botanists and offers no centrally acting mechanism; Mandragora belongs to the kykeon, not to the cure. Only Pancratium spp. satisfy all five, and they do so for a reason no other candidate can supply: contractile roots that bury the bulb, accounting for precisely the difficulty of extraction that Theophrastus singled out as diagnostic. Conclusions: The pharmacological reading of the episode stands. The single-species identification does not, and should give way to a clade-level hypothesis centred on the Mediterranean Amaryllidoideae, with Pancratium as the likeliest archetype — that is, to an ancient ethnobotanical complex in which empirical antidotal knowledge was carried by a group of plants rather than by one.

Abstract: Amid shifting urban renewal approaches and industrial restructuring in China, small and medium-sized cities face the challenge of conserving industrial heritage through adaptive reuse. Drawing on gazetteers, planning documents, and interviews, this paper examines the transformation of the Anqing Baiqitun Cement Plant into a cultural and creative park across environmental, social, economic, and governance dimensions. The case is significant as typical heavy industrial heritage in a smaller city, while the enterprise's restructuring and relocation have produced a rupture in collective memory and identity. The study finds that minimal intervention in the heavy industrial remains achieved carbon sequestration and emission reduction, succeeded in ecological restoration, and attained financial viability by leveraging local markets and intangible assets. However, the industrial past has been selectively reconstructed, creating a divide between the former industrial community and the present one, partly due to an over-reliance on Authorised Heritage Discourse logic and insufficient collaboration with the existing enterprise. Participatory governance, driven mainly by government coordination and market capital, proved efficient but lacked public engagement. The paper argues that regenerating industrial heritage in small and medium-sized cities requires not only physical upgrading but also social mechanisms that enable public participation in conservation.

Abstract: While humour requires closeness, it may also be understood at distance, in books or newspapers, where jokes play an important role both as attractive elements for reading and as political and social devices. One of the problems that shall be discussed is a particular case of 'Anglobalization': the reception and appropriation of British cultural and political influence via the translation of British authors or through the satire on the influence of British Army officers. Thereafter, along with the concept of the British presence in Portuguese reading materials, the question is to understand whether we may speak about British humour or about Portuguese humour on British characters. While the meanings of jokes change, being far from the cultural area where texts were born and understood, they may still function for different readers. Humour is a strong case in discussing cultural transfer and reading expansion, as readers deal with jokes meant to be heard or to be seen, and hardly to be read.

Abstract: Sunday Schools provided access to books that would otherwise have not been available to rural children and teenagers in Australia. These books were largely written in the late nineteenth century by lower middle-class women, the daughters of clerks and grocers in England. The books produced by these writers were hardly sedate or regimented but laced with techniques deriving from the sensation novel, with unreliable narrators and unreliable figures of authority. An examination of one young woman’s reading choices reveals a world characterized by insecurity in identity, danger and uncertainty.

Abstract: Why did Portuguese diplomacy survive in Benin and Warri while Christian conversion failed to produce lasting social transformation? What explains the survival of diplomatic exchange in the face of the fragility of missionary success? This paper explores the diplomatic and religious aspects of Portuguese relations with the kingdoms of Benin and Warri from the late fifteenth century to 1725. It argues that African political agency, rather than European initiative, was the decisive structural feature of early Afro-Portuguese relations in the Bight of Benin. Diplomacy endured because the Oba of Benin and the Olu of Warri found Portuguese engagement useful for trade, prestige, military advantage, and external legitimation. Christianity, however, failed to achieve lasting social transformation because it threatened the sacred foundations of kingship in Benin and, in Warri, remained largely a court religion rather than a socially translated and locally sustained faith. The divergence between diplomatic success and missionary failure was therefore not incidental: it reflected African rulers’ capacity to select, adapt, and refuse foreign influence according to local political priorities.

Abstract:

The thesis of this essay is this: the concept of “national sovereignty” is a “poisoned candy”. Their universalization prevents, among other things, the existence of “nations of nations”. Perhaps the clearest example is the “Spanish nation”, which includes territories that, for centuries, have been called “nations” without ceasing to be part of the “Spanish nation” or posing problems of sovereignty. Only the recovery of the original meaning of the Latin “natio” can eliminate this unavoidable lexical problem, which has become a conceptual obstacle. The author traces the history of the two words involved in the question, both from their Latin origin: “natio” and “soberanitas”. To explain their union, he then reviews the various forms and political theories with which the concept of “supreme authority” has been attempted to be expressed until he reaches that of “national sovereignty” with Sieyès. This forces him to review more than two millennia of history of political thought, from the fifth century B.C. to the end of the eighteenth century.