Historical research acknowledges only cursorily the Catholic contribution to eugenics. Yet there is a substantial link between Catholic discourses on morality and the emergence of Italian eugenics. In this essay I argue that sexual normalisation was a key source of consensus. Masculine and patriarchal values strengthened the strategic collaboration between Fascist demographic policies, the Italian interpretation of eugenics, and Catholic doctrine. I draw on archival and printed material to show that the control of public morality and the support for reproduction met both Catholic and Fascist interests. In particular, I focus on the alliance between the State and the Catholic Church working against ‘the contraceptive mentality’. Mussolini wanted to stimulate religious sentiment as a basis for the fight against depopulation. The Catholic Church desired a set of laws against immorality, birth control and abortion. In this way, Fascism and the Catholic Church found a solid cultural agreement around restoring traditional mores, patriarchal values, and gender hierarchy.

This article focuses on the relationship between Alevis and the Turkish and German states. It does so by examining the Turkish Alevi Opening (2009–2010) and the German Islam Conference (2006–present), two unprecedented official platforms aimed at improving Alevis’ political participation. The study asks why such state-sponsored initiatives came into existence in Turkey and Germany, and why the German Islam Conference has proven more successful from the perspective of Alevis. It argues that even though the diffusion of EU norms and pressure from transnational advocacy networks have increased awareness regarding the Alevi issue, domestic factors have been more salient in the emergence and outcome of these initiatives in both countries.

Since its inception, the Arctic Council (AC) has focused on biodiversity, under its working group on the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna. By adopting a holistic, cross-sectoral approach to biodiversity governance, the AC has acknowledged that biodiversity is not only a matter for the Council and its governments: also non-state actors must be involved. This article analyses whether and how three essential non-state actors – science, business and NGOs – influence AC processes on Arctic biodiversity, comparing the roles of these actors on biodiversity governance in the wider international context. AC work on biodiversity has remained largely scientific, with fewer political commitments for states and the Council as such: science has had a significant influence, whereas there has been limited space for the involvement of the business sector. NGOs have served mainly as contributors and partners in scientific work, increasingly also assuming policy advocacy roles. This article notes the need for closer political cooperation on biodiversity in the AC, with firmer commitments for states and the AC, inspired by work in other AC focal areas.

This essay is an attempt to think through the three revolutions, using Tocqueville's theory of “democracy” as a key. For Tocqueville, democracy is a society with “the equality of conditions” – in other words, a society that has no hereditary status system. In this sense, Chinese society since the Song Dynasty has been “democracy” as Tocqueville himself pointed out repeatedly. In his understanding, contemporary China was a “democratic society” and its form of government was highly centralized “despotism”; in sum, it was “democratic despotism.” Tocqueville was warning against the possible Sinification of America and Europe. Moreover, he thinks what the French Revolution brought about were mainly “the equality of conditions” and the establishment of centralized state power. The Meiji Revolution also realized these two things because it had not been “democratic” and the polity had been federal. On the other hand, in China, both had been actualized since the tenth century. Therefore, the Chinese Revolution which ended up with the establishment of the communist rule is very different from the other two revolutions.

This article examines the conflicts in writing the imperial modern history of China among various stakeholders, particularly Chinese and American historians, and their dealing with a set of personal documents of Sir Robert Hart, Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Services (CMCS) during the Qing period. This set of documents is called “Hart Industry” and contains Hart's personal papers and seventy-seven volumes of diaries, among others. Revealing the imperial Inspector-General's view on “westernization” in modern China, the Hart Industry played a key role in the development of the history of modern China throughout the twentieth century. From around 1957 until 1995, the diaries became a source of a highly politicized academic debate between Chinese Communist historians of the People's Republic of China and western historians of the Hart Industry. By providing a “study of studies” on the historiography of the colonial modern history of China, this article argues that the Hart diaries were critical to historians’ understanding of their own academic discourse.

This article is part of my series of articles that deal with the Western and Chinese commercial disputes from the 1880s until the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. In contrast to my previous articles, it deals with commercial disputes between American mercantile firms and Chinese trading merchants in the early twentieth century by examining the unpublished Shanghai American consular archives at NARA II (National Archives and Records Administration), College Park, Maryland. Together with correspondence in the North-China Herald (NCH), these archives can be materials for revealing the peculiar behavior of the proprietors of Chinese partnership (joint-share, or hegu 合股) firms. They cooperated with American mercantile firms so long as the assets of American mercantile firms could guarantee their commercial profits. Whenever they were aware that American mercantile firms could no longer guarantee the safety of their commercial assets, they did not hesitate in breaching commercial contracts by means of various tactics. Seen from the American side, it was nothing but a betrayal. Following typical cases in the records, this article reveals the process by which these commercial disputes escalated to such a level that leaders of Chinese mercantile people demanded reforms to the commercial court system at the end of the 1910s.