Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques

Earthquakes are among the most destructive natural disasters; however, accurately predicting when an earthquake will strike remains elusive. Consequently, the statistical analysis of historical earthquake records becomes invaluable for forecasting future seismic events. In pre-modern Vietnam, from the tenth to the nineteenth centuries, chronicles such as The Abridged Chronicles of Việt, The Complete Annals of Đại Việt, The Imperially Ordered Outlines and Essentials of the Comprehensive Mirror of the History of Việt, and The Veritable Records of the Great South recorded seventy-three earthquakes. This article provides an overview of earthquake records in historical sources, recounts notable earthquakes, and compares these accounts with seismic data. Additionally, it examines the perceptions of pre-modern Vietnamese people, as documented by royal historiographers, regarding the origins and causes of earthquakes, along with the measures taken in response to these natural disasters.

The aim of the article is to understand historians’ silences toward certain topics. The main argument is that sometimes historians’ silence can be considered as unspoken judgment and such judgment tends to be more meaningful and important than spoken and articulated one. To achieve the goal and demonstrate the argument, I will utilize modes of conceptual implications that are derived from legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) as a methodology and apply them to some cases from pre-modern Arabic historiography. The article is an opportunity to vitalize humanities fields via interdisciplinarity and likewise to give legal theory a chance to engage with humanities fields.

The history of modernity's emergence has often been described as secularization, with the Enlightenment understood as a crucial chapter. Since the late twentieth century, however, the secularization paradigm has been severely undermined in various disciplines. This article intends to contribute to these historiographical debates by tracing core Enlightenment ideas to the religiously grounded philosophy of the Middle Ages, revealing major yet overlooked continuities between scholasticism and Enlightenment thought. Focusing on one especially influential stream of Enlightenment moral philosophy, which provided the intellectual basis of the eighteenth-century culture of sensibility, it demonstrates that the concept of an instinctive moral sense originated in Aristotelian-Thomist scholasticism as developed by Bonaventure. This tradition was transmitted to seventeenth- century England through John Wilkins's circle, enabling Shaftesbury's engagement with these ideas. Shaftesbury subsequently influenced Enlightenment moral philosophy both in Scotland and, via Diderot and Rousseau, in France.

This article focuses on the influence of liberal and postliberal historiography on the study of Christianity. It aims to define a postliberal historiography that goes beyond the constraints of existing critiques of liberal historiography. Postliberal historiography critiques liberal historicism but has yet to fully escape its ontological assumptions. To move beyond its limitations, history must be reinterpreted through a new ontological framework that redefines history's nature, time, causality, and human agency. The article then examines how a truly postliberal historiography reshapes the historical study of Christianity. Such an approach sees Christianity not as a historical phase to be outgrown but as a continuous and authoritative tradition integral to human history.

During the Cold War, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted extensive surveillance of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), claiming to protect national security and prevent communist infiltration. Influenced by J. Edgar Hoover's personal biases against the civil rights movement, the FBI used methods such as wiretapping, infiltration, and psychological tactics. These surveillance operations had a considerable impact on the NAACP's operational dynamics, inducing psychological distress among its members and adversely affecting public perception. In response to the intensifying red scare, the NAACP adopted a pronounced anti-communist position. The FBI's surveillance not only squandered substantial resources within the US judicial system but also severely disrupted the internal functioning of the NAACP, tarnished its external reputation, and ultimately undermined its leadership role in the civil rights movement.

Expectations for the future infused 1950s culture. Drawing on the recent wartime past and the new Cold War, individuals and governments around the world imagined the years to come, anticipating both the unbounded potential and the terrifying problems that seemed just over the temporal horizon. The governments of East and West Germany became particularly invested in describing the better future and especially in trying to bring their visions to fruition. Despite claiming that they were embarking toward opposing futures of socialism and capitalism, the two states presented the future in similar ways. They focused on predictions that were concrete, achievable, and near at hand. Indeed, the future was so near that it was possible to point out some ways in which it was already present.

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, François Jarrige, Thomas Le Roux, Corinne Marache, and Julien Vincent, La nature en révolution: Une histoire environnementale de la France, 1780–1870 (vol. 1). Paris: La Découverte, 2025. ISBN: 978-2-348-08438-6. 313 pp. 24€

Simon Porcher, La fin de l'eau? Paris: Fayard, 2024. ISBN : 978-2-213-72718-9. 298 pp. 21,50€