Itinerario: Volume 35 - | Cambridge Core

The Future of Harbin's Past
James Carter
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

14 March 2012, pp. 73-85
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Much of Harbin's early history revolved around struggles over the city's identity and also for control of the city's colonial legacy. The city's Russian past, in particular, has existed uneasily alongside its development as a Chinese city, and nearly a century after Russian control over the city ended, the competition over Harbin's identity continues to evolve. After many decades of denying and dismissing Harbin's colonial past, local, regional, and national Chinese governments are now exploiting that past as an asset for the city's economic development. Building on trends that first emerged in the 1990s, Harbin's Chinese rulers are now turning to the city's non-Chinese past as a means of competing in a global cultural and economic environment. More than attracting foreigners focused on nostalgia, however, Harbin seems eager to present itself as example of the “occidental” exotic for Chinese domestic tourists.

Plague Times: Scientific Internationalism and the Manchurian Plague of 1910/1911
Cornelia Knab
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

14 March 2012, pp. 87-105
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Among epidemic diseases, plague is particularly charged with historical memory and ominous cultural connotations. In many parts of the world, plague's seemingly mysterious origins, its gruesome ways of spreading, and its powers of devastation have raised it to a symbol of evil. In several languages, the word “plague” itself has become synonymous with scourge and universal disaster over the centuries. However, plague is not only a disease from the remote past; it also exemplifies the biological globalisation of modern times, highlighting at once socio-biological phenomena, global connectedness, and other dimensions of modernity. In particular, outbreaks of the so-called third plague pandemic from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century made the disease an oppressive reality in many regions of the world.