Privy councils are among the most traditional, yet least conspicuous forms of collective decision-making in modern states. However, using the example of East Asia, this chapter shows that, far from being a moribund relic of the pre-constitutional past, advisory councils to the head of state were a highly productive global element of…[Read more]

This chapter focuses on the Tokugawa-Meiji transition period in the Japanese archipelago. It discusses the question of the perceived poor prospects for the transplantation of a “parliament” onto Japanese soil. The Japanese system itself, on which the new parliament was premised, hovered between a centralized unitary state and an extremely…[Read more]

The article examines the relationship between the late Qing constitutional movement of 1905–1911 and the vast borderland regions of the Qing Empire–that is, Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang. It traces how intellectuals and officials concerned with devising constitutional policies foresaw the integration of these regions into the nascent par…[Read more]

Examines the role of the yeti in shaping Cold War popular science networks and relations between official and popular scientific practices in the Soviet Union.

A review of Marek Inglot, S.J., How the Jesuits Survived Their Suppression. The Society of Jesus in the Russian Empire (1773-1814), ed. and trans. D. L. Schlafly (Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2015), Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 85, Fasc. 169.

Review of Nikolaos Chrissidis, An Academy at the Court of the Tsars: Greek Scholars and Jesuit Education in Early Modern Russia

A review of Au service de la reconciliation des Églises: Jean Gagarin, Jean Martynow et Victor de Buck: Correspondance, edited by Robert Danieluk, S.J., and Bernard Joassart, S.J.

In 1791, amidst growing anxiety about British encroachment on its fur trade with the Qing Empire, the Russian government discovered that Britain was sending a large and important embassy to Beijing, led by Lord Macartney. In an attempt to derail the negotiations, Russia enrolled the Polotsk Jesuits in a plot to convince the Qing of the…[Read more]

A study of the ideological and transnational context of informatics and cybernetics in the late Soviet Union, focusing on the leading Soviet computer scientist Andrei Ershov.

A study of the relationship between pastoral poetry and urban politics in eighteenth-century New York City.