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Seminar - Contingent Event Causality: Did Civilian Massacres Trigger Nationalist Revolutions in India (1919) and China (1925)?
Room 3401 (Lift 2 or Lifts 17-18), 3/F Academic Building
Critical events in politics—defined as sudden and surprising occurrences that trigger a chain of events leading to a significant and unanticipated outcome—are undertheorized for their causal properties, or regarded as random occurrences that cannot be brought under theoretical propositions. This paper examines two events in which lethal repression was used by security forces against unarmed protestors. It considers the claim, often noted in subsequent nationalist narratives, that the massacres triggered the radicalization of nationalist movements in India (1919) and China (1925). Using process tracing and counterfactual analysis, the paper asks to what extent the shootings constitute necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the subsequent realignment of the nationalist movements and surprising concessions made by imperial Great Britain. The paper also considers the effort in social science research to look for general causes to explain outcomes across multiple cases, in contrast to within-case analysis of non-generalizable historical events as explanatory factors READ MORE...
追尋失去的榮譽: 尋找趙振英少校、尋找馬廷誨老師
利榮達演講廳 (LT-D)
1945年9月9日，中國戰區受降儀式在南京舉行，年輕的新六軍少校趙振英在場負責警戒。現場紀錄影像隨後塵封於美國國家檔案館，而趙振英歷盡坎坷，默默無聞地生活在盧溝橋畔。數十年後，抗日將領後代、建築師晏歡受一個紀錄片鏡頭的啓發，從援華美軍家中珍藏的一幅合影和一個小紅日記本開始，追尋數年，終於找到趙振英，與專業團隊合作創作出紀錄片《發現少校》。沉寂半個世紀的趙振英成爲兩岸知名的抗戰老兵，追回失去的榮譽。 READ MORE...