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The term doping emerges from 1900 onwards in texts, and was, at first, described indifferently. Later, it was given a moral aspect, but was viewed with curiosity rather than indignation. During the interwar period a (doping) discussion arose, linking (specific) pharmaceuticals and experts, especially in sports medicine, a new discipline that had evolved from hygiene and military medicine. On the whole, the discussion was limited to scientific aspects. Initially, only substances that were toxic and health-damaging were considered doping. This paper discusses this, using Coramin and Pervitin as examples. Its focus ranges from the quasi-public approach to improvement in performance in sports to, at first, contradictory arguments and, finally, to the lost innocence of sports medicine. At least from 1945 onwards, with the invention of highly effective drugs, such as anabolic steroids and amphetamines, and under the influence of war medicine the ethical limits in sports medicine were transgressed and the health of athletes was sacrificed to higher national objectives.This paper also reveals that, already in the late 1930s, leading sports physicians attributed an exceptional position to professional high-performance sport, and considered it as detached from popular sport and closer to war deployment. Anything must be allowed - irrespective of the athletes' health. Last but not least, this paper shows that, right from the beginning, sports medicine claimed the prerogative of interpretation of doping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the role of religion, as a subject taught in schools, from a curricular perspective. Based on the teaching materials in use in the Canton of Solothurn around 1800, I argue that education in religion is - in the tradition of curriculum studies - particularly suited for reconstructing the historical expectations placed on education. First, it is evident that the teaching materials in use were meant not just for instructing schoolchildren about religion but were also meant to educate teachers. Second, and precisely because classes in subjects such as reading or writing used religious material, religion must be understood as an expression of socially and culturally dominant expectations, quite apart from what was required of education in a curricular sense. By the end of the 18th century, religion was the dominant language used for expressing normative expectations - one which far transcended the classes explicitly devoted to it as a subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To diversify the USSR's energy supply, a major objective of the Stalinist command economy, Soviet workers were sent to Norway's Svalbard (Spitzbergen) archipelago in 1931 to mine coal. Drawing on archival materials, this paper discusses the complex entanglement this resource extraction meant for Moscow, the Kola Peninsula, and Svalbard. The archipelago was by no means an Arctic sideshow: miners flooded the streets of Murmansk, in far northwest Russia, awaiting their departure to the archipelago, and Svalbard coal fueled the furnaces of the Kola Peninsula Murmansk is located on. Officials in distant Moscow tried to regulate the oft-problematic circulation of coal and workers, in the process reconfiguring the understanding of how coal and miners were interrelated both technically and socially. In 1946, matters reversed due to changed geopolitical objectives. Rather than having miners dig coal to be sent to Russia, the war-ravaged mines were rebuilt; now workers were sent to Svalbard in order to strengthen Soviet claims on the territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Village as a Republic. Republican experience, Anticlericalism and Radicalism in the District of Entremont (Valais), 1789-1870.This paper analyses the deep and long lasting influence of the Helvetic Republic (1798-1803) on several villages of the district of Entremont, an Alpine region in the Swiss Canton of Valais, where excellent sources document the history of local families and sharp political conflicts. The micro-historical approach highlights the relationship between the republican experience and the formation of a strong radical and anticlerical movement during the 19th century. In fact, the majority of the radical activists came from the same families that had taken over local leadership during the republican era. Moreover, since the late 18th century different sexual attitudes and behaviour patterns had characterized the opposing factions: in the fervently Catholic Canton of Valais of the 19th century, families with a radical background had significant more illicit sexual relations than conservative groups. From this point of view, the building of different political and religious milieus, linked with the diversification of sexual and religious cultures since the republican period, seems to be a crucial aspect for the understanding of political evolutions in 19th century Switzerland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are quite a few indications that during the 16th and 17th century population growth ran relatively parallel in the Alps and in the surrounding lowlands. Density was much lower in the mountains, but the rates did not diverge markedly. This changed during the modernisation period in the 18th and 19th century, when the growth of the alpine population lagged considerably behind. Thus the peripheral position of the Alps was reinforced. Recent studies now show that there was a trend reversal in the course of the 20th century with the emergence of the post-industrial and leisure society. The regional developments in the alpine area continued to be highly variable, but in its entirety the area seems to have produced an aboveaverage population growth in the post-war period. These observations, however, relate to the total population of the states with alpine regions (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia and Switzerland) and not to the surrounding areas (like Bavaria, Côte d'Azur, Lombardy, Piedmont, and so on). Since these surrounding areas have often shown higher growth than other European regions in the past, it is possible that the trend reversal would not show up in a direct comparison between the Alps and their surroundings. The paper examines whether this holds true, or not, and which conclusions we can draw from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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