Paths to Kingship in Medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Weiler

Medieval Europe was a world of kings, but what did this mean to those who did not themselves wear a crown? How could they prevent corrupt and evil men from seizing the throne? How could they ensure that rulers would not turn into tyrants? Drawing on a rich array of remarkable sources, this engaging study explores how the fears and hopes of a ruler's subjects shaped both the idea and the practice of power. It traces the inherent uncertainty of royal rule from the creation of kingship and the recurring crises of royal successions, through the education of heirs and the intrigue of medieval elections, to the splendour of a king's coronation, and the pivotal early years of his reign. Monks, crusaders, knights, kings (and those who wanted to be kings) are among a rich cast of characters who sought to make sense of and benefit from an institution that was an object of both desire and fear.

Author(s):  
Christopher Cullen

We look first at the situation in the early years of the restored Han dynasty. Liu Xin’s system continued in use for more than half a century. Then, in 85 CE, Liu Xin’s system was replaced. We have records of the practical and theoretical grounds on which the old system was rejected, and of the creation and implementation of a new system. Next we follow the story of how c. 92 CE Jia Kui advocated a fundamental innovation in both theory and practice: he insisted on the ecliptic as being central to astronomical observation and calculation. The richness of records from this period makes it easy to tell a detailed story of technical innovation in its fullest context, leading up to the work of Zhang Heng (78–139 CE), for whom astronomical calculation was just one of several fields in which he gained a reputation for exceptional originality.


2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 24-39
Author(s):  
Nabila El-Ahmed ◽  
Nadia Abu-Zahra

This article argues that Israel substituted the Palestinian refugees' internationally recognized right of return with a family reunification program during its maneuvering over admission at the United Nations following the creation of the state in May 1948. Israel was granted UN membership in 1949 on the understanding that it would have to comply with legal international requirements to ensure the return of a substantial number of the 750,000 Palestinians dispossessed in the process of establishing the Zionist state, as well as citizenship there as a successor state. However, once the coveted UN membership had been obtained, and armistice agreements signed with neighboring countries, Israel parlayed this commitment into the much vaguer family reunification program, which it proceeded to apply with Kafkaesque absurdity over the next fifty years. As a result, Palestinians made refugees first in 1948, and later in 1967, continue to be deprived of their legally recognized right to return to their homes and their homeland, and the family reunification program remains the unfulfilled promise of the early years of Israeli statehood.


Author(s):  
Stephanie J. Smith

Chapter 1 focuses on the founding of Mexico’s Communist Party in 1919, and the Party’s links to the influential national and international artistic movement active in Mexico throughout the 1920s. Although during these early years the Party’s official membership numbers remained relatively insignificant, this chapter argues that the extraordinary influence of these creative participants, both female and male, on the politics of the period was far from trivial. Art and politics intertwined as artists played major roles in political affairs, and government officials appropriated the arts to transmit the “official” national history.


2020 ◽  
pp. 22-50
Author(s):  
Maya Nadkarni

This chapter narrates the early years of postsocialist transformation as Hungarians sought to make remake themselves as new national subjects amid the remains of multiple discredited pasts and failed historical trajectories. It explores how politicians, activists, and public officials initially conceptualized the problem of socialist remains in terms of physical remainders perceived to be emblematic of the former regime. Politicians, activists, and public officials battled to “spring clean” remains of the communist past in order to restore Hungary to the “authentic” course of national history. The chapter also focuses on the debates that resulted in the removal of Budapest's socialist-era statues to a Statue Park Museum on the outskirts of the city. Supporters justified the creation of the park as a democratic solution to the outrage that communist monuments inspired. Yet the removal of these statues was not a response to a crisis of defacements and public dissatisfaction, but an attempt to cover up the fact that little such crisis existed.


Author(s):  
Christopher Wixson

‘GBS’ explores George Bernard Shaw’s early years in Dublin, the forging of his professional roots in London, and the creation of his ‘GBS’ persona. While he would often belie the extent of their influence, his earliest experiences sowed the seeds of that distinctive political and artistic Shavian sensibility. Taking up the mantle of public advocacy, the young Shaw became a sought-after tract writer, speech giver, debater, and activist crusader on behalf of a variety of social causes. He also worked as an art, music, book, and drama reviewer for a number of periodicals. For Shaw, journalism represented an opportunity to inform, inspire, and provoke the public directly.


First Monday ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall M. Livingstone

Software robots (“bots”) play a major role across the Internet today, including on Wikipedia, the world’s largest online encyclopedia. Bots complete over 20 percent of all edits to the project, yet often their work goes unnoticed by other users. Their initial integration onto Wikipedia was not uncontested and highlighted the opposing philosophies of “inclusionists” and “deletionists” who influenced the early years of the project. This paper presents an in-depth interview with Wikipedia user Ram-Man, an early bot operator on the site and creator or the rambot, the first mass-editing bot. Topics discussed include the social and technical climate of early Wikipedia, the creation of bot policies and bureaucracy, and the legacy of rambot and Ram-Man’s work.


Author(s):  
Roger R. Tamte

Existing football literature lacks an adequate history of the creation of American football, primarily because it fails to sufficiently examine individual human contributions, especially the circumstances and role of those contributions in achieving the game’s distinctive and appealing features. Walter Camp is the key person in American football’s development, almost a solitary leader in the game’s early years, influential in development of various component features of the game, and inventor of its most important rule, the downs-and-distance rule (today four downs to advance ten yards). Camp was closely involved in American football throughout his life, a generally positive experience until the game encounters a major crisis in the early 1900s, when American football and its rule makers are attacked because of the game’s perceived brutality. Conflict develops over potential solutions, and Camp is partially defeated with the help of President Theodore Roosevelt, effectively forcing inclusion of forward passing in the game.


2021 ◽  
pp. 041
Author(s):  
András Horányi ◽  
Radmila Brožková

Jean-François Geleyn a joué un rôle central dans la création et le fonctionnement de la coopération Aladin sur la prévision numérique du temps (PNT). Le projet Aladin a non seulement développé des outils de prévision numérique du temps à court terme, qui pouvaient être utilisés pour la prévision numérique opérationnelle, mais a également instauré un lien durable entre ses participants. Dans cet article, nous rendons hommage à Jean-François avec notre récit historique et parfois personnel des premières années de la coopération. Nous reconnaissons et soulignons que Jean-François n'a pas seulement créé et façonné la coopération elle-même, mais qu'il a également influencé la carrière et la vie de beaucoup des scientifiques appartenant aux instituts participant à ce projet. Jean-François Geleyn had a pivotal role in the creation and running of the Aladin Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) cooperation. The Aladin project not only developed short-range NWP tools, which could be used for operational numerical forecasting, but also instilled a long-lasting bond among its participants. In this article we pay tribute to Jean-François with our historical and sometimes personal account of the early years of the cooperation. We acknowledge and stress that Jean-François not only created and shaped the cooperation itself, but also influenced the career and life of many scientists from the participating institutes.


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