Passes and Protection in the Making of a British Mediterranean

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 602-631 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tristan Stein

AbstractBetween the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the security of British navigation in and around the corsair-infested waters of the Mediterranean depended on indented parchment passports—Mediterranean passes. This article recovers the history of the Mediterranean pass and traces the development of the Mediterranean pass system from its origins in England's mid-seventeenth-century treaties with the North African regencies to its role in the emergence of Britain's Mediterranean empire over the course of the long eighteenth century. At its inception, the Mediterranean pass system formed an interstate regulatory regime that mediated between North African and British naval power by providing a means to identify British vessels at sea and to limit the protection of Britain's treaties to them. During the eighteenth century, however, foreign merchants and shipowners, especially from Genoa, sought out the security of British passes by moving to Britain's colonies at Gibraltar and Minorca. The resulting incorporation of foreigners into the British pass system fundamentally altered the nature and significance of the pass and contributed to the development of Britain's imperial presence in the Mediterranean. This article reveals how the growth of British power and the interactions of British consuls and imperial officials with mariners and merchants from around the Mediterranean transformed the pass from a document of identification into an instrument of imperial protection that helped sustain Britain's Mediterranean outposts in the eighteenth century and make possible the dramatic expansion of the British Empire further into that sea at the start of the nineteenth.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel Wolloch

In The Enlightenment’s Animals Nathaniel Wolloch takes a broad view of changing conceptions of animals in European culture during the long eighteenth century. Combining discussions of intellectual history, the history of science, the history of historiography, the history of economic thought, and, not least, art history, this book describes how animals were discussed and conceived in different intellectual and artistic contexts underwent a dramatic shift during this period. While in the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century the main focus was on the sensory and cognitive characteristics of animals, during the late Enlightenment a new outlook emerged, emphasizing their conception as economic resources. Focusing particularly on seventeenth-century Dutch culture, and on the Scottish Enlightenment, Wolloch discusses developments in other countries as well, presenting a new look at a topic of increasing importance in modern scholarship.


2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 599-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. O. C. BROWN

ABSTRACTLocal conditions and responses to European expansion were important in the ‘interactive emergence of European domination’. However, the comparative lack of sources has tended to obscure what these were. In the early eighteenth century, Morocco was responding to the growth of English power in the Mediterranean; new sources presented here show how ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥamāmī, one of Sultan Mawlāy Ismāʿīl's most powerful ministers, tried to co-operate with the English in order to manage their influence and consolidate his own political position. This offered them a potential means to overcome the obstacles that, compared to the North African regencies, made Morocco resistant to European political and economic influence. These efforts, however, were thwarted by a combination of factors. With al-Ḥamāmī's political credibility threatened, the development of co-operation between the English and a section of the Moroccan elite was undermined, leaving the fundamental dynamics of Anglo-Moroccan relations unchanged.


Author(s):  
COLIN HEYWOOD

The North African maritime frontier in the period under review in this chapter presents a paradox. On the one hand, there was a situation in which, to borrow J. S. Bromley's luminous phrase, ‘two societies, two conceptions of justice, collaborated and collided’. Bromley was referring to the contemporary Caribbean world of the late seventeenth-century boucaniers, but, equally, in the western Mediterranean, and on the land frontier of the North African littoral, there was a common maritime culture which shared many traits across the religious divide. In the context of the Ottoman frontier, the discussion suggests that a British archive-based archaeography of the Ottoman North African maritime frontier for the entire period from 1660 to the end of the eighteenth century and even into the early nineteenth is a subject which both has something to contribute and deserves to be taken further.


2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-46
Author(s):  
Adam L Storring

Abstract This article demonstrates that the military ideas of King Frederick the Great of Prussia up to the Seven Years War (1756–1763) were primarily inspired by France, and particularly by the towering figure of King Louis XIV. It examines the intellectual inspirations for Frederick’s military ideas, showing that French military influence reflected the strength of French cultural influence in the long eighteenth century and the importance of Louis XIV as a model for monarchical self-representation. Frederick’s famous personal command of his armies reflected the Enlightenment concept of the ‘great man’ (grand homme), but Frederick thereby sought primarily to outdo the Sun King, whom Voltaire had criticized for merely accompanying his armies while his generals won battles for him. The example of Frederick thus demonstrates that not only rulers but also enlightened philosophers often looked backwards toward older monarchical examples. Frederick sought to create his own ‘Age of Louis XIV’ in the military sphere by imitating the great French generals of the Sun King. Frederick’s famous outflanking manoeuvres followed the example of famous French generals, reflecting the practice of the more mobile armies of the mid-seventeenth century. Frederick used French practice to justify his attacks with the bayonet, and his ‘short and lively’ wars reflected French strategic traditions. The evidence of French influence on Frederick seriously challenges concepts of a ‘German Way of War’, and indeed of supposed national ‘ways of war’ in general, emphasizing the need for a transnational approach to the history of military thought.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.


This volume charts the development of protestant Dissent between the passing of the Toleration Act (1689) and the repealing of the Test and Corporation Acts (1828). The long eighteenth century was a period in which Dissenters slowly moved from a position of being a persecuted minority to achieving a degree of acceptance and, eventually, full political rights. The first part of the volume considers the history of various Dissenting traditions inside England. There are separate chapters devoted to Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers—the denominations that traced their history before this period—and also to Methodists, who emerged as one of the denominations of ‘New Dissent’ during the eighteenth century. The second part explores the ways in which these traditions developed outside England. It considers the complexities of being a Dissenter in Wales and Ireland, where the state church was Episcopalian, as well as in Scotland, where it was Presbyterian. It also looks at the development of Dissent across the Atlantic, where the relationship between Church and state was rather more loose. The third part is devoted to revivalist movements and their impact, with a particular emphasis on the importance of missionary societies for spreading protestant Christianity from the late eighteenth century onwards. The fourth part looks at Dissenters’ relationship to the British state and their involvement in campaigns to abolish the slave trade. The final part discusses how Dissenters lived: the theology they developed and their attitudes towards Scripture; the importance of both sermons and singing; their involvement in education and print culture; and the ways in which they expressed their faith materially through their buildings.


1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Jenkins

In the seventeenth century, one of the Catholic strongholds of Britain had lain on the southern Welsh borders, in those areas of north Monmouthshire and southern Herefordshire dependant on the Marquis of Worcester at Raglan, and looking to the Jesuit mission at Cwm. Abergavenny and Monmouth had been largely Catholic towns, while the north Monmouthshire countryside still merited the attention of fifteen priests in the 1670s—after the Civil Wars, and the damaging conversion to Protestantism of the heir of Raglan in 1667. Conspicuous Catholic strength caused fear, and the ‘Popish Plot’ was the excuse for a uniquely violent reaction, in which the Jesuit mission was all but destroyed. What happened after that is less clear. In 1780, Berington wrote that ‘In many [counties], particularly in the west, in south Wales, and some of the Midland counties, there is scarcely a Catholic to be found’. Modern histories tend to reflect this, perhaps because of available evidence. The archives of the Western Vicariate were destroyed in a riot in Bath in 1780, and a recent work like J. H. Aveling's The Handle and the Axe relies heavily on sources and examples from the north of England. This attitude is epitomised by Bossy's remark on the distribution of priests in 1773: ‘In Wales, the mission had collapsed’. However, the question of Catholic survival in eighteenth-century Wales is important. In earlier assessments of Catholic strength (by landholding, or number of recusants gaoled as a proportion of population) Monmouthshire had achieved the rare feat of exceeding the zeal of Lancashire, and Herefordshire was not far behind. If this simply ceased to exist, there was an almost incredible success for the ‘short, sharp’ persecution under Charles II. If, however, the area remained a Catholic fortress, then recent historians of recusancy have unjustifiably neglected it.


Itinerario ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Both overseas trade and shipbuilding in India are of great antiquity. But even for the early modern period, maritime commerce is relatively better documented than the shipbuilding industry. When the Portuguese and later the North Europeans entered the intra-Asian trade, many of the ships they employed in order to supplement their shipping in Asia were obtained from the Indian dockyards. Detailed evidence with regard to shipbuilding, however, is very rare. It has been pointed out that the Portuguese in the sixteenth century were more particular than their North-European counter-parts in the following centuries in providing information on seafaring and shipbuilding. Shipbuilding on the west coast has been discussed more than that on the eastern coast of India, particularly the coast of Bengal. Though Bengal had a long tradition of shipbuilding, direct evidence of shipbuilding in the region is rare. Many changes were brought about in the history of India and the Indian Ocean trade of the eighteenth century, especially after the 1750s. When the English became the largest carriers of Bengal's trade with other parts of Asia, this had an impact on the shipbuilding in Bengal. It was in their interest that the British in Bengal had their ships built in that province.


2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIP WITHINGTON

This review reconsiders the place and importance of urban political culture in England between c. 1550 and c. 1750. Relating recent work on urban political culture to trends in political, social, and cultural historiography, it argues that England's towns and boroughs underwent two ‘renaissances’ over the course of the period: a ‘civic renaissance’ and the better-known ‘urban renaissance’. The former was fashioned in the sixteenth century; however, its legacy continued to inform political thought and practice over 150 years later. Similarly, although the latter is generally associated with ‘the long eighteenth century’, its attributes can be traced to at least the Elizabethan era. While central to broader transitions in post-Reformation political culture, these ‘renaissances’ were crucial in restructuring the social relations and social identity of townsmen and women. They also constituted an important but generally neglected dynamic of England's seventeenth-century ‘troubles’.


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