Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Chomel (1671–1740): A Case Study in Problems Relating to the Social Status of Scientists in the Early Modern Period

1986 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-322
Author(s):  
David Sturdy

Consider this statement: the practice of science influences and is influenced by the civilization within which it occurs. Or again: scientists do not pursue their activities in a political or social void; like other people, they aspire to make their way in the world by responding to the values and social mechanisms of their day. Set in such simple terms, each statement probably would receive the assent of most scholars interested in the history of science. But there is need for debate on the nature and extent of the interaction between scientific activity and the civilization which incorporates it, as there is on the relations of scientists to the society within which they live. This essay seeks to make a contribution mainly to the second of these topics by taking a French scientist and academician of the eighteenth century and studying him and his family in the light of certain questions. At the end there will be a discussion relating those questions or themes to the wider debate. There is an associated purpose to the exercise: to present an account of the social origins and formation of Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Chomel (botanist, physician and member of the Academic des Sciences) which will augment our knowledge of this particular savant.

Author(s):  
Irene Fosi

AbstractThe article examines the topics relating to the early modern period covered by the journal „Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken“ in the hundred volumes since its first publication. Thanks to the index (1898–1995), published in 1997 and the availability online on the website perpectivia.net (since 1958), it is possible to identify constants and changes in historiographical interests. Initially, the focus was on the publication of sources in the Vatican Secret Archive (now the Vatican Apostolic Archive) relating to the history of Germany. The topics covered later gradually broadened to include the history of the Papacy, the social composition of the Curia and the Papal court and Papal diplomacy with a specific focus on nunciatures, among others. Within a lively historiographical context, connected to historical events in Germany in the 20th century, attention to themes and sources relating to the Middle Ages continues to predominate with respect to topics connected to the early modern period.


In the early modern period, Catholic communities in Protestant jurisdictions were impelled to establish colleges for the education and formation of students in more hospitable Catholic territories. The Irish, English and Scots Colleges founded in France, Flanders, the Iberian peninsula, Rome and elsewhere are the best known, but the phenomenon extended to Dutch and Scandinavian foundations in southern Flanders and the German lands. Similarly colleges were established in Rome for various national communities, among whom the Maronites are a striking example. The first colleges were founded in the mid-sixteenth century and tens of thousands of students passed through them until their closure in late eighteenth century. Only a handful survived the disruption of the French Revolutionary wars to re-emerge in the nineteenth century. Historians have long argued that these exile colleges played a prominent role in maintaining Catholic structures by supplying educated clergy equipped to deal with the challenges of their domestic churches. This has ensured that the Irish, English and Scots colleges in particular have a rich historiography laid out in the pages of Archivium Hibernicum, the Records of the Scots Colleges or the volumes published under the aegis of the Catholic Record Society in England. Until recently, however, their histories were considered in isolating confessional and national frameworks, with surprisingly little attempt to examine commonalities or connections. Recent research has begun to open up the topic by investigating the social, economic, cultural and material histories of the colleges. Meanwhile renewed interest in the history of early modern migration has encouraged historians to place the colleges within the vibrant migrant communities of Irish, English, Scots and others on the continent. The Introduction begins with a survey of the colleges. It assesses their historiographies, paying particular attention to the research of the last three decades. The introduction argues that an obvious next step is to examine the colleges in transnational and comparative perspectives. Finally, it introduces the volume's essays on Irish, English, Scots, Dutch, German and Maronite colleges, which provide up-to-date research by leading historians in the field and point to the possibilities for future research on this exciting topic.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-108
Author(s):  
FEBBY NANCY PATTY

Leonard  Andaya adalah guru besar Sejarah Asia Tenggara di Universitas of Hawaii at Manoa. Ia menyelesaikan pendidikan sarjana di Yale University (1965) dan menyelesaikan pendidikan S2 dan S3 di Cornell University pada bidang sejarah Asia Tenggara. Beberapa karya buku yang dihasilkan di antaranya The Kingdom of Johor (1975); The Heritage of Arung Palakka : History of South Sulawesi (Celebes) in the Seventeenth Century (1981); History of Malaysia (1982); The World of Maluku: Eastern Indonesia in Early Modern Period (1993); Leave of the Same Tree: Trade and Etnicity in the Straits of Melaka (2008); History of Early Modern Southeast Asia, 1400-1830 (2015).


Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 86
Author(s):  
Artur Kolbiarz

The Vienna Academy was the most important art academy for German-speaking artists in the Baroque period. It shaped the development of art in the capital of the Habsburg monarchy as well as on its periphery, including in Silesia, yet the relationships between Silesian sculptors and painters and the Vienna Academy have been overlooked by scholars. Research in the Academy archives sheds light on a number of important issues related to the social, economic, and artistic aspects of the education and the subsequent activities of Vienna Academy alumni. Surviving student registers record the names of Silesian painters and sculptors studying in Vienna and offer insights into other aspects of education at the Academy.


Author(s):  
Natália Da Silva Perez

In this introductory text to the special issue Regulating Access: Privacy and the Private in Early Modern Dutch Contexts, Natália da Silva Perez argues that privacy can be a productive analytical lens to examine the social history of the Dutch Republic. She starts by providing an overview of theoretical definitions of privacy and of the ‘private versus public’ dichotomy, highlighting their implications for the study of society. Next, she discusses the modern view of privacy as a legally protected right, explaining that we must adjust expectations when applying the concept to historical examination: in the early modern period, privacy was not yet fully incorporated within a legal framework, and yet, it was a widespread need across different echelons of society. She provides a historical overview of this widespread need for privacy through instances where people attempted to regulate access to their material and immaterial resources. Finally, she describes how the four articles in this special issue contribute to our understanding of the role of privacy in early modern Dutch life.


Itinerario ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
François-Joseph Ruggiu

It is well-known that in 1763 the French presence in India was reduced by the treaty of Paris to five trading posts, or comptoirs, whose names—Pondichéry, Yanaon, Karikal, Mahé and Chandernagor—were erstwhile learned by heart by the French schoolchildren. French India lasted until 1954 and sparked a wide scientific interest in France at least until the beginning of the 1970s. Since that time, along with the history of French colonial policy during the early modern period as a whole, the study of French India has largely gone out of fashion. The last decades of the Ancien Regime have especially been concerned by this disaffection. The best current French specialists of these parts of the world, like Philippe Haudrère, have focused on the activities of the Compagnie françaises des Indes, which was suspended in 1769, or, like Jacques Weber, devoted themselves to the history of the French presence in India during the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. Even if the period of Dupleix is more studied, the history of French India during the eighteenth century does not seem to tempt many researchers nowadays.


Author(s):  
Ronald C. Po

Tracing the social lives of tea, porcelain, and silk, it is discernible that the world had been living with commodities made in and exported from China for a fairly long period of time. Particularly, when tea slowly became more common in England during the 18th century, most Britons tended to purchase tea leaves planted in the Yangtze River Delta and the Fujian region. When Europeans first encountered Chinese porcelain, it was so fine, translucent, and superior to anything that they could possibly manufacture at the time. They thus concluded that it must be a magic substance and astonishingly called it “white gold.” The Western obsession about Chinese porcelain, in turn, encouraged Europeans to produce their own imitations in terms of both production processes and marketing strategies. When silkworm disease ruined European sericulture in the middle of the 19th century, Chinese silk, including silk textiles and spun and raw silks, fulfilled a need in a demanding Euro-American market. These examples, among many others, conceivably reveal that China has played a crucial role in the global history of the dissemination and consumption of commodities since the early modern period.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-122
Author(s):  
Björn Moll

Abstract This article focusses on the discourse surrounding ›projectors‹, autoentrepeneurs, who made plans for innovations of any kind and tried to have potential financiers promote them, from the Baroque to German Romanticism. While the role of projectors in the history of science has been the object of historical study, there is a lack of research regarding the concept’s trajectory and its semantic variation. In the early modern period, the necessity of innovation was emphasized, but also the contingency of project proposals. During the Enlightenment, the tradition of the approval of project-making continued, but projects became detached from projectors. In the late 18th century, the idea of speculation and the fantastic transformed within the area of creativity, due to the primacy of imagination and genius. What happened to the talk about projectors and their ways of self-fashioning after the disappearance of the social figure? What enabled authors to refer to projectors and how was their role historically discussed? Projectors served as a topos of insanity or deception or a sign of unprofessionalism (as shown in examples by Goethe and Schiller). Romanticism carried with it the positive connotations of the project, but also reinterpreted its negative aspects, such as the value of incompletion, insanity and alternative ways of work.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-79
Author(s):  
Sara Zandi Karimi

This article is a critical translation of the “History of the Ardalānids.” In doing so, it hopes to make available to a wider academic audience this invaluable source on the study of Iranian Kurdistan during the early modern period. While a number of important texts pertaining to the Kurds during this era, most notably the writings of the Ottoman traveler Evliya Chalabi, focus primarily on Ottoman Kurdistan, this piece in contrast puts Iranian Kurdistan in general and the Ardalān dynasty in particular at the center of its historical narrative. Thus it will be of interest not only to scholars of Kurdish history but also to those seeking more generally to research life on the frontiers of empires.Keywords: Ẕayl; Ardalān; Kurdistan; Iran.ABSTRACT IN KURMANJIDîroka Erdelaniyan (1590-1810)Ev gotar wergereke rexneyî ya “Dîroka Erdelaniyan” e. Bi vê yekê, merema xebatê ew e ku vê çavkaniya pir biqîmet a li ser Kurdistana Îranê ya di serdema pêş-modern de ji bo cemawerê akademîk berdest bike. Hejmareke metnên girîng li ser Kurdên wê serdemê, bi taybetî nivîsînên Evliya Çelebî yê seyyahê osmanî, zêdetir berê xwe didine Kurdistana di bin hukmê Osmaniyan de. Lê belê, di navenda vê xebatê de, bi giştî Kurdistana Îranê û bi taybetî jî xanedana Erdelaniyan heye. Wisa jî ew dê ne tenê ji bo lêkolerên dîroka kurdî belku ji bo ewên ku dixwazin bi rengekî berfirehtir derheq jiyana li ser tixûbên împeretoriyan lêkolînan bikin jî dê balkêş be.ABSTRACT IN SORANIMêjûy Erdellan (1590-1810)Em wutare wergêrranêkî rexneyî “Mêjûy Erdellan”e, bew mebestey em serçawe girînge le ser Kurdistanî Êran le seretakanî serdemî nwê bixate berdest cemawerî ekademî. Jimareyek serçawey girîng le ser kurdekan lew serdeme da hen, diyartirînyan nûsînekanî gerîdey ‘Usmanî Ewliya Çelebîye, ke zortir serincyan le ser ‘Kurdistanî ‘Usmanî bûwe. Em berheme be pêçewanewe Kurdistanî Êran be giştî, we emaretî Erdelan be taybetî dexate senterî xwêndinewekewe. Boye nek tenya bo twêjeranî biwarî mêjûy kurdî, belku bo ewaney le ser jiyan le sinûre împiratoriyekan twêjînewe deken, cêgay serinc debêt.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document