But Are We Any Closer to Home?: Early Modern German Urban History SinceGerman Home Towns

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Friedrichs
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
German History ◽  
Home Town ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Cities

For a quarter of a century we have lived not in but with the “German home town.” For it was in 1971 that Mack Walker published his remarkable book,German Home Towns: Community, State and General Estate, 1648–1871. I well recall my own excitement when I first read this book, just as I was completing a dissertation on the social history of a German town in the seventeenth century. Not only wasGerman Home Townsoriginal and provocative, but it seemed by its very nature to validate the importance of studying early modern German cities. My own enthusiasm for this book has been echoedby that of numerous other historians, especially historians outside Germany itself. This is evident, for example, in James Sheehan's major survey of German history from 1770 to 1866, which repeatedly turns to Mack Walker—“the home towns' eloquent historian”—for the telling phrase or pregnant concept that best encapsulates some aspect of urban life or mentality. Walker's book is routinely cited in bibliographies as one of the most important works in the field.

The Perraults

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oded Rabinovitch
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
French Language ◽  
Kinship Networks ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Family Strategies

Through the story of the Perraults, a family of literary and scientific authors active in seventeenth-century Paris, the book argues that kinship networks played a crucial yet unexamined role in shaping the cultural and intellectual ferment of seventeenth-century France, while showing how culture in its turn shaped kinship and the social history of the family. The book examines the world of letters as means of social mobility and revises our understanding of prominent early modern institutions, such as the Academy of Sciences, Versailles, and the salons, as well as authorship and court capitalism. Put together, this project serves as a catalyst for rethinking early modern cultural and intellectual institutions more broadly. In this view, institutions no longer appear as rigid entities that embody or define intellectual or literary styles, such as “Cartesianism,” “empiricism” or “the purity of the French language.” Rather, they emerge as nodes that connect actors, intellectual projects, family strategies and practices of writing, thereby reframing their relation to the state.

The Sodhi kings in the Kaliyuga: The genealogy of the Sikh Gurus in the Bachitar Natak

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hardip Singh Syan
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Islamic Fundamentalism ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

In the late seventeenth century Mughal India, Guru Gobind Singh and his Sikh army became politically and militarily opposed to the policies of Emperor Aurangzeb in the Punjab country. The Sikhs were not unique in this regard as across Aurangzeb’s Empire credible insurgencies began undermining Mughal authority. While an earlier historiography of this era reasoned that such revolts were caused by Aurangzeb’s abandonment of secularism for Islamic fundamentalism, contemporary research has provided a more nuanced analysis by exploring the history and ideas of the rebels. In this article, I explore how the Sikh community engaged in a dialogue on Kshatriyahood which was both specific to the Punjab country and similar to dialogues found across Mughal India. In addition, my article explores the social history of caste in medieval and early modern Punjab and the contested identities of Kshatriyahood and Brahminhood.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
John Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Social History ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
English History ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

The introduction argues for the importance of language-learning and multilingualism in the history of early modern England. English-speakers who ventured beyond Dover could not rely on English and had to become language-learners, while even at home English urban life was often multilingual. It brings together early modern concepts of linguistic ability with approaches from sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, and the social history of language in order to show how we can think about linguistic competence in a historical perspective. It demonstrates the importance of ‘questions of language’ to the social, cultural, religious, and political histories of early modern England, and to the question of England’s place in a rapidly expanding world. After an overview of the book’s structure, aims, and parameters, it closes by asking how taking a polyglot perspective might shift our understandings of early modern English history.

The Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modern Culture

2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 533
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Celenza ◽  
Brendan Dooley
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Bourgeoisie

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Maza
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social History ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
French History ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

The concept of a group called “the bourgeoisie” is unusual in being both central to early modern and modern European history, and at the same time highly controversial. In old regime France, people frequently used the words “bourgeois” or “bourgeoisie” but what they meant by them was very different from the meaning historians later assigned to those terms. In the nineteenth century the idea of a “bourgeoisie” became closely associated with Marxian historical narratives of capitalist ascendancy. Does it still make sense to speak of a “bourgeoisie”? This article attempts to lay out and clarify the terms of the problem by posing a series of questions about this aspect of the social history of Ancien Régime France, with a brief look across the Channel for comparison. It considers first the problem of definition: what was and is meant by “the bourgeoisie” in the context of early modern French history? Second, what is the link between eighteenth-century economic change and the existence and nature of such a group, and can we still connect the origins of the French Revolution to the “rise” of a bourgeoisie? And finally, can the history of perceptions and representations of a bourgeoisie or middle class help us to understand why the concept has been so problematic in the longer run of French history?

The Chronology of Galen's Early Career

1973 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Nutton
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
Scientific Thought ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Psychology And Medicine

The last decade has witnessed a widespread resurgence of interest in Galen of Pergamum that is without parallel since the early seventeenth century. New studies of Galen's concepts of psychology and medicine have examined afresh his position in the development of scientific thought, and historians have begun to realize the wealth of material for the social history of the Antonine Age that he provides. But, despite the earlier labours of Ilberg and Bardong to restore a chronological order to the many tracts that flowed readily from his pen, many of the events of his life still lack the precise dates that would enable even more valuable information to be extracted, especially upon the careers of his friends.

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