scholarly journals THE POPULARITY OF ANCIENT HISTORIANS, 1450–1600

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 561-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
FREYJA COX JENSEN
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
European Culture ◽  
European Heritage ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe histories of ancient Greece and Rome are part of a shared European heritage, and a foundation for many modern Western social and cultural traditions. Their printing and circulation during the Renaissance helped to shape the identities of individual nations, and create different reading publics. Yet we still lack a comprehensive understanding of the forms in which works of Greek and Roman history were published in the first centuries of the handpress age, the relationship between the ideas contained within these texts and the books as material objects, and thus the precise nature of the changes they effected in early modern European culture and society. This article provides the groundwork for a reassessment of the place of ancient history in the early modern world. Using new, digital resources to reappraise existing scholarship, it offers a fresh evaluation of the publication of the ancient historians from the inception of print to 1600, revealing important differences that alter our understanding of particular authors, texts, and trends, and suggesting directions for further research. It also models the research possibilities of large-scale digital catalogues and databases, and highlights the possibilities (and pitfalls) of these resources.

scholarly journals From museum to memory institution: the politics of European culture online

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Stainforth
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
Online Networks ◽  
European Culture ◽  
European Heritage ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Heritage Collections

Museums, libraries and archives have long been considered the retainers of some form of collective memory. Within the last twenty years, the term ‘memory institution’ has been coined to describe these entities, which is symptomatic of the fact that such places are increasingly linked through digital media and online networks. The concept of the memory institution is also part of the vocabulary used to promote broader cultural integration across nations, and appears in discussions of European heritage and in policy documents concerning the digitization of cultural heritage collections. To explore the relationship between cultural heritage, memory and digital technology further, this paper will examine the large-scale digitization project Europeana, under which museums, libraries and archives are re-defined as cultural heritage institutions or memory institutions. My purpose is to trace the conceptual trajectory of memory within this context, and to address how the idea of a European cultural memory structured by technology holds implications for institutions traditionally associated with practices of remembering.Key words: Cultural heritage, collective memory, digitization, network, memory institution, Europe, integration

scholarly journals Digging down into the global urban past

Urban History ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Emma Hart ◽  
Mariana Dantas
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Global City ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Modern Cities ◽  
Diverse Communities

Abstract In our introduction to this Special Issue on early modern cities and globalization, we explore the current place of cities before 1850 in global urban history and address the promise of a greater focus on their role. We argue that the interplay between the large scale and the small scale in the imperial global city is an essential dialogical force in the formation of each city's relationship to the wider early modern world. Furthermore, early modern global urban history can help explain the creation of spaces that facilitated connections between distant, global locations, as well as illuminate the emergence of networks of exchange between city communities around the globe. Yet, it also reveals the tense, messy negotiation of the meaning of these urban spaces, as well as the incredibly diverse communities they harboured.

Representations of Children in Ancient Greece

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olympia Bobou
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Vase Painting ◽  
Funerary Reliefs ◽  
The Relationship

Children’s representations appear early in the Greek visual material culture: first they appear in the large funerary vases of the geometric period, while in the archaic period they appear in funerary reliefs and vases. To the representations in vase painting, those in terracotta statuettes can be added in the fifth century, but it is in the fourth century bc that children become a noteworthy subject of representation, appearing both in small- and large-scale objects in different media. This chapter considers the relationship between changing imagery of children in ancient Greece and social and religious developments from the geometric period, through the Hellenistic period and into the Roman period in Greece.

The Scandal of Kabbalah

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaacob Dweck
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Culture War ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Jewish Mysticism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition. From its medieval beginnings as an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah spread throughout the early modern world and became a central feature of Jewish life. Scholars have long studied the revolutionary impact of Kabbalah, but, as this book argues, they have misunderstood the character and timing of opposition to it. Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources, this book tells the story of the first criticism of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. In this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an authentic form of ancient esotericism, Modena proved the recent origins of Kabbalah and sought to convince his readers to return to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides. This book examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed by Modena's attack—a critical analysis of sacred texts, skepticism about religious truths, and self-consciousness about the past—and shows how these qualities and the later history of his polemic challenge conventional understandings of the relationship between Kabbalah and modernity. The book argues that Kabbalah was the subject of critical inquiry in the very period it came to dominate Jewish life rather than centuries later as most scholars have thought.

Empires and protection: making interpolity law in the early modern world

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Benton ◽  
Adam Clulow
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Dual Character ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractReferences to protection were ubiquitous across the early modern world, featuring in a range of transactions between polities in very different regions. And yet discourses about protection retained a quality of imprecision that makes it difficult to pin down precise legal statuses and responsibilities. It was often unclear who was protecting whom or the exact nature of the relationship. In this article, we interrogate standard distinctions about the dual character of protection that differentiate between ‘inside’ protection of subjects and ‘outside’ protection of allies and other external groups. Rather than a clear division, we find a blurring of lines, with many protection claims creatively combining ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ protection. We argue that the juxtaposition of these ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ meanings of protection underpinned the formation of irregular, interpenetrating zones of imperial suzerainty in crowded maritime arenas and conflict-ridden borderlands across the early modern world.

The Ottoman Postmaster: Contractors, Communication and Early Modern State Formation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Choon Hwee Koh
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Spatial Configuration ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Administrative Capacity ◽  
Military Contractors ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Centralization And Decentralization

Prevailing historiography views the use of contractors by states as indicative of a loss or decentralization of power. This article takes the case of the Ottoman postmaster to demonstrate how contracting could in fact strengthen early modern empires and to argue that the binary spatial metaphors of ‘centralization’ and ‘decentralization’ cannot adequately explain how power worked in the early modern world (about 1500–1800). Indeed, recent scholarship has highlighted the scale and significance of military contractors in early modern European warfare. However, contractors were not confined to expanding military capacity; they were also employed to expand administrative capacity in diverse arenas. Evidence from Ottoman fiscal documents and judicial registers shows how contracted postmasters played a crucial role in strengthening the imperial bureaucracy’s supervision of a sprawling postal system. In contrast to war-making, which involved the short-term mobilization of vast resources, maintaining a large-scale infrastructure required long-term co-ordination across multiple dispersed nodes, and this entailed a different spatial configuration of power that disrupts the dichotomous paradigm of centralization and decentralization. Ultimately, a holistic appraisal of early modern state-building needs to consider not just cases of war-making or provincial administration, but also pan-imperial infrastructures like information and communication systems.

scholarly journals Moral and Valuable World of Iran of the Late 20th – Early 21st Centuries in the Context of “Cultural Heritage” and “Dialogue of Civilizations” Concepts

2020 ◽  
pp. 77-88
Author(s):  
Egnara Vartanyan
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Modern World ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
Active Perception ◽  
The West ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Western Values ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship

Introduction. The article deals with the problem of studying the ethics and values of Iran in the period from the late 20th to the early 21st centuries in the context of “cultural heritage” and “dialogue of civilizations” concepts. Methods. The historical-typological and historical-systematic methods, the civilization approach used in the article have allowed to analyze the typology and transformation of the Iranian culture in the period from the late 20th to the early 21st centuries. Analysis. The specific historical characteristics of the Iranian civilization are the continuity of development and the civilization openness, which can be explained not only by invasions of other civilizations, but also by the active perception of the intellectual culture achievements of other peoples. The Iranian civilization came into contact with other civilizations, its origin and functioning were caused by the dialogue of cultures in a broad sense of this word. The psychological reorganization of the Iranians arose as a reaction to the introduction of western values in the life of the country during the shah modernization of the 1960s – 1970s, which led to forming new features in the national consciousness of the Iranians: the aspiration to revive national cultural traditions, desire not so much “to catch up with the West”, as to approve the priority of its culture in peoples consciousness. Those years the Iranian social thought was devoted to the intensive development of the concept of historical and cultural identity of the country, problems of the relationship between the West and the East. In the Iranian social thought the certain independent area of knowledge, namely “cultural heritage”, was formed, which gave the way to the national consciousness and encouraged the scientific search of a rational model of countrys development, looking for the reliance in the traditional experience. Results. The author draws the conclusion that the interpenetration and mutual enrichment of people, cultures, civilizations are important, especially in the era of globalization. But this process is the most valuable in the context of the development of national cultures, respect for the cultural heritage of every nation i.e. maintaining cultural diversity of the modern world. Today modernization of Iran is connected with the civilization principles of development (“dialogue of civilizations”) in combination with preservation of cultural heritage.

scholarly journals OLD BELIEVERS IN RUSSIA AND ABROAD AMID THE PANDEMIC

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 128-136
Author(s):  
Olga Shimanskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Church Members ◽  
Old Believers ◽  
Baltic Countries ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The Relationship

On the basis of documents and an array of confessional Internet publications, the article analyzes the interaction of Old Believer agreements with states (Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic countries, etc.) in the context of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. It occurred during the 400th anniversary of the protopope Avvakum (Petrov) (1620–1682), which is celebrated by Old Believers in Russia and beyond. Old Believers nowadays are the largest Russian religious diaspora seeking selfdetermination in the modern world through interaction with states and society. The pandemic in the jubilee year became a mark of change in the relationship between the Old Believers and the government. It shifted from confrontation and neutrality to cooperation within the framework of those models of state-confessional relations that have become established in countries where their communities exist. During the pandemic Old Believer accords urged church members to follow state measures introduced to combat spread of the infection and perceive all restrictions as temporary obedience. There has been a significant modernization of interaction within confessional communities in liturgical and everyday practices, associated with the intensified use of digital technologies. As a result, celebration of the anniversary of archpriest Avvakum became possible on a large scale despite the restrictions.

scholarly journals Between Nature and Culture : The Integrated Ecology of Renaissance Climate Theories

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Miglietti
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The Relationship

‘Climate theories’ are often explained away in scholarship as pseudosciences irrelevant to the modern world, or as morally problematic forms of geographic determinism. This chapter instead argues that such theories still offer a valuable lens not only for understanding how early modern people conceptualized the relationship between human culture and nonhuman nature, but also for resituating ourselves with respect to this very same issue. Are we humans above and outside nature, or are we an integral part of it, caught in its dynamics and affected by its internal changes—including those resulting from our own agency? Three sixteenth-century authors (Le Roy, Bodin, La Framboisière) are here brought into dialogue with contemporary thinkers (Descola, Latour) to reappraise the ‘integrated ecology’ of nature and culture proposed by early modern climate theorists.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-158
Author(s):  
Stefania Tutino
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Catholic Culture ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter concludes the book by providing some reflections about the meaning of forgeries in early modern Europe. It examines the effects that the growing ability to detect forgeries had on the intellectual and cultural landscape of early modern Europe, and it shows the peculiar tension that this provoked in early modern Catholic culture. The chapter also shows that the relationship between evidence, truth, authenticity, and belief was as complex for early modern people as it is for us, albeit in different terms. Reflecting on what changed between then and now, and on and what didn't, can help us understand better not only the early modern world, but also our own.

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