scholarly journals A History of Pigs in China: From Curious Omnivores to Industrial Pork

2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 865-889
Author(s):  
Brian Lander ◽  
Mindi Schneider ◽  
Katherine Brunson

Pigs have played a central role in the subsistence and culture of China for millennia. The close relationship between pigs and people began when humans gradually domesticated wild pigs over 8,000 years ago. While pigs initially foraged around settlements, population growth led people to pen their pigs, which made them household trash processors and fertilizer producers. Household pigs were in daily contact with people, who bred them to fatten quickly and produce larger litters. Early modern Europeans found Chinese pigs far superior to their own and bred the two to create the breeds now employed in industrial pork production around the world, including China. In recent decades, industrial farms that scientifically control every aspect of pigs’ lives have spread rapidly. Until recently, most Chinese people ate pork only on special occasions; their ability in recent decades to eat it regularly exemplifies China's increasing prosperity. Meanwhile, vast areas of North and South American farmland are now devoted to growing soybeans to feed hundreds of millions of pigs in China, and the methane, manure, and antibiotic resistance they produce creates environmental and health problems on a global scale.

Author(s):  
Bernadette Andrea

This chapter examines four ‘time-spaces’ to situate the lives of individuals from the Islamic world in early modern England and their impact on its literary imagination: 1) the presence of Tartars, Chaldeans, and scattered ‘Others’ from the Islamic world in England from the 1550s to the 1570s; 2) the letters Queen Elizabeth I issued to various Muslim sovereigns from the 1580s to the 1590s; 3) Moroccan and Persian embassies at the English court through the 1680s; and 4) Muslim converts and captives in England through the 1690s. This history of the marginal presence of individuals from the Islamic world in England prior to the eighteenth century and their disproportionate resonance in the literature of the era thus becomes one of the facilitating conditions for the emerging anglocentric discourse of empire on a global scale.


Vox Patrum ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 213-296
Author(s):  
Piotr Kochanek

The idea of the pentarchy directly expressed by Justinian I (527-565) – Novella 131 – is also perceptible in cartography. This paper examines the 41 medieval and early modern world maps in the context of the vignettes of the pentarchy. From the above analysis shows that almost every map from this period had a vignette of Jerusalem and 37 maps have a vignette of Rome. But only 28 maps have a vi­gnette of Alexandria, 24 maps have a vignette of Constantinople, and 20 maps have a vignette of Antiochia. In the case of Jerusalem, a huge majority of vignettes is a sacred buildings (most often it is the Tomb of Christ). Only in three cases is a Holy Cross. In contrast, Rome’s vignettes represent both religious buildings and fortifications. As for the drawings on the vignettes of Antiochia, Alexandria, and Constantinople, the vast majority of them are character of fortifications. These vignettes are, on the one hand, a close relationship with the history of these cit­ies, on the other hand, they are associated with the medieval and early modern politic ideology and theology. This paper is trying to capture and analyze these complicated, religious, political, and theological relationships, and explaining the meaning of these vignettes.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Stefan Hanß

Abstract This paper reveals the voices, logics, and consequences of sixteenth-century American storytelling about the Battle of Lepanto; an approach that decenters our perspective on the history of that battle. Central and South American storytelling about Lepanto, I argue, should prompt a reconsideration of historians’ Mediterranean-centered storytelling about Lepanto—the event—by studying the social dynamics of its event-making in light of early modern global connections. Studying the circulation of news, the symbolic power of festivities, indigenous responses to Lepanto, and the autobiographical storytelling of global protagonists participating at that battle, this paper reveals how storytelling about Lepanto burgeoned in the Spanish overseas territories.


Author(s):  
John Watkins

The Renaissance jurist Alberico Gentili once quipped that, just like comedies, all wars end in a marriage. In medieval and early modern Europe, marriage treaties were a perennial feature of the diplomatic landscape. When one ruler decided to make peace with his enemy, the two parties often sealed their settlement with marriages between their respective families. This book traces the history of the practice, focusing on the unusually close relationship between diplomacy and literary production in Western Europe from antiquity through the seventeenth century, when marriage began to lose its effectiveness and prestige as a tool of diplomacy. The book begins with Virgil's foundational myth of the marriage between the Trojan hero Aeneas and the Latin princess, an account that formed the basis for numerous medieval and Renaissance celebrations of dynastic marriages by courtly poets and propagandists. It follows the slow decline of diplomatic marriage as both a tool of statecraft and a literary subject, exploring the skepticism and suspicion with which it was viewed in the works of Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare. The book argues that the plays of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine signal the passing of an international order that had once accorded women a place of unique dignity and respect.


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.


Author(s):  
David Randall

The changed conception of conversation that emerged by c.1700 was about to expand its scope enormously – to the broad culture of Enlightenment Europe, to the fine arts, to philosophy and into the broad political world, both via the conception of public opinion and via the constitutional thought of James Madison (1751–1836). In the Enlightenment, the early modern conception of conversation would expand into a whole wing of Enlightenment thought. The intellectual history of the heirs of Cicero and Petrarch would become the practice of millions and the constitutional architecture of a great republic....


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