Sri Lanka in the Long Early Modern Period: Its Place in a Comparative Theory of Second Millennium Eurasian History

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 815-869 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALAN STRATHERN
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Solid States ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Comparative Theory ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Eurasian History

AbstractThis paper explores how Sri Lanka might fit into Victor Lieberman's theory of Eurasian history. Lieberman's work to date has focused on the ‘protected rimlands’ which he sees as sharing the same historical path from a milieu of warring little kingdoms to increasingly large, solid states. But what happens in a land, such as Sri Lanka, which can be considered ‘protected’ before 1500, and ‘unprotected’ thereafter? Political integration and boundaries are first discussed, followed by ethnic and historical awareness before 1500. The third section sketches the chronological development of Buddhism before 1500, while the fourth considers the impact of the European interruption, and the fifth briefly looks at the results for 1600–1800. Along the way, some problems with applying the notion of ‘early modernity’ to Sri Lanka are disclosed.

Moscow: The Third Rome

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Mayhew
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Imperial Ideology ◽  
The City ◽  
Modern Russian

In the mid-19th century, three 16th-century Russian sources were published that alluded to Moscow as the “third Rome.” When 19th-century Russian historians discovered these texts, many interpreted them as evidence of an ancient imperial ideology of endless expansion, an ideology that would go on to define Russian foreign policy from the 16th century to the modern day. But what did these 16th-century depictions of Moscow as the third Rome actually have in mind? Did their meaning remain stable or did it change over the course of the early modern period? And how significant were they to early modern Russian imperial ideology more broadly? Scholars have pointed out that one cannot assume that depictions of Moscow as the third Rome were necessarily meant to be imperial celebrations per se. After all, the Muscovites considered that the first Rome fell for various heretical beliefs, in particular that Christ did not possess a human soul, and the second Rome, Constantinople, fell to the Turks in 1453 precisely because it had accepted some of these heretical “Latin” doctrines. As such, the image of Moscow as the third Rome might have marked a celebration of the city as a new imperial center, but it could also allude to Moscow’s duty to protect the “true” Orthodox faith after the fall—actual and theological—of Rome and Constantinople. As time progressed, however, the nuances of religious polemic once captured by the trope were lost. During the 17th and early 18th centuries, the image of Moscow as the third Rome took on a more unequivocally imperialist tone. Nonetheless, it would be easy to overstate the significance of allusions to Moscow as the third Rome to early modern Russian imperial ideology more broadly. Not only was the trope rare and by no means the only imperial comparison to be found in Muscovite literature, it was also ignored by secular authorities and banned by clerics.

Temporary Housing and Unsettled Population: Drivers of Urban Change in Early Modern Marseille and Rome

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 118-140
Author(s):  
Eleonora Canepari
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Modern Cities ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Mobile Population ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This paper argues that unsettled people, far from being “marginal” individuals, played a key role in shaping early modern cities. It does so by going beyond the traditional binary between rooted and unstable people. Specifically, the paper takes the temporary places of residence of this “unsettled” population – notably inns (garnis in France, osterie in Italy) – as a vantage point to observe social change in early modern cities. The case studies are two cities which shared a growing and highly mobile population in the early modern period: Rome and Marseille. In the first section, the paper focuses on two semi-rural neighborhoods. This is to assess the impact of mobility in shaping demographic, urbanistic, and economic patterns in these areas. Moving from the neighborhood as a whole to the individual buildings which composed it, the second section outlines the biographies of two inns: Rome’s osteria d’Acquataccio and Marseille’s hôtel des Deux mondes. In turn, this is to evaluate changes and continuities over a longer period of time.

5. Family histories and the autobiography of childhood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Marcus
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Family Histories ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The years of childhood have become increasingly central to autobiographical writing. Historians have linked this development to the new ideas about life-stages that emerged in the early modern period. Philippe Ariès (1914–84) made a key contribution in 1960 with a book on the child and family life in the ancien régime, known in English as Centuries of Childhood. ‘Family histories and the autobiography of childhood’ considers how genealogy (the tracing of family history) and the shaping of family relations by cultural and social forces have been central concerns for many modern autobiographers. It also looks closely at the relationship between child and parent and at the impact of mixed cultures.

scholarly journals PUBLICITY, PRIVACY, AND RELIGIOUS TOLERATION IN HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARASH ABIZADEH
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Private Sphere ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
Public Expression ◽  
Modern Period

What motivated an absolutist Erastian who rejected religious freedom, defended uniform public worship, and deemed the public expression of disagreement a catalyst for war to endorse a movement known to history as the champion of toleration, religion's freedom from coercion, and separation of church and state? At least three factors motivated Hobbes's 1651 endorsement of Independency: the Erastianism of Cromwellian Independency, the influence of the politique tradition, and, paradoxically, the contribution of early modern practices of toleration to maintaining the public sphere's religious uniformity. The third factor illustrates how a key function of the emerging private sphere in the early modern period was to protect uniformity, rather than diversity; it also shows that what was novel was not so much the public/private distinction itself, but the separation of two previously conflated dimensions of publicity—visibility and representativeness—that enabled early modern Europeans to envisage modes of worship out in the open, yet still private.

Exiles Abroad

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Goodrich
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Third Order ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Period

Over the course of the early modern period, political and religious upheavals in England led to the formation of many different expatriate communities on the Continent and in North America. As Catholics, Protestants, Nonconformists, and Royalists lived in exile, they established three major sorts of communities: lay congregations; educational institutions; and monastic houses. Examining texts produced by and for representative examples of each group (the Marian congregation at Geneva, the English colleges at Rheims and Rome, and the Third Order Franciscan convent in Brussels), this chapter offers case studies of the way that exiled communities adapted certain forms of writing in order to develop and express a collective religious identity. In doing so, members of these groups negotiated their relationships with one another, the English nation, and the broader Continental religious community.

The Puritan Work Ethic Revisited

1980 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Seaver
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Work Ethic ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism ◽  
The One ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior ◽  
The Impact

Whether Puritanism gave rise to a “work ethic,” and, if so, what the nature of that ethic was, has been a source of controversy since Max Weber published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism more than seventy years ago. Experienced polemicists have waged international wars of words over its terms, and tyros have won their spurs in the battle. With repect to England, there is at present no agreement either about the reality of a peculiarly Puritan work ethic or about the impact, if any, that such an ethic might have had on the attitudes and behavior of the emerging capitalist bourgeoisie, if such a species indeed existed as a distinctive social class or group in the early modern period. In fact, since perfectly sane and competent historians have questioned on the one hand, whether “Puritanism” is more than a neo-idealist reification of a nonentity, and on the other, whether the early modern middle class is more than a myth, it might be the better part of wisdom to inter the remains of these vexed questions as quietly as possible. What follows is not a perverse attempt to flog a dead horse, if it is dead and a horse, but rather on the basis of a different perspective and different evidence to resurrect a part of what Timothy Breen has called “the non-existent controversy.”

The Concept “Fact”: Legal Origins and Cultural Diffusion

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Third ◽  
Legal Origins ◽  
Cultural Diffusion ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Fact Finding

Facts are something we take for granted, at least most of the time. As ordinary individuals we assume that there are knowable facts, for instance, that the dog chewed the drapes, that England exists, that it rained yesterday, or that babies cry. If, as scholars, that is as historians, social scientists, and natural scientists, we are more aware of the problematical nature of “facts” we nevertheless tend to establish and use facts rather unselfconsciously in our work. On this occasion I want to look at the evolution of the concept of “fact,” and in particular the way “fact” entered English natural philosophy. I will attempt to show that the concept of “fact” or “matter of fact,” so prominent in the English empirical tradition, is an adaptation or borrowing from another discipline—jurisprudence, and that many of the assumptions and much of the technology of fact-finding in law were carried over into the experimental science of the seventeenth century.My paper has three parts. The first discusses the nature of legal facts and fact-finding in the early modern period, focusing on the distinction between “matters of fact” and “matters of law,” the emphasis on first hand testimony by credible witnesses, the preference for direct testimony over inference, and legal efforts to create and maintain impartial proceedings. The second portion attempts to show how legal methods and assumptions were adopted by early modern historiographers and other fact-oriented reporters. The third section attempts to show how the legally constructed concept of “fact” or “matter of fact” was transferred to natural history and natural philosophy and generalized in Locke's empirical philosophy.

Entering a city: on a lost early modern practice

Urban History ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL JÜTTE
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Main Section ◽  
Modern City ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
City Gates ◽  
History Of

ABSTRACT:City gates and walls were among the most striking features of the pre-modern city, yet we still know relatively little about their impact on daily life and what it meant to enter a city at that time. The present article explores precisely these questions. The first section outlines the general significance of city gates and walls in pre-modern times. In the second, I examine the four distinct functions of city gates in the early modern period. The third and main section presents a detailed description of the various practices, procedures and problems that accompanied the entrance to a city. Finally, and to conclude, the history of city gates is viewed in conjunction with the broader history of the early modern city and its transformation in the transition to modernity.

scholarly journals Balkan or border warfare? Glimpses from the early modern period

Balcanica ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 85-103
Author(s):  
Lothar Höbelt
Keyword(s):  
Head Start ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Low Intensity ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
East And West ◽  
The Impact

At the beginning of the early modern period, the concept of Europe did not yet exist. Religion, not politics or geography, was the defining criterion. It was Christendom that people referred to - not Europe - when they wanted to introduce the concept of burdensharing. In military terms, differences between Oriental and Occidental empires were less obvious; if anything, the Ottomans seemed to have a head-start in terms of centralization and professionalism. It was not the impact of Ottoman rule as such that created the conditions for ?Balkan warfare?. It was the unsettled character of the borders between ?East? and ?West? that gave rise to a form of low-intensity conflict that might be said to provide a foretaste of what came to be known as Balkan warfare.

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