scholarly journals Contested enslavement: the Portuguese in Angola and the problem of debt, c. 1600–1800

Itinerario ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-275
Author(s):  
Judith Spicksley
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The West ◽  
Central Coast ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Slave Traders

The Portuguese were keen slave traders on the west central coast of Africa in the early modern period, but governors in Angola appear to have been increasingly unhappy about certain aspects of enslavement in relation to debt, and in particular that of children. Slavery for debt was uncommon in early modern Europe, where three arguments, drawn from Roman law, were usually cited by way of justification: birth; war; and self-sale. Cavazzi, an Italian Capuchin missionary travelling around Angola between 1654 and 1665, suggested several similarities between the legal justifications for slavery in Africa and Europe, but also pointed up a major difference: while in Angola in the early modern period enslavement could result from a number of instances of default, in Portugal at the same time - and in Europe more widely – debtors tended to find themselves imprisoned if they defaulted on a payment, rather than enslaved. This paper will consider the nature of debt enslavement in Angola in the early modern period, and how it impacted on the transatlantic slave trade.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Carmen Fracchia
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
The North ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Mediterranean

The African presence in imperial Spain, from the last quarter of the fifteenth century until the end of the eighteenth century, was due to institutionalization of the transatlantic slave trade that brought 700,000–800,000 Africans as slaves to the Crowns of Portugal, Aragon, and Castile. During the same period and in the same territories, the Mediterranean slave trade was responsible for the presence of 300,000–400,000 Moor, Berber, and Turk slaves. According to Alessandro Stella, if we add those born in these European territories, there were approximately two million slaves living in the Iberian Peninsula and islands during the early modern period. The black presence was ubiquitous in the south of these territories and in the main cities of the centre and the north, as we shall see in ...

Coda: Repositioning Early Modern Prague on the Global Stage

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Suzanna Ivanič
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Musical Knowledge ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The City

The question that sparked this forum was to what extent we can see Prague as an important stage for Renaissance and Reformation exchange and as an internationally connected city. It is striking, though not unexpected, that all the authors have been drawn to some extent to sources and subjects in Rudolfine Prague. It must be stressed, however, that the emphasis of each of these studies is somewhat different to an older field of “Rudolfine studies.” The researchers here do not focus on the emperor's court but use it as context. It is tangential to their main focal points—on Jewish communities, religious change, and the exchange of scientific and musical knowledge—and these are first and foremost historians not of Prague but of social and cultural history, music, art, material culture, and religion. This indicates a marked shift from the historiography. For this generation of scholars, Prague is not only a city that is home to a fascinating and intriguing art historical moment but is also a city of early modern international connections. It provides a unique context for understanding communities, everyday experiences, religion, and culture in early modern Europe—a multilingual, multiconfessional, and multicultural mixing pot whose composition changed dramatically across the early modern period. Rudolf's court was certainly a catalyst for these crossings and encounters, but they did not fade away after his death in 1612, nor were they limited to the confines of the castle above the city.

scholarly journals Alternative Pasts and Colonial Engagements in the North: The Materiality and Meanings of the Pajala ‘Runestone’ (Vinsavaara Stone), Northern Sweden

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-628
Author(s):  
Vesa-Pekka Herva ◽  
Janne Ikäheimo ◽  
Matti Enbuske ◽  
Jari Okkonen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
General Level ◽  
Northern Sweden ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Cosmological Context ◽  
Ancient Times

The unknown and exotic North fascinated European minds in the early modern period. A land of natural and supernatural wonders, and of the indigenous Sámi people, the northern margins of Europe stirred up imagination and a plethora of cultural fantasies, which also affected early antiquarian research and the period understanding of the past. This article employs an alleged runestone discovered in northernmost Sweden in the seventeenth century to explore how ancient times and northern margins of the continent were understood in early modern Europe. We examine how the peculiar monument of the Vinsavaara stone was perceived and signified in relation to its materiality, landscape setting, and the cultural-cosmological context of the Renaissance–Baroque world. On a more general level, we use the Vinsavaara stone to assess the nature and character of early modern antiquarianism in relation to the period's nationalism, colonialism and classicism.

Absolutism

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Goldie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Free Rider ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Civil Authority

Absolutism is a nineteenth-century term designed precisely to address the mismatch between doctrine and power. The intellectual resources of absolutism were far older than the Renaissance and Reformation. The absolutism of monarchs was a contingent and temporary corollary of the principal juridical development of the early modern period: the emergence of the concept of sovereignty. Absolute monarchy was a free rider on a concept that would later unseat it. Theorists of absolute sovereignty drew heavily on Roman law, and often invoked the idea of the translatio imperii, the inheritance by modern monarchies of Roman imperial authority. The sovereignty of kings, seeking to trump the divine imperium of the papacy, masqueraded its jurisprudence as the divinity of kings. The “divine right of kings” was a theological meditation on a juridical concept, not a species of mysticism, and rarely did absolutists endow monarchs with magical or sacerdotal attributes. Absolutism conspicuously appropriated religious form when expressed as a theory of obedience. Absolutist theory offered an account of the origins of civil authority.

scholarly journals Jewish and Hebrew Books in Marsh’s Library: Materiality and Intercultural Engagement in Early Modern Ireland

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 597
Author(s):  
Bradford A. Anderson ◽  
Jason McElligott
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Extensive Collection ◽  
Intercultural Engagement ◽  
Personal Collection

Marsh’s Library in Dublin, Ireland, is an immaculately preserved library from the early eighteenth century. Founded by Archbishop Narcissus Marsh, the library has an extensive collection of Jewish and Hebrew books which includes Hebrew Bibles, Talmudic texts, rabbinic writings, and Yiddish books that date back to the early modern period. This study explores a cross section of the Jewish and Hebrew books in Marsh’s collection, with particular focus on issues of materiality—that is, how these books as material artefacts can inform our understanding of early modern history, religion, and intercultural engagement. We suggest that these books, a majority of which come from Marsh’s personal collection, are a valuable resource for reflection on (1) Christian engagement with Jewish culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, (2) the production, use, and travel of Jewish books in early modern Europe, and (3) snapshots of Jewish life in early modern Ireland and beyond.

Social Change and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe: Some Danish Evidence

1983 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knud J. V. Jespersen
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Military History ◽  
Decisive Factor ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
The Middle Ages

There is general agreement among scholars of military history on the main features of military developments during the transition from the middle ages to the early modern period. A brief sketch of the broad outlines of these developments may therefore suffice as a preface to an investigation of Danish knight service in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.The decisive factor in the medieval army was the fully armoured, lancebearing mounted knight. The battlefield was totally dominated by the combat technique of these bands of qualifizierten Einzelkämpfern, offensive combat at close quarters. The remaining forces, in contrast, functioned merely as auxiliaries to the main arm - the heavy mounted knights.

scholarly journals The rise of prosociality in fiction preceded democratic revolutions in Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (46) ◽  
pp. 28684-28691
Author(s):  
Mauricio de Jesus Dias Martins ◽  
Nicolas Baumard
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Capita Gross Domestic Product ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Modern Period

The English and French Revolutions represent a turning point in history, marking the beginning of the modern rise of democracy. Recent advances in cultural evolution have put forward the idea that the early modern revolutions may be the product of a long-term psychological shift, from hierarchical and dominance-based interactions to democratic and trust-based relationships. In this study, we tested this hypothesis by analyzing theater plays during the early modern period in England and France. We found an increase in cooperation-related words over time relative to dominance-related words in both countries. Furthermore, we found that the accelerated rise of cooperation-related words preceded both the English Civil War (1642) and the French Revolution (1789). Finally, we found that rising per capita gross domestic product (GDPpc) generally led to an increase in cooperation-related words. These results highlight the likely role of long-term psychological and economic changes in explaining the rise of early modern democracies.

Written Proof Between Capitulations and Ottoman Kadi Courts in the Early Modern Period

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Maurits H. van den Boogert
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Central Place ◽  
The West ◽  
Legal Reforms ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Oral Testimony ◽  
Trade Partners

Abstract The introduction of legal reforms in the sixteenth century that gave the Hanafi school its central place in the Ottoman legal system coincided with the arrival of new trade partners from the West, first France and later England and the Dutch Republic. The Ottoman authorities’ own emphasis on the primacy of written proof and the marginalization of oral testimony was also reflected in the privileges granted to these new arrivals from the West. Although many European ambassadors and consuls distrusted “Turkish justice”, the Ottoman legal system’s stability and predictability contributed considerably to creating favourable conditions of trade.

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