The Costs and Benefits for Europeans from their Empires Overseas

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Karl O'Brien ◽  
Leandro Prados de la Escosura
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic History ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
International Economy ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Middle Ages

Large historical problems are stimulating to debate but difficult to specify and answer in ways that might carry forward our long-standing discourses in global economic history. The papers which form the basis of our essay deal with a meta question and are focused upon the economic consequences (the costs and benefits) for those European societies most actively involved in territorial expansion, colonization, world trade, capital exports and emigration to other continents over the past five centuries. Our symbolic dates mark (rather than demarcate) the beginning and ending of European imperialism. Colonisation occurred in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages but between 1415 and 1789 European powers, particularly Britain but also Spain, Portugal, Holland, France and Italy, founded hundreds of colonies. Individual articles have concentrated upon periods of significance for particular countries and are, moreover, analysed within the context of an international economy, evolving through four eras (or orders) of mercantilism (1415–1846), liberalism (1846–1914), neo-mercantilism (1914–48), and decolonisation (1948–74). Our Introduction draws heavily upon six national case studies as well as discussions that took place at a conference in Madrid in 1997. We do not intend to cite particular contributions to the inferences and conclusions in this essay. Our views represent an elaboration upon and an interpretation of the articles that follow.

Economic History

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Dyer
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Strong Influence ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
The Past ◽  
Important Position ◽  
British Research ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter examines British research and publications concerning medieval economic history. It shows that the study of medieval economy and society helps to unify a number of areas of research and has developed an important position as a hub with links to many other disciplines. It explores the evolving interpretations of the medieval economy and society that have had a strong influence on the academic community and which have played their part in bringing about a shift in attitudes towards the past in general and the middle ages in particular.

Clothing and Female Reclusion in The Life of Mary of Egypt and The Life of Christina of Markyate

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Anna McKay
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Holy Women ◽  
Experiences Of Women ◽  
Mary Of Egypt ◽  
The Middle Ages

Over the past two decades, medieval feminist scholarship has increasingly turned to the literary representation of textiles as a means of exploring the oftensilenced experiences of women in the Middle Ages. This article uses fabric as a lens through which to consider the world of the female recluse, exploring the ways in which clothing operates as a tether to patriarchal, secular values in Paul the Deacon’s eighthcentury Life of Mary of Egypt and the twelfth-century Life of Christina of Markyate. In rejecting worldly garb as recluses, these holy women seek out and achieve lives of spiritual autonomy and independence.

Democratic Myths in Victorian Medievalism

1980 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 129-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Jann
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Spiritual Health ◽  
The Political ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Central Characteristic ◽  
Liberal Individualism ◽  
The Middle Ages

Critical attention to the dominant tradition of Victorian medievalism has stressed its essentially conservative tendencies. For representative proponents of this tradition – Carlyle, Ruskin, Young England – the imaginative value of the Middle Ages lay in their contrast with the political and social disorder of the present. The antidote to those modern poisons – laissez faire capitalism, Utilitarian ethics, Liberal individualism – lay in a resuscitation of medieval hierarchy, one which called on the Captains of Industry to form a new aristocracy, and the state to assume control over the economy and social welfare. For such thinkers, the spiritual health and organic order of medieval society depended upon its essentially undemocratic structure. The prominence of this analysis has unfortunately overshadowed the importance of two alternative treatments of Victorian medievalism, the Whig and the Socialist. While opposed in fundamental ways to one another, these interpretations are opposed in more significant ways to that dominant conservative tradition in that they created alternative myths of the Middle Ages to justify a more – not less – democratic society in the present and future. Such myths assisted the development of class consciousness by using the authority of history to sanction a social order which drew its moral and political strengths not from the ideals of the aristocracy, but from those of the middle and working classes, respectively. However, the following demonstration of the way similar historical points of departure can lead investigators to radically different conclusions ultimately reinforces the central characteristic of Victorian medievalism: that it represented less an attempt to recapture the past “as it really was” than a projection of current ideals back into time.

World Medievalism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise D'Arcens
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Television Programs ◽  
Indigenous Australia ◽  
Global Modernity ◽  
To Come ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Textual Culture ◽  
The Middle Ages

World Medievalism: The Middle Ages in Modern Textual Culture explores the ways in which a range of modern textual cultures have continued to engage creatively with the medieval past in order to come to terms with the global present. Building its argument through four case studies—from the Middle East, France, Southeast Asia, and Indigenous Australia–it shows that to understand medievalism as a cultural idiom with global reach, we need to develop a more nuanced grasp of the different ways ‘the Middle Ages’ have come to signify beyond Europe as well as within a Europe that has been transformed by multiculturalism and the global economy. The book’s case studies are explored within a conceptual framework in which medievalism itself is formulated as ‘world-disclosing’—a transhistorical encounter that enables the modern subject to apprehend the past ‘world’ opened up in medieval and medievalist texts and objects. The book analyses the cultural and material conditions under which its texts are produced, disseminated, and received and examines literature alongside films, television programs, newspapers and journals, political tracts, as well as such material and artefactual texts as photographs, paintings, statues, buildings, rock art, and fossils. While the case studies feature distinctive localized forms of medievalism, taken together they reveal how imperial and global legacies have ensured that the medieval period continues to be perceived as a commonly held past that can be retrieved, reclaimed, or revived in response to the accelerated changes and uncertainties of global modernity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document