scholarly journals Joseph Merlin in London, 1760–1803: the Man behind the Mask. New Documentary Sources

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 130-163
Author(s):  
Margaret Debenham
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Instrument Maker ◽  
Patent Rights ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Parish Registers

Joseph Merlin (1735–1803), ‘Ingenious Mechanick’, musical-instrument maker and flamboyant showman, is perhaps best remembered for his Museum in Princes Street, London, with its scintillating displays of automata and extraordinary inventions. Two newly identified sets of Court documents, Nicholl v. Merlin, 1779 and Merlin v. Celsson, 1779–81, now provide insights into previously unknown aspects of his business dealings and personal life. The former concerns a dispute over a house that Merlin commissioned to be built in 1776, the latter a violation of his 1774 combined harpsichord-pianoforte patent rights. Material relating to Lavigne Verel, his musical instrument foreman from 1773 to 1781, is also reported. Amongst other novel findings, perhaps the most surprising is Merlin's marriage in 1783. Contemporary primary-source material consulted includes original manuscripts held at The National Archives, UK, the Scone Palace Archives, Parish Registers, Land Tax and Apprenticeship records and numerous contemporary newspaper advertisements and notices.

The Swaziland Oral History Project

1987 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 383-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.A. Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Political Position ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
National Archives ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Selection Of

In 1985 an oral history project was established in Swaziland, based in the National Archives at Lobamba. The Oral History Project set itself three tasks; the establishment of an oral archive on Swazi history; the publication of a selection of transcripts form the oral archive concerning the precolonial history of Swaziland; the popularization of precolonial history.The precolonial history of Swaziland is the history of a largely non–literate people. The colonial period is well–documented, but mostly from the perspective of the colonial administration. Oral traditions are thus a primary source for both the precolonial and the later history of Swaziland. The Project is concerned to preserve oral testimonies about all periods of Swazi history, including the immediate past. Special attention however, has been paid to the collection and preservation of the oral record pertaining to the precolonial history of Swaziland, a period for which documentary sources are largely absent.There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the relative stability of the Swazi kingdom and its high degree of centralization imparted to early Swazi traditions a unique chronological depth. Secondly, the varied circumstances of incorporation of its many component chiefdoms have endowed Swaziland with an exceptionally rich corpus of local and regional traditons. This diversity facilitates the development of a picture of precolonial life that moves beyond the elitist versions of history which have long dominated both Swazi history and precolonial history elsewhere in southern Africa. Not only are the surviving Swazi oral traditions about the precolonial past unusually rich, but Swaziland occupied a pivotal political position in nineteenth–century southeast Africa. Its traditions illuminate the processes and forces that shaped the history of the entire region

The 2016 Police and Crime Commissioner elections

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Joyce
Keyword(s):  
Public Awareness ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the 2016 elections for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and to compare them with those that took place in 2012. It seeks to evaluate the background of the candidates who stood for office in 2016, the policies that they put forward, the results of the contests and the implications of the 2016 experience for future PCC elections. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based around several key themes – the profile of candidates who stood for election, preparations conducted prior to the contests taking place, the election campaign and issues raised during the contests, the results and the profile of elected candidates. The paper is based upon documentary research, making particular use of primary source material. Findings The research establishes that affiliation to a political party became the main route for successful candidates in 2016 and that local issues related to low-level criminality will dominate the future policing agenda. It establishes that although turnout was higher than in 2012, it remains low and that further consideration needs to be devoted to initiatives to address this for future PCC election contests. Research limitations/implications The research focusses on the 2016 elections and identifies a number of key issues that emerged during the campaign affecting the conduct of the contests which have a bearing on future PCC elections. It treats these elections as a bespoke topic and does not seek to place them within the broader context of the development of the office of PCC. Practical implications The research suggests that in order to boost voter participation in future PCC election contests, PCCs need to consider further means to advertise the importance of the role they perform and that the government should play a larger financial role in funding publicity for these elections and consider changing the method of election. Social implications The rationale for introducing PCCs was to empower the public in each police force area. However, issues that include the enhanced importance of political affiliation as a criteria for election in 2016 and the social unrepresentative nature of those who stood for election and those who secured election to this office in these contests coupled with shortcomings related to public awareness of both the role of PCCs and the timing of election contests threaten to undermine this objective. Originality/value The extensive use of primary source material ensures that the subject matter is original and its interpretation is informed by an academic perspective.

The Edwardians and the Making of a Modern Spanish Obsession

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsty Hooper
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Popular Imagination ◽  
Concert Halls ◽  
Material History ◽  
British People ◽  
Industrial Investment

What did the Edwardians know about Spain, and what was that knowledge worth? The Edwardians and the Making of a Modern Spanish Obsession draws on a vast store of largely unstudied primary source material to investigate Spain’s place in the turn-of-the-century British popular imagination. Set against a background of unprecedented emotional, economic and industrial investment in Spain, the book traces the extraordinary transformation that took place in British knowledge about the country and its diverse regions, languages and cultures between the tercentenary of the Spanish Armada in 1888 and the outbreak of World War I twenty-six years later. This empirically-grounded cultural and material history reveals how, for almost three decades, Anglo-Spanish connections, their history and culture were more visible, more colourfully represented, and more enthusiastically discussed in Britain’s newspapers, concert halls, council meetings and schoolrooms, than ever before. It shows how the expansion of education, travel, and publishing created unprecedented opportunities for ordinary British people not only to visit the country, but to see the work of Spanish and Spanish-inspired artists and performers in British galleries, theatres and exhibitions. It explores the work of novelists, travel writers, journalists, scholars, artists and performers to argue that the Edwardian knowledge of Spain was more extensive, more complex and more diverse than we have imagined.

scholarly journals Yes, John G Lake was a Con Man: A Response to Marius Nel

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Morton
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Apostolic Faith Mission

This response to Marius Nel’s 2016 article (in Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae no. 42, 1, 62-85) uses primary source material to refute his claims that John G Lake, the initiator of Pentecostalism in southern Africa, was an upstanding man of God. A wide array of American and South African sources show that Lake invented an extensive but fictitious life story, while also creating a similarly dubious divine calling that obscured his involvement in gruesome killings in America. Once in South Africa, he used invented “miracles” to raise funds abroad for the Apostolic Faith Mission. Before long, he faced many accusations of duplicity from inside his own church.

scholarly journals Naked eye: memoirs and diaries as a historical source material for studying the history of Belarusian press in the Second Polish Republic.

2020 ◽  
pp. 435-444
Author(s):  
Nadzeya Sluka
Keyword(s):  
Source Material ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Naked Eye ◽  
Unique Information ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
National Movement ◽  
History Of

The article deals with the particular kind of documentary sources for the history of the Belarusians in the Second Polish Republic – memoirs and diaries. The memoirs of Liudvika Vojcik, Janka Bagdanowič, Marjan Pieciukievič, and also the diaries of Maksim Tank and Piotr Siaŭruk are reviewed. The article concludes that personal writings provide unique information about the Belarusian national movement and the Belarusian press that can be applied in further historical research.  

Spiritualité, Spirituality, and Espiritualidad

2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-525
Author(s):  
Rady Roldán-Figueroa
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Colonial Latin America ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
Academic Study

Abstract This article offers a corrective to the widely held idea that the modern concept of spirituality is traceable to the seventeenth century French notion of spiritualité. Instead, the argument is made that the sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish terms spiritual and spiritualidad are earlier expressions of the modern concept of spirituality. The article opens with an examination of the place of spirituality in the academic study of religion and proceeds to a discussion of the premises of conceptual history and modern lexicography. In the closing section, the author analyses a plethora of lexicographical and other primary source material from the medieval to the early modern periods that demonstrate the usage of the terms spirital and espiritualidad in Spain as well as in colonial Latin America. Among the sources examined are Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana (Madrid: Luis Sánchez, 1611); Fernando de Valverde, Vida de Jesu Christo nuestro señor (Lima: Luis de Lyra, 1657); and Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Madrid: En la imprenta de Francisco del Hierro, 1726–1739).

Art and archives

1978 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 33-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Whalley ◽  
Clive Wainwright ◽  
Sarah Fox-Rtt
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
National Register ◽  
Siegfried Sassoon ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
General Kind ◽  
Victoria And Albert Museum ◽  
Active Policy

The Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum has always collected primary source material. This consists of artists’ letters, diaries, sitters’ books and various personal papers. Or it may be material of a more general kind: inventories, bills, unpublished articles, recipes for paints and varnishes and similar items of use to the Museum departments or to other readers. Occasionally in the past we have been offered material relating to a firm, a person, or a society, which consisted of a mixture of printed matter, photographs, original drawings, manuscript letters etc., which, when received in the Museum, would be divided among the relevant departments — the Library and the Department of Prints and Drawings in particular. The Library continues to acquire manuscript material of the kind mentioned above, and indeed in the last two years has pursued an active policy in this field. As a result we have acquired such varied items as the wardrobe accounts of the Empress Josephine for 1809 (2 large boxes of them), a 16th century herald’s sketchbook, an unpublished history of jade, and a letter from Sir William Nicholson to Siegfried Sassoon agreeing to illustrate ‘Memoirs of a fox-hunting man’. A list of the English accessions is published annually, and all acquisitions are notified to the National Register of Archives. Most of the items were acquired by purchase (e.g. from booksellers’ lists or auction sales), but there have also been some welcome donations.

Art and Society in England and France in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Two Paintings before the Public

1972 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 119-139
Author(s):  
Alan Bowness
Keyword(s):  
Primary Source ◽  
Source Material ◽  
The State ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Art And Society ◽  
The Moment ◽  
State Of Art

The primary source material for the art historian is of course the work of art, and this in itself places him in a fortunate position because the permanent relevance of the work of art is, I take it, self-evident. For the art historian, the work of art is an historical fact, pre-selected for generally accepted aesthetic reasons. But the work of art has no absolute meaning: it does not exist in a vacuum. It has both what we might call a history and a geography—the history being that record of interpretation and evaluation which accrues to the work of art from the moment of its creation down to the present day; and the geography being the particular artistic and social context of its original creation. The history can at times be very misleading: it is obvious that each generation is going to interpret the past as it wishes, and no judgment can be objective. So it is the geography that is more important, and this is extremely difficult to define. But if we are to understand the work of art, we need to enquire into the circumstances of its creation: we must ask, what did this painting or sculpture or building signify when it first appeared? Only from such specific investigations can one proceed to general propositions about the state of art at any particular moment, and perhaps also about the state of society which produced the art.

DIRK VANDEWALLE, Libya Since Independence: Oil and State-Building (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998). Pp. 245. $45 cloth, $16.95 paper.

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-319
Author(s):  
Azzedine Layachi
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
State Building ◽  
Source Material ◽  
North African ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
Rentier States

Among Middle Eastern and North African states, Libya has been under-studied, especially in recent years, because of difficulties in doing fieldwork and because of Libya's isolation by the American-led international boycott in the wake of the Lockerbie incident. Vandewalle's book is not only a much needed and fresh look at the inner workings of Libya; it is also a very valuable contribution to an ongoing theoretical debate over rentier states, state-building, and étatism. It is the culmination of fourteen months of fieldwork that included interviews with many high officials and access to primary source material available only in Libya.

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