Defining the Common Good: Empire, Religion and Philosophy in Eighteenth- Century Britain. Peter N. Miller , Quentin Skinner

1996 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 681-683
Author(s):  
E. J. Hundert
2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-271
Author(s):  
Hugh D. Hudson

For Russian subjects not locked away in their villages and thereby subject almost exclusively to landlord control, administration in the eighteenth century increasingly took the form of the police. And as part of the bureaucracy of governance, the police existed within the constructions of the social order—as part of social relations and their manifestations through political control. This article investigates the social and mental structures—the habitus—in which the actions of policing took place to provide a better appreciation of the difficulties of reform and modernization. Eighteenth-century Russia shared in the European discourse on the common good, the police, and social order. But whereas Michel Foucault and Michael Ignatieff see police development in Europe with its concern to surveil and discipline emerging from incipient capitalism and thus a product of new, post-Enlightenment social forces, the Russian example demonstrates the power of the past, of a habitus rooted in Muscovy. Despite Peter’s and especially Catherine’s well-intended efforts, Russia could not succeed in modernization, for police reforms left the enserfed part of the population subject to the whims of landlord violence, a reflection, in part, of Russia having yet to make the transition from the feudal manorial economy based on extra-economic compulsion to the capitalist hired-labor estate economy. The creation of true centralized political organization—the creation of the modern state as defined by Max Weber—would require the state’s domination over patrimonial jurisdiction and landlord control over the police. That necessitated the reforms of Alexander II.


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (25) ◽  
pp. 208
Author(s):  
Fernanda Fioravante Kelmer Mathias

<p>O presente artigo tem por objetivo a discussão acerca das receitas das câmaras mineiras de Vila Rica e Vila de São João del Rei entre os anos de 1719 e 1750. De modo geral, a historiografia sobre o tema, seja em Portugal, seja no Brasil, apesar de pouco sistemática, defende o senso comum de que as receitas das câmaras no período moderno eram bastante modestas. Dessa forma, para melhor compreender os números da receita camarária, especialmente no que concerne à atuação da câmara frente ao bem comum dos povos e ordenação da sociedade, busquei realizar uma análise pormenorizada e sistemática da receita anual de duas importantes câmaras mineiras na primeira metade do século XVIII, bem como inserir a discussão dentro do debate historiográfico atinente aos recursos da câmara. Para além, o artigo em questão assume uma perspectiva comparativa tanto no que concerne aos dados fornecidos pela historiografia, quanto em relação às duas câmaras em apreço.</p><p><strong><br /></strong></p><p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>In general, both in Portugal and in Brazil, the historiography on the subject, although unsystematic, defends the common sense that the revenue from the council in the modern period was rather modest. Thus, to better understand the revenue of the council, especially in relation to the performance of the council in the common good of the people and in the ordering of society, the article examines in detail the revenue of the two major councils of captaincy of Minas Gerais in the first half eighteenth century. The text also contextualizes the discussion within the historiographical debate on the subject. The article analyses the data provided by the historiography, and the relationship between the two councils, from a comparative perspective.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: Colonial Minas; Council’s revenue; Council’s function.</p>


1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Armitage

The transformation of patriotism into nationalism has become one of the accepted grand narratives of eighteenth-century British history. From its first appearance in English in the 1720s, “patriotism” as a political slogan expressed devotion to the common good of the patria and hostility to sectional interests and became a staple of oppositional politics. Though it was attacked by ministerialist writers, it was a liability only for those like the elder Pitt, whose attachment to patriotism when in opposition was not matched by his behavior when in government. However, the Wilkesite agitations and the debate over the American War decisively tainted patriotism with the whiff of factious reformism, and it was in just this context, in 1775, that Dr. Samuel Johnson famously redefined patriotism as “the last refuge of a scoundrel.” In the following half century, both radicals and loyalists fought over the appropriation of patriotism: the radicals to rescue it from the contempt into which it had fallen in the 1770s, the loyalists and the government to harness its potent discourse of national duty for the cause of monarchical revivalism and aggressive anti-Gallicanism. It is now generally agreed that the conservatives won, as the oppositional language of the early and mid-eighteenth century was thereby transformed into “an officially constructed patriotism which stressed attachment to the monarchy, the importance of empire, the value of military and naval achievement, and the desirability of strong, stable government by a virtuous, able and authentically British elite.”


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