Family Life in Early Modern Times, 1500–1789. Edited by David I.  Kertzer and Marzio  Barbagli. The History of the European Family, volume 1. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. Pp. xxxii+365. $35.00.

2003 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 923-925
Author(s):  
Merry Wiesner‐Hanks
Author(s):  
Derek Offord

G. M. Hamburg, Russia’s Path Toward Enlightenment: Faith, Politics, and Reason, 1500–1801. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016, 912 p. ISBN: 9780300113136


The history of war is also a history of its justification. The contributions to this book argue that the justification of war rarely happens as empty propaganda. While it is directed at mobilizing support and reducing resistance, it is not purely instrumental. Rather, the justification of force is part of an incessant struggle over what is to count as justifiable behaviour in a given historical constellation of power, interests, and norms. This way, the justification of specific wars interacts with international order as a normative frame of reference for dealing with conflict. The justification of war shapes this order and is being shaped by it. As the justification of specific wars entails a critique of war in general, the use of force in international relations has always been accompanied by political and scholarly discourses on its appropriateness. In much of the pertinent literature the dominating focus is on theoretical or conceptual debates as a mirror of how international normative orders evolve. In contrast, the focus of the present volume is on theory and political practice as sources for the re- and de-construction of the way in which the justification of war and international order interact. The book offers a unique collection of papers exploring the continuities and changes in war discourses as they respond to and shape normative orders from early modern times to the present. It comprises contributions from International Law, History and International Relations and from Western and non-Western perspectives.


Reinardus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
Wilt L. Idema

Abstract The tale of the war of the mice against the cat has a history of several thousands of years. First known from ancient Egypt, it was wide-spread in Classical antiquity, would remain popular in the Near East until modern times, and also was widely known in Europe in medieval and early modern times in paintings, prints, songs, and mock-epics. In China the most popular tale on the antagonism of mice and cats was the tale of their underworld court case. Starting from the first half of the nineteenth century, some versions of that tale also include an account of the war between the two species. Only one stand-alone treatment of the theme is known from an edition of the 1920s. In Japan the theme of the war of the mice against the cats also makes its first appearance in print in the first half of the nineteenth century. No direct foreign influence can be discerned in the emergence of this theme in either country.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-135
Author(s):  
Peter Strohschneider ◽  

The essay draws on the concept of ‘asymmetric counter-concepts’ as developed by Reinhart Koselleck starting with twin-formulas such as ‘the familiar and the unfamiliar’ which are generally used to establish collective des­ignations of the self and others and which institutionalize the axiological and the epistemological. These counter-concepts can have different semantic temperatures. The focus is on the underlying meaning-production schemes which produce value-asymmetries. The essay tries to show that a process of heating up these value-asymmetries is only one side of the history of such asymmetric counter-concepts from medieval to modern times. Simultaneously a cooling down can be observed in written texts from different periods; examples include the 12th century Rolandslied and the 16th century Essais of Michel de Montaigne. Full negation eliminates uncertainties and value insecurities. But the complexities and contingencies that emerge since Early Modern times then lead to losses of negatability (Negierbarkeitsverluste), which in turn render gains in unfamiliarity. The modern experience of the foreign is indeterminate otherness instead of determined negation that characterized pre-modern alterity. Modern societies therefore need to mediate between validity and contingency under the circumstances of plurality. Interpretational demands and uncertainty about the relevant interpretive frames increase. Foreignness is then experienced as unfamiliarity. This presupposes intellectual attitudes like irritability, curiosity, and willingness to learn. The modern concept of ‘culture’ then is proposed as a comparative pattern where only unavoidable structural asymmetry remains. It explains cultural differences and the experience of foreignness through heterogeneity. Using this specifically modern pattern, there is no longer a legitimate value slope between one’s own position and its negation. The distinction is then between the familiar and the unfamiliar.


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