Ideas of Race in Early America

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean P. Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
American Indians ◽  
Skin Color ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early America ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Purity Of Blood

“Race,” as a concept denoting a fundamental division of humanity and usually encompassing cultural as well as physical traits, was crucial in early America. It provided the foundation for the colonization of Native land, the enslavement of American Indians and Africans, and a common identity among socially unequal and ethnically diverse Europeans. Longstanding ideas and prejudices merged with aims to control land and labor, a dynamic reinforced by ongoing observation and theorization of non-European peoples. Although before colonization, neither American Indians, nor Africans, nor Europeans considered themselves unified “races,” Europeans endowed racial distinctions with legal force and philosophical and scientific legitimacy, while Natives appropriated categories of “red” and “Indian,” and slaves and freed people embraced those of “African” and “colored,” to imagine more expansive identities and mobilize more successful resistance to Euro-American societies. The origin, scope, and significance of “racial” difference were questions of considerable transatlantic debate in the age of Enlightenment and they acquired particular political importance in the newly independent United States. Since the beginning of European exploration in the 15th century, voyagers called attention to the peoples they encountered, but European, American Indian, and African “races” did not exist before colonization of the so-called New World. Categories of “Christian” and “heathen” were initially most prominent, though observations also encompassed appearance, gender roles, strength, material culture, subsistence, and language. As economic interests deepened and colonies grew more powerful, classifications distinguished Europeans from “Negroes” or “Indians,” but at no point in the history of early America was there a consensus that “race” denoted bodily traits only. Rather, it was a heterogeneous compound of physical, intellectual, and moral characteristics passed on from one generation to another. While Europeans assigned blackness and African descent priority in codifying slavery, skin color was secondary to broad dismissals of the value of “savage” societies, beliefs, and behaviors in providing a legal foundation for dispossession. “Race” originally denoted a lineage, such as a noble family or a domesticated breed, and concerns over purity of blood persisted as 18th-century Europeans applied the term—which dodged the controversial issue of whether different human groups constituted “varieties” or “species”—to describe a roughly continental distribution of peoples. Drawing upon the frameworks of scripture, natural and moral philosophy, and natural history, scholars endlessly debated whether different races shared a common ancestry, whether traits were fixed or susceptible to environmentally produced change, and whether languages or the body provided the best means to trace descent. Racial theorization boomed in the U.S. early republic, as some citizens found dispossession and slavery incompatible with natural-rights ideals, while others reconciled any potential contradictions through assurances that “race” was rooted in nature.

scholarly journals Aproximación al estudio de las antigüedades en la América española en el siglo XVIII a través de tres instrucciones

2017 ◽  
pp. 317
Author(s):  
Alicia León Gómez ◽  
Raquel Gil Fernández
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Personal Property ◽  
Recommended Treatment ◽  
Colonial Archaeology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Source Of Information

Resumen: En este artículo analizamos tres instrucciones emitidas en el siglo XVIII en las que se alude al tratamiento de vestigios arqueológicos de la América española. A través de ellas podemos observar la evolución en la concepción imperante en cada momento sobre los restos arqueológicos, y cómo se va trascendiendo desde la perspectiva anticuarista hasta una nueva corriente en la que se empiezan a tratar como fuente de información. Centrándonos en los capítulos dedicados a antigüedades, analizaremos el cuerpo de las instrucciones redactadas por Franco Dávila, Antonio de Ulloa y José de Estacharía y el tratamiento que se recomienda en las mismas para los restos muebles e inmuebles hallados en la América Colonial.Palabras clave: Instrucciones, Historia de la arqueología de la América Colonial, anticuarismo, novatores, antigüedades americanasAbstract: In this article, we analyse three sets of instructions, issued in the 18th century, referring to the treatment of the archaeological vestiges of Spanish America. Through them we can trace the evolution of the prevailing idea concerning archaeological remains at every moment, and how a shift from the antiquarian perspective to a new trend will allow them to be treated as a source of information. We analyse the body of instructions written by Franco Davila, Antonio de Ulloa and José de Estacharía, focusing on the chapters dedicated to antiques, which recommended treatment for the remains and personal property found in Colonial America.Key words: Instructions, History of the American Colonial archaeology, antiquarianism, novatores, American antiques 

scholarly journals Documentation of Caddo Ceramic Vessel Sherds from the Shelby Site (41CP71) in the Vernon Holcomb Collection, Camp County, Texas

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy K. Perttula
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Animal Remains ◽  
Archaeological Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ceramic Vessels ◽  
Building Activities ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Work Done

The Shelby site (41CP71) is an important Late Caddo period, Titus phase, religious and political center on Greasy Creek in the Northeast Texas Pineywoods. The site, occupied from the 15th century A.D. until at least the late 17th century A.D., is a large and well-preserved settlement with abundant habitation features as well as plant and animal remains, evidence of mound building activities in the form of a 1.5 m high structural mound, and a large community cemetery with at least 119 burial pits and perhaps as many as 200. The Shelby site is the nexus of one of a number of Titus phase political communities in the Big Cypress Creek stream basin. Nevertheless, very little is known archaeologically about the site—or the history of the Caddo’s settlement there—since almost all the work done at the site since it was discovered in 1979 has been by looters. Perttula and Nelson completed a limited amount of work in the village area in 2003, and Bob Turner and others worked in the 1.5 m high structural mound between 1985-1988, but an overall synthesis of the Caddo occupation at the Shelby site awaits more extensive professional archaeological investigations. One key step in any professional archaeological work that may be forthcoming at the site includes the documentation of Caddo material culture remains, especially Caddo ceramics, that are known to have come from the site, as they provide a record of the temporal, functional, and stylistic range of the ceramic vessels used and discarded at the site, as well as evidence of interaction and contact between different but contemporaneous Caddo groups. In August 2009, I had an opportunity to document a collection of Caddo ceramic sherds held by Vernon Holcomb from the Shelby site. He collected these sherds from the surface of the site some 25-30 years ago where they had been eroded out of the banks of a dry or intermittent stream branch that drains north to Greasy Creek.

Doctrine of Affections

Music ◽  
2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Compositional Techniques ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Baroque Music ◽  
History Of ◽  
Baroque Era ◽  
Temperament Theory ◽  
Rhetorical Discourse ◽  
Theoretical Issues

The “doctrine of affections” is a legendary creature created by early-20th-century German musicologists: its head is made of prescriptive treatises and its body of descriptive compositions. The term has however entered scholarly parlance and is commonly used to refer to a cluster of theorizations and compositional strategies that shared a common aim: emphasizing the affective dimension of music in order to move the listener. The “doctrine of affections” derives its name from the German term Affektenlehre and it lived its golden age in the Baroque era (see the Oxford Bibliographies article on Baroque Music and its section “Music-Theoretical Issues”). It merges a renewed humanistic interest in the ars rhetorica, ensued to the rediscovery of texts such as Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria during the 15th century, with an interest in the mechanics of the passions, fostered by Descartes’ Passions de l’âme (1649). The power of music to raise or soothe the passions had already been discussed by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle (the latter’s theory of catharsis proving especially successful during the Renaissance), and in some sense “doctrines of affections” have often accompanied the history of thinking about music and its effects. However the “doctrine of affections” stricto sensu is tied to the revival of doctrines of musical ethos by the humanists, in combination with medical elements derived from galenic temperament theory and with the idea of musica humana derived from Boethius (Ficino’s theories being a notable example of this combination). Baroque doctrines of affections, while deriving some themes—such as the link between modes and affects—from these former traditions, modified their gravity center. From a Renaissance medical model interested in the bodily transformations induced by music, the focus shifts to a rhetorical model interested in producing determinate effects on the listeners in the orator’s mode. During the 16th and 17th centuries, from the philosophical upsurge of interest in passions themselves and in their communicability and from the coeval transformations in musical compositional techniques, a renovated rhetorical discourse on affective music and its relation to the poetical texts was drafted. Drawing on the speculations of authors like Descartes, Mersenne, and Kircher, 18th-century theorists tried to single out the affective power of modes and figures, albeit without creating universal theories. These musico-rhetorical theories dawned when a new way of addressing the world of the passions and affections was devised later in the 18th century.

The first Russian dictionaries

2021 ◽  
pp. 36-43
Author(s):  
Н.Е. Касьяненко
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Alphabetical Order ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Статья посвящена истории развития словарного дела на Руси и появлению первых словарей. Затрагиваются первые, несловарные формы описания лексики в письменных памятниках XI–XVII вв. (глоссы), из которых черпался материал для собственно словарей. Анализируются основные лексикографические жанры этого времени и сложение на их основе азбуковников. В статье уделено внимание таким конкретным лексикографическим произведениям, как ономастикону «Рѣчь жидовскаго «зыка» (XVIII в.), словарям-символикам «Толк о неразумнех словесех» (XV в.) и «Се же приточне речеся», произвольнику, объясняющему славянские слова, «Тлъкование нεоудобь познаваεмомъ въ писаныхъ рѣчемь» (XIV в.), разговорнику «Рѣчь тонкословія греческаго» (ХV в.). Характеризуется словарь Максима Грека «Толкованіе именамъ по алфавиту» (XVI в.). Предметом более подробного освещения стал «Лексис…» Л. Зизания – первый печатный словарь на Руси. На примерах дается анализ его реестровой и переводной частей. Рассматривается известнейший труд П. Берынды «Лексикон славеноросский и имен толкование», а также рукописный «Лексикон латинский…» Е. Славинецкого, являющий собой образец переводного словаря XVII в. The article is dedicated to the history of the development of vocabulary in Russia and the emergence of the first dictionaries. The first, non-verbar forms of description of vocabulary in written monuments of the 11th and 17th centuries (glosses), from which material for the dictionaries themselves were drawn, are affected. The main lexicographical genres of this time are analyzed and the addition of alphabets on their basis. The article focuses on specific lexicographical works such as the «Zhidovskago» (18th century) the dictionaries-symbols of «The Talk of Unreasonable Words» (the 15th century). and «The Same Speech», an arbitrary explanation of slavic words, «The tlution of the cognition in the written», (the 14th century), the phrasebook «Ry subtle Greek» (the 15th century). Maxim Greck's dictionary «Tolkien names in alphabetical order» (16th century) is characterized. The subject of more detailed coverage was «Lexis...» L. Sizania is the first printed dictionary in Russia. Examples give analysis of its registry and translation parts. The famous work of P. Berynda «Lexicon of Slavic and Names of Interpretation» and the handwritten «Lexicon Latin...» are considered. E. Slavinecki, which is a model of the 17th century translated dictionary.

The Politics of Poetics: Nonnus' Dionysiaca and the World of Late Antiquity

Ramus ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 99-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Shorrock
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Focus

Over the last thirty years or so our understanding of the world of late antiquity has undergone a radical transformation. In addition to the important contributions by historians such as Peter Brown (on the body and society) and Averil Cameron (on the evolution of Christian discourse), new perspectives have also been opened up on the material culture of the later empire. In the arena of literary criticism, however, signs of any analogous transformation have been much less obvious. Though, of course, it is easy to overstate the case, it is nevertheless clear from the bibliographic record that the literature of the late antique period has not yet been subject to the intense critical attention of other epochs, such as the Second Sophistic. This article will attempt on a necessarily modest scale to address this lack of critical attention.My primary focus is the fifth-century CE epic poem, the Dionysiaca of Nonnus, a product of Roman Egypt, written in Greek in forty-eight chapter-length books. It runs to over 21,000 hexameter lines—some five thousand lines longer than Homer's Iliad—and tells the story of the wine-loving Dionysus, the hero whose destiny it is to become a god. Though its influence on the wider literary culture of late antiquity was profound, it has remained a marginalised and neglected text within the history of modern classical scholarship. The Dionysiaca exists as an often quoted yet rarely read compendium of obscure mythological information, and is periodically mined for allusions to earlier and implicitly ‘better’ poets whose works have only survived in fragmentary form, but it is rarely considered on its own terms.

scholarly journals Changing Interpretations of Plotinus: The 18th-Century Introduction of the Concept of a ‘System of Philosophy’

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo Catana
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Reader ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Method Point

Abstract This article critically explores the history and nature of a hermeneutic assumption which frequently guided interpretations of Plotinus from the 18th century onwards, namely that Plotinus advanced a system of philosophy. It is argued that this assumption was introduced relatively late, in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that it was primarily made possible by Brucker’s methodology for the history of philosophy, dating from the 1740s, to which the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’ was essential. It is observed that the concept is absent from Ficino’s commentary from the 15th century, and that it remained absent in interpretations produced between the 15th and 18th centuries. It is also argued that the assumption of a ‘system of philosophy’ in Plotinus is historically incorrect—we do not find this concept in Plotinus’ writings, and his own statements about method point in other directions. Eduard Zeller (active in the second half of the 19th century) is typically regarded as the first to give a satisfying account of Plotinus’ philosophy as a whole. In this article, on the other hand, Zeller is seen as having finalised a tradition initiated in the 18th century. Very few Plotinus scholars have examined the interpretative development prior to Zeller. Schiavone (1952) and Bonetti (1971), for instance, have given little attention to Brucker’s introduction of the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’. The present analysis, then, has value for an understanding of Plotinus’ Enneads. It also explains why “pre-Bruckerian” interpretations of Plotinus appear alien to the modern reader; the analysis may even serve to make some sense of the hermeneutics employed by Renaissance Platonists and commentators, who are often eclipsed from the tradition of Platonism.

scholarly journals The Ritual of “Exposing the Thief” in Old Rus: from the Enactment by the Archbishop of Novgorod Ioann III to Apocryphal Manuscript Culture

Slovene ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 262-295
Author(s):  
Alina S. Alekseeva
Keyword(s):  
Full Text ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
Old Russian ◽  
Textual Study ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Greek Tradition ◽  
History Of

The Old Russian ritual of “Exposing the Thief” (“The Decree on the Proskomedia to the Holy Three Confessors Gurias, Samonas and Abibus”) was written by the Archbishop of Novgorod, Ioann III. The creation of the text was inspired by the sign from the icon of the confessors on December 24, 1410 in St. Sophia Cathedral. The full text of the “Decree…” is preserved in two copies from the 16th –17th centuries, whereas the prayer alone until recently was known in two copies not earlier than the 17th century. The corpus of copies of the prayer was replenished with two copies in manuscripts from the end of the 14th or the beginning of the 15th century and from the 18th century, respectively. The discovery of the first copy raised the question about the original text written by Archbishop Ioann: did he write the prescriptive part for a previously known prayer only or the full text? A textual study of the “Decree...” and the copies of the prayer allows to reconstruct the history of the text and conclude that the archetype contained both the prayer and the prescriptive part. Thus, it could be confirmed that the author of both parts of the “Decree...” is Archbishop Ioann, but the prayer is a less uniform formation. The comparison with Slavic prayers showed that the fragment about the forefathers, going back to a Greek tradition, was borrowed by Ioann from a South Slavic manuscript, while the first part of the text about the three confessors was compiled by the archbishop himself in the context of the special attitude of Novgorod to the cult of St. Gurias, Samonas and Abibus.

scholarly journals Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in the Days of Great Trials: 1941-1942

2020 ◽  
pp. 719-735
Author(s):  
Simon S. Ilizarov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Ussr Academy ◽  
Scientific Heritage ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Geographical Society ◽  
Soviet Academy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

This paper reviews the work of the Archive of the Soviet Academy of Sciences during the blockade of Leningrad in 1941–42. It is based on the archive series that contains a report detailing the work of the 22 Academy’s institutions in Leningrad (11 scientific research institutes, 3 museums, the Archive, the Library, the Geographical Society, etc.) over 7 months of 1942 and prepared for the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It lists Archive’s staff members who died or were evacuated during this period. It shows that, even in the hardest days under the blockade, the work in the Archive never stopped. An important part of this work was associated with the activities of the Commission for the History of the USSR Academy of Sciences (KIAN). The paper reviews the history of the KIAN creation under the auspices of the Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Leningrad in 1938, soon after forcible liquidation of the Institute for the History of Science and Technology and tragic death of its first director, Academician N.I. Bukharin. A number of outstanding historians-archivists and historians of science – A.I. Andreyev, I.I. Lyubimenko, L.B. Modzalevskii, and others – participated in the work of the KIAN headed by Academician S. I. Vavilov and his deputy, Director of the Archive, G.A. Knyazev. The research and archaeographic work of the Archive’s staff was associated with preparation of publications for the “Scientific Heritage” series (it was established in 1940 upon initiative of the President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences V. L. Komarov with active participation of the eminent historian of science T. I. Rainov). During that period, the editorial work on the second volume of the “Reviews of Archive Materials” (Obozreniya arkhivnykh materialov) was completed and V.F. Gnucheva completed her unique history-of-science book “The Geographical Department of the 18th century Academy of Sciences.” Both books were published after the war, in 1946. The main result of the work of the few Archive’s staff members was safeguarding the precious historical materials and searching for, concentrating, and preserving documentation of evacuated institutions and individual scientists, some of whom were killed by the cold, famine, and diseases. The paper contains data from official reports: quantitative data concerning documents taken into the Archive’s custody in 1941 and in 1942 and processed and described series; it names institutions and scholars, whose documents ended up in the Archive of the Academy of Sciences. By July 31, 1942, the number of fonds in the Archive reached 740. Reports of such Academy institutions as the Institute of Oriental Studies, the N.Ya. Marr Institute for the History of Material Culture, the Institute of Literature, the All-Union Geographical Society, and others allow the scholars to analyze their work associated with the preservation of books and archival fonds and collections. The paper is based on documentary sources that are being introduced into scientific use for the first time.

Fortress in the village of Achabet in the Republic of South Ossetia According to Written Sources and Historiographic Data

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-31
Author(s):  
Eduard V. Kaziev
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
South Ossetia ◽  
The Third ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Comparative Historical Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Village ◽  
Written Sources

The fortress in the village of Achabet is known from a number of written sources of the early 15th and 18th centuries. Despite this circumstance, in the scientific tradition it is contradictory to believe that the first information about the fortress contained in written sources refers to the events of the middle of the 16th century, and the lower limit of several periods of its construction is correlated by researchers with the same time. The presence of a contradiction between the information about the fortress contained in written sources and the presentation of this information in the scientific tradition determined the relevance of this study. The aim of the study, therefore, was to resolve this contradiction by analyzing and comparing the known information from written sources about this monument with information about it contained in the historical and linguistic literature, as well as with descriptions of the monument presented in the literature on the history of fortifications of the Transcaucasia. This comparison, in turn, made it possible to present a possible chronology of the construction of a number of objects that made up the complex of the monument over several periods of its construction. According to the results of the study, it is assumed that the tower and the adjacent semicircle of the first fortress wall were erected at the turn of the 13th–14th centuries, the second fortress wall was built along the first in the second half of the 15th century, and the third wall, the largest in terms of area covered, was erected in the 30-s of the 18th century. The materials for the study were written sources, as well as information about field examinations of the monument, available in the scientific tradition. The research was carried out on the basis of the method of comparative historical analysis.

scholarly journals PLANIGRAPHY AND TYPOLOGICAL CARACTERYSTYC OF GLASS ITEMS FROM AKKERMAN

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 133-148
Author(s):  
S. O. Biliaieva ◽  
O. Ye. Fialko
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Military History ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military

Archaeological materials of Belgorod-Akkerman cause great interest as the monument of different civilizations, the interrelations of which in the field of the material culture, not enough study yet. Take in attention the perspectives of planigraphic analyse, which was accepted earlier on the base of the glasses for architectural reconstructions of the Turkish bathhouse, the article is the first attempt to represent the results of complex analyse of the glass things (nearby 1000 exemplars), which were founded on the whole square of the excavations of the expedition of 1999—2010. On the base of the two main parameters: planigraphy and typology of the findings in the buildings of the Low yard of the fortress the fact of the interrelation of artefacts with historical development of various structures was established. Some differences in using the glass artefacts in the bathhouse and barbican were admitted. The new page of the military history of Akkerman of the 18th century became the mass findings of fragments of glass grenades, which have been led to the destruction of the barbican.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document