Textiles in the Atlantic World

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Tuckett
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
World Cotton ◽  
Plant Fibers ◽  
Cultural Economic

Textile history is not just about the cloth itself; it is also about how that cloth was made, who used it and how, and what these factors can tell us as researchers about wider social, cultural, economic, and political practices of the past. Whether made of animal or plant fibers; woven, knitted, or felted; plain or dyed; embroidered or printed, textiles are used on some level by all societies and cultures. This use ranges from flat textiles such as blankets or bedding to utilitarian and fashionable garments that, respectively, protect or adorn the body, as well as giving observers a visual cue by which they can judge and categorize the wearer. Within the Atlantic world specifically, textiles can tell us about the ingenuity, social hierarchy, and cultural practices of indigenous populations before, during, and after colonial expansion. They can inform us about the development of the Atlantic economy in the early modern period, and the rise of industrial textile production over domestic manufacture from the late 18th century onward. Significantly, they can also tell us about the personal skills, tastes, and circumstances of the indigenous, free, and enslaved people who made, transported, used, and interpreted these goods in and around the Atlantic world. Exploring and understanding the history of textiles therefore involves the study of craft and design, technology and industrialization, goods and consumption, and people and society. Readers will find it helpful to also consult the Oxford Bibliographies articles on “Clothing,” “Material Culture in the Atlantic World,” “Cotton,” and “Silk.”

Self and Body

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Sassatelli
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Specific Configuration ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
Late Modern

This article investigates the historical formation and specific configuration of a threefold relation crucial to contemporary society, that between the body, the self, and material culture, which, in contemporary, late modern (or post-industrial) societies, has become largely defined through consumer culture. Drawing on historiography, sociology, and anthropology, it explores how, from the early modern period, the consolidation of new consumption patterns and values has given way to particular visions of the human being as a consumer, and how, in turn, the consumer has become a cultural battlefield for the management of body and self. The article also discusses tastes, habitus, and individualization.

The Dutch in South America and the Caribbean

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Ebert
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Financial Services ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Atlantic History ◽  
Salvador Da Bahia ◽  
Spanish Atlantic ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Republic

The concept of “Latin America” gained currency only in modern times, and its use as an organizing concept for the early modern period is limited. The best way to understand the involvement of the Dutch Republic in overseas colonizing efforts is through the idea of Atlantic history. This involvement was part and parcel of the fitful consolidation of the Republic in the latter decades of the 16th century, as the “rebellious provinces” took their war with Habsburg Spain to Spanish Atlantic possessions. A more sustained assault on the Iberian Atlantic began with the chartering of the first Dutch West India Company (WIC) in 1621. A short-lived invasion of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil’s colonial capital, was followed by a successful occupation of the rich sugar-producing captaincy of Pernambuco from 1630 to 1654. Dutch New York, by way of comparison, was a small venture. Grand schemes for large Dutch colonies in territories claimed by the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies came to nothing, and the WIC was reorganized in 1674 with more modest ambitions. The Dutch subsequently established a vigorous presence in Suriname, Curaçao, and a handful of islands in the Lesser Antilles embracing plantation agriculture, trade, and financial services. This bibliography examines Dutch Atlantic world historiography with a focus on competition with the Iberian empires, especially in Brazil. It also discusses works on other Dutch outposts, which are considered collectively as a “Caribbean zone,” whether mainland or island. Administered only loosely by the second WIC, these colonies became sites of vigorous interaction with all the other European Atlantic powers throughout the 18th century. Other sections list works on the Dutch in the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in Dutch colonies, the history of Portuguese Jews in the Dutch Atlantic world, and published primary sources relevant to Dutch Atlantic history.

The Northwest Coast

Anthropology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie H. Tepper
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Geographic Area ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Northwest Coast ◽  
European Contact ◽  
The North

The distinctive culture of the Indigenous populations on the Northwest Coast (NWC) and their colonial history—from European contact in the 17th century to contemporary issues of land claims and reconciliation—have helped to frame many of the themes and models of ethnographic theory and practice, particularly in American anthropology. The NWC is often defined as the geographic area stretching from Alaska to California. For the purposes of this bibliography, the study area is limited to what is sometimes called the “North Pacific Coast,” which begins at the southern border of Alaska, continues down the coastline of British Columbia (BC), and ends in northern Washington State. Its rocky coastline is broken up by deep fjords and offshore islands, including Vancouver Island in the south and Haida Gwaii (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands) in the north. Several major river systems provide access to the BC interior through the mountainous Cascade Range. Though local resources vary along the coast, almost all the Indigenous groups followed a similar seasonal cycle of fishing, hunting, and gathering from spring to fall. The winter months were dedicated to the manufacture of material culture, social feasting, and ceremonial gatherings. Large oceangoing canoes and smaller river crafts linked well-established villages into an extensive series of trade routes. Walking trails over the mountains allowed the exchange of seafood and other coastal products for animal skins and goods from interior forests. Warfare brought additional wealth to the victor by means of raiding stored foods and manufactured items. European contact began in the late 18th century with the arrival of Spanish and British explorers. They were followed by English, American, and Russian fur traders. The discovery of gold along the Fraser River in 1858, and later finds in the Cariboo Mountains, brought tens of thousands of American, British, and other immigrants to the area. British sovereignty over the area north of the 49th parallel was quickly reinforced by the Royal Navy and an expanded colonial administration. In 1871 the province of British Columbia joined the Canadian Confederation and NWC Indigenous communities came under the control of the federal Indian Act. This act is still in force.

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 Concepts of exhibiting ethnographic collections of the 18th century Kunstkamera of the Imperial Academy of Sciences

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-218
Author(s):  
Margarita F. Khartanovich ◽  
◽  
Maria V. Khartanovich ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Traditional Culture ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The Body ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Imperial Academy ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The exposition of the 18th century Kunstkamera of the Imperial Academy of Sciences was arranged according to the principle of a universal, all-encompassing presentation of the surrounding world through material monuments. Along with natural history collections, items related to the traditional spiritual and material culture of various peoples were displayed in the Kunstkamera. As part of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, the Kunstkamera was a kind of public presentation of the activities of academicians, reflecting the development of scientific knowledge in a particular area through the principles of organizing objects and their interpretation. This article analyzes the stages of exhibiting objects of traditional culture, their relationship and interdependence with the development of scientific interest in the “description of peoples”. In the first decades of public exposure for the Kunstkamera (1730s–1740s), the items of traditional culture of any nation were exhibited based on their functional purpose. Large-scale expeditionary geographic studies of Russia, begun by Peter I and continued during subsequent reigns, significantly expanded the body of information and materials stored and studied at the Imperial Academy of Sciences. The ethnographic assemblies received state “publication” during the ethnographic carnival, organized on the occasion of celebrations upon the signing of a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Empress Anna Ioannovna. Since the end of the 1740s, due to the expeditionary research of the territories of the Russian Empire, the collection of ethnographic items has acquired a systemic classification character, which contributes to a reliable reflection of the system of organizing life sustainment for a certain people in specific territorial conditions. By the last decades of the 18th century, the ethnographic exposition of the Kunstkamera of the Imperial Academy of Sciences was the result of an integrated scientific approach to the presentation of the cultural diversity of the peoples of the Russian Empire.

Hunger and Food Shortages

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Kean Sharp
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic World ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Food Shortage ◽  
Transport Infrastructure ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Common Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
Food Shortages

Woven into the fabric of history, hunger and food shortage experienced by individuals, communities, or large-scale societies are important historical markers, often used to chronicle significant points in time. As such, the histories of hunger and food shortage in various places and times in the Atlantic world serve as a productive lens with which to study the political, social, cultural, economic, and environmental parameters of Atlantic world history from pre-contact to present day. Within Atlantic history, just as in the early 21st century, hunger and food shortage can be a result of environmental conditions or natural disaster, such as the severe winters and wet summers which caused Europe’s Great Famine (1315–1322). Hunger and food shortage was and is also the result of intentionally orchestrated conditions including any combination of warfare, politics, poverty, and power. In the early decades of cross-Atlantic contact, food shortage and hunger was a common experience for both immunocompromised indigenous populations as well as inexperienced European explorers and early settlers. Control over food as well as limiting access to it came to serve as an important tool in white control over the land and people of the New World, both indigenous and those forcibly migrated from Africa. While food shortage was a common experience in European history due to mercantilist practices and harvest failures, food shortage and hunger in contemporary history largely is focused on western Africa. Despite the enormous expansion of agricultural productivity, extensive networks of transport infrastructure, and the interlinked global economy, hunger and food shortages still persist in all parts of the world, and indeed thrive, in all parts of the world.

scholarly journals L. F. Marsilji – prvi antikvar Srbije

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 595
Author(s):  
Vladimir V. Mihajlović
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
History Of Archaeology ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The 19Th Century

The all-encompassing changes that have shaped the west of Europe during the early modern period, introducing new ways of perceiving (and investigating) the whole universe, and each individual as well, have decisively influenced the foundations of our discipline. The special credit should be paid to the antiquarian movement and the generations of its followers. On the other hand, according to the general consensus, the region of modern Serbia, being a part of the Ottoman Empire, has not attracted the curiosity of the antiquarians until the second half of the 18th century. Numerous reviews of the history of archaeology in Serbia, both by local and foreign authors, consolidate this view. However, the life and work of Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (1658–1730) offers a significantly different view of the roots of archaeology in these parts. Born in an aristocratic family in Bologna, highly educated, serving in the Austrian Imperial army by the end of 17th century, Count Marsigli spent almost two decades in the lands of the middle Danube valley. During the Vienna war (1683–1699), and then fortifying the new frontier after the Peace of Karlovac (1699–1701), L. F. Marsigli got acquainted with the rich heritage (above all from the Roman times) of the region. He published the results of his research in the volume entitled Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus. The very title suggests the importance Marsigli assigned to the Classical past, whose vestiges he described in the second of six books of this work. Under the title De antiquitatibus Romanorum ad ripas Danubii, in accordance with the best antiquarian traditions, the learned Count offers a comprehensive and systematic review of the Roman material culture along the Danube banks – in his own words – of Pannonia and Moesia. Marsigli’s antiquarian endeavours in the field and the subsequent published accounts establish a massive contribution to the antiquarian tradition in the region of modern Serbia, and then – indirectly, through the works of the 19th century authors – to Serbian archaeology in general.

Touchy-Feely History: The ‘Stuff’ of American Culture

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-18
Author(s):  
Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
New Research

This state of the field essay examines recent trends in American Cultural History, focusing on music, race and ethnicity, material culture, and the body. Expanding on key themes in articles featured in the special issue of Cultural History, the essay draws linkages to other important literatures. The essay argues for more a more serious consideration of the products within popular culture, less as a reflection of social or economic trends, rather for their own historical significance. While the essay examines some classic texts, more emphasis is on work published within the last decade. Here, interdisciplinary methods are stressed, as are new research perspectives developing by non-western historians.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Goldschmidt ◽  
Barbara Graziosi
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Specific Site ◽  
Entire Volume ◽  
The Third ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Classical Poetry ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Made In

The Introduction sheds light on the reception of classical poetry by focusing on the materiality of the poets’ bodies and their tombs. It outlines four sets of issues, or commonplaces, that govern the organization of the entire volume. The first concerns the opposition between literature and material culture, the life of the mind vs the apprehensions of the body—which fails to acknowledge that poetry emerges from and is attended to by the mortal body. The second concerns the religious significance of the tomb and its location in a mythical landscape which is shaped, in part, by poetry. The third investigates the literary graveyard as a place where poets’ bodies and poetic corpora are collected. Finally, the alleged ‘tomb of Virgil’ provides a specific site where the major claims made in this volume can be most easily be tested.

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