Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760-1830

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Stock
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
European Continent ◽  
Geographical Imagination ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Difference ◽  
Commercial Network ◽  
British Culture ◽  
British People

Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760–1830 seeks to establish what literate British people understood by the word ‘Europe’ in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It achieves this objective through detailed analysis of nearly 350 geographical reference works, textbooks, dictionaries, and encyclopaedias. Largely neglected by historians, these materials were widely read by contemporaries and can reveal the formative ideas about Europe circulating in Britain. The book therefore traces the history of ideas in non-elite contexts; it moves away from an approach to intellectual history concerned predominantly with prominent thinkers. The opening two chapters outline the characteristics and popularity of geography books and explain how they structure geographical knowledge. The remaining chapters explore eight themes which frame how Europe is understood in British culture. A chapter each is devoted to religion; the natural environment; race and other theories of human difference; the state; borders; the identification of the ‘centre’ and ‘edges’ of Europe; commerce and empire; and ideas about the past, progress, and historical change. Each chapter shows how geographical texts use these intricate concepts to communicate and construct widely understood ideas about the European continent. Is Europe unified by shared religious heritage? Where are the edges of Europe? Is Europe primarily a commercial network or are there common political practices too? Is Britain itself a European country? By showing how these and other questions were discussed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British culture, the book provides a thorough and much-needed historical analysis of Britain’s enduringly complex intellectual relationship with Europe.

Luther's Word on Man's Will: A Case Study in Comparative Intellectual History

1984 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-667
Author(s):  
Mark Migotti
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
Thematic Unity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Single Set

It is commonplace to observe that the history of thought reveals certain recurring patterns whose mode of expression changes according to context. It is equally apparent that to chart the salient characteristics of an influential way of thinking – to give concrete, clearly defined shape to the usually tangled fundamental impulses informing a cast of mind – is a complex, difficult task which calls for attention from (at least) the historian, the psychologist, the philosopher and, in the case of religious figures and movements, the theologian alike. With regard to the manner of thinking embodied in the theological doctrines of Martin Luther such a task is fraught with more than the usual number of pitfalls. In the first place, following recent Luther scholarship, we must be wary of assuming that the great Reformer held fast to a single set of theological opinions throughout his long career. We shall not, therefore, attempt to reach conclusions applicable to Luther's thought as a whole, but rather shall focus exclusively on a number of key early expositions of the Theologia Crucis. Here, between about 1514 and 1520, we find, according to our argument, enough thematic unity to warrant the search for underlying principles. A second, less easily disposed of difficulty is the lack of a working consensus as to how and with what aims in mind one should even begin an historical analysis of Luther's texts. For example, to the believer who regards Luther's basic tenets as in a straightforward sense divinely inspired, the attempt to extract from his writings the ingredients of a certain thoroughly human way of thinking will seem doomed to inadequacy from the start. Likewise, for different reasons, many of today's.

Toward a Global Intellectual History of “Minority”

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-324
Author(s):  
Roy Bar Sadeh ◽  
Lotte Houwink ten Cate
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Minority Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

Abstract The term minority is today applied to describe beleaguered, persecuted, and exiled people whose subordination is preserved or merely “tolerated” by majoritarian politics inherent to modern states. As this introduction indicates, however, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries minority politics became a rubric for sociopolitical emancipation, providing a framework for intellectuals in colonized Asia and Africa to question European powers' treatment of marginalized communities. Bar Sadeh and Houwink ten Cate contend that “minority” has unique value as an instrument for historical analysis that is restricted neither solely to minority-majority relations nor to debates about (political) representation. Instead, the authors propose a global intellectual history of “minority” as a concept and experience, which is explored in the essays compiled in this special section, “Minority Questions.” By examining the diverse genealogies of the concept of minority, the essays that follow provide a valuable contribution to efforts to redress historical wrongs, even as they offer a range of explanations for the enduring legacy and power of this multifaceted concept.

Divine Variations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Keel
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Reasoning Strategies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Difference ◽  
Biblical Commentaries

The view that science and religion are necessarily in conflict has increasingly lost favor among scholars who have sought more nuanced theoretical frameworks for evaluating the configurations of these two bodies of knowledge in modern life. This book situates, for the first time, the modern study of race into scholarly debates concerning whether the conflict thesis is a viable analytic framework for assessing the relations between religion and science. Arguing that the conflict model is thoroughly inadequate, this book shows that the formation of the race concept in the minds of Western European and American scientists grew out of and remained indebted to Christian intellectual history. Religion was not subtracted from nor did it stand in conflict with constructions of race developed across the modern life and health sciences. The argument made in this book is based on a reexamination of paratheological texts and biblical commentaries from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, works in early Christian natural philosophy, seminal studies in German ethnology and early nineteenth-century American social science, debates among twentieth-century Progressive Era public health scientists, and contemporary genetic analysis of ancient human DNA. Divine Variations recovers the hidden history of how Euro-American scientists inherited from their Christian ancestors a series of ideas and reasoning strategies about race that profoundly shaped the modern biological construction of human difference.

Between Two Worlds: American Social Thought After the Civil War

Prospects ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 411-431
Author(s):  
Rush Welter
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Renaissance ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
History Of

In recent years American scholars have made significant progress in rethinking the history of the United States after the Civil War. Although much of their effort has come to a focus on Reconstruction, new questions and new techniques of historical analysis have combined to revitalize examination of the era as a whole. Yet-certain specialized studies notwithstanding – relatively little has been done to reconceive the intellectual history of the period. In part, this situation probably reflects the disappointing character of most of postbellum thought, which boasts few such luminaries as the era of the American Revolution or that of the so-called American Renaissance. In part, it may also reflect the fact that study of the period revived at a time when intellectual history no longer seemed to represent the cutting edge of historical inquiry. In any case, the opinions and beliefs of late Victorian America have remained a stepchild of historical research while their adopted family has flourished.

scholarly journals Comparative and Historical Analysis of Early Donghak: Cross-Religious Dialogue between Confucianism and Catholicism in 19th-Century Korea

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 608
Author(s):  
Byeongdae Bae
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Late Stage ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Middle Stage ◽  
New Religions ◽  
Religious Dialogue ◽  
History Of ◽  
Catholic Tradition

The purpose of this study was to characterize early Donghak thought as the fusion of two horizons, one Confucian and the other Catholic. In particular, the study divided the Donghak founder Su-un Choe Je-u’s view of divinity into three stages, and showed how the evolution of his thought through these stages can be explained as the product of a dialogue between the Confucian monist tradition based on qi or vital energy and the Catholic dualist tradition based on Thomistic scholasticism. The study adopted a comparative and historical methodology, whereby comparison was limited to similarities and differences between Su-un’s works and sources in the Confucian or Catholic tradition that we can reasonably assume to have been available to Su-un. It was found that Su-un’s thought in the early stage was marked by theistic features similar to the scholastic view of God, and that in the middle stage Su-un sought to accommodate this theism within a pantheistic framework based on the Confucian monist tradition. For convenience’ sake, this theism-within-pantheism can be referred to as Su-un’s “panentheism”. It is suggested that the creative tension within this panentheism motivated Su-un to introduce innovations in his thought. First, in the middle stage, Su-un rejected the monism of li or pattern that was prevalent in the Neo-Confucian orthodoxy of his day, reverting to the older tradition of qi-monism. Second, in the late stage of his thought, he appears to have rehabilitated li as intelligent pattern that is the source of all signs of intelligence in the natural and moral order. As for the value of the approach adopted in this study, it enables us to make better sense of obscure details in Su-un’s works by placing them in their proper historical context, as evinced by the reading of Su-un’s late stage work “Buryeon Giyeon” presented herein. It is hoped that this approach will be applied more rigorously in future studies to deepen our understanding of the intellectual history of Donghak and Cheondogyo, along with various other new religions that emerged in Korea’s modern history.

Historical Analysis of Law

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Dirk Dubber
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

Kenneth Ledford's and Michael Meranze's insightful comments raise important questions about the nature of legal history in general, and of the history of punishment in particular. According to Ledford and Meranze, modern legal history is social history, to be distinguished from “old-style intellectual history.” A product of the latter “historical method no longer in favor,” “The Right to Be Punished” draws Ledford's and Meranze's criticism for its insufficient “root[s]… in the soil of social history” and for its inadequate “account of the … social basis of the modern will to punish” and “the social embeddedness of punishment.”

Lorenzo Valla's Critique of Jurisprudence, the Discovery of Heraldry, and the Philology of Images

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 1183-1224
Author(s):  
Jennifer Kathleen Mackenzie
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Social Authority ◽  
History Of

In 1433, Lorenzo Valla attacked contemporary jurisprudence with a treatise attributed to the civilian lawyer Bartolus of Saxoferrato, the “De insigniis et armis.” This was considered Europe's first treatise on heraldry until a team of legal historians questioned its subject matter and authenticity. Meanwhile, visual culture continues to be seen as peripheral to Valla's critical agenda. This article proposes that Valla engaged images as manifestations of social authority and historical change. His epistle against Bartolus participates in an intellectual history of intersections between philology, antiquarianism, and the anthropology of images in which heraldry has been defined.

MODERNITY AGAINST MODERNITY: WANG HUI'S CRITICAL HISTORY OF CHINESE THOUGHT

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
VIREN MURTHY
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Chinese Thought ◽  
Critical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Intervention ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
The Relationship

In the last fifteen years or so, Chinese intellectuals have been heatedly debating the complex relationships between China's prospects, China's past, and the modern predicament. In this context Wang Hui has emerged as one of China's most challenging and controversial intellectuals. His work is controversial. At a time when intellectuals take modernization as a goal, Wang has consistently voiced reservations. Readers find his works challenging because, instead of criticizing modernity or capitalism from simple moral tenets, Wang has always sought to redefine the terms of the debate through detailed and sensitive historical analysis. Hence amidst his busy life as editor, professor, and polemicist, Wang has devoted more than ten years to writing his magisterial four volume book The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought (Zhongguo sixiang de xingqi), in which he fundamentally rethinks the relationship between modernity and Chinese thought. However, Wang's book is not just an immense contribution to historical and historiographical scholarship; his work is a self-consciously political intervention. Specifically, he highlights the role of intellectual history as critique and attempts to recover repressed elements of the past in order to question the structures that govern the present. In the last line of the conclusion to his book he writes, “the history that modernity loftily and even proudly rejects contains the inspiration and possibilities for overcoming its crisis.” Taking China as his focus, Wang attempts to write this history.

Late Stalinism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evgeny Dobrenko
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
Art Music ◽  
The Political ◽  
Internal Logic ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
Soviet Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Texts

This nuanced historical analysis of late Stalinism organized chronologically around the main events of the period—beginning with Victory in May 1945 and concluding with the death of Stalin in March 1953—analyzes key cultural texts to trace the emergence of an imperial Soviet consciousness that, the book argues, still defines the political and cultural profile of modern Russia. The book provides a cultural and intellectual history of the era in which the shaping of the Soviet nation was completed. It talks about the era when mental and cultural dominants that determined the character of Russia were definitively affirmed. It also looks into cultural texts of literature, theater, cinema, art, music, scientific and historical texts, and popular literature through which history reveals its internal logic. The book analyzes Stalinism that communicated the new agenda, gave the new political course form through media, and inculcated the new ideological modulations. It explores the prism of Soviet art in order to trace the political and ideological transformation of the Stalinist regime from revolutionary international utopianism to conservatively patriarchal national Bolshevism.

The Nostalgic Imagination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Collini
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
English History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Raymond Williams

This unusual book explores the historical assumptions at work in the style of literary criticism that came to dominate English studies in the twentieth century. Stefan Collini shows how the work of critics renowned for their close attention to ‘the words on the page’ was in practice bound up with claims about the nature and direction of historical change, the interpretation of the national past, and the scholarship of earlier historians. Among the major figures examined in detail are T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, William Empson, and Raymond Williams, while there are also original discussions of such figures as Basil Willey, L. C. Knights, Q. D. Leavis, and Richard Hoggart. In the period between Eliot’s The Sacred Wood and Williams’s The Long Revolution, the writings of such critics came to occupy the cultural space left by academic history’s retreat into specialized, archive-bound monographs. Their work challenged the assumptions of the Whig interpretation of English history and entailed a revision of the traditional relations between ‘literary history’ and ‘general history’. Combining close textual analysis with wide-ranging intellectual history, this book both revises the standard story of the history of literary criticism and illuminates a central feature of the cultural history of twentieth-century Britain.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document