(Dis)connecting Empires

2018 ◽  
pp. 12-36
Author(s):  
Zoltán Biedermann
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Global Connections ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Sense

Chapter 1 drafts a roadmap for a critical connected history of empires in the early modern world. It asks where exactly ‘connections’ sit with regard to the global and the local. For an understanding of global connections, local contexts remain key. There, we can seek out the ‘cultural history of the political’ and examine the role played by communication and translation. The notion that unfolding European-Asia dialogues can be sliced up into rigid ‘phases’ (e.g. ‘commerce’ to ‘conquest’) is reductive. At the heart of all interactions is the possibility of violence. Violence is not a monopoly of states in the modern sense of the word, but of polities that entertain a complex relationship with space, through layered suzerainties translatable across Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas. The ‘Imperial Theme’ identified by Frances Yates calls to be made to work across the globe. It could foment the formulation of a general theory of the imperial in the early modern world.

scholarly journals ‘A Place full of Trade’: Placing an Early Modern Chinese Town in Global Cultural History

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-194
Author(s):  
Anne Gerritsen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Administrative Records ◽  
Global Connections ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Town

This article focuses on the history of Wuchengzhen 吳 城 鎮, a small town in the inland province of Jiangxi. It explores the history of the town between 1500 and 1850 in terms of both its local significance as an entrepot for trade in grain and tea and its global connections to early modern Europe, by way of the trade in porcelain. The question this paper explores concerns the juxtaposition between, on the one hand, the idea gained from global historians, that during the early modern period, globally traded commodities like tea and porcelain situate a small town like this in a globalized, perhaps even unified or homogenous, world, and on the other hand, the insight gained from cultural historians, that no two people would ever see, or assign meaning to, this small town in the same way. Drawing on this insight, the history of Wuchengzhen is explored on the basis of different textual (administrative records, local gazetteers, merchant manuals) and visual sources (maps and visual depictions of the town), exploring the ways in which the different meanings of the town are constructed in each. The combination of global and cultural history places Wuchengzhen on our map of the early modern world.

Jesuit Accommodation, Dissimulation, Mental Reservation

2017 ◽  
pp. 215-240
Author(s):  
Stefania Tutino
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Global Dimension ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Intellectual Identity ◽  
Culturally Different ◽  
History Of

This chapter analyzes the role that accommodation, dissimulation, equivocation, and mental reservation played in Jesuit spirituality, theology, and culture. These doctrines came to represent a fundamental component of the religious, theological, and intellectual identity of the Society of Jesus. Indeed, Ignatius Loyola himself made discreción one of the principles differentiating the Society from all other Catholic religious orders. The chapter demonstrates the centrality that these forms of accommodation and dissimulation acquired in the political, religious, and intellectual history of the early modern world, becoming useful tools to articulate one’s political and religious allegiance and thus becoming an integral part of post-Reformation culture. As post-Reformation Catholicism assumed an increasingly global dimension, these doctrines became politically, spiritually, theologically, and hermeneutically necessary for the Catholic missionaries to approach, come to terms with, and adapt to geographically and culturally different contexts, places, and people.

The Tsar's Happy Occasion

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell E. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
History Of ◽  
Court Politics ◽  
Gift Exchanges

This book shows how the vast, ornate affairs that were royal weddings in early modern Russia were choreographed to broadcast powerful images of monarchy and dynasty. Processions and speeches emphasized dynastic continuity and legitimacy. Fertility rites blended Christian and pre-Christian symbols to assure the birth of heirs. Gift exchanges created and affirmed social solidarity among the elite. The bride performed rituals that integrated herself and her family into the inner circle of the court. This book demonstrates how royal weddings reflected and shaped court politics during a time of dramatic cultural and dynastic change. As the book shows, the rites of passage in these ceremonies were dazzling displays of monarchical power unlike any other ritual at the Muscovite court. And as dynasties came and went and the political culture evolved, so too did wedding rituals. The book relates how Peter the Great first mocked, then remade wedding rituals to symbolize and empower his efforts to westernize Russia. After Peter, the two branches of the Romanov dynasty used weddings to solidify their claims to the throne. The book offers a sweeping, yet penetrating cultural history of the power of rituals and the rituals of power in early modern Russia.

Rivers of the Sultan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faisal H. Husain
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
River System ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Realignment ◽  
Provincial Autonomy

Rivers of the Sultan offers a history of the Ottoman Empire’s management of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the early modern period. During the early sixteenth century, a radical political realignment in West Asia placed the reins of the Tigris and Euphrates in the hands of Istanbul. The political unification of the longest rivers in West Asia allowed the Ottoman state to rebalance the natural resource disparity along its eastern frontier. It regularly organized the shipment of grain, metal, and timber from upstream areas of surplus in Anatolia and the Jazira to downstream areas of need in Iraq. This imperial system of waterborne communication, the book argues, created heavily militarized fortresses that anchored the Ottoman presence in Iraq, enabling Istanbul to hold in check foreign and domestic challenges to its authority and to exploit the organic wealth of the Tigris-Euphrates alluvium. From the end of the seventeenth century, the convergence of natural and human disasters transformed the Ottoman Empire’s relationship with its twin rivers. A trend toward provincial autonomy ensued that would localize the Ottoman management of the Tigris and Euphrates and shift its command post from Istanbul to the provinces. By placing a river system at the center of analysis, this book reveals intimate bonds between valley and mountain, water and power in the early modern world.

Allegra Iafrate, The Long Life of Magical Objects: A Study in the Solomonic Tradition. The Magic in History Series. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, xi, 235 pp., 19 b/w images, 2 tables.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-254
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modern World ◽  
State University ◽  
Eastern Culture ◽  
Historical Objects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Objects ◽  
The Middle Ages

Throughout times, magic and magicians have exerted a tremendous influence, and this even in our (post)modern world (see now the contributions to Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2017; here not mentioned). Allegra Iafrate here presents a fourth monograph dedicated to magical objects, primarily those associated with the biblical King Solomon, especially the ring, the bottle which holds a demon, knots, and the flying carpet. She is especially interested in the reception history of those symbolic objects, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, both in western and in eastern culture, that is, above all, in the Arabic world, and also pursues the afterlife of those objects in the early modern age. Iafrate pursues not only the actual history of King Solomon and those religious objects associated with him, but the metaphorical objects as they made their presence felt throughout time, and this especially in literary texts and in art-historical objects.

Stuart Succession Literature

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
British Literature ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literature And Politics ◽  
Distinct Category ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
Distinguished Group ◽  
Modern British Literature

Moments of royal succession, which punctuated the Stuart era (1603–1714), occasioned outpourings of literature. Writers, including most of the major figures of the seventeenth century from Jonson, Daniel, and Donne to Marvell, Dryden, and Behn, seized upon these occasions to mark the transition of power; to reflect upon the political structures and values of their nation; and to present themselves as authors worthy of patronage and recognition. This volume of essays explores this important category of early modern writing. It contends that succession literature warrants attention as a distinct category: appreciated by contemporaries, acknowledged by a number of scholars, but never investigated in a coherent and methodical manner, it helped to shape political reputations and values across the period. Benefiting from the unique database of such writing generated by the AHRC-funded Stuart Successions Project, the volume brings together a distinguished group of authors to address a subject which is of wide and growing interest to students both of history and of literature. It illuminates the relation between literature and politics in this pivotal century of English political and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the volume will be indispensable to scholars of early modern British literature and history as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in both fields.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rembert Lutjeharms
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Poetry And Poetics ◽  
Sanskrit Poetics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sanskrit Poetry ◽  
The Way

This chapter introduces the main themes of the book—Kavikarṇapūra, theology, Sanskrit poetry, and Sanskrit poetics—and provides an overview of each chapter. It briefly highlights the importance of the practice of poetry for the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition, places Kavikarṇapūra in the (political) history of sixteenth‐century Bengal and Orissa as well as sketches his place in the early developments of the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition (a topic more fully explored in Chapter 1). The chapter also reflects more generally on the nature of both his poetry and poetics, and highlights the way Kavikarṇapūra has so far been studied in modern scholarship.

The Oxford History of Historical Writing

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Korean Peninsula ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
North West ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

How was history written in Europe and Asia between 400–1400? How was the past understood in religious, social, and political terms? And in what ways does the diversity of historical writing in this period mask underlying commonalities in narrating the past? The volume tackles these and other questions. Part I provides comprehensive overviews of the development of historical writing in societies that range from the Korean Peninsula to north-west Europe, which together highlight regional and cultural distinctiveness. Part II complements the first part by taking a thematic and comparative approach; it includes chapters on genre, warfare, and religion (amongst others) which address common concerns of historians working in this liminal period before the globalizing forces of the early modern world.

A Renaissance Marriage

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn James
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Political ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Spousal Relationship ◽  
Prescriptive Literature ◽  
Religious Perspectives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Princely State

Drawing extensively on unpublished archival sources, this book analyses the marriage of Isabella d’Este, one of the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance, and her less well-known husband, Francesco Gonzaga, ruler of the small northern Italian principality of Mantua (r. 1484–1519). It offers fresh insights into the nature of political marriages during the early modern period by investigating the forces which shaped the lives of an aristocratic couple who, within several years of their wedding, had to deal with the political challenges posed by the first conflicts of the Italian Wars (1494–1559) and, later, the scourge of the Great Pox. The study humanizes a relationship that was organized for entirely strategic reasons, but had to be inhabited emotionally if it was to produce the political and dynastic advantages that had inspired the match. The letter exchanges of Isabella and Francesco over twenty-nine years, as well as their correspondence with relatives and courtiers, show how their personal rapport evolved and how they cooperated in the governance of a princely state. Hitherto examined mainly from literary and religious perspectives and on the basis of legal evidence and prescriptive literature, early modern marriage emerges here in vivid detail, offering the reader access to aspects of the lived experience of an elite Renaissance spousal relationship. The book also contributes to our understanding of the history of emotions, of politics and military conflict, of childbirth, childhood, and family life, and of the history of disease and medicine.

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