‘H Two O’ to ‘O Two H’

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Wothers
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Other Substances ◽  
Primary Substance ◽  
Different Gases

It was not until the late eighteenth century—over a hundred years after the discovery of phosphorus—that it was appreciated that both phosphorus and sulfur were actually elements. Prior to this time, it was thought that all matter was made up of four so-called elements: earth, air, fire, and water. The realization that this was not so centred on understanding that the air is actually composed of a number of different gases, and in particular, understanding what happens when things burn. The discovery that water could be broken down into, or indeed synthesized from, two simpler elementary substances started a chemical revolution in France. The fruits of this revolution are embodied in the very names we now use for these two components, hydrogen and oxygen. However, the path to enlightenment was tortuous, lasting over 200 years. At its peak at the end of the eighteenth century, chemists fell into two distinct camps—those for the new French chemistry, and those against it. Several different names were given to the gases before ‘hydrogen’ and ‘oxygen’ triumphed. As it turns out, one of these names is still based on an incorrect theory, and it might have been more appropriate if the names hydrogen and oxygen had been swapped around. From the sixth century BC, the ancient Greek philosopher Thales taught that water was the primary matter from which all other substances were formed. Perhaps this idea came from water’s ready ability to form solid ice, ‘earth’, or vapours and mists, ‘airs’. Other philosophers thought the primary substance was air; others still, fire. It was less common for earth to be thought of in this way, possibly, as Aristotle later wrote, because it was too coarse-grained to make up these fluids. In the fifth century BC Empedokles brought the four ‘elements’ together—earth, air, fire, and water—and for many centuries it was thought that these made up everything around us.

Slavery and Ransom

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Smiley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
The State ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Law

This chapter explores captives’ fates after their capture, all along the Ottoman land and maritime frontiers, arguing that this was largely determined by individuals’ value for ransom or sale. First this was a matter of localized customary law; then it became a matter of inter-imperial rules, the “Law of Ransom.” The chapter discusses the nature of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, emphasizing the role of elite households, and the varying prices for captives based on their individual characteristics. It shows that the Ottoman state participated in ransoming, buying, exploiting, and sometimes selling both female and male captives. The state particularly needed young men to row on its galleys, but this changed in the late eighteenth century as the fleet moved from oars to sails. The chapter then turns to ransom, showing that a captive’s ability to be ransomed, and value, depended on a variety of individualized factors.

Historical Romance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ina Ferris
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Distinct Form ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Historical Romance ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter looks at historical romance. Late eighteenth-century historiography began to expand its purview to unofficial spheres of social, cultural, and private life typically cultivated by informal genres such as memoirs, biographies, and novels. The ‘matter’ of history was being increasingly redefined, and this had two key effects that bear on the question of historical romance. First, the ‘reframing’ of the historical field generated a marked reciprocity among the different historical genres in the literary field, as they borrowed material and tactics from one another; second, it led to a splintering albeit not displacement of ‘general’ history, as new branches of history writing took shape, notably that of literary history as a distinct form of history. Hence romance now denoted not only the realm of ‘fancy’ but a superseded literary form of renewed interest in the rethinking of the national past.

The Practical and Symbolic Functions of Pre-Rameau Opera at the Paris Opéra before Gluck

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Michel Noiray
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter explains how a uniquely long-lived canon evolved in revivals of operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully and his immediate successors—chiefly André Campra and André-Cardinal Destouches—right up to the early 1770s. The Académie Royale de Musique was unique as the only theater to resist Italian repertory, except in two brief controversial periods. A dogmatic commitment to the old style and repertory survived after Lully’s death, quite separate from the operas of Jean-Philippe Rameau. Opposition to this unique practice broke out occasionally among the public, but such opinion was not widely supported in the press. It is striking that the main critics of ancienne musique, as it was called—Rousseau, Paul Henri d’Holbach, and Friedrich Melchior von Grimm—all came from outside France. This chapter is paired with Franco Piperno’s “Italian opera and the concept of ‘canon’ in the late eighteenth century.”

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