Loadstones and Earths

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Wothers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Silicon Dioxide ◽  
English Translation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mineral Salt ◽  
Chemical Compositions ◽  
Great Work ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century

Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779–1848), discoverer of the elements selenium, thorium, cerium, and silicon and deviser of the chemical symbols we use today, was one of the last in a long list of Swedish mineralogists and chemists active during the eighteenth century. Berzelius himself regarded one of his predecessors, Axel Fredrik Cronstedt (1722–65), as the founder of chemical mineralogy. We met Cronstedt in Chapter 2 as the discoverer of the element nickel, isolated from the ore kupfernickel. But another of Cronstedt’s achievements was perhaps of even greater significance: his development of a classification of minerals based not on their physical appearances, as had been common up to this time, but on their chemical compositions. He first published his scheme anonymously in Swedish in 1758, but it was later translated into English as An Essay towards a System of Mineralogy. Cronstedt recognized four general classes of minerals: earths, bitumens, salts, and metals. As their name suggests, the bitumens were flammable substances that might dissolve in oil but not in water. The main difference between the salts and the earths was that the former, which included the ‘alcaline mineral salt’ natron, could be dissolved in water and recrystallized from it. The earths he defined as ‘those substances which are not ductile, are mostly indissoluble in water or oil, and preserve their constitution in a strong heat’. Cronstedt initially recognized nine different classes of earth. By the time of Torbern Bergman (1735–84), these had been reduced to five which ‘cannot be derived from each other or from anything simpler’. Lavoisier and his collaborators included these five in their great work on nomenclature even though they suspected that, like soda and potash, they were most likely not simple substances, but species that contained new metals. In the 1788 English translation of the nomenclature these were called silice, alumina, barytes, lime, and magnesia. The first two eventually, in the early nineteenth century, yielded the elements silicon and aluminium. The word ‘silicon’ derives from the Latin ‘silex’ (meaning ‘flint’—a form of silicon dioxide), with the ending ‘-on’ reflecting its resemblance to the other non-metals carbon and boron.

scholarly journals Iceland in the Eighteenth Century: An Island Outpost of Europe?

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Agnarsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
European Continent ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The Enlightenment

The aim is to define Iceland’s relationship with Europe during the eighteenth century. Though Iceland, an island in the mid-Atlantic, was geographically isolated from the European continent, it was in most respects an integral part of Europe. Iceland was not much different from western Europe except for the notable lack of towns and a European-style nobility. However, there was a clearly – defined elite and by the end of the eighteenth century urbanisation had become government policy. Iceland was also remote in the sense that the state of knowledge among the Europeans was slight and unreliable. However, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, Danish and French expeditions were sent to Iceland while British scientists began exploring the island with the result that by the early nineteenth century an excellent choice of books was available in the major European languages giving up-to-date accounts of Iceland. On the other hand the Icelanders were growing ever closer to Europe, by the end of the century for instance adopting fashionable European dress. Iceland’s history always followed western trends, its history more or less mirroring that of western Europe.

Natives, Religion, and Race in Colonial America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linford D. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
The Other ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
Religion And Race ◽  
Racial Lines ◽  
Modern Sense ◽  
Over Time

Although racial lines eventually hardened on both sides, in the opening decades of colonization European and native ideas about differences between themselves and the other were fluid and dynamic, changing on the ground in response to local developments and experiences. Over time, perceived differences were understood to be rooted in more than just environment and culture. In the eighteenth century, bodily differences became the basis for a wider range of deeper, more innate distinctions that, by the nineteenth century, hardened into what we might now understand to be racialized differences in the modern sense. Despite several centuries of dispossession, disease, warfare, and enslavement at the hands of Europeans, native peoples in the Americans almost universally believed the opposite to be true. The more indigenous Americans were exposed to Europeans, the more they believed in the vitality and superiority of their own cultures.

scholarly journals Smoking Clubs in Graphic Satire and the Anglicizing of Tobacco in Eighteenth-Century Britain

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Cynthia Roman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Associational Life ◽  
Graphic Satire ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Eighteenth Century Britain ◽  
Cultural Connotations

Abstract Focusing on A smoking club (1793/7) by James Gillray, this essay presents satiric representations of smoking clubs in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British prints, arguing that they reflect and mediate contemporary understandings of tobacco as an intoxicant in British associational life. The breadth of potential cultural connotations – from political and social parody to light-hearted humour – is traced through the content and imagery of selected prints. These prints rely on the familiarity of contemporary audiences with political and social knowledge, as well as a visual iconography iconically realized in William Hogarth's A midnight modern conversation (1732).

scholarly journals From Baranowski to Baranauskas, from James to Ngũgĩ: Post-Colonial Aspects of Linguistic Switch

2020 ◽  
pp. 219-245
Author(s):  
Paweł Bukowiec
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
World Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Post Colonial

The article attempts to perform a comparative study of the phenomenon of the so-called linguistic switch, i.e., a change of languages in which the writer creates his/her works. One side of the analysis focuses on nineteenth-century Lithuanian poets, represented mainly by Antanas Baranauskas, and the other on the contemporary Kenyan prose writer Ngu˜g˜ wa Thiong’o. The juxtaposition of ı such extremely distant authors: 1. allows a better understanding of the specificity of multilingualism in both eighteenth-century Lithuanian literature and contemporary fiction; 2. proves once again the universality of postcolonial sensitivity; 3. constitutes an attempt at comparative thinking in the context of world literature.

scholarly journals Dynamics of Continuity and Change: Shifts in Labour Relations in the Potosí Mines (1680–1812)

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (S24) ◽  
pp. 93-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossana Barragán Romano
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The One

AbstractLabour relations in the silver mines of Potosí are almost synonymous with the mita, a system of unfree work that lasted from the end of the sixteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, behind this continuity there were important changes, but also other forms of work, both free and self-employed. The analysis here is focused on how the “polity” contributed to shape labour relations, especially from the end of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century. This article scrutinizes the labour policies of the Spanish monarchy on the one hand, which favoured certain economic sectors and regions to ensure revenue, and on the other the initiatives both of mine entrepreneurs and workers – unfree, free, and self-employed – who all contributed to changing the system of labour.

Geopolitics of Comparison: World Literature Avant la Lettre

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

Abstract According to a well-known narrative, the concept of Weltliteratur and its academic correlative, the discipline of comparative literature, originated in Germany and France in the early nineteenth century, influenced by the spread of scientism and nationalism. But there is another genesis story that begins in the late eighteenth century in Spain and Italy, countries with histories entangled with the Arab presence in Europe during the medieval period. Emphasizing the role of Arabic in the formation of European literatures, Juan Andrés wrote the first comparative history of “all literature,” before the concepts of Weltliteratur and comparative literature gained currency. The divergence of the two genesis stories is the result of competing geopolitical interests, which determine which literatures enter into the sphere of comparison, on what terms, within which paradigms, and under what ideological and discursive conditions.

Air and Odour

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-87
Author(s):  
William Tullett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Environmental Medicine ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
Royal Institution ◽  
Airborne Disease ◽  
The Relationship

Starting with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s experience of the Royal Institution lectures of 1802, this chapter sets out the relationship between smell, chemistry, and environmental medicine in the period from the 1660s to the 1820s. Putridity and putrefaction had long been associated with bad smell, but what the chemical investigations of the mid-eighteenth century succeeded in doing was separating the stink of putridity from its unhealthy qualities. Eudiometers, devices for measuring the quality of air that enjoyed a short vogue in the later eighteenth century, were one way of replacing the, now untrustworthy, sense of smell. Ultimately smell became a useful analogy for thinking about airborne disease or contagious particles, but by the early nineteenth century most physicians and chemists no longer believed that all smell was disease.

German Neo-Pietism and the Formation of National Identity

2019 ◽  
Vol 88 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-119
Author(s):  
Doron Avraham
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Devotion ◽  
Alternative Meaning ◽  
Christian Conservatives ◽  
Prevailing View

In the early nineteenth century, a neo-Pietist circle of awakened Protestants emerged in Prussia and other German lands. Disturbed by the consequences of the French Revolution, the ensuing reforms and the rising national movement, these neo-Pietists—among them noble estate owners, theologians, and other scholars—tried to introduce an alternative meaning for the alliance between state and religion. Drawing on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pietist traditions, neo-Pietists fused their keen religious devotion with newly constructed conservative ideals, thus rehabilitating the legitimacy of political authority while investing the people's confession with additional meaning. At the same time, and through the same pietistic source of inspiration, conservative neo-Pietists forged their own understanding of national identity: its origins, values, and implications. In this regard, and against the prevailing view of the antagonist stance taken by Christian conservatives toward nationalism in the first half on the nineteenth century, this article argues for the consolidation of certain concepts of German national identity within Christian conservatism.

The Theory of Recognition in Fieri (1958)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Formative Stage ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
New States ◽  
The Law

The historian of international law attempting an inquiry into the law of recognition of States and governments during its formative stage, particularly into eighteenth-century sources, is bound to consult the first historical survey of the literature of the law of nations by D. H. L. Ompteda, published in 1785. Ompteda referred to problems of recognition under the general heading of the fundamental right of nations to freedom and independence. All the essays he mentioned as being directly or indirectly relevant to problems of recognition of new States or rulers were written by comparatively unknown authors. Among them, Justi and Steck were perhaps the most active participants in the first attempts to formulate a theory of recognition. This chapter considers these early attempts, in particular the direct influence of Justi and Steck on Martens and Klueber, and through them on Henry Wheaton and some of the early nineteenth-century writers.

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