Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 541-554
Author(s):  
Adriaan C. Neele
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Vested Interest ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Missionary Societies

Jonathan Edwards’s attention to Africa cannot go unnoticed, as articulated in his A History of the Work of Redemption. Less attention, however, has been given to the reception of Edwards’s works in Africa. This absence in Edwardsean research is remarkable, as many of his works have been reprinted, translated, and published from the eighteenth century onwards, particularly by those who had a vested interest in missionary movements and societies labouring throughout Africa. In fact, the reception of Edwards’s thought in Africa is primarily through the work of nineteenth-century missionaries and missionary societies—willing or unwilling participants of the colonial European expansion in Africa. Several of his works translated into Arabic, Dutch, English, French, and German found their way from Cairo to Cape Town. This chapter, then, is a preliminary overview from North Africa to Southern Africa of the distribution, use, and appropriation of some of Edwards’s works throughout the continent.

The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume II

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Degree Of Acceptance ◽  
Missionary Societies ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
British State ◽  
The Relationship

This volume charts the development of protestant Dissent between the passing of the Toleration Act (1689) and the repealing of the Test and Corporation Acts (1828). The long eighteenth century was a period in which Dissenters slowly moved from a position of being a persecuted minority to achieving a degree of acceptance and, eventually, full political rights. The first part of the volume considers the history of various Dissenting traditions inside England. There are separate chapters devoted to Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers—the denominations that traced their history before this period—and also to Methodists, who emerged as one of the denominations of ‘New Dissent’ during the eighteenth century. The second part explores the ways in which these traditions developed outside England. It considers the complexities of being a Dissenter in Wales and Ireland, where the state church was Episcopalian, as well as in Scotland, where it was Presbyterian. It also looks at the development of Dissent across the Atlantic, where the relationship between Church and state was rather more loose. The third part is devoted to revivalist movements and their impact, with a particular emphasis on the importance of missionary societies for spreading protestant Christianity from the late eighteenth century onwards. The fourth part looks at Dissenters’ relationship to the British state and their involvement in campaigns to abolish the slave trade. The final part discusses how Dissenters lived: the theology they developed and their attitudes towards Scripture; the importance of both sermons and singing; their involvement in education and print culture; and the ways in which they expressed their faith materially through their buildings.

Schopenhauer’s Pessimism in Context

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-298
Author(s):  
Mark Migotti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

In this chapter, the author attempts to establish what is philosophically living and what is philosophically dead in Schopenhauer’s pessimism. Against the background of the intriguing the history of the terms “optimism” and “pessimism”—in debates about Leibniz’s theodicy in the early eighteenth century and the popularity of Schopenhauer in the late nineteenth century, respectively—the author points up the distinction between affirming life, which all living beings do naturally, and subscribing to philosophical optimism (or pessimism), which is possible only for reflective beings like us. Next, the author notes the significance of Schopenhauer’s claim that optimism is a necessary condition of theism and explains its bearing on his pessimistic argument for the moral unacceptability of suicide. The chapter concludes that Schopenhauer’s case for pessimism is not conclusive, but instructive; his dim view of the prospects for leading a truly rewarding, worthwhile human life draws vivid attention to important questions about how and to what degree an atheistic world can nevertheless be conducive to human flourishing.

scholarly journals ‘Constitutions selection’: Darwin, race and medicine

BJHS Themes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Suman Seth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Skin Colour ◽  
Race Science ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Race ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract In the course of his discussion of the origin of variations in skin colour among humans in the Descent of Man, Charles Darwin suggested that darker skin might be correlated with immunity to certain diseases. To make that suggestion, he drew upon a claim that seemed self-evidently correct in 1871, although it had seemed almost certainly incorrect in the late eighteenth century: that immunity to disease could be understood as a hereditary racial trait. This paper aims to show how fundamental was the idea of ‘constitutions selection’, as Darwin would call it, for his thinking about human races, tracking his (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to find proof of its operation over a period of more than thirty years. At the same time and more broadly, following Darwin's conceptual resources on this question helps explicate relationships between conceptions of disease and conceptions of race in the nineteenth century. That period saw the birth of a modern, fixist, biologically determinist racism, which increasingly manifested itself in medical writings. The reverse was also true: medicine was a crucial site in which race was forged. The history of what has been called ‘race-science’, it is argued, cannot and should not be written independent of the history of ‘race-medicine’.

scholarly journals The Materiality of English Suicide Letters, c. 1700 – c. 1850

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Ella Sbaraini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Emotional Distress ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Scholars have explored eighteenth-century suicide letters from a literary perspective, examining issues of performativity and reception. However, it is fruitful to see these letters as material as well as textual objects, which were utterly embedded in people's social lives. Using thirty manuscript letters, in conjunction with other sources, this article explores the contexts in which suicide letters were written and left for others. It looks at how authors used space and other materials to convey meaning, and argues that these letters were epistolary documents usually meant for specific, known persons, rather than the press. Generally written by members of the ‘lower orders’, these letters also provide insight into the emotional writing practices of the poor, and their experiences of emotional distress. Overall, this article proposes that these neglected documents should be used to investigate the emotional and material contexts for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century suicide. It also argues that, at a time when the history of emotions has reached considerable prominence, historians must be more attentive to the experiences of the suicidal.

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.

How violent was eighteenth-century Ireland?

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (119) ◽  
pp. 377-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neal Garnham
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Popular Protest ◽  
Ancient Regime ◽  
History Of ◽  
Typical Part ◽  
The Law

In his recent book dealing with the history of duelling in Ireland, James Kelly comes to the conclusion that eighteenth-century Ireland was essentially ‘a violent society’, peopled at least in part ‘by wilful men who put their individual reputations above their lives, their families, their religion, and the law’. Such comments seem to continue a well-established tradition of interpretation that goes back to the nineteenth century. However, this image of a society in which violence was endemic, and conflict a feature of everyday life, has not gone unquestioned by historians. For example, Thomas Bartlett and Sean Connolly have instead noted the relatively controlled nature of popular protest, the early disappearance of banditry, and the reliance, until the very end of the century, on local enforcement of the law, as possible indications that Ireland may not have been as disorderly a society as has been suggested. These differing interpretations have, in turn, an obvious relevance to the wider debate on how eighteenth-century Ireland should be perceived: as a society irreconcilably and uniquely divided by religious and ethnic conflicts, or as a more or less typical part of the European ancient régime.

scholarly journals pre-eighteenth-century traditions of revivalism: damascus in the thirteenth century

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
konrad hirschler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Large Sections

this article examines whether it is possible to trace eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalist thought to earlier ‘medieval’ examples. the discussion is centred on the issue of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, which featured prominently in revivalist thought. taking the example of scholars in thirteenth-century damascus, it firstly compares the respective readings of ijtiha¯d/taqli¯d, by focusing on one individual, abu¯ sha¯ma (d. 1267). it secondly asks whether a scholar like abu¯ sha¯ma, who had adopted a reading similar to later revivalists, also took a critical and oppositional stand against large sections of his contemporary society, i.e. a revivalist posture. it is this article's main contention that the example of abu¯ sha¯ma shows the need to study in more detail possible revivalist traditions prior to the ‘grand’ movements. the combination of the history of ideas and social history might allow a deeper understanding of how and in what contexts calls for reform and opposition to the current state of affairs were expressed.

WILLIAM GELL AND POMPEIANA (1817–19 AND 1832)

2015 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 245-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosemary Sweet
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Interests ◽  
Additional Income ◽  
Archaeological Approach

This article offers an analysis of the preparation, publication and reception of the two separate versions of William Gell's Pompeiana, texts that exercised a formative influence over Victorian understanding of not just Roman Pompeii, but of domestic Roman life more broadly throughout the nineteenth century, and that highlight a transition from eighteenth-century antiquarianism to a more ‘archaeological’ approach to the past in the nineteenth century. Using unpublished correspondence that has been overlooked by other scholarship on Gell, it argues that the form and content of the volumes responded to both contemporary fascination with the history of domestic life and the need for an affordable volume on Pompeii. But the volumes also reflected many of Gell's more personal interests, developed in a career of travelling in Greece, Asia Minor and Spain, and were a product of his circumstances: they were conceived in order that Gell (and his coadjutor John Peter Gandy in the first edition) might earn much-needed additional income, and were a means through which Gell could consolidate his social position in Naples by establishing his authoritative expertise on Pompeii.

AFRICAN IVORIES AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ANTIQUARIANS

2019 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 347-362
Author(s):  
William Hart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Specific Reference ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Late Renaissance ◽  
Source Of Information

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, artists in West Africa made sophisticated ivory carvings specifically for the early Portuguese navigators and their patrons. In researching the history of the ivories, the records of eighteenth-century English antiquarians are a neglected yet important source of information. Such sources help to bridge the gap between the earliest references to Afro-Portuguese ivories in Portuguese customs records (as well as the inventories of royal and princely treasuries of the late Renaissance) and their re-appearance in nineteenth-century museum registers and the collections of private individuals.Especially valuable in this regard are the eighteenth-century minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London, which enable us to trace the history of several African ivories associated with Fellows of the Society – in particular, Richard Rawlinson, Martin Folkes, Sir Hans Sloane, George Vertue and George Allan. In this article, the author reassesses two African ivories, an oliphant and a saltcellar, with specific reference to the Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London, shedding new light on the history of these beautiful objects.

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