Comparisons and Consequences in Global Perspective, 1500–1750

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merry Wiesner-Hanks
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
The Reformation

This chapter places the Protestant Reformation in a global perspective in two ways, using methods and examining themes common in world history as a field. First, it compares the Reformation to other religious transformations that were occurring at roughly the same time, including the early development of Sikhism, reform movements within Chinese Confucianism, and the reinvigoration of Islam in the Songhay Empire by King Askia the Great. Second, it examines the spread of Protestant ideology and institutions in the increasingly interconnected early modern world, with the colonies of the Dutch East India Company and the missionary work of the Moravians serving as the primary examples of such cultural encounters. It argues that moving beyond Europe to adopt a broader spatial scale enhances our understanding of the religious dynamism of the period, which does not diminish the importance of the Protestant Reformation, but allows us to view it in new ways.

The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Renaissance Italy

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. J. McNair
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Giordano Bruno ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
The One

Between the execution of Gerolamo Savonarola at Florence in May 1498 and the execution of Giordano Bruno at Rome in February 1600, western Christendom was convulsed by the protestant reformation, and the subject of this paper is the effect that that revolution had on the Italy that nourished and martyred those two unique yet representative men: unique in the power and complexity of their personalities, representative because the one sums up the medieval world with all its strengths and weaknesses while the other heralds the questing and questioning modern world in which we live.

THE RECOVERY OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN THE CULTURE OF HUMANISTS AND THE COMMUNICATIVE ORIGINS OF THE REFORMATION

Traditio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 375-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
JORGE LEDO
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Common Currency ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Rules Of The Game

Ideas and opinions about communication and intellectual exchange underwent significant changes during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The rediscovery of parrhesia by the humanists of the Quattrocento is one of the least studied of these changes, and at the same time, paradoxically, one of the most fascinating. My main argument in these pages is that the recovery of Hellenistic “freedom of speech” was a process that took place from the thirteenth century through the first decade of the sixteenth century; thus it began well before the term παρρησία was common currency among humanists. This is the most important and counterituitive aspect of the present analysis of early modern parrhesia, because it means that the concept did not develop at the expense of classical and biblical tradition so much as at the expense of late-medieval scholastic speculation about the sins of the tongue and the legitimation of anger as an intellectual emotion. To illustrate this longue durée process, I have focused on three stages: (i) the creation, transformation, and assimilation by fourteenth-century humanism of the systems of sins of the tongue, and especially the sin of contentio; (ii) the synthesis carried out by Lorenzo Valla between the scholastic tradition, the communicative presumptions of early humanism, and the classical and New Testament ideas of parrhesia; and (iii) the systematization and transformation of this synthesis in Raffaele Maffei's Commentariorum rerum urbanorum libri XXXVIII. In closing, I propose a hypothesis. The theoretical framework behind Maffei's encyclopaedic approach is not only that he was attempting to synthesize the Quattrocento's heritage through the prism of classical sources; it was also that he was crystallizing the communicative “rules of the game” that all of Christianitas implicitly accepted at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Taking the three ways of manifesting the truth considered by Maffei and fleshing them out in the figures of Erasmus of Rotterdam, Celio Calcagnini, and Martin Luther just before the emergence of the Protestant Reformation could help to explain from a communicative perspective the success and pan-European impact of the Reformation.

“NOTHING IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE”: GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE TIME REGIME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 821-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEBASTIAN CONRAD
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New Technology ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Time Regime ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

When European clocks first arrived in seventeenth-century Japan they generated a commotion. The highly complex but also very precise instruments had been brought to Nagasaki by the Dutch East India Company that monopolized the sparse and highly regulated trade between Japan and Europe for more than two centuries. As an expression of the technological sophistication achieved in early modern Europe, mechanical clocks were hi-tech products of their time. They operated with a spring to store the energy, and their making required highly developed skills in casting and metalwork. The new technology made it possible to emancipate the measurement of time from sunshine and to achieve an evenness of temporal rhythms, not only during the day, but also at night.

scholarly journals Dutch trade and patronage networks as facilitators of transcontinental mobility in early modern Russia and the VOC Cape

Historia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
B. Gorelik ◽  
G.J. Schutte
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
East India Company ◽  
High Status ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
The Social ◽  
Upward Social Mobility ◽  
Identity Transformations

The Swellengrebels were the most important family at the Cape under Dutch East India Company (VOC) rule to become members of the Netherlands governing elite. Hendrik Swellengrebel was the colony's only locally-born governor, while his father and other members of the family at the Cape were born in Russia. Their migration between Europe, Africa and Asia reflected the development and functioning of the Dutch trade and patrimonial networks. Even on the periphery, at the Cape and among Dutch expatriates in Russia, those networks provided opportunities for overseas employment and upward social mobility. The case of the Swellengrebels shows that not only goods but also people could make their way from Russia to the Cape and the VOC Asia. Patronage enabled both spatial and upward social mobility. Keeping mutually beneficial relations with influential patrons such as Nicolaes Witsen, members of the Swellengrebel family navigated their way within the Dutch trade networks and achieved prosperity and a high status in such culturally diverse societies as Russia and the Cape. The social advancement, identity transformations and transcontinental migrations of the Swellengrebel family demonstrate the materiality of transcontinental patrimonial networks in the early modern period.

scholarly journals Administering Empire. Business Diplomacy in Early Modern Sweden: The Cases of Abraham Cabiljau and the Gothenburg Company

2022 ◽  
pp. 21-51
Author(s):  
Kaarle Wirta ◽  
Katja Tikka ◽  
Jaakko Björklund
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Commercial Law ◽  
International Commerce ◽  
Military Recruitment ◽  
New Era ◽  
Economic Relationships ◽  
Northern European

The article illustrates the importance of business diplomacy practised by free agents, who navigated and negotiated between northern European empires for widespread commercial, legal and administrative developments. Abraham Cabiljau’s career is an example from the early modern Swedish empire, which stands on the threshold of a new era. In the Swedish empire, Cabiljau was involved in several different sectors, from military recruitment to the development of state accounting and administration of international trade. He represents the Swedish empire’s vast economic relationships with international merchant networks operating in a broad spectrum of military and commercial arenas. The Swedish empire was economically dependent on the financial resources of the merchants in Amsterdam, and economic prosperity was not the sole contribution of these merchants. The education, knowledge and connections provided by Cabiljau greatly enhanced the administration and organisation of Sweden’s international trade by importing a new legal mindset and organisational culture. In return, northern mining resources and Baltic commerce were alluring for Dutch merchants. We argue that the modelling of international organisations was an essential part of Swedish economic development. However, the first Swedish trading companies remained an experimental attempt to transplant the Dutch East India Company (VOC) model to Sweden. Individuals like Cabiljau represent key actors who ignited, taught and promoted commercial law development in Sweden, on which international commerce was later built upon, with long-lasting impacts.

scholarly journals “House Fathers” and “People of the Fields” in Art and Folk Literature Since the Reformation

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Scheuerman ◽  
Arthur Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Rural Culture ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Plant Selection ◽  
Agricultural Improvement ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Folk Literature ◽  
Rural Depopulation

Themes related to humanity’s relationship to nature as technological change led to the Industrial Revolution are evident in early modern German and Austrian art and literature. Authors of popular Hausväterliteratur (house fathers’ literature) associated with the Protestant Reformation advocated the rudiments of agricultural “improvement” through division and specialization of agrarian labor, plant selection, crop rotation, and other changes that upper class landowners adopted for their own economic benefit. By the nineteenth century, authors of Volksliteratur and Dorfgeschichten(village stories) composed novels and short stories celebrating aspects of rural culture and land stewardship as both values were increasingly threatened by modernity. In his writings on Die Gute Gesellschaft (The Good Society), Peter Rosegger cautioned against preoccupation with technical progress that was contributing to rural depopulation and erosion of the sustaining Volksgeist (folk spririt) of locale, community, and obligation.

The Jews and the Reformation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Austin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
First Century ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Jewish Learning ◽  
The Impact

This book examines the attitudes of various Christian groups in the Protestant and Catholic Reformations towards Jews, the Hebrew language, and Jewish learning. Martin Luther's writings are notorious, but Reformation attitudes were much more varied and nuanced than these might lead us to believe. The book has much to tell us about the Reformation and its priorities, and it has important implications for how we think about religious pluralism more broadly. The book begins by focusing on the impact and various forms of the Reformation on the Jews and pays close attention to the global perspective on Jewish experiences in the early modern period. It highlights the links between Jews in Europe and those in north Africa, Asia Minor, and the Americas, and it looks into the Jews' migrations and reputation as a corollary of Christians' exploration and colonisation of several territories. It seeks to next establish the position Jews occupied in Christian thinking and society by the start of the Reformation era, and then moves on to the first waves of reform in the earliest decades of the sixteenth century in both the Catholic and Protestant realms. The book explores the radical dimension to the Protestant Reformation and talks about identity as the heart of a fundamental issue associated with the Reformation. It analyzes “Counter Reformation” and discusses the various forms of Protestantism that had been accepted by large swathes of the population of many territories in Europe. Later chapters turn attention to relations between Jews and Christians in the first half of the seventeenth century and explore the Sabbatean movement as the most significant messianic movement since the first century BCE. In conclusion, the book summarizes how the Jews of Europe were in a very different position by the end of the seventeenth century compared to where they had been at the start of the sixteenth century. It recounts how Jewish communities sprung up in places which had not traditionally been a home to Jews, especially in Eastern Europe.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document