scholarly journals “Soi-Disant Columbuses”: The Discovery of Dominica’s Boiling Lake and the Commodification of Knowledge in Colonial Societies

2008 ◽  
Vol 82 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 237-263
Author(s):  
Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert

It may indeed be “a truth universally acknowledged” that “no man is an island, entire of itself.” Nonetheless, the entirety upon itself that Donne assumes as a given in connection to islands may be true only as far as geography and geometry are concerned – or perhaps, in the case of the poet, as far as the pure idea, the literary conceit, goes. The truth is that given the pernicious history of European colonization around the world, no island has retained its entirety of itself for very long after being “discovered” by Europeans. One may thus wonder if Donne himself was quite unaware of the irony implicit in his verses. In 1596, more than a quarter century before he penned his famous lines, he had had his own brush with conquest and colonization. In that year, he had enlisted in the Earl of Essex’s unsuccessful privateering expedition against Cadiz, and in 1597 he had sailed with Essex and Sir Walter Ralegh in the near-disastrous Islands Expedition, which had sought to intercept Spanish ships bringing gold and silver from South America as they sailed past the Azores.

1967 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 83-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Hurstfield.

In the reign of James I, Sir Walter Ralegh, a prisoner in the Tower and under sentence of death, occupied some of his leisure in writing a History of the World. Unfortunately, he never got beyond 130 B.C.; but in his Introduction he did pause to comment on more recent history. Now that Elizabeth I was dead, he felt able to speak quite freely about her father:


Author(s):  
Alexander B. Haskell

Sir Walter Ralegh published his monumental History of the World in 1614, two years after the untimely death of the young Prince Henry, heir apparent to James I, and seven years after the successful establishment of a Virginia colony at Jamestown, a fort situated along a grand river given the same sovereign-evoking name, the James. The three events were undoubtedly intertwined for Ralegh. Prince Henry was the darling of the Virginia colonizers. Embraced for his firm Protestant faith but also more broadly idealized as heaven-sent, Henry was eagerly courted by the adventurers, who wanted him to serve as the “...


1936 ◽  
Vol CLXXI (nov28) ◽  
pp. 395-395
Author(s):  
M.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis R.A. Mans ◽  
Priscilla Friperson ◽  
Meryll Djotaroeno ◽  
Jennifer Pawirodihardjo

The Republic of Suriname (South America) is among the culturally, ethnically, and religiously most diverse countries in the world. Suriname’s population of about 600,000 consists of peoples from all continents including the Javanese who arrived in the country between 1890 and 1939 as indentured laborers to work on sugar cane plantations. After expiration of their five-year contract, some Javanese returned to Indonesia while others migrated to The Netherlands (the former colonial master of both Suriname and Indonesia), but many settled in Suriname. Today, the Javanese community of about 80,000 has been integrated well in Suriname but has preserved many of their traditions and rituals. This holds true for their language, religion, cultural expressions, and forms of entertainment. The Javanese have also maintained their traditional medical practices that are based on Jamu. Jamu has its origin in the Mataram Kingdom era in ancient Java, some 1300 years ago, and is mostly based on a variety of plant species. The many Jamu products are called jamus. The first part of this chapter presents a brief background of Suriname, addresses the history of the Surinamese Javanese as well as some of the religious and cultural expressions of this group, focuses on Jamu, and comprehensively deals with four medicinal plants that are commonly used by the Javanese. The second part of this chapter continues with an equally extensive narrative of six more such plants and concludes with a few remarks on the contribution of Javanese jamus to Suriname’s traditional medicinal pharmacopeia.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 763
Author(s):  
Bart J. Koet

It is the thesis of this article that a secular form of the biblical Exodus pattern is used by Woody Allen in his Broadway Danny Rose. In the history of the Bible, and its interpretation, the Exodus pattern is again and again used as a model for inspiration: from oppression to deliverance. It was an important source of both argument and symbolism during the American Revolution. It was used by the Boer nationalists fighting the British Empire and it comes to life in the hand of liberation theology in South America. The use of this pattern and its use during the seder meal is to be taken loosely here: Exodus is not a theory, but a story, a “Big Story” that became part of the cultural consciousness of the West and quite a few other parts of the world. Although the Exodus story is in the first place an account of deliverance or liberation in a religious context and framework, in Broadway Danny Rose it is used as a moral device about how to survive in the modern wilderness.


Author(s):  
Andrés Troncoso ◽  
Felipe Armstrong ◽  
Mara Basile

Central and South America is a vast region, where a wide range of different societies established, transformed, disappeared, and endured. This kaleidoscope of peoples offers a particularly rich and diverse body of rock art in terms of its historical, technical, visual, and spatial features. The first sections of this chapter briefly introduces the reader to this diversity, as well as to the history of rock art research, presenting and discussing the different theoretical and methodological frameworks used. The authors discuss the role that rock art played—and still plays—for different groups, which they have grouped in terms of their common socioeconomic strategies. The authors argue that rock art research from this region can contribute to the wider understanding of rock art in the world, offering its materialistic and archaeological approaches ranging from the study of social complexity, the domestication of animals, mobility, and memory.


1936 ◽  
Vol CLXXI (nov28) ◽  
pp. 394-394
Author(s):  
Wm. Jaggard

English Today ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Meyerhoff

ABSTRACTAn analysis of dialect variability in the use of BE in the island of Bequia. Bequia (pronounced /bekwei/) is the northernmost of the Grenadine islands in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Like most of the Caribbean, Bequia has a long history of language contact, but most of the evidence for this must be inferred. It appears that the Carib population living on the island before European colonization settled Bequia in successive waves of migration ultimately originating from the coast of South America indeed the name ‘Bequia’ is said to derive from a Carib word becouya, meaning ‘Island of the clouds’, but as yet I have been unable to trace this etymon reliably to a particular Carib language. Based on what we know about St Vincent, and the limited mentions of Bequia in the eighteenth century, we can infer that, at times, there may have been contact between some combination of speakers of a Carib language or languages, French, English, African languages and/or possibly a relatively new creole-like or contact variety of English.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis R.A. Mans ◽  
Priscilla Friperson ◽  
Meryll Djotaroeno ◽  
Jennifer Pawirodihardjo

The Republic of Suriname (South America) is among the culturally, ethnically, and religiously most diverse countries in the world. Suriname’s population of about 600,000 consists of peoples from all continents including the Javanese who arrived in the country between 1890 and 1939 as indentured laborers to work on sugar cane plantations. After expiration of their five-year contract, some Javanese returned to Indonesia while others migrated to The Netherlands (the former colonial master of both Suriname and Indonesia), but many settled in Suriname. Today, the Javanese community of about 80,000 has been integrated well in Suriname but has preserved many of their traditions and rituals. This holds true for their language, religion, cultural expressions, and forms of entertainment. The Javanese have also maintained their traditional medical practices that are based on Jamu. Jamu has its origin in the Mataram Kingdom era in ancient Java, some 1300 years ago, and is mostly based on a variety of plant species. The many Jamu products are called jamus. The first part of this chapter presented a brief background of Suriname, addressed the history of the Surinamese Javanese as well as some of the religious and cultural expressions of this group, focused on Jamu, and comprehensively dealt with four medicinal plants that are commonly used by the Javanese. This second part of the chapter continues with an equally extensive narrative of six more such plants and concludes with a few remarks on the contribution of Javanese jamus to Suriname’s traditional medicinal pharmacopeia.


Author(s):  
Martín Pérez Bañasco

China is a country with a history that spans more than 5000 years, a civilization that has maintained its customs and art throughout that period, and a nation that is known to the world as the “Dragon of Asia.” Uruguay is a small country in South America with a similarly rich cultural background, whose name, in the indigenous language of the Guaraní people, means the “River of the Painted Birds.” Uruguay has a comparatively small history of only 200 years, but it is a nation defined by the diversity of its population and their experiences – from the indigenous people to the colonizers and immigrants. Uruguay is also a land of revolutions, marked by the search for social equality and freedom.


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