Too Much to Rule: States and Empires across the Early Modern World

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 511-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Marcocci
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Global History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Promising Line

In the past two decades, empires have increasingly attracted the attention of historians of the early modern period to the detriment of the traditional focus on states as the default political unit of analysis. The emergence of global history is not alien to this turn. This article maintains that our understanding of configurations of the early modern political map would only benefit from detaching the history of the state from its European trajectory and focusing on the multiple connections between states and empires across the world. Not only did both states and empires share the problem of having too much to rule, but their differences were not always so clear to the historical actors. Therefore, looking at their interactions at a local level might be a promising line to follow in future research.

College Communities Abroad

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Migrant Communities ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

In the early modern period, Catholic communities in Protestant jurisdictions were impelled to establish colleges for the education and formation of students in more hospitable Catholic territories. The Irish, English and Scots Colleges founded in France, Flanders, the Iberian peninsula, Rome and elsewhere are the best known, but the phenomenon extended to Dutch and Scandinavian foundations in southern Flanders and the German lands. Similarly colleges were established in Rome for various national communities, among whom the Maronites are a striking example. The first colleges were founded in the mid-sixteenth century and tens of thousands of students passed through them until their closure in late eighteenth century. Only a handful survived the disruption of the French Revolutionary wars to re-emerge in the nineteenth century. Historians have long argued that these exile colleges played a prominent role in maintaining Catholic structures by supplying educated clergy equipped to deal with the challenges of their domestic churches. This has ensured that the Irish, English and Scots colleges in particular have a rich historiography laid out in the pages of Archivium Hibernicum, the Records of the Scots Colleges or the volumes published under the aegis of the Catholic Record Society in England. Until recently, however, their histories were considered in isolating confessional and national frameworks, with surprisingly little attempt to examine commonalities or connections. Recent research has begun to open up the topic by investigating the social, economic, cultural and material histories of the colleges. Meanwhile renewed interest in the history of early modern migration has encouraged historians to place the colleges within the vibrant migrant communities of Irish, English, Scots and others on the continent. The Introduction begins with a survey of the colleges. It assesses their historiographies, paying particular attention to the research of the last three decades. The introduction argues that an obvious next step is to examine the colleges in transnational and comparative perspectives. Finally, it introduces the volume's essays on Irish, English, Scots, Dutch, German and Maronite colleges, which provide up-to-date research by leading historians in the field and point to the possibilities for future research on this exciting topic.

Animal Studies and the Early Modern Period

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Mennell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Unique Manner ◽  
Human Animal

The burgeoning field of animal studies has facilitated the exploration of human-animal relations across a variety of disciplines. Following the animal turn in humanities scholarship, a number of studies published in the late 20th and early 21st centuries have demonstrated that animals reflected the social, cultural, and political concerns of the early modern period in a unique manner due to a shift in the ways in which animals were viewed and valued. This shift was largely caused by the increasing commodification of animals, the discovery of new creatures through global exploration, a renewed interest in investigating and documenting all earthly beings, and an enhanced concern for animal welfare. A range of early modern texts reflect this shift in the perception of animals through engaged interaction with conceptions of the human-animal divide and interrogation of human exceptionalism. Animals also inhabit a multitude of early modern texts in a less prominent manner because, as is the case in the modern world, animals lived alongside humans and were a fundamental part of everyday life. While these texts may not at first seem to reveal much detail about the lives of animals and how they were viewed in the early modern period, the field of animal studies has provided a method of bringing nonhuman beings to the fore. When analyzing the representation of nonhuman beings in early modern texts through the lens of animal studies a thorough consideration of the context in which such texts were written and investigation of the lived experience of the animals they seek to portray is required in order to capture, what leading animal studies scholar Erica Fudge terms, a holistic history of animals.

scholarly journals Wearing images. Introduction = Imágenes portadas. Introducción

2018 ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Diane H. Bodart
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Past ◽  
Art Object ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modes Of Interaction

In the past decades, studies on the materiality and the efficacy of images, as well as the artistic and social practices related to them, have allowed scholars to explore how much images’ making, use, handling and display contributed to the activation of their powers of presence through their interaction with the viewer. Further, the growing interest in the articulation between the history of art and the anthropology of images has brought to light the close links between the art object and the body: in fact, if the body can be the medium of the animate art object, the art object can potentially act as a substitute of the animate body. But what happens when the body is the support of a distinctive image, when it inscribes an image on its own surface, whether directly on the skin or through intermediary props such as clothing or corporeal parure? Wearing Images investigates the different modes of interaction between the image and the body that wears it in the Early-Modern period, when devotional, political, dynastic or familial images could be worn as medals, jewels, badges, embroidered garments or tattoos.En las últimas décadas, los estudios sobre la materialidad y la eficacia de las imágenes, así como de las prácticas artísticas y sociales asociadas a ellas, han permitido a los historiadores explorar hasta qué punto la fabricación de las imágenes, su uso, manejo y exhibición contribuyó a activar sus capacidades de presentarse a través de su interacción con el espectador. Además, el creciente diálogo entre la historia del arte y la antropología de las imágenes ha puesto de relieve las estrechas conexiones entre el objeto artístico y el cuerpo: en efecto, si el cuerpo puede ser el medio para el objeto artístico animado, el objeto artístico puede actuar potencialmente como sustituto del cuerpo animado. Pero ¿qué ocurre cuando el cuerpo es el soporte de una imagen distintiva, cuando inscribe una imagen en su propia superficie, ya sea directamente en la piel o a través de intermediarios como el vestido o un adorno? Wearin Images investiga las diferentes modalidades de interacción entre la imagen y el cuerpo que se viste con ella en la Edad moderna, en una época en la que imágenes devocionales, políticas, dinásticas o familiares podían vestirse como medallas, joyas, placas, prendas bordadas o tatuajes.

Writing the past in early-modern Ireland: Anglesey, Borlase and the craft of history

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (158) ◽  
pp. 171-191
Author(s):  
Eamon Darcy
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Profound Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Methods

AbstractThe draft notes for a proposed history of Ireland compiled by Arthur Annesley, the first earl of Anglesey, and letters to Edmund Borlase, author of The history of the execrable Irish rebellion (London, 1680), which describe the reception of his work in England and Ireland, offer a convenient keyhole through which historians can investigate the craft of history writing in the early-modern period. While there has been much discussion of these authors and their contribution to wider political (and highly partisan) debates concerning the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis, less has been said about the historical methods they employed to understand the past. While this article does not deny that both authors attempted to defend their own political factions and views, it argues that a focus on the partisan nature of their contributions neglects the historiographical context to what they produced. Both Anglesey’s and Borlase’s research and writing occurred at a time of profound change in history writing as readers were becoming increasingly critical of works they read and authors engaged in sustained attempts to understand deep-lying causes of the various crises that engulfed the three kingdoms. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to illustrate how both Anglesey and Borlase’s ‘histories’ reflected this historiographical turn in the late-seventeenth century.

The Index in the Premodern and Modern World

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Conrau-Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Great Degree ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
Textual Form

In the history of the book, indexes emerged as a result of a number of developments in paratexts and organization. The earliest examples of this device varied significantly in layout, organization, and textual form. While various kinds of tables of contents are attested in the ancient world, the index is a much later innovation. The earliest use of indexes is found in legal and then scholastic and patristic texts in continental Europe; they were particularly useful for university students and preachers. Indexes served as aids to help them navigate the growing corpus of legal and theological compilations and commentaries. However, their format and function were variable: the manuscript evidence shows a great degree of experimentation, combining alphabetic, vocalic, and systematic orders of arrangement. In the early modern period, with increasing anxieties about how to organize and manage information, treatises instructed readers how to compile an index. In turn, from the 16th century and well into the 18th, writers cautioned against an excessive reliance on these book aids in lieu of reading the whole books and lampooned so-called “index learning.” The use of indexes in Greek, Hebrew, and Islamic book culture only began in earnest in the early modern period.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Vandrei
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Public History ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Culture ◽  
The Way

This chapter introduces the reader to the story of Boudica, beginning in the early modern period. It also introduces what is meant by ‘historical culture’, and discusses the manner in which these two themes open up wider questions about the creative processes inherent in reconstructing the past. It discusses the distinction between approaches to the history of history, including memory and public history, as well as the existing scholarly literature about Boudica’s posthumous reputation. It goes on to argue that historical ideas are the product of complex, individualized processes, through which scholars can move beyond an understanding of the past as epiphenomenal to any single present. It establishes the argument, methodology, and audience for the book, noting in particular the way in which historical culture encourages a renewed focus on the importance of ‘truth’ in understanding the past’s relationship to successive presents.

scholarly journals Human Trafficking in Medieval Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Paolella
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
Global Concern

Human trafficking has become a global concern over the last twenty years, but its violence has terrorized and traumatized its victims and survivors for millennia. This study examines the deep history of human trafficking from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. It traces the evolution of trafficking patterns: the growth and decline of trafficking routes, the everchanging relationships between traffickers and authorities, and it examines the underlying causes that lead to vulnerability and thus to exploitation. As the reader will discover, the conditions that lead to human trafficking in the modern world, such as poverty, attitudes of entitlement, corruption, and violence, have a long and storied past. When we understand that past, we can better anticipate human trafficking’s future, and then we are better able to fight it.

Rivers of the Sultan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faisal H. Husain
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
River System ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Realignment ◽  
Provincial Autonomy

Rivers of the Sultan offers a history of the Ottoman Empire’s management of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the early modern period. During the early sixteenth century, a radical political realignment in West Asia placed the reins of the Tigris and Euphrates in the hands of Istanbul. The political unification of the longest rivers in West Asia allowed the Ottoman state to rebalance the natural resource disparity along its eastern frontier. It regularly organized the shipment of grain, metal, and timber from upstream areas of surplus in Anatolia and the Jazira to downstream areas of need in Iraq. This imperial system of waterborne communication, the book argues, created heavily militarized fortresses that anchored the Ottoman presence in Iraq, enabling Istanbul to hold in check foreign and domestic challenges to its authority and to exploit the organic wealth of the Tigris-Euphrates alluvium. From the end of the seventeenth century, the convergence of natural and human disasters transformed the Ottoman Empire’s relationship with its twin rivers. A trend toward provincial autonomy ensued that would localize the Ottoman management of the Tigris and Euphrates and shift its command post from Istanbul to the provinces. By placing a river system at the center of analysis, this book reveals intimate bonds between valley and mountain, water and power in the early modern world.

scholarly journals Global border making and securitisation in the early modern world: introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 9s4 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Lisa Hellman ◽  
Edmond Smith
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Global History ◽  
The Core ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
Work First

In the early modern period, borders could be mutable, imprecise, and represent far more than the lines on a map or delineation between sovereign states. In this essay, as well as introducing the eight articles that form the body of the special edition, we set out the key ideas that serve as a common theme and thread across this collected body of work. First, the idea of �securitisation� is examined, and consideration given to how it has been used by both scholars in International Relations and more recently in historical studies. Second, we consider the concept of �border making� and explore how re-examining our preconceptions about the idea of borders can change the way we examine important questions related to state and imperial formation, identity, and the meaning of community. Finally, the possibilities for using borders and security as entry points into asking new questions about �emotional global history� are discussed, and how this could be useful for thinking more carefully about the tensions, frictions and entanglements, as much as connection and exchange, that are at the core of globalising processes that have done so much to shape the world as we know it today.

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