The Casa da Índia and the Emergence of a Science of Administration in the Portuguese Empire

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 327-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ângela Barreto Xavier
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Critical Dimension ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Portuguese Empire ◽  
And Storage ◽  
At Home

Abstract The role played by archives in the making of a Portuguese science of imperial administration is scarcely known. Systematic research is still lacking on what literature suggests was a critical dimension in the management of the empire. By focusing on the Casa da Índia’s activities of production, record-keeping and retrieving of information and knowledge, this study intends to contribute to a better understanding of the links between empire and Portuguese early-modern archival experiences. For more than a century, the Casa da Índia was the institution responsible for the circulation and storage of commodities, information and people within the Portuguese empire, as well as the payment of duties and taxes. What challenges did territorial expansion entail for the Portuguese monarchy, and, in particular, for its archival organization and practices? How did the Casa da Índia register these imperial dynamics? Did its archive materialize the Empire at home? Finally, was its archive relevant to the emergence of a Portuguese science of imperial administration?

Grain Policies and Storage in Southern Germany: The Regensburg Hospital (17th-19th Centuries)

2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 415-445
Author(s):  
Kathrin Pindl
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Analytical Scheme ◽  
Economic Decisions ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Time Specific ◽  
Time Invariant ◽  
And Storage

Abstract This paper is concerned with the storage policy of the citizens’ hospital of Regensburg in the Early Modern period (focus: 18th century). The main purpose consists of (1) a source-based micro-study that helps to derive insights into the mechanisms of how experiences and expectations have influenced decisions by a pre-modern institution, (2) an analytical scheme for describing and evaluating the process of decision-making based on narrative evidence, and (3) the suggestion of analytical categories. These should allow a differentiation between time-invariant human behaviour that determines economic decisions, and time-specific factors which can be used to separate possibly “pre-modern” patterns from seemingly modern-day capitalist economic performance.

A Sound of Silence in the Archives: On Eighteenth-Century Russian Diplomacy and the Historical Episteme of Central Asian Hostility

Itinerario ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 552-571
Author(s):  
Paolo Sartori
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Russian Enterprise ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
European Colonialism

AbstractCui bono information and record keeping? In his most recent work devoted to the study of British and French imperialism in the Levant in early modern history, Cornel Zwierlein has argued that “empires are built on ignorance.” It is, of course, true that during the old regime Western knowledge of things “Oriental” was patently defective, marked as it was by blind spots and glaring gaps; and if observed in the broader context of European colonialism in Asia, the British and French cases are hardly exceptional. Sanjay Subrahmanyam's Europe's India has shown compellingly that the Portuguese, too, blindly forged ahead in their imperial expansion into South Asia, with a good dose of improvisation. By focusing on a mission to Khiva, Bukhara, and Balkh in 1732, I set out to show that the Russian venture in Asia too was premised upon ignorance, among other things. More specifically, I argue that diplomatic and commercial relations between Russia and Central Asia developed in parallel with the neglect of intelligence gathered and made available in imperial archives. Reflecting on the fact that the Russian enterprise in Asia was minimally dependent on information allows us to complicate the reductive equation of knowledge to power, which originates from the “archival turn.” Many today regard archives as reflective of projects of documentation, which granted epistemological virtue to the texts stored, ordered, and preserved therein. The archives generated truth claims, we are told, about hierarchies of knowledge produced by states and, by doing so, they effectively operated as a technological apparatus bolstering the state. However, not all the texts which we find in archives always retained their pristine epistemic force. To historicise the uses, misuses, and, more importantly, the practices of purposeful neglect of records invites us to revisit the quality of transregional connectivity across systems of signification in the early modern period.

scholarly journals Impact of Cooking Procedures and Storage Practices at Home on Consumer Exposure toListeria MonocytogenesandSalmonellaDue to the Consumption of Pork Meat

Risk Analysis ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 638-652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandra De Cesare ◽  
Eva Doménech ◽  
Damiano Comin ◽  
Adele Meluzzi ◽  
Gerardo Manfreda
Keyword(s):  
Pork Meat ◽  
And Storage ◽  
At Home

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

2021 ◽  
pp. 56-84
Author(s):  
Sara H. Lindheim
Keyword(s):  
Word Choice ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Roman People ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Geographical Space ◽  
At Home ◽  
Changing World

Octavian/Augustus, following in the footsteps of both Pompey and Caesar, relentlessly pursues territorial expansion abroad, while at home he presents the Roman people with the image of himself as unstoppable expansionist. In one otherwise unprepossessing poem Propertius makes a strikingly romantic assertion: Cynthia prima fuit, Cynthia finis erit (1.12.20). The word choice—finis—gives pause, especially when this particular elegy (1.12) and the ones with which Propertius surrounds it (1.8a, 1.8b, and 1.11) emphasize geographical space. To be more precise, they focus on Cynthia’s propensity to move through geographical space, away from the Propertian amator. Anxieties emerge from Propertius’ elegies when he imagines the individual faced with an infinite and ever-changing world. The Propertian amator struggles to establish and cling to the possibility of known and definable boundaries. He seeks to render Cynthia his finis and to anchor his self-definition to her.

scholarly journals Catholicism Decentralized: Local Religion in the Early Modern Periphery

2020 ◽  
Vol 89 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-287
Author(s):  
Beat Kümin ◽  
Felicita Tramontana
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Organizational Factors ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Early Modern Catholicism ◽  
Local Religion ◽  
Close Supervision ◽  
Central Switzerland ◽  
Strong Position

AbstractExpanding upon recent work on the heterogeneity of Catholicism and the challenges facing Tridentine reformers, this article examines local religion in two “extreme” settings: the village republic of Gersau in Central Switzerland and the missionary territory of the Custody of the Holy Land. Following conceptual remarks, the authors sketch the distinct secular contexts as well the phased evolution of localized networks for the administration of the cure of souls, the latter starting in the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, respectively. A consistently comparative approach reveals notable similarities—in terms of expanding spiritual provision and better record keeping—alongside substantial differences—especially between the clearly demarcated territorial parishes in the Alps and a more punctual system of sacrament centers in Palestine. At Gersau, where diocesan structures were weak, the church operated under the close supervision of a commune with extensive powers stretching to the rights of advowson and benefice administration. Around Jerusalem, the Franciscans—whose custos acted as the vicar apostolic—used material incentives to win over converts from other Christian denominations. Building on recent reassessments of the post-Tridentine Church, both examples thus underline the strong position of the laity in the confessional age and the need to acknowledge local sociopolitical as well as organizational factors in the formation of early modern Catholicism.

scholarly journals Plague, Practice, and Prescriptive Text

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 152-178
Author(s):  
Moshe Dovid Chechik ◽  
Tamara Morsel-Eisenberg
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Status ◽  
Accepted Practice ◽  
At Home

Abstract This article studies the fate of a contradiction between practice and prescriptive text in 16th-century Ashkenaz. The practice was fleeing a plagued city, which contradicted a Talmudic passage requiring self-isolation at home when plague strikes. The emergence of this contradiction as a halakhic problem and its various forms of resolution are analyzed as a case study for the development of halakhic literature in early modern Ashkenaz. The Talmudic text was not considered a challenge to the accepted practice prior to the early modern period. The conflict between practice and Talmud gradually emerged as a halakhic problem in 15th-century rabbinic sources. These sources mixed legal and non-legal material, leaving the status of this contradiction ambiguous. The 16th century saw a variety of solutions to the problem in different halakhic writings, each with their own dynamics, type of authority, possibilities, and limitations. This variety reflects the crystallization of separate genres of halakhic literature.

Early modern Ireland and Europe

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (144) ◽  
pp. 604-609
Author(s):  
Bernadette Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Academic Institutions ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Changing Trend ◽  
Active Research ◽  
At Home

Many strands of the complex story of Irish migration to Europe in the early modern period are currently the focus of active research by historians both at home and abroad. The traditional emphasis on researching the Catholic Irish who travelled to Europe to further their education is now less pronounced, as researchers move beyond the archives of religious orders and academic institutions into the secular archives of France, Spain and other regions of western Europe. This changing trend is probably dictated more by economic and social considerations than by ideology.

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