MOLDA VIA AND WALLACHIA IN THE EYES OF RUSSIAN OBSERVERS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-123
Author(s):  
VICTOR TAKI

Abstract: Taking as its starting point the Enlightenment discourse about Eastern Europe, the article examines the way Russian elites responded to the emergence of the West-East symbolic divide through discovery and appropriation of their own "Orient." The encounter of the Westernized Russian officer corps and diplomats with the Hellenized Romanian boyar elite of Moldavia and Wallachia in the course of the Russian-Ottoman wars provides an illustration of this phenomenon. Deriving from the classic oppositions between "Europe" and "Orient," "civilization" and "barbarity," the Russian discourse on Moldavia and Wallachia differed from West European models through the recognition of common religion and the similarities between the lifestyle of the Romanian elite and the old Muscovite ways. This interplay of "sameness" and "otherness" served the Russian imperial elite to monopolize the civilizing mission in the region and assert its European identity in the period when the latter became increasingly questioned both internationally and domestically.

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 99-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Taki

Taking as its starting point the Enlightenment discourse about Eastern Europe, thc article examines the way Russian elites responded to the emergence of the West-East symbolic divide through discovery and appropriation of their own "Orient." The encounter of the Westernized Russian officer corps and diplomats with the Hellenized Romanian boyar elite of Moldavia and Wallachia in the course of the Russian-Ottoman wars provides an illustration of this phenomenon. Deriving from the classic oppositions between "Europe" and "Orient," "civilization" and "barbarity," the Russian discourse on Moldavia and Wallachia differed from West European models through the recognition of common religion and the similarities between the lifestyle of the Romanian elite and the old Muscovite ways. This interplay of "sameness" and "otherness" served the Russian imperial elite to monopolize the civilizing mission in the region and assert its European identity in the period when the latter became increasingly questioned both intemationally and domestically.


Aries ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-270
Author(s):  
Alexandra H.M. Nagel

Abstract The works of Julius Spier, a pupil of C.G. Jung, provide a perfect case study illustrating the psychologization of chiromancy during the Interbellum. His case also highlights a lack of insight in the way in which hand-reading has evolved in Europe since the nineteenth century. After its appearance in the West, the art of reading hands has generally been referred to as chiromancy (hand divination, i.e. fortune-telling through reading the palm). Thanks to the work of the French captain Casimir S. d’ Arpentigny, published first in 1843, chirognomy (the study of hand forms) has become an important aspect of hand-reading. Afterwards, Adolphe Desbarrolles distinguished a chirognomic and a chiromantic aspect on a hand-analysis, whereupon either chirology (the study of the hand) or chirosophy (wisdom of the hand) became the umbrella terms for the “twin sciences” chiromancy and chirognomy. Spier, however, juxtaposed chirology and chiromancy before branching off with his novel method entitled psychochirology.


2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Thisaranie Herath

The inaccessibility of the Ottoman harems to European males helped perpetuate the image of the harem as purely sexual in nature and contributed to imperialistic discourse that positioned the East as inferior to the West. It was only with the emergence of female travellers and artists that Europe was afforded a brief glimpse into the source of their fantasies; however, whether these accounts catered to or challenged the normative imperialist discourse of the day remains controversial. Emerging scholarship also highlights the way in which harem women themselves were able to control the depiction of their private spaces to suit their own needs, serving to highlight how nineteenth century depictions of the harem were a series of cross-cultural exchanges and negotiations between male Orientalists, female European travellers, and shrewd Ottoman women. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 30-37
Author(s):  
A.V. Kamenets ◽  
◽  
L.V. Molina ◽  
◽  

this article discusses the key ideas of the philosophy of the Enlightenment (applying democratic attitudes, referring to real-life problems and issues, promoting humaneness and humanism) that have influenced the Russian musical culture. A connection is traced between the worldview of the West-European philosophers of the Enlightenment and the works of European composers and musicians that influenced the Russian musical culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. The article highlights how the philosophy of the Enlightenment affected the development of the operatic and singing art in Russia and how it in many ways dictated subsequent trends in the Russian music.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 251-267
Author(s):  
Anneloek Scholten ◽  
Sophie van Os

Abstract ‘You Must Cultivate the Heathland’. The Society of Benevolence and the cultivation of soil in the nineteenth-century press. In the nineteenth century, debates surrounding the cultivation of Dutch soil and processes of civilisation were inextricably linked. This article examines the discourse surrounding cultivation of heathlands in newspaper reports about the Society of Benevolence in the 1820s and 1840s. It considers the way the cultivation of heathland in Drenthe is framed as a civilizing force and reflects on the tensions between nation and region in reporting on this issue, as local economic and cultural interests conflicted with nationalist visions of progress and the interests of urban investors. Comparing Dutch and British reports on the Society, the article also forms a starting point for a transnational perspective on this topic.


Author(s):  
Yi Guo

This chapter examines the introduction of the Western concept of press freedom into imperial China. The initial introduction of freedom of the press was a product of the transnational interaction between China and the West in the nineteenth century. From the 1830s, Western businessmen, European Protestant missionaries, and Chinese diplomats introduced scattered ideas of press freedom into China, though these had very little influence at the time. This chapter documents this initial process of conceptual transplantation and summarizes the differing interpretations of press freedom through an in-depth textual analysis of primary sources.


Author(s):  
Ourania Polycandrioti

The longevity of the magazine Revue des Deux Mondes, its position among the French magazines, its contents, contributors and directors, all prominent scholars of France, establish the Revue des Deux Mondes as an important record of intellectual and political life in the nineteenth century, as well as of the way in which the West in general and France in particular regarded contemporary Greece during the same period. This study aims to provide an overview of all Greek-themed articles in the magazine from 1829 to 1899, with the purpose of exploring the various aspects of ancient and contemporary Hellenism, in relation to France’s foreign policies as well as the activities of the French School at Athens.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ol'ga Masloboeva

This monograph explains the historical necessity of the emergence in the nineteenth century the Russian organicism, and the subsequent birth of his Russian cosmism. On the basis of the age of the principle of the analysis of the history, the idea of which originated in Antiquity, but the most consistent development was in the works, T. N. Granovsky, reveals the connection of the inner logic of a growing world and domestic philosophical thought. Suitable vzaimodeystvie development of the West-European and Russian philosophy is confirmed by the comparative analysis of the evolution of philosophical anthropology, presented in the second section of the monograph. For students and teachers and all those interested in issues of Russian organicism and cosmism Russian.


Slavic Review ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 660-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Hitchins

In the second half of the eighteenth century the leavening effects of the Enlightenment began to be felt among the Rumanians of Transylvania. The Enlightenment in Transylvania—and in Eastern Europe generally —was a curious blend of natural law, rationalism, and optimism, drawn from the West, and nationalism, a response to local conditions. It is no coincidence that the first tangible signs of national awakening among the Rumanians manifested themselves at this time. In the thought of the Enlightenment they discovered new justification for their claims to equality with their Magyar, Saxon, and Szekler neighbors. For example, they applied the notion of “natural” civil equality between individuals to the relationship between whole peoples, and they accepted wholeheartedly the myth of the social contract as the foundation of society and as the guarantee of the rights of all those who composed it.


2005 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Bunce

Why has the national idea played such a powerful role, both positive and negative, in the regime, state, and economic transitions that have taken place in post-communist Eurasia? This article emphasizes the powerful but variable effects of imperial rule in this region, beginning with the Habsburgs and continuing through the more recent experiences of the Soviet bloc and the Yugoslav, Soviet, and Czechoslovak ethnofederations. The national idea, a product of very different experiences in the West, was transformed when moving eastward in the nineteenth century, largely because imperial contexts are not state contexts. The political empowerment of the national idea continued when imperial dynamics returned to the region with the rise of communism. As a result, post-communist Eastern Europe was unusually well situated to privilege nationalism in the struggles over new states and new economic and political regimes.


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