The Hanoi Reprint of the Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain (1772) and the Printing of Buddhist Works in Northern Vietnam at the End of the Eighteenth Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Tô Lan Nguyễn ◽  
Rostislav Berezkin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Northern Vietnam ◽  
Official Ideology ◽  
Buddhist Scripture ◽  
Woodblock Printing

Abstract The Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain is a popular Buddhist narrative in prosimetric form that was transmitted to Vietnam from China and reprinted in Hanoi with imperial sanction in 1772. The historical background of the Hanoi reprint demonstrates that this text had much higher status in Vietnam than in China. In Vietnam it was regarded as an authoritative Buddhist scripture. The case of the reprint of the Precious Scroll of Incense Mountain reveals the role of Buddhist monasteries as centers of woodblock printing in Vietnam, which still remains understudied in current research. The growth of printing of Buddhist works, which enjoyed the support of the court and officials in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, testifies to the popularity of Buddhism among the ruling elite during the Later Lê dynasty, when Confucianism was proclaimed the official ideology of the state.

Slavery and Ransom

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Smiley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
The State ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Law

This chapter explores captives’ fates after their capture, all along the Ottoman land and maritime frontiers, arguing that this was largely determined by individuals’ value for ransom or sale. First this was a matter of localized customary law; then it became a matter of inter-imperial rules, the “Law of Ransom.” The chapter discusses the nature of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, emphasizing the role of elite households, and the varying prices for captives based on their individual characteristics. It shows that the Ottoman state participated in ransoming, buying, exploiting, and sometimes selling both female and male captives. The state particularly needed young men to row on its galleys, but this changed in the late eighteenth century as the fleet moved from oars to sails. The chapter then turns to ransom, showing that a captive’s ability to be ransomed, and value, depended on a variety of individualized factors.

scholarly journals Afterlives of the Republic of Letters: Learned Journals and Scholarly Community in the Early Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-116
Author(s):  
Floris Solleveld
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Scholarly Community ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Changing Role

Abstract What happened to the Republic of Letters? Its history seems to stop at the end of the eighteenth century. And yet, in the nineteenth century, there still existed a community gathered in scholarly societies, maintaining a transnational correspondence network and filling learned journals. The term indeed becomes less frequent, but does not go entirely out of use. This article traces the afterlives of the Republic of Letters in the early nineteenth century. Specifically, it investigates texts that attempt to (re)define the Republic of Letters or a cognate, the wider diffusion of the term, and the changing role of learned journals in that period. While most attempts to reinvent the Republic of Letters failed miserably, they indicate a diagnosis of the state of learning and the position of scholars in a period of transition, and in doing so they contradict an ‘unpolitical’ conception of the Republic of Letters.

Civil society

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean L. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Critical Force ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Formal Economy ◽  
Role Of The State

In modern social and political philosophy civil society has come to refer to a sphere of human activity and a set of institutions outside state or government. It embraces families, churches, voluntary associations and social movements. The contrast between civil society and state was first drawn by eighteenth-century liberals for the purpose of attacking absolutism. Originally the term civil society (in Aristotelian Greek, politike koinonia) referred to a political community of equal citizens who participate in ruling and being ruled. In the twentieth century the separation of philosophy from social sciences, and the greatly expanded role of the state in economic and social life, have seemed to deprive the concept of both its intellectual home and its critical force. Yet, approaching the end of the century, the discourse of civil society is now enormously influential. What explains the concept’s revival? Does it have any application in societies that are not constitutional democracies? From a normative point of view, what distinguishes civil society from both the state and the formal economy?

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 204-220
Author(s):  
Igor Fedyukin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Personal Projects

The Conclusion sets the broader context for the key episodes of innovation driven by projectors that have been the subjects of the preceding chapters. It explores the role of diverse enterprisers in the evolution of schools in Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century and later. These enterprisers included numerous private teachers, who dominated the educational landscape in Russia well into the nineteenth century, and diverse officials who promoted their personal projects from within the emerging educational bureaucracy. Contrary to the pervasive myth that the “state” has always been and still is the only player in education in Russia, similar dynamics, to some extent, are observed also in the twentieth century and today.

The State and Geographic Process: A Critical Review

1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Dear ◽  
G Clark
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
The State ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Research Issues ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Geographic Process ◽  
Social Engineer

This paper provides a critical review of a long-neglected issue in geography: The role of the state in geographic processes. Five major interpretations of this role are discussed, with emphasis on their interrelationships and analytical implications: the state as supplier of public goods and services; as facilitator and regulator of the economy; as social engineer; as arbiter; and as agent of some ruling elite. This overview clarifies the question of what the state actually is, and emphasizes the significance of three crucial research issues: the legitimation and fiscal crises of the state; the role of the local state; and comparative analysis of the state in socialist systems.

Criminal Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Meccarelli
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Law System ◽  
Historical Turn ◽  
State Monopoly ◽  
Key Aspects

This chapter aims to study features and development of criminal law in the medieval and modern ages. The emergence, at the end of the eighteenth century, of the state monopoly on punishment, connected with the establishment of the statutory law as an ordering factor, represents a historical turn. Before, criminal law—much more than to the exercise of a right to punish—is related to the problem of determining justice in order to produce a public space substitute for revenge. The chapter, considering this different foundation, analyses the ordering factors structuring the criminal law system. It then focuses on peculiar features of the criminal trial and on key aspects such as the role of the judge, the sanctions regimes, the taxonomy of the crimes, and the regimes of proof. Some cursory remarks, as to how the criminal legal order turns into a system under a state monopoly, serve as a conclusion.

Festivals and the dynamics of the exceptional dead in northern Vietnam

2007 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Kingsley Malarney
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Space ◽  
The State ◽  
Northern Vietnam ◽  
Socialist State ◽  
Political Legitimation ◽  
Changing Role

AbstractThis article examines the changing dynamics of ritual engagements with the ‘exceptional dead’ in northern Vietnam. Since its inception, the socialist state has attempted to control which exceptional dead its citizenry can ritually engage in order to advance revolutionary goals. Although it was successful in this effort for several decades, since the early 1990s both the state and the population have begun ritually engaging a wider number of exceptional dead. This article examines the implications of this change with regard to political legitimation, access to sacred space and the changing role of the exceptional dead in people's lives.

Britain's Foreign Alliances in the Eighteenth Century

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 573-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Black
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political System ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
British Foreign Policy

One of the greatest problems in the discussion of eighteenth-century British foreign policy concerns the assessment of the influence of the particular character of the British political system. British foreign policy, and thus the country's alliance strategy, was conditioned by the subtle interplay of internal processes, the functioning of her domestic political system, and the international situation. As historians are concerned increasingly to probe the nature of the domestic pressures influencing the formulation and execution of policy, so it becomes more important to define the political, as opposed to constitutional, role of Parliament and public opinion. This is of obvious significance for the study of Britain's relations with her allies. Were these made more difficult as a consequence of the distinctive character of the British political system? There was no shortage of contemporaries willing to state that this was the case. An obvious category of discussion concerned the citing of domestic pressure as a reason why concessions could not be made to foreign powers, both allies and those whose alliance was sought. This was of particular significance when ministries explained why gains made during war could not be surrendered at peace treaties and gains made at the peace could not be yielded subsequently. Their defense of the retention of Gibraltar was based on this argument. Similar arguments were used by British ministers in seeking to persuade allies to do as they wished. Diplomatic pressure on France over the state of Dunkirk or on Spain and Portugal over commercial disputes made frequent use of the argument of domestic pressure.

David Hume's Account of Luxury

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
David Hume ◽  
The State ◽  
Traditional View ◽  
Strong Case ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Political Responses

Scholarly discussions of the eighteenth-century luxury controversy invariably acknowledge the important role of David Hume, usually identifying him as one of the first to have made a strong case against the traditional view that luxury is morally corrupt and inimical to the survival of the state. But, having said this, they tend to treat Hume rather summarily, often focusing exclusively on the 1752 essay “Of Refinement in the Arts” and generally agreeing with one leading commentator that “Hume's arguments are straightforward, and can be dealt with briefly.” On closer examination, however, it appears that Hume's treatment of luxury was more complex in its historical development, and more subtle in its final form, than some have supposed. The first part of the following discussion considers the historical progression of Hume's thinking while the second consists in an analysis of “Refinement,” with particular attention to an important but overlooked distinction between the appropriate moral and political responses to luxury.

Crafts and Statecraft in Eighteenth Century Jodhpur

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-722 ◽  
Author(s):  
NANDITA PRASAD SAHAI
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
State Formation ◽  
The State ◽  
External Support ◽  
State Appropriations ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Recent Trends

This essay argues that too much of scholarship on state formation in late pre-colonial India has displayed an elitist bias and focused exclusively on the activities and concerns of upper-caste ruling groups alone. Building upon recent trends that have brought into view the roles of a greater diversity of groups, this article explores the agentive role of the crafts and artisan communities in the state formation of Jodhpur during the eighteenth century. This was a period when the Rathor rulers of Jodhpur were unable to rely on the external support of the Mughal Empire and felt compelled to forge alliances with new groups who, perhaps, were previously marginal to political processes in the region. This, of course, did not dissolve the difficult and often exploitative conditions under which artisans worked, and though their agency was more reactive than creative, it did serve to define and limit the levels of state appropriations in revenues and labour.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document