Barbarism Begins at Home: Islamic Art on Display in Palermo's Museo Nazionale and Sicilian Ethnography at the 1891‐92 Esposizione Nazionale

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-117
Author(s):  
Dana Katz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Islamic Art ◽  
North African ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
At Home

Abstract In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Palermo's Museo Nazionale (National Museum) displayed one of the earliest institutional collections of Islamic art in Western Europe. The museum's director, Antonino Salinas, exhibited objects demonstrating the island's material heritage, including its two-and-a-half centuries of rule by North African dynasties during the medieval period. The prevailing perception elsewhere in post-unification Italy ‐ that Sicily was ungovernable and barbaric in nature ‐ heightened the display's significance. Another exhibition that many Italians would have perceived as representing the 'other' was the Mostra Etnografica Siciliana (Sicilian Ethnographic Exhibition), which the folklorist Giuseppe Pitrè created for the 1891‐92 Palermo Esposizione Nazionale (National Exposition). Highlighting Sicily's volatile image, the Italian press implicitly equated Pitrè's show with the so-called Abyssinian Village, which stood in the exposition fairgrounds and marked the establishment of Italy's first colony in Eritrea at a time of unprecedented imperial expansion. At the National Museum, Salinas remained undeterred, and despite associations of the island's conditions with Africa, he expanded its Islamic holdings. Likewise, Pitrè exhibited costumes, tools, and devotional objects that further accentuated regional differences at the National Exposition. In both displays, Salinas and Pitrè presented what they conceived as Sicily's unique cultural and historical patrimony.

scholarly journals Islamic heritage versus orthodoxy: Figural painting, musical instruments and wine bowls at the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures

2021 ◽  
pp. 135918352199750
Author(s):  
Pooyan Tamimi Arab
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Islamic Art ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
The One

Shahab Ahmed’s What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (2016) challenges anthropologists, Islamic Studies scholars, art historians and museum practitioners to question the theological assumptions underlying conceptions of Islamic art and material culture. This article analyses three object types key to Ahmed’s analysis – Islamic figural painting, musical instruments and wine bowls – from the vantage point of the collection of the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures. Based on the author’s experience as Assistant Curator for West Asia and North Africa in 2015–2016 and on exhibition developments up until 2019, Ahmed’s framework is demonstrated as a guide for critical interpretations of exhibitions of Islamic art and material culture. This perspective lays bare a tension that contemporary museums struggle with in response to nationalist pressures to integrate Muslim citizens in Western Europe: between a diverse Islamic heritage, on the one hand, and orthodox desires to materially purify the very idea of Islam, on the other.

The Division of Some Mexican Haciendas during the Liberal Revolution, 1856-1862

1971 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Bazant
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
The Other ◽  
San Luis ◽  
San Luis Potosi ◽  
Industry And Commerce ◽  
Privately Owned ◽  
The Church

In the middle of the nineteenth century, ecclesiastical wealth in Mexico consisted basically of real estate and mortgages. The Church avoided investments in mining, industry and commerce. There were regional differences, the Church being richer in some parts of the country than in others: in the two most important cities, Mexico and Puebla, the different ecclesiastical corporations owned about half of the total real estate, whereas in some of the smaller cities, such as Veracruz, Jalapa, Orizaba, Córdoba and San Luis Potosí, the Church was proportionately much poorer. The urban real estate consisted of houses rented on fairly favourable terms to both rich and poor, monastic buildings and churches. In the countryside, the Church was considerably poorer than in the cities: its haciendas were few compared to the number of those privately owned, and their value amounted to about 5 per cent of that of all rural estate. Real estate formed about one-half of Church possessions; the other half consisted of mortgages.

Reforms and Deficits: Ottoman Response to European Challenges

2018 ◽  
pp. 90-111
Author(s):  
Şevket Pamuk
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
The One ◽  
Independence Movements

This chapter discusses the Ottoman reforms as well as the efforts to finance them. The Ottoman government, faced with the challenges from provincial notables and independence movements that were gaining momentum in the Balkans, on the one hand, and the growing military and economic power of Western Europe, on the other, began to implement a series of reforms in the early decades of the nineteenth century. These reforms and the opening of the economy began to transform the political and economic institutions very rapidly. The chapter shows the social and economic roots of modern Turkey thus need to be sought, first and foremost, in the changes that took place during the nineteenth century.

A Cultural History of the Home in the Age of Empire

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Western World ◽  
Economic Resource ◽  
Emotional Environment ◽  
Male Breadwinner ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Construct

During the nineteenth century the home, as both a cultural construct and a set of lived practices, became more powerful in the Western world than ever before. The West saw an unprecedented period of imperial expansion, industrialisation and commercialization that transformed both where and how people made their homes. Scientific advances and increasing mass production also changed homes materially, bringing in domestic technologies and new goods. This volume explores how homes and homemaking were imagined and practiced across the globe in the nineteenth century. For instance, not only did the acquisition of empires lead to the establishment of Western European homes in new terrains, but it also buttressed the way in which Europeans saw themselves, as the guardians of superior cultures, patriarchal relationships and living practices. During this period a powerful shared cultural idea of home emerged – championed by a growing urban middle class – that constructed home as a refuge from a chaotic and noisy industrialised world. Gender was an essential part of this idea. Both masculine and feminine virtues were expected to underpin the ideal home: a greater emphasis was placed on an ideal of the male breadwinner and the need for women to maintain the domestic material fabric and emotional environment was stressed. While these ideas were shared and propagated in print culture across Western Europe and North America there were huge differences in how they were realised and practiced. Home was experienced differently according to class and race; different forms of identity and levels of socio-economic resource fashioned a variety of home-making practices. While demonstrating the cultural importance of home, this book reveals the various ways in which home was lived in the nineteenth century.

Filling the Gap between Radishchev and the Decembrists

Slavic Review ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Raeff
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Other ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Future ◽  
The One

In general histories of Russian social and philosophical thought we usually find a gap between 1790 (publication of Radishchev's Journey) and 1815 (the establishment of the first secret societies by the future Decembrists). This quarter of a century could boast neither a prominent personality nor a cause cèlèbre of government persecution. True enough, there was Karamzin and his Zapiska o drevnei i novoi Rossii (Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia); but the tract remained long unknown, and its author is usually dismissed as a lone figure whose impact on the development of the ideologies that were to matter was, at best, peripheral. General histories of literature treat this period primarily in terms of the philological debate between Karamzin and Shishkov and as prologue to Romanticism. Thus, in the one case, the period is described exclusively in terms of Russia's literary history, which is not very satisfactory to the student of social and political ideas; for literature—even as engagé a literature as was Russia's in the nineteenth century—is hardly an adequate source or form of ideology. In the other case, Radishchev must perforce be viewed as an isolated figure, a maverick, without either followers or immediate influence. Furthermore, the obvious implication is that there were no direct links between the Decembrists and eighteenth-century Russian ideas, so that the young rebels of 1825 must have been influenced exclusively by their experiences with the life and thought of Western Europe.On the strength of the testimony of all contemporaries, however, the first decade of the nineteenth century was a period of great intellectual ferment, of exhilarating optimism about Russia's prospects for “modernization” (to use a fashionable term). Compared with the last years of Catherine II and with the reign of Paul, these decades also offered greater freedom, more opportunities for the expression of ideas and hopes. Could indeed the outrage and disillusionment at Alexander's so-called reactionary stance after 1815 be understood if it were not for the fact that his reign had opened on such a strong note of optimism and vitality?

Mimetic Governmentality and the Administration of Colonial Justice in East Timor, ca. 1860–1910

2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Roque
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
East Timor ◽  
The Other ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
Indigenous Law ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
The Comparative Study ◽  
Colonial Government

AbstractThis article explores the mimesis of indigenous “customs and law” as a theory of and strategy for colonial government in the period of late imperialism. I draw on the case of colonial administration in the Portuguese colony of Timor during the second-half of the nineteenth century. I introduce the concept of “mimetic governmentality”: the art of governing the Other through the productive inclusion of institutions, symbols, cultural materials, or social forms understood as other than one's own. In Timor, the imperial establishment was characterized by fragility and isolation, and a pragmatic style of colonial action thrived. In Europe, modern doctrines of colonial law rejected assimilationist policies and advocated “specialization.” In this context, between 1860 and 1910, administrators on Timor devised a system of colonial justice that required the colonizers to slip into the indigenous world and govern others from the others' position and perspectives. To efficiently govern the “natives” and apply colonial justice in courts—the so-calledjustiças—Europeans had to release themselves from European principles and embrace indigenous law, as they understood it. The essay uses the case of Timor to assert the analytic importance and potential of mimesis for the comparative study of colonial administrations during the period of imperial expansion.

The Origins of Medieval Vessel Turning

2005 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paola Pugsley
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Preceding Period ◽  
Bear Witness

Wooden vessels were in widespread use in British households after the tenth century. Most were turned, both inside and out, and bear witness to highly developed lathe techniques. This paper considers the preceding period with a view to finding links with woodworking techniques developed either in antiquity or in the early medieval period. The quest is hampered by the limited quantity of material, as wood does not normally survive in the archaeological record. On the other hand, by taking the largest possible sample (in this case from the whole of western Europe), a scenario for the origin of medieval vessel turning can be proposed.

scholarly journals Iceland in the Eighteenth Century: An Island Outpost of Europe?

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Agnarsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
European Continent ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The Enlightenment

The aim is to define Iceland’s relationship with Europe during the eighteenth century. Though Iceland, an island in the mid-Atlantic, was geographically isolated from the European continent, it was in most respects an integral part of Europe. Iceland was not much different from western Europe except for the notable lack of towns and a European-style nobility. However, there was a clearly – defined elite and by the end of the eighteenth century urbanisation had become government policy. Iceland was also remote in the sense that the state of knowledge among the Europeans was slight and unreliable. However, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, Danish and French expeditions were sent to Iceland while British scientists began exploring the island with the result that by the early nineteenth century an excellent choice of books was available in the major European languages giving up-to-date accounts of Iceland. On the other hand the Icelanders were growing ever closer to Europe, by the end of the century for instance adopting fashionable European dress. Iceland’s history always followed western trends, its history more or less mirroring that of western Europe.

At Home and at Work

Marius Petipa ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 159-188
Author(s):  
Nadine Meisner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dance Language ◽  
The West ◽  
Home Life ◽  
Night And Day ◽  
At Home

After a description of Petipa’s home life and six children with his new partner, Liubov Savitskaya, chapter 7 continues the previous chapter’s subject of Petipa’s aesthetic. It examines his working methods, his dance language, the importance of the ballerina’s variation and her primacy in nineteenth-century ballet, to the point that women sometimes appeared en travesti. Petipa’s principal ballerina in the 1870s was Ekaterina Vazem, made prominent not only by her own talent, but by the decision not to invite foreign ballerinas. Although less important than the ballerina, the male dancer in Russia enjoyed more prominence than in the West. Even so, he was treated differently: where ballerinas fused the two components of dance and mime, for men they were often separated, the performer specializing in one or the other. Among the ballets, Mlada and its influence on La Bayadère are considered in detail. The chapter ends with Petipa’s ballet, Night and Day, for the coronation of Alexander III, following the assassination of Alexander II.

The Place to Heal and the Place to Die. Patients and Causes of Death in Nineteenth-Century Venice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renzo Derosas ◽  
Cristina Munno
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Medical Staff ◽  
Causes Of Death ◽  
The Other ◽  
Rational Structure ◽  
Hospital System ◽  
Elderly Immigrants ◽  
Hospital Deaths ◽  
Hospital History ◽  
At Home

Summary We used death records to highlight the main features of mid-nineteenth-century Venetian hospitals. At that time, the medicalisation of hospitals was well under way. The Civic Hospital, in particular, had up to 1,400 beds, a large medical staff and a rational structure. By contrasting hospital deaths with deaths occurring at home, we asked whether the patterns seen reflect the modernisation of the hospital system. On one hand, those admitted to hospital were mostly poor, elderly, immigrants, with little support at home, suggesting that social rather than medical conditions determined hospitalisation. On the other hand, there were differences in the causes of death, implying that the hospital pursued some therapeutic specialisation, which attracted also patients of better social standing. Notwithstanding the deep transformation that took place in the nineteenth century, the Venetian experience confirms the coexistence and interdependency of care and cure as permanent features of hospital history.

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