Mapping Plus Ultra: Cartography, Space, and Hispanic Modernity

2002 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Padróón
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Hispanic Culture ◽  
History Of Cartography ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of

THE HISTORY OF CARTOGRAPHY in the early modern period has been tied in particular ways to the emergence of both imperialism and modernity. At the center of this argument lie the gridded scale maps that Europeans learned to make in the wake of their rediscovery of Ptolemy's Geography. These new maps supported the emergence of abstract space as a centerpiece of a new spatiality - a spatiality that in turn supported, in both theory and practice, the reterritorialization of the extra-European world for European ends. My paper interrogates this argument by examining Spanish attempts to map the Americas during the years 1492 to 1580. It identifies a cartographic culture steeped in late medieval figures of space, one that suggests continuity rather than rupture between the Middle Ages and the origins of European imperialism. Many Spanish mapmakers were engaged with some of the most sophisticated problems posed by the new, Ptolemaic cartography.These specialists, however, represented only a small minority of Spanish mapmakers. Although the abstract spatiality that informed their practice proved to be the emerging cultural trend, this spatiality was not hegemonic in early modern Spanish culture as a whole. Both philological and cartographic evidence drawn from outside the circle of specialists suggests that an alternative spatiality was also at play, one that was rooted in the itineraries of travel rather than the planar extensions of geometry.This linear spatiality had its roots in late medieval travel narrative and so-called way-finding maps. It is this spatiality that is most common in Spanish attempts to figure the wider world. This argument should not be understood as an essay in Hispanic particularity. Spain functions as a test-case here, and no claim is made that its linear spatiality is unique to Hispanic culture. What may be unique to Spain is the persistence of this spatiality beyond the year 1580, when the cartographic revolution took root much more deeply in northern than in southern Europe. Nonetheless, its near-ubiquity in the first ninety years of Spanish Americana suggests that the association we have made among abstract spatiality, modernity, and imperialism has been misplaced. Although it may be genuine, it must be understood as an attempt to rationalize empire after the fact, not as a cultural prop of an original imperial impulse.

La Storia dell’Età Moderna nelle „Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Biblioteken“: lo specchio di un secolo di ricerche

2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-46
Author(s):  
Irene Fosi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Papal Court

AbstractThe article examines the topics relating to the early modern period covered by the journal „Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken“ in the hundred volumes since its first publication. Thanks to the index (1898–1995), published in 1997 and the availability online on the website perpectivia.net (since 1958), it is possible to identify constants and changes in historiographical interests. Initially, the focus was on the publication of sources in the Vatican Secret Archive (now the Vatican Apostolic Archive) relating to the history of Germany. The topics covered later gradually broadened to include the history of the Papacy, the social composition of the Curia and the Papal court and Papal diplomacy with a specific focus on nunciatures, among others. Within a lively historiographical context, connected to historical events in Germany in the 20th century, attention to themes and sources relating to the Middle Ages continues to predominate with respect to topics connected to the early modern period.

scholarly journals Introduction

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-244
Author(s):  
Eli Rubin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Last Ice Age ◽  
The City

The essays in this special issue all focus on the city of Berlin, in particular, its relationship with its margins and borders over thelongue dureé. The authors—Kristin Poling, Marion Gray, Barry Jackisch, and Eli Rubin—all consider the history of Berlin over the last two centuries, with special emphasis on how Berlin expanded over this time and how it encountered the open spaces surrounding it and within it—the “green fields” (grüne Wiesen) referred to in the theme title. Each of them explores a different period in Berlin's history, and so together, the essays form a long dureé history of Berlin, although each of the essays in its own way explores the roots of Berlin's history in deeper time scales, from the early modern period, to the Middle Ages, and even to the very end of the last ice age, more than 10,000 years ago.

“Most Hevynesse and Sorowe”: The Presence of Emotions in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Court of Chancery

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merridee L. Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Legal Requirements ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Court Of Chancery

Finding emotions in medieval and early modern sources is one of the more difficult challenges currently facing historians. The task of uncovering emotions in legal records is even more fraught. Legal sources were precisely crafted to meet legal requirements and jurisdictional issues. Equally, emotions were not part of the jurisdiction of any court in the late Middle Ages or early modern period and there was no legal interest in eliciting them from litigants. Why then would we begin to think it is possible to find emotions in these legal records? This article invites social and legal historians to begin considering these questions by investigating the emotions in cases brought into the court of Chancery between 1386 and 1558.

scholarly journals The Athos Bulgarian history writing of the 18th century between the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 14-19
Author(s):  
Dmitriy Polyvyannyy
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
History Writing ◽  
National History ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bulgarian Population ◽  
The One

The article is dedicated to three Bulgarian historical works created at Athos in the second half of the 18th c. – "Slavo-Bulgarian History" by Saint Paisius of Hilendar, anonymous "Zograf History" and "Brief History of the Bulgarian Slav People" by monk-priest Spyridon of Gabrovo. By the author’s opinion, these works, on the one hand, were born in the atmosphere of rivalry between the monasteries of Athos and their Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian clergy, and on the other, were actualised by the strengthening contacts of Hilandar and Zograf with Bulgarian lands. If the first affected the contents of the mentioned works, the second lead to sufficient enlargement of their audience, which, in its turn, became a precondition of the growing interest to the national history among the Bulgarian population of Rumelia in the first half of the 19th c.

scholarly journals Sâncraiu de Mureș (Marosszentkirály): medieval settlement network, Pauline monastery and its environment on the middle course of the Mureş river

2020 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-198
Author(s):  
Elek Benkő ◽  
Pál Sümegi ◽  
Tünde Törőcsik ◽  
Elvira Bodor ◽  
Balázs Sümegi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Multidisciplinary Research ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eastern Periphery

AbstractThe study aims to contribute to the medieval environmental history of the eastern periphery of the Transylvanian Plain (Câmpia Transilvaniei/Mezőség). With the help of archaeological and historical data and the multi-aspect analysis of undisturbed core sequences, the economic life of the Pauline Monastery founded in the 14th century near Sâncraiu de Mureş (Marosszentkirály) and the surrounding villages was investigated. The multidisciplinary research focuses on the paleochannels of the Mureş and the artificial watercourses (ditches) that branch off the river, and the mills built on them. The work also provides new data on the general environmental changes in the middle course of the Mureş river during the Middle Ages and the early modern period, which are largely due to the very intense human activity here.

Ownership of mines and taxation in Castilian laws, from the middle ages to the early modern period: the decisive influence of the sovereign in the history of mining

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEANNETTE GRAULAU
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
Mineral Wealth ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Decisive Influence ◽  
Merchant Capital ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mining Laws

ABSTRACTSovereign ownership of mines and taxation were fundamental principles governing the mining economy of the territories of the Castilian crown during the medieval period. Ownership of mines meant that mineral wealth, discovered or undiscovered, belonged to the crown estate. Only the sovereign could grant mining rights to ‘private’ persons and impose mineral taxation. Particularly during the last three centuries of the Reconquista (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries), these principles were used to unify the situation in those territories falling under the sway of a sovereign with expansionist ambitions. Increasing globalisation of the metal trade in the thirteenth century and the formation of capital markets in Europe firmly put the Castilian crown in competition with other economic agents aiming to win a monopoly in metallic wealth. Castile's mining laws aspired to solve the ensuing tension by attracting merchant capital to the mines, aiming to absorb the comparative advantages of mining capital. In a protracted process, the mineral laws of the sixteenth century were a testimony to the decisive influence of the sovereign in the history of mining.

Drawing Physics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don S. Lemons
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Higgs Boson ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Line Drawing ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
History Of Physics ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of

Drawing Physics is a collection of 51 essays each one organized around a simple, informative, line drawing that conveys a key idea in the history of physics. The essays, each approximately 1000 words long, are chronologically ordered from Thales, who around 600 BCE explained and used the principles of triangulation, to Peter Higgs, who received the Nobel Prize in 2012 for his prediction of the Higgs boson. The essays expand on the science conveyed in each drawing and place that science in a broader cultural context. The essays are grouped into five sections: Antiquity, Middle Ages, Early Modern Period, Nineteenth Century, and Twentieth Century and Beyond. Each essay stands alone and requires no background in physics or mathematics.

London and Droitwich, c. 650–750: trade, industry and the rise of Mercia

2005 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 7-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.R. Maddicott
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Industrial Site ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Growing Economy

This article argues that the power of the early Mercian kings from Wulfhere to Aethelbald, c.650-750, rested partly on their ability to exploit the growing economy which characterised this period; and that such exploitation provides a hitherto unacknowledged reason for the rise of Mercia to supremacy. The argument rests on the Mercian rulers' control of two particular places, London and Droitwich, the first the country's foremost port, the second a major industrial site concerned with the production of salt. After the growth of Mercian authority over both places has been traced, it is suggested that taxation of their activities may have resulted in substantial profits, via tolls in both centres and, in Droitwich, via a further levy on the manufacture of salt. The history of taxation on salt is traced back from the early modern period in order to see what light later practices shed upon those of the early middle ages. The article concludes by suggesting that the Mercian rulers were fortunate in exercising power at a time when economic growth, partly church-led, was open to royal exploitation and that those rulers had a conscious appreciation of the advantages so to be gained.

Capturing the Landscape Within

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Silent Reading ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of

This chapter situates the history of listening in the context of recent work in the histories of reading, seeing, and feeling. Using William Reddy’s The Navigation of Feeling (2001), it considers changes in practices—from the absence of silent reading in antiquity and the early Middle Ages, to public reading in the early modern period, to modern silent reading—and, using depictions of museum-goers, sketches a history of experience in the visual arts. By widening the field from listening, this chapter aims both to fill out and to integrate the modern history of experience. It also suggests ways of understanding how transformations in perception by one of our human senses affects those in another and why historic modes of perception and description will not likely return.

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