''John Bull, pit, box, and gallery, said No!'': Charles Macklin and the Limits of Ethnic Resistance on the Eighteenth-Century London Stage

2002 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Goring

THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES REPRESENTATIONS of Irishness on the eighteenth-century London stage as a basis for reconsidering the theater's role as a site of interethnic contest and negotiation. Ethnic interaction is thematized in numerous eighteenth-century plays - a tendency that highlights the function of the stage as a mediator of the social and cultural shifts that followed urban expansion, the growth of the British empire, and, with immigration, the increasing multiculturalism of Britain and particularly London. The theaters of the period have consequently been presented as spaces in which minority ethnic groups were able to express forceful antihegemonic resistance - both from the stage and from the auditorium. That such resistance typically inspired vigorous counterresistance has received minimal critical attention. The article examines several Irish-themed plays, particularly those by the celebrated Irish actor-playwright Charles Macklin (1699?-1797), and it investigates their reception by the heterogeneous London public. Exploring issues of both authorship and reception - and presenting previously unpublished writings by Macklin - it uncovers a dialogue between ethnic resistance and counterresistance, and thus it interrogates the radicalism attributable to London theaters as sites of ethnic negotiations. It argues that the ethnic voice gained only circumscribed legitimacy during the eighteenth century, and that, despite the efforts of writers such as Macklin, traditional modes of representing Irishness were not radically overturned.

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 530-546
Author(s):  
Md. Emaj Uddin

Purpose Structural sociological framework suggests that sociopolitical and economic factors exert independent effects on variations in family status attainment (FSA) across the social/ethnic groups. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and predict how social-political-economic factors exert effects on disparity in FSA between the majority and minority ethnic groups in Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach This study used the cross-cultural survey design to analyze the research objective. In doing so, 585 men (Muslim n=150, Hindu n=145, Santal n=145, and Oraon n=145) who were randomly selected through cluster sampling from the Rasulpur union of Bangladesh were interviewed with a semi-structured questionnaire. Findings The results of Pearson’s χ2 test have shown that FSA was significantly different (p<0.01) associated with social-political-economic factors between the majority and minority groups. The results of the linear regression analysis (coefficients of β) suggested that social, political, and economic factors were the best predictors (significant at p<0.01 level) to perpetuate disparity in FSA between the majority and minority ethnic groups in Bangladesh. In addition, the results of coefficients of determination (R2) suggested that unequal distribution of social-political-economic resources perpetuates 10-14 percent disparities in FSA between the majority and minority groups in Bangladesh. Research limitations/implications Although the findings of the study are suggestive to understand the disparity in FSA associated with social-political-economic factors, further cross-cultural research is needed on how the social psychological factor affects variations in FSA between the groups in Bangladesh. In spite of the limitation, social policymakers may apply the findings with caution to design social policy and practice to reduce the disparity in FSA between the majority and minority ethnic groups in Bangladesh. Originality/value The cross-cultural findings are original in linking structural sociological theory and comparative family welfare policy to reduce the disparity in FSA between the majority and minority groups in Bangladesh.


1970 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 38-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keshav Kumar Shresta

Nepal, despite being small in size, is a country with geographical and cultural diversities. The social system or structure of Nepal is based on the unity in diversity that integrates various caste, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural groups. According to 2001 census, 102 types of caste/indigenous ethnic groups dwell in Nepal and 92 mother languages are spoken (C.B.S, 2002 :28-33). A comprehensive study about all the caste and indigenous ethnic groups dwelling in Nepal has not been conducted yet from the sociological and anthropological perspectives. Even today some minority ethnic groups are about to be extinct. Some even do not have the knowledge of their own cultural history. Such ethnic groups have begun to give up their ancestral cultures/traditions and adopt the customs of other castes/social groups and forget their own cultural history.    DOI: 10.3126/opsa.v11i0.3029 Occasional Papers in Sociology and Anthropology Vol.11 2009 38-47


2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Marin Constantin

AbstractThis article is concerned with the social, economic, and cultural process of the folk artisanship among the ethnic minorities of Hungarians, Turks, and Croatians in contemporary Romania. Ethnographic information is provided on the peasant artisans' professional framework (private workshops), as well as on their crafts development under socialism and in times of market economy in Romania. Similarly considered are the craft traditions, the folk arts, and the ethnic representativeness of artisanship. Relevant categories of analysis are also paternity in crafts and the relationships that the craftsmen engage with the ethnographic museums and the national centers for the conservation of folk culture. Description and interpretation in this text contribute to the understanding of artisanship as complex and dynamic pattern of civilization among the minority ethnic groups in Romania.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-203
Author(s):  
Roy Jones ◽  
Tod Jones

In the speech in which the phrase ‘land fit for heroes’ was coined, Lloyd George proclaimed ‘(l)et us make victory the motive power to link the old land up in such measure that it will be nearer the sunshine than ever before … it will lift those who have been living in the dark places to a plateau where they will get the rays of the sun’. This speech conflated the issues of the ‘debt of honour’ and the provision of land to those who had served. These ideals had ramifications throughout the British Empire. Here we proffer two Antipodean examples: the national Soldier Settlement Scheme in New Zealand and the Imperial Group Settlement of British migrants in Western Australia and, specifically, the fate and the legacy of a Group of Gaelic speaking Outer Hebrideans who relocated to a site which is now in the outer fringes of metropolitan Perth.


2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Kidd

Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) made several iconoclastic interventions in the field of Scottish history. These earned him a notoriety in Scottish circles which, while not undeserved, has led to the reductive dismissal of Trevor-Roper's ideas, particularly his controversial interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment, as the product of Scotophobia. In their indignation Scottish historians have missed the wider issues which prompted Trevor-Roper's investigation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a fascinating case study in European cultural history. Notably, Trevor-Roper used the example of Scotland to challenge Weberian-inspired notions of Puritan progressivism, arguing instead that the Arminian culture of north-east Scotland had played a disproportionate role in the rise of the Scottish Enlightenment. Indeed, working on the assumption that the essence of Enlightenment was its assault on clerical bigotry, Trevor-Roper sought the roots of the Scottish Enlightenment in Jacobitism, the counter-cultural alternative to post-1690 Scotland's Calvinist Kirk establishment. Though easily misconstrued as a dogmatic conservative, Trevor-Roper flirted with Marxisant sociology, not least in his account of the social underpinnings of the Scottish Enlightenment. Trevor-Roper argued that it was the rapidity of eighteenth-century Scotland's social and economic transformation which had produced in one generation a remarkable body of political economy conceptualising social change, and in the next a romantic movement whose powers of nostalgic enchantment were felt across the breadth of Europe.


Author(s):  
Alison Games

This book explains how a conspiracy trial featuring English, Japanese, and Indo-Portuguese co-conspirators who allegedly plotted against the Dutch East India Company in the Indian Ocean in 1623 produced a diplomatic crisis in Europe and became known for four centuries in British culture as the Amboyna Massacre. The story of the transformation of this conspiracy into a massacre is a story of Anglo-Dutch relations in the seventeenth century and of a new word in the English language, massacre. The English East India Company drew on this new word to craft an enduring story of cruelty, violence, and ingratitude. Printed works—both pamphlets and images—were central to the East India Company’s creation of the massacre and to the story’s tenacity over four centuries as the texts and images were reproduced during conflicts with the Dutch and internal political disputes in England. By the eighteenth century, the story emerged as a familiar and shared cultural touchstone. By the nineteenth century, the Amboyna Massacre became the linchpin of the British Empire, an event that historians argued well into the twentieth century had changed the course of history and explained why the British had a stronghold in India. The broad familiarity with the incident and the Amboyna Massacre’s position as an early and formative violent event turned the episode into the first English massacre. It shaped the meaning of subsequent acts of violence, and placed intimacy, treachery, and cruelty at the center of massacres in ways that endure to the present day.


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