scholarly journals NORMATIVE HORIZONS: READING ENSLAVED AFRICANS’ AUTONOMY THROUGH PRIMARY SOURCES IN COLONIAL BRAZIL

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B Melia

This essay is an exploration of historical knowledge: how it is authored and, more importantly, how we can access it. Through in-depth inspection and careful combination of primary source documents from 1690 to 1806, the text is a result of my attempts to reconstruct Brazilian slave autonomy as a kind of historical knowledge. Disassembling the language that framed colonial encounters, I argue that historical knowledge from primary texts must first be framed within the everyday ‘encounters’ of others in 18th century Brazil social life. Utilising a socially situated textual analysis, the essay accesses the often overwritten autonomy of slaves through historical documents: (1) the text of a friar writing on slaves’ fantastic religious accomplishments, (2) two colonial mandates prohibiting slaves’ promiscuous and suggestive fashions, (3) a history of slave rebellion against colonial powers and (4) a list of demands composed by slaves offered as a peace treaty to their owner. Through exploring the ‘normative horizons’ of the authorial point-of-view of each text, what follows is not merely an ethnohistorical experiment in accessing historical knowledge, but an ethnographic exposition in imagining the lives and futures of slaves in the past.

Author(s):  
Seema S.Ojha

History is constructed by people who study the past. It is created through working on both primary and secondary sources that historians use to learn about people, events, and everyday life in the past. Just like detectives, historians look at clues, sift through evidence, and make their own interpretations. Historical knowledge is, therefore, the outcome of a process of enquiry. During last century, the teaching of history has changed considerably. The use of sources, viz. textual, visual, and oral, in school classrooms in many parts of the world has already become an essential part of teaching history. However, in India, it is only a recent phenomenon. Introducing students to primary sources and making them a regular part of classroom lessons help students develop critical thinking and deductive reasoning skills. These will be useful throughout their lives. This paper highlights the benefits of using primary source materials in a history classroom and provides the teacher, with practical suggestions and examples of how to do this.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 684-714
Author(s):  
Оtkirbay Agatay ◽  

Research objectives: This article discusses Joči’s military-political role and status in the Mongol Empire (Yeke Mongol Ulus), beginning in the early thirteenth century and within the intra-dynastic relations of Činggis Khan’s chief sons. In particular, the article seeks to answer questions about Joči’s birth. Discrepancies between the Secret History of the Mongols and other written sources cast doubt on whether Joči was even a legitimate son of Činggis Khan, let alone his eldest one. In addition, this article includes an analysis of Joči’s place within the family and the traditional legal system of the medieval Mongols based on the principles of majorat succession outlined in the Mongol Empire. It establishes evidence of his legitimacy within the Činggisid dynasty’s imperial lineage (altan uruġ) – a point of view supported by his military-political career, his pivotal role in the western campaigns, his leadership at the siege of Khwārazm, and the process of division of the ulus of Činggis Khan. Research materials: This article makes use of Russian, English, and Turkic (Kazakh, Tatar, etc.) translations of key primary sources including the Secret History of the Mongols and works of authors from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries, including Al-Nasawī, Shіhāb al-Dīn al-Nuwayrī, ‘Alā’ al-Dīn ’Aṭā-Malik Juvāynī, Minhāj al-Dīn Jūzjānī, Zhao Hong, Peng Daya, John of Plano Carpini, William of Rubruck, Jamāl al-Qarshī, Rashīd al-Dīn, Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-ʿUmarī, Uluġbeg, Ötämiš Hājī, Lubsan Danzan, Abu’l-Ghāzī, and Saγang Sečen. New secondary works regarding Joči published by modern Kazakh, Russian, Tatar, American, French, Chinese, Korean and other scholars were also consulted. Results and novelty of the research: Taking into consideration certain economic and legal traits of the medieval Mongols, their traditional practices, military-political events, and longterm developments in the Mongol Empire’s history, descriptions of Joči being no more than a “Merkit bastard” are clearly not consistent. The persisting claims can be traced to doubts about Joči’s birth included in the Secret History of the Mongols, the first extensive written record of the medieval Mongols which had a great impact on the work of later historians, including modern scholars. Some researchers suspect this allegation may have been an indirect result of Möngke Khan inserting it into the Secret History. This article argues that the main motivation was Batu’s high military-political position and prestige in the Yeke Mongol Ulus. After Ögödei Khan’s death, sons and grandsons of Ögödei and Ča’adai made various attempts to erode Batu’s significant position in the altan uruġ by raising questions regarding his genealogical origin. This explains why doubts about Joči’s status in the imperial lineage appeared so widely following his death in an intra-dynastic propaganda struggle waged between the houses of Joči and Тolui and the opposing houses of Ča’adai and Ögödei’s sons. This conflict over the narrative was engendered by the struggle for supreme power in the Mongol Empire and the distribution of conquered lands and property.


Author(s):  
Mizanur Rahman

The holy Quran is the divine message sent to all humanity by Allah (SWT). This message concerns not only the owners of the language from which it descended but all humanity. So it is necessary to translate this message into those languages for people from different cultures to understand. However, whether the Quran will be translated into other languages has been discussed throughout history and positive and negative opinions about the issue continue. As a Muslim-dominated country, Bangladesh has been working on the translation of the Quran since the 18th century. This article, firstly, discussed the historical process of the translation of the Quran into Bengali and then the translation of the Quran by Gholam Azam is examined as an example, who worked to understand and explain the Quran and reflect the effect of the Quran in social life.


Author(s):  
Janina Kosman

The Library of the State Archives in Szczecin has got a valuable collection of old printed books, including a large collection of handbooks. The article presents selected examples of 17th and 18th century publications produced in Szczecin, in one of the most important local schools, the Paedagogium Ducale, later transformed into the Gymnasium Carolinum. These materials, referring to various manifestations of school life, illustrate reflect activities of educational institutions of that time. They are also an important supplement to the history of culture and social life in Szczecin and in the Western Pomerania.


Author(s):  
Svetlana A. Baturenko

The emergence and development of Marxist feminism in Russia and in the world in general is considered in article on the basis of the analysis of primary sources. The problem of position of women attracted a keen interest of representatives of the most different sociological schools in Russia during its formation. The Marxist feminism was the separate significant direction in the Russian sociological thought. It developed as the special theoretical project and also it had bright experience of implementation. Among representatives of the Russian Marxist sociology names of V.I. Lenin, N.K. Krupskaya, A.M. Kollontay which made a big contribution to development of this direction are known. The feminism of the Marxist direction made breakthrough in the theory and implementation of the ideas. In a year of the two- hundredth anniversary since the birth of K. Marx numerous scientific conferences bring up the questions of social development which were occurring in Russia and caused considerable changes of social life again. The Marxist feminism was one of such significant events in the history of the country and in the history of domestic sociology. Now results and consequences of activity of supporters of the Russian Marxist feminism are reinterpreted. During the XX century their main ideas and achievements were exposed to criticism not only in the Russian, but also in foreign sociology. At the same time the author notes that the Marxist feminism develops and now on the basis of the general idea that the gender relations are parallel to class, interact with them and in a sense are their integral part. In modern sociology various directions within socialist feminism were created.


Author(s):  
Carlota Boto

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that took place in Europe in the 18th century, whose main characteristic was criticism. For the Enlightenment theorists, it was assumed that the idea of reason should be the basis of all actions taken in every sphere of social life. The aim of the present study is to investigate the entanglement between Enlightenment and education. In order to do so, we first resort to Kant’s thought. Kant characterizes the Enlightenment as man’s emergence from his own immaturity, defining immaturity as the inability to use one’s own understanding. One can say that the Enlightenment has an intrinsic pedagogical dimension. The enterprise of Diderot’s Encyclopedia consisted of a project that could be regarded as pedagogical, since it aimed at spreading the new breakthroughs of knowledge in all fields to an increasing number of people. The belief of the Enlightenment was that progress in science and technology did not only depend on advances in accumulated knowledge. The achievements of science would also—beyond the new discoveries in the various fields of knowledge—be furthered through the irradiation of that knowledge. The expansion of access to the achievements of science for an increasing number of people was one of the main objectives of the Enlightenment theorists, and particularly of the Encyclopedia. It should be noted that these pedagogical projects were based on the thesis that the schooling of society was a strategy with which to secure and consolidate the path of reason, and to protect it against dogmas and prejudices against it. For this reason, the Enlightenment consisted of organization of the intellectual world, whereby the activity of thought effectively became a struggle in favor of freedom of reasoning and freedom of belief. In the Enlightenment ideas of education as set out in Diderot’s Plan of a University or of a Public Education in All Sciences, written while he was under state guard, one can see how the idea of instruction is linked to the concept of civilization. It was believed that, through education, the nation could be enlightened, and the people would also be better prepared to live as good citizens. In addition, it was believed that school education would give people the opportunity to develop the talents nature had endowed them with. The idea was that allowing everyone to have free access to the instruments of rationality and freedom of judgment would bring about the possibility of a fairer, more egalitarian society in which distinctions between its citizens were based on merit rather than inequalities of fortune. Finally, Condorcet’s proposal for the organization of the public education undoubtedly constitutes the matrix of our contemporary idea of the state school. To develop reason presupposes, from the point of view of the Enlightenment, using the instruments of that reason so it can be expressed. This implied the formation of public opinion, which was, per se, a pedagogical task. Also, and most importantly, this implied the necessity of the creation of schools.


Itinerario ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-177
Author(s):  
M.P.H. Roessingh

The subject of this article is the fight for the throne in the kingdom of Gowa at the end of the 18th century, during the decline of the Dutch East India Company, a period which also saw the downfall of Gowa and the supremacy of Bone. The sources for the history of this period are twofold: on one hand the indigenous sources, “lontara-bilang” (diaries) and other records in Buginese and Makassarese; secondly, the European writings, principally the archival materials from the Dutch government at Makassar, supplemented by travel accounts and reports of the English. My primary sources are almost exclusively Dutch, namely the papers of the VOC, as they are preserved in the General State Archives in The Hague. To be more precise, these sources may be in Dutch, but in addition to the letters etc. written by Company officials, they also contain translations from documents drawn up by the rulers of Bone and Gowa or other of Asians. Moreover, the governors of Makassar often made use of indigenous sources, both oral and written, in preparing their lengthy memoirs about the state of affairs in their district. In 1736, the High Government in Batavia decided that two accurate genealogical tables must be prepared of the royal houses of Bone and Gowa.


Author(s):  
I. S. Tomilov

The study reviews scientific literature concerning the cities of the Tobolsk province in the late XVIII – early XX centuries. The article  features the works of scientists, published in the pre-revolutionary  period and affecting different sides of the subject in question. The  results of the research indicate that before 1917 the scientific works  were mainly concentrated on such aspects of urban life as  demography, trade, administration, urban space, education, local  government, and periodicals. The authors did not distinguish the  concept of «social life» as a separate phenomenon, limiting the  study of its individual components. The methodology includes the  use of techniques and tools of local, systemic, comparative- historical, and problem-chronological methods, as well as  developments «history of everyday life» and «new Imperial history». In general, the article emphasizes the expansion of scientific  knowledge about the social history of Siberian cities in the post- reform and late Imperial periods, reveals the influence of the  researchers ' views on the integration of urban life. The scope of the  study is not limited to the interest of historians, urbanists and local  historians to the subject of study. Historiographical analysis is  relevant from the point of view of modern discussions about the  prospects of urban studies, and can also be used in the preparation  of textbooks and summaries on Siberian history. 


2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (2-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. W. Musson

This paper reviews the history of the study of historical British earthquakes. The publication of compendia of British earthquakes goes back as early as the late 16th Century. A boost to the study of earthquakes in Britain was given in the mid 18th Century as a result of two events occurring in London in 1750 (analogous to the general increase in earthquakes in Europe five years later after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake). The 19th Century saw a number of significant studies, culminating in the work of Davison, whose book-length catalogue was published finally in 1924. After that appears a gap, until interest in the subject was renewed in the mid 1970s. The expansion of the U.K. nuclear programme in the 1980s led to a series of large-scale investigations of historical British earthquakes, all based almost completely on primary historical data and conducted to high standards. The catalogue published by BGS in 1994 is a synthesis of these studies, and presents a parametric catalogue in which historical earthquakes are assessed from intensity data points based on primary source material. Since 1994, revisions to parameters have been minor and new events discovered have been restricted to a few small events.


2021 ◽  
pp. 343-355
Author(s):  
Ilya O. Ivanov ◽  

The article details the activities of the Archive Committee of the Moscow Spiritual Consistory, set up on the initiative of Metropolitan Philaret Drozdov of Moscow to put in order diocesan archives, which had suffered in the Napoleonic invasion. The documentary complex of the consistory was the backbone of the institution. The disastrous state of the archive not only undermined the activities of the consistory, but also hindered its socially important search for information in the parish records. Thus, the first priority and essential task of the Committee was to sort through and describe burial record books, which were in disorder. The filed away documents of the consistory expeditions, or structural subdivisions of the consistory, also required serious systematization. The same was true of the historical part of the complex dating back to the previous century. Thus, the Committee faced a choice of an optimal classification scheme: territorial grouping of files by soroks and churches, which dated back to the 18th century, or grouping by “substance” — subjects corresponding to the activity areas of the consistory desks and expeditions. The latter was impelled by the Statute of the Consistory (1841), as well as by the permanently increasing volume of records. So far, the Moscow Consistory Archive has been studied primarily from a pragmatic point of view: as a rich source base for diverse research on the history of the Church. The issues of archival document arrangement have attracted no special attention in scientific literature, although the surviving materials of the Committee reflect an interesting debate of diocesan archivists on the possible solution to the existing problem. In this respect, the documents left by the Committee are a valuable illustration of the Church archiving in search for a better organization of systematic preservation of diocesan administrative documents. The conclusion is made that the Committee was directly involved in the development of the consistory's document complex, its continuous processing, description, and adaptation to the new records management conditions, as well as to the modern structure of the Moscow Ecclesiastical Consistory collections. Stable organization of work with documentary material would have been impossible without appropriate staffing. The Committee was an unusual, beyond-the-limits-of-corporate-culture union of Moscow priests. Representatives of the Moscow clergy formed a special type of archivist, combining work in the archives with everyday parish practice.


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