The Enlightenment in Spain: Influences Upon New World Policy

1985 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 436-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris H. W. Engstrand
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Equality ◽  
National Life ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Insight Into

The Enlightenment in Spain defies definition. In certain respects it was a viable force opening up new vistas of knowledge and understanding, while in others it was a mild breeze rustling some leaves of insight into the possibility of human equality. For certain of Spain's royal officials, the ideas of the eighteenth century philosophes were refreshing and undeniably sound; for others even the gathering of knowledge in the new encyclopedias was a dangerously democratic trend. In some areas of national life, reforms gained immediate acceptance, in others the old ways remained entrenched.Spain has always been a country of extremes, of absolute alternatives. Spaniards strive to achieve impossible goals or they remain incredibly inert. With the discovery of America their ambitious undertakings excelled those of England or France, but subsequent neglect brought about failures of equal magnitude. In the sixteenth century they thought to conquer the world; in the next their weakened Hapsburg monarchs squandered the wealth of the New World while the country fell into economic ruin.

The Importance of Jacques Saurin in the History of Casuistry and the Enlightenment

1956 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-209
Author(s):  
George L. Mosse
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Scientific Inspiration

The purpose of this paper is to examine several aspects of the relationship between Christianity and the rise of the new rationalistic spirit of the eighteenth century. It is in this connection that we intend to examine the thought of the French Huguenot preacher Jacques Saurin (1677–1730). Historians have held that the two leading ideas of that century, Nature and Reason, derive their meaning from the natural sciences. Such a point of view tends to ignore the greater realism towards nature and politics which developed within the Christian theological framework itself. From the sixteenth century on, we find orthodox theologians emphasizing the need for dealing with the world on its own terms. It was not so much the new sciences but rather the conflicts of the Reformation which brought out this increasingly rational attitude on the part of both Protestant and Catholic theologians. This development went on side by side with that secularized idea of reason which is of specific scientific inspiration. The means which theologians used to make room for a greater realism in their Christian framework of thought was casuistic divinity.

The Library of Bryant Barrett, Laceman and Country Squire

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 549-572
Author(s):  
Frans Korsten ◽  
Jos Blom ◽  
Frans Blom
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Insight Into

Bryant Barrett (c.1715–1790) was a Catholic tradesman who managed to become affluent enough to be able to collect a library of nearly 2,000 volumes. His library catalogues are still extant and the aim of the present article is to analyse these in order to get an insight into the intellectual world of an eighteenth-century RC self-made man. There are a number of catalogues of institutional RC libraries and the occasional catalogue of an RC clergyman, but as far as we know the Barrett catalogues are a unique register of the books possessed by an ‘ordinary’ RC layman. The traditional picture of eighteenth-century English Catholic life is that of a dwindling community with a rather provincial and conservative outlook on life. Heroic martyrdom was a feature of the past: ordinary life entailed guarding against modern enlightenment views and – towards the end of the century – internal discussions about the concessions necessary to achieve Catholic emancipation. Barrett's library modifies this picture in a number of ways: it reveals an eminently practical man who was also an intellectual, someone interested in the past, loyal to his faith, knowledgeable about the latest developments in industry and science, intrigued by perspectives opening up through exploration and travel, fascinated with new developments and ideas. Barrett was a both a devout Roman Catholic and a well-read man of the world.

scholarly journals Latin America in Global History: An Historiographic Overview

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (60) ◽  
pp. 253-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Olstein
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
World History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Global History ◽  
The World ◽  
Last Ice Age ◽  
Great Divergence

Abstract World history can be arranged into three major regional divergences: the 'Greatest Divergence' starting at the end of the last Ice Age (ca. 15,000 years ago) and isolating the Old and the New Worlds from one another till 1500; the 'Great Divergence' bifurcating the paths of Europe and Afro-Asia since 1500; and the 'American Divergence' which divided the fortunes of New World societies from 1500 onwards. Accordingly, all world regions have confronted two divergences: one disassociating the fates of the Old and New Worlds, and the other within either the Old or the New World. Latin America is in the uneasy position that in both divergences it ended up on the 'losing side.' As a result, a contentious historiography of Latin America evolved from the very moment that it was incorporated into the wider world. Three basic attitudes toward the place of Latin America in global history have since emerged and developed: admiration for the major impact that the emergence on Latin America on the world scene imprinted on global history; hostility and disdain over Latin America since it entered the world scene; direct rejection of and head on confrontation in reaction the former. This paper examines each of these three attitudes in five periods: the 'long sixteenth century' (1492-1650); the 'age of crisis' (1650-1780); 'the long nineteenth century' (1780-1914); 'the short twentieth century' (1914-1991); and 'contemporary globalization' (1991 onwards).

A Russian Mystic Faces the Age of Rationalism and Revolution: Thought and Activity of Ivan Vladimirovich Lopukhin

1967 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-188
Author(s):  
Alexander Lipski
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Western Influence ◽  
The World ◽  
Extreme Degree ◽  
State Of Mind

It is generally accepted that even though rationalism was predominant during the eighteenth century, a significant mystical trend was simultaneously present. Thus it was not only the Age of Voltaire, Diderot, and Holbach, but also the Age of St. Martin, Eckartshausen and Madame Guyon. With increased Western influence on Russia, it was natural that Russia too would be affected by these contrary currents. The reforms of Peter the Great, animated by a utilitarian spirit, had brought about a secularization of Russian culture. Father Florovsky aptly summed up the state of mind of the Russian nobility as a result of the Petrine Revolution: “The consciousness of these new people had been extroverted to an extreme degree.” Some of the “new people,” indifferent to their previous Weltanschauung, Orthodoxy, adopted the philosophy of the Enlightenment, “Volter'ianstvo” (Voltairism). But “Volter'ianstvo” with its cult of reason and belief in a remote creator of the “world machine,“ did not permanently satisfy those with deeper religious longings. While conventional Orthodoxy, with its emphasis on external rites, could not fill the spiritual vacuum, Western mysticism, entering Russia chiefly through freemasonry, provided a satisfactory alternative to “Volter'ianstvo.”

The Prospects for Scientific and Technological Development in Saudi Arabia

1979 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-372
Author(s):  
Joseph S. Szyliowicz
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
New World ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
World History ◽  
Rare Phenomenon ◽  
The World ◽  
Scientific And Technological Development

Today we are witnessing a very rare phenomenon in world history: a state suddenly deluged with an apparently inexhaustible amount of wealth as occurred in sixteenth-century Spain and Portugal when the riches of the New World flowed to the Iberian peninsula. Now the ‘black gold’ under the sands of the Arabian desert has provided one of the most underpopulated and under developed regions of the world with an equivalent bonanza. The new wealth of Spain helped to ruin that country. What will be the fate of Saudi Arabia and its small neighbors?

Puritan Radicalism and the Enlightenment

1960 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 424-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
George L. Mosse
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
World View ◽  
Difficult Problem ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The World ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between Christianity and the Enlightenment presents a subtle and difficult problem. No historian has as yet fully answered the important question of how the world view of the eighteenth century is related to that of traditional Christianity. It is certain, however, that the deism of that century rejected traditional Christianity as superstitious and denied Christianity a monopoly upon religious truth. The many formal parallels which can be drawn between Enlightenment and Christianity cannot obscure this fact. From the point of view of historical Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, the faith of the Enlightenment was blasphemy. It did away with a personal God, it admitted no supernatural above the natural, it denied the relevance of Christ's redemptive task in this world. This essay attempts to discover whether traditional Christian thought itself did not make a contribution to the Enlightenment.

Reformation without end

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Civil Unrest ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Reformation

Reformation without end reinterprets the English Reformation. No one in eighteenth-century England thought that they lived during ‘the Enlightenment’. Instead, they thought that they still faced the religious, intellectual and political problems unleashed by the Reformation, which began in the sixteenth century. They faced those problems, though, in the aftermath of two bloody seventeenth-century political and religious revolutions. This book is about the ways the eighteenth-century English debated the causes and consequences of those seventeenth-century revolutions. Those living in post-revolutionary England conceived themselves as living in the midst of the very thing which they thought had caused the revolutions: the Reformation. The reasons for and the legacy of the Reformation remained hotly debated in post-revolutionary England because the religious and political issues it had generated remained unresolved and that irresolution threatened more civil unrest. For this reason, most that got published during the eighteenth century concerned religion. This book looks closely at the careers of four of the eighteenth century’s most important polemical divines, Daniel Waterland, Conyers Middleton, Zachary Grey and William Warburton. It relies on a wide range of manuscript sources, including annotated books and unpublished drafts, to show how eighteenth-century authors crafted and pitched their works.

Racism As We Sense It Today

PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (5) ◽  
pp. 1737-1742 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter D. Mignolo
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
The Andes ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The One ◽  
Jose De Acosta ◽  
Opening Up

The research that I reported in the darker side of the renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization (1995) was driven by my desire and need to understand the opening up of the Atlantic in the sixteenth century, its historical, theoretical, and political consequences. How was it that coexisting socioeconomic organizations like the Ottoman and Mughal sultanates as well as the incanate in the Andes and the tlahtoanate in the Valley of Mexico were either inferior or almost absent in the global historical picture of the time? I became aware, for example, that people in the Valley of Mexico living in the Aztec tlahtoanate, whether in conformity or dissenting, were compared—by the Spaniards—with the Jews. The comparison was twofold: on the one hand, the Indians and the Jews were dirty and untrustworthy people; on the other hand, the Indians in the New World may have been part of the Jewish diaspora. So, the comparison got in trouble, because Indians and Jews may have been the same people. The Jesuit priest José de Acosta, in his Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1589), asked whether the Indians descended from the Jews, addressing a question that was on everybody's mind. He dismissed the possibility of the connection, because the Jews had had a sophisticated writing system for a long time while the Indians were illiterate (in the Western sense of the word). Jews liked money, Acosta pointed out, while Indians were not even aware of it; and while Jews took circumcision seriously, Indians had no idea of it. Last but not least, if Indians were indeed of Jewish origin, they would not have forgotten the Messiah and their religion.

scholarly journals Medicinal Mercury in Early Modern Portuguese Records: Recipes and Methods from Eighteenth-Century Medical Guidebooks

2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 1017-1042 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Walker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Eastern Hemisphere ◽  
Asian Medicine ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract This chapter will present and explicate rare information regarding circumstances and techniques for the application of medicinal mercury in the Portuguese medical context during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through the use of Portuguese medical texts (including translated excerpts), the chapter will provide insight into how early modern Portuguese practitioners processed and employed mercury to treat various ailments. Of interest, too, will be that these remedies were developed at several disparate locations throughout the Portuguese imperial world (China, India, Angola, Brazil, and Portugal), and often drew upon, and blended, indigenous medical substances from the region where each remedy originated. Regarding the use of mercury in South Asian medicine, medical scholars have noted that, from the sixteenth century onwards, much of the intra-Asian (and global) mercury trade was conducted through Portuguese merchants and agents. This work asserts that Portuguese merchants and shippers had unique access both to mercury at the commodity’s main sources in Spain and Peru (Almadén and Huancavelica, respectively), but also to established, developed colonial trade routes throughout the eastern hemisphere. Most of the information presented here is excerpted from two little-known eighteenth-century Portuguese primary sources: a Jesuit compilation medical and apothecary guide in manuscript, and a published physician’s treatise regarding fevers and other illnesses encountered during a posting of nearly a decade in Angola.

Samar in the Late Eighteenth Century

1980 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-52
Author(s):  
Bruce Cruikshank
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Spanish Colonies ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Parish Churches

In 1767 Charles III issued his famous decree expelling the Jesuits from Spain and the Spanish colonies around the world. The repercussions of this edict were felt even on Samar, a large but relatively unimportant province in the eastern Visayas in the Philippine colony (see Map One) whose missions, later parish churches, had been staffed by Jesuit missionaries from the last few years of the sixteenth century until the order of expulsion arrived on Samar in September 1768. The Jesuits were replaced by Augustinians in the pueblos of Guivan, Balangiga, and Basey; and in the rest of the pueblos by Franciscans (see Map Two).

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