Coming to Terms with a Misinterpreted Past? Rethinking the Historical Antecedents of Germany's 1999 Citizenship Reform

2012 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-38
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Automatic Transmission ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
German States ◽  
German Citizenship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Historical Antecedents ◽  
Policies And Practices

The article contends that the significance attributed to the 1999 citizenship reform in Germany is closely linked to a particular reading of the history of German citizenship policies. This reading, which remained dominant until the 1990s, assigned a crucial role for Germany's exclusionary citizenship policies to the law of descent, which seemed to be deeply ingrained in successive German states policies and practices from the nineteenth century on. Arguing that recent historiography on citizenship has called attention to the significant degree of variation between periods of openness and closure, as well as highlighting restrictive naturalization policies as a key ingredient of ethnic closure, the author contends that this focus was misplaced. Accordingly, the disappointing effects of a law that focused on the automatic transmission of citizenship while paying less attention to making voluntary transition to citizenship easier are not particularly surprising.

How violent was eighteenth-century Ireland?

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (119) ◽  
pp. 377-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neal Garnham
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Popular Protest ◽  
Ancient Regime ◽  
History Of ◽  
Typical Part ◽  
The Law

In his recent book dealing with the history of duelling in Ireland, James Kelly comes to the conclusion that eighteenth-century Ireland was essentially ‘a violent society’, peopled at least in part ‘by wilful men who put their individual reputations above their lives, their families, their religion, and the law’. Such comments seem to continue a well-established tradition of interpretation that goes back to the nineteenth century. However, this image of a society in which violence was endemic, and conflict a feature of everyday life, has not gone unquestioned by historians. For example, Thomas Bartlett and Sean Connolly have instead noted the relatively controlled nature of popular protest, the early disappearance of banditry, and the reliance, until the very end of the century, on local enforcement of the law, as possible indications that Ireland may not have been as disorderly a society as has been suggested. These differing interpretations have, in turn, an obvious relevance to the wider debate on how eighteenth-century Ireland should be perceived: as a society irreconcilably and uniquely divided by religious and ethnic conflicts, or as a more or less typical part of the European ancient régime.

Physics Textbooks and Textbook Physics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josep Simon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Science Education ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of Physics ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
German States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

This article focuses on physics textbooks and textbook physics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular emphasis on developments in France, Germany, Britain, and the United States. It first examines the role that physics textbooks played in the early stages of the professionalization of the history of science before presenting a general overview of the genesis of textbook physics in the nineteenth century. It also looks at major textbooks produced in France and the German states while making some reference to British and American textbooks. Finally, it considers recent scholarship dealing with textbooks in the history of physics. The article shows how our views on textbooks have been shaped by events that have established particular hierarchies between scientific research and science education, and between universities and schools. It argues that the study of textbooks would benefit from greater reflexivity.

The Law of Commerce and Trade

2019 ◽  
pp. 241-262
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Friedman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Marine Insurance ◽  
Commercial Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Commercial Paper ◽  
International Body ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Merchant

This chapter discusses the history of American commercial law covering the admiralty and general commerce, sale of goods, bankruptcy and insolvency, and contract. American commercial law was deeply and persistently in debt to England. Theoretically, even national sovereignty was no barrier. The laws of admiralty, marine insurance, commercial paper, and sale of goods were not, supposedly, parochial law, English law; they were part of an international body of rules. The law of sales of goods developed greatly in the first half of the nineteenth century. Many, if not most, of the leading cases were English and were adopted in the United States fairly rapidly. Two strains of law—contract and the law merchant—each with a somewhat different emphasis, were more or less godparents of the law of sales.

Toleration and Repression: German States, the Law and the ‘Sects’ in the Long Nineteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 338-361
Author(s):  
Manfred Henke
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
General Law ◽  
German States ◽  
The Law ◽  
Revolution Of 1848 ◽  
The Church ◽  
The French Revolution

At the beginning of the period, the Prussian General Law Code did not provide for equal rights for members of ‘churches’ and those of ‘sects’. However, the French Revolution decreed the separation of church and state and the principle of equal rights for all citizens. Between the Congress of Vienna (1815) and the revolution of 1848, Prussian monarchs pressed for the church union of Lutheran and Reformed and advocated the piety of the Evangelical Revival. The Old Lutherans felt obliged to leave the united church, thus eventually forming a ‘sect’ favoured by the king. Rationalists, who objected to biblicism and orthodoxy, were encouraged to leave, too. As Baptists, Catholic Apostolics and Methodists arrived from Britain and America, the number of ‘sects’ increased. New ways of curtailing their influence were devised, especially in Prussia and Saxony.

scholarly journals Musical theory in the early philosophical transactions

1940 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-157
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Musical Note ◽  
Educational Value ◽  
Fundamental Nature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law

In the Rede Lecture which he delivered in 1878 Clerk Maxwell wrote : ‘ The special educational value of this combined study of music and acoustics is that more than almost any other study it involves a continual appeal to what we must observe for ourselves.’ It had been the defect of musical theory in the preceding century or more that it had continually failed to make this appeal. If, however, we go to earlier days still, to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, before Rameau (1683-1764) ‘ discovered ’ the so-called chord of nature in the harmonic overtones of a musical note, we find a different story. True, we find the curious-minded speculating, as the Pythagoreans had done, about the fundamental nature of music ; but we do not find them laying down the law for composers, as the English neo-Pythagoreans attempted to do in the nineteenth century. From this point of view, as well as from that of the history of acoustics, some of the early papers in the Philosophical Transactions are as significant as they are interesting. Two of these papers appear, at first sight, to be primarily scientific. Their importance in the history of musical theory will emerge later in this paper.

scholarly journals A short history of scientific investigations on glaciers

1987 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. 4-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garry K.C. Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Hydrostatic Pressure ◽  
Short History ◽  
Scientific Investigations ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Semi Solid ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
Louis Agassiz

AbstractScientific investigations on valley glaciers engaged some of the greatest natural philosophers of the nineteenth century. Among these, Louis Agassiz has unique importance for he personifies the transition from the protoscientific period of de Saussure and Scheuchzer to the scientific one of Forbes and his successors. In this brief history I have attempted to connect the achievements of the past 50 years with the aspirations of our predecessors.“The air immediately above me seemed filled with rainbow-dust, for the ice-needles glittered with a thousand hues under the decomposition of light upon them, while the dark storm in the valley below offered a strange contrast to the brilliancy of the upper region in which I stood”.–Louis Agassiz“To myself, I confess that this now appears the strongest argument of all for considering the glacier as a united mass like a river, in which there is a nice equilibrium between the force of gravitation, acting by hydrostatic pressure, and the molecular resistance of the semi-solid; the degree of regularity of the law which connects the partial movements is wonderful, and I maintain that it is inexplicable except upon the viscous theory”.–James D. Forbes

scholarly journals Taking the Stand: Women as Witnesses in New Zealand’s Colonial Courts c.1840-1900

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Elizabeth Bowyer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Public Places ◽  
Native Land ◽  
Divorce Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law

<p>The study considers women as witnesses in New Zealand’s colonial courts from c.1840 to 1900. An analysis of women as witnesses adds another dimension to what is known about the everyday but often compelling presence of women in New Zealand’s colonial courts. In 1840 British law was formally implemented in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The law’s institutional structures would soon follow. In 1841 the Supreme Court was established followed by the Resident Magistrate Courts in 1846. The courts were a part of formal British governance. While women were excluded from serving as judges, barristers, solicitors, court officials and jury members, they did appear before the courts as victims, defendants, spectators and witnesses. Being a witness was the only form of verbal participation women could undertake in the court processes during the nineteenth century.   Existing scholarly work has tended to concentrate on women appearing in the courts in the nineteenth century as victims or defendants. This study explores the complex agency of women using the law and as active participants in its deliberations. Four substantive chapters consider women as witnesses in cases involving petty offences, violent crime, civil cases and the Native Land Court and finally cases of divorce, bigamy and action of breach of promise of marriage.   Courts were significant public places in colonial New Zealand. They were places where disputes were settled, grievances could be aired, conduct was put on trial and order was maintained. A long established element of the legal tradition was that unprejudiced and fair justice could only be assured if the courts were open and public spaces. Thus, the witness stand was a place where women had a public voice.   Women’s eligibility to appear as witnesses in the court changed over the period under study. In 1840 when British law formally arrived in New Zealand women were restricted in the cases and circumstances in which they could take the stand. Wives were unable to give evidence in cases involving their husbands. From 1843 to 1889 gradual changes to evidence law allowed women to take the stand in different ways and by 1900 women appeared as witnesses in case types ranging from civil actions to the most violent offences in the criminal law. Changes in married women’s property law in 1860, and more significantly in 1884 and divorce law from 1867 generally extended the number and kind of cases in which women gave testimony in the courts. From the 1860s the Native Land Court became a familiar place for many Māori women forced to resort to the Court to establish title over land. Evidence suggests women’s knowledge of whakapapa and the oral histories of iwi and hapū were vital on the witness stand to ‘prove’ their link with land.   The study shows the variety of ways in which the courts were places where women spoke on a public stage, and where their words were often recorded and reported on as part of the official proceedings of the justice system. As witnesses they were also in courtrooms where they watched and were watched in a public domain and their words were heard long before they had any say in political representation. Once women had the vote, from 1893, they were eager to reform the justice system: seeking the opportunity for women to serve on juries, to serve as police, to qualify as lawyers, and in reforming the most egregious injustices such as the differential grounds for wives and husbands to petition for divorce. The application of the law, and the making of the law, proved uneven but had closely interrelated phases in the history of women in colonial New Zealand.</p>

Beyond Rosetta

2020 ◽  
pp. 20-34
Author(s):  
Rachel Mairs
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Upper Egypt ◽  
Antiquities Market ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Scholarship ◽  
Antiquities Trade

The discovery and collection of multilingual inscriptions through excavation and the antiquities trade in the nineteenth century played a crucial role in the decipherment of Egyptian scripts. The history of the modern ownership of inscriptions now located in Egypt, Europe, and North America and their role in the development of Egyptology are closely linked. The chapter traces the history of scholarship on several Greek-Egyptian texts, including an unpublished inscription from the Delta, a decree in honour of a member of a prominent family from Upper Egypt, foundation plaques from a temple of Hathor-Aphrodite, and a sphinx from Koptos. The reassembly of stones which were often dispersed and broken into separate pieces through circumstances of excavation or the antiquities market allows us to establish equivalences between Egyptian and Greek concepts, people, and places, and sheds light on the sociolinguistic situation in individual communities, and in Egypt as a whole.

Inventing American Exceptionalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amalia D. Kessler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law

It is widely accepted that American procedure—and indeed American legal culture as a whole—are adversarial (and distinctively so). Yet, precisely because this assumption is so deep-rooted, we have no history of how American adversarialism arose. This book provides such a history. It shows that the United States long employed not only lawyer-empowering adversarial procedure, but also various forms of more judge-dependent, quasi-inquisitorial procedure—including the equity tradition borrowed from England and, to a lesser extent, conciliation courts transplanted from continental Europe. However, the United States largely abandoned quasi-inquisitorial procedure by the close of the Civil War and Reconstruction, committing itself to lawyer-driven adversarialism. In explaining this turn to the adversarial, the book looks to developments both internal and external to the law. Among the key internalist factors on which the book focuses are the rise of the previously unknown category of “procedure”, as well as a set of seemingly small changes in the approach to taking testimony before equity-court officials known as masters in chancery, which ended up having unintended systemic consequences. So, too, from a more externalist perspective, the book traces how advocacy of adversarialism became intimately linked with demands for a largely unregulated market and the preservation of white supremacy. The product of deep-rooted inheritances, as well as more immediate and contingent occurrences, the nineteenth-century embrace of adversarsarialism would prove deeply consequential, shaping Americans’ experience of the law down to the present, often in ways that constrain rather than expand access to justice.

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