Forging a nation: the spurious histories of Charles Bertram and James Macpherson

2020 ◽  
pp. 149-167
Author(s):  
Alan Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Medieval Manuscript ◽  
James Macpherson ◽  
History Of ◽  
Manuscript Copy

Chapter eight examines two texts which would have a dramatic impact on early modern attitudes towards ancient Scotland. The so-called De Situ Britanniae, ‘discovered’ by Englishman Charles Bertram in Copenhagen, purported to be a medieval manuscript copy of an ancient Roman source that radically rewrote the Roman history of Scotland. Widely disseminated and cited in antiquarian circles, it was only in the nineteenth century that the text was identified as an elaborate forgery. The 1760s saw the publication of poetry attributed to an ancient bard named Ossian and ‘translated’ from the Gaelic by James Macpherson. The verses told of the heroic deeds of Fingal and recounted tales of Caledonian battles against the Romans. Immediately denounced as a forgery by many, the poems would nevertheless become a worldwide sensation, reframing the ancient Caledonians as courtly and cultured figures whilst perfectly satisfying the growing taste for the Romantic and sublime.

Medical Martyrs: Nineteenth-Century Representations of Early Modern Inquisitorial Persecution of Spanish Physicians

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 135-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Keitt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
National Identities ◽  
History Of

Abstract This essay examines the discourse on medicine and the Inquisition in nineteenth-century Spain. It traces how liberal reformers selectively appropriated aspects of the history of Spanish medicine in the service of their contemporary political and scientific agendas, and how in doing so they contributed to the formation of new professional and national identities.

The Revolt of the Mice

Reinardus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 81-93
Author(s):  
Wilt L. Idema
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Court Case ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Times

Abstract The tale of the war of the mice against the cat has a history of several thousands of years. First known from ancient Egypt, it was wide-spread in Classical antiquity, would remain popular in the Near East until modern times, and also was widely known in Europe in medieval and early modern times in paintings, prints, songs, and mock-epics. In China the most popular tale on the antagonism of mice and cats was the tale of their underworld court case. Starting from the first half of the nineteenth century, some versions of that tale also include an account of the war between the two species. Only one stand-alone treatment of the theme is known from an edition of the 1920s. In Japan the theme of the war of the mice against the cats also makes its first appearance in print in the first half of the nineteenth century. No direct foreign influence can be discerned in the emergence of this theme in either country.

scholarly journals Феномен самоубийства в России XVIII в.

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Александр Каменский
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Emotional Perception ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military

The history of suicide in Russia, especially prior to the nineteenth century, remains understudied. While in most European countries the process of decriminalization and secularization of suicide was underway, in Russia, with the introduction of the Military Article of 1715, it was formally criminalized. On the basis of the study of more than 350 newly examined archival cases, this article examines how the transfer of suicide investigations to secular authorities also entailed secularization, while the peculiarities of the Russian judicial and investigative system, as well as lacunae in the legislation, actually led to the gradual decriminalization of suicide. At the same time, although among Russians, as well as among other peoples, a number of superstitions were associated with suicide, there is no evidence in the archival documents studied in this article of a particularly emotional perception of suicide. The phenomenon of suicide in eighteenth-century Russia, when compared to early modern Europe, did not have any significant, fundamental differences. However, the features of the Russian judicial-investigative system made this phenomenon less public, less visible and less significant for public consciousness.  

scholarly journals England’s “Bloody Code” in Crisis and Transition: Executions at the Old Bailey, 1760–1837

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Devereaux
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old Bailey ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Execution Rates ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era

The most celebrated and influential history of execution in England, V.A.C. Gatrell’s The Hanging Tree (Oxford, 1994), uses a survey of execution rates to make two very striking and seemingly persuasive assertions. First, more people were being hanged in early nineteenth-century England than at any time since the early modern era; and second, that the end of capital punishment came far more suddenly than previous studies have recognized. This article acknowledges and extends the importance of Gatrell’s first insight, while arguing that he nevertheless both understates the complexity of developments and overstates the suddenness with which both the letter and the practice of capital punishment were abandoned. It does so through a careful recalculation and analysis of execution rates at London’s Old Bailey courthouse, where execution was practiced on a far larger scale than in any other jurisdiction in the Anglo-American world, and whose practice most profoundly shaped the perceptions of both critics and proponents of capital punishment alike.

5 Evolution and Gestalt of the Austrian State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wiederin Ewald
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Administrative State ◽  
World War ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Different Levels

This chapter presents an overview and history of the Austrian administrative state. It shows how the traditional form of the Austrian administration evolved in the second half of the nineteenth century. After defeat in World War I, the Republic of Austria succeeded the extinct Danube Monarchy; it took over the Viennese central administrative departments and their personnel and remained a ‘typical administrative state’. In the early modern period, the fundamental elements of Austria's administration developed on three different levels that still exist and to this day continue to characterize the administration's structure. Most notably, the state's dominant administrative feature is expressed by the equality of the judiciary and the administrative branch in both standing and rights.

The History of Continua

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
To Come

Mathematical and philosophical thought about continuity has changed considerably over the ages. Aristotle insisted that continuous substances are not composed of points, and that they can only be divided into parts potentially; a continuum is a unified whole. The most dominant account today, traced to Cantor and Dedekind, is in stark contrast with this, taking a continuum to be composed of infinitely many points. The opening chapters cover the ancient and medieval worlds: the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander, and a recently discovered manuscript by Bradwardine. In the early modern period, mathematicians developed the calculus the rise of infinitesimal techniques, thus transforming the notion of continuity. The main figures treated here include Galileo, Cavalieri, Leibniz, and Kant. In the early party of the nineteenth century, Bolzano was one of the first important mathematicians and philosophers to insist that continua are composed of points, and he made a heroic attempt to come to grips with the underlying issues concerning the infinite. The two figures most responsible for the contemporary hegemony concerning continuity are Cantor and Dedekind. Each is treated, along with precursors and influences in both mathematics and philosophy. The next chapters provide analyses of figures like du Bois-Reymond, Weyl, Brouwer, Peirce, and Whitehead. The final four chapters each focus on a more or less contemporary take on continuity that is outside the Dedekind–Cantor hegemony: a predicative approach, accounts that do not take continua to be composed of points, constructive approaches, and non-Archimedean accounts that make essential use of infinitesimals.

Interaction and boundary work: Western merchant colonies in the Levant and the Eastern Churches, 1650–1800

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-176
Author(s):  
Cornel Zwierlein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Boundary Work ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Close Distance

European merchants in their factories (‘nations’) in the Eastern Mediterranean under Ottoman rule were not really colonizers; in early modern times, they were somehow privileged guests. However, they deserve an important part in a long-term history of types of ‘close distance’ and forms of segregational coexistence. Different from recent studies that stress a strong overall interaction, understanding, sharing, and exchange between Europeans and Ottoman subjects, it is proposed to distinguish three levels: (1) The daily commercial interaction of Western Europeans with their Ottoman counterparts; (2) the stronger involvement in some politico-religious struggles (the 1724 schism in the patriarchate of Antioch serves as example): also here, one has still to distinguish between real interest in the religious cause and other activities as credit lending; (3) the care for and maintenance by the Europeans of their own Western national culture abroad: these cultural activities served more to (eventually unconsciously) perform ‘boundary work’ and to close up the ‘nation’. These early modern forms of close distance and segregation were only isomorphic but not homologous with later highly conscious colonial and modern imperial forms of contact between ‘West’ and ‘East’ as in the nineteenth-century European settlements in Istanbul.

Centering Bukhara

2020 ◽  
pp. 42-72
Author(s):  
James Pickett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Urban Construction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
The Prestige

This chapter traces the history of the ascent of Bukhara by focusing both on investments in physical religious infrastructure and on textual mythologization, whereby Bukhara was discursively centered within the larger Perso-Islamic cosmopolis. These mutually reinforcing efforts had roots in the deep past, reemerged in the sixteenth century, and reached a crescendo in the nineteenth century. The early modern chapter of this story, particularly urban construction of religious infrastructure under the Shibanid and Ashtarkhanid dynasties, has received scholarly attention. The nineteenth century, however, is better known for colonial defeat and stagnation. The chapter argues that the Manghit era marked the city's cultural apex, inheriting all of the prestige and infrastructure from previous eras, and building on them substantially. By tying the universal and abstract to the immediate and concrete, Bukhara's mythologization project exemplifies an understudied process with parallels throughout the preindustrial world.

A History of the Ottoman Fez before Mahmud II (ca. 1600–1800)

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-183
Author(s):  
Youssef Ben Ismail
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
Global History ◽  
Imperial History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Point Of Departure

Abstract The history of the Ottoman fez is usually told with the nineteenth century as a point of departure. In the 1820s and 1830s, the reforms initiated by Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–39) elevated the red felt cap to the rank of official headgear of the Ottoman empire. But little is known about its history prior to its adoption by the state: where did the fez come from and how did it become so prevalent in the Ottoman empire? This essay examines the global history of the fez in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Taking Mahmud II’s reforms as an endpoint, it examines the process by which the headgear first came to be both culturally visible and commercially available in the Ottoman realm. Three aspects of this history are considered: the trans-imperial history of the fez as a commercial commodity, its cultural reception in the Ottoman world, and the establishment of a community of Tunisian fez merchants in early modern Istanbul.

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