Comedy and Crisis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyce Goggin ◽  
Frans De Bruyn
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Full Length ◽  
Speculative Bubble ◽  
Financial Speculation ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Finance ◽  
Extensive Bibliography

Comedy and Crisis features the first ever scholarly English translation of two plays by the eighteenth-century Dutch playwright Pieter Langendijk: Quincampoix, or the Wind Traders [Quincampoix of de Windhandelaars], and Harlequin Stock-Jobber [Arlequin Actionist]. Both plays were occasioned by the financial speculation in England, France, and the Netherlands in 1719-20. In the Netherlands the speculative activity was referred to as a windhandel or wind trade. The first play is a full-length satirical comedy, and the second is a short, comic harlequinade; both were performed in Amsterdam in the fall of 1720, as the speculative bubble in the Netherlands was bursting. Comedy and Crisis also contains a translation of the extensive apparatus (introduction and notes) prepared by the scholar C.H.P. Meijer for his 1892 edition of these plays. The current editors have updated the footnotes and added six new critical essays by contemporary literary and historical scholars that contextualize the two plays historically and culturally. The book includes an extensive bibliography and index. The materials assembled in Comedy and Crisis are a rich resource for cultural, historical, and literary students of the history of finance and of eighteenth-century studies.

Longfellow's “Lapland Song”

PMLA ◽  
1930 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 1188-1192
Author(s):  
James Taft Hatfield
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
English History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Folk Poetry ◽  
Latin Work

It is known that the “Lapland song,” quoted at the end of each stanza in Longfellow's poem, My Lost Youth, was first taken down from a native Laplander, Olaus Matthiae Sirma, and printed in the original, together with a Latin prose version, by Professor Johannes Scheffer of Upsala in his exhaustive Latin work Lapponia (Frankfort 1673). The enormous currency of this book, as well as its various translations, and the wide literary interest aroused in different countries by the two primitive Lapland songs which it contained, have been discussed by F. E. Farley and H. Wright. The English translation of Scheffer's work (Oxford, 1674) was so successful as to lead to a second edition in London in 1704. The latter edition was timely for nourishing the flame of enthusiasm for folk-poetry first kindled by Addison's epoch-making essay from the text, Interdum vulgus rectum videt, published in the Spectator of May 21, 1711. On April 30, 1712, there appeared in the Spectator a new rhymed translation of the song under consideration, by an anonymous author, who professed to derive his version from the “original history,” though it is luminously evident that he looked no deeper than into the metrical version given in the English “History of Lapland.” The song printed in the Spectator was widely popular in England during the entire eighteenth century, and led to a number of other English versions, not one of which, however, contained the lines quoted by Longfellow, or went back to the Latin source.

scholarly journals Water and national identity in the Netherlands; the history of an idea

Water History ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Mostert
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Water History ◽  
Stimulate Action ◽  
National Pride ◽  
External Threats ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Turmoil ◽  
Roman Catholics

AbstractAccording to a popular Dutch theory, water has shaped the Dutch national identity. The Dutch fight against the water would have stimulated perseverance, ingenuity, cooperation and an egalitarian and democratic society. Despite the long water management history of the Netherlands, water became an important part of the self-images of the nation only in the eighteenth Century. In the 1780s the idea that the Dutch had wrung their country from the sea became popular. Initially, this idea was especially popular among the (proto-)liberal opposition, who emphasised the importance of the nation and its achievements. By the end of the nineteenth Century, water had become a national symbol for orthodox Calvinists, Roman Catholics and Socialists too, despite their different views on the nation. Whenever there was fast social change, political turmoil or external threats, as in the late eighteenth Century, the 1930s and 1940s and since the 1990s, the link between water and the Netherlands was used to promote national pride and unity and stimulate action. This link has also been used to promote specific hydraulic works, but it is a topic for further research how widespread and effective this practice was. As this paper is part of a special issue, Water History in the time of COVID-19, it has undergone modified peer review.

Eighteenth-Century Identified Copies of MāšāʾAllāh’s Kitāb Qiyām al-Ḫulafāʾ from Yemen: Text Edition and Contextualization

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 270-291
Author(s):  
Anne Regourd
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Field Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Textual Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Collection

Abstract A copy of the Kitāb Qiyām al-Ḫulafāʾ (Book on the reign of Rulers), identified in Ḏamār, Yemen, in 1993, is dated 8 Ǧumādā Awwal 1150 AH (= Sept. 1737 AD). Under the name of the famous Jewish astrologer MāšāʾAllāh, who practised at the early ʿAbbasid Court together with the Banū Nawbaḫt, this book displays the horoscopes of the Prophet Muhammad and of the caliphs up to Hārūn al-Rašīd. E.S. Kennedy & D. Pingree offered an English translation of the Kitāb Qiyām al-Ḫulafāʾ in The Astrological History of MāšāʾAllāh, Cambridge (MA), Harvard U. Press, 1971, Appendix 2, on the basis of “two late manuscripts”, one from Berlin, the other at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Since then, K. Yamamoto & Ch. Burnett have edited the text on the basis of three manuscripts, adding one from Bursa, and offered a revised English translation. Meanwhile, I came upon a second copy of the book in Ṣanʿāʾ. The copy preserved at the Waqf Library of Ḏamār belonged to the personal collection of a Yemeni cadi, who was a divinatory practitioner (munaǧǧim). At the intersection of textual studies and field work, this paper, following an introduction to the text, will concentrate on the circulation of the 1150/1737 manuscript and its potential uses.

Retrospect on J.C. van Leur's Essay on the Eighteenth Century as a Category in Asian History

Itinerario ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.J. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
European History ◽  
General View ◽  
History Of ◽  
Limited Scale ◽  
Asian History

In an essay of extraordinary range and depth, which it is difficult to summarise without distortion, Jacob van Leur is above all making an appeal for the autonomy of Asian history in relation to that of Europe. He was reviewing volume IV by Godée Molsbergen of Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch Indië, which dealt with the eighteenth century. To Molsbergen the activities of the V.O.C. in Asia in the eighteenth century had characteristics distinct from those of the seventeenth-century Company or from what was to follow in Indonesia in the nineteenth century. These characteristics essentially reflected those of the Netherlands during the eighteenth century. Assuming that eighteenth-century European history has unifying characteristics (an assumption that he was inclined to question), Van Leur asked: ‘Is it possible to write the history of Indonesia in the eighteenth century as the history of the Company?’ His answer was a resounding ‘no’. In giving his answer he widened the issue from Indonesia to Asia as a whole. ‘A general view of the whole can only lead to the conclusion that any talk of a European Asia in the eighteenth century is out of the question, that a few European centres of power had been consolidated on a very limited scale, that in general – and here the emphasis should lie – the oriental lands continued to form active factors in the course of events as valid entities, militarily, economically and politically.’ He concluded that diere was an ‘unbroken unity’ of Asian history from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Until well into the nineteenth century Europe and Asia were ‘two equal civilisations developing separately of each other’.

Intellectual Change before the Enlightenment: Scotland, the Netherlands and the Reception of Cartesian Thought, 1650–1700

2015 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Raffe
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
United Provinces

This article argues that intellectual historians' fascination with a narrative of the emerging Scottish enlightenment has led to a neglect of ideas that did not shape enlightenment culture. As a contribution to a less teleological intellectual history of Scotland, the article examines the reception of the philosophy of René Descartes (1596–1650). Cartesian thought enjoyed a brief period of popularity from the 1670s to the 1690s but appeared outdated by the mid-eighteenth century. Debates about Cartesianism illustrate the ways in which late seventeenth-century Scottish intellectual life was conditioned by the rivalry between presbyterians and episcopalians, and by fears that new philosophy would undermine christianity. Moreover, the reception of Cartesian thought exemplifies intellectual connections between Scotland and the Netherlands. Not only did Descartes' philosophy win its first supporters in the United Provinces, but the Dutch Republic also provided the arguments employed by the main Scottish critics of Cartesianism. In this period the Netherlands was both a source of philosophical innovation and of conservative reaction to intellectual change.

J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Nacol
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
History Of Political Economy ◽  
History Of Finance ◽  
Scholarly Attention

In The Machiavellian Moment, J. G. A. Pocock shows how Niccolò Machiavelli and other Florentine political thinkers adapted Aristotelian and Polybian insights to create a paradigm of republican political thought that was sensitive to the problem of stabilizing civic virtue against inevitable political decay in time. This republican paradigm, he famously insists, traveled to eighteenth-century Anglo-American contexts via the work of James Harrington and helped political thinkers make sense of two seemingly disparate events—the rise of finance in Britain and the American Revolution—in civic republican terms. Pocock’s insistence that The Machiavellian Moment is a work of history does not negate its contributions to political theory. First, it is a significant text for political theorists who attend to the role of language and discourse in political thinking, although the Pocockian approach bears limitations worth acknowledging. Second, Pocock’s work is critical to the republican revival in contemporary political theory, because he centers and defends Florentine and Anglo-American republicanisms as political discourses worthy of scholarly attention. Lastly, The Machiavellian Moment appears, in hindsight, as a foundational text for scholarship in the history of political economy, particularly the pre-history of finance and credit.

The Making of a Fundamental Value

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-49
Author(s):  
Mart Rutjes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Dutch Society ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fundamental Value

Separation of church and state is one of the key concepts in contemporary debates in increasingly secular democracies like the Netherlands. It is not only used to describe the legal and political arrangements between the state and religious organizations, but is also part of a larger discursive struggle over national identity and the meaning of citizenship. This article traces the history of the concept of separation of church and state in the Netherlands since the eighteenth century. First, it shows how the concept has always been a contested one. Second, it argues that the current framing of separation of church and state as a fundamental value of Dutch society is relatively recent and is connected to growing secularism and the position of Islam in Dutch society.

E Pluribus Unum

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 121-133
Author(s):  
Matthijs Tieleman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
American Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Problem ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Society Today

Abstract Polarization is a critical problem confronting American politics and society today. The history of the Netherlands serves as both a warning and an opportunity for the United States in its quest to solve pernicious partisanship. The eighteenth-century Dutch Republic demonstrates how continued division without compromise can easily lead to revolution and civil war. In contrast, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of the Netherlands show how a pluralist political culture created a society of compromise and tolerance. This article suggests several ways in which the United States can start to create a similar society of E pluribus unum and mitigate some of the effects of polarization in contemporary American politics.

A contribution to the history of the herbaria of George Clifford III (1685–1760)

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerard Thijsse
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Natural History Museum ◽  
Main Body ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Plant Names ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
History Of

The herbarium of the wealthy banker George Clifford III, who lived near Haarlem in the Netherlands, was studied by Linnaeus. It forms the basis for Hortus Cliffortianus (1738), one of the principal works on which his famous Species plantarum (1753) was founded. It is this close relationship between Clifford's herbarium and Hortus Cliffortianus together with the frequency with which Linnaeus cited species accounts from that work in the synonymy of accounts in Species plantarum which makes it highly important in the light of the typification of Linnaean plant names. It is well known that the main body of Clifford's herbarium is held at the Natural History Museum, London. Less well known is the existence of a much smaller collection now held at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden. Most of the plants in the London set are mounted with printed vases and ribbons, and have decorative labels. Similar ornaments also occur in the Leiden Clifford herbarium. The use of such ornaments was widespread in the Netherlands in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. In this paper the history of both Clifford herbaria is reconstructed and an attempt made to establish their exact connection by comparison of the handwriting on the labels and the presence of the different printed ornaments.

scholarly journals “No Intrigue Is Spared”: Anglo-American Intelligence Networks in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic

Itinerario ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Matthijs Tieleman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
Postal Services ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American

Abstract This article surveys previously underexamined American and British intelligence networks that operated in the Netherlands during the eighteenth century and demonstrates the relevance of the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic to the larger history of the Netherlands, early modern Europe, and the revolutionary Atlantic. The Dutch Republic's favourable geographic location, its postal services, its sophisticated press, and its mercantile economy made it an ideal place to extract information and build intelligence networks, shaping power politics in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic. Additionally, this article illustrates how these Anglo-American intelligence networks affected the Dutch Republic and the revolutionary Atlantic. In the late 1770s, American revolutionaries successfully deployed their intelligence network to unleash a propaganda campaign that aimed to convince the Dutch public of their cause. By infiltrating the liberal and sophisticated Dutch printing press, the American revolutionaries not only succeeded in fostering political support among the Dutch public; they also created a transatlantic intellectual exchange with the Dutch opposition that laid the foundations of the Dutch Patriot movement of the 1780s and ultimately the dissolution of the Dutch Republic as a whole in 1795.

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