Being and Becoming

2021 ◽  
pp. 425-438
Author(s):  
Jan Lorenz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Perceived Threat ◽  
Ethnic Boundaries ◽  
Being And Becoming

This chapter explores conversions to Judaism in pre-modern confessional states that were recognized as central to the experience of European Jews and became common in antiquity in the last two centuries BCE. It talks about the procedure and legal ramifications of conversion to Judaism that first emerged in the reforms that were retroactively attributed to Nehemiah and Ezra. It also explains how conversions to Judaism are considered as a social organization of difference of the situational reorganization of ethnic boundaries, which responds to the perceived threat of Hellenism and assimilation. The chapter looks at accounts of transition to Judaism from early modern western Europe, which were generally kept in secret as they ran the risk of ostracism by the surrounding Christian world. It discusses how individuals who became Jewish at the time were being driven by intellectual and theological reasoning.

The Birth of the National Historical Writing in England and France

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Palamarchuk ◽  
◽  
Ekaterina Terenteva ◽  
Sergey Fyodorov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Complex Analysis ◽  
Legal Consciousness ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Past ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Prevalent Form ◽  
Xviith Century

The monograph is a study of main trends of emergence and evolution of the national historical writing in Western Europe in the XVIIth century. Based on a complex analysis of several phenomena which defined the development of the Early Modern historical writing, it provides a comparative analysis of the regional schools of historical writing (particularly those of the English antiquaries and French érudits) in the process of their respective growth and formation accomplished by the end of XVIIth century with the advent of the national historiography. The conceptual unity of the book is verified within the context of the rise of the national states in England and France, which stipulated a consistent demand for reinforcing the nationally orientated discourses not only in a historical writing but also in legal and political thought. The perception of England as an empire, entrenched in the insular historical and legal consciousness, recurring during the reigns of the Stuarts and extending to the whole British archipelago, determined the establishment of chorography as a prevalent form characteristic of the English historiography. Chorographic structure of the narrative unfolding the space of the territorial “empire” to the reader corresponded to the method of “intellectual appropriation” of the British Isles by the English antiquarians which could be defined as “cultural-historical”. A considerable role was devoted to reactualization of ethnogenetic myths at different levels: while some of them (primarily – the Galfridian myth) were regarded as relevant to the pan-British cultural and historical past, others emphasized autonomous dimensions of the past and present of distinct composites (Scotland, Ireland, Wales) The continental French variant of proto-national historiography also utilized the idea of empire but in a different mode defined by the formula “rex in regno suo imperator est”. The emerging school of érudits modelled principles of its narratives on patrimonial structures rooted in the feudal medieval society (dynasty; royal family; aristocratic lineages; seigneurial rights and vassal obligations; the system of offices created by the monarch stemming from the royal household etc.). The unity of the subjects of the French kingdom was ensured not by the shared territorial commonality but by their loyalty to the king. Therefore, the French variant of “intellectual appropriation” was developed in a socio-political direction in contrast to the territorial.

scholarly journals Not for Sale, but for Own Need”: Trade of the Volhynian Gentry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Second Half of the 16th — First Half of the 17th Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Ihor Huliuk
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Traded Goods ◽  
Classical Economic ◽  
Economic Nature ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe ◽  
General Criticism

The article analyzes socioeconomic processes in the early modern Europe, in particular trade in its separate regions. It considers the classical economic model focused on the industry and agriculture, which Eastern and Western Europe followed in their multifaceted development. It studies legislation, namely the Second Lithuanian Statute and the Sejm Constitutions for assessing the involvement of gentry representatives in commerce. It indicates that the activity of the Volhynian gentry in the internal trade of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was due to both external changes in the market, primarily the demand for products from Eastern Europe, and the tendency observed on the continent when running a household became a business that made incomes grow. It analyzes general criticism in the intellectual circles of the trade activity of the gentry as such, which could lead to a certain deterioration of traditions. Man-knight and man-merchant intersections in the society of that time were acceptable if a nobleman traded goods from his own estates and could prove it with an oath.The article also investigates key areas of trade of the Volhynian gentry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the basis of documentary material of court books of the 16th–17th-century Volhynia and previously published sources of economic nature. It studies main range of goods sold and bought by the representatives of the elite, observes the participation of the Volhynian gentry in trade operations with the core centers of the Polish-Lithuanian economy, and their involvement in local fairs and tradings. It shows the role of intermediaries, first of all representatives of the Jewish community and peasants from the gentry fоlwarks, in the trade enterprise of the gentry.

scholarly journals God’s Country in Black and Blue: How Christian Nationalism Shapes Americans’ Views about Police (Mis)treatment of Blacks

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel L. Perry ◽  
Andrew L. Whitehead ◽  
Joshua T. Davis
Keyword(s):  
People Of Color ◽  
Victim Blame ◽  
Perceived Threat ◽  
Excessive Force ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Ethnic Boundaries ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
National Probability Sample ◽  
Police Discrimination ◽  
Christian Nationalism

Research shows that Americans who hold strongly to a myth about America’s Christian heritage—what is called “Christian nationalism”—tend to draw rigid boundaries around ethnic and national group membership. Incorporating theories connecting ethnic boundaries, prejudice, and perceived threat with a tendency to justify harsher penalties, bias, or excessive force against racial minorities, the authors examine how Christian nationalist ideology shapes Americans’ views about police treatment of black Americans. Analyses of 2017 data from a national probability sample show that adherence to Christian nationalism predicts that Americans will be more likely to believe that police treat blacks the same as whites and that police shoot blacks more often because blacks are more violent than whites. These effects are robust even when including controls for respondents’ religious and political characteristics, indicating that Christian nationalism influences Americans’ attitudes over and above the independent influences of political conservatism or religious parochialism. In fact, the authors find that religiosity influences policing attitudes in the opposite direction. Moreover, observed patterns do not differ by race, suggesting that Christian nationalism provides a cultural framework that can bolster antiblack prejudice among people of color as well as whites. The authors argue that Christian nationalism solidifies ethnic boundaries around national identity such that Americans are less willing to acknowledge police discrimination and more likely to victim-blame, even appealing to more overtly racist notions of blacks’ purportedly violent tendencies to justify police shootings. The authors outline the implications of these findings for understanding the current racial-political climate leading up to and during the Trump presidency.

scholarly journals Servitude and Work at the Dawn of the Early Modern Era The Devaluation of Salaried Workers and the “Undeserving Poor”

2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (01) ◽  
pp. 77-85
Author(s):  
Giacomo Todeschini
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Economic Rationality ◽  
Salaried Workers ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Undeserving Poor

Abstract Thomas Piketty’s analysis of the way that neoliberal economists use false meritocracy to justify growing economic inequality invites historians to reconsider the representation of workers in the economic thought and administrative politics of preindustrial Western Europe. This renewed focus on those termed mercenarii in theological, economic, and legal texts, namely salaried workers, shows that since the thirteenth century the literate elites of Christian Europe have interpreted manual labor as the sign of a competence that was useful but also socially and politically devalorizing. The ancient Roman conception of wages as auctoramentum servitutis, or evidence of servitude, reemerges at the end of Middle Ages in the guise of a complex theological, legal, and governmental discourse about the intellectual incompetence and necessary political marginality of salaried workers as manual laborers. At the dawn of the early modern era, the representation of salaried labor as a social condition corresponding to a state of servitude and lack of intellect characterizes both literary works and the economic rationality embodied by the first “scientific” economists.

The Industrial Division of Labour and National Cultures

1982 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Gellner
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
National Cultures ◽  
Complex Transformation ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Original Event

THE ORIGINS OF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY CONTINUE TO BE AN object of scholarly dispute. It seems to be very probable that this will continue to be so forever. An enormously complex transformation occurred in a very large, diversified and intricate society, and the event was unique: no imitative industrialization can be treated as an event of the same kind as the original industrialization, simply in virtue of the fact that all the others were indeed imitative, were performed in the light of the now established knowledge that the thing could be done and had certain advantages (though the emulated ideal was of course interpreted in all kinds of quite diverse ways). So we can never repeat the original event which is to be understood, which was perpetrated by men who knew not what they did, and this was of its essence: we cannot do this, for quite a number of cogent reasons - the sheer fact of repetition makes it different from the original occasion; one cannot in any case reproduce all the circumstances of early modern Western Europe; and experiments on such a scale, for the sake of establishing a theoretical point, are morally hardly conceivable. In any case, to sort out causal threads in so complex a process, we should need not one, but very, very many re-runs, and these will never be available to us.

Economic Conditions in Early Modern Bengal: A Contribution to the Divergence Debate

2010 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tirthankar Roy
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Income Growth ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Average Income ◽  
European Colonization

This article contributes to the debate on relative levels of living in the early modern world by estimating the income and probable range of income growth in Bengal before European colonization. The exercise yields two conclusions, (a) average income in Bengal was significantly smaller than that in contemporary Western Europe, and (b) there is insufficient basis to infer either growth or decline in average income in the eighteenth century.

The Reformation and Early Modern Periods

2020 ◽  
pp. 26-34
Author(s):  
Katrina Jennie-Lou Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Christmas Trees ◽  
Radical Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Catholic Churches

From the sixteenth through to the eighteenth centuries, Christians in Western Europe and North America celebrated Christmas in a variety of ways. Some of the practices or elements of celebration are familiar as they are still a part of many Christmas celebrations today, such as gift-giving, hospitality, feasting, singing, and decorating with greenery and Christmas trees. Other aspects of Christmas revelry were reduced during this period, as reformers in both the Protestant and Catholic Churches worked to rid the holiday of some of its excessive forms of festivity, such as misrule, social inversion, or superstitious practices. While in some areas, namely Scotland, England, and New England, radical reformers, including the Puritans, did away with Christmas festivities in the late-sixteenth and early- to mid-seventeenth centuries, these legal strictures were difficult to enforce and were not long-lasting. Instead, in both Protestant and Catholic countries, Christmas celebrations continued, though they often changed from what they had been in the Middle Ages. By the nineteenth century, traditions such as Christmas carols, Christmas trees, Nativity scenes, and Saint Nicholas iconography had been established that were taken up and popularized on a wider scale, but claims that those traditions were not invented until the nineteenth century are often rather overstated. Instead, many of these traditions grew and blossomed throughout the early modern period, sometimes despite radical Reformation attempts to get rid of Christmas, sometimes because of reforms in its celebration.

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