Neither colonies nor colonialism? The early modern semantics of European expansion in German political economics (1700–1800)

2020 ◽  
pp. 26-44
Author(s):  
Jonas Hübner
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Economics ◽  
European Expansion

Review of Culture and Cultivation in Early Modern England: Writing and the Land, by Michael Leslie and Timothy Raylor; Death and the Metropolis: Studies in the Demographic History of London 1670-1830, by John Landers; Capitalism, Culture and Decline in Britain, 1750-1990, by W. D. Rubinstein; Subverting Scotland's Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo-British Identity, 1689-c.1830, by Colin Kidd; Outsiders: Class, Gender and Nation, by Dorothy Thompson; Land and Economy in Baroque Italy: Valpolicella, 1630-1797, by Peter Musgrave; The Seduction of the Mediterranean: Writing, Art, and Homosexual Fantasy, by Robert Aldrich; Geographical Inquiry and American Historical Problems, by Carville Earle; Historical Atlas of Canada, Vol. II: The Land Transformed, 1880-1891, by R. Louis Gentilcore; In the Absence of Towns: Settlement and Country Trade in Southside Virginia, 1730-1800, by Charles J. Farmer; North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers: Origins, Diffusion, and Differentiation, by Terry G. Jordan; From Wooden Ploughs to Welfare: Why Indian Policy Failed in the Prairie Provinces, by Helen Buckley; Russian Refuge: Religion, Migration, and Settlement on the North American Pacific Rim, by Susan Wiley Hardwick; La Paz de Dios y del Rey: la Conquista de la Selva Lacandona, 1525-1821. Oro Verde: la Conquista de la Selva Lacandona por los Maderos Tabasqueños, 1822-1949, by Jan de Vos; Haciendas and 'Ayllus': Rural Society in the Bolivian Andes in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, by Herbert S. Klein; Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective: Essays on the Meanings of Some Places in the Past, by A. R.H. Baker and G. Bilger; The Early Modern World-System in Georgraphical Perspectie, by Hans-Jurgen Nitz; European Expansion and Migration: Essays on the Intercontinental Migration from Africa, Asia and Europe, by P. C. Emmer and M. Mörner; Mass Migration in Europe: The Legacy and the Future, by Russell King; Asia in the Making of Europe, Volume III: A Century of Advance Book 1: Trade, Missions, Literature; Book 2: South Asia; Book 3: Southeast Asia; Book 4: East Asia, by Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. Van Kley; The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century, by Zeynep Çelik; The Shona and Their Neighbours, by David Beach and Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, by Mary Louise Pratt

1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-498
Author(s):  
Tom Williamson ◽  
Peter Clark ◽  
A.G. Hopkins ◽  
Rab Houston ◽  
Gillian Rose ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
North American ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Modern World ◽  
La Selva ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
The North ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Mary Louise Pratt ◽  
And Migration

scholarly journals Myths of military revolution: European expansion and Eurocentrism

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 491-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.C. Sharman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Western Expansion ◽  
Military Revolution ◽  
Military Innovations ◽  
The Military ◽  
Social Root

This article critiques explanations of the rise of the West in the early modern period premised on the thesis that military competition drove the development of gunpowder technology, new tactics, and the Westphalian state, innovations that enabled European trans-continental conquests. Even theories in International Relations and other fields that posit economic or social root causes of Western expansion often rely on this “military revolution” thesis as a crucial intervening variable. Yet, the factors that defined the military revolution in Europe were absent in European expeditions to Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and conventional accounts are often marred by Eurocentric biases. Given the insignificance of military innovations, Western expansion prior to the Industrial Revolution is best explained by Europeans’ ability to garner local support and allies, but especially by their deference to powerful non-Western polities.

Science by regimento: Standardising Long-Distance Control and New Spaces of Knowledge in Early Modern Portuguese Cosmography

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 133-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
Distance Control ◽  
Complex Process

European expansion produced great transformations in the way modern societies were organised as well as in the management of new practices and spaces of knowledge. This article analyses the ways in which the Iberian world responded to such transformations through the creation of a series of control mechanisms that constitute the prehistory of the modern ways of standardising science. This article is thus a contribution to discussions of the normative and institutional development involving long-distance control that took place amongst the expansionist powers of early modern Europe. It examines one of the normative artefacts implemented by the Portuguese crown from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, the Regimento do Cosmógrafo-Mor (1592), the visible face of a complex process of normalisation, control and circulation of information, which ultimately regulated the nautical and cosmographical practice of a long-distance global network. For this reason, this article refers to science by regimento, science that is produced and performed under clear directives. Through the study of this document I aim to highlight not only how the Portuguese overseas enterprise was organised, but also how its technical and scientific configuration, which regulated navigation in the Atlantic, the use of astrolabes, and the directions to depict previously unseen plants and animals, contributed to defining science in early modern Iberian societies.


New Albion: Anatomy of an English Colonisation Failure, 1632–1659

Itinerario ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
L.H. Roper
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New World ◽  
European American ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
The Creation

Where do episodes of colonising failure fit into the historiography of European expansion? Almost by definition, this field, especially those aspects of it concerned with colonial social formation, privileges the study of those colonies which became established. Nor does an enquiry into failure have much to offer to those who have adopted the increasingly popular “Atlantic” perspective on European overseas activity. The students in this school of thought stress the importance of the commercial and social links between European-American settlements, as well as with Africa and Europe. These were forged through the unprecedented movement of people and commodities generated by early modern overseas activity, especially across the Atlantic Ocean. These connections and the corresponding mingling of peoples from four continents constitute the key elements in the development of “modernity” and the creation of a manifestly new world.

Geography, Early Modern Colonialism and Central Europe’s Atlantic Trade

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 410-420
Author(s):  
Klaus Weber
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
West African ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
Atlantic Trade ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
Commercial Networks ◽  
Cottage Industries ◽  
Textile Sector

Only during the last decade or so has Germany been considered more systematically as a factor in European Expansion from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. The effects of the Price Revolution – a decline in wages and prices stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to Central and Eastern Europe – favoured the growth of labour-intensive cottage industries, largely in the textile sector. Central Europe’s geographic features – reliable precipitation supports forestry and feeds rivers, providing hydro-energy for machines and transport lanes from hinterlands to maritime ports – favoured energy-intensive production of steel-, brass- and glass-ware, all destined for colonial markets and for the barter trade against slaves from the West African coast. Early on, these commodity flows and commercial networks had integrated German territories into the colonial empires of the Western sea powers, laying the groundwork for the colonial adventures of the Wilhelmine Empire.

Archaeology, conflict and contemporary identity in the north of Ireland. Implications for theory and practice in comparative archaeologies of colonialism

2006 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey J. Horning
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
The North ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Socially Relevant ◽  
The Impact

Current trends in historical archaeology emphasize the centrality of capitalism and colonial discourse in examining commonalities in the archaeologies of fictive worlds such as the British Atlantic. Yet far from informing archaeological practice, overly simplistic incorporation of postcolonial and neo-Marxian approaches in comparative archaeologies can actually impede our ability to disentangle the complexities of the early modern colonial experience in a socially relevant fashion. While the disparate colonial settlements of the Atlantic share a recognizable material culture as physical testament to the overarching impact of European expansion, contemporary implications and memories of colonial entanglements vary wildly. A critical consideration of the role of overtly theoretical approaches in developing a nuanced archaeology of the early modern period in the north of Ireland, where the construction of present-day identities is firmly rooted in dichotomous understandings of the impact of British expansion in the 16th and 17th centuries, raises broader questions about our responsibilities in addressing conflict and in redressing the disjuncture between espousing and practising theoretically informed archaeology.

Beyond Guns, Germs, and Steel: European Expansion and Maritime Asia, 1400-1750

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 165-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tonio Andrade
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Longue Duree ◽  
Longue Durée ◽  
European Technology ◽  
Maritime Empire

AbstractWhy did Europeans rather than other Eurasians build the world’s first global empires, extending a measure of control, however fragile and contingent, over the oceans of the world? This article suggests that the best place to find an answer to the question is not in Europe but in Asia. Europeans were not alone in creating overseas empires in the early modern period, but the Asian counterparts to the Portuguese, Dutch, and English Empires are little known. Focusing on two of those Asian examples—the Ya’rubi Dynasty of Oman and the Zheng maritime empire of China—the author suggests that although European technology did confer an advantage on European mariners, it was not an insuperable advantage. Asian powers could adopt and adapt European cannons, ships, and nautical charts and beat the Europeans at their own game. Indeed, he suggests, this intra-Eurasian borrowing is a key process of history over the longue durée.

Trade and Civilization around the Bay of Bengal, c. 1650–1800

Itinerario ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 82-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jos Gommans
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Bay Of Bengal ◽  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Special Volume ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
The Third ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
Ancien Régime

About seven years ago the journalItinerarioissued a special volume on theAncien Régimein India and Indonesia that carried the papers presented at the third Cambridge-Leiden-Delhi-Yogyakarta conference. The aim of the conference was a comparative one in which state-formation, trading net-works and socio-political aspects of Islam were the major topics. Thumbing through the pages of this issue (while preparing this essay) I had the impression that the results of the conference went beyond its initial comparative goals. Directly or indirectly, several papers stressed that during the early-modern phase India and Indonesia were still part of a cultural continuum that was only gradually broken up by the ongoing process of European expansion during the nineteenth century. It appeared that even after the earlier course of so-called ‘Indianisation’ – a designation that unjustly conveys an Indian ‘otherness’ – India and the Archipelago shared many characteristics, especially in terms of their political and religious orientation. More importantly, these shared traits were shaped by highly mobile groups of traders, pilgrims and courtiers who criss-crossed the Bay of Bengal, traversing both the lands above and below the winds.

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