scholarly journals Tax Policy of the Fourth Estate?

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-104
Author(s):  
Tomáš Sterneck

The study deals with questions of the political cooperation of Moravian territorial lord’s towns (the Moravian Fourth Estate) in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. This issue is viewed through the prism of political negotiations about the very high tax burden on the towns. After an outline of the structure of the estate-organized society of the Moravian Margraviate and the role of territorial lord’s—royal and chamber—towns in it, the article introduces the natural and fiscal burdens weighing down the urban organisms and escalating in line with the wars of the Habsburg Monarchy against the expansive Ottoman Empire. The burden on Moravian towns was much heavier than on other segments of the estate-structured society. This was the basis for the towns’ concerted efforts to find relief, which manifested itself during the Fifteen Years’ War with the High Porte in 1593–1606. Surviving sources offer detailed documentation of the 1604 negotiations, when at the initiative of Brno, an attempt was made to counter the pressure of the higher estates that intended to further increase the tax burden on territorial lord’s towns. However, these negotiations illustrate that effective joint action of the town representations was hindered by individual municipalities’ particular interests. Individualism generally exacerbated the towns’ weak position in the political system of the time. In the broader coordinates of early modern Europe, in the Bohemian lands, urban space was less developed and the bourgeoisie was significantly weaker than in their Western and Southern European counterparts. Therefore, the limited coordination of the territorial lord’s towns in the fight against the higher estates did not lead to the desired results.

Author(s):  
Laurence Publicover

This chapter analyses the ways in which the collaborative drama The Travels of the Three English Brothers defends the Sherley brothers’ real-world political endeavours across Europe and Persia through its intertheatrical negotiations. Explaining the political background of those endeavours and their controversial nature, it illustrates how the playwrights liken the Sherleys to the heroes of dramas that had been popular on the early modern stage over the preceding twenty years, in particular Tamburlaine and The Merchant of Venice. It also examines the significance of Francis Beaumont’s specific parody, in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, of an episode in Travels in which the Persian Sophy acts as godfather to the child of Robert Sherley. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of playing companies in shaping dramatic output.


Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Ihor Huliuk

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.


Journalism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146488492095950
Author(s):  
Jefferson Lyndon D Ragragio

Editorials are a political force used by news media to fulfil its watchdog function in fragile democracies like the Philippines. However, they also serve as a platform to invite a more positive reading of strongman administration. Against the backdrop of media populism, the article will problematize how the Fourth Estate articulates its political stance by examining the tensions and complexities in editorials. It will highlight the ways the media deals with subjects and stories surrounding Rodrigo Duterte. Through an analysis of editorials of four leading dominant news outlets (Bulletin, Inquirer, Rappler, and Star), three meta-thematic categories of media frames are uncovered. First, character degradation frames delineate how the media denounces the ties of Duterte with other political actors, particularly the Marcoses and China’s Xi. Second, pro-establishment frames echo the optimistic mantra of the government amid crisis. And third, non-editorial frames exhibit the failure of media to publish watchdog-inspired editorials. Each of these categories has underlying frames that are indicative of the democratic potential, or lack thereof, of news media.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Israel

This chapter assesses the age of the ‘Court Jew’ (1650–1713), which marked the zenith of Jewish influence in early modern Europe. The remarkable role of the Jews in European affairs at that time rested on the solid foundations laid during the Thirty Years War. By 1650, a scattered but socially closely intertwined élite of provisioners and financiers had emerged who were simultaneously agents of states and the effective leaders of Europe's Jewish communities. Sometimes, they showed a strong sense of commitment to one particular government, but this was, in fact, both unusual and untypical. Generally, Jewish court factors, or Hoffaktoren as they were known in Germany, lived outside the states which they served. Not infrequently, they acted for several governments at once. Most typical of all, the close collaboration and interdependence between them, interlocking with the correspondence between kehillot in different countries, made their activity more thoroughly international and specifically Jewish than the banking and contracting of later times. Assuredly, the system centred on Germany, Austria, and Holland, but it ramified far beyond these limits, exerting an appreciable influence also on affairs in Spain, Portugal, the Spanish Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Italy, England, and Ireland.


2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-167
Author(s):  
Alexander Klein ◽  
Jelle van Lottum

ABSTRACTThis article offers the first multivariate regression study of international migration in early modern Europe. Using unique eighteenth-century data about maritime workers, we created a data set of migration flows among European countries to examine the role of factors related to geography, population, language, the market, and chain migration in explaining the migration of these workers across countries. We show that among all factors considered in our multivariate analysis, the geographical characteristics of the destination countries, size of port towns, and past migrations are among the most robust and quantitatively the most important factors influencing cross-country migration flows.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 500-527
Author(s):  
Michael Bycroft

Abstract Economic historians have shown that the regulations of craft guilds were a source of innovation rather than inertia in the economy of early modern Europe. Historians of science have shown that craftsmen contributed to the scientific revolution in the same time and place. But very little is known about the role of guild regulation in intellectual (as opposed to social, political and economic) change. This paper shows that regulation went hand-in-hand with intellectual change at the Paris guild of goldsmiths in the decades around 1700. In this period the wardens of the guild developed sophisticated techniques for organizing and disseminating their large archive of legal documents. They also published two books on the natural history of precious stones that broke with the learned tradition of writing on this topic. The reform of the archive and the reform of natural history were undertaken by the same goldsmiths, for similar reasons, using analogous literary techniques.


2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 451-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasileios Syros

AbstractThis article offers a detailed investigation of Byzantine and post-Byzantine perceptions of the political organization of the Italian city-states. Drawing on philosophical and historical writing produced by Byzantine and post-Byzantine authors between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, it identifies the main patterns and motifs that informed Byzantine discourse about the constitutional arrangements of such Italian cities as Genoa, Venice, Florence, and Milan. It shows how these come into play in the writings of major figures of Byzantine and post-Byzantine intellectual life such as Theodoros Metochites, John Kantakouzenos, Nikephoros Gregoras, George of Trebizond, Cardinal Bessarion, Laonikos Chalkokondyles, and John Kottunios. It also explores the ways in which the classical legacy of political thought was applied by Byzantine writers in their analysis of various constitutional forms. The findings of this survey provide new insights into cross-cultural exchanges between the Byzantine world and medieval and early modern Europe and the formation of Byzantine identity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (46) ◽  
pp. 28684-28691
Author(s):  
Mauricio de Jesus Dias Martins ◽  
Nicolas Baumard

The English and French Revolutions represent a turning point in history, marking the beginning of the modern rise of democracy. Recent advances in cultural evolution have put forward the idea that the early modern revolutions may be the product of a long-term psychological shift, from hierarchical and dominance-based interactions to democratic and trust-based relationships. In this study, we tested this hypothesis by analyzing theater plays during the early modern period in England and France. We found an increase in cooperation-related words over time relative to dominance-related words in both countries. Furthermore, we found that the accelerated rise of cooperation-related words preceded both the English Civil War (1642) and the French Revolution (1789). Finally, we found that rising per capita gross domestic product (GDPpc) generally led to an increase in cooperation-related words. These results highlight the likely role of long-term psychological and economic changes in explaining the rise of early modern democracies.


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