Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Grivno
Keyword(s):  
Free Labor ◽  
Rural Workforce ◽  
History Of ◽  
Labor Regimes

This introductory chapter argues for a broader, more inclusive history of American workers by focusing on the histories of northern Maryland's free and enslaved farmhands. It presents an overview of this rural workforce and its inherent diversity, illustrating through anecdotes and other literature the myriad bonds that developed between labor regimes and among workers, regardless of the divide between slavery and free labor. Indeed, the chapter argues that this divide is not often as clear as it initially appears to be. And to supplement further discussion in the succeeding chapters, this introduction also offers a brief geographical and political overview of the narrow swath of territory near the Mason–Dixon Line. More specifically, it focuses on six Maryland counties that abutted the sectional border (Baltimore, Carroll, Cecil, Harford, Frederick, and Washington).

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Television Film ◽  
Popular Image

The introductory chapter discusses the popular image of the ‘Romantic mad poet’ in television, film, theatre, fiction, the history of literary criticism, and the intellectual history of the twentieth century and its countercultures, including anti-psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Existing literary-historical work on related topics is assessed, before the introduction goes on to suggest why some problems or difficulties in writing about this subject might be productive for further cultural history. The introduction also considers at length the legacy of Michel Foucault’s Folie et Déraison (1961), and the continued viability of Foucauldian methods and concepts for examining literary-cultural representations of madness after the half-century of critiques and controversies following that book’s publication. Methodological discussion both draws on and critiques the models of historical sociology used by George Becker and Sander L. Gilman to discuss genius, madness, deviance, and stereotype in the nineteenth century. A note on terminology concludes the introduction.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
John B. Nann ◽  
Morris L. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
The U.S

This introductory chapter provides an overview of legal history research. An attorney might conduct legal history research if the law at question in a legal dispute is very old: the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights are well over two hundred years old. Historical research also comes into play when the question at issue is what the law was at a certain time in the past. Ultimately, law plays an important part in the political and social history of the United States. As such, researchers interested in almost every aspect of American life will have occasion to use legal materials. The chapter then describes the U.S. legal system and legal authority, and offers six points to consider in approaching a historical legal research project.

Introduction

Manhunts ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grégoire Chamayou ◽  
Steven Rendall
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book focuses on manhunts—the concrete historical phenomena in which human beings were tracked down, captured, or killed in accord with the forms of the hunt. These were regular and sometimes large-scale practices whose forms were first theorized in ancient Greece, long before their enormous expansion in the modern period in conjunction with the development of transatlantic capitalism. The main problem has to do with the fact that the hunter and the hunted do not belong to different species. Since the distinction between the predator and his prey is not inscribed in nature, the hunting relationship is always susceptible to a reversal of positions. Prey sometimes band together to become hunters in their turn. The history of a power is also the history of the struggles to overthrow it.

The Decentering of Democracies

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Rosanvallon
Keyword(s):  
Great Majority ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Majority Principle ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Democratic Elections

This introductory chapter considers the definitions of legitimacy in the context of democratic politics. Expressions such as the “great majority” or “vast majority” established the law of numbers, in contrast to the minority rule characteristic of despotic and aristocratic regimes. At first, it was the difference in the origins of power and the foundation of political obligation that was crucial. Later, the majority principle came to be recognized in a more narrowly procedural sense. The chapter traces this evolution within the history of democratic elections, positing a decentering of democracy as newer forms of political investment emerge, making democratic politics into something more than merely electing representatives.

The Debate about Guilds

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Sheilagh Ogilvie
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Human Capital Investment ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
The Poor ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter provides a brief history of guilds and an overview of the debate surrounding them. The effects of guilds on economy and society have always attracted controversy. Contemporaries held strong views about them, with guild members and their political allies extolling their virtues, while customers, employees, and competitors lamented their misdeeds. Modern scholars are also deeply divided on guilds. Some claim that guilds were so widespread and long-lived that they must have generated economic benefits. Other scholars take a darker view. Guilds, they hold, were in a position to extract benefits for their own members by acting as cartels, exploiting consumers; rationing access to human capital investment; stifling innovation; bribing governments for favours; harming outsiders such as women, Jews, and the poor; and redistributing resources to their members at the expense of the wider economy.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Michael Koortbojian
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Feature ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This introductory chapter briefly discusses the baffling history of the pomerium. The pomerium, as a fundamental feature of Rome's political topography, was especially confounding for Roman antiquarians seeking to study the origins of Rome and its institutions. Its religious role lived on, cultivated by the priesthoods—the augurs and the pontiffs—charged with its related rituals. But the realities that accompanied Rome's growth from the Romulean foundation to the caput mundi rendered much of the surviving lore that surrounded the city's mythic past incommensurate with early imperial life in the urbs. The sheer scale of the city thus challenged one's belief in so many of the stories about its formation and its growth.

Know Thyself: What Is “Wilsonianism”?

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Tony Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Liberal Internationalism ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Wilsonianism, which comprises a set of ideas called American liberal internationalism. More than a century after Woodrow Wilson became president of the United States, his country is still not certain how to understand the important legacy for the country's foreign policy of the tradition that bears his name. Wilsonianism remains a living ideology whose interpretation continues either to motivate, or to serve as a cover for, a broad range of American foreign policy decisions. However, if there is no consensus on what the tradition stands for, or, worse, if there is a consensus but its claims to be part of the tradition are not borne out by the history of Wilsonianism from Wilson's day until the late 1980s, then clearly a debate is in order to provide clarity and purpose to American thinking about world affairs today.

Introduction: Reimagining a New Spartacus

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antony Augoustakis ◽  
Monica S. Cyrino
Keyword(s):  
Political Movements ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Cable Network ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter discusses the highly successful television series Spartacus, which aired on the premium cable network STARZ from 2010 to 2013. The story of Spartacus, the historical Thracian gladiator who led a slave uprising against the Roman Republican army from 73 to 71 BC, has inspired numerous receptions over the centuries in a variety of different media, while the figure of the rebel slave leader has often served as an icon of resistance against oppression in modern political movements and popular ideologies. Here, the chapter looks into the production history of the STARZ series and how the series itself treads familiar ground at the same time as it explores new territory.

Introduction

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGINA HERRMANN ◽  
JOE CRIBB
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Iconography

This introductory chapter discusses the coverage of this book, which is about the history of Central Asia after its conquest by Alexander the Great and before the introduction of Islam. It explores the role of the nomads in the shaping of Central Asia, describes major cities and the arrangement of buildings, and explores the region's experience with a series of invasions. The chapter analyses the role of money as a marker of cultural continuity and change and discusses religious iconography and temples.

Introduction: Understanding the Partisan-Chetnik Conflict

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marko Attila Hoare
Keyword(s):  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to present a history of the birth and rise of the Partisans in Bosnia-Hercegovina, as a Communist-led movement of resistance to the German and Italian occupiers and their domestic collaborators; of the emergence of a Chetnik movement as a conservative, Serb-nationalist rival to the Partisans; and of the conflict between the two. It analyses the impact that the conflict with the Chetniks had on Partisan policy and organization, and the evolution of the Partisan movement under the influence of this conflict. Finally, it examines the sequence of events that enabled the Partisans to emerge effectively as the victors in the contest with the Chetniks in Bosnia-Hercegovina by the autumn of 1943, and the reasons for the Partisan success. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document