Masters, Mistresses, Slaves, and the Antinomies of Modernity

2018 ◽  
pp. 21-60
Author(s):  
Paul Gilroy
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New World ◽  
Slave Narratives ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Defining Moment ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Period

Modernity is a notion widely debated, whether it is the periodization of modernity or the attributes defining the modern period. Jürgen Habermas situates the Enlightenment as a moment of critique of the early-modern period and the reimagining of modernity after the Age of Reason. This chapter argues that Habermas’s call for completing the unfinished project of the Enlightenment fails to acknowledge the defining moment of modernity—New World slavery—and the agents of the modernizing process—the slaves. The chapter investigates the dynamics of mastery and slavery that are at the center of modernity through close examination of Frederick Douglass’s only work of fiction, The Heroic Slave (1853), supplemented with references to “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered” (1854) and Douglass’s slave narratives. The memory of slavery, the chapter contends, is integral to theorizations of freedom.

The Folly of the Cross

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Viladesau
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Theology Of The Cross ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Satisfaction Model

This work surveys the ways in which theologians, artists, and composers of the early modern period dealt with the passion and death of Christ. The fourth volume in a series, it locates the theology of the cross in the context of modern thought, beginning with the Enlightenment, which challenged traditional Christian notions of salvation and of Christ himself. It shows how new models of salvation were proposed by liberal theology, replacing the older “satisfaction” model with theories of Christ as bringer of God’s spirit and as social revolutionary. It shows how the arts during this period both preserved the classical tradition and responded to innovations in theology and in style.

scholarly journals Barriers Instead of Bridges: The Developed World and Intercontinental Migration

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Pieter C. Emmer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
New World ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
British India ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Developed World

In this article I discuss intercontinental migration during the early modern period. The discovery of the New World sparked a large-scale movement lasting more than four centuries. Before 1800, only 2 to 3 million Europeans availed themselves of the opportunity to move to the New World. Colonial powers, therefore, turned to Africa and transported about 11.5 million slaves to America. After 1850 and the gradual abolition of slavery, the migration of Europeans increased dramatically, but these migrants avoided the former slave regions. Some areas therefore resorted to the importation of Asian indentured labourers, mainly from British India.

The Holy Family

2020 ◽  
pp. 184-191
Author(s):  
Holly Taylor Coolman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
New World ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Modern Period

The Holy Family, as such, is all but absent in Christian imagination and devotion for the first thousand years of the Church’s existence. In close connection to the cult of St Joseph, the Holy Family gains new prominence toward the end of the medieval period, and then grows dramatically in importance in the early modern period. Traditions in the New World such as Las Posadas are also discussed in this chapter. Especially important in Catholic thought and practice, the Holy Family has come to have central symbolic importance for all Christians in contemporary Christmas celebrations such as children’s Nativity plays and pageants.

Manhunts

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grégoire Chamayou
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
New World ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Initiation Rite ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Runaway Slaves ◽  
The Middle Ages

Touching on issues of power, authority, and domination, this book takes an in-depth look at the hunting of humans in the West, from ancient Sparta, through the Middle Ages, to the modern practices of chasing undocumented migrants. Incorporating historical events and philosophical reflection, the book examines the systematic and organized search for individuals and small groups on the run because they have defied authority, committed crimes, seemed dangerous simply for existing, or been categorized as subhuman or dispensable. The book begins in ancient Greece, where young Spartans hunted and killed Helots (Sparta's serfs) as an initiation rite, and where Aristotle and other philosophers helped to justify raids to capture and enslave foreigners by creating the concept of natural slaves. The book discusses the hunt for heretics in the Middle Ages; New World natives in the early modern period; vagrants, Jews, criminals, and runaway slaves in other eras; and illegal immigrants today. Exploring evolving ideas about the human and the subhuman, what we owe to enemies and people on the margins of society, and the supposed legitimacy of domination, the book shows that the hunting of humans should not be treated ahistorically, and that manhunting has varied as widely in its justifications and aims as in its practices. The book investigates the psychology of manhunting, noting that many people, from bounty hunters to Balzac, have written about the thrill of hunting when the prey is equally intelligent and cunning. An unconventional history on an unconventional subject, this book is an in-depth consideration of the dynamics of an age-old form of violence.

The Longue Durée of the French Bourgeoisie

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Heller
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Dialectical Opposition ◽  
The Revolution

AbstractBeginning with Engels, Marxist historiography viewed the absolute monarchy in France as mediating between the nobility and the emergent capitalist bourgeoisie. More recent Marxist accounts stress that the absolute monarchy reflected the interests of the nobility. Revisionist Marxist historians have taken this perspective to an extreme arguing that, at the height of the Bourbon monarchy in the seventeenth century, a capitalist bourgeoisie did not exist. This paper argues that, in taking such a view, these historians have ignored the ongoing dialectical opposition between the forces of rent and profit in the early-modern period. As a result, they have severed the connection between the ancien régime and the Revolution of 1789. Despite being thrown on the defensive by the advance of rent and the crystallisation of the absolutist state, a capitalist bourgeoisie that emerged in sixteenth-century France survived and persevered during the seventeenth century. It resumed the initiative in the succeeding period of the Enlightenment.

scholarly journals Herkules i Gerion, królowie Hiszpanii. Mit i jego recepcja w iberyjskich kronikach dobry średniowiecza i nowożytności

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-125
Author(s):  
Dawid Barbarzak
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
New World ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Middle Ages

The ancient myth about Hercules’ expedition to the island of Erythea, his combat with Geryon and setting the Pillars was adopted by the authors of Iberian chronicles from the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. The paper responds to the question of how the myth was being changed by the authors and what their political or genealogical aim related with the historical period was. The analysis of ancient sources and the comparison with chosen Iberian chronicles proves that the character of Hercules was intentionally adapted for creating old dynastic genealogies, a model of good king or founding myths of Spanish cities (as Cádiz and A Coruña). For similar reasons, Spanish colonial expansion changed also the idea of the Pillars of Hercules which were not perceived as the boundary of the Mediterranean anymore but became a gate to the New World.

Between systematization and rationalization

2020 ◽  
pp. 204-216
Author(s):  
Raf Van Rooy
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Regional Variation ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The One ◽  
First Time

Chapter 16 discusses further evidence for the systematization and rationalization of the language / dialect distinction in the period 1650–1800, the age of rationalism and the Enlightenment. On the one hand, a kind of dialectological tradition emerged. The study of regional variation became a subfield of philology, albeit never an autonomous one; occasionally, it even now received the label of dialectologia, apparently introduced in 1650. For the first time, philologists presented dissertations on dialectal diversity that were no longer exclusively focused on the Greek dialects. On the other hand, scholars adopted more rational attitudes towards the conceptual pair. Some chose to supplement the binary contrast with new concepts. Others advocated distinguishing more clearly between different interpretations of the language / dialect distinction. Confusion persisted, however, throughout the early modern period. The first vocal sceptic of the conceptual pair was Friedrich Carl Fulda, who made it painfully clear how arbitrary and imprecise the distinction actually was.

The Annunciation from Luke to the Enlightenment

2019 ◽  
pp. 386-406
Author(s):  
Gary Waller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Western Imagination

This chapter provides a cultural rather than a theological reading of the Annunciation story, locating it historically from its beginnings in Luke to the pre-Enlightenment, and then, by interrogating that history, speculating about why for a millennium and a half (and beyond), the Gospel’s story of Gabriel’s appearance to Mary (Luke 1: 26–38) has had such a powerful hold over the Western imagination. The early modern period saw the discovery of multiple versions of the Annunciation story, and from Ersamus onwards, the emergence of critical history calling into question the historicity of the Gospel accounts.

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