Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Russell E. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Russian Science ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Court Politics ◽  
Women And Power

This chapter focuses on the wedding rituals and dynasties in Russia. It describes and analyzes the themes explored by Russian polymath and “father of Russian science” Mikhail Lomonosov — ritual, dynasty, religion, royal women, and power (and several more) — as they were expressed in royal weddings from the end of the fifteenth century through the first half of the eighteenth century. The chapter then argues that court politics in Muscovy was marriage politics, and the marriage of the ruler was the critical moment in every generation of the dynasty. Each time the ruler married, the political elite around him reshuffled, with new royal in-laws joining the ranks of the innermost circle of courtiers in the Kremlin. It also notes that royal weddings, like other court rituals, were manipulated by wedding choreographers and sometimes by rulers themselves to project a dynastic message. Finally, and most fundamentally, the chapter rests on a close reading of texts, most notably the rich corpus of Muscovite royal wedding documents. The creation of these texts were genuine events in the political and cultural life of the court, reflecting changes in ruling dynasties, religious attitudes, and political agendas.

‘Like amphibious animals’: Irish protestants, ancient Britons, 1691–1707

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 785-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Smyth
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
Parliamentary Sovereignty ◽  
Inferior Status ◽  
The Face ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity ◽  
Two Kingdoms

ABSTRACTIreland in the 1690s was a protestant state with a majority catholic population. These protestants sometimes described themselves as ‘the king's Irish subjects’ or ‘the people of Ireland’, but rarely as ‘the Irish’, a label which they usually reserved for the catholics. In constitutional and political terms their still evolving sense of identity expressed itself in the assertion of Irish parliamentary sovereignty, most notably in William Molyneux's 1698 pamphlet, The case of Ireland's being bound by acts of parliament in England, stated. In practice, however, the Irish parliament did not enjoy legislative independence, and the political elite was powerless in the face of laws promulgated at Westminster, such as the i6gg woollen act, which were detrimental to its interests. One possible solution to the problem of inferior status lay in legislative union with England or Great Britain. Increasingly in the years before 1707 certain Irish protestant politicians elaborated the economic, constitutional and practical advantages to be gained from a union, but they also based their case upon an appeal to the shared religion and ethnicity of the sovereign's loyal subjects in the two kingdoms. In short the protestants insisted that they were English. This unionist episode thus illustrates the profoundly ambivalent character of protestant identity in late seventeenthand early eighteenth-century Ireland.

scholarly journals About Seraph’s arrow and St. Michael’s shield. A poem by priest Dominik Zabłocki OP for Countess Teresa Barbara Radziwill Pac on the occasion of her name day

2021 ◽  
pp. 52-64
Author(s):  
Regina Jakubėnas
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
Intensive Development ◽  
Grand Duchy ◽  
Male Lineage

In the second half of the eighteenth century a lot of occasional poems were published in Vilnius. Their authors were often representatives of various orders: the Piarists, the Jesuits, the Basilians, the Dominicans. Name day poems enjoyed great popularity, which was influenced by the intensive development of various forms of social life. Name day poems were part of “home muse” or family poetry. The authors often addressed their works to representatives of the political and official elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, who played an important role in the public and political life of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The poems were more often devoted to the representatives of the male lineage due to their social status and functions, although it happened that women, especially representatives of influential families in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, were also the recipients of these poems. The article discusses an occasional work by a priest Dominik Zabłocki, Dominican friar, devoted to Countess Teresa Barbara Pacowa of the Dukes of Radziwills – a lady of the Austrian Order of the Starry Cross. The poem describes her personal merits, the merits of her husband and family, referring to the rich symbolism of the coat of arms of the Pac, the Radziwill and the Zawisza families from which Teresa Pacowa’s mother was descended. This piece of work undoubtedly belongs to the group of texts that were addressed to a wider audience and performed a political and propaganda function.

Seeking Sanctuary

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon McSheffrey
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
English Law ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
The Right ◽  
Modern Era

Seeking Sanctuary explores a curious aspect of premodern English law: the right of felons to shelter in a church or ecclesiastical precinct, remaining safe from arrest and trial in the king’s courts. This is the first book in more than a century to examine sanctuary in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Looking anew at this subject challenges the prevailing assumptions in the scholarship that this ‘medieval’ practice had become outmoded and little used by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Although for decades after 1400 sanctuary-seeking was indeed fairly rare, the evidence in the legal records shows the numbers of felons seeking refuge in churches began to climb again in the late fifteenth century and reached its peak in the period between 1525 and 1535. Sanctuary was not so much a medieval dinosaur accidentally surviving into the early modern era, as it was an organism that had continued to evolve and adapt to new environments and indeed flourished in its adapted state. Sanctuary suited the early Tudor regime: it intersected with rapidly developing ideas about jurisdiction and provided a means of mitigating the harsh capital penalties of the English law of felony that was useful not only to felons but also to the crown and the political elite. Sanctuary’s resurgence after 1480 means we need to rethink how sanctuary worked, and to reconsider more broadly the intersections of culture, law, politics, and religion in the century and a half between 1400 and 1550.

Eighteenth-Century English Politics: Recent Work

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-272
Author(s):  
Jeremy Black
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dust Jacket ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
English Politics

This article is intended as a sequel to the one published in Albion 28, 4 ([Winter 1996]: 607–33). As with the earlier article, it reflects the wealth of recent scholarship and adopts a wide definition of politics, and there is a powerful element of choice and subjectivity. The last arises in part from the breadth of the subject. A definition of the political culture and process of the period that directs attention to cultural, religious, social and gender issues is not one that can be readily summarized by restricting attention to the world of Court, Parliament, and the political elite.Last time I began with cultural politics, and it is worth renewing this approach because the role of discourses as both forms of political expression and the subject of historical study remain important. The most prominent book in this field was a disappointment. John Brewer's The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1997) is a work about and of consumerism. The forcing house of eighteenth-century public demand provides the essential pressure for cultural modernization and for the definition of taste in this account. Consumerism has also structured Brewer's book as a cultural and intellectual artefact. As he acknowledges, he wanted to ensure that the book “would be a beautiful object,” and HarperCollins has amply fulfilled this requirement. The publisher was also responsible for fighting what Brewer terms the “alien abstractions” of the original prose, and presumably for the decision to dispense with footnotes. The book as consumer product contributes to the sumptuous cover illustration, a painting of “Sir Rowland and Lady Winn in the Library at Nostell Priory,” to the photograph of the relaxed author on the dust-jacket, and to the laudatory quotes from two big names, Simon Schama and Lisa Jardine, not noted for their work on the subject but then most potential purchasers would not know that.

scholarly journals Social Mobility and Political Regimes: Intergenerational Mobility in Hungary, 1949–2017

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paweł Bukowski ◽  
Gregory Clark ◽  
Attila Gáspár ◽  
Rita Pető
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Free Market Economy

AbstractThis paper measures social mobility rates in Hungary during the period 1949 to 2017, using surnames to measure social status. In those years, there were two very different social regimes. The first was the Hungarian People’s Republic (1949–1989), which was a communist regime with an avowed aim of favouring the working class. The second is the modern liberal democracy (1989–2017), which is a free-market economy. We find five surprising things. First, social mobility rates were low for both upper- and lower-class families during 1949–2017, with an underlying intergenerational status correlation of 0.6–0.8. Second, social mobility rates under communism were the same as in the subsequent capitalist regime. Third, the Romani minority throughout both periods showed even lower social mobility rates. Fourth, the descendants of the eighteenth-century noble class in Hungary were still significantly privileged in 1949 and later. And fifth, although social mobility rates did not change measurably during the transition, the composition of the political elite changed rapidly and sharply.

Eugenics in Postcolonial Southeast Asia

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunil S. Amrith
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Essential Point ◽  
Immigration Control ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
Plural Society ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Directed Development ◽  
Racial Thought

The rich vein of writing on race and racial thought in the region provides an essential point of entry to eugenics in Southeast Asia. This article focuses on the experience of postcolonial Malaysia and Singapore and suggests that traces of eugenic thought and practice have played a role in shaping strategies of state-directed development from the 1950s. The “science of racial improvement” exerts a powerful influence on the political elite of both countries, providing a rationale and a model for many attempts to understand, differentiate, and improve the population. This article focuses on close connections between race and racial aptitudes, and the politics of immigration control and colonial reservations. It further discusses the focus of eugenic policies in Southeast Asia on using state power to rebalance the plural society, and signification of racial improvement in the identification and exclusion of particular peoples.

RIOT ACTS, POPULAR PROTEST, AND PROTESTANT MENTALITIES IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY IRELAND

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 403-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
NEAL GARNHAM
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Legislative Action ◽  
Popular Protest ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Civil Disorder ◽  
Popular Movements

The condition of the Anglican elite in eighteenth-century Ireland has been the focus of some debate by historians. Members of the Protestant Ascendancy class have been variously cast as a community under constant threat, or as a self-confident group secure in their control of the country's political and economic systems. Various contributions to this dialogue have been made through the study of popular movements and civil disorder. Rather than further comment on such phenomena this article seeks to examine the reactions of the Irish political elite to them. Although the country had no general Riot Act on the English model until 1787, legislative initiatives were made on several occasions prior to this. While these initially tended to be unsuccessful in parliament, local in their application, and to impose relatively lenient punishments, attitudes began to change in the 1770s. The political elite then moved comparatively rapidly to general legislation that created riot as a felony. Such developments suggest that prior to the last quarter of the eighteenth century civil disorder was not seen as a real threat to Protestant ascendancy, though Protestant fears finally culminated in legislative action in 1787. Arguably it was this event that marked the first great nadir in Anglican self-confidence in eighteenth-century Ireland.

To Be a Sikh King

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-42
Author(s):  
Priya Atwal
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Political ◽  
Scholarly Research ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Changing World

This chapter provides a sense of the political, cultural and intellectual context in which Ranjit Singh was able to claim the title of ‘Maharajah’. It examines the development of ‘Sikh’ ideas about monarchy, power and rulership that first emerged within the earliest writings of the first Sikh ‘master’, Guru Nanak, in the fifteenth century; whilst considering how attempts to practically interpret and set into action such ideas also evolved within the changing world of the Punjab, leading up to the early years of Ranjit Singh’s reign. This chapter draws upon recent scholarly research that has re-evaluated the dynamics between the Sikhs and the Mughal imperial dynasty, and about the emergence of the Khalsa and Sikh sardars as powers in their own right across eighteenth-century Punjab: studies that casts doubt on earlier scholarly contentions about the ‘republican’ nature of the Khalsa. It thereby aims to outline ideas of Sikh kingship that may have inspired and legitimised Ranjit Singh’s rise to power as a self-styled monarch by the turn of the nineteenth century.

ELITE WOMEN, SOCIAL POLITICS, AND THE POLITICAL WORLD OF LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 669-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELAINE CHALUS
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Politics ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political World ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

Political historians have recognized that politics and high society interacted in eighteenth-century England; and most would also recognize the presence of elite women in the social world of politicians. These assumptions have not, however, been subjected to much scrutiny. This article takes the social aspects of politics seriously and aims to provide an introduction to social politics – the management of people and social situations for political ends – and, specifically, to the involvement of women therein. Politics in eighteenth-century England was not just about parliament and politicians; it also had a social dimension. By expanding our understanding of politics to include social politics, we not only reintegrate women into the political world but we also reveal them to have been legitimate political actors, albeit on a non-parliamentary stage, where they played a vital part in creating and sustaining both a uniquely politicized society and the political elite itself. While specific historical circumstances combined in the eighteenth century to facilitate women's socio-political involvement, social politics is limited neither to women nor to the eighteenth century. It has wider implications for historians of all periods and calls into question the way that we conceptualize politics itself. The relationship between the obstinately nebulous arena of social politics and the traditional arena of high politics is ever-changing, but by trivializing the former we limit our ability to understand the latter.

The Discourse about Kosovo in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1981–1989

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 245-265
Author(s):  
Husnija Kamberović
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The Media

Abstract The author analyses the discourse about Kosovo in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) during the 1980s. During these years, Serbian media developed several stereotypes to discredit the political leaders of BiH and accuse them of fomenting unrest in Kosovo. The author assesses these stereotypical depictions as well as the response of the Islamic Community and political leadership in BiH to these accusations. He asks what the attitude of Serbia’s political elite towards BiH was, and what role the Serbian political leadership played in the media attacks. He then investigates the evolution of the BiH leadership’s stances towards the events in Kosovo between the beginning and the end of the 1980s. And finally, through a close reading of session minutes and media, he assesses the increasingly deviating views of the BiH political leaders vis-á-vis the situation in Kosovo.

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