The hub of the system. Discussions and perceptions regarding the geopolitical role of Milan in the 16th century

The article studies the geopolitical role of the State of Milan during the 16th century, as it was perceived and discussed by both members of the Habsburg ruling class as well as Italian writers, politicians and diplomats who did not belong to those circles nor were under their influences. The analysis starts with the early years of the century and subsequently covers the period of the Wars of Italy and then the second half of the century, when the new international context created by the peace of Cateau Cambrésis gave rise to a complex interplay between continuity and change. Keywords: geopolitics, 16th-century Italy, Milan, Habsburg Empire.

Reconstruction of Nineteenth-Century Channel Patterns of Polish Carpathians Rivers from the Galicia and Bucovina Map (1861–1864)

Historical maps are often the only source of information allowing for the regional reconstructions of river channel patterns in the past. In the Polish Carpathians, analyses of historical channel patterns were performed mostly in river reaches scale. In this paper, the Galicia and Bucovina map (1861–1864) (the Second military survey of the Habsburg Empire) was used to reconstruct and map the historical channel patterns of seven rivers from the Polish Carpathians. It was found that, in the nineteenth century, rivers in the western part of the study area (Soła, Skawa, Raba, Dunajec) supported a multi-thread channel pattern, whereas rivers in the eastern part (Wisłoka, San, Wisłok) present a mostly single-thread channel pattern. These differences probably result from the higher relief energy and precipitation, lower proportions of forests in the catchments, and more frequent floods favouring high sediment supply to the fluvial system, and thus the formation of multi-thread reaches in the western part of the study area. At the local scale, the most important factor supporting multi-thread channel pattern development was the availability of gravel sediments in the wide valley floor sections. The formation of anabranching reaches with a single mid-channel form was probably associated with the channel avulsion process. There is no clear evidence linking the change in the channel pattern type with an abrupt change in the river channel slope. This study confirms the usefulness of the second military survey map of the Habsburg Empire for the regional reconstruction of river channel pattern types.

The digital cartographic reconstruction of the 1897 ‘Mátra Guide’ (Hungary)

The Mátra Mts has been one of the most frequented tourist destinations since the second half of the 19th century. This area – the highest mountain range in Hungary – offers a wide variety of free-time activities, geographical and cultural values. Because of these attractions, the tourism importance of the Mátra Mts has been recognised relatively early. The first tourist association was established in 1877 by Kolos Hanák and István Széky. They published the ‘Mátra Guide’ in the same year and reissued it in 1897 with minor revisions. This publication presents the natural-cultural values and the tourism infrastructure of the surrounding area. They also describe interesting hiking routes all around the Mátra. Although the most important sights were illustrated, no cartographic representation was published. In this study we processed the content of the book: every localizable site and tourism facility were visualised applying GIS techniques. A base map of relief, watercourses, road network and settlements were edited using the 2nd military survey topographic maps of Habsburg Empire (to present former conditions), the 1933 ‘Mátra’ hiking map and hillshading (generated from SRTM). The digitized tourism elements from the book were visualised on this ‘historical hiking map’ using Leaflet. As the final online map is available to everybody, the early condition and infrastructure of tourism can be easily examined. This work contributes to the visual heritage preservation of the Mátra Mts: it may strengthen the knowledge on tourism history and digital cartographic solutions.

THE VAMPIRLIJA HILL IN THE VILLAGE OF MIJAJLOVAC (TRSTENIK): A POSSIBLE LOCATION FOR THE BIRTHPLACE OF EUROPEAN ‘VAMPIROLOGY’

Vampires gained worldwide popularity due to the classic novel about the most famous one, Dracula, written by Bram Stoker in 1897. Bram Stoker’s Dracula has very little in common with his inspiration, the fifteenth-century Wallachian ruler Vlad III (1431‒1476), who was a real historical figure. However, some strange events involving the dead seem to have occurred in Southwest of Transylvania a few centuries after the Wallachian prince’s death. In some parts of the Habsburg Kingdom of Serbia (1718‒1739), the local Austrian authorities recorded some cases of ‘vampirism’, which Europe would be introduced to shortly afterward, along with this newly accepted word. This paper will present historical facts about one particular case recorded at the southernmost border of the Habsburg Empire, which at the time was the West Morava River. It was the case of a ‘vampire’ named Arnold Paole, who died in 1726/7 in the border village of Medveđa and whose case ‘infected’ the whole Europe with the ‘virus’ of ‘vampiromania’. The main goal of the paper is to locate the spot where one of the first ‘vampire slayings’ ever recorded could have taken place, and to direct further investigations within early modern age archaeology.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT IN 19th CENTURY SERBIAN HISTORY TEXTBOOKS

Alexander the Great (356 B.C – 323 B.C) has gone down in history as one of the greatest conquerors of Antiquity. By the time he was 30, he had conquered most of the known world. The territory under his control lay from Greece in the west, southward through Egypt and eastward to India. His military successes made him an inspiration to many writers of his time and later. Since his life span corresponds to the era that today we call Hellenism, he is mentioned in all the educational systems of Europe. From their first appearance on this continent, school books have alluded to Alexander and his conquests. The first history textbooks in the Serbian language emerged in Serbia in the mid-19th century and they, too, included Alexander the Great. In this paper, we shall show how the history of Alexander was taught at the time and how his feats influenced generations of Serbian children educated at the first schools founded in the areas of the Habsburg Empire that they inhabited.

Imperial Identity Seen Through Art. The Case of Maria Theresa – Considerations

During the reign of Maria Theresa (1740-1780) a reassessment of the role women played in a closed society occurred. The main question this article aims to answer is how one can identify these changes by analysing images with high symbolic value, which celebrated and presented Maria Theresa in instances of official relevance, images produced in a period when nations were designing themselves. The present article seeks to underline some of the most representative ideas on how the monarchical identity of Maria Theresa was constructed in art to serve political and propagandistic functions, in an age considered the richest in formal expressions, that is the Baroque, or the ‘Late Baroque’. Hereditary successor to a long line of Holy Roman emperors, Maria Theresa changed the perspective on monarchy and constructed a different identity, that of female agency. Metaphorical images and realism define the analysed portraits in order to demonstrate how the political and the natural body of the monarch combined to illustrate power and aristocratic descent. In my study, the theoretical works on the role Maria Theresa played as female heir to the throne of the Habsburg Empire (rex femineus) are to be viewed as main sources of the imagery surrounding her natural and political body. What I propose is an inquiry into the iconographic representations of Maria Theresa’s body of state, which was public and eternal, and thus privileged as a site of discourse for absolutist statehood.

Novoselitsa – “An Insignificant Barrier”

This article focuses on Russian Novoselitsa, a small town on the Russian-Austro-Hungarian-Romanian border, which served as the sole border crossing between Russian Bessarabia and Austrian Bukovina. From 1893 it was also an important railway junction between the two empires. Based on diplomatic documents from the Austrian State Archives, the article discusses Austrian officials’ views of ethnoreligious communities in the region, including Bessarabian Romanians, Jews, Russian Old Believers, and Ukrainians. It also examines the activity of the Austro-Hungarian Consular Agency in Russian Novoselitsa (1869–1914). The authors analyze the attitude of the Austrian officials towards ethnoreligious groups, informal practices on the border, and revolutionary unrest. The Novoselitsa case epitomizes the fundamental difference between the supranational Habsburg Empire and the nationalizing Romanov Empire, but also highlights the similarities between the two regimes. It illustrates the notions of “shatterzone of empires” (Bartov and Weitz 2013) and “thick borders”: Novoselitsa, a periphery with regard to both Vienna and St. Petersburg, was a relatively autonomous space and had its own forms of agency, which expanded much beyond the border itself on both sides of the frontier. Cases of corruption and espionage are especially revealing in regard to the uncertainty and confusion specific to the borderlands, which reigned as much at the center as on the periphery. This case study also provides an interesting perspective on everyday life, emphasizing the peculiarities of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian monarchies, as well as the entanglements between the two entities.

El Escorial – the Concept, the Image, and the Style of the Royal Residence of King Philip II

The paper explores the architecture of King Philip II royal residence. El Escorial monastery palace represents a system of art treasures of the Spanish Renaissance, manifested in the method of implementing the figurative absolutization of the Classical aesthetics, revealing the ideas of the magnificence of the “Roman spirit” of the Habsburg empire. By reinterpreting the legacy of the theory of architectural rules, El Escorial was the standard of classical construction in late 16th century Spain. The Christian ideas become the cement of the Empire governance. It is symbolic that the year of the completion of Trento Cathedral (1563) was also the year the construction of El Escorial had begun. The first executor of the project was the architect, philosopher, and mathematician Juan Bautista de Toledo, who studied in Rome and Naples under the masters of the Italian Renaissance. He was later replaced by Juan de Herrera, the acclaimed spokesman of the royal architectural style. The paper covers the most controversial issues: problems of the ensemble concept, their interpretations, the role of theoretical sources, biblical semantics, etc.