Новые источники по истории Дербетского улуса

The article aims to introduce a new source on the Kalmyk Khanate’s history, namely, “Vypiska o derbetevykh vladel’tsakh i o ikh ulusakh sochinennaia” (An extract about Derbet owners and their ulus, composed). The document was discovered in the National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, repository 36, “Sostoiashchii pri kalmytskikh delakh pri Astrakhanskom gubernatore (To Kalmyk affairs under the Astrakhan governor). Results. The record made on 70 sheets of paper, originated from the Collegium of Foreign Affairs; it was sent along with the imperial decree for the governor to familiarize himself with the policy pursued in relation to the ulus. The source contains significant data that sheds additional light not only on the history of the Derbet ulus but also on the Kalmyk Khanate overall. It describes the history of the ulus since the early eighteenth century, with a focus on the events between the 1740s and mid-1750s. The document has to do with the events that took place on the Don, where the Derbet ulus used to roam; special attention is given to the Derbet owners’ attitudes to the strife that took place in the first half of the century. Conclusions. “Vypiska o derbetevykh vladel’tsakh i o ikh ulusakh sochinennaia” is one of the detailed records describing the history of the Derbet ulus in the eighteenth century based on the government’s documents of the first half of the century. That is why there is a detailed description of the events related to the ulus’s move to the Don, indicating the ulus owners’ attitudes to the strife that took place at the time in the Khanate. There is every reason to believe that the document was written by Vasily Bakunin, the Collegium member who was most knowledgeable about the affairs of the Kalmyk Khanate.

Mechanica Medicina Sacra: Biblical Vegetarianism in Philippe Hecquet’s Theological Medicine

In the early eighteenth century, the French Jansenist physician Philippe Hecquet began publishing prolifically on the benefits of what he called “meatless medicine,” calling for a “Catholic cook” to guide France’s physical, moral, and spiritual health. This paper analyzes Hecquet’s defense of vegetarianism as an early modern example of a distinct kind of Biblical medicine – what Hecquet termed “theological medicine” – in the context of his understanding of bodily mechanism, natural history, and Biblical literalism, in his Traité des dispenses du carême (1709) and La medecine théologique, ou la medecine créée (1733). I argue that vegetarianism was the first principle of Hecquet’s Biblical medicine, which he considered both a natural and revealed truth to be grasped and applied by the pious physician.

The Politics of Anti-Corruption

As other chapters have made clear, the corruption of politics was a concern of the pre-modern era, especially in relation to political officers. Yet alongside the corruption of politics there was also a very strong politics of corruption. ‘Anti-corruption’ was nearly always political, in the sense of having a political agenda, implicit or explicit, behind it. This chapter argues that these political dimensions need to be recognised more than they have been. The chapter examines the ‘work’ done by the discourse of corruption, underlining its emotive power and its capacity both to challenge political rules and to help define boundaries of legitimate behaviour. The politics of anti-corruption is highlighted in the imperial context through a case study of early eighteenth-century Barbados. The chapter then examines these political functions in relation to the many highly politicised impeachments for corruption, from 1621 to 1806.

Embodied Invention

This chapter develops a historical account of Bach’s musicking body, and those of early-eighteenth-century keyboardists more generally, as a way to rethink how Bach’s keyboard music was conceived and performed. It synthesizes aspects of contemporaneous medical, scientific, and theological discourses about the human faculties of touch, memory, and invention, and brings these into dialogue with the inventive and performative dimensions of Bach’s keyboard practice. The chapter unearths historical conceptions of memory as physiologically grounded and distributed across the body, of touch as a corporeal-spiritual faculty, and of human bodies as purposive and intelligent. These notions of a bodily kind of intelligence suggest the need to ascribe much greater agency to the embodied aspects of early-eighteenth-century modes of composing and performing. The chapter thus offers a somatic alternative to the customary focus on mental, disembodied patterns of invention in understanding Bach’s compositional and improvisatory practices at the keyboard.