Music and Philosophy: The Enlightenment and Beyond
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- Research Article
- 10.1111/j.1468-229x.1971.tb02014.x
- Feb 1, 1971
- History
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- Research Article
1
- 10.5406/15549399.54.4.035
- Dec 1, 2021
- Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought
Joseph Smith Jr. found himself in court many times throughout his life. Historians argue that his problematic relationship with the law began in 1826 when he faced disorderly person charges in Bainbridge, New York. According to the pretrial sources, some of Josiah Stowell's family members charged that Joseph Smith claimed to have supernatural powers: Horace Stowell and Arad Stowell claimed that he used seer stones to see lost, stolen, and hidden things and to seek treasure.1 An additional disorderly person hearing followed in 1829 in Lyons, New York. In 1830, a disorderly person charge brought Joseph Smith back to court in Bainbridge, New York. In the same year, a final disorderly person charge took him to court in Colesville, New York.2 Since these events, there has been a vigorous discussion over whether Smith's implication in these practices should disqualify his prophetic claims. This framing of the charges has sometimes overshadowed the legal debates.3Previous attempts to understand these legal events have assumed that these cases were built upon early examples of anti-fraud legislation.4 The basis of this interpretation is the use of the word "pretended" and allegations of "juggling," or sleight-of-hand, which appear in both New York's 1813 disorderly person statute and the accounts of Joseph Smith's court proceedings. However, reading these cases in terms of fraud may result from a cultural misunderstanding between modern researchers and their nineteenth-century subjects. For instance, Dan Vogel noted that Justice Neeley, who oversaw the 1826 case, was interested in allegedly pretended powers not economic deception.5This article proposes that Joseph Smith's early trials were about "pretended witchcraft and magic"6 and the related thoughtcrime of "pretended religion," categories of crime generated during the Enlightenment to categorize unorthodox religious traditions as witchcraft while negating their claims to miraculous or supernatural powers. Smith's defense that he really was a seer was irrelevant because the legal system categorized the spiritual practice of treasure seeking as pretended witchcraft and magic.To understand Joseph Smith's interactions with New York's 1813 disorderly person statute, historians must evaluate the historical and cultural trends associated with the legislative precedent that contributed to the 1813 statute. This comparative method has been a standard in witchcraft studies for decades.7 Throughout the analysis of these laws and charges, I use evidence from Joseph Smith's life outside the courtroom to demonstrate that fear of witchcraft motivated these charges while expressions of that fear were suppressed in the later narratives of these legal persecutions. Evidence outside the courtroom demonstrates that the conspiracies and persecutions endured by Joseph Smith were echoes of the witchcraft belief exemplified more than a century earlier in Salem, Massachusetts.The New York disorderly persons statue belongs to a specific legislative history aimed at magic and witchcraft. Legislation aimed at policing treasure seeking, the use of seer stones, and finding lost and stolen items through a gift from God or other supernatural means was meant to curb the influence of "the cunning-folk."8 Cunning-folk were folk-Christian healers whom religious authorities conflated with "diabolical witches" in early modern Europe, an imaginary category of people who were alleged to renounce their baptism and swear loyalty to the devil and his war on Christendom.9 Folk-Christian beliefs covered a range of magical practices. The King Henry Witchcraft Act of 1542 marked the earliest Anglophone legislation aimed at curbing treasure seeking. Queen Elizabeth's Witchcraft Act of 1563 repealed and replaced King Henry's Act and was subsequently superseded by the King James Witchcraft Act of 1604.10 All three intended to control the diabolical witch, but their language reveals their intent to penalize the cunning-folks' spiritual practices. This was also true of other acts passed throughout the British Isles.11 In 1692, the Massachusetts colony passed a witchcraft act based on the King James Act of 1604, explicitly targeted cunning-folk practices, including treasure seeking.12 This was the cornerstone upon which all Anglophone witchcraft legislation was founded, including the pretended witchcraft legislation of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.The cultural conversation around demonology informed this legislation's development. Early modern demonologies began in a Roman Catholic environment obsessed with controlling heresy.13 These works fused ideas from the Bible, Patristic writings of the early church, the Lives of Saints, Greco-Roman literature, and classical poetry to construct a historical foundation of the "witch" stereotype. This stereotype combined with diabolized depictions of popular fairy belief, folk-Christianity deemed superstitious by religious authorities, heresy, and popular concerns about maleficium. Continental believers' demonologies targeted the folk-Christian observances of the cunning-folk as examples of superstition and a living tradition of witchcraft.14 This tool could be abused against a wide variety of people regardless of the content of their beliefs and practices. For example, demonologist Nicholas Rémy claimed that a woman whose practices were completely orthodox could still be guilty of witchcraft, that witches were guilty of imitating Elijah and Elisha, and that witches were guilty of using religion to mask their alleged diabolism.15 Thus folk-Christian practices were easily distorted into diabolical witchcraft by religious and legal authorities.English demonologies appeared in the decades after the English Reformation when religious leaders led "a Henrician assault on popular religion."16 Fear of cunning-folk carried over to North America, where Cotton Mather attributed the rise of witchcraft in New England to the arrival of Quakers, cunning-folk, and Native American shamans.17 When Richard Boulton wrote one of the last significant believers' demonologies in England, paraphrasing Exodus 22:18, he asserted, "wise Women are not fit to live," without elaboration.18 He fully expected his eighteenth-century audience to understand that the cunning-folk were the witches targeted in English demonology and anti-witchcraft law. At the beginning of the Second Great Awakening, Ezra Stiles would preach a sermon conflating cunning-folk activities and Native American spiritual practices with witchcraft. He did so to "lay this whole Iniquity open, that all the remains of it might be rooted out."19 Concerns over the diabolical witch and the cunning-folk would continue in the Anglophone world into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.20Belief in the "diabolical witch" was the orthodox position between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, but there were also detractors. The Dutch physician Johann Weyer argued that the devil took advantage of imbalances in the humor of black bile to produce a mental illness (melancholy). He argued that the devil did so to generate illusions that deceived people into believing that witches were real and that magic was efficacious.21 Weyer still targeted cunning-folk practices and conflated them with necromancy, but he denied their efficacy. English skeptic Reginald Scott argued that the sorcerers of the Bible, the religious authorities of the pagan world, Catholic priests, and cunning-folk—whom he called "cozening witches"—all utilized sleight of hand and deception, not actual demonic powers, to lead people into idolatry or to deceive them.22 These skeptical demonologists described the beliefs and practices of pagan religions, Catholicism, Christian enthusiasts, and the cunning-folk as false prophecy, legerdemain, juggling, and pretended powers. They remained a vocal but marginalized position within demonology throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.By the eighteenth century, skeptical demonology replaced believing demonology as the dominant view, and unorthodox spiritual practices came to be defined as pretended by those in power. In the Anglophone world, this included the practices of cunning-folk, gypsies, Catholics, and Indigenous peoples. However, it also included the beliefs and practices of charismatic Christians pejoratively labeled "enthusiasts." For example, Reverend Francis Hutchinson cited the beliefs and practices of radical Protestants known as the French Prophets as pretended. In his book on this religious minority, he consistently defined charismatic Christian claims to spiritual power as enthusiasm, pretended, legerdemain, and juggling.23 The King George Witchcraft Act of 1735 ended diabolical witchcraft as a legal category in England and Scotland and made "pretended" the legal standard in Enlightenment England.24The King George Witchcraft Act of 1735 developed within a broader legal environment that had produced similar statutes throughout Europe.25 The first of these was the French Edict of 1692, which reclassified witchcraft into crimes like poisoning, sacrilege, and pretended powers. Notably, a similar law produced in the same environment defined Protestantism as a pretended religion and penalized Protestant leaders for advocating pretended religion.26 In colonial America, the state used anti-vagrancy legislation to control religious deviants like Jesuits, Quakers, and Enthusiasts by labeling them vagabonds and disorderly persons, then penalizing them for breaking vagrancy law.27Skeptical witchcraft legislation continued to be developed in the American colonies and then the United States into the nineteenth century.28 When New York drafted the 1813 disorderly person statute, it continued this trend by utilizing the language of early European witchcraft legislation. The relevant portion of the law addresses vagrancy and defines a disorderly person as "all jugglers [those who cheat or deceive by sleight of hand or tricks of extraordinary dexterity], and . . . all persons pretending to have skill in physiognomy, palmistry, or like crafty science, or pretending to tell fortunes, or to discover where lost goods may be found."29 This statute had much in common with the anti-vagrancy and pretended witchcraft legislation of the Anglophone world of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, a product of a larger legal environment that employed the King George Witchcraft Act of 1735 as a model.30 This model preemptively defined religious and spiritual unorthodoxy as pretended witchcraft, magic, or religion. By categorizing people's beliefs and practices as pretended this legislation allowed the state to discriminate against unorthodox spiritual traditions by deliberately conflating them with criminal deception.Legislation based on skeptical demonology continued in nineteenth-century England with the 1824 Act for the Punishment of Idle and Disorderly Persons, and Rogues and Vagabonds, in that Part of Great Britain called England.31 This act criminalized "every person pretending or professing to tell fortunes, or using any subtle Craft, Means, or Device, by Palmistry or otherwise, to deceive and impose."32 According to Owen Davies, the clause was "widely used in prosecuting rural cunning-folk."33 Throughout the British Empire and its former colonies, the government used anti-vagrancy legislation and skeptical witchcraft legislation to categorize people's genuine beliefs and religious practices as "pretended" as late as the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.34Besides Joseph Smith, only one other well-known example of disorderly person prosecution for treasure seeking in early America employs the word "pretended" to describe alleged supernatural gifts—the disorderly person charges against Dr. Luman Walters.35 Walters's case is only known due to newspaper articles discussing a documented case in New Hampshire.36 Because the notes from Luman Walters's trial are not available, it is impossible to explore how the court used "pretended" in disorderly person trials in the nineteenth century. But through Walters's alleged conviction in New York we can see how this legislation was used to penalize Walters for cunning-folk practices.37 Later allegations that Walters was a necromancer reveal the underlying religious bias which conflated cunning-folk with witches.38Although it is tempting to read "pretended" as fraud, there is reason to be cautious. According to Lynne Hume, in Anglophone witchcraft legislation "'pretends to exercise' means something else. The presumption is that people are not able to do these things and therefore whoever says they can is acting in a fraudulent manner."39 In previous generations, legal authorities and religious authorities superseded the cunning-folks' beliefs and practices by presuming that the cunning-folk were diabolical witches. After the Enlightenment, the same psychological process allowed Anglophone legal authorities to recategorize genuine belief and practices as pretended witchcraft. In both cases the legal system deliberately conflated unorthodox spiritual traditions with another crime to enable the policing of unorthodox spirituality. This tells us more about the beliefs of those in power than it does about the traditions these legal categories were designed to punish.Despite legal skepticism, belief in diabolical witchcraft continued into Joseph Smith's lifetime and beyond.40 The nineteenth-century repeal of Ireland's 1586 witchcraft statute inspired the publication of the anonymous pamphlet Antipas, which conflated Catholicism and Dissenters with witchcraft and urged Parliament to restrict both groups' religious activities. The pamphlet would have had a broad audience. As Andrew Sneddon has explained, "for the vast majority of those placed lower down the social ladder, especially those living in small, close-knit rural areas, the existence of the malefic witch continued to be regarded as a threat to their property and persons in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The same holds true for North America."41The diabolical witch doctrine still had its believers in Joseph Smith's early nineteenth-century environment, although the law no longer recognized diabolical witchcraft as a reality. Smith's critic Alexander Campbell argued for a synthesized demonology that allowed for pretended necromancy and diabolical necromancy to coexist as two different kinds of witchcraft.42 Campbell's use of necromancy charges in witchcraft allegations was a standard pattern within the Second Great Awakening.43 Likewise, treasure seeking became a primary target of witchcraft fear and belief during this period.44 People who feared cunning-folk, alleged false-prophets, Catholics, Atheists, non-white spiritual practices, and religious movements like the Quakers, the Shakers, and the Wilkensonians saw the practices they feared most as both pretended and diabolical, often describing these groups as practicing necromancy.45 In the early nineteenth-century environment of legal skepticism and the common suppressed belief that diabolical witches existed, one would expect to find the categories of pretended witchcraft and diabolical witchcraft used to label Joseph Smith's folk-Christian practices of treasure seeking in 1826 as well as charismatic expressions of Christian belief in 1830.When Joseph Smith, a young treasure seeker, had his first visionary experience, local religious leaders reacted negatively in ways that Smith family members considered surprising.46 At the age of fourteen, an unnamed assailant fired a bullet at Joseph Smith as he returned home.47 In 1823, Joseph Smith experienced an envisioned visitation of an angel, who declared that Smith would be a prophet and uncover a buried scripture. Within a year of this experience, rumors began to circulate that someone had disinterred and dissected his older brother Alvin's body.48 Dan Vogel and Michael Quinn believe that these were allegations of utilizing part of Alvin's body to acquire the golden plates. These rumors portrayed the act of acquiring the golden plates as a form of necromancy.49 These allegations may have been an initial, failed, attempt to charge Joseph Smith with a crime. As William Morain points out, "violating a grave" was "a felony offense for which, in 1824, he could have been incarcerated in the New York state prison for five years."50 A year later, in 1825, Josiah Stowell heard about Joseph Smith's gift for using his seer stone, perhaps tied to rumors of Joseph's 1823 vision of an angel who led him to the gold plates. Josiah Stowell requested that Joseph reside at his home as a farmworker who would aid Stowell in his treasure seeking. Joseph's parents agreed, perhaps to remove him from a dangerous environment. However, trouble followed Joseph Smith Jr. to Bainbridge, New York. In 1826, Stowell's nephew took Joseph Smith to court as a disorderly person.51Allegations of witchcraft continued after the trials as well, with some ascribed to Joseph's life in the 1820s. In 1834, testimonies ascribed to Smith's neighbors appeared in the anti-Mormon book Mormonism Unvailed.52 The affidavits in this book describe Smith's activities through the paradigms of pretended and diabolical witchcraft. In one of these affidavits, discussing a period between the 1826 and 1830 hearings, Sophia Lewis, who also served as Emma Smith's midwife, reported that Joseph and Emma's child died horribly deformed at birth. Her affidavit is notable because the diabolical witch's doctrine and folklore viewed deformed births and stillbirth as evidence of witchcraft.53 Shortly after Alvin's death, Emma Smith returned to her parents' Methodist church in Harmony. When Joseph Smith attempted to attend, it sparked a controversy that included church members' allegations of necromancy and other witchcraft practices. In the 1879 remembrances of these events, Emma's relatives made it clear that those involved in this controversy believed Joseph Smith "was a conjurer" and "a sorcerer," clarifying that these were forms of "witchcraft."54 This same Methodist congregation later threatened violence against Joseph Smith, which forced him to move to the home of Peter Whitmer Sr. in Fayette, New York.55Beginning in 1830, Joseph Smith's restorationism utilized the example of the Christian curses used by Old Testament Prophets, as well as Jesus and the Apostles in the New Testament. Joseph instructed his missionaries and followers to employ ritualized dusting of feet and clothing as a testament against those who persecuted them and rejected their message. This practice continued into the 1890s and would have provided ample material for those who believed that Joseph Smith and his followers were witches.56 Allegations of witchcraft continued in February 1831 with Alexander Campbell's publication of "Delusions," an anti-Mormon article in his periodical the Millennial Harbinger.57 In this article, Campbell uses familiar skeptical tropes and employs demonology to compare Joseph Smith and Mormonism with false prophecy, enthusiasm, and witchcraft. He directly compared Joseph Smith to Simon Magus and Elymas, the sorcerers of the Bible.58 Campbell leaves no room for equivocation: "I have never felt myself so fully authorized to address mortal man in the style in which Paul addressed Elymas the sorcerer as I feel towards this Atheist Smith."59 During the same year, mobs pursued Joseph Smith's followers as they left New York for Ohio.60 In 1832, Campbell's was as a In anti-witchcraft violence can be in the that Joseph Smith and in this Joseph Smith that these which he as a to their As a of a by Smith may have of Joseph Smith to Simon they Joseph Smith, the attempted to his to therefore or Joseph the it . . . us his They attempted to a of into his Joseph claimed that the not to but they would . . . All were and one man on and body with his like a Smith had to the from his to more The easily use of has In the nineteenth century, the was believed to be a means of a witch's powers and was a common of anti-witchcraft of witchcraft belief continued later into Joseph Smith's life. In 1834, the would the affidavits in his Mormonism This like a of skeptical and believers' describing Smith's alleged folk-Christian activities through the pretended and diabolical witchcraft As late as Smith of Campbell's continued witchcraft The year, Joseph Smith's last treasure ended with a that his to the more and of this For there are more than one for in this This treasure took in Salem, that the that had followed Smith to this in could be through a of early American witchcraft belief and In Smith's Joseph of to He claimed that Smith, the of had two who of when they the of the false and to their and are that they were not left to the power of the devil and Smith, to their with a crime so would appear that many of Smith's him of witchcraft and magic throughout his early life and to the by and there are three of in witchcraft The first and most of court and of The is These that the these often the beliefs and of the historians of witchcraft these by controlling for allegations of into these accounts by their The category are In Joseph Smith's 1826, and 1830 disorderly person only the court into the category of do not have the trial notes or sources, only of the used to the 1826 pretrial are known as the and the The only in articles to the pretrial The first of these articles appeared in with in and The is by William as a of his alleged as at the 1826 was in for the 1830 there are accounts by Joseph Smith, his and other a in witchcraft An additional related to the 1830 disorderly person cases is a ascribed to Justice of the George who oversaw the disorderly person of As with all sources, these accounts should be read events they describe may not took in They may also or of these As in all accounts of witch we must for the of in of Joseph Smith's alleged accounts of the 1826 disorderly person pretrial evidence that they into the larger pattern of In the there is evidence about Joseph his and his folk-Christian The Joseph Smith as a a for cunning-folk who compared to Old Testament The addresses the cunning-folk practice of utilizing seer also that these were Stowell and as believed As an the claims that Josiah Stowell's and two . . . or to of Joseph Smith's of his seer stones folk-Christian practices. claims that after a vision of a stone, Joseph Smith to find his seer stone, and the significant about how he the after he found This is when one the writings of a modern Dutch In his book on his folk-Christian practices, provided a for the of miraculous stones to God and for upon the This a larger pattern of Joseph Smith his other seer stones, as by This may be a of Joseph his first seer The also the powers within a folk-Christian that when Joseph had the stone, one of the of an an earlier of Joseph Smith's alleged as a seer as an According to this Joseph Smith Sr. his alleged gift and many of his finding hidden and stolen and that he that both he and his were that this power that God had so him should be used only in of or its in and with a he his to his was to this power. He that the of would some the of the and enable him to see testimonies of Smith's powers were a in the The was Josiah who the testimonies of Joseph Sr. and Joseph examples of the Joseph Smith's Stowell many other not to that Smith the he and many to his The then that Justice Stowell's belief in Joseph Smith's alleged as a treasure I believe says I believe it is not a of I it to be claims Joseph Smith his treasure that the treasure not be by by after with and they to the by These are a of the folk-Christian utilized by treasure of which Joseph Smith Sr. is believed to have According to both the and these were to a placed on the treasure by the person who buried When their attempts to acquire the treasure the at the folk-Christian for the treasure a against the devil over the of seeking from some five feet in had been without a of war against this of was and they that the of or of some mental was the of their between folk-Christian and for Joseph Smith's and depictions of these practices as When demonologists argue against of cunning-folk beliefs and practices, they described the common that practices were by the Christian would then attempt to by that folk-Christian practices were forms of false an with the For those who believed demonologists than evidence of folk-Christian was evidence of the is on this of the 1826 it Joseph Smith's seer use and treasure seeking, it does not a of power he ascribed these to that would us to compare his alleged practices to the In of these it Joseph Smith's and activities
- Research Article
7
- 10.5325/critphilrace.4.2.263
- Jul 1, 2016
- Critical Philosophy of Race
Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment
- Research Article
- 10.1111/j.1468-229x.1971.tb02024.x
- Jun 1, 1971
- History
ANCIENT: Edessa ‘the Blessed City’. By J. B. Segal ANCIENT: Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of st. Augustine. By R. A. Markus ANCIENT: Bread and the Liturgy: The Symbolism of Early Christian and Byzantine Bread Stamps. By George Galavaris MEDIEVAL: Life in Anglo‐Saxon England. By R. I. Page MEDIEVAL: The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom. By A. P. Vlasto MEDIEVAL: It is a pleasure to welcome a new edition of Cecily Clark's edition of the Peterborough Chronicle, 1070–1154 MEDIEVAL: The Age of Chivalry. Manners and Morals 1000–1450. By C. T. Wood MEDIEVAL: The Knight and Chivalry. By Richard Barber MEDIEVAL: Scripta Leonis, Rufini et Angeli Sociorum s. Francisci. The Writings of leo, Rufino and Angelo Companions of st. Francis. Edited and translated by Rosalind B. Brooke MEDIEVAL: Irrigation and Society in Medieval Valencia. By Thomas F. Glick MEDIEVAL: English Historical Documents: vol. iv, 1327–1485. Edited by A. R. Myers MEDIEVAL: Bernardo Giustiniani. A Venetian of the Quattrocento. By Patricia H. Labalme MEDIEVAL: The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity. By Roberto Weiss MEDIEVAL: The Imperial Age of Venice, 1380–1580. By D. S. Chambers MEDIEVAL: The Three Ages of the Italian Renaissance. By Robert S. Lopez MEDIEVAL: Geoffrey Trease's the Condottieri EARLY MODERN: The Foundations of the Modern World 1300–1775. By L. Gottschalk, L. C. Mackinney and E. H. Pritchard EARLY MODERN: Monastic Iconography in France from the Renaissance to the Revolution. By Joan Evans EARLY MODERN: Tudor Royal Proclamations. Edited by Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin EARLY MODERN: Theatre of the World. By Frances A. Yates EARLY MODERN: La Plume, la Faucille et le Marteau: Institutions et Societe en France du Moyen age a la Revolution. By Roland Mousnier EARLY MODERN: The French Nobility in Crisis, 1560–1640. By Davis Bitton EARLY MODERN: Les Oeconomies Royales de Sully, Volume 1, 1572–1594. Edited by David Buisseret and Bernard Barbiche EARLY MODERN: Change in the Provinces: The Seventeenth Century. By Alan Everitt EARLY MODERN: Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy. Protestant Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth‐Century France. By Brian C. Armstrong EARLY MODERN: God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. By Christopher Hill EARLY MODERN: Donald Veall takes a good subject in the Popular Movement for law Reform, 1640–1660 EARLY MODERN: Michael Landon also begins his the triumph of the Lawyers: Their Role in English Politics, 1678–1689 EARLY MODERN: Robert Harley, Puritan Politician. By Angus McInnes EARLY MODERN: New Cambridge Modern History Volume vi: The Rise of Great Britain and Russia 1688–1715/25. Edited by J. S. Bromley EARLY MODERN: The Growth of English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Edited with an Introduction by W. E. Minchinton EARLY MODERN: Britain After the Glorious Revolution 1689–1715. By Geoffrey Holmes and others THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: The Ancien Régime in Europe: Government and Society in the Major States 1648–1789. By E. N. Williams THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: Anglo‐American Political Relations, 1675–1775. Edited by Alison Gilbert Olson and Richard Maxwell Brown THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: Muscovite and Mandarin. Russia's Trade with China and its Setting, 1727–1805. By C. M. Foust THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: Philosopher king. the humanist pope benedict xiv. By Renée Haynes THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: The British Empire Before the American Revolution. vol. xv. A Guide to Manuscripts Relating to the History of the British Empire, 1748–1776. By Lawrence Henry Gipson THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: In his study of Shipping and the American war 1775–83 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: The Parkers at Saltram, 1769–89. Everyday life in an Eighteenth‐Century House. By Ronald Fletcher THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: The French Revolution. By François Furot and Denis Richot THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: Biography is not a medium much used by present teachers of modern European history and Madame Roland and the age of Revolution by Gita May THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: Napoleon and Paris. By Maurice Guerrini. Translated by Margery Weiner THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: Power in the Industrial Revolution. By Richard L. Hills THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: The Textile Industry. By W. English THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: Systèmes Agraires et Progrès Agricole: l'Assolement Triennal en Russie aux xviii e ‐xix e Siecles. By M. Confino THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: The First Industrial Nation. An Economic History of Britain 1700–1914. By Peter Mathias THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I: Political Attitudes and the Conduct of Russian Diplomacy 1801–1825. By Patricia K. Grimsted THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: Bureaucracy and Church Reform. the Organizational Response of the Church of England to Social Change 1800–1965. By Kenneth A. Thompson THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: Father of Racist Ideology. The Social and Political Thought of Count Gobineau. By Michael D. Biddiss THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: Marx Before Marxism. By David McLellan THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: Baines's Account of the Woollen Manufacture of England. With a new Introduction by K. G. Ponting THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: The Victorian Crisis of Faith: Six Lectures. Edited by Anthony Symondson THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: Popular Movements, C. 1830–1850. Edited by J. T. Ward THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: The Pauper Press. A Study of Working‐Class Radicalism of the 1830s. By Patricia Hollis THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: The war of the Unstamped. The Movement to Repeal the British Newspaper Tax, 1830–1836. By J. H. Wiener THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: Free Trade: Theory and Practice from Adam Smith to Keynes. By N. McCord THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: The Dietary Surveys of Dr. Edward Smith. By T. C. Barker, D. J. Oddy and John Yudkin THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: The Red Shirt and the Cross of Savoy: The Story of Italy's Risorgimento (1748‐1871). By George Martin THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: The Social Foundations of German Unification 1858–1871, Ideas and Institutions. By Theodore S. Hamerow THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: The Victorian Underworld. By Kellow Chesney THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: Cosmopolitanism and the National State. By Friedrich Meinecke; translated by Robert B. Kimber THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: The Administration of Imperialism: Joseph Chamberlain at the Colonial Office. By Robert V. Kubicek THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: Sir John Brunner: Radical Plutocrat, 1842–1919. By Stephen E. Koss THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow. vol. 4. 1917: Year of Decision; vol. 5. 1918–1919: Victory and Aftermath. By Arthur J. Marder THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: The Russian Search for Peace February‐October 1917. By R. A. Wade THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: The Making of the Soviet State Apparatus. By Olga A. Narkiewicz THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: The Politics of Decontrol of Industry: Britain and the United States. By Susan Armitage THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: British Social Policy 1914–1939. By Bentley B. Gilbert THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey, 1937–1940. Edited by John Harey THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: American Aid to France 1938–40. By John McVickar Haight THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: The Resistance Versus Vichy. By Peter Novick THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: De Gaulle's Foreign Policy 1944–1946. By A. W. De Porte THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: Europe Since Hitler. By Walter Laqueur THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: The European Renaissance Since 1945. By Maurice Crouzet THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: France since 1918. By Herbert Tint THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: Wars, Plots and Scandals in Post‐War France. By Philip M. Williams THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: French Politicians and Elections 1951–1969. By Philip M. Williams AFRICA, ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA: A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1545 to 1800. By Walter Rodney AFRICA, ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA: Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast 1600–1720. By Kwame Yeboa Daaku AFRICA, ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA: Province of Freedom: A History of Sierra Leone 1787–1870. By John Peterson AFRICA, ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA: West African Countries and Peoples. By James Africanus Horton with an introduction by George Shepperson AFRICA, ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA: Pre‐Colonial African Trade. Essays on Trade in Central and Eastern Africa Before 1900. Edited by Richard Gray and David Birmingham AFRICA, ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA: Colonialism in Africa 1870–1960. vol. i: The History and Politics of Colonialism 1870–1914. Edited by L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan AFRICA, ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA: Reluctant Rebellion. The 1906–1908 Disturbances in Natal. By Shula Marks AFRICA, ASIA AND AUSTRALASIA: The Administration of Nigeria: Men, Methods and Myths. By I. F. Nicolson AFRIC
- Research Article
- 10.5406/24736031.49.1.01
- Jan 1, 2023
- Journal of Mormon History
Cunning Distortions: Folk Christianity and Witchcraft Allegations in Early Mormon History
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- 10.1080/13602360903027947
- Jun 1, 2009
- The Journal of Architecture
The weather in the architecture: Soane, Turner and the ‘Big Smoke’
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- 10.5406/21638195.95.2.04
- Jul 1, 2023
- Scandinavian Studies
Sámi Literature in Norwegian Language Arts Textbooks
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- 10.1162/afar_a_00538
- Aug 1, 2020
- African Arts
Fetishizing the Foot: Mobility and Meaning in Indian Ocean Sandals
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- 10.1093/envhis/emz077
- Nov 12, 2019
- Environmental History
New Scholarship
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- 10.5325/critphilrace.1.1.0136
- Apr 1, 2013
- Critical Philosophy of Race
Racism and Modernity: Festschrift for Wulf D. Hundt
- Research Article
- 10.1353/ecs.2021.0075
- Jan 1, 2021
- Eighteenth-Century Studies
Reviewed by: The Cambridge History of the Gothic. Vol. 1: Gothic in the Long Eighteenth Century ed. by Angela Wright and Dale Townshend, and: The Cambridge History of the Gothic. Vol. 2: Gothic in the Nineteenth Century ed. by Dale Townshend and Angela Wright JoEllen Mary DeLucia Angela Wright and Dale Townshend, eds., The Cambridge History of the Gothic. Vol. 1: Gothic in the Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2020). Pp. 516; 16 b/w illus. $155.00 cloth. Dale Townshend and Angela Wright, eds., The Cambridge History of the Gothic. Vol. 2: Gothic in the Nineteenth Century. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2020) Pp. 541; 14 illus. $155.00 cloth. Defining the Gothic has been a perennial problem. Is it a literary genre, an aesthetic, or a style? As a historical marker, does it refer to the liberty-loving Goths of pre-Roman Britain, a medieval chivalric culture, or is it a negative definition of modernity? During the long eighteenth-century, Gothic was used as an adjective to describe architecture, political values, and, later, literary texts; in the nineteenth century, the term largely disappeared. In the twentieth century, Victorian studies adapted the Gothic as a “retrospective construct” (II:15)—a category used to group everything from Bram Stoker’s Dracula to the Kelmscott Press’s The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer under the same umbrella. The Gothic’s search for a clear referent has had the sometimes frustrating but also liberating effect of evacuating the term of any clear meaning. Dale Townshend and Angela Wright, the editors of the first two volumes of The Cambridge History of the Gothic, argue that instead of linking the Gothic to a historical period, discipline, or set of formal characteristics, we should understand it as a “mode.” Mode in these volumes means something close to a method or approach, an active means of both interrogating dominant histories and writing “counter-history” (I: 6). The discontinuities and the unevenness in the application of the term Gothic make the case for it as an approach or process. As Robert Miles argues, the Gothic might best be understood as “a temporal contrast . . . between the premodern world of ghosts (timeless, circular, repetitious, with porous boundaries between the self and other, this world and the next), and the empty, chronometric, homogenous time of modernity” (I: 449); or, as Tom Duggett persuasively suggests, “a zeitgeist term—a word in the process of becoming, through contestation and self-contradiction” (II: 105). One of the great strengths of Townshend and Wright’s turn to mode instead of form is that they are able to develop a truly interdisciplinary collection of essays, putting literature, history, art, architecture, and drama into conversation with one another. At the same time, the constraints of the linear history demanded by the form of a three-volume Cambridge History, with separate volumes dedicated to the long eighteenth century, the nineteenth century, and a yet to be published volume on the twentieth century, work against the Gothic mode itself. As I read, I sometimes wished that the essays were grouped in a non-linear fashion, interrogating instead of replicating progressive historical form. Despite these formal constraints, the collected essays provide a fascinating interdisciplinary and transnational look at the Gothic, which almost always begins its story with Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764); those in eighteenth-century studies would find these volumes most useful as a means of building a counternarrative of our period’s influence, one that contests the aesthetic and philosophical tenets of the neo-Classical and Enlightenment impulses that still dominate understandings of the eighteenth century; in addition, the collection would aid eighteenth centuryists in responding to recent calls to think and teach beyond the traditional boundaries of period and [End Page 1012] discipline and track the echoes of issues central to the eighteenth century across periods and national traditions. With the third volume yet to be released, this review only considers the first two volumes, which are dedicated to the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; they include an impressive forty-one essays from forty-two scholars writing from different disciplinary and national perspectives. In keeping with the Gothic mode, the essays are best read...
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1
- 10.5204/mcj.459
- May 2, 2012
- M/C Journal
Café Space, Communication, Creativity, and Materialism
- Research Article
5
- 10.1353/cat.2005.0217
- Jul 1, 2005
- The Catholic Historical Review
I. Introduction: Catholic Enlightenment and Popular Catholicism One of greatest paradoxes of modern Catholic history is that a seemingly moribund Old Regime Church gave way to a broad-based popular Catholic revival in nineteenth century. How can this reinvigoration be accounted for? Miracles, of course, are always a possibility, but historians are required to look for more prosaic explanations. The Catholic revival has received a fair share of scholarly attention. As a multi-faceted phenomenon, scholars have focused on questions ranging from diocesan organization and clerical training, to in-depth studies on religious experience of common people. For all this interest in nineteenth-century Catholicism at local and popular level, however, it remains to be explained how Old Regime Church could accommodate its traditional distrust-when not outright repression-of popular religious practices, enabling popular Catholicism in fact to become one of key aspects of Church's political and social power. For all emphasis on nineteenth-century developments, then, it remains to be shown how Roman Catholicism in eighteenth century underwent a fundamental revision in its approach to popular religion. While it is certain that social, economic, and institutional factors had an important role in shaping of popular Catholicism, can it also be said that there were intellectual roots as well? The remainder of this article addresses this question by describing intellectual context of eighteenth-century revolution in Catholic moral theology that enabled institutional Church to align itself with practices of popular Catholicism. This essay also hopes to demonstrate that intellectual components of popular Catholicism must be understood on their own terms, and not merely reduced to social or political factors. I propose to demonstrate that new moral system outlined below overcame certain intellectual barriers that would otherwise have stood in way of Church's enthusiastic embrace of popular religious practices and attitudes.1 The central question of this essay, therefore, is how aristocratic-minded Church of Counter-Reformation adapted to social transformations of eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to become, in words of Louis Châtellier, the religion of poor.2 Rather than seeing this new identity as a late reaction to changes of revolutionary era, I will suggest how its roots extend back into early eighteenth century, specifically to disputes over laxism, probabilism, and rigorism. Social historians like Châtellier have shown how, around eighteenth century, missionaries in Europe shifted their efforts away from trying to force peasants to completely abandon their so-called superstitious beliefs. Instead, missionaries embraced what they now accepted as genuine piety, and sought instead only to strengthen connections between popular piety and institutional Catholic Church. In my view, this shift in pastoral practice should be seen in concert with revolution in moral theology that-while not abandoning concept of original sin-downplayed strongly negative Augustinian condemnation of human nature and embraced a generally more optimistic view of human moral capability. The figure of Neapolitan moral theologian and founder of popular Redemptorist Congregation Alphonsus Maria di Liguori (1696-1787) stands at center of this transformation. Liguori not only authored one of most widely circulated tracts on Marian devotion-the queen of superstition to Enlightenment Christians and rational skeptics alike-the Glories of Mary. He also succeeded in elaborating a system of moral theology which postulated that in cases of doubt about existence of a moral law, human liberty was anterior to law.3 More clearly than others, Liguori overcame negative Augustinian view of human nature that had led Jansenists to follow their rigorist tendencies in moral theology. …
- Research Article
- 10.5406/19452349.40.3.07
- Oct 1, 2022
- American Music
Smears, Laughs, and Barnyard Hokum: Early Jazz Trombone and the Problem of Novelty
- Research Article
- 10.7916/d8r78cs5
- Mar 23, 2015
- Current Musicology
The well-known horse-racing ballad "Skewball" (hereafter, SB) has a well-established oral tradition in Ireland, with versions documented throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The latest is a 1979 field recording of Derry folksinger and storyteller, Eddie Butcher (Shields 2011:58-9). (1) The ballad was also assimilated into African-American oral tradition, in which it was reconstructed and renamed "Stewball" (Lomax 1994:68-71; Scarborough 1925:61-4), and was still being documented in American folk tradition as late as the 1930s (Flanders 1939:172-4). In common with countless other folk songs, SB was appropriated by broadside (2) printers and subsequently enjoyed widespread public appeal throughout England in the early- to mid-nineteenth century, its popularity waning with the later decline of the broadside as a medium of ballad transmission and distribution. A comparative analysis of oral and broadside versions reveals clear differences between the two narratives. I argue that these variations were quite deliberate in origin, being a direct result of interpolations and excisions made by broadside ballad printers to the original oral narrative. By drawing comparisons between versions of SB collected from both oral and broadside sources, this paper will demonstrate that as a consequence of significant social and cultural advancements in the nineteenth century, SB was deliberately revised with the aim of enhancing its appeal and relevance to an increasingly literate middle class audience. Historical Context The narrative recounted in SB centres on a historically documented horse race held in Kildare, Ireland on March 30, 1752 (Heber 1753:106). (3) The race in question was a two-horse challenge between Sir Ralph Gore's Grey Mare (Pick 1803:504)--the clear favorite--and Arthur Mervin's Skewball (Pick 1803:91; Harewood 1835:309), a far lesser-known racehorse (if not completely unknown in Ireland), in which the latter unexpectedly triumphs to great acclaim. Unsurprisingly, the narrative of SB has changed considerably over time. Such variation is to be expected from a ballad that was based on eighteenth-century events in Ireland, enjoyed widespread popular appeal as a nineteenth-century English broadside printing, became established in African-American slave culture and later appeared as a work song among African-American prisoners, (4) and ultimately became popularised on both sides of the Atlantic in the folk revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s. There are, however, key narrative features that are common to all documented oral and broadside versions of the ballad, (5) namely: (i) A two-horse challenge for a considerable purse is arranged to be held on "the plains of Kildare" between Sir Ralph Gore and Arthur Mervin, both of whom were well-known figures in eighteenth-century Irish horse racing circles, and served as presidents of the Irish Jockey Club in the late 1750s (Carpenter 1998:312). (6) (ii) Although fleeting comparative references are periodically made to other racehorses, only two are mentioned as participating in the contest related in the ballad. The race favorite is a grey mare owned by Gore and is referred to variously in the ballads as either Grey Mare, Maid Sportly, or Miss Portly/Portsley/ Sportl(e)y /Sportsly/Sprightly, or in later versions as Miss Grizzle. (7) The lesser-known challenger--a skewbald gelding--is owned by Marvin and known as Skewball8 throughout all documented versions (iii) Upon hearing of the challenge and the wager that has been put down, the skewbald--the clear second favorite in the contest--instructs his master to place a considerable bet as he is assured of victory. Despite the established reputation of the favorite, Skewball wins easily to both the surprise and delight of the assembled crowd. Despite both oral and broadside versions of SB sharing the overall subject matter and common structure shown above, a comparative analysis of the two genres reveals some striking differences. …