Early Eighteenth Century Research Articles

New World of Gain: Europeans, Guaraní, and the Global Origins of Modern Economy by Brian P. Owensby

The Jesuit missions among the Guaraní Indians in Paraguay (1640s to 1767) have attracted attention for many centuries. At their peak in the early eighteenth century, the missions, numbering thirty at the time, encompassed around 140,000 people. They appeared to be virtually autonomous in their government, relying mostly on an internal economy only partially connected to the colonial economy. Owensby contributes to the study of these missions by placing them within a larger history of capitalism (which he calls “gain”). He argues that the Guaraní economy, based on what he calls “substantive mutuality,” offered an alternative to the European model’s increasing focus on mercantile endeavor and the exaltation of individual profit.Owensby dives deeply into the history of Paraguay as a Spanish colony, from its beginnings when the Guaraní accepted the Spanish as allies to aid in the defense against outside indigenous enemies. He asserts that the Guaraní understood society as the ultimate refuge against predation; the keys to a good life were exchange and reciprocation, which the Guaraní initially enjoyed with the Spanish, accepting them as brothers-in-law to their women and thus incorporating them into their society. As the sixteenth century wore on, however, the Spanish changed this relationship by seizing or demanding Guaraní women as a way to accumulate wealth. Owensby provides a culturally sensitive discussion of the interplay between Spanish exploitation of indigenous labor and the Guaraní response. The Guaraní began to bristle at the Spanish demands.By the early seventeenth century, the Jesuit missions had offered the Guaraní protection from Spanish exploitation. Owensby shows through the careful reading of philosophical texts, ranging from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to sixteenth-century Spanish treatises, how the Jesuit vision dovetailed with Guaraní social relations. By the early eighteenth century, the missions had reached their apogee, which Owensby characterizes as a system largely based on indigenous consent to the mutual benefit of the Spaniards and the Guaraní (“substantive mutuality”). Owensby does not provide much detail about the founding of the missions nor of their administration; his purpose is to explore the thinking that lay behind the way the missions were supposed to work.The foregoing is not meant to imply that Owensby does not discuss such crucial aspects as the lead-up to the Guaraní War, when a large part of the mission population rebelled against the king, surrendering seven of the most prosperous missions to the Portuguese as part of the Treaty of Madrid (1750). Owensby dedicates two chapters to the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 and its aftermath to show how new ideas of utility and the triumph of economic rationality over other aspects of rule destroyed the mission towns. Chapter 7 is an acute analysis not only of the missions but also of the late eighteenth-century reform project of the Spanish Bourbon monarchy in general.In its attempt to use the Guaraní missions to make larger points about the history of capitalism, the last chapter veers from Paraguay to a discussion of how intellectuals of the seventeenth and eighteenth century (mis)interpreted the Jesuit missions for their own ends. Owensby uses interpretations from the British Isles to reveal the disdain that most thinkers had for the missions as a counterexample to the emerging European system of commerce and individual gain.Through his exploration of the Paraguayan missions, Owensby makes the case that European notions of economic gain were not inevitable and that societies could be organized in better ways to bring about greater well-being. This book is important not only for its erudition about the Paraguayan missions but also for its understanding of the European colonial enterprise and economic thought in general.

Iran and a French Empire of Trade, 1700–1808: The Other Persian Letters by Junko Thérèse Takeda

Reviewed by: Iran and a French Empire of Trade, 1700–1808: The Other Persian Letters by Junko Thérèse Takeda Susan Mokhberi Iran and a French Empire of Trade, 1700–1808: The Other Persian Letters. By junko thérèse takeda. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020. Recently scholars have turned their attention to the impact Asia, and especially Persia and the Ottoman Empire, made in France prior to Montesquieu's Persian Letters.1 Junko Takeda's timely book takes off from this point in the early eighteenth century arguing that Persia continued to make a strong impact in France, shaping economics, military technology, and politics from the pre-Revolutionary era to Napoleon. Takeda unearths a truly global Enlightenment era in which Frenchmen watched events in Persia and responded, revealing the commercial and intellectual intertwining of Asian and European Empires. Takeda's method advances the field of global history by taking a microhistorical approach. She relates accounts of unexpected characters including merchant-diplomats, former gambling-house Madams, Armenian envoys, and Enlightenment figures. The book uncovers how Persian and French relations advanced through the contributions of these various marginalized people from across the Mediterranean world, far from the halls of Versailles and revolutionary chambers. The diverse cast of figures negotiated treaties, dealt in arms and commercial exchange, and spread Enlightenment and Revolutionary ideas from Asia to France. Chapter one draws on Takeda's extensive knowledge of the commercial politics of Marseille, the subject of her first book. Here, she explores the rise of the Fabre family, a powerful merchant family in Marseille who had ties to Versailles. She explains how the French monarchy selected one of the Fabre family members, despite inadequate experience and more qualified candidates, to become the official envoy to the Safavid Shah in 1705. The French court "rewarded [End Page 149] loyalty over ingenuity, talent or even wealth," thereby leading to chaotic results. Chapter two traces the 1705 embassy of Jean-Baptiste Fabre to Persia and the woman who accompanied him, Marie Petit, a former Madam and woman of questionable repute. Her role in French-Persian relations was most famously laid out in the 1950s by historian Laurence Lockhart.2 The French sources, written by Petit's male opponents discredited her as a hindrance to politics and marked her as a symbol of disorder. Takeda teases out Marie Petit's voice and salvages her side of the story thereby raising Petit from a marginal, tarnished figure to a role of importance in international politics. Chapter three traces continued attempts to forge a treaty between France and Persia in the early eighteenth century. Individuals, including a rich Armenian merchant, spearheaded efforts to supply Persia with arms against the opponents that encircled the Safavid empire. Takeda highlights the personal tragedy and struggles such individuals underwent to shape international relations. For instance, the Armenian merchant was one of the wealthiest merchants in Yerevan when he embarked on his commercial and diplomatic quest to Europe. He became Persia's first consul to France but after surviving the plague in Marseille and thirteen years of difficulties, he died in Marseille in ruins. Chapter four connects Enlightenment ideas of Revolution to events in Asia. Montesquieu, Voltaire, and others wrote about the turbulent transformations in government across Asia. Takeda carefully unpacks this vast Enlightenment literature on the political convulsions that shook Persia. In tune with the recent translation of Jürgen Osterhammel's essay on the impact of Nadir Shah, the Persian eighteenth-century conqueror who took over the weakened Safavid dynasty and established a vast but short-lived Asian empire, Takeda shows how discussions of Nadir Shah's rise and fall shaped the French conversation about revolution and notions of violence and human rights.3 Taking into account the vast literature on Persian revolutions, [End Page 150] Takeda convincingly shows that the causes of the French Revolution included discussions stretching from Persia and beyond, and therefore more global than previously imagined. Chapter five spotlights the oft-forgotten personality, dubbed the "other" Rousseau, Jean-François Rousseau, the cousin of Jean Baptiste. Raised in Persia, Jean-François was an advocate of the French Revolution and one of...

The Filaments of the Textile Trade: Subtle and Broad Trends in Exports from South Asia to Maritime Southeast Asia

This essay uses an eighteenth-century patolu—a fine silk double-ikat textile—as the jumping-off point to explore the complex trading relationship between South Asia and the islands of maritime Southeast Asia. Using the Dutch Textile Trade Project’s data and visualizations, this essay considers the loosening connections between specific localities (including Gujarat, the Coromandel Coast, and Bengal) and their characteristic textiles in South Asia in the early eighteenth century. The commerce in textiles was further transformed by the rise of the opium trade, a commodity for which the Dutch East India Company (VOC) had established a monopoly by the eighteenth century.

Sheathing and Pay Techniques in the Boa Vista 1 Ship (Lisbon, Portugal)

Between September 2012 and February 2013, archaeological excavations carried out in the riverside area of Lisbon (Portugal) revealed the remains of two wooden ships: Boa Vista 1 (BV1) and Boa Vista 2 (BV2), both dating from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. BV1 ship consists of scattered hull timbers which were damaged and out of their original positions. Some of the ship’s hull features are common in the Mediterranean like a composite keel with butt joints and hook scarfs in the connection between floors and futtocks, while others are well-known Iberian shipbuilding features like the transition between the keel and the sternpost being made through a single piece, the heel. A unique feature was a layer of animal hair between the sheathing and the hull planking. This paper focuses mainly on the study of wooden sheathing, including but not limited to the analysis of its conventional “architectural signatures”. The latest results concerning animal hair identification will also be presented and discussed, showing the added value of multidisciplinary approaches in archaeology.

To Counterfeit Is Death? Money, Print, and Punishment in the Early American Public Sphere

This article contributes to recent scholarship on early American money by exploring the role of print and the public sphere in making local paper currencies meaningful. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, elected assemblies and paper money advocates produced currencies, legislation, and discourse to incite belief in paper money and foster confidence in the fiscal promise that underpinned its value. With the spread of the press and the rise of counterfeiting, colonial governments and established printers turned monetary crime into a force of legitimation, distinguishing genuine monetary tokens from their fraudulent counterparts to authenticate "real" paper money. At a time when threats to the monetary system came less from counterfeiters than from political and economic factors, the authorities used the power of the press to legitimate paper as money and to demonstrate stewardship over the market relations paper money shaped. By the mid-eighteenth century, printers were putting variations of the phrase "To Counterfeit Is Death" on colonial currencies and detailing harsh punishments for counterfeiters in their newspapers, rendering colonial state power visible to abstract subjects. The political basis of paper money's value—the power of the purse—was in the process hidden from public view.

Water, Bodies, Space: New Directions in World Environmental History

Water, Bodies, Space:New Directions in World Environmental History Jack Bouchard Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire. By faisal husain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021. 278 pp. ISBN 9780197547274. $35.00 (hardcover); $35.00 (ebook). An Empire Transformed: Remolding Bodies and Landscapes in the Restoration Atlantic. By kate luce mulry. New York: New York University Press, 2021. 362 pp. ISBN 978-1-4798-9526-7. $35.00 (hardcover); $35.00 (ebook). Mapping Nature Across the Americas. Edited by kathleen a. brosnan. and james r. akerman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. xii + 416 pp. ISBN 978-0-226-69643-0. $70.00 (hardcover); $69.99 (ebook). Sometimes it is the sudden intrusion of new questions, and the unexpected perspectives they offer, into the field of World History which has galvanized efforts to push our work and teaching forward in new directions. What does the Ottoman Empire look like from the viewpoint of a marsh in southern Iraq? How could England's Charles II dream of improving his subject's physical health in eastern England by radically transforming the landscape in which they lived? What does an Indigenous place-name on a European colonial map signify, and what can that tell us about local ecologies? These are some of the inquiries posed by a new generation of environmental historians, and they speak to the potential for their works to change how we study the past on a global scale. We are living through a transformative moment in the field of environmental history. The climate crisis has catalyzed both a surge in interest and a revolution in methods. Not only are more and more [End Page 133] explicitly "environmental history" studies appearing on the market, but increasingly other fields are producing works with an environmental inflection. A proper survey of recent publications in environmental history is becoming increasingly untenable, given the volume of output, such that to understand these transformations it is useful to examine the edges of the field, the places where scholars are pushing into new subject, methods, and conceptual approaches. Three new works offer a snapshot of the evolving field, and its potential to contribute to world history: Faisal Husain's Rivers of the Sultan: The Tigris and Euphrates in the Ottoman Empire; Kate Luce Mulry's An Empire Transformed: Remolding Bodies and Landscapes in the Restoration Atlantic; and Mapping Nature Across the Americas, a collected volume edited by Kathleen A. Brosnan and James R. Akerman. ________ Faisal Husain's Rivers of the Sultan is a wonderful addition to global environmental history, and a welcome contribution to histories of the Mideast and early modern empires. Of the three works, Husain's is perhaps the most explicitly environmental but also the most ambitious in its methods, combining several overlapping environmental history approaches. Rivers of the Sultan explores the history of the Tigris-Euphrates basin from the early sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries. As Husain argues, historians have treated these waterways as "dismembered bodies," a practice which flies in the face of science, historical memory, and the behavior of states. This new study instead "[adopts] a hydro-scale that considers the fluvial system as a continuous whole. Unified under Ottoman hegemony, the natural drainage pattern of the twin rivers fostered intimate bonds between upstream and downstream provinces, transporting not only water and sediment but also boatloads of men, guns, and grain that cemented the Ottoman presence in the east" (p. 5). This builds on recent advancements in water history, and a push for more river-stories in our literature.1 Such an integrative approach allows him to explain the ways that regional hydrographies and ecologies were exploited by, and thwarted, the Ottoman state: "From the sixteenth century, Istanbul put this natural [End Page 134] waterwheel to work for the benefit of its imperial project" (p. 3). We are meant to see empire from the perspective of a riverbank, and the view upends how historians have spatially oriented Ottoman history. Husain's work is divided into three parts. Part I, "The Amphibious State," examines the problem of fortification and shipbuilding in the Ottoman Empire and Tigris-Euphrates basin more broadly to understand the practical...

Utopian Dreams and Untenable Realities: The Georgia Trustees' Failure to Stabilize the Frontier through Foreign Migration

In the 1730s and 1740s, the Trustees of Georgia incorporated a variety of ethnic and religious groups into the colony in order to protect the borderland between the British and Spanish empires in North America. Historians have largely emphasized economic underdevelopment in explaining the decline of the early Georgia settlement, but the neglect of the Trustees in creating connections among these diverse groups remains an understudied factor in the colony's struggles. Georgia officials' improvisational approach to colony-building in the early eighteenth century demonstrates a failed experiment within the British imperial system, and ultimately it did not create a sustainable settlement. Scottish and Irish as well as German-speaking, Jewish, and other settlers increased British-allied presence on the frontier, but in many cases these groups remained linguistically and geographically siloed. A reading of the Trustees' plans and the correspondence of their representatives in the southeast demonstrates a lack of planning for coordinating and integrating these communities that paradoxically made the colony more fractured, and thus less secure and effective in defending against Spanish spies and military threats. The difficulties of populating this contested borderland proved too complex for the Trustees.

Handel as Miscellany

AbstractDuring the early eighteenth century, music composed by George Frideric Handel began to circulate in miscellaneous publications of songs and arias. His music appeared in various forms. Some publications, such as four notable pocket collections published in the mid-1720s, preserve the music largely unchanged, although within a new sonic context. Other publications completely transform arias and even overtures into vocal works with new texts, creating layers of musical associations and meanings. Unauthorized appearances of Handel's music in songbook miscellanies and single-sided prints show alternative ways in which consumers may have heard and experienced the composer outside of the opera house or a concert setting. Examining these alternative sources for Handel's music allows for an enriched assessment of which works of the composer were critically and commercially appreciated during the early eighteenth century. Analysing appearances of Handel's music in songbook anthologies also offers insight into how musical miscellanies became ubiquitous forms of the production and reception of his works in the early eighteenth century.

The Capital of Free Women: Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial Mexico

The Capital of Free Women: Race, Legitimacy, and Liberty in Colonial Mexico

THE BISON AND THE BLOW FLY: USING PUPARIA OF THE BLACK BLOW FLY (PHORMIA REGINA: DIPTERA, CALLIPHORIDAE) TO CONSTRAIN THE SEASON OF DEATH AND TAPHONOMIC HISTORY OF AN EARLY HISTORIC-AGE BISON, CARSON CITY, NEVADA, USA

ABSTRACT We report the occurrence of abundant dipteran puparia of Phormia regina, the black blow fly, in association with an early historic-age bison skeleton excavated near Carson City, Nevada. Cut marks on some of the bones indicate that the bison was butchered and probably skinned by humans. Radiocarbon dating provides two possible age intervals for the death of the bison: (1) latest seventeenth to early eighteenth century or (2) early nineteenth to early twentieth century; we consider the more recent age to be more plausible. The purpose of this study is to explore how the presence of puparia of this well-studied, necrophagous fly species can be used to help constrain the season of death and inform the interpretation of the taphonomic history of the bison. The life cycle of P. regina requires a minimum of 8.8 days within a temperature range of 14°C to 35°C, so the bison carcass must have been exposed to the air for at least that long within that temperature range. However, of the thousands of recovered puparia, 35% remain closed and did not produce adult flies; of this cohort, only a tiny percentage exhibit small exit holes attributable to parasitoid wasps. Cold temperatures, and not parasitoid wasps, are the most probable cause of the high pupal mortality. Climate data for the region, along with P. regina temperature constraints and streamflow and flooding records for the Carson River watershed, indicate that the bison died and was colonized by black blow flies in the spring, when night-time temperatures were low. A short time later the skinned and butchered skeleton was buried by floodplain sediments. Blow fly puparia can contribute useful information for the taphonomic analysis of vertebrate fossil sites.

“Exile on narrow paths”

The Hungarian word bujdosás originally referred to both exile and travel in general; thus, peregrination was understood as “bujdosás or travel in foreign lands”. This was not without a reason, as public safety, harsh travel conditions and unfamiliar foreign customs made exile and travel similar to each other. The genre of the exile song, which deals with wandering and leaving one’s homeland, already in the Middle Ages was connected to the image of hopelessness caused by leaving and saying farewell, as well as with the encounter with the unfathomable nature of one’s fate. The real model for later Hungarian farewell and exile songs is two poems by Bálint Balassi (cca. 1589). Seventeenth–eighteenth century complaint songs were increasingly concerned with the private sphere, turning more and more towards the lyric self. This is the experience that connects political and religious refugees, people in exile for private reasons, travellers and peregrines. Therefore, the genres of the complaint song and the exile song are markedly present in early modern popular poetry. The genre of exile song occurs with an increasing frequency already in the first half of the seventeenth century. In the early eighteenth century, the emigration waves following the end of the Rákóczi Insurgence turned exile into an everyday experience for both the exiled and those staying behind. Biblical reminiscences and the exodus motif known from the Old Testament were increasingly frequent, at times even at the expense of description of personal life. The exile song is an important and complex genre in Hungarian migration literature. These songs discuss central questions of several centuries, from fleeing personal problems to religious and political persecution, from the peregrine student’s desire for freedom to the risks taken for one’s worldview. They present all this in an empathetic, personal and rewritable way, constantly modifying the model at the same time.

Cartas Ejecutorias de Hidalguía (executory certificates of nobility): a survey in materials analysis, legal, and aesthetic contexts—two case studies

Illuminated manuscripts are relatively well studied, but the available publications greatly focus on religious manuscripts of a geographically limited area. In contrast, technical examinations of illuminated legal documents have received far less attention, e.g., Spanish cartas ejecutorias de hidalguía (executory certificates of nobility). These documents are suitable case studies to deepen current knowledge of manuscript-making in Spain for two reasons: First, they are dated (late fifteenth to early eighteenth centuries); and second, they are unusual and understudied from both the textual and materials analysis standpoints. Cartas contain judicial proceedings whereby a family gained or was re-assigned hidalguía (lower nobility). A key exhibit to achieving this status was proving their “blood purity” which implied they were faithful Catholics, so finding religious representations within the document is common. In addition, families embedded their faith and links to monarchs in their coat of arms through symbols like crowned eagles, trees, and towers. The deliberate choice of heraldic and religious elements is as important as the materials used to produce them. Interested in better understanding illumination in Spain we are studying these unique documents from the historical, materials, and iconographic points of view. Herein, we present the earliest results of an ongoing survey, detailing two case studies: Davila and Nuñez D. Armesto cartas. This research uses a combination of: (a) instrumental techniques (X-ray fluorescence, reflectance, and infrared spectroscopies; peptide mass fingerprinting; and gas chromatography); and (b) historical research using both the manuscript’s contents as primary sources, and published research. The preliminary results are enabling us to shed light onto Spanish (legal) illuminated manuscript-making, and the symbolic role materials played, e.g., use of precious metals adorning monarchical elements, presence of ultramarine mixed with azurite on both coats of arms, and on Virgin Mary’s gown, etc. This survey intends to simultaneously learn more about illumination practices in Spain, inform conservation decisions, and hopefully better understand problems connected to historic ideologies that were legalized in beautiful albeit disturbing documents, e.g., persecution of non-Catholics at the time in Spain.

Features of the Organisation of Illegal Book Printing of the Fedoseyevtsy Old Believers in the Second Half of the 19th — Early 20th Centuries

This article attempts to analyse the book publishing activities of the Bespopovtsy Old Believers in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Old Believer book printing of this period is the least studied section in the history of Russian printed books. From its inception in the early eighteenth century until 1905, the book publishing of the Old Believers was illegal. If the period of the eighteenth — early nineteenth centuries is clear enough, there is only a certain general idea of the situation in the second half of the nineteenth — early twentieth centuries (before 1905). The reason for this is that all editions of the latter period are anonymous or have false imprints. The author of the article offers her own approach to the study of this stage of Old Believer printing. In her opinion, it is necessary to identify and describe publications with their subsequent grouping based on the commonality of some features, primarily fonts and ornamentation, with a further search for ways to link these book groups to printing houses known from archival documents. Following this approach, the article identifies a group of publications, which list Pochaev as their place of publication. An analysis of these publications and identified archival materials makes it possible to identify eight printing houses in which they were printed. The study results in the following hypothesis: all these printing houses belonged to the Old Believers of the Fedoseyevtsy denomination, they closely interacted with each other, forming a kind of network, whose activities were guided and inspired by the Preobrazhensky cemetery. A special role in the production of printed materials of the Fedoseyevtsy denomination was played by the printing house of the Ovchinnikov brothers, which functioned for about 35 years. It helped smaller printing houses, cast fonts for them, made decor clichйs, and received materials from closed establishments. After the Ovchinnikov printing house ceased operations, other printers took over from them, who probably studied with them and purchased their equipment.

Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives ed. by Reva Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg

Reviewed by: Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives ed. by Reva Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg Denise Amy Baxter Reva Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg, eds., Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives (New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020). Pp. 286; 16 color and 106 b/w illus. $150.00 cloth; $35.95 paper. Despite a wonderful collection of essays on the subject by scholars such as Margaret C. Jacob, Janet M. Burke, and Robert Beachy published in the Winter 2000 issue of this journal, Freemasonry does still mystify, if not historians, then art historians, or, at least many of them, or maybe just me.1 Yet, I contend that this is not surprising. Freemasonry is chronologically, geographically, and organizationally diffuse, with individual orders and rites and lodges, and it is, explicitly, secretive. Nonetheless, Freemasonry surrounds us on a daily basis. Even if with our increasingly cashless society I less frequently encounter the all-seeing eye of the national seal on the one-dollar bill, I pass both a Masonic Lodge and a billboard for Scottish Rite for Children Orthopedic Hospital on my daily commute. And it is exactly these historical though contemporary, completely encompassing visual and material aspects of Freemasonry that is the topic of Freemasonry and the Visual Arts from the Eighteenth Century Forward: Historical and Global Perspectives. The scope of this fascinating volume, ably brought together by art historians Reva Wolf and Alisa Luxenberg, is simply the "centrality of the arts to the history of Freemasonry, and conversely, Freemasonry's significance for the history of art from the 1720s forward" (1). After reading the volume's essays you may well also experience the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, or frequency bias, and see Masonic imagery and influence everywhere you look. But, in this case, it really was already there. The introductory chapter, co-authored by Wolf and Luxenberg, points to the volume's overarching goal of the "Mystery of Masonry Brought to Light," whetting the reader's suspicions that indeed we are, and have been, surrounded by Masonic imagery in media ranging from architecture to porcelain, city planning to paintings, and in sites starting in the early eighteenth century, such as the Grand Lodge of England, to contemporary Haitian Vodou visual and material culture. In addition to the case studies, the editors have generously provided the reader with an extended bibliography of the kind so frequently missing in anthologies. The [End Page 327] volume's essays were sourced from a College Art Association session chaired by Reva Wolf in 2016 and a set of three sessions on Freemasonry and the Visual Arts at the Second World Conference on Fraternalism, Freemasonry, and History in 2017 at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. It would appear that the combination of sources contributed to the disciplinary and geographic range of the authors. The scope of the volume is ambitious, especially its additional claim of not only a historical but a global perspective. That said, it is important to note that the contributions are explicitly the particular interests of the authors; they are selected case studies. The volume does not comprise chapters commissioned to cover the entire scope of the relationship between Freemasonry and the visual arts, nor, as these selections indicate, could any single volume contain that totality. Organized chronologically, five of the eleven case studies are situated in the long (and broad) eighteenth century, and it is these on which I focus. In the first of these, art historian David Martín López asks the question of what would change if we were to posit that noted Portuguese Enlightenment politician, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, Marquis of Pombal and Count of Oeiras, was a Freemason? How would this alter our interpretations of the Marquis of Pombal and, more discretely, how would his architectural projects in Lisbon following the devastation of the 1755 earthquake be alternatively understood through this lens, and, conversely, how might an analysis of the architecture and urban planning spearheaded by the Marquis of Pombal provide evidence for his affiliation with Freemasonry? Biographical evidence, including the Marquis of Pombal's friendship with known...

About “Ivans of Oblivious Origin”: One of the Strategies of Social Mobility in Eighteenth-Century Russia

In the Russian legal system, the phenomenon of persons of oblivious origin emerged in the early eighteenth century. During population censuses, enumerators discovered a number of people, unaware of their parents and places of domicile, who subsequently did not belong to any social stratum. Despite its realization that many persons of oblivious origin were in fact runaway peasants and deserters, the government decided to use them to increase its population in different parts of the country instead of returning them to their official localities. At the same time, some runaways independently managed to be added to the census rolls in towns and villages, thereby changing their social status. As a result, the examination of the issue of people of oblivious origin as one of the strategies of deception improves our understanding of adaptation tools and everyday practices, employed by the inhabitants of the Russian Empire.

Affective Profit

Affective Profit

Категория совести в нравственном богословии XVIII – первой половины XIX в.

The article presents a general overview of the interpretation of the category of conscience in the Synodal period. As a theological term, the word “conscience” entered the Old Russian language together with Christianity, that is why virtually all its meanings were associated with the New Testament and the texts of the Holy Fathers. Speaking of conscience, the scribes of the pre-Synodal pore understood it in a traditional way for Eastern Christianity. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a systematic description of conscience as a moral category emerged under the influence of a methodology that had taken shape in the West, primarily in the context of what was commonly referred to as casuistry. A peculiarity of this approach was the emphasis on a vague or scrupulous conscience and its errors. Later in the second half of the 18th century, the Catholic influence was replaced by a Protestant one, which affected the way of thinking about conscience in the first half of the next century as well. The doctrine of conscience became more balanced, because the emphasis was no longer only on error, but on its transformation by the grace of baptism. Finally, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the first experiments in the independent courses in moral theology appeared, the authors of which considered conscience in the context of sacred theology.

The Pluralization of Scripture in Early American Protestantism: Competing Bible Translations and the Debate over Universal Salvation, ca. 1700–1780

ABSRACTThis article addresses a pervasive historiographic assumption about the supremacy of the King James Bible in British North America by proposing that a process we call the “pluralization of Scriptures” forced colonial Protestants to square their belief in “the Bible” with the undeniable reality of many “bibles.” While the KJV remained dominant among anglophone Protestant populations, by the early eighteenth century some heirs of New England Puritanism were challenging its adequacy and pushing for improved translations of key passages, as members of the clerical intelligentsia became immersed in cutting-edge textual and historical scholarship. Also, during the eighteenth century, non-English cultures of biblicism with their own religious print markets formed in the middle colonies, most importantly among diasporic communities of German Protestants, who brought the Luther Bible to America, and diverse “heterodox” Bibles associated with radical Pietist groups. This essay contends that, well before the American Revolution, the advent of Higher Criticism in American seminaries, and the first wave of English-language Bible production in the early republic, Scripture had ceased to be a static, monolithic entity. A considerable number of alternative translations and commentary traditions in a variety of different languages came to co-exist and, at some points, also interact with each other. Moreover, we argue that competing translations, even of passages speaking to core Christian doctrines, were inextricably bound up with some of the most significant controversies among colonial Protestants, such as the debate over the doctrine of universal salvation, our main case study.

A tree-ring record of historical fire activity in a piedmont longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) woodland in North Carolina, USA

BackgroundLongleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) ecosystems were historically widespread in the North American Coastal Plain and in some southeastern piedmont and montane settings. The naval stores industry, deforestation, and other human activities resulted in an extensive loss (c. 97% loss) of the original woodlands and savannas. Longleaf pine ecosystems are maintained by frequent surface fire which promotes successful regeneration and maintains open canopy conditions and a largely herbaceous understory. Fire regimes (including the frequency and seasonality of fire) likely varied across the entire range of longleaf pine and through time; further research is needed to elucidate this variability.ResultsWe used fire scars in stumps and snags to reconstruct fire history in a piedmont longleaf pine ecosystem in North Carolina. For each tree sampled, we examined multiple cross sections to avoid omission of fire events recorded by smaller fire scars. Our samples revealed evidence of frequent fire (c. 3–4-year fire interval) beginning in the early eighteenth century and extending to the mid-nineteenth century. Fires occurred in the dormant and early earlywood positions of annual rings and were likely human ignited.ConclusionsTo our knowledge, this is the first tree-ring-based fire history in longleaf pine of the piedmont. As such, it offers a rare glimpse into historical fire activity in a now scarce but important ecological setting. More research is needed to develop additional fire chronologies in the piedmont region, including for longer periods of time and for larger spatial areas.

The Emergence of a Theatrical Science of Man in France, 1660–1740

The Emergence of a Theatrical Science of Man in France, 1660–1740