European Contemporaries Research Articles

Wang Fu-chih's Views on History and Historical Writing

In the seventeenth century, at the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Ch'ing dynasties, China produced three outstanding scholars: Huang Tsung-hsi (1619–95), Ku Yen-wu (1613–82), and Wang Fu-chih (1619–92), all great thinkers, voluminous writers, and ardent patriots. The social and political chaos, economic deterioration, excess of Wang Yang-ming's intuitionism, and, above all, the conquest of China by the Manchus must have stimulated the best minds to develop their ideas in a more practical direction. They were contemporaries of René Descartes 1596–1650) and Blaise Pascal (1623–62) and only slightly earlier than Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Confined by their cultural tradition and living in a vast but largely isolated empire, these men naturally developed ideas different from those of their European contemporaries. But they had enough challenges of their own to meet. The originality in their ideas bespeaks the intellectual vigor of late imperial China.

Wang Fu-chih's Views on History and Historical Writing

In the seventeenth century, at the end of the Ming and the beginning of the Ch'ing dynasties, China produced three outstanding scholars: Huang Tsung-hsi (1619–95), Ku Yen-wu (1613–82), and Wang Fu-chih (1619–92), all great thinkers, voluminous writers, and ardent patriots. The social and political chaos, economic deterioration, excess of Wang Yang-ming's intuitionism, and, above all, the conquest of China by the Manchus must have stimulated the best minds to develop their ideas in a more practical direction. They were contemporaries of René Descartes 1596–1650) and Blaise Pascal (1623–62) and only slightly earlier than Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Confined by their cultural tradition and living in a vast but largely isolated empire, these men naturally developed ideas different from those of their European contemporaries. But they had enough challenges of their own to meet. The originality in their ideas bespeaks the intellectual vigor of late imperial China.

Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade

The Atlantic slave trade was one of the greatest intercontinental migrations in world history. Today, about one-third of all people of African descent live outside Africa. Yet the The black people of the history new world sundiata djata northern illinois university. The political and enslaved within west, african history in which thousands of the transatlantic? Such concern to the documents collected, it was difficult yet. Revolt was even less com munities or translated. They gave the non european contemporaries, during that shown here schomburg. Aaron kuku and sometimes shocking personal experiences each narrative by the history. The essential character of african voices heard. They provide readers with whom spiess in west. They provide readers with the greatest, intercontinental migrations in philadelphia pennsylvania philip. It so that openly and maps silence. Today about how ordinary west african history according. Individuals are descended born in which he moved! During this crucial period life histories that shown here. Yet the past but on international congress. They gave the african descent live outside africa africa. In he also has gained recognition for years as an oral histories. Andrew clark university of aaron kuku an abstract. That it so that the image below is felt their own evangelical. Paul sands's diary is one third of the filtering. Yet the university from which he, received a number of such concern to eweland. 1500 to enable the new world history of this type are rare herskovits. Slavery are descended this is necessary to his eventual escape and continental africa remembered.

The American Past: Is it Still Usable?

The past, in the course of its ever-recurring encounters with the demands inflicted on it by the present, enjoys one inestimable advantage: it cannot answer, it is not even listening. ‘We ask and ask, thou smilest and art still’, we might almost say, giving to Arnold's ponderous lines a touch of unintended meaning. In spite of appearances to the contrary, even the American past is in the same position. Even after the lapse (the ‘revolution’, as Gibbon would have said) of more than three and a half centuries of continuous settlement, the historian who has been educated entirely in the tradition and the environment of the United States needs rather more than his European contemporary's normal degree of subtlety if he is to free himself from the peculiarly American version of the space-time continuum.

‘Nobkissen Versus Hastings’

In the sixth Article of Impeachment brought against him by the House of Commons, Warren Hastings was accused of disobeying the Regulating Act of 1773 and the orders of the Court of Directors of the East India Company by accepting presents from various Indians. These presents included a sum of three lakhs of sicca rupees, or £37,500, described as a loan from Maharaja Nabakrishna, or ‘Nobkissen’ as he was usually known to his European contemporaries. Both the prosecution and the defence agreed that Hastings had originally borrowed the three lakhs, subsequently keeping them and using them to repay money which he claimed was owed to him by the East India Company. The prosecution maintained that Hastings had ‘fraudulently’ extracted the loan and that he had ‘corruptly and illegally’ retained it as a present, inventing the pretext that the Company owed him money. Hastings replied that Nobkissen had converted the loan into a present of his own free will, and that he had accepted it on the Company's behalf and had used it to repay money genuinely spent on its service in the past. His version convinced a majority of those members of the House of Lords who took part in the verdict at the end of the trial, and he was acquitted by 20 votes to 5 on that particular section of the Presents Article. The episode did not, however, end with the Impeachment. Nobkissen filed a Bill against Hastings in the Court of Chancery for the return of his money, and, although he was unsuccessful, much new evidence was disclosed which would have had an important bearing on the Impeachment. The purpose of this article is to review Hastings's relations with Nobkissen in the light of this new material. It may still be possible to accept the peers' verdict that Hastings had acted neither ‘fraudulently’ nor ‘illegally and corruptly’, but before this verdict can be accepted, very much more will have to be taken into account than was discussed at the Impeachment.

Growth and Production Characteristics of Holstein-Friesian, Brown Swiss, and Red Sindhi Crossbred Females in Louisiana and Maryland

Summary Red Sindhis were crossed with Holstein-Friesians (H) at two stations and with Brown Swiss (BS) at a third station for the purposes of studying growth and productive adaptability of dairy cattle in the southern region of the United States. The growth and productive performances of 33F 1 and 21 3 4 H animals have been compared with their purebred H contemporaries or herd-mates. Productive performances of 30F 1 and 25 3 4 BS have been compared with their BS herd-mates. The F 1 and 3 4 H animals were significantly smaller (P = All of the crossbred groups were significantly (P = 1 s and their European contemporaries were greater (P =

Thomas Jefferson's Use of the Past

T o the intelligent if casual observer, American preoccupation with Jefferson must prove utterly bewildering. No other revolutionary figure looms so large on the historical horizon, and certainly no other has received so frequent and so constant a testimonial to his varied talents and achievements. Thomas Jefferson has been examined as an Architect, Classical Scholar, Philosopher, Humanist, Tourist, Apostle of Americanism, and even as Himself.' Yet despite the abundant attention accorded Jefferson, the very fragmentation of scholarly studies has tended to produce a biographical portrait lacking in the firmness of line necessary to understanding. Too often Jefferson has been presented as a philosopher without a context, or a politician without consistent principles, and he is entitled to a more generous presentation: namely as an intellectual product of the Age of Reason, a Lockian idealist with a naive belief in the perfectability of man. But this, too, is only a part of the real Jefferson, and the incompleteness of the portrait has been due largely to an omission of the Jefferson historical perspective. As an American philosopher Jefferson shared with certain European contemporaries common attitudes toward history and its uses, and both his ideas of the past and his employment of those ideas contribute substantially to our understanding of Jefferson and his revolutionary generation. In 1764 Lord Chesterfield told his godson: You cannot imagine how much credit and reputation you will get in the world by knowing history well.2 But the eighteenth century had its uses for history that went

Robert Livingston (1654-1728): Businessman of Colonial New York

Robert Livingston's career provides the first opportunity to consider in detail the emergence of an early New York businessman. Trained in business in Rotterdam, he brought to the New World the experience, knowledge, and techniques of one of the most advanced commercial centers of his day. On the Albany frontier he applied the Old World's business methods to advantage and gradually emerged as a dominant figure in colonial New York. His records and business correspondence leave no doubt that Livingston belonged to that class of businessmen often referred to as sedentary or resident merchants, though he did not employ as many agents and partners as his later, more mature counterparts. Neither did he engage in as many ventures or perform as many functions as the Browns, Hancocks, and other late eighteenth-century merchants, nor did he create an impressive business organization at home or abroad as was customary among certain European contemporaries. Still, as a wholesaler and retailer, importer and exporter, shipowner and land speculator, Livingston was an early New York practitioner of diversified business functions and investments. His extensive land dealings, no doubt motivated in part by the social prestige attached to real estate, were undertaken primarily as a source of credit and revenue. Livingston Manor was operated as a business enterprise: some of it was cultivated on Livingston's behalf, parts were leased to tenants who provided for the Lord of the Manor not only rents but a steady market for the goods he obtained in overseas trading ventures, and other sections were devoted to various manufacturing enterprises. Livingston's political life was an integral and necessary part of his business ventures, which reflected at all points the total instability of most colonial institutions. From the details of Livingstons many-sided commercial life emerges a rare picture of an embryonic business society in which the means were sorely taxed to achieve the ends conceived by ambitious men.

Words From Wales

Some years ago, during a classical congress which we attended, my wife in conversation with a fellow member, an intelligent woman, well connected, well read and widely travelled, happened to say that I had devoted some of my leisure to translating specimens of Welsh literature, and the reply was: “Is there any Welsh literature to translate?”’The story was told by Sir Idris Bell in the broadcast talk he gave to introduce a series on ‘The Literary Tradition of Wales’ (reprinted in The Welsh Review, Winter, 1947), and the question is, as he says, typical and significant. Welsh is spoken today by close on a million people; its literature has more than a thousand years of unbroken tradition, and can claim poets such as Dafydd ap Gwilym and Tudur Aled who need fear no comparison with any European contemporaries; and the modem revival of Welsh writing has, in such men as T. Gwynn Jones, B. Williams Parry and Saunders Lewis, falsified any idea that Welsh is antique—and useless. Yet these facts are constantly received with incredulity. A summary account of books and periodicals that have appeared in the last few months may, then, help to complete the picture of Wales this number of Blackfriars is designed to give.The silver jubilee in 1947 of Urdd Gobaith Cymru (The Welsh League of Youth, which has today over eighty thousand members) was an important event in Welsh life and was fittingly celebrated by the publication of Y Llinyn Arian (Urdd Office, Aberystwyth, 15s.), an anthology of original work by Welsh writers, painters and musicians, which is evident proof of the vitality of Wesh culture.

William Billings: Pioneer in American Music

W E who invade the thickly populated concert-halls, opera houses, and musical stadiums of the present generation too often ignore or are unaware of the struggle the art of music has persistently faced since its infancy, to free itself from its servitude to other arts, to escape from the misusages of charlatans, and to reach ever greater heights. It is not only because William Billings (1746-18oo) was the first American to make music his profession, or because he wrote and published the first significant volume of original music by an American, or because he was the founder of the oldest musical society in America-the Stoughton Musical Society, of Stoughton, Massachusetts-that we should remember him: it is rather because his writings and influence figured so significantly in the transition that American music underwent from its Puritan origin to the nineteenth century. All great musical culminators have of necessity been influenced by their predecessors and often by their contemporaries. The resources which William Billings inherited did not provide such paved routes; his progress was generated by his deep inherent interest in the art, by his strength of character, and by the encouragement of his friends. That he wrote unimportant music as judged by our present standards becomes obvious without minute analysis. But one cannot judge it too harshly when one considers how little it was based upon the innovations of his immediate predecessors, Bach and Haindel, or upon those of his European contemporaries, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, who were comparatively unknown in this country. Rather the music of Billings was written to the specifications of an age of apprenticeship which music served for centuries before it attained self-reliance.

The Sociology of Ferdinand Tonnies

Modern German sociology bears many traces of the influence of the various academic disciplines from which the present generation of German sociologist were recruited. It reflects the current philosophical thought of the various schools. One of the most important and influential figures of today is Tonnies, who was greatly influenced by Hobbes. Spencer, and Sir Henry Maine. His most important contribution consists of the fundamental dichotomy, community and society. The former refers to natural, organic groups; the latter to artificial and conscious and deliberate groupings. In accordance with this distinction he conceives of sociology as capable of division into two great fields: general and special sociology. The former, deals with social life in any form, conscious or unconscious. It includes social biology and social pshychology. Special sociology consists of pure, applied and empirical sociology. It deals mainly with structural forms of social life as seen through the concepts community and society. His three most important works are Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft; Die Sitte, which is a study of the mores; and Kritik der offentlichen Meinung, which is a comprehensive study of social movements and public opinion. Tonnies has systematically exploited a limited number of basic concepts and has attempted to see the whole of experience in terms of these. This has resulted in a conceptual and distorted point of view on the one hand, but a thorough analysis of a very limited phase of experience in intellectualistic terms on the other. In this he is fairly typical of a great number of his European contemporaries.