Hereditary Nobility Research Articles

Place, Class, and the Destruction of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby From the Perspective of Space

This study is a spatial analysis of The Great Gatsby (1925). This novel presents the power game among various white classes in American society in the context of the Roaring Twenties, with obvious spatial characteristics. The geographical distribution between East Egg, West Egg, and the Valley of Ashes presents the high-and-low-class distinction of different classes in social space. The upper classes practice class oppression and exploitation through space, while the lower classes also use space to resist oppression and climb the class ladder. This paper draws on French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s spatial ideas, especially the spatial triad, to explore the close connection between space and class in the novel. The Great Gatsby encompasses various class groups in white society, including the hereditary aristocracy like the Buchanans, the new money represented by Gatsby, and the lower class represented by the Wilsons. To modify the spatial order, different classes use space as a medium to preserve their class identity and seek their social presence, which reproduces the illusion of the American Dream of the Jazz Age and reveals Fitzgerald’s humanistic concern for people in spatial relations.

Гемптон-корт палац і «тисяча днів королеви Анни».

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the coronation of Anne Boleyn as Queen of England , on 1 June 1533. In Tudor history, 7th September 1533, Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, gave birth to Queen Elizabeth I. And this year marks the 500th anniversary of Elizabeth I’s birth. In 2022, on the March 4 marked 500 years to the day of Anne’s first recorded appearance at the English court in 1522. On September 1, 1532, Henry VIII had taken an unprecedented step: He had elevated a woman into England’s hereditary nobility. It was both a gift of love and compensation for enduring years of frustration while Henry tried to put an end to his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. The article devoted to Hampton Court Palace and Anne Boleyn the Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of King Henrich VIII. Anne Boleyn is called 'Anne of the Thousand Days' because Henrich VIII replaced her after roughly three years. Anne who waited seven years to marry the King was dismissed and disgraced within a third of that time. Despite ruling for just three years during the Tudor dynasty, Anne Boleyn is one of the most famous queens in British History. She played a major role in the English Reformation along with Henry VIII. The author presents the events of Tudor history before Anne Boleyn’s coronation, which will be described in the next article.

Hampton Court Palace and 'Anne of the Thousand Days'

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the coronation of Anne Boleyn as Queen of England , on 1 June 1533. In Tudor history, 7th September 1533, Queen Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, gave birth to Queen Elizabeth I. And this year marks the 500th anniversary of Elizabeth I’s birth. In 2022, on the March 4 marked 500 years to the day of Anne’s first recorded appearance at the English court in 1522. On September 1, 1532, Henry VIII had taken an unprecedented step: He had elevated a woman into England’s hereditary nobility. It was both a gift of love and compensation for enduring years of frustration while Henry tried to put an end to his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. The article devoted to Hampton Court Palace and Anne Boleyn the Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of King Henrich VIII. Anne Boleyn is called 'Anne of the Thousand Days' because Henrich VIII replaced her after roughly three years. Anne who waited seven years to marry the King was dismissed and disgraced within a third of that time. Despite ruling for just three years during the Tudor dynasty, Anne Boleyn is one of the most famous queens in British History. She played a major role in the English Reformation along with Henry VIII. The author presents Hampton Court Palace in London and its History, its historic landscape gardens features elements that illustrate significant periods of the art of gardens.

State Power, Social Life, and Russian Nobles in the 18th Century

State Power, Social Life, and Russian Nobles in the 18th Century Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter (bio) Ol´ga Glagoleva and Ingrid Shirle (Schierle), eds., Kul´tura i byt dvorianstva v provintsial´noi Rossii XVIII veka (The Culture and Everyday Life of 18th-Century Provincial Gentry), vols. 1–3. 556 + 567 + 598 pp., illus. Moscow: Politicheskaia entsiklopediia, 2021. ISBN-13 978-5824324204. Andreas Schönle and Andrei Zorin, On the Periphery of Europe, 1762–1825: The Self-Invention of the Russian Elite. xii + 242 pp. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2018. ISBN-13 978-0875807850. $39.00. The Europeanized elite, the Russian nobility, the provincial nobility, the court nobility, elite and lesser nobles, hereditary and service nobles, landowning and landless nobles, educated society (obshchestvo or publika), and "people of various ranks" (raznochintsy)—these familiar terms illustrate the multiplicity of social realities that defined Russia's educated and service classes in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Historians and literary scholars long have understood that the Russian elite cannot be equated solely with the service and/or landowning nobilities. Merchants and educated non-noble servicemen, though bounded by institutions such as serfdom and the Petrine Table of Ranks, also aspired to the legal and cultural status of hereditary noble. Whatever the economic circumstances and cultural accretions attained by upwardly mobile individuals, hereditary nobility writ large remained the primary embodiment of the state-initiated project of Europeanization. The significant number of unrequited claimants to noble status illustrates the dynamics of aspiration: 560 out of 1,000 petitioners seeking to enter military service with noble rights in 1820; 3,215 petitioners seeking confirmation of noble status by the Ministry of Justice in 1845 (compared to 3,332 who were [End Page 381] confirmed); and 3,320 in 1846 (compared to 3,013 confirmed).1 Seasoned readers of Russian history readily associate these sociocultural ambiguities with the formation of the all-class (or above-class) Russian intelligentsia. But how can specialists convey the significance of such details to a broader reading public? ________ How best to describe the process of Europeanization for "a broadly educated reader" is precisely the task embraced by Andreas Schönle and Andrei Zorin in their elegant work of synthesis, On the Periphery of Europe, the second volume in a project devoted to the creation of a Europeanized Russian elite.2 Although in the introduction the authors define the elite with reference to the "elitist identity" of individuals—whether or not an individual defined himself or herself "as part of the 'cream' of the country and acted accordingly" (5)—the book is really about a subsection of nobles who consciously sought to become European, pursued moral transformation and autonomy through literary activities, and interiorized the "requirement to act on behalf of the public good and rise above their sole private interest" (5). In post-Petrine Russia, the authors argue, and continuing until the Decembrist Rebellion of 1825, service to the monarch for the common good could not be disentangled from moral self-development or intentional Europeanization. Over time, and especially after the 1762 emancipation from obligatory service, the top-down cultural revolution of Peter the Great gave way to an internalized emotional identification with the monarch, the court, and the empire's greatness in war, diplomacy, education, and culture. As the process of Europeanization unfolded, the elite—defined in cultural terms rather than with reference to socioeconomic or political structures—had to navigate a complicated emotional space defined by a strong service ethos, attachment to the monarch and court, the association of progress with integration into Europe, pride in Russianness and in Russia's cultural achievements, and a sense of individuality and moral autonomy that increasingly produced conflict between personal aspirations and the demands of state service. By 1825, the cultivated elite's [End Page 382] internalized identification with the monarch, court, and state power had come to an end. Based on synthesis of scholarly studies and the letters, travel diaries, memoirs, poetry, and literature of recognized authors and public figures, Schönle and Zorin explore the emergence of an educated noble elite that from the mid-18th century became socially and culturally differentiated from the court, the broader urban population...

The political economy of Solon’s law against neutrality in civil wars

In 594 BCE, the Athenian lawgiver Solon, called upon to resolve a deepening social crisis, introduced a new constitution and mandated that in civil conflicts, no citizen is to remain apathetic and must take sides. Because the law seemed to support strife, it presents a puzzle. The paper offers a political economy rationale for Solon’s law against neutrality, modeling social conflict as a rent-seeking competition. We divide society into three groups, a hereditary aristocracy, which monopolized power before the Solonian constitution, a rival wealth-based commercial elite, called the new Solonian elite, and the poor, who are enfranchised only partly. We then identify the conditions under which the third group is better off by allying with one of the other groups, protecting the Solonian constitution. In our framework, Solon’s ban on neutrality is an attempt to change the payoffs from violent redistributions of rents, so that conflict is avoided. Accordingly, the ban should not only impede excessive rent seeking, but also prevent the exclusion of any social group.

Cacicas: The Indigenous Women Leaders of Spanish America, 1492–1825

From the time of Christopher Columbus, Spaniards developed the notion of Indians as a sweeping cultural category, and their empire soon evolved a system of law and governance based on the theory of parallel Indian and Spanish republics. This system incorporated Native leaders whom Spaniards termed caciques. The word itself was borrowed from Caribbean Tainos, but Spaniards applied it liberally to Native leaders throughout the empire. Cacicas (female caciques) are surprisingly common in the documentary record, though they have not always received adequate attention from historians. This excellent edited volume addresses the omission. In nine chapters by leading historians in the field, several general findings emerge: Cacicas exerted considerable influence in colonial systems through their control of property, their feudal privileges, and their occasional appointment to political offices more typically held by men. Many invoked their status to great advantage in legal conflicts and local politics.The position of cacicas was most stable and enduring in the core areas of Spanish viceroyalties where colonial institutions were built on a foundation of preconquest empires. Bradley Benton's chapter on cacicas from central Mexico describes the formation and preservation of complex alliances among the elite families of Texcoco and Teotihuacan. The descendants operated as both local leaders and imperial clients who survived as a permanent elite under Spanish rule. Despite diminishing political power, male and female members of these families retained considerable influence and social standing even in the late eighteenth century. Sara Vicuña Guengerich gives us a portrait of Teresa Choquehuanca, a Peruvian cacica in the era of late colonial Andean rebellions. Choquehuanca was a descendant of Inca lords, a governor, and an influential loyalist. She struggled to simultaneously advance her own interests and those of the colonial regime in her capacities as a landowner, businesswoman, and regional official charged with the extraction of tribute and labor from the peasantry. A chapter by Liliana Pérez Miguel and Renzo Honores and another by Karen Graubart describe the persistence of powerful cacicas in lowland Peru, where capullanas (female chiefs) had existed at the time of first contact. In both cases, litigation records reveal an era in which Native titles and privileges were hotly contested. At the same time, this legal and political climate offered a path to power for elite Native women who operated as clients of the viceroyalty.The book is also attentive to women's leadership in frontier spaces where the position of cacicas was more loosely defined. Peter Villella's chapter on the Tapias of Querétaro describes a family of Indigenous soldiers on a mining frontier who transformed themselves into a new regional nobility. In this case women's leadership was rooted not in a preconquest hereditary nobility but in the mechanisms of alliance, conquest, and cocolonization that permitted rising families to become civic founders and long-term elites. A chapter by Florencia Roulet also addresses hybrid elites in frontier spaces—in this case, the pampas region on the southern Río de la Plata frontier. The area's inhabitants were considered barbarians by the Spanish, but barbarians led by a recognizable group of caciques. Cacicas rose to prominence at this moment not so much through their ties to an ancestral aristocracy but through their roles as diplomats and translators, which gave them influence among Spaniards and Native peoples alike.The women studied by this book occupied a wide range of positions on the continuum of status in colonial society. Some were wealthy and powerful descendants of incas and tlatoque, and several were significant regional rulers in their own right. Others were more humble community elites. A chapter by Margarita Ochoa on Mexico City and one by Catherine Komisaruk on cases from the Kingdom of Guatemala provide intimate portraits of women who, though they invoked the language and history of nobility, were people of middling means, fighting to hold on to property and status among their neighbors.Cacicas leaves a few loose ends. Chantal Caillavet's chapter on the northern Andes is something of a prospectus for future research, but one that offers emerging researchers a helpful blueprint for the use of testaments in the reconstruction of social history. An appendix by the late Patrick Werner, though not a chapter in the strictest sense, is a valuable resource. He has left future researchers of cacicazgos in Nicaragua a guide to the Colección Somoza, a database of underutilized colonial sources from the Archivo General de Indias.Unlike most edited volumes, this one is suitable for use in the classroom. Though the book is based on new research from experts in the field, the prologue (by Ida Altman), the introduction (by the editors), and the conclusion (by Mónica Díaz) offer student-readers an excellent introduction to the subject of cacicas, to the relevant historiography, and to the broader field of Native elites under Spanish rule.

MODERN BRITISH CULTURE AND ARISTOCRACY

The article provides an analysis of the contemporary British aristocracy, which promotes the monarchical principle. The aristocratic aspect, class division and social hierarchy remain important components of the modern culture of Great Britain. In addition to the traditional hereditary aristocracy, which actively participates in public life, one can also talk about the aristocracy of the middle class, which partly adopted and inherited the traditions of high society.

Katrina O’Loughlin. Women, Writing, and Travel in the Eighteenth Century.

Katrina O’Loughlin. <i>Women, Writing, and Travel in the Eighteenth Century</i>.

The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics, by S. Elizabeth Penry

This book by Elizabeth Penry gives a history of ordinary Andeans of the Audiencia de Charcas who, throughout the centuries of Spanish domination, defined themselves by reinterpreting colonial institutions and ideas. It shows how those people struggled to govern themselves and to acquire full rights. It also demonstrates how they moved from ‘a politics of hereditary nobility, the caciques, to a hybrid form of participatory democracy, with the town council at its heart, that had roots in both the Andean and Spanish worlds’ (p. 3). This history is based on an impressive analysis of historical sources coming from many archives, and written with microhistory tools: interwoven stories that make a complex transformation comprehensible. Penry poses an important question that is the main thread of the book: what is the común? She traces the use of the word ‘común’ from the late seventeenth century until it became widespread during the revolutions of the 1780s. Común was, in Penry’s view, ‘the Andean voice’ of popular sovereignty, a term that only referred to the common people and not to the hereditary nobility. It was, however, a term that was not always in use, so she needed to reconstruct its history. For this purpose, she focuses on two pre-Conquest federations, the Killaka and the Karanqa. Within their territories, she concentrates on five highland towns, refounded with Christian patron saints in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The geography of the book also comprises the distant valleys belonging to those federations, which were located within the Qaraqara territory.

ГЕРБОВЫЕ ИЗОБРАЖЕНИЯ НА ПОРТРЕТАХ ВОЙСКОВОГО АТАМАНА ДОНСКОГО ВОЙСКА Д.Е. ЕФРЕМОВА И ОСОБЕННОСТИ ФОРМИРОВАНИЯ ЮЖНОРОССИЙСКОГО ДВОРЯНСТВА В XVIII ВЕКЕ. ЧАСТЬ 2

The article examines the main heraldic concepts and categories that affect the controversial issues of the topic. Considerable attention is paid to the reasons and conditions for the origin and placement of heraldic and non-heraldic figures on the coat of arms of D.E. Efremov, the nature and content of the heraldic images and their symbolism are considered. The author traces the ideological and heraldic continuity between the family coats of arms of different generations of the Efremovs family, their influence on the formation of region-al noble heraldry. The article analyzes the process of formation of the Don nobility from the first highest awards to individuals to the formation of the ranks and awards of the social corporation of officials through seniority, and its transformation as a result of the policy of Emperor Paul I into the highest estate of the Russian Empire. The article examines the legal framework for the acquisition of the rights and privileges of the hereditary nobility by the Don elders, identifies common and emphasizes different processes from those in the Malorussian and Russian provinces. The article describes new phenomena in the military, political and social life of the Don army in connection with the awards of the ranks of the Russian regular army to the senior officers - this is the restriction of military (ordinary) law and the formation of subordination on the basis of imperial legislation, as well as the creation of a new social hierarchy and military management.

ОБРАЗ ДИНАСТИИ БЕКМУХАМЕДОВЫХ В ПРОЦЕССЕ СОЦИАЛЬНЫХ ИЗМЕНЕНИЙ КАЗАХСКОЙ СТЕПИ (XIX – НАЧАЛО XXВВ.)

In the article, based on new archival documents extracted from the funds of the central archives of Kazakhstan and Russia, the process of embedding the Bekmukhamedov family into the imperial and Soviet system of government will be considered. Their destinies and careers reflected the choice of a range of opportunities that existed in their historical time. The founder of the Bekmukhamedov dynasty, foreman of the serkesh clan of the Inner Horde, biy Choltur served as adviser to Jangir Khan, deputy of the Enotaevsk district of the Astrakhan province.His son, Mukhamedzhan, a graduate of the Orenburg Cadet Corps, went from a translator to the Sultan of the 1st and 2nd Primorsk districts of the Inner Horde, entered the privileged estate of the Russian Empire - hereditary nobility. The third generation of Bekmukhamedovs met a new challenge, namely the revolutionary events of 1917, which became the basis for their inclusion in the Soviet system of government. ShavkatBekmukhamedov became a member of the Kazrevkom, the People’s Commissariat of Justice, the commission for the preparation of the Constitution of the ASSR. The Bekmukhamedov dynasty reflected all those social changes that took place at the late 19th - early 20th centuries in the Kazakh steppe, namely the transition from nomadic institutions of power to the Russian administrative structure and then the Soviet system.Key words: Kazakh officials, nobility of the Russian Empire, administrative reforms, Soviet power.

Дискриминационная экономическая политика российского правительства в отношении дворян-католиков Беларуси (вторая половина XIX – начало ХХ в.)

Introduction. The upper class of Belarus within the Russian Empire attracted the attention of researchers. However, the restrictive economic policy of the Russian government towards the nobility of the Roman Catholic faith has not been the subject of special study. The aim of the article is to identify the main aspects of the discriminative policy of the autocracy against the Catholic nobility of Belarus in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. Methodology. The study is based on the fundamental principles of historical knowledge – historicism, objectivity, value-based approach, and traditional general scientific and concrete historical methods were used to implement the research tasks. Results. In 1858 in the Belarusian provinces the hereditary nobility made up one third of the upper class of the European part of Russia. The implementation of the “parsing the shliahta” policy led to a sharp reduction in the Catholic nobility by 1865. The government sought to economically undermine the economic activities of the Catholic nobility and equalize Russian and Catholic land ownership in the Belarusian region. This was reflected in the preferential sale of sequestered and confiscated estates, the prohibition of land purchases by Catholics, all kinds of fines and especially through contribution fee and a tax to support the Orthodox clergy. Conclusion. The government’s discriminative policy towards Catholic nobility was aimed at curbing the economic activity of “the Poles” in Belarus. The main elements of its implementation were the sequestration and confiscation of the estates of Catholics who directly or indirectly participated in the uprising of 1863–1864, various fines, the prohibition of the purchase of land holdings, contribution fee, taxes on maintaining the Orthodox Church, etc. At the same time, this policy did not lead to the expected results. At the beginning of the 20th century the Catholic nobility outnumbered the Russian nobility in land ownership.

К вопросу о том, как «железные псы» Батуидов разломали «золотую юрту» своих «хозяев»

Research objective: As the ruler of the Golden Horde from 1361 to 1362, Khidr became the first khan to represent the Shibanid dynasty, while all previous represen­tatives of this dynasty remained loyal to the Batuids until he came to power. This situation forms one of the key moments of the initial period of the “Great Troubles”. This article is devoted to the circumstances and consequences of the ascension and the short-term rule of this Khan in the Golden Horde. In addition, the goal here is to highlight the role and inte­rests of the high hereditary metropolitan and regional aristocracy in these events. Research materials: Since, as a result of the latest research, Chinggis-nama is recognized as a source that preserves historical facts, rather than merely folk elements as was previously thought, it is necessary to involve Ötemish Hajji’s work in covering those histo­rical events and processes where it contains a unique information regarding them. At the same time, because it is still difficult to distinguish between the factual and the mythological elements of its content, verification of Chinggis-nama’s information with information from other sources (as well as from archaeology, numismatics, and other auxiliary historical disciplines) is required when possible. So, the main source used in the article is the historical Chinggis-nama of Ötemish Hajji. Additional sources are Russian chronicles, Tawarikh-i guzida-i Nusrat-nama, Muntakhab al-tawarikh-i Muini by Muin al-Din Natanzi, a Venetian source by Benedetto Bianco which was very recently introduced into scholarly circulation, and others. Results and novelty of the research: This article is one of the first studies, using the account of Ötemish Hajji as a main historical source for analysing and reconstructing a real historical event (namely, the seizure of power by the Shibanids in the Golden Horde in 1360) and its consequences. It is proposed to continue to involve this source in the study of historical events, but with great caution. Regarding the stated topic, the author of the present article dares to hope that the results of such work bring new and significant contribution to the research of this rather poorly studied period in the history of the Ulus of Jochi. Especially, the results help to reveal and emphasize the causes and circumstances that led the Golden Horde into a period of great turmoil, i.e., the “Great Troubles”.

Boris Vladimirovich Zalessky (1887—1966): Unknown Pages of the Biography of the Scientist

New biographical data about the Russian scientist-geologist, specialist in the field of petrography B. V. Zalessky are identified and specified. The links in the history of the Zalessky (Zalesky) family, which belonged to the hereditary nobility of the Kazan province, who had estates in the Vyatka, Kazan and Kostroma provinces, are being restored. Verified information about the closest relatives of B. V. Zalessky is provided: his great-grandfather — the honorary caretaker of the Yaransky district school P.A. Zalessky; grandfather — a member of the city council of Kazan, comrade of the mayor and acting mayor N. P. Zalessky; father — the prosecutor of the Vyatka, then the Kazan district court, later the assistant to the chief prosecutor of the Criminal Cassation Department of the Government Senate V. N. Zalessky (erroneously presented in the works of a number of researchers as “Zalsky”), etc. The characteristic of the personality, scientific activity and social circle of B. V. Zalessky is given. His relations with famous figures of Russian science and culture — M. M. Bakhtin, the Florensky family are considered. Scattered information contained in various sources — unpublished (archival) and published (scientific articles and monographs, memoirs and epistolary sources, documentary prose, reference and encyclopedic literature and Internet publications) is collected and generalized.

Наследственная элита казахского социума XVII–XIX вв. в научном наследии Ирины Ерофеевой

The personality and creativity of the Kazakh scientist Irina Viktorovna Yerofeyeva, who recently left us, is considered in this article as an independent object of scientific commemoration. Her range of interests was quite wide, and her scientific heritage was truly unique. In our study, the subject of historiographic analysis was mainly the works of I. Yerofeyeva concerning the hereditary privileged elite of the nomadic society of the Kazakhs in the process of colonial subordination of the Russian Empire, which went on for quite a long historical time. The scientist clearly and precisely raised the question of the strategies of behavior of the national hereditary elite of the Kazakhs in this difficult historical period. I. Yerofeyeva not only presented a full-fledged picture of the elimination of the institution of khan power in Kazakhstan, but also showed how the Russian empire dealt with the “old steppe institution, the estate of the traditional nobility – tore or sultan” in the process of colonial subordination. It was I. Yerofeyeva who raised the question of the mobilizing role of the traditional ruling elite of the Kazakhs in opposing tsarism. According to the scientist, the Russian Empire eventually achieved an important goal set before the beginning of the colonial subordination of the Kazakh steppe. It broke the indisputable privilege of the sultan’s estate that had prevailed for many centuries in the minds of the Kazakhs. “Clear standard criteria for determining the status identification of Kazakh rulers” developed by I. Yerofeyeva are of great importance for the study of the social stratification of the Kazakh society of the imperial period. In general, the analysis of the scientist’s research in the chosen aspect of studying her works definitely showed that Irina Yerofeyeva has forever entered the world science with her outstanding contribution to the study of the history of the Kazakh people at the time of the colonial subordination of Russia, especially its hereditary aristocracy

Vsevolod Dmitrievich Zinserling. (On the occasion of the 130th anniversary of his birth)

IVsevolod Dmitrievich Zinserling was born on September 20, 1891, in St. Petersburg. His father, Dmitri Petrovich Zinserling, a descendant of immigrants from the south of Germany or Switzerland, who received hereditary nobility, worked all his life as a teacher of mathematics and, as an inspector of the famous Gurevich Gymnasium, had the rank of actual state councilor. Dmitry Petrovich was also the author of scientific research on the history of mathematics in ancient Egypt, manuals on statistics, and algebra textbook, which was republished many times. His mother, Olga Ivanovna (nee Semenova), ran the household and raised four children. There was a creative atmosphere in the family, all had artistic talents, loved and knew nature well. The elder brother Boris Zinserling, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts, an officer, after the Civil War, found himself in Warsaw, where he became a professor and author of projects to restore many architectural masterpieces in the postwar period. His younger brother Yuri (George) Zinserling, a doctor of biological sciences, a botanist, one of the founders of a new scientific trend - geobotany, was arrested in 1938 when he was acting director of the Botanical Institute and soon died in custody. His sister Nina was an artist who died at a young age.

The reception of Thomas Carlyle in land reform movements in Australia and New Zealand, c. 1860–1914

ABSTRACT This article examines the ways in which the writings of the great Victorian man of letters Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) were appropriated by land reformers in Australia and New Zealand. Carlyle argued that the land had been created by God for the benefit of the whole people, and that its possessors thus had a duty to put it to the best possible use. In this sense, work was the sole legitimate title to land. On these grounds, Carlyle was highly critical of the landowners of his era, whom he considered to be grossly remiss in their duties, living a life of idleness and luxury at the expense of their tenants. However, Carlyle did not go so far as to recommend the expropriation of the landlords, leaving open the possibility that they might still reform their behaviour. Ignoring this qualification, land reformers in Australia and New Zealand appropriated Carlyle’s writings, extending his denunciations of the hereditary nobility of Britain to the capitalist sheep-farmers and ‘squattocrats’ of the Antipodes, as well as adducing Carlyle in support of their own proposals for radical reform.

ARISTOCRACY AND MONETIZATION: PLATO, PARMENIDES, HERAKLEITOS, AND PINDAR

If there was an ‘aristocracy’ in the archaic and classicalpolis, how was it differentiated from the rest of thepolis? There are various possible criteria for differentiating a socio-political elite, notably birth, legal status, education, virtue, power, access to deity, wealth, and performance (or display). European history has left us with a strong association between ‘aristocracy’ and the criterion of birth, which produces a relatively closed elite. As for the ancient Greekpolis, however, an excellent recent collection of essays entitled‘Aristocracy’ in Antiquityedited by Nick Fisher and Hans van Wees generally rejects earlier assumptions that a hereditary aristocracy is clearly identifiable, and gives some prominence instead to the criterion of display or performance (such as competing in Panhellenic games or erecting an image of an ancestor). My concern is not directly with this interesting controversy, but rather with a historical process that is almost entirely omitted by‘Aristocracy’ in Antiquity(and by most other discussions of Greek aristocracy), namely themonetizationof thepolisthat was made pervasive by the invention of coinage and its rapid spread in Greek culture from the early sixth centurybce.

The nobility of Simbirsk Governorate at the end of the 18th - the first half of the 19th century

The goal of the paper is to analyze the socio-economic situation of the Simbirsk Governorate nobility in the late 18th - first half of the 19th century. The authors have characterized the dynamics of the number of nobles in Simbirsk Governorate (in comparison with indicators of Kazan Governorate and the Penza Governorate). The nobility is divided into two groups - hereditary and personal. The authors reveal the position of both groups in the structure of the estate in Simbirsk Governorate and other Middle Volga governorates and trace the dynamics of this indicator. It is noted that hereditary nobility prevailed in Simbirsk Governorate during the study period, although its specific gravity decreased. Another trend was the bureaucracy. The authors have shown the heterogeneity of the nobility in the region in terms of soul ownership (stratification by this criterion is the most justified). Within the studied class, the highest, middle and lower strata are distinguished. The analysis of the highest stratum composition made it possible for the authors to identify the nobles who were distinguished by the highest level of well-being (P.I. Myatleva, V.P. Orlov-Davydov, A.M. Potemkin, A.S. Urusova, the Rodionovs). The authors come to the conclusion that there was a distribution of landlord estates pledge and their auctioning in the first half of the 19th century. This should be considered evidence of the impoverishment of the nobility on the eve of the Emancipation Reform.

Наследственная аристократия и ее владения в структуре и политике царства Цинь в IV–III веках до н. э.

The paper discusses the question of existence of hereditary aristocracy in the ancient Chinese state of Qin during the period of 4th – 3rd BC, as well as the question of its role in the domestic political process. The paper shows the dynamic of political change on the materials of received sources as well as on that of the paleographic texts. It also shows that the traditional perception of Shang Yang’s reforms is false. This perception is based on the sources, composed largely during the Han era, which predetermined their bias towards the history of Qin. Based on these sources the research to date usually depicts the reforms of Shang Yang as an act of dismantling the order based on hereditary aristocracy and transforming Qin into a bureaucratic state, divided uniformly into counties and commanderies. However the reality, as shown in the sources contradicts this view, as the hereditary aristocracy after the reforms of Shang Yang neither ceased to exist, nor lost the decisive grip over the political process in the state of Qin. The research shows a dependence of the power transition stability and the ability of the hereditary aristocracy to align with the monarch and also shows that the process of imperial formation put this model of stability in jeopardy. It has also become clear that the very process of reproducing conflict between the aristocratic and bureaucratic groups within Qin’s elites was driven by the changing interest of the monarch, who, in his different period of reign aimed at different goals, thus being the variable that propelled the political change within a framework of constants. This change led inevitably to the transformation of connection between the ruler and the hereditary aristocracy, the initial type of which being that of a hereditary lineage system of ties, and the final being that of an imperial state system, where the groups of hereditary aristocracy within the imperial court no longer needed to have kinship with the ruler, but played the role of agents for the local elites, influencing imperial politics.