Mid-eighteenth Century Research Articles

Rules and Practices: Builders’ Examinations in Early Modern Lisbon (17th-18th Centuries)

This article explores the taking of examinations in Lisbon by those involved in the building trade in the early modern period. It contrasts rules with examination practices based on information gathered from regulatory documents and over two thousand records of craftsmanship examinations conducted between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. While the former documents are well known in Portuguese historiography concerning craft guilds, the latter were taken from two handwritten books which have not previously been researched. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of this data set shows that examination practices complied with the main rules and formalities, although there were exceptions resulting from historical circumstances. This analysis also reveals various aspects of the examination which are not possible to discover using only regulations, as well as offering an unprecedented insight into the characteristics and patterns of the masons and carpenters of Lisbon in the early modern period.

‘Away, Away’: Franz Liszt's Mazeppa and the Bonds of Freedom

Franz Liszt's symphonic poem Mazeppa (1854) recreates a narrative that portrays Cossack commander Ivan Mazeppa's torturous Ride – bound naked to an unbroken horse – to miraculous survival and triumph. To evoke this legend, Liszt incorporated familiar musical tropes: persistent galloping triplets, fanfares, apotheosis and a march-like finale. These tropes illustrate a consistent story, but they risk sounding merely clichéd and mimetic. To appreciate how Liszt uses these tropes to create depth and compositional creativity in Mazeppa requires consideration of the myth's intertextuality. This article considers the broader sources that informed Liszt's Mazeppa and offers an interpretation that includes the programme's preface and an array of Mazeppa ‘texts’ that have appeared since the mid-eighteenth century. These texts include a quasi-historical narrative, poetry and visual art along with Liszt's original commentary for Mazeppa and his defence of programme music in his Berlioz and His ‘Harold’ Symphony essay. Taking all of this together, my approach in this article is to analyse Mazeppa as if listening for the protagonist and letting the character of his musical subject inform my interpretation. Hearing the musical subject in this work requires attention to voice, expressivity, motives, gestures, themes and extramusical intertexts to construct, layer by layer, an interpretation of Mazeppa's symbolic significance. I argue that connecting these threads of cultural history illuminates the piece's theme of suffering and death as inescapable companions in the life of the creative genius.

«Fruit of Hope»: Recruitment of Kyiv Academy Students to the Hospital Schools in the Mid-18th Century Russian Empire

The article examines the choice of medical career as a way of social mobility by students of the Kyiv Academy, focusing on the first recruitment campaigns to hospital schools in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in the mid-eighteenth century. Researchers have long noted that students from the Hetmanate and Sloboda Ukraine were a valuable source for imperial domestic physicians. Lesser is known about possible motivations of the volunteers to study medicine in view of their social background. The article argues that a medical career was an active choice for social advancement made not only by clergy students, but Cossacks and commoners as well. Among those who wished to pursue a medical career were also towners. It was rarely attractive to representatives of the Cossack elite at the time under consideration. The article illustrates the process of educational integration of many students from the lower social ranks on their way to becoming participants in imperial project. First, the article examines how this trajectory of social advancement was shaped by the recruitment policy of the imperial medical administration, both declared and implemented. Then, it discusses the students’ travels to the capitals in light of the challenges they faced and the decisions they made on their way to join the medical ranks. The final part examines the social background of the students and their academic performance to understand what the choice of medical profession meant for different social groups and how inclusive this path of social mobility was.

Reception of Danielius Kleinas’s Ideas in Povilas Frydrichas Ruigys’s Grammar Anfangsgründe einer Littauischen Grammatick (1747)

The article analyses the reception of Danielius Kleinas’s ideas in Povilas Frydrichas Ruigys’s grammar Anfangsgründe einer Littauischen Grammatick (1747, hereinafter RG). Two aims were pursued: (1) to single out Kleinas’s ideas that Ruigys found relevant and suitable for describing the language of the mid-eighteenth century and (2) to identify the intentions of Ruigys in adopting them. Using an analytical interpretive approach based on philological analysis, it is shown that Kleinas’s Grammatica Litvanica (1653, hereinafter KG) was a particularly important source. The need of the Age of Enlightenment to learn about the world and to educate society is highlighted in discussing the motives for adopting and adapting ideas. The study of the reception of Kleinas’s ideas leads to the following conclusions: 1. Frequent references to KG, both explicit and implicit, point to a similar school of linguistic thought and the acceptability of its ideas. 2. KG was a particularly important source in two respects: (1) selecting a dialect for grammar and distinguishing it from others and (2) developing an extensive section on syntax. 3. By adopting Kleinas’s key idea of choosing one dialect as the basis for the description of the Lithuanian language, Ruigys expanded its area to two counties: Įsrutis (Ger. Insterburg) and Ragainė (Ger. Ragnit). He considered the other dialects in Prussia and Lithuania Major as secondary. Ruigys was the first to classify Lithuanian dialects by the opposition main : secondary or centre : periphery. 4. By placing emphasis on the stability, universality, and prestige of the main dialect in relation to other dialects, Ruigys continued the tradition of forming standard language on the basis of one dialect, which was initiated by Kleinas. In the eighteenth century, this was relevant for the written form of the language. 5. By introducing secondary dialects, he aimed to facilitate the integration of individuals appointed to priesthood in a new linguistic environment. This was important for the spoken form of the language. 6. In preparing a grammar for learning Lithuanian by non-Lithuanians, Ruigys paid considerable attention to syntax. By adopting Kleinas’s ideas and expanding them, he sought to develop the ability to produce a coherent text. The ability to generate well-formed sentences is important for both written and spoken language. 7. One of the characteristics of the language teaching methodology developed by Ruigys was the development of linguistic communicative competence. In the Age of Enlightenment, this was particularly necessary for the organisation of public education through churches and schools. Taking up earlier ideas and adapting them to the needs of the eighteenth century, Ruigys developed a tool for non-Lithuanians to learn Lithuanian, to develop linguistic competence appropriate to their duties, and to adapt to a new environment. 8. RG is focused not only on setting out the basics of the language but also on reducing the distance between written and spoken language. 9. Since the description of the grammatical structure of the Lithuanian language in the mid-seventeenth century was suitable as a basis for a grammar of the mid-eighteenth century, it evidences the slight change in the language itself.

Invader Enthroned: The Indian Portraits of Nadir Shah and Their Local and British Collectors

The conquest of Delhi in 1739 shook India and stunned the world. Despite the horror of his invasion, Nadir Shah (r. 1736–47) was commemorated in dozens of portraits from across the subcontinent. Contemporary depictions of the Iranian conqueror align with his imperial rhetoric and the new aesthetic of his Indo-Persian realm, but the vast majority were created posthumously between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. More curious is the fact that many of them are inserted into dynastic portrait series of Mughal emperors even though Nadir Shah did not stay to rule. Why did local painters continue to glorify a foreign invader and plunderer for another century after his death? The motivations are further complicated by two very different groups of patrons and collectors—local and British elites in India. Nadir Shah’s defeat of Delhi empowered regional rulers and emboldened British imperialist ambitions. Their divergent perspectives and the roles they played in the viral circulation of Nadir Shah’s image across India form the core of this investigation.

Count Sigismund Attems (1708–1758) in Light of His Probate Inventory

Count Sigismund Attems (1708–1758) was one of the most prominent personalities in Gorizia in the mid-eighteenth century. He held important positions in the district government and devoted much of his private life to erudition and literary writing, as well as to studying antiques and local history. The article discusses the structure and value of the count’s property based on the presentation of the interior furnishings, luxury items, clothes, books, artworks, and residences listed in his posthumously compiled probate inventory. The comparison of the findings with other available studies of material culture in the County of Gorizia and in Carniola will shed light on Count Sigismund Attems’s standing in his social and societal milieu in terms of his estate and cultural impact.

The Emergence of a Military Urban in and of War

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine demonstrates once again the vulnerability and significance of cities in war. In this article, and with inspiration from Ian Hacking’s historical ontology, I draw on a varied source material to argue that there is today something new and qualitatively distinct in how the U.S. military approaches war and combat in urban environments. By investigating the historical-conceptual trajectory of “the urban” in U.S. military practice from the mid-eighteenth century until today, the article argues that a gradual shift has occurred in terms of how the armed forces have begun to think of and act on the urban as a distinct object that can be made “known” and managed in and through a specialized knowledge. A “military urban” has come into being, conditioned by a particular epistemic and implying a new way for urban spaces to exist in war. The article’s findings have implications for our understanding of what the urban is for militaries and, relatedly, for grasping the role of epistemics and knowledge practices in conditioning military actions in and on urban spaces.

BEYOND THE ‘WILD SHEPHERD’: HOW GLOBAL CAPITALISM HAS RESHAPED PASTORALISM. SUGGESTIONS FROM A MEDITERRANEAN ISLAND

This article shows how, from the modern era up to the present day, Sardinian pastoralism has been increasingly incorporated into global capitalism, despite essentialising narratives about the primitiveness and backwardness of shepherds that have been propagated from the mid-eighteenth century to the present neoliberal phase. The case-study considered in this article illustrates how capitalism works as a ‘food regime’, producing the ‘conversion of agriculture and food to commodity-type relations, which, in addition to cheapening food, also incorporates agricultures and foods into investment strategies’ (McMichael 2013: 21). First, a reconstruction of the embedding of Sardinian pastoralism into the global capitalist chain from the modern age to the early twentieth century is presented. Then the changes in pastoralism from the post-World War II period to the 2000s and the neoliberal turn of the last twenty years are considered. The aim is to analyse how pastoralists coped with the uncertainties arising from being part of the global market, the volatility of milk prices and the resulting contradictions that have emerged. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ .

Genre, Place, and the Persian Literary Imagination in the Punjab, ca. 1650–1750

Abstract This article examines descriptions of the Punjab, particularly Lahore and its environs, in Persian writings from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries. Specifically, it traces the usage and movement of topographical registers and imagery across genres and literary forms that are usually studied separately, highlighting the ways in which they interacted with (and resisted) each other. It suggests that such experimentations with the writing of place were central to the ways in which individuals engaged in processes of self-fashioning. Further, it argues that such experimentations with literary-topographical themes and registers also helps explain the increasing interest in the Punjabi qiṣṣa and other regional narratives in Persian during this period. These observations help to further nuance understandings of the ways in which genres and languages interacted in the early modern Punjab.

Mid-Exposition Modal Contrast and Francesco Galeazzi’s “Characteristic Passage”

This article considers the merits of analyzing a compositional practice that occurs in some major-mode, mid-eighteenth-century sonata-form works using contemporaneous concepts. In these works, the post-transition part of the exposition opens in the minor-mode version of the secondary key rather than the prepared, major-mode key. This minor-mode insertion is short-lived: the movement usually shifts to the anticipated, major-mode secondary key after a phrase or two, and the exposition concludes in that key. These passages are best understood as minor-mode examples of Francesco Galeazzi’s “characteristic passage,” a medial passage that occurs in the secondary key. While they can be analyzed using modern approaches to sonata form, these approaches often dramatize this point in the exposition in a way that is inconsistent with mid-eighteenth-century style. In addition to arguing for analysis informed by contemporaneous thought, this article includes an examination of the hallmarks and use of minor-mode characteristic passages, the use of these passages in minor-mode movements from the mid-eighteenth century and beyond, and a discussion of possible historical precedents. The article’s conclusion considers analyses of two works that, from a modern perspective, use the same structure but that, from Galeazzi’s perspective, are different in both structure and implication. This suggests that, much as conflicting analyses reveal different aspects of a single work, different apparatuses—be they contemporary or contemporaneous—may reveal different aspects of style.

Demographic History and English Culture

In England, the period from the late Middle Ages through early modernity was bookended by demographic change. On one edge, there was the Black Death and subsequent plague pandemics, which halved the population, reshaping English society in their wake. On the other, there was the demographic transition of the mid-eighteenth century, which reduced death rates and led to modern family structures. Between these two epochal events, demographic trends shaped English customs and values, and were in turn shaped by them. The articles in this special issue draw on cutting-edge demographic research to offer new interpretations of the effects of plague, patterns of marriage, evolving forms of labor, and the morality of crime and charity, among other subjects. Together, they illustrate how quantitative studies in historical demography can shed light on key transformations in culture and society—and vice versa.

Children and Youth Coerced Displacement: A History of Power Struggle between State and Provincial A‘yān’s Families

This article offers a new perspective on children and youth’s coerced displacement in the context of the Ottoman Middle East and highlights their potential as a social group to inform studies of children, kinship, and family vis-a-vis the state. Using iltizām contracts, I argue that the Ottoman state prioritized its stability and economic interests and turned a blind eye to promises it made to ensure the “well-being” of young Ottoman subjects. The contracts recorded around the mid-eighteenth century document an institutionalized practice by the state to remove and incarcerate young and minor males associated with the families of multazims, or tax farmers, who generally hailed from the class of provincial notables, or a‘yān, to persuade the latter to render payment of taxes. Although multazims appeared to be indifferent to the fate of their castaway children, evidence suggests that multazims took advantage of geopolitical changes toward the last quarter of the eighteenth century to avoid the incarceration of their children, as the practice completely disappeared at that time. This article also attempts to approach the question of whether this forced displacement of children represents a form of mobility, in comparison to other forms of children’s mobility, like the devširme, and explores what this meant for the expansion, or retraction, of the state power and its governing policies.

Dhat Syndrome East and West: A History in Two Acts.

The intriguing story of dhat syndrome is that of medical modernity (psychiatry, clinical sexology) declaring medical premodernity (Ayurvedic concepts of semen loss) as its object. The early history and prehistory of this "culture-bound" diagnosis help understanding it as a dynamic confrontation of local, shifting knowledges. For instance, semen loss anxiety was an established motif both in European early twentieth-century psychoanalysis and again in several Indian psychodynamic texts of the 1960s. Moreover, it became problematically tied to notions of "Indian character". Little realized is that European venereologists were dealing with much comparable clinical presentations since the late eighteenth century, often resolving them in strikingly similar ways. For centuries, European proto-endocrinological ideas tied masculinity to theabsorption and recirculation of semen, informingpopular conceptions of "semen loss" (spermatorrhea) much comparable to those driven by dhatu physiology, dovetailing in colonial-era medicine. Expressive of growing controversy concerning this physiology after the mid-eighteenth century, a leitmotif of exaggerated fears tied to both "quacks" and proselytizing leading authorities such as Tissot and Lallemand, informed diagnoses of "tabes imaginaria", "spermatophobia", and "imaginary spermatorrhea."

Recipes for Life: Black Women, Cooking, and Memory

In African American history, food has functioned as expression of colonial power and control, and as a source of Black celebration and liberation. Cookbooks written by Black women from the mid-eighteenth century to late twentieth century reflect the long history of the development of African American cuisine. These texts are practical and instructional, while also offering insights into the transnational development of food as an expression of cultural history through African, Indigenous, and European influences. African Americans, and more specifically Black women, have contributed to the food history of the Southern United States by developing a distinct African American cuisine and creating the texts by which to publicly declare their knowledge and ensure its survival. By analyzing the cookbooks of Malinda Russell, Edna Lewis, Vertamae Smith-Grosvenor, and Carole and Norma Jean Darden, a timeline of cookbooks from the Civil War to the Black Power Movement can be established. Their commonalities, including the use of cookbooks as autobiographies, community memoirs, and genealogical records, are features that resonated with the Civil Rights Movement in the latter half of the twentieth century. Food is more than a means of survival. It is a constantly evolving expression of culture, people, and celebration.

Cultivating Hadhrami Memory: The Politics of Haul in a Malay-Speaking Hadhrami Sultanate in Indonesia

This article identifies haul, an annual commemoration of the death of charismatic figures, in Indonesia as political. The politicization of haul has been accompanied by a proliferation of narratives promoting the history of Hadhrami diaspora while strengthening the relationship between local Hadhramis and the local statesmen. This qualitative research examines the use of haul in Pontianak to commemorate selected syarif aristocrats. Pontianak, founded in the mid-eighteenth century by a syarif statesman, has a long-standing Hadhrami memory. Data for this study were collected through literature review, interviews, observation, and archival research related to Kadriah Sultanate’s haul events. The findings suggest that haul reshapes memories of the Kadriah Sultanate and Hadhrami identity for pragmatic purposes in local politics. By examining this case study of a commemorative religious event in the non-Arab world, it is shown that the local Arab sultanate redefines Hadhrami ethnic identity as nationalist, locally rooted, and heroic. Public haul festivals thus become effective tools for syarif politicians to exert influence in the religious and political spheres.

From sodomy to homosexuality: the role of criminal law in Filippo Maria Renazzi’s Rome between the Enlightenment and the Napoleonic Era

ABSTRACT Throughout the nineteenth century, significant transformations took place in the understanding of Western homosexuality, shifting from the domain of criminal law to that of medical science. This article explores the role of European legal thought in laying the groundwork for such changes, particularly starting from the mid-eighteenth century. Examining the contributions of the Roman jurist Filippo Maria Renazzi (1745–1808), this research emphasizes his role among the thinkers who lived through the transition from the European ius commune tradition to the era of criminal codes. Renazzi, a conservative university professor in papal Rome, not unfamiliar with Enlightenment discussions, penned a successful criminal treatise in Latin between 1773 and 1786. His expertise was also in demand during the subsequent development of the criminal code for the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. By focusing on the figure of Renazzi, still not extensively studied, this article attempts to shed light on the transition towards the general decriminalization of non-reproductive carnal offenses, including sodomy. In the new penal code project, only acts committed against the will of others and public order remained generically condemned. This underscored the indifference of criminal law towards penalizing behavior that medicine would subsequently come to recognize as an inherent identity.

Saxon Diplomacy in the First Months of the Second Silesian War (August/October 1744)

In the mid-eighteenth century, the Electorate of Saxony, one of the largest German states joined in a personal union with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, played a significant role in European politics. Relations with Saxony were critical in the diplomatic calculations of Europe’s major powers, including Great Britain, France, and Austria. This holds true during the time of the Silesian Wars (1740–1742; 1744–1745) as Prussia’s strengthening political influence gave rise to two major power centres in Germany. Austria and Prussia were both keen on winning Saxony’s favour as a potential ally. Its significant army and advantageous strategic location were the key factors. The importance of Saxony in the military and political conflict between Vienna and Berlin rose during the Second Silesian War. However, not much is known about Saxony’s involvement in this conflict as both Russian and foreign historians have not extensively researched it. The article aims to address this gap as comprehensively as possible, in other words, to ascertain the extent of Saxon diplomacy’s impact on the initial stage of the Second Silesian War and to establish the objectives and outcomes of Saxon policy during the relevant period. The research is based on a wide range of sources, including the documents from the Main State Archives (Hauptstaatsarchiv) in Dresden, the Austrian State Archives (Österreichisches Staatsarchiv) in Vienna, and the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire in Moscow. Most of the documents had never been used before or were being introduced for the first time for the current subject. The author concludes that during the period in question, Saxon diplomacy managed to gain advantageous positions in negotiations with Great Britain, Austria, and the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands in Warsaw and Vienna in the autumn of 1744 and spring of 1745, securing assurances of forthcoming subsidies and acquisition of some Prussia’s territories.

The Problems of Performing Piety in some Exeter Dissenting Sermons c.1660–1745

This article explores the theme of hypocrisy in a multi-volume collection of hitherto unstudied manuscript sermons by Exeter Dissenting ministers from the Restoration to the mid-eighteenth century, held by the Devon and Exeter Institution. In these sermons, the theme of hypocrisy is addressed in a variety of senses and contexts, including the imposition by conformists of forms of worship not required by Scripture; the false accusations of hypocrisy made against Dissenters; the insincere performance of piety; the tendency of sinners to justify vice as virtue and virtue as vice; and the incompatibility of persecution with true New Testament Christianity. These sermons trace a move from Reformed orthodoxy towards rational Dissent, with a soteriology that increasingly makes moral performance a condition of final salvation. The possibility of insincere performance of piety and virtue by hypocrites may have created increased anxiety in a context in which soteriology and ethics were increasingly entangled.

‘Accounting for the Music’. Institutional logics in the Regio Teatro Carolino of Palermo at the beginning of the nineteenth century

ABSTRACT We analyse the foundation and organisation of the Regio Teatro Carolino (RTC) in Palermo in the mid-eighteenth century, and its development at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In particular, we examine the accounting system to determine how it was influenced by competing and often conflicting institutional logics. The RTC originated from a private initiative of the Palermo nobility, but soon had to resort to public funding to maintain its artistic performances. Following this process, the Bourbon monarchy implemented control over the RTC and more generally, over all theatrical activities. The research emphasises the different institutional logics that shaped the RTC's management system, highlighting the hybrid characteristics of this institution.

"Sexual Development": Timing Puberty in German Enlightenment Medicine (1778-99).

From the mid-eighteenth century onward, French vitalists started to re-theorize the bodily clock of maturation. Archaic notions of precocity as an ill omen and ancient constructions of sexual timing as ethnic markers now acquired an increasingly physiological profile. Regulatory conceptions of sexual and psychosexual "development" widely animated German literature in the closing decades of the century. Here is evidence of new interdisciplinary problematizations of pubescence (Mannbarkeit) as the coordination in time of the mental apparatus (Seele, Character) and the sex drive (Geschlechtstrieb). New developmental-physiological frames for sexual maturity and psychosexuality readily extended to the fate of Nationalcharacter, sponsoring various roundtables concerning etiological questions.