Nineteenth Century Research Articles

Актуализация проблематики Чужого в ценностно-смысловом контексте по материалам русской культуры конца XVIII – первой четверти XIX вв.

The scientific interest in the problematic of the ‘Other’ remains relevant, particularly in light of ongoing globalization processes. Modern cultures confront, alienate or adopt the values of those with whom they communicate. Questions concerning whether to accept the ‘Other’ and their experiences, the potential for their transformation, and the necessity of openness towards the ‘Other’ constitute a significant modern agenda in intercultural communication. This article presents an effort to synthesize models of reception of the ‘Other’ as articulated by both domestic and European thinkers, including the author’s original scheme of the value-semantic system “Self – Other”. The concept of the ‘Other’ is examined through phenomenological and civilizational approaches. The author notes a spectrum of characteristics attributed to the ‘Other’ and proposes a value-semantic lens for their consideration. A central question that persists to the present day is the possibility of understanding the ‘Other’ or Alien. An analysis of this issue through a value-based optic has revealed the factors of identification and consolidation of the ‘Self’ in relation to the ‘Other’. The author explores this problematic through culturally-historical examples of Russian-French interactions in the late XVIII – first quarter of the XIX centuries. The given examples and cultural and historical experience can be used in the analysis of the current cultural situation.

Население Черноморского округа 70-х гг. XIX в.: состояние и структура, влияние Русско-турецкой войны 1877–1878 гг.

In this article, the author examines the society of the Black Sea District during the 1870s of the XIX century. Within the context of colonization processes and the impact of military actions during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, issues pertaining to the formation of administrative and territorial boundaries, as well as the state and structure of the population in both the pre-war and post-war periods, are discussed. The author presents data regarding the ethnic and religious composition of the population, highlighting its growth from the end of 1872 to the beginning of 1883, and comes to the conclusion that the war had a detrimental effect on demographic processes. The main sources of this study include published official statistical data, normative legal acts, and newspaper publications from “Kavkaz” and “Moscow Vedomosti”, alongside personal materials such as memoirs and analytical works by Arseniy Vasilyevich Vereshchagin, an active participant in the development of the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus during the 1870s.

Проблема бессознательного в европейском теизме и спиритуализме XIX в. и русская религиозная философия

European theism and spiritualism of the XIX century and Russian religious philosophy are examples of a non-psychoanalytic tradition of studying the unconscious, the study of which is of scientific interest. The issue of the influence of European philosophy on Russian philosophy has been considered in many aspects, but the influence on the doctrine of the unconscious has not been studied. The aim of this article is to study the influence of the views of European theists and spiritualists of the XIX century on the problem of the unconscious on Russian religious philosophy. The novelty lies in the fact that, firstly, an assessment is given of the nature of the influence of European theism and spiritualism of the XIX century on Russian religious philosophy on the issue of the unconscious; secondly, the difference in the interpretation of the unconscious in religious philosophy of the XIX – first half of the XX century and psychoanalytic philosophy is shown. It is shown that European theism and spiritualism of the XIX century had a significant influence on the interpretation of the unconscious in Russian religious philosophy, however, domestic thinkers also, when studying the unconscious, focused their attention on the moral and ethical aspect of personal existence and considered the unconscious in a broad historical and philosophical context. In addition, the fundamental elements in the interpretation of the unconscious in Russian religious philosophy and European theism and spiritualism are the psychological understanding of the unconscious and the personal nature of the interaction between man and God (in accordance with the views of theistic philosophy).

Visualizing Race at the Perkins School for the Blind

The article considers the construction of racialized citizenship in the Perkins School for the Blind in the nineteenth century through centering two cases of Black children that appear in Perkins’s archives. There is little scholarship on the history of Black students at Perkins, and materials on their experiences are scarce. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman’s concept of “critical fabulation,” the article speculates on how Black children were admitted to the institution not for training in economic futures but to serve as object lessons for their white classmates, who were taught to apprehend race through Black children’s presence. Black children helped produce white citizenship; the school’s ostensible policy of colorblind admission segregated blind Black children from futures preserved for blind white children. Illuminating presences and absences of race in the archives shows us how race, disability, and racialized disability co-constituted one another in the service of state-sanctioned efforts to manage who could and could not participate in the social, political, and economic orders.

Genius loci of the city of Padua in the context of Slovak travelogues of the 19th century

The authors’ decision to “read” and semiotically analyse the city’s text based on travelogues stems from their aesthetic, historical and informational value, the possibility of incorporating them “into the network” of other texts about Padua, thus shaping city image. The authors’ research on Slovak literature and culture also determined the choice. As a time frame, the nineteenth century is not accidental; the Slovak cultural environment (the territory of present-day Slovakia) witnessed the development of the travelogue genre and journeys to Italy. By interpreting and semiotic analysis of the selected authors’ travelogues and works, the paper draws attention to the uniqueness of Padua, the ways of its representation and the grasping of the urban space, which until now despite its importance in education, sciences and art has remained unnoticed in literary studies. Considering that only four Slovak travellers included Padua in their writings during the studied period, all of their works were reviewed to uncover their texts’ semantic potential. Interpretive immersions thus reflect the experiential reception of the author’s city image and perceiving its architectural structure. Through this, the authors develop a network of texts about Padua and support the typological classification according to its specific function or image. This paper articulates a variant of the Slovak phenomenon of Italian travel and a view of the meanings associated with urban spaces and places. It reflects the importance of travel writing for understanding the (literary) cityscape and its transformations and opens space for further research on the subject.

Tiger shikars: The Wodeyars’ construction of a Rajput identity through sport

Abstract This article explores the practice of the sport of tiger hunting among the Wodeyars, the maharajas of Mysore, through an examination of art, archival records, state gazetteers, and a tour diary of Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV. It argues that the Wodeyars only adopted the sport as an expression of kingship in the late nineteenth century, under British influence. This, I posit, was part of their larger attempt to align their kingship to more popular Indian modes, specifically the Rajputs. By reading accounts of the sport in Krishnaraja Wodeyar’s tour diary, along with examining the Wodeyars’ attempts at forging kinship relations with the Rajputs, the article demonstrates how the sport became crucial to the Wodeyars’ assertion of a Rajput identity and to attempts to obtain a higher position in the princely hierarchy of the colonial period. The recognition that the success of tiger hunts was significant to Rajput kingship and identity, along with rising concern over the diminishing tiger population, led the Wodeyars to enclose forests, establish private hunting preserves and a shikar department, and classify tiger as game in an attempt to improve the sport and make it exclusive.

Warlike Heroines and Anglo-German Drama in an Age of Europhobia

The Anglo-German drama, which comes to proliferate in London's patent theatres at the turn of the nineteenth century, renders ubiquitous an arms-bearing heroine whose foreign character and perceived ideological inferences render her a chief object of attack among British Europhobic commentators. Redressing the limited scholarship devoted to this pervasive Anglo-German figure, this essay foregrounds the remarkable extent to which she is implicated in the perceived social and political threats with which the German drama is freighted. The essay uses theatrical commentaries to spotlight three recurring, though not quite harmonious flaws, for which the violent German heroine is contemporaneously berated. Then, analysing performances of Joseph George Holman's The Red-Cross Knights (Haymarket, 1799) and Richard Cumberland's Joanna of Montfaucon (Covent Garden, 1800), the essay illustrates the meticulous methods employed by dramatists to mollify the subversive implications embodied by the Anglo-German Amazon and to uphold supposedly inherent distinctions between male and female conduct, and British and European females, at a moment when the blurring of such gendered and national boundaries portends the social anarchy witnessed across the Channel.

Digital Archives for Academic Heritage: Tools and Processing Environments for the Museum Metaverse and Scientific Dissemination

Abstract. In recent years the digital visualisation techniques, including 3D digital models of indoor spaces, saw an exponential increase in their applications, both in the fields of Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) and of Cultural Heritage (CH). This growth is mainly due to the increasing affordability of tools for the acquisition and elaboration of three-dimensional digital survey/data management and to their increasing ‘user friendliness’.The research proposes a further step on research started some years ago by our group about the exploration of indoor mapping for the creation of the 3D virtual museum of our Institution, starting with the realisation of a virtual model of the university’s spaces (departments and halls). At first, the virtual museum will host the Curioni Digital Collection, which consist of circa 140 wooden models of building details, bridges, tunnels, and vaults designed by prof. G. Curioni during the second half of the XIX century as teaching aids for the Construction and Structural Design classes. A comparison between two main tools to support management and diffusion of geometrical, alphanumerical, and topological data will be given (Matterport and Unity). The parallel approach considering two tools is to provide a digital twin of a real collection placed in a real space, and, on the other hand, to use a real historical university space, virtualized, to host a virtual collection.

Systematics and Phylogeny of Myxomycetes: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Myxomycetes are amoeboid fungus-like organisms (Amoebozoa) with a unique life cycle characterized by a great morphological diversity of fruiting bodies. Due to the similarity of these structures to the fruiting bodies of some representatives of Ascomycota and Basidiomycota, myxomycetes have been classified as fungi since the first known scientific description in 1654. Only in the XIX century, when their life cycle was studied, the difference of this group from fungi became clear. During the same period, microscopic structures of fruiting bodies, as well as ornamentation of the spore surface, began to be considered as diagnostic features. Due to this, in the period from the end of XIX to the middle of XX century, a rather stable system was formed. However, as further studies have shown, both macro- and micromorphological characters are often quite variable, depend on environmental conditions, and often result from a convergent evolution, which causes difficulties in defining species and taxonomic units of higher ranks. Since the first decade of the 21st century, thanks to the development of molecular genetic methods and accumulation of data on nucleotide sequences of marker genes together with the improvement of microscopic studies, it has been possible to obtain data on the evolutionary relationships of different groups of myxomycetes. A milestone in this process was the publication of the first phylogenetic system of myxomycetes in 2019. This work was the starting point for a number of studies on the relationships of different groups of myxomycetes at a lower taxonomic level. Thus, there has been a surge in the number of studies that bring us closer to constructing a natural system. The latest iteration of the myxomycete system, incorporating all modifications and enhancements as of June 2024, is presented.

Living within the Watershed: Managing Urban Water Supply in a Growing Metropolis

London’s rapid population growth during the nineteenth century drove demand for larger volumes of higher-quality water. This gave rise to Parliamentary bills for large infrastructure projects to transfer water to London from outside the Thames watershed and for the transfer of private company assets to municipal management. Wales was the most frequently suggested source, as it was argued to have cleaner, softer, and more abundant water. London’s water companies favored using improved infrastructure, connected networks, and demand management. Despite substantial investment, London’s water company assets and responsibilities were transferred to the Metropolitan Water Board in 1904. Looking back in 1953, fifty years after it was formed to take over London’s water infrastructure, the Metropolitan Water Board noted that extensive acquisition of land for reservoirs and watershed protection by the water companies proved invaluable in securing a sustainable water supply for the metropolis a century later.

Migration and mobilisation in New York during the First World War

ABSTRACT This article examines the impact of the First World War on immigration into New York from 1914 into the 1920s. From the nineteenth century onwards, New York had become the destination for global migration as individuals sought to settle in the city or the wider United States. Millions had passed through the immigration points in New York by the beginning of the twentieth century but the outbreak of war in 1914 suddenly brought this flow to a halt. Naval blockades, restrictions on civilian movement and mobilisation of economies in Europe ended what had been one of the most significant migration routes in modern human history. The impact on the city of this curtailment brought fear and anxiety to the streets. New York’s population was overwhelmingly made up of first or second-generation immigrants in 1914 and a concern that the war could be ‘exported’ to the United States through New York created anti-immigrant concern amongst the city and federal authorities. This created a wartime culture in New York that – at least for the duration of the conflict – removed its status as a city of immigrants and instilled a sense that the metropolis should be remade as ‘American’.

Value, knowledge and reputation: zoological exchange by Australian museums, 1870-1900.

The burgeoning nineteenth-century public-museum sector built a significant part of its natural-history specimen collections through extensive international trading. The early 2020s has seen an upsurge of scholarly interest in this largely overlooked trade. Exchange was a distinctive aspect of the natural-history trade that reveals much about the diverse practices and motives of the institutional collectors. Economic-geographic benefits included conserving the limited financial resources of museums and exploiting complementarities in the geographic distribution of specimens. Collection management, institutional reputation, social connection and international diplomacy were also part of a complex mix of value making that shaped this important international trade. We analyse the exchange practices of the three largest museums in the Australian colonies in the final three decades of the nineteenth century who exchanged Australia's 'rare and curious' fauna with collectors across the globe. By deploying and analysing extensive, comparative data on a particular form of natural history, zoology, and a particular kind of trade, exchange trading, among three Australian museums, this paper extends and enriches recent scholarship on the mobility of natural-history specimens and how they were traded.

Literature and Mysticism in the Wake of Silvano Panunzio: From The Divine Comedy to the European Literature of the Twentieth Century

This article introduces one of the forgotten figures of religious and literary studies: the Italian scholar, philosopher, metaphysician, poet and writer Silvano Panunzio (1918–2010). His contribution has so far been relegated to the margins of academic debate, and, currently, there are no academic studies on his work, in which mysticism plays a pivotal role. Panunzio believed that the transcendental and mystical dimension is fundamental for fully understanding the social, cultural, historical and political events of humanity. Another relevant aspect of his work is the importance he gave to literature and its relationship with mysticism, as in the case of Dante’s Divine Comedy or other European and Eastern writers and poets, such as Goethe, Shakespeare, Ibn Arabi and Dostoevsky. Significantly, Panunzio saved from oblivion the work of a forgotten man of letters of the nineteenth century, Gabriele Rossetti (1783–1854), who proposed the first symbolic and esoteric interpretation of Dante’s literary production and of European medieval love literature. Raising awareness of the intellectual amnesia around the figure of Silvano Panunzio may be a useful contribution to future research, both in the field of religious and literary studies.

Exploiting inter- and intra-continental markets: The business of transporting convicts to the Australian colonies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century

Exploiting inter- and intra-continental markets: The business of transporting convicts to the Australian colonies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century

The two faces of Franco-Sudanian Treaties: The peripheral practice of ratification as evidence of transregional international law in the nineteenth century

Abstract Legal scholars continue to revisit historical treaties between Western and non-Western nations to challenge long-standing accounts of non-Western peoples’ engagement with international law. Following this trend, new scholarship has stressed African agency in Euro-African treaty-making. However, legal scholars have generally overlooked African perspectives, pointing to a lack of sources. Focusing on nineteenth-century treaty-making between France and the polities of the Western Sudan in West Africa, this article excavates African perspectives through a novel reading of Euro-African treaties in an African context. This reading analyses treaties within the Western Sudan’s broader diplomatic corpus in both French and Arabic. By focusing on markers of translation, transcription, and negotiation left on different copies of treaties, this method brings to light arguments and practices that have been obscured in published European-language versions. Reading Franco-Sudanian treaties in a Sudanian context reveals that different norms governed the ratification of treaties in the Western Sudan and Europe. Treaties that scholars have long considered unratified were in fact ratified according to Western Sudanian norms, which designated the governor of French Senegal rather than the French president as the official competent to ratify treaties for France. However, when French officials sought to use treaties to claim sovereign rights in West Africa against Great Britain, they pressed the president to ratify them again. Presidential ratification thus served to transpose Franco-Sudanian treaties from an African to a Western normative order. Uncovering the African origins of Euro-African treaties thus reveals their differential operation across autonomous inter-polity orders.

Gender stereotypes in the German language: synchronic-diachronic perspective

The article examines the peculiarities of objectification of the universal opposition «man – woman» in the German language based on lexicographic sources from different chronological periods. German language is interesting for studying this opposition because of its expanded nature, which is particularly evident within the «woman» component: «Mann – Frau / Weib». The analysis of interpretations of the concepts «man» and «woman» in German dictionaries reveals the processes of gender stereotyping reflected in them during different periods of language development. This allows us to understand the development of ideas about these concepts in a specific linguistic culture. The leading characteristics of men and women, as reflected in the semantics of key lexemes such as Mann, Frau and Weib, as well as adjectives derived from these words, are determined. Their cultural and historical context is explored. It is found that during the XVIII and XIX centuries, the concepts of «man» and «woman» consistently reflected the processes of gender stereotyping. However, gender stereotypes regarding women were more varied and complex. Starting in the XX century and especially in the XXI century, stereotypes have been presented to a lesser degree, with a noted neutralization of social oppositions within the considered opposition. It is observed that the opposition between man and woman in German initially had a dual nature, both socially and naturally. It is concluded that at present, in lexicographic sources, naturally oriented traits are the leading features of objectification in the «man-woman» opposition. The issue of the level of accuracy with which different concepts are reflected in explanatory dictionaries of the German language has been identified.

Статистические данные о городе Сольвычегодске в XIX веке (по географическим сведениям)

The paper provides statistical (historical and geographical) information about the typical northern trading town of Solvychegodsk, founded on the site of old salt mines. The information relates to the life of the town in the XIX century. The following quantitative parameters are considered: population, industries, buildings, etc. Statistical data is provided based on the use of Geographical Lexicons and Dictionaries: Polunin, Maksimovich, Shchekatov, Semenov and statistical descriptions of Russian towns.

Social inequalities in adult mortality across Europe (18th-21st centuries): A critical analysis of theories and evidence

This study examines the historical evolution of socioeconomic disparities in adult mortality, with a focus on European societies. Despite the widespread improvements in population health, social inequalities in mortality are a pervasive phenomenon nowadays. This paper employs a critical analysis of both theoretical and empirical literature to investigate major international studies and their findings on longevity differences associated with socioeconomic status from the nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Findings reveal that adult mortality trajectories have differed notably across social classes and regions, with some areas exhibiting disparities before the demographic transition and others showing inequalities emerging later. Understanding these long-term health inequality trends sheds light on the changing influence of medical advances and their interplay with economic growth, educational disparities, environmental factors, state roles, and production distribution, which have shaped mortality disparities through different development stages. These factors elucidate the international heterogeneity of results until the mid-twentieth century and offer explanatory insights into observed north-south patterns in Europe. Our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how advancements in public health, economic development, and social policies have shaped health outcomes over centuries. The implications of this research inform ongoing debates and health policy, emphasizing a nuanced interpretation of historical data to craft effective strategies that address health inequalities today.

Thomas Brassey, the Hausenstein tunnel and the Swiss Federal Court

It has recently been suggested that the work of Thomas Brassey, a major nineteenth century contractor, is worthy of further study. Unfortunately he instructed that his papers should be destroyed upon his death. However court papers were published concerning his claim against his client for compensation for additional costs as the result of adverse ground conditions during the construction of the Hauenstein tunnel in Switzerland and his client’s counterclaim for the effects of late completion. These documents, along with a descriptive account written by the client’s former section engineers, enable a reconstruction of events placed in their geological and contractual background. The developing breakdown of the relationship between contractor and client is apparent. The content of the claim, counterclaim and court decision are summarised. Aspects of the character of Brassey revealed are found to differ from the descriptions provided by his nineteeth century biographer.

Commons land management in Southern, post-unification Italy: New evidence from a micro analysis on Salerno province

Abstract The aim of this study is to observe the ability of Southern Italian municipalities to respond to and redefine the management of common lands following the national privatisation and partition policies promoted by the State during the second half of the nineteenth century. The hypothesis tested is whether, through the analysis of new archival sources such as management rules, it is possible to identify good practices of management of common lands, along with the presence of resilience on the part of local communities during a period defined as one of uncontrollable ‘decline’ for these resources. Three Apennine areas (Campania Region) were identified as the observation sample. The analysis revealed that for these specific cases, it is imprecise to speak of decline and a lack of propensity to develop good management practices, but rather of institutions that are attentive to the protection and preservation of their commons through specific rules.