Royal Interests Research Articles

Hamlet and Its Danish Double. The Historical Performance as Medium for a Utopian Monarchy

The first Hamlet production in Danish, performed 1813 at The Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen, went through substantial cuts and changes in the text. The re-cycling of sets from other performances were used in the production of Hamlet and turned the reworked version of Hamlet into a negotiation of the utopian heroic vision of the Danish monarchy, despite its painful bloody conflicts of power. It is my point, that this production of Hamlet, by the dramaturgical choices made, became, what I would determine as, a plain “theatricality” of the play and with the desire for a peaceful future without conflicts. The invisibility of Shakespeare’s “utopia” was transformed into an almost theatricalized “anti-utopia” or dystopia in this production with an affinity for melodrama. How seemingly strange and paradoxical this dramaturgy was, the production of the first Danish Hamlet paved the way for a historically very long stylized form of reality in its impact on the long ninetieth century Danish theatre history. The theatrical way of thinking, as embedded in Shakespeare’s play, was adopted into a theatre mentality where dreams would echo the idea of the Royal interest and taste, leaving an impression of conform aesthetics. The dramaturgical choices from 1813 lasted until the time when Henrik Ibsen’s naturalist plays would have their opening nights at the very same Royal Danish Theatre.

The birth of oppida: small towns in Hungary in the Angevin period

AbstractThis article revisits the origins of small towns in medieval Hungary from the perspective of their owners and seigneurs. The fourteenth-century development of small towns on the estates of private landowners resulted from the coincidence of several factors. Among these, the article considers the intersection of royal and private interests. The aristocrats’ concern to endow their estate centres with privileges or attract new settlers to their lands was dependent on royal approval; likewise, the right to hold annual fairs had to be granted by the kings, and one had to be a loyal retainer to be worthy of these grants. The royal model of supporting the mendicant orders, which were gaining ground in Hungary from the thirteenth century onwards, added a further dimension to the overlords’ development strategies. This shows that royal influence, directly or indirectly, had a major impact on the development of towns on private lands in the Angevin period (1301–87).

Pocket Maps and Public Poetry in the English Renaissance. Katarzyna Lecky. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. vi+277.

Pocket Maps and Public Poetry in the English Renaissance. Katarzyna Lecky. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. vi+277.

‘Is Still Not the Blood of the Blessed Martyr Thomas Fully Avenged?’ Thomas Becket's Cult at Canterbury under Henry III and Edward I

AbstractIn July 1220, the boy king Henry III attended the Translation of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury, whereby the saint's body was transferred from its original tomb in the crypt of Canterbury cathedral to a splendid new shrine in the main body of the church. This article explores the continuing appeal of Becket's cult at Canterbury for elite ecclesiastical and lay circles in thirteenth‐ and early fourteenth‐century England. It argues that the Englishmen, or holders of ecclesiastical office in England, who were canonised as saints in the thirteenth century were associated with St Thomas and his cult. Drawing on the records of the English royal household and wardrobe, alongside letters and charters, this article then examines the reception of Becket's cult at the royal court. Although Henry III was more famous for his adult devotion to St Edward the Confessor, Henry and his wife, Eleanor of Provence, still paid their respects to Becket's shrine at Canterbury. Royal interest in St Thomas of Canterbury, or St Thomas the Martyr, continued, but with added vigour, under Edward I, his wives and his children. Despite St Thomas's appeal for opponents of the English crown, Becket's cult remained firmly connected to the English ruling dynasty.

<em>Procuració versus governació</em>. El reino de Valencia ante la reforma gubernativa de 1344

La "Procuration" est une institution qui naquit presque en même temps que le royaume de Valence. Elle avait pour mission de gouverner les territoires de la Couronne d 'Aragon pendant les absences du roi et de pourvoir à la défense de la chose publique ainsi que des intérêts royaux, au moyen d'une intervention aussi bien pacificatrice que punitive de la part de ses titulaires. Ce modèle se divisa en automne 1344, pour transformer en l’espace de quelques années, l’appareil administratif territorial originel de la Couronne d' Aragon. L'élément de base d'un changement si radical fut la tentative d'améliorer la gouvernabilité des territoires de la Couronne en limitant l’extension des circonscriptions administratives, jusqu’à les convertir en des espaces dont le contrôle direct exercé par l'autorité garantissait une intervention effective des officiers chargés de sa gestion. L'échec retentissant de ce système a administration multiple n 'améliora en aucune manière l'efficacité de l'administration des territoires et même l'aggrava: deux années plus tard, on decida d'en revenir au vieux système de viceregence. Le present article met en relief l'origine, la nature et les résultats de la rétorme de 1344 dans la Couronne d 'Aragon, en insistant sur tous ces aspects dans le royaume de Valence.

La ciudad y el rey: renovación de la red urbana de Navarra al final de la Edad Media

Tras el análisis del desarrollo de la red urbana de Navarra hasta los inicios del siglo XIII, realizado en trabajos anteriores, se observaba una trama densa. Ésta se había formado al hilo de diversos condicionantes: el interés regio, el control del espacio y la consolidación de rutas preferentes de comunicación. Se intuía además que, a partir de ese momento y hasta el final de la Edad media, los elementos decisivos para la articulación de un sistema urbano jerarquizado serían otros. Analizar este proceso, entre 1219 y el inicio del siglo XVI, es el objetivo de este trabajo. Destaca ahora la consolidación de cuatro –máximo cinco– focos urbanos esenciales, con particular relevancia de tres –Pamplona, Tudela, Estella– definidos sobre todo por el peso político, administrativo, económico y eclesiástico de uno de ellos, y el administrativo y económico –sobre todo- de los otros dos. La trama urbana del final de la Edad Media se sostiene sobre estos puntos esenciales; la jerarquía urbana del reino y su sistema de articulación adquiere una forma más simple y acorde con los rasgos esenciales de las realidades urbanas y con las dimensiones del propio reino.

William Dargan, An Honourable Life (1799–1867) by Fergus Mulligan (review)

Despite these lapses of presentation, Fanning has yet again produced a stimulating book that opens new perspectives on modern Ireland. Patrick Maume works as a researcher with the Royal Irish Academy’s ongoing Dictionary of Irish Biography. He is a graduate of University College Cork and Queen’s University Belfast. William Dargan, An Honourable Life (1799–1867), Fergus Mulligan (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 2013), 312 pages. Daniel O’Connell looms large in my life. His extraordinary contribution to our prospects and culture changed all that followed in his political wake. As an Irish politician I stand, with due humility, on the shoulders of his achievements. The other, more prosaic, reason for his prominence is that I can see his grave every morning from my bedroom window! This view is possible because I am very lucky to live close to the national treasure that is Glasnevin Cemetery. The proximity of this cemetary to the Botanic Gardens, and their joining through a spendid gateway constructed by the Office of Public Works, offers an extraordinary and rewarding trail. Life and death are juxtaposed, with many and varied aspects of our national heritage on display. My more recent visits to this pathway have included a visit to a slightly less well-known grave, that of William Dargan – engineer and businessman. This year marks the 150th anniversary of his death. This anniversary makes it all the more appropriate to comment on a beautiful biography, William Dargan, An Honourable Life 1799–1867, by Fergus Mulligan, a life-long devotee of this extraordinary figure. The author opens with the claim that, ‘One of the aims of this book is to show just how unique was Dargan’s contribution to Ireland and to suggest that he, as much and probably more than any other figure in nineteenth-century Ireland, deserves that overused and sometimes abused title of “patriot”. He was, this volume contends, “a giant among men”’. Upon completing this delightful book, this reader, for one, is now in full agreement with both claims. Before moving to the canvas of achievement that was the life of Dargan, it is worth pausing on some of his lesser-known contributions and efforts.Any of these would merit a footnote in Irish history, but their recognition, along with his more famous achievements, does justice 246 Studies • volume 106 • number 422 Summer 2017: Book Reviews to the breadth of his accomplishments. The Great Industrial Exhibition of 1853 has unduly faded to the recesses of our national history. Organised by the Royal Dublin Society, this event was at the instigation of Dargan, who was a life member of the RDS. His motivations extended beyond reflecting national glory. He negotiated a deal that stipulated that, if the surplus from the exhibition exceeded a certain level, he would receive £20,000 plus five per cent of the excess. If the exhibition made a loss, he would cover the deficit. This acumen was at the heart of all else he would achieve. The exhibition was held in a hall constructed on the lawns of what is commonly known as Leinster House on Kildare Street. Standing ninety metres tall, ‘The inside was painted light blue, the ribs in buff picked out in scarlet’. The opening ceremony was attended by dignitaries, including the mayors of Manchester and Liverpool and a government minister from Peru. Within a week visitor numbers reached 5,000 per day. Such success garnered royal interest, with Queen Victoria paying a visit on 30 August 1853. Upon meeting Dargan she ‘laid her hand on his arm and shook it warmly, drawing a burst of cheering from the crowd’. Such warmth extended to a visit to his home, in Mount Anville, where she drank tea and admired the views of Dublin Bay. The industry and vision of Dargan is similarly reflected in an uncelebrated, minor but fascinating episode of Irish transport history. The opening of the Dublin to Galway railway line in 1851 led to the pursuit of an extraordinary opportunity for Galway Port. This presented the potential for it to be used as the main port for transatlantic travel between Britain, Ireland and America. Mulligan notes that almost every town on the west coast, including...

Cardinal Enea Silvio Piccolomini and the Development of Cardinal Protectors of Nations

This article deals with the development of Cardinal Protectors of Nations in the 15th century. It is based partly on texts examined by Josef Wodka (1938), partly on the correspondence of Cardinal Enea Silvio Piccolomini published in the Opera Omnia edition of 1571 and the correpondence of King Christian 1. with the Papal Court.The author’s interpretation of the development differs somewhat from Josef Wodka’s in that it recognizes the decisive role of the Council of Basle in creating a legal base for cardinals representing royal interests at the Apostolic Sea. The Council agreed with the stance of Pope Martin V that cardinals should act as impartial and independent advisors of popes, but – reaching back to Avignonese precedents – it accepted a form of representation termed “promotorship” rather than “protectorship” of royal affairs. It did not indicate any difference of content between the two concepts, but only addressed the modalities of partiality and payment.This interpretation is based on the Conciliar Decree itself and on the Cardinal’s correspondence which documents the practice at the Papal Court in the 1450’s, including a formal arrangement of promotorship between the Cardinal and the Emperor, and negotiations concerning such a promotorship between the Cardinal and the King of Denmark.

Rady, Martyn and Simon, Alexandru (eds) Government and Law in Medieval Moldavia, Transylvania and Wallachia (review)

SEER, 93, 4, OCTOBER 2015 754 published via the online journal, KinoKultura (as is the case with Meghan Vicks’s piece on Andrei Zviagintsev’s The Return) is also questionable, given that this is easily accessible to students all over the world via the Internet. These observations notwithstanding, undergraduate students of Russian cinema will no doubt find the Readers useful, and the books also have much to offer the general reader, not least the fact that they situate the films they discuss firmly within the specific socio-ideological and cultural contexts from which they emerged. UCL SSEES Rachel Morley Rady, Martyn and Simon, Alexandru (eds). Government and Law in Medieval Moldavia, Transylvania and Wallachia. SSEES Studies in Russia and Eastern Europe, 11. UCL SSEES, London, 2013. ix + 125 pp. Tables. Notes. Further reading. Index. £20.00 (paperback). Government and Law in Medieval Moldavia, Transylvania and Wallachia, the volume edited by Martyn Rady and Simon Alexandru, fills a gap in the existing English-language bibliography on the legal history of medieval Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia. It is an important and welcome contribution to Central-East European medieval historiography on law and custom, featuring a number of strong, insightful essays (in particular those by Mariana Goina, Adrian Magina and Tudor Sălăgean). The volume also makes available in English the latest research in the field and promotes the work of young academics, thus building academic bridges between local historians and Western academics and research students. Although there are fewer contributions on Moldavia and Wallachia than on Transylvania, this however reflects the book’s origins as a conference proceedings volume (the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 2012) and can only serve as an incentive for further research and publication. The excellent editorship of the volume makes it a pleasure to read. The volume kicks off with Romulus-Gelu Fodor’s contribution on ‘Constitutional Thought and Institutions in Medieval Transylvania’, which stresses the influence of Werbőczy’s Tripartitum on Transylvanian law and institutions as well as its distinct status among the lands belonging to the Hungarian Crown. Fodor presents the tug-of-war between king and estates, which resulted in the sixteenth-century creation of an independent principality of Transylvania, thus transposing Werbőczy’s notion of a noble republic onto Transylvania. The second contribution, authored by Tudor Sălăgean, explores this theme further by focusing on the Transylvanian congregatio nobilium REVIEWS 755 and its role as a legal community at the end of the thirteenth century. The author cogently explains the ambiguity implicit in the notion of regnum Transilvanum, which has been divergently interpreted by Romanian and Hungarian historians. Thus, the emergence of a congregatio of nobles in Transylvania ‘gave the title of regnum a new meaning, in the sense of a “legal country”, a juridical community with its own privileges and the right of collective self-government’. The next three contributions on Transylvania shift the focus of analysis from sources of law and authority to interactions between these and ordinary people. Florin Nicolae Ardelean provides an in-depth survey of military recruitment in Transylvania within a legal framework in which royal decrees were often overturned by customary law. Liviu Cîmpeanu explains the process of colonization, the fiscal and military obligations of the Transylvanian Saxons and the nature of their privileges. Oana Toda describes in detail the road infrastructure of northern Transylvania and places it in the context of property and legal relations, contrasting the royal interest in commercial routes and the salt trade with the reality on the ground of illegal tolls and other abuses. Adrian and Livia Magina cover the territory of what in later centuries would become the Banat of Temesvár. Adrian Magina thus looks at the intricacies of the ius valachicum in the Hungarian Kingdom and its relationship with written law, concluding that, ‘having its roots in both the Romano-Byzantine legal tradition and influenced by the Hungarian customary law, the ius valachicum demonstrates a self-generating and pragmatic form of law, as well as one that borrowed from larger legal traditions’. Livia Magina maps the changes undergone by the environment in the medieval and early modern Banat under the impact of water technology (mills...

Análisis multicausal de Panel Cointegrado para el periodo 2000-2010 en el sistema microfinanciero boliviano

There are analyzed the effects of the economic-financial variables as the microcredit, credit of consumption, mortgage loan of housing, the rate of royal interest and the economic growth in the total portfolio of the system microfinaciero of Bolivia. The approach is based on the classification of the total portfolio according to type of credit, of agreement to the classification of the authority of supervision of the financial system of Bolivia (asfi). To be able to analyze these effects it uses as methodology econométrica, the models of information of static and dynamic panel (pooled regression, fixed effects, random effects and dynamic panel). The results show, that all the mentioned factors help to explain the total portfolio of the microfinancial system in Bolivia.

The Arab Aristophanes

The Arab Aristophanes Marvin Carlson (bio) The thirteenth-century Egyptian playwright Ibn Dāniyāl is slowly coming to Western attention as one of the most important dramatists of the Middle Ages. The fact that he wrote for the puppet theater, a form often thought of as artistically inferior by both Arab and Western scholars, and the fact that he wrote in Arabic, a language that most Western scholars incorrectly think produced no drama before the colonial period, have doubtless contributed to his long eclipse. In the Arab world, poetry has always been regarded as the highest literary form, and since Ibn Dāniyāl was one of the most honored poets of his time it is as a poet that he has been remembered in that world, while the three plays written late in his career have received comparatively little attention. Clearly this situation is now changing. Thanks largely to the efforts of a few dedicated twentieth-century German scholars, led by Georg Jacob, the plays have been reconstructed from manuscripts spread across the medieval Arab world—from Istanbul to the Escorial in Spain—and published in complete form for the first time as recently as 1992.1 Thus [End Page 151] even scholars with a working knowledge of Arabic have had access to these remarkable creations only for the past two decades. Gradually, word of them has spread, however, and the first book-length study of Ibn Dāniyāl in English appeared in 2012, also with a translation of one of his three plays.2 Western scholars are now beginning to realize that this hitherto almost unknown dramatist produced some of the most complex and literate dramatic works of the Middle Ages, rivaling or surpassing almost every known dramatic work in the Arab or Western world for several centuries before and after him. Ibn Dāniyāl was actually a native of Mosul (located in today's Iraq), who fled to Cairo in the 1260s when still in his teens to escape the Mongol invasion of his home city. In Cairo he supported himself for a time as an eye doctor, but soon established a reputation among that city's bohemian population as a wit, a gifted poet, and an active pursuer of a libertine lifestyle. His poetic gift, however, became more and more widely recognized. In the manner of young impecunious poets throughout the ages, Ibn Dāniyāl sought a degree of financial security by producing poems, often panegyrics, for influential and well-to-do patrons. At the top of the social pyramid was the sultan, and just at the time Ibn Dāniyāl arrived in Cairo, the sultanate was undergoing a momentous shift. The powerful warrior named Baybars, who in 1254 defeated and captured King Louis IX of France, ending the Fourth Crusade, and, even more importantly, defeated in the following year the Mongol general, Hugelu, stopping the Mongol advance into the Middle East, married the widowed queen of Egypt and established a new, non-Arab dynasty—the Mamluks—which dominated Egypt for the next several centuries. On their march toward Cairo, the Mongols had captured and sacked Baghdad and Damascus, leaving the Egyptian city as the undisputed trading and intellectual center of the Arab world, a role it has maintained ever since. The new sultan, Baybars, built upon this situation, proving himself as successful an administrator as he had been a general. He had much less interest in the arts, however, and indeed in his campaigns to improve the city put strict curbs on such matters as drinking and the sex trade, earning him little respect from the bohemian community among whom the young Ibn Dāniyāl first settled. Baybars's son Barakah, who succeeded him in 1277, was equally uninterested in poetry and the arts. A [End Page 152] weak ruler, he was deposed two years later by his father-in-law, Qalāwūn, who after a number of lean years again turned royal interest toward the arts and brought leading singers and poets to entertain and grace his court. By this time Ibn Dāniyāl's reputation among the upper classes was such that he became in...

The Bipartisan Promise of 1776: The Republican Form and Its Manner of Election

Did our Founders wage a Revolution to dethrone the king and aristocratical monarchy of England to establish an aristocracy here in America? Nay. The promise of Independence, the whole purpose of conducting a war in the name of unalienable rights, was to secure a just system of self-rule, a government of, by, and for, the People – the republican form. This bipartisan promise was not a form of government that would forever be secure once established, but a form that We the People could forever preserve through electing those representatives faithful to what Jefferson described as “the principles of 1776.” The ultimate question of today, is whether those fundamental principles characteristic of our republican form demand (more) regulation of money in elections, or, whether changes in time have made the First Amendment an election issue substantially different from the Founding? Has the role of free speech in the realm of election law since 1976 been consistent with the principles of 1776? And if the “corruption of every government begins almost always with the corruption of its principles,” is it not necessary to recur to those principles in attempting to answer this, perhaps age-defining question? The first part of the article is “a recurrence” to the principles underlying the Revolution. Through deploying an arsenal of Founding sources which illuminate original intent, we will fully analyze the essential elements of republicanism. In learning why the Framers fixed reapportionment of The House in the Constitution – to ensure that Congress did not “cease to be the Representatives of the people,” as noted by George Mason – we will discover why the Great Compromise was indeed great. For the compromise sheds bright light on the meaning of equal representation and its synonymous relation to securing a ‘true majority.’ The second part of the article, an extension of the fundamental principle of preserving the republican form, details the power given to Congress in Art. I Sec. 4 of the Constitution. Given that elections are the “natural cure” for maladministration in republics, Federalist 59 describes this power as “the means of [Congress’s] own preservation,” and multiple State Conventions viewed the power as necessary to secure representation. In clarifying the Framing bases for property qualifications – how they were intended to prevent corruption, while most voters owned land in 1787 – assumptions of the Founders might be altered. Where even if one believes that our Founders were aristocrats due to their property qualifications, restricting the franchise by property is fundamentally different from the free or non-corrupt electoral process (manner), on which the existence of the republican form is predicated. For the ‘aristocratic manner of election’ in eighteenth century England where the ‘royal interests’ of the crown, “the few,” increased their power in Parliament through the use of wealth – usurping the power of “the many” – lead directly to the poor policies which preceded our Revolution. Thus, we come back to the pivotal question, the focus of part 3: free speech or free elections? Expanding on Professor Lawrence Lessig’s “dependence corruption,” the article delineates a conception of corruption in light of Federalist Nos. 73 and 79, and the principles of representation demanded by the Revolution (as ensouled in the Constitution). In utilizing a multitude of original Framing sources, this article differs from related scholarship in how it analyzes today’s electoral process through the vision of the Founders and their generation – through tapping the “spirit of 1776.”

Pageantry, Queens, and Housewives in the Two Texts of <i>The Merry Wives of Windsor</i>

The pageant that ends Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor alludes in its form and themes to the country-house entertainments performed for Elizabeth on progress. It interprets this kind of pageantry as a space to negotiate communal identities and as an opportunity for women and the nonelite to intervene socially and politically. As it does so, it reveals friction between regional pride and emerging nationalism, and it suggests that Elizabeth served as a powerful model of female authority for women of the middling sort. We find substantial difference in the pageant’s language between the 1602 Quarto and the 1623 Folio. Although previous scholars have argued that the Quarto is anticourt and would not make sense as a royal performance, its intertextuality with royal entertainment highlights the subtle tribute it offers Elizabeth. The Quarto pageant celebrates Windsor as a self-sufficient community that serves royal interests without sacrificing its own. The Folio pageant offers more explicit allusions to the court, and these additional references make it not more celebratory but more ambivalent, as it both emulates and parodies Elizabethan court festival. The Folio’s development of ideologies present in more subtle ways in the Quarto, such as its heightened celebration of self-governing women, lends support to the possibility that the Quarto is an early text and that the Folio is a revised version.

Creolization of the Atlantic World: The Portuguese and the Kongolese

In the 1930s, Gilberto Freyre’s praise of mixed-race people in Brazil challenged the idea of white supremacy, contributing to the building of a new Brazilian identity. In the 1950s, Freyre projected the idea of openness and racial mixture onto the Portuguese empire, fuelling Salazar’s colonial propaganda. The idea of Lusotropicalism was contested by Marvin Harris and Charles Boxer, who demonstrated that there were very few mixed-race people in Angola and Mozambique, and exposed the long history of racism in the Portuguese colonies. However, the fashionable notions of hybridism and creolization have been putting Freyre back on the map. The article exposes the limits of Freyre’s approach of inter-ethnic relations, structured around the flexibility (or otherwise) of white colonists. It engages with the much more interesting but problematic approach suggested by Linda Heywood and John Thornton, who shifted to Kongo and African agency the creolization of the Atlantic. It suggests a reassessment of the real Christianization of Kongo and its complex chronology, drawing attention to the royal interests of conversion, the limits of conversion among the population, and the conditions for erosion of Christianity in the long run.

Creolization of the Atlantic World: The Portuguese and the Kongolese

In the 1930s, Gilberto Freyre’s praise of mixed-race people in Brazil challenged the idea of white supremacy, contributing to the building of a new Brazilian identity. In the 1950s, Freyre projected the idea of openness and racial mixture onto the Portuguese empire, fuelling Salazar’s colonial propaganda. The idea of Lusotropicalism was contested by Marvin Harris and Charles Boxer, who demonstrated that there were very few mixed-race people in Angola and Mozambique, and exposed the long history of racism in the Portuguese colonies. However, the fashionable notions of hybridism and creolization have been putting Freyre back on the map. The article exposes the limits of Freyre’s approach of inter-ethnic relations, structured around the flexibility (or otherwise) of white colonists. It engages with the much more interesting but problematic approach suggested by Linda Heywood and John Thornton, who shifted to Kongo and African agency the creolization of the Atlantic. It suggests a reassessment of the real Christianization of Kongo and its complex chronology, drawing attention to the royal interests of conversion, the limits of conversion among the population, and the conditions for erosion of Christianity in the long run.

Urban Order and Street Regulation in Seventeenth-Century Sweden

AbstractThis article examines how, in the early modern towns of Stockholm and Åbo, royal interests, town planning, street building and maintenance, and street behavior related to ideas and ideals of urban order. Town laws and ordinances, royal letters and some town court records are employed to tell a story of royal interest in well-ordered, impressive, successful towns; various street plans for the capital and the smaller provincial towns; and the varying execution of renewal plans. It is evident that the capital was to reflect the royal person and the state and that streets and street behaviour were important in this regard. But in towns outside the capital, especially in concrete street maintenance, the centrality of streets does not clearly emerge. The burghers in towns operated as individuals—there was no bottom-up or top-down plan or supervision.

Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America (review)

Reviewed by: Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America Brian Rouleau (bio) Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America. By Eric J. Dolin. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2007. Pp. 460. Cloth, $27.95.) In the nineteenth-century United States, whaling was big business. From the end of the War of 1812 to the beginning of the Civil War, over three-quarters of the world's whaling voyages departed from American ports, [End Page 756] representing a capital investment of nearly seventy million dollars. The industry sent droves of young men to sea and employed many more ashore in a variety of trades essential to the outfitting of vessels and the processing of whale products. This nation, now a signatory of several pacts banning the practice of commercial whaling, outpaced all others in the wholesale slaughter of some of the world's largest mammals. Eric Jay Dolin's Leviathan thus seeks to recapture the centrality of whaling to the history of the United States. Part business history and part social history, the book spans nearly four centuries and is divided into three major parts. The first and strongest section, entitled "Arrival and Ascent, 1614–1774," offers exquisite insight on the ways that whaling drew European settlers across the Atlantic. Indeed, it would seem that whales were never far from the mind's eye of many of the New World's most famous residents. John Smith, for example, wrote extensively of New England's bountiful cetaceans as a means to lure settlers and pique royal interest in his northern ventures. Aboard the Mayflower, one dejected Pilgrim sighed that "we saw Whales playing hard by us, [which] if we had instruments and meanes to take them we might have made a very rich returne, which to our great griefe we wanted" (31). Capital and labor shortages dictated that most whale products in the seventeenth century were extracted via "drift whaling." Creatures that washed ashore were quickly claimed, cut into, broken apart for profit, and even taxed by local authorities. Over time, as the trade moved off shore, its center became Nantucket Island, a place Crevecoeur described as "a barren sandbank fertilized with whale oil only" (121). Dolin does an excellent job charting the rise of this barren outpost to an area of great renown and even greater profit to the British empire. As with most places in colonial America, the fortunes amassed by Nantucket's elite were built on an exploitation of the labor of a racial underclass; in this case, it was the island's original inhabitants. Hundreds of Wampanoag Indians shipped out of Nantucket, often entangled in usurious relations of debt-dependency that kept them laboring without the prospect of mobility. Here and elsewhere, Dolin emphasizes the ways in which whalemen themselves suffered diminishing returns on their labor despite the often fabulous wealth they helped generate. Part Two, "Tragedy and Triumph, 1775–1860," finds Nantucket atop the whalefishery world, and, more specifically, the sperm whalefishery. In possession of the globe's largest and most productive whale fleet, Nantucketers literally kept the streets of London alight. Illustrating the [End Page 757] increasing interdependence of the eighteenth-century British empire, Dolin reveals how sperm whale oil taken by Nantucket ships off the coast of North Carolina filled lamps along London's streets as part of a crime-fighting initiative in the imperial capital. Certainly no one was more aware of the island's importance than Nantucketers themselves. Terrified of the impoverishing effects of privateering and trade disruption during the American Revolution, Nantucket's scions, nominally attached to the rebellious state of Massachusetts, defied the Continental Congress in attempting to negotiate for themselves a separate peace that would grant them a right to whale and trade for the British. The bargaining power wielded by Nantucket's chief whalers, out of all proportion to their size as a group, is a point Dolin returns to often, perhaps to emphasize the authority conferred on energy cartels then as now. Only a timely end to the war itself kept Nantucket a part of the new nation. Yet the damage was already done; much of the fleet had been captured or plundered, and most of...

THE FRENCH ARMY, 1624–1914: FROM THE KING'S TO THE PEOPLE'S

Richelieu's army: war government and society in France, 1624–1642. By David Parrott. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xxiv+599. ISBN 0-521-79209-6. £65.00.The dynastic state and the army under Louis XIV: royal service and private interest, 1661–1701. By Guy Rowlands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xxiv+404. ISBN 0-521-64124-1. £55.00.The French army, 1750–1820: careers, talent, merit. By Rafe Blaufarb. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. Pp. xii+227. ISBN 0-7190-6262-4. £45.00.The people in arms: military myth and national mobilization since the French Revolution. Edited by Daniel Moran and Arthur Waldron. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xi+268. ISBN 0-521-81432. £50.00.From revolutionaries to citizens: antimilitarism in France, 1870–1914. By Paul B. Miller. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. xiii+277. ISBN 0-8223-2766-X. £13.95.Although all the books under review are military histories, international conflict is not their central concern. They are not primarily campaign histories, nor studies of strategic or tactical innovations, nor biographies of great commanders. If they help to answer the military historian's traditional question – how is military might created and used on the battlefield – then they do so indirectly, through an exploration of how the state marshalled its resources for war, particularly in terms of manpower. This is not just a question of emphasis, or of filling in gaps in the historiography; these books mount a sustained critique on the explanatory models favoured by military historians. Military history, David Parrott suggests, too readily falls into a ‘whiggish trap’: a series of clear-sighted war leaders grasp the potential of technology in achieving the state's foreign policy objectives; technological shifts drive changes in the size and organization of armies, and consequently in the development of the state. And thus was the modern world of large, complex, disciplined organizations made. In contrast, we are offered here a selection of error-prone war leaders, constrained at every turn by the social, political, and financial realities of their day, who were intent not on ‘progress’ but on manipulating the system of which they themselves were a part, and as much for their own ends as for those of the state they served.

Poverty and the Politics of Colonialism: “Poor Spaniards,” Their Petitions, and the Erosion of Privilege in Late Colonial Quito

Poverty and the Politics of Colonialism: “Poor Spaniards,” Their Petitions, and the Erosion of Privilege in Late Colonial Quito

Den skæggede eskimo

Den skæggede eskimo