Eighteenth Century Research Articles

Canada's Intangible Economic Cultural Capital (Outline for Characterization)

Canadian society is the product, if not a fusion, then a close coexistence of two cultures - English, Protestant and French, Catholic. It is natural that its cultural capital – values, traditions, perceptions, norms, etc. – is composed of elements of the cultural capitals of England (Britain) and France, or a mixture of them. Thus, Canada has inherited from them statism and communitarianism, while the United States has come to be dominated by anti-statist and individualistic sentiments. The harsh living conditions and remoteness from metropolitan areas have been instrumental in producing a "garrison mentality" and a "survival" orientation among Canadians, which provoked a more communitarian lifestyle. Direct observers of life in New France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries noted a sharp contrast between the French and the English – the former imitating the local nobility in trying to keep up with it in luxury, while the latter sought to toil hard and to invest their earnings in business. Differences in work and consumer ethics between English-speaking (Protestants) and French-speaking (Catholics) Canadians seem mostly to be a thing of the past, however, the rejection of mercantile orientation in some segments of Canadian society still persists to the present day. Canadian managers are not as aggressive and assertive as Americans and are more ready to take into account the public interest. True to some of its historical European roots, Canada has adopted many social democratic practices – a fairly developed welfare state (with free healthcare) and large-scale state entrepreneurship (however, its size has been significantly reduced lately). Proximity to such an economic giant as the USA has both pluses and minuses. The southern neighbor is suspected of trying to format the Canadian economy to suit its own goals and objectives, which causes rejection and resistance.

Miracles in the MiddleAges and Today // Miracle Healing, Miracle Visions, and Miracle Narratives in the Premodern and Modern World

As much as we live today in a world that is seemingly mostly determined by rationality and technology, we are actually far away from such a status, fortunately so, at least depending on one’s perspective. Hidden behind much scientific research and a mechanistic world determined by machines, for instance, we can easily discover countless examples of superstition, faith, irrationality, wishful thinking, dreams, speculation, and imagination. This is fortunately so, indeed, because it respects the indigenous human nature irrespective of many faults and problems resulting from it. Contrary to Max Weber’s famous formulation, the modern experience of the disenchantment of this world was actually accompanied by a profound rediscovery of or return to magic, spirituality, and fantasy, whether we think of the Romantics, the high popularity of the genre of fairy tales, the ever-growing body of video games and related media today all predicated on science fiction and hence fantasy, or the world of movies. This paper, however, does not intend to develop a large concept about the history of science, the emergence of modernity and individuality, and the steady rise of rationality at the latest since the eighteenth century, all of which have been discussed already at length by historians, anthropologists, philosophers, literary scholars, art historians, and sociologists. Instead, the focus will rest on the belief in miracles and miracle healings and trace the vast discourse on charms and miracles from the early Middle Ages to the modern times as a constant, consistent, and impactful aspect of all human culture we cannot and should not deny if we want to subscribe to a realistic assessment of human culture and mentality. The argument focuses on the curious phenomenon that the belief in miracles continues to run strongly until today both among religious individuals and ordinary individuals who face, for instance, a desperate health situation, a personal crisis, or dangers of all kinds. Popular culture appears to be highly influenced by the belief in miracles, in divine agents who come to people’s rescue in critical moments, and hence the belief in the power of prayer. Each individual aspect would require an extensive scholarly discussion, which this paper cannot offer. Instead, I will trace primarily the discourse on charms and miracles from the early Middle Ages to the present, whereby we can determine the continuity of pre-modern ideas, values, and concepts as valuable aspects for all people throughout time. To make good sense, the concept of the charm as a verbal statement for a magical and religious transformation is widened to include all word magic in medicine, athletics, politics, friendship, and family relationships whenever there is a perceived need to draw from other powers for the well-being of a human being.

La evolución de los superlativos absolutos cultos y populares en diferentes tradiciones discursivas (siglos XVI a XX)

This article addresses the evolution of the synthetic, standard and colloquial absolute superlatives in Spanish over five centuries (from the sixteenth to the twentieth) and in different discourse traditions (considering the perspective of distance and communicative immediacy). To this end, 26 pairs of superlatives have been studied in which there is an alternation between the colloquial and the standard form, of the type amiguísimo/amicísimo, buenísimo/bonísimo, noblísimo/nobilísimo, pobrísimo/paupérrimo…, in which the first expression represents the colloquial variant and the second, the standard. Results show an increase in the use of the superlative over the centuries, with particular relevance in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and a predominance of the standard variant throughout the historical series. The study shows a crucial turn in the twentieth century, when the colloquial variant becomes the preferred option for the first time. Moreover, the study reveals significant differences in the corpora analyzed. While formal texts opt for the standard superlative, informal discourse traditions favour colloquial voices. These results highlight the importance of corpus research in analyzing both formal texts and those closer to the orality of the time.

THE KINGDOM OF IMERETI ACCORDING TO „TSKHOVREBA MEPETA” (LIFE OF KINGS) BY SEKHNIA CHKHEIDZE

Verifying written sources, especially the works of the old chroniclers and specifying their historical and source study value is one of the main tasks of historical sciences. No complete A complete historical and source-scientific study of the works by Sekhnia Chkheidze, a Georgian historian of the of the XVII century and the first third of the XVIII century has not been carried out until now. Such a “delay” is partially caused by the attitude of Ivane Javakhishvili, the founder of the modern Georgian historical school, to the works of Sekhnia Chkheidze. Our goal is to study the reliability of the records by Sekhnia by means of comparison of the different kind of historical sources, records of Georgian and foreign authors and data from the works by Sekhnia Chkheidze. The article analyses the records of the author about the kingdom of Imereti history of XVII-XVIII centuries out of the mentioned extensive research. Georgian historiography is dominated by the view that the focus of Sekhnia Chkheidze's attention was only on the historical processes taking place in the Eastern Georgia, and he was not familiar with the political situation in the Western Georgia. On the basis of the cyclical source scientific research conducted by us, the present paper shows that S. Chkheidze was well aware of the political processes taking place in the Western Georgia, especially in the Kingdom of Imereti. Reportedly, Georgia was divided into several kingdom-prinicipalities in the II half of the XV century, it was a long process, first, Samtskhe-Saatabago, then Kakheti Kingdom separated from the united Georgia, later, Kartli and Imereti were also formed as separate kingdoms. The process of disintegration was deepend in the XVI century, Imereti Kingdom had started dividing into several prinicipalities like Samegrelo, Guria, Abkhazia and Svaneti in the second half of the 50s. Despite such a condition the fight for restoring of the country unity had never stopped. Sekhnia Chkheidze, treasurer and historian of the royal court of Kartli, could clearly see that Western Georgia faced the most difficult situation in the case of unification of the country. A chronicler highlights the attempt of progressive kings of Kartli (Vakhtang V, Giorgi XI, Archil and Vakhtang VI) to enhance and strengthen their influence on the whole region with support of Georgians from the Western Georgia.

“Studying & Drawing”: A Neapolitan Trip by Charles-Louis Clérisseau and Robert Adam in Light of Newly Discovered Drawings

Abstract This article presents a group of drawings by Charles-Louis Clérisseau from a newly discovered collection in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. These drawings date from Clérisseau’s study trip to Naples with Robert Adam in April 1755, shortly after he became Adam’s cicerone and drawing instructor. They include studies of ancient ruins, counterparts of which can be found among Adam’s drawings from his grand tour, now held in Sir John Soane’s Museum. Situating this excursion within the artists’ careers, this new research expands on the itinerary of their shared journey and builds on our knowledge of Adam’s first steps as a student of drawing in Italy. The travel studies discussed here illustrate the training of the architect-artist in the eighteenth century, emphasizing the era’s significance for draftsmanship. By addressing these drawings in the context of learning through copying, this article furthers our understanding of the concept of copying in architectural history.

Engineering indigenous dispossession and plantation slavery in the Southeast Gulf coast

In this paper we examine the activities of US Army topographers and engineers in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) watershed during the violent transformation of the region from the heartlands of the Creek confederacy to US territorial control. A vital waterway for the Creek in the late eighteenth century, the rivers would become an important transportation network in the US plantation economy by the early nineteenth century. We emphasize that the army made its initial infrastructural improvements in the region to provide security for the plantation system. Army engineering in the ACF watershed began in the struggle for the Gulf borderlands, as white American settlers, British forces, Indigenous peoples, and Black maroons fought for control over the contested terrain. US engineers and topographers produced territorial knowledge and physical infrastructure to facilitate the occupation of Indigenous territory and elimination of potential spaces of Black freedom. Topographic knowledge would later serve as the foundation for restructuring the land as property, naturalizing its possession by white plantation owners. Similarly, roads and waterway improvements, created to facilitate troop movements, would later serve as vital transportation infrastructure for settlement and expanding plantation slavery. This paper demonstrates how military engineering techniques designed to secure the Nation in the context of race war subsequently provided the coordinates for reorganizing the land within an emergent plantation economy inside its territorial borders.

Muhammed Sâdık Şihâbî Sa’dî Kâdirî’nin Menâkıb-ı Gavsiyye isimli eserinin Çağatayca çevirisi üzerine bir değerlendirme

This study is about the manâqib of Abdulqâdir Gaylânî, which was written in Persian in Turkestan in the XVIIIth century and translated into Chagatai by a person named Molla Yusuf in the XIXth century. The source of the study is the Menâqib-i Ghavsiyya of Muhammad Sâdiq Shihâbî Sa’dî Qâdirî, which was transcribed and translated by Mullah Yusuf b. Mullah Rahman/Rahim, and the scope of the study is limited to this work. Prof. Dr. Abdullah Gündoğdu took the copy in his personal collection as a basis for the study. Menâqib-i Ghavsiyya is a translation of the work written in Persian by Muhammad Sâdık Shihâbî Sa’dî Qâdirî. As Abdülqâdir Gaylânî, his science, preaching, lineage and activities spread to a very wide geography, especially his menâqib was also written or translated in Turkistan. Considering the high number and widespread use of the Menâqibnamas of Abdulqâdir Gaylânî, it is understood that Qâdirîyya was influential in Turkestan. Qâdirîyya, which is divided into approximately fifty branches, still exists in India, Turkestan, Anatolia and the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East, the whole of Asia, Europe, America, Australia: it is still active and widespread everywhere. The silsilas of the Qâdirî branches spreading in Turkistan are based on Abdurrazzâk Gaylânî. Considering that Abdurrazzâq Gaylânî lived in the XIIth and XIIIth centuries (v. 1207), it is understood that Qâdirîyya reached Turkestan at an early date and continued its existence for many years. Menâqib-i Ghavsiyya, translated by Molla Yusuf, indicates that the Qâdirî Order continued its activities and existence in Turkestan in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has reached to the present day.

Liberal Political Philosophy and European Economic History: A Note

There exists a widespread belief that England’s economic achievements were based on its spectacular progress in agriculture, in which primitive peasant cultivation was replaced by far the economically more successful large-scale cultivation by farmers. History, however, has a different tale to tell. Agriculture in England did not achieve any particular efficiency before the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century. No particular progress in agricultural techniques was observed before the eighteenth century, during which the entire English peasantry was uprooted to make way for ‘farmers’, employing wage labour.

Gender norms and solar panel energy adoption in Australia: Evidence from a natural experiment

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the United Kingdom transported convicts to the penal colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. Most of the convicts who were sent to the colonies were men. Treating it as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ the gender imbalance associated with this historical event to examine how gender norms influence the adoption of photovoltaic solar panels (PVS) in modern day Australia. Estimates from our preferred instrumental variable specification suggest that a unit increase in the historical sex ratio causes 3.5 more PVS units to be installed per 1000 population. We provide indirect evidence on the role of female bargaining power as a channel. We find that women living in locations which had higher historical sex ratios report being more satisfied with the division of childcare and household responsibilities, consistent with having greater bargaining power. We find that the effect of historical sex ratios on each of these proxies for female bargaining power is moderated by having an Australian-born parent, such that having an Australian-born parent strengthens the relationship, consistent with gender norms being passed down across generations. We also find that the effect of historical sex ratios on female bargaining power is attenuated by internal migration and greater ethnic diversity in the postcode, both of which weaken the vertical transmission of gender norms.

Correction to ‘Numeracy selectivity of Spanish migrants in colonial America (sixteenth–eighteenth centuries)’

Correction to ‘Numeracy selectivity of Spanish migrants in colonial America (sixteenth–eighteenth centuries)’

“One Certain Standard”: Colonial Currencies and the Politics of Economic Knowledge in Late Stuart Britain

Abstract Chronic coin shortages plagued Ireland and Britain's American colonies throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Despite complaints, every proposal to mint money in early modern Britain's overseas Atlantic empire failed, whether in Ireland, the Caribbean, or North America. This article explains why. Although the rulers in the court and Parliament were sometimes enthusiastic about colonial mints, the Officers of the Royal Mint exercised enduring influence and managed to obstruct each of these projects. The evolution of the Mint officers’ advice into a maxim of monetary uniformity allowed the doctrine of “one certain standard” to survive the ensuing decades of upheaval as it shed its visible politics. While their advice grew out of the particular politics of the early Restoration, it gained special power and durability when it took on the character of technocratic expertise. Still, an investigation of the same actors’ treatment of a parallel issue—the rates of the foreign coins that circulated in colonies—reveals that an authoritarian style had an enduring hold on imperial monetary policy. This article offers an explanation for the British Empire's peculiar monetary geography, and also demonstrates the way that seemingly apolitical technical knowledge can disguise a potent politics.

The Paleo‐Serchio River: history of floods between Lucca and Pisa during the Roman period

ABSTRACTThe reconstruction of flood frequency beyond the Instrumental Era is challenging and mostly based on historical sources, but it rarely covers more than the last 1000 years when abundant documentation is preserved. To investigate the long‐term trends in flooding and obtain insight into current climatic changes it is necessary to extend these data to a larger number of rivers beyond the Instrumental Era and available period of historical documentation. In this paper we reconstruct the paleoflood record for the Roman Period of the Serchio River (Auser in antiquity, located in Northern Tuscany, Central Italy) using geoarcheological data. The complex hydrological evolution of the river and the development of the important cities of Lucca and Pisa on the river bank allowed an important collection of data, showing a prominent peak in flood activity during the 1st century ce, which seems to correspond to an increase in regional rainfall interpreted from speleothem proxies. A secondary peak is present in the 6th century ce, which corresponds locally with an increase in precipitation recorded by speleothems. The phases of increased flooding, when compared with present‐day synoptical meteorological conditions, probably developed during a period of negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) Index, and it is partially supported by comparison with paleoproxies for NAO. These findings confirm that an extensive collection of geoarcheological data, supported by geological and geomorphological investigation, represents a powerful tool to be integrated with historical data for the reconstruction of floods. The concomitance of local paleohydrological proxies can help in disentangling the origin of the signal from other causes.

The Anufor (Chokosi): history of origins and settlement patterns

ABSTRACT The early parts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were significant in the history of today’s Northern Ghana as far as migrations and wars were concerned. It was a period of internecine wars, thus a very important watershed in the history of West Africa when several microstates were in their formative years. This meant the marshalling of all resources possible, including the formation of alliances. The migration of the Anufor to their present location in Ghana and Togo at the behest of the Gonja and subsequently Mamprusi as mercenaries can be traced to the early seventeenth century. Oral traditions and archival sources point to a ‘clientele’ relationship between the Anufor and the kingdoms of Mamprusi, Dagomba, and Gonja. This paper examines the inherent peculiarities that facilitated the migration of the Anufor as mercenaries in ‘wars and battles for others and their contribution to state formation processes.

Voluntary Slavery and the Meaning of Slavery

Abstract For most scholars of slavery, the pairing of the terms ‘voluntary’ and ‘slavery’ remains problematic. The dominant model of slavery defines it as an involuntary status, in which people—according to the liberal model of ownership—were reduced to ‘things’, able to be used, abused and even killed at will. However, this involuntary model is a modern creation, developed by abolitionists from the eighteenth century. Prior to this, being owned did not necessarily involve being reduced to a ‘thing’; as a result, the decision to enter ownership voluntarily did not carry the same weight of contradiction. In this article I show that as the idea of slavery as involuntary was consolidated, so the rhetorical and critical value of ‘voluntary slavery’ as the ultimate oxymoron rose to the fore. In the process, however, the exploitation of those who agreed to submit themselves to others was downplayed.

Barriers to the Textile Proto-industry Development in Bulgarian lands in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Barriers to the Textile Proto-industry Development in Bulgarian lands in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Triangulating a Global Qing: China, Japan, and Europe in a Snuff Bottle

Abstract In the early eighteenth century, a palm-sized snuff bottle was produced for China’s Kangxi 康熙 emperor (r. 1661–1722). Made in the Qing dynasty court workshops in Beijing, this tiny object paired European-style enamels (if not also imported pigments) painted on copper with two insets of Japanese black and gold maki-e lacquer. Combining Japanese and European materials in Chinese court arts is highly unusual, especially in so small an object, making the snuff bottle an extremely rare and rather experimental example. Yet this self-consciously globalizing object, whose imperial approval is present in the Kangxi reign mark (Kangxi nianzhi 康熙年製) on its base, reveals more than creative innovation and technical ingenuity. By combining materials, techniques, foreign origins, object function, and representational styles, it demonstrates a wide scope of foreign engagement on the part of the emperor who laid the foundation for the entire High Qing period (1662–1799).

Comparative legal teaching in eighteenth-century Oxford: an analysis of Thomas Bever’s Appendix to his lectures

Abstract In the 1760s and 1770s, Thomas Bever, a once-eminent but today nearly-forgotten English civilian, was delivering a course of lectures devoted to civil law at Oxford. The final part of those lectures, known as the Appendix, was of a different character from the earlier parts. In the Appendix Bever discussed the development of the law and constitution of 15 European countries. His description was an attempt to compare different systems and to abstract general legal concepts common to different countries. Along with other issues, Bever was specifically interested in abstracting the common roots of medieval feudalism. The analysis offered in this article is the result of archival investigation comparing two different versions of Bever’s lecture notes. The main objective of the article is to reconstruct Bever’s narrative, together with analysing his methodology and the intellectual framework of his work. This investigation reveals the intricacies of the legal education offered at Oxford in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Debates in Sociology

This paper focuses on the theoretical debates in sociology that acted as the driving force in its course of development drawing heavily from the thinking of Alvin Gouldner. Revolutionary transformation in the French society in late eighteenth century and the subsequent social disorder created the background of the development of positivism by Comte with the advocacy of restoring social order. Intermingling of different theories also took place as in the case of positivism furnishing the context for the emergence of structural functionalism. Interpretative sociology brought new dimension to the understanding of social phenomena by highlighting the perspective of the actors instead of the observer. In this vein it also discusses the emergence of intersubjectivity, ethnomethodology and related theoretical views. For obvious reason the paper deals elaborately with the perspective of Marxism. It underlines that structural functionalism presents society as an interwoven equilibrium while Marxism views the same as a conflicting whole with the effect of domination by the ruling class. This paper elaborates on the basic tenets of historical materialism as couched in Marxism. However, Marxist prognosis faltered in advanced capitalist countries of the Western hemisphere calling for new theoretical insight. Within Marxism it happened by examining the causal background of the continuation of capitalist countries, elaborated in this paper in the section on structural Marxism. The premise of sociology also necessitated the emergence of Durkheim and Weber who argued for different perspectives for the understanding of social order. The contributions of system theory and interactionism are duly acknowledged in this paper to weave a comprehensive intellectual tapestry being linked with debates and argumentation. The parallelism of system and individual brought dualism in sociological theory and Anthony Giddens took up attempt to draw a conflation between the two, unfolding a new dimension in the debate ridden sociological theories. The paper concluded with the discussion of Derrida and Lyotard to unfold the novel approach of post-modernism in challenging the claim of universality of modern theories.

W Ukrainie czy na Ukrainie?

W UKRAINIE (IN UKRAINE) OR NA UKRAINIE (ON UKRAINE)? ON PREPOSITIONS AND TOPONYMS IN POLISH FROM A HISTORICAL AND COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE The author of this paper discusses the usage of the preposition na (‘on’) with some country names, such as Ukraina (Ukraine), Litwa (Lithuania) and Węgry (Hungary) in Polish. The above examples are exceptions to the general rule according to which names of countries take the preposition w (‘in’) and do (‘to’) to describe, respectively, static and dynamic relations. Na, in turn, regularly occurs with names of Polish provinces. Historically, the pair w/do was used with both categories of place-names, while na was a linguistic innovation in that context. Statistical analysis of historical texts shows that its spread was gradual. Individual toponyms adopted the preposition na in different periods, reflecting the loss of their autonomy. However, following the partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, na started to be used with most Polish provinces and several foreign ones (which are currently independent states). Thus, the linguistic change was caused by a change in the perception of the terms in question, the latter being a shift from political to ethnographic terms. The mechanism itself can be best accounted for with the use of the term zooming, or change of the vantage point, which, in this case, was zoomed in.

САМОЗВАНЕЦ ИЛИ ВСЁ-ТАКИ ПРИНЦ? ПЕРКИН УОРБЕК В ИСТОРИЧЕСКОЙ ПАМЯТИ АНГЛИЧАН

In the XVI–XXI centuries, ideas about Perkin Warbeck made a full circle – from the perplexity of contemporaries, through the unconditional rejection of Tudor century, the first attempts to justify Warbeck of the XVII–XVIII centuries, sentimental novels and poems of the XIX century, scrupulous studies of the turn of the XX–XXI centuries, historians returned to the beginning. Аs well as contemporaries, they distrust the official, Tudor version of events and admit that the real prince, the rightful heir of the Yorks, was sent to the gallows. The image of Warbeck turned out to be so contradictory because the choice between an "impostor" and a "prince" did not always depend on objective, scientific calculations. Often the decision was determined by an assessment of the Tudor rule and of the preceding period of the Wars of the Roses (especially the personality and reign of Richard III). There were also non-scientific factors. To find an extra-political explanation for Warbeck's success, even under the Tudors he was turned into an immensely charming handsome man, a victim of intrigues. Artists, poets and novelists were happy to exploit and develop this emotional component; as the historical distance lengthened, the image of Warbeck became more and more touching and sentimental.