scholarly journals Enlightened Travelers and Their Mental Maps

2015 ◽  
pp. 145-155
Author(s):  
Nikolay Aretov
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
General Description ◽  
Common Elements ◽  
Mental Maps ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Patriarchal Culture ◽  
Mental Mapping

Enlightened Travelers and Their Mental MapsThe issue of mental mapping of Eastern Europe (Wolff), posed during the Enlightenment, and the similar problem of the image of the Balkans (Todorova), are both multifaceted. This paper deals with three aspects of these processes and seeks to analyse them through the prism of the Orientalism-Occidentalism opposition.The article opens with a very general description of the Oriental mental maps on the part of 19th-century Bulgarian revolutionaries and modernisers. Most characteristic in this respect are the diaries of those convicted to exile in the Diarbekir fortress. I then turn my attention to texts by influential foreigners who arrived in Bulgaria immediately after 1878, including especially the publications by the Czech historian and Slavonic scholar Constantine Jireček and some of the reactions they provoked.The article reveals common elements in both the foreign perspective on the inhabitants of the Orient/the Balkans/Bulgaria and the Bulgarian perspective on the Occident/Western Europe. A hypothesis is proposed that what the analysed texts portray is not a general clash between traditionalism (patriarchal culture) and modernity but rather a very particular conflict over which group should perform the role of the “civiliser” of Bulgarian society. Both sides of the conflict made instrumental use of existing discourses, be it modernist or patriarchal, Orientalist or Occidentalist.Oświeceni podróżnicy i ich mapy mentalneProblem mentalnego kartografowania Europy Wschodniej (L. Wolff), jak też Bałkanów (M. Todorowa), od czasów oświecenia jest wieloaspektowy. Artykuł charakteryzuje trzy spośród tych aspektów i poszukuje związków pomiędzy nimi, poprzez analizę opozycji orientalizm – okcydentalizm.Na początku prezentuję najogólniej mapy mentalne bułgarskich rewolucjonistów i przedstawicieli nowoczesności z XIX wieku na Bałkanach (Orient). Najbardziej charakterystyczne pod tym względem są dzienniki skazańców z twierdzy tureckiej w Diar-Bekir. Następnie moja uwaga skupia się na tekstach wpływowych cudzoziemców, którzy znaleźli się w Bułgarii bezpośrednio po 1878 roku, a wśród nich w centrum mojego zainteresowania znajdują się niektóre publikacje Czecha Konstantina Irečka i reakcje na nie.Artykuł jest próbą zarysu punktu widzenia cudzoziemca w stosunku do przedstawicieli Orientu /Bałkanów/Bułgarii i bułgarskiego dystansu w odniesieniu do Okcydentu /Zachodu/ Europy. Materiał analizowany skłania ku hipotezie, że nie o zderzenie między tradycjonalizmem (patriarchalną kulturą) i nowoczesnością idzie, ale o konkretną walkę o odegranie roli "cywilizatora" bułgarskiego społeczeństwa. W tej walce oponenci wykorzystują instrumentalnie dostępne dyskursy, modernistyczne, czy też patriarchalne, orientalne, czy okcydentalne. Просветени пътешественици и техните ментални картиПроблемът за менталното картографиране на Източна Европа (Л. Улф) от Просвещението, както и сродния му проблем за отношението към Балканите (М. Тодорова) имат многобройни аспекти. Статията очертава три от тях и търси връзките им, видени през опозицията ориентализъм – оксидентализъм. В началото са представени най-общо менталните карти на българите революционери и модернизатори от ХІХ в. на Ориента. Те са особено характерни за мемоарите на заточениците в Диарбекир. След това вниманието се насочва към текстовете на влиятелни чужденци, попаднали в България непосредствено след 1878 г., на първо място някои публикации на чеха Константин Иречек и някои реакции към тях. Разкрити са общите елементи в ориенталистката гледна точка на чужденеца и оксиденталистките възражения на българина. Изказва се хипотезата, че в случая не се наблюдава сблъсък между традиционно (патриархално) и модерно, а конкурентна борба за ролята на "цивилизатора" на българското общество. В тази борба опонентите използват инструментално наличните дискурси, били те модернистки или патриархални, ориенталистки или оксиденталистки.

Some Observations on the Role of Ducats in the Balkans in Late Medieval and Modern Times

Rural History ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEKSANDAR N. BRZIĆ
Keyword(s):  
Rural Population ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
Evolutionary Aspects

Ducats were issued for the first time in the second half of the thirteenth century. Although practically invisible in Western Europe nowadays, they are still hoarded and used by the rural population of the Balkans. The wealth stored in them is considerable; its level does not show signs of structural decline yet, even in the age of the almighty euro. The history of the use of ducats in the Balkans can be divided into three distinctive periods. Using a descriptive economic-historical approach, the characteristics of these periods, their main evolutionary aspects and particularities are being observed and explained. An overview of countries issuing ducats in the Balkans is given and some economic comparisons used to illustrate the significance of ducats as an economic phenomenon. Finally, the very important question of the use of ducats in jewelry in the Balkans is considered.

scholarly journals Revisiting “Tin in South-eastern Europe?”

Starinar ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Wayne Powell ◽  
Ognjen Mladenovic ◽  
Steffanie Cruse ◽  
Arthur Bankoff ◽  
Ryan Mathur
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Isotopic Signature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Placer Deposits ◽  
South Eastern Europe

The important role of the Balkans in the origin and development of metallurgy is well established with respect to copper. In addition, Aleksandar Durman, in his 1997 paper ?Tin in South-eastern Europe??, essentially initiated studies into the role of the Balkans in Europe?s Bronze Age tin economy. He identified six geologically favourable sites for tin mineralisation and associated fluvial placer deposits in the former Yugoslavian republics, and suggested that these may have added to the tin supply of the region. The viability of two of these sites has been confirmed (Mt Cer and Bukulja, Serbia) but the exploitation potential for the other locations has remained untested. River gravels from these four sites (Motajica and Prosara in Bosnia and Herzegovina; Bujanovac in Serbia; Ograzden in North Macedonia) were obtained by stream sluicing and panning. The sites of Prosara and Bujanovac were found to be barren with respect to cassiterite (SnO2). Streams flowing from Motajica and Ograzden were both found to contain cassiterite, but in amounts several orders of magnitude less than at Mt Cer and Bukulja. Although it is possible that minor tin recovery occurred at Motajica and Ograzden, it is unlikely that they could have contributed meaningfully to regional tin trade. This is supported by the fact that the isotopic signature (?124Sn) of cassiterite from Motajica is highly enriched in light isotopes of tin compared to that associated with Late Bronze Age artefacts of the region.

De-Orientalizing the Western Gaze on Eastern Europe

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-162
Author(s):  
Barbara Christophe
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
Publishing Houses

Comparing narratives of the Soviet occupation in 1940 in current textbooks by two leading Lithuanian publishing houses, I claim that Lithuanian textbooks offer diverging accounts, which mirror to a large extent the opposing mnemonic frames supported by two rival political camps. I also show that the same textbooks tame those differences by transcending the politically charged frames they have chosen in the first place, presenting, for example, the USSR as both villain and victim of the war. Considering the relevance of these findings for our understanding of dynamics of remembering in general and in the Lithuanian culture of memory in particular, I point out that embracing the political inherent in all acts of recalling the past does not necessarily lead to politicized, i.e. narrow-minded memories, and I reflect on what these mnemonic practices mean for reevaluating the traditional role of Eastern Europe as the backward other of Western Europe.

The Enlightenment, Public Memory, Liberalism, and the Post-Communist World

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven M. DeLue
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Public Memory ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Political Relationships ◽  
Equal Respect ◽  
Do So

This article discusses the central role of public memory of radical injustice—or the systematic denial by a regime of the principle of equal respect for persons under the rule of law—in creating and preserving a liberal democratic regime. My contention is that, in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, efforts to deny equal respect in a systematic way to entire groups of people must be remembered by a society—indeed, there is a moral obligation to do so. And when these events are remembered, the basis for establishing and maintaining the rule of law in society on behalf of civic equality is more likely. A public memory of radical injustice has become much stronger in the countries of Eastern Europe than in Russia, and I speculate what the consequences of this circumstance are likely to be for the political relationships between Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe.

scholarly journals Various mental images about the geographical extension of Central, Southeast and Eastern Europe

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (31) ◽  
pp. 129-143
Author(s):  
Hardi Tamás
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Questionnaire Survey ◽  
Physical Geography ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
Mental Maps ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The World ◽  
Space Concepts ◽  
The University

Abstract Central Europe, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Southeast Europe as macro- region space concepts are not regions designable by physical geography; the geographical content of these concepts is drawn and re-drawn by historical, cultural and geopolitical processes. Debates on the extension and content of the macro-regions featured intensify every now and then, especially in crisis periods - it is enough to think of the years before, during and after the world wars, the regime change, and these days. Our paper, with the brief summary of the preliminaries, highlights, from the perspective of our age, the geopolitically determined transformation and demonstrates the findings of our empirical research. During our research we made a questionnaire survey in which we recorded mental maps of the university students of Hungary and its seven neighbour countries, looking at where the respondents put their own countries and what image of the respective macro-regions lived in their minds. Our findings may be subject to debates but clearly show the convergent or divergent directions of the respective countries, at least as regards the judgement by the youth.

HISTORICAL REGIONS BETWEEN CONSTRUCTION AND PERCEPTION: VIEWING FRANCE AND POLAND IN THE LATE-EIGHTEENTH AND EARLY-NINETEENTH CENTURIES

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 79-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Struck
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Rural Culture ◽  
Mental Maps ◽  
Urban Background ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The One ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe

This essay tackles the problem of spatial imaginations, representations, and "mental maps." Its main point of reference is Larry Wolff's thesis that the division of Europe into an Eastern - backward and uncivilized - part, on the one hand, and a Western - modem and civilized - part, on the other, can be traced back to the late-eighteenth century. In the Enlightenment, according to Wolff, philosophers, writers, and above all travelers created this normative and value laden inner-European dichotomy. From the perspective of German travelogues on Poland and France published between roughly 1750 and 1850, Europe and its inner division appears in a completely different light. The perceptions, for instance, of travel infrastructure, rural life, and small provincial towns are widely identical. From the perspective of a bourgeois, educated, mostly Protestant traveier, originating from an urban background, the main dichotomy around 1800 was not the division between Eastern and Western Europe. The cleavages followed the division between urban and rural culture, bourgeois and peasant milieu, or between denominations, such as Protestantism and Catholicism.

Europe as a Cultural-Civilizational Construct

2019 ◽  
pp. 36-61
Author(s):  
Katherine Graney
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Eastern Boundary ◽  
European Form

This chapter examines the different meanings that “Europe” has historically had. It explores the geographic, cultural, religious, and historical understandings of Europe, stressing the uncertainty regarding Europe’s eastern boundary, and how this uncertainty has given rise to the idea that there are actually many “different” Europes, including Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Mitteleuropa, and the Balkans. It stresses the role of Christianity in understanding Europeanness, and the role that Orthodoxy plays as a “quasi-European” form of Christianity, and Islam as Europe and Christianity’s certain “other.” It also discusses how Russia, in both its Tsarist and Soviet guises, has been judged by others (and itself) to only imperfectly fit the criteria associated with Europeanness, even as it judged non-Russian others within its realm according to those same criteria.

NATO After Tito

Worldview ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 11-12
Author(s):  
L. Thomas Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Wishful Thinking ◽  
Southwest Asia ◽  
The West ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Center Stage

While the eyes of the West rivet upon Soviet expansionism in Southwest Asia, another drama moves to center stage in the Balkans.There is considerable wishful thinking, particularly in Western Europe, about the Soviets' inability to engage their forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, maintain their defenses against China, and still cause difficulty in Eastern Europe after the death of Yugoslavia's president, Josip Tito. This is the same kind of rationalization that for two decades lulled the West into letting its defenses erode to a scandalous level.

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