scholarly journals Neighbourhood of the City and the Provinces in Dalmatia in the Light of Chosen Examples of Early Modern French Travel Literature

2015 ◽  
pp. 83-93
Author(s):  
Wojciech Sajkowski
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Italian Culture ◽  
Western European ◽  
The City

Neighbourhood of the City and the Provinces in Dalmatia in the Light of Chosen Examples of Early Modern French Travel LiteratureIn early modern period Dalmatia was a region which was culturally diversified. Such cities as Zadar or Split were the centres of Italian culture, while province was a part of the Slavic world. Their location on the route to Turkey made of them a frequent stop for such French travellers as Jacob Spon (1675) or Louis-François Cassas (1782), which testimonies became a basis for printed publications. In their testimonies readers could find the information about Dalmatian cities and province and differences between then. The latter issue is important, yet often neglected addition to the discussion on the shaping of the image of the Balkans.In this study we concentrate on this French approach to this problem, because it can be considered as representative for the other Western European perspectives. The French look at the issue of neighbourhood of the city and the province was characterized by a distance, which is rarely found in Venetian sources. This wide chronologic scope will allow to show changes which occurred in the French image of Dalmatia during the age of Enlightenment.The paper tries to analyse the travel literature in the perspective of the issue of image of neighbourhood of the city and province in Dalmatia and proves that this image had two perspectives. The first related to the neighbourhood of the sophisticated Italian culture (synonymous with the city) and the province, equated mostly with little known in the West Slavic world. The second perspective, which appeared in the second half of the eighteenth century dealt with these relationships in the wider context of the neighbourhood civilization and backwardness. Sąsiedztwo miasta i prowincji w Dalmacji w świetle wybranych przykładów francuskiej literatury podróżniczej z czasów nowożytnychDalmacja stanowiła w epoce nowożytnej niezwykle zróżnicowany kulturowo obszar, w którym miasta takie, jak Zadar czy Split, stanowiły przede wszystkim ośrodki kultury włoskiej, podczas gdy prowincja przynależała do świata słowiańskiego. Położenie na szlaku do Turcji sprawiało, że do miast trafiali podróżnicy tacy, jak Jacob Spon (1675), czy Louis-François Cassas (1782), którzy opisywali ich zabytki (w tym te z czasów Cesarstwa Rzymskiego), a także obyczaje ich mieszkańców. Bardzo często zwracali uwagę na kulturowy i etniczny kontrast miasta z prowincją, większy niż w przypadku zachodnioeuropejskich centrów i ich okolic – bo dotyczący również kwestii etnicznych. Francuskie spojrzenie na kwestię sąsiedztwa miasta i prowincji na obszarze Dalmacji jest o tyle istotne, że charakteryzuje się dystansem, który rzadziej spotykamy w źródłach weneckich. W owych opisach już na wstępnym etapie badań można wydzielić  dwie  perspektywy – pierwsza dotyczy spotkania wyrafinowanej kultury włoskiej (utożsamianej z miastem) i prowincji, utożsamianej najczęściej z mało znanym na Zachodzie światem słowiańskim. Druga perspektywa, która pojawiła się w drugiej połowie XVIII wieku, rozpatrywała te relacje w szerszym kontekście sąsiedztwa cywilizacji i zacofania, które łączyło wspominaną refleksję dotyczącą stosunków włosko-słowiańskich  z historyczną refleksją nad sąsiedztwem rzymskiej cywilizacji (której wiele świadectw zachowało się miastach dalmatyńskich) z barbarzyństwem – które doprowadziło do jej kresu. Szersza perspektywa chronologiczna umożliwi uchwycenie zmiany, jaka zaszła w we francuskim spojrzeniu na Dalmację, a której katalizatorem były nie tylko coraz większe zainteresowanie tym regionem (mające swoje apogeum w krótkim okresie napoleońskich rządów w Dalmacji w okresie istnienia Prowincji Iliryjskich), lecz również oświeceniowa refleksja dotycząca cywilizacji i prymitywizmu.

Merciful Father, Impersonal State: Russian Autocracy in Comparative Perspective

1997 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 635-663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerie Kivelson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Central State ◽  
The West ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
State Apparatus

Comparative analyses traditionally have done Russian history no favors. Invidious comparisons have situated Russia firmly in a context of backwardness relative to the West. The term ‘medieval’ customarily applies to Russia until the era of Peter the Great, that is, until the early eighteenth century, and even the least condemnatory scholars point out similarities between Muscovite Russia of the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries and early medieval tribal formations of northern Europe. Along with ‘backwardness,’ comparative history has customarily found in Russia an example of extraordinarily oppressive autocratic despotism, while at the same time, and omewhat contradictorily, decrying the incompetence and rampant corruption of the central state apparatus. These and other unflattering comparative generalizations arose in the observations of Western travellers who recorded their impressions of Russia in the early modern period and have continued in the writings of scholars and journalists to this day.

The Petrine Divide and the Periodization of Early Modern Russian History

Slavic Review ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 410-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell E. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Russian History ◽  
The West ◽  
Traditional Use ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Court Politics ◽  
Law Of Succession ◽  
Gradual Transformation

Among the chief problems in determining the boundaries of the early modern period in Russian history is die reign and reforms of Peter I the Great. In this article, Russell E. Martin situates Peter's reign within the context of dynastic marriage politics from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. He argues that the centuries from roughly 1500 to 1800 constitute a single, coherent period. Court politics were dominated by concerns of kinship and marriage: in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by the search for a domesdc bride for the Russian rulers through bride shows; then, in the eighteenth century, by the gradual transformation of court politics away from domestic brides and toward a more traditional use of dynastic marriage as a tool in foreign policy. The early modern period ends, Martin argues, only with the promulgation of a new law of succession by Paul I (as modified by Alexander I). The so-called Petrine divide, then, is elided in a periodization of Russian history that very much mirrors the boundaries that are conventional in the west.

Surat

2019 ◽  
pp. 218-238
Author(s):  
Martha Chaiklin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Port City ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The World ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Indian Ocean World ◽  
The City

In the eighteenth century, Surat was perhaps the single most important port city of the Moghul empire, if not the world. Dutch, English, French, and Portuguese ships were called from Africa and Brazil to obtain Gujarati textiles, side by side with dhows from the throughout the Indian Ocean. This textile trade was underpinned by ivory, large amounts of which poured in the city both by caravan and by sea. Even though Surat, or even Gujarat, was not elephant habitat in the early modern period, Surat became a significant port for the import of ivory into India. The need for tusks of an appropriate size for bangles created symbiosis of trade between Gujarati textiles and ivory that directly affected the prosperity of Surat. The chapter thus links Surat to the Indian Ocean World through ivory and demonstrate the interconnected nature of ivory and textiles in the Gujarat region.

Mapping the early modern city

Urban History ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Hills
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Patron Saint ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Internal Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This paper analyses in their political context the festival decorations created by Paolo Amato, architect to the Senate of Palermo, in 1686 for the festival of the patron saint of that city. One of these decorations, that of the main altar in the cathedral, is of particular interest in that it represents a map of the city itself. An analysis of this map in relation to other seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century maps of Palermo reveals its political and social aim and biases, but also shows that it was unusually up to date and accurate as a representation of the city at that date. Such a representation not only marks a striking cul-de-sac in the history of the development of cartography, but sheds light on the relationship between forging politically acceptable identities for a city and their representation in the early modern period. The map in particular, but all the decorations, or apparati, in general are interpreted in the context of the weakened Spanish empire (to which Sicily belonged) and of the internal politics of the island and of Palermo.

An Early Jesuit Encounter with the Qur’an

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Paul Shore
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
European Language ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western European

The manuscipt Animadversiones, Notae ac Disputationes in Pestilentem Alcoranum is an almost entirely unknown translation of the Qur'an into baroque Latin completed by the Jesuit priest Ignazio Lomellini in 1622, of which only one copy exists. It is accompanied by extensive commentaries and includes a complete text of the Qur’an in Arabic and numerous marginalia. It is, therefore, one of the earliest complete translations of the Qur’an into a western European language and a crucial document of the encounter between western Christianity and Islam in the early modern period. This essay examines Lomellini’s understanding of Arabic and, specifically, of the cultural and religious underpinnings of Qur’anic Arabic. Special attention is given to his lexical choices. This essay also deals with the document’s intended audience, the resources upon which he drew (including the library of his patron, Cardinal Alessandro Orsini), and the manuscript’s relationship to the Jesuits’ broader literary and missionary efforts. Finally, it asks why scholars, particularly those who study the history of the Jesuits, have ignored this manuscript and its author.

Free Trade before Liberalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Tazzara
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
State Policy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Free Trade Zone ◽  
Central Mediterranean ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Institutional Variation ◽  
Intellectual Legacy

Chapter 8 situates Livorno amidst a larger picture of competition in the central Mediterranean. It analyzes the spread of free ports by considering the two axes along which Italian ports liberalized during the early modern period: hospitality toward merchants and openness toward goods. Despite much institutional variation, a maritime free trade zone was in existence by the mid-eighteenth century. The intellectual legacy of free ports such as Livorno was nonetheless ambivalent. Though some Enlightenment thinkers used free ports to formulate general theories of free trade, others believed they promoted the subjection of state policy to foreign merchants.

Baroque Opera

2018 ◽  
pp. 369-385
Author(s):  
Downing A. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Social World ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Nested Structures ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
Baroque Opera

The fundamental assumption of commentators from the early modern period is that tasteful music functions simultaneously to express sentiment and to move listener-spectators. The three core elements of the baroque operatic spectacle—poetry, music, and dance—are defined by their ability to express and convey passion. Commentators point to the particular ability of musical language—and its combination with poetry and movement—to represent that which is out of reach of spoken language, or below the threshold of linguistic representation. Although both dramma per musica and the tragédie en musique arose and were fundamentally grounded in monarchical cultural worlds, both also endured successfully as public art forms. Aesthetically, baroque opera exhibits and revels in nested structures, manifested in plays within plays and in references that place the operatic moment within a social world outside the opera. Opera left this aesthetic behind as it moved into the second half of the eighteenth century, influenced by the views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the works of Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck among others.

Coda: Repositioning Early Modern Prague on the Global Stage

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Suzanna Ivanič
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Musical Knowledge ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The City

The question that sparked this forum was to what extent we can see Prague as an important stage for Renaissance and Reformation exchange and as an internationally connected city. It is striking, though not unexpected, that all the authors have been drawn to some extent to sources and subjects in Rudolfine Prague. It must be stressed, however, that the emphasis of each of these studies is somewhat different to an older field of “Rudolfine studies.” The researchers here do not focus on the emperor's court but use it as context. It is tangential to their main focal points—on Jewish communities, religious change, and the exchange of scientific and musical knowledge—and these are first and foremost historians not of Prague but of social and cultural history, music, art, material culture, and religion. This indicates a marked shift from the historiography. For this generation of scholars, Prague is not only a city that is home to a fascinating and intriguing art historical moment but is also a city of early modern international connections. It provides a unique context for understanding communities, everyday experiences, religion, and culture in early modern Europe—a multilingual, multiconfessional, and multicultural mixing pot whose composition changed dramatically across the early modern period. Rudolf's court was certainly a catalyst for these crossings and encounters, but they did not fade away after his death in 1612, nor were they limited to the confines of the castle above the city.

Die geschriebene Stadt

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Teresa Schröder-Stapper
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The City

The Written City. Inscriptions as Media of Urban Knowledge of Space and Time The article investigates the function of urban inscriptions as media of knowledge about space and time at the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period in the city of Braunschweig. The article starts with the insight that inscriptions in stone or wood on buildings or monuments not only convey knowledge about space and time but at the same time play an essential role in the construction of space and time in the city by the practice of inscribing. The analysis focuses on the steadily deteriorating relationship between the city of Braunschweig and its city lord, the Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, and its material manifestation in building and monument inscriptions. The contribution shows that in the course of the escalating conflict over autonomy, a change in epigraphic habit took placed that aimed at claiming both urban space and its history exclusively on behalf of the city as an expression of its autonomy.

Moscow: The Third Rome

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Mayhew
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Imperial Ideology ◽  
The City ◽  
Modern Russian

In the mid-19th century, three 16th-century Russian sources were published that alluded to Moscow as the “third Rome.” When 19th-century Russian historians discovered these texts, many interpreted them as evidence of an ancient imperial ideology of endless expansion, an ideology that would go on to define Russian foreign policy from the 16th century to the modern day. But what did these 16th-century depictions of Moscow as the third Rome actually have in mind? Did their meaning remain stable or did it change over the course of the early modern period? And how significant were they to early modern Russian imperial ideology more broadly? Scholars have pointed out that one cannot assume that depictions of Moscow as the third Rome were necessarily meant to be imperial celebrations per se. After all, the Muscovites considered that the first Rome fell for various heretical beliefs, in particular that Christ did not possess a human soul, and the second Rome, Constantinople, fell to the Turks in 1453 precisely because it had accepted some of these heretical “Latin” doctrines. As such, the image of Moscow as the third Rome might have marked a celebration of the city as a new imperial center, but it could also allude to Moscow’s duty to protect the “true” Orthodox faith after the fall—actual and theological—of Rome and Constantinople. As time progressed, however, the nuances of religious polemic once captured by the trope were lost. During the 17th and early 18th centuries, the image of Moscow as the third Rome took on a more unequivocally imperialist tone. Nonetheless, it would be easy to overstate the significance of allusions to Moscow as the third Rome to early modern Russian imperial ideology more broadly. Not only was the trope rare and by no means the only imperial comparison to be found in Muscovite literature, it was also ignored by secular authorities and banned by clerics.

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