Reading Ireland: Print, Reading and Social Change in Early Modern Ireland (review)

Abstract This paper argues that unsettled people, far from being “marginal” individuals, played a key role in shaping early modern cities. It does so by going beyond the traditional binary between rooted and unstable people. Specifically, the paper takes the temporary places of residence of this “unsettled” population – notably inns (garnis in France, osterie in Italy) – as a vantage point to observe social change in early modern cities. The case studies are two cities which shared a growing and highly mobile population in the early modern period: Rome and Marseille. In the first section, the paper focuses on two semi-rural neighborhoods. This is to assess the impact of mobility in shaping demographic, urbanistic, and economic patterns in these areas. Moving from the neighborhood as a whole to the individual buildings which composed it, the second section outlines the biographies of two inns: Rome’s osteria d’Acquataccio and Marseille’s hôtel des Deux mondes. In turn, this is to evaluate changes and continuities over a longer period of time.

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The International Ceramics Trade and Social Change in the Red River Delta in the Early Modern Period

The Asian review of World Histories ◽

10.1163/22879811-12340008 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 123-144

Author(s):

Ueda Shinya ◽

Nishino Noriko

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Social Change ◽

Early Modern ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

River Delta ◽

Red River ◽

Traditional Society ◽

Social Changes ◽

Red River Delta ◽

Modern Period

Abstract Nishimura Masanari argued that the construction of enclosed-type levees caused the water level of the Red River to rise in seventeenth-century northern Vietnam, and he suggested that this phenomenon triggered social changes that brought about the establishment of Vietnamese “traditional society,” represented by the autonomous villages of the Red River Delta. Nishimura’s archaeological discussion of the transition from horseshoe-shaped levees to enclosed-type levees suggests new ways of studying socioeconomic change in early modern Vietnam. This article examines the utilization of the dry riverbed area of the Red River near Hanoi and tracks changes in the position of the levee near the neighboring villages of Bát Tràng and Kim Lan from the seventeenth century onward. The article shows that Nishimura’s argument concerning the levee network makes it possible to locate the establishment of early modern Vietnamese society in the “Age of Commerce.”

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State formation and social change in early modern England: A problem stated and approaches suggested∗

Social History ◽

10.1080/03071029108567786 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 1-17 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Michael Braddick

Keyword(s):

Social Change ◽

Early Modern ◽

State Formation ◽

Early Modern England

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INTOXICANTS AND SOCIETY IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x11000197 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 54 (3) ◽

pp. 631-657 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

PHIL WITHINGTON

Keyword(s):

Social Change ◽

Social Identity ◽

Early Modern ◽

Social Groups ◽

Early Modern England ◽

Theory And Practice ◽

Cultural Contexts ◽

Civilizing Process ◽

The Poor

ABSTRACTThe article considers the rapid increase in the English market for alcohol and tobacco in the 1620s and the set of concurrent influences shaping their consumption. It suggests that intoxicants were not merely a source of solace for ‘the poor’ or the lubricant of traditional community, as historians often imply. Rather, the growth in the market for beer, wine, and tobacco was driven by those affluent social groups regarded as the legitimate governors of the English commonwealth. For men of a certain disposition and means, the consumption of intoxicants became a legitimate – indeed valorized and artful – aspect of their social identity: an identity encapsulated by the Renaissance concept of ‘wit’. These new styles of drinking were also implicated in the proliferation (in theory and practice) of ‘societies’ and ‘companies’, by which contemporaries meant voluntary and purposeful association. These arguments are made by unpacking the economic, social, and cultural contexts informing the humorous dialogue Wine, beere, ale and tobacco. Contending for superiority. What follows demonstrates that the ostensibly frivolous subject of male drinking casts new light on the nature of early modern social change, in particular the nature of the ‘civilizing process’.

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