Anthropological Models in Yoruba History

Africa ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. C. C. Law
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Descent Group ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Social Anthropologist

Opening ParagraphThe recent appearance of a monograph by a social anthropologist, Peter Lloyd, on The Political Development of Yoruba Kingdoms in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries is likely to arouse considerable interest among historians of Africa, whose appetites have been whetted by adumbrations of his interpretation in some of his earlier publications. Lloyd traces the political development of the kingdom of Oyo through its period of imperial expansion in the eighteenth century until its collapse in the 1830s, and of five Yoruba states in the nineteenth century—Ibadan, Ado Ekiti, Abeokuta, Iwo, and Ilorin. He seeks to apply to the history of these states a model of the process whereby ‘tribal kingdoms’ develop into ‘highly centralised monarchies’. A ‘tribal kingdom’ is defined as one in which ‘political power…rests with a council of chiefs, each of which is selected by and from among members of a descent group—[and] the king is seen more as an arbiter between the chiefs than as an autocrat’. In a centralized monarchy, on the other hand, power rests with the king, the senior chiefs are appointed by the king, and a concept of ‘citizenship’ develops to replace descent-group loyalties. The Yoruba states discussed in this monograph did not, in fact, develop in this way, and Lloyd's theme is their failure to achieve centralization. The analysis is applied principally to Oyo. Of the nineteenth-century states discussed, relatively little is said of Iwo and Ado Ekiti, while Ibadan, Abeokuta, and Ilorin did not start out as ‘tribal kingdoms’ but as war-camps without kings. Moreover, it is suggested that the failure of Oyo to achieve centralization provided precedents for decentralization which influenced the development of its successors in the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Materialism, Politics, and the History of Philosophy

2021 ◽  
pp. 293-312
Author(s):  
Ayşe Yuva
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the political uses of the categorization of eighteenth-century French materialism as mechanistic and reductionist. Regardless of the current or outdated character of these materialisms, their rejection and the narratives that endorsed such judgments appear as partly ideological. Using several examples, this chapter will examine how this reductionist image of eighteenth-century French materialism was formed in the nineteenth century. It aims to show that the quarrels about materialism focused at that time on the question of a society’s dominant beliefs.

Elmina and Greater Asante in the nineteenth century

Africa ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry W. Yarak
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regional Studies ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Over Time

Opening ParagraphOne of the more interesting historiographical debates that emerged in the course of the great burst of research into Akan (actually primarily Asante) history during the 1950s and 1960s concerned the ‘structure’ of the Asante empire, or ‘Greater Asante’ as one of the contributors to the debate, Kwame Arhin, has termed it (Arhin, 1967). The debates have largely been informed by a synchronic, ‘centrist’ approach; that is, by an approach that views the imperial structure at a given point in time, and primarily from the perspective of the political centre, the capital town of Kumase. The 1970s have seen a proliferation of regional studies of the Akan and their neighbours, and so it is perhaps time to reopen the debate on the nature of the Asante imperial order from a broader perspective, one that is both more sensitive to change over time and includes the emerging views from the periphery (see, for example, Berberich, 1974; Case, 1979; Ferguson, 1972; Greene, 1981; Haight, 1981; Handloff, 1982; Sanders, 1980; Weaver, 1975; Yarak, 1976). The present paper first briefly sketches the social and political setting in nineteenth-century Elmina (εdena), then critically reviews the historiographical debate over the structure of Greater Asante, and lastly offers an alternative approach to the study of Greater Asante based on a case study of the history of Asante relations with Elmina.

Origins: Controversies over Hasidic Shtiblekh

2013 ◽  
pp. 42-76
Author(s):  
Marcin Wodziński
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
The Political ◽  
The South ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
History Of

This chapter covers the prominence of the Jewish Question in the political debates of the last years of the Commonwealth, as well as in the later journalism of the Duchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom of Poland regarding interests in hasidim. It analyzes the cradle of Polish Hasidism, Podolia and Volhynia, the south-eastern borderlands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where from the 1740s to 1760 the putative creator of the group, Israel ben Eliezer, also known as the Besht was active. Though Hasidism appeared in the lands of central Poland as early as the mid-eighteenth century, the governments that controlled these territories between 1772 and 1830 did not become aware of it until nearly the end of that period that the existence of hasidic groups became an issue in Jewish politics. It explains how the lack of official interest in Hasidism was caused by the very complicated general history of the states of central and eastern Europe at the start of the nineteenth century. The growing wave of interventions in issues related to Hasidism and the fact that the question of the legality of Hasidism became tied up with the issue of religious fraternities.

‘We Must Hang Together’: The English Appropriation of Esprit de Corps in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Ensemblance ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 87-111
Author(s):  
Luis de Miranda
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
The Us ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

This chapter narrates the English propagation of the phrase, initiated by Voltaire’s friend Lord Chesterfield. It demonstrates the importance of discussions about ‘esprit de corps’ in the English and American leading societies, for example in the British Parliament or among the US Founding Fathers. At the end of the eighteenth century, esprit de corps was a notion that infiltrated the political debate at the highest level. In the newly born United States of America, the official discourse on esprit de corps reproduced the ambivalence of French utterances. A relatively new idea in the nineteenth-century occidental world, connected with the notions of civil society and public service, was that the rights of a people — and sometimes of humanity altogether — were to be guarded by a ‘universal class’ of enlightened and educated officials. Social control in nineteenth-century English-speaking geopolitical zones relied on religion and ‘science’ to present a version of esprit de corps as a natural and familial quality.

The Professionalization of an Elite: The Nineteenth Century Episcopate

1991 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
William T. Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Church History ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Popular View ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Church

A number of Victorian writers identified a change in the episcopate in the nineteenth century: Dean Burgon, for example, believed that a remodeled episcopacy emerged at this time. Historians have advanced the view that the changes were generated by the Whig ecclesiastical reforms of the 1830s. Indeed it is part of the schemata of ecclesiastical history that bishops in the eighteenth century were fundamentally different from those in the nineteenth century. Yet, as C. K. Francis Brown admitted, there has been no attempt to establish a pattern of this in the career and social history of the nineteenth century episcopate. This is all the more surprising since a structuralist analysis of the Caroline and Hanoverian episcopate has existed for some years. The traditional view of Church history, that the ecclesiastical reforms of the 1830s and 1840s were the principal engine of change, have tended to overlook the structural changes in bishops' career patterns and that there was a change in the concept of the episcopal function. The context of this changed concept of episcopal duty is important. Recent work on the professionalization of the clergy has focused on the immediate impact of the Reformation and the development of the Church as a profession up to the early eighteenth century. Rosemary O'Day and Geoffrey Holmes have demonstrated that between 1580 and 1730 the clerical profession became increasingly stratified. The overpopulation of the clergy in the eighteenth century accelerated this trend, establishing a Church in which there were extremes of wealth and poverty. At the same time the clergy were subject to greater lay control than any other emergent profession. This tension between professionalization and institutions of the state has been examined in other occupations, but throughout the nineteenth century it grew stronger in the Church. From patronage of a living to nomination to a see, laity dominated the Church. In spite of Whig reforms of the 1830s and 1840s lay control established strict parameters within which the professionalization of the episcopate occurred. The effect of control from outside the Church was that the paths to the bench of bishops remained more numerous and varied than the limited paths to the elite of other professions like the judiciary. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also saw functional trends that brought about the professionalization of the clergy. These changes have been thoroughly analyzed by Anthony Russell. The self-conscious spirituality of the Tractarian movement also effected changes in the popular view of the clerical function, and the episcopate was not immune to these changes. By the closing decades of the nineteenth-century bishops were appointed whose careers had been touched by these trends. Equally important were developments within the episcopate that altered the bishops' roles.

State-run celebration of Liberation Day in Czechoslovakia (based on audiovisual sources)

2019 ◽  
pp. 251-268
Author(s):  
Timur Gimadeev
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Military

The article deals with the history of celebrating the Liberation Day in Czechoslovakia organised by the state. Various aspects of the history of the holiday have been considered with the extensive use of audiovisual documents (materials from Czechoslovak newsreels and TV archives), which allowed for a detailed analysis of the propaganda representation of the holiday. As a result, it has been possible to identify the main stages of the historical evolution of the celebrations of Liberation Day, to discover the close interdependence between these stages and the country’s political development. The establishment of the holiday itself — its concept and the military parade as the main ritual — took place in the first post-war years, simultaneously with the consolidation of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. Later, until the end of the 1960s, the celebrations gradually evolved along the political regime, acquiring new ritual forms (ceremonial meetings, and “guards of memory”). In 1968, at the same time as there was an attempt to rethink the entire socialist regime and the historical experience connected with it, an attempt was made to reconstruct Liberation Day. However, political “normalisation” led to the normalisation of the celebration itself, which played an important role in legitimising the Soviet presence in the country. At this stage, the role of ceremonial meetings and “guards of memory” increased, while inventions released in time for 9 May appeared and “May TV” was specially produced. The fall of the Communist regime in 1989 led to the fall of the concept of Liberation Day on 9 May, resulting in changes of the title, date and paradigm of the holiday, which became Victory Day and has been since celebrated on 8 May.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Yaari
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
State Of Israel

This chapter examines the lack of continuous tradition of the art of the theatre in the history of Jewish culture. Theatre as art and institution was forbidden for Jews during most of their history, and although there were plays written in different times and places during the past centuries, no tradition of theatre evolved in Jewish culture until the middle of the nineteenth century. In view of this absence, the author discusses the genesis of Jewish theatre in Eastern Europe and in Eretz-Yisrael (The Land of Israel) since the late nineteenth century, encouraged by the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the emergence of Jewish nationalism, and the rebirth of Hebrew as a language of everyday life. Finally, the chapter traces the development of parallel strands of theatre that preceded the Israeli theatre and shadowed the emergence of the political infrastructure of the future State of Israel.

Schopenhauer’s Pessimism in Context

2020 ◽  
pp. 283-298
Author(s):  
Mark Migotti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

In this chapter, the author attempts to establish what is philosophically living and what is philosophically dead in Schopenhauer’s pessimism. Against the background of the intriguing the history of the terms “optimism” and “pessimism”—in debates about Leibniz’s theodicy in the early eighteenth century and the popularity of Schopenhauer in the late nineteenth century, respectively—the author points up the distinction between affirming life, which all living beings do naturally, and subscribing to philosophical optimism (or pessimism), which is possible only for reflective beings like us. Next, the author notes the significance of Schopenhauer’s claim that optimism is a necessary condition of theism and explains its bearing on his pessimistic argument for the moral unacceptability of suicide. The chapter concludes that Schopenhauer’s case for pessimism is not conclusive, but instructive; his dim view of the prospects for leading a truly rewarding, worthwhile human life draws vivid attention to important questions about how and to what degree an atheistic world can nevertheless be conducive to human flourishing.

scholarly journals ‘Constitutions selection’: Darwin, race and medicine

BJHS Themes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Suman Seth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Skin Colour ◽  
Race Science ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Race ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract In the course of his discussion of the origin of variations in skin colour among humans in the Descent of Man, Charles Darwin suggested that darker skin might be correlated with immunity to certain diseases. To make that suggestion, he drew upon a claim that seemed self-evidently correct in 1871, although it had seemed almost certainly incorrect in the late eighteenth century: that immunity to disease could be understood as a hereditary racial trait. This paper aims to show how fundamental was the idea of ‘constitutions selection’, as Darwin would call it, for his thinking about human races, tracking his (ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to find proof of its operation over a period of more than thirty years. At the same time and more broadly, following Darwin's conceptual resources on this question helps explicate relationships between conceptions of disease and conceptions of race in the nineteenth century. That period saw the birth of a modern, fixist, biologically determinist racism, which increasingly manifested itself in medical writings. The reverse was also true: medicine was a crucial site in which race was forged. The history of what has been called ‘race-science’, it is argued, cannot and should not be written independent of the history of ‘race-medicine’.

The Wasteland of William Blake

1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-204
Author(s):  
Frank O'Malley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
William Blake ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Mind ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

The question is: how can you put a prophet in his place when, by the very character of prophecy, he is eternally slipping out of place? William Blake was not an eighteenth century or nineteenth century mind or a typically modern mind at all. What I mean to say, right at the start, is that, although well aware of his time and of time altogether, he was not in tune with the main tendencies of his or our own time. Indeed time was a barrier he was forever crashing against. Blake's talent raved through the world into the fastnesses of die past and dramatically confronted the abysses of the future. His age did not confine him. As a poet he does not seem finally to have had real spiritual or artistic rinship with any of the rationalist or romantic writers of England. As a thinker he came to despise the inadequacy of the limited revolutionary effort of the political rebels of the Romantic Revolution. Blake's name is not to be seen mounted first with that of Paine or Godwin, of Rousseau or Voltaire, of Wordsworth or Shelley or Byron or Keats. With these he has, ultimately, little or nothing in common. At any rate, his voice and mood and impact are thoroughly different from the more publicly successful voices of the period of his life, older and younger generations alike.

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