Chaadaev's Evaluation of Peter the Great

Slavic Review ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-44
Author(s):  
Raymond T. McNally
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
Russian Intellectual History ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Source Materials

The question “Did Peter the Great exert a beneficial or a harmful influence upon the development of Russian history and culture?” is one that has provoked debate ever since that monarch ruled Russia in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The varied answers to that question set up the general battle lines between Westernizers and Slavophiles during the first half of the nineteenth century. One of Russia's most critical intellectuals in that period, Peter Iakovlevich Chaadaev, answered the question in several ways. His answers provide a key to a peculiar kind of ideological westernization in Russian intellectual history. The discovery of hitherto unpublished source materials that fill an important gap in the documentation of Chaadaev's views on Peter the Great led to the writing of this article.

What is Prosveshchenie? Nikolai Novikov's Historical Dictionary of Russian Writers Revisited

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 360-377
Author(s):  
Colum Leckey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Broad Context ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Unusual Combination ◽  
Religious Piety ◽  
Russian Intellectual History

AbstractScholars have long regarded Nikolai Novikov's Historical Dictionary of Russian Writers as an essential source for eighteenth-century Russia's literary and intellectual life. Beyond providing valuable information on hundreds of authors, the Dictionary also clarifies the meaning of enlightenment (prosveshchenie) for Novikov and his generation. This article examines the Dictionary's application and understanding of prosveshchenie in the broad context of Russian intellectual history. For Novikov, prosveshchenie bore little similarity to the skeptical and critical spirit of the European Enlightenment. Instead, it represented an unusual combination of religious piety, erudition, and commitment to the spread of learning—the same ideals Novikov would promote as a Freemason and pass on to the nineteenth-century intelligentsia.

Islam without Europe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad S. Dallal
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Ganges

Replete with a cast of giants in Islamic thought and philosophy, Ahmad S. Dallal’s pathbreaking intellectual history of the eighteenth-century Muslim world challenges stale views of this period as one of decline, stagnation, and the engendering of a widespread fundamentalism. Far from being moribund, Dallal argues, the eighteenth century--prior to systematic European encounters--was one of the most fertile eras in Islamic thought. Across vast Islamic territories, Dallal charts in rich detail not only how intellectuals rethought and reorganized religious knowledge but also the reception and impact of their ideas. From the banks of the Ganges to the shores of the Atlantic, commoners and elites alike embraced the appeals of Muslim thinkers who, while preserving classical styles of learning, advocated for general participation by Muslims in the definition of Islam. Dallal also uncovers the regional origins of most reform projects, showing how ideologies were forged in particular sociopolitical contexts. Reformists’ ventures were in large part successful--up until the beginnings of European colonization of the Muslim world. By the nineteenth century, the encounter with Europe changed Islamic discursive culture in significant ways into one that was largely articulated in reaction to the radical challenges of colonialism.

The records of the Charity Commissions a source for urban history

Urban History ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 31-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Grady
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Effective Utilization ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Public ◽  
Charity Commission ◽  
Public Record ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Made In

Officially sponsored investigation of charities has a long history encompassing the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century commissions issued under the Statutes of Charitable Uses of 1597 and 1601, and the brief national inquiry made for the Gilbert returns of 1787–8. It was in the nineteenth century, however, that the first detailed general surveys of English and Welsh charities were made. In August 1818, amidst revived interest in the more effective utilization of charitable funds, the Brougham Commission was appointed by parliament to examine the state of charitable trusts for educational purposes in England. With the renewal and widening of its powers in the following year, it spent almost two decades investigating charitable trusts of all types in England and Wales. The Commission expired in 1837 but, after lengthy vacillation, parliament set up a permanent body in 1853. Like its predecessor, this new commission began collecting up-to-date information about charitable trusts; a task it still performs today. The invaluable products of the two commissions are several voluminous series of reports and digests printed in Parliamentary Papers between 1819 and 1913, and extensive records dating from 1819 held by the Charity Commission and the Public Record Office. This article discusses these sources and their value to the urban historian.

The Early History of the Sultanate of Angoche

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. D. Newitt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Early History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Set Up

The sultanate of Angoche on the Moçambique coast was founded probably towards the end of the fifteenth century by refugees from Kilwa. It became a base for Muslim traders who wanted to use the Zambezi route to the central African trading fairs and it enabled them to by-pass the Portuguese trade monopoly at Sofala. The Portuguese were not able to check this trade until they themselves set up bases on the Zambezi in the 1530s and 1540s, and from that time the sultanate began to decline. Internal dissensions among the ruling families led to the Portuguese obtaining control of the sultanate in the late sixteenth century, but this control was abandoned in the following century when the trade of the Angoche coast dwindled to insignificance. During the eighteenth century movements among the Macua peoples of the mainland and the development of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean laid the foundations for the revival of the sultanate in the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Héroes nacionales como vehículos emocionales de conceptos / National Heroes as Emotional Vehicles of Political Concepts

2017 ◽  
pp. 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Isabel González Manso
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Siglo Xix ◽  
The Relationship

This article deals with the relationship between concepts, heroes and emotions. To that purpose it propounds an explicative mechanism through the comparative analysis of the use of heroes in Spanish politics in the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. The spread of some political concepts was facilitated by their association with heroes of the past, which not only provide legitimacy but also a strong emotional burden in terms of the values they represented. The proposed methodology is applied to the examination of political uses of two historical figures: Padilla and Pelayo.Key WordsEmotions, national heroes, intellectual history, nineteenth centuryResumenEl presente artículo examina la relación entre conceptos, héroes y emociones. Para ello propone un mecanismo que se sirve del análisis comparado del uso de héroes en la política española de finales del siglo XVIII y de la primera mitad del XIX. La difusión de ciertos conceptos políticos se vio facilitada por su asociación con héroes del pasado que no solo aportaban legitimidad y prestigio sino también una fuerte carga emocional dado los valores que estos héroes representaban. Las consideraciones metodológicas se aplican al análisis de los usos políticos de dos personajes históricos: Padilla y Pelayo.Palabras claveEmociones, héroes nacionales, historia intelectual, siglo XIX

scholarly journals Peter the Great as Antichrist: The Secular Sources of an Old Believer Compilation from Holy Scripture

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen Perrie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old Believers ◽  
Similar Role ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Made In

This article is devoted to an Old Believer work about Peter the Great, known as A Compilation from Holy Scripture about the Antichrist, which was first published in 1861. Some scholars have suggested that the work dates back to Peter’s reign, when many traditionally minded Orthodox Christians regarded the tsar as the Antichrist. The author of this article argues, however, that the work dates from the early nineteenth century, and that the case it makes for Peter’s identity as Antichrist is based primarily on tales about the tsar which were published in the late eighteenth century. On the basis of anecdotes about Peter’s conception, for example, the author of the Compilation drew a comparison with the Annunciation, the Epiphany, and the Feast of the Circumcision, to demonstrate a sacrilegious parallel between Peter’s biography and that of Christ, which “proved” that Peter was the Antichrist. The Compilation also cites works which seem to blasphemously suggest that Peter was God incarnate, in order to argue that the tsar was the embodiment not of God, but of Satan. Finally, when one work praised Catherine the Great for representing “the spirit of Peter the Great”, the compiler concluded that the spirit of all subsequent Russian rulers was also the spirit of Peter, that is, the spirit of the Antichrist. This is an idiosyncratic version of the argument made in the late eighteenth century by Evfimii, the founder of the Old Believer sect of the beguny, that Peter had founded a dynasty of Antichrists, and that all “true Christians” should flee from his realm. The distinguished Russian scholars Viktor Zhivov and Boris Uspenskii have argued that the metaphorical sacralisation of the monarch, in secular eighteenth-century panegyrics, was interpreted literally by some Old Believers and contributed to their identification of Peter as the Antichrist. The author of this article suggests that a similar role was played by more popular works such as the collections of anecdotes which presented the tsar as a God-like figure.

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.

scholarly journals Afrikanerliberalisme in die tydperk 1775 - 1975 – die interpretasies van GD Scholtz en H Giliomee

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
P De Klerk
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
South African ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
English Speaking

Two historians, GD Scholtz and H Giliomee, have written extensively about liberal political thought among Afrikaners during the period 1775-1975. Their interpretations of the influence of liberalism on Afrikaner political thought differ from one another in some respects. Scholtz acknowledges the influence of the political ideas of the Enlightenment on the Cape Patriot movement of the late eighteenth century, but does not regard these ideas as a form of liberalism. He views liberalism as a political ideology alien to the Afrikaners, that was introduced to South Africa in the early 1800s by British officials and missionaries. Since the middle of the nineteenth century the main exponents of liberal political thought in South Africa were British colonists and their descendants. There were always a few Afrikaners with liberal political ideas, but they were strongly influenced by British culture or by English-speaking South Africans. Giliomee, however, is of the opinion that there were already Afrikaners with liberal ideas at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It appears from his study that, although none of the major Afrikaner political leaders from the eighteenth century until the present can be described as a liberal, in the course of two centuries a number of politicians and intellectuals with an Afrikaans background played an important role in various liberal political movements and had a significant influence on the development of Afrikaner political thought. Although Scholtz and Giliomee have both made an important contribution to research on Afrikaner liberal political thought, it is clear that more research should lead to a better understanding of this phenomenon.Keywords: South African Historiography; Afrikaner Political Thought; GD Scholtz; H Giliomee; Liberalism; Democracy; Cape Patriot Movement; Cape Franchise; Segregation; Apartheid Disciplines: Political History; Intellectual History; Political Philosophy

scholarly journals 'Weighty Celebrity': Corpulency, Monstrosity, and Freakery in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Whitney Dirks
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Conjoined Twins ◽  
Fat Studies ◽  
Additional Input ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
English Society ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Source Materials

Obesity seems to have become prevalent in English society in the eighteenth century, likely as a result of changes in the country's diet such as an increasing consumption of sugar. With the greater incidence of corpulence in the population came more fat individuals on England's lucrative show circuit, joining the conjoined twins, hermaphrodites, dwarfs, giants, and individuals of different ethnicities who had peopled London's pubs, coffee houses, and exhibition halls for centuries. This article contextualizes historical corpulency in terms of early modern monstrosity and nineteenth-century freakery, with additional input from the modern Fat Studies and Disability Studies movements, in order to explore public consciousness about and fascination with particularly obese individuals, epitomized by the fattest men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: the 616-pound (279 kg) Edward Bright and the 739-pound (335 kg) Daniel Lambert. Using a variety of source materials—newspaper articles, dieting pamphlets, medical and scientific essays, advertising leaflets and etchings, and popular histories about the lives of famous individuals—this essay argues that, though extremely corpulent individuals needed to exist in the first place in order to be incorporated into the show circuit, it was society's fascination with these new, unusual bodies that allowed them to rise into prominence as an entertainment feature in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England.

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