Silence in the Woods

Sibirica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Art Leete

This article explores the ethnographic, philosophical, and political background of the image of the northern peoples as “silent,” by analyzing the diachronic perspective descriptions of the Finno-Ugric peoples of the north who inhabit Western Siberia and the Russian North from the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth. Early modern ethnographies treated the Siberian peoples as aggressive, although from the end of the eighteenth century this image was reassessed and a different view of the silent character of the indigenous people was introduced in scholarly literature. Silent conduct was assessed as an archaic quality of the Finno-Ugric temperament, or as the result of the colonial encounter. This manifestation of silence was the most distinctive marker of the modern transformations of power and knowledge in the arena of Siberian studies.

Itinerario ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 167-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhaswati Bhattacharya

Both overseas trade and shipbuilding in India are of great antiquity. But even for the early modern period, maritime commerce is relatively better documented than the shipbuilding industry. When the Portuguese and later the North Europeans entered the intra-Asian trade, many of the ships they employed in order to supplement their shipping in Asia were obtained from the Indian dockyards. Detailed evidence with regard to shipbuilding, however, is very rare. It has been pointed out that the Portuguese in the sixteenth century were more particular than their North-European counter-parts in the following centuries in providing information on seafaring and shipbuilding. Shipbuilding on the west coast has been discussed more than that on the eastern coast of India, particularly the coast of Bengal. Though Bengal had a long tradition of shipbuilding, direct evidence of shipbuilding in the region is rare. Many changes were brought about in the history of India and the Indian Ocean trade of the eighteenth century, especially after the 1750s. When the English became the largest carriers of Bengal's trade with other parts of Asia, this had an impact on the shipbuilding in Bengal. It was in their interest that the British in Bengal had their ships built in that province.


2020 ◽  
pp. 131-148
Author(s):  
Alan Montgomery

The Agricola of Tacitus is the most extensive surviving ancient literary source on Roman Britain, and much of it deals with the Roman general Agricola’s conquest of Caledonia. Apparently providing evidence of the military prowess and civilising intentions of Rome whilst also describing a brave Caledonian hero named Calgacus, the text could be interpreted differently according to the political and patriotic affiliations of its early modern readers. As chapter seven will reveal, the Agricola would become something of an obsession amongst Scotland’s antiquarians, providing historical information on Roman exploits in the north but also lacking key geographical and historical details, encouraging conjecture which sometimes tipped into pure fantasy. As a result, a phenomenon christened ‘Agricolamania’ had already been noted by the end of the eighteenth century.


Author(s):  
Maryam Wasif Khan

Who is a Muslim? Orientalism and Literary Populisms argues that modern Urdu literature, from its inception in colonial institutions such as Fort William College, Calcutta, to its dominant forms in contemporary Pakistan—popular novels, short stories, television serials—is formed around a question that is and historically has been at the core of early modern and modern Western literatures. The question—who is a Muslim—is predominant in eighteenth-century literary and scholarly orientalist texts, the English oriental tale chief amongst them, but takes on new and dangerous meanings once it travels to the North-Indian colony, and later to Pakistan. A literary-historical study spanning some three centuries, this book argues that the modern Urdu literary formation, far from secular or progressive, has been shaped as the authority designate on the intertwined questions of piety, national identity, and citizenship, first in colonial India and subsequently in contemporary Pakistan.


2017 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
Simon Mayers

The prevailing historiographies of Jewish life in England suggest that religious representations of the Jews in the early modern period were confined to the margins and fringes of society by the desacralization of English life. Such representations are mostly neglected in the scholarly literature for the latter half of the long eighteenth century, and English Methodist texts in particular have received little attention. This article addresses these lacunae by examining the discourse of Adam Clarke (1760/2–1832), an erudite Bible scholar, theologian, preacher and author and a prominent, respected, Methodist scholar. Significantly, the more overt demonological representations were either absent from Clarke‘s discourse, or only appeared on a few occasions, and were vague as to who or what was signified. However, Clarke portrayed biblical Jews as perfidious, cruel, murderous, an accursed seed, of an accursed breed and radically and totally evil. He also commented on contemporary Jews (and Catholics), maintaining that they were foolish, proud, uncharitable, intolerant and blasphemous. He argued that in their eternal, wretched, dispersed condition, the Jews demonstrated the veracity of biblical prophecy, and served an essential purpose as living monuments to the truth of Christianity.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Carmen Fracchia

The African presence in imperial Spain, from the last quarter of the fifteenth century until the end of the eighteenth century, was due to institutionalization of the transatlantic slave trade that brought 700,000–800,000 Africans as slaves to the Crowns of Portugal, Aragon, and Castile. During the same period and in the same territories, the Mediterranean slave trade was responsible for the presence of 300,000–400,000 Moor, Berber, and Turk slaves. According to Alessandro Stella, if we add those born in these European territories, there were approximately two million slaves living in the Iberian Peninsula and islands during the early modern period. The black presence was ubiquitous in the south of these territories and in the main cities of the centre and the north, as we shall see in ...


Author(s):  
Alan Montgomery

The third chapter discusses the widespread early modern belief that the Roman invasions of Caledonia had failed due to the indomitability of its indigenous inhabitants. In Scottish history, poetry and political tracts, this mythical fight for liberty against Rome was often compared with the fate of England, which had repeatedly fallen to foreign invaders. By the eighteenth century, the notion of a brave Caledonian resistance to Rome was embedded in the Scottish consciousness, and the bravery of their supposed ancestors was often invoked by those opposed to the Union of 1707. Meanwhile, the argument that Rome had not failed to conquer the north, but rather had seen no point in conquering it, was sometimes proposed, particularly by English commentators.


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