“NOTHING IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE”: GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE TIME REGIME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 821-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEBASTIAN CONRAD
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New Technology ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Time Regime ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

When European clocks first arrived in seventeenth-century Japan they generated a commotion. The highly complex but also very precise instruments had been brought to Nagasaki by the Dutch East India Company that monopolized the sparse and highly regulated trade between Japan and Europe for more than two centuries. As an expression of the technological sophistication achieved in early modern Europe, mechanical clocks were hi-tech products of their time. They operated with a spring to store the energy, and their making required highly developed skills in casting and metalwork. The new technology made it possible to emancipate the measurement of time from sunshine and to achieve an evenness of temporal rhythms, not only during the day, but also at night.

Ireland and the Monarchy in the Early Stuart Multiple Kingdom

1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Perceval-Maxwell
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Foreign Intervention ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

Ireland's position as a kingdom in early modern Europe was, in some respects, unique, and this eccentricity sheds light upon the complexity of governing a multiple kingdom during the seventeenth century. The framework for looking at the way Ireland operated as a kingdom is provided, first by an article by Conrad Russell on ‘The British problem and the English civil war’ and secondly by an article by H. G. Koenigsberger entitled ‘Monarchies and parliaments in early modern Europe – dominium regale or dominium politicum et regale’. Russell listed six problems that faced multiple kingdoms: resentment at the king's absence, disposal of offices, sharing of war costs, trade and colonies, foreign intervention and religion. Koenigsberger used Sir John Fortescue's two phrases of the 1470s to distinguish between constitutional, or limited monarchies, and more authoritarian ones during the early modern period. Both these contributions are valuable in looking at the way the monarchy operated in Ireland because the application of the constitution there was deeply influenced by Ireland's position as part of a multiple kingdom and because Englishmen, looking at Ireland, wanted her to be like England, but, at the same time, did not wish her to exercise the type of independence that they claimed for England.

A Maritime Monarchy

2020 ◽  
pp. 215-233
Author(s):  
Jonathan Scott
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Agricultural Productivity ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

This chapter considers the possibility of building a maritime monarchy and how the Anglo-Dutch Revolution achieved this. Early modern Europe was governed by territorial monarchies and small, sometimes maritime, republics and/or cities. The former were culturally and socially aristocratic, and the latter mercantile. But in the later seventeenth century, a new European great power emerged that was a territorial monarchy within which a landed aristocracy, enriched by the economic changes of the period, beginning with those revolutionizing agricultural productivity, became fully participant in its new commercial economy. The way in which Britain's ruling class in both Houses of Parliament intertwined hereditary nobility and a mercantile, manufacturing, and financial oligarchy had no European parallel. The strict separation of the world of work from socially mandated aristocratic idleness which applied elsewhere had disappeared.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Empirical Stance

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

The Tenuous Thread: A Venetian Lawyer's Apology for Jewish Self-Government in the Seventeenth Century

AJS Review ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-250
Author(s):  
David Malkiel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Political Structures

Ghettoization stimulated sixteenth-century Italian Jewry to develop larger and more complex political structures, because the Jewish community now became responsible for municipal tasks. This development, however, raised theological objections in Catholic circles because Christian doctrine traditionally forbade the Jewish people dominion. It also aroused hostility among the increasingly centralized governments of early modern Europe, who viewed Jewish self-government as an infringement of the sovereignty of the state. The earliest appearance of the term “state within a state,” which has become a shorthand expression for the latter view, was recently located in Venice in 1631.

scholarly journals Sharecropping and Investment in Agriculture in Early Modern France

1982 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip T. Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Risk Sharing ◽  
Modern Theory ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Early Modern France ◽  
Modern France ◽  
Modern Europe

The paper examines the spread of sharecropping that followed a wave of investment in agriculture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. Using results from the modern theory of share contracts, it argues that sharecropping was a means of risk sharing that favored both landlords and tenants. Although the evidence used in this paper comes from France, the results may well apply to other areas of early modern Europe.

Breeched and Unbridled: Bifurcated Equestrian Garments for Women in Early Modern Europe

Costume ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-185
Author(s):  
Valerio Zanetti
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Affective Meaning ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Modern Europe

This article discusses the wearing of bifurcated equestrian garments for women in early modern Europe. Considering visual representations as well as documentary sources, the first section examines the fashion for red riding breeches between the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Worn for their comfort and functionality in the saddle, these garments were also invested with powerful symbolic and affective meaning. The second section provides new insights about female equestrian outfits in late seventeenth-century France. Through the close reading of two written accounts, the author sheds light on the use of breeches as undergarments in the saddle and discusses the appearance of a hybrid riding uniform that incorporated knee-length culottes. By presenting horsewomen who wore bifurcated garments in the pursuit of leisure rather than transgression, this study revises historical narratives that cast the breeched woman exclusively as a symbol of gender upheaval.

scholarly journals Humans as Animals and Things in Pre-Buddhist China

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 360
Author(s):  
Michael Nylan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Early China ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
East And West ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

This paper examines the way thinkers in the pre-Buddhist world in China viewed the animal-human divide. It argues that the boundaries between humans and animals were porous. The only unique capacities that human beings are credited with were first (widely) the ability to develop their unique potentials (chengren 成人), and, second (in a very few texts), the capacity to respond with greater sensitivity to the resonant world around them. In both contexts, the extant terms make use of two terms, ling 靈 and jingshen 精神. Part II of the essay then turns to examine the most influential Euro-American theories cited in today’s secondary literature regarding the animal-human divide. None of these seem remotely like the theories articulated in early China. In Part III, the essay examines vitalism, which is an unusual instance in early modern Europe where an important theory seems to approach the views of early China, with the express aim of reminding readers that we need not automatically posit an impassable gulf between East and West, but can, instead, profit from wider reading that yields more comparative insights.

Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe*

1990 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Findlen
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Scientific Texts ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

During The Sixteenth And Seventeenth centuries natural history, and to a certain extent science in general, rediscovered its capacity for playfulness in the form of the scientific joke. By scientific joke, I mean thelusus naturae, or joke of nature, and the lusus scientiae, or joke of knowledge, that populated the museums and scientific texts of the period. The relation between the natural paradox of lusus and the scientific demonstrations and experiments that were also lusus points to the way in which the dynamic between art and nature and between collector and audience unfolded in the spectacle of science.

scholarly journals The Hermeneutics of Transmission: Deciphering Discourses on Poetry and the Arts in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800)

2011 ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Déborah Blocker
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Political History ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
The Status ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

This article discusses how the constitution, circulation and institutionalization of discourses on poetry and the arts in early modern Europe could best be accounted for from a historical point of view. Pointing to various inconsistencies in the way historians of ideas have traditionally explained the rise of aesthetic discourses, the article examines the usefulness of the tools crafted by historians of the book for the development of such a project. Through an example, the drawbacks of interpretations based solely on serial bibliographies are also addressed, as the author argues for the importance of case studies, grounded in social, cultural and political history, through which various types of aesthetic practices may be made to appear. She also suggests that, to bypass the theoretical and practical deadlocks of traditional Begriffsgeschichte as far as the study of aesthetic practices is concerned, intellectual traditions and the actions that make them possible — that is “actions of transmission” — are to be promoted to the status of primary hermeneutic tools.

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