An Early Transpacific Account of the Spice Islands by Andrés de Urdaneta (1536)

Author(s):  
Jorge Mojarro Romero

Andrés de Urdaneta (1508?–1568) tells the story of the ill-fated expedition of Jofre García de Loaysa (1490–1526), which was meant to consolidate the Spanish claim to the Spice Islands in the aftermath of the Magellan expedition. Urdaneta, a participant in the expedition who later made important contributions to Pacific navigation, covers the ill-fated voyage of Loaysa’s fleet as well as the armed conflict that ensued when the Spanish arrived in the Moluccas only to find the Portuguese already ensconced on the island of Ternate. This brief narrative provides an insight into a complex political and military situation, in which the rivalry between the two Iberian empires overlaps with the local rivalries of sixteenth-century insular Southeast Asia. Jorge Mojarro provides the necessary historical context.

1986 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 777-799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary G. Dietz

Machiavelli's most famous political work, The Prince, was a masterful act of political deception. I argue that Machiavelli's intention was a republican one: to undo Lorenzo de Medici by giving him advice that would jeopardize his power, hasten his overthrow, and allow for the resurgence of the Florentine republic. This interpretation returns The Prince to its specific historical context. It considers Machiavelli's advice to Lorenzo on where to reside, how to behave, and whom to arm in light of the political reality of sixteenth-century Florence. Evidence external to The Prince, including Machiavelli's other writings and his own political biography, confirms his anti-Medicean sentiments, his republican convictions, and his proclivity for deception. Understanding The Prince as an act of political deception continues a tradition of reading Machiavelli as a radical republican. Moreover, it overcomes the difficulties of previous republican interpretations, and provides new insight into the strategic perspective and Renaissance artistry Machiavelli employed as a theoretician.


Author(s):  
Panagiota Nakou

Abstract An enduring ethical dispute accompanies prenatal screening and testing (PST) technologies. This ethical debate focuses on notions of reproductive choice. On one side of the dispute are those who have supported PST as a way to empower women’s reproductive choice, while on the other side are those who argue that PST, particularly when made a routine part of prenatal care, limits deliberate choice. Empirical research does not resolve this ethical debate with evidence both of women for whom PST enhances their choices but also persistent evidence of recurrent problems between PST and women’s autonomous decision-making. While there have been attempts to remove challenges to reproductive choice, it has been argued that these challenges cannot be removed entirely. In this paper I provide a historical review of PST technologies’ development and in doing so provide a detailed insight into the root causes of this tension between the opposing sides of this debate. This historical account provides evidence that those who championed the early use of these technologies did so in order to achieve a number of wholly different goals other than women’s choice and empowerment. These different aims focus on scientific discovery and eugenic goals and, I argue, are irreconcilable with women’s choice and empowerment. It thus may not be surprising that the resulting practice of PST continues to resist compatibility with women’s choice and empowerment. Ultimately, by understanding the historical foundations of PST we can more effectively assess how to reconcile women’s reproductive autonomy with routine prenatal screening.


The Library ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-224
Author(s):  
Conor Leahy

Abstract This article introduces a copy of The Woorkes of Geffrey Chaucer (1561) formerly belonging to the writer, cleric, limner, and book-collector Stephan Batman (c. 1542–1584). The volume is currently held at the Guildhall Library (SR 2.3.3), and contains Batman’s annotations and manicules throughout the text. It also features a 28-line poem in Batman’s hand, a short booklist of medieval chronicles, and five line drawings. The book thus offers a fresh insight into the reading practices of one of the most industrious English antiquaries of the sixteenth century, and sheds new light on Chaucer’s sixteenth-century reception.


2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 1272-1297
Author(s):  
Lauren Beck

AbstractHijuelasfurnish scholars with more than account balances and bills paid: ledgers such as the ones that detailed the expenses of Seville’s sixteenth-century Alcázar also yield important insight into the facility’s work environment. These hardly studied ledgers describe the workers’ backgrounds, including their wages and any special accommodations they required, as well as the transaction of material goods, which in this period included slaves. The following examination ofhijuelasuncovers the racial and labor realities of a royal property. These documents also challenge established scholarly observations about working life in early modern Seville in important ways.


2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-33
Author(s):  
Sanjay Subrahmanyam

AbstractFar less attention has been paid to the rise to importance of the Gujarati port of Surat, than to its decline. This brief essay, a tribute to the memory of Surat's best-known historian, Ashin Das Gupta, attempts to address the problem of its rise before the Mughal conquest of Gujarat in the 1570s. It argues that once Diu had been taken over by the Portuguese in 1535, Surat emerged as a crucial link between Southeast Asia and West Asia. Thus, one needs to look not only at the relationship between the port and its hinterland, but to Surat's role as an entrepôt, in order to explain its rise.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Netanel

In this book, Neil Netanel traces the historical development of Jewish copyright law. In so doing, he compares rabbinic reprinting bans with secular and papal book privileges and relays the stories of dramatic disputes among publishers of books of Jewish learning and liturgy, beginning with the early sixteenth century and continuing until today. He describes each dispute in its historical context and examines the rabbinic rulings that sought to resolve it. Remarkably, the rabbinic reprinting bans and copyright rulings address some of the same issues that animate copyright jurisprudence today: Is copyright a property right or just a right to receive fair compensation? How long should copyrights last? What purposes does copyright serve? While Jewish copyright law has borrowed from its secular counterpart at key junctures, it fashions strikingly different answers to those key questions.


2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 235-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lâle Uluç

This paper introduces a copy of the Iskandarnāma of Nizami dated 1435 and dedicated to the Timurid prince Ibrahim Sultan, grandson of the eponymous founder of the Timurid dynasty. It discusses the various features of the manuscript together with comparable examples from the same period, and also focuses on Abu al-Fath Ibrahim Sultan ibn Shah Rukh and his role as both a military leader and a patron of the arts during his tenure as the governor of the provinces of Fars, Kirman, and Luristan (1414–35). Utilizing the visual data together with the historical context of the period, this essay interprets one of the illustrations of the Iskandarnāma, hoping to fulfill what David Summers called “the most basic task of art history,” which he says “is to explain why works of art look the way they look.” The addition of this Iskandarnāma manuscript to the surviving corpus of works that can be connected to Ibrahim Sultan will provide a further insight into the important patronage of this Timurid prince.


Author(s):  
Melissa Crouch

This article explores the ways Islam is recognized by the state in Southeast Asia, along with the scholarly debates that have arisen in response to these Islam-state configurations. It begins with an overview of the work of Professor M. B. Hooker, a pioneer of the field of comparative law in Southeast Asia, especially his study of Islamic law. It then considers how scholars have addressed the regulation and institutionalization of Islam in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and Singapore as well as the tensions and armed conflict between Muslim minorities and the state in Thailand and the Philippines, while largely overlooking Muslim minorities of Myanmar. Finally, it discusses the ongoing challenge of advocating for the importance of the study and contribution of Islamic law in Southeast Asia to the broader field of Islamic legal studies.


10.54179/2101 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanine De Landtsheer

Famed for his ground-breaking philological, philosophical, and antiquarian writings, the Brabant humanist Justus Lipsius (1547-1606) was one of the most renowned classical scholars of the sixteenth century. In this volume, Marijke Crab and Ide François bring together the seminal contributions to Lipsius’s life and scholarship by Jeanine De Landtsheer (1954-2021), who came to be known as one of the greatest Lipsius specialists of her generation. In Pursuit of the Muses considers Lipsius from two complementary angles. The first half presents De Landtsheer’s evocative life of the famous humanist, based on her unrivalled knowledge of his correspondence. Originally published in Dutch, it appears here in English translation for the first time. The second half presents a selection of eight articles by De Landtsheer that together chart a way through Lipsius’s scholarship. This twofold approach offers the reader a valuable insight into Lipsius’s life and work, creating an indispensable reference guide not only to Lipsius himself, but also to the wider humanist world of letters.


Author(s):  
Ward Keeler

Louis Dumont’s analysis of hierarchy in South Asia provides insight into how hierarchical assumptions inform social relations in Burma. Although Burmese society lacks caste, it still organizes everyone’s social relations on the principle that individuals enter into relationships because of their differences, and every relationship will place one person in a position of superiority, the other as subordinate. Benedict Anderson’s work on charisma in Java complements Dumont’s work by showing how assuming that power comes from above encourages people to subordinate themselves to concentrations of power. Marina Warner’s analysis of tales makes it clear that people who are structurally weak have no choice but to try to establish themselves as dependents of powerful others. Kapferer’s work in Sri Lanka provides further guidance for adapting Dumont’s analysis of hierarchy to other contexts outside India.


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