An Early Eighteenth Century Scottish Saltwork: Arran,c.1710 – 1735

Abstract

Historians have paid little attention to Scotland's salt industry. The few physical traces of its existence have not been seriously examined and interpreted by industrial archaeologists. This article presents some new material about saltmaking on the west coast of Scotland but more importantly it argues that the site under review here, on Arran in the Firth of Clyde, represents the earliest known upstanding remains of the type of saltwork which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ranged along both shores of the river Forth, from where the bulk of Scotland's salt production came.     

Azerbaijan between Two Empires: A Contested Borderland in the Early Modern Period (Sixteenth‒Eighteenth Centuries)

The first part of the paper examines the evolution and transformation of Safavid ideology in the context of confessional changes and the role of Turkoman tribes in the Safavid social movement in the Ottoman?Iranian borderland. The second part examines the impact of Ottoman?Safavid wars and religious rivalry on the society and economy of Azerbaijan from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.     

Whales, Walruses, and Elephants: Artisans in Ivory, Baleen, and Other Skeletal Materials in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam

Hard animal tissues obtained from whales, walruses, and elephants are baleen, whale bone, walrus ivory, walrus baculum, and elephant ivory. Objects of these materials were manufactured by artisans in Amsterdam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. New archaeological and historical evidence show the import and importance if these materials. The importance of baleen is evident from historical sources. Whale bone and walrus penis bone were only used occasionally. The use of walrus ivory appeared to be of minor importance in comparison to elephant ivory. The Dutch elephant ivory trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is evident in historical and archaeological sources.     

Agrarian Social Structure in the Central Lake District,c. 1574–1830: The Fall of the ‘Mountain Republic’?

Abstract

Many social commentators of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, notably those influenced by Romanticism, were keen to highlight the historical stability of agrarian life in the northern uplands. Founded on the supposed existence of an egalitarian ‘republic’ of smallholding yeomen, this stability was then contrasted to the apparently inexorable erosion of the economic position of such farmers around 1800. The present article uses records from the central Lakeland manor of Grasmere (with a comparison with the neighbouring manor of Langdale) to explore the agrarian social structure of the uplands between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. It argues that while a stable core of farmers can be found in the early modern period, there is also clear evidence of greater social differentiation amongst the customary tenantry by the third quarter of the eighteenth century, well before the process began to be noticed by social commentators and Romantic writers.     

“Some in Rags and Some in Jags and Some in Silken Gowns”: Textiles from Iceland’s Early Modern Period

The Danish trade monopoly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries resulted in the implementation of strict regulations and controls on textile production, the introduction of weaving workshops equipped with new horizontal looms, and a deliberate attempt to phase out the production of homespun cloth on the warp-weighted loom. What was the fate of homespun cloth in this era of introduced industrialization in Iceland? Archaeological textile collections from Iceland??s early modern period are abundant though understudied. This paper reports current research on these collections and suggests that homespun cloth did not die out in the late medieval period, but that it continued into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, declining slowly thereafter. Moreover, homespun cloth of the early modern period evolved into something that was structurally different than its earlier medieval version, possibly in response to increased climatic fluctuations during the Little Ice Age.     

Atlantic consumption of French rum and brandy and economic growth in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Caribbean

Why did the production of rum in the French West Indies not achieve the same success within the French Atlantic as it did in the British Atlantic world? Surveying the history of rum production in the French Caribbean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this article contends that the reason why no regional trade in rum developed in French North America resulted from fierce industrial and institutional competition from brandy producers in metropolitan France. Rum, nevertheless, remained significant within the culture and economy of Native Americans and African Americans. This article seeks to add nuance to the wider debate of the ability of the trans-border diffusion of new ideas to stimulate and institutionalize industrial and economic growth in the Atlantic world. French entrepreneurs were no less ‘entrepreneurial’ than their British counterparts, but real constraints on consumption on both sides of the Atlantic created insufficient demand.     

A total extinction confidently hoped for: the destruction of Cape San society under Dutch colonial rule, 1700-1795

San (Bushman) society in the Cape Colony was almost completely annihilated during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a result of land confiscation, massacre, forced labour and cultural suppression that accompanied colonial rule. Whereas similar obliterations of indigenous peoples in other parts of the world have resulted in major public controversies and heated debate amongst academics about the genocidal nature of these episodes, in South Africa the issue has effectively been ignored aside from passing, often polemical, references to it as genocide. Even recent studies that have approached the mass killing of the Cape San with sensitivity and insight do not address it as a case of genocide. This article sets out to redress this imbalance in part by analysing the dynamic of frontier conflict between San and settler under Dutch colonial rule as genocide. It demonstrates both the exterminatory intent underlying settler violence as well as the complicity of a weak colonial state in these depredations, including its sanctioning of the root-and-branch eradication of the San.     

Sleepwalking through History: Medicine,Arts, and Courts of Law

Somnambulism, or sleepwalking, has always been of interest to theologians, writers, philosophers, physicians, and others fascinated by unusual behaviors. This parasomnia, which was defined less precisely in the past than it is today, has long been featured in medical dissertations and books of medicine. Further, Shakespeare, Bellini, and Brown, among others, incorporated it into their plays, operas, and novels. Because some somnambulists turned violent and committed other acts detrimental to society, sleepwalking also demanded attention from legal systems, and guidelines were set for whether somnambulists could be held responsible for their actions. This historical review focuses on these developments pertaining to somnambulism through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.     

Sleepwalking through history: medicine, arts, and courts of law

Somnambulism, or sleepwalking, has always been of interest to theologians, writers, philosophers, physicians, and others fascinated by unusual behaviors. This parasomnia, which was defined less precisely in the past than it is today, has long been featured in medical dissertations and books of medicine. Further, Shakespeare, Bellini, and Brown, among others, incorporated it into their plays, operas, and novels. Because some somnambulists turned violent and committed other acts detrimental to society, sleepwalking also demanded attention from legal systems, and guidelines were set for whether somnambulists could be held responsible for their actions. This historical review focuses on these developments pertaining to somnambulism through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.     

Behind the Façade of the Rites Controversy: The Intriguing Contrast of Chinese and European Theism

The Chinese rites controversy of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries has been often studied, but hitherto mostly as a quasi-linguistic-and-technical dispute between the followers of Matteo Ricci, the legendary founder of the Jesuit China mission, and his many different enemies in the Catholic Church. In reality the involved debate was much more complex than that at every turn. To show this and more, this article takes a close look again at how and why Chinese terms and customs came to figure in Ricci's proselytising work in China, how they were challenged both inside and outside the Jesuit China mission, how the Chinese reacted and why, and what the debate revealed about the intriguing contrast of Chinese and European theism.     

Sociability,Perfectibility and the Intellectual Legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Abstract

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the concept of sociability was used mainly to refer to the putative range of primary human qualities or capabilities that preceded—or existed independently of—the formation of political societies. This article is an examination of the impact of Rousseau's thought on this then standard usage. Its initial focus is on Rousseau's concept of perfectibility and its bearing on the thought of Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, and Friedrich Schlegel. Its broader aim is to show how their respective responses to Rousseau were part of a more deep-seated transformation of the concept of sociability itself.     

History and the Duality of Power in Community‐based Forestry in Southeast Bolivia

This article discusses theories of power and economic articulation in the framework of a community‐based forestry project among the Chiquitano communities of southeastern Bolivia. The analysis focuses on the tensions that characterize indigenous development projects, and the problems that result from competing systems of control and power. Using Norman Whitten's concept of the duality in power, and Carol Smith's elaboration of historical economic analysis, the author examines the connections between historical, political and economic institutions and norms promoting redistribution of resources and goods in Chiquitano culture, and the unique Chiquitano response to the opportunities and challenges of international development. He contends that the distribution of development funds and resources in the form of small gifts and loans by Chiquitano leaders to neighbours and kin follows economic and political models established in Jesuit missions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The article also argues that patterns of resistance and adaptation in Chiquitano political leadership follow patterns established under rubber and ranching patrons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.     

Innovation in paper making: The Netherlands 1750–1850

Abstract

Until the middle of the eighteenth century Dutch paper makers had a leading position on the international paper market, both commercially and technically. From around 1700 a decline set in, which became dramatic after 1780. The introduction of new machinery and processes from Britain and elsewhere during the nineteenth century was slow, but when it came about, the Dutch paper industry regained an important part of the international market. This article attempts to explain the technological aspects of this development in the light of theories about the economic and technological history of the Netherlands in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.     

汉代中国经济、社会和国家权力--评许倬云的《汉代农业:早期中国农业经济的形成》

许倬云所看的《汉代农业：早期中国农业经济的形成》是美国西雅图华盛顿大学”汉代研究丛书”之一种。该著作不仅为西方读者考察和介绍了关于汉代农业的重要史料,而且还进一步诠释了古代中国农业经济、社会和国家发展的历史。但是,受魏特夫“亚细亚型社会”和“东方专制主义”观点的影响,作者在运用相关考察汉代农业经济时,却忽略了对传统史料的考证和诠释。这种倾向,导致了作者在论述水利工程、人口增长、佃农人数、国家权力和田租数量等影响农业经济发展的要素时,忽略或误读了传统史料所表达的基本信息。同样,作者对汉代地主阶级势力所作出的过低的估计也存在着相当问题。实际上,整个汉代,地主阶级的发展是极为活跃的：西汉后期,地主豪强兼并土地已愈演愈烈;迨至东汉,随着田庄的兴起,汉朝统一的根基不断被腐蚀,最后终于瓦解了汉王朝的统治。     

Two Probate Inventories from Industrial Shropshire

Abstract

Probate inventories can be a useful source of information for the understanding of industrial activity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This paper presents two such inventories from Shropshire.     

Naturwissenschaft und Religion in den Niederlanden um 1600

Dutch science flourished in the late sixteenth and in the seventeenth century thanks to the immigration of cartographers, botanists, mathematicians, astronomers and the like from the Southern Netherlands after the Spanish army had captured the city of Antwerp in 1585, and thanks to the religious and the socio-economic situation of the country. A strong impulse for practical scientific activities started from the Reformation, mainly thanks to its anti-traditional attitude, which had an anti-rationalistic tendency. Therefore, in the Northern Netherlands there was no ‘warfare’ between science and religion and the biblical arguments leading to Galileo's condemnation were not used. Although the growth of the exact sciences and of technology in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in Protestant cirles may be partly attributed to the expansion of trade, industry, navigation and so on, this does not explain why there was also at the same time a great interest in subjects as botany and zoology, which had no immediate economic utility. There were discussions about Copernicanism and Cartesianism. So a number of astronomers and theologians rejected the earth's movement on scientific and religious grounds, but there were also those who did not reject the Copernican system on biblical grounds. In the seventeenth century there was much discussion between science and religion in the Northern Netherlands, but that discussion was not followed by censure by the Church of the State. In the Republic there was a large amount of intellectual freedom in the study of the natural sciences, thanks to practical and ideological considerations. In the eighteenth century the seventheenth century tension between science and religion changed into a physicotheological natural science. It was believed that investigations into the workings of nature should lead to a better understanding of its Creator. So Bernard Nieuwentijt in his well-known book: The right use of-world views for the conviction of atheists and unbelievers (1715) intended to prove the existence of God on the basis of teleological arguments.     

Natural theology and ancient theology in the Jesuit China mission

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the proselytical use of ancient theology that developed in the environment of the Jesuit China Mission in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This period is roughly coeval with the European diffusion of deistic doctrines based on a secularized interpretation of natural theology. I argue that the threat posed by the spread of such doctrines produced a significant effect on the philosophy that Jesuits developed in order to relate to Confucianism. In particular, in the late seventeenth century, Jesuits belonging to the China Mission gradually abandoned Matteo Ricci’s natural theology and espoused an approach grounded in ancient theology. The situation changed, however, after the turn of the eighteenth century. Deism continued to spread, and even ancient theology came to be perceived as dangerously close the libertinism. The increasing suspicion towards ancient theology was reflected, in the China Mission, by the reception of the doctrines advanced by the so-called “Figurists”, a group of French Jesuits who proposed an interpretation of certain characters of the Chinese Five Classics as figurae of the Bible.     

Arkawāzī and His Baweyaļ: A Feylî Elegiac Verse from Piştiku

The study of southern Kurdish literature is largely dominated by a bipolar perspective. Literature in southern Kurdistan is mostly, if not exclusively viewed in the context of relations between Iran on the one hand and, on the other, Iraq, the local states of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To be sure, Iran acquired a dominant role in southern Kurdistan, yet it is also considered to have been the only dynamic factor in southern Kurdish dialect, while the Iraqi regions are supposed to have fulfilled an essentially passive one. This article presents the most well-known poem of Arkawāzī, a southern Kurdish poet from Pi?tiku, an Iranian region of southern Kurdistan. It transcribes, translates, and glosses a Feylî elegiac text in which the poet describes the death of his son. Notwithstanding my dialectological purpose, the article may also provide some raw material for the historians.