Benjamin Vaughan and the consequences of anonymity: an introduction to Kenneth E. Carpenter’s Benjamin Vaughan’s Contributions Unveiled: A Bibliography

Benjamin Vaughan had a passion for anonymity and Kenneth E. Carpenter’s is the first attempt to provide a full list of his many and significant contributions to intellectual life and letters in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, up to his emigration to North America in 1797. This is an introduction to Carpenter’s important research.     

The Seventy Years War, 1744–1815, and Britain’s Fiscal-Naval State

Abstract

This article argues that we should view Britain as fighting a ‘Seventy Years War’ with France between the battles of Fontenoy in 1745 and Waterloo in 1815. Through years of hot and cold war, Britain struggled to build the military power needed to prevent it from falling under the domination of France. In hindsight, many view the British as inevitable imperialists, confidently building towards their global empire of the nineteenth century. In reality, eighteenth-century Britons frequently fretted about the threat of invasion, military weakness, possible financial collapse, and potential revolution. Historical developments only look inevitable in hindsight and with the aid of the social sciences. The struggle to defend itself in Europe during the Seventy Years War saw Britain develop a ‘fiscal-naval state’ that built a global empire.     

Towards Hume – the discourse on the liberty of the press in the age of Walpole*

The liberty of the press became one of the main topics of public debate in the 1720s and 1730s in response to Walpole’s restrictive press policy. This debate was carried on mainly in newspapers such as the Craftsman and the London Journal. Country and Court writers did not limit their discussions to legal questions, but conducted a lively debate about what press freedom actually was, and what role the press should have in political life. Among other things, they discussed to what extent it was appropriate for the press to take on an anti-governmental role. This debate is important, not least because it is a foil for one of the ‘classical’ eighteenth-century texts on the problem of press freedom, David Hume’s essay ‘Of the Liberty of the Press’. The debate reveals to what extent, and in what respects, Hume was breaking new ground in this essay.     

Franklin's Classical American Statesmanship

Abstract

Herbert Storing has persuasively argued that American political thought and statesmanship breaks with the tradition of classical political philosophy and statesmanship, particularly its concern with shaping the character of citizens and leaders, and instead sides with modern political philosophy, which has tended to encourage statesmen to forgo shaping the character of citizens and leaders and to focus instead on shaping institutions that will function regardless of citizens' virtue (or lack of virtue). An exception to this general rule, however, is Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, in the tradition of classical statesmanship, sought to shape not only American political institutions, but also and especially the character and way of life of his fellow citizens. Yet the character and way of life that Franklin helped lead his fellow citizens to embrace is uniquely modern and American in spirit. Thus, Franklin can be said to offer us an example of classical, but uniquely modern and American, statesmanship.     

Excavating Utopia: Why Archaeologists Should Study “Ideal” Communities of the Nineteenth Century

The study of utopias is riddled with contradictions: we admire and fear them; they are a radical critique of the modernist societies that surround them, and yet they are in some ways the archetypal product of modernity. This paper suggests that studying Utopia could be of value in analyzing some of the complexities and contradictions of Western society and ideology in the nineteenth century, as well as causing us to question some of the preconceptions we regularly bring to the study of the archaeological past. Finally I will suggest that a different kind of nineteenth century, one which includes the radical dissent and resistance of utopian thinkers and experimenters, provides a strong basis for a critique of the social values of modern capitalism.     

“Horned cattle and pack horses”: zooarchaeological legacy collections from the unauthorized (and unscreened) Spanish Fort

ABSTRACT

In 1689, the governor of La Florida ordered the construction of a fort near the Muscogee (Creek) ancestral community of Apalachicola, supplying it with a caravan of “horned cattle and pack horses.” The fort, referred to as “Spanish Fort,” was abandoned a year later. Archaeological investigations of the fort were carried out in 1960 without sieving, and a large collection of faunal remains was minimally studied. Despite the limitations of the recovery methods, a recent analysis of these zooarchaeological legacy collections provides insight into the provisioning strategies of the Spanish military 150 years after initial colonialism began. Spanish Fort was better provisioned than its predecessors, such as Fort San Juan, but with a limited range of domesticated livestock—only cattle and horses. The presidio may have traded with the Apalachicola community in order to diversify their diet, but butchering marks indicate that the presidio’s soldiers processed their own meat at the fort. Having learned hard lessons from earlier colonial expeditions, Spanish military colonialists minimized the outpost’s vulnerability by not relying heavily on the local Native American population, while building a transactional relationship with Apalachicola to ensure the community’s cooperation. The zooarchaeological materials from Spanish Fort also indicate that the fort was intentionally destroyed by fire, providing a glimpse of Spanish adaptive strategies as the mission of securing the inland Southeast from rival colonialism abruptly ended.     

A possible eighteenth to nineteenth century example of a popliteal aneurysm from Leicester

Examples of the impressions made on bones by arterial aneurysms are rare in the archaeological record. One such specimen was found in a collection of 5000 pieces of disarticulated human bone from a disturbed eighteenth to nineteenth century graveyard in Leicester. The distal end of an adult femur shows a lesion on the posterior surface that has been identified as that made by an aneurysm of the popliteal artery, by comparison with an authenticated museum specimen of that condition, also of eighteenth century data. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Who Will Write the History of Tears?’ History of Ideas and History of Emotions from Eighteenth-Century France to the Present

Summary

The aim of this article is to shed light on the methodological relationship between the history of ideas and the history of emotions, starting from the conception of weeping in the eighteenth-century French reflection. This period was critical for the defining of the modern concept of emotion because it encompassed the development of a new aesthetic and moral code centred on the exasperation of sensitivity and an exaggerated use of tears. This study brings out, in terms of methodology, the importance that the analysis of tears assumed from two points of view: on the one hand, it places the problem in a framework determined by history and culture (the object of study for the history of emotions); on the other, it recognises the unavoidable axiological and moral element that characterised crying (the object of study for the history of ideas). After a brief reconstruction of the discussion of tears in the history of emotion—from the histoire des mentalités to the ‘emotional turn’—and in the history of ideas, respectively, the article outlines some potential areas for research in an interdisciplinary perspective.     

Count Karl von Zinzendorf 's ‘New Accountancy’: The Structure of Austrian Government Finance in Peace and War, 1781–1791

This article examines various British proposals for co-operation with other European imperial powers to counter the rebellion of the American colonies or curb the pretentions of the new United States. Historians have paid little attention to these projects, mainly because none of them eventuated in the co-operation their authors envisaged. But their lack of success is not a reason to dismiss them as unimportant; their failure reveals much about British attitudes at the time.     

A Social History of Trans-Imperial Diplomacy in a Crisis Context: Herbert von Rathkeal's Circles of Belonging in Pera, 1779–1802

ABSTRACT

This article explores the multiple circles of diplomatic agents and their social belonging in the context of the international crisis in late eighteenth-century Istanbul, drawing upon the private papers of the imperial internuncio at Pera between 1779 and 1802. The son of an Irish Jacobite supporter who became a Jesuit and then a radical reformer in Vienna, Peter Herbert von Rathkeal was also a member of the Pera society in which he was born and raised. An agent of one of the most influential trans-imperial households established in Friuli, and a member of the Austrian and British nobilities, Herbert sought to become an eminent actor of the Ottoman diplomatic scene while remaining the patron of a cosmopolitan commercial-cum-political clientele. To study Herbert's actions is to question the model of diplomatie de type ancien in a cross-cultural and fast-changing context of crisis. Despite the collapse of the old diplomatic order with the breakdown of the French Revolution, and despite rising tensions generated by the increasingly sensitive ‘Eastern Question’, this article reveals how Herbert von Rathkeal managed to maintain a certain stability in Istanbul due to the economic and social resources, which his different circles of belonging opened up for him.     

殖民地时期美国史研究中的若干重要问题

国内美国史学界对殖民地时期研究相对薄弱,而美国学者的研究则至为丰富。在研究中通常会遇到许多棘手的难题：如何确定殖民地时期在美国历史中的地位?如何看待不同种族和族裔群体的历史作用?如何理解英格兰文化与北美文化的关系?如何解释北美13个殖民地从分到合的变化过程?如何借鉴和利用美国学者整理的历史文献和发表的研究成果?这都是研究殖民地时期美国史所必须处理的问题。     

19世纪英国城市现代化初探

城市现代化是城市化发展的高级阶段。19世纪的英国不仅是世界上第一个城市化国家,而且率先在城市现代化方面做出新的探索。首先在城市物质环境方面进行了巨大的改革,从城市街道的规划改造,到居民住宅的建筑规范,从居民私人空间的营造,到城市公共空间的建设,使城市的物质环境有了极大的改善。其次,在城市的管理方面也进行了全面探索,使城市管理摆脱了中世纪的寡头统治,进入到民主监督与管理的时代。由此,使城市的发展在经历了第一个阶段的数量扩张后,进入到了质量的增长时期,即向城市现代化方向迈进。     

冲突与合作:霸权转移视野下的现代英美关系考察(1914-1947)

20世纪前半期英美两国总体保持了合作关系,但在霸权争持矛盾的作用下,两国在世界秩序塑造、海上权势分配、战时战略规划、殖民地与势力范围归属以及经贸竞争等一系列问题上发生过激烈冲突。然而,实力上的巨大差距、国际体系的变迁、战争的冲击以及美国渐进并相对克制的崛起方式等因素迫使英国且战且退,于二战后不久完成了向美国转移世界霸权的进程。