An Iroquois frontier: the north shore of Lake Ontario during the late seventeenth century

Historical accounts and assessments of Lake Ontario's north shore during the late seventeenth century generally describe the area as an abandoned battleground and devasted “no-man's land”. The impression is built of English and particularly French views that this was an area no longer useful as a major source of furs. To the Iroquois the land was anything but devastated. Whereas they bypassed the territory in their constant search for furs to the north and west, the north shore, strategic and fertile, became a trading, agricultural, and even settlement frontier. A reassessment of the written documents and largely neglected maps of the period suggest that the Iroquois occupation of the north shore was highly ordered and based on traditional trade routes and tribal territorial claims. It was an extension of the homeland. But innovations in subsistence, settlement, and lifestyle did occur. The study of expansion to the north shore provides valuable insights into the delicate balance between the forces of change and continuity in post-contact Iroquois society.     

Accidentally killed by a cart: Workplace,hazard, and risk in late seventeenth century London

This article considers some of the interrelated characteristics of work, working environment and hazard, within the setting of the early modern city. Taking London as its example, some of the problems associated with the definition of work, and importantly work‐place, in the pre‐industrial economy are reviewed. Through an analysis of the frequency and patterns of sudden death in accidental and work‐related contexts, the range of hazards to which the inhabitants of London were exposed are described, and an assessment is made of the level of risk attached to certain occupational activities.     

Hospitality at wakes and funerals in Ireland from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century: Some evidence from the written record

Several aspects of mortuary customs in Ireland have already been studied in detail. This paper focuses on the role of hospitality on the occasion of death from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Based on a variety of written records, it discusses the attitudes of both lay and clerical commentators—officials, travellers and writers on the one hand, and the clergy on the other—to the provision of hospitality, particularly before the interment of the corpse. The meaning of hospitality for the bereaved family, the community, and the deceased is also explored.     

Mutilated memory: Reconstruction of the past and the mechanisms of memory among 17th century Otomis

Based on a chronicle written and translated by the Otomi — an indian group living in Querétaro City to the east of the Mexican Bajio, this work intends to describe the way they conceived the Spanish Conquest in the mid‐XVIIth century. By recalling, interpreting and idealizing their past these indians elaborated a version that conveys a complex and hopeless search for autonomy and identity in a context of social decay and crisis. This text is also a rare manifestation of colonial indian literature. Its analysis discovers the way Indians could use writing, oral and written sources to create and express an original way of coping with the past, time and colonial society.     

Dysfunctional domesticity: female insanity and family relationships among the West Riding poor in the mid-nineteenth century

"Dysfunctional domesticity" contributes to the growing reevaluation of the importance of the history of the family to understanding the history of insanity. Using patient case histories from the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, this article examines representations of family life among poor in England in the 1830s and 1840s. Among the so-called moral causes of insanity, family relationships held a prominent place. Female patients more than male patients had their mental illnesses attributed to their domestic circumstances: the poverty of their home lives, grief over a death of friends and family, love and marital relationships gone wrong, and violence in their homes. The case histories reveal that poor women experienced many pressures in the domestic sphere, and insanity may have been one way to escape dysfunctional domesticity.     

多元化、多样化、拓展化与开放性——西方学术界“17世纪普遍危机”论争及其启示

20世纪中期起,西方学术界围绕着"17世纪普遍危机"问题进行了一场论争,促进了对近代早期欧洲史的理解.透过其研究历程,我们从中可得到诸多启示.     

Drinking to Mana and Ethnicity: Trajectories of Yaqona Practice and Symbolism in Eastern Fiji

This paper sets out a transformational history of yaqona use in Fiji from first contact with Europeans to present times. Trying to transcend the familiar history/structure dichotomy, two relatively separate trajectories of Fijian practice are identified, both incorporating enduring cultural premises, both logically and historically transformative. In the older of these trajectories, yaqona drinking is transformed ritually to promote or block the circulation of mana in embodied Fijian ‘lands’. In the younger pathway, by contrast, secular variants of yaqona ceremonial are invented to ethnic effect as one particular transformation of a modern structure that, against the grain of ritual practice, tends to detach ethnic Fijians from ancestral powers. It is suggested that, whilst, in appropriate spaces, contemporary ethnic objectifications of yaqona are formulated in opposition to other ethnic presences as expressions of ‘authentic’ Fijian‐ness, the underlying ritual transformations of yaqona produce a range of Fijian states that exceed this authenticity and challenge the otherwise hegemonic claims of ethnicity.