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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Scandinavian Converts to Catholicism in Rome, 1673–1706 1

This article presents an analysis of a group of converts to Roman Catholicism, hitherto largely unknown in historical research, of Scandinavian origin received in the late 17th and early 18th centuries in Rome by Ospizio dei Convertendi. The article provides an overview of the converts and their motives, examining different factors which influenced the complex conversion process. It suggests that the key factors were often of a social rather than a religious nature, and that the conversions as a whole cannot be explained by Queen Christina's example and presence in Rome.     

The Atlantic Challenge: How Political Science Understands Canada’s Smallest Region

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how Canadian political science portrays Atlantic Canada, along with some of the consequences of persistent misrepresentations. I first explore traditional portrayals of Atlantic Canada as well as arguments challenging those conceptions, demonstrating that it is no longer appropriate to treat Atlantic Canada as primarily defined by either economic processes or common political culture. I then survey the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Canadian Public Administration and Canadian Public Policy to determine the extent to which discussions of Atlantic Canada still, (a) emphasize economic phenomena, and (b) assume a common Atlantic political culture. I find that, while political scientists are now less likely to study the region in terms of economic phenomena, they still perpetuate outdated depictions of Atlantic political culture. This tendency results in a certain degree of methodological imprecision and reinforces problematic assumptions about Atlantic political life.     

16、17世纪英国政治文化中的父权主义

父权主义是在英国从封建主义向资本主义过渡的历史背景下,为适应秩序和稳定的需要而产生的,是16、17世纪英国大多数人共同的政治态度,为英国君权的扩张和君主实施社会控制提供了合法性依据,也在一定程度上阻止了暴君和暴政在英国的出现。英国率先完成从封建主义向资本主义过渡,父权主义是一个重要的因素。     

Towards a definition of naval elites: reconsidering social change in Britain,France and Spain,c.1670–1810

Abstract

This work proposes the term ‘naval elites’ in order to provide a new interpretation of social change in the eighteenth century from a comparative perspective. Naval elites, a social group formed by a part of the naval officer corps and midshipmen, are here defined as a historical instrument, the particular and intriguing features of which may be useful in the revision of some perspectives on social change. In particular, the authors analyse shifting power relationships through the reconsideration of naval patronage and bureaucracy, revisit the process of naval professionalization and the transformation of the concept of merit, and suggest that naval elites embodied new notions of social distinction and exclusiveness.     

SAME/DIFFERENCE? TOWARD A SAPPHIC/NONBINARY SEXUALITY OF HISTORY

What is the next step when one has published a strong intervention in a field but later recognizes that one's angle of vision deserves new scrutiny? In this article, which began as a roundtable talk, I return to The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565–1830 (2014) to interrogate its “same-sex” logic through a nonbinary/trans lens. My book argues that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century representations of the sapphic became a flash point for European cultures grappling with questions of power and governance, desire and duty, mobility and difference in an age of colonialism, racial capitalism, revolution, and reaction. In figuring the sapphic exclusively through notions of sameness, however, The Sexuality of History does not do justice to trans and nonbinary figures both historical and fictional. Is there a place among sapphic subjects for these figures, and, if so, with what implications? I argue here for a both/and approach that requires recoding certain figures as nonbinary while still insisting on their efficacy as signs of the sapphic. This recoding encourages a more nuanced exploration of the cultural work performed by sapphic representations and a more expansive conception of what I have called a sapphic episteme. Such revisionist thinking may be useful at a time of social and theoretical tensions at the intersections of “lesbian” and “trans.”     

Was William Shakespeare an Eighteenth-Century Geographer? Constructing Histories of Geographical Knowledge

A Wittgensteinian view of language and meaning is employed in a modified approach to the historiography of geography which steers between socio-economic approaches and the scepticism engendered by post-structuralist theories of language, so enabling connections between geography and humanism to be explored. The contextual history which flows from this method is exemplified by an analysis of eighteenth-century editions of Shakespeare and the approaches they adopted to discussing Shakespeare's knowledge of geography and the natural world. The early eighteenth century edited Shakespeare in the light of subsequent knowledge of nature, thus removing him from historical context and rendering him as an eighteenth century geographer. By contrast, later editions, starting with Samuel Johnson's (1765), attempted to recover the geographical knowledge Shakespeare could have possessed in the Tudor period. The two editorial projects are related back to the religious, natural philosophical and historical beliefs of the editors. Individual intellects, the history of textuality and the shifting affiliations of geography in the division of knowledge need to be addressed more closely in future work on the history of geography.     

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.     

The investiture of Emperor Charles VI in Brabant and Flanders: a test case for the authority of the new Austrian government

This article focuses upon the investitures of Emperor Charles VI in 1717 in Brabant and Flanders. The purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate that, contrary to what some historians have claimed, the element of direct communication between prince and subjects remained significant at least until the beginning of the eighteenth century. Despite Charles' assertive attitude, the ceremonies were preceded by a period of intense negotiation, in which the Estates made clear demands. Eventually, however, he acquiesced to some of their requests. These concessions can be placed within a long tradition of modus vivendi between princely centralism and local autonomy in the Southern Netherlands. The sovereign was financially dependent on the Estates, which therefore had a great deal of leverage at their disposal. This vulnerability was compounded by the fact that Charles stood at the head of a dynasty, the Austrian Habsburgs, which had no tradition of authority in these regions upon which to draw. Furthermore, the Barrier Treaty's provisions restricted his sovereignty. His bargaining position influenced the organisation of the investitures, thus illustrating that in the early eighteenth century, the sovereign and provincial Estates of the Southern Netherlands were still engaged in a contractual relationship.